Wherefore, when our Lord breathed on His disciples, and said, "Receive ye the Holy Ghost," He certainly wished it to be understood that the Holy Ghost was not only the Spirit of the Father, but of the only begotten Son Himself.For the same Spirit is, indeed, the Spirit of the Father and of the Son, making with them the trinity of Father, Son, and Spirit, not a creature, but the Creator.For neither was that material breath which proceeded from the mouth of His flesh the very substance and nature of the Holy Spirit, but rather the intimation, as I said, that the Holy Spirit was common to the Father and to the Son; for they have not each a separate Spirit, but both one and the same.Now this Spirit is always spoken of in sacred Scripture by the Greek word pneuma, as the Lord, too, named Him in the place cited when He gave Him to His disciples, and intimated the gift by the breathing of His lips; and there does not occur to me any place in the whole Scriptures where He is otherwise named.But in this passage where it is said, "And the Lord formed man dust of the earth, and breathed, or inspired, into his face the breath of life;" the Greek has not pneuma, the usual word for the Holy Spirit, but pnoh, a word more frequently used of the creature than of the Creator; and for this reason some Latin interpreters have preferred to render it by "breath" rather than "spirit." For this word occurs also in the Greek in Isa.Ivii.16, where God says, "I have made all breath," meaning, doubtless, all souls.Accordingly, this word pnoh is sometimes rendered "breath,"sometimes "spirit," sometimes "inspiration," sometimes "aspiration,"sometimes "soul," even when it is used of God.
Pneuma, on the other hand, is uniformly rendered "spirit," whether of man, of whom the apostle says, "For What man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him?"(1) or of beast, as in the book of Solomon, "Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth ?"(2) or of that physical spirit which is called wind, for so the Psalmist calls it:
"Fire and hail; snow and vapors; stormy wind;"(3) or of the uncreated Creator Spirit, of whom the Lord said in the gospel, "Receive ye the Holy Ghost," indicating the gift by the breathing of His mouth; and when He says, "Go ye and baptize all nations in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,"(4) words which very expressly and excellently commend the Trinity;and where it is said, "God is a Spirit;"(5) and in very many other places of the sacred writings.In all these quotations from Scripture we do not find in the Greek the word pnoh used, but pneuma, and in the Latin, not flatus, but spiritus.Wherefore, referring again to that place where it is written, "He inspired," or to speak more properly, "breathed into his face the breath of life," even though the Greek had not used pnoh (as it has)but pneuma, it would not on that account necessarily follow that the Creator Spirit, who in the Trinity is distinctively called the Holy Ghost, was meant, since, as has been said, it is plain that pneuma is used not only of the Creator, but also of the creature.
But, say they, when the Scripture used the word "spirit,"(6) it would not have added "of life" unless it meant us to understand the Holy Spirit; nor, when it said, "Man became a soul," would it also have inserted the word "living" unless that life of the soul were signified which is imparted to it from above by the gift of God.
For, seeing that the soul by itself has a proper life of its own, what need, they ask, was there of adding living, save only to show that the life which is given it by the Holy Spirit was meant? What is this but to fight strenuously for their own conjectures, while they carelessly neglect the teaching of Scripture?
