A Confession

God does not give the Spirit to the Son, nor does he measure it, for God is not measured by God.
-Gregory

O Father, you sent forth your Word and your Spirit moved upon the face of the waters; by your power, O Spirit, was the Son made one of us, and we saw the Father; on our supper is the Father’s Spirit poured out and yet we taste your flesh, O Son. What is there on earth or in heaven that does not depend on you? What is there that exists that is not one? What is there that is one that does not draw from Oneness? And yet what is there that exists that does not exist in your Threeness, O One in whom we live and move and have our being?

Where was the Spirit when the Father said to his Son “I have begotten thee?” Where was the Son when the Father gave forth his Spirit? Where is the time when these things were not so? It is no time, it cannot be found; the mind of God cannot search it out, nor can the imagination of the world’s Creator envision it. Where is the place where we shall meet our God? In a tabernacle of darkness where my Lord has made his dwelling place.

O Father how was it to your Son that you said “I have begotten thee,” when that very Speech is the Son of your begetting? Almighty Word, what is your own, when even your breath is the Breath of another? O Giver of Life, how long life have you received to proceed from two infinities?

But you, O Lord, do not measure your Spirit, nor does God measure God, for what do we measure, but what we do not know? Does a man know his stature till he has measured it? Does a man know he is 'tall' till he has lain the word along himself and found it fitting? So we measure by what is not ourselves that which we do not know of ourselves. Yet what is of yourself unless all knowledge? And with what shall you measure yourself? For what is like yourself, as a chart has height like a child, which is not yourself? Or what is God that is not You, what is divine that you are not? Or shall we sunder God from God to measure God?

But Lord, I say to my hand, you have five fingers, I have measured you out, proportioned you and counted your members; shall you not say to your Son “I have begotten thee” and measure him by your Word? Yet what measurement is it to say I am as tall as I am? So it is for the Word to speak of himself. Was not God in Jesus Christ, reconciling the world to himself? Let us measure him. And what, shall we tell God that we have measured him? But God of all men knows the stature and the going out and the coming in and of the man he was not least.

Ourselves we cannot see without a mirror, but your ways are not our ways, O Lord. By our thoughts alone we can conceive of who we are, but your thoughts are not our thoughts, O Lord. You that are One and do not divide in being Three, shall you divide to know yourself? Shall you set apart the Son to measure the Spirit, shall you reckon without your Reason and breathe without your Breath? Or can what is from the beginning be no more? Shall you dissect the One that has no parts, shall the knife of your Reason measure out the portion of the Father, and the law of your decree specify the property of the Son? Shall the Spirit be poured into jars until the God gives out? And shall we then count the jars, that have contained what contains all? How shall we make these jars, when the Maker of the world shall be their contents? Where shall we put these jars, when the resting place of eternity will rest in them? From whom shall we buy these jars, which are the words of truth, the measure of God? To whom shall we go, O Lord? You alone have the words of truth.