Nicene and Post-Nicene Church Fathers Series 2 - The Still Small ...

and university life. 63 The assigned date, 357, may be reasonably accepted, and shortly after
his baptism he was ordained Reader. 64 It was about this that he visited monastic settlements
in Palestine, Mesopotamia, Cœle Syria, and Egypt, 65 though he was not so fortunate as to
encounter the great pope Athanasius. 66 Probably during this tour he began the friendship
with Eusebius of Samosata which lasted so long.
To the same period we may also refer his renunciation of his share of the family property.
67 Maran would appear to date this before the Syrian and Egyptian tour, a journey
which can hardly have been accomplished without considerable expense. But, in truth, with
every desire to do justice to the self-denial and unworldliness of St. Basil and of other likeminded
and like-lived champions of the Faith, it cannot but be observed that, at all events
in Basil’s case, the renunciation must be understood with some reasonable reservation. The
great archbishop has been claimed as a “socialist,” whatever may be meant in these days by
the term. 68 But St. Basil did not renounce all property himself, and had a keen sense of its
rights in the case of his friends. 69 From his letter on behalf of his foster-brother, placed by
Maran during his presbyterate, 70 it would appear that this foster-brother, Dorotheus, was
allowed a life tenancy of a house and farm on the family estate, with a certain number of
slaves, on condition that Basil should be supported out of the profits. Here we have landlord,
tenant, rent, and unearned increment. St. Basil can scarcely be fairly cited as a practical
apostle of some of the chapters of the socialist evangel of the end of the nineteenth century.
But ancient eulogists of the great archbishop, anxious to represent him as a good monk,
63 According to the legendary life of St. Basil, attributed to St. Amphilochius, he was baptized at Jerusalem.
Nor is it right to omit to notice the argument of Wall (Infant Baptism, ch. x.) founded on a coincidence between
two passages in the writings of Greg. Naz. In Or. xl. ad init. he speaks of baptism as a γένεσις ἡμερινὴ καὶ
ἐλευθέρα καὶ λυτικὴ παθῶν, πᾶν τὸ ἀπὸ γενέσεως κάλυμμα περιτέμνουσα, καὶ πρὸς τὴν ἄνω ζωὴν ἐπανάγουσα.
In Or. xliii., he says of Basil that τὰ πρῶτα τῆς ἡλικίας ῦπὸ τῷ πατρὶ…σπαργανοῦται καὶ διαπλάττεται πλάσιν
τὴν ἀρίστην τε καὶ καθαρωτάτην, ἣν ἡμερινὴν ὁ θεῖος Δαβιδ καλῶς ὀνουάζει καὶ τῆς νυχτερινῆς ἀντίθετον.
As they stand alone, there is something to be said for the conclusion Wall deduces from these passages. Against
it there is the tradition of the later baptism, with the indication of Dianius as having performed the rite in the
De Sp. Scto. 29. On the other hand τὰ πρῶτα τῆς ἡλικιας might possibly refer not to infancy, but to boyhood.
64 De S. Scto. xxiv. On his growing seriousness of character, cf. Ep. ccxxiii.
65 Epp. i. and ccxxiii. § 2.
66 Ep. lxxx.
67 cf. Ep. ccxxiii. § 2. Greg. Naz., Or. xliii.
68 e.g. The New Party, 1894, pp. 82 and 83, quoting Bas., In Isa. i., Hom. in illud Lucæ Destruam horrea, § 7,
and Hom. in Divites.
69 Epp. iii., xxxvi. cf. Dr. Travers Smith, Basil, p. 33.
70 Ep. xxxvii.
Life at Cæsarea; Baptism; and Adoption of Monastic Life.
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