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

To the Canonicæ.Letter LII. 2184To the Canonicæ. 