Though He has power over all men, yet He does not give eternal life to all men, but only to those whom God has given Him ([vi. 37]), because only these correspond with His grace. This is implied in Christ's language here, for the words, “to all whom Thou has given Him,” explain the expression all flesh, and show that it is only in those who believe that the universal Power over “all flesh” is efficacious.
| 3. Haec est autem vita aeterna: ut cognoscant te, solum Deum verum, et quem misisti Iesum Christum. | 3. Now this is eternal life: that they may know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent. |
3. Now this is eternal life, &c. The sense is: this is the pledge, the cause of eternal life (see John [iii. 36]), that they know Thee with the knowledge of faith, know Thee to be the only true God and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent. The Greek ἵνα γινώσκωσίν σε τὸν μόνον ἀληθινὸν θεόν shows that the Father is here said to be the only God, to the exclusion of other Gods, but not to the exclusion of other Persons who participate in the same Godhead. It is not meant that the Father is the only Divine Person. There are other Persons in the Godhead, but there is no other Godhead. The words mean, then, that they may know Thee to be the only true God, to the exclusion of all other Gods; but do not mean that they may know Thee alone to be the true God, to the exclusion of the Son and Holy Ghost.
Many of the fathers adopt another interpretation of the verse, holding that the order of the words is inverted, and that Divinity is predicated of both the Father and Christ. They understand the verse thus: that they may know Thee and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent, to be the only true God. So SS. Aug., Amb., Hil., Greg. Naz., Athan., Cyp. [pg 296] The latter interpretation more clearly establishes Christ's Divinity against the Arians; but in any interpretation it is clear that Christ implies His own Divinity, since He declares that the knowledge of Himself, equally with that of the Father, is the cause and pledge of eternal life. He who had said: “I and the Father are one” (John x. 30), and who, a few verses farther down in this prayer, says to the Father: “All my things are thine, and thine are mine,” cannot reasonably be supposed to withdraw His claims to Divinity in the words before us.
Some of the fathers, and many of the scholastics, hold that there is question in verse 3 not of the knowledge of God through faith, but of the knowledge of the blessed in heaven; and they argue from this verse to prove that the essence of life eternal consists in knowing God; in other words, that the happiness of the blessed consists in an act of the intellect; namely, the vision of God.[108] Since we believe that the question here is of the knowledge of God through faith, and not through the beatific vision, we hold that no argument can be drawn from this verse as to the essence of the happiness of the blessed.
| 4. Ego te clarificavi super terram: opus consummavi, quod dedisti mihi ut faciam: | 4. I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do: |
4. Some understand these words as proleptic, and take the sense to be: I am about to glorify Thee by My death, to finish the work of redemption which thou gavest Me to do. Others understand of the work of preaching, which was now actually completed, and by which the Father's name and glory had been manifested upon the earth. The latter interpretation seems to us the more natural, and more suited to the context, especially to verse 6: “I have manifested thy name to the men whom thou hast given me out of the world.”
| 5. Et nunc clarifica me tu, Pater, apud temetipsum, claritate, quam habui, prius quam mundus esset, apud te. | 5. And now glorify thou me, O Father, with thyself, with the glory which I had, before the world was, with thee. |
5. In return for His having given glory to the Father upon the earth, Christ, as man, prays the Father to glorify Him in heaven. There is a difficulty here, arising from the fact that Christ [pg 297] seems to pray that the glory which as God He possessed from all eternity may be given to Him as man. Now, the glory of God is incommunicable, and even the blessed humanity of Christ is incapable of partaking fully thereof. Hence various interpretations have been advanced in order to explain this difficulty:—
(1) Some say that Christ, as man, prays merely for that glory which, in the decrees of God, was given to His humanity from all eternity. But against this view is the fact that the fathers generally quoted the latter part of this verse to prove the eternal existence and Divinity of Christ.