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

Father, Son and Holy Ghost to be one and the same, in no respect showing difference or
variation; from this identity of operation we necessarily infer the unity of the nature.
7. The Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost alike hallow, quicken, enlighten, and comfort.
No one will attribute a special and peculiar operation of hallowing to the operation of the
Spirit, after hearing the Saviour in the Gospel saying to the Father about His disciples,
sanctify them in Thy name. 2659 In like manner all other operations are equally performed,
in all who are worthy of them, by the Father and by the Son and by the Holy Ghost; every
grace and virtue, guidance, life, consolation, change into the immortal, the passage into
freedom and all other good things which come down to man. Nay even the dispensation
which is above us in relation to the creature considered both in regard to intelligence and
sense, if indeed it is possible for any conjecture concerning what lies above us to be formed
from what we know, is not constituted apart from the operation and power of the Holy
Ghost, every individual sharing His help in proportion to the dignity and need of each.
Truly the ordering and administration of beings above our nature is obscure to our perception;
nevertheless any one, arguing from what is known to us, would find it more reasonable
to conclude that the power of the Spirit operates even in those beings, than that He is excluded
from the government of supramundane things. So to assert is to advance a blasphemy bare
and unsupported; it is to support absurdity on fallacy. On the other hand to agree that even
the world beyond us is governed by the power of the Spirit, as well as by that of the Father
and of the Son, is to advance a contention, supported on the plain testimony of what is seen
in human life. Identity of operation in the case of Father and of Son and of Holy Ghost
clearly proves invariability of nature. It follows that, even if the name of Godhead does
signify nature, the community of essence proves that this title is very properly applied to
the Holy Spirit.
8. I am, however, at a loss to understand how our opponents with all their ingenuity
can adduce the title of Godhead in proof of nature, as though they had never heard from
Scripture that nature does not result from institution and appointment. 2660 Moses was
made 2661 a god of the Egyptians when the divine voice said, “See I have made thee a god to
Pharaoh. 2662 The title therefore does give proof of a certain authority of oversight or of
action. The divine nature, on the other hand, in all the words which are contrived, remains
always inexplicable, as I always teach. We have learnt that it is beneficent, judicial, righteous,
good, and so on; and so have been taught differences of operations. But we are, nevertheless,
unable to understand the nature of the operator through our idea of the operations. Let
2659 cf. St. John xvii. 11 and 17.
2660 χειροτονητή.
2661 ἐχειροτονήθη.
2662 Ex. vii. 1.
To Eustathius the physician.
664