Works 7 part 9/12

For neither does a member become a member of Christ, and a temple of God, according to the apostle Paul, except him whom the Holy Spirit has both chosen and sanctified, and, as God, by His own power has dwelt in him whom He Himself has chosen. The Arians say that after the setting of the world the kingdom of the Son of God is to be ended. I believe that the man taken up into heaven, united out of the Virgin Mary, is God, whom I confess also to sit at the right hand of the Father, to whom all power in heaven and on earth is given. I confess also that He will judge the living and the dead, whose kingdom I confess is never to be ended, the prophet Daniel saying: 'I beheld in the vision of the night;'

'And behold, one like the Son of Man was coming with the clouds of heaven, and he came even unto the Ancient of Days, and they presented him before him; and he gave him power, and honour, and a kingdom: and all peoples, tribes, and tongues shall serve him: his power is an everlasting power, which shall not be taken away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed' (Dan. VII, 13). The prophet says, of course, that the Son of Man received power, and honour, and a kingdom. But that these things were spoken truly of the Son of Man, that is, of the assumed manhood, the Lord himself declares more plainly in the Gospel, saying: 'You shall see,' he says, 'heaven opened, and the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of God' (Matth. XXVI, 64). And again:

'You shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds, with great glory and majesty' (Marc. XIII, 26). Likewise the angels also said to the apostles: 'This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, shall so come, in like manner as you have seen him going into heaven' (Act. I, 11). Therefore I believe that to the Son of Man, assumed from the Virgin Mary, all power in heaven and on earth was given, which before he was assumed by God the Word he did not have. For God the Word, and God the Son, who is the wisdom, virtue, power, and will of the Father, always had and has all the Father's power, as he himself says: 'All things whatsoever the Father has are mine' (Joan. XVI, 15). And 'Whatsoever the Father does, these same things likewise the Son also does' (Joan. V, 19).

And 'As the Father raises up the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will' (Ibid., 21). I believe Christ to be God, the true Son of God, and therefore I am a Christian. I confess true God and true man, who was born of the Virgin Mary, as the Apostle says: 'God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself' (II Cor. V, 19). I believe the same Jesus Christ to be perfect God and perfect man, as the Apostle proclaims: 'According to Christ, in whom dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily' (Col. II, 9). And 'Whose are the fathers, and from whom is Christ, who is over all, God blessed' (Rom. IX, 5).

I believe in one image of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, we who were created after one image of the Godhead, as God said: 'Let us make man, not after our images, but after our image and likeness' (Gen. I, 26). I believe that there always was and is one name of the Godhead in the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit: for we are baptized not in many names, but in the one name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit according to the Lord's precept, and so are made Christians. This is the catholic, this the true, this the perfect faith; this is the one and full baptism, by which, according to the Lord's precept as has been said, we are baptized, and there is one belief in the faith, without any diminution of any person:

and likewise one belief is presented in the Trinity. It must therefore be required of those who raise a contrary question against this singular faith, saying that the Son was not begotten of the substance of God the Father, but at a later time, alien to the substance of the divine Father, lesser and inferior in deity, and they even say that he is a creature. They also say that the Holy Spirit was created by a creature, that is, by the Son, so that in their view even the Father himself becomes lesser; for they assert blasphemously that his wisdom, Word, virtue, and his Holy Spirit are a creature. They must therefore be asked whether they believe the Son of God to have advanced in age, or in dignity, by the passing of time?

Or whether, as he was begotten of the Father, or, as they themselves say, created, so he remains? If they say it is so, and that he never advanced, nor can advance, it must be required of them concerning whom it is read written in the Gospel: 'And the child grew, and waxed strong, full of wisdom, and the grace of God was in him' (Luc. II, 40). This we most plainly confess of the man who was assumed by God the Word: who, nourished with milk, grew, came to maturity, and advanced even to the perfect age. The man assumed by Christ Jesus is wholly full of wisdom; which wisdom is the Son of God the Father: for that wisdom itself built for itself a temple of a human body in the Virgin Mary, as Solomon says: 'Wisdom has built herself a house' (Prov.

IX, 1). Therefore if he answers, or confesses, that it was said of the man who was assumed, he has thought catholically: for he who builds the house is the Lord; but that which is built and created is a servant: thus the house, which is man, grows and is built, but God, who is always perfect, does not grow. It remains therefore that he confess the Word, the Son of God, to be perfect from the perfect Father, begotten, and wholly from the whole, full also from the full: for it is quite contrary to the Christian faith that, because the man grew, God should be said to be always imperfect, who never advanced; but is always lesser, according to the blasphemy of the perverse teachers.

Surely, after so many years' course, let them believe that he can at some time be made equal to the Father, since it is read of him: 'He grew and advanced' (Luc. II, 40, 51). For of the Father it is nowhere read that he advances, grows, or grows old: therefore, since the Father does not grow nor grow old, but remains in the proper power of his own deity, this one of whom it is read that he grows and advances ought already to have arrived at equality with the Father. But these human comparisons do not suit the divine substance: because the perfect God the Father begot a perfect Son, and it must never be believed that the virtue and wisdom of God was imperfect or lesser: for whoever presumes to think thus will not do so without detriment to his own salvation.

It must therefore be held and confessed truly that the man grew and advanced into God, that is, into the Son of God. The Evangelist says that 'to those who received him, he gave power to become sons of God' (Joan. I, 12). And how did the Lord's manhood and the form of a servant not advance into God? But God the Word, the virtue and wisdom of the Father, was always perfect and equal to the begetter in the substance of the Godhead, as the Apostle says: 'Who, when he was established in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God' (Philip. II, 6). He therefore who in the form of God was equal to God the Father, emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, as the same apostle proclaims;

that is, of his own will, not by compulsion, he bowed himself down to take up the form of a servant, so that the worthless or inferior form might grow and advance into a better substance, through him who deigned to assume it, not so that the divine substance or power should be changed or reduced into the state of a servant; the Apostle saying of the changing of our form into a better state: 'That this mortal body might put on immortality' (I Cor. XV, 54). And 'As in Adam all die, so in Christ all shall be made alive' (I Cor. XV, 22). And again: 'But we, brethren, have been called unto liberty' (Gal. V, 13).

Therefore, if through the grace of Christ we have been called, as has been said, into a better state, that is, into liberty through the faith which is in Christ, what Christian, or what man of sound mind, would dare to say that his liberator was changed into a worse state or condition? So that the divine substance, which is always immutable, should be turned into a lowly and human substance, and from God become flesh, from perfect become inferior, from equal become lesser, from Lord become servant, from creator become creature, and the omnipotent incur the injury of impossibility: and that he who in the substance of his Godhead was impassible should become passible, and the immortal succumb to death?

Since all these things are to be believed by faith in the one person of Christ, according to the Apostle's preaching and Christian doctrine, as he says: 'God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself' (II Cor. V, 19). And again, he says, 'according to Christ, in whom dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily' (Col. II, 9). Therefore God assumed man, the Lord a servant, the creator a creature, the maker a thing made, the omnipotent an inferior, the invisible a visible, the unfailing a wearied, the immortal a mortal, the impassible a passible, the immutable a mutable nature; nor was God changed into human flesh or substance. He was impassible, but in himself he glorified the nature which he assumed:

but the human, mortal, and weak flesh and nature, as has been said, advanced into divine glory, the Lord himself saying in the Gospel concerning the Son of Man assumed by him: 'Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him' (Joan. XIII, 31). If God is glorified in him, both God glorified him in himself, and forthwith glorified him. Receive, I pray, a few testimonies from the divine Scriptures, whoever you are who wish to be a perfect Christian, and to follow the true and entire reason, leaving aside the empty babblings and superfluous questions of those who have not only themselves fallen erring from the faith of Christ, but, as the Apostle says, also lead others into error.

For the fact that Christ is born in time at Bethlehem, that he is laid in a manger, that he is wrapped in swaddling clothes, that he is nursed, that he grows, that he matures, that he is carried away fleeing into Egypt, that he is subject to his parents, that he is tempted by the devil, that he hungers, that he thirsts, that he eats and drinks, that he sleeps, that he is wearied, that he weeps, that as though not knowing he seeks the tomb of Lazarus, that he says as though ignorant of the day of judgment, that he is glorified by the testimony of the Father, that he comes sorrowful and trembling to the passion, that he is struck with blows, that he is judged by Pilate, that he is scourged, that he is crucified, that he is given vinegar mingled with gall to drink, that a wound is driven into his side with a lance, that he dies, that he is taken down from the wood, that he is buried, that on the third day he rises alive from the dead, that after the resurrection he receives power over all things, that as though ignorant he inquires of the two walking on the way what things had been done in Jerusalem, that he questions Peter as though not knowing whether he was loved by him more than by the other disciples:

