On the Trinity, Book 2

Believers have always found their satisfaction in the Divine saying that our ears heard read from the Gospel at the moment when the Power that attests it was given to us: Go now and teach all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I command you; and remember, I am with you always, even to the end of the world. What part of the mystery of humanity's salvation is not included in those words? What is forgotten, what is left in darkness? Everything is full, as coming from the Divine fullness; perfect, as coming from the Divine perfection. The passage contains the exact words to be used, the essential acts, the order in which they are done, and an insight into the Divine nature. He told them to baptize in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, that is, confessing the Creator, the Only-begotten, and the Gift. For God the Father, from Whom all things come, is One; and our Lord Jesus Christ the Only-begotten, through Whom all things exist, is One; and the Spirit, God's Gift to us, Who fills all things, is also One. So each has His place according to the powers He holds and the benefits He gives — the One Power from Whom all things come, the One Offspring through Whom all things exist, the One Gift Who gives us perfect hope. Nothing is missing from that supreme Union, which includes, in Father, Son and Holy Spirit, infinity in the Eternal, His Likeness in His exact Image, and our enjoyment of Him in the Gift.

But the errors of heretics and blasphemers force us to deal with unlawful matters, to scale dangerous heights, to speak words that cannot be spoken, to trespass on forbidden ground. Faith ought to fulfill the commandments in silence, worshiping the Father, revering the Son with Him, abounding in the Holy Spirit; but we must strain the poor resources of our language to express thoughts too great for words. The error of others forces us to err ourselves by daring to put into human terms truths that ought to stay hidden in the silent reverence of the heart.

For many have arisen who have given the plain words of Holy Scripture some arbitrary interpretation of their own in place of their true and only sense, and they have done this in defiance of the clear meaning of the words. Heresy lies in the meaning assigned, not in the word written; the guilt belongs to the interpreter, not to the text. Isn't truth indestructible? When we hear the name Father, isn't sonship implied in that Name? The Holy Spirit is mentioned by name; doesn't He have to exist? We can no more separate fatherhood from the Father or sonship from the Son than we can deny that the gift we receive exists in the Holy Spirit. Yet people with twisted minds plunge the whole matter into doubt and difficulty, foolishly reversing the clear meaning of the words and depriving the Father of His fatherhood because they want to strip the Son of His sonship. They take away the fatherhood by claiming that the Son is not a Son by nature; for a son does not share his father's nature when the begetter and the begotten do not have the same properties, and anyone whose being is different from his father's, and unlike it, is no son. Yet in what sense is God a Father (as He is) if He has not begotten in His Son the same substance and nature that are His own?

So, since they cannot change the recorded facts, they bring new principles and theories of human invention to bear on them. Sabellius, for instance, makes the Son an extension of the Father, and makes faith on this point a matter of words rather than of reality, for he makes one and the same Person both Son to Himself and Father. Hebion allows the Son of God no beginning except from Mary, and presents Him not as first God and then man, but as first man and then God; he declares that the Virgin did not receive into herself One Who already existed, Who had been God the Word in the beginning, dwelling with God, but that through the agency of the Word she bore Flesh; in his opinion 'Word' means not the nature of the pre-existent Only-begotten God, but only the sound of a raised voice. Similarly, certain teachers of our own day claim that the Image and Wisdom and Power of God was produced out of nothing, and in time. They do this to save God, regarded as Father of the Son, from being lowered to the Son's level. They are afraid that the Son's birth from Him would deprive Him of His glory, and so they come to God's rescue by calling His Son a creature made out of nothing, so that God may live on in solitary perfection without a Son born of Himself and sharing His nature. No wonder their doctrine of the Holy Spirit is different from ours, when they presume to subject the Giver of that Holy Spirit to creation, and change, and non-existence. In this way they destroy the consistency and completeness of the mystery of the faith. They break up the absolute unity of God by assigning differences of nature where everything is clearly common to Each; they deny the Father by robbing the Son of His true Sonship; they deny the Holy Spirit, blind to the facts that we possess Him and that Christ gave Him. They lead poorly taught souls to ruin by boasting of the logical perfection of their doctrine; they deceive their hearers by emptying the terms of their meaning, even though the Names remain as witnesses to the truth. I pass over the pitfalls of other heresies, Valentinian, Marcionite, Manichee and the rest. From time to time they catch the attention of some foolish souls and prove fatal through the very infection of contact with them; each plague is as destructive as the next once the poison of its teaching has found its way into the hearer's thoughts.

Their treason puts us in the difficult and dangerous position of having to make a definite statement, beyond what Scripture says, on this grave and obscure matter. The Lord said that the nations were to be baptized in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. The words of the faith are clear; the heretics do their utmost to cloud the meaning with doubt. This does not permit us to add to the appointed form, yet we must set a limit to the liberties they take in interpretation. Since their malice, inspired by the devil's cunning, empties the doctrine of its meaning while keeping the Names that convey the truth, we must emphasize the truth that those Names convey. We must proclaim the majesty and functions of Father, Son and Holy Spirit exactly as we find them in the words of Scripture, and so bar the heretics from robbing these Names of their sense of Divine character, and force them, by means of these very Names, to limit their use of terms to their proper meaning. I cannot imagine what kind of mind our opponents have, who distort the truth, darken the light, divide the indivisible, tear apart what is unharmed, dissolve the perfect unity. To them it may seem a small thing to tear up Perfection, to make laws for Omnipotence, to limit Infinity; as for me, the task of answering them fills me with anxiety; my head spins, my mind is stunned, and my very words must be a confession, not that I am weak in speech, but that I am speechless. Yet the desire to take on the task presses itself on me; it means resisting the proud, guiding those who wander, warning the ignorant. But the subject is inexhaustible; I can see no end to my venture of speaking about God in terms more precise than He Himself has used. He has given the Names — Father, Son and Holy Spirit — that tell us about the Divine nature. Words cannot express, feeling cannot embrace, and reason cannot grasp the results of inquiry carried any further; everything is ineffable, unattainable, incomprehensible. The vastness of the theme exhausts language, the splendor of its radiance blinds the eye that gazes on it, and the mind cannot take in its boundless extent. Still, under the necessity laid on us, and praying for pardon from Him Whose attributes these are, we will venture, inquire and speak; and further — it is the only promise we dare to make in so grave a matter — we will accept whatever conclusion He points us to.

It is to the Father that all existence owes its origin. In Christ and through Christ He is the source of all. Unlike everything else, He is self-existent. He does not draw His being from outside, but possesses it from Himself and in Himself. He is infinite, for nothing contains Him and He contains all things; He is eternally unbound by space, for He is limitless; eternally prior to time, for time is His creation. Let your imagination range to what you suppose is God's farthest limit, and you will find Him present there; strain as much as you like, there is always a further horizon toward which to strain. Infinity belongs to Him, just as the power to make such an effort belongs to you. Words will fail you, but His being will not be confined. Or again, turn back the pages of history, and you will find Him always present; even if numbers fail to express how far back in time you have reached, God's eternity is not diminished. Brace your mind to comprehend Him as a whole; He escapes you. God as a whole has left something within your grasp, but this something is inseparably bound up with His entirety. So you have missed the whole, since only a part remains in your hands; no, not even a part, for you are dealing with a whole that you have failed to divide. For a part implies division, a whole is undivided, and God is everywhere and wholly present wherever He is. Reason, then, cannot cope with Him, since no vantage point for contemplating Him can be found outside Himself, and since eternity is eternally His. This is a true statement of the mystery of the unfathomable nature expressed by the Name 'Father:' God invisible, ineffable, infinite. Let us confess by our silence that words cannot describe Him; let our senses admit that they are defeated in the attempt to grasp Him, and reason in the effort to define Him. Yet, as we said, He has in 'Father' a name that indicates His nature; He is Father without qualification. He does not receive the power of fatherhood from an outside source, as men do. He is unbegotten, everlasting, inherently eternal. He is known only to the Son, for no one knows the Father except the Son and the one to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him, nor does anyone know the Son except the Father. Each has perfect and complete knowledge of the Other. Therefore, since no one knows the Father except the Son, let our thoughts about the Father agree with the thoughts of the Son, the only faithful Witness, Who reveals Him to us.

It is easier for me to feel this about the Father than to say it. I am well aware that no words are adequate to describe His attributes. We must feel that He is invisible, incomprehensible, eternal. But saying that He is self-existent and self-originating and self-sustained, that He is invisible and incomprehensible and immortal — all this is an acknowledgment of His glory, a hint of our meaning, a sketch of our thoughts; but speech is powerless to tell us what God is, and words cannot express the reality. You hear that He is self-existent; human reason cannot explain such independence. We can find things that support and things that are supported, but what exists in this way is obviously distinct from what causes it to exist. Again, if you hear that He is self-originating, no case can be found in which the one who gives the gift of life is identical with the life that is given. If you hear that He is immortal, then there is something that does not spring from Him and with which He has, by His very nature, no contact; and indeed death is not the only thing that this word 'immortal' claims is independent of God. If you hear that He is incomprehensible, that is the same as saying that He is non-existent, since contact with Him is impossible. If you say that He is invisible, a being that does not visibly exist cannot be sure of its own existence. So our confession of God fails through the defects of language; the best combination of words we can devise cannot indicate the reality and the greatness of God. Perfect knowledge of God is to know Him in such a way that we are sure we must not be ignorant of Him, yet cannot describe Him. We must believe, must grasp, must worship; and such acts of devotion must take the place of definition.

