On the Holy Spirit 27.65–29.75

"For what reason, then," they say, "when the syllable 'in' is properly suited to the Spirit and suffices for our every conception of him, have you introduced this new syllable, saying 'with the Spirit' and not 'in the Holy Spirit,' uttering expressions neither otherwise necessary nor customary in the churches?" Now, that the syllable "in" has not been assigned exclusively to the Holy Spirit, but is common to the Father and the Son, has been said above. And I think it has also been sufficiently said that it not only takes nothing away from the Spirit's dignity, but even leads up to the greatest height the thoughts of those who are not wholly perverted. What remains is to relate about "with": where it began, what force it has, and how it agrees with Scripture.

Of the doctrines and proclamations preserved in the church, some we have from written teaching, and others we have received handed down to us in a mystery from the tradition of the apostles; and both have the same force for piety. No one will dispute these—no one, at least, who has even a slight experience of the church's institutions. For if we were to try to reject the unwritten customs as having no great force, we would unwittingly damage the Gospel in its most vital points, or rather reduce the proclamation to a bare name. For example (to mention first the first and most common), who taught in writing that those who have hoped in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ should be signed with the sign of the cross? What writing taught us to turn toward the east at prayer? Which of the saints has left us in writing the words of the epiclesis at the showing forth of the bread of the Eucharist and the cup of blessing? For we are not content with the words the Apostle or the Gospel recorded, but we say others both before and after, as having great force for the mystery, receiving them from the unwritten teaching. We bless the water of baptism and the oil of anointing, and besides this the one being baptized himself. From what writings? Is it not from the silent and mystical tradition? And further, what written word taught the anointing with oil itself? And the threefold immersion of a person—where does it come from? And the rest of what belongs to baptism, the renouncing of Satan and his angels—from what scripture is it? Is it not from this unpublished and secret teaching, which our fathers guarded in a silence free from meddling and prying, having learned well that the sanctity of the mysteries is preserved by silence? For what the uninitiated are not even permitted to look upon, how would it be fitting to parade the teaching of it in writings? Or what did the great Moses intend in not making all the parts of the sanctuary accessible to all? He stationed the profane outside the sacred enclosures; he allowed the first courts to the purer; he judged the Levites alone worthy to be servants of the divine; and, assigning the slaughtered victims, the burnt offerings, and the rest of the sacred service to the priests, he admitted one chosen out of all into the inner sanctuary—and not even him at all times, but on one day only in the year, and he fixed for him a set hour of that day for entry, so that he might behold the Holy of Holies with awe at its strangeness and unfamiliarity. For in his wisdom he knew well that contempt lies close at hand for what is trodden and easily grasped, while eager interest is somehow naturally joined to what is withdrawn and rare. In the same way the apostles and fathers who from the beginning laid down the ordinances concerning the churches guarded the sanctity of the mysteries in what is hidden and unspoken. For what is carried out to common and casual hearing is no mystery at all. This is the reason for the tradition of unwritten things: that the knowledge of the doctrines might not, through familiarity, become neglected and contemptible to the many. For doctrine (dogma) is one thing, and proclamation (kerygma) another: the one is kept in silence, while proclamations are made public. Obscurity too, which Scripture uses, is a kind of silence, making the sense of the doctrines hard to perceive for the benefit of the readers. For this reason we all look toward the east at our prayers, but few of us know that we are seeking our ancient homeland, Paradise, which God planted in Eden toward the east. We make our prayers standing on the first day of the week, but not all of us know the reason. For it is not only that, as those who have risen with Christ and ought to seek the things above, we remind ourselves on the day of resurrection, by standing at prayer, of the grace given to us; but also that the day seems in some way to be an image of the age that is awaited. That is why, though it is the beginning of days, it is named by Moses not "first" but "one." "And there was evening," it says, "and there was morning, one day"—as though the same day recurred many times. So "one" and "eighth" are the same, showing through itself that truly one and truly eighth day, which the Psalmist also mentioned in certain titles of the psalms: the state that follows this time, the unceasing day, without evening, without successor, that endless and ageless age. Of necessity, then, the church teaches her own nurslings to offer their prayers on it standing, so that by constant reminder of the endless life we may not neglect the provisions for that removal. And the whole of Pentecost is a reminder of the resurrection awaited in the age to come. For that one and first day, multiplied seven times by seven, completes the seven weeks of holy Pentecost; for beginning from the first day it ends on the same, unrolling fifty times through the like days in between. That is why by its likeness it imitates eternity, beginning, as in a circular motion, from the same points and ending at the same. On it the ordinances of the church have taught us to prefer the upright posture of prayer, by a vivid reminder transferring our mind, as it were, from present things to things to come. And at each kneeling and rising we show by the act that through sin we fell down to earth, and through the love for humankind of him who created us we were called back up to heaven.

