Tractates on the Gospel of John 21.1–21.13

Yesterday, as far as the Lord deigned to grant, we treated with what ability we could, and understood with what capacity we could, how the works of the Father and the Son are inseparable: the Father does not do some things and the Son others, but the Father does all things through the Son, as through his Word, of whom it is written, “All things were made through him, and without him nothing was made.” Let us look today at the words that follow, and let us both beg the same Lord for his mercy and hope in it, so that first, if he himself judges it fitting, we may understand what is true; but if we cannot do this, that we may not go into what is false. For it is better not to know than to err; but to know is better than not to know. So above all we ought to strive to know: if we can, thanks be to God; but if for the present we cannot reach the truth, let us not go toward falsehood. For we ought to consider what we are and what we are treating. We are men carrying flesh, walking in this life; and though already reborn of the seed of God's word, yet renewed in Christ in such a way that we are not yet entirely stripped of Adam. For that which in us is mortal and corruptible and weighs down the soul plainly comes from Adam, and this is evident; but that which in us is spiritual and lifts up the soul comes from the gift of God and from the mercy of him who sent his only Son to share our death with us and to lead us to his own immortality. We have him as teacher, that we may not sin; as defender, if we have sinned and have confessed and turned back; as intercessor for us, if we desire some good from the Lord; and as giver together with the Father, because the Father and the Son are one God. But he was speaking these things as a man to men: God hidden, man manifest, that he might make manifest men gods; and the Son of God, made a son of man, that he might make the sons of men sons of God. By what art of his wisdom he does this we recognize in his words. For he speaks as a little one to little ones; but he is little in such a way that he is also great; we are little, but great in him. He speaks, then, as one who cherishes and nourishes infants at the breast, and those who grow by loving.

He had said, “The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he sees the Father doing.” And we understood that the Father does not do something separately, so that when the Son has seen it, he too does something similar after looking at his Father's work; but that he said, “The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he sees the Father doing,” because the Son is wholly from the Father, and his whole substance and power are from him who begot him. But now, having said that he does likewise the things the Father does—so that we should not understand the Father to do some things and the Son others, but the Son to do with like power those very things that the Father does, since the Father does them through the Son—he went on to say what we heard read today: “For the Father loves the Son, and shows him all things that he himself does.” Again mortal thought is thrown into confusion. The Father shows the Son what he himself does; therefore, someone says, the Father does it separately, so that the Son can see what he does. Again two craftsmen, as it were, come to human thought, as if a smith were teaching his son his craft and showing him whatever he makes, so that he too can make it: “All things,” he says, “he shows him that he himself does.” When the Father makes, then, does the Son not make, so that the Son can see what the Father makes? Certainly “all things were made through him, and without him nothing was made.” Hence we see how the Father shows the Son what he does, when the Father does nothing except what he does through the Son. What did the Father make? The world. Did he show the Son the world already made, so that he too might make something similar? Then let the world be given us that the Son also made. But “all things were made through him, and without him nothing was made,” and “the world was made through him.” If the world was made through him, and all things were made through him, and the Father makes nothing that he does not make through the Son, where does the Father show the Son what he does, except in the Son himself, through whom he does it? For what place is there where the Father's work might be shown to the Son, as if he made it outside and sat outside, and the Son watched the Father's hand to see how he made it? Where is that inseparable Trinity? Where is the Word, of whom it was said that he is “the power and wisdom of God”? Where is what Scripture says of Wisdom itself: “For it is the radiance of eternal light”? Where is what is said of it again: “It reaches mightily from end to end, and orders all things sweetly”? If the Father does anything, he does it through the Son; if through his Wisdom and his Power, he does not show him outside something for him to see, but shows him in himself what he does.

