On the Holy Spirit (in Jerome's Latin translation) 23–34

So when we speak of the working and, so to say, distributing nature of the Holy Spirit, let us not be led away by those who say that the Holy Spirit is an activity of God and not a substance. From very many other places too the subsisting nature of the Holy Spirit is shown, as in what the apostles write: "For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us"; for the phrase "it seemed good" signifies not an activity but a nature, especially since something similar is found of the Lord: "As it seemed good to the Lord, so it was done." Again, his words are very often read, as in this: "While they were fasting and ministering," that is, the disciples of Christ, "the Holy Spirit said: Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them." This voice, a sign of divinity and authority, shows a substance not created but uncreated. For the Holy Spirit did not call Barnabas and Paul to some other work that is not the Father's and the Son's, since the ministry which the Spirit entrusted and handed over to them is the ministry of the Father and the Son. Paul says to the Galatians: "For he who worked in Peter for the apostleship of the circumcision worked also in me for the Gentiles," and in Barnabas. For they were sent together to the nations by the authority of the Holy Spirit. And with Christ also working in the apostles, the ministry of the Spirit was fulfilled, so that the apostles themselves confess that they speak in Christ and what they saw with their own eyes, and that they became ministers of the Word, that is, of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God. And so, as possessing a primacy in the priesthood, they were appointed by Christ as initiators into the faith, when he said: "Go, teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." And as the Apostle writes most rightly: "One Lord, one faith, one baptism." Who will not be compelled by the truth itself to accept the lack of difference of the holy Trinity, since there is one faith in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and the washing is given and confirmed in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit?

I do not think anyone will be so senseless and mad as to think that baptism given in the name of the Father and the Son without the inclusion of the Holy Spirit is complete; or again in the name of the Father and the Holy Spirit, with the name of the Son left out; or in the name of the Son and the Holy Spirit, without putting first the name of the Father. For though someone may exist with a heart of stone, so to speak, and a mind wholly estranged, who tries to baptize so as to leave out one of the prescribed names, a lawgiver contrary to Christ, he will nevertheless baptize without completeness; indeed, he will be wholly unable to free from sins those whom he thinks he has baptized. From this it is gathered how undivided the substance of the Trinity is: that the Father is truly the Father of the Son, the Son truly the Son of the Father, and the Holy Spirit truly the Spirit of the Father and of God, and moreover of wisdom and truth, that is, of the Son of God. This, then, is the salvation of believers, and the ordering of the church's discipline is completed in this Trinity. For the Saviour sent his disciples to preach the Gospel, and the Father is said to have appointed in the church, for teaching the doctrines of truth, first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, the Apostle's statement on this matter agreeing: "And as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the Gospel, so we speak, not as pleasing men, but God, who has approved our hearts." These same men, whom Christ commanded to be teachers and the Father approved, the Holy Spirit is also said to have appointed stewards and overseers in the church. For when the apostle Paul had gathered at Miletus presbyters from various places and very many churches, he said: "Take heed to yourselves and to the whole flock, over which the Holy Spirit has placed you as bishops, to rule the church of the Lord, which he acquired with his own blood." If, then, those whom Christ sent to evangelize and baptize the nations, the Holy Spirit set over the church, appointed by the Father's decision, no one can doubt that there is one working and approval of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and consequently the same substance of the Trinity. We must also consider this: that a creature cannot dwell in the heart and the mind, but only God and his Word in the Holy Spirit, as the Father says of certain people: "I will dwell in them and walk among them." And someone addresses him: "But you dwell in the holy place, the praise of Israel." For the maker of all creation dwells on high among the highest. And the only-begotten Son dwells in the pure mind and the heart of believers. For the Apostle says that Christ dwells by faith in the inner man, in the Spirit, writing: "That Christ may dwell by faith in your hearts, in the Spirit, in the inner man." He also says of himself: "Christ lives in me"; and again: "Christ who speaks in me"; and the Saviour says: "We will come, I and the Father," no doubt to him who keeps his commands, "and make our dwelling with him." The passage runs thus: "If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him." In another place too the whole nature of rational creatures is called the Saviour's house.

