The Spirit Called Paraclete

At the beginning, as the subject required, we held our first discussions about the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Then it seemed right to go back over our ground and show that the same God was the creator and founder of the world and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ — that is, that the God of the law and of the prophets and the God of the Gospel are one and the same. After that it had to be shown, with respect to Christ, how the one already demonstrated to be the Word and Wisdom of God became man. What remains is to return, as briefly as we can, to the subject of the Holy Spirit. [a]

It is time, then, to say a few words as best we can about the Holy Spirit, whom our Lord and Savior in the Gospel of John names the Paraclete. For just as it is the same God himself and the same Christ, so it is also the same Holy Spirit who was in the prophets and in the apostles — that is, in those who believed in God before Christ came, and in those who have taken refuge in God through Christ. We have heard, it is true, that certain heretics have dared to say there are two Gods and two Christs; but we have never known of anyone preaching two Holy Spirits.

For how could they support that out of Scripture? What distinction could they lay down between one Holy Spirit and another, supposing any definition or description of the Holy Spirit can be found at all? Even if we granted Marcion or Valentinus that distinctions can be drawn in the matter of deity, and that the nature of the good God is one thing and the nature of the just God another, what will he think up, what will he find, that lets him bring in a distinction in the Holy Spirit? My own view is that they are able to find nothing whatever that would mark a distinction of any kind at all.

It is our opinion that every reasoning creature, without any distinction, receives a share of him in the same way it receives a share of the Wisdom and the Word of God. I notice, however, that the chief coming of the Holy Spirit to men is announced after Christ’s ascension into heaven rather than before his coming into the world. Before that, the gift of the Holy Spirit was given to the prophets alone, and to a few individuals, if there happened to be anyone among the people who deserved it. But after the Savior’s coming it is written that the prediction of the prophet Joel was fulfilled: [e]

“In the last days it will come about that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and they will prophesy,”

which is like the well-known statement, “All nations will serve him.”

By the grace of the Holy Spirit, then, along with many other results, this most glorious consequence is plainly shown. As for the things written in the prophets or in the law of Moses, at that time it was only a few — the prophets themselves, and hardly one other man out of the whole nation — who were able to look past the merely bodily meaning and find something greater, something spiritual, in the law or in the prophets. But now there are countless multitudes of believers who, though they cannot set out in order and clearly what follows from their spiritual understanding, are nevertheless completely convinced that circumcision is not to be taken literally, nor the sabbath rest, nor the pouring out of an animal’s blood, nor the answers God gave Moses about these things. And this way of taking them is beyond doubt suggested to the minds of all by the power of the Holy Spirit.

There are many ways of grasping Christ. He is wisdom, yet he does not act the part of wisdom or exercise the power of wisdom in everyone, but only in those who give themselves to the pursuit of wisdom in him. He is called a physician, yet he does not act as one toward everyone, but only toward those who understand how weak and sick they are and run to his compassion to get well. I think it is the same with the Holy Spirit, in whom every kind of gift is contained. On one the Spirit bestows the word of wisdom, on another the word of knowledge, on another faith; and so, in each of those who are able to receive him, the Spirit himself becomes — or is understood to be — that very thing which the one who has deserved a share in him needs. [h]

These divisions and differences are not noticed by people who hear him called the Paraclete in the Gospel and never stop to consider what work or act he is named the Paraclete for. They have lumped him in with some ordinary spirit or other, and by doing so have tried to unsettle the churches of Christ and have stirred up quarrels of no small size among brothers and sisters. Yet the Gospel shows him to be of such power and majesty that it says the apostles could not yet take in the things the Savior wanted to teach them until the Holy Spirit came, who would pour himself into their souls and give them light about the nature of the Trinity and about faith in it.

But these people, because their understanding is ignorant, are not only unable to state the truth logically themselves; they cannot even give their attention to what we put forward. Holding unworthy ideas about his divinity, they have handed themselves over to errors and deceptions, corrupted by a spirit of error rather than taught by the teaching of the Holy Spirit. It is as the apostle declares:

“Following the teaching of demons, forbidding to marry, to the destruction and ruin of many, and to abstain from foods, so that by a showy display of stricter observance they may lead the souls of the innocent astray.”

We must know, then, that the Paraclete is the Holy Spirit, who teaches truths that cannot be put into words — things that are, so to speak, unspeakable, “which it is not lawful for a man to utter” — that is, which human language cannot indicate. The phrase “it is not lawful” is used by the apostle, we think, in place of “it is not possible,” as also where he says: [k]

“All things are lawful for me, but not all things are good for me; all things are lawful for me, but not all things build up.”

For the things that are in our power because we may have them are the ones he calls lawful for us.

But the Paraclete, who is called the Holy Spirit, is named from his work of consoling; for paraklēsis is what Latin calls consolatio. If anyone has deserved a share in the Holy Spirit by coming to know his unspeakable mysteries, he undoubtedly gains comfort and gladness of heart. For since he arrives, by the Spirit’s teaching, at the knowledge of the reasons for everything that happens — how and why it occurs — his soul cannot be troubled in any way or admit any feeling of grief, and nothing alarms him, because he clings to the Word of God and to his wisdom and through the Holy Spirit calls Jesus Lord.

And since we have brought up the Paraclete and have explained as well as we could what ought to be thought about him, and since our Savior too is called the Paraclete in the letter of John, where he says,

“If any of us sins, we have a Paraclete with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins,”

let us consider whether this word Paraclete may happen to have one meaning when it is applied to the Savior and another when it is applied to the Holy Spirit. Now Paraclete, spoken of the Savior, seems to mean one who pleads for us; for in Greek the word carries both senses, one who pleads and one who comforts. Because of the phrase that follows, when he says, “and he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins,” the name Paraclete seems to be understood in the Savior’s case as meaning one who pleads: he is said to plead with the Father on account of our sins. In the case of the Holy Spirit, Paraclete has to be understood as comforter, since he bestows consolation on the souls to whom he openly reveals the grasp of spiritual knowledge.