Christ’s Glory Is His Own

Then in another discussion of yours, or rather in another of your blasphemies, you say: “And he separated from the divine nature the Spirit who created his humanity. For Scripture says that what was born of Mary is of the Holy Spirit. It was the Spirit who also filled with righteousness what had been created, for it says, ‘He appeared in the flesh, was counted righteous in the Spirit.’ Again, it was the Spirit who made him to be feared by the demons: ‘For I,’ he says, ‘cast out demons by the Spirit of God.’ It was the Spirit who also made his flesh a temple: ‘For I saw his Spirit coming down like a dove and remaining on him.’ Again, it was the Spirit who granted him his ascension into heaven, for it says, ‘Giving a command to the apostles whom he had chosen, he was taken up by the Holy Spirit.’ In short, it was the Spirit who granted such glory to Christ.” [a]

So the whole of your blasphemy comes to this: that Christ had nothing of himself, and that he, a mere man as you say, received nothing from the Word, that is, from the Son of God, but that everything in him was the gift of the Spirit. Now, you would have him taken for a man because, as you say, everything he has belongs to another. If, then, we can show that everything you credit to the Spirit is his own, what remains but to prove that he is God, because everything he has is his own? And we will prove this not only by discussion and argument, but by the voice of the Godhead itself, for nothing testifies about God better than the things of God. And because nothing knows itself better than the very glory of God, there is nothing we have more right to believe on the subject of God than those writings in which God is his own witness.

First, then, as to your saying that the Holy Spirit created his humanity. We might take it in a simple sense, if we could be sure that you had not brought it forward to serve unbelief. For we do not deny that the Lord’s flesh was conceived by the Holy Spirit. But we assert that the body was conceived through the working together of the Holy Spirit in such a way that we can say his humanity was created for himself by the Son of God. This is what the Holy Spirit himself says in Holy Scripture, when he testifies that “Wisdom has built itself a house.” You see, then, that what was conceived by the Holy Spirit was built and completed by the Son of God. It is not that the work of the Son of God is one thing and the work of the Holy Spirit another. Rather, through the oneness of the Godhead and of its glory, the working of the Spirit is the building of the Son of God, and the building of the Son of God is the working together of the Holy Spirit. That is why we read not only that the Holy Spirit came upon the Virgin, but also that the power of the Most High overshadowed her. Wisdom itself is the fullness of the Godhead, and so no one could doubt that when Wisdom built itself a house, all the fullness of the Godhead was present.

But the wretched hardness of your blasphemy, while it tries to cut Christ off from the Son of God, does not see that it is cutting the nature of the Godhead off from itself altogether. Unless perhaps you believe that the house was built for him by the Holy Spirit because he himself was not enough for the task and could not build a house for himself. But it is as absurd as it is wild to believe that he, who we believe created by his will the whole universe of things in heaven and on earth, was unable to build himself a body. This is all the more so since the power of the Holy Spirit is his power, and the divinity and glory of the Trinity are so united and inseparable that we cannot think of anything at all in one Person of the Trinity that can be separated from the fullness of the Godhead. Once this is laid down and grasped, then, that according to the faith of Holy Scripture Wisdom built itself a house when the Holy Spirit came upon the Virgin and the power of the Most High overshadowed her, the rest of the slanders of your blasphemy come to nothing. For there can be no doubt that he made all things by himself and in himself, in whose name and by faith in whom even believers can do anything. He did not need anyone else’s help, just as those who trusted in his power have not needed it.

And so your assertions that he was counted righteous by the Spirit, that the Spirit made him to be feared by the demons, that his flesh became the temple of the Holy Spirit, and that he was taken up into heaven by the Spirit, are all blasphemous and wild. This is not because we are to believe that the oneness and working together of the Spirit was missing from any of the things he did, for the Godhead is never missing from itself, and the power of the Trinity was always present in the Savior’s works. It is because you will have it that the Holy Spirit gave help to the Lord Jesus Christ as if he were feeble and powerless, and granted him things he could not obtain for himself. Learn, then, from the sacred witnesses to believe God, and not to mix falsehood with truth. The subject does not allow it, and common sense recoils from the idea of mixing the notions of the devil’s spirit with the witnesses that are divine.