Tractates on the Gospel of John 55–111

Tractate 100

TRACTATE 100 On John 16.13–15 hen the Lord was promising that the Holy Spirit would come, he said, “He will teach you all truth”; or what is read in some codices, “He will guide you in all truth. For he will not speak of himself, but what things soever he will hear, he will speak.” But concerning these words of the Gospel we have already discussed what the Lord granted;1 now give your attention to the things that follow. (2) “And the things that are to come,” he said, “he will announce to you.” And we need not delay here because it is clear and poses no question of which an explanation should be demanded from us. But what he adds, “He will glorify me because he will receive of mine and announce it to you,” must not be passed over carelessly. For his words, “He will glorify me,” can be understood in this way: by pouring out love in the hearts of believers and by making them spiritual, he revealed to them how the Son, whom they only knew before according to the flesh and, as men, thought him a man, was equal to the Father. Or at least in this way: filled with confidence by love itself,2 and with fear driven out, they announced Christ to men, and thus his fame was spread out in all the world. So then he said, “He will glorify me,” in such a way as though he were to say, “He will take fear away from you and will give love, with which, proclaiming me more passionately , you will give the odor, you will commend the honor of my glory through the whole world.” He said that the same Spirit would do what they were going to do in the Holy 1. See Tractates 96.4 and 99. 2. There is an alternate reading: filled by him with love and confidence. 229 Spirit, just as in the following: “For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you.”3 (3) Indeed, individual Latin translators in their translation variously put the Greek word which is doxa V sei, one clarificabit (will make bright or renowned), another glorificabit (will glorify).4 For the concept that is designated dovxa in Greek, from which the verb doxva Vsei is derived, is translated [into Latin] as both claritas (brightness or renown) and gloria (glory). For by glory one is made renowned and by renown, glorious; and for this reason, what is signified by each word is one and the same thing. For as the most renowned authors of the Latin language have defined it, glory is “a repeated telling about someone with praise.”5 And when this has been done with regard to Christ in this world we must not believe that it has conferred something on Christ, but on the world. For to praise the good benefits, not the one who is praised, but those who praise. 2. But there is also a false glory when those praising are deceived by error either in things, or in men, or in both. For they are deceived in things when they think that what is evil is good; and then in men when they think that he who is evil is good; but in both when both that which is vice is thought to be virtue and he who is praised because of this does not have what he is thought [to have], whether he is good or evil. (2) For indeed, to give one’s substance to actors is enormous vice, not virtue;6 and you know concerning such men how there is “repeated telling with praise,” because, as it has been written, “The sinner is praised in the desires of his soul and he who does unjust things is blessed.”7 Here the praisST . AUGUSTINE 230 3. Mt 10.20. 4. See Tractate 82.1. 5. The definition is exactly from Cicero, De Inventione 2.55.166 (H. Hubbell, Loeb Classical Library [Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1949], 332). 6. The key to the meaning of this passage is En in Ps 102.13 (CCL 40.1463–64). To give to someone in need is Christian and scriptural, but to give to someone because of the glory that he has achieved through a sinful activity is evil and sinful. This is to honor the evil thing that the person does rather than the person himself. 7. Ps 10...