On the Trinity 2.6

That everything proper to the Godhead is attested of the Holy Spirit.

Next, then, they declare in their oracles, concerning the pure and unspeakable nature of the Holy Spirit, the same sort of things as concerning God the Father, who rules over all, and the Son, who is beyond all and Lord of all, because he is not of a different substance, nor less in power and glory. … and to what is created. For whatever a creature has, it has as a gift bestowed by the Trinity in one Godhead; and each thing can always be recognized from what belongs to it, both what it is and what it is not, whether it is God by nature or a creature. For example:

1. Creation has being, though it did not exist in the beginning. And in Job it was shown which is its first work among rational beings: for it speaks of the devil, who by his conduct belied his nature. But that the Holy Spirit, as the breath of the Almighty, is a creature, or has any beginning at all, is nowhere written. For a work could not have existed before the creating Spirit, and above all such a work, which showed itself, by its own choice, worthless, ungrateful, and profane. And since Scripture neither says that there is, of the divine … [hypo]stases, a first and an after, what dispute remains as to their being in the one unoriginate Godhead and equality of honor?

2. Nothing created fills the world, or holds all things together, or is in all things; rather, even the intellectual powers have a limit and a defined quantity; for these things belong to the Godhead alone. But the greatness of the Holy Spirit is indissoluble, … and is always everywhere, through all and in all; filling the world and holding it together according to the Godhead, but uncontainable according to its power; measuring, but not measured. “For God does not give the Spirit by measure,” as the Savior says in John; and according to Wisdom, which has: “For you love all things that exist, and loathe none of the things you have made; for you would not have formed anything if you hated it. How would anything have endured if you had not willed it, or how would anything not called forth by you have been preserved? You spare all things, because they are yours, O Master, lover of souls, and your incorruptible Spirit is in all things.” Hence we rightly name God Father of all, though he is not our Father by nature, as he is of his Only-begotten. And again: “The Spirit of the Lord has filled the world, and that which holds all things together has knowledge of every voice”; that is, he has embraced the invisible and the visible creation, the intelligible and the sensible, and nothing at all is without a share in his everlasting oversight; for this is what “holding all things together” shows. And he hears every voice, it says, since as God he is always everywhere in all things, bringing all material disorder round into fitting order, and sparing and caring for the things made by him, since he is by nature providence and wisdom, pervading all things, as the Father is. For who is it who has such knowledge? Isaiah too speaks thus: “The Spirit of knowledge and godliness”; and David sings: “Where shall I go from your face? And where shall I flee from your Spirit?” And the Master, teaching that the Godhead of the Holy Spirit is not circumscribed by place, but is at once in heaven and on earth, always having supplied and always supplying all sufficiency to creation, said in John: “If you love me, keep my commandments; and I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Paraclete, so that the Spirit of truth may be with you, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him; but you know him” … by which he steers the universe … and the paths are the particular administrations through which he passes, as it were, through all things, so that it may become known that [he is] of the one infinite nature present everywhere. And such testimonies declare him [so]; they handed down equal things about each of the pure hypostases: Jeremiah, setting it out from God the Father: “I fill heaven and earth, says the Lord”; David, singing of the Son in Psalm 144: “And of his greatness there is no end”; Paul, proclaiming of the same: “He who descended is the same who ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.”

[3.] … admits corruption, the turning, which we call also change, as the prophecy says: “He who makes all things and transforms them.” The wise among those outside, having heard this, say: “Dissolving them into themselves, and making them grow again out of themselves.” The bodiless rational creation has the corruption that comes by choice: God gave it an abiding nature, and established it forever and forever and ever; but it brings on its own ending, and is corrupted by this very thing, so that from this it loses, as it were, being called eternal. For whatever goes out of itself, that is, is changed, this is thereafter the death of what it was before; as when wickedness becomes goodness, it is put to death by the very thing by which it departed from goodness; and conversely, goodness by wickedness. For there are some that [were meant] always to stand by the first boundary, even if this was not denied them … [as the apost]les [say] these things: Peter: “For if God did not spare the angels who sinned, but cast them into Tartarus in chains of gloom and has kept them for the judgment of the great day, and did not spare the ancient world”; and Jude: “And angels who did not keep their own dominion, but abandoned their proper dwelling, he has kept in everlasting chains under gloom.” The bodily and rational creation undergoes alteration: in disposition, as Judas lost his sanctification, and as Paul writes, “But the widow who lives in pleasure is dead while she lives,” though she is still passing her life among men; and in substance, as it first comes to an end and then passes over into immortality. “For this corruptible,” it says, “must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.” The non-rational creation undergoes turning and ceases to be; as when light turns to darkness and water to blood, it was prophesied: “This is the change of the right hand of the Most High”; and elsewhere: “Heaven and earth,” it says, “will pass away.” For it was prophesied that there will be [new] heavens and a new earth. And truly, everything that has received a beginning will also have an end. But the Holy Spirit, since he is of the unspeakable, eternal, and incorruptible nature that rules over all, and is always the same and in the same way; since he alone knows and does the things of God; and since he guards all things, both rational beings and those perfect in faith, and the non-rational, up to the limit given to the non-rational of abiding in their identity, is by nature and by choice incapable of turning and change, which is to say incorruptible. And what is unchangeable, or incorruptible, is at once without beginning, without end, and beyond the ages. And what is without beginning is a creator and not a creature. Therefore Wisdom says, properly, “Your incorruptible Spirit is in all things”; and Peter, “in the incorruptible [ornament] of a gentle and quiet Spirit.” For so too the Father, who is always equal and like to himself, admitting neither a slackening toward the worse nor an advance toward the better, is described by James: “With whom there is no variation or shadow of turning”; and by Paul: “To the incorruptible, invisible, only wise God”; in the same way the Son too was attested in Psalm 101: “But you, O Lord, remain forever”; and again: “In the beginning, O Lord, you founded the earth, and the heavens are the works of your hands. They will perish, but you remain; and they will all grow old like a garment, and like a cloak you will roll [them up].”

4. Creation does not possess eternity absolutely and by its own completeness: first, because it does not have this from itself, but obtained it for the time following from when it came into being, by the gift of God, who alone exists of himself and beyond the ages. For being good, he creates; [and] presiding over his own work, he bestows eternity on it as a gift; second, because of the causes explained in the preceding heading. But because the Holy Spirit of God, creator and good, works all things eternally, and is never himself brought to an end, while he is able to bring to an end the things made by him, he has been praised with this title. You may learn it, if you will listen to me, from this: Paul writes thus to the Hebrews: “Who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God.” He means Christ the Master, who in his august incarnation offered himself through the Holy Spirit on our behalf to his own Father. And Peter too sounds in agreement, as has already been mentioned: “But the Utterance of God remains forever.” For here he calls the Spirit of God the Utterance of God. And [Paul], because of the identity of the Godhead, mentioning the Father … in praise: “The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,” he says, “who is blessed forever, knows”; and again: “Jesus Christ, yesterday and today the same, and forever.” But it is not to be borne, it is not to be borne by hearing, what those who are averse to the theology of the Holy Spirit have laid down on this heading too. For out of prejudice they carry themselves off to the ends of the earth; and undiscerning love is not wont to bear witness to exact inquiry; still, nothing prevents us from hearing that very sophistry of theirs, for so they will be condemned still more. It runs thus: “Not if something is homonymously called eternal can it be called God; but if one is God, he is the maker of eternal things. [Long] ago God spoke in the prophets; in the last of the days he has spoken to us in a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also made the ages. For if anything called eternal ought to be named god, there will be infinitely many gods. For it is written: ‘And be lifted up, you eternal gates’; and again, ‘They remembered eternal years’; and again, ‘Like eternal sheep’; and, ‘These will rise to eternal punishment’; and elsewhere, ‘Those in the dust of the earth will rise, some to eternal life, and others to eternal shame.’ Are punishment and shame, then, gods? Do you see into what great absurdity and impiety the homonymy of ‘eternal’ falls?” A swell of confusion floats on the surface of their thoughts and words, and is mixed up with them; but the following dissolves it. As we mentioned just now, even if the other things happen to have the name “eternal,” they alone had it not apart from time; rather, they also have corruption, the turning that comes from their own will, and their “eternal” is altogether unlike the divine eternal; just as the one called holy, whether angel or man, is not holy in a way like and equal to the Holy Spirit of the holy ones; for he is wholly holiness and eternity itself. Let them attend, then, to the grandeur of speech with which “eternal” has been proclaimed of the Holy Spirit, and how Scripture added to it that wonderful thing which surpasses everyone’s grasp, I mean that he who made the ages offered himself through the Holy Spirit to his own true Father on our behalf. Let them consider also that all the powers of the heavens are in the Holy Spirit, surely as in one who creates together with the Creator who has no need; and that the oracles we have brought forward for this heading foretold the end of the eternal gates and sheep that the heretics mentioned, not opportunely but artfully. And let the difference be plain to them between what is eternal without beginning and unchangeably, and what is eternal from a point in time and changeably; and that this difference is not slight, nor only in substance and other beauty, but a total otherness. And let this too be known: that the Holy Spirit has his share in the judgment concerning the eternal with God the Father, who empowered all things, and with the Son, not with creatures. And let them loose their worse opinion and choose the better … worthy; and let them act better for the time after this, for there is no grudging; and from the very things by which they harmed themselves in making their boastful complaint, let them carry off from there the benefit of repentance. For if this word was used of God the Father and the Son as indicating something befitting God, it may be taken equally and in the same way of the Spirit of God. That is one point; another is that none of the eternal things they mentioned is called divine, or Holy Spirit proceeding from God, or one thing and not a multitude; nor is it ranked with the Father and the Son for the divine initiation and the divine gift, nor, not to say much, has it been counted worthy of any other honor that belongs to the Godhead. Another point besides these: God the Father was pleased that all things should be created through his Son, the Word. And what reproach, as they dream, comes to his all-holy Spirit from not creating, if, according to them, he is not ineffably a fellow worker with the Creator, as the Father is? But that every operation and gift, creative, good, and perfect, belongs to his only-begotten Son, the Word, and to the one Holy Spirit, and is common to them, and that all are referred back to the One from whom and with whom these blessed hypostases came forth ineffably, anyone would most easily learn who quietly examined the oracles full of wisdom, both those mentioned in various places of this book and those in the one before it. And Paul too, being more than human, declared this plainly, affirming it to the Corinthians: “But you were washed, you were justified, you were sanctified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.” Observe, then, observe: if the name of the Son is divine, as indeed it is divine, then wholly so is the name of the Holy Spirit; for he indicated one name of them both. And that, as the Holy Spirit created ineffably together [with them] in the beginning, so now too he re-creates. For “being washed” signified being created anew. And to Titus: “Having given us new birth through the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit.” And no less does the sacred Psalmist expect us to know that those who already exist in their first coming-to-be are now created, spiritually, in the divine pool. For he says: “A people being created will praise the [Lord]” … and they do not differ from one another in Godhead and power, and they alone can be united by nature, ranked together, and everywhere thought of together with the One, who himself has both—not as one whose hypostases they are—as hypostases from himself without beginning, equally, alike, ineffably united, and continuous.

Further, in addition to what has been said: every plea of these heretics is of the same kind, as it is of the same wording, as the present shifting sophistry of theirs, as we shall learn by experience shortly from the headings themselves. For if perhaps some word, such as “eternal” or “good,” which carries a divine indication concerning the Trinity in unity and belongs to it wholly and perfectly, happens to have been said somewhere of a creature, with the mention that befits a creature, they say nothing (for what could they say?) about God the Father and his Son; but at once they most foolishly bring the Holy Spirit down into creation, instead of most fittingly referring to God and the Only-begotten those whom the theologians have most fittingly praised in like and equal terms with the Holy Spirit. Let only these words of ours, then, which cannot be shaken and suffice for the whole contest with the heretics, stand; or let them show (which is grievous even to say) that a beginning or an end of the Holy Spirit has been declared somewhere in the oracles; or at all that he had some path toward corruption, as angelic and human choice has; or else let them have, as the saying goes, “an ox on the tongue.” So much about them; I will pass to the subject from the beginning.

5. The rational creation is capable of virtue and vice, as we find among the bodiless beings, as we said before, the approved angels within virtue and those cast out within vice; and among bodies, as we ourselves are. But the divine Spirit, being above virtue and glory, or rather himself the fountain of the highest virtue, is capable of none of these, as neither is the Father nor the Son. And if he is not capable of them, he is not of a different will either; and if so (for he does all that the Father wills), neither is he of a different substance. And from this, then, it is concluded both that he is not a creature, but stands without difference toward God the Father and his Son; and that we know from him God, from whom he proceeded by nature, and that he is in us, as it is written.

