The Trinity and the Holy Spirit

In the preceding chapter, we examined Athanasius’s defense and exposition of the Creed of the Council of Nicaea. We specifically focused on his theological account of the ontological relationship between the Father and the Son, demonstrating that, for Athanasius, they are equally God and that together they constitute the one nature of God—the Father eternally begetting his Son. While he did not discuss at length in his anti-Arian/pro-Nicene works his understanding of the Trinity or, specifically, the divine status and role of the Holy Spirit, neither topic is completely absent from his mind. In this chapter, we will survey Athanasius’s understanding of the Trinity within his anti-Arian tracts, and then turn to his later work, that is, his Letters to Serapion. While Basil the Great is often credited with writing the first treatise specifically on the Holy Spirit, it is Athanasius, in his Letters, who actually provides the first extensive defense of and theological treatment on the full divinity of the Holy Spirit, and he does so in a manner that is more scripturally robust and theologically mature than the later Basil. With this in mind, we will first discuss how Athanasius conceives the Trinity.

Trinitarian Doxology and the Sacrament of Baptism

Within his critique of the Arian position and his championing of the Nicene doctrine, Athanasius consistently speaks of the Trinity within a doxological context: “To the God and Father is due the glory, honor and worship, with his co-existent Son and Word, together with the All-holy and Life-giving Spirit, now and to the endless ages of ages. Amen.”^[1] Athanasius insists that he does not worship the Son/Word as creature, but rather he worships the one God who “created all things through his Word, the only-begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom to thee Father, together with the same Word, in the Holy Spirit, be glory and power forever and ever. Amen.”^[2] The Arians held that, since there is eternally only one God, it was only “when” God created the Son and the Holy Spirit that he became Father. “But this is not so; perish the thought; the Triad is not originated, but there is an eternal and single Godhead in the Triad, and there is one glory of the Holy Triad.” For Athanasius, “the faith of Christians acknowledges the blessed Triad as unalterable and perfect and ever what is was, never adding to it what is more, nor imputing to it any loss . . . and therefore dissociates it from things generated, and guards as indivisible and worships the unity of the Godhead itself.”^[3]

From within this Trinitarian doxological setting Athanasius perceives the divinity of the Holy Spirit. As the term Father implies the term Son and thus their communion within the one nature of God, so the Holy Spirit cannot be “parted from him that sent him [Father], or from him who conveyed him [Son].”^[4] For Athanasius, since the fathers at the Council of Nicaea spoke of the Son being homoousion with the Father, they did not “make the Holy Spirit alien from the Father and the Son, but rather glorified him together with the Father and the Son, the one faith of the Holy Triad, because there is in the Holy Triad also one Godhead.”^[5]

By placing the Holy Triad within a doxological milieu, Athanasius is able to confirm a number of Trinitarian truths. Since the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are all equally worshiped, one must conclude that they are all equally divine, otherwise Christians would be performing idolatrous acts. Being all divine, one must also conclude that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are all eternal and, as such, unoriginated, perfect, and unchangeable. Importantly, since the act of worship distinguishes the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, they must possess their own unique and unconfused identities. Lastly, the very same act of worship nonetheless demands that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are all equally the one God, for it is the one Triadic God that Christians worship. Thus, Christian doxological prayer bears witness to the divine eternal unity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit as the one unchanging perfect God.

The divine Triad, for Athanasius, is not simply worshiped for its own sake but is also imperative for human salvation. This is seen within his theology of baptism, for one is baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit and so taken up into their divine communion. The Son eternally possesses the Spirit of his Father and when he became flesh, the Father said: “Receive the Holy Spirit.” “When he [Jesus] is baptized, it is we who are baptized in him. . . . He sanctifies himself, that we might be sanctified in him.”^[6] Commenting on 1 John 4:14, Athanasius states:

For the Son does not merely partake of the Spirit, that therefore he too may be in the Father, nor does he receive the Spirit, but rather he supplies it himself to all; and the Spirit does not unite the Word to the Father, but rather the Spirit receives from the Word . . . and by participation of the Spirit we are knit into the Godhead; so that our being in the Father is not ours, but is the Spirit’s which is in us and abides in us. . . . [Thus] the Son is in the Father in one way, and we become in him in another way, and that neither we shall ever be as he, nor is the Word as we. . . . For he . . . gives the Spirit, and whatever the Spirit has, he has from the Word. . . . For since the Word is in the Father, and the Spirit is given from the Word, he wills that we should receive the Spirit, that, when we receive it, thus having the Spirit of the Word which is in the Father, we too may be found on account of the Spirit to become one in the Word, and through him in the Father. . . . For what the Word has by nature, as I said, in the Father, that he wishes to be given to us through the Spirit irrevocably. . . . And so we are sons and gods because of the Word in us, so we shall be in the Son and in the Father, and we shall be accounted to have become one in the Son and in the Father, because that Spirit is in us, which is in the Word which is in the Father.^[7]

In this rather convoluted passage, Athanasius is articulating how human beings, through baptism, come to participate in the life of the divine Triad. He does this by differentiating the manner in which the Son and Holy Spirit are related to the Father and the manner in which human beings come to be related to the Father. For Athanasius, the Father begets his divine Son and so he possesses the Holy Spirit in accord with his divine nature as the Father’s Son. The Son, in turn, gives all that he has received to the divine Holy Spirit. This divine interrelationship constitutes the unity of the divine Triad and becomes, within the economy of salvation, the source and goal of the Christian life. Jesus, as the incarnate, Spirit-filled Son, bequeaths to Christians his Holy Spirit, who unites them to him; in being united to Jesus, the Son, they are united to his Father as his adopted, Spirit-filled children. Christians are “made sons through him [the Son] by adoption and grace, as partaking of his Spirit.”^[8] The divine Triad, then, for Athanasius, is of primary soteriological significance, because the whole point of the Father sending his Son into the world and of the Son pouring out his Holy Spirit upon the world is to ensure that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, each in their respective manners in accordance with their personal identity, can embrace believers within their very own divine communion of life and love. For Athanasius, this is what it means for human beings to be divinized.

It is important to highlight that, within the above quotation, Athanasius is also arguing that as the Son receives his full divinity from the Father, and so possesses the Holy Spirit by nature, so the Holy Spirit receives his full divinity from the Son and so is divine as the Son himself is divine. The Holy Spirit is fully divine, for he receives from the Son all that the Father has given him, that is, his divinity. While Athanasius is not here advancing Augustine’s later understanding that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son (filioque)—that is, proceeds as the paternal love of the Father for the Son and as filial love of the Son for the Father—he is giving an active role to the Son in the Father’s breathing forth of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is truly God because he receives from the Son the full divinity that the Father has given to the Son. In this sense, Athanasius does appear to offer a nascent understanding of the filioque.^[9]

The Trinity and the Holy Spirit

Toward the latter part of the Arian controversy, around the year 360, during Athanasius’s third exile, a new debate appeared on the horizon. Bishop Serapion of Thmuis, a friend and advocate of Athanasius, wrote to him asking his theological help. A group of Christians, who believed in the full divinity of the Son, denied, nonetheless, that the Holy Spirit was divine. They were known as the Tropici because they interpreted the scriptures in a figurative manner. (Later, those who denied the divinity of the Holy Spirit were termed “Pneumatomachians”—“Spirit-fighters.”) They professed that while the Father and the Son were “alike” in their divinity, the Holy Spirit was “unlike” the Father and the Son and so a creature. The theological grounding for this position was claimed to be Scripture itself, for Scripture never simply calls the Holy Spirit “God.” Moreover, a number of scriptures seem to imply that the Spirit was created as one of the angels (see Amos 4:13, 1 Tim 5:21, and Heb 1:14).^[10] Furthermore, if the Holy Spirit is divine, it would seem that he would either be another “Son” or, if he proceeded from the Father through the Son, he would be a “grandson.” Since both options were untenable, the Holy Spirit must be a creature. Athanasius responded to Serapion by writing four letters wherein he not only refutes the false interpretation of Scripture but, more so, offers a positive scriptural defense and articulation of the Holy Spirit’s full divinity.^[11]

