ACC ~ John 15 v24

WORDS AND WORKS TESTIFY FOR JESUS

CHRYSOSTOM: Jesus proclaims ahead of time that there will be no small punishment against them. For, since they continually pretended that they persecuted him on account of the Father, to deprive them of this excuse he says: I gave them doctrine, I added miracles, which, according to Moses’ law, should convince all if the doctrine itself is good also. If I had not done among them the works that no one else had ever done, they would have had no sin. HOMILIES ON THE GOSPEL OF JOHN 77.2. [1]

[1] NPNF 1 14:283**; PG 59:416.

HAD NO ONE ELSE DONE THESE THINGS?

AUGUSTINE: Their [i.e., those who hate Christ] sin was in the fact that they did not believe him, notwithstanding his doctrine and his miracles. … But why does he add, “which no one else ever did”? Christ did no work greater than the raising of the dead, which we know the ancient prophets did before him. [1] … Is it that he did some things that no one else did? But others also did what neither he nor anyone else did. … True. Yet none of the ancient prophets that we read of healed so many bodily defects, sicknesses, infirmities. For to say nothing of single cases, Mark says … that wherever he entered, into villages, or cities or country, they laid the sick in the streets and asked that they might touch just the border of his garment. And any who touched him were made whole. [2] … Such works as these no one else had done in them. In them, he says, meaning not among them or before them but directly in them because he healed them … for which they surely ought to have returned him with love and not with hatred. … The wicked hate the Lord, but he is loved by the righteous gratuitously [gratis, freely,] inasmuch as they expect no other gifts beyond himself, for he himself will be all in all. … But even where particular works, like some of these, had been done before, whoever worked such things did not really do them, for he [i.e., Jesus] did them through them, whereas Jesus performs these miracles by his own power. TRACTATES ON THE GOSPEL OF JOHN 91.1-4. [3]

[1] Augustine then cites many examples of miracles in both the Old and New Testament.

[2] Mk 6:56.

[3] NPNF 1 7:361-62**; CCL 36:553-55.