Tractates on the Gospel of John 90.1–92.2

You heard the Lord saying, "Whoever hates me hates my Father also," he who had said above, "These things they will do to you, because they do not know him who sent me." So a question arises that must not be passed over: how can they hate one they do not know? For if they suspect or believe God to be, not what he is, but something else, and hate this, then certainly they do not hate him, but what they conceive by their lying suspicion or vain credulity; but if they think of him what he is, how are they said not to know him? With men, indeed, it can happen that we often love those we have never seen; and so, conversely, it is not impossible that we hate those we have never seen. For when report speaks of someone, well or ill, it comes about not unreasonably that we love or hate someone unknown to us. But if the report is true, how is he to be called unknown about whom we have learned true things? Because we have not seen his face? But even he himself does not see it, and yet no one can be better known to anyone than he is to himself. So the knowledge of a person is not conveyed to us in his bodily face; rather, he lies open to our knowledge when his character and life are not hidden. Otherwise no one could know himself, since he cannot see his own face. But each one knows himself so much more certainly than he is known to others as he can more certainly see by inward sight what he understands, what he desires, how he lives; and when these are disclosed to us too, then he truly becomes known to us. Since these things are often conveyed to us about the absent or even the dead, either by report or by writings, it comes about that we often hate or love men whom we have never seen with the face of the body (though not men whom we do not know at all).

But in these matters our credulity is often deceived, because sometimes history, and much more often report, lies. But it is our concern not to be deceived by a harmful opinion, so that, since we cannot search out men's consciences, we may hold a true and certain judgment about the things themselves. That is, if we do not know whether this or that man is unchaste or chaste, we should nevertheless hate unchastity and love chastity; and if we do not know whether this or that man is unjust or just, we should nevertheless love justice and detest injustice; not the justice and injustice we invent for ourselves in error, but those which we faithfully see in God's truth, the one to be sought and the other to be shunned. So, when concerning the things themselves we seek what is to be sought and shun what is to be shunned, we may be pardoned if about the hidden things of men we sometimes, indeed constantly, think what is not true. For this I judge to belong to human temptation, without which this life cannot be led, so that the Apostle said, "Let no temptation take hold of you but what is human." For what is so human as to be unable to look into the human heart, and therefore not to search out its hiding places, but often to suspect something other than what goes on there? Yet even in this darkness of human things, that is, of other people's thoughts, though we cannot clear up our suspicions, because we are men, we ought to restrain our judgments, that is, definite and firm verdicts, and "not judge anything before the time, until the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things hidden in darkness and will make manifest the thoughts of the heart; and then each one will have praise from God." When, then, there is no error about things, so that vices are rightly disapproved and virtues approved, then surely, if there is error about men, it is a pardonable human temptation.

Through this darkness of human hearts, a thing much to be wondered at and much to be lamented happens: that sometimes one whom we think unjust, and yet who is just, and in whom we love justice without knowing it, we avoid, turn away from, bar from our company, refuse to share life and table with; and even, if the necessity of imposing discipline compels us, whether so that he may not harm others or that he himself may be corrected, we pursue him with salutary severity; and we afflict as bad a good man whom we love without knowing it. This happens if, for example, someone who is chaste is believed by us to be unchaste. For without doubt, if I love a chaste man, he is himself what I love; so I love him himself, and do not know it. And if I hate an unchaste man, I do not hate him himself, because he is not what I hate; and yet to my beloved, with whom my soul always dwells in the love of chastity, I unknowingly do wrong, erring not in distinguishing virtues and vices, but in the darkness of human hearts. So just as it can happen that a good man hates a good man without knowing it, or rather loves him without knowing it (for he loves him when he loves the good, because what the one is, the other loves), but hates, without knowing it, not him but what he thinks he is; so it can happen that an unjust man hates a just man, and, while he thinks he loves an unjust man like himself, unknowingly loves a just man; and yet, while he believes him unjust, he loves not him but what he thinks he is. And as with man, so also with God. Finally, if the Jews were asked whether they loved God, what would they answer but that they did love him, not lying deliberately, but rather supposing it in error? For how could they love the Father of the truth, who hated the truth? For they do not want their deeds to be condemned, and the truth is such that such deeds are condemned; so they hate the truth as much as they hate their own punishments, which the truth inflicts on such people. But they do not know that it is the truth which condemns such as they are; so they hate what they do not know; and when they hate it, they surely cannot but hate him also from whom it was born. And therefore, because they do not know that the truth, by whose judgment they are condemned, was born of God the Father, they certainly both do not know him and hate him. O wretched men, who, while they want to be evil, do not want the truth to exist by which the evil are condemned! For they do not want it to be what it is, when they ought rather not to want themselves to be what they are; so that, while it remains, they might be changed, lest by its judgment they be condemned.