We have now traded the dangers of a coast without harbors for the storms of the open sea. We can neither safely advance nor safely retreat, yet the way that lies ahead of us has greater hardships than the way that lies behind. The Father is what He is, and we must believe in Him as He is revealed. The mind shrinks in dread from discussing the Son; at every word I tremble for fear of being led into treason. For He is the Offspring of the Unbegotten, One from One, true from true, living from living, perfect from perfect; the Power of Power, the Wisdom of Wisdom, the Glory of Glory, the Likeness of the invisible God, the Image of the Unbegotten Father. Yet in what sense can we conceive that the Only-begotten is the Offspring of the Unbegotten? Again and again the Father cries out from heaven, This is My beloved Son, with Whom I am well pleased. It is no tearing or severing, for He Who begot is without passions, and He Who was born is the Image of the invisible God and bears witness, The Father is in Me and I am in the Father. It is no mere adoption, for He is the true Son of God and cries out, Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father also. Nor did He come into existence in obedience to a command, as created things did, for He is the Only-begotten of the One God; and He has life in Himself, just as He Who begot Him has life, for He says, Just as the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the Son to have life in Himself. Nor does a portion of the Father reside in the Son, for the Son bears witness, Everything that the Father has is Mine, and again, And everything that is Mine is Yours, and what is Yours is Mine, and the Apostle testifies, For in Him all the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily; and by the nature of things a portion cannot possess the whole. He is the perfect Son of the perfect Father, for He Who has all has given all to Him. Yet we must not imagine that the Father did not give because He still possesses, or that He has lost because He gave to the Son.

So the manner of this birth is a secret known only to the Two. If anyone blames his own incapacity for his failure to solve the mystery, despite the certainty that Father and Son stand in those relations to Each Other, he will be still more pained at the ignorance I confess. I, too, am in the dark, yet I ask no questions. I take comfort in the fact that Archangels share my ignorance, that Angels have not heard the explanation, and worlds do not contain it, that no prophet has caught sight of it and no Apostle has asked about it, that the Son Himself has not revealed it. Enough of such pitiful complaints. Whoever you are who search into these mysteries, I do not ask you to resume your exploration of height and breadth and depth; I ask you instead to accept patiently your ignorance of the manner of Divine generation, since you do not know how His creatures come into existence. Answer me this one question: Do your senses give you any evidence that you yourself were begotten? Can you explain the process by which you became a father? I do not ask where you got perception, how you obtained life, where your reason comes from, or what the nature of your senses of smell, touch, sight, hearing is; the fact that we have the use of all these is the evidence that they exist. What I ask is: How do you give them to your children? How do you graft in the senses, give light to the eyes, implant the mind? Tell me, if you can. So you have powers that you do not understand, and you pass on gifts that you cannot comprehend. You are calmly indifferent to the mysteries of your own being, yet irreverently impatient at your ignorance of the mysteries of God's being.

Listen then to the Unbegotten Father, listen to the Only-begotten Son. Hear His words, The Father is greater than I, and I and the Father are One, and Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father also, and The Father is in Me and I am in the Father, and I went out from the Father, and Who is in the bosom of the Father, and Whatever the Father has He has handed over to the Son, and The Son has life in Himself, just as the Father has in Himself. Hear in these words the Son, the Image, the Wisdom, the Power, the Glory of God. Next, notice the Holy Spirit proclaiming, Who will declare His generation? Note the Lord's assurance, No one knows the Son except the Father, nor does anyone know the Father except the Son and the one to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him. Go deep into the mystery, plunge into the darkness that shrouds that birth, where you will be alone with God the Unbegotten and God the Only-begotten. Make your start, continue, persevere. I know that you will not reach the goal, but I shall rejoice at your progress. For whoever devoutly walks an endless road, even if he reaches no end, will profit from his efforts. Reason will fail for lack of words, but when it comes to a halt it will be better for the effort it has made.

The Son draws His life from the Father Who truly has life; the Only begotten from the Unbegotten, Offspring from Parent, Living from Living. Just as the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the Son also to have life in Himself. The Son is perfect from Him Who is perfect, for He is whole from Him Who is whole. This is no division or severance, for Each is in the Other, and the fullness of the Godhead is in the Son. The Incomprehensible is begotten of the Incomprehensible, for no one else knows Them, but Each knows the Other; the Invisible is begotten of the Invisible, for the Son is the Image of the invisible God, and whoever has seen the Son has seen the Father also. There is a distinction, for They are Father and Son; not that Their Divinity differs in kind, for Both are One, God from God, One God Only begotten from One God Unbegotten. They are not two Gods, but One from One; not two Unbegotten, for the Son is born of the Unborn. There is no diversity, for the life of the living God is in the living Christ. This much I have decided to say about the nature of their Divinity, not imagining that I have managed to summarize the faith, but recognizing that the theme is inexhaustible. Then faith, you object, has no service to perform, since there is nothing it can comprehend. Not at all; the proper service of faith is to grasp and confess the truth that it is incapable of comprehending its Object.

Something more remains to be said about the mysterious generation of the Son; or rather, this something more is everything. I tremble, I hesitate, my powers fail, I do not know where to begin. I cannot tell the time of the Son's birth; it would be impious not to be certain of the fact. To whom shall I appeal? Whom shall I call to help me? From what books shall I borrow the terms needed to state so hard a problem? Shall I ransack the philosophy of Greece? No! I have read, Where is the wise man? Where is the inquirer of this world? In this matter, then, the world's philosophers, the wise men of paganism, are silent, for they have rejected the wisdom of God. Shall I turn to the Scribe of the law? He is in darkness, for the Cross of Christ is an offense to him. Should I perhaps tell you to shut your eyes to heresy and pass it by in silence, on the grounds that we show enough reverence to Him Whom we preach if we believe that lepers were cleansed, the deaf heard, the lame ran, the paralyzed stood, the blind (in general) received sight, the man blind from birth was given eyes, demons were routed, the sick recovered, the dead lived. The heretics confess all this, and perish.

Now look and see something no less miraculous than lame men running, blind men seeing, demons fleeing, life from the dead. Standing by my side, to guide me through the difficulties I have set out, is a poor fisherman, ignorant, uneducated, fishing lines in hand, clothes dripping, feet muddy, every inch a sailor. Consider and decide which would be the greater feat: to raise the dead, or to give an untrained mind knowledge of mysteries as deep as those he reveals by saying, In the beginning was the Word. What does this In the beginning was mean? He ranges back across the expanses of time; centuries are left behind, ages are canceled. Fix in your mind whatever date you like for this beginning; you miss the mark, for even then He Whom we are speaking about was. Survey the universe and note carefully what is written about it, In the beginning God made the heavens and the earth. This word beginning fixes the moment of creation; you can assign a date to an event that is explicitly stated to have happened in the beginning. But this fisherman of mine, unschooled and unread, is unhindered by time and undaunted by its immensity; he pierces beyond the beginning. For his was has no limit of time and no starting point; the uncreated Word was in the beginning.

But perhaps we will find that our fisherman is guilty of departing from the terms of the problem he was set to solve. He has set the Word free from the limitations of time; whatever is free lives its own life and owes no obedience. So let us give our closest attention to what follows: And the Word was with God. We find that it is with God that the Word, Which was before the beginning, exists, unbound by time. The Word, Which was, is with God. He Who is absent when we look for His origin in time is present all along with the Creator of time. This time our fisherman has escaped; perhaps he will give way to the difficulties that await him.

For you will argue that a word is the sound of a voice, that it is a naming of things, an utterance of thoughts. This Word was with God, and was in the beginning; the expression of the eternal Thinker's thoughts must be eternal. For now I will give you a brief answer of my own on the fisherman's behalf, until we see what defense he makes for his own simplicity. The nature of a word, then, is that it is first a potentiality and afterward a past event; it exists only while it is being heard. How can we say, In the beginning was the Word, when a word neither exists before nor lives on after a definite point in time? Can we even say that there is a point in time at which a word exists? Not only do the words in a speaker's mouth not exist until they are spoken, and perish the instant they are uttered, but even in the moment of utterance there is a change from the sound that begins a word to the sound that ends it. That is the reply that occurs to me as a bystander. But your opponent the Fisherman has an answer of his own. He will begin by scolding you for not paying attention. Even if your untrained ear failed to catch the first clause, In the beginning was the Word, why complain about the next, And the Word was with God? Was it And the Word was in God that you heard — the pronouncement of some profound philosophy? Or does your provincial dialect make no distinction between in and with? The claim is that the One Who was in the beginning was with Another, not in Another. But I will not argue from the beginning of the sentence; the rest can take care of itself. Now hear the rank and the name of the Word: — And the Word was God. Your argument that the Word is the sound of a voice, the utterance of a thought, collapses. The Word is a reality, not a sound, a Being, not speech, God, not a nonentity.

