Patristic Wisdom: Looking to the Third Sunday after Pentecost

Then the multitude came together again, so that they could not so much as eat bread. But when His own people heard about this, they went out to lay hold of Him, for they said, “He is out of His mind.” And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, “He has Beelzebub,” and, “By the ruler of the demons He casts out demons.” So He called them to Himself and said to them in parables: “How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself, and is divided, he cannot stand, but has an end. No one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man. And then he will plunder his house. “Assuredly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the sons of men, and whatever blasphemies they may utter; but he who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is subject to eternal condemnation”—because they said, “He has an unclean spirit.” (Mark 3:20–30)

No one who is indwelt by the Holy Spirit can imagine saying “anathema” to Jesus. No one in the Spirit would deny that Christ is the Son of God, or reject God as Creator. No believer would utter such things contrary to Scriptures, or substitute alien or sacrilegious ordinances contrary to moral principles. But if anyone shamelessly blasphemes against this same Holy Spirit, he “does not have forgiveness, either in this world or in the world to come.” For it is the Spirit who through the apostles offers testimony to Christ, who in the martyrs manifests unwavering faith, and who in the lives of the chaste embraces the admirable continence of sealed chastity. It is the Spirit who, among the whole church, guards the laws of the Lord's teaching uncorrupted and untainted, destroys heretics, corrects those in error, reproves unbelievers, reveals impostors, and corrects the wicked.

Novatian, The Trinity 29

He is the subject, not the object, of hallowing, apportioning, participating, filling, sustaining. We share in him; he shares in nothing. He is our inheritance, he is glorified, counted together with Father and Son. He is a dire warning to us, the “finger of God.” The Spirit is, like God, a “fire.” This means that the Holy Spirit is of the same essential nature as the Father. The Spirit is the very One who created us and creates us anew through baptism and resurrection. The Spirit knows all things, teaches all things, moves where and when and as strongly as he wills. He leads, speaks, sends, and separates those who are vexed and tempted. He reveals, illumines, gives life, or better said, he is himself light and life. He makes us his temple, he sanctifies, he makes us complete. He both goes before baptism and follows after it. All that the Godhead actively performs, the Spirit performs.

Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 31, “On the Holy Spirit” 29