Theological Oration 5: On the Holy Spirit 22–33

Of things, some do not exist but are spoken of; some exist but are not spoken of; some neither exist nor are spoken of; and some both exist and are spoken of. Do you ask me for proofs of these? I am ready to supply them. In Scripture God sleeps and wakes, is angry, walks, and has the cherubim as his throne. Yet when did he become subject to passion? When have you heard that God is a body? This is something that does not exist, pictured in words. For we have named the things of God, as far as we can reach, from what is ours. His keeping quiet toward us and, as it were, neglecting us, for reasons he himself knows, we call sleeping; for our sleep is like that, inactive and idle. His suddenly doing good after a change we call waking; for waking is the ending of sleep, as visitation is the ending of turning away. His punishing we have made into being angry, for with us punishment comes from anger. His acting now here and now there we call walking; for passing from one place to another is walking. His resting among the holy powers and, as it were, loving to dwell with them, we call sitting and being enthroned; and this too is ours, for the divine rests in none as in the saints. His swiftness of movement we call flying; his watching over us, a face; his giving and receiving, a hand; and in short each of God’s powers or activities has been painted for us as something bodily.

Again: where did you get “unbegotten” or “without beginning,” your citadels, or we “immortal”? Show me these words in Scripture by name, or we will strike them out, and you are dead by your own assumptions, now that your names have been pulled down, along with the wall of refuge in which you trusted. Or is it not plain that they come from passages that imply them, even if these words are not used? Which passages? “I am the first, and I am after these things,” and “Before me there was no other God, and after me there shall be none.” For all of “is” is mine, neither beginning nor ending. Taking these, you called him “without beginning” and “unbegotten” because there is nothing before him and he has no older cause; and “immortal” and “indestructible” because he will not cease to be. Such, then, are the first pairs, and so they stand. What things neither exist nor are spoken of? That the divine is evil, that a sphere is square, that the past is present, that man is not composite. Whom have you ever known to reach such a pitch of madness as to dare to think or assert anything like this? It remains to show what both exists and is spoken of: God, man, angel, judgment. Vanity are such syllogisms as yours, an overthrow of faith and an emptying of the mystery.

Since there is so great a difference between names and things, why are you so much a slave of the letter, siding with Jewish wisdom and following syllables while abandoning the realities? If, when you said “twice five” or “twice seven,” I concluded “ten” or “fourteen” from your words; or if from “a rational, mortal animal” I concluded “man,” would you think I was talking nonsense? And how, when I was saying what you said? For words belong not so much to the one who speaks them as to the one who compels them to be spoken. As, then, in this case I would look not so much at what is said as at what is meant, so too, if I found anything else in Scripture that is meant though not said, or not clearly, I would not avoid expressing it for fear of you, the slanderer of names. This is how we will take our stand against those who are half fair-minded. To you it is not even possible to say this. For you deny the titles of the Son, which are so clear and so many, so it is plain you would not have respected these either, even if you knew far clearer and more numerous ones. But now I will explain the reason for the whole concealment, wise as you are, by taking the argument back a little.

There have been two notable changes of life in the whole history of the world, which are also called two covenants, and earthquakes, because of how momentous the event was: the one from idols to the Law, the other from the Law to the gospel. And we are told the good news of a third earthquake, the passage from here to what is there, which can no longer be moved or shaken. The two covenants had the same experience. What was it? They were not changed all at once, nor at the first movement of the undertaking. For what reason? It is necessary to know, so that we might not be forced but persuaded. For what is involuntary does not last, like streams or plants held back by force; but what is voluntary is more lasting and more secure. The one belongs to the one who uses force, the other is ours; the one belongs to God’s gentleness, the other to tyrannical power. So he did not think it right to do good to the unwilling, but to benefit the willing. For this reason, like a tutor and a physician, he takes away some ancestral customs and allows others, conceding a little to what gives pleasure, as physicians do with the sick, so that their medicine may be accepted when it is skilfully mixed with something pleasant. For change in what has been honoured by custom and long time is not very easy. What do I mean? The first covenant cut off idols but allowed sacrifices; the second removed sacrifices but did not forbid circumcision. Then, once people had accepted the removal, they also gave up what had been allowed, the one the sacrifices, the other circumcision; and they became Jews instead of Gentiles, and Christians instead of Jews, stolen away into the gospel by gradual changes. Let Paul persuade you of this, who went from circumcising and purifying himself to saying, “But I, brothers, if I still preach circumcision, why am I still persecuted?” The one was a matter of economy, the other of perfection.

