Accordingly our Lord says that eternal life lies in vision, in seeing, that is, it consists in this basically and in its whole substance. But it is love which moves one to this vision, and is in a certain way its fulfillment: for the completion and crown of beatitude (happiness) is the delight experienced in the enjoyment of God, and this is caused by charity. Still, the substance of beatitude consists in vision, seeing: "We shall see him as he is" (1 Jn 3:2).
2187 Secondly, we should explain the phrase, you the only true God. It is clear that Christ was speaking to the Father, so when he says, you the only true God, it seems that only God the Father is true God. The Arians agree with this, for they say that the Son differs by essence from the Father, since the Son is a created substance, although he shares in the divinity more perfectly and to a greater degree than do all other creatures. So much more that the Son is called God, but not the true God, because he is not God by nature, which only the Father is.
Hilary answers this by saying that when we want to know whether a certain thing is true, we can determine it from two things: its nature and its power. [3] For true gold is that which has the species of true gold; and we determine this if it acts like true gold. Therefore, if we maintain that the Son has the true nature of God, because the Son exercises the true activities of divinity, it is clear that the Son is true God. Now the Son does perform true works of divinity, for we read, "Whatever he [the Father] does, that the Son does likewise" (5:19); and again he said, "For as the Father has life in himself," which is not a participated life, "so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself" (5:26); "That we may be in his true Son, Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life" [1 Jn 5:20].
According to Hilary, he says, you the only true God , in a way that does not exclude another. He does not say without qualification, you the only , but adds and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. [4] It is like saying: that they know you and Jesus Christ whom you have sent to be the one and only true God. This is a pattern of speaking that we also use when we say [in the Gloria ]: " You alone, Jesus Christ, are the most high, together with the Holy Spirit." No mention is made of the Holy Spirit because whenever the Father and the Son are mentioned, and especially in matters pertaining to the grandeur of the divinity, the Holy Spirit, who is the bond of the Father and Son, is implied.
2188 Or, according to Augustine in his work, The Trinity, he says this to exclude the error of those who claim that it is false to say that the Father is God, and the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God; while it is true to say that the Father and the Son and Holy Spirit are one God. [5] The reason for this opinion was that the Apostle said that "Christ [is] the power of God and the Wisdom of God" (1 Cor 1:24). Now it is clear that we cannot call anyone God unless he has divine power and wisdom. Therefore, since these people held that the Father was wisdom, which is the Son, they held further that the Father considered without the Son would not be God. And the same applies to the Son and the Holy Spirit.
The incarnation of the Son of God is indicated by saying that he was sent. So when he says here, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent, we are led to understand that in eternal life we will also rejoice in the humanity of Christ: "Your eyes will see the king," that is, Christ, "in his beauty" (Is 33:17); "He will go in and out and find pasture" (10:9).
2189 Now we see why Christ's prayer deserves to be heard: first, he mentions why he deserves this; secondly, he states the reward, Father, glorify me .
2190 He states that he merited to be heard for two reasons. First, because of his teaching, when he says, I glorified you on earth , that is, in the minds of men, by manifesting you in my teaching: "Glorify the Lord in teaching" [Is 24:15]. Secondly, I glorified you by my obedience; thus he said, I... having accomplished the work . He uses the past tense in place of the future: I glorified for "I will glorify," and accomplished in place of "I will accomplish." He does this because these things had already begun, and also because the hour of his passion, when his work would be accomplished, was very near.
"The work which you gave me to do," not merely ordered. It is not enough [for a work to be accomplished] for Christ and us to be ordered by God, because whatever Christ as man accomplished and whatever we can do is God's gift, God gave us this: "I knew that I could not be continent unless God gave it" [Wis 8:21]. You gave me , I say, by the gift of grace, to do, that is, to accomplish.
2191 The reward for Christ's obedience and teaching is glory: "He humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name" (Phil 2:8). And so Christ asks for his reward, saying, and now, Father, glorify me . According to Augustine this does not mean, as some have thought, that the human nature of Christ, which was assumed by the Word, would at some time be changed into the Word, and the human nature changed into God. [6] This would be to annihilate the [human] nature of Christ, for when a first thing is changed into another in such a way that this other is not enriched, the first thing seems to have been annihilated [because it produced no effect]. But nothing can be added to enrich the divine Word of God.
Thus, for Augustine, and now, Father, glorify me , refers to the predestination of Christ as man. Something can be had by us both in the divine predestination and in actual fact. Now Christ, in his human nature, as all other human beings, was predestined by God the Father: "He was predestined Son of God" [Rom 1:4]. With this in mind he says, and now ‑ after I have glorified you, having accomplished the work which you gave me to do ‑ Father, glorify me in your own presence, that is, have me sit at your right hand, with the glory which I had with you before the world was made, that is to say, with the glory I had in your predestination: "The Lord Jesus... was taken up into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of God" (Mk 16:19). [7]
2192 Hilary gives the other interpretation. [8] The glory of human beings will be in a certain way similar to the glory of God, although unequal. Now Christ, as God, had glory with the Father from all eternity, a divine glory and equal to that of the Father. Accordingly, what he is asking for here is that he be glorified in his human nature, that is to say, that what was flesh in time and changed by corruption, should receive the glory of that brightness which is outside of time. He is asking not for an equal glory, but for one which is similar, which is to say that just as the Son is immortal and sitting at the right hand of the Father from all eternity, so he now become immortal in his human nature and exalted to the right hand of God.
