Tractates on the Gospel of John 55–111

Tractate 75

TRACTATE 75 On John 14.18–21 fter his promise of the Holy Spirit, in order that no one might think that the Lord was going to give him as a substitute for himself in such a way that he would not also be with them, he added and said, “I shall not leave you orphans; I shall come to you.” Orphans are pupilli;1 that is, the first is the Greek, the other, the Latin name for the same thing. For also in the psalm where we read, “You will be a helper to the pupillus,”2 the Greek has, “to the orphan.” Therefore, although the Son of God has adopted us [to be] sons to his Father and has willed us to have by grace the same Father who is his Father by nature,3 nevertheless even he himself, in a way, shows fatherly feeling toward us when he says, “I shall not leave you orphans: I shall come to you.” It is in this regard that he also calls us sons of the Bridegroom where he says, “The hour will come that the Bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then the sons of the Bridegroom will fast.”4 And indeed who is the Bridegroom except the Lord Christ? 93 1. The Latin word for orphans or fatherless wards. 2. Ps 9b.14. The LXX does read j orfanoiv, but the Vulgate also uses the transliterated Greek word. Augustine, En in Ps 9.1.31 (CCL 38.72) has pupillo, as here. 3. The adoption of men as sons of God as one of God’s gifts of reconciliation effected by Jesus’ death is a common theme in Augustine’s writings. See, e.g., Tractates 2.13, 53.8, 54.2, and 110.5; DCD 21.15 (CCL 48.780– 81, FOTC 24.374–76); En in Ps 66.9 (CCL 39.866–67); Sermones 57.2 (PL 38.587), 139.1 (PL 38.769–70); Contra Faustum Manichaeum 3.3 (PL 42.215–16); and Expositio ex Epistola ad Romanos 52–53 (PL 35.2073–76). There is a brief discussion in E. Portalié, A Guide to the Thought of Saint Augustine , tr. R. Bastian (Chicago, 1960), 166–67. 4. Mt 9.15. 94 2. Then he continues and says, “Yet a little while, and the world sees me no more.” Well now! Did the world see him5 then? For in fact by the term “world” he intends to be understood those about whom he spoke just previously, saying about the Holy Spirit “whom the world cannot receive because it does not see him nor does it know him.”6 Clearly the world with its eyes of flesh saw him7 visible in the flesh. It did not, however, see that the Word was hidden in the flesh. It saw the man; it did not see God. It saw the clothing; it did not see the one clothed. But because after the Resurrection he was unwilling to show to those not his own even his flesh itself, which he showed to his own, not only to be seen, but also to be touched, perhaps one ought to understand that it was with respect to this that [these words] were said, “Yet a little while, and the world sees me no more; but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live.” 3. What is “Because I live, you also will live”? Why did he say, in the present [tense], that he is living but, in the future [tense], that they would live, except that he promised to those men also that the life even of the flesh, rising again, of course, as has preceded in him, would follow? And because his own Resurrection was soon to be, he used a verb of the present tense for the sake of signifying quickness; but because theirs is put off until the end of [this] age, he did not say, “you live,” but “you will live.” Therefore, elegantly and briefly, by two verbs of the present and future tense, he promised two resurrections, namely, his own, soon to be, and ours, to come at the end of [this] age. (2) “Because,” he says, “I live, you also will live.” Because he lives, therefore we also shall live. For “by a man death and by a man the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all men die, so in Christ all will be made alive.”8...