On the Trinity 15.19–15.25

Must this too be proved, that the Holy Spirit is called the Gift of God in the sacred Scriptures? If this too is expected, we have in the Gospel according to John the words of the Lord Jesus Christ, who says: “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the Scripture says, rivers of living water will flow from his belly.” And the evangelist went on to add: “Now this he said of the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive.” Hence the apostle Paul also says: “And we have all been made to drink one Spirit.” But whether this water, which is the Holy Spirit, has been called the gift of God is the question. But as we find here that this water is the Holy Spirit, so we find elsewhere in the same Gospel that this water is called the gift of God. For when the same Lord was speaking with the Samaritan woman at the well, to whom he had said, “Give me a drink,” and she had answered that Jews have no dealings with Samaritans, “Jesus answered and said to her: If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, Give me a drink, you would perhaps have asked him, and he would have given you living water. The woman said to him: Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep; where then do you have living water?” and so on. “Jesus answered and said to her: Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; but the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” Since, then, this living water, as the evangelist explained, is the Holy Spirit, without doubt the Spirit is the Gift of God, of which the Lord says here: “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, Give me a drink, you would perhaps have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” For what he says there, “Rivers of living water will flow from his belly,” he says in this place: “It will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

The apostle Paul too says, “To each one of us grace is given according to the measure of the gift of Christ”; and to show that the gift of Christ is the Holy Spirit, he went on to add, “Therefore it says: He ascended on high, he led captivity captive, he gave gifts to men.” Now it is very well known that the Lord Jesus, when after his resurrection from the dead he had ascended into heaven, gave the Holy Spirit, filled with whom those who had believed spoke in the tongues of all nations. And let no one be troubled that he says “gifts,” not “gift”; for he cited this testimony from the Psalm. In the Psalm it reads thus: “You ascended on high, you led captivity captive, you received gifts among men.” For so most manuscripts have it, especially the Greek, and we have it so translated from the Hebrew. The apostle, then, said “gifts,” as the prophet did, not “gift.” But whereas the prophet said, “You received gifts among men,” the apostle preferred to say, “He gave gifts to men,” so that from both words, the one prophetic, the other apostolic, since in both there is the authority of the divine word, the fullest sense might be rendered. For both are true: that he gave to men and that he received among men. He gave to men as the head to his members; he himself received among men, surely in his members, on account of which members of his he cried from heaven, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” and of which members of his he says, “When you did it to one of the least of mine, you did it to me.” Christ himself, then, both gave from heaven and received on earth. Further, both the prophet and the apostle said “gifts” for this reason: because through the Gift, which is the Holy Spirit, many gifts, which are proper to each, are distributed in common to all the members of Christ. For not every one has all, but some have these, others those, though all have the Gift itself by which what is proper to each is distributed, that is, the Holy Spirit. For elsewhere too, having mentioned many gifts, he says, “All these the one and the same Spirit works, distributing to each his own as he wills.” This word is also found in the Letter to the Hebrews, where it is written, “God bearing witness by signs and wonders and various powers and distributions of the Holy Spirit.” And here, having said, “He ascended on high, he led captivity captive, he gave gifts to men,” he says: “Now that he ascended, what does it mean but that he also descended into the lower parts of the earth? He who descended is the same who ascended above all the heavens, that he might fill all things. And he gave some apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers.” See why they are called gifts: because, as he says elsewhere, “Are all apostles? Are all prophets?” and so on. But here he added, “for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ.” This is the house which, as the Psalm sings, is built after the captivity; since from those who have been rescued from the devil, by whom they were held captive, the house of Christ is built, which house is called the Church. And he who conquered the devil led this captivity captive. And so that the devil might not drag with him into eternal punishment those who were to be members of the holy head, he bound him first with the chains of justice, then with those of power. The devil himself, then, is called the captivity which he led captive who ascended on high and gave gifts to men, or received gifts among men.