At the onset of his first letter, Athanasius wants to establish that God is a unified Triad and so develops the argument that we already noted above. As the Arians dishonor the Father by denying the Son, “so also these men [the Tropici], in speaking evil of the Holy Spirit, speak evil of the Son.”^[12] At first glance Athanasius’s logic is not so apparent. Only if the divinity of the Holy Spirit is dependent upon the divinity of the Son, as the Son’s divinity is dependent upon the divinity of the Father, is Athanasius’s logic sustained. Thus, he argues that “the Spirit of the Son” cannot “be a creature,” for as “the Word and the Father” are one, so “the Holy Spirit” shares “the same oneness with the Son as the Son with the Father,” and so the Holy Spirit must be divine as the Father and Son are divine. If God is a Triad, then the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit must share the same divine nature. To speak correctly of the Word demands that one “think soundly of the Spirit also, who proceeds from the Father, and, belonging to the Word, is from him given to his disciples and all who believe in him.”^[13] For Athanasius, those who deny the divine status of the Holy Spirit not only deny the divinity of the Son but, ultimately, do not “have the Father,” for he would not then be divine either, because he would not be the Father of his only begotten Son.^[14] To reject the divinity of the Holy Spirit, according to Athanasius, destroys the ontological interrelationship among the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit within the divine Triad.

For the holy and blessed Triad is indivisible and one in itself. When mention is made of the Father, there is included also his Word, and the Spirit who is in the Son. If the Son is named, the Father is in the Son, and the Spirit is not outside the Word.^[15]

Given that the Holy Spirit is truly divine, the unanswered question still remains: why is the Holy Spirit not another Son, or, if the Spirit is from the Son, why is he not then a grandson? Such conclusions can readily be denied as contrary to Scripture and theologically absurd, yet they demand a scriptural and theological explanation. Here, Athanasius lacks a satisfactory answer. To ask such questions is, for Athanasius, to enter into the deep mysteries of God where one is forbidden to travel. Such questions are “impious . . . for it is not fitting to ask such questions about the Godhead. For God is not man, that we should dare to ask human questions about him.”^[16] The pious response is “to be silent on these matters and disregard these people.”^[17] For Athanasius, we must content ourselves with the formulas of Scripture and the theological conventions of the tradition, and so acknowledge that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit each possess their own singular identities. Thus, we are assured that within the one divine Triad, “the Spirit of the Father is called the Spirit of the Son,” and in being such, the Spirit is neither the Father nor the Son.^[18]

Athanasius, nonetheless, does employ the notion of “image” to help bring light upon this shrouded mystery. “As the Son is in the Spirit, as in his own image, so also the Father is in the Son.”^[19] As the Son is the “image” of the Father who is manifested in his Son, so the Spirit is the “image” of the Son who is manifested in the Spirit. For Athanasius, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are mutually co-inhering images; to perceive and know one of them is to perceive and know the others. The notion of a progressive “imaging” does allow Athanasius to maintain the divine triadic unity as well as the distinct identity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, for the Son is the begotten image of the Father and the Holy Spirit proceeds as the image of the Son.^[20] However, the notion of “image” is significantly flawed on one level. The Son is the image of the Father not only in that he is God as the Father is God but also in that, being the Son, he perfectly reflects the Father. The Son is Son both as to his nature as God and as to his personal identity as Son. The Holy Spirit is the image of the Son only in that he is God as the Son is God, which is Athanasius’s main concern. However, the Holy Spirit is not the image of the Son as to his personal identity as the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit does not perfectly reflect the Son’s sonship as the Son perfectly reflects the Father’s fatherhood. While the Son is begotten of the Father, the Spirit is not begotten of the Son. If he were to be begotten of the Son, then he would indeed be a grandson of the Father.^[21]

Athanasius’s Ten Scriptural and Soteriological Proofs

for the Spirit’s Divinity

In his ongoing contention that the Holy Spirit is indeed truly divine, Athanasius next provides, in his first Letter to Serapion, a tenfold series of scriptural arguments. (There is a shorter similar series of these arguments in his third Letter.) There are two main thrusts contained in these arguments. First, the Holy Spirit’s divinity is grounded in the Spirit’s intimate relationship with the Father and Son and so their divine oneness. Second, only if the Holy Spirit is truly divine as the Father and Son are divine can he fulfill, in communion with them, the soteriological tasks scripturally attributed to him.

