An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith. John of Damascus

No one seeth the Father, save the Son and the Spirit10.

      The Son is the counsel and wisdom and power of the Father. For one may not speak of quality in connection with God, from fear of implying that He was a compound of essence and quality.

The Son is from the Father, and derives from Him all His properties: hence He cannot do ought of Himself11. For He has not energy peculiar to Himself and distinct from the Father12.

That God Who is invisible by nature is made visible by His energies, we perceive from the organisation and government of the world13.

The Son is the Father’s image, and the Spirit the Son’s, through which Christ dwelling in man makes him after his own image14.

The Holy Spirit is God, being between the unbegotten and the begotten, and united to the Father through the Son15. We speak of the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ, the mind of Christ, the Spirit of the Lord, the very Lord16, the Spirit of adoption, of truth, of liberty, of wisdom (for He is the creator of all these): filling all things with essence, maintaining all things, filling the universe with essence, while yet the universe is not the measure of His power.

      God is everlasting and unchangeable essence, creator of all that is, adored with pious consideration.

      God is also Father, being ever unbegotten, for He was born of no one, but hath begotten His co-eternal Son: God is likewise Son, being always with the Father, born of the Father timelessly, everlastingly, without flux or passion, or separation from Him. God is also Holy Spirit, being sanctifying power, subsistential, proceeding from the Father without separation, and resting in the Son, identical in essence with Father and Son.

Word is that which is ever essentially present with the Father. Again, word is also the natural movement of the mind, according to which it is moved and thinks and considers, being as it were its own light and radiance. Again, word is the thought that is spoken only within the heart. And again, word is the utterance17 that is the messenger of thought. God therefore is Word18 essential and enhypostatic: and the other three kinds of word are faculties of the soul, and are not contemplated as having a proper subsistence of their own. The first of these is the natural offspring of the mind, ever welling19 up naturally out of it: the second is the thought: and the third is the utterance.

      The Spirit has various meanings. There is the Holy Spirit: but the powers of the Holy Spirit are also spoken of as spirits: the good messenger is also spirit: the demon also is spirit: the soul too is spirit: and sometimes mind also is spoken of as spirit. Finally the wind is spirit and the air is spirit.

      Footnotes

1 Arist., Physic, bk. iv. 4.

2 Text, οἷον ὁ ἀ& 209·ρ περιέχει, τὸ δὲ σῶμα περιέχεται· οὐχ ὅλος δε ὁ περιέχων ἀ& 208·ρ, &c. Variant, οἷον ὁ ἀ& 209·ρ περιέχει τόδε σῶμα, οὐχ ὅλος, &c.

3 ἄϋλος ὤν. Greg. Naz., Orat. 34, Greg. Nyss., De anim. et resurr., &c. speak of God as nowhere and as everywhere.

4 Greg. Naz., Orat. 34.

5 Isai. vi. 1, seq.

6 Isai. lxvi. 1.

7 Baruch iii. 38.

8 Greg. Naz., Orat. 44.

9 St. John v. 22.

10 St. John vi. 46.

11 Ibid. v. 30.

12 Greg., Orat. 36.

13 Wisd. xii. 5.

14 Basil, Cont. Eun., bk. v.

15 μέσον τοῦ ἀγεννήτου καὶ τοῦ γεννητοῦ, καὶ δι᾽ Υἱοῦ τῷ Πατρὶ συναπτόμενον.

16 αὐτοκύριος.

17 προφορικός is absent in mss. but added by a second hand in one codex.

18 οὐσιώδης τέ ἐστι καὶ ἐνυπόστατος. Against the Sabellian doctrine, the views of Paul of Samosata, &c.

19 πηγαζόμενον.

      Chapter XIV.

       Table of Contents

      —The properties of the divine nature.

Uncreate, without beginning, immortal, infinite, eternal, immaterial1, good, creative, just, enlightening, immutable, passionless, uncircumscribed, immeasurable, unlimited, undefined, unseen, unthinkable, wanting in nothing, being His own rule and authority, all-ruling, life-giving, omnipotent, of infinite power, containing and maintaining the universe and making provision for all: all these and such like attributes the Deity possesses by nature, not having received them from elsewhere, but Himself imparting all good to His own creations according to the capacity of each.

The subsistences dwell and are established firmly in one another. For they are inseparable and cannot part from one another, but keep to their separate courses within one another, without coalescing or mingling, but cleaving to each other. For the Son is in the Father and the Spirit: and the Spirit in the Father and the Son: and the Father in the Son and the Spirit, but there is no coalescence or commingling or confusion