What does the Father see—or rather, what does the Son see in the Father, so that he too may do it? Perhaps I could say it; but give me someone who can grasp it. Or perhaps I could think it but not say it; or perhaps not even think it. For that divinity surpasses us as God surpasses men, as the immortal surpasses mortals, as the eternal surpasses the temporal. May he inspire and grant; may he deign now to sprinkle something from that fountain of life and let it drip into our thirst, lest we dry up in this desert. Let us say to him “Lord,” to whom we have learned to say “Father.” For we dare this, because he himself willed that we should dare it; provided only that we live so that he does not say to us, “If I am a Father, where is my honor? If I am a Lord, where is my fear?” Let us say to him, then, “Our Father.” To whom do we say “Our Father”? To the Father of Christ. Whoever, then, says “Our Father” to the Father of Christ, what does he say to Christ but “Our brother”? Yet he is not our Father in the same way as he is Christ's Father; for Christ never joined us to himself in such a way as to make no distinction between us and himself. For he is the Son equal to the Father, he is eternal with the Father and coeternal with the Father; but we were made through the Son, adopted through the Only-begotten. Accordingly, it was never heard from the mouth of our Lord Jesus Christ, when he spoke to the disciples, that he said of the supreme God, his Father, “Our Father”; but he said either “my Father” or “your Father.” He did not say “Our Father,” so much so that in one place he set these two side by side: “I am going,” he says, “to my God and your God.” Why did he not say “our God”? He said both “my Father” and “your Father”; he did not say “our Father.” He so joins as to distinguish, and so distinguishes as not to disjoin. He wants us to be one in him, but the Father and himself to be one.

However much, then, we understand and however much we see, even when we have been made equal to the angels, we shall not see as the Son sees. For we, even when we do not see, are something. And what else are we when we do not see but non-seeing? Still we exist, even as non-seeing; and in order to see, we turn ourselves to him whom we are to see; and there comes to be in us a seeing that was not there when we nevertheless existed. For there is a man not seeing, and the same man, when he has seen, is called a man seeing. So for him, seeing is not the same as being a man; for if seeing were for him the same as being a man, he would never be a man unless seeing. But when there is a man not seeing, and he seeks to see what he does not see, there is someone who seeks, and someone who turns himself to see; and when he has turned himself well and has seen, he becomes a man seeing who was before a man not seeing. Seeing, then, comes to him and departs from him: it comes to him when he turns himself toward, it departs from him when he turns himself away. Is the Son like this? Far from it. The Son was never non-seeing and afterward became seeing; but to see the Father is for him to be the Son. For we, by turning away to sin, lose enlightenment, and by turning ourselves to God, receive enlightenment. For the light by which we are enlightened is one thing; we who are enlightened are another. But the light itself by which we are enlightened neither turns away from itself nor loses its light, because it is light. So, then, the Father shows the Son the thing he does in such a way that the Son sees all things in the Father, and the Son is all things in the Father. For by seeing he was born, and by being born he sees. But it is not that at some time he was not born and afterward was born, as it is not that at some time he did not see and afterward saw; but in that which is for him to see, in that is for him to be, in that is for him to have been born, in that is for him to abide, in that is for him not to be changed, in that is for him to persist without beginning and without end. Let us not, then, take it carnally, that the Father sits and does a work and shows it to the Son, and the Son sees the work that the Father does and makes it in another place or out of other material. For “all things were made through him, and without him nothing was made.” The Son is the Word of the Father; God has said nothing that he did not say in the Son. For by saying in the Son what he was going to make through the Son, he begot the Son himself, through whom he would make all things.

