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| The Holy Spirit and the Church. The Church is the Temple of God.
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Chapter 56.—The Holy Spirit
and the Church. The Church is the Temple of God.
And now, having spoken of Jesus
Christ, the only Son of God, our Lord, with the brevity suitable to
a confession of our faith, we go on to say that we believe also in
the Holy Ghost,—thus completing the Trinity which constitutes the
Godhead. Then we mention the Holy Church. And thus we are made to
understand that the intelligent creation, which constitutes the
free Jerusalem,1187
ought to
be subordinate in the order of speech to the Creator, the Supreme
Trinity: for all that is said of the man Christ Jesus has
reference, of course, to the unity of the person of the
Only-begotten. Therefore the true order of the Creed demanded that
the Church should be made subordinate to the Trinity, as the house
to Him who dwells in it, the temple to God who occupies it, and the
city to its builder. And we are here to understand the whole
Church, not that part of it only which wanders as a stranger on the
earth, praising the name of God from the rising of the sun to the
going down of the same, and singing a new song of deliverance from
its old captivity; but that part also which has always from its
creation remained steadfast to God in heaven, and has never
experienced the misery consequent upon a fall. This part is made up
of the holy angels, who enjoy uninterrupted happiness; and (as it
is bound to do) it renders assistance to the part which is still
wandering among strangers: for these two parts shall be one in the
fellowship of eternity, and now they are one in the bonds of love,
the whole having been ordained for the worship of the one God.
Wherefore, neither the whole Church, nor any part of it, has any
desire to be worshipped instead of God, nor to be God to any one
who belongs to the temple of God—that temple which is built up of
the saints who were created by the uncreated God. And therefore the
Holy Spirit, if a creature, could not be the Creator, but would be
a part of the intelligent creation. He would simply be the
highest creature, and therefore would not be mentioned in the Creed
before the Church; for He Himself would belong to the Church, to
that part of it which is in the heavens. And He would not have a
temple, for He Himself would be part of a temple. Now He has a
temple, of which the apostle says: “Know ye not that your body is
the temple of the Holy Ghost, which is in you, which ye have of
God?”1188
Of which
body he says in another place: “Know ye not that your bodies are
the members of Christ?”1189
How, then, is He not God, seeing
that He has a temple? and how can He be less than Christ, whose
members are His temple? Nor has He one temple, and God another,
seeing that the same apostle says: “Know ye not that ye are the
temple of God?”1190
and adds, as proof of this, “and
that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you.”1191
God, then, dwells in His temple:
not the Holy Spirit only, but the Father also, and the Son, who
says of His own body, through which He was made Head of the Church
upon earth (“that in all things He might have the
pre-eminence):”1192
“Destroy this temple, and in
three days I will raise it up.”1193
The temple of God, then, that is,
of the Supreme Trinity as a whole, is the Holy Church, embracing in
its full extent both heaven and earth.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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