iv. Athanasius's Doctrine of the Holy Spirit
THE LETTERS OF $T. ATHANASIUS
appears to be confined to John 1s and Amos 413. If we may assume that these heretics are Egyptian Pneumatomachi, then their dependence upon the Anomoeans'seems to have been far closer than any we can attribute to the Macedonians, though the latter borrowed arguments and expositions from Eunomius and his disciples. This conclusion is confirmed by the account given of the Tropici in these letters. It is true that Athanasius does not discuss John 13; that there is nothing to suggest that the Tropici gave publicity to the notion of daaeiOuncic ; and, at least in Ep. I, little to suggest that they denied the Spirit His part in creation.®* But allowance must be made for the information at Athanasius's disposal. He had not met these people face to face, nor had he anything of theirs in writing. He was entirely dependent upon the letters Serapion sent him. Moreover, it is probable that the '"Aguototedimy dewdtns of Aetius and Eunomius suffered a little in transmission through the Tropici. There is nothing to suggest that the new movement boasted intellectual substance. Its supporters were probably confined to parish clergy and laymen. They certainly failed to found a school or a sect, and their very name would have perished but for these letters.
IV. ATHANASIUS'S DOCTRINE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT
For Athanasius, the doctrine of the Spirit stands in the closest possible relation to that of the Son. We have already seen the immediate practical advantages he obtained from insisting upon that relationship.
It enabled him to maintain that Tropicism was inconsistent with the formulated doctrine of the Church. But this co-ordination was not merely a tactical device to outflank his adversaries. It was strategically sound. In the context of the Arian controversy, the relationship between the two doctrines was exactly as he held it to be. The question of the Spirit arose out of the question of the Son. It was a crisis within 1118! (continued ) developed in 24-5. The heretics referred to in 38 and 45 are, of course, not Pneumatomachi at all, but, apparently, Sabellians and Manichaeans.
82 jbid.14-16, 59. He also mentions, in 59, in connexion with Amos 413, Zechariah
121. But the passage is so entirely inapposite that it is hard to believe that any
Pneumatomachist, who was not an utter imbecile, would have cited it. Can it be that Didymus knew that Zechariah came into the argument somewhere and, by lapse of memory, substituted this passage for Io?
88 cf, 1.9(88) and 24(127). It may be that the greateremphasis laid upon the creative activity of the Spirit, in III.4-5(172ff.), is due to the fact that his attention had been drawn to this point by Serapion.
INTRODUCTION
a crisis. The Christian doctrine of God depended, in its entirety, upon this issue. To have yielded to the Tropici or to have acquiesced in the inclusion of the Spirit with the creatures would have been to surrender everything Athanasius had contended for. How clearly he realized this connexion can be understood from the references to the Spirit in c. Arianos, I-III. They are not numerous.? They are all incidental to the main argument, and not one of them is introduced for the sake of the Spirit. Yet, were these letters and all the later works lost, we should have little difficulty in determining where Athanasius stood in regard to this subject and what he believed.
These considerations should be sufficient to dispose of the notion that faith in the Spirit's essential Godhead was something that Athanasius had picked up on his travels in Rome and the West. It is not an addendum artificially stitched on to his confession of the Son.
The one doctrine springs naturally and inevitably from the other.
They are entirely integrated. But by insisting that it is from our knowledge of the Son that we must derive our knowledge of the Spirit,?
Athanasius reveals, notonly an exact appreciation of the contemporary situation for theology, but also a vigorougnd profound apprehension of his subject. Here we recover once again the New Testament conception of the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of the Son, not only inasmuch as the Son gives and sends Him, but because He is the principle of Christ's life within us. His ministry is the ministry of the Son; and all the activity of the Son is accomplished in Him.? We may justly say of Athanasius what Lebreton says of Paul: 'behind his conception of the Spirit stands Christ.' But we can scarcely say it of any of his contemporaries or predecessors. Origen, indeed, brought the Spirit and the Son into close relationship at one important point,' by teaching that the former is originated through the latter; and Dr. Prestige does well to remind us® of the significance of this for the doctrine of the double
Iv! The principal points are: the Spirit sent and given by the Son as His own, 1.47-8 ; the equality of the Spirit with the Son, 1.50; the Spirit peculiarly the gift of God, and His mission from the Son thus proving the Son's Godhead, II.18; the Spirit in the Trinity, as the activity of light is in the radiance which comes from the sun, III.15; God in us by the indwelling of the Spirit, III.24.
2TIL.1.
8 cf. 1.19-20(108f.).
