On the Holy Spirit 18.44–23.54

In handing down the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, the Lord did not hand them down together with a number. For he did not say, "Into first and second and third," nor, "Into one and two and three"; but through holy names he granted the knowledge of the faith that leads to salvation. So what saves us is the faith, while number has been devised as a sign indicating the quantity of subjects. But these men, who gather harm for themselves from every side, use even the power of counting against the faith: though nothing else is changed by having a number added to it, in the case of the divine nature they treat number with reverence, lest through it they exceed the measure of the honour due to the Paraclete! But, most wise men, let the unattainable be above number altogether—as the ancient reverence of the Hebrews wrote the unutterable name of God in special characters, and in this way showed its pre-eminence over all things. But if we must indeed count, let us not do violence to the truth in this either. Either let the ineffable be honoured by silence, or let the holy be counted piously. One God and Father, one only-begotten Son, and one Holy Spirit: we proclaim each of the hypostases singly; and when we must count them together, we are not carried away by an ignorant way of counting into the notion of many gods.

For we do not count by addition, increasing from one to a multitude and saying "one, two, three," or "first, second, third." "For I, God, am first, and I am after these things." A second God we have never, to this day, heard of. For in worshipping God from God we both confess the distinctiveness of the hypostases and remain within the monarchy, not scattering the theology into a divided multitude, because one form, so to speak, is beheld in God the Father and God the Only-begotten, imaged in the invariability of the Godhead. For the Son is in the Father and the Father in the Son, since the one is such as the other is, and the other such as the one; and in this they are one. So according to the distinctiveness of the persons they are one and one, but according to the community of nature the two are one. How, then, if they are one and one, are they not two Gods? Because a king is spoken of, and the king's image, and not two kings. For neither is the power split nor the glory divided. As the sovereignty and authority over us is one, so the glorification we give is one and not many, because the honour paid to the image passes over to the archetype. What the image is here by imitation, that the Son is there by nature. And as in works of art the likeness lies in the form, so in the divine and incomposite nature the union lies in the communion of the Godhead. One also is the Holy Spirit, and he too is proclaimed singly, joined through the one Son to the one Father, and through himself completing the much-praised and blessed Trinity. His intimacy with the Father and the Son is sufficiently shown by the fact that he is not ranked among the multitude of the creation but is spoken of singly. For he is not one of many; he is one. For as there is one Father and one Son, so there is also one Holy Spirit. He stands, then, as far apart from created nature as the singular naturally stands from things composite and plural; and he is united with the Father and the Son as closely as unit is akin to unit.

And the proofs of the community of nature come not only from this, but also from the fact that he is said to be "from God"—not as all things are from God, but as proceeding from God; not by begetting, as the Son, but as the Spirit of his mouth. Of course the mouth is not a bodily member, nor is the Spirit breath that dissolves; rather, the mouth is to be understood in a way befitting God, and the Spirit is a living essence, lord of sanctification. His intimacy with God is shown by this, while the manner of his existence is kept ineffable. He is also called the Spirit of Christ, as being united with him by nature. That is why "if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to him." Hence he alone glorifies the Lord worthily. "He will glorify me," the Lord says—not as the creation does, but as the Spirit of truth, clearly showing the truth in himself, and as the Spirit of wisdom, revealing in his own greatness Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God. And as Paraclete he expresses in himself the goodness of the Paraclete who sent him, and in his own dignity he shows the majesty of him from whom he came forth. There is, then, one kind of glory that is natural, as the light is the glory of the sun; and another that comes from outside, from choice, offered with discernment to those who are worthy. This too is twofold: "A son," it says, "glorifies his father, and a slave his master." Of these, the slave's glory is offered by the creation; the other, the glory of kinship, so to speak, is fulfilled by the Spirit. For as the Lord said of himself, "I glorified you on earth; I finished the work you gave me to do," so he said of the Paraclete: "He will glorify me, because he will take from what is mine and declare it to you." And as the Son is glorified by the Father, who says, "I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again," so the Spirit is glorified through his fellowship with the Father and the Son and through the testimony of the Only-begotten, who says, "Every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven you men; but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven."