6. Creation is sanctified and justified by God, who is holy by nature; for it is capable of receiving sanctification and justification, not of bestowing them. But the Holy Spirit, since he stands apart from creation and is joined by nature to him from whom he has proceeded (concerning whom we were also taught in the mysteries that “every good gift and every perfect present is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning”); and since he cares for all things and takes forethought even for the guilty, sanctifies, justifies, makes wise, and bestows every form of heavenly virtue; but he himself is nowhere found to have any aptitude for being sanctified, justified, or made wise by another (as neither has the self-existent Father nor his Son, who is of the same nature); and he is “Spirit of holiness,” meaning holy by nature and of himself; and “divine Spirit,” meaning God by nature; and “breath of the Almighty,” meaning consubstantial with the Almighty, breathed forth from his hypostasis. So even one such name alone shows that he is both consubstantial with God the Father and sanctifying, and cannot be contained even by reason. Therefore Paul, who was able both to speak and to set out patterns of the faith, introduced this, setting forth at once this very heading which we are now pursuing, and also the Holy Spirit’s sharing with God the Father in the great gifts and in the rebirth in baptism; and further, that the name “God” is one and equal for the Trinity, and that, when invoked, it always works with equal power … “but you were justified, you were sanctified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.” Therefore those who share in him, that is, those who are counted worthy to be sanctified, justified, and made wise by him, are called, as the same apostle teaches the Hebrews, “partakers of the Holy Spirit.” And to the Ephesians he writes: “In whom you also, having believed, were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise.” For it is plain that those who are sealed, that is, sanctified, participate, but are not participated in. For if the Holy Spirit, or the Son, were a creature, what need would there be for the creature to sanctify and to make the fullness, when God the Father had sanctified sufficiently? We at any rate who are created, knowing that this anointing belongs to one uncreated, do not bestow sanctification from ourselves, but say: “May God sanctify you.” And I will go on to another acknowledged and strong argument, after which not even those who have practiced shamelessness will be able to do so. The Master of the universe, having given his command concerning God the Father and himself in absolute terms, “Baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son,” did not simply add “and of the Spirit,” but added “Holy.” So he mentioned him not merely without lowering him, but even raising him up, because the Spirit is by nature that which the self-complete hypostases are, which the one name signified, with which the Spirit himself was named together; and correspondingly, because the Holy Spirit is constituted that which the Father and his Son are in Godhead, with whom he was mentioned; as is, the saying goes, plain even to a blind man. But this belongs to a fuller theology; so that it may easily be believed that to be called, and to be by nature, holy and righteous, and indeed to sanctify and justify one’s own creatures, belongs to the Godhead alone, like things have been sung of the Father, as when the Son himself says in John: “Holy Father, keep them in your name”; and again: “Sanctify them in your truth; your Word is truth”; and again: “Righteous Father.” And as when they prophesy: Ezekiel, “And let them know that I am the Lord who sanctifies them”; David in Psalm 10, “The Lord is righteous and has loved righteousness; his eyes have seen uprightness” … “and yours, and they are under you.” And as when Paul writes, to the Thessalonians: “May the God of peace himself sanctify you wholly”; to the Romans: “It is God who justifies; who is he who condemns?”; to the Hebrews: “That the virgin may be holy in body and spirit”; as though it were possible that she, by her own turning, should not be holy, or by virtue be sancti[fied] … [and by] “body” the active operation, according to Isaiah, who prophesies: “And those who err in spirit shall know understanding”; that is, those who err in action or in disposition. And of the Son, as when he is praised: “One holy, one Lord Jesus Christ”; and as the Acts say: “They killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the Righteous One”; and as Peter said: “Christ died once for sinners, the righteous for the unrighteous.” From such oracles, then, if they wished to act rightly, they ought to have been led to hymn the Spirit as God. This they do not do; instead they say: “The angels were not sanctified, and yet they are holy”; not attending to the fact that angels too, as men, were sanctified (which by God … of men, and of those who share in him, …

7. Creation cannot be participated in substantially by the rational soul, so as to dwell in it; for to be participated in this way is proper to God alone. But the Holy Spirit can be participated in substantially, as can the Father and the Son, as was said in the first book. For here too, once the Father dwells in the worthy, what need would there be, if not because of the unity of the divine nature and its fullness toward us, for the Son and the Holy Spirit to enter with him and come in with him? Certainly no one would ever choose to say that a multitude of gods, as it were, dwells in us, but [would say] that the three hypostases are one, in accordance with the one unity of Godhead.

8. Creation has goodness by the gift of the Trinity in one Godhead, which is goodness itself. And it is secondary to have something good by participation, to one’s own measure, compared with being by nature the first and measureless good itself. And the good found in creation is not woven together or ranked with the creating, original, and one good, which all things desire, while it desires nothing; even if it is said in the Gospel, “Well done, good servant,” and, “The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good.” For it does not speak, so to say, of the good that is in the heart and is good in the proper sense, but of the good that is yoked to creation and befits it. For that good multiplies and bestows goodnesses on its own works, so that from it each existing thing may be preserved and remain in the rank in which it was allotted to be; and it is itself the one good, the cause for all of all good things; through it the good below is done; and it preserves all things to which it is present, just as evil, which arises from our choice, destroys. Perceiving this, those outside too say: “The wicked have this very great good in themselves: when they attempt to harm others, they themselves are the first to reap the fruit of their own wickedness.” But the Holy Spirit, as was said before, being self-sufficient good, and wholly good always toward all, and not second to the one and first good, received equal [honors], as was shown in the first book; and as Ezra, who spoke freely toward the divine goodness, knowing that even if he stumbled he would suffer no harm from it, prophesied: “And you gave your good Spirit to instruct them.” And Matthew and Luke, signifying that the Spirit is by substance the divine goodness itself, and that in him every good gift and every perfect present is understood, wrote, the one: “How much more will the Father from heaven give good things to those who ask him?”, and the other: “How much more will the Father from heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?” For it is proper to a changeable, that is, a created, substance to be made good, or sanctified, or made wise by another, and not … in Isaiah, showing that no one will ever receive his spiritual blessings who has not first been found filled with the wisdom and understanding of the Holy Spirit, he said: “I will put my Spirit upon your seed, and my blessings upon your children.” In keeping with this Paul wrote: “For this reason,” he says, “we too, from the day we heard, have not ceased to pray for you and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding, walking worthily of the Lord.” It is plain that he means “of the divine Spirit.” For that the kingdom above, which has no end, is understood together with the Spirit of God, as not foreign to him because of …, he confirms in the same Epistle, writing: “For the kingdom of God is not food and drink, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” Nor did this escape Peter. For in his defense to those who blamed the meeting he had with Cornelius, he said: “If then God gave them the same gift, granting the Holy Spirit, as he did to us at the beginning, who was I to be able to hinder God?” And again: “And God, who knows the heart, bore witness to them, giving the Holy Spirit just as he did to us; and he made no distinction between us and them, having cleansed their hearts by faith.” That is: the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, one might say his irresistible and abundant visitation, is the cause of prophecy, of renewal, of heavenly goods, and of perceiving the beauty of divine truth. For as the Apostle holds: “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace.” Hence he writes again: “For the love of God has been poured out in our hearts in the Holy Spirit.” Since, then, there is one goodness in … just as there is one truth, righteousness, and wisdom (I mean the one above), according to the words, “You are mighty, O Lord, and your truth is round about you” (which is the only-begotten God), and according to the words, “To the only wise God,” many truths, righteousnesses, and wisdoms are multiplied for us from above, according to the words, “The Lord seeks out truths,” and, “The Lord is righteous and has loved righteousnesses,” and, “A multitude of the wise is the salvation of the world,” and, “Walking with the wise, you will be wise.” It is clear, then, that the Spirit of God, in his very existence, is the good Spirit, and the Spirit of wisdom and of truth, and the Spirit of God the Father, invisible and uncompounded.

