Hexaemeron; On the Holy Spirit; Letters

Establishment of the natural communion of the Spirit from His being, equally with the Father and the Son, unapproachable in thought.¹

53. Moreover the surpassing excellence of the nature of the Spirit is to be learned not only from His having the same title as the Father and the Son, and sharing in their operations, but also from His being, like the Father and the Son, unapproachable in thought. For what our Lord says of the Father as being above and beyond human conception, and what He says of the Son, this same language He uses also of the Holy Ghost. "O righteous Father," He says, "the world hath not known Thee,"² meaning here by the world not the complex whole compounded of heaven and earth, but this life of ours subject to death,³ and exposed to innumerable vicissitudes. And when discoursing of Himself He says, "Yet a little while and the world seeth me no more, but ye see me;"⁴ again in this passage, applying the word world to those who being bound down by this material and carnal life, and beholding⁵ the truth by material sight alone,⁶ were ordained, through their unbelief in the resurrection, to see our Lord no more with the eyes of the heart. And He said the same concerning the Spirit. "The Spirit of truth," He says, "whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him: but ye know Him, for He dwelleth with you."⁷ For the carnal man, who has never trained his mind to contemplation,⁸ but rather keeps it buried deep in lust of the flesh,⁹ as in mud, is powerless to look up to the spiritual light of the truth. And so the world, that is life enslaved by the affections of the flesh, can no more receive the grace of the Spirit than a weak eye the light of a sunbeam. But the Lord, who by His teaching bore witness to purity of life, gives to His disciples the power of now both beholding and contemplating the Spirit. For "now," He says, "Ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you,"¹⁰ wherefore "the world cannot receive Him, because it seeth Him not,...but ye know Him; for he dwelleth with you."¹¹ And so says Isaiah;—"He that spread forth the earth and that which cometh out of it; he that giveth breath unto the people upon it, and Spirit to them that trample on it"¹²; for they that trample down earthly things and rise above them are borne witness to as worthy of the gift of the Holy Ghost. What then ought to be thought of Him whom the world cannot receive, and Whom saints alone can contemplate through pureness of heart? What kind of honours can be deemed adequate to Him?

The glorifying of the enumeration of His attributes.

54.¹³ Now of the rest of the Powers each is believed to be in a circumscribed place. The angel who stood by Cornelius¹⁴ was not at one and the same moment with Philip;¹⁵ nor yet did the angel who spoke with Zacharias from the altar at the same time occupy his own post in heaven. But the Spirit is believed to have been operating at the same time in Habakkuk and in Daniel at Babylon,¹⁶ and to have been at the prison with Jeremiah,¹⁷ and with Ezekiel at the Chebar.¹⁸ For the Spirit of the Lord filleth the world,¹⁹ and "whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?"²⁰ And, in the words of the Prophet, "For I am with you, saith the Lord...and my spirit remaineth among you."²¹ But what nature is it becoming to assign to Him who is omnipresent, and exists together with God? The nature which is all-embracing, or one which is confined to particular places, like that which our argument shews the nature of angels to be? No one would so say. Shall we not then highly exalt Him who is in His nature divine, in His greatness infinite, in His operations powerful, in the blessings He confers, good? Shall we not give Him glory? And I understand glory to mean nothing else than the enumeration of the wonders which are His own. It follows then that either we are forbidden by our antagonists even to mention the good things which flow to us from Him. or on the other hand that the mere recapitulation of His attributes is the fullest possible attribution of glory. For not even in the case of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and of the Only begotten Son, are we capable of giving Them glory otherwise than by recounting, to the extent of our powers, all the wonders that belong to Them.

Proof of the absurdity of the refusal to glorify the Spirit, from the comparison of things glorified in creation.

55. Furthermore man is "crowned with glory and honour,"²² and "glory, honour and peace" are laid up by promise "to every man that worketh good."²³ There is moreover a special and peculiar glory for Israelites "to whom," it is said "pertaineth the adoption and the glory...and the service,"²⁴ and the Psalmist speaks of a certain glory of his own, "that my glory may sing praise to Thee²⁵;" and again "Awake up my glory"²⁶ and according to the Apostle there is a certain glory of sun and moon and stars,²⁷ and "the ministration of condemnation is glorious."²⁸ While then so many things are glorified, do you wish the Spirit alone of all things to be unglorified? Yet the Apostle says "the ministration of the Spirit is glorious."²⁹ How then can He Himself be unworthy of glory? How according to the Psalmist can the glory of the just man be great³⁰ and according to you the glory of the Spirit none? How is there not a plain peril from such arguments of our bringing on ourselves the sin from which there is no escape? If the man who is being saved by works of righteousness glorifies even them that fear the Lord³¹ much less would he deprive the Spirit of the glory which is His due.

