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| The Creature is Not So Taken by the Holy Spirit as Flesh is by the Word.
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Chapter 6.—The
Creature is Not So Taken by the Holy Spirit as Flesh is by the
Word.
11. It is, then, for this reason
nowhere written, that the Father is greater than the Holy Spirit,
or that the Holy Spirit is less than God the Father, because the
creature in which the Holy Spirit was to appear was not taken in
the same way as the Son of man was taken, as the form in which the
person of the Word of God Himself should be set forth not that He
might possess the word of God, as other holy and wise men have
possessed it, but “above His fellows;”245
not certainly that He possessed the
word more than they, so as to be of more surpassing wisdom than the
rest were, but that He was the very Word Himself. For the word in
the flesh is one thing, and the Word made flesh is another;
i.e. the word in man is one thing, the Word that is man is
another. For flesh is put for man, where it is said, “The Word
was made flesh;”246
and again, “And all flesh shall
see the salvation of God.”247
For it does not mean flesh without
soul and without mind; but “all flesh,” is the same as if it
were said, every man. The creature, then, in which the Holy Spirit
should appear, was not so taken, as that flesh and human form were
taken, of the Virgin Mary. For the Spirit did not beatify the dove,
or the wind, or the fire, and join them for ever to Himself and to
His person in unity and “fashion.”248
| 248 [The reference is to σχήμα,
in Phil. ii. 8—the term
chosen by St. Paul to describe the “likeness of men,” which the
second trinitarian person assumed. The variety in the terms by
which St. Paul describes the incarnation is very striking. The
person incarnated subsists first in a “form of God;” he then
takes along with this (still retaining this) a “form of a
servant;” which form of a servant is a “likeness of men;”
which likeness of men is a “scheme” (A.V. “fashion”) or
external form of a man.—W.G.T.S.] | Nor, again, is the nature of the
Holy Spirit mutable and changeable; so that these things were not
made of the creature, but He himself was turned and changed first
into one and then into another, as water is changed into ice. But
these things appeared at the seasons at which they ought to have
appeared, the creature serving the Creator, and being changed and
converted at the command of Him who remains immutably in Himself,
in order to signify and manifest Him in such way as it was fit He
should be signified and manifested to mortal men. Accordingly,
although that dove is called the Spirit;249
and in speaking of that fire,
“There appeared unto them,” he says, “cloven tongues, like as
of fire, and it sat upon each of them; and they began to speak with
other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance;250
in order to show that the Spirit
was manifested by that fire, as by the dove; yet we cannot call the
Holy Spirit both God and a dove, or both God and fire, in the same
way as we call the Son both God and man; nor as we call the Son the
Lamb of God; which not only John the Baptist says, “Behold the
Lamb of God,”251
but also
John the Evangelist sees the Lamb slain in the Apocalypse.252
For that
prophetic vision was not shown to bodily eyes through bodily forms,
but in the spirit through spiritual images of bodily things. But
whosoever saw that dove and that fire, saw them with their eyes.
Although it may perhaps be disputed concerning the fire, whether it
was seen by the eyes or in the spirit, on account of the form of
the sentence. For the text does not say, They saw cloven tongues
like fire, but, “There appeared to them.” But we are not wont
to say with the same meaning, It appeared to me; as we say, I saw.
And in those spiritual visions of corporeal images the usual
expressions are, both, It appeared to me; and, I saw: but in those
things which are shown to the eyes through express corporeal forms,
the common expression is not, It appeared to me; but, I saw. There
may, therefore, be a question raised respecting that fire, how it
was seen; whether within in the spirit as it were outwardly, or
really outwardly before the eyes of the flesh. But of that dove,
which is said to have descended in a bodily form, no one ever
doubted that it was seen by the eyes. Nor, again, as we call the
Son a Rock (for it is written, “And that Rock was Christ”253
), can we so
call the Spirit a dove or fire. For that rock was a thing already
created, and after the mode of its action was called by the
name of Christ, whom it signified; like the stone placed under
Jacob’s head, and also anointed, which he took in order to
signify the Lord;254
or as Isaac
was Christ, when he carried the wood for the sacrifice of
himself.255
A particular
significative action was added to those already existing things;
they did not, as that dove and fire, suddenly come into being in
order simply so to signify. The dove and the fire, indeed, seem to
me more like that flame which appeared to Moses in the bush,256
or that
pillar which the people followed in the wilderness,257
or the
thunders and lightnings which came when the Law was given in the
mount.258
For the
corporeal form of these things came into being for the very
purpose, that it might signify something, and then pass away.259
| 259 [A theophany, though a harbinger
of the incarnation, differs from it, by not effecting a
hypostatical or personal union between God and the creature. When
the Holy Spirit appeared in the form of a dove, he did not unite
himself with it. The dove did not constitute an integral part of
the divine person who employed it. Nor did the illuminated vapor in
the theophany of the Shekinah. But when the Logos appeared in the
form of a man, he united himself with it, so that it became a
constituent part of his person. A theophany, as Augustin notices,
is temporary and transient. The incarnation is
perpetual.—W.G.T.S.] | E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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