4. But we have still in reserve for the further solution of this question the blessed apostle, and that robber who was a villain in wickedness, but a believer on the cross. For the Apostle Paul tells us that he was made an apostle not of men, nor by man, but by Jesus Christ: and speaking of his own gospel.
he says, " For I neither re(*eived it of man, neither did I learn it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ." ^ How then was he among those of whom it is said, " They shall believe on me through their word ''? On the other hand, the robber believed at the very time when in the case of the teachers themselves such faith as they previously possessed had utterly failed. Not even he, therefore, believed on Christ through their word, and yet his faith was such that he confessed that He whom he saw nailed to the cross would not only rise again, but would also reign, when he said, " Remember me when Thou comest into Thy kingdom. "•» 5. Accordingly it remains that if we are to believe that the Lord Jesus, in this prayer, prayed for all of His own who either then were or' should thereafter be in this life, which is a state of trial upon earth,^ we must so understand the expression, " through their word," as to believe that it here signified the word of faith itself which they preached in the world, and that it was called their word because it was primarily and principally preached b}'' them. For it was already in the course of being preached by them in the earth when Paul received that same word of theirs by the revelation of Jesus Christ. Whence also it came about that he compared the Gospel with them, lest by any means he had run, or should run, in vain; and they gave him their right hand because in him also they found, although not given him by them, their own word which they were already preaching, and in which they were now established.*^ And in regard to this word of the resurrection of Christ, it is said by the same apostle, "Whether it were I, or they, so we preach, and so ye believed;"' and again, " This is the word of faith,'* he says, " which we preach, that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth that Jesus is the Lord, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved." ^.\nd in the Acts of the Apostles we read that in Christ, God hath marked out [the ground of] faith unto all men, in that He hath raised Him from the dead.' Accordingly, this word of faith, because principally and primarily preached by the apostles who adhered to Him, was called their word. Not, however, on that account does it cease to be the word of God because it is called their word; for 5 Job vii. i: Tcntatio siipfr tcrrcuii, yN""^!' N'«i''> ''"K" lish version, " An appointed time (inarg., wMrfari;) uimn cartli." Kcv. Ver. puts "warfare" into the text, and "time of service" on the margin.
4o8 [Tractate CX.
the same apostle Says that the Thessalonians received it from him "not as the word of men, but, as it is in truth, the word of God.'' ' "Of God," for the very reason that it was freely given by God; but called "their word," because primarily and principally committed to them by God to be preached. In the same way also the thief mentioned above had in the matter of his own faith their word, which was called theirs precisely because the preaching of it primarily and principally pertained to the office they filled. And once more, when murmuring arose among the Grecian widows in reference to the serving of the tables, previous to the time when Paul was brougcit to the faith of Christ, the reply given by the apostles, who before then had adhered to the Lord, was: " It is not good that we should leave the word I I Thess. ii. 13.
I I Thess. ii. 13.
of God, and serve tables."^ Then it was that they provided for the ordination of deacons, that they themselves might not be drawn aside from the duty of preaching the word. Hence that was properly enough called their word which is the word of faith, whereby all, from whatever quarter they had heard it, believed on Christ, or, as yet to hear it, should thereafter believe. In this prayer, therefore, all whom He redeemed, whether then alive or thereafter to live in the flesh, were prayed for by our Redeemer when, praying for the apostles who were then with Him, He also conjoined those who were yet to believe on Him through their word. But what, after such conjunction, He then proceeds to say, must be reserved for discussion in another discourse.
2 Acts vi. 1-4.
TRACTATE CX.
Chapter XVII. 21-23.
I. After the Lord Jesus had prayed for His disciples whom He had with Him at the time, and had conjoined with them others who were also His own, by saying, " Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also who shall believe on me through their word," as if we were inquiring what or wherefore He prayed for them, He straightway subjoined, " That they all may be one; as Thou, Father, [art] in me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us." And a little above, while still praying for the disciples alone who were then with Him, He said, " Holy Father, keep in Thine own name those whom Thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are'' (ver. 11). It is the same thing, therefore, that He now also prayed for in our behalf, as He did at that time in theirs, namely, that all — to wit, both we and they — may be one. And here we must take particular notice that the Lord did not say that we all may be one, but, "that they all may be one; as Thou Father, in me, and I in Thee" (where is to be understood are one, as is more clearly expressed afterwards); because He had also said before of the disciples who were with Him, " That they may be one, as we are." The Father, therefore, is in the Son, and the Son in the Father, in such a way as to be one, because they are of one substance; but while we may indeed be in them, we cannot be one with them; for they and we are not of one substance, in as far as the Son is God along with the Father. But in as far as He is man, He is of the same substance as we are. But at present He wished rather to call attention to that other statement which He made use of in another place, " I and the Father are one,"' where He intimated that His own nature was the same with that of the Father. And accordingly, though the Father and Son, or even the Holy Spirit, are in us, we must not suppose that they are of one nature with ourselves. And hence they are in^ us, or we are in them, in this sense, that they are one in their own nature, and we are one in ours. For they are in us, as God in His temple; but we are in them, as the creature in its Creator.
