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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 79
Letter LII. [2184]
To the Canonicae. [2185]
1. I have been very much distressed by a painful report which reached my ears; but I have been equally delighted by my brother, beloved of God, bishop Bosporius, [2186] who has brought a more satisfactory account of you. He avers by God's grace that all those stories spread abroad about you are inventions of men who are not exactly informed as to the truth about you. He added, moreover, that he found among you impious calumnies about me, of a kind likely to be uttered by those who do not expect to have to give the Judge in the day of His righteous retribution an account of even an idle word. I thank God, then, both because I am cured of my damaging opinion of you, an opinion which I have derived from the calumnies of men, and because I have heard of your abandonment of those baseless notions about me, on hearing the assurances of my brother. He, in all that he has said as coming from himself, has also completely expressed my own feeling. For in us both there is one mind about the faith, as being heirs of the same Fathers who once at Nicaea promulgated their great decree [2187] concerning the faith. Of this, some portions are universally accepted without cavil, but the homoousion, ill received in certain quarters, is still rejected by some. These objectors we may very properly blame, and yet on the contrary deem them deserving of pardon. To refuse to follow the Fathers, not holding their declaration of more authority than one's own opinion, is conduct worthy of blame, as being brimful of self-sufficiency. On the other hand the fact that they view with suspicion a phrase which is misrepresented by an opposite party does seem to a small extent to relieve them from blame. Moreover, as a matter of fact, the members of the synods which met to discuss the case of Paul of Samosata [2188] did find fault with the term as an unfortunate one.
For they maintained that the homoousion set forth the idea both of essence and of what is derived from it, so that the essence, when divided, confers the title of co-essential on the parts into which it is divided. This explanation has some reason in the case of bronze and coins made therefrom, but in the case of God the Father and God the Son there is no question of substance anterior or even underlying both; the mere thought and utterance of such a thing is the last extravagance of impiety. What can be conceived of as anterior to the Unbegotten? By this blasphemy faith in the Father and the Son is destroyed, for things, constituted out of one, have to one another the relation of brothers.
[2184] Placed at the beginning of St. Basil's episcopate, c. 370.
[2185] Canonicae, in the early church, were women enrolled in a list in the churches, devoted to works of charity, and living apart from men, though not under vows, nor always in a coenobium. In Soc., H.E.i. 17 they are described as the recipients of St. Helena's hospitality. St. Basil is supposed to refuse to recognise marriage with them as legitimate in Ep. cclxxxviii. The word kanonikon may stand for either gender, but the marriage of Canonici was commonly allowed. Letter clxxiii. is addressed to the canonica Theodora.
[2186] Vide the Letter li.
[2187] kerugma. On Basil's use of this word and of dogma, vide note on p. 41.
[2188] i.e.the two remarkable Antiochene synods of 264 and 269, to enforce the ultimate decisions of which against Paul of Samosata appeal was made to the pagan Aurelian. On the explanation of how the Homoousion came to be condemned in one sense by the Origenist bishops at Antioch in 269, and asserted in another by the 318 at Nicaea in 325, see prolegomena to Athanasius in Schaff and Wace's ed. p. xxxi. cf. Ath.,De Syn. S: 45, Hil., De Trin. iv. 4, and Basil, Cont. Eunom. i. 19. "Wurde seiner Lehre: Gott sey mit dem Logos zugleich Eine Person, hen prosopon wie der Mensch mit seiner Vernunft Eines sey,' entgegengehalteh, die Kirchenlehre verlange Einen Gott, aber mehrere prosopa desselben, so sagte er, da auch ihm Christus eine Person (naemlich als Mensch) sey, so habe auch sein Glaube mehrere prosopa, Gott und Christus stehen sich als homoousioi, d. h. wahrscheinlich gleich persoenliche gegenueber, Diese veratorische Dialektik konnte zwar nicht taeuschen; wohl aber wurde das Wort homoousios, so gebraucht und auf die Person ueberhaupt bezogen, dadurcheine Weile verdaechtig (man fuerchtete nach Athan. De Syn. Ar. et Sel. c. 45, eine menschliche Person nach Paul in die Trinitaet einlassen zu muessen), bis das vierte Jahrhundert jenem Wort bestimmten kirchlichen Stempel gab." Dorner, Christologie. B. i. 513. Vide also Thomasius, Christliche Dogmengeschichte, B. 1, p. 188.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/basil/letters.asp?pg=79
