13. Similar evidence has been collected also concerning the Holy Spirit, of which those who have discussed the subject before ourselves have most fully availed themselves, that He too is God, and not a creature. But if not a creature, then not only God (for men likewise are called gods [51] ), but also very God; and therefore absolutely equal with the Father and the Son, and in the unity of the Trinity consubstantial and co-eternal. But that the Holy Spirit is not a creature is made quite plain by that passage above all others, where we are commanded not to serve the creature, but the Creator; [52] not in the sense in which we are commanded to "serve" one another by love, [53] which is in Greek douleuein, but in that in which God alone is served, which is in Greek latreuein. From whence they are called idolaters who tender that service to images which is due to God. For it is this service concerning which it is said, "Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve." [54] For this is found also more distinctly in the Greek Scriptures, which have latreuseis. Now if we are forbidden to serve the creature with such a service, seeing that it is written, "Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve" (and hence, too, the apostle repudiates those who worship and serve the creature more than the Creator), then assuredly the Holy Spirit is not a creature, to whom such a service is paid by all the saints; as says the apostle, "For we are the circumcision, which serve the Spirit of God," [55] which is in the Greek latreuontes. For even most Latin copies also have it thus, "We who serve the Spirit of God;" but all Greek ones, or almost all, have it so. Although in some Latin copies we find, not "We worship the Spirit of God," but, "We worship God in the Spirit." But let those who err in this case, and refuse to give up to the more weighty authority, tell us whether they find this text also varied in the mss.: "Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, which is in you, which ye have of God?" Yet what can be more senseless or more profane, than that any one should dare to say that the members of Christ are the temple of one who, in their opinion, is a creature inferior to Christ? For the apostle says in another place, "Your bodies are members of Christ." But if the members of Christ are also the temple of the Holy Spirit, then the Holy Spirit is not a creature; because we must needs owe to Him, of whom our body is the temple, that service wherewith God only is to be served, which in Greek is called latreia. And accordingly the apostle says, "Therefore glorify God in your body." [56]
[34] John i. 1, 14, 2, 3
[35] [Augustin here postulates the theistic doctrines of two substances--infinite and finite; in contradiction to the postulate of pantheism, that there is only one substance--the infinite.--W.G.T.S.]
[36] 1 John v. 20
[37] 1 Cor. i. 24
[38] Ecclus. xxiv. 5
[39] 1 Tim. vi. 14-16
[40] Ps. lxxii. 18
[41] John v. 19, 21
[42] [Nothing is more important, in order to a correct interpretation of the New Testament, than a correct explanation of the term God. Sometimes it denotes the Trinity, and sometimes a person of the Trinity. The context always shows which it is. The examples given here by Augustin are only a few out of many.--W.G.T.S.]
[43] 1 Cor. viii. 6
[44] Rom. xi. 36
[45] Ipsi.
[46] Rom. xi. 33-36
[47] 1 Cor. viii. 6
[48] Phil. ii. 6
[49] [It is not generally safe to differ from Augustin in trinitarian exegesis. But in Phil. ii. 6 "God" must surely denote the Divine Essence, not the first Person of the Essence. St. Paul describes "Christ Jesus" as "subsisting" (huparchon) originally, that is prior to incarnation, "in a form of God"(en morphe theou), and because he so subsisted, as being "equal with God." The word morphe is anarthrous in the text: a form, not the form, as the A.V and R.V. render. St. Paul refers to one of three "forms" of God--namely, that particular form of Sonship, which is peculiar to the second person of the Godhead. Had the apostle employed the article with morphe, the implication would be that there is only one "form of God"--that is, only one person in the Divine Essence. If then theou, in this place, denotes the Father, as Augustin says, St. Paul would teach that the Logos subsisted "in a form of the Father," which would imply that the Father had more than one "form," or else (if morphe be rendered with the article) that the Logos subsisted in the "form" of the Father, neither of which is true. But if "God," in this place, denotes the Divine Essence, then St. Paul teaches that the unincarnate Logos subsisted in a particular "form" of the Essence--the Father and Spirit subsisting in other "forms" of it. The student will observe that Augustin is careful to teach that the Logos, when he took on him "a form of a servant," did not lay aside "a form of God." He understands the kenosis (ekenose) to be, the humbling of the divinity by its union with the humanity, not the exinanition of it in the extremest sense of entirely divesting himself of the divinity, nor the less extreme sense of a total non-use of it during the humiliation.--W.G.T.S.]
[50] 1 Cor. xi. 3
[51] Ps. lxxxii. 6
[52] Rom. i. 25
[53] Gal. v. 13
[54] Deut. vi. 13
[55] Phil. iii. 3 (Vulgate, etc.).
[56] 1 Cor. vi. 19, 15, 20