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130 Pages
Page 52
Human beings in art surpass their own works, and yet are consubstantial with them, as the potter with his clay, and the shipwright with his timber. For both are alike bodies, subject to sense, and earthy. [363] Eunomius explained the title "Only Begotten" to mean that the Son alone was begotten and created by the Father alone, and therefore was made the most perfect minister. "If," rejoins Basil, "He does not possess His glory in being perfect God, if it lies only in His being an exact and obedient subordinate, in what does He differ from the ministering spirits who perform the work of their service without blame? [364] Indeed Eunomius joins created' to begotten' with the express object of shewing that there is no distinction between the Son and a creature! [365] And how unworthy a conception of the Father that He should need a servant to do His work! He commanded and they were created.' [366] What service was needed by Him Who creates by His will alone? But in what sense are all things said by us to be through the Son'? In that the divine will, starting from the prime cause, as it were from a source, proceeds to operation through its own image, God the Word." [367] Basil sees that if the Son is a creature mankind is still without a revelation of the Divine. He sees that Eunomius, "by alienating the Only Begotten from the Father, and altogether cutting Him off from communion with Him, as far as he can, deprives us of the ascent of knowledge which is made through the Son. Our Lord says that all that is the Father's is His. [368] Eunomius states that there is no fellowship between the Father and Him Who is of Him." [369] If so there is no "brightness" of glory; no "express image of hypostasis." [370] So Dorner, [371] who freely uses the latter portion of the treatise, "The main point of Basil's opposition to Eunomius is that the word unbegotten is not a name indicative of the essence of God, but only of a condition of existence. [372] The divine essence has other predicates. If every peculiar mode of existence causes a distinction in essence also, then the Son cannot be of the same essence with the Father, because He has a peculiar mode of existence, and the Father another; and men cannot be of the same essence, because each of them represents a different mode of existence. By the names of Father, Son, and Spirit, we do not understand different essences, (ousias), but they are names which distinguish the huparxis of each. All are God, and the Father is no more God than the Son, as one man is no more man than another. Quantitative differences are not reckoned in respect of essence; the question is only of being or non-being. But this does not exclude the idea of a variety in condition in the Father and the Son (heteros hechein),--the generation of the Latter. The dignity of both is equal. The essence of Begetter and Begotten is identical. [373]
[363] Id. ii. 19.
[364] So. R.V. distinguishes between the words leitourgika and diakonian which are confused in A.V.
[365] Id. i. 21.
[366] Ps. cxlviii. 5.
[367] Id. i. 21.
[368] cf. John xvii. 10.
[369] Id. i. 18.
[370] On this brief summary of Basil's controversy with Eunomius, cf. Boehringer, Kirchengeschichte, vii. 62, seqq.
[371] Christologie, i. 906.
[372] to agennetos huparxeos tropos kai ouk ousias onoma. Adv. Eunom. iv.
[373] cf. De Sp. Scto. pp. 13, 39, and notes; Thomasius, Dogmengeschichte, i. 245; Herzog, Real-Encycl. "Eunomius und Eunomianer."
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/basil/life-works.asp?pg=52
