Letters to Serapion 1.29–1.33

Since, then, the church has this foundation of the faith, let them tell us again and answer: Is it a Triad or a Dyad? If it is a Dyad, then let the Spirit be numbered by you with the creatures. But then your mind is not directed to one God, who is “over all” and “through all” and “in all.” For you do not have “in all,” since you divide the Spirit from the Godhead and estrange him from it; and your initiation, which you think you perform while thinking in this way, is not entire, as it should be when it is into the Godhead. For a creature is mixed into it; and you too, like the Arians and the Greeks, confess as God the creation together with God who created it through his own Word. Being so disposed, what hope have you? Or who will join you to God, when you do not have the Spirit of God himself, but that of creation? And what daring and heedlessness is yours, that you bring the Father and his Word down to the creatures, and in turn make the creature equal to God? For this is what you do by imagining the Spirit to be a creature and ranking him in the Triad. And what madness of yours is this, that you think God unjust, since not all angels or all creatures, but one of them, is numbered with God and his Word? For according to you, once the Spirit is an angel and a creature and is ranked in the Triad, not one but all the created angels ought to be ranked with it, and it should no longer be a Triad but some countless multitude of godhead; so that in this too your supposed initiation, divided here and there, may become unstable through its variety. Such are the ends of you and of the Arians, who reason against the Godhead and worship the creature rather than God who created all things.

Such absurdities, then, befall you from calling it a Dyad. But if it is a Triad, as indeed it is, and it has been shown to be indivisible and not unlike, then its holiness must be one, and its eternity one, and its unchangeable nature one. For as the faith handed down concerning it is one, and this joins us to God; and as whoever takes away anything from the Triad and is baptized in the name of the Father alone, or in the name of the Son alone, or in Father and Son without the Spirit, receives nothing, but remains empty and uninitiated, both he and the one who seems to give it—for the initiation is in the Triad—so whoever divides the Son from the Father, or brings the Spirit down to the creatures, has neither the Son nor the Father, but is godless and worse than an unbeliever, and anything rather than a Christian; and rightly so. For as the baptism given in Father and Son and Holy Spirit is one, and the faith in it is one, as the apostle said, so the holy Triad, being the same with itself and united to itself, has in itself nothing of originated things; and this is the indivisible oneness of the Triad, and the faith in it is one. But if, according to the invention of you Tropici, it is not so, and you have dreamed of calling the Holy Spirit a creature, then your faith is no longer one, nor your baptism one, but two: one into Father and Son, and another into an angel who is a creature; and nothing of yours is secure or true any longer. For what fellowship has the originated with the creator? Or what oneness have the creatures below with the Word who made them? Knowing this, the blessed Paul does not divide the Triad as you do, but, teaching its oneness, he wrote to the Corinthians about spiritual gifts, and sums up all things into the one God and Father, saying: “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of ministries, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who works all things in all.” For what the Spirit distributes to each, these are supplied from the Father through the Word. For all that is the Father’s is the Son’s; and so the gifts given by the Son in the Spirit are the Father’s gifts. And when the Spirit is in us, the Word who gives him is in us too, and the Father is in the Word; and so it is as was said: “I and the Father will come and make our home with him.” For where the light is, there is the radiance too; and where the radiance is, there too is its activity and its luminous grace. And teaching this again, Paul wrote once more to the Corinthians, in the second letter, saying: “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” For the grace and gift that is given is given in the Triad, from the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit. For as the grace given is from the Father through the Son, so there could be no fellowship of the gift in us except in the Holy Spirit. For in partaking of him we have the love of the Father, and the grace of the Son, and the fellowship of the Spirit himself.