'Simon,' he says, 'Peter, do you love me more than these?' (Joan. XXI, 15). Yet the apostolic confession declared that he knew all things, even hidden things. How then does he who calls himself a Christian not perceive that these things either belong to, or are to be believed to belong to, the human substance and the form of a servant, not to the divine majesty and power? For life never dies, but the man dies. Nor can God the Word be ignorant of anything, to whose eyes all things are bare and open, as the Apostle says:

'For the word of God is living, and effectual, and more piercing than any two-edged sword, and reaching even to the division of the soul and the spirit, of the joints also and the marrow, and a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart, and there is no creature invisible in his sight: but all things are bare and open to his eyes' (Hebr. IV, 12). God therefore is not a creature, but the man is: God, who is life, is not buried, but the flesh: nor does God, who is wholly everywhere, and above all, rise from the depths, but the man rises into God. For that he is scourged and judged by Pilate, is man. But that he himself will come to judge the world, is God and man.

For it is certain that the one who is sorrowful and trembling is man, not God, who is immutable and unchangeable. But as for his not knowing the day, and not knowing the place — is it to be believed that he who made the days, and the hours, and the years, and the seasons, could be ignorant of anything? But what the man does not know, God nevertheless does not fail to know, who is before the ages, through whom all things were made. For to suppose of the wisdom of God that it could be ignorant of anything is a matter of the gravest peril. He who weeps and is wearied is certainly man, not God the Word, who is the virtue of the Father: for it is unlawful to say that the virtue of God is wearied. Do you think it is man who hungers and thirsts, or God who gives life to the world, the bread who came down from heaven, who also gives food to all flesh?

But neither does life hunger, nor can the fountain thirst: he is indeed tempted by the devil as man, but as God he is adored by the angels, who also minister to him, of whom it is written: 'Who makes his angels spirits, and his ministers a burning fire' (Psal. CIII, 4). All these things therefore, as has been said, must necessarily be referred to the servile, mortal, and passible nature, which was assumed by God the Word. For all the things which are spoken lowly, he took upon himself and endured for us; as the Apostle also teaches: 'For though he was rich, he became poor, that through his poverty we might be rich' (II Cor. VIII, 9). And again: 'Who, when he was in the form of God, equal to God, emptied himself, taking the form of a servant' (Philip. II, 6).

Thus also his prophet, foretelling his passion in the flesh, says: 'By his wound we are healed' (Isai. LIII, 5). When therefore you hear lowly things, whoever you are, O man, concerning Christ, do not judge them to be spoken of the divine height; when you read injurious things, believe them according to the lowly form, not according to the divine lordship: but when you read impossible things, take them to belong to human frailty, not to divine power. Nor ought you to call down the divine height to the lowly condition: nor strive to bring the divine power and majesty down to lower things, but rather raise the things that belong to our infirmity and frail nature up to that virtue, as the Lord himself says: 'When I shall be lifted up from the earth, I will draw all things to myself' (Joan. XII, 32).

He indeed exalts our nature into himself through the cross by its fellowship with him, but does not bow down his divine power into ours by union with it. For so in another place he says: 'For the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost' (Luc. XIX, 10), not to lose that which he always was, as the blessed evangelist John says: 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; the same was in the beginning with God; all things were made by him' (Joan. I, 1).

Therefore, according to the doctrine of the Lord himself, and the preaching of the Apostle, the property of each nature being preserved in the one person of Christ, that is, of God and man, the perfect God, who glorifies, must be believed, worshipped, and adored in the perfect man who is glorified, and God the Son of God, in whom dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, in whose fullness is the Father. For as the Son is in the glory of the Father, according to the doctrine of the blessed Apostle, so the Father is in the fullness of the Son, as he says: 'I am in the Father, and the Father in me' (Joan. XIV, 10). And again: 'But the Father abiding in me, he does the works' (Ibid.). Christ the Son must therefore be served, because he is both perfect God and true Son:

and he who faithfully serves the Son, serves the Father, and the Holy Spirit, who is in him. And he who adores the Father, in him adores the Son, and the Holy Spirit: because in the Father is the Son, and the Holy Spirit who proceeds from God the Father; the Lord himself saying: 'I am in the Father, and the Father in me' (Ibid.). Of the Holy Spirit also he says: 'But the Spirit, the Paraclete, who proceeds from my Father' (Joan. XV, 26). And when one adores the Son, in him he adores the Father, and the Holy Spirit, because in him is the Father, as he says: 'He who sees me, sees also my Father' (Joan. XIV, 9). And again: 'But the Father abiding in me, he does the works' (Joan. XIV, 10). But of the Holy Spirit he thus says:

