Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Establishment of the natural communion of the Spirit from His being, equally with the Father and the Son, unapproachable in thought.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter XXII.
Establishment of the natural communion of the Spirit
from His being, equally with the Father and the Son, unapproachable in
thought.1167
| 1167 πρὸς
θεωρίαν
δυσέφικτον.
The Benedictine Latin is “incomprehensibilis,”
but this is rather ἀκατάληπτος.
The “incomprehensible” of the Ath. Creed is
“immensus.” |
53. Moreover the
surpassing excellence of the nature of the Spirit is to be learned not
only from His having the same title as the Father and the Son, and
sharing in their operations, but also from His being, like the Father
and the Son, unapproachable in thought. For what our Lord says of
the Father as being above and beyond human conception, and what He says
of the Son, this same language He uses also of the Holy Ghost.
“O righteous Father,” He says, “the world hath not
known Thee,”1168
meaning here by the
world not the complex whole compounded of heaven and earth, but this
life of ours subject to death,1169
| 1169 ἐπίκηρος.
The force of the word as applied to this life is illustrated by
the 61st Epigram of Callimachus:
Τίς
ξένος, ὦ
ναυηγέ;
Δεόντιχος
ἐνθάδε
νεκρὸν
εὗρεν ἐπ᾽
αἰγιαλοῖς,
χῶσε δὲ τῷδε
τάφῳ
δακρύσας
ἐπίκηρον εὸν
βίον· οὐδὲ
γὰρ αὐτὸς
ἥσυχος,
αἰθυί& 219·ς δ᾽
ἶσα
θαλασσοπορεῖ
. | and exposed
to innumerable vicissitudes. And when discoursing of Himself
He says, “Yet a little while and the world seeth me no more,
but ye see me;”1170
again in this
passage, applying the word world to those who being bound
down by this material and carnal life, and beholding1171
| 1171 ἐπιβλέποντας
, the reading of the Viennese ms. vulgo
ἐπιτρέποντας. | the truth by material sight
alone,1172
were ordained,
through their unbelief in the resurrection, to see our Lord no more
with the eyes of the heart. And He said the same concerning
the Spirit. “The Spirit of truth,” He says,
“whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth Him not,
neither knoweth Him: but ye know Him, for He dwelleth with
you.”1173
For the
carnal man, who has never trained his mind to
contemplation,1174
but rather keeps
it buried deep in lust of the flesh,1175
| 1175 τῷ
φρονήματι
τῆς
σαρκός.
cf. Rom.
viii. 6 τὸ γὰρ
φρόνημα τῆς
σαρκὸς
θάνατος. |
as in mud, is powerless to look up to the spiritual light of the
truth. And so the world, that is life enslaved by the
affections of the flesh, can no more receive the grace of the Spirit
than a weak eye the light of a sunbeam. But the Lord, who by
His teaching bore witness to purity of life, gives to His disciples
the power of now both beholding and contemplating the Spirit.
For “now,” He says, “Ye are clean through the word
which I have spoken unto you,”1176
wherefore “the world cannot receive Him, because it seeth Him
not,…but ye know Him; for he dwelleth with
you.”1177
And so
says Isaiah;—“He that spread forth the earth and that
which cometh out of it; he that giveth breath unto the people upon
it, and Spirit to them that trample on it”1178
| 1178
Is. xlii. 5, LXX. πατοῦσιν
αὐτήν. So St.
Basil’s argument requires us to translate the lxx.
The “walk therein” of A.V. would not bear out his
meaning. For this use of πατειν, cf.
Soph., Ant. 745. οὐ γὰρ
σέβεις
τιμάς γε τὰς
θεῶν
πατῶν. So in the vulgate
we read “et spiritum calcantibus
eam,”—calcare bearing the sense of
“trample on,” as in Juvenal, Sat. x. 86,
“calcemus Cæsaris hostem.”
The Hebrew bears no such meaning. | ; for they that trample down earthly
things and rise above them are borne witness to as worthy of the
gift of the Holy Ghost. What then ought to be thought of Him
whom the world cannot receive, and Whom saints alone can contemplate
through pureness of heart? What kind of honours can be deemed
adequate to Him?E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
