What forgetfulness of hope is it, to esteem Christ weak and lesser and contemptible, who conferred upon us fortitude and greatness and glory according to the will of His Father? Believe me: the honour of the Son is the dignity of the Father; as much as you offer to the only-begotten, so much the more will you amplify the glory of the Father. The good Father does not envy the Son His glory; for all the glory of the Son runs back to the Father. This is the Catholic sense, this the devotion of the faithful, this the zeal of the saints. According to these things they understand all the sayings and deeds of the Saviour, and understanding, they speak of them. Nor are they at all hindered in this devotion by those things which seem to show the Lord's will: as, for instance, The Father is greater than I (Joan. XIV, 28);
and, I came not to do my own will (Joan. VI, 38); and, The Son can do nothing of Himself (Joan. V, 19); and many other things of this kind: all of which do not weaken the Son, nor depreciate Him, but distinguish Him from the Father. Since these too are set down for this end, that His true divinity may not be denied: I came forth from God the Father (Joan. XVI, 28); and, I am in the Father, and the Father in me (Joan. X, 38); I and the Father are one (Ibid., 30); and, He that sees me, sees also the Father (Joan. XIV, 9); and, As the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom He will (Joan. V, 21). But neither do those things scandalize the faithful soul, in which the Lord is reported to have hungered, slept, wept; and then, sorrowful even unto death, the cross, the Passion, the burial:
since for this end they were written and done, that both examples of endurance might be furnished, and His true incarnation might be known. For in that the Lord is said to have hungered, understand the assumption of a true body. But in that with five loaves and two fishes He feeds five thousand men, recognize His true divinity. Assuredly, when He says: I am the living bread that came down from heaven (Joan. VI, 41), it does not fall within our sense that bread should be believed to hunger. So too is it to be understood of sleep, since as by the sleep of the body the truth is known, so by that which immediately commands the winds and the waves, His true divinity is proved. For in that He shed tears over Lazarus, the suspicion of a phantasm is removed;
for tears are the humours of a true body. But in that He says, Lazarus, come forth (Joan. XI, 43), and immediately he who already stank, the earth opening itself, came forth alive, it is a great token of His divinity. For that also which He says, My soul is sorrowful even unto death (Matth. XXVI, 38), can from this very resurrection of Lazarus be understood, how it ought to be taken: for the divinity did not fear death, but through the sorrow of the soul indicated a human affection. The cross likewise, the Passion, and the burial, are dispelled by one or another saying of the Lord, lest impotence or infirmity be ascribed to Him. When He says to the Jews, Destroy this temple, He surely meant His own body: and I will raise it up in three days (Joan. II, 19).
And again He says, I have power to lay down my life, and I have power to take it up again (Joan. X, 18). If He raises up the temple of His own body, if there is power of laying down the soul through the Passion and of resuming it through the Resurrection, the opinion of infirmity ceases in Christ, where the sublimity of so great power is declared. All things therefore are to be piously understood; all are to be handled with honour; both are to be confessed in the Lord; and the form in which He always was, and the form of a servant, which was assumed for the sake of servants, is to be believed; and the passion according to the flesh, and the impassibility according to the divinity; lest we be judged either impious or ungrateful. For he who denies the Son of God, according to that which He is, to be impassible,
and says that He is unlike God the Father, this man is impious. And he who disdains to confess His sufferings according to the flesh, is ungrateful. Let us therefore glory in the cross of Christ, as Paul was wont to glory: But God forbid, he says, that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ (Gal. VI, 14). Let us confess the unity, that we be not separated: For if we are dead with Him, says the Apostle, we shall also live with Him: if we endure, we shall also reign with Him. If we deny Him, He also will deny us (II Tim. II, 11-12). If we believe not what He Himself says, I and the Father are one, He remains faithful, He cannot deny Himself; because He is in the glory of God the Father; because He lives with the Father; because He reigns with the Father in one and the same dominion.
As the Apostle says, when he was speaking of every unchaste and unclean and covetous person, There shall be, he says, no heir in the kingdom of Christ and of God (Eph. V, 5); he called it one kingdom, as much of Christ as of God; because there is one will of the Father and the Son; one co-operation; one grace, finally, and one and the same governance: as the same teacher of the Gentiles instructs, writing: Grace to you and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. And again: But may God Himself and our Father, and the Lord Jesus, direct our way unto you (I Thess. III, 11). He did not say 'direct' (plural), lest he should introduce a diversity of the Father and the Son, either of will or of power; but he said 'direct' (singular), that he might rather demonstrate the unity.
With this faith, therefore, and in these same words, let us also pray that the one grace of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the one peace, one governance also, may ever both protect and direct us. These few words in place of a little commentary, since you asked that they be written to you, I could not refuse. I am confident that to faithful souls, though they are brief, they will be able to afford the full gladness of God. Here ends the book of Nicetas the bishop On the Rule of Faith. Here begins his book On the Power of the Holy Spirit. It follows that I set forth, according to the capacity of my mind, what I hold concerning the third Person, that is, the Holy Spirit: since I understand that many doubt especially about this.
And although it is rash to dispute about Him who is joined to the Father and the Son in confession, according to the Lord's tradition and our confession in baptism, yet because many hold divergent views, and a reason is required of us, it must of necessity be rendered; nor rendered from anywhere else, save from the fountains of the divine Scriptures. But I am certain that ears pre-occupied and minds weighed down by another opinion can with difficulty be appeased: for a prejudice is pernicious. For this is in human nature, that if something evil has been whispered to us about some good man, and a lying messenger has forestalled the knowledge of the truth, we lay aside with difficulty and toil the opinion once received, even if we are taught by suitable witnesses.
Which I suspect will now happen to many, who, forestalled by the perverse interpretation of teachers, have believed the Holy Spirit to be a creature, and have despised Him as a minister. Let us return therefore to our purpose. In the Nicene treatise it was set down, according to the form of the creed, We believe also in the Holy Spirit. Which surely sufficed for the faithful, because in that assembly there had been a question about the Son, not about the Holy Spirit. And would that, as it had been handed down, they who afterwards introduced the question about the Spirit had simply believed the Holy Spirit together with the Father and the Son! as, for instance, the Macedonians, or those who share in this curiosity. For while these too inquire, of what sort is the Holy Spirit also? Whence is He? How great is He? Was He born? Or was He made?
thus again they rent the people, and truly, according to the Apostle's saying (I Tim. I, 4), introduced an interminable question into the Churches. Ought they not rather to have honoured, together with the Father and the Son, Him whom they had once believed to be holy and holy by birth, than to have associated Him with creatures? But still they bring in questions, and by tortuous interrogations they contend to strip of faith any who are simple. And I think it doubtful to no one that an evil interrogation hurls the one questioned, unless he be wary, unknowingly into blasphemy. And hence it is that Paul forewarns: See that no man rob you through philosophy and vain deceit (Coloss. II, 8). For the rebels question concerning the Holy Spirit: Was the Holy Spirit born, or unborn?
Behold two snares stretched out on the right and on the left: for into whichever part you wish to extend the foot of your reply, you will be caught. If you say, He was born, he will say that He is then no longer the only-begotten Son of God, since another also has been born. If you say, He was not born, he will say to you, then there will also be another unbegotten Father: and now there is no longer one God the Father, of whom are all things. But when he has blocked the way of reply on either side, he now leads you as if by a straight course into the pit, so as to say: If then the Spirit was neither born of the Father, nor unbegotten, it remains that He be called a creature. What shall the faith of the Church do amid these clauses?
Shall it acquiesce in tortuous philosophy, and against the opinion of all the Scriptures, both of the Old and of the New Testament, believe the holy Spirit of God to be created, whom it could nowhere read to be a creature? Be it far. It will do far better, if, spurning human conclusions of this kind and the bonds of interrogations, it turn itself to the words of its Lord. For He Himself in the Gospel says whence the Holy Spirit is; He Himself sets an end to the question, He who has no end. He says therefore to the apostles: I will send you from the Father the Paraclete, the Spirit of truth (Joan. XV, 26). But whence is He? You do not know. If you wish to know, hear Him saying: He proceeds from the Father. What now is fitting, brethren? To hear Christ, or men?