“And greater works than these will he show him, that you may marvel.” Here again he unsettles us. And who is there who can worthily search out so great a secret? But since he has deigned to speak to us, he himself opens it. For he would not want to say what he did not want to be understood; since he deigned to speak, he has without doubt roused our hearing; will he desert, once roused, the one he roused to hear? We said, as best we could, that the Son does not know in time, and that the Son's knowledge is not one thing and the Son himself another, and the Son's seeing one thing and the Son himself another; but that the seeing itself is the Son, and the knowledge or wisdom of the Father itself is the Son, and that this wisdom and this seeing are eternal from eternity, and coeternal with him from whom it is; and that nothing there varies through time, nothing is born that was not, nothing perishes that was. We said it as best we could. What, then, is time doing here now, that he should say, “Greater works than these will he show him”? That is, he is going to show; this is “he will show.” “He has shown” is one thing, “he will show” another: “he has shown” we say of the past, “he will show” we say of the future. What, then, are we doing here, brothers? See, the one whom we had called coeternal with the Father, in whom nothing varies through time, nothing moves through intervals either of moments or of places, who abides always with the Father seeing, seeing the Father and existing by seeing—again naming times to us, says, “He will show him greater things than these.” So he is going to show the Son something more that the Son does not know? What, then, do we do? How do we understand this? See, our Lord Jesus Christ was above; he is below. When was he above? When he said, “Whatever the Father does, these same things the Son also does likewise.” Why is he now below? “Greater works than these will he show him.” O Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior, Word of God through whom all things were made, what is the Father going to show you that you do not yet know? What of the Father is hidden from you? What is hidden from you in the Father, from whom the Father is not hidden? What greater works is he going to show you? Or than what works are the ones he is going to show greater? For when he said “greater than these,” we ought first to understand greater than what.

Let us recall where this discourse came from. It was when that man who had been thirty-eight years in his infirmity was cured, and he bade him, made whole, take up his bed and go to his house. For from this the Jews with whom he was speaking were stirred up. He was speaking in words and keeping silent in meaning; in a way he was hinting to those who understood and concealing from those who were angry. So from this, since the Jews were stirred up because the Lord did this on the sabbath, they gave occasion to this discourse. Let us not, then, hear these things as if we had forgotten what was said above, but let us look back at that man, sick for thirty-eight years, suddenly made whole, while the Jews marveled and were angry. They were seeking darkness from the sabbath rather than light from the miracle. Speaking, then, to these indignant men, he said this: “Greater works than these will he show him.” Greater than these: than which? Because you have seen a man made whole whose sickness had lasted thirty-eight years, the Father is going to show the Son greater things than these. What are the greater things? He goes on and says: “For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so the Son also gives life to whom he will.” These are plainly greater. For it is much more that the dead should rise than that the sick should recover: these are greater. But when is the Father going to show them to the Son? Does the Son not know them? And he who was speaking—did he not know how to raise the dead? Did he through whom all things were made still have to learn to raise the dead? Did he who caused us to live, when we did not exist, still have to learn how we are to be raised? What, then, does he mean?

For he came down to us, and he who a little before was speaking as God began to speak as man. Yet he who is man is the same who is God, because God became man; but he became what he was not without losing what he was. So man was added to God, that he might be man who was God, not so that he would now be man and not be God. Let us hear him, then, as a brother too, we who were hearing the Creator: Creator, because he is the Word in the beginning; brother, because he was born of the Virgin Mary; Creator before Abraham, before Adam, before the earth, before the heaven, before all things bodily and spiritual; but brother from the seed of Abraham, from the tribe of Judah, from an Israelite virgin. If, then, we know him who speaks to us to be both God and man, let us understand the words of God and of man; for sometimes he says things to us that belong to his majesty, sometimes things that belong to his humility. For he is exalted who is humble, so that he may make us, who are humble, exalted. What, then, does he say? “The Father will show me greater things than these, that you may marvel.” So he is going to show them to us, not to him. Since, then, the Father is going to show them to us, he therefore said, “that you may marvel.” For he explained what he meant by “The Father will show me.” Why did he not say, “The Father will show you,” but “he will show the Son”? Because we too are members of the Son; and what we, as members, learn, he himself in a way learns in his members. How does he learn in us? As he suffers in us. From where do we prove that he suffers in us? From that voice from heaven: “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” Is it not he who will sit as judge at the end of the world, and setting the righteous on the right and the wicked on the left, will say, “Come, blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom; for I was hungry and you gave me to eat”? And when they answer, “Lord, when did we see you hungry?” he will say to them, “When you gave to one of my least ones, you gave to me.” Let him, then, who said, “When you gave to one of my least ones, you gave to me,” be asked by us now, and let us say to him, “Lord, when will you be a learner, since you teach all things?” At once he answers us in our faith: “When one of my least ones learns, I learn.”

