Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 7.djvu/463

 HOLY

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HOLY

Heimbucher. Orden und Kongregati&nen (Paderbom, 190S): Steele, The Convmts of Great Britain (St. Louis, 1902); Helyot, Diet, des ordres reliffieux (Paris, 1859).

F. M. RUDGE.

Holy Ghost. — I. Si-nopsi.s of the Dogm.\. — The doctrine of the Catholic Church concerning the Holy Ghost forms an integral part of her teaching on the mystery of the Holy Trinity, of which St. Augustine (De Trin., I, iii, .5)", speaking with diffidence, says: " In no other subject is the danger of erring so great, or the progress so difficult, or the fruit of a careful study so apprecialjle". The essential points of the dogma may be resumed in the following propositions: The Holy Ghost is the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity. Though really distinct, as a Person, from the Father and the Son, He is consubstantial with Them; being God hke Them, He possesses with Them one and the same Divine Essence or Nature. He proceeds, not by way of generation, but by way of spiration, from the Father and the Son together, as from a single princi- ple. Such is the belief the Cathohc faith demands.

II. Chief Errobs. — .411 the theories and all the Christian sects that have contradicted or impugned, in any way, the dogma of the Trinity, have, as a logi- cal consequence, threatened likewise the faith in the Holy Ghost. .4mong these, history mentions the following: (1) In the second and third centuries, the dynamic or modalistic Monarchians (certain Eljion- ites, it is said, Theodotus of Byzantium, Paul of Samosata, Praxeas, Noetus, Sabellius, and the Patri- passians generally) held that the same Divine Person, according to His different operations or manifesta- tions, is in turn called the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; so they recognized a purely nominal Trinity. (2) In the fourth centurj' and later, the Arians and their numerous heretical offspring: .\no- moeans or Eunomians, Semi-.\rians, Acacians, etc., while admitting the triple personality, denied the con- substantiality. -\rianism had been preceded by the Subordination theory of some ante-Nicene writers, who affirmed a difference and a gradation between the Divine Persons other than those that arise from their relations in point of origin. (3) In the sixteenth century, the Socinians explicitly rejected, in the name of reason, along with all the mysteries of Christianity, the doctrine of Three Persons in One God. (4) Men- tion may also be made of the teachings of Johannes Philoponus (sixth century), Ro-scellinus, Gilbert de la Porree, Joacliim of Flora (eleventh and twelfth cen- turies), and, in modern times, Giinther, who, by deny- ing or obscuring the doctrine of the numerical unity of the Divine .Nature, in reality .set up a triple deity.

In addition to these systems and these writers, who came in conflict with the true doctrine about the Holy Ghost only indirectl.v and as a logical result of pre- vious errors, there were others who attacked the truth directly: (1) Towards the middle of the fourth century, Macedonius, Bishop of Constantinople, and, after him, a number of Semi-.4rians, while apparently admitting the Divinity of the Word, denied that of the Holy Ghost. The}' placed Him among the spirits, inferior ministers of God, but higher than the angels. They were, under the name of Pneumatomachians, con- demned by the Council of Constantinople, in 381 (Mansi, lit, col. 560). (2) Since the days of Photius, the schismatic Greeks maintain that the Holy Ghost, true God like the Father and the Son, proceeds from the former alone.

III. The Third Person of the Blessed Trinity. — This heading implies two truths: (1) The Holy Ghost is a Person really distinct as such from the Fa- ther and the Son; (2) He is God and consubstantial with the Father and the Son. The first statement is directly opposed to Monarchianism and to Socin- ianism; the second to Subordinationism, to the differ- ent forms of Arianism, and to Macedonianism in par- ticular. The same arguments drawn from Scripture

and Tradition may be used generally to prove either assertion. We will, therefore, bring forward the proofs of the two truths together, but first call particu- lar attention to some passages that demonstrate more explicitly the distinction of personality.

A. In the New Testament the word spirit and, per- haps, even the e-xpression spirit of God signifj' at times the soul or man himself, inasmuch as he is under the influence of God and aspires to things above; more frequently, especially in St. Paul, they signify God acting in man; but they are used, besides, to des- ignate not only a working of God in general, but a Divine Person, Who is neither the Father nor the Son, Who is named together with the Father, or the Son, or with Both, without the context allowing them to be identified. .\ few instances are given here. We read in John, xiv, 16, 17: ".\nd I will ask the Father, and he shall give you another Paraclete, that he may abide with you for ever. The spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive"; and in John, xv, 26: "But when the Paraclete cometh, whom I will send you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceedeth from the Father, he shall give testimony of me. " St. Peter adilresses his first epistle, i, 1-2, " to the stran- gers dispersed . . . elect, according to the foreknowl- edge of God the Father, unto the sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ ". The Spirit of consolation and of truth is also clearly distinguished in John, xvi, 7, 13-15, from the Son, from Whom He receives all He is to teach the .\postles, and from the Father, who has nothing that the Son also does not possess. Both send Him, but He is not separated from Them, for the Father and the Son come with Him when He descends into our souls (John, xiv, 23).

Many other texts declare quite as clearly that the Holy (^ihost is a Person, a Person distinct from the Father and the Son, and yet One God with Them. In several places St. Paul speaks of Him as if speaking of God. In .\cts, xxviii, 25, he says to the Jews: "Well did the Holy Ghost speak to our fathers by Isaias the prophet"; now the prophecy contained in the next two verses is taken from Isaias, vi, 9, 10, where it is put in the mouth of the " King the Lord of hosts ". In other places he uses the words God and Holy Ghost as plainly synonymous. Thus he WTites, I Cor., iii, 16: " Know you not, that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? " and in vi, 19: "Or know you not, that your mem- bers are the temple of the Holy Ghost, who is in you. . . ?" St. Peter asserts the same identity when he thus remonstrates with .\nanias (.\cts, v, 3-4) : " Why hath Satan tempted thy heart, that thou shouldst lie to the Holy Ghost. . . ? Thou hast not lied to men, but to God." The sacred WTiters attribute to the Holy Ghost all the works characteristic of Divine power. It is in His name, as in the name of the Fa- ther and of the Son, that baptism is to be given (Matt., xxviii, 19). It is by His operation that the greatest of Divine mysteries, the Incarnation of the Word, is accomplished (Matt., i, IS, 20; Luke, i, 35). It is also in His name and bj' His power that sins are forgiven and souls sanctified: "Receive ye the Holy Ghost. Whose sins you .shall forgive, they are forgiven them" (John, XX, 22, 23) ; " But you are washed, but you are sanctified, but you are justified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Spirit of our God " (I Cor., VI, 11); "The charity of God is poured forth in our hearts, by the Holy Ghost, who is given to us " (Rom., V, 5). He is essentially the Spirit of truth (John, xiv, 16-17; XV, 26), Whose office it is to strengthen faith (.\cts, vi, 5), to bestow wisdom (Acts, vi, 3), to give testimony of Christ, that is to say, to confirm His teaching inwardly (John, xv, 26), and to teach the Apostles the full meaning of it (John, xiv, 26; xvi, 13). With these Apostles He will abide for ever (John, xiv, 16). Having descended on them at Pentecost, He