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. 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 4. I have glorified thee on terram: opus consummavi, quod the earth: I have finished the dedisti mihi ut faciam: work which thou gavest me to do: