Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume VIII/De Spiritu Sancto/Chapter 16

by Philip Schaff et al.

Chapter XVI.

That the Holy Spirit is in every conception separable from the Father and the Son, alike in the creation of perceptible objects, in the dispensation of human affairs, and in the judgment to come.

37.  Let us then revert to the point raised from the outset, that in all things the Holy Spirit is inseparable and wholly incapable of being parted from the Father and the Son.  St. Paul, in the passage about the gift of tongues, writes to the Corinthians, “If ye all prophesy and there come in one that believeth not, or one unlearned, he is convinced of all, he is judged of all; and thus are the secrets of the heart made manifest; and so falling down on his face he will worship God and report that God is in you of a truth.”^[1]  If then God is known to be in the prophets by the prophesying that is acting according to the distribution of the gifts of the Spirit, let our adversaries consider what kind of place they will attribute to the Holy Spirit.  Let them say whether it is more proper to rank Him with God or to thrust Him forth to the place of the creature.  Peter’s words to Sapphira, “How is it that ye have agreed together to tempt the Spirit of the Lord?  Ye have not lied unto men, but unto God,”^[2] show that sins against the Holy Spirit and against God are the same; and thus you might learn that in every operation the Spirit is closely conjoined with, and inseparable from, the Father and the Son.  God works the differences of operations, and the Lord the diversities of administrations, but all the while the Holy Spirit is present too of His own will, dispensing distribution of the gifts according to each recipient’s worth.  For, it is said, “there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit; and differences of administrations, but the same Lord; and there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all.”^[3]  “But all these,” it is said, “worketh that one and the self-same Spirit, dividing to every man severally as He will.”^[4]  It must not however be supposed because in this passage the apostle names in the first place the Spirit, in the second the Son, and in the third God the Father, that therefore their rank is reversed.  The apostle has only started in accordance with our habits of thought; for when we receive gifts, the first that occurs to us is the distributer, next we think of the sender, and then we lift our thoughts to the fountain and cause of the boons.