'He shall glorify me, because he shall receive of mine, and shall announce it to you' (Joan. XVI, 14). And 'All things whatsoever the Father has are mine. Therefore I said to you, that he shall receive of mine' (Joan. XVI, 15). The Spirit, then, of the Father is the Spirit of the Son, as the Apostle says: 'And because you are sons of God, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into your hearts' (Gal. IV, 6). And again: 'But if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his' (Rom. VIII, 9). And again: 'For I know that this shall fall out to me unto salvation, through your prayer, and the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ' (Philip. I, 19). In the Gospel also the Lord himself says: 'The Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name' (Joan. XIV, 26).

And in the Acts of the Apostles it is thus read: 'Now when they had passed through Phrygia and Galatia, they were forbidden by the Holy Spirit to preach the word in Asia. And when they were come into Mesopotamia, they attempted to go into Bithynia, and the Spirit of Jesus did not permit them' (Act. XVI, 6). By most manifest testimonies, therefore, it is proved that the Holy Spirit, the Spirit the Paraclete, the Spirit who proceeds from the Father, is the Spirit of the Son, the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of Jesus. For the whole Trinity, inseparably in one substance, Godhead, and power, is to be adored, worshipped, proclaimed, and feared.

All Christians must therefore flee and beware, lest, according to the error of unskilled men (which the Apostle notes), erring concerning the faith, they be led astray. 'Erring,' he says, 'and leading into error' (II Tim. III, 13); that is, those who would persuade men to believe that in the holy and undivided Trinity there is something created, or inferior, or later. For whatever is created cannot be God: what is inferior is not perfect: what is later lacks perpetuity: and accordingly in these grades there can be nothing divine. For the blessed Apostle, the chosen vessel, condemns such teachers, or those who follow their doctrine, writing thus to the Romans: 'His eternal power also and Godhead:

so that they are inexcusable: because when they had known God, they glorified him not as God, neither gave thanks: but became vain in their thoughts, and their foolish heart was darkened. For professing themselves to be wise, they became fools: and they changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of the image of corruptible man' (Rom. I, 20, 21, 22, 23). And again it follows, saying: 'Who changed the truth of God into a lie: and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever and ever' (Ibid., 25). Concerning the Trinity, and the Holy Spirit. TO THEOPHILUS. To those who profess that the Son of God is created, we shall by no means give an answer concerning the Holy Spirit.

For just as they have dared to say that the Son, who was begotten impassibly of the substance of God, is created, so they likewise say similar things of the Holy Spirit, though they will surely have to do penance. But to those who in the meantime think rightly concerning the Son, we shall also answer concerning the Holy Spirit. For it is to be hoped that those who have once begun to turn from irreligion to religion may come to perfect gain. And this comes from the sacred divine Scriptures, and not from human understandings. We shall therefore take pains to furnish a reasoning of this kind. Tell us, you marvellous men, where in the divine Scriptures you have read that the Holy Spirit is created? 'We have heard John,' they say, 'saying in the Gospel:

All things were made by him, and without him was made nothing' (Joan. I, 3). To whom we say: If then you also hear David in the one hundred and eighteenth psalm saying to God by the Holy Spirit, that 'all things serve you' (Psal. CXVIII, 91), you will surely say that even the Holy Spirit is a servant; who is not a servant, but free, and has set the creature free, and advanced it into the adoption of sons to God. Or have you not heard Paul writing to the Romans: 'You have not received the spirit of bondage again unto fear; but you have received the spirit of the adoption of sons, in which we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit himself bears witness to our spirit, that we are sons of God' (Rom. VIII, 15). And again:

'For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has freed me from the law of sin and death' (Ibid., 2). But if the Holy Spirit is not a servant, as the Scriptures have proved, and it is written, 'Because all things serve you' (Psal. CXVIII, 91), then the fact that all things were made by the Son does not show that the Holy Spirit was created. For it is not John who says: 'All things were made by the Son, and without him was made nothing' (Joan. I, 3). For he was one of those who heard the Saviour saying: 'For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father, who speaks in you' (Matth. X, 20). As Peter also says, writing: 'Which things are now announced to you by those who have preached the gospel to you, the Holy Spirit being sent from heaven.'