I can compare the case of theology to this, except that it goes the opposite way. There the change came by taking away; here perfection comes by adding. For this is how it is. The Old Testament proclaimed the Father openly and the Son more obscurely. The New made the Son manifest and hinted at the Godhead of the Spirit. Now the Spirit dwells among us, giving us a clearer manifestation of himself. For it was not safe, when the Godhead of the Father had not yet been acknowledged, to proclaim the Son openly; nor, when the Son’s had not yet been accepted, to burden us further (if I may say something rather bold) with the Holy Spirit; lest, like people weighed down with food beyond their strength, or who turn eyes still too weak toward the light of the sun, they should endanger even what was within their strength. Rather, by gradual additions, and, as David said, by ascents, and by advances and progress from glory to glory, the light of the Trinity would shine on those more illumined. For this reason, I think, he also comes to the disciples gradually, measuring himself to the capacity of those who receive him: at the beginning of the gospel, after the passion, after the ascension, working miracles, breathed upon them, appearing in tongues of fire. And Jesus reveals him little by little, as you will notice yourself if you read more carefully. “I will ask the Father,” he says, “and he will send you another Advocate, the Spirit of truth,” so that he might not seem to be a rival God and to speak as from some other authority. Then, “He will send, but in my name”: he left out “I will ask,” but kept “he will send.” Then “I will send”: his own dignity. Then “He will come”: the authority of the Spirit.

You see lights shining on us little by little, and an order of theology which it is better for us too to keep, neither revealing everything at once nor hiding it to the end. The one would be unskilful, the other godless; the one could wound outsiders, the other alienate our own. I will add to what has been said something that has perhaps already occurred to others as well, but which I take to be the fruit of my own thought. The Saviour had some things which, it was said, the disciples could not bear then, though they were filled with much teaching, perhaps for the reasons I have given, and for this reason they were veiled; and again he said that we would be taught all things by the Spirit when he came to dwell with us. One of these, I think, is the Godhead of the Spirit itself, made clear later, when the knowledge was ripe and could be received, after the Saviour’s restoration, when he was no longer disbelieved because of the marvel. For what greater thing than this did he promise, or did the Spirit teach? If indeed anything should be thought great and worthy of God’s majesty among the things promised or taught.

This is what I hold about these things, and may I hold it, and whoever is my friend: to worship God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, three distinctive properties, one Godhead, undivided in glory, honour, substance, and kingship, as one of the God-bearers a little before us taught. May he not see the morning star rising, as Scripture says, nor the glory of the splendour there, who does not hold this, or who shifts with the times, becoming now one thing and now another, and taking unsound counsel about the greatest matters. For if he is not to be worshipped, how does he deify me through baptism? And if he is to be worshipped, how is he not to be revered? And if revered, how is he not God? One hangs on the other, a truly golden and saving chain. From the Spirit comes our rebirth; from rebirth our re-creation; from re-creation our knowledge of the dignity of the one who re-created us.

This is what one might say even granting that it is unscriptural. But now the swarm of testimonies will come upon you, from which the Godhead of the Spirit is shown to be very much in Scripture, to those who are not very dull or strangers to the Spirit. Consider it like this. Christ is born; the Spirit goes before him. He is baptized; the Spirit bears witness. He is tempted; the Spirit leads him up. He works miracles; the Spirit accompanies him. He ascends; the Spirit takes his place. For what great thing that is God’s can he not do? What name that belongs to God is not given him, except unbegottenness and begottenness? For the distinctive properties had to remain with the Father and the Son, so that there might be no confusion in the Godhead, which brings everything else into order and good arrangement. I shudder when I think of the wealth of his titles, and how many names those who oppose the Spirit shamelessly defy. He is called the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ, the mind of Christ, the Spirit of the Lord, and the Lord himself; the Spirit of adoption, of freedom; the Spirit of wisdom, understanding, counsel, might, knowledge, godliness, and the fear of God, for he is the maker of all these; filling all things with his substance, holding all things together; filling the world in his substance, not contained by the world in his power; good, upright, sovereign, by nature and not by appointment; sanctifying, not sanctified; measuring, not measured; shared, not sharing; filling, not filled; holding together, not held together; inherited, glorified, counted with the Father and the Son, held out as a warning; the finger of God; fire, like God, to show, I think, that he is consubstantial; the Spirit who made, who creates anew through baptism and through resurrection; the Spirit who knows all things, who teaches, who blows where and as much as he wills; who guides, speaks, sends out, sets apart, is provoked, is tempted; who reveals, illuminates, gives life, or rather is light and life itself; who makes temples, who deifies, who perfects, so that he both anticipates baptism and is sought after baptism; who does all that God does; divided in tongues of fire, distributing gifts, making apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers; intelligent, manifold, clear, distinct, unhindered, undefiled; which means the same as most wise and manifold in his activities, making all things clear and distinct, free and unchangeable; all-powerful, all-surveying, penetrating through all intelligent, pure, and most subtle spirits, the angelic powers, I think, as well as the prophetic and apostolic, at the same time and not in the same places, since they are assigned to different places; by which his uncircumscribed nature is shown.

Those who say and teach these things, who call him another Advocate, as though another God, who know that blasphemy against him alone is unforgivable, who so fearfully made an example of Ananias and Sapphira for lying to the Holy Spirit, as having lied to God and not to man: do they seem to you to proclaim the Spirit God, or something else? You are truly very dull and far from the Spirit if you are in doubt about this and need someone to teach you. Such, then, and so many and so living are his titles. Why should I set out for you the testimonies word by word? And whatever is said of him here in a lowlier way, his being given, sent, divided, the gift, the grant, the breathing, the promise, the intercession, or anything else of the kind (not to mention each one), must be referred to the first cause, so that it may be shown from whom he is, and three divided principles may not be accepted, as in polytheism. For it is equally impious to join them together like Sabellius and to separate them like Arius, the one in person, the other in nature.

For my part, I have considered this much in my own mind with the curiosity of the intellect, examining the matter from every side and looking for some image of so great a thing, and I could not find anything below with which to compare the divine nature. For even if some small likeness is found, the greater part escapes me and leaves me below with my example. I thought of a source, a spring, and a river, as others have too, in case the Father might correspond to the one, the Son to the second, and the Holy Spirit to the third. For these are not divided by time, nor separated from one another in their continuity, even though they seem in a way to be distinguished by three properties. But I was afraid, first, of admitting a flow in the Godhead that has no rest; and second, that this comparison might introduce numerical oneness. For the source, the spring, and the river are one in number, though shaped differently.

Again, I thought of the sun, a ray, and light. But here too there is a fear: first, that some composition might be imagined in the uncompounded nature, as in the sun and what is in the sun; and second, that we might give substance to the Father but not make the others subsistent, turning them into powers of God that exist in him but do not subsist (for neither the ray nor the light is another sun, but certain outflowings from the sun and substantial qualities), and so, as far as the example goes, we would give God both being and not being in them, which is still more absurd than what has been said. I have also heard someone suggest this kind of illustration: a sunbeam flashing on a wall and quivering from the movement of water, which the ray has taken up through the air in between and then, checked by the resistant surface, has become a strange vibration. For it darts about with many rapid movements, no more one than many, nor more many than one, escaping before the eye can seize it, because of the speed of its gathering and scattering.

But I cannot accept this either. For one thing, it is quite plain what moves the sunbeam, but nothing is older than God, that there should be something that moves him; for he is the cause of all things and has no older cause. For another, here too there is a suspicion of the same things, composition, diffusion, and an unstable, not fixed nature, none of which should be thought of the Godhead. In short, nothing satisfies my mind when I contemplate in these examples what is pictured, unless one takes a single feature of the image with good sense and throws away the rest. In the end, then, it seemed to me best to let go of images and shadows, as deceptive and falling very far short of the truth, and to hold myself to the more reverent conception, resting on a few words, using the Spirit as guide, keeping to the end the illumination I received from him as a genuine companion and partner, and so to pass through this age, cutting my way through it, and to persuade others as far as I can to worship Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the one Godhead and power. For to him belong all glory, honour, and might for ever and ever. Amen.