Chapter IV.--Of the Fact that John Undertook the Exposition of Christ's Divinity.
7. These three evangelists, however, were for the most part engaged with those things which Christ did through the vehicle of the flesh of man, and after the temporal fashion. [518] But John, on the other hand, had in view that true divinity of the Lord in which He is the Father's equal, and directed his efforts above all to the setting forth of the divine nature in his Gospel in such a way as he believed to be adequate to men's needs and notions. [519] Therefore he is borne to loftier heights, in which he leaves the other three far behind him; so that, while in them you see men who have their conversation in a certain manner with the man Christ on earth, in him you perceive one who has passed beyond the cloud in which the whole earth is wrapped, and who has reached the liquid heaven from which, with clearest and steadiest mental eye, he is able to look upon God the Word, who was in the beginning with God, and by whom all things were made. [520] And there, too, he can recognise Him who was made flesh in order that He might dwell amongst us; [521] [that Word of whom we say,] that He assumed the flesh, not that He was changed into the flesh. For had not this assumption of the flesh been effected in such a manner as at the same time to conserve the unchangeable Divinity, such a word as this could never have been spoken,--namely, "I and the Father are one." [522] For surely the Father and the flesh are not one. And the same John is also the only one who has recorded that witness which the Lord gave concerning Himself, when He said: "He that hath seen me, hath seen the Father also;" and, "I am in the Father, and the Father is in me;" [523] "that they may be one, even as we are one;" [524] and, "Whatsoever the Father doeth, these same things doeth the Son likewise." [525] And whatever other statements there may be to the same effect, calculated to betoken, to those who are possessed of right understanding, that divinity of Christ in which He is the Father's equal, of all these we might almost say that we are indebted for their introduction into the Gospel narrative to John alone. For he is like one who has drunk in the secret of His divinity more richly and somehow more familiarly than others, as if he drew it from the very bosom of his Lord on which it was his wont to recline when He sat at meat. [526]
[518] Temporaliter.
[519] Quantum inter homines sufficere credidit.
[520] John i. 1, 3.
[521] John i. 14.
[522] John x. 30.
[523] John xiv. 9, 10.
[524] John xvii. 22.
[525] John v. 19.
[526] John xiii. 23.
Chapter V.--Concerning the Two Virtues, of Which John is Conversant with the Contemplative, the Other Evangelists with the Active.
8. Moreover, there are two several virtues (or talents) which have been proposed to the mind of man. Of these, the one is the active, and the other the contemplative: the one being that whereby the way is taken, and the other that whereby the goal is reached; [527] the one that by which men labour in order that the heart may be purified to see God, and the other that by which men are disengaged [528] and God is seen. Thus the former of these two virtues is occupied with the precepts for the right exercise of the temporal life, whereas the latter deals with the doctrine of that life which is everlasting. In this way, also, the one operates, the other rests; for the former finds its sphere in the purging of sins, the latter moves in the light [529] of the purged. And thus, again, in this mortal life the one is engaged with the work of a good conversation; while the other subsists rather on faith, and is seen only in the person of the very few, and through the glass darkly, and only in part in a kind of vision of the unchangeable truth. [530] Now these two virtues are understood to be presented emblematically in the instance of the two wives of Jacob. Of these I have discoursed already up to the measure of my ability, and as fully as seemed to be appropriate to my task, (in what I have written) in opposition to Faustus the Manichæan. [531] For Lia, indeed, by interpretation means "labouring," [532] whereas Rachel signifies "the first principle seen." [533] And by this it is given us to understand, if one will only attend carefully to the matter, that those three evangelists who, with pre-eminent fulness, have handled the account of the Lord's temporal doings and those of His sayings which were meant to bear chiefly upon the moulding of the manners of the present life, were conversant with that active virtue; and that John, on the other hand, who narrates fewer by far of the Lord's doings, but records with greater carefulness and with larger wealth of detail the words which He spoke, and most especially those discourses which were intended to introduce us to the knowledge of the unity of the Trinity and the blessedness of the life eternal, formed his plan and framed his statement with a view to commend the contemplative virtue to our regard.
[527] Illa qua itur, ista qua pervenitur.
[528] Qua vacatur.
[529] Reading lumine; but one of the Vatican mss. gives in illuminatione, in the enlightenment of the purged.
[530] 1 Cor. xiii. 12.
[531] Book xxii. 52.
[532] Laborans.
[533] Visum principium. In various editions it is given as visus principium. The mss. have visum principium. In the passage referred to in the treatise against Faustus the Manichæan, Augustin appends the explanation, sive verbum ex quo videtur principium, = the first principle seen, or the word by which the first principle is seen. The etymologies on which Augustin proceeds may perhaps be these: for Leah, the Hebrew verb Laah, to be wearied (l'h); and for Rachel the Hebrew forms Raah = see, and Chalal = begin (r'h ,chll). For another example of extravagant allegorizing on the two wives of Jacob, see Justin Martyr's Dialogue with Trypho, chap. cxl.--Tr.