Let us, then, rejoice and give thanks that we have been made not only Christians but Christ. Do you understand, brothers, do you grasp the grace of God upon us? Marvel, rejoice: we have been made Christ. For if he is the head, we are the members; the whole man is he and we. This is what the apostle Paul says: “That we may no longer be children, tossed about and carried around by every wind of doctrine.” But above he had said: “Until we all meet in the unity of faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God, in a perfect man, in the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ.” The fullness of Christ, then, is head and members. What is head and members? Christ and the church. For we would be arrogating this to ourselves proudly, unless he himself deigned to promise it, who says through the same apostle: “But you are the body of Christ and its members.”

When, then, the Father shows something to the members of Christ, he shows it to Christ. A kind of great miracle takes place, yet a true one: there is shown to Christ what Christ knew, and it is shown to Christ through Christ. It is a wonderful and great thing, but Scripture speaks this way. Are we going to contradict the divine utterances, and not rather understand them, and by his own gift give thanks to the one who gave it? What is it that I said: it is shown to Christ through Christ? It is shown to the members through the head. See it in yourself: suppose that with your eyes closed you want to pick something up; your hand does not know where to go, and yet your hand is your member, for it is not separated from your body; open your eyes, and now the hand sees where to go: the member has followed as the head showed the way. If, then, something like this could be found in you, that your body showed something to your body, and something was shown to your body through your body, do not marvel that it is said, it is shown to Christ through Christ. For the head shows, that the members may see; and the head teaches, that the members may learn; yet head and members are one man. He did not wish to separate himself, but deigned to be joined to us. He was far from us, very far: what is so far apart as the made and the Maker? What so far apart as God and man? What so far apart as justice and iniquity? What so far apart as eternity and mortality? See how far away was the Word, in the beginning God with God, through whom all things were made. How, then, did he come near, so as to be what we are, and we in him? “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.”

This, then, is what he is going to show us; this he showed to his disciples, who saw him in the flesh. What is this? “As the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so the Son also gives life to whom he will.” Some, then, the Father, and others the Son? Certainly all things were made through him. What do we say, my brothers? Christ raised Lazarus: what dead man did the Father raise, that Christ might see how to raise Lazarus? Or when Christ raised Lazarus, did the Father not raise him, and did the Son act alone without the Father? Read the passage itself, and see that he calls upon the Father there so that Lazarus may rise. As man, he calls upon the Father; as God, he acts with the Father. So Lazarus too, who rose again, was raised both by the Father and by the Son, in the gift and grace of the Holy Spirit; and the Trinity did that wonderful work. Let us not, then, understand “As the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so the Son also gives life to whom he will” in such a way as to think that some are raised and given life by the Father, others by the Son; but the very same whom the Father raises and gives life, the Son also raises and gives life, because “all things were made through him, and without him nothing was made.” And to show that he has a power equal, though given by the Father, he therefore says, “So the Son also gives life to whom he will,” to show his will there; and so that no one should say, “The Father raises the dead through the Son, but the Father as the one who is mighty, as the one who has the power, the Son as acting by another's power, doing something as a minister, like an angel,” he signified his power when he said, “So the Son also gives life to whom he will.” For the Father does not will anything other than the Son does; but as they have one substance, so they have one will.

And who are these dead whom the Father and the Son give life? Are they the ones we spoke of, Lazarus, or the widow's son, or the daughter of the ruler of the synagogue? For we know that these were raised by Christ the Lord. He wishes to make known to us something else, namely the resurrection of the dead that we all await; not the one that certain people had so that others might believe. For Lazarus rose to die again; we shall rise to live for ever. Does the Father bring about such a resurrection, or the Son? Rather, the Father in the Son. Therefore the Son, and the Father in the Son. How do we prove that he speaks of this resurrection? After saying, “For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so the Son also gives life to whom he will,” so that we should not understand the resurrection of the dead that he performs as a miracle, not for eternal life, he went on to say, “For the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son.” What is this? He was speaking of the resurrection of the dead, that “as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so the Son also gives life to whom he will”: why did he at once add, as a reason, something about judgment, saying, “For the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son,” unless because he had spoken of that resurrection of the dead which is to take place at the judgment?