As the Lord Jesus is over his own house, whose house we are, so the house of Christ is the temple of God, in which the Spirit of the same God dwells. Writing to the Corinthians, Paul says: "Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwells in you?" If, in the house and temple in which the Father and the Saviour dwell, the Holy Spirit is at once found too, the undivided substance of the Trinity is shown. And not long after in the same epistle he says: "Do you know that your bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit, whom you have from God?" Since, then, the Holy Spirit is taught to dwell in the mind and the inner man in the same way as the Father and the Son, it is, I will not say foolish, but impious to call him a creature. For disciplines (I mean virtues and arts) and their opposites, disturbances and ignorance, and feelings can dwell in souls, not as substances but as accidents. But it is impossible for a created nature to dwell in the mind. If this is true, and the Holy Spirit, subsisting beyond any doubt, is an indweller of soul and heart, no one can doubt that he must be believed uncreated with the Father and the Son. From everything, then, that the argument has set out as it proceeds, the Holy Spirit has been shown to be incorruptible and everlasting according to the nature of the Father and the Son, and has removed all doubt and suspicion about himself, lest he be thought one of the created substances. Nor can it be doubted that he is the Spirit of God, whom the Saviour's words in the Gospel declare to go forth from the Father: "When the Comforter comes," he says, "whom I will send you, the Spirit of truth who goes forth from the Father, he will bear witness to me." He calls the coming Holy Spirit the Comforter, giving him a name from his activity, because he not only comforts those he finds worthy of himself and makes them strangers to all sadness and disturbance, but gives them an unbelievable joy and gladness, so much that one may thank God for being held worthy of such a guest and say: "You have put gladness in my heart." For everlasting gladness lives in the hearts of those in whom the Holy Spirit dwells. This Holy Spirit, the Comforter, is sent by the Son, not as in the ministry of angels or prophets or apostles, but as the Spirit of God should be sent by wisdom and truth, having an undivided nature with that same wisdom and truth. For the Son, sent by the Father, is not separated or disjoined from him, remaining in him and having him in himself. Moreover, the Spirit of truth, sent by the Son in the way described, goes forth from the Father, not passing from one place to another. That is both impossible and blasphemous. For if the Spirit went forth from place to place, the Father himself would be found in a place, and the Spirit of truth, circumscribed in a certain space like bodies, would leave one place and move to another. But as the Father, not existing in a place, is beyond all the nature of bodies, so the Spirit of truth is in no way enclosed by the limits of places, since he is incorporeal and, to speak more truly, surpasses all rational creation.

Since, then, it is impossible and impious to believe what we have described of incorporeal beings, the Holy Spirit's going forth from the Father is to be understood as the Saviour testifies that he himself went forth from God, saying: "I went forth from God and have come." And as we separate places and changes of place from incorporeal beings, so we also distinguish from the nature of intellectual beings utterances, I mean inward and outward ones, because these belong to bodies that receive making and have extension. So we must believe, by an ineffable word known only by faith, that the Saviour is said to have gone forth from God and the Spirit of truth to go forth from the Father, as the Spirit says, "who goes forth from me". For though he could have said "from God", or "from the Lord", or "from the Almighty", he touched none of these, but said "from the Father": not that the Father is other than God Almighty, for it is a crime even to think that, but the Spirit of truth is said to go forth from him according to the particular character and conception of the Parent. For although the Saviour often says that he went forth from God, he takes for himself rather from the name "Father" the particular character and, so to say, the intimacy we have often discussed, saying: "I am in the Father and the Father in me"; and elsewhere: "I and the Father are one"; and many other similar sayings that the attentive reader will find in the Gospel. This Holy Spirit, then, who goes forth from the Father, will bear witness, says the Lord, to me, bearing a testimony like that of the Father, of which he says: "The Father who sent me bears witness to me." When the Son sends the Spirit of truth, whom he called the Comforter, the Father sends him at the same time. For the Father does not fail to send when the Son sends, since the Spirit comes by the same will of the Father and the Son. The Saviour too speaks through the prophet, as will be plain to one who reads the whole passage: "And the Lord has sent me, and his Spirit"; for God sends not only the Son but also the Spirit. The apostle also says: "The things now announced to you by those who preached the Gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven." And in the book entitled Wisdom, a voice giving thanks to God is uttered by those who have obtained the divine gifts: "Who has traced out what is in heaven? Who has known your will, unless you gave wisdom and sent your Holy Spirit from on high? And so the paths of those on earth were set right, and men were taught what pleases you." And in the present reading not only is the wisdom of God, that is, his only-begotten Son, given by the Father, but the Holy Spirit too is sent.