And the apostle Peter, as we read in that canonical book in which the Acts of the Apostles are written, speaking of Christ, when the Jews were stirred in heart and said, “What then shall we do, brothers? Show us,” said to them: “Repent, and let each of you be baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” Likewise we read in the same book that Simon Magus wished to give the apostles money so as to receive from them the power by which the Holy Spirit would be given through the laying on of his hands. To him the same Peter said, “Your money perish with you, because you thought you could possess the gift of God with money.” And in another place in the same book, when Peter was speaking to Cornelius and those who were with him, announcing and preaching Christ, Scripture says: “While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard the word; and the believers of the circumcision who had come with Peter were amazed, because on the Gentiles also the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out. For they heard them speaking in tongues and magnifying God.” And when Peter afterwards gave an account of this deed of his, that he had baptized the uncircumcised (for, to remove the knot of this question, the Holy Spirit had come upon them before they were baptized), to the brothers who were at Jerusalem and were disturbed on hearing of it, he says among other things: “But when I had begun to speak to them, the Holy Spirit fell on them, as on us at the beginning. And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he said: John indeed baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit. If, then, he gave them an equal gift, as also to us who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could forbid God to give them the Holy Spirit?” And there are many other testimonies of the Scriptures which harmoniously attest that the Holy Spirit is the Gift of God, inasmuch as he is given to those who through him love God. But it is too long to collect them all. And what is enough for those for whom what we have said is not enough?

They should certainly be reminded, since they now see that the Holy Spirit is called the Gift of God, that when they hear “the gift of the Holy Spirit” they should recognize that kind of expression used in “in the stripping off of the body of flesh.” For as the body of flesh is nothing other than the flesh, so the gift of the Holy Spirit is nothing other than the Holy Spirit. He is, then, the Gift of God inasmuch as he is given to those to whom he is given. But in himself he is God, even if he is given to no one, because he was God, coeternal with the Father and the Son, before he was given to anyone. Nor, because they give and he is given, is he therefore less than they. For he is so given as the Gift of God that he also gives himself as God. For it cannot be said that he is not in his own power, of whom it was said, “The Spirit breathes where he wills,” and in the apostle, as I have already mentioned above, “All these the one and the same Spirit works, distributing to each his own as he wills.” There is not there the subjection of the one given and the dominion of the givers, but the concord of the given and the givers.

Therefore, if holy Scripture proclaims, “God is love,” and love is from God and works in us so that we abide in God and he in us, and we know this from the fact that he has given us of his Spirit, the Spirit himself is God who is love. Then, if among the gifts of God nothing is greater than love, and there is no greater gift of God than the Holy Spirit, what follows more naturally than that he is love, who is called both God and from God? And if the love by which the Father loves the Son and the Son loves the Father ineffably shows the communion of both, what is more fitting than that he should properly be called love who is the Spirit common to both? For it is sounder to believe or understand that the Holy Spirit is not alone love in that Trinity, but is not in vain properly called love, for the reasons that have been given. Just as he is not alone either spirit or holy in that Trinity, since the Father is spirit and the Son is spirit, and the Father is holy and the Son is holy, which piety does not doubt; and yet he is not in vain properly called the Holy Spirit. For because he is common to both, he is properly called what both are in common. Otherwise, if in that Trinity the Holy Spirit alone is love, then surely the Son turns out to be the Son not of the Father alone but also of the Holy Spirit. For in countless places the Son is called and read to be the only-begotten of God the Father, yet in such a way that what the apostle says of God the Father is also true: “who rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of his love.” He did not say “of his Son”; had he said so, he would have said it most truly, as he did say it most truly, since he often said it; but he said, “of the Son of his love.” The Son, then, is the Son of the Holy Spirit too, if there is no love of God in that Trinity except the Holy Spirit. And if this is most absurd, it remains that the Holy Spirit is not alone love there, but is properly so called for the reasons I have sufficiently discussed; and that what was said, “of the Son of his love,” is to be understood as nothing else than “of his beloved Son,” in short, “of the Son of his substance.” For the love of the Father, which is in his ineffably simple nature, is nothing other than his very nature and substance, as we have often said and are not reluctant to repeat often. And therefore the Son of his love is none other than he who was begotten of his substance.