And since, through an illuminating power, we fix our eyes on the beauty of the image of the invisible God, and through it are led up to the supremely beautiful vision of the archetype, there, surely, the Spirit of knowledge is inseparably present, supplying in himself to those who love to behold the truth the power to see the image. He does not make the showing from outside, but leads them to knowledge in himself. For as "no one knows the Father except the Son," so "no one can say 'Jesus is Lord' except in the Holy Spirit." For it is not said "through the Spirit" but "in the Spirit"; and, "God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth"; as it is written, "In your light we shall see light"—that is, in the illumination of the Spirit, "the true light, which enlightens every man coming into the world." So he shows the glory of the Only-begotten in himself, and in himself he grants the knowledge of God to the true worshippers. The way of the knowledge of God, then, is from the one Spirit through the one Son to the one Father. And conversely, the natural goodness, the sanctification that is by nature, and the royal dignity pass from the Father through the Only-begotten to the Spirit. In this way both the hypostases are confessed and the pious doctrine of the monarchy does not fall away. But those who make subnumeration consist in saying "first, second, and third" should know that they are bringing the polytheism of Greek error into the undefiled theology of Christians. For the mischief of subnumeration leads to nothing else than confessing a first, a second, and a third God. But for us the order laid down by the Lord is enough; whoever confuses it will transgress no less than these men in their impiety. That the community of nature is in no way dissolved by the manner of subnumeration, as these men have erred in thinking, has been sufficiently said. But let us go along with this contentious and vain-minded man, and grant that what is second to something is spoken of as numbered under it. Let us see, then, what follows from the argument. "The first man," it says, "was from the earth, made of dust; the second man is the Lord from heaven." And elsewhere: "Not the spiritual first, but the natural, and then the spiritual." If, then, the second is numbered under the first, and what is numbered under is less honourable than that under which it is numbered, then by your reasoning the [heavenly man] is less honourable than the natural …

"Granted," he says; "but glory is by no means due to the Spirit, so that he should be exalted by us in doxologies." From where, then, could we take proofs of the Spirit's dignity, which surpasses all understanding, if his fellowship with the Father and the Son was not thought credible by them as a testimony to his rank? Still, by looking at the meanings of his names, at the greatness of his workings, and at the benefits bestowed on us, or rather on all creation, we can come to some understanding of his majesty and of his unattainable power. He is named Spirit: as "God is spirit," and "the breath of our face, Christ the Lord." Holy: as the Father is holy and the Son is holy. For to the creation sanctification was brought in from elsewhere; but for the Spirit holiness is what completes his nature. That is why he is not sanctified but sanctifies. Good: as the Father is good, and good is the one begotten of the good; he has goodness as his essence. Right: as "the Lord God is right," because he is truth itself and righteousness itself, having no turning aside or swerving either way, because his essence is unchangeable. Paraclete: as the Only-begotten is, as he himself says, "I will ask my Father, and he will give you another Paraclete." So the names are common to the Spirit with the Father and the Son, since he obtained these titles from his kinship of nature. For where else could they come from? Again, he is named guiding Spirit, Spirit of truth, and Spirit of wisdom. "The divine Spirit, who made me." And, it says, "God filled Bezalel with the divine Spirit of wisdom and understanding and knowledge." Such, then, are his names: extraordinary and great, yet not exceeding his glory.

And his workings, what are they? Ineffable in their greatness, and innumerable in their multitude. For how shall we conceive what lies beyond the ages? What were his workings before the intelligible creation? How great are the graces from him toward the creation? And what is his power toward the ages to come? For he was, and pre-existed, and was present together with the Father and the Son before the ages. So that, even if you conceive of something beyond the ages, you will find it lower than the Spirit. And if you think of the creation, the powers of the heavens were established by the Spirit—establishment being understood, clearly, as a firmness in the habit of good that is hard to dislodge. For intimacy with God, immutability toward evil, and continuance in blessedness come to the powers from the Spirit. The coming of Christ: and the Spirit runs ahead. The presence in the flesh: and the Spirit is inseparable. Workings of miracles, gifts of healings: through the Holy Spirit. Demons were driven out in the Spirit of God. The devil was brought to nothing, the Spirit being present together. Redemption of sins: in the grace of the Spirit. "For you were washed and sanctified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and in the Holy Spirit." Intimacy with God: through the Spirit. "For God has sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, 'Abba, Father.'" The resurrection from the dead: by the working of the Spirit. "You will send forth your Spirit, and they will be created, and you will renew the face of the earth." If someone takes "creation" to mean the return to life of those who have been dissolved, how is the working of the Spirit not great, who administers for us the life that comes from the resurrection and refashions our souls for that spiritual life? Or if "creation" means the change for the better, here, of those who have fallen through sin (for it is used in this way too in the usage of Scripture, as when Paul says, "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation"), then the renewal here as well, and the change from the earthly and passion-ridden life to the heavenly citizenship, which comes about for us through the Spirit, lifts our souls to the utmost height of wonder. In view of this, should we fear that we may overstep his dignity by the excess of our honors? Or the opposite: that we may bring down our conception of him to something lowly, even if we think we are uttering about him the greatest things that human thought and tongue can produce? "Thus says the Holy Spirit," as "Thus says the Lord": "Go down, and go with them, doubting nothing, for I have sent them." Are these the words of one lowly and cowering? "Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them." Does a slave speak so? And Isaiah: "The Lord has sent me, and his Spirit"; and, "The Spirit came down from the Lord and guided them." And do not take this guiding, again, as a lowly service. For Scripture testifies that this is also God's work: "You guided your people like sheep," it says; and, "He who guides …"

"But he also intercedes for us," he says. "So, as far as a suppliant falls short of a benefactor, so far the Spirit falls short of God in dignity." But have you not yet heard concerning the Only-begotten, that he is at the right hand of God and intercedes for us? Do not, then, because the Spirit is in you (if indeed he is in you at all), nor because he teaches and guides us when we have been blinded to the choice of what is profitable, for this reason lose the pious and holy opinion about him. For this is surely the height of ingratitude: to make the benefactor's love for humankind an occasion for thanklessness. "Do not, then, grieve the Holy Spirit." Hear what Stephen, the firstfruits of the martyrs, says, reproaching the people for their disobedience and insubordination: "You always resist the Holy Spirit," he says. And again Isaiah: "They provoked the Holy Spirit, and he was turned into enmity against them"; and elsewhere: "The house of Jacob provoked the Spirit of the Lord." Are not such things indicative of an authoritative power? I leave it to the judgment of readers what kind of conceptions one ought to have on hearing these things: as of an instrument, a subject, one of equal honor with the creation and a fellow slave with us? Or is it most grievous to the pious to let this blasphemy slip in even by a single word? Do you call the Spirit a slave? But "the slave," it says, "does not know what his master is doing"; whereas the Spirit knows the things of God as the spirit of a man knows the things in him.

"He is neither slave nor master," he says, "but free." O the dreadful insensibility, O the pitiable fearlessness of those who say this! What should I lament in them more: their ignorance or their blasphemy? They insult the doctrines of theology with human examples, and try to fit to the divine and ineffable nature the usage of this world, with its shifting differences of rank, not realizing that among men no one is a slave by nature. For either they were overpowered and brought under the yoke of slavery, as in captivities; or they were enslaved through poverty, as the Egyptians were to Pharaoh; or, by some wise and secret dispensation, the worse of the children were condemned by their fathers' word to serve the more prudent and better—which a just examiner of events would call not a condemnation but a benefit. For one who, through lack of understanding, does not have in himself what by nature rules, it is more profitable to become another's possession, so that, being directed by the reason of the one in command, he may be like a chariot that has taken on a charioteer, or a ship that has a helmsman seated at the tiller. That is why Jacob is lord of Esau by his father's blessing: so that the fool, who does not have his own guardian, the mind, might be benefited by the prudent man even against his will. And Canaan "shall be a household slave to his brothers," since he was untaught in virtue, having Ham his father without understanding. Here, then, this is how people are slaves; and those are free who have escaped poverty or war, or who do not need the guardianship of others. So that even if one is called master and another servant, yet all, both by their equal honor with one another and as possessions of him who made us, are fellow slaves. But there, what can you exempt from slavery? For they were created and at the same time their being slaves was constituted with them. For they do not rule over one another, since heavenly beings have no share in greed; but all things bow to God, rendering to him as Master the fear that is due, and as Creator the glory that belongs to him. For "a son glorifies his father, and a slave his master," and God certainly demands one of the two: "For if I am Father," he says, "where is my glory? And if I am Lord, where is my fear?" Otherwise the most pitiable of all lives would be one not placed under the oversight of the Master—such as the apostate powers are, which, because they stiffened their necks against God Almighty, throw off the bridle of slavery: not by being of a different nature, but by being insubordinate toward their Maker. Whom, then, do you call free? One who has no king? One who neither has power to rule another nor accepts being ruled? But there is no such nature among the things that exist, and to conceive this of the Spirit is manifest impiety. So if he is created, he is clearly a slave together with all things: "For all things," it says, "are your slaves"; but if he is above the creation, he is a sharer in the kingship.