In the Gospel itself too it is proclaimed that the Holy Spirit is given and sent by the Father, as the Saviour says: "And I will ask my Father, and he will give you another Paraclete, to be with you for ever, the Spirit of truth"; and again: "But the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things." In these sayings the Father is said to give another Paraclete, but not another than the one who is sent by the Son, according to the saying: "But when that Paraclete comes, whom I will send you from the Father, the Spirit of truth." He named him another Paraclete not because of a difference of nature but because of a diversity of activity. For since the Saviour holds the role of mediator and envoy, and as high priest makes supplication for our sins, saving for ever those who have come to God through him, since he always lives to intercede for them with the Father, the Holy Spirit has been named Paraclete in another sense, because he comforts those who are in sadness. But do not, from the different activities of the Son and the Holy Spirit, suppose that their natures differ. For in another place the Spirit, the Paraclete, is found acting as an envoy to the Father, as in this: "For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with unutterable groanings. And he who searches hearts knows what the Spirit desires, because he asks for the saints according to God."

The Saviour too works the comfort from which the Holy Spirit is named Paraclete in the hearts of those who need it. For it is written: "And he comforted the lowly of the people." That is why one who had obtained this benefit spoke in his praise: "Lord, according to the multitude of the sorrows in my heart, your comforts have gladdened my heart" (or "have loved my soul": it is found written both ways in different copies). The Father too is called the God of all comfort, comforting those who are in tribulation, so that out of their very distress they may obtain through patience first salvation and then the crown of glory. The Spirit, then, the Comforter and holy, the Spirit of truth, is given by the Father to remain always with Christ's disciples, with whom the Saviour himself also is, saying: "For behold, I am with you to the end of the age." And since both the Holy Spirit and the Son are always present to the apostles, it follows that the Father too is with them, since one who receives the Son receives the Father also, and the Son with the Father makes his dwelling with those who have proved worthy of his coming. And where the Holy Spirit is, the Son too is at once found. For since the Holy Spirit is in the prophets, making them foretell the future and do the other things that belong to prophetic activity, the word of God is said to have come to them, so that to the customary formula of the prophets, "Thus says the Lord", is added also "The word that came to Isaiah", or to the others.

That the prophets had the Holy Spirit we know from God's own plain words. For he says: "Whatever I commanded by my Spirit to my servants the prophets." And the Saviour in the Gospel indicates that righteous men, and those who before his coming sang to the people of things to come, were filled with the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. For when he asked the Pharisees what they thought of Christ, and heard that he was the son of David, he said: "How does David in the Spirit call him Lord, saying, The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand? If, then, David in the Holy Spirit calls him Lord, how is he his son?" And Peter says to those who shared his faith: "The Scripture had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit spoke beforehand through the mouth of David concerning Judas," and so on; and again in the same book: "You who through the Holy Spirit spoke by the mouth of David your servant: Why did the nations rage, and the peoples meditate vain things?" Isaiah too, when he had been moved to prophesy by the word of God, is said to have prophesied by the command of the Holy Spirit, as is written at the end of the same Acts: "The Holy Spirit spoke well through Isaiah the prophet to your fathers, saying: Go to this people and say, You will hear with your ears," and the rest. This prophecy, which the apostle Paul affirms was uttered by the Holy Spirit, the prophet's book itself records was spoken by the Lord: "And I heard," says Isaiah, "the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go to this people? And I said: Here I am, send me. Go," he says, "and say to this people: You will hear with your ears," and after other things the Lord himself says: "And they will turn, and I will heal them." And at once the prophet: "How long, O Lord?" For when the Lord had told the prophet to say what is written, and the prophet had answered the Lord's command, "How long, O Lord?", Paul affirms that what was said by the Lord in the prophet was spoken in the Holy Spirit. From this it is clearly shown, as we have often said already, that the will and nature of the Lord and of the Holy Spirit are one, and that in the name "Spirit" the name "Lord" is also understood. For as, in the epistle to the Corinthians, the term "God" applied to the Father and "Lord" applied to the Son neither takes lordship from the Father nor deity from the Son (for by the same reason by which the Father is Lord, the Son is also God), so the Holy Spirit too is called Lord. And if Lord, then also God, as we said a little earlier when we set out the apostle Peter's words to Ananias, who had kept back the money, because deity too is understood in the Holy Spirit.