The day would fail me if I recounted the unwritten mysteries of the church. I pass over the rest; but the very confession of faith in Father and Son and Holy Spirit—from what writings do we have it? For if, from the tradition of baptism, in keeping with the sequence of piety—since as we are baptized so we ought also to believe—we make our confession like our baptism, let them allow us too, by the same sequence, to render glory like our faith. But if they reject the form of the doxology as unwritten, let them give us written proofs both of the confession of faith and of the other things we have enumerated. Then, when there are so many unwritten things, and they have such force for the mystery of piety, will they not allow us one word that has come down to us from the fathers—which we found remaining, from unaffected custom, in the churches that have not been perverted—a word with no small reason behind it, and contributing no slight share to the power of the mystery?

The force of each expression has been stated. It will be stated again where they agree with one another and where they differ—not fighting against each other in opposition, but each contributing its own sense to piety. "In" sets forth rather what concerns us; "with" proclaims the fellowship of the Spirit with God. That is why we use both words: by the one setting forth the dignity of the Spirit, by the other announcing the grace that is with us. So we offer glory to God both "in the Spirit" and "with the Spirit," saying nothing of our own, but, as from a rule—the Lord's teaching—transferring the word to things that are closely connected and joined to one another and that have a necessary conjunction in the mysteries. For what was numbered together at baptism we thought it necessary to join together in the faith as well; and we made the confession of faith a kind of beginning and mother of the doxology. What, then, must we do? Let them now teach us either not to baptize as we received, or not to believe as we were baptized, or not to glorify as we have believed. Let someone show either that the sequence of these with one another is not necessary and unbroken, or that innovation in them is not the overthrow of everything. Yet they do not stop dinning up and down that the doxology "with the Holy Spirit" is unattested, unwritten, and the like. It has been said that it is the same in meaning to say "Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit" and "Glory to the Father and to the Son with the Holy Spirit." So no one can reject or strike out the syllable "and," which came from the Lord's own voice, and nothing prevents the acceptance of its equivalent; how it differs from and resembles the other we showed above. The Apostle also confirms our argument, using either word indifferently, saying now, "In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God," and again, "When you and my spirit are gathered together, with the power of the Lord Jesus," thinking it makes no difference whether he uses the conjunction or the preposition for linking the names.

Let us see also whether we can devise some defense of this usage for our fathers; for those who gave the expression its beginning are more exposed to the charges than we are. Paul, then, writing to the Colossians, says, "And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision, he made alive together with Christ." Did God, then, grant to a whole people and church the life with Christ, but not to the Holy Spirit to be with Christ? If even to conceive this is impious, how is it not holy to render the confession conjoined, as the nature is? Then, how is it not the height of insensibility to confess that the saints are with Christ (since Paul, away from the body, is at home with the Lord, and having departed is already with Christ), but not to grant to the Spirit, as far as it lies with them, even an equal share with men in being with Christ? And Paul calls himself God's fellow worker in the dispensation of the Gospel; but if we call the Holy Spirit a fellow worker—through whom the Gospel bears fruit in all creation under heaven—will they here too bring an indictment of impiety against us? And, it seems, the life of those who have hoped in the Lord "is hidden with Christ in God, and when Christ, our life, appears, then they too will appear with him in glory"; but the Spirit of life himself, who set us free from the law of sin, is in no way with Christ, neither in the secret life hidden with him nor in the manifestation of the glory which we expect to be revealed in the saints? We are "heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ"; but is the Spirit disinherited and without share in the fellowship of God and his Christ? "The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God"; and do we not give the Spirit even the testimony to his fellowship with God that we have learned from the Lord? But the height of folly: we hope, through faith in Christ that is in the Spirit, to be raised together with him and to sit together in the heavenly places, when he transforms the body of our humiliation from the natural to the spiritual; but to the Spirit we grant no sitting together, no glory, nothing else of what we have from him? Of all the things of which we have believed ourselves worthy, according to the unfailing gift of him who promised, do we concede none to the Holy Spirit, as though it exceeded his dignity? And it belongs to your dignity to be always with the Lord, and you expect, caught up in the clouds to meet him in the air, to be always with the Lord; but you now deny that the Spirit is with Christ?—you who treat as an outlaw the one who numbers him together and ranks him with the Father and the Son, as though he were intolerably impious!

I am ashamed to add what remains: that you expect to be glorified together with Christ ("if indeed we suffer with him, that we may also be glorified with him"), but you do not glorify the Spirit of holiness together with Christ, as though he were not worthy of the same things as you. And you hope to reign together with him, but you insult the Spirit of grace, assigning him the rank of a slave and a servant. And I say this not to show that only so much is owed to the Spirit in doxology, but to expose the ingratitude of those who do not grant even so much, but shun as impiety the Spirit's fellowship in glory with the Son and the Father. Who can pass over this without groaning? Is it not plain—so that even a child could recognize it—that present events are the prelude to the threatened failure of the faith? What was indisputable has become doubtful. We believe in the Spirit, and we fight against our own confessions. We are baptized, and again we do battle. We call on him as the author of life, and we despise him as a fellow slave. We received him with the Father and the Son, and we dishonor him as a part of the creation. And those who "do not know what they should pray for," if they are ever led to utter something exalted about the Spirit, as though they were reaching his dignity, curb whatever in their speech goes beyond due measure. They ought rather to lament their weakness: that we are not able to repay in words the grace of what we experience in deed. For it "surpasses all understanding" and shows up the nature of speech, which does not equal even the smallest part of his dignity—according to the saying of the book entitled Wisdom: "Exalt him," it says, "as much as you can, for he will surpass even so; and in exalting him, increase. Do not grow weary, for you will never reach the end." Truly fearful is the account you must give for such words, you who have heard from the God who does not lie that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is unforgivable.

Against the charge that the doxology "with the Spirit" is unattested and unwritten, we say this: if nothing else is unwritten, let this not be accepted either; but if most of the mysteries have their place among us without being written, we shall accept this too, along with many others. And I think it apostolic also to hold fast to the unwritten traditions. "I praise you," he says, "because you remember me in everything and hold fast the traditions just as I handed them on to you"; and, "Hold fast the traditions that you received, whether by word or by letter." One of these is this present one, which those who ordained it from the beginning handed on to those after them, its use always advancing with time, and so through long custom they rooted it in the churches. If, then, like people in a court who lack proof from documents, we were to present you with a multitude of witnesses, would we not obtain from you a verdict of acquittal? I think so: "For by the mouth of two or three witnesses every word shall be established." And if we were also to show you clearly that the long course of time is on our side, would we not seem to you to be speaking reasonably in saying that this suit cannot be brought against us? For ancient doctrines are somehow awe-inspiring, having a venerable quality, as it were, from the gray hair of antiquity. I will therefore enumerate for you the champions of the expression (and the length of time is certainly measured along with them, though it goes unsaid); for it did not originate with us. How could it? We are truly men of yesterday, in the words of Job, compared with so long a time as that of this custom. For my part, if I must speak of what is my own, I keep this expression like an inheritance from my father, having received it from a man who spent a long time in the service of God, by whom I was both baptized and admitted to the ministry of the church. And searching by myself whether any of the ancient and blessed men used these expressions now disputed, I found many who are credible both by their antiquity and by the accuracy of their knowledge, not like men of the present day. Some of them joined the words in the doxology with the preposition, others with the conjunction, and they were not thought to see any difference, at least as regards the right conception of piety.