Christ did not say that the Holy Spirit was made, but only this, that He proceeds from the Father. Our adversaries say that He was made and created. I judge it were better to believe these things as Christ the Lord revealed them than as human presumption has contrived them. But if we should ask them from what source they can prove that the Holy Spirit was made, since they have no sure and clear testimony from the Scriptures, they take up that saying in the Gospel: 'All things were made through Him, and without Him was made nothing that was made' (John 1:3). They therefore say: If all things were made through Him, then the Holy Spirit too must be believed to have been made among all things. This is no fit proof, but rather a scrupulous piecing-together. I ask, then:
the mouth of John, who spoke these things — in what Spirit did it speak? Was it not in the Holy Spirit? If then it spoke in the Spirit, it was surely the Spirit Himself who spoke. Now He was speaking of those things which were made through Him, namely all that is established in the multitude and order of creatures; the Holy Spirit was not speaking of Himself, as though He too were to be believed made from nothing among the rest of the creatures. And the blessed apostle Paul is witness to this matter, who enumerates by name those things that were made through Christ. 'In Him,' he says, 'were created all things that are in the heavens and that are on the earth, visible and invisible; whether thrones, or dominations, or principalities, or powers:'
all things were created through Him and in Him' (Col. 1:16). Did he anywhere among all the things heavenly and earthly name the Holy Spirit as well? And surely he would have named Him first of all, had he known Him to be created or made like the rest. But if you insist on understanding so harshly the saying, 'all things were made through Him,' so as not to except the Holy Spirit, I ask what you think of what the prophet David says to God the Lord: 'all things serve Thee' (Ps. 118:91). Do you say that the Holy Spirit serves among all things, or do you call Him a servant, who surely is not a servant but the Lord who frees the creature from servitude? That the Holy Spirit is Lord, Paul writing to the Thessalonians says thus:
'May the Lord direct your hearts in the love of God and the patience of Christ' (2 Thess. 3:5). Without doubt he called the Spirit Lord, of whom the Saviour Himself had also said to the apostles that 'He shall direct you into all truth' (John 16:13). Still more plainly does Paul teach, saying: 'The Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty' (2 Cor. 3:17). And to the Romans: 'You have not received,' he says, 'the spirit of bondage again in fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption' (Rom. 8:15). If He is the Spirit of adoption, and makes men sons of God, how is He set in a servile condition, since a servant cannot lawfully set free? 'Because,' he says, 'you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of His Son into your hearts crying out:'
'Abba, Father.' 'And if a son, then an heir through God; therefore he is now no longer a servant, but a son' (Gal. 4:6-7). If Christ makes me free and a son and heir of the divinity that bears His own name, I shall be impious if I should call Him a servant who makes me free. Moreover the liberty of the Spirit is manifested also in this, that the Apostle says: 'One and the same Spirit works all things, dividing to each severally as He wills' (1 Cor. 12:11). Where a voluntary distribution is proclaimed, no condition of servitude can be seen. For in a creature servitude is to be understood; but in the Trinity, lordship and liberty.
Therefore if that which is said in the psalm, 'all things serve Thee,' pertains to the creatures and not to the Holy Spirit, then this saying also, 'all things were made through Him,' does not enclose the Holy Spirit among all things; for He who proceeds from the Father is nowhere read to have been made from any matter or from nothing. It is enough, then, for the faithful to know this: that the Son indeed is begotten, but the Spirit is proceeding from the Father; and let us use those very words which the divine Scripture willed us to use.
