Dialogues on the Holy Trinity 1 part 23/23

A. Entirely so indeed, my friend; and this you will know well also from other considerations.

For one may hear God speaking, and all but pronouncing a formal charge of desertion against those who have worshiped the creation, saying:

'Heaven was astonished at this, and shuddered exceedingly greatly,' says the Lord, 'for my people have done two evil things:'

'they have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and have dug for themselves broken cisterns that cannot hold water.' And we shall find our Lord Jesus Christ addressing the Jews:

'If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.'

'This he said concerning the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were about to receive.' Behold, then, once more clearly and plainly, that the Spirit and the Father — that is, the Son — are called, in equal measure and with equal power, water of life, the shared designation following, I suppose, upon the identity of essence.

For this thing being so by nature, one could also demonstrate it in another way.

For since God is holy by nature, the Spirit is holy essentially, and it is through him and in him that one may partake of the holy God.

B. Not as his own, they say, but as having sanctification imported, and conveying it to creation from God.

A. The Spirit, then, is itself first sanctified, before it instills into creatures a sanctification that is not its own — if indeed we affirm it true that, in every case supposed to be a conveying, whatever passes through it to others must surely, in every way, be something other than itself.

A. Therefore, if the Spirit that is in us is not holy by nature, let them tell us, then, what nature it has been allotted instead.

And if they should be unwilling to assign to it the holy nature, would not the argument, in every way and altogether, run the risk for them of an inescapable blasphemy? B. So it seems.

Yet they say this, that Christ spoke concerning him:

'He will take of what is mine and declare it to you.' They therefore say that the Spirit is a partaker of the Son.

A. By no means; far from it, I think, indeed.

For this would clearly indicate a division of nature into inequality, and would plainly show sanctification in the Spirit as one thing existing in another, different thing.

But he did not say this; rather, that it will use his own words, because of the identity of essence and its being altogether of the same nature, of the same operation, and of the same speech — so that if it should choose to sound forth anything at all to the saints, this would be the word of Christ.

'For he will not speak,' it says, 'anything of himself, but whatever he hears he will speak.'

Just as, then, the Son, being consubstantial with God the Father, and being his Word, speaks his words — for 'he whom God has sent speaks the words of God,' according to the voice of John, since the will of the Son is not other than that in God the Father — in the same manner and reasoning, I think, the Holy Spirit also speaks the things of Christ, being his Spirit, and possessing, by its natural identity with him in every respect, his glory and his very manner of speech.

Holy, therefore, not by participation, nor by an external relation to the Son, but by nature and in truth, is his Spirit.

And just as it is senseless and ignorant to call a man truly a man, and yet to conceive of him as being something else besides this, so it is altogether foolish to call the Spirit 'Holy Spirit' and yet to drive it away from being holy by nature, forcibly thrusting it, out of place, into another nature.

For the name does not signify for him some manner of glory or preeminence, as, for instance, 'Rulership' and 'Throne' and 'Dominion' do in the case of those things which have been brought into being through him;

but it will rather be, as it were, indicative of an essential quality, just as 'Father' is to the Father, and 'Son' is to the Son.

— a mode of otherness, I mean, of essential otherness? Or how would they not be shown to be unsound and shallow-minded, who reckon among creatures him through whom and in whom the nature of divinity is present in us? For is not that which is above creation incapable of being participated in by a creature? Or is the statement not true? B. Very much so.

A. What then? Is not God wise — or rather, wisdom itself? B. And how could this be disputed? A. But by what are the things that are made wise, made wise? Tell me this again.

A. Therefore, if the Spirit makes wise those capable of receiving wisdom, it will surely be, and be understood to be, wisdom.

But this we said is God.

B. What then, they say, if both men and angels are wise, and are able to make others wise as well? A. But they do not, my good sir, instill wisdom into those said to be made wise by them, as God does; rather they make others partakers of their own aptness for learning.

So that, if it should give itself by way of participation and indwelling, it surely makes one wise through itself, and thereby, in turn, fulfills the very activity of the supreme nature in this respect.

And indeed, to Moses the hierophant, God who is able to do all things, said:

'Who gave a mouth to man? And who made him hard of hearing, and deaf, seeing, and blind? Is it not I, the Lord God?' And moreover, elsewhere, through one of the prophets, concerning the flock of the Jews: 'I will speak to this people in other tongues and by other lips, and not even so will they believe.' And in the Acts of the Holy Apostles, this very thing is accomplished by the operation of the Spirit:

'For they began,' it says, 'to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.' And again, when Christ said to his own disciples that they would be brought before governors and kings, and that it would in no way be fitting for them to be afraid:

'Do not be anxious,' he says, 'about what you shall say or what you shall speak.'

'For I will give you a tongue' — and by the operation and nature of the Holy Spirit, the sacred Scripture says, the promise has been fulfilled for the saints.

'For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking in you.' How, then, could that which makes wise as wisdom itself still be a creature, something made, and, being of the highest nature, ranked thereafter second and in a diminished state — even though God is wisdom? And how could that which knows all things and searches out the depths of God be classed together with those who do not know the things that are in God, and receive from us a glory befitting a slave, even though the Savior plainly says: