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Translated by Bl. Jackson.
St Basil the Great Resources Online and in Print
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88 Pages
Page 47
Chapter XVII.
Against those who say that the Holy Ghost is not to be numbered with, but numbered under, the Father and the Son. Wherein moreover there is a summary notice of the faith concerning right sub-numeration.
41. What, however, they call sub-numeration, [1077] and in what sense they use this word, cannot even be imagined without difficulty. It is well known that it was imported into our language from the "wisdom of the world;" [1078] but a point for our present consideration will be whether it has any immediate relation to the subject under discussion. Those who are adepts in vain investigations tell us that, while some nouns are common and of widely extended denotation, others are more specific, and that the force of some is more limited than that of others. Essence, for instance, is a common noun, predicable of all things both animate and inanimate; while animal is more specific, being predicated of fewer subjects than the former, though of more than those which are considered under it, as it embraces both rational and irrational nature. Again, human is more specific than animal, and man than human, and than man the individual Peter, Paul, or John. [1079] Do they then mean by sub-numeration the division of the common into its subordinate parts? But I should hesitate to believe they have reached such a pitch of infatuation as to assert that the God of the universe, like some common quality conceivable only by reason and without actual existence in any hypostasis, is divided into subordinate divisions, and that then this subdivision is called sub-numeration. This would hardly be said even by men melancholy mad, for, besides its impiety, they are establishing the very opposite argument to their own contention. For the subdivisions are of the same essence as that from which they have been divided. The very obviousness of the absurdity makes it difficult for us to find arguments to confute their unreasonableness; so that really their folly looks like an advantage to them; just as soft and yielding bodies offer no resistance, and therefore cannot be struck a stout blow. It is impossible to bring a vigorous confutation to bear on a palpable absurdity. The only course open to us is to pass by their abominable impiety in silence. Yet our love for the brethren and the importunity of our opponents makes silence impossible.
[1077] "The word was used as a quasi philosophical term to express the doctrine quoted by St. Basil, in S: 13: it does not occur in the confession of Eunomius, which was prepared after this book, a.d. 382; but it was used by him in his Liber Apologeticus (before a.d. 365) against which St. Basil wrote." Rev. C.F.H. Johnston. For "huparithmesis" the only authorities given by the lexicons are "ecclesiastical." But the importation from the "wisdom of the world" implies use in heathen philosophy.
[1078] cf. 1 Cor. i. 20.
[1079] "This portion of the theory of general language is the subject of what is termed the doctrine of the Predicables; a set of distinctions handed down from Aristotle, and his follower Porphyry, many of which have taken a firm root in scientific, and some of them even in popular, phraseology. The predicables are a five-fold division of General Names, not grounded as usual on a difference in their meaning, that is, in the attribute which they connote, but on a difference in the kind of class which they denote. We may predicate of a thing five different varieties of class-name: A genus of the thing (genos). A species (eidos). A differentia (diaphora). A proprium (idion). An accidens (sumbebekos). It is to be remarked of these distinctions, that they express, not what the predicate is in its own meaning, but what relation it bears to the subject of which it happens on the particular occasion to be predicated." J. S. Mill, System of Logic, i. 133.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/basil/holy-spirit.asp?pg=47