But he who loves life, and knows the Author of life, and has received Him in the shared honour of the three Names in the sacrament of baptism — let him not there seek an end where it is certain there was no beginning, in which he has believed. We believe therefore that the Holy Spirit the Paraclete proceeds from the Father; but that He is not the Son, nor the Son of the Son, as they are wont foolishly to inquire; but the Spirit of truth, whose procession, of what kind or how great it is, is granted to no one to know. For concerning the incomprehensibility of the Spirit Himself the Lord also said in the Gospel: 'For the Spirit breathes where He wills, and you hear His voice, but you know not whence He comes or whither He goes' (John 3:8). This Spirit we know to be in His own true person;
the fountain of sanctification, the light of souls, the distributor of graces. This Spirit sanctifies, is not sanctified; enlightens, is not enlightened; nor can any creature without this Spirit either attain to eternity or be named truly holy. I dare to say: the very temple of the Lord — that is, the body which He took from the Virgin — was assuredly furnished by the Spirit Himself. And the angel Gabriel said to Mary: 'The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee; and therefore that which is born of thee is of the Holy Spirit' (Luke 1:35). Behold, that very temple in which the Word of the Lord dwelt we find sanctified by the Spirit. And although the Lord Himself says of Himself, 'Whom the Father sanctified and sent into this world' (John 10:36);
and again, 'For the Son of God can sanctify both His own body and all things' (John 17:19): yet in order to manifest to the world the power and property of the Holy Spirit, at the time of His baptism He Himself received the Holy Spirit into His own body in the form of a dove, so that truly, according to the Apostle's saying, all the fullness of the Godhead dwelt in Him bodily; from which fullness the apostles afterward receive grace for grace, the Lord Himself breathing upon the face of the apostles and saying: 'Receive the Holy Spirit; if you forgive anyone's sins, they shall be forgiven; if you retain anyone's, they shall be retained' (John 20:22-23). And since it is written, 'Who can forgive sins but God alone?' (Luke 5:21):
behold, the apostles are shown to forgive sins in the power of Christ. Thus it has become known how great is the sanctification of the Spirit, where it is shown applied to the Lord's own body; and known too is the power of the Spirit, when He forgives sins. Let us come, then, to His other powers and works, that it may be recognized what and how great the Holy Spirit is. For just as the Father and the Son are recognized only through their works, as the Lord Himself says, 'or believe My works' (John 10:38), so also the Holy Spirit cannot be more fully known as to what He is except through the marks of His works. Let no one therefore grow anxious when we bring forward headings concerning the power of the Holy Spirit; let no one close his ears when the divine words are recited:
the heavenly testimonies ought to be believed more than earthly fictions. What then is it that we intend? Assuredly, to bring the tradition back to the Lord's own signs. For if we are reborn in the name of the Father and of the Son not without the Holy Spirit, if we are sanctified not without the Holy Spirit, and set out toward eternity, we desire to show that not only in baptism but also in all other works the Holy Spirit has worked and ever works together with the Father and the Son. And yet this alone would suffice: that He is found to cooperate in the sacrament of baptism; for from this the other things too are understood not to have been created without the Spirit.
What sort of thing is it, in truth, that the renewal and repair of man should be believed to come about with the Spirit, but the forming and creation of man to be without the Spirit? Is it doubtful to anyone that the sacrament of baptism is something greater than the very beginnings of the creature? For in baptism eternity is perfected, but in the beginning death reigned from Adam. Let us hear, then, David prophesying of the creation: 'By the word of the Lord the heavens were established, and by the Spirit of His mouth all their power' (Ps. 32:6). This Word is surely to be understood as the Son, according to John's proclamation, 'through whom all things were made.' But the Spirit of His mouth is no other than He who is believed to be holy. You have then in one little verse the Lord, and the word of the Lord, and the Holy Spirit, fulfilling the mystery of the Trinity.
But if some imprudent person should wish to interpret this word, through which the heavens were established, as a command, and should likewise call the Spirit as dissoluble as air, it is necessary that he fall little by little into Judaism; for neither Photinus nor the Jews concede that anything was procreated through the substantive Word and the Spirit. But you will say: Concerning the Word it is indeed manifest that He created; what of the Spirit? Receive another testimony from that most just and most ancient Job. 'The divine Spirit,' he says, 'who made me' (Job 33:4). And David singing says to God: 'Send forth Thy Spirit, and they shall be created, and Thou shalt renew the face of the earth' (Ps. 103:30). If creation and renewal shall be through the Spirit, then without doubt the beginning of creation too was not without the Spirit.