But I tremble to say it; the audacity staggers me. I hear, And the Word was God — I, who have been taught by the prophets that God is One. To spare me further fears, friend Fisherman, share this great mystery with me more fully. Show that these claims are consistent with the unity of God, that there is no blasphemy in them, no explaining away, no denial of eternity. He continues, He was in the beginning with God. This He was in the beginning removes the limit of time; the word God shows that He is more than a voice; and the fact that He is with God proves that He neither encroaches on Another nor is encroached on, for His identity is not swallowed up in Another's, and He is clearly stated to be present as God with the One Unbegotten God, His One and Only-begotten Son.

We are still waiting, Fisherman, for your full description of the Word. He was in the beginning, someone may say, but perhaps He was not before the beginning. To this, too, I will give a reply on my Fisherman's behalf. The Word could not be other than He was; that was is unconditional and unlimited. But what does the Fisherman say for himself? All things were made through Him. So, since nothing exists apart from Him through Whom the universe came into being, He, the Author of all things, must have an immeasurable existence. For time is a knowable and divisible measure of extension, not in space but in duration. All things are from Him, without exception; so time itself is His creature.

But, my Fisherman, someone will object that you are reckless and extravagant in your language, and that All things were made through Him needs qualification. There is the Unbegotten, made by no one; there is also the Son, begotten of the Unborn Father. This All things is an unguarded statement that admits no exceptions. While we are silent, not daring to answer or trying to think of some reply, you break in with, And without Him nothing was made. You have restored the Author of the Godhead to His place, while proclaiming that He has a Companion. From your statement that nothing was made without Him, I learn that He was not alone. He through Whom the work was done is One; He without Whom it was not done is Another: a distinction is drawn between the Creator and the Companion.

Reverence for the One Unbegotten Creator troubled me, for fear that in your sweeping assertion that all things were made by the Word you had included Him. You have banished my fears with your Without Him nothing was made. Yet this same Without Him nothing was made brings trouble and perplexity. So something was made by that Other; not made, it is true, without Him. If the Other did make anything, even though the Word was present at the making, then it is not true that through Him all things were made. It is one thing to be the Creator's Companion, and quite another to be the Creator Himself. I could find answers of my own to the previous objections; in this case, Fisherman, I can only turn at once to your words, All things were made through Him. And now I understand, for the Apostle has enlightened me: Things visible and things invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers, all are through Him and in Him.

Since, then, all things were made through Him, come to our help and tell us what was made not without Him. What was made in Him is life. What was made in Him was certainly not made without Him; for what was made in Him was also made through Him. All things were created in Him and through Him. They were created in Him, for He was born as God the Creator. Again, nothing that was made in Him was made without Him, because God the Begotten was life, and was born as Life, not made life after His birth; for there are not two elements in Him, one inborn and one conferred afterward. In His case there is no interval between birth and maturity. None of the things created in Him was made without Him, for He is the Life that made their creation possible. Moreover God, the Son of God, became God by virtue of His birth, not after He was born. Born the Living from the Living, the True from the True, the Perfect from the Perfect, He was born in full possession of His powers. He did not need to learn later what His birth was, but was conscious of His Godhead by the very fact that He was born as God from God. I and the Father are One, are the words of the Only-begotten Son of the Unbegotten. It is the voice of the One God proclaiming Himself to be Father and Son; the Father speaking in the Son and the Son in the Father. So too, He who has seen Me has seen the Father too; so too, All that the Father has, He has given to the Son; so too, As the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the Son to have life in Himself; so too, No one knows the Father except the Son, nor the Son except the Father; so too, In Him all the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily.

This Life is the Light of men, the Light that illuminates the darkness. To comfort us for the inability to describe His generation that the prophet speaks of, the Fisherman adds, And the darkness did not comprehend Him. The language of unaided reason was baffled and silenced; the Fisherman who lay on the bosom of the Lord was taught to express the mystery. His language is not the world's language, for He deals with things that are not of the world. Tell us what it is, if there is any teaching you can extract from his words beyond what their plain sense conveys; if you can translate the truth we have drawn out into other terms, make them known everywhere. If there is none — indeed, because there are none — let us accept this teaching of the fisherman with reverence, and recognize in his words the oracles of God. Let us cling in adoration to the true confession of Father and Son, Unbegotten and Only-begotten ineffably, Whose majesty defies all expression and all perception. Let us, like John, lie on the bosom of the Lord Jesus, so that we too may understand and proclaim the mystery.

