On the Trinity 2.10

… my … And I think that it was for this reason alone that he spared them and commanded them to come to Job, so that he might pray for them: clearly on account of the words that bear on him, because they said blamelessly and very fittingly, from what source I do not know: “The divine Spirit that made me, and the breath of the Almighty that teaches me”; and in a short saying described great power, and the creative nature that wards off evil. Did Elihu, then, stop his theology here? And yet he expressly added much about the almighty God the Father, to which nothing need be objected. For he said: “For he who is above mortals is eternal”; and again: “If there be a thousand death-bearing angels, not one of them shall wound him, if he resolves in his heart to turn to the Lord”; and again: “He will pray to the Lord, and it will be acceptable to him”; and again: “Save my soul from going down to corruption, and my life shall see light. Behold, the Mighty One works all these things.” So his words are good on the matters concerning God and his Spirit, but in error on the rest. For indeed Job too, having named the Holy Spirit divine, as was said before, received so great a praise from God. Reckon then that even if you do not accept the testimony of Elihu, the sacred heralds who called the Holy Spirit divine suffice even so; and even one of them, bearing witness, is worthy of belief; and that often the demon, wishing to deceive, mixes with the lie, as bait, some truth known to the one he is speaking with. Indeed in the Gospel we hear the devil conversing with the Lord of all from the divine Scriptures, weaving holy texts into his unholy reasonings and words, and saying, to tempt him: “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written: He will command his angels concerning you, to guard you.” And indeed the demons too speak of God better than the Arians, who ordained your heresiarch Macedonius, and after him Marathonius: “What have we to do with you, Jesus, Son of the living God? Have you come here to torment us before the time?” And James, showing that faith without works is dead, and conversely, and that the one works together with the other, and from both comes what is perfect, openly proclaims: “You believe that God is one? You do well; the demons also believe, and shudder.” Moreover the Samaritan woman too, after what she said at first, having been rebuked by Christ, who wills all to be saved, spoke the second time faithfully, and not as a Samaritan; and she was deemed worthy of praise and of mercy together. And perhaps many other such things might be found by those who spend more labor on these matters. You see, then, that you, O Macedonian, do not even believe about the Holy Spirit as Elihu did; but every sober reasoning about him has flowed away from you; and because of the diminution you work upon his divine substance, and because you are not a full partaker of his grace, are his eternal gifts scarce for you? But enough of these things.

Now to what [Paul says] writing to the Corinthians: “Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwells in you? If anyone destroys the temple of God, God will destroy him; for the temple of God is holy, and that is what you are.” Observe how he called the Spirit of God God, dwelling in man’s temple, which he named the temple of God; as he says elsewhere: “What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God, as God said: I will dwell in them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” And as he writes to Timothy: “Guard the good deposit through the Holy Spirit who dwells in us.” And as it is in the Gospel, as was said already: “… from his Spirit, which he has given us.” Indeed, as from two hypostases, he says in Isaiah: “I am, and there is no other.” As also from the Son he said in the Gospel: “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him”; and to the Hebrews: “But Christ over his house, whose house we are”; and the sacred psalmist: “But you dwell among the holy, the praise of Israel.” I think he called the whole rational nature of the faithful the holy dwelling of the uncircumscribed God. It has therefore all but been shown that the Holy Spirit is God; but also equal and like to the Father and the Son, … Son: in the Epistle to the Hebrews, Paul saying, “Christ as Son over his house, whose house we are”; and again, “In these last days …”; in the Gospels, about himself: “If then the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” It is clear, then, that here too he indicates him by not adding whose Son he is; and not as the Jews might speak of Absalom, and of what he secretly plotted against his father. For he did not confess [him] when he died, he who had forbidden his killing and had mourned his death; … by having man as a temple equally and likewise; and that he who is the house of the Father has also the Son who is in him, and the Spirit of God; as again he who has been deemed worthy of the visitation of the Son, or of the Spirit, by all means has the Father as well.

