Nicene and Post-Nicene Church Fathers Series 2 - The Still Small ...

as from the Lord the Spirit.” 1160 But to leave no ground for objection, I will quote the actual
words of the Apostle;—“For even unto this day remaineth the same veil untaken away in
the reading of the Old Testament, which veil is done away in Christ.…Nevertheless, when
it shall turn to the Lord, the veil shall be taken away. Now the Lord is that Spirit.” 1161 Why
does he speak thus? Because he who abides in the bare sense of the letter, and in it busies
himself with the observances of the Law, has, as it were, got his own heart enveloped in the
Jewish acceptance of the letter, like a veil; and this befalls him because of his ignorance that
the bodily observance of the Law is done away by the presence of Christ, in that for the future
the types are transferred to the reality. Lamps are made needless by the advent of the sun;
and, on the appearance of the truth, the occupation of the Law is gone, and prophecy is
hushed into silence. He, on the contrary, who has been empowered to look down into the
depth of the meaning of the Law, and, after passing through the obscurity of the letter, as
through a veil, to arrive within things unspeakable, is like Moses taking off the veil when he
spoke with God. He, too, turns from the letter to the Spirit. So with the veil on the face of
Moses corresponds the obscurity of the teaching of the Law, and spiritual contemplation
with the turning to the Lord. He, then, who in the reading of the Law takes away the letter
and turns to the Lord,—and the Lord is now called the Spirit,—becomes moreover like
Moses, who had his face glorified by the manifestation of God. For just as objects which lie
near brilliant colours are themselves tinted by the brightness which is shed around, so is he
who fixes his gaze firmly on the Spirit by the Spirit’s glory somehow transfigured into
greater splendour, having his heart lighted up, as it were, by some light streaming from the
truth of the Spirit. 1162 And, this is “being changed from 1163 the glory” of the Spirit “into”
His own “glory,” not in niggard degree, nor dimly and indistinctly, but as we might expect
any one to be who is enlightened by 1164 the Spirit. Do you not, O man, fear the Apostle
when he says “Ye are the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwelleth in you”? 1165 Could
he ever have brooked to honour with the title of “temple” the quarters of a slave? How can
he who calls Scripture “God-inspired,” 1166 because it was written through the inspiration
of the Spirit, use the language of one who insults and belittles Him?
1160 2 Cor. iii. 17, 18, R.V. In Adv. Eunom. iii. 3 St. Basil had quoted v. 17 of the Son, making πνεῦμα de-
scriptive of our Lord. “This was written,” adds Mr. C.F.H. Johnston, “during St. Basil’s presbyterate, at least ten
years earlier.”
1161 2 Cor. iii. 14, 16, 17.
1162 cf. 2 Cor. iii. 18.
1163 St. Basil gives ἀπό the sense of “by.” So Theodoret, Œcum., Theophylact, Bengel. cf. Alford in loc. The
German is able to repeat the prep., as in Greek and Latin, “von einer Klarheit zu der andern, als vom Herrn.”
1164 ἀπό.
1165 1 Cor. iii. 16.
1166 2 Tim. iii. 16.
Proof from Scripture that the Spirit is called Lord.
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