1. Following upon 1 Corinthians 2:11–12, Athanasius argues:

For if, as no one knows the things of man save the spirit of man that is in him, so no one knows the things of God save the Spirit of God; would it not be evil speech to call the Spirit who is in God a creature, him who searches even the deep things of God?^[22]

Moreover, only if the Spirit is divine can he reveal to believers the salvific truth that is revealed by the Father’s Word.

2. Scripture (Ps 104:30, Rom 1:4, 1 Cor 6:11, Titus 3:4–7, and Heb 6:4) professes that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of holiness and renewal. The Holy Spirit sanctifies and renews creatures, but in order to do so he cannot be a creature himself, but he must possess such holiness as God. As the Son is the creator of all and so is God, so the Holy Spirit who sanctifies also must be God. Likewise, the fruit of the Son’s redemption is the work of the divine Holy Spirit, that is, the sanctifying and renewing of all believers and the whole of creation.^[23]

3. The Holy Spirit is the “quickening Spirit” (Rom 8:11; John 4:14, 7:39). The Father raises Jesus from the dead through the power of the Holy Spirit, and this same Spirit will raise the mortal bodies of believers back to life. Only if the Spirit shares in the incorruptible divine life of the Father and the Son can he bestow immortality to mortal creatures. “He [the Holy Spirit] that does not partake of life, but who is himself partaken of and quickens the creatures, what kinship can he have with originated beings?”^[24]

4. The Holy Spirit is also “called unction and seal” (Isa 61:1, Gal 4:29, 2 Cor 2:15, Eph 1:13, and 2 Pet 1:4). Because it is the Word who anoints and seals through the Holy Spirit, the seal of the Holy Spirit comprises “the form of Christ who seals,” and because of this, believers “share in the same divine nature,” for they partake “of the Word in the Spirit.”^[25] We see again that, for Athanasius, Christians are divinized precisely because, through the indwelling of the divine Spirit, they are in communion with the divine Word.

5. Athanasius immediately emphasizes this same point from another perspective. Christians are temples of the Holy Spirit and so “become partakers of God.” The seal of the Holy Spirit belongs “to the nature of the Son who, through the Spirit who is in him, joins us to the Father.” Thus, the Spirit cannot be a creature but is of “the nature of God” for “the Father, through the Word, in the Holy Spirit, creates and renews all things.”^[26]

6. Significantly, Athanasius argues for the divinity of the Holy Spirit by accentuating that the Son and the Spirit act in communion with one another. Together, they collaborate in bringing about the salvation of Christians. To intensify this divine unity of the Son and Holy Spirit working in tandem with one another, Athanasius speaks again of the Holy Spirit being “the image of the Son.” “For as the image is, so also must be that who is its image.”^[27] This image, however, resides solely in the Holy Spirit being truly divine as the Son is divine and not insofar as the Holy Spirit reflects the Son’s sonship. “If the Son, because he is of the Father, is proper to his essence, it must be that the Spirit, who is said to be from God, is in essence proper to the Son.”^[28] Moreover, because the Spirit shares in the same divine nature as the Son, “the Holy Spirit is called the Spirit of Sonship.” Therefore, “as the Son is wisdom and truth, this Spirit is described as Spirit of wisdom and truth. Again, the Son is the power of God and the Lord of Glory, and the Spirit is called Spirit of power and glory.”^[29] For Athanasius, while the Word, as the Father’s Son, is wisdom, truth, power, and glory, the Spirit, being the Spirit of sonship is the Spirit of wisdom, truth, power, and glory, for the Son has conferred upon the Spirit all that he has received from the Father. Once more, we see that, for Athanasius, the Son is instrumental in constituting the Spirit’s divinity by sharing with the Spirit all of the Father’s divine attributes.

