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Translated by Bl. Jackson.
St Basil the Great Resources Online and in Print
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This Part: 128 Pages
Page 83
XIV. A taker of usury, if he consent to spend his unjust gain on the poor, and to be rid for the future of the plague of covetousness, may be received into the ministry. [2647]
XV. I am astonished at your requiring exactitude in Scripture, and arguing that there is something forced in the diction of the interpretation which gives the meaning of the original, but does not exactly render what is meant by the Hebrew word. Yet I must not carelessly pass by the question started by an enquiring mind. At the creation of the world, birds of the air and the fishes of the sea had the same origin; [2648] for both kinds were produced from the water. [2649] The reason is that both have the same characteristics. The latter swim in the water, the former in the air. They are therefore mentioned together. The form of expression is not used without distinction, but of all that lives in the water it is used very properly. The birds of the air and the fishes of the sea are subject to man; and not they alone, but all that passes through the paths of the sea. For every water-creature is not a fish, as for instance the sea monsters, whales, sharks, dolphins, seals, even sea-horses, sea-dogs, saw-fish, sword-fish, and sea-cows; and, if you like, sea nettles, cockles and all hard-shelled creatures of whom none are fish, and all pass through the paths of the sea; so that there are three kinds, birds of the air, fishes of the sea, and all water-creatures which are distinct from fish, and pass through the paths of the sea.
XVI. Naaman was not a great man with the Lord, but with his lord; that is, he was one of the chief princes of the King of the Syrians. [2650] Read your Bible carefully, and you will find the answer to your question there.
[2647] cf. Can. Nic. xvii. Canon Bright (On the Canons, etc., p. 56) remarks: "It must be remembered that interest, called tokos and fenus, as the product of the principal, was associated in the early stages of society,--in Greece and Rome as well as in Palestine,--with the notion of undue profit extorted by a rich lender from the needy borrower (see Grote, Hist. Gr. ii. 311 H.; Arnold, Hist. Rome i. 282; Mommsen, Hist. R. i. 291). Hence Tacitus says, sane vetus urbi fenebre malcum, et seditionum discordiarumque creberrima causa' (Ann. vi. 16), and Gibbon calls usury the inveterate grievance of the city, abolished by the clamours of the people, revived by their wants and idleness.'" (v. 314.)
[2648] Ps. viii. 8.
[2649] Gen. i. 20 and 21.
[2650] 2 Kings v. 1.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/basil/letters-2.asp?pg=83