4 And, to a certain degree also, by affirming the personality of the Spirit. cf. de
Prin.Liii.1: 'De subsistentia vero Spiritus sancti ne suspicionem quidem ullam habere quis potuit praeter eos qui in lege et prophetis versati sunt vel eos qui se credere Christo profitentur.' é 5 God in Patristic Thought, p.249 f aed
THE ,\LETTERS OF ST. ATHANASIUS
procession. But the subordinationism which, even here, is clearly marked in Origen's approach, led him to distinguish the activity of the Spirit by assigning to Him a limited sphere of action. The majority of early Fathers would probably have been willing to say with Irenaeus® that the Word and the Spirit are the two hands of God; with the implication that what one hand does not perform is left for the other. But inasmuch as the activity of the Word was gradually correlated with the whole activity of God, it became harder and harder to think of the Spirit at all, and faith in Him became largely a matter of reafirming the baptismal tradition.? The very fact that a final distinction of function cannot be drawn within the Godhead, which embarrassed
Justin and Irenaeus, i is the very substance of Athanasius's case. "There is nothing which is not originated and actuated through the Word in the Spirit."® This formula, 'through the Word in the Spirit', based on 1 Corinthians 86 and 123, etc., occurs over and over again in these letters!°; and Athanasius obviously attaches a more definite significance to the prepositions than Basil does.1 For Athanasius, the co-activity of the Three Persons does not simply mean—as it does for Basil and Didymus—that they work fégether in one activity. The action of the Godhead, as he understands it, derives from the Father and is accomplished through the agency of the Son in the Spirit. It must be v6 Haer.1V.Praef.A.
7 cf. Raven, Apollinarianism, p.36, on the Logos doctrine: *... it also appropriates to the Second Person the work and attributes of the Third. It is the Logos, not the Spirit, who is the Lord and Giver of life.' But the writer, while criticizing the Logos doctrine, falls a victim to its influence. The tragedy did not lie in the fact that it acknowledged the Word to be the Giver of life, but that it so subordinated the Spirit to the Son as to make possible that division of operation which Professor Raven's criticism presupposes.
8 See Swete, H.S.4.C.38; Harnack, H.D.11.209 and 266. It also has this advantage, that it enables him to conserve the older traditions of the creative Logos-Sophia which we find in Justin and Theophilus, and of the Logos Paedagogos of Clement of Alexandria. See on I.31(145) and III.5(174).
97.31.
Weg, 1.9,12,24,25,30; III.5.
11 cf. de Sp.S.7, on 1 Corinthians 86: "These are the words of a writer not laying down a rule, but carefully distinguishing the hypostases.'
12 For Didymus, the treatment of 2 Corinthians 1313 in de Sp.S.16-17, may be compared with that in £p.1.30-1. See also the whole section on the activity of the Spirit in de Trin.I1.560-632. The same feature, in the thought of Basil, can be recognized in his de Sp.8.37-40. By contrast, Gregory of Nyssa is thoroughly
Athanasian in such passages as ad@'v.Mac.1317a: 'Every activity which, coming from God, reaches the creature, originates with the Father, goes forth through the Son, and is perfected in the Holy Spirit."
INTRODUCTION
admitted that he does not make altogether clear what he means by 'in the Spirit'. But two statements are suggestive. Firstly, the Spirit is the évéoyera of the Son'; secondly, 'The things created through the Word have their vital strength out of the Spirit from the Word'.4 We may add what he says in c. 4r. III.15, that the Trinity is 'sun and radiance, and one is the light which is from the sun in the radiance'.
We must beware of reading into these statements a more precise significance than they are well able to bear. But, taken together, they seem to imply that Athanasius conceives of the Spirit as realizing and giving actuality to the power of God." 'Radiance' suggests that which the sun diffuses; 'light' suggests that which the eye receives and which justifies and fulfils the whole process of illumination in the enlightened activity of the recipient. This line of thought is most easily related to the work of the Spirit in the sanctification of the creature, and it was probably suggested by reflection upon this theme. It is true that, for Athanasius, the formula, "The Son creates and the Spirit sanctifies', is too simple. It suggests that there is a work of God from which the Spirit is excluded. Rather, he thinks of creation and sanctification as one single work.!* Thus, in his review of the Spirit's ministry in I.22—4, he deals with His creativeness not independently but, as it were, in the context of His sanctifying operation. This was all the easier for him because of his doctrine of creation itself.17 God cannot create without imparting to His creatures something of His own character; and the continuance of His works is only secured by His presence within them.