Irenaeus of old, and Clement of Rome, and Dionysius of Rome, and—what is surprising to hear—Dionysius of Alexandria, who in his second letter to his namesake, On Refutation and Defense, ended his discourse thus. I write out for you the man's very words: "Following all these," he says, "we too, having received a form and rule from the presbyters before us, giving thanks in accord with them, now also bring our letter to you to a close. To God the Father and the Son our Lord Jesus Christ, with the Holy Spirit, be glory and might to the ages of ages. Amen." And no one could say that these words have been altered. For he would not have insisted so strongly, saying that he had received a form and rule, if he had said "in the Spirit"; for that expression is in common use. It was the other that needed a defense. Somewhere in the middle of the treatise he also speaks thus against the Sabellians: "If, because the hypostases are three, they say that they are divided, there are three, even if they do not wish it; or else let them abolish the divine Trinity altogether." And again: "For this reason, after the unity, the Trinity too is most divine." And Clement, more anciently: "God lives," he says, "and the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit." And let us hear how Irenaeus, who lived near the apostles, mentioned the Spirit in his work against the heresies: "Those who are unbridled," he says, "and carried away by their own lusts, having no desire for the divine Spirit, the Apostle rightly calls fleshly." And elsewhere the same writer says: "Lest, becoming without share in the divine Spirit, we should fail of the kingdom of heaven, the Apostle cried out that flesh cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven." And if anyone considers Eusebius of Palestine trustworthy because of his wide learning, we point out the same expressions in him too, in his Questions concerning the polygamy of the ancients. For he says this, urging himself on to the discussion: "Calling on the holy God of the prophets, the giver of light, through our Saviour Jesus Christ, with the Holy Spirit."

We have also found Origen, in many of his discourses on the Psalms, rendering glory "with the Holy Spirit"—a man whose conceptions about the Spirit were by no means sound in every respect; yet in many places he too, out of deference to the strength of custom, uttered pious words about the Spirit. In the sixth book, I think, of his Commentaries on the Gospel according to John, he plainly declared him an object of worship, writing word for word as follows: "The washing of water is a symbol of the cleansing of the soul, which is washed of all filth that comes from evil; but no less, in itself, for one who offers himself to the Godhead of the worshipful Trinity, it has, through the power of the invocations, the beginning and source of gifts." And again, in his Commentaries on the Letter to the Romans: "The holy powers," he says, "are capable of receiving the Only-begotten and the Godhead of the Holy Spirit." Thus, I think, the strength of tradition often led these men to contradict even their own doctrines. Nor did this form of doxology escape Africanus the historian. For in the fifth book of his Epitome of the Times he too evidently says: "For we who know the measure of those words, and are not ignorant of the grace of faith, give thanks to the Father, who has granted to us, his own, Jesus Christ, the Saviour of all and our Lord; to whom be glory and majesty, with the Holy Spirit, to the ages." Now other passages might perhaps be disbelieved, or, if altered, have a forgery hard to detect, since the difference lies in one syllable; but those we have quoted at greater length both escape tampering and have a testimony easily proved from the writings themselves. And there is something else, which otherwise it would perhaps be petty to bring forward, but which, for one accused of innovation, is needed as testimony to antiquity through time; this too I will add. It seemed good to our fathers not to receive the gift of the evening light in silence, but to give thanks as soon as it appeared. Who was the father of those words of the thanksgiving at the lighting of the lamps we cannot say; yet the people utter the ancient expression, and no one has ever thought those impious who say, "We praise the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit of God." And if anyone knows the hymn of Athenogenes, which he left like a protective charm to those who were with him as he was already hastening to his perfecting by fire, he knows also what the martyrs' opinion about the Spirit was. So much for this.

