Annotatio XCIX
”There appeared to him three men.” — Genesis 18:2
Procopius of Gaza, examining the apparition of the Angels to Abraham, seems to assert that the dove in which the Holy Spirit appeared at Christ’s baptism was not truly a dove,1 saying thus: “God, in the old testament, was seen in a bodily form; yet that body did not have the property of a mortal body, for it consisted neither of flesh nor of blood. In the same manner the Holy Spirit came into our sight in the appearance of a dove — yet it was not a dove, because it did not have the property which a dove has.” See Annotation 13 of book 6.
Footnotes
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Right margin: The dove descending upon Christ — whether it was truly an animal. (Columba, super Christum descendens, an fuerit verè animal.) ↩