NPNF2-08. Basil: Letters and Select Works - Holy Bible Institute

Homiletical.though suddenly rescuing Him from the blasphemers’ calumny, he asks, what is the Word?The Word was God. Do not put before me any ingenious distinctions of phrase; do not withyour wily cleverness blaspheme the teachings of the Spirit. You have the definitive statement.Submit to the Lord. The Word was God.”Homily XXIV., against the Sabellians, Arians, and Anomœans, repeats points whichare brought out again and again in the De Spiritu Sancto, in the work Against Eunomius,and in some of the Letters.Arianism is practical paganism, for to make the Son a creature, and at the same time tooffer Him worship, is to reintroduce polytheism. Sabellianism is practical Judaism,—adenial of the Son. 618 John i. 1, xiv. 9, 7, xvi. 28, and viii. 16 are quoted against both extremes.There may be a note of time in the admitted impatience of the auditory at hearing of everyother subject than the Holy Spirit. The preacher is constrained to speak upon this topic,and he speaks with the combined caution and completeness which characterize the DeSpiritu Sancto. “Your ears,” he says, “are all eager to hear something concerning the HolyGhost. My wish would be, as I have received in all simplicity, as I have assented withguileless agreement, so to deliver the doctrine to you my hearers. I would if I could avoidbeing constantly questioned on the same point. I would have my disciples convinced ofone consent. But you stand round me rather as judges than as learners. Your desire is ratherto test and try me than to acquire anything for yourselves. I must therefore, as it were, makemy defence before the court, again and again giving answer, and again and again sayingwhat I have received. And you I exhort not to be specially anxious to hear from me whatis pleasing to yourselves, but rather what is pleasing to the Lord, what is in harmony withthe Scriptures, what is not in opposition to the Fathers. What, then, I asserted concerningthe Son, that we ought to acknowledge His proper Person, this I have also to say concerningthe Holy Spirit. The Spirit is not identical with the Father, because of its being written ‘Godis a Spirit.’ 619 Nor on the other hand is there one Person of Son and of Spirit, because it issaid, ‘If any man have not the spirit of Christ he is none of his.…Christ is in you.’ 620 Fromthis passage some persons have been deceived into the opinion that the Spirit and Christare identical. But what do we assert? That in this passage is declared the intimate relationof nature and not a confusion of persons. For there exists the Father having His existenceperfect and independent, root and fountain of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. There existsalso the Son living in full Godhead, Word and begotten offspring of the Father, independent.Full too is the Spirit, not part of another, but contemplated whole and perfect in Himself.The Son is inseparably conjoined with the Father and the Spirit with the Son. For there islxi618 cf. ccx. p. 249.619 John iv. 24.620 Rom. viii. 9 and 10.106