Therefore the dialectic of Eunomius, from whom the Eunomian heretics arose, is laughable. Since he could not understand, and would not believe, that the only-begotten Word of God, through whom all things were made, is the Son of God by nature, that is, begotten of the substance of the Father, he said that he is the Son not of his nature or substance or essence, but the son of the will of God, wishing to assert, that is, that the will by which God begot the Son was accidental to God: evidently because we sometimes will something which we did not will before; as if our nature were not understood to be changeable for these very reasons, which far be it that we should believe to be so in God. For it was written, “Many are the thoughts in a man's heart, but the counsel of the Lord abides forever,” for no other reason than that we should understand or believe that, as God is eternal, so his counsel is forever, and therefore unchangeable, as he himself is. And what is said of thoughts can most truly be said of wills too: “Many are the wills in a man's heart, but the will of the Lord abides forever.” Some, so as not to call the only-begotten Word the son of God's counsel or will, have said that the Word himself is the counsel or will of the Father. But it is better, as I think, to say counsel from counsel and will from will, as substance from substance and wisdom from wisdom, lest by that absurdity which we have already refuted the Son be said to make the Father wise or willing, if the Father does not have counsel or will in his substance. Shrewdly indeed someone answered a heretic who asked most craftily whether God begot the Son willingly or unwillingly, so that if he said “unwillingly,” a most absurd wretchedness of God would follow; but if “willingly,” the heretic would at once conclude, as by an invincible argument, what he was aiming at, that the Son is of the will, not of the nature. But that man, most alertly, asked him in turn whether God the Father is God willingly or unwillingly, so that if he answered “unwillingly,” that wretchedness would follow which it is great madness to believe of God; but if he said “willingly,” it would be answered him, “Then he too is God by his will, not by nature.” What remained, then, but that he should fall silent and see himself bound by his own question in an insoluble knot? But if any person in the Trinity is also to be called properly the will of God, this name, like love, belongs rather to the Holy Spirit. For what else is love but will?

I see that in this book I have argued about the Holy Spirit according to the holy Scriptures what suffices for the faithful, who already know that the Holy Spirit is God, and not of another substance, nor less than the Father and the Son, which we showed to be true according to the same Scriptures in the earlier books. From the creation too which God made, we have reminded those who ask for a reason in such matters, as far as we were able, that they might clearly see his invisible things, understood through the things that are made, as far as they could, and especially through the rational or intellectual creature, which was made in the image of God; through which, as through a mirror, they might discern, as far as they could, if they could, the Trinity that is God, in our memory, understanding, and will. Whoever vividly perceives these three, established by God in his mind by nature, and how great a thing it is in the mind that by it even the eternal and unchangeable nature can be recalled, beheld, and desired, remembers it through memory, looks upon it through understanding, embraces it through love, surely finds the image of that supreme Trinity. To remembering, seeing, and loving that supreme Trinity, so as to recall it, contemplate it, and delight in it, he ought to refer the whole of his life. But I have warned, as much as seemed sufficient, that he should not so compare this image, made by the same Trinity and changed for the worse by its own fault, with that same Trinity as to think it like it in every way, but rather that he should discern in this likeness, of whatever kind, a great unlikeness too.

I have certainly tried, as far as I could, to indicate God the Father and God the Son: that is, God the begetter, who in a certain way uttered in his Word, coeternal with himself, all that he substantially has; and that Word of his, God, who himself too has substantially nothing more or less than is in him who begot the Word, not falsely but truly. I tried to show this so that it might be seen, not yet face to face, but through this likeness in an enigma, by conjecturing however little, in the memory and understanding of our mind: assigning to memory all that we know, even if we are not thinking of it, and to understanding, in a certain proper way, the forming of thought. For it is by thinking what we have found to be true that we are said above all to understand, and this indeed we leave again in memory. But that is a more hidden depth of our memory, where we found this also when we first thought of it, and where the innermost word is begotten, which belongs to no language, as knowledge from knowledge, and sight from sight, and the understanding that appears in thought from the understanding that was already in memory but was hidden; although thought itself, unless it had a memory of its own, would not return to those things which it had left in memory while it thought of other things.