Therefore, if it is the Holy Spirit who says: 'All things were made by the Son, and without him was made nothing' (Joan. I, 3), it would indeed have behoved him, if he were created, to say: 'All things were made by him, and I too was made by him, and without him was made nothing,' as is the custom of the saints. So Paul indeed writes most carefully of himself and of all the saints: 'But to us there is one God the Father, of whom are all things, and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him' (I Cor. VIII, 6). But since the Holy Spirit is not of the universality, but of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit said that all the things which are after the Trinity were created by the Son.

And the most blessed Paul is my witness in the Holy Spirit, that all things were made by the Son, professing it in his Epistle written to the Colossians: 'For in the Son himself were created all things that are in heaven, and that are on earth, whether visible or invisible, whether thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers; all things were created by him, and in him, and he is before all' (Col. I, 16). He did not say, 'or the Holy Spirit.' The Psalmist also, in the one hundred and forty-eighth psalm, by the same Holy Spirit commanding all creation to praise God, and saying: 'Praise the Lord from the heavens, praise him in the heights. Praise him, all his angels, praise him, all his hosts.'

'Praise him, sun and moon, praise him, all you stars and light. Praise him, you heavens of heavens, and let the waters that are above the heavens praise the name of the Lord' (Psal. CXLVIII, 1), etc. — he judged it unworthy to number the Holy Spirit among these, and to say: 'Let the Holy Spirit praise him': because the Spirit belongs to those who are praised, and not to those who praise (as we shall prove shortly after from the Scriptures), and to those who give life, and is not to be given life, since he is life; as Paul says in the second Epistle to the Corinthians: 'But our sufficiency is from God, who has also made us fit ministers of the New Testament, not of the letter, but of the Spirit: for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life' (II Cor. III, 5). But to the Romans:

'The body indeed is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of justice' (Rom. VIII, 10). And again: 'But if the Spirit of him who raised up Jesus Christ from the dead dwells in you, he who raised up Jesus Christ from the dead shall also give life to your mortal bodies, because of his Spirit dwelling in you' (Ibid., 11). The three holy martyrs also, Ananias, Azarias, and Misael, placed in the furnace of fire, in the land of the Chaldeans, when God had wondrously turned the heat of the fire into a tempered coolness, exhorting all creation to praise God with them, thus begin: 'Bless the Lord, all you works of the Lord, praise and exalt him above all for ever.'

'Bless the Lord, you heavens, sing a hymn and exalt him above all for ever. Bless the Lord, you angels, sing a hymn, and exalt him above all for ever. Bless the Lord, you waters that are above the heavens; sing a hymn, and exalt him above all for ever. Bless the Lord, all you hosts of the Lord, sing a hymn, and exalt him above all for ever. Bless the Lord, sun and moon, sing a hymn, and exalt him above all for ever' (Dan. III, 57-62). And in what follows, urging themselves to this: 'Bless the Lord, Ananias, Azarias, and Misael, praise and exalt him above all for ever' (Ibid., 88). And exhorting every creature to bless the Lord with them, they do not say: 'Let the Holy Spirit also bless the Lord.'

Moreover, the Seraphim were seen by Isaiah standing and praising; and the Cherubim by Ezekiel beneath the glory of the God of Israel. Since therefore the saints, faithfully and most evidently, did not number the Holy Spirit among the things made by the Son, but everywhere the divine Scriptures have professed him together with the Father and the Son — whom these men do not fear to subtract from the Father and the Son, and boldly to number with the universality. But Paul says to the Churches of God: 'Grace to you and peace from God the Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ' (Rom. I, 7, and in other Epistles of St. Paul), and he does not say, 'and the Holy Spirit.' And writing to the Thessalonians he says: 'Now may God himself the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, direct our way to you' (I Thess. III, 11);