On the Holy Spirit 6.13–8.21

Nor can they take refuge in the plea of ignorance, since they take up the argument so technically and maliciously. For they are plainly angry with us because we complete the doxology to the Only-begotten with the Father, and do not separate the Holy Spirit from the Son. Hence they call us innovators, revolutionaries, inventors of phrases—and what term of reproach do they not use? I am so far from being vexed by these insults that, if their loss did not cause us grief and unceasing pain, I might almost have said that I am grateful to them for the blasphemy, as bringers of blessedness. For "Blessed are you," it says, "when they revile you for my sake." What they are indignant about is this. "The Son," they say, "is not with the Father but after the Father; therefore it is consistent to offer glory to the Father through him, but not with him. For 'with him' indicates equality of honour, while 'through whom' presents subordinate service. Nor is the Spirit to be ranked together with the Father and the Son, but under the Son and the Father: not co-ordinated but subordinated, not numbered with them but numbered under them." With such technicalities of words they pervert the simple and unelaborate character of the faith. So what pardon could they obtain for inexperience, who by their own meddlesomeness do not allow even others to remain inexperienced?

Let us first ask them this: in what sense do they say the Son is "after" the Father? As later in time, or in order, or in dignity? In time, no one is so foolish as to say that the maker of the ages holds second place, since no interval intervenes in the natural conjunction of the Son with the Father. Indeed, even by human ways of thinking one cannot say that the Son is later than the Father, not only because the two are thought of together by virtue of their relation, but because those things are called later in time which are at a smaller distance from the present, and those earlier which are further from the present. For instance, the events of Noah's time are earlier than those of Sodom, because they are further removed from the present; and the latter are later than the former, because they seem somehow nearer to the present. But to measure the being of the life that transcends all time and all ages by its distance from the present—how is this not, besides impiety, the utmost folly? As if God the Father, compared with God the Son, who exists before the ages, would surpass him in the same way in which things subject to coming into being and passing away are said to be earlier than one another! No, a pre-eminence of the Father reaching further back is inconceivable, because the begetting of the Lord transcends absolutely every thought and every notion. John well enclosed our mind within fixed bounds by two words, when he said: "In the beginning was the Word." For "was" is something thought cannot get beyond, and "beginning" something imagination cannot pass over. However far you run back upward in thought, you do not get beyond the "was"; and however you strain to see what lies beyond the Son, you will not be able to rise above the "beginning." It is pious, then, to think of the Son in this way, together with the Father.

But if they conceive of some lowering of the Son in relation to the Father, as in a place lying below, so that the Father sits above and the Son is thrust down to the next place below, let them confess it, and we will be silent; the plain statement at once shows its absurdity. For those who do not grant that the Father pervades all things do not even keep consistency in their reasoning, since the mind of sound people believes that God has filled all things; nor do they remember the prophet who says, "If I go up to heaven, you are there; if I go down to Hades, you are present"—they who divide up and down between Father and Son. But, to say nothing of refuting the ignorance of those who assign place to incorporeal things, what can excuse their fight and opposition against the Scriptures, shameless as it is—"Sit at my right hand," and "He sat at the right hand of the majesty of God"? For "the right hand" does not indicate the lower place, as their argument has it, but a relation of equality. The right hand is not taken bodily (for then there would also be something left-handed about God); rather, the word presents the magnificence of the Son's honour by the honourable names of the seat of dignity. It remains, then, for them to say that this expression shows an inferiority of dignity. Let them learn, then, that "Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God," and that he is "the image of the invisible God" and "the radiance of his glory," and that "God the Father has sealed him," having stamped his whole self upon him. These testimonies, then, and all those akin to them throughout Scripture—shall we say that they are humbling, or rather that they proclaim, like public announcements, the majesty of the Only-begotten and his equality of glory with the Father? And let them hear the Lord himself clearly presenting his glory as equal in honour to the Father's, when he says, "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father"; and again, "When the Son comes in the glory of the Father"; and, "that they may honour the Son as they honour the Father"; and, "We beheld his glory, glory as of the only-begotten from the Father"; and, "The only-begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father." Taking none of these into account, they assign to the Son the place set apart for enemies. For the Father's bosom is a fitting seat for a son, while the place of the footstool belongs to those who must be made to fall down. We, then, since we are pressing on to other things, have touched on the testimonies in passing; but you may at leisure gather the proofs and behold the height of the glory and the surpassing power of the Only-begotten. Yet to a well-disposed hearer even these are not small—unless someone understands "the right hand" and "the bosom" in a fleshly and lowly way, so as to circumscribe God in a place and to fashion for him a shape, a form, and a bodily posture, which are far removed from the notion of the simple, infinite, and incorporeal—except that the lowness of such a notion applies alike to the Father and the Son. So the one who argues such things does not lower the dignity of the Son but brings upon himself the judgment for blasphemy against God. For whatever he dares against the Son he must transfer to the Father. The one who assigns the upper place to the Father as a seat of precedence, and says that the only-begotten Son sits below, will have all the bodily accidents following from his own imagining. But if these are the fantasies of men struck with wine and deranged in mind by frenzy, how is it pious for those taught by the Lord himself that "whoever does not honour the Son does not honour the Father" not to worship and glorify with the Father him who is joined to him in nature, in glory, and in dignity? For what shall we say? What just defence shall we have before the fearful and common tribunal of all creation, if—when the Lord clearly promises that he will come in the glory of the Father, and Stephen saw Jesus standing at the right hand of God, and Paul testifies in the Spirit about Christ that he is at the right hand of God, and the Father says, "Sit at my right hand," and the Holy Spirit testifies that he sat at the right hand of the majesty of God—we bring down him who shares the throne and the honour from the relation of equality to a lower one? For I think that standing and sitting suggest the fixity and complete stability of his nature—just as Baruch, showing the immovable and unchangeable character of God's way of being, said, "You are enthroned for ever, and we are perishing for ever"—while the place at the right hand shows equality of honour in dignity. How then is it not reckless …

"But to say 'with him'," they say, "is utterly foreign and unusual, whereas 'through him' is most proper to the language of Scripture and well worn in the usage of the brotherhood." What, then, do we say to this? Blessed are the ears that have not heard you, and the hearts that have been kept unwounded by your words! But to you who love Christ I say that the church knows both usages and rejects neither as destroying the other. For when we contemplate the majesty of the nature of the Only-begotten and the pre-eminence of his dignity, we testify that the glory is his with the Father; but when we consider the supply of good things to us, or our own access and appropriation to God, we confess that this grace is worked for us through him and in him. So "with whom" is the proper expression of those who give glory, and "through whom" the special expression of those who give thanks. It is false, too, that the expression "with whom" is foreign to the usage of the devout. For all whose steadiness of character led them to prefer the dignity of antiquity to novelty, and who kept the tradition of the fathers unadulterated, have used this expression, in country and in city alike. It is those who are sated with what is customary and scorn the old as stale who welcome innovations, just as in clothing the lovers of finery always prefer the changed fashion to the common one. So you may see that even now the speech of country people is old-fashioned, while the words of these skilled men, practised in disputes about words, are branded by the new wisdom. What our fathers said, then, we too say: that the glory is common to the Father and the Son; therefore we offer the doxology to the Father with the Son. But it does not suffice us that this is the tradition of the fathers; for they too followed the intent of Scripture, taking their starting points from the testimonies that we set before you from Scripture a little earlier. For "the radiance" is thought of with the glory, and the image with the archetype, and the Son always together with the Father, since not even the sequence of the names, let alone the nature of the realities, admits separation.

So when the Apostle gives thanks to God through Jesus Christ, and again says that through him he has received grace and apostleship for the obedience of faith among all the nations, or that through him we have obtained access into this grace in which we stand and boast, he is setting out his benefits toward us: now conveying the grace of good things from the Father to us, now bringing us through himself to the Father. For in saying, "Through whom we have received grace and apostleship," he shows the supply of good things from that source; and in saying, "Through whom we have obtained access," he presents our reception and appropriation to God, which comes about through Christ. Is, then, the acknowledgment of the grace he works toward us a diminishing of his glory? Or is it truer to say that the recounting of his benefits is a fitting theme for doxology? That is why we find that Scripture does not hand the Lord down to us by a single name, nor only by those that show his Godhead and greatness. Now it uses names that characterise his nature—for it knows "the name that is above every name," the name of the Son, and calls him true Son, and only-begotten God, and power of God, and wisdom, and Word. And again, because of the manifold grace toward us which, out of [the riches of] his goodness, he provides to those in need according to his manifold wisdom, it designates him by countless other titles, calling him now shepherd, now king, and again physician, and the same one bridegroom, and way, and door, and spring, and bread, and axe, and rock. For these do not present his nature but, as I said, the manifold variety of his working, which, out of compassion for his own creature, he provides to those in need according to the particular need. Those who have fled for refuge to his care, and through patient endurance have achieved a readiness to share, he calls sheep; and he acknowledges that he is the shepherd of such as listen to his voice and do not heed strange teachings: "For my sheep," he says, "hear my voice." He is king of those who have already risen higher and need lawful governance; and door, because he leads out to worthy deeds through the rightness of his commands, and again gives safe shelter to those who take refuge, through faith in him, in the good of knowledge. Hence: "If anyone enters through me, he will go in and go out and find pasture." And rock, because he is a strong and unshakable safeguard for the faithful, firmer than any bulwark. In these cases "through him" has its most fitting and clearest use, when he is called door and way. But as God and Son, he has the glory with the Father and together with the Father: "that at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, of things in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God"—so they proclaim to us.

For through him comes every help for souls, and for each kind of care some particular name has been devised. When he presents to himself the blameless soul, which has no spot or wrinkle, as a pure virgin, he is called bridegroom; but when he takes it ruined by the evil blows of the devil and heals it, sorely sick as it is with sins, he is named physician. Do such cares of his for us, then, bring our thoughts down to something lowly? Or, on the contrary, do they not produce amazement at the great power and, at the same time, the love for humankind of the Saviour, that he both endured to sympathise with our weaknesses and was able to come down to our weakness? For heaven and earth and the vastness of the seas, the creatures that live in the waters and the animals of the land, the plants and stars, the air and the seasons, and the varied ordering of the universe, do not establish the surpassing greatness of his strength so much as the fact that God, the uncontainable, was able impassibly, through the flesh, to grapple with death, so that by his own suffering he might grant us freedom from suffering. And if the Apostle says, "In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us," he does not suggest by such an expression some lowly service, but the help worked "in the might of his strength." For he himself bound the strong man and plundered his goods—that is, us, whom the devil had used for every evil working—and made them vessels useful to the Master, made ready for every good work out of the preparation of what lies in our power. So we have obtained access to the Father through him, having been transferred from the dominion of darkness to a share in the inheritance of the saints in light. Let us not, then, think of the economy through the Son as a service compelled by servile lowliness, but as a voluntary care, worked out of goodness and compassion, according to the will of God the Father, for his own creature. For so shall we be pious: testifying to his perfect power in all that is accomplished, and never separating him from the Father's will. So too, when the Lord is called "way," we are carried up to a higher notion, not to the one taken at first sight. For by "way" we understand the advance to perfection, in order and sequence, through the works of righteousness and the illumination of knowledge, always reaching out for what lies ahead and straining forward to what remains, until we arrive at the blessed end, the knowledge of God, which the Lord grants through himself to those who have believed in him. For our Lord is truly a good way, without byways or wandering, leading to the truly good, the Father. For "no one comes," he says, "to the Father except through me." Such, then, is our ascent to God through the Son.

Next we should say, in turn, what the supply of good things from the Father to us through him is like. All nature in creation, both this visible world and the intelligible, needs care from God in order to be held together; so the creator Word, the only-begotten God, distributing his help according to the measure of each one's need, measures out gifts that are varied and manifold because of the variety of those who receive his benefits, yet proportioned to each according to what its need requires. Those held in the darkness of ignorance he enlightens; therefore he is the true light. He judges, measuring out the recompense according to the worth of deeds; therefore he is a righteous judge. "For the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son." He raises up from their fall those who have slipped from the height of life into sin; therefore he is resurrection. All this he does, working by the touch of his power and the will of his goodness. He shepherds, enlightens, nourishes, guides, heals, raises up. He gives being to what is not; he holds together what has been created. So the good things from God reach us through the Son, who works each of them more swiftly than speech could tell. For neither lightning nor the course of light through the air is so swift; nor the quick glances of the eyes; nor the movements of our own thought. Each of these falls further behind the divine working in speed than the slowest of our animals falls behind—I will not say birds, or winds, or the motion of the heavenly bodies, but—our own mind in its movement. For what extension of time would he need who "upholds all things by the word of his power," who does not work bodily or need manual labour for his creating, but has the nature of the things that come to be following his will unforced? As Judith says: "You thought, and all the things you thought stood before you." Yet, lest we be drawn away by the greatness of his works into imagining that the Lord is without origin, what does Life itself say? "I live because of the Father." And the power of God: "The Son can do nothing of himself." And the self-sufficient wisdom: "I have received a commandment what to say and what to speak." Through all these he leads us to the knowledge of the Father and refers the wonder at what is done to him, so that through him we may know the Father. For the Father is not seen from a difference in the works, as though he displayed a peculiar and separate working—for "whatever the Son sees the Father doing, these the Son also does likewise"—but he reaps the wonder at what is done through the glory brought to him by the Only-begotten, being exulted in and exalted, beyond the greatness of the works, for the maker himself, by those who acknowledge him as Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, "through whom are all things and for whom are all things." That is why the Lord says, "All that is mine is yours," since the origin of created things goes back to him; "and yours is mine," since the cause of creating comes down to the Son from there. He does not use helps for his working, nor is he entrusted with the service of each work by piecemeal commissions—that would be ministerial and fall utterly short of the divine dignity. No: the Word, full of the Father's good things, shining forth from the Father, does all things according to the likeness of the one who begot him. For if he is without variation in essence, he will also be without variation in power; and those whose power is equal surely have equal working as well. For "Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God." And so "all things came into being through him," and "all things were created through him and for him"—not as one fulfilling an instrumental or servile ministry, but as one accomplishing the Father's will creatively.

So when he says, "I have not spoken of myself"; and again, "As the Father has told me, so I speak"; and, "The word that you hear is not mine but his who sent me"; and elsewhere, "As the Father commanded me, so I do"—he uses such expressions not because he lacks choice or impulse of his own, or waits for the starting signal given by agreed tokens, but to show that his own will is joined to the Father in unity and without separation. Let us not, then, take the so-called "commandment" as an imperative word spoken through the organs of speech, laying down for the Son, as for a subject, what he must do; rather let us understand, in a manner befitting God, a transmission of will, like the reflection of a form in a mirror, passing timelessly from the Father to the Son. For "the Father loves the Son and shows him all things." So all that the Father has belongs to the Son, not accruing to him little by little, but present all at once. Among humans, the one who has been thoroughly taught a craft and has its habit firmly settled through long practice can afterwards work by himself according to the principles of knowledge stored within him; and shall the wisdom of God, the creator of all creation, the ever perfect, wise without being taught, the power of God, "in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge," need piecemeal supervision to define for him the manner and measure of his workings? No doubt in the vanity of your reasonings you will open a schoolroom too, and have him first in a pupil's inexperience, then learning wisdom by gradual additions of lessons and advancing to perfection. From this, if you know how to keep your reasonings consistent, you will find the Son always being taught and never able to reach perfection, since the Father's wisdom is infinite, and the end of the infinite cannot be grasped. So whoever does not grant that the Son has all things from the beginning will never grant that he will reach perfection. But I am ashamed of the lowness of the notion to which the sequence of the argument has brought me down. Let us return, then, to the heights of our subject.

"Whoever has seen me has seen the Father"—not the imprint or the form, for the divine nature is free of composition, but the goodness of the will, which, concurrent with the essence, is seen to be like and equal, or rather the same, in the Father and the Son. What, then, of "having become obedient," and "He gave him up for us all"? It means that the Son has from the Father his working on behalf of humans, in goodness. But hear these words too: "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law"; and, "While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." And pay close attention also to the Lord's words: while he instructs us about the Father in this way, he also knows how to use words of authority and mastery, saying, "I will; be cleansed"; and, "Be silent, be muzzled"; and, "But I say to you"; and, "Dumb and deaf spirit, I command you"; and the like—so that through these we may know our Master and maker, and through the others be taught about the Father of our Master and maker. So from every side the argument is shown to be true: that the Father's creating through the Son neither makes the Father's creation imperfect nor shows the Son's working to be feeble, but presents the unity of the will. So the expression "through whom" contains an acknowledgment of the principal cause; it is not adopted as a charge against the efficient cause.