But those who resist the truth are wont here craftily to turn the name and person of the Spirit into the Son, wherever the Spirit is found as creator; because the Son too is Spirit, just as the Father also is Spirit. This surely is not to be conceded to their perverse argumentation, even from this very fact, that David both said 'the word of the Lord,' which is the Son, and no less proclaimed the Spirit, who is holy: the word indeed establishing the heavens, but the Spirit all their power, that is, their adornment. Let them therefore either believe, who read these things; or if they will not believe, why do they even read them? But let no one think that this belief pertains to the reproach of God the Father, since rather it looks to His glory, if He whose Word it is that is Father, or whose Spirit it is that is Author,
is said to have created all things; for He Himself creates all things, since His Word and His Spirit create. After the creation, then, let us show that the Trinity gives life. And indeed concerning the Person the Apostle testifies: 'I charge thee before God, who gives life to all things' (1 Tim. 6:13). And Christ gives life: 'My sheep,' He says, 'hear My voice; and I give them eternal life' (John 10:27). But we are given life through the Spirit, the Lord Himself saying, 'It is the Spirit that gives life' (John 6:63). Likewise Paul to the Romans: 'He who raised up Christ from the dead shall also give life to your mortal bodies, because of His Spirit that dwells in you' (Rom. 8:11).
Behold, one life-giving of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit is openly shown. The foreknowledge of all things is in God, and He is the discerner of hidden things. Although no Christian is ignorant of this, yet it must be shown from the book of Daniel. 'God,' he says, 'who art the discerner of hidden things, who foreseest all things before they come to be' (Dan. 13:42). This same foreknowledge is in Christ, as the evangelist says: 'From the beginning,' he says, 'Jesus knew who they were that should betray Him, or who were the unbelieving' (John 6:64). And that He is the discerner of hidden things is manifested from this, when, making manifest the obscure counsels of the Jews, He said: 'Why do you think evil in your hearts?' (Matt. 9:4)
Likewise God manifested that the Spirit foreknows all things, saying to the apostles: 'When the Spirit of truth shall come, He shall teach you all things, and shall announce to you the things to come' (John 16:13). He who is declared to announce the things to come will not, I think, be doubted to foreknow all things, since He Himself searches the depths of God, and knows all things that are of God. Moreover He also reveals the sacraments of God; Daniel testifies, saying: 'He is the God of gods, and the King of kings, who reveals sacraments' (Dan. 2:47). All things are revealed through Christ, as He Himself says: 'No one knows the Father but the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal Him' (Luke 10:22). But all revelation is in the Spirit; Paul testifies: 'To us,' he says, 'God has revealed it through His Holy Spirit' (1 Cor. 2:10).