“For the Father,” he says, “judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son.” A little before, we thought that the Father does something that the Son does not do, when he said, “For the Father loves the Son, and shows him all things that he himself does”—as if the Father were doing and the Son watching. So a carnal understanding was creeping into our minds, as though the Father did what the Son did not do, while the Son watched the Father showing what was done by the Father. So it was as if the Father did what the Son did not do; now we see the Son doing something that the Father does not do. How he turns us about and works over our minds! He leads us this way and that; he does not let us stay in one place of the flesh, so that by turning us he may exercise us, by exercising cleanse us, by cleansing make us capable, and when we are made capable, fill us. What do these words make of us? What was he saying? What is he saying? A little before, he was saying that the Father shows the Son whatever he does: I was seeing, as it were, the Father doing and the Son waiting. Now again I see the Son doing and the Father at leisure: “For the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son.” When the Son is going to judge, then, will the Father be at leisure and not judge? What is this? What am I to understand? Lord, what are you saying? You are the Word, God; I am a man. Do you say that the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son? I read in another place your saying, “I judge no one; there is one who seeks and judges.” Of whom do you say, “There is one who seeks and judges,” if not of the Father? He seeks out the wrongs done to you, he judges concerning the wrongs done to you. How is it, here, that the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son? Let us ask Peter too; let us hear him speaking in his letter: “Christ suffered for us,” he says, “leaving us an example, that we should follow in his steps; who committed no sin, nor was guile found in his mouth; who, when he was reviled, did not revile in return; when he suffered wrong, did not threaten, but committed himself to him who judges justly.” How is it true that the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son? We are troubled here; troubled, let us sweat; sweating, let us be cleansed. Let us try somehow, by his gift, to penetrate the deep secrets of these words. Perhaps we act rashly in wanting to discuss and examine the words of God. And why were they spoken, except to be known? Why did they sound, except to be heard? Why were they heard, except to be understood? Let him strengthen us, then, and give us something, as much as he deigns; and if we do not yet reach the fountain, let us drink from the stream. See, John himself has flowed out to us like a stream; he has brought the Word down to us from on high; he has lowered it and in a way laid it level, so that we may not dread the height but may approach the lowly one.

There is indeed a true and firm meaning, if we can somehow hold it, of “The Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son.” For this was said because at the judgment no one will appear to men but the Son. The Father will be hidden, the Son manifest. In what will the Son be manifest? In the form in which he ascended. For in the form of God he is hidden with the Father; in the form of a servant he is manifest to men. So the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son—that is, the manifest judgment; in this manifest judgment the Son will judge, because he himself will appear to those who are to be judged. Scripture shows us more clearly that he himself will appear. On the fortieth day after his resurrection he ascended into heaven while his disciples watched, and an angel's voice said to them, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This one who has been taken up from you into heaven will come in the same way as you saw him going into heaven.” In what way did they see him go? In the flesh, which they touched, which they handled, whose very scars they verified by touching; in that body in which he went in and out with them for forty days, showing himself to them in truth, not in any falsehood: not a phantom, not a shadow, not a spirit; but as he himself said, without deceiving, “Handle me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see that I have.” That body is now indeed worthy of a heavenly dwelling, not subject to death, not changeable through the ages. For it does not, as it grew from infancy to that age, so verge from the age that was youth into old age: it remains as it ascended, to come to those to whom he willed that his word be preached before he comes. So he will come in human form: this the ungodly will see; those placed on the right will see it; those set apart on the left will see it; as it is written, “They will look on him whom they pierced.” If they will look on him whom they pierced, they will see the very body that they struck with the lance: the Word is not struck with a lance. This, then, the ungodly will be able to see, which they were able to wound. They did not see the God hidden in the body; after the judgment he will be seen by those who will be on the right. This, then, is what he says: “The Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son”: because the Son will come manifest to the judgment, appearing to men in a human body, saying to those on the right, “Come, blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom,” and saying to those on the left, “Depart into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.”