It is true that in contra Gentes and de Incarnatione he does not relate this to the Spirit, but only to the Son. When writing these letters,
. however, he is forced to reconsider and reinterpret both creation and 'deification' in order to do justice to the work of the Spirit. So in I.29 he insists, from Ephesians 46, that by denying the Spirit the Tropici virtually deny the immanence of God.
In his exposition of the Spirit's work in sanctification, Athanasius once again takes us back to the New Testament. It is true that he falls far short of the great Pauline and Johannine doctrine. He has little to say of the ethical fruits of the Spirit or of His witness with the spirit of the believer. Nor is he concerned, as his contemporary, Cyril of ~ 1v18 1.20 and 30.
14 t7y tod elvat ioydy (III.5).
"15 cf, Swete, H.S.A.C.379: "He gives actuality to the work . . . and brings it to its destined end .
. . the Spirit is the Spirit of power; the vitalizer, the perfecter of the works of God.'
16 See note on 1.9(82f.).
17 cf. c,Gentes 41 and de Inc.4,
THE LETTERS OF ST. ATHANASIUS
Jerusalem, is concerned, with the illumination of the mind and conscience by the Spirit. To His prophetic ministry he does indeed give prominence; but it is for him a ministry exhausted in the inspiration of Scripture. This limitation is partly due to the purpose with which he writes. He does not set out to describe the work of the Spirit but to establish His propriety to God. In his treatment he necessarily selects such points as most directly bear on his main subject. But, more fundamentally, his apprehension is limited by his conception of sanctification, which is metaphysical rather than ethical. Although the term feoxoinots and its cognates are not as prominent in these Epistles as they are in c. Arianos I-III, the idea dominates his thought. By sanctification he means the elevation of human nature to a state of divine incorruption so that it is enabled, as far as its creatureliness permits, to partake the blessedness of God. This concept did not, of course, originate with Athanasius. Origen taught that human nature can, in fact, be transmuted into something divine; that this has actually happened ® to the particular humanity assumed by our Lord, and, ina lesser degree, happens to all believers. But whereas Origen (and, even more pronouncedly, his predecessor, Clement) interprets this transformation, at any rate at its highest level, in terms of enlightenment,"
Athanasius relates it more directly to the fallen condition of mankind and our consequent loss of immortality." The purpose of the Incarnation is not only to enlighten, but also to recreate our humanity by reuniting it with God and thus staying the process of death. In this insistence
18 For the relevant passages, see Harnack, H.D.11.371, note. That human nature is, in some way, deified in all those who receive Christ with faith can be seen from such passages as c.Cels.II1.28 and de Prin.I.vi.2.
19 cf, Harnack, H.D.II.374f. 'At bottom there is nothing obscure and mystical here ; the whole process takes place in the will and in the feelings through knowledge.
... In this view the thought of regeneration in the sense of a fundamental renewal of the Ego has no place.' But when he attempts (in de Prin.II.vi.6) to distinguish and to relate the fusion of the two natures in Christ and the work of God in human nature generally, he uses the symbolism of physical processes in the same way as Athanasius in I.23. Moreover, as Harnack observes, the metaphysical terminology is retained in connexion with baptism. cf. in Foh.V1.33.
20 cf. the interesting comparison of Athanasius's doctrine with that of Clement,
in Tollinton's Clement of Alexandria, 11.21, etc., and see Robertson, Intro. lxix—Ixxi.
It should be noticed that whereas for Athanasius and Irenaeus the work of grace means the elevation of human life to an entirely new level of communion with the divine and incorruptible, Origen starts with the assumption that immortality is an inalienable attribute of the soul. Thus, for him: 'if man conquers . .
. he attains likeness to God; the image of God he bears, beyond danger of loss, in his indestructible, rational and therefore immortal spirit'; Harnack, ibid. p.364.
INTRODUCTION
upon éy8agaia as the characteristic quality in the divine life as it is bestowed upon men he takes up the teaching of Irenaeus.*" Beyond
Irenaeus, it may be traced back to Ignatius, and thence to the Fourth Gospel.# Athanasius's treatment of this subject in these letters is important, not because it modifies or enlarges the concept of sanctification found in de Incarnatione, but because it relates it to the Holy Spirit. The very fact that sanctification, so conceived, was an extension to 'all creation' of that which the Word had accomplished, by His Incarnation, Passion and Resurrection, in His own humanity, tended to obscure and to minimize the operation of the Spirit therein as a fuller and more ethical interpretation would not have done. This development is not a mere expeditious device to meet a new situation. The teaching of I.22—4 is to be found 'tz muce' in c. Ar. 1.47, where the principal Scripture passages he makes use of are already cited.24 The attribution of Oeoroinotc to the Spirit in de Dec. 14% is also significant. Here again, the thought of Athanasius is close to that of Irenaeus, who, more than any other writer of the second and third centuries, lays emphasis, in his account of sanctification, on the work of the Spirit. Nor is the resemblance confined _to the general idea. The symbols and terms under which it is expressed and the texts from which it is established are largely common'to them both. Athanasius may well be directly
1v21 For references, see Harnack, [email protected], note 2. Theophilus (ad Aut.I1.27) is apparently the first Christian writer to identify the gift of immortality as Peomoinotc.
