Theological Oration 5: On the Holy Spirit

Such, then, is our account of the Son; and so it has escaped those who would stone it, passing through their midst. For the Word is not stoned, but stones when he wishes, and slings at beasts, words that approach the mountain wickedly. “But what would you say,” they ask, “about the Holy Spirit? Where do you get this strange God, not found in Scripture, that you bring in on us?” This is said now even by those who are moderate about the Son. For as one finds with roads and rivers, which split off from one another and join together again, so it happens here too, through the abundance of impiety: people who disagree on other points agree on this one, so that one cannot clearly tell where they agree and where they conflict.

The account of the Spirit has a special difficulty, not only because people, worn out by arguments about the Son, wrestle more hotly against the Spirit (for they must be impious about something, or life is not worth living for them), but also because we ourselves, exhausted by the number of questions, suffer what those with poor appetites suffer: when they have taken a dislike to one food, they are put off all food alike, and we are put off every argument in the same way. Still, may the Spirit grant it, and the word will run, and God will be glorified. To examine carefully and distinguish in how many senses “spirit” or “holy” is understood and used in the divine Scripture, with testimonies suited to the inquiry, and in what special sense the combination of the two, I mean “Holy Spirit,” is used besides, we will leave to others, who have worked this out for themselves and for us, as we have for them. We ourselves will turn to what follows in our discourse.

Those who are indignant with us for bringing in the Holy Spirit as a strange God, falsely enrolled, and who fight hard for the letter, should know that they are afraid where there is no fear; and let them understand clearly that their love of the letter is a cloak for their impiety, as will be shown a little later, when we refute their objections as far as we can. For our part, we have such confidence in the Godhead of the Spirit whom we worship that we will begin our theology from here, applying the same words to the three, even if some think it too bold. “He was the true light that enlightens every man coming into the world”: the Father. “He was the true light that enlightens every man coming into the world”: the Son. “He was the true light that enlightens every man coming into the world”: the other Advocate. Was, and was, and was; but one was. Light, and light, and light; but one light, one God. This is what David long ago perceived when he said, “In your light we shall see light.” And now we have both seen and proclaim it, grasping from the light of the Father the light of the Son in the light of the Spirit: a concise and simple theology of the Trinity. Let him who rejects reject, let the lawless be lawless; what we have understood, we also proclaim. We will go up a high mountain and cry out, if we are not heard from below. We will exalt the Spirit; we will not be afraid. And if we are afraid, it will be by keeping silent, not by proclaiming.

If there was a time when the Father was not, there was a time when the Son was not. If there was a time when the Son was not, there was a time when the Holy Spirit was not either. If the one was from the beginning, so were the three. If you cast down the one, I dare to say, do not set the other two up high either. What good is an incomplete Godhead? Or rather, what Godhead is it, if it is not complete? And how is it complete if something is missing for its completeness? Something is missing if it does not have the Holy; and how would it have it if it does not have this? Either holiness is something other than this (and let someone say what it is understood to be), or, if it is the same, how is it not from the beginning? As though it were better for God to be at some time incomplete and without the Spirit! If he was not from the beginning, he is ranked with me, even if a little before me; for it is by time that we are separated from God. If he is ranked with me, how does he make me God, or how does he join me to the Godhead?

Or rather, let me philosophize to you about him from a little further back; for we have already discussed the Trinity. The Sadducees did not think the Holy Spirit existed at all, any more than angels or resurrection; I do not know how they came to reject so many testimonies about him in the Old Testament. The more theological of the Greeks, who came nearer to us, had some notion of him, it seems to me, but disagreed about the name, calling him “mind of the universe,” “the mind from outside,” and the like. Of the wise among ourselves, some have taken him to be an activity, some a creature, some God, and some did not know which of these, out of reverence for Scripture, they say, since it has not clearly shown either. For this reason they neither worship nor dishonour him, holding a kind of middle position about him, or rather a very wretched one. Of those who have taken him to be God, some are pious in thought only, others dare to be pious with their lips as well. I have heard others, wiser in measuring Godhead, who confess, as we do, that there are three objects of thought, but set them so far apart from one another as to make the first unlimited in both substance and power, the second in power but not in substance, and the third circumscribed in both; imitating in another way those who name them Creator, Co-worker, and Minister, and who think that the order and grace of the names reflects the sequence of the realities.

With those who have not even thought that he exists, or with the triflers among the Greeks, we will have no discussion; may we not be anointed with the oil of sinners in our discourse. With the others we will argue like this. The Holy Spirit must be considered either among things that exist by themselves or among those observed in something else; those skilled in these matters call the first substance and the second accident. If he is an accident, he would be an activity of God; for what else, or of whom else, could he be? This in a way best avoids composition too. And if he is an activity, clearly he will be acted, not act, and he will cease as soon as he is acted; for that is what an activity is. How then does he act, say this and that, set apart, grieve, become provoked, and do all the things that clearly belong to one who moves, not to a movement? But if he is a substance, and not something that belongs to a substance, he will be taken to be either a creature or God. For something between these, sharing in neither or compounded of both, not even those who invent goat-stags could conceive. But if he is a creature, how do we believe in him, or how are we perfected in him? For to believe in something is not the same as to believe about it: the first belongs to the Godhead, the second to any matter. But if God, then not a creature, not a thing made, not a fellow servant, nor any of the lowly names at all.

Here the argument is yours. Let the slings fly and the syllogisms be woven. “He is certainly either unbegotten or begotten. If unbegotten, there are two without beginning. If begotten, divide again: he is either from the Father or from the Son. If from the Father, there are two sons and brothers.” Make them twins too, if you like, or one older and the other younger, since you are so fond of the body. “If from the Son,” he says, “then we have a God who is a grandson; and what could be stranger than that?” This is what those say who are wise to do evil but will not write what is good. For my part, if I saw that the division was necessary, I would accept the realities without being afraid of the names. For because the Son is Son by a certain loftier relation, since we could not otherwise show that he is from God and consubstantial, it does not follow that we must think it necessary to transfer all the terms here below, including those of our kinship, to the divine. Or perhaps, by this reasoning, you would take our God to be male, because he is called God and Father; and the Godhead to be something female, as far as the names go; and the Spirit neuter, because it does not beget? And if you should play so far as to say that God, joining with his own will, according to the old nonsense and myths, begot the Son, we would have brought in the male-female God of Marcion and Valentinus, who shaped the novel aeons.

Since we do not accept your first division, which assumes there is nothing between unbegotten and begotten, your brothers and grandsons will at once be gone, along with your august division, dissolved together like a complicated knot when the first loop is undone, and withdrawn from theology. For where will you put “the one who proceeds,” tell me, who appears in between the terms of your division, and is introduced by a better theologian than you, our Saviour? Unless you have removed that saying from your gospels for the sake of your third testament: “The Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Father.” In so far as he proceeds from there, he is not a creature; in so far as he is not begotten, he is not a son; and in so far as he is between the unbegotten and the begotten, he is God. And so, escaping the nets of your syllogisms, he has shown himself God, stronger than your divisions. What, then, is procession? You tell me what the unbegottenness of the Father is, and I will give a natural account of the begetting of the Son and the procession of the Spirit, and we shall both go mad for peering into the mysteries of God. And who are we to do this? We who cannot even know what lies at our feet, or count the sand of the seas, the drops of rain, and the days of eternity, let alone enter into the depths of God and give an account of a nature so ineffable and beyond reason.

“What, then,” he says, “does the Spirit lack to be a son? For if he did not lack something, he would be a son.” We do not say he lacks anything, for God has no deficiency. It is the difference of manifestation, so to speak, or of their relation to one another, that has made their names different. For neither does the Son lack anything to be Father (for sonship is not a deficiency), yet he is not therefore Father. Otherwise the Father too will lack something to be Son, for the Father is not Son. These things come not from deficiency nor from any inferiority in substance. It is precisely not being begotten, being begotten, and proceeding that have given the names Father, Son, and the one called the Holy Spirit, so that the distinctness of the three persons (hypostases) may be preserved in the one nature and dignity of the Godhead. For the Son is not the Father, since there is one Father, but he is what the Father is; nor is the Spirit a son because he is from God, since there is one Only-begotten, but he is what the Son is. The three are one in Godhead, and the one is three in distinctive properties; so that the one is not Sabellian, nor the three of the present wicked division.

What then? Is the Spirit God? Certainly. Then is he consubstantial? Yes, if he is God. “Give me, then,” he says, “from the same source one who is son and one who is not son, and yet consubstantial, and I will accept God and God.” You give me another God and another nature of God, and I will give you the same Trinity with the same names and realities. But if God is one and the supreme nature is one, where shall I find a likeness to show you? Or will you look again among the things below and around you? It is very shameful, and not only shameful but quite futile, to take a comparison for things above from things below, and for things unchangeable from the flowing nature, and, as Isaiah says, to seek the living among the dead. Still, for your sake I will try to give the argument some help even from there. I think I will pass over the rest, though I could say much from natural history about the ingenuity nature has shown in the generation of animals, some of it known to us and some to few. For it is said that like is begotten not only from like, and different from different, but also like from different and different from like. And, if the account is to be believed, there is another mode of generation, in which a creature is consumed by itself and born from itself. There are also creatures that in a way go out of themselves, changing and being transformed from one animal into another, by nature’s ingenuity. And from the same being, one thing is offspring and another not, yet they are consubstantial; which comes somewhat nearer to our present subject. But I will mention one thing of our own, which everyone knows, and then pass on to another argument.

What was Adam? Something moulded by God. What was Eve? A section of what was moulded. What was Seth? Offspring. Do moulding, section, and offspring seem the same to you? How could they? But are these consubstantial, or not? How could they not be? It is agreed, then, that things that came to exist in different ways can be of the same substance. I say this not to attribute moulding or cutting or anything bodily to the Godhead (let none of the word-fighters fasten on me again), but to view what is intelligible in these as on a stage. For no comparison can reach the whole truth purely. “And what of it?” they say. “For here it is not one and the same source from which one is offspring and the other something else.” What then? Are not Eve and Seth from the same Adam? From whom else? Are both of them offspring? By no means. What then? One is a section, the other an offspring. And yet both are the same as each other, for they are human beings; no one will deny it. Will you then stop fighting against the Spirit, as though he must be either offspring, or not consubstantial and not God, now that you have taken from human things what is possible for our conception? I think it would be well for you, unless you are very determined to be contentious and to fight against what is plain.

“But who,” he says, “ever worshipped the Spirit? Who among the ancients or the moderns? Who prayed to him? Where is it written that one should worship him or pray to him? Where did you get this?” We will give the fuller reason later, when we discuss what is unwritten. For now it will be enough to say this: the Spirit is the one in whom we worship and through whom we pray. “For God is Spirit,” it says, “and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” And again: “For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings that cannot be uttered.” And “I will pray with the spirit, and I will pray with the mind also,” that is, in mind and spirit. So to worship or pray to the Spirit seems to me to be nothing other than the Spirit offering prayer and worship to himself. Who among the inspired, who know well that the worship of one of the three is the worship of the three because of the equality of honour and Godhead in the three, would not praise this? Nor will I be afraid of the saying that all things came into being through the Son, as though the Holy Spirit were one of these “all things.” For it says “all things that came into being,” not simply all things; for the Father did not come into being, nor anything that did not come into being. Show that he came into being, then give him to the Son and count him among the creatures. Until you show this, the all-inclusive word does not help your impiety. If he came into being, it was certainly through Christ; I will not deny that myself. But if he did not come into being, how is he one of the “all things,” or through Christ? Stop, then, dishonouring the Father by honouring him against the Only-begotten (it is a bad honour to give a creature and rob him of what is more precious, a Son), and the Son against the Spirit. For he is not the maker of a fellow servant, but is glorified with one of equal honour. Do not rank any of the Trinity with yourself, lest you fall away from the Trinity. Do not cut away from anyone the one nature, equally worthy of reverence; for whichever of the three you pull down, you will have pulled down the whole, or rather fallen away from the whole. It is better to take a small idea of the union than to dare a complete impiety.

Our discourse has now come to the main point. I groan that a question long dead and yielded to faith is now being revived; yet it is necessary to stand against these chatterers and not lose our case by default, when we have an argument and are pleading for the Spirit. “If he is God,” he says, “and God, and God, how are there not three Gods? Or how is what you glorify not a rule of many?” Who says this? Those more complete in impiety, or also those of the second rank, I mean those who are more or less fair-minded about the Son? My argument against both is in common, but against these latter there is a particular one. To them I say this. What do you who worship the Son, though you have abandoned the Spirit, say to us “tritheists”? Are you not “ditheists”? If you deny the worship of the Only-begotten too, you have clearly taken your place among our opponents, and why should we treat you kindly as not wholly dead? But if you worship him and are so far in a saving state, we will ask you: what is your answer to the charge of ditheism, if it is brought against you? If there is a reasoned answer, reply, and give us too a way to answer. For the arguments by which you repel ditheism will suffice us against tritheism. And so we win, using you, our accusers, as our advocates; what could be nobler?

What, then, is our common struggle and argument against both? For us there is one God, because there is one Godhead; and those who are from him are referred to the one, even though three are believed in. For one is not more God and another less, nor one before and another after; the Godhead is not cut off by will or divided by power, nor can anything that belongs to divided things be found here. Rather, to put it briefly, the Godhead is undivided in those who are distinct, as in three suns joined to one another there is one blending of light. When, then, we look at the Godhead, the first cause, and the monarchy, what we picture is one; but when we look at those in whom the Godhead is, and those who are from the first cause, timelessly and with equal glory, the objects of worship are three.

“But,” they might say, “do not the Greeks too have one Godhead, as their more advanced philosophers hold, and do we not have one humanity, the whole race? And yet there are many gods, not one, just as there are many men.” But there the common nature has unity only as an object of thought, while the individuals are very widely divided from one another in time, in passions, and in power. For we are not only composite but also opposed, both to one another and to ourselves; we do not remain purely the same even for one day, let alone a whole lifetime, but are always flowing and changing in body and soul. I do not know whether this is not true even of angels and all the higher nature after the Trinity, though they are simple in a way, and more firmly fixed in the good by their nearness to the supreme Good.

As for the gods and demons worshipped by the Greeks, as they themselves call them, they need no accusers from us; they are convicted by their own theologians: as passionate, as factious, full of so many evils and changes, and opposed not only to one another but to their first causes, whom they call Oceanus, Tethys, Phanes, and I know not whom else; and finally a god who hated his children through love of power, and swallowed all the others out of greed, so that he might become “father of men and gods,” as they were wretchedly eaten and vomited up. And if these are myths and allegories, as they say, to escape the shamefulness of the story, what will they say to “All things were divided in three,” and each god ruling over some part of what exists, divided both by their domains and by their ranks? Ours is not like this. “Not such is the portion of Jacob,” says my theologian. Rather, each of the three is one with what is joined to him no less than with himself, by the sameness of substance and power. This is the account of the union, so far as we have grasped it. If this account is strong, thanks be to God for the insight; if not, let us look for a stronger one.

As for your arguments by which you do away with our union, I do not know whether to say they belong to someone joking or someone in earnest. What is the argument? “Things of one substance,” he says, “are counted together” (by counting together he means bringing into one number); “but things not of one substance are not counted together. So you cannot escape saying three Gods on this reasoning, while we are in no danger at all, for we do not say they are of one substance.” You have freed yourself from trouble with one word and won an evil victory, like those who hang themselves for fear of death. To spare yourself the labour of upholding the monarchy, you have denied the Godhead and betrayed what is in question to the enemy. As for me, even if some labour is needed, I will not give up the object of my worship. But here I do not even see what the labour is.

“Things of one substance are counted together,” you say, “while things not so related are expressed one by one.” Where did you get this, and from what dogmatists and myth-tellers? Do you not know that every number indicates the quantity of the things under it, not their nature? I am so old-fashioned, or rather so ignorant, that I call three things that are three in number, even if they differ in nature; and one, and one, and one, units counted otherwise, even if they are joined in substance, looking not so much to the things themselves as to the quantity of the things counted. But since you hold on so tightly to the letter, though you fight against the letter, take your proofs from there. In Proverbs there are three things that go well: a lion, a goat, and a cock; and fourth, a king making a speech before a nation; not to mention the other fours listed there, though different in nature. And I find two cherubim counted one by one by Moses. How then, by your technical rules, are the first three, when they are so widely separated in nature, or the others counted singly, when they are so alike in nature and joined together? If I were to speak of God and mammon as two masters counted as one number, though so far apart from each other, I would perhaps be laughed at all the more for counting them together.

“But for me,” he says, “those things are said to be counted together and of the same substance whose names are also expressed correspondingly, as ‘three men’ and ‘three gods,’ not ‘three this and that.’” What kind of concession is that? This is legislating about names, not telling the truth. For then for me Peter, Paul, and John are not three, nor of one substance, until they are called three Pauls, three Peters, and as many Johns. For what you have required for the more general names we will demand for the more specific ones, on your construction; or will you be unjust, refusing to give what you have taken? What of John, who in his catholic letters says that there are three that bear witness, the Spirit, the water, the blood? Does he seem to you to talk nonsense, first because he dared to count together things not of one substance, which you allow only to things of one substance (for who would say these are of one substance?), and second because he did not make the words correspond, but, having put “three” in the masculine, added the three things in the neuter, against the rules and laws of your grammar? And yet what difference is there between putting “three” first and adding “one and one and one,” or saying “one and one and one” and calling them not three persons but three things? You yourself reject this in the case of the Godhead. What about the crab, the animal, the tool, and the constellation? What about the dog, the land dog, the water dog, and the heavenly one? Do they not seem to you to be called three crabs and three dogs? Certainly. Are they then of one substance for that reason? Who with sense will say so? Do you see how your argument about counting together has collapsed, refuted in so many ways? If things of one substance are not always counted together, and things not of one substance are counted together, and names are expressed together in both cases, what have you gained by your doctrines?

I consider this too, perhaps not beside the point. Are not one and one put together into two? And is not two resolved into one and one? Clearly. If, then, on your reasoning, things put together are of one substance, and things divided are of different substances, what follows? That the same things are both of one substance and of different substances. I laugh too at your counting first and counting after, of which you are so proud, as though the realities depended on the order of the names. For if so, what prevents the same things, since in Scripture the same persons are named first and named after because of the equal honour of their nature, from being on the same reasoning both more honourable and less honourable than themselves? I say the same about the words “God” and “Lord,” and further about the prepositions “from whom,” “through whom,” and “in whom,” by which you technically divide up the Godhead for us, giving the first to the Father, the second to the Son, and the third to the Holy Spirit. What would you have done if each of these were fixed to each person, since, when all are used of all, as is plain to the diligent, you bring in by them so great an inequality of both dignity and nature? This is enough for those who are not very unreasonable. But since it is hard for you, once you have attacked the Spirit, to be checked in your charge, and not, like the more reckless boars, to fight to the end and push yourself onto the sword until you have taken the whole wound inside you, come, let us see what argument you still have left.

Again and again you bring round to us the charge that it is unscriptural. That this doctrine is not foreign or smuggled in, but was known and hinted at to those of old and is revealed to those now, has already been shown by many who have treated the subject, all who have read the divine Scriptures not carelessly or casually, but have gone through the letter and looked within, and so were counted worthy to see its hidden beauty and were illuminated by the light of knowledge. We too will show it, briefly and as far as possible, so as not to seem superfluous or more ambitious than we should be, building on another man’s foundation. But if the fact that he is not very clearly or often called God by name in Scripture, as the Father was earlier and the Son later, has become for you a cause of blasphemy and of this excessive itch of the tongue and impiety, we will remove this harm for you by philosophizing a little about things and names, and especially about the usage of Scripture.

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.