2. But then after saying, " That they also may be one in us," He added, "That the world may believe that Thou hast sent me." What does He mean by this? Is it that the world will then be brought to the faith, when we shall all be one in the Father and Son? Is not such a state the everlasting peace, and the reward of faith, rather than faith itself? For we shall be one not in order to our believing, but because we have believed. But although in this life, because of the common ' Chap. X. 30.
Traciate ex.]
faith itself, all who believe in one are one, according to the words of the apostle, " For ye are all one in Christ Jesus;"' even thus we are one, not in order to our believing, but because we do believe. What, then, is meant by the words, "That they all may be one, that the world may believe "? This, doubtless, that the "all" are themselves the believing world. For those who shall be one are not of one class, and the world that is thereafter to believe on this very ground that these shall be one, of another; since it is perfectly certain that He says, "That they all may be one," of those of whom He had said before, "Neither pray I for these alone, but for those also who shall believe on me through their word," immediately adding as He does, " That they all may be one." And this " all," what is it but the world; not certainly that which is hostile, but that which is believing? For you see here that He who had said, " I pray not for the world," now prayeth for the world that it may believe. For there is a world whereof it is written, " That we might not be condemned with this world. "= For that world He prayeth not, for He is fully aware to what it is predestinated. And there is a world whereof it is written, " For the Son of man came not to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved;"3 and hence the apostle also says, " God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself."'* For this world it is that He prayeth, in saying, " That the world may believe that Thou hast sent me." For through this faith the world is reconciled unto God when it believes in the Christ whom God has sent. How, then, are we to understand Him when He says, " That they also may be one in us, that the world may believe that Thou hast sent me," but just in this way, that He did not assign the cause of the world believing to the fact that those others are one, as if it believed on the ground that it saw them to be one; for the world itself here consisteth of all who by their own believing become one; but in His prayer He said, "That the world may believe," just as in His prayer He also said, "That they all may be one;" and still further in the same prayer, " That they also may be one in us." For the words, "they all may be one," are equivalent to " the world may believe," since it is by believing that they become one, iierfectly one; that is, those who, although one by nature, had ceased to be so by their mutual dissensions. In fuie, if the verb which He uses, " I pray," be understood in the third clause, or rather, to ' Oal. iii. 28. 3 Chap. iii. 17.
make the whole fuller, be everywhere supplied, the explanation of this sentence will be all the clearer: I pray " that they all may be one; as Thou, Father, in me, and I in Thee;" I pray " that they also may be one in us;" I pray "that the world may believe that Thou hast sent me." And, mark, He added the words " in us " in order that we may know that our being m.ade one in that love of unchanging faithfulness is to be attributed to the grace of God, and not to ourselves: just as the apostle, after saying, " For ye were at one time darkness, but now are ye light," that none might attribute the doing of this to themselves, added, "in the Lord."^ 3. Furthermore, our Saviour in thus praying to the Father showed Himself to be man; while He now also shows that He Himself, as being God along with the Father, doeth that which He prayeth for, when He says, " And the glory which Thou gavest me, I have given them." And what was that glory but immortality, which human nature was henceforth to receive in Him? For not even He Himself had as yet received it, but in His own customary way, on account of the absolute fixedness of predestination. He intimates what is future in verbs of the past tense, because being now on the point of being glorified, or in other words, raised up again by the Father, He Himself is going to raise us up to the same glory in the end. What we have here is similar to what He says elsewhere, " As the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them, even so the Son quickeneth whom He will." And "whom," but just the same as the Father? " For what things soever the Father doeth," not other things, but " these also doeth the Son," not in a different vvay, but "in like manner."* Ami in this way He also raised up even His own self. For to this effect he said, " Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up again."' Accordingly the glory of immortality, which He says had been given Him by the Father, He must be also understood as having bestowed upon Himself, although He does not say it. For on this very account He more frequently says that the Father alone doeth, what He Himself also doeth along with the Fatlier, that everything whatever He may attribute to Him of whom He is. But sometimes also He is silent about the Father, and says that He Himself doeth what He only doeth along with tlie Fatlier: that we may thereby understand that the Son is not to be separated from the working of the Father, when He is silent about Himself, and ascribes 5 Eph. V. 8.