Grant, they say, that He is to be glorified, but not with the Father and the Son. But what reason is there in giving up the place appointed by the Lord for the Spirit, and inventing some other? What reason is there for robbing of His share of glory Him Who is everywhere associated with the Godhead; in the confession of the Faith, in the baptism of redemption, in the working of miracles, in the indwelling of the saints, in the graces bestowed on obedience? For there is not even one single gift which reaches creation without the Holy Ghost;³² when not even a single word can be spoken in defence of Christ except by them that are aided by the Spirit, as we have learnt in the Gospels from our Lord and Saviour.³³ And I know not whether any one who has been partaker of the Holy Spirit will consent that we should overlook all this, forget His fellowship in all things, and tear the Spirit asunder from the Father and the Son. Where then are we to take Him and rank Him? With the creature? Yet all the creature is in bondage, but the Spirit maketh free. "And where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty."³⁴ Many arguments might be adduced to them that it is unseemly to coordinate the Holy Spirit with created nature, but for the present I will pass them by. Were I indeed to bring forward, in a manner befitting the dignity of the discussion, all the proofs always available on our side, and so overthrow the objections of our opponents, a lengthy dissertation would be required, and my readers might be worn out by my prolixity. I therefore propose to reserve this matter for a special treatise,³⁵ and to apply myself to the points now more immediately before us.

56. Let us then examine the points one by one. He is good by nature, in the same way as the Father is good, and the Son is good; the creature on the other hand shares in goodness by choosing the good. He knows "The deep things of God;"³⁶ the creature receives the manifestation of ineffable things through the Spirit. He quickens together with God, who produces and preserves all things alive,³⁷ and together with the Son, who gives life. "He that raised up Christ from the dead," it is said, "shall also quicken your mortal bodies by the spirit that dwelleth in you;"³⁸ and again "my sheep hear my voice,...and I give unto them eternal life;"³⁹ but "the Spirit" also, it is said, "giveth life,"⁴⁰ and again "the Spirit," it is said, "is life, because of righteousness."⁴¹ And the Lord bears witness that "it is the Spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing."⁴² How then shall we alienate the Spirit from His quickening power, and make Him belong to lifeless nature? Who is so contentious, who is so utterly without the heavenly gift,⁴³ and unfed by God's good words, who is so devoid of part and lot in eternal hopes, as to sever the Spirit from the Godhead and rank Him with the creature?

57. Now it is urged that the Spirit is in us as a gift from God, and that the gift is not reverenced with the same honour as that which is attributed to the giver. The Spirit is a gift of God, but a gift of life, for the law of "the Spirit of life," it is said, "hath made" us "free;"⁴⁴ and a gift of power, for "ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you."⁴⁵ Is He on this account to be lightly esteemed? Did not God also bestow His Son as a free gift to mankind? "He that spared not His own Son," it is said, "but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?"⁴⁶ And in another place, "that we might truly know the things that are freely given us of God,"⁴⁷ in reference to the mystery of the Incarnation. It follows then that the maintainers of such arguments, in making the greatness of God's loving kindness an occasion of blasphemy, have really surpassed the ingratitude of the Jews. They find fault with the Spirit because He gives us freedom to call God our Father. "For God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into" our "hearts crying Abba, Father,"⁴⁸ that the voice of the Spirit may become the very voice of them that have received him.

That Scripture uses the words "in" or "by," en, cf. note on p. 3, in place of "with." Wherein also it is proved that the word "and" has the same force as "with."

58. It is, however, asked by our opponents, how it is that Scripture nowhere describes the Spirit as glorified together with the Father and the Son, but carefully avoids the use of the expression "with the Spirit," while it everywhere prefers to ascribe glory "in Him" as being the fitter phrase. I should, for my own part, deny that the word in [or by] implies lower dignity than the word "with;" I should maintain on the contrary that, rightly understood, it leads us up to the highest possible meaning. This is the case where, as we have observed, it often stands instead of with; as for instance, "I will go into thy house in burnt offerings,"⁴⁹ instead of with burnt offerings and "he brought them forth also by silver and gold,"⁵⁰ that is to say with silver and gold and "thou goest not forth in our armies"⁵¹ instead of with our armies, and innumerable similar passages. In short I should very much like to learn from this newfangled philosophy what kind of glory the Apostle ascribed by the word in, according to the interpretation which our opponents proffer as derived from Scripture, for I have nowhere found the formula "To Thee, O Father, be honour and glory, through Thy only begotten Son, by [or in] the Holy Ghost,"—a form which to our opponents comes, so to say, as naturally as the air they breathe. You may indeed find each of these clauses separately,⁵² but they will nowhere be able to show them to us arranged in this conjunction. If, then, they want exact conformity to what is written, let them give us exact references. If, on the other hand, they make concession to custom, they must not make us an exception to such a privilege.

