Tractates on the Gospel of John

³ Furthermore, our Saviour in thus praying to the Father showed Himself to be man; while He now also shows that He Himself, as being God along with the Father, does that which He prays for, when He says, “And the glory which You gave me, I have given them.” And what was that glory but immortality, which human nature was henceforth to receive in Him? For not even He Himself had as yet received it, but in His own customary way, on account of the absolute fixedness of predestination, He intimates what is future in verbs of the past tense, because being now on the point of being glorified, or in other words, raised up again by the Father, He Himself is going to raise us up to the same glory in the end.

What we have here is similar to what He says elsewhere, “As the Father raises up the dead, and quickens them, even so the Son quickens whom He will.” And “whom,” but just the same as the Father? “For what things soever the Father does,” not other things, but “these also does the Son,” not in a different way, but “in like manner.” And in this way He also raised up even His own self. For to this effect he said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up again.” Accordingly the glory of immortality, which He says had been given Him by the Father, He must be also understood as having bestowed upon Himself, although He does not say it.

For on this very account He more frequently says that the Father alone does, what He Himself also does along with the Father, that everything whatever He may attribute to Him of whom He is. But sometimes also He is silent about the Father, and says that He Himself does what He only does along with the Father: that we may thereby understand that the Son is not to be separated from the working of the Father, when He is silent about Himself, and ascribes some work or other to the Father; as, on the other hand, the Father is not separated from the working of the Son, when the Son is said, without any mention being made of [the Father] Himself, to be doing some work in which nevertheless both are equally engaged.

When, therefore, in some work of the Father, the Son says nothing of His own working, He commends humility, that He may become the source of sounder health to us; but when, in turn, in the case of some work of His own, He says nothing of the working of the Father, He commends His own equality, that we may not suppose Him to be inferior. In this way, then, and in this passage, He neither estranges Himself from the Father's working, although He has said, “The glory which You gave me;” for He also gave it to Himself: nor does He estrange the Father from His own working, although saying, “I have given to them;” for the Father also gave it to them.

For the works not only of the Father and the Son, but also of the Holy Spirit, are inseparable. But just as, because of His praying the Father in behalf of all His people, it was His own pleasure that this should be done, “that they all may be one;” so also on the ground of His own beneficence, as expressed in the words, “The glory which You gave me, I have given them,” the doing of that was none the less His pleasure; for He immediately added, “That they may be one, as we also are one.”