The One Christ: St. Augustine's Theology of Deification (continued)
138 The Holy Spirit's Indwelling were going to believe in Christ by the gift of the Holy Spirit."8 In these sensible signs [signis sensibilibus], Augustine develops an important theologoumenon: given the Spirit's particular task within the economy, the various scriptural signifiers for the Spirit stress his subtle and silent ubiquity. The objects he chose by which to make himself known only hint at but never reveal his substance. The Spirit never sanctified the dove, wind, or fire because he never united them to himself, nor his person [neque . . . sibique et personae suae in unitatem habitumque coniunxit] to any such transitory creature.9 Although he remains immutable and invisible like the Father and the Son, he uses very plain and visible theophanies in order to convert the human mind from these visible manifestations of his own coming to the hidden eternity of his constant presence.10 Unlike the dignity of the flesh the Son assumed from Mary's humanity, the Spirit was never joined to any created nature. Augustine's exegesis clarifies that these ephemeral images "imposed themselves on the human senses and passed away [and] were divinely effected at a particular time from subservient creation, not from the Sovereign Nature itself, which remaining intact in itself, moves what it wishes, and, unchangeable, changes what it wishes."11 That is, the Holy Spirit never assumed created being, was never joined to any part of the visible world and can therefore never be circumscribed by it.
The Spirit's various theophanies are not, however, without significance. In his commentary on John 1:32–33, where John the Baptist witnesses the Spirit's descent from heaven "like a
8. Trin. 4.20.29; Hill, Trinity, 175: "cum oportet eius aduentum signis sensibilis demonstrari ut ostenderetur totum orbem terrarum atque omnes gentes in linguis uariis constitutas credituras in Christum per donum spiritus sancti"; CCL 50.201.
9. Trin. 2.6.11; CCL 50.94. 10. Cf. Trin. 2.5.10: "ut exterioribus uisis hominum corda commota a temporali manifestatione uenientis ad occultam aeternitatem semper praesentis conuerterentur"; CCL 50.93; cf. Jo. eu. tr. 6.3.
11. Jo. eu. tr. 99.2; Rettig, Tractates, 4.220; slightly adjusted.