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

That the Holy Spirit is in every conception inseparable from the Father and the Son, alikein the creation of perceptible objects, in the dispensation of human affairs, and in thejudgment to come.Spirit. Accordingly the mode of the creation of the heavenly powers is passed over in Silence,for the historian of the cosmogony has revealed to us only the creation of things perceptibleby sense. But do thou, who hast power from the things that are seen to form an analogy ofthe unseen, glorify the Maker by whom all things were made, visible and invisible, principalitiesand powers, authorities, thrones, and dominions, and all other reasonable natureswhom we cannot name. 1034 And in the creation bethink thee first, I pray thee, of the originalcause of all things that are made, the Father; of the creative cause, the Son; of the perfectingcause, the Spirit; so that the ministering spirits subsist by the will of the Father, are broughtinto being by the operation of the Son, and perfected by the presence of the Spirit. Moreover,the perfection of angels is sanctification and continuance in it. And let no one imagine meeither to affirm that there are three original hypostases 1035 or to allege the operation of theSon to be imperfect. For the first principle of existing things is One, creating through theSon and perfecting through the Spirit. 1036 The operation of the Father who worketh all inall is not imperfect, neither is the creating work of the Son incomplete if not perfected bythe Spirit. The Father, who creates by His sole will, could not stand in any need of the Son,but nevertheless He wills through the Son; nor could the Son, who works according to thelikeness of the Father, need co-operation, but the Son too wills to make perfect through theSpirit. “For by the word of the Lord were the heavens made, and all the host of them by thebreath [the Spirit] of His mouth.” 1037 The Word then is not a mere significant impressionon the air, borne by the organs of speech; nor is the Spirit of His mouth a vapour, emittedby the organs of respiration; but the Word is He who “was with God in the beginning” and“was God,” 1038 and the Spirit of the mouth of God is “the Spirit of truth which proceedethfrom the Father.” 1039 You are therefore to perceive three, the Lord who gives the order, theWord who creates, and the Spirit who confirms. 1040 And what other thing could confirmationbe than the perfecting according to holiness? This perfecting expresses the confirmation’sfirmness, unchangeableness, and fixity in good. But there is no sanctification without241034 cf. Col. i. 16.1035 ὑποστάσεις, apparently used here as the equivalent of οὐσίαι, unless the negation only extends to ἀρχικάς.cf. note on p. 5.1036 Contrast the neuter τὸ ὄν of Pagan philosophy with the ὁ ὤν or ἐγώ εἰμι of Christian revelation.1037 Ps. xxxiii. 6.1038 John i. 1.1039 John xv. 26.1040 τὸν στερεοῦντα τὸ πνεῦμα. It is to be noticed here that St. Basil uses the masculine and more personalform in apposition with the neuter πνεῦμα, and not the neuter as in the creed of Constantinople, τὸ κύριον καὶτὸ Ζωοποιὸν τὸ ἐκ τοῦ πατρὸς ἐκπορευόμενον, etc. There is scriptural authority for the masculine in the “ὅτανδὲ ἔλθῃ ἐκεῖνος, τὸ πνεῦμα τῆς ἀληθείας” of John xvi. 13. cf. p. 15–17.191