This faith, and every part of it, is impressed on us by the evidence of the Gospels, by the teaching of the Apostles, and by the futility of the treacherous attacks that heretics make on every side. The foundation stands firm and unshaken in the face of winds and rains and torrents; storms cannot overthrow it, dripping water cannot hollow it out, and floods cannot sweep it away. Its excellence is proved by the failure of countless assaults to damage it. Certain remedies are compounded so as to be of value not merely against a single disease but against all; they are universally effective. So it is with the Catholic faith. It is not a medicine for some particular ailment, but for every ill; no virulence can master it, no numbers defeat it, no complexity baffle it. One and unchanging, it faces and conquers all its enemies. It is marvelous that one form of words should contain a remedy for every disease, a statement of truth to confront every scheme of falsehood. Let heresy gather its forces and every sect come out to battle. Let our answer to their challenge be that there is One Unbegotten God the Father, and One Only-begotten Son of God, perfect Offspring of a perfect Parent; that the Son was begotten with no lessening of the Father or subtraction from His Substance, but that He Who possesses all things begot an all-possessing Son; a Son not emanating or proceeding from the Father, but composed of, and inherent in, the whole Divinity of Him Who is present eternally wherever He is present; One free from time, unlimited in duration, since all things were made by Him, and, indeed, He could not be confined within a limit He Himself created. This is the Catholic and Apostolic Faith that the Gospel has taught us and that we profess.

Let Sabellius, if he dares, confuse Father and Son as two names with one meaning, making them not a Unity but One Person. He will get a prompt answer from the Gospels, not once or twice but again and again, This is My beloved Son, with Whom I am well pleased. He will hear the words, The Father is greater than I, and I go to the Father, and Father, I thank You, and Glorify Me, Father, and You are the Son of the living God. Let Hebion, who allows the Son of God no life before the Virgin's womb and sees in Him the Word only after His life as flesh had begun, try to undermine the faith. We will tell him to read again, Father, glorify Me together with Yourself with the glory that I had with You before the world existed, and In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and All things were made through Him, and He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. Let the preachers whose apostleship is the latest fashion — an apostleship of Antichrist— come forward and pour their mockery and insult on the Son of God. They must hear, I came out from the Father and The Son in the Father's bosom, and I and the Father are One, and I in the Father, and the Father in Me. And finally, if they are angry, as the Jews were, that Christ should claim God as His own Father, making Himself equal with God, they must accept the answer He gave the Jews, Believe My works, that the Father is in Me and I in the Father. So our one immovable foundation, our one blessed rock of faith, is the confession from Peter's mouth, You are the Son of the living God. On it we can base an answer to every objection with which perverted ingenuity or embittered treachery may attack the truth.

In what remains we have what the Father's will appointed. The Virgin, the birth, the Body, then the Cross, the death, the visit to the lower world; these things are our salvation. For the sake of mankind the Son of God was born of the Virgin and of the Holy Spirit. In this process He provided for Himself; by His own power — the power of God — which overshadowed her, He sowed the beginning of His Body and entered on the first stage of His life in the flesh. He did it so that by His Incarnation He might take the fleshly nature to Himself from the Virgin, and that through this mingling a holy Body of all humanity might come into being; so that through the Body He was pleased to assume, all mankind might be hidden in Him, and He in return, through His unseen existence, might be reproduced in all. So the invisible Image of God did not scorn the shame that marks the beginnings of human life. He passed through every stage: conception, birth, wailing, cradle and each successive humiliation.

What worthy return can we make for such great condescension? The One Only-begotten God, ineffably born of God, entered the Virgin's womb and grew and took on the frame of poor humanity. He Who upholds the universe, within Whom and through Whom all things exist, was brought forth by ordinary childbirth; He at Whose voice Archangels and Angels tremble, and heaven and earth and all the elements of this world melt, was heard wailing like a child. The Invisible and Incomprehensible, Whom sight and feeling and touch cannot measure, was wrapped in a cradle. If anyone considers all this unworthy of God, then the less such condescension befits the majesty of God, the greater he must admit his debt for the benefit conferred. He by Whom man was made had nothing to gain by becoming Man; it was our gain that God became incarnate and lived among us, making all flesh His home by taking on Himself the flesh of One. We were raised because He was lowered; His shame was our glory. He, being God, made flesh His dwelling, and we in return are lifted anew from the flesh to God.