And again in the same second Epistle: “Or do you not know that your bodies are a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought with a price. Glorify God, then, in your bodies.” Having said that the bodies of the faithful are the temple of the Holy Spirit, he admonished them to glorify God in their bodies, clearly the Holy Spirit. And by saying that he is from God, he teaches that he proceeds from him by nature. And this again also shows that man is his temple equally with the Father and the Son. Likewise in the same second Epistle: “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; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as from the Lord, the Spirit.” And he named the Holy Spirit Lord so many times, and as bestowing freedom on those to whom he appears, and as having glory in himself. The whole interpretation of the passage is as follows. The Jewish observances of the old covenant, he says, still remain, not uncovered and recognized by some as having been abolished in Christ, who said: “I did not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it”; that is, either to make it cease, or to fill up what was lacking. But when someone turns to the Lord, and passes from the type to the truth, from the law to grace, according to “You are not under law but under grace,” he casts off that veil which, as it were, covered him; doing like Moses, who removed the veil from his face when he was deemed worthy to converse with the invisible God, [the veil that he put on because the glory] from the divine appearance … the eyes of those who gazed at him. And that the Lord here is the Holy Spirit … with unveiled face, and no longer bowed beneath the yoke of slavery, we behold as in a mirror the glory of the Lord who dwells in us, going from the glory of the Spirit to the glory of the Father.

Let us go on also to what follows: “If all prophesy,” he says, “and an unbeliever or an outsider comes in, he is convicted by all, he is examined by all, the secrets of his heart are made manifest; and so, falling on his face, he will worship God, declaring that God is really among you.” The Holy Spirit, then, who speaks and works in those who prophesy and in the saints, and who supplies the gifts, is here too plainly named God who is worshiped. And it must be noted that also worship… deems fit to write; and the words go like this: “Now may the God of endurance and of hope grant you to be of the same mind with one another, according to Jesus Christ; that with one accord, with one mouth, you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Who then is the God who grants us to think thus about the Father and his Only-begotten, but the Holy Spirit? For it remains for us to understand him. But to the Thessalonians likewise: “Now may the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God and into the endurance of Christ.” So that the Holy Spirit is the Lord who directs into the love of God and the Father, and into the endur[ance …] … “… and abound in love toward one another and toward all, just as we do toward you, so as to establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” What Lord, then, is it who makes us abound and establishes us in holiness before the Father and the Son, but the Holy Spirit? And he charges them not to drive away, through some drunken excess or negligence, his eternal grace kindled in us, writing: “Do not quench the Spirit.” And again, declaring him God, and … he says: “He who rejects [this] rejects not man but God, who gives his Holy Spirit …” … plainly presenting the Holy Spirit as God and Lord, he threatened, in these very words, a certain man named Ananias: “Why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back part of the price of the land? While it remained, did it not remain yours, and when it was sold, was it not in your power? You have not lied to men but to God.” And immediately he says this to Sapphira, the wife of Ananias: “Why is it that you agreed together to tempt the Spirit of the Lord?” This is like “You shall not tempt the Lord your God,” and what was written by James: “For God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one.” And John, proclaiming the Spirit God, as was said above: “God is Spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” For as God is Spirit, so also his Holy Spirit is God; and as God is, and is called, what his Spirit is, so also the Holy Spirit is what he is whose Spirit he is, that is, God without beginning. And we must, he says, worship the Holy Spirit with our whole spirit, without hesitation, with truth, and not with lips only and bare words. But if the Macedonians should say that “in the [Spirit]” … not that the Spirit too is worshiped, they will be compelled to say that “in the Son” [means] not that the Son too [is worshiped]. For he himself said: “I am the truth”; and even from this saying these blessed hypostases will have no difference.

Isaiah, prophesying about the Church and those in it who are schooled in the wisdom of the Spirit, recounts from God somewhat thus: “Behold, I prepare for you carbuncle as your stone, and sapphire as your foundations; and I will make your battlements jasper, and your gates crystal stones, and your wall choice stones, and all your sons taught by God.” This prophecy the Savior recalled in John, saying: “It is written in the …” And Paul writes to the Thessalonians in agreement with these: “For you yourselves are taught by God to love one another.” And both speak of the Holy Spirit, as again in John the Master says: “He will teach you, and remind you of all things.” If then those who are taught by the Holy Spirit are called “taught by God,” let the reader understand what the Holy Spirit is, hearing also: “God taught me wisdom”; and again: “God taught me from my youth.” And Scripture is also called God-breathed and divine, because the Holy Spirit, who breathed it, is God, according to Paul writing to Timothy the second time: “All Scripture is God-breathed and profitable.” And again Peter writes in the second catholic [epistle]: “For prophecy was never borne by the will of man, but holy men spoke from God, borne along by the Holy Spirit.” And the Acts of the Apostles contain this: “Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to the people” what he said. Each one, then, of the things declared in the Scriptures about the divine Spirit is sufficient proof of his likeness in all respects to the Godhead of God the Father and the Son.