The Lord had said: "Whoever hates me hates my Father also." For certainly whoever hates the truth must also hate him from whom the truth was born; of this we have already spoken as much as was given us. Then he added what we must now speak of: "If I had not done among them the works which no one else did, they would not have sin." That great sin, namely, of which he also said above, "If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin." This is the sin by which they did not believe in him as he spoke and worked. For they were not without any sin before he spoke to them and worked among them; but this sin by which they did not believe in him is mentioned in this way because by this very sin the others too are retained. For if they did not have this, and believed in him, the others too would be forgiven.

But what is this, that when he had said, "If I had not done among them the works," he at once added, "which no one else did"? For no works of Christ seem greater than the raising of the dead; and we know that the ancient prophets also did this. For Elijah did it; Elisha did it, both when he lived in this flesh and when he lay buried in his tomb. For some men carrying a dead man, when enemies rushed upon them, took refuge there, and when they had laid him there, he at once rose again. Yet Christ did some things which no one else did: that he fed five thousand men with five loaves, and four thousand with seven; that he walked on the waters and granted Peter to do so; that he changed water into wine; that he opened the eyes of a man born blind; and many other things which it would take long to mention. But we are answered that others too did things which he did not do, and which no one else did. For who but Moses struck the Egyptians with so many and such great plagues, led the people through the divided sea, obtained manna from heaven for the hungry, and poured out water from the rock for the thirsty? Who but Jesus son of Nave divided the streams of the Jordan for the people to cross, and by a prayer sent up to God reined in and fixed the running sun? Who besides Samson, in his thirst, was satisfied by water gushing from the jawbone of a dead ass? Who besides Elijah was carried up on high in a chariot of fire? Who besides Elisha, as I mentioned a little before, when his own corpse was buried, restored another's corpse to life? Who besides Daniel lived unharmed among the mouths of hungry lions shut in with him? Who besides the three men, Hananiah, Azariah, Mishael, walked unhurt in flames that blazed and did not burn?

I pass over the rest, since I think these suffice to show that some saints too did certain marvelous works which no one else did. But no one at all of the ancients is read to have healed so many defects, ailments, and afflictions of mortals with such power. For, to say nothing of those whom he made whole one by one with a command as they came to him, the evangelist Mark says in one place: "When evening came, after the sun had set, they brought to him all who were sick and those who had demons; and the whole city was gathered at the door; and he cured many who were afflicted with various diseases, and cast out many demons." And when Matthew had recorded this, he also added the prophetic testimony, saying: "That what was spoken by Isaiah the prophet might be fulfilled, saying: He took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses." Likewise in another place Mark says: "And wherever he went into villages or farms or cities, they laid the sick in the streets and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his garment; and as many as touched him were made well." These things no one else did among them. For "among them" (in eis) is to be understood thus: not among them or in their presence, but plainly in them, because he healed them. For he wished to be understood those works which not only caused wonder but also conferred manifest health; for which benefits they certainly ought to have repaid love, not hatred. Indeed it surpasses all the miracles of the rest that he was born of a virgin, and that he alone could violate his mother's integrity neither when conceived nor when born; but this was done neither in their presence nor in them. For the apostles came to know the truth of this miracle not by a sight shared with them but by a discipleship separate from them. And that on the third day he gave himself back alive from the tomb in the flesh in which he had been killed, and, never to die again, ascended with it into heaven, surpasses even all the other things he did; but neither was this done in the Jews nor in their presence; and he had not yet done this when he said, "If I had not done among them the works which no one else did."

Surely, then, they are those works by which he showed in their illnesses miracles of healing so great as no one had bestowed among them before; for these they saw, and reproaching them for this he adds and says, "But now they have both seen and hated both me and my Father; but this is so that the word might be fulfilled which is written in their Law, They hated me without cause." He calls it their Law, not as invented by them, but as given to them: just as we say, "Our daily bread," which we nevertheless ask from God, adding, "give us." He hates without cause who seeks no advantage from his hatred and avoids no disadvantage: so the ungodly hate the Lord; so the righteous love him, that is, freely, so that they expect no good things besides him, since he himself will be all in all. But whoever attends more deeply to Christ's saying, "If I had not done among them the works which no one else did" (for even if the Father or the Holy Spirit did them, no one else did them, because the whole Trinity is one substance), will find that he himself did it whenever any man of God did anything of the kind. For he can do all things in himself through himself, but no one can do anything without him. For Christ with the Father and the Holy Spirit are not three gods but one God, of whom it is written, "Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, who alone does wonders." So no one else did whatever works he did among them; for whatever any other man did of this kind, he did it with Christ doing it. But these Christ himself did, without their doing anything.