59. As we find both expressions in use among the faithful, we use both; in the belief that full glory is equally given to the Spirit by both. The mouths, however, of revilers of the truth may best be stopped by the preposition which, while it has the same meaning as that of the Scriptures, is not so wieldy a weapon for our opponents, (indeed it is now an object of their attack) and is used instead of the conjunction and. For to say "Paul and Silvanus and Timothy"⁵³ is precisely the same thing as to say Paul with Timothy and Silvanus; for the connexion of the names is preserved by either mode of expression. The Lord says "The Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost."⁵⁴ If I say the Father and the Son with the Holy Ghost shall I make, any difference in the sense? Of the connexion of names by means of the conjunction and the instances are many. We read "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost,"⁵⁵ and again "I beseech you for the Lord Jesus Christ's sake, and for the love of the Spirit."⁵⁶ Now if we wish to use with instead of and, what difference shall we have made? I do not see; unless any one according to hard and fast grammatical rules might prefer the conjunction as copulative and making the union stronger, and reject the preposition as of inferior force. But if we had to defend ourselves on these points I do not suppose we should require a defence of many words. As it is, their argument is not about syllables nor yet about this or that sound of a word, but about things differing most widely in power and in truth. It is for this reason that, while the use of the syllables is really a matter of no importance whatever, our opponents are making the endeavour to authorise some syllables, and hunt out others from the Church. For my own part, although the usefulness of the word is obvious as soon as it is heard, I will nevertheless set forth the arguments which led our fathers to adopt the reasonable course of employing the preposition "with."⁵⁷ It does indeed equally well with the preposition "and," confute the mischief of Sabellius;⁵⁸ and it sets forth quite as well as "and" the distinction of the hypostases, as in the words "I and my Father will come,"⁵⁹ and "I and my Father are one."⁶⁰ In addition to this the proof it contains of the eternal fellowship and uninterrupted conjunction is excellent. For to say that the Son is with the Father is to exhibit at once the distinction of the hypostases, and the inseparability of the fellowship. The same thing is observable even in mere human matters, for the conjunction "and" intimates that there is a common element in an action, while the preposition "with" declares in some sense as well the communion in action. As, for instance;—Paul and Timothy sailed to Macedonia, but both Tychicus and Onesimus were sent to the Colossians. Hence we learn that they did the same thing. But suppose we are told that they sailed with, and were sent with? Then we are informed in addition that they carried out the action in company with one another. Thus while the word "with" upsets the error of Sabellius as no other word can, it routs also sinners who err in the very opposite direction; those, I mean, who separate the Son from the Father and the Spirit from the Son, by intervals of time.⁶¹

60. As compared with "in," there is this difference, that while "with" sets forth the mutual conjunction of the parties associated,—as, for example, of those who sail with, or dwell with, or do anything else in common, "in" shews their relation to that matter in which they happen to be acting. For we no sooner hear the words "sail in" or "dwell in" than we form the idea of the boat or the house. Such is the distinction between these words in ordinary usage; and laborious investigation might discover further illustrations. I have no time to examine into the nature of the syllables. Since then it has been shewn that "with" most clearly gives the sense of conjunction, let it be declared, if you will, to be under safe-conduct, and cease to wage your savage and truceless war against it. Nevertheless, though the word is naturally thus auspicious, yet if any one likes, in the ascription of praise, to couple the names by the syllable "and," and to give glory, as we have taught in the Gospel, in the formula of baptism, Father and Son and Holy Ghost,⁶² be it so: no one will make any objection. On these conditions, if you will, let us come to terms. But our foes would rather surrender their tongues than accept this word. It is this that rouses against us their implacable and truceless war. We must offer the ascription of glory to God, it is contended, in the Holy Ghost, and not and to the Holy Ghost, and they passionately cling to this word in, as though it lowered the Spirit. It will therefore be not unprofitable to speak at greater length about it; and I shall be astonished if they do not, when they have heard what we have to urge, reject the in as itself a traitor to their cause, and a deserter to the side of the glory of the Spirit.