[9.] … for this belongs properly to the consubstantial Trinity alone. For the Father loves humankind: “not angry with us to the end, nor wrathful forever, nor dealing with us according to our sins, nor repaying us according to our iniquities,” according to Psalm 102; and as Solomon says: “You spare all things, because they are yours, O Master, lover of souls,” as has been said; so that for these reasons he is called our Master and Father, his care being blended with his power. For there is no title more proper to God than Father, lover of humankind, good, and holy. The Son loves humankind, who for our sake, the works of his august and intelligible hands, “emptied himself, taking the form of a servant,” as the Apostle writes to Titus: “… of God our Savior appeared.” And whoever renders to him all that befits the only-begotten God goes away having received more than he hoped. The Holy Spirit of God loves humankind, according to Wisdom, which says: “For the Spirit of wisdom is a lover of humankind, and will not acquit the righteous.” For he did not overlook human nature as it perished, but came down by himself, … us, and bestowed the divine gifts, and from the beginning took such care for what is in [God’s] image that, as a token of his surpassing goodness, he has this name too. For great are the elements, heaven, earth, sea; and great is the rational creation, that of the angels and of every power above the world; [but for] man the Trinity has as its name of goodness “lover of humankind.”

[10.] … “… yours.” But the Holy Spirit is not only not written to be a slave, but also, as Master and free by nature, wherever he is and upon whomever he comes, he bestows the freedom that he has. For only things made are brought under the yoke of slavery; and what is not a slave is not a thing made; and what is not a thing made is God by nature. For “the slave is nothing compared with the free-born race,” as those outside too have said. A faithful witness of these things is the Apostle, writing to the Corinthians in the second Epistle: “Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom”; to Timothy: “For God did not give us a spirit of slavery, but a Spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline”; to the Romans: “For you did not receive a spirit of slavery again to fear, but a Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry, [Abba], Father. So you are no longer a slave, but a son.” Just as, then, we were set free by the Son, hearing, “You are no longer a slave but free,” and, “the freedom with which the Son set you free,” so, because of the identity of substance and lordship, we are set free by the Spirit, through the words already mentioned: “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.”

11. Creation, both intellectual and sensible, serves, and does not command of itself; as it says of the angels: “Mighty in strength, doing his word.” But the Holy Spirit of God commands the prophets and apostles with his own authority, as God and Master, as will be shown in the chapters below.

[12.] … and of the all-powerful divine strength, but it does not strengthen. For it received the power sufficient for itself, and it has no strength to impart it to its fellow servants. But the Spirit of God strengthens with his fruitful, nourishing, and unfailing strength, since he is creator and not creature. For the Savior says in the Acts: “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you”; as though, without his coming, we have no power toward God and no hope. One must observe, besides this, first, that the coming of the Holy … [and second] that he did not come as his own messenger, but was announced beforehand by the great God and Savior himself. And so again he says: “But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.” And this was the power of the Holy Spirit. And Paul writes to the Romans words that no one finds it easy to admire or interpret worthily, especially in passing: “I have, then, my boast in Christ Jesus toward God. For I will not dare to speak of anything except what Christ has worked through me, by word and deed, to bring the Gentiles to obedience, by the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the Holy Spirit.”

