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

Against those who say that it is not right to rank the Holy Spirit with the Father and theSon.Chapter X.Against those who say that it is not right to rank the Holy Spirit with the Father and the Son.24. But we must proceed to attack our opponents, in the endeavour to confute those“oppositions” advanced against us which are derived from “knowledge falsely so-called.” 924It is not permissible, they assert, for the Holy Spirit to be ranked with the Father andSon, on account of the difference of His nature and the inferiority of His dignity. Againstthem it is right to reply in the words of the apostles, “We ought to obey God rather thanmen.” 925For if our Lord, when enjoining the baptism of salvation, charged His disciples to baptizeall nations in the name “of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost,” 926 not disdainingfellowship with Him, and these men allege that we must not rank Him with the Fatherand the Son, is it not clear that they openly withstand the commandment of God? If theydeny that coordination of this kind is declaratory of any fellowship and conjunction, letthem tell us why it behoves us to hold this opinion, and what more intimate mode of conjunction927 they have.If the Lord did not indeed conjoin the Spirit with the Father and Himself in baptism,do not 928 let them lay the blame of conjunction upon us, for we neither hold nor say anything924 1 Tim. vi. 20. The intellectual championship of Basil was chiefly asserted in the vindication of the consubstantialityof the Spirit, against the Arians and Semi-Arians, of whom Euonomius and Macedonius wereleaders, the latter giving his name to the party who were unsound on the third Person of the Trinity, and wereMacedonians as well as Pneumatomachi. But even among the maintainers of the Nicene confession there wasmuch less clear apprehension of the nature and work of the Spirit than of the Son. Even so late as 380, the yearafter St. Basil’s death, Gregory of Nazianzus, Orat. xxxi. de Spiritu Sancto, Cap. 5, wrote “of the wise on our sidesome held it to be an energy, some a creature, some God. Others, from respect, they say, to Holy Scripture,which lays down no law on the subject, neither worship nor dishonour the Holy Spirit.” cf. Schaff’s Hist. ofChristian Ch. III. Period, Sec. 128. In Letter cxxv. of St. Basil will be found a summary of the heresies with whichhe credited the Arians, submitted to Eusthathius of Sebaste in 373, shortly before the composition of the presenttreatise for Amphilochius.925 Acts v. 29.926 Matt. xxviii. 19.927 The word used is συνάφεια, a crucial word in the controversy concerning the union of the divine andhuman natures in our Lord, cf. the third Anathema of Cyril against Nestorius and the use of this word, andTheodoret’s counter statement (Theod. pp. 25, 27). Theodore of Mopsuestia had preferred συνάφεια to ἕνωσις;Andrew of Samosata saw no difference between them. Athanasius (de Sent. Dionys. § 17) employs it for themutual relationship of the Persons in the Holy Trinity: “προκαταρκτικὸν γάρ ἐστι τῆς συναφείας τὸ ὄνομα.”928 μηδέ. The note of the Ben. Eds. is, “this reading, followed by Erasmus, stirs the wrath of Combefis, whowould read, as is found in four mss., τότε ἡμῖν, ‘then let them lay the blame on us.’ But he is quite unfair to174