The Dew of the Spirit

It was certainly within the apostles’ power to say that Christ came down upon Jesus, or that the so-called higher Savior came down upon the Jesus of the arrangement, or that the one who is from the invisible places came down upon the one who is from the Demiurge. But they neither knew anything of the kind nor said it; had they known it, they would certainly have stated it. What they did record is what actually happened: that the Spirit of God came down upon him as a dove. This is the Spirit of whom Isaiah declared, “And the Spirit of God will rest upon him,” as I have already said. And again: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me.” This is the Spirit of whom the Lord says, “It is not you who are speaking, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you.” And again, when he gave the disciples the power of new birth into God, he said to them, “Go and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” [a]

For God had promised that in the last times he would pour him out upon his servants, men and women alike, so that they would prophesy. That is why he came down upon the Son of God, now made the Son of Man — growing used, in fellowship with him, to living among the human race, to resting with human beings, and to living in God’s handiwork, working the Father’s will in them and renewing them from their old habits into the newness of Christ.

This is the Spirit David asked for on behalf of the human race when he said, “And strengthen me with your sovereign Spirit.” And this is the Spirit who, as Luke says, came down on the disciples at the day of Pentecost after the Lord’s ascension, with power to admit all nations to the entrance of life and to the opening of the new covenant. That is why, all together and in every language, they spoke the praise of God, while the Spirit brought distant peoples into one and offered up to the Father the firstfruits of all the nations. That is why, too, the Lord promised to send the Advocate, who would join us to God.

For just as a packed lump of dough cannot be made out of dry wheat without liquid, and a loaf cannot hold together, so in the same way we, though many, could not have been made one in Christ Jesus without the water from heaven. And as dry ground bears nothing unless it takes in moisture, so we too, being at first a dry tree, could never have borne fruit for life without the rain freely given from above. Our bodies have received their unity with one another by means of that washing which leads to incorruption; our souls have received theirs by means of the Spirit. Both are necessary, since both contribute to the life of God.

So our Lord took pity on that Samaritan woman who had gone wrong — who did not stay with one husband, but was sexually immoral through many marriages — by pointing out living water to her and promising it to her, so that she would thirst no more and would no longer spend her labor getting water that only refreshes for a while, but would have in herself water springing up to eternal life. The Lord received this as a gift from his Father, and he himself confers it as well on those who share in him, sending the Holy Spirit over all the earth.

Gideon, the Israelite whom God chose to save the people of Israel from the power of foreigners, foresaw this gift of grace: he changed his request and prophesied that there would be dryness on the fleece of wool — the fleece standing for the people — on which alone the dew had fallen at first. He was showing that they would no longer have the Holy Spirit from God, as Isaiah says, “I will also command the clouds to rain no rain upon it”; but that the dew, which is the Spirit of God who came down upon the Lord, would be spread over all the earth: “the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and godliness, the spirit of the fear of God.”

This Spirit, again, he conferred upon the church, sending the Advocate from heaven over all the world — the same heaven from which, the Lord tells us, the devil was thrown down like lightning. So we need the dew of God, so that we are not burned up and are not left unfruitful, and so that where we have an accuser we may have an Advocate as well. For the Lord entrusted to the Holy Spirit his own man, who had fallen among robbers — the man he took pity on himself, and whose wounds he bound up, paying out two royal denarii — so that we, receiving through the Spirit the image and inscription of the Father and the Son, might make the denarius entrusted to us bear increase, and count out the profit on it to the Lord.

So then: the Spirit came down under the arrangement appointed beforehand, and the Son of God, the only Son, who is also the Word of the Father, came in the fullness of time, having become flesh in man for the sake of man and having met every condition of human nature — our Lord Jesus Christ being one and the same, as the Lord himself testifies, as the apostles confess, and as the prophets announce. And so all the teachings of these men, who have invented Ogdoads and Tetrads that do not exist and have imagined the Lord’s person split into parts, have been shown to be falsehoods.

These men do in fact set the Spirit aside altogether. They understand that Christ was one and Jesus another, and they teach that there was not one Christ but many. And if they speak of them as united, they separate them again: they show that one of them truly underwent suffering while the other remained untouched by suffering; that one truly ascended to the Pleroma while the other remained in the middle region; that one truly feasts and revels in places invisible and above every name, while the other is seated with the Demiurge, emptying him of his power.

So it will be your duty, and the duty of everyone else who gives attention to this writing and is anxious about his own salvation, not to agree readily when you hear these men’ speeches out in public. For, as I have already observed, they say things that resemble what the faithful say, and yet they not only hold opinions that are different, they hold ones that are flatly contrary, and full of blasphemy at every point. By them they destroy people who, because the words look alike, swallow a poison their constitution cannot take — as if a man handed you lime mixed with water for milk and misled you by the likeness of the color. As one better than I has said, speaking of all who in any way corrupt the things of God and adulterate the truth: “Lime is wickedly mixed with the milk of God.”