13. Creation does not always speak the truth, but by its own … as among the fleshless, the devil; and among those in the flesh, as it is written: “Every man is a liar,” and, “You will destroy all who speak falsehood.” Those outside too wrote: “For the Father, God, will be no helper of liars.” And among the saints, as Paul said of the apostles: “But when I saw that they were not walking straight toward the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all” what he said. For truly, never to lie belongs to the divine nature alone. Therefore he wrote to the Hebrews: “So that,” he says, “by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie” … [the nature] of the Holy Spirit, sharing in nature with the Father and the Son, shares with them in everything, and indeed in not lying. For he is the Spirit of truth of God, as was said before, speaking by the one will of the Father, of the Son, and of himself, and not speaking from himself, as the Son testified of him, saying: “He will not speak from himself.”

14. Creation has nothing that is called “truth,” because there is one divine truth, as there is one holiness and one goodness, from which we confess that these come to each of us. But the Holy Spirit is called “truth,” as the Father and the Son are, since he is of the same one Godhead, having nothing divided or discordant. The Son testifies concerning the Father and himself, saying: “Father, your Word is truth”; and again: “I am the life and the truth.” And concerning the Holy Spirit …

15. Creation does not know the things of God; for they surpass it; and no creature, not even that of the approved [angels], dares to set out toward such knowledge; since to know the things of God is altogether impossible for a nature that is not of the same nature and does not possess the same knowledge as God; as the Savior taught, saying in John: “The servant does not know what his master is doing”; and as Peter wrote: “The things which are now announced to you through those who preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, into which angels long to look.” But that the Holy Spirit knows them, as God consubstantial, the Apostle wrote to the Corinthians, as was said before. And again, presenting the greatness of the Spirit and his equality with the Father, … he writes: “But he who searches the hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit.” For just as, saying something great about the Father, he said that he knows the mind of the Spirit, so, presenting the Holy Spirit’s fellowship of nature and will with him, and his equality of dignity and power, he wrote that the Spirit alone knows the things of the Father, and searches his depths, and those unknown thoughts of his which must be revealed, when they should be, to the worthy. And as for Peter’s having written, as was said before, “The Spirit was sent from heaven,” let it be understood in the way in which “The Son was sent” is understood. For as he was sent as Word, so the Spirit was sent as utterance and Spirit of God. And because of knowing that the things from Christ, or of the Holy Spirit are said, are said also by … For he is not ignorant, nor is he sent as a slave; nor does he speak, or act, or come of himself, as one opposed to God.

16. Creation does not see God the Father as he is; for this is uncontainable and unbearable for another nature; and to it applies the saying, “No one shall see my face and live.” But the Scriptures say sometimes that the Son alone, sometimes that the Holy Spirit alone, sees or knows God the Father, since the Trinity is in a unity of Godhead; as when the Savior says in John: “Not that anyone has seen the Father, except he who is from God; he has seen the Father.” And the Son is from God by nature by way of begetting, and the Holy Spirit by way of procession. And again: “For no one knows the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son reveals him.” And as when Paul, as was said before, writes specifically about the Holy Spirit to the Corinthians. And as Isaiah prophesies: “Spirit of wisdom and understanding, Spirit of knowledge and godliness.” “Is it not written, then,” he says, “in Matthew, from the Savior: ‘See that you do not despise one of these little ones; for I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father who is in heaven’?” Yes; but they see, not how great and of what kind God is, but as far as they can contain. But the Only-[begotten and the Holy Spirit, being of the same God]head, see the immeasurable and formless God as he is.

17. The rational creation, when it becomes worthy of renewal and adoption, is counted worthy of these by the all-powerful grace of the Holy Spirit; since he is not a creature but God, such as he who created things in the first place.

18. All creation, visible and invisible, is commanded by name by the three young men, Ananias, Azarias, and Misael, when they were put in the Babylonian furnace, to sing hymns to God and exalt him above all forever; and further, the cherubim and the divine throne, by which the seraphim are here understood, glorify him, since they too are part of creation. For the same young men said: “Blessed are you who sit upon the cherubim”; and again, instead of mentioning the seraphim: “And blessed are you on the throne of your kingdom, and praised and exalted above all forever.” Likewise creation is bidden to praise the Lord by David too, moved by the Holy Spirit, in Psalm 102 and in Psalm 148. But the Holy Spirit, like the Son, was not mentioned with them; since he too is not a creature but a creator; nor is he among those who sing hymns, but among those to whom hymns are sung, even by the seraphim themselves, who stand around the divine tribunal with great fear and cover themselves with their wings, and in turn [cry] three times “Holy,” because of the three hypostases, and once “Lord,” because of the one lordship; which shows above all the Godhead of the all-praised Spirit. But the Macedonians, on their guard and, as it were, afraid that they might ever say anything fitting about him, … giving themselves leave without right, and on this heading too, brandishing every kind of weapon, their unbridled words, saying with quibbling: “It is written,” he says, “‘Praise the Lord, for a psalm is good; let praise be sweet to God’; and, ‘It is good to give thanks to the Lord, and to sing to your name, O Most High.’ But nowhere, of course, do we find, ‘Praise the Holy Spirit.’” They must be answered thus: If you take the texts you have brought forward as concerning the Father, you cast out the Son; and if as concerning the Son, the reverse; since the Holy Spirit too both is Lord and is written as Lord, and it is not clear of which hypostasis “Lord” is now written. Consider, then, whether you have not used [these texts] against yourselves. But that the Holy Spirit does not sing hymns, since he is not a creature, but is hymned together [with them], because he is the Spirit of God, is easier to learn both from his being ranked with him and from the fact that the three young men and the sacred Psalmist bid all creation by name to sing hymns, but not … he is above them in substance. And if so, how did some boldly dare to call him … of the order of the angels? For if, as the heretics say, he is of a nature between God and the angels, and more honored and higher than all, then, since he is above all one, they ought either to have bidden him to sing hymns by himself, or at least to have named him first and included the others generally with him; not, as they arrogantly conjecture, the reverse.