38.  Moreover, from the things created at the beginning may be learnt the fellowship of the Spirit with the Father and the Son.  The pure, intelligent, and supermundane powers are and are styled holy, because they have their holiness of the grace given by the Holy Spirit.  Accordingly the mode of the creation of the heavenly powers is passed over in Silence, for the historian of the cosmogony has revealed to us only the creation of things perceptible by sense.  But do thou, who hast power from the things that are seen to form an analogy of the unseen, glorify the Maker by whom all things were made, visible and invisible, principalities and powers, authorities, thrones, and dominions, and all other reasonable natures whom we cannot name.^[5]  And in the creation bethink thee first, I pray thee, of the original cause of all things that are made, the Father; of the creative cause, the Son; of the perfecting cause, the Spirit; so that the ministering spirits subsist by the will of the Father, are brought into being by the operation of the Son, and perfected by the presence of the Spirit.  Moreover, the perfection of angels is sanctification and continuance in it.  And let no one imagine me either to affirm that there are three original hypostases^[6] or to allege the operation of the Son to be imperfect.  For the first principle of existing things is One, creating through the Son and perfecting through the Spirit.^[7]  The operation of the Father who worketh all in all is not imperfect, neither is the creating work of the Son incomplete if not perfected by the Spirit.  The Father, who creates by His sole will, could not stand in any need of the Son, but nevertheless He wills through the Son; nor could the Son, who works according to the likeness of the Father, need co-operation, but the Son too wills to make perfect through the Spirit.  “For by the word of the Lord were the heavens made, and all the host of them by the breath [the Spirit] of His mouth.”^[8]  The Word then is not a mere significant impression on the air, borne by the organs of speech; nor is the Spirit of His mouth a vapour, emitted by the organs of respiration; but the Word is He who “was with God in the beginning” and “was God,”^[9] and the Spirit of the mouth of God is “the Spirit of truth which proceedeth from the Father.”^[10]  You are therefore to perceive three, the Lord who gives the order, the Word who creates, and the Spirit who confirms.^[11]  And what other thing could confirmation be than the perfecting according to holiness?  This perfecting expresses the confirmation’s firmness, unchangeableness, and fixity in good.  But there is no sanctification without the Spirit.  The powers of the heavens are not holy by nature; were it so there would in this respect be no difference between them and the Holy Spirit.  It is in proportion to their relative excellence that they have their meed of holiness from the Spirit.  The branding-iron is conceived of together with the fire; and yet the material and the fire are distinct.  Thus too in the case of the heavenly powers; their substance is, peradventure, an aerial spirit, or an immaterial fire, as it is written, “Who maketh his angels spirits and his ministers a flame of fire;”^[12] wherefore they exist in space and become visible, and appear in their proper bodily form to them that are worthy.  But their sanctification, being external to their substance, superinduces their perfection through the communion of the Spirit.  They keep their rank by their abiding in the good and true, and while they retain their freedom of will, never fall away from their patient attendance on Him who is truly good.  It results that, if by your argument you do away with the Spirit, the hosts of the angels are disbanded, the dominions of archangels are destroyed, all is thrown into confusion, and their life loses law, order, and distinctness.  For how are angels to cry “Glory to God in the highest”^[13] without being empowered by the Spirit?  For “No man can say that Jesus is the Lord but by the Holy Ghost, and no man speaking by the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed;”^[14] as might be said by wicked and hostile spirits, whose fall establishes our statement of the freedom of the will of the invisible powers; being, as they are, in a condition of equipoise between virtue and vice, and on this account needing the succour of the Spirit.  I indeed maintain that even Gabriel^[15] in no other way foretells events to come than by the foreknowledge of the Spirit, by reason of the fact that one of the boons distributed by the Spirit is prophecy.  And whence did he who was ordained to announce the mysteries of the vision to the Man of Desires^[16] derive the wisdom whereby he was enabled to teach hidden things, if not from the Holy Spirit?  The revelation of mysteries is indeed the peculiar function of the Spirit, as it is written, “God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit.”^[17]  And how could “thrones, dominions, principalities and powers”^[18] live their blessed life, did they not “behold the face of the Father which is in heaven”?^[19]  But to behold it is impossible without the Spirit!  Just as at night, if you withdraw the light from the house, the eyes fall blind and their faculties become inactive, and the worth of objects cannot be discerned, and gold is trodden on in ignorance as though it were iron, so in the order of the intellectual world it is impossible for the high life of Law to abide without the Spirit.  For it so to abide were as likely as that an army should maintain its discipline in the absence of its commander, or a chorus its harmony without the guidance of the Coryphæus.  How could the Seraphim cry “Holy, Holy, Holy,”^[20] were they not taught by the Spirit how often true religion requires them to lift their voice in this ascription of glory?  Do “all His angels” and “all His hosts”^[21] praise God?  It is through the co-operation of the Spirit.  Do “thousand thousand” of angels stand before Him, and “ten thousand times ten thousand” ministering spirits?^[22]  They are blamelessly doing their proper work by the power of the Spirit.  All the glorious and unspeakable harmony^[23] of the highest heavens both in the service of God, and in the mutual concord of the celestial powers, can therefore only be preserved by the direction of the Spirit.  Thus with those beings who are not gradually perfected by increase and advance,^[24] but are perfect from the moment of the creation, there is in creation the presence of the Holy Spirit, who confers on them the grace that flows from Him for the completion and perfection of their essence.^[25]

39.  But when we speak of the dispensations made for man by our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ,^[26] who will gainsay their having been accomplished through the grace of the Spirit?  Whether you wish to examine ancient evidence;—the blessings of the patriarchs, the succour given through the legislation, the types, the prophecies, the valorous feats in war, the signs wrought through just men;—or on the other hand the things done in the dispensation of the coming of our Lord in the flesh;—all is through the Spirit.  In the first place He was made an unction, and being inseparably present was with the very flesh of the Lord, according to that which is written, “Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending and remaining on Him, the same is”^[27] “my beloved Son;”^[28] and “Jesus of Nazareth” whom “God anointed with the Holy Ghost.”^[29]  After this every operation was wrought with the co-operation of the Spirit.  He was present when the Lord was being tempted by the devil; for, it is said, “Jesus was led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted.”^[30]  He was inseparably with Him while working His wonderful works;^[31] for, it is said, “If I by the Spirit of God cast out devils.”^[32]  And He did not leave Him when He had risen from the dead; for when renewing man, and, by breathing on the face of the disciples,^[33] restoring the grace, that came of the inbreathing of God, which man had lost, what did the Lord say?  “Receive ye the Holy Ghost:  whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever ye retain, they are retained.”^[34]  And is it not plain and incontestable that the ordering of the Church is effected through the Spirit?  For He gave, it is said, “in the church, first Apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers, after that miracles, then gifts of healing, helps, governments, diversities of tongues,”^[35] for this order is ordained in accordance with the division of the gifts that are of the Spirit.^[36]

40.  Moreover by any one who carefully uses his reason it will be found that even at the moment of the expected appearance of the Lord from heaven the Holy Spirit will not, as some suppose, have no functions to discharge:  on the contrary, even in the day of His revelation, in which the blessed and only potentate^[37] will judge the world in righteousness,^[38] the Holy Spirit will be present with Him.  For who is so ignorant of the good things prepared by God for them that are worthy, as not to know that the crown of the righteous is the grace of the Spirit, bestowed in more abundant and perfect measure in that day, when spiritual glory shall be distributed to each in proportion as he shall have nobly played the man?  For among the glories of the saints are “many mansions” in the Father’s house,^[39] that is differences of dignities:  for as “star differeth from star in glory, so also is the resurrection of the dead.”^[40]  They, then, that were sealed by the Spirit unto the day of redemption,^[41] and preserve pure and undiminished the first fruits which they received of the Spirit, are they that shall hear the words “well done thou good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things.”^[42]  In like manner they which have grieved the Holy Spirit by the wickedness of their ways, or have not wrought for Him that gave to them, shall be deprived of what they have received, their grace being transferred to others; or, according to one of the evangelists, they shall even be wholly cut asunder,^[43]—the cutting asunder meaning complete separation from the Spirit.  The body is not divided, part being delivered to chastisement, and part let off; for when a whole has sinned it were like the old fables, and unworthy of a righteous judge, for only the half to suffer chastisement.  Nor is the soul cut in two,—that soul the whole of which possesses the sinful affection throughout, and works the wickedness in co-operation with the body.  The cutting asunder, as I have observed, is the separation for aye of the soul from the Spirit.  For now, although the Spirit does not suffer admixture with the unworthy, He nevertheless does seem in a manner to be present with them that have once been sealed, awaiting the salvation which follows on their conversion; but then He will be wholly cut off from the soul that has defiled His grace.  For this reason “In Hell there is none that maketh confession; in death none that remembereth God,”^[44] because the succour of the Spirit is no longer present.  How then is it possible to conceive that the judgment is accomplished without the Holy Spirit, wherein the word points out that He is Himself the prize^[45] of the righteous, when instead of the earnest^[46] is given that which is perfect, and the first condemnation of sinners, when they are deprived of that which they seem to have?  But the greatest proof of the conjunction of the Spirit with the Father and the Son is that He is said to have the same relation to God which the spirit in us has to each of us.  “For what man” it is said, “knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man but the Spirit of God.”^[47]

On this point I have said enough.

