Quotes from Athenagoras on the Prophetic Spirit

 

But we have for witnesses of the things we apprehend and believe, prophets, men who have pronounced concerning God and the things of God, guided by the Spirit of God. And you too will admit, excelling all others as you do in intelligence and in piety towards the true God (to\ o !ntwj qei=on), that it would be irrational for us to cease to believe in the Spirit from God, who moved the mouths of the prophets like musical instruments, and to give heed to mere human opinions.

But, since the voices of the prophets confirm our arguments-for I think that you also, with your great zeal for knowledge, and your great attainments in learning, cannot be ignorant of the writings either of Moses or of Isaiah and Jeremiah, and the other prophets, who, lifted in ecstasy above the natural operations of their minds by the impulses of the Divine Spirit, uttered the things with which they were inspired, the Spirit making use of them as a flute-player²⁵ breathes into a flute;-what, then, do these men say? "The Lord is our God; no other can be compared with Him." And again: "I am God, the first and the last, and besides Me there is no God." In like manner: "Before Me there was no other God, and after Me there shall be none; I am God, and there is none besides Me." And as to His greatness: "Heaven is My throne, and the earth is the footstool of My feet: what house win ye build for Me, or what is the place of My rest? " But I leave it to you, when you meet with the books themselves, to examine carefully the prophecies contained in them, that you may on fitting grounds defend us from the abuse cast upon us.

(He is speaking of believers) The prophetic Spirit also agrees with our statements. "The Lord," it says, "made me, the beginning of His ways to His works." The Holy Spirit Himself also, which operates in the prophets, we assert to be an effluence of God, flowing from Him, and returning back again like a beam of the sun. Who, then, would not be astonished to hear men who speak of God the Father, and of God the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,

May you, by considering yourselves, be able to discover the heavenly kingdom also! For as all things are subservient to you, father and son, who have received the kingdom from above (for "the king's soul is in the hand of God," Saith the prophetic Spirit), so to the one God and the Logos proceeding from. Him, the Son, apprehended by us as inseparable from Him, all things are in like manner subjected.” -- Athenagoras  (A Plea For the Christians) –175 AD

“Prophecy was still uttering forth whatever the Holy Spirit gave them which was completely detached from their thinking.” --Athenagorus (I wrote this quote down 25 years ago and I am unsure of the source material.)