19. Creation is not numbered together with God. For what does a being in diminution have in common with him who is wholly …, a being that came into being, with him who made it? But the all-honored Spirit, as God, is named either together with the Father and the Son, as when the Master gives the rule concerning baptism, and as when the Apostle writes the second time to the Corinthians, “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all”; or with one of their hypostases; or he is also mentioned on his own, as was said in the first book. But the Macedonians, starting from the choice of Valentinus, who was cast out and rejected, who turned Manichaean, and who, among his other absurd fabrications, madly called the divine Spirit a coeval of the angels, say: “Paul wrote to Timothy: ‘I charge you before God and the Lord Jesus Christ and the elect angels’; but he passed over the Holy Spirit in silence, as having, of course, ranked him with the angels.” But this thought comes out of the abundance of their own heart. For even if at times there is no specific mention of the Holy Spirit, he is included together with God the Father, since he is his Spirit by nature. That is why there are times when either God the Father himself is not mentioned in word, but in faithful thought, while the Son and the Holy Spirit are mentioned; or the reverse. Even Valentinus, who ought not to be mentioned, called the sanctifying Spirit Paraclete, as Christ the Master [is called] Paraclete, from his being called upon … of Scripture do we find angels mentioned together with God for creation, or the mysteries, or doxology. But the Holy Spirit’s fellowship with the Godhead Paul wrote to the Corinthians in the second Epistle: “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God the Father, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit”; and elsewhere: “If there is any fellowship of the Spirit.” The sacred Psalmist, then, cries out in these words the difference between the unoriginate Word and the divine Spirit on the one hand and the ministering spirits on the other, and that they are not of their rank, but that by these self-complete hypostases, and through them, and on their account, God the Father created the angels in them, and that all things are perfected and held together: “By the Word of the Lord the heavens were made firm, and by the Spirit of his mouth all their powers.” For one must understand by “Word” him through whom all things are; by “Spirit of the mouth of the Lord,” the Holy Spirit; by “powers of the heavens,” both their very structures and indeed angels, principalities, authorities, and powers. And again: “He who makes his angels spirits, and his ministers a flaming fire.” And the Apostle too fights against them, crying: “We were made to drink of one Spirit.” For as it is impossible for the radiance to be separated from the light, or wisdom from the wise, that is, the Son from the Father, so too the Holy Spirit from him whose Spirit he is, as the breath we breathe is from us. Without noticing it, then, through the very arguments by which they unseasonably disagree with us, … and it returns to the unshakable house of the beginning, from which they leapt away, they make trouble for the Apostle, who, on their account, in the words before us, bore witness before the uncreated nature and the created … “[a spectacle to the world and to angels] and to men,” and, “I call heaven and earth to witness this day,” and, “Hear, O heaven, and give ear, O earth.”

20. Creation has names that do not share in the names spoken of God, as it does not share his nature. But the Holy Spirit shares in the names of God, because he shares in his nature too; except that the Father alone is called Father, because he alone begot in hypostasis; and the Son is called Son, and not Father, of the uncreated nature, because he was truly begotten but did not beget. As when Scripture names the Spirit himself Lord, as ruling over all things, and sharing in the … himself holy by nature, and as sanctifying creation; incorruptible, good, love, wisdom, understanding, as it has also named God; power, … righteous, from the things by which he justifies, being himself sinless; Paraclete, as also the Son; fire, from his appearing to the apostles in fiery tongues; as Moses says of the Father, “Our God is a consuming fire,” and John of the Son, “He will baptize you in the Holy Spirit and fire”; and all such things.

21. Creation has nothing that exists in one hypostasis, that is, in one person. For there are many angels and archangels; the seraphim likewise; the cherubim are not one thing; principalities and authorities are spoken of, powers, dominions, and thrones, in the plural; heavens, men, and the other works. For the sun and moon too share with the multitude of the stars, both in nature and in fieriness, as the first book covered this more thoroughly. But the Holy Spirit, as not numbered with creation, the oracles have proclaimed to us to be one and the same.