Footnotes

1. 1 Cor. xiv. 24, 25.
2. Acts v. 9 and 4.  “Thou hast not lied,” said to Ananias, interpolated into the rebuke of Sapphira.
3. 1 Cor. xii. 4, 5, 6.
4. 1 Cor. xii. 11.
5. cf. Col. i. 16.
6. ὑποστάσεις, apparently used here as the equivalent of οὐσίαι, unless the negation only extends to ἀρχικάς.  cf. note on p. 5.
7. Contrast the neuter τὸ ὄν of Pagan philosophy with the ὁ ὤν or ἐγώ εἰμι of Christian revelation.
8. Ps. xxxiii. 6.
9. John i. 1.
10. John xv. 26.
11. τὸν στερεοῦντα τὸ πνεῦμα.  It is to be noticed here that St. Basil uses the masculine and more personal form in apposition with the neuter πνεῦμα, and not the neuter as in the creed of Constantinople, τὸ κύριον καὶ τὸ Ζωοποιὸν τὸ ἐκ τοῦ πατρὸς ἐκπορευόμενον, etc.  There is scriptural authority for the masculine in the “ὅταν δὲ ἔλθῃ ἐκεῖνος, τὸ πνεῦμα τῆς ἀληθείας” of John xvi. 13.  cf. p. 15–17.
12. Ps. xiv. 4.
13. Luke ii. 14.
14. 1 Cor. xii. 3.
15. Luke i. 11.
16. “Man greatly beloved.”  A.V. and R.V. Dan. x. 11.
17. 1 Cor. ii. 10.
18. Col. i. 16.
19. Matt. xviii. 10.
20. Is. vi. 3.
21. Ps. cxlviii. 2.
22. Dan. vii. 10.
23. cf. Job xxxviii. 7, though for first clause the lxx. reads ὅτε ἐγενήθη ἄστρα.  On the Pythagorean theory of the harmony of the spheres vide Arist. De Cœl. ii. 9, 1.
24. προκοπή.  cf. προέκοπτε of the boy Jesus in Luke ii. 52.
25. ὑπόστασις, apparently again used in its earlier identification with οὐσία.
26. Titus ii. 13, R.V.  The A.V. favours the view, opposed to that of the Greek Fathers, that “the great God” means the Father.  cf. Theodoret in this edition, pp. 319 and 321 and notes.
27. John i. 33.
28. Matt. iii. 17.
29. Acts x. 38.
30. Matt. iv. 1.
31. δυνάμεις, rendered “wonderful works” in Matt. vii. 22; “mighty works” in Matt. xi. 20, Mark vi. 14, and Luke x. 13; and “miracles” in Acts ii. 22, xix. 11, and Gal. iii. 5.
32. Matt. xii. 28.
33. Gen. ii. 7, lxx. is ἐνεφύσησεν εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον αὐτοῦ.  “εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον” is thence imported into John xx. 22.  Mr. C.F.H. Johnston notes, “This addition…is found in the Prayer at the Little Entrance in the Liturgy of St. Mark.  Didymus, in his treatise on the Holy Spirit, which we have only in St. Jerome’s Latin Version, twice used ‘insufflans in faciem corum,” §§6, 33.  The text is quoted in this form by Epiphanius Adv. Hær. lxxiv. 13, and by St. Aug. De Trin. iv. 20.”  To these instances may be added Athan. Ep. i. § 8, and the versions of Upper and Lower Egypt, the Thebaic, known as the Sahidic, and the Memphitic, or Coptic, both ascribed to the 3rd century.
34. John xx. 22, 23.
35. 1 Cor. xii. 28.
36. cf. 1 Cor. xii. 11.
37. 1 Tim. vi. 15.
38. Acts xvii. 31.
39. παρὰ τῷ πατρί, (=chez le Père,) with little or no change of meaning, for ἐν τῇ οἰκί& 139· τοῦ πατρός μου.  John xiv. 2.
40. 1 Cor. xv. 41, 42.
41. cf. Eph. iv. 30.
42. Matt. xxv. 21.
43. Matt. xxiv. 51.
44. Ps. vi. 5, lxx.  ὅτι οὐκ ἔστιν ἐν τῷ θανάτῳ ὁ μνημονεύων σου, ἐν δὲ τῷ ἅδῃ τίς ἐξομολογήσεται σοι; Vulg. “In inferno autem quis confitebitur tibi?”
45. Phil. iii. 14.
46. 2 Cor. i. 22, v. 5.
47. 1 Cor. ii. 11.