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.of subjects separated by a less interval from the present, and priority of subjects farther off.For instance, what happened in Noah’s time is prior to what happened to the men of Sodom,inasmuch as Noah is more remote from our own day; and, again, the events of the historyof the men of Sodom are posterior, because they seem in a sense to approach nearer to ourown day. But, in addition to its being a breach of true religion, is it not really the extremestfolly to measure the existence of the life which transcends all time and all the ages by itsdistance from the present? Is it not as though God the Father could be compared with, andbe made superior to, God the Son, who exists before the ages, precisely in the same way inwhich things liable to beginning and corruption are described as prior to one another?The superior remoteness of the Father is really inconceivable, in that thought and intelligenceare wholly impotent to go beyond the generation of the Lord; and St. John has admirablyconfined the conception within circumscribed boundaries by two words, “In thebeginning was the Word.” For thought cannot travel outside “was,” nor imagination 792beyond “beginning.” Let your thought travel ever so far backward you cannot get beyondthe “was,” and however you may strain and strive to see what is beyond the Son, you willfind it impossible to get further than the “beginning.” True religion, therefore, thus teachesus to think of the Son together with the Father.915. If they really conceive of a kind of degradation of the Son in relation to the Father,as though He were in a lower place, so that the Father sits above, and the Son is thrust offto the next seat below, let them confess what they mean. We shall have no more to say. Aplain statement of the view will at once expose its absurdity. They who refuse to allow thatthe Father pervades all things do not so much as maintain the logical sequence of thoughtin their argument. The faith of the sound is that God fills all things; 793 but they who dividetheir up and down between the Father and the Son do not remember even the word of theProphet: “If I climb up into heaven thou art there; if I go down to hell thou art there also.” 794Now, to omit all proof of the ignorance of those who predicate place of incorporeal things,what excuse can be found for their attack upon Scripture, shameless as their antagonism is,in the passages “Sit thou on my right hand” 795 and “Sat down on the right hand of themajesty of God”? 796 The expression “right hand” does not, as they contend, indicate the792 Φαντασία is the philosophic term for imagination or presentation, the mental faculty by which the objectmade apparent, φάντασμα, becomes apparent, φαίνεται. Aristotle, de An. III. iii. 20 defines it as “a movementof the mind generated by sensation.” Fancy, which is derived from φαντασία (φαίνω, ÖBHA=shine) hasacquired a slightly different meaning in some usages of modern speech.793 Eph. iv. 10.794 Ps. cxxxix. 7, P.B.795 Ps. cx. 1.796 Heb. i. 3, with the variation of “of God” for “on high.”156