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Translated by Bl. Jackson.
St Basil the Great Resources Online and in Print
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88 Pages
Page 14
14. Let us first ask them this question: In what sense do they say that the Son is "after the Father;" later in time, or in order, or in dignity? But in time no one is so devoid of sense as to assert that the Maker of the ages [789] holds a second place, when no interval intervenes in the natural conjunction of the Father with the Son. [790] And indeed so far as our conception of human relations goes, [791] it is impossible to think of the Son as being later than the Father, not only from the fact that Father and Son are mutually conceived of in accordance with the relationship subsisting between them, but because posteriority in time is predicated of subjects separated by a less interval from the present, and priority of subjects farther off. For instance, what happened in Noah's time is prior to what happened to the men of Sodom, inasmuch as Noah is more remote from our own day; and, again, the events of the history of the men of Sodom are posterior, because they seem in a sense to approach nearer to our own day. But, in addition to its being a breach of true religion, is it not really the extremest folly to measure the existence of the life which transcends all time and all the ages by its distance from the present? Is it not as though God the Father could be compared with, and be made superior to, God the Son, who exists before the ages, precisely in the same way in which things liable to beginning and corruption are described as prior to one another?
The superior remoteness of the Father is really inconceivable, in that thought and intelligence are wholly impotent to go beyond the generation of the Lord; and St. John has admirably confined the conception within circumscribed boundaries by two words, "In the beginning was the Word." For thought cannot travel outside "was," nor imagination [792] beyond "beginning." Let your thought travel ever so far backward you cannot get beyond the "was," and however you may strain and strive to see what is beyond the Son, you will find it impossible to get further than the "beginning." True religion, therefore, thus teaches us to think of the Son together with the Father.
[789] poietes ton ai& 240;non.
[790] Yet the great watchword of the Arians was en pote hote ouk en.
[791] te ennoi& 139; ton anthropinon is here the reading of five MSS. The Benedictines prefer ton anthropon, with the sense of "in human thought."
[792] Phantasia is the philosophic term for imagination or presentation, the mental faculty by which the object made apparent, phantasma, becomes apparent, phainetai. Aristotle, de An. III. iii. 20 defines it as "a movement of the mind generated by sensation." Fancy, which is derived from phantasia (phaino, ÖBHA=shine) has acquired a slightly different meaning in some usages of modern speech.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/basil/holy-spirit.asp?pg=14
