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

Issue joined with those who assert that the Son is not with the Father, but after the Father.Also concerning the equal glory.Chapter VI.Issue joined with those who assert that the Son is not with the Father, but after the Father.Also concerning the equal glory.13. Our opponents, while they thus artfully and perversely encounter our argument,cannot even have recourse to the plea of ignorance. It is obvious that they are annoyed withus for completing the doxology to the Only Begotten together with the Father, and for notseparating the Holy Spirit from the Son. On this account they style us innovators, revolutionizers,phrase-coiners, and every other possible name of insult. But so far am I from beingirritated at their abuse, that, were it not for the fact that their loss causes me “heaviness andcontinual sorrow,” 786 I could almost have said that I was grateful to them for the blasphemy,as though they were agents for providing me with blessing. For “blessed are ye,” it is said,“when men shall revile you for my sake.” 787 The grounds of their indignation are these:The Son, according to them, is not together with the Father, but after the Father. Hence itfollows that glory should be ascribed to the Father “through him,” but not “with him;”inasmuch as “with him” expresses equality of dignity, while “through him” denotes subordination.They further assert that the Spirit is not to be ranked along with the Father andthe Son, but under the Son and the Father; not coordinated, but subordinated; not connumerated,but subnumerated. 788With technical terminology of this kind they pervert the simplicity and artlessness ofthe faith, and thus by their ingenuity, suffering no one else to remain in ignorance, they cutoff from themselves the plea that ignorance might demand.14. Let us first ask them this question: In what sense do they say that the Son is “afterthe Father;” later in time, or in order, or in dignity? But in time no one is so devoid of senseas to assert that the Maker of the ages 789 holds a second place, when no interval intervenesin the natural conjunction of the Father with the Son. 790 And indeed so far as our conceptionof human relations goes, 791 it is impossible to think of the Son as being later than theFather, not only from the fact that Father and Son are mutually conceived of in accordancewith the relationship subsisting between them, but because posteriority in time is predicated786 cf. Rom. ix. 2.787 Matt. v. 11.788 ὑποτάσσω. cf. 1 Cor. xv. 27, and inf. cf. chapter xvii. ὑποτεταγμένος is applied to the Son in the Macrostichor Lengthy Creed, brought by Eudoxius of Germanicia to Milan in 344. Vide Soc. ii. 19.789 ποιητὴς τῶν αἰ& 240·νων.790 Yet the great watchword of the Arians was ἦν ποτε ὅτε οὐκ ἦν.791 τῆ ἐννοί& 139· τῶν ἀνθρωπίνων is here the reading of five MSS. The Benedictines prefer τῶν ἀνθρώπων,with the sense of “in human thought.”155