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130 Pages
Page 58
On Mark x. 18. There is none Good, etc.
"If the Saviour is not good, He is necessarily bad. For He is simple, and His character does not admit of any intermediate quality. How can it be otherwise than absurd that the Creator of good should be bad? And if life is good, and the words of the Son are life, as He Himself said, the words which I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life,' [403] in what sense, when He hears one of the Pharisees address Him as good Master does He rejoin, There is none good but One, that is God'? It was not when He had heard no more than good that he said, there is none good,' but when He had heard good Master. He answered as to one tempting Him, as the gospel expresses it, or to one ignorant, that God is good, and not simply a good master."
On John xvii. 5. Father, glorify Me.
"If when the Son asked to be glorified of the Father He was asking in respect of His Godhead, and not of His manhood, He asked for what He did not possess. Therefore the evangelist speaks falsely when he says we beheld His glory'; [404] and the apostle, in the words They would not have crucified the Lord of glory,' [405] and David in the words And the King of glory shall come in.' [406] It is not therefore an increase of glory which he asks. He asks that there may be a manifestation of the oeconomy. [407] Again, if He really asked that the glory which He had before the world might be given Him of the Father, He asked it because He had lost it. He would never have sought to receive that of which He was in possession. But if this was the case, He had lost not only the glory, but also the Godhead. For the glory is inseparable from the Godhead. Therefore, according to Photinus, [408] He was mere man. It is then clear that He spoke these words in accordance with the oeconomy of the manhood, and not through failure in the Godhead."
[403] John vi. 64.
[404] John i. 14.
[405] 1 Cor. ii. 8.
[406] Ps. xxiv. 7.
[407] i.e. of the incarnation, cf. pp. 7, 12.
[408] On Photinus cf. Socrates, Ecc. Hist. ii. 29, and Theodoret, Haer. Fab. iii. 1, and Epiphanius, Haer. lxxi. S: 2. The question as to what Synod condemned and deposed him has been thought to have been settled in favour of that of Sirmium in 349. (D.C.B. iv. 394.) cf. Hefele's Councils, tr. Oxenham, ii. 188.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/basil/life-works.asp?pg=58