6 Ciiap. V. 2t, 19.
7 Chap. ii. 19.
4IO THE AVORKS OF ST. AUGUSTIN.
[Tractate CX.
some work or other to the Father; as, on the other hand, the Father is not separated from the working of the Son, when the Son is said, without any mention being made of [the Father] Himself, to be doing some work in which nevertheless both are equally engaged. When, therefore, in some work of the Father, the Son says nothing of His own working, He commends humility, that He may become the source of sounder health to us; but when, in turn, in the case of some work of His own. He says nothing of the working of the Father, He commends His own equality, that we may not suppose Him to be inferior. In this way, then, and in this passage. He neither estranges Himself from the Father's working, although He has said, " The glory which Thou gavest me;" for He also gave it to Himself: nor does He estrange the Father from His own working, although saying, " I have given to them;" for the Father also gave it to them. For the works not only of the Father and the Son, but also of the Holy Spirit, are inseparable. But just as, because of His praying the Father in behalf of all His people, it was His own pleasure that this should be done, " that they all may be one;" so also on the ground of His own beneficence, as expressed in the words, " The glory which Thou gavest me, I have given them," the doing of that was none the less His pleasure; for He immediately added, " That they may be one, as we also are one."
4. And then He added: "I in them, and Thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one." Here He briefly intimated Himself as the Mediator between God and men. Nor was this said in any such way as if the Father were not in us, or we were not in the Father; since He had also said in another place, " We will come unto him, and make our abode with him;"^ and a little before in this present passage He had not said, " I in them. and Thou in me,'^ as He said now; or. They in me, and I in Thee; but, " Thou in me, and I in Thee, and they in us." Accordingly, when He now says, " I in them, and Thou in me," the words take this form in reference to the person of the Mediator, like that other expression used by the apostle,'* Ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's."^ But in adding, " That they may be made perfect in one," He showed that the reconciliation, which is effected by the Mediator, is carried to the very length of bringing us to the enjoyment of that perfect blessedness, which is thenceforth incapable of further addition. Hence the words that That the world may know that Thou follow, '" I Chap. xiv. 23.
I Cor. iii.
23.
hast sent me," are not, I think, to be taken as if He had again said, " That the world may believe;" for sometimes, to know, is also used in the same sense as to believe, as it is in the words He uttered some time before: " And they have known truly that I came out from Thee, and they have believed that Thou didst send me." He expressed the same thing by the later words, " they have believed," as He had done by the earlier, "they have known." But inasmuch as He here speaks of the consummation, the knowledge must be taken for such, as it shall then be by sight, and not, as it now is, by faith. For an order seems to have been preserved in reference to what He said a little before, '"that the world may believe; " while here it is, " that the world may know. " For although He said there, " that they all may be one, "and "may be one in us," yet He did not say, "they may be made perfect in one," and so subjoined the words, " that the world may believe that Thou hast sent me;" but here He said, " That they may be made perfect in one," and then added, not, " that the world may believe," but, " that the world may know that Thou hast sent me."
For so long as we believe what we do not see, we are not yet made perfect, as we shall be when we have merited the sight of that which we believe. Most correctly, therefore, did He ^ay in that previous place, " That the world may believe," and here " That the world rray know;" yet both there and here, " that Thou hast sent me;" that we may know, so far as belongs to the inseparable love of the Father and the Son, that at present we only believe what we are on the way, by believing, to know. And had He said. That they may know that Thou hast sent me, it would be just of the same force as what He actually does say, " that the world may know.'^ For they are the world that abideth not in enmity, as doth the world that is foreordained to dam.nation; but one that out of an enemy has been transformed into a friend, and on whose account " God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself." Therefore said He, "I in them, and Thou in me;'' as if He had said, I in those to whom Thou hast sent me; and Thou in me, reconciling the world unto Thyself through me.
5. In close relation to these come also His further words: "And Thou hast loved them as thou hast loved me." That is to say, in the Son the Father loveth us, because in Him He hath chosen us before the foundation of the world. ' For He who loveth the Only-begotten, certainly loveth also His members which, through His in- 3 Eph. i. 4.
