Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] On account of one saying of Philip's and the Lord's answer to it, we seem to have run right through the Gospel of John — lest a single saying overturn so many things stated plainly, both before and after, a saying which ought rather to be interpreted in line with the whole, than against the whole, even against its own sense. [2] But without bringing in the other Gospels, which confirm the faith by the Lord's nativity, it is enough that he who was to be born of a virgin was, by the angel himself, announced beforehand as marked out as Son of God: "The Spirit of God will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore also what is born of you, being holy, will be called the Son of God." [3] They will want to argue even here, but the truth will prevail. "Surely," comes their objection, "the Son of God must be God himself, and the power of the Most High must be the Most High himself." And they are not ashamed to insinuate that, if it were so, it would have been written so. For whom was he afraid of, that he did not say plainly, "God will come upon you and the Most High will overshadow you"? But by saying "the Spirit of God," though the Spirit is God, he did not name God directly, meaning to have understood a portion of the whole which was going to pass over into the name of "Son." [4] This Spirit of God amounts to nothing other than the Word. Just as, when John writes that "the Word was made flesh," we grasp that the Spirit is bound up in that mention of the Word, so also here we can make out the Word beneath the label "Spirit." For Spirit furnishes the underlying stuff of the Word, while Word is how the Spirit acts and functions — the pair forming a single reality. [5] Otherwise John will be professing one thing became flesh, and the angel will be foretelling a different thing to become flesh, unless Spirit is also Word and Word also Spirit. Just as, then, the Word of God is not the very one whose Word it is, so neither is the Spirit — even though called God, he is not himself the one of whom he is called God. Nothing that belongs to someone is that person himself. Plainly, when something comes from someone, and is his precisely by coming from him, it can be of such a kind as the one from whom, and to whom, it belongs. [6] And so Spirit is God and Word is God, because each is from God, yet is not itself the one from whom it is. But if the Spirit of God, being a substantive thing, is not itself God but is God only to this extent, that it is of the very substance of God himself — being a substantive thing, as though it were one share of the totality — all the more, then, the power of the Most High cannot itself be equated with the Most High, since what is called Spirit is not even a substantive thing, any more than wisdom or providence are: for these are not substances but accidents of some substance. [7] Power is an accident of Spirit, and will not itself be Spirit. These realities, then — call them what you will, the Spirit of God, the Word, the Power — having converged together upon the virgin, that which she bears is God's Son. [8] This he himself also attests in these same Gospels, from the time he was a boy: "Did you not know," he asks, "that I have to be occupied with my Father's affairs?" This too Satan acknowledges in the temptations: "If you are the Son of God." This too the demons confess from then on: "We know who you are, the Son of God." He himself worships the Father. He does not deny that he is confessed by Peter as the Christ of God. Exulting in the Spirit, to the Father: "I confess to you, Father," he says, "that you have hidden these things from the wise." [9] Here too he affirms that the Father is known to no one except the Son, and that the Son will confess those who confess him before the Father, and deny those who deny him — bringing in the parable of the son, not the father, sent into the vineyard after several servants and killed by the wicked tenants, and defended by the father. He himself does not know the last day and hour, known to the Father alone; he assigns a kingdom to his disciples just as he says a kingdom was assigned to himself by the Father; he has the power to ask the Father for legions of angels to help him, should he wish; he cries out that God has forsaken him; he places his spirit into the Father's hands; and after the resurrection he promises to send his disciples the Father's promise; and at the very last he directs that they be baptized under the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit — not a single name, for it happens not once but thrice, once for each name, into distinct persons, that our baptism proceeds.