But in case fastidious minds are troubled by cradle and wailing, birth and conception, we must give to God the glory that each of these contains, so that we may approach His self-abasement with souls duly filled with His claim to reign, and not forget His majesty in His condescension. So let us note who attended His conception. An Angel speaks to Zacharias; fertility is given to the barren; the priest comes out mute from the place of incense; John bursts into speech while still confined in his mother's womb; an Angel blesses Mary and promises that she, a virgin, will be the mother of the Son of God. Aware of her virginity, she is distressed at this hard thing; the Angel explains to her the mighty working of God, saying, The Holy Spirit will come from above into you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. The Holy Spirit, descending from above, made the Virgin's womb holy, and breathing in it (for The Spirit blows where it wishes ), mingled Himself with the fleshly nature of man, and annexed that foreign domain by force and might. And, in case failure should result from the weakness of the human structure, the power of the Most High overshadowed the Virgin, strengthening her weakness in the likeness of a cloud cast around her, so that the shadow, which was the might of God, might fortify her bodily frame to receive the procreative power of the Spirit. This is the glory of the conception.

And now let us consider the glory that accompanies the birth, the wailing and the cradle. The Angel tells Joseph that the Virgin will bear a Son, and that Son will be named Emmanuel, that is, God with us. The Spirit foretells it through the prophet, the Angel bears witness; He who is born is God with us. The light of a new star shines out for the Magi; a heavenly sign escorts the Lord of heaven. An Angel brings the shepherds the news that Christ the Lord is born, the Savior of the world. A multitude of the heavenly host flocks together to sing the praise of that childbirth; the rejoicing of the Divine company proclaims the fulfillment of the mighty work. Then glory to God in heaven, and peace on earth to men of good will is announced. And now the Magi come and worship Him wrapped in swaddling clothes; after a life devoted to the mystic rites of vain philosophy they kneel before a Baby laid in His cradle. So the Magi stoop to revere the weaknesses of Infancy; its cries are greeted by the heavenly joy of angels; the Spirit Who inspired the prophet, the heralding Angel, the light of the new star, all serve around Him. This is how the Holy Spirit's descent and the overshadowing power of the Most High brought Him to His birth. The inward reality is very different from the outward appearance; the eye sees one thing, the soul another. A virgin gives birth; her child is of God. An Infant wails; angels are heard in praise. There are coarse swaddling clothes; God is being worshiped. The glory of His Majesty is not lost when He takes on the lowliness of flesh.

So it was also during the rest of His life on earth. The whole time He spent in human form was devoted to the works of God. I have no space for details; it is enough to say that in all the varied acts of power and healing He performed, it is plain that He was man by virtue of the flesh He had taken, and God by the evidence of the works He did.

I ought not to be silent about the Holy Spirit, and yet I have no need to speak; still, for the sake of those who are ignorant, I cannot hold back. There is no need to speak, because we are bound to confess Him, since He proceeds from Father and Son. For my part, I think it wrong to discuss the question of His existence. He does exist, since He is given, received and retained; He is joined with Father and Son in our confession of the faith, and cannot be excluded from a true confession of Father and Son; take away a part, and the whole faith is damaged. If anyone asks what meaning we attach to this conclusion, he, as well as we, has read the words of the Apostle, Because you are sons of God, God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father, and Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, in Whom you have been sealed, and again, But we have not received the spirit of this world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things given to us by God, and also But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God is in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him, and further, But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead lives in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies for the sake of His Spirit who lives in you. So since He exists, and is given, and is possessed, and is from God, let those who slander Him take refuge in silence. When they ask, Through Whom does He exist? For what purpose does He exist? What is His nature? We answer that He is the One through Whom all things exist, and from Whom all things come, and that He is the Spirit of God, God's gift to the faithful. If our answer displeases them, their displeasure must also fall on the Apostles and the Prophets, who spoke of Him exactly as we have. And furthermore, the Father and the Son must incur the same displeasure.

The reason, I believe, why certain people remain in ignorance or doubt is that they see this third Name, the Name of the Holy Spirit, often used to signify the Father or the Son. No objection need be raised to this; whether it is the Father or the Son, He is Spirit, and He is holy.

