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

That v: not found “of whom” in the case of the Son and of the Spirit.you;” 775 and, “Thou makest thy boast of God.” 776 Instances are indeed too numerous toreckon; but what we want is not so much to exhibit an abundance of evidence as to provethat the conclusions of our opponents are unsound. I shall, therefore, omit any proof ofthis usage in the case of our Lord and of the Holy Ghost, in that it is notorious. But I cannotforbear to remark that “the wise hearer” will find sufficient proof of the proposition beforehim by following the method of contraries. For if the difference of language indicates, aswe are told, that the nature has been changed, then let identity of language compel our adversariesto confess with shame that the essence is unchanged.12. And it is not only in the case of the theology that the use of the terms varies, 777 butwhenever one of the terms takes the meaning of the other we find them frequently transferredfrom the one subject to the other. As, for instance, Adam says, “I have gotten a man throughGod,” 778 meaning to say the same as from God; and in another passage “Moses commanded…Israelthrough the word of the Lord,” 779 and, again, “Is not the interpretationthrough God?” 780 Joseph, discoursing about dreams to the prisoners, instead of saying“from God” says plainly “through God.” Inversely Paul uses the term “from whom” insteadof “through whom,” when he says “made from a woman” (A.V., “of” instead of “through awoman”). 781 And this he has plainly distinguished in another passage, where he says thatit is proper to a woman to be made of the man, and to a man to be made through the woman,in the words “For as the woman is from [A.V., of] the man, even so is the man also through[A.V., by] the woman.” 782 Nevertheless in the passage in question the apostle, while illustratingthe variety of usage, at the same time corrects obiter the error of those who supposed775 Rom. i. 10.776 Rom. ii. 17.777 According to patristic usage the word “theology” is concerned with all that relates to the divine andeternal nature of Christ, as distinguished from the οἰκονομία, which relates to the incarnation, and consequentredemption of mankind. cf. Bishop Lightfoot’s Apostolic Fathers, Part II. Vol. ii. p. 75, and Newman’s Arians,Chapter I. Section iii.778 Gen. iv. 1, lxx. A.V. renders “she conceived and bare Cain and said,” and here St. Basil has been accusedof quoting from memory. But in the Greek of the lxx. the subject to εἶπεν is not expressed, and a possible constructionof the sentence is to refer it to Adam. In his work adv. Eunom. ii. 20, St. Basil again refers the exclamationto Adam.779 Num. xxxvi. 5, lxx.780 Gen. xl. 8, lxx.781 Gal. iv. 4.782 1 Cor. xi. 12.153