The Life-Giving Power of the Spirit and the Unity of Divinity

The divine energy does not manifest itself in such a way as a life-giving spirit, which is God's inherent substance that gives life to all things, according to Paul, the trumpet of faith, writing to the Romans: 'for the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death' (Romans 8:2); and again: 'he who raised Jesus Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his indwelling Spirit in you' (Romans 8:11); and to the Corinthians: 'not that we are sufficient to consider anything as being from ourselves; but our sufficiency is from God, who has made us ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter, but of the spirit. For the letter kills, but the spirit gives life' (2 Corinthians 3:6). By 'letter' he said the Mosaic law, which forbids: 'eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth' (Exodus 21:24) and defends against the lawless living; but the Holy Spirit of God is life-giving, having made us no longer under law, but under grace, and having guaranteed not to fail, to give 'evil for evil,' but rather good for evil. 'If,' he says, 'your enemy hungers, feed him'; and again to the same: 'the first Adam became a living soul, the last Adam a life-giving spirit' (1 Corinthians 15:45); and to the Galatians: 'he who sows into the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life' (Galatians 6:8); and according to John, saying from the Savior: 'it is the Spirit that gives life' (John 6:63). Ezekiel himself declares this very thing, and prophesies that with God, as His Spirit, He will perform the resurrection: 'thus says the Lord to these dry bones: behold, I am bringing into you a spirit of life, and I will cause nerves to come upon you, and I will cause flesh to rise upon you, and I will stretch skin over you, and I will give my Spirit upon you, and you shall live and you shall know that I am the Lord' (Ezekiel 37:12-14). Therefore, the essential life and the life-giving power has neither beginning nor end nor alteration; and do not let this fall to these by nature and truth of God.

For which is it, even as those things which are apart from the God and Father are possessed by inheritance. For no created thing can be a cause of life or show life in itself; but all things deprived of the divine Spirit are dead; 'for in him we live and move and are,' as the apostolic acts said (Acts 17:28). And indeed, if all things that come into being and are perishable, and those things which are perishing, remain without life: how could he grant these things to others, of which he himself becomes lacking? We are therefore made alive by the Holy Spirit, just as by him who said: 'I am the resurrection and the life' (John 11:25).

It has been written that because of the identity of divinity and the equal energy, as he raised Christ, who suffered in the flesh through us, sometimes the Father, sometimes himself, sometimes the Holy Spirit. And according to the heretical exposition: that because of the identity of divinity and the one energy, the scriptures say, as he raised Jesus Christ according to the form of a servant, sometimes the Father, sometimes himself, sometimes the Holy Spirit; but the actions are not so: 'God raised this one on the third day' (Acts 2:24), as John says from the Savior: 'destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. But he was speaking about the temple of his own body' (John 2:19-21); and again: 'I lay down my soul, so that I may take it again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down myself. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it again' (John 10:17-18). Peter in the first epistle says: 'Christ died once for sins on our behalf, the righteous for the unrighteous, so that he might bring us to God; having been put to death in the flesh, but having been made alive in the spirit' (1 Peter 3:18).

That he creates and raises from the dead. In the same way, that he who created is to sanctify is more necessary than the creating. And according to the heretical exposition: that the great creation creates man and raises from the dead and makes alive and returns to heaven and renewed the earth which had been corrupted by human lawlessness.