Friday, February 15, 2013

Can't Help But Boast

For the Spirit of the Lord fills the world,* and “where shall I go from your spirit? or where shall I flee from your presence?”†  And, in the words of the Prophet, “For I am with you, says the Lord … and my spirit remains among you.”‡  But what nature is it proper to assign to Him who is omnipresent, and exists together with God?  The nature which is all-embracing, or one which is confined to particular places, like that which our argument shows the nature of angels to be?  No one would say so.  Shall we not then highly exalt Him who is in His nature divine, in His greatness infinite, in His operations powerful, in the blessings He confers, good?  Shall we not give Him glory?  And I understand glory to mean nothing else than the enumeration of the wonders which are His own.  It follows then that either we are forbidden by our antagonists even to mention the good things which flow to us from Him, or on the other hand that the mere recapitulation of His attributes is the fullest possible attribution of glory.  For not even in the case of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and of the Only begotten Son, are we capable of giving Them glory otherwise than by recounting, to the extent of our powers, all the wonders that belong to Them.

Basil of Caesarea, On the Holy Spirit, 23.54

*  Wisdom 1:7
†  Psalm 39:7
‡  Haggai 2:4-5

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