Behold, the God who is the revelation of the one Trinity. That He is everywhere present and fills all things, Isaiah says: 'I am,' he says, 'a God at hand, and a God from afar' (Isa. — cf. Jer. 23:23). 'If a man shall be hidden in secret places, shall I not see him? Do I not fill heaven and earth?' (Jer. 23:24) But what of His own presence, who is everywhere? Christ the Saviour also says in the Gospel: 'Wherever two or three shall be gathered in My name, there am I also in the midst of them' (Matt. 18:20). And of His fullness the apostle relates: 'He who descended is the same also who ascended above all the heavens, that He might fill all things' (Eph. 4:10). Concerning the Holy Spirit likewise, that He is present everywhere, the prophet says in the person of the Lord:
'I am among you, and My Spirit stands in the midst of you' (Hag. 2:6). And Solomon says: 'The Spirit of the Lord has filled the whole world' (Wisd. 1:7). God dwells in His saints, according to the promise which He had spoken: 'I will dwell in them and walk among them' (2 Cor. 6:16). But what does the Lord say in the Gospel? 'Abide in Me, and I in you' (John 15:4). And Paul proves this: 'Know you not that Jesus Christ is in you?' (2 Cor. 13:5) But all this is fulfilled in the indwelling of the Spirit, as John records: 'By this,' he says, 'we know that He abides in us, by the Spirit which He has given us' (1 John 3:24). Likewise the same Paul: 'Know you not that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?' (1 Cor. 3:16)
And soon he says: 'Glorify and bear God in your body' (1 Cor. 6:20). Now that the Father reproves, and the Son also reproves, and the Holy Spirit also reproves, must be proved thus. In Psalm 49 it is read: 'But to the sinner God has said: why do you declare My justices?' (Ps. 49:16) And below: 'I will reprove you, and set that before your face' (ibid. 21). David likewise praying says to God: 'O Lord, reprove me not in Thy wrath' (Ps. 6:2). And because He Himself is to come to reprove all flesh (Jude 15). But what does the Saviour say in the Gospel concerning the Holy Spirit? 'When that Paraclete comes,' He says, 'He shall reprove the world of sin, and of justice, and of judgment' (John 16:8). Foreseeing this, David cried out to God:
157:72
QuoiboaSpiritutuo, etafacietuaquofugiam (Ps. CXXXVIII, 7)? QuodsitautemunumjudiciumaaDeoperChristumfuturum, beatusPaulusostendit: cumjudicabit, inquit, DeusoccuItahominumumperJesurnChristumDominumnostrum (Rom. II, 16). EtquiaSpiritussanctusjudicaturusestAntichristum, dicentePaulo, cumdepersonaejusloqueretur: Queminterficiet, ait,DominusJesusSpirituorisui (IIThess. II, 8). SiAntichristusSpirituorisDominiinterficitur, ergoetomniscreaturaSpiritujudicabitur, dicenteSalomone: ContraillosstatuetSpiritusvirtutis, ettamquamturboventidivideteos (Sap. v, 24). ii.
'Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit, and whither shall I flee from Thy face?' (Ps. 138:7) That there is to be one judgment from God through Christ, blessed Paul shows: 'when God shall judge,' he says, 'the hidden things of men through Jesus Christ our Lord' (Rom. 2:16). And that the Holy Spirit is to judge Antichrist, Paul says, when he spoke of his person: 'Whom the Lord Jesus shall slay,' he says, 'with the Spirit of His mouth' (2 Thess. 2:8). If Antichrist is slain by the Spirit of the Lord's mouth, then every creature also shall be judged by the Spirit, as Solomon says: 'Against them the Spirit of power shall take His stand, and like a whirlwind of the wind shall divide them' (Wisd. 5:23).
For that the Father is good, the Son good, and the Holy Spirit good, is thus proved. Of the Father indeed the Only-begotten said in the Gospel: 'None is good but one God' (Matt. 19:17). But of Himself: 'I am the good shepherd' (John 10:11). Of the Spirit likewise David singing says: 'Thy good Spirit shall lead me into the right way' (Ps. 142:10). And as it is said of the Son, 'Right is the word of the Lord' (Ps. 32:4), so also of the Spirit it is said: 'Renew a right spirit within my bowels' (Ps. 50:12). But who could pass over in silence that dignity of the Holy Spirit? For the ancient prophets cried out: 'Thus says the Lord.' This voice Christ at His coming recalled to His own person, saying: 'But I say to you.' And the new prophets, what do they cry?
as Agabus prophesying in the Acts of the Apostles says: 'Thus says the Holy Spirit' (Acts 21:11). And again, the apostle Paul was called and sent by God the Father and by Christ (Gal. 1:1), not by men nor through a man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father. But in the Acts of the Apostles it is read that he was separated and sent by the Holy Spirit. For thus it is written: 'And the Holy Spirit says, Separate to Me Barnabas and Paul for the work to which I have called them' (Acts 13:2). And a little after: 'They therefore, being sent by the Holy Spirit, went down to Seleucia' (ibid. 4). But lest anyone should esteem the Holy Spirit as something contemptible because He is called the Paraclete: the Paraclete is 'advocate' or 'consoler' according to the Latin tongue;