22. Creation is not written to be the water of life; for it did not have everlasting life of itself, as God, who lives without beginning, has. But the [her]alds praise the Holy Spirit as being this, as proceeding by nature from the immortal and life-giving fountain of the Father, not created. For just as we said in the first book that the light does not bring its own brightness into being but begets it, so here, that the fountain does not bring into being the water that comes from it, but has it proceeding from it and consubstantial. For no one brings into being his own son or his own spirit; for then he would no longer be a father, nor have a spirit. Jeremiah, in the person of God: “The heaven was astonished at this, and the earth shuddered at this; for my people have done two evil things. They have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and have dug for themselves broken cisterns, which will not be able to hold water.” The prophet sets out the mystery in a mystical way. For he called God the fountain; and the living water the Holy Spirit, who in the pool cleanses all our sins, and who by nature cannot be torn away from the intelligible fountain, as the stream from springs cannot. Isaiah likewise: “I will give water in thirst to those who walk in [a waterless land; I will put my Spirit upon] your [seed], and my blessings upon your children; and they shall spring up among water like grass, and like willows by flowing water.” And this has a spiritual division through hidden expressions. For to those, he says, who are in ignorance of baptism, and for this reason walk in a waterless land, “I will put my Spirit,” who can make the pool [a source of life] for them, like water-loving plants, and “like the tree planted by the streams of waters, which will give its fruit in its season, and its leaf will not fall.” And the sacred Psalmist, making the truth, which is in fact something hidden, in some way hidden in speech too because it must be so, sings in Psalm 35: “For with you is the fountain of life”; and in Psalm 147: “[He will blow] his Spirit, and the waters will flow” … “gladdening the great city of God”; and this is the whole inhabited world. For, if I may so put it, what each city is to men, the world is to the Almighty. Baruch, lamenting the people who were in the land of the Chaldeans, who did not have the Holy Spirit, cries: “Why is it, Israel, that you are in the land of your enemies? You have grown old in a foreign land, you have been defiled with the dead, you have been counted with those in Hades. You have forsaken the fountain of wisdom; if you had walked in the way of God, you would dwell in peace forever”; calling God the fountain, and the Holy Spirit wisdom. John, from the Son to the Samaritan woman: “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, Give me [a drink, you would have asked him, and he would have given you] living [water]”; meaning the immortal streams of the pool of the Holy Spirit. For that all these things were said about the Spirit of God, the evangelist just mentioned has explained word for word. For when the Savior said, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the Scripture has said, out of his belly will flow rivers of living water,” he at once added: “Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed [in him] were to receive.”

[23.] … is anointed in baptism. The Savior, as God, was anointed with his all-holy Spirit, uncreated as he is, above his fellows, us. For if the Spirit were a creature, the Uncreated would not have been anointed with his own handiwork. The witnesses are those written below. Isaiah, speaking from the Savior: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me.” David: “Therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your fellows.” Why “therefore”? Because, being God not made with hands, he was anointed by God, uncreated and without beginning. And he said “your God” because of his birth from the Virgin. Peter in the Acts: “You know the word that came throughout all Judea and Samaria, beginning from Galilee after the baptism that John preached: Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed him with the Holy Spirit and with power.” The Acts: “They were gathered together in truth in this city against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed.” And the Song of Songs explains this thus: “Your name is ointment poured out; therefore the maidens have loved you.” It says that the name of ointment belongs to Christ, that is, the name of the Paraclete; since both hypostases share in the name, and in themselves give off the fragrance of the nature of God the Father. By the maidens it means the churches, in which he is glorified, of which David too spoke in Psalm 67: “Princes went before, joined to [singers, in the midst of maidens playing timbrels]”; so saying because of the renown of their faith, and because they make the whole earth resound with readings and psalmody. And to each of them, in the Song, the Bridegroom himself, fair in his beauty, speaks chastely: “Behold, you are fair, my companion; behold, you are fair.” And again he sings, as it were, a wedding song: “Come from Lebanon, bride; come from Lebanon; you will come and pass through from the beginning of faith.” And that we too receive an anointing in our renewal, John writes in the first Epistle: “And you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you know all things.” As the Savior was in the dispensation, he says, so you too have an anointing from the Holy Spirit. And that this saving gift too has been given us in common by the blessed Trinity, they teach thus. Isaiah: “And the Lord of hosts will make for all the nations on this mountain: they will drink wine, they will be anointed with ointment on this mountain. Hand all these things over to the nations.” For by the mountain he foretold the church of God, because of the height of its faith; by the wine, the Master’s saving blood; by the ointment, that with which, when we have been sanctified, we are anointed by the priest. John in the same first Epistle, concerning Christ: “And you, the anointing which you have … [you have no need] that anyone teach you, but as his anointing teaches you about all things.” And Paul in the second to the Corinthians: “Now he who establishes us with you in Christ, and has anointed us, is God, who has also sealed us and given the pledge of the Spirit in our hearts.”