But of the Holy Spirit I have shown nothing in this enigma that seemed like him except our will, or the love or affection which is a stronger will; since our will, which is in us by nature, has various affections according as things lie near it or come upon it by which we are attracted or offended. What then? Are we to say that our will, when it is right, does not know what to seek and what to shun? But if it knows, then there is in it a certain knowledge of its own, which cannot exist without memory and understanding. Or are we to listen to someone saying that love, which does not act wrongly, does not know what it does? As, then, understanding is in that principal memory, and love is in it, the memory in which we find ready and stored what we can reach by thinking (because we find those two there too, when by thinking we find that we understand and love something, which were there even when we were not thinking of them); and as memory is in this understanding which is formed by thought, and love is in it, the true word which we speak inwardly, without the language of any nation, when we say what we know (for the gaze of our thought does not return to anything except by remembering, and does not care to return except by loving): so the love which joins the sight established in memory and the sight of thought formed from it, as parent and offspring, would not know what it should rightly love unless it had a knowledge of seeking, which cannot exist without memory and understanding.

But since these are in one person, as man is, someone may say to us: “These three, memory, understanding, and love, are mine, not their own; and they do what they do not for themselves but for me, or rather I do it through them. For I remember through memory, understand through understanding, love through love; and when I turn the gaze of thought to my memory, and so speak in my heart what I know, and a true word is begotten from my knowledge, both are mine, both the knowledge and the word. For it is I who know, I who speak in my heart what I know. And when by thinking I find in my memory that I already understand, already love something, which understanding and love were there even before I thought of it, I find my understanding and my love in my memory, by which it is I who understand, I who love, not they themselves. Likewise when thought is mindful and wishes to return to what it had left in memory, and to behold those things understood and speak them inwardly, it is by my memory that it is mindful, and by my will that it wills, not its own. My love too, when it remembers and understands what it ought to seek and what to shun, remembers through my memory, not its own; and whatever it loves intelligently, it understands through my understanding, not its own.” This can be said briefly: through all those three it is I who remember, I who understand, I who love, I who am neither memory nor understanding nor love, but have them. These things, then, can be said by one person, who has these three, not who is these three. But in the simplicity of that supreme nature which is God, although there is one God, yet there are three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

A trinity as the thing itself, then, is one thing; the image of a trinity in another thing is another; and because of this image, that in which these three are is also called an image, just as both the panel and what is painted on it are called an image; but it is because of the painting on it that the panel too is called by the name of image. But in that supreme Trinity, which incomparably surpasses all things, there is such inseparability that, whereas a trinity of men cannot be called one man, that Trinity is both called and is one God; nor is that Trinity in one God, but it is one God. Nor again is that Trinity as this image, man, having those three, is one person; but there are three persons, the Father of the Son, the Son of the Father, and the Spirit of the Father and the Son. For man's memory, and especially that which beasts do not have, namely that in which intelligible things are contained without having come into it through the bodily senses, has according to its small measure, in this image of the Trinity, a likeness of the Father, incomparably unequal indeed, but a likeness of some kind; and likewise man's understanding, which is formed from it by the attention of thought when what is known is spoken, and is the word of the heart belonging to no language, has in its great disparity some likeness of the Son; and man's love, proceeding from knowledge and joining memory and understanding, as common to parent and offspring, and therefore understood to be neither parent nor offspring, has in this image some likeness, though very unequal, of the Holy Spirit. Yet it is not so that, as in this image of the Trinity these three are not one man but belong to one man, so in the supreme Trinity itself, of which this is the image, those three belong to one God; rather they are one God, and they are three persons, not one. This is indeed wonderfully ineffable, or ineffably wonderful: that while this image of the Trinity is one person, and the supreme Trinity itself is three persons, that Trinity of three persons is more inseparable than this of one. For that Trinity, in the nature of divinity, or as it may better be called, deity, is what it is, and is unchangeably and always equal within itself; nor was there a time when it was not, or was otherwise; nor will there be a time when it will not be, or will be otherwise. But these three that are in the unequal image, though not separated by places, since they are not bodies, are yet now in this life separated from one another by magnitudes. For though there are no masses there, we do not therefore fail to see that in one person memory is greater than understanding, in another the reverse, and in another these two are surpassed by the magnitude of love, whether they are equal to each other or not. And so two are surpassed by one, and one by two, and one by one: the lesser by the greater. And when they are equal to one another, healed of all weakness, not even then will that which by grace will be changed no more be equal to that which is unchangeable by nature; because the creature is not equal to the Creator, and when it is healed of all weakness it will have been changed.