Tractate CX.]
strumentality, He engrafted into Him by adoption. But we. are not on this account equal to the only-begotten Son, by whom we have been created and re-created, that it is said, " Thou hast loved them as [Thou hast] also [loved] me." For one does not always intimate equality when he says, As this, so also that other; but sometimes only, Because this is, so also is the other; or, That the one is, in order that the other may be also. For who could say that the apostles were sent by Christ into the world in exactly the same way as He Himself was sent by the Father? For. to say nothing of other differences, which it would be tedious to mention, they at all events were sent when they were already men; but He was sent in order that He might be man; and yet He said above, " As Thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I sent them into the world \" as if He had said. Because Thou hast sent m.e, I have sent them. So also in the passage before us He says, "Thou hast loved them, as Thou hast loved me;" which is nothing else than this. Thou hast loved them because that Thou hast also loved me. For He could not but love the members of the Son, seeing that He loveth the Son Himself; nor is there any other reason for loving His members, save that He loveth Himself. But He loveth the Son as regards His Godhead, because He begat Him equal with Himself; He loveth Him also in regard to what He is as man, because the only-begotten Word was Himself made flesli, and on account of the Word is the flesh of the Word dear to Him; but He loveth us, inasmuch as we are the members of Him whom He loveth; and in order that we might be so. He loved us on this account before we existed.
6. The love,therefore, wherewith God loveth, is incomprehensible and immutable. For it was not from the time that we were reconciled unto Him by the blood of His Son that He began to love us; but He did so before the foundation of the world, that we also might be His sons along with His Only-begotten, before as yet we had any existence of our own. T.et not the f:ict, then, of our having been reconciled unto God through the death of His Son be so listened to or so understood, as if the Son reconciled us to Him in this respect, that He now began to love tnose whom He formerly hated, in the same way as enemy is reconciled to enemy, so that thereafter they become friends, and mutual love takes the place of their mutual hatred; but we were reconciled unto Him who already loved us, but with whom we were at enmity because of our sin. Whether I say the trutii on this, let the apostle testify, when he says: "God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."' He, therefore, had love toward us even when we were practising enmitv against Him and working iniquity; and yet to Him it is said with perfect truth, " Thou hatest, O Lord, all workers of iniquity. "- Accordingly, in a wonderful and divine manner, even when He hated us, He loved us; for He hated us, in so far as we were not wliat He Himself had made; and because our own iniquity had not in every part consumed His work, He knew at once both how, in each of us, to hate what we had done, and to love what He had done. And this, indeed, may be understood in the case of all regarding Him to whom it is truly said, "Thou hatest nothing that Thou hast made."^ For He would never have wished anything that He hated to exist, nor would aught that the Omnipotent had not wished exist at all, were it not that in what He haled there was also something that He loved. For He. justly hateth and reprobateth vice as utterly repugnant to the principle of His procedure, yet He loveth even in the persons of the vitiated what is susceptible either of His own beneficence through healing, or of His judgment by condemnation. In this way God at the same time hateth nothing of what He has made; for as the Creator of natures, and not of vices, it was not He who made the evil that He hateth; and of these same evils, all is good that He really doeth, either by mercifully healing them, or by judicially regulating them. Seeing, then, that He hateth nothing that He hath made, who can worthily describe how much He loveth the members of His Only-begotten, and how much more the Only-begotten Himself, in whom are hid all things visible and invisible, which were ordained in their various classes, and which He loves in fullest harmony with such ordination? For the members of His Only-begotten He is leading on by the liberality of His grace to an equality with the holy angels; while the Only-begotten Himself, being Lord of all, is doubtless Lord of angels, being by nature, as God, the equal not of angels, but rather of the Fatiier Himself; while through grace, in respect of which He is man, how can He otherwise than surpass all angelic excellence, seeing that in Him human flesh and the Word constitute but one personality?
7. Nevertheless there are not wanting some who place us likewise before the angels; because, they say, Christ died for us and not for angels. But what else is such a notion ■ Rom. V. 8. o.