From these things too, then, the activity of the Triad is shown to be one. For the apostle does not mean that the things given are given differently and separately by each, but that what is given is given in the Triad, and that all things are from one God. That, then, which is not a creature, but is united to the Son as the Son is united to the Father, which is glorified together with Father and Son and confessed as God with the Word, and which works what the Father works through the Son—how does one who calls it a creature not commit open impiety against the Son himself? For there is nothing that does not come to be and is not worked through the Word in the Spirit. This is sung in the Psalms too: “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made firm, and by the Spirit of his mouth all their host”; and in the hundred and forty-seventh psalm: “He will send out his word and melt them; he will breathe his Spirit, and the waters will flow.” And we were justified, as the apostle said, “in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.” For the Spirit is inseparable from the Word. Indeed, when the Lord says, “I and the Father will come,” the Spirit comes in with them, no otherwise than as the Son will dwell in us, as Paul writes to the Ephesians: “that he may grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell …” And when the Son is in us, the Father is too, since the Son says, “I am in the Father and the Father in me.” Therefore too, when the Word comes to be in the prophets, they prophesy in the Holy Spirit himself. When, at any rate, Scripture says, “And the word of the Lord came to” such and such a prophet, it is shown that he prophesies in the Holy Spirit. For in Zechariah it is written: “But receive my words and my statutes, which I command by my Spirit to my servants the prophets”; and a little later, accusing the people, he said: “And they made their heart disobedient, so as not to hear my laws and the words which the Lord Almighty sent by his Spirit by the hands of his former prophets.” And Peter said in the Acts: “Brothers, the Scripture had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit spoke beforehand.” And the apostles together cried out thus: “Master, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them, who by the Holy Spirit, through the mouth of our father David your servant, said.” And Paul, when he was in Rome, spoke boldly to the Jews who came to him: “The Holy Spirit spoke well through Isaiah the prophet to your fathers.” And to Timothy he wrote: “Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the sound faith, giving heed to deceitful spirits.” Therefore too, when the Spirit is said to come to be in some, it is understood that the Word is in them, giving the Spirit. When, at any rate, the prophecy “I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh” was being fulfilled, Paul said, “according to the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ to me”; and to the Corinthians he wrote: “Or do you seek proof of Christ speaking in me?” But if it was Christ who spoke in him, plainly the Spirit who spoke in him was Christ’s; and indeed, with Christ speaking in him, he said again in the Acts: “And now, behold, I am going bound in the Spirit to Jerusalem, not knowing what will befall me there, except that the Holy Spirit testifies to me in every city that bonds and afflictions await me.” Hence, when the saints say, “Thus says the Lord,” they speak in no other way than in the Holy Spirit; and speaking in the Spirit, they say these things in Christ. And when Agabus too in the Acts says, “Thus says the Holy Spirit,” it is in no other way than that, the Word having come to him, the Spirit enabled him to speak and to testify to what awaited Paul at Jerusalem. Indeed, when the Spirit again testified to Paul, it was Christ himself who spoke in him, … so that the testimony that comes from the Spirit is the Word’s. So too, when the Word came upon the holy Virgin Mary, the Spirit came in with him, and the Word in the Spirit formed and fitted …

So it is shown in harmony from the divine Scriptures that the Holy Spirit is not a creature, but proper to the Word and to the Godhead of the Father. For in this way the teaching of the saints is gathered into the holy and indivisible Triad, and this is the one faith of the catholic church. But the irrational myth-making of the Tropici is out of harmony with the Scriptures and in harmony with the irrationality of the Ariomaniacs; and it is likely that they put on this act to deceive the simple. But thanks be to the Lord that, as you write, they have not escaped notice while covering themselves with their pretended opposition to the Arians. For they are hated by those too, because they call only the Spirit a creature, and not the Word as well; and they have been condemned by all, as truly fighting against the Spirit, and as soon to become dead, being bereft and empty of the Spirit. For, according to the blessed apostle, being unspiritual men, they could not receive the things of the Spirit of God, because they are spiritually discerned; but those who think the things of the truth discern all things, while they themselves are discerned by no one, since they have in themselves the Lord, who reveals to them in the Spirit both himself and, through himself, the Father.

I, then, though I am living in the desert, yet because of the shamelessness of those who have turned aside from the truth, and without caring about those who wish to laugh at the weakness and lowliness of the demonstration in my words, have written briefly and sent it to your piety, earnestly begging that, when you read it, you correct some things and pardon what is weakly said. For I have handed it on in accordance with the apostolic faith handed down to us by the fathers, devising nothing from outside; but what I learned, I have engraved in harmony with the holy Scriptures. For this too agrees with what was set forth above for confirmation from the holy Scriptures; and it has not been devised from outside, but the Lord Jesus Christ himself, through himself, taught the Samaritan woman, and through her us, the perfection of the holy Triad, which is indivisible and one Godhead. The Truth himself bears witness, as he says to the Samaritan woman: “Believe me, woman, the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth; for the Father seeks such people to worship him. God is Spirit, and those who worship him must worship in Spirit and truth.” It has been shown, then, from this that the Truth is the Son himself, as he says, “I am the truth”; about whom the prophet David too called out, saying, “Send out your light and your truth.” The true worshipers, then, worship the Father, but in Spirit and truth, confessing the Son and in him the Spirit. For the Spirit is inseparable from the Son, as the Son is inseparable from the Father. The Truth himself bears witness, saying: “I will send you the Paraclete, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, whom the world cannot receive”—that is, those who deny that he is from the Father in the Son. One must, then, in imitation of the true worshipers, confess the truth and run to it. But if even after this they neither wish to learn nor are able to understand, let them at least cease from their slanders and not divide the Triad, lest they be divided from life; and let them not number the Holy Spirit with the creatures, lest, as the Pharisees of that time ascribed the works of the Spirit to Beelzebul, these too, daring the like, suffer with them the punishment that has no pardon, both here and hereafter. … I have done this too, confident that, since you have a good conscience, if anything has been left out in these things too, you will supply it.