By Henry Aloysius Barry
CHAPTER VIII. DIVINITY OF THE HOLY GHOST.
Macedonius was deposed by the Arians in 360, and his special tenets were condemned at the Council of Constantinople, in 381, which added to the Nicene Creed a clause defining the divinity of the Holy Ghost. Faith teaches that the Holy Ghost is God—"I believe in the Holy Ghost." (Sym. of Ap.) "Ananias, why hast thou conceived of this thing in thy heart," asks St. Peter, "thou hast not lied to man but to God!" (Acts v. 3, 4), adds the apostle, in the same breath.
The apostle, we here find, calls the one, whom he immediately before names the Holy Ghost, in the present instance, God —"Why hath Satan tempted thy heart that thou shouldst lie to the Holy Ghost." (v. 3.) In lying to the Holy Ghost, Ananias had lied to God. St. Stephen reproaches the Jews with a repetition of that resistance which their fathers before them had offered to the Holy Ghost: —"You stiff-necked and uncircumcised, in heart and ears, you also resist the Holy Ghost; as your fathers did, so do you also." (Acts vii, 51.) The offence of their fathers had been resistance to God; the Holy Ghost is, then, that same God, Who, of old, did speak:—"Harden not your hearts as in the provocation, in the temptation of the desert, where your fathers tempted me." (Heb. iii, 7.) "Take heed, brethren, lest perhaps there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelieving to depart from the living God" (12); "For He is the Lord, our God,—to-day, if you should hear His voice, harden not your hearts as in the provocation—where your fathers tempted me." (Ps. xciv, 78, 79.) "Well did the Holy Ghost speak to our fathers by Isaias the prophet." (Acts, xxviii, 25.) Our Lord Himself has also said, "Whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of Man it shall be forgiven him, but to him that shall speak against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven." (St. Luke, ii, 10.) If the Holy Ghost were merely of creature-stuff the larger grievousness of the offence against Him could not be managed at all. "Know ye not," says St. Paul, "that ye are the temples of God, and that the spirit of God dwelleth within you?" (I Cor. iii, 16.) St. Augustine takes occasion from these words to remark against Maximinus, "Our body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, despise not our bodies. They are the members of Christ. How great, therefore, God is—to Whom a temple is lifted by God and out of the members of God." (i. 3. n. 3.) Kings dwell in palaces, temples are reared up only to God, the Holy Ghost is, therefore, God. "No created being," says St. Cyril of Alexandria, "is such as God to dwell in a temple; for, among other things, this is characteristic of God alone." (Thesauri Ass. 34.) Creation, which is, of course, a prerogative of
Godhead is lucidly ascribed to the Holy Ghost, "and the spirit of God moved over the waters." (Gen. i, 2.) Hence the divinity of the Third Person, for "in the beginning, God created." (v. 17.) "By the word of the Lord, the heavens were created, and all the power of them by the spirit of His mouth." (Ps. xxxii, 6.) Says Job, "The spirit of God made me."
