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Translated by Bl. Jackson.
St Basil the Great Resources Online and in Print
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88 Pages
Page 17
We have only touched cursorily on these proofs, because our object is to pass on to other points. You at your leisure can put together the items of the evidence, and then contemplate the height of the glory and the preeminence of the power of the Only Begotten. However, to the well-disposed hearer, even these are not insignificant, unless the terms "right hand" and "bosom" be accepted in a physical and derogatory sense, so as at once to circumscribe God in local limits, and invent form, mould, and bodily position, all of which are totally distinct from the idea of the absolute, the infinite, and the incorporeal. There is moreover the fact that what is derogatory in the idea of it is the same in the case both of the Father and the Son; so that whoever repeats these arguments does not take away the dignity of the Son, but does incur the charge of blaspheming the Father; for whatever audacity a man be guilty of against the Son he cannot but transfer to the Father. If he assigns to the Father the upper place by way of precedence, and asserts that the only begotten Son sits below, he will find that to the creature of his imagination attach all the consequent conditions of body. And if these are the imaginations of drunken delusion and phrensied insanity, can it be consistent with true religion for men taught by the Lord himself that "He that honoureth not the Son honoureth not the Father" [809] to refuse to worship and glorify with the Father him who in nature, in glory, and in dignity is conjoined with him? What shall we say? What just defence shall we have in the day of the awful universal judgment of all-creation, if, when the Lord clearly announces that He will come "in the glory of his Father;" [810] when Stephen beheld Jesus standing at the right hand of God; [811] when Paul testified in the spirit concerning Christ "that he is at the right hand of God;" [812] when the Father says, "Sit thou on my right hand;" [813] when the Holy Spirit bears witness that he has sat down on "the right hand of the majesty" [814] of God; we attempt to degrade him who shares the honour and the throne, from his condition of equality, to a lower state? [815] Standing and sitting, I apprehend, indicate the fixity and entire stability of the nature, as Baruch, when he wishes to exhibit the immutability and immobility of the Divine mode of existence, says, "For thou sittest for ever and we perish utterly." [816] Moreover, the place on the right hand indicates in my judgment equality of honour. Rash, then, is the attempt to deprive the Son of participation in the doxology, as though worthy only to be ranked in a lower place of honour.
[809] John v. 23.
[810] Matt. xvi. 27.
[811] Acts vii. 55.
[812] Rom. viii. 34.
[813] Ps. cx. 1.
[814] Heb. viii. 1.
[815] Mr. Johnston well points out that these five testimonies are not cited fortuitously, but "in an order which carries the reader from the future second coming, through the present session at the right hand, back to the ascension in the past."
[816] Baruch iii. 3, lxx.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/basil/holy-spirit.asp?pg=17