And why should we, fighting from lowly ground, win a shameful victory in argument, when it is possible, by setting out more exalted things, to show beyond dispute the surpassing greatness of his glory? If we speak what we have been taught by Scripture, perhaps they will raise a great and vehement shout, and, stopping their ears and taking up stones, or whatever happens to come to hand—each of the Pneumatomachians making that his weapon—they will come at us. Yet our safety must not be valued above the truth. We have found, then, in the Apostle: "May the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God and into the endurance of Christ in afflictions." Who is the Lord who directs into the love of God and into the endurance of Christ in afflictions? Let those who enslave the Spirit answer us. For if the words were about the God and Father, it would surely have said, "May the Lord direct you into his own love"; if about the Son, it would have added "into his own endurance." Let them seek, then, what other person there is who is worthy to be honored with the title "Lord." Similar to this is the passage found elsewhere: "May the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we do for you, so as to establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints." What Lord does he pray to establish the hearts of the faithful in Thessalonica blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord? Let those answer us who place the Holy Spirit with the ministering spirits sent out for service. But they cannot. Let them therefore hear yet another testimony, which quite expressly calls the Spirit Lord: "Now the Lord," it says, "is the Spirit"; and again, "as from the Lord, the Spirit." And so as to leave no occasion for contradiction, I shall set out the Apostle's very words: "For to this day the same veil remains at the reading of the old covenant, not being lifted, because it is abolished in Christ. But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit." What does he mean by this? That the one who sits by the bare sense of the letter and spends his time somewhere among the observances of the law has veiled his own heart with the Jewish understanding of the letter as with a curtain; and he suffers this because he does not know that the bodily observance of the law is abolished at the coming of Christ, the types having now been exchanged for the reality. For lamps are idle when the sun is present; and the law ceases and prophecies are silenced when the truth has appeared. But the one who has been able to stoop down into the depth of the law's meaning, and, parting the obscurity of the letter like a curtain, to come within the mysteries, has imitated Moses, who removed the veil when he spoke with God: he too turns from the letter to the spirit. So the obscurity of the law's teachings corresponds to the veil on Moses' face, and the turning to the Lord corresponds to spiritual contemplation. He, then, who in the reading of the law removes the letter turns to the Lord (and the Lord is here called the Spirit), and becomes like Moses, whose face was glorified by the appearing of God. For as things placed beside bright colors are themselves tinged by the radiance shed around them, so the one who has fixed his eyes clearly on the Spirit is somehow transformed by his glory into something brighter, his heart lit up, as by a light, by the truth that comes from the Spirit. And this is the meaning of "is transformed from the glory" of the Spirit "into" his own "glory": not meanly or dimly, but to the degree that …

The surpassing greatness of his nature is known not only from his having the same titles as the Father and the Son and sharing in their workings, but also from his being, like them, hard to attain in contemplation. For what the Lord says about the Father, as being beyond human thought, and what he says about the Son, the same he says also about the Holy Spirit. "Righteous Father," he says, "the world has not known you"—meaning here by "the world" not the framework made up of heaven and earth, but this perishable life, subject to countless changes. And speaking about himself: "Yet a little while," he says, "and the world will see me no more, but you will see me." Here again he calls "world" those who are bound to material and fleshly life and entrust the truth to their eyes alone, who through unbelief in the resurrection would no longer see our Lord with the eyes of the heart. And he said the same about the Spirit: "The Spirit of truth," he says, "whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him; but you know him, because he remains with you." For the fleshly man, whose mind is untrained for contemplation, or rather who keeps it wholly buried, as in mud, in the mind of the flesh, is unable to look up to the spiritual light of the truth. Therefore the world—that is, the life enslaved to the passions of the flesh—does not receive the grace of the Spirit, as a weak eye does not receive the light of a sunbeam. But to his disciples, to whom he bore witness to a purity of life that came from his teachings, the Lord grants that they are already able to behold and contemplate the Spirit. "For you are already clean," he says, "because of the word that I have spoken to you." Hence "the world cannot receive him, for it does not see him; but you know him, because he remains with you." Isaiah says the same: "He who established the earth and what is in it, and gives breath to the people upon it, and Spirit to those who tread on it." For those who tread down earthly things and rise above them have been attested as worthy of the gift of the Holy Spirit. What, then, must we think of him who cannot be contained by the world, but can be seen by the saints alone through purity of heart? Or what honors are fitting for him?

Each of the other powers is believed to be in a circumscribed place. For the angel who stood by Cornelius was not at the same time with Philip; nor was the one who spoke with Zechariah from the altar at the same moment also filling his own station in heaven. But the Spirit is believed to have been at work at the same time in Habakkuk and in Daniel in Babylon, and to have been with Jeremiah in the dungeon and with Ezekiel at the Chebar. For "the Spirit of the Lord has filled the world"; and, "Where shall I go from your Spirit, and where shall I flee from your presence?"; and the prophet: "For I am with you, says the Lord, and my Spirit stands in your midst." What sort of nature, then, is it fitting to think belongs to one who is everywhere and present together with God? The nature that encompasses all things, or one enclosed in particular places, such as Scripture has shown that of the angels to be? No one would say so. Shall we not, then, highly exalt him who is divine in nature, uncontainable in greatness, powerful in his workings, good in his benefits? Shall we not glorify him? For my part, I consider glory to be nothing other than the enumeration of the wonders that belong to him. So either these men will order us not even to remember the good things that come from him, or else the recounting of what belongs to him is the fulfilment of the highest doxology. For we cannot glorify even the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and his only-begotten Son otherwise than by recounting his wonders as far as we are able.