LECTURE 2
6 I have manifested your name to the men whom you gave me out of the world; thine they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. 7 Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you; 8 for I have given them the words which you gave me, and they have received them and know in truth that I came ( exivi ) from you; and they have believed that you did send me. 9 I am praying for them; I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours; 10 all mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. 11a And now I am no more in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. [9]
2193 Above, our Lord prayed for himself; here he prays for the society of his apostles: first, he states his reasons for praying; secondly, what he is praying for (v 11). He does two things about the first: first, he mentions his reasons for praying founded on his disciples; secondly, the reasons founded on himself (v 9). From the point of view of his disciples, he mentions three reasons for praying for them: first, because they were taught by him; secondly because they had been given to him; thirdly, because of their obedience and devotion.
2194 He mentions the first reason when he says, I have manifested your name . We could add here, according to Augustine, "that the Son may glorify you" (v 1). The Father has already received some of this glory because I have manifested your name to the men whom you gave me out of the world. [10]
Chrysostom reads it this way. I say that I have finished the work you gave me to do. [11] What this work was he adds by saying, I have manifested your name to the men .... This is the characteristic work of the Son of God, who is the Word, and the characteristic of a word is to manifest the one speaking it: "No one knows the Father except the Son and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal him" (Mt 11:27); "No one has ever seen God; the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known" (1:18).
2195 There is a problem with this: Since God the Father was known to men before Christ came ‑ "In Judah God is known" (Ps 76:1) ‑ why does Christ say, I have manifested your name . I answer that the name of God the Father can be known in three ways. In one way, as the creator of all things; and this is the way the Gentiles knew him: "His invisible nature... has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made" (Rom 1:20); "God has shown it to them" (Rom 1:19). In another way [the Father can be known] as the only one to whom the veneration of latria [adoration] is to be given. He was not known to the Gentiles in this way, for they gave the veneration of latria to other gods. He was known in this way only to the Jews, for they alone had been commanded in their law to sacrifice only to the Lord: "Whoever sacrifices to any god, save to the Lord only, shall be utterly destroyed" (Ex 22:20). Thirdly, he can be known as the Father of an only Son, Jesus Christ. He was not known to anyone in this way, but did become so known through his Son when the apostles believed that Christ was the Son of God.
2196 He gives the second reason why he prays for them when he says, whom you gave me . First, he mentions that they were given to him, from which we can see the reason or way they were given. He says, whom you gave me , that is, it is to these that I have manifested your name . But did Christ possess them as the Father possessed them? Yes he did, insofar as he was God. But he says, whom you gave me , that is, to me as man, to listen to me and obey me: "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him" (6:44). Those who come to Christ do so through the gift and grace of God: "For by grace you have been saved... it is the gift of God" (Eph 2:8). You gave them to me out of the world, that is, they were chosen from the world: "I chose you out of the world" (5:19). For even though the entire world was given to the Son insofar as he was God, the apostles were given to the Son to obey. He mentions the reason for this giving when he says, thine they were . This is like saying: the reason they were given is that thine they were , and mine, and predestined from eternity to attain by grace a future glory: "He chose us in him before the foundation of the world" (Eph 1:4). And you gave them to me , that is, by making them adhere to me you accomplished in fact what was previously predestined for them with me and in me.
2197 The third reason for praying for the disciples, based on their devotion, is mentioned when he says, they have kept your word . First, he mentions their devotion to the Son; secondly, he shows that this devotion gives glory to the Father, they know that everything that you have given to me is from you; thirdly, we see the reason this gives glory to the Father: for I have given them the words which you gave me .
2198 As to the first: he had said that you gave them to me because thine they were . And they were devoted because they have kept your word , in their hearts by faith, and in their actions by fulfilling your words: "Keep my commandments and live" (Prv 7:2); "If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love" (15:10).
2199 Father, the fact that they kept your word in this way gives you glory. For this is my word: everything I have I have from you. Now they know that everything that you have given me , that is, to your Son in his human nature, is from you: "We have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father" (1:14), that is to say, we saw him as having everything from the Father. And because they know this, the Father receives glory in their minds.
2200 The reason this gives glory, that is, that this obedience of the disciples to the Son gives glory to the Father, is stated when he says, for I have given them the words which you gave me . First he states that knowledge comes from the Father to the disciples; secondly, that the minds of the disciples are led back to the Father.
2201 It is stated that knowledge is given in two ways. In the first way the Father gives to the Son. Thus he says: the words which you gave me , in my eternal generation, in which the Father gave words to the Son, although the Son himself is the Word of the Father. These words are nothing else than the patterns or plans of everything which is to be done. And all these patterns the Father gave to the Son in generating him. Or, it could be said that the you gave me refers to the humanity of Christ, because from the very instant of his conception the most holy soul of Christ was full with all knowledge of the truth, "full of grace and truth" (1:14), that is, with the knowledge of every truth: "In whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge" (Col 2:3).
The other giving of knowledge is from Christ to his disciples, so he says, I have given them , by teaching them, both from without and from within: "For all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you" (15:15). By saying this he shows that he is the mediator between God and man (1 Tim 2:5), because what he received from the Father he passed on to the disciples: "I stood between the Lord and you at that time, to declare to you the word of the Lord" (Deut 5:5).