Tractates on the Gospel of John 55–111

Tractate 79

TRACTATE 79 On John 14.29–31 ur lord and Savior Jesus Christ had said to his disciples , “If you loved me, you would indeed be glad because I go to the Father; for the Father is greater than I.”1 And that he said this because of the form of the servant , not because of the form of God2 in which he is equal with the Father, the faith knows, [the faith] which has been made secure by devout minds, not made up3 by slanderous and frenzied ones. Then he added, “And now I have told you before it comes to pass, that when it shall come to pass, you may believe.” What is this, since a man ought rather more believe that which ought to be believed before it comes to pass? In fact, this is the praiseworthiness of faith, if what is believed is not seen. For why is it a great thing if what is seen is believed, in view of that statement of the same Lord when he criticized4 the disciples, saying, “Because you have seen, you have believed; blessed are they who do not see and believe ”?5 (2) And I do not know whether anyone ought to be said to believe what he sees. For faith itself, in the Epistle which is written to the Hebrews, has been defined as follows: “Now, 1. Jn 14.28. 2. Cf. Phil 2.6–7. 3. A word play in the verbs: est . . . fixa, non ficta. 4. Or criticizes. The Latin verb arguit can be either the present or the perfect tense. In both verse 27 and 29, the Greek text has the present tense, levgei, says, with no variant reading. R. E. Brown, The Anchor Bible 29a.1018–19, takes this to be an historical present and so translates. The Vulgate has the present tense, dicit, at verse 27 and the perfect tense, dixit, at verse 29, although there is a variant present there. 5. Jn 20.29. 111 112 faith is the substance of those who hope,6 the conviction of things that are not seen”7 And therefore if faith is of things that are believed and the same faith is of things that are not seen, what is the meaning of the Lord’s words, “And now I have told you before it comes to pass that, when it shall come to pass, you may believe”? Should it not rather have been said, “And now I have told you before it comes to pass that you may believe that which, when it shall come to pass, you will see”? For even that man to whom it was said, “Because you have seen, you have believed,” did not believe the thing that he saw, rather, he saw one thing, but believed another ; for he saw the man, he believed the God.8 For indeed he was looking at and touching living flesh, which he had seen dying, and he believed the God lying concealed in that very flesh. Therefore he believed with the mind what he did not see through the instrumentality of that which appeared to the senses of his body. But even though things that are seen are said to be believed, as each one says that he has believed his own eyes, nevertheless this is not the faith that is built up in us. But from the things that are seen we are brought to a point that those things that are not seen are believed . (3) And therefore, dearly beloved, in regard to the Lord’s words from which my present discourse stems, “And now I have told you before it comes to pass that, when it shall come to pass, you may believe,” certainly “when it shall come to pass” means the following: that they will see him after this death living and ascending to the Father and they, after seeing this, would believe that he himself was the Christ, the Son of the living God, who was able to do this when he had foretold it and to foretell it before he did it. But they would believe this, not with new but with increased faith, or with [faith] impaired when he died, but repaired9 ST. AUGUSTINE 6. Some codices have, in place of sperantium, sperandorum or sperandarum , things to be hoped for, as in the Vulgate. This is probably an attempt to correct a lectio difficilior. Augustine’s version of the whole verse is quite different...