But since the order of the inquiry began from this point, "But when the Paraclete comes, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things", come now, let us inquire from the saying itself whether we can find anything in it that agrees with what has been said. The Saviour affirms that the Holy Spirit is sent by the Father in his name, and the Saviour's proper name is "Son", since this word marks a sharing of nature and, so to speak, the particular character of the persons. In this name of the Son, the Holy Spirit sent by the Father is to be understood as not a servant, not other than the Son, and not disjoined from him. And as the Son comes in the name of the Father, saying, "I have come in my Father's name" (for it belongs only to the Son to come in the name of the Father, preserving the Son's relation to the Father and the Father's to the Son), so, on the other hand, no one else comes in the name of the Father, but, for example, in the name of the Lord, of God, of the Almighty. You will be able to see this plainly if you reread the prophets attentively. For Moses too, the great minister and servant of God, came in the name of him who is, and in the name of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, God saying to him: "Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel: He who is has sent me to you"; and again: "You shall say to them: The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob has sent me to you." For the sending of righteous servants, such as those of whom he said, "I will command by my Spirit my servants the prophets", was made in the name of God. And since they showed themselves worthy of God, they are said to have come in the name of God; again, advancing further and settled under the rule of the one God, they came in the name of God Almighty. But since the sons of Israel living in Egypt had learned to worship as gods those who are not, and to venerate the elements of the world with divine honour, it followed that Moses was sent to them under the name of "He who is", so that he might free them from false gods and lead them over to the true deity and to the Lord of their fathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

As, then, servants who come in the name of the Lord, by the very fact that they are subject and serve, point to the Lord and convey his particular character (for they are the Lord's servants), so the Son, who comes in the name of the Father, bears the particular character and name of the Father, and through these is shown to be the only-begotten Son of God. Since, then, the Holy Spirit is sent by the Father in the name of the Son, having the Son's particular character inasmuch as he is God, though not his sonship, so as to be his son, he shows that he is joined to the Son in unity. That is why he is also called the Spirit of the Son, making sons by adoption those who were willing to receive him. "Because you are sons of God," he says, "the Father sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying: Abba, Father." This Holy Spirit, who comes in the name of the Son, sent by the Father, will teach all things to those who are perfect in the faith of Christ: all things that are spiritual and intellectual, and, to sum it all up briefly, all the mysteries of truth and wisdom. He will teach, not as a teacher and master of a discipline he has acquired from elsewhere (that belongs to those who have learned wisdom and some arts by study and diligence), but as being himself the art and teaching and wisdom, the Spirit of truth, he invisibly instils into the mind the knowledge of divine things. For the Father also teaches his disciples in this way, as one taught by him says: "O God, you have taught me wisdom"; and another boldly cries out: "You have taught me, O God, from my youth"; and so all become taught. The Son of God too, the wisdom of God and the truth, so teaches those who share in him that he teaches the discipline not by art but by nature. That is why, when the disciples are taught, they call him alone master. These same disciplines, given by the Father and the Son into the hearts of believers, the Holy Spirit ministers to those who have ceased to be merely natural. "For the natural man does not perceive the things of the Spirit," thinking what is said to be foolishness; but one who has cleansed his mind of disturbances will be filled with the disciplines of the Holy Spirit, that is, with words of wisdom and knowledge, so much that one who has received them says: "But God has revealed it to us through the Holy Spirit." And to those who have so prepared themselves God grants the Spirit of wisdom and revelation for knowledge of himself; and those who receive the Spirit of wisdom are made wise not from elsewhere but by the Holy Spirit himself, and from him they understand the Lord and whatever is of God's will, and they know that same Spirit by his own revelation, so as to know that these things have been given them by the Lord; so that one who has obtained the spirit of revelation and wisdom is fit to preach the doctrines of truth, relying not on human art but on God's, as we can hear one of them, the Apostle, saying: "My preaching and my speech were not in persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of the power of God." The power equal to the Spirit we can interpret as none other than Christ our Lord. For he says to the disciples: "You will receive the power of the Holy Spirit coming upon you"; and the angel says to Mary: "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you." So the creative power of the Most High, the Holy Spirit coming upon the Virgin Mary, fashioned the body of Christ; using it as a temple, he was born without the seed of a man.