But those who consider the mind of Macedonius more excellent than the simplicity of the Scriptures, and want to show it to be more honorable than our unadulterated faith, speaking against the Holy Spirit, have written abuse even about his indwelling in us, in these very words: “Things said allegorically, or by appellation, or metaphorically, or homonymously must not be taken for doctrinal precision. For ‘temple,’” he says, “is also the one in Jerusalem, made of lifeless material, and that was the first to be named a temple; homonymously, then, men also. And a dwelling house is supposedly a ‘temple’ too, from dwelling and living in it. ‘For Nebuchadnezzar was,’ he says, ‘in the temple of his kingdom.’” And again: “If men by nature are a temple by appellation, then not truly.” And again: “Since, then,” he says, “we have also been called sheep, are we that by nature?” And again: “He who bought us back,” he says, “is the one who died for us; and he who buys back does not buy back what belongs to another.” So they argue, helplessly and irrationally, in a way that no one, not even of those able to reason a little, would accept. For in comparing the God-uttered sayings concerning the Godhead itself, which is not to be despised, and concerning the rational works of his hands, ourselves, they bring cattle and lifeless building into the midst, and make sport, as it were, of fearful texts and matters, and through these supposedly simple and easy words they call [people] into their own pit, like those who hook fish with a little bait. But we, showing on every side that throughout our whole life, as we at least think, we have taken the greatest care not to utter anything at random or with hatred against anyone, and that we have shunned even reasonable abuse, have come … those of the sober-minded … have heard from the Scriptures, and to persuade the others, as far as in us lies, no longer to hold the judgment or faith they hold. For we who are deemed worthy to have dwelling in us the subsistent Spirit of God, who fills all things, are named his temple neither by homonymy or synonymy, nor by allegory, nor by metaphor, but properly and in truth. Hence the Apostle, speaking not to the temple in Jerusalem and the things that the heretics used as an image, but to the faithful, and showing clearly that the Holy Spirit is God, said: “Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwells in you?” And to the Hebrews: “We are partakers of the Holy Spirit.” For if [we are] a temple of the Holy Spirit, it is not as those called a temple of God [in some other sense], [but] as [the temple] of God, that we have been so named. And God the Father, who possesses us as Master, dwells in us (for a temple befits God alone), and likewise with him his only-begotten Son and his one Holy Spirit. And in the way in which God and the Father, even though it is not written that he bought us back with his own blood, is our Master, so also is his Holy Spirit. For it follows from the things said to circumscribe the Godhead of the Holy Spirit that they must likewise be taken of God the Father too. Who then would be persuaded … Paul and the other saints, or Macedonius and Arius, who repented in pretense? For if they have any regard for the saints, how did they fail to notice … [that they do not] deign to say and think the same as they? But if the one think one way and these another (and this is indisputable from what has been shown; for they did not utter the sayings set out by comparing the rational temple, made according to the image of God, the work of his hands and the fairest of things on earth, contemptuously and mockingly with walls and cattle, as these insolent men do, or by judging it to be one and the same with them), this is not the part of Christians, nor of men otherwise wise; nor would anyone ever suppose that those who teach such things speak the truth. But one who learns that they truly hold this view, how will he not think himself the wiser if he flees the doctrines of heretics and is persuaded by those who are far better, I mean the saints, or, to speak more truly, by the words of God himself? For no one, even if he were utterly inexperienced in the Scriptures, would say that all those excellent and famous men said these things from their own judgment alone, and not that God converses with us through their voice and teaches both other things greater than human understanding, and that in the faithful God himself, and his only-begotten Son, and his one Spirit dwell alike and equally, undefiled. Refuting, therefore, and casting away their sophistical drivel, and that they should not blas[pheme] … in Psalm 104 he charges them: “Do no harm to my prophets.” But enough about those who are in no way friends of God, who has given men even the gift that comes from homonymy …

Since it has been established, then, that the Holy Spirit is God and that he prompted the prophecies, it is time now to pass on to Zechariah, not the prophet with the sickle, but the father of John, who also judged that he who spoke in the prophets is God and Lord of Israel. Let me set out the very words he spoke: “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and wrought redemption for his people, and has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David, as he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old.” And the sacred psalmist, who never departed from doctrinal teaching, agrees with these, saying in Psalm 84: “I will hear what the Lord God will speak in me”; and in the second book of the history of the Kingdoms he declared of what Lord and God this longed-for inspiration was, saying: “The Spirit of the Lord spoke in me, and his word was upon my tongue.”