The Lord Jesus, in the discourse he spoke to his disciples after supper, close to his passion, as one about to go and leave them in bodily presence, yet to be with all his own until the consummation of the age in spiritual presence, exhorted them to endure the persecutions of the ungodly, whom he called by the name of the world. Out of that world, however, he said he had chosen the disciples themselves, so that they might know that they are what they are by the grace of God, but had been what they had been by their own vices. Then he plainly named the Jews as persecutors both of himself and of them, so that it might be wholly evident that they too were included under the name of the damnable world that persecutes the saints. And when he had said of them that they did not know him by whom he was sent, and yet hated both the Son and the Father, that is, both him who was sent and him by whom he was sent (all of which we have already discussed in other sermons), he came to where he says, "That the word might be fulfilled which is written in their Law, They hated me without cause." Then, as if in consequence, he added the words we have now undertaken to discuss: "But when the Paraclete comes, whom I will send you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me; and you also will bear witness, because you have been with me from the beginning." What has this to do with what he had said, "But now they have both seen and hated both me and my Father; but that the word might be fulfilled which is written in their Law, They hated me without cause"? Is it that the Paraclete, the Spirit of truth, when he came, convicted those who had seen and hated by a more manifest testimony? Indeed, by his manifestation he even converted some of those who had seen and still hated to the faith that works through love. That we may understand it so, we recall that it so happened. For on the day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit came upon a hundred and twenty people gathered together, among whom were all the apostles; and when, filled with him, they spoke in the tongues of all nations, many of those who had hated, stunned by so great a miracle (since they saw, as Peter spoke, so great and divine a testimony borne to Christ that he who had been killed by them and reckoned among the dead was proved to have risen and to be alive), were pierced to the heart and converted; and they received pardon for so great a blood so impiously and savagely shed, redeemed by the very blood they had shed. For the blood of Christ was so shed for the remission of all sins that it could blot out even the very sin by which it was shed. Looking to this, then, the Lord said, "They hated me without cause; but when the Paraclete comes, he will bear witness about me": as if he said, They hated me and killed me while seeing me; but the Paraclete will bear such witness about me as to make them believe in me without seeing.

"And you," he says, "will bear witness, because you have been with me from the beginning." The Holy Spirit will bear witness, and you too will bear witness. For because you have been with me from the beginning, you can preach what you know; and the reason you do not do so now is that the fullness of that Spirit is not yet present to you. "He, then, will bear witness about me, and you will bear witness": for the love of God, poured out in your hearts through the Holy Spirit who will be given you, will give you the confidence to bear witness. This was certainly still lacking to Peter when, terrified by the questioning of a woman, a maidservant, he could not bear true witness, but against his promise was driven by great fear to deny three times. But this fear is not in love; "perfect love casts out fear." Finally, before the Lord's passion, his servile fear was questioned by a woman of servile condition; but after the Lord's resurrection, his free love was questioned by the very Prince of freedom: and so there he was troubled, here he was calmed; there he denied the one he had loved, here he loved the one he had denied. But even then that love itself was still weak and narrow, until the Holy Spirit strengthened and enlarged it. After the Spirit was poured into him with the abundance of more generous grace, he so kindled Peter's once cold breast to bear witness about Christ, and so unlocked that mouth which had before, trembling, suppressed the truth, that, when all on whom the Holy Spirit had come were speaking in the tongues of all nations, with crowds of Jews standing around, he alone flashed out more readily than the others to bear witness about Christ, and confounded Christ's killers with his resurrection. If anyone delights to behold so sweetly holy a spectacle, let him read the Acts of the Apostles: there let him be amazed at blessed Peter preaching, whom he had grieved over as he denied; there let him see that tongue, transferred from diffidence to confidence and from servitude to freedom, turning so many tongues of enemies to the confession of Christ, the same tongue which, unable to bear the one tongue of a maid, had been turned to denial. What more? So great a brilliance of grace, so great a fullness of the Holy Spirit appeared in him, such weights of most precious truth came forth from the preacher's mouth, that out of a huge multitude he made the Jews, the adversaries and killers of Christ, ready to die for him, those by whom he had feared to be killed with him. This the Holy Spirit did, sent then and promised before. These great and wonderful benefits of his the Lord foresaw when he said, "And they have seen and hated both me and my Father, that the word might be fulfilled which is written in their Law, They hated me without cause. But when the Paraclete comes, whom I will send you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me; and you will bear witness." For he, bearing witness and making the bravest of witnesses, took away fear from Christ's friends and turned the hatred of his enemies into love.