From this it is shown that the Holy Spirit is creator, as we have already briefly shown in our book On Doctrines. And in the Psalm it is said to the Lord: "You will take away your Spirit from them, and they will fail and return to their earth. Send forth your Spirit, and they will be created, and you will renew the face of the earth." Nor is it surprising if the Holy Spirit is the maker of the Lord's body alone, since, joined with the Father and the Son, he created by the same power all things that the Father and the Son created. For it says: "Send forth your Spirit, and they will be created." We have already often shown that the Holy Spirit is of the same working as the Father and the Son, and that in the same working there is one substance; and conversely, that things that are consubstantial (ὁμοούσια) do not have different workings. And to set down another testimony that can help us in faith in the Holy Spirit, in the Gospel the passage runs thus: "I still have many things to tell you, but you cannot bear them now. But when that Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth. For he will not speak from himself, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will announce to you the things to come. He will glorify me, because he will receive of mine and announce it to you. All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said to you that he will receive of mine and announce it to you."

From these sacred words we are taught that, after Jesus had taught his disciples many things, he said: "I still have very many things to tell you," because this word, "I still have many things to tell you", is not addressed to just any newcomers wholly empty of God's grace, but to those who, though hearers of his words, had not yet attained everything. Handing on to them whatever could suffice, he put off the rest to a future time: things they could not know without the teaching of the Holy Spirit, since before the Lord's passion the Holy Spirit had not been given to men, as the evangelist says: "For the Spirit had not been given to anyone, because Jesus was not yet glorified," calling it Jesus' glorification to taste death for all. So after the resurrection, appearing to his disciples and breathing into their faces, he said: "Receive the Holy Spirit"; and again: "You will receive the power of the Holy Spirit coming upon you." When he comes into the hearts of believers, they are filled with words of wisdom and knowledge, and, made spiritual in this way, they receive the teaching of the Holy Spirit, which can lead them into all truth. For since the hour had not yet come in which they were to be filled with the Holy Spirit when he said to them, "I still have many things to tell you", he consequently added: "but you cannot bear them now." For, still serving the type of the law, its shadow and images, they could not look upon the truth, whose shadow the law bore, and so could not bear spiritual things. "But when that one comes," he says, that is, "the Paraclete, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you into all truth," transferring you by his teaching and instruction from the death of the letter to the life-giving spirit, in which alone the truth of all Scripture lies. So the Spirit of truth himself, entering a pure and simple mind, will seal in you the knowledge of truth, and, always adding new things to old, will guide you into all truth.

Someone too, addressing his prayers to God the Father, says: "Guide me in your truth," that is, in your Only-begotten, who testifies in his own words: "I am the truth." This perfection God grants by sending the Spirit of truth to guide believers into all truth. Then, in what follows, about the Spirit of truth who is sent by the Father and is the Paraclete, the Saviour, who is also the truth, says: "For he will not speak from himself", that is, not without me, and without my and the Father's will, because he is inseparable from my will and the Father's, because he is not from himself but from the Father and me; for his very subsisting and speaking come to him from the Father and me. I speak the truth, that is, I inspire what he speaks, since he is the Spirit of truth. But speaking and saying in the Trinity must not be taken according to our custom, by which we converse and speak to one another, but according to the manner of incorporeal natures, and especially of the Trinity, which places its will in the hearts of believers and of those who are worthy to hear it: this is what saying and speaking is.