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.that the body of the Lord was a spiritual body, 783 and, to shew that the God-bearing 784 fleshwas formed out of the common lump 785 of human nature, gave precedence to the moreemphatic preposition.The phrase “through a woman” would be likely to give rise to the suspicion of meretransit in the generation, while the phrase “of the woman” would satisfactorily indicate thatthe nature was shared by the mother and the offspring. The apostle was in no wise contradictinghimself, but he shewed that the words can without difficulty be interchanged. Since,therefore, the term “from whom” is transferred to the identical subjects in the case of which“through whom” is decided to be properly used, with what consistency can these phrasesbe invariably distinguished one from the other, in order that fault may be falsely found withtrue religion?8783 The allusion is to the Docetæ. cf. Luke xxiv. 39.784 The note of the Benedictine Editors remarks that the French theologian Fronton du Duc (Ducæus) accusesTheodoret (on Cyril’s Anath. vii.) of misquoting St. Basil as writing here “God-bearing man” instead of “Godbearing flesh,” a term of different signification and less open as a Nestorian interpretation. “God-bearing,”θεοφόρος, was an epithet applied to mere men, as, for instance, St. Ignatius. So Clement of Alexandria, I. Strom.p. 318, and Gregory of Nazianzus, Or. xxxvii. p. 609. St. Basil does use the expression Jesus Christ ἄνθρωπονΘεόν in Hom. on Ps. xlix.785 φυραμα. cf. Rom. ix. 21.154