But this Trinity, not only incorporeal but also supremely inseparable and truly unchangeable, we shall see far more clearly and certainly, when the sight face to face that is promised us has come, than we now see its image, which we are. Yet those who see through this mirror and in this enigma, as it is granted to see in this life, are not those who behold in their own mind the things we have set out and commended, but those who see the mind as an image, so that they can in some way refer what they see to him whose image it is, and, through the image which they see by beholding, see him too by conjecturing, since they cannot yet see face to face. For the apostle does not say, “We see now a mirror,” but, “We see now through a mirror.”

Those, then, who see their own mind, in the way it can be seen, and in it this trinity which I have discussed in many ways as I could, and yet do not believe or understand it to be the image of God, see a mirror indeed, but they so far fail to see through the mirror him who is now to be seen through the mirror that they do not even know that the mirror itself which they see is a mirror, that is, an image. If they knew this, perhaps they would perceive that he whose mirror this is should be sought through it, and meanwhile seen through it in some way, with unfeigned faith cleansing their hearts, so that he who is now seen through a mirror may be seen face to face. Despising this faith that cleanses hearts, what do they achieve by understanding the most subtle arguments about the nature of the human mind, except to be condemned by the witness of their own understanding? They would certainly not labor in it, and scarcely arrive at anything certain, were they not wrapped in penal darkness and burdened with the corruptible body that weighs down the soul. For what desert, then, was this evil inflicted, if not for sin? Warned, then, by the greatness of so great an evil, they ought to follow the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world.

For those who belong to him, even those far slower in mind than these, when they are released from the body at the end of this life, the envious powers have no right to hold. This Lamb, slain by them without owing them any debt of sin, conquered them, but not by the might of power before he had conquered by the justice of his blood. Accordingly, freed from the power of the devil, they are received by the holy angels, set free from all evils through the Mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ; since, as the divine Scriptures agree, both old and new, those through which Christ was foretold and those through which he was proclaimed, there is no other name under heaven in which men must be saved. And, cleansed from every contagion of corruption, they are settled in peaceful abodes until they receive their bodies back, but now incorruptible, to adorn, not burden them. For this pleased the best and wisest Creator: that the spirit of man, devoutly subject to God, should have the body happily subject to it, and that this happiness should last without end.

There we shall see the truth without any difficulty, and enjoy it, most clear and most certain. Nor shall we seek anything by the reasoning mind, but by the contemplating mind we shall discern why the Holy Spirit is not a Son, though he proceeds from the Father. In that light there will be no question; but here, by experience itself, it has appeared to me so difficult (as without doubt it will appear likewise to those who read these things carefully and intelligently), even though I promised in the second book of this work that I would speak of it in another place, that whenever I wished to show something like it in the creature which we are, my speech did not adequately follow my understanding, such as it was; although even in that understanding I felt that I had made an attempt rather than achieved a result. In the one person which is man I did find an image of that supreme Trinity, and, especially in the ninth book, I wished to show those three in a changeable thing, so that they might be more easily understood even through intervals of time. But the three of one person could not correspond to those three persons as human intention demands, as we have shown in this fifteenth book.