7. Similarly, as the Son shares in the Father’s unchangeable divine nature so “the Holy Spirit, being in God, must be incapable of change, variation, and corruption.”^[30]

8. Likewise, as God is everywhere, so “the Spirit of the Lord fills the universe.” Creatures, even angels, are “circumscribed,” but the Spirit, as is the Word, is present with and “fills all things.”^[31]

9. Athanasius highlights once again that “the Holy Spirit is partaken of and does not partake.” The Holy Spirit is “always the same,” and he, being proper to the Word, empowers believers to partake of what is of God and so not a creature who partakes of God.^[32]

10. Athanasius concludes by noting that “the Holy Spirit is one, but the creatures are many.” “Because the Spirit is one, and, still more, because he is proper to the Word who is one, he is proper to God who is one, and one in essence (homoousion) with him.”^[33] Here, Athanasius is unafraid to call upon Nicaea’s strategic, and controversial, term.^[34] He does so to enhance and ensure the Spirit’s oneness with the Father and the Son. He is able to do so because he grasps that as the Son is proper to the Father’s essence and so homoousion with the Father, so the Spirit is proper to the Word/Son’s essence and so also homoousion with the Father. For Athanasius, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are all one and the same God, “the Holy Triad.”^[35]

Tradition and the Spirit’s Divinity

Having finished his soteriological scriptural arguments for the Spirit’s full divinity, Athanasius proceeds to invoke the constant tradition of the faith within the Catholic Church, the faith that was given to the apostles and professed by all of the fathers.^[36] Athanasius summarizes that faith by providing his most comprehensive testament to the Holy Triad.

There is, then, a Triad, holy and complete, confessed to be in Father, Son and Holy Spirit, having nothing foreign or external mixed with it, not composed of one that creates and one that is originated, but all creative and constructive; and it is consistent in itself and indivisible in nature, and its activity is one. For the Father does all things through the Word and the Holy Spirit; thus the unity of the holy Triad is preserved.^[37]

Athanasius distinguishes the singular identities of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit as well as simultaneously acknowledging their unity of nature. While they act as the one God, the Father acts through the distinct actions of the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Athanasius then returns to the sacrament of baptism. No one can be baptized in the Father alone, or the Son alone, or the Father and the Son, for without the Holy Spirit one is not taken up into the very life of God as God truly is, and so would not be truly divinized. “For as baptism, which is given in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is one; and as there is one faith in the Triad; so also the Holy Triad.” Thus, Athanasius confirms that without the Holy Spirit, Christians possess no union with the Father and the Son. “For it is when we partake of him [the Holy Spirit] that we have the love of the Father, the grace of the Son, and the communion of the Spirit himself.”^[38] So Athanasius concludes his first Letter: “True worshipers, therefore, worship the Father, but in Spirit and Truth, confessing the Son and in him the Spirit. For the Spirit is inseparable from the Son, as the Son is inseparable from the Father.”^[39] For Athanasius, to deny the divinity of the Holy Spirit is to blaspheme him and so commit, as Jesus warned, the unforgivable sin.

Conclusion

The source of Athanasius’s defense and articulation of the Trinity and, specifically, that of the divinity of the Holy Spirit is Scripture itself, for it proclaims that the one God is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. This is what the church has always professed and proclaimed. For Athanasius, as the Father is eternally the Father of the Son, so the Holy Spirit must be the eternal Spirit of the Father and the Son. As the Father and Son mutually co-inhere in one another, so the Son and Holy Spirit must mutually co-inhere in one another, and so, in turn, the Holy Spirit must mutually co-inhere in the Father. This ontological communion of being and action between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit is the defining characteristic of Athanasius’s theology of the Holy Spirit and, ultimately, of the Trinity itself. In this mutual ontological interrelationship among the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Athanasius offered the theological foundation for the future notion of their perichoresis, that is, their mutual intercommunion and co-inherence. Thus, Athanasius advanced the church’s understanding of the Trinity, both in the East and the West, in a significant manner that continues to today.

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