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.lower place, but equality of relation; it is not understood physically, in which case theremight be something sinister about God, 797 but Scripture puts before us the magnificenceof the dignity of the Son by the use of dignified language indicating the seat of honour. Itis left then for our opponents to allege that this expression signifies inferiority of rank. Letthem learn that “Christ is the power of God and wisdom of God,” 798 and that “He is theimage of the invisible God” 799 and “brightness of his glory,” 800 and that “Him hath Godthe Father sealed,” 801 by engraving Himself on Him. 802Now are we to call these passages, and others like them, throughout the whole of HolyScripture, proofs of humiliation, or rather public proclamations of the majesty of the OnlyBegotten, and of the equality of His glory with the Father? We ask them to listen to theLord Himself, distinctly setting forth the equal dignity of His glory with the Father, in Hiswords, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father;” 803 and again, “When the Son comethin the glory of his Father;” 804 that they “should honour the Son even as they honour theFather;” 805 and, “We beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father;” 806and “the only begotten God which is in the bosom of the Father.” 807 Of all these passages797 I know of no better way of conveying the sense of the original σκαῖος than by thus introducing the Latinsinister, which has the double meaning of left and ill-omened. It is to the credit of the unsuperstitious characterof English speaking people that while the Greek σκαῖος and ἀριστερός, the Latin sinister and lævus, the Frenchgauche, and the German link, all have the meaning of awkward and unlucky as well as simply on the left hand,the English left (though probably derived from lift=weak) has lost all connotation but the local one.798 1 Cor. i. 24.799 Col. i. 15.800 Heb. i. 3.801 John vi. 27.802 The more obvious interpretation of ἐσφράγισεν in John vi. 27, would be sealed with a mark of approval,as in the miracle just performed. cf. Bengel, “sigillo id quod genuinum est commendatur, et omne quod nongenuinum est excluditur.” But St. Basil explains “sealed” by “stamped with the image of His Person,” an interpretationwhich Alfred rejects. St. Basil at the end of Chapter xxvi. of this work, calls our Lord the χαρακτὴρκαὶ ἰσότυπος σφραγίς, i.e., “express image and seal graven to the like” of the Father. St. Athanasius (Ep. i. adSerap. xxiii.) writes, “The seal has the form of Christ the sealer, and in this the sealed participate, being formedaccording to it.” cf. Gal. iv. 19, and 2 Pet. i. 4.803 John xiv. 9.804 Mark viii. 38.805 John v. 23.806 John i. 14.807 John i. 18. “Only begotten God” is here the reading of five mss. of Basil. The words are wanting in onecodex. In Chapter viii. of this work St. Basil distinctly quotes Scripture as calling the Son “only begotten God.”(Chapter viii. Section 17.) But in Chapter xi. Section 27, where he has been alleged to quote John i. 18, with the157