But the words of the Gospel, For God is Spirit, need careful examination of their sense and their purpose. For every saying has a prior cause and an aim, which must be determined by studying the meaning. We must bear this in mind so that we do not, on the strength of the words God is Spirit, deny not only the Name but also the work and the gift of the Holy Spirit. The Lord was speaking with a woman of Samaria, for He had come to be the Redeemer for all mankind. After He had spoken at length about the living water, about her five husbands, and about the man she then had who was not her husband, the woman answered, Lord, I see that You are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain; and you say that Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship. The Lord replied, Woman, believe Me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know; for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth; for the Father seeks such people to worship Him. For God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in the Spirit and in truth, for God is Spirit. We see that the woman, her mind full of inherited tradition, thought that God must be worshiped either on a mountain, as at Samaria, or in a temple, as at Jerusalem; for Samaria, in disobedience to the Law, had chosen a site on the mountain for worship, while the Jews regarded the temple founded by Solomon as the home of their religion, and the prejudices of both confined the all-embracing and limitless God to the crest of a hill or the vault of a building. God is invisible, incomprehensible, immeasurable; the Lord said that the time had come when God would be worshiped neither on a mountain nor in a temple. For Spirit cannot be shut in or confined; it is present everywhere in space and time, and present in its fullness under all conditions. So, He said, the true worshipers are those who will worship in the Spirit and in truth. And those who are to worship God the Spirit in the Spirit will have the One as the means, and the Other as the object, of their reverence: for Each of the Two stands in a different relation to the worshiper. The words, God is Spirit, do not alter the fact that the Holy Spirit has a Name of His own, and that He is the Gift to us. The woman who confined God to hill or temple was told that God contains all things and is self-contained: that He, the Invisible and Incomprehensible, must be worshiped by invisible and incomprehensible means. The imparted gift and the object of reverence were clearly shown when Christ taught that God, being Spirit, must be worshiped in the Spirit, and revealed what freedom and knowledge, what boundless scope for adoration, lay in this worship of God, the Spirit, in the Spirit.

The words of the Apostle have the same meaning: For the Lord is Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. To make his meaning clear he has distinguished between the Spirit, Who exists, and Him Whose Spirit He is: Proprietor and Property, He and His, differ in sense. So when he says, The Lord is Spirit, he reveals the infinity of God; when he adds, Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty, he points to Him Who belongs to God; for He is the Spirit of the Lord, and Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. The Apostle makes the statement not out of any need of his own argument, but for the sake of clarity. For the Holy Spirit is everywhere One, enlightening all the patriarchs and prophets and the whole company of the Law, inspiring John even in his mother's womb, given in due time to the Apostles and other believers, so that they might recognize the truth granted to them.

Let us hear from our Lord's own words what the work of the Holy Spirit within us is. He says, I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. For it is to your advantage that I go: if I go I will send you the Advocate. And again, I will ask the Father and He will send you another Advocate, so that He may be with you forever, the Spirit of truth. He will guide you into all truth, for He will not speak from Himself, but whatever He hears He will speak, and He will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take from what is Mine. These words were spoken to show how multitudes would enter the kingdom of heaven; they contain an assurance of the Giver's goodwill, and of the manner and terms of the Gift. They tell how, because our feeble minds cannot comprehend the Father or the Son, our faith, which finds God's incarnation hard to believe, will be enlightened by the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Bond of union and the Source of light.

The natural next step is to listen to the Apostle's account of the powers and functions of this Gift. He says, All who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. For you did not receive the Spirit of slavery leading back into fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by which we cry, Abba, Father; and again, For no one speaking by the Spirit of God says anathema to Jesus, and no one can say, Jesus is Lord, except in the Holy Spirit; and he adds, Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit, and varieties of ministries, but the same Lord, and varieties of workings, but the same God, Who works all things in all. But to each one the enlightenment of the Spirit is given to be of benefit. Now to one there is given through the Spirit the word of wisdom, to another the word of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith in the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing in the One Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discerning of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. But it is the One and same Spirit who works all these. Here we have a statement of the purpose and results of the Gift; and I cannot imagine what doubt can remain after so clear a definition of His Origin, His action and His powers.

So let us make use of this great benefit, and seek personal experience of this most necessary Gift. For the Apostle says, in words I have already quoted, But we have not received the spirit of this world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things given to us by God. We receive Him, then, so that we may know. Faculties of the human body, if denied their exercise, will lie dormant. The eye without light, natural or artificial, cannot do its work; the ear will be ignorant of its function unless some voice or sound is heard; the nostrils will be unaware of their purpose unless some scent is breathed in. It is not that the faculty will be absent because it is never called into use, but that there will be no experience of its existence. So, too, the human soul, unless it has taken hold of the gift of the Spirit through faith, will have the innate faculty of grasping God but will lack the light of knowledge. That Gift, which is in Christ, is One, yet offered, and offered fully, to all; it is denied to none, and given to each according to the measure of his willingness to receive; its stores grow richer the more earnest the desire to earn them. This gift is with us to the end of the world, the comfort of our waiting, the assurance, through the favors He grants, of the hope that will be ours, the light of our minds, the sun of our souls. We must seek and earn this Holy Spirit, and then hold Him fast through faith and obedience to the commands of God.