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

Against Eunomius the heretic.Letter XVI. 1900Against Eunomius the heretic. 1901He who maintains that it is possible to arrive at the discovery of things actually existing,has no doubt by some orderly method advanced his intelligence by means of the knowledgeof actually existing things. It is after first training himself by the apprehension of small andeasily comprehensible objects, that he brings his apprehensive faculty to bear on what isbeyond all intelligence. He makes his boast that he has really arrived at the comprehensionof actual existences; let him then explain to us the nature of the least of visible beings; lethim tell us all about the ant. Does its life depend on breath and breathing? Has it a skeleton?Is its body connected by sinews and ligaments? Are its sinews surrounded with musclesand glands? Does its marrow go with dorsal vertebræ from brow to tail? Does it give impulseto its moving members by the enveloping nervous membrane? Has it a liver, with a gallbladder near the liver? Has it kidneys, heart, arteries, veins, membranes, cartilages? Is ithairy or hairless? Has it an uncloven hoof, or are its feet divided? How long does it live?What is its mode of reproduction? What is its period of gestation? How is it that antsneither all walk nor all fly, but some belong to creeping things, and some travel through theair? The man who glories in his knowledge of the really-existing ought to tell us in themeanwhile about the nature of the ant. Next let him give us a similar physiological accountof the power that transcends all human intelligence. But if your knowledge has not yet beenable to apprehend the nature of the insignificant ant, how can you boast yourself able toform a conception of the power of the incomprehensible God? 19021261900 Placed by the Ben. Ed. in the reign of Julian 361–363.1901 Eunomius the Anomœan, bp. of Cyzicus, against whose Liber Apologeticus Basil wrote his counter-work.The first appearance of the αἱρετικὸς ἄνθρωπος, the “chooser” of his own way rather than the common senseof the Church, is in Tit. iii. 10. αἱρετίζειν is a common word in the LXX., but does not occur in Is. xlii. 1, thoughit is introduced into the quotation in Matt. xii. 18. ἅιρεσις is used six times by St. Luke for “sect;” twice by St.Paul and once by St. Peter for “heresy.” Augustine, C. Manich. writes: “Qui in ecclesia Christi morbidum aliquidpravumque quid sapiunt, si, correcti ut sanum rectumque sapiant, resistunt contumaciter suaque pestifera etmortifera dogmata emendare nolunt, sed defensare persistunt hæretici sunt.”1902 As an argument against Eunomius this Letter has no particular force, inasmuch as a man may be a gooddivine though a very poor entomologist, and might tell us all about the ant without being better able to decidebetween Basil and Eunomius. It is interesting, however, as shewing how far Basil was abreast of the physiologyof his time, and how far that physiology was correct.396