22 E. F. Scott's criticism of the conception of 'life' in the Fourth Gospel might have been made of Athanasius's doctrine: '. .
. John involves himself in a view that may fairly be described as semi-physical. The true life is regarded as a kind of higher essence inherent in the divine nature, analogous to the life principle in man, but different in quality—spiritual instead of earthly. Ethical conceptions fall into a secondary place. Man requires to undergo a radical change, not in heart merely, but in the very constitution of his nature. Until he possesses himself of the higher, diviner essence there can be no thought of his participating in the life of God' (The Fourth Gospel, p.258). How far the categories Athanasius uses, categories which, of course, he inherited from his predecessors, adequately express his own thought, is a matter for consideration. Certainly his doctrine of redemption, as expounded in the de Inc., is profoundly ethical. See the discussion in Sellers, Two Ancient Christologies, pp-15-17.
23 [23 fin. See note in loc.(124).
24 His use of 2 Peter 14 is specially noteworthy. cf. also c.Ar.1.16, ad Adel.4, ad
Epict.6, etc. It is curiously neglected by earlier writers, and Athanasius may be said to have fixed its significance for the soteriological doctrine of the Church.
25 See note on 1.24(125f.).
26 See especially Haer.III. xvii and xviii; V.i, vi-1, vii.1.
THE LETTERS OF ST. ATHANASIUS
indebted to his predecessor here. But, even if he borrows his materials, he adapts them to his own use and makes them serve his conception of the Spirit's propriety to the Son. For example, both Origen and Irenaeus make use of the symbol of unction. For the former, it expresses, from Psalm 448, the permeation of Christ's human soul by the Word and Wisdom of God, so that its fragrance extends to those that partake of Him.?' Irenaeus relates it, from Isaiah 611, to the descent of the Spirit upon Christ: 'It is the Father who anoints, but the Son who is anointed by the Spirit who is the unction."** And, as He receives, so the Lord transmits the gift to those who partake of Himself.
Athanasius, as is clear from c. Ar. 1.46—7, also starts from Isaiah 611 and the baptism of Christ. But, from the beginning, the Spirit is the Spirit of the Son: 'I, being the Father's Word, give to myself, when becoming man, the Spirit.'° That the anointing is from the Father is, for the moment, disregarded. So in I.23 the emphasis is again laid upon Christ as the anointer; and, no less, upon the fact that the characteristic quality imparted by the Spirit is that of Christ. Here he takes up the point Origen has made. Being anointed with the Spirit, "we are the fragrance of Christ'. So likewise, Irenaeus regards the Spirit as conveying to man the image of the Father and of the Son," or, in other words, the similitude of God.*! Athanasius, in speaking of the Spirit as seal and image, limits the metaphor to His relation with the Son. Similarly, in Irenaeus the Spirit is generally the Spirit of God, occasionally the Spirit of the Father, never the Spirit of the Son. In Athanasius the last is the most usual designation.
In all this there is, of course, no intention on the part of Athanasius to alienate the Spirit from the Father. Perhaps it was because he felt that what he says in I.22, etc., is capable of such misinterpretation that he insists explicitly in III.1 that 'the Holy Spirit, which is said to belong to the Son, belongs to the Father'. The Son forms, as it were, the link between them. It is from the Spirit's propriety to the Son that we apprehend His procession from the Father.** Can we go on from this to assert that Athanasius teaches a doctrine of double procession, from the Son as well as from the Father, or, as the Eastern Fathers put it, from the Father through the Son? It must be confessed that Athanasius's explicit teaching on this point is far less clear and conclusive than
1v2? de Prin. I1.vi.6.
%8 Haer.I11.xviii.3.
29 ¢,Ar.1.46 fin.
80 Haer II1.xvii.3.
91 ibid.V.vi.1; cf. V.viii.l.
92 e.g. III xvii.1; V.i.1, vi.2.
88 '|. . which is said to proceed from the Father because it is from the Word, who is confessed to be from the Father, that it shines forth and is sent and is given' (1.20).
INTRODUCTION
Montfaucon* supposed it to be. It is made plain that the Spirit proceeds from the Father. éxsogevec8ar has already acquired a technical meaning in this connexion.* His relation to the Son is set forth by saying that He is sent or given from Him. The preposition aga is generally preferred here.** Athanasius also says, from John
'1614, that the Spirit receives é% tod Yiod. A close examination of the passages in which these and analogous expressions occur *®" suggests that, in using them, he thinks primarily, if not exclusively, in terms of the Spirit's mission in the world. Indeed, the interpretation given to John 2022in III.1, that by breathing upon the disciples Christ gave them the Spirit 'out of Himself', might lead us to conclude that, even in his own thinking, he has not clearly distinguished procession and mission.** On the other side, in I.15, when he speaks clearly and unequivocally of the Spirit's being, he confines himself to the statement that the Spirit is 'of the Son', no preposition being used. This is the more significant in that it follows a direct assertion of the Spirit's procession from the Father.
It is not difficult to account for Athanasius's hesitation. The notion of a double procession was not a novelty. As we have already seen," both Eusebius and Marcellus approached it, the former in insisting that the Spirit is originated by the Son, the latter by setting His procession from the Son side by side with His procession from the Father. In each case the conclusion finally reached was heretical. Eusebius dismissed the whole notion of procession and refused to regard the Spirit as anything more than one of the yeyytdé of John 13. Marcellus found here a new argument against the drawing of any final distinction between the Person of the Father and that of the Son. Confronted thus with the Scylla of Arianism and the Charybdis of Sabellianism,
Athanasius might well be reluctant to pursue the subject. For his purpose it was sufficient to establish that the Spirit derives His existence from the Father as truly as the Son, and that He stands in as close and unitive relation to the Son as the Son to the Father. He might
1v84 Prolegomena, xxix, Migne, Pat.Gr.25.
85 See note on 1.2(64f.).
36 See note on 1.2(65).
37 See especially on I.20(117).
38 Greek theology seems never entirely to have transcended this confusion. cf. what Swete says of John of Damascus, H.S.4.C.284.
89 p19 f.
40 Tangen summarized the teaching of Athanasius on the relation of the Spirit to the Father and the Son in four propositions:
(a) The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father ; (6) He belongs to the Son whose image He is;
42 °
THE LETTERS OF ST. ATHANASIUS
well be content to leave to others the final correlation and adjustment of the two statements.
This was all the easier for him because he had attained to a fuller and more satisfying conception of the divine unity than his predecessors had known. Earlier theology found the ground of that unity in the one Father from whom the Son and the Spirit derive their being.
Origen had conceived that derivation at once as an eternal fact and as the first link in the chain of creation. The Lucianic tradition, as represented by Asterius, with a sharper and juster sense of the distinction between God and His creatures, regarded the generation of the Son as an act, beyond time indeed, but by its very nature temporal and contingent; while, at the same time, it strove to preserve the uniqueness of the Son by insisting upon the immediacy of His generation. He is poovoyevyc in the sense that He is the sole direct work of the Father." For persons in this tradition, the question of the Spirit's Godhead resolved itself into the question of the mode of His derivation.
How is He from God? yerytéy He must be, if the unity of God is to be maintained. But any attempt to distinguish His yéveoug from that of the creatures seemed to sacrifice the reality of Christ's Sonship.
Athanasius, on the other hand, starts from different premises. The Father is, indeed, sny7) Oedtytoc. But the Godhead of which He is the source is not something transmitted to and partaken by His Son and His Spirit. Each person is God and Lord, and the divine unity is maintained by the coinherence of each Person in the rest. The decisive formula for his Trinitarian doctrine is clearly given in III.5: od yao éxtdc éote tod Adyov to IIveipua, adda, éy tH Adym dv &v TH
Oc@ dadtod gotw.
Thus for Asterius and his Anomoean successors the significant preposition is éx, for Athanasius it is éy.
If the Spirit is fully understood to be in God, how He comes from God is a secondary question into which we need not proceed. Indeed, to speculate upon it is impertinent and dangerous."
Yet if we regard what is implicit, rather than what is explicit, in these letters, we are justified in claiming that the procession of the Spirit through the Son is a necessary corollary of his whole argument.
1v40 (continued) (c) He has the whole divine nature of the Father through the Son, who thus far is His source; (@) He is in the Father through the Son.
(Quoted by Lauchert, Die Lehre des hl. Athanasius, p.64.) 41 See de Dec.8 and de Syn.18.
42 So 1.17,18, IV.5, etc.