The Renewal of the Trinity and the Role of the Spirit

Whether it is the Son or the Spirit. For neither would the Most High and rich in mercy borrow from the lesser or the poorer, nor have we acted in a double or dissimilar way. Yet what kind of logic holds that man is a maker and creator of good things, let us say, or of evil, while the Spirit is not this? But man does so by the concession of God, or from the essence provided by God, creating things without soul; and whoever wishes, does not even create essence, as we have already said. But the Spirit acts authentically, and establishes essence out of non-beings, being both a co-worker and the breath of the Pantokrator.

Therefore, in Ezekiel, God shows that our spirit is to be renewed, while the Holy Spirit renews, and indicates that it is not simply a spirit, but specifically His own, decreeing thus: 'And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will give you; and I will take away the stony heart from your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh, and my spirit I will put in you' (Ezekiel 36:26). But those who are stingy regarding these divine voices, and standing in all perplexity, are instead using external arts and attempting to divert these clearly spoken things to one thing or another. For they say with these words: the one who created the dead, raises the dying alone. For a painter could not correct the work of an architect that is decaying, nor a hunter the work of a shipbuilder, nor a runner the work of a builder; but rather an architect of architects and a shipbuilder of shipbuilders.

But the Holy Spirit, they say, neither raised the dead nor created; for once, they say, the human nature was created in Adam, and there is nothing else besides it, nor many times. But even Eve was joined to Adam by the common word of nature, and after that was formed. But we, the orthodox, since the creating and raising of the dead is most especially a knowledge of divine power, confess the Holy Spirit to be God, having performed these things; for 'by the word' 'the heavens were established, and by the spirit of his mouth all their powers' (Psalm 33:6), and since from the beginning, during the creating of all things, He was also present and indissolubly possessed in divinity and in the energy...

Indeed, for this reason they are also present and remembered as they are being renewed. For what these have said is that to renew is not of another substance, which is to say of another nature, except for that of the Creator.

Therefore, concerning those things which exist and are being lived as if they were not existing, but are now being created spiritually and more divinely, David and Paul proclaim, as was foreordained and as we shall find in many places. For all time would fail me if I wished to remember everything everywhere. If, then, they did not differ in the Scriptures, but it seemed so to them, first, even if the divine writings in this book and those mentioned before it were ever once used as an exhortation: for what could one say, hearing these things, about the one using them to teach? Second, they reasoned that, just as the Father is a companion to the Son by the will of the Creator, so also is His Spirit. And not for the examination of the non-similar, regarding the proportion of one another and of those needing time and not even readily and everywhere blamelessly fulfilling the desire, they led us toward the investigation of the words and the substance of the unmixed, blessed Trinity which has completed us, saying things they had never before spoken. For how else could we say how great is the God Father, who once willed to bring all things into being through the Son, the Word? Surely, it has been proclaimed concerning the seed of David and Abraham and from the root of Jesse according to the flesh (Rom 1:3), as it has been perfectly said: 'For that which was born in her is of the Holy Spirit' (Luke 1:35), so that it might be consistent from every side that the sanctifying Spirit was a co-worker with the Good Creator. Therefore it is also written again: 'Jesus was led in the Spirit into the wilderness' (Matt 4:1); because the ruling Spirit was with Him, as God to God and as holding all things together and being present everywhere to Him, upon whom all things stand, and being in all things and filling all things. Since neither by their word nor by their manner does the Father raise the dead or create. For all things came into being through the Son alone. For toil is passion, and passion is a way toward corruption. Not denying, however, that the Lord was incarnated without sin from the nature of Adam, which is to say from the Virgin, or that we say these things of our own, but rather we confirm this by saying from...