And Gregory the Great, and his words—where shall we place them? Not with the apostles and prophets? He was a man who walked in the same Spirit as they, who kept in step with the footprints of the saints all his life, and who achieved the strictness of the Gospel way of life throughout his whole life. For my part I say this: surely we shall wrong the truth if we do not number that soul among those who are intimate with God, as one who shone like a great and brilliant lamp in the church of God. Through the Spirit's working with him he had a power fearful to demons, and he received such grace of speech for the obedience of faith among the nations that, having received only seventeen Christians, he brought the whole people, both of the city and of the countryside, to God through knowledge. He also changed the course of rivers, commanding them in the great name of Christ; and he dried up a lake that was a cause of war between covetous brothers. His predictions of the future were such that he fell short of none of the other prophets. In short, it would be a long task to relate the man's wonders; by the abundance of the gifts in him, worked by the Spirit in all power and signs and wonders, he was called a second Moses by the very enemies of the truth. So in every word and work that he accomplished by grace a kind of light shone out, a sign of the heavenly power that invisibly accompanied him. Even now the wonder of him is great among the people of the region, and his memory is fixed in the churches, fresh and ever new, dimmed by no length of time. So they have added to the church no action, no word, no mystical rite beyond what he left behind. For this reason many of the things performed among them seem to be deficient, because of the antiquity of their order; for those who governed the churches after him in succession would not accept, as an addition, anything devised after him. One of the things from Gregory, then, is the form of the doxology now disputed, preserved in the church from his tradition. And it is not much labor, for one who takes a little trouble, to gain full assurance of these things. Our own Firmilian also bears witness to this faith in the writings he left behind. And those who knew the great Meletius say that he held this opinion. And why must we speak of ancient things? Even now in the East do they not recognize the pious chiefly by this, distinguishing them by this expression as by a sign? And as I heard from one of the men from Mesopotamia, a man skilled in the language and unperverted in opinion, it is not even possible for them to speak otherwise in their native tongue, even if they wished, but by some native idiom they must utter the doxology through the syllable "and," or rather through words equivalent to it. And we Cappadocians too say it so in our own tongue, the Spirit having foreseen, already at the division of tongues, the usefulness of the expression. And what of almost the whole West, from Illyricum to the bounds of our inhabited world? Does it not uphold this expression?

How, then, am I an innovator and a coiner of new words, when I present as the originators and champions of the expression whole nations and cities, a custom older than all human memory, and men who were pillars of the church, distinguished in all knowledge and power of the Spirit? For this reason this warlike band has been stirred up against us, and every city and village and all the remotest places are full of slanders against us. These things are grievous and painful to the hearts of those who seek peace; but since the rewards of endurance for sufferings on behalf of the faith are great, then for this let the sword be sharpened, let the axe be whetted, let fire burn more fiercely than the Babylonian furnace, let every instrument of torture be set in motion against us: for to me nothing is more fearful than not to fear the threats the Lord has held out against those who blaspheme the Spirit. To fair-minded people, then, what has been said is a sufficient defense: that we accept an expression so dear and familiar to the saints, and confirmed by so long a custom, since from the time the Gospel was proclaimed until now it is shown to have had its place in the churches, and—what is greatest—to be pious and holy in its meaning. But before the great judgment seat, what defense shall we prepare for ourselves? That what led us to the glory of the Spirit was, first, the honor paid him by the Lord, who joined him with himself and the Father at baptism; then the introduction of each of us to the knowledge of God through such initiation; and above all, the fear of the threatened punishments, which keeps out every conception of an unworthy and lowly notion. But our opponents—what will they say? What defense will they have for their blasphemy, who neither revered the Lord's honors nor feared his threats? They are masters to decide about their own affairs, or even now to decide again. For my own part, I would pray above all that the good God may grant his peace to rule in the hearts of all, so that these men who swell with rage against us and are drawn up fiercely in battle array may be calmed in a spirit of gentleness and love; but if they have become utterly savage and untamable, that he may grant us at least to bear patiently what comes from them. In any case, for those who have the sentence of death in themselves, it is not suffering for the faith that is painful, but not being allowed to contend for it that is most grievous; just as for athletes it is not so hard to take blows in the contest as not to be admitted to the stadium at all. Or perhaps this was the "time to keep silence," according to the wise Solomon. For what use is it truly to shout into the wind, when so violent a storm holds life in its grip—a storm by which every mind of those under instruction in the word, filled with the deceit of false reasonings like an eye filled with dust, is confounded; every ear is battered by the heaviest and strangest noises; and everything is shaken and in danger of falling?