The Angelic Doctor Against the Errors of the Greeks - Part Two - Chapter 2

That the Son sends the Holy Spirit.

It is likewise evident on the authority of Holy Scripture that the Son sends the Holy Spirit. For in John 15:26 it is stated: When the Paraclete comes whom I shall send you, and in John 16:7: If I do not go away, he Paraclete will not come to you, but if I go, I will send him to you. On the authority of Scripture (John 14:16) it is also certain that the Father gives the Holy Spirit: I will ask the Father and he will give you another Paraclete. But that the Son gives the same Holy Spirit is clear from John 20: 22), for it is there stated that after the resurrection the Lord breathed upon the disciples and said to them: Receive the Holy Spirit. Athanasius confesses the same in his discourse on the Council of Nicaea: “How will they be consummated unless I, your Word, am consummated”, that is, assume a perfect man, “and perfect mankind within myself and grant them the Holy Spirit, my equal and in all things my cooperator?”  And the same point in the letter to Serapion: “I believe, o holy fellow priest, that you have received this Holy Spirit from the Son.” 

The same Athanasius, moreover, in the same letter says: “This is the order of divine nature from the Father in the Son that he who is from no one should be sent by no one, and he who is from another should come not in his own name, but in the name of him from whom he exists. So the Holy Spirit who is not from himself, should not come of himself, but in the name of him from whom he is and from he derives his hypostatic status as God, wherefore of him the Son says (John 14:26): The Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name.”  From the fact that the Holy Spirit is sent by the Son, it clearly follows that he exists eternally of the Son and derives from him his status as God.

Nicetas, commenting on John, likewise says: “The Father does not send the Holy Spirit in virtue of a property other than the one by which the Son sends him; nor does the Son send the Holy Spirit in virtue of some property by which the Father does not send him.”  Whence it is clear that the Father and the Son send the Holy Spirit in virtue of the same property and on the same basis. If, therefore, the Father sends the Holy Spirit as one who exists eternally of him, similarly the Son will send the Holy Spirit as one who eternally exists of him.

So, too, Athanasius in his discourse on the Council of Nicaea, speaking in the person of the Son, says: “As you begot me perfect God and caused me to assume a perfect man, so of yourself and of my essence give them the perfect Holy Spirit.”  And in his letter to Serapion, “As in the Son of God the nature which he took from us remains united to him, so also he remains in us through his own Spirit coessential with him, whom in virtue of his essence he spirates from his essence and gives to us.”  And in his sermon on the Incarnation of the Word he says” “The Holy Spirit is given to the disciples from the fullness of the godhead.”  Likewise Nicetas commenting on John says: “As the Father, the Son gives the Spirit of himself.” 

From all this it is concluded that the Spirit is said to be given or sent by the Son, not only in so far as the gift of grace through which the Holy Spirit dwells in us is from the Son, but in so far as the Holy Spirit is from the Son. For it is impossible that the gift of grace, being something created, should be of the essence of the Son. But the Holy Spirit is coessential with the Son. Wherefore he can be given or sent from the essence of the Son.

Moreover, nothing but what belongs to him can be given by anyone. The Holy Spirit, therefore, is given by him whose he is, as 1 John 4:3 states: By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his own Spirit. If, therefore, the Son sends or gives the Holy Spirit, the Spirit must be his. From the fact that it is his Spirit, it follows that the Spirit is from him eternally, as has been shown.  From this, that the Son sends or gives the Holy Spirit, it follows that the Spirit likewise exists of him eternally.