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Translated by Bl. Jackson.
St Basil the Great Resources Online and in Print
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88 Pages
Page 43
You are therefore to perceive three, the Lord who gives the order, the Word who creates, and the Spirit who confirms. [1040] And what other thing could confirmation be than the perfecting according to holiness? This perfecting expresses the confirmation's firmness, unchangeableness, and fixity in good. But there is no sanctification without the Spirit. The powers of the heavens are not holy by nature; were it so there would in this respect be no difference between them and the Holy Spirit. It is in proportion to their relative excellence that they have their meed of holiness from the Spirit. The branding-iron is conceived of together with the fire; and yet the material and the fire are distinct. Thus too in the case of the heavenly powers; their substance is, peradventure, an aerial spirit, or an immaterial fire, as it is written, "Who maketh his angels spirits and his ministers a flame of fire;" [1041] wherefore they exist in space and become visible, and appear in their proper bodily form to them that are worthy. But their sanctification, being external to their substance, superinduces their perfection through the communion of the Spirit. They keep their rank by their abiding in the good and true, and while they retain their freedom of will, never fall away from their patient attendance on Him who is truly good. It results that, if by your argument you do away with the Spirit, the hosts of the angels are disbanded, the dominions of archangels are destroyed, all is thrown into confusion, and their life loses law, order, and distinctness. For how are angels to cry "Glory to God in the highest" [1042] without being empowered by the Spirit? For "No man can say that Jesus is the Lord but by the Holy Ghost, and no man speaking by the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed;" [1043] as might be said by wicked and hostile spirits, whose fall establishes our statement of the freedom of the will of the invisible powers; being, as they are, in a condition of equipoise between virtue and vice, and on this account needing the succour of the Spirit. I indeed maintain that even Gabriel [1044] in no other way foretells events to come than by the foreknowledge of the Spirit, by reason of the fact that one of the boons distributed by the Spirit is prophecy. And whence did he who was ordained to announce the mysteries of the vision to the Man of Desires [1045] derive the wisdom whereby he was enabled to teach hidden things, if not from the Holy Spirit? The revelation of mysteries is indeed the peculiar function of the Spirit, as it is written, "God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit." [1046]
[1040] ton stereounta to pneuma. It is to be noticed here that St. Basil uses the masculine and more personal form in apposition with the neuter pneuma, and not the neuter as in the creed of Constantinople, to kurion kai to Zoopoion to ek tou patros ekporeuomenon, etc. There is scriptural authority for the masculine in the "hotan de elthe ekeinos, to pneuma tes aletheias" of John xvi. 13. cf. p. 15-17.
[1041] Ps. xiv. 4.
[1042] Luke ii. 14.
[1043] 1 Cor. xii. 3.
[1044] Luke i. 11.
[1045] "Man greatly beloved." A.V. and R.V. Dan. x. 11.
[1046] 1 Cor. ii. 10.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/basil/holy-spirit.asp?pg=43
