Augustine
PL 32, col. 848
English
Was not the Father, or the Son, borne above the waters too? If we mean by place, as a body is, then neither was the Holy Spirit; but if we mean the eminence of unchangeable Godhead over everything changeable, then Father and Son and Holy Spirit were borne above the waters. Why then is this said only of your Spirit? Why of him alone? As if there were a place there, where there is no place, for him alone of whom it is said that he is your gift. In your gift we rest; there we enjoy you. Our rest is our place. Love lifts us there, and your good Spirit raises our lowliness from the gates of death. In good will is our peace. A body by its weight strives toward its own place. Weight is not only toward what is lowest, but toward its own place. Fire tends upward, a stone downward. They are driven by their weights; they seek their places.
Fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt · cc-by
Latin
Numquid aut Pater aut Filius non superferebatur super aquas? Si tanquam loco sicut corpus, nec Spiritus sanctus: si autem incommutabilis divinitatis eminentia super omne mutabile, et Pater et Filius et Spiritus sanctus superferebatur super aquas. Cur ergo tantum de Spiritu tuo dictum est hoc? cur de illo tantum dictum est? Quasi locus ibi esset, qui non est locus, de quo solo dictum est quod sit donum tuum. In dono tuo requiescimus; ibi te fruimur. Requies nostra, locus noster. Amor illuc attollit nos, et Spiritus tuus bonus exaltat humilitatem nostram de portis mortis (Psal. IX, 15) . In bona voluntate pax nobis est (Luc. II, 14) . Corpus pondere suo nititur ad locum suum. Pondus non ad ima tantum est, sed ad locum suum. Ignis sursum tendit, deorsum lapsis. Ponderibus suis aguntur, loca sua petunt.
PL 32, col. 848 · pd
Notes
The question turned inward: not what 'above' means but why the Spirit alone is said to be above. Answer: because the Spirit is gift, and love is weight. 'Pondus meum amor meus' follows a few lines on.
Love, gift, weight
Threads
- ← echoes · Rupert of Deutz
'bonitatem amoremque Dei … amorem et vitam' develops Conf. XIII.9's Spirit-as-gift-and-love reading of the same verse. - ← parallel · Philo of Alexandria
The same question, seven centuries and one theology apart. Augustine asks why only the Holy Spirit was borne above the waters, and answers from the Trinity and from the weight of love that carries a thing to its place. Philo asks why only the breath and the light were given something extra in the verse, and answers that breath is the most life-giving of things and God is the cause of life. Both are reading the verse's asymmetry as deliberate; neither has read the other; and Philo's answer is available to a reader with no doctrine of persons at all.