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| Chapter XIX. Having proved above that the Spirit abides and speaks in the prophets, St. Ambrose infers that He knows all things which are of God, and therefore is One with the Father and the Son. This same point he establishes again from the fact that He possesses all that God possesses, namely, Godhead, knowledge of the heart, truth, a Name above every name, and power to raise the dead, as is proved from Ezekiel, and in this He is equal to the Son.
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Chapter XIX.
Having proved above that the Spirit abides and speaks in
the prophets, St. Ambrose infers that He knows all things which are of
God, and therefore is One with the Father and the Son. This same
point he establishes again from the fact that He possesses all that God
possesses, namely, Godhead, knowledge of the heart, truth, a Name above
every name, and power to raise the dead, as is proved from Ezekiel, and
in this He is equal to the Son.
144. And so as the
Father and the Son are One, because the Son has all things which the
Father has, so too the Spirit is one with the Father and the Son,
because He too knows all the things of God. For He did not obtain
it by force, so that there should be any injury as of one who had
suffered loss; He did not seize it, lest the loss should be his from
whom it might seem to have been plundered. For neither did He
seize it through need, nor through superiority of greater power did He
take it by force, but He possesses it by unity of power.
Therefore, if He works all these things, for one and the same Spirit
worketh all,1419
how is He not God
Who has all things which God has?
145. Or let us consider what God may have
which the Holy Spirit has not. God the Father has Godhead, and
the Son, too, in Whom dwells the fulness of the Godhead, has it, and
the Spirit has it, for it is written: “The Spirit of God is
in my nostrils.”1420
146. God, again, searches the hearts and
reins, for it is written: “God searcheth the hearts and
reins.”1421
The Son
also has this power, Who said, “Why think ye evil in your
hearts?”1422
For Jesus
knew their thoughts. And the Spirit has the same power, Who
manifests to the prophets also the secrets of the hearts of others, as
we said above: “for the secrets of his heart are made
manifest.” And why do we wonder if He searches the hidden
things of man Who searches even the deep things of God?
147. God has as an attribute that He is true
for it is written: “Let God be true and every man a
liar.”1423
Does the
Spirit lie Who is the Spirit of Truth?1424
and Whom we
have shown
to be called the Truth, since John called Him too the Truth, as also
the Son? And David says in the psalm: “Send out Thy
light and Thy truth, they have led me and brought me to Thy holy hill
and to Thy tabernacles.”1425
If you
consider that in this passage the Son is the light, then the Spirit is
the Truth, or if you consider the Son to be the Truth, then the Spirit
is the light.
148. God has a Name which is above every
name, and has given a name to the Son, as we read that in the Name of
Jesus knees should bow. Let us consider whether the Spirit has
this Name. But it is written “Go, baptize the nations in
the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Spirit.”1426
He has,
then, a Name above every name. What, therefore, the Father and
the Son have, the Holy Spirit also has through the oneness of the Name
of His nature.
149. It is a prerogative of God to raise the
dead. “For as the Father raiseth the dead and quickeneth
them, so the Son also quickeneth whom He will.”1427
But the Spirit also (by Whom God
raiseth) raiseth them, for it is written: “He shall quicken
also your mortal bodies through His Spirit that dwelleth in
you.”1428
But that
you may not think this a trivial grace, learn that the Spirit also
raises, for the prophet Ezekiel says: “Come, O Spirit, and
breathe upon these dead, and they shall live. And I prophesied as
He commanded me, and the Spirit of life entered into them, and they
lived, and stood up on their feet an exceeding great
company.”1429
And
farther on God says: “Ye shall know that I am the Lord,
when I shall open your graves, that I may bring My people out of their
graves, and I will give you My Spirit, and ye shall
live.”1430
150. When He spoke of His Spirit, did He mention
any other besides the Holy Spirit? For He would neither have
spoken of His Spirit as produced by blowing, nor could this Spirit come
from the four quarters of the world, for the blowing of these winds,
which we experience, is partial, not universal; and this spirit by
which we live is also individual, not universal. But it is the
nature of the Holy Spirit to be both over all and in all.
Therefore from the words of the prophet we may see how (the frame-work
of the members long since fallen asunder being scattered) the bones may
come together again to the form of a revived body, when the Spirit
quickens them; and the ashes may come together on the limbs belonging
to them, animated by a disposition to come together before being formed
anew in the appearance of living.
151. Do we not in the likeness of what is done
recognize the oneness of the divine power? The Spirit raises
after the same manner as the Lord raised at the time of His own
Passion, when suddenly in the twinkling of an eye the graves of the
dead were opened, and the bodies living again arose from the tombs, and
the smell of death being removed, and the scent of life restored, the
ashes of those who were dead took again the likeness of the living.
152. So, then, the Spirit has that which
Christ has, and therefore what God has, for all things which the Father
has the Son also has, and therefore He said: “All things
which the Father hath are Mine.”1431
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