When our Lord delivered the baptismal formula of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, he did not attach the gift to numerical ranking. He did not say, “into first, second, and third,” nor “into one, two, and three.” Through holy names he gave us the gift of knowledge of the faith that leads to salvation. What saves us, therefore, is faith; number is only a sign devised to indicate how many subjects are spoken of.
But these people, who find every possible means of bringing ruin on themselves, have turned even the human ability to count against the faith. Nothing else changes its nature merely because a number is attached to it. Yet in the case of the divine nature they treat number with religious awe, as though counting were necessary to keep the Paraclete from receiving more honor than they think appropriate.
Most wise men! Let what is unapproachable remain altogether above and beyond number. The ancient reverence of the Hebrews wrote the ineffable name of God in distinctive characters in an effort to signify its infinite excellence. Count, if you insist—but do not injure the faith by your counting. Either honor the ineffable by silence, or, when holy realities must be counted, count them in a manner consistent with godliness.
There is one God and Father, one Only-begotten, and one Holy Spirit. We proclaim each hypostasis distinctly. When necessity requires us to count, we do not allow ignorant arithmetic to carry us away into a plurality of gods.
We do not count by addition, gradually increasing from unity to multiplicity and saying “one, two, three,” nor “first, second, third.” For God says, “I am the first and I am the last,” and even now we have never heard of a second God.
Worshiping God from God, we confess the distinction of the hypostases while remaining faithful to the monarchy. We do not break theology apart into a divided plurality, because in God the Father and God the Only-begotten we behold, so to speak, one form united in the unchangeableness of the Godhead. The Son is in the Father and the Father in the Son. As the one is, so is the other; and in this lies their unity.
According to the distinction of hypostases, each is one and one; according to the communion of nature, they are one. How, then, if there is one and one, are there not two gods? Because we speak of a king and the king’s image, not of two kings. Majesty is not cut in two, nor glory divided. The sovereignty and authority over us is one; therefore the doxology we offer is not plural but one, because the honor paid to the image passes to the archetype.
What the image possesses in a work of art through imitation, the Son possesses by nature. In works of art likeness depends upon form; in the divine and uncompounded nature, unity consists in communion of the Godhead.
The Holy Spirit also is one, and we speak of him in the singular. He is joined to the one Father through the one Son and through himself completes the adorable and blessed Trinity. His intimate relation to Father and Son is sufficiently shown by the fact that he is not placed among the plurality of creation but spoken of singly. He is not one among many, but One.
As there is one Father and one Son, so there is one Holy Spirit. Therefore he is as far removed from created nature as the singular is removed from composite plurality, and he is united to the Father and the Son as one is naturally related to one.
Our proof of the Spirit’s natural communion does not come from this alone. Scripture also says that he is “from God”—not in the sense in which all things are from God, but as proceeding from God; not by generation as the Son is, but as the Breath of his mouth.
Yet “mouth” must not be understood as a bodily member, nor the Spirit as breath that disperses into the air. “Mouth” is said in a way appropriate to God, while the Spirit is a living substance endowed with supreme sanctifying power. Thus the intimate relation is made clear while the manner of his ineffable existence is kept safe from bodily imagination.
He is also called “Spirit of Christ,” because he is naturally and intimately related to Christ. Therefore, “If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to him.” The Spirit alone glorifies the Lord worthily, for the Lord says, “He will glorify me”—not as a creature glorifies, but as “the Spirit of truth,” manifesting the truth in himself, and as the Spirit of wisdom revealing in his own greatness “Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”
As Paraclete, he expresses in himself the goodness of the Paraclete who sent him, and in his own dignity manifests the majesty of the one from whom he proceeds.
There is a glory belonging naturally, as light is the glory of the sun; and there is another glory bestowed by judgment and free choice upon those who are worthy. The latter has two forms: “A son honors his father, and a servant his master.” The servile honor is offered by creation; the other, which we may call intimate or familial, is fulfilled by the Spirit.
Just as our Lord says of himself, “I glorified you on earth; I finished the work you gave me to do,” so he says of the Paraclete, “He will glorify me, because he will receive from what is mine and declare it to you.” And as the Son is glorified by the Father when the Father says, “I have glorified it and will glorify it again,” so the Spirit is glorified through his communion with Father and Son and through the testimony of the Only-begotten: “Every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven people, but blasphemy against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven.”
When, through the power that enlightens us, we fix our gaze on the beauty of the image of the invisible God and through the image are led upward to the supreme beauty of the archetype, the Spirit of knowledge is inseparably present with us. In himself he gives those who love the vision of truth the power to behold the Image. He does not merely display it from outside; in himself he leads us into full knowledge.
“No one knows the Father except the Son.” Likewise, “No one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except in the Holy Spirit.” Scripture does not say merely “through the Spirit” here, but “in the Spirit.” And, “God is Spirit, and those who worship him must worship in Spirit and truth”; and again, “In your light we shall see light”—that is, by the illumination of the Spirit we behold “the true light that enlightens every person coming into the world.”
Thus in himself the Spirit displays the glory of the Only-begotten, and in himself he gives true worshipers the knowledge of God. The way of the knowledge of God therefore runs from the one Spirit, through the one Son, to the one Father. Conversely, natural goodness, inherent holiness, and royal dignity extend from the Father, through the Only-begotten, to the Spirit.
In this way the hypostases are acknowledged without losing the true doctrine of the monarchy. Those who defend their “sub-numbering” by speaking of first, second, and third should understand that they are importing the polytheism of pagan error into the undefiled theology of Christians. Their destructive invention can end only in confession of a first, second, and third god.
For us, the order prescribed by the Lord is enough. Whoever confuses that order is no less guilty of transgressing the law than the impious pagans.
Enough has now been said against their error to show that natural communion is not dissolved by their manner of counting. Still, let us make a concession to our contentious and feeble-minded opponent and grant, for argument’s sake, that whatever comes second is “sub-numbered” to what comes first. Let us see what follows.
“The first man was from the earth, earthy; the second man is the Lord from heaven.” Again, “The spiritual was not first, but the natural, and afterward the spiritual.” If whatever is second is sub-numbered to what is first, and whatever is sub-numbered is thereby inferior in dignity, then according to your reasoning the spiritual is inferior in honor to the natural, and the heavenly man to the earthly.