3 Wisd. xi. 25.
THE WORKS OF ST. AUGUSTIN, [Tractate CXI.
than the desire to glory over our very impiety? For "Christ," as the apostle says, "in due time died for the ungodly.'" Where it is not any desert of ours, but the mercy of God, that is commended. For what can be the character of the man who wishes himself to be lauded, because he has become so abominably diseased through his own wickedness, that he can only be healed by the death of his physician? That surely is not the glory of our deserts, but the medicine of our diseases. Or do we prefer ourselves to the angels on this account, that, while there are angels also who have sinned, there has been no such labor expended on their healing? As if something that was at least small in amount had been undertaken for them, and what was greater for us. But had even such been the case, it might still be a subject of inquiry whether it was so because we had once stood in a position of superior excellence, or because we were now lying in a more desperate condition. But knowing as we do that the Creator of all good has imparted no grace for I Rom. V. 6.
I Rom. V. 6.
the reparation of angelic evils, why do we not rather draw the inference that their fault was judged all the more damnable, that the nature of those who committed it was of a loftier sublimity? For to the same extent as they less than we ought to have fallen into sin, were they superior in nature to us. But now in offending against the Creator they became all the more detestably ungrateful for His beneficence, that they were created capable of exercising the greater beneficence; nor was it enough for them to become deserters from Him, but they must also become our deceivers. This, therefore, is the great goodness of which we are to be made the subjects by Him, who hath loved us even as He hath loved Christ, that, for His sake, whose members He wished us to be, we may be equal to the holy angels/ to whom we were created with an inferiority of nature, and have by our sin fallen into such greater depths of unworthiness, as to make it incumbent that we should be in some sort their associates.
- Luke XX. 36.
TRACTATE CXI.
Chapter XVH. 24-26.
I. The Lord Jesus raises up His people to a great hope, than which there could not possibly be a greater. Listen and rejoice in hope, that, since the present is not a life to be loved, but to be tolerated, you may have the power of patient endurance amid all its tribulation.' Listen, I say, and weigh well to what it is that our hopes are exalted. Christ Jesus saith. The Son of God, the Only-begotten, who is co-eternal and equal with the Father, saith: He, who for our sakes became man, but became not, like every man besides, a liar,^ saith: the Way, the Life, the Truth saith:3 He who overcame the world, saith of those for whom He overcame it: listen, believe, hope, desire what He saith: " Father," He says, " I will that they also whom Thou hast given me be with me where I am." Who are these who He says were given Him by the Father? Are they not those of whom He says in another place, " No man cometh unto me, unless the Father, who hath sent me, draw him"?'* We already know if we have I Rom. xii. 12. 3 Chap. xiv. 6.
- Ps. cxvi. II. 4 Chap. vi. 44.
made any beneficial progress in this Gospel, how it is that the things which He says the Father doeth. He Himself doeth likewise along with the Father. They are those, therefore, whom He has received from the Father, whom He Himself has also chosen out of the world, and chosen that they may be no more of the world, ever/as He also is not of the world; and yet that they also may be a world that believeth and knoweth that Christ has been sent by God the Father that the world might be delivered from the world, and so, as a world that was to be reconciled unto God, might not be condemned with the world that lieth in enmity. For so He says in the beginning of this prayer: " Thou hast given Him power over all flesh," that is, over every man, "that He should give eternal life to as many as Thou hast given Him." Here He makes it clear tliat He has indeed received power over all men, that, as the future Judge of quick and dead, He may deliver whom He pleases, and condemn whom He pleases; but that these were given Him that to all of them He should give eternal life. For so He Tractate CXL] 41, says: " That He should give eternal life to as many as Thou hast given Him." Accordin^dy they were not given Him that from them He should withhold eternal life; although over them also the power has been given Him, inasmuch as He nas received it over all flesh, in other words, over every man. In this way the world that has been reconciled will be delivered from the hostile world, when He putteth into exercise His power over it, to send it away into death eternal; but the other He maketh His own that He may give it everlasting life. Accordingly, to every one, without fail, of His own sheep the Good Shepherd, as to every one of His members the great Head, hath promised this reward, that where He is, there also we shall be with Him; nor can that be otherwise which the omnipotent Son declared to be His will to the omnipotent Father. For there also is the Holy Spirit, equally eternal, equally God, the one Spirit of the two, the substance of the will of both. For the words that we read of Him as uttering on the eve of His passion, "Yet not. Father, as I will, but as Thou wilt," ' as if the Father has or had one will, and the Son another, are the echo of our infirmity, however faith-pervaded, which our Head transfigured in His own person, when He likewise bare our iniquities. But that the will of the Father and the Son is one, of both of whom also there is but one Spirit, by including whom we come to the knowledge of the Trinity, let piety believe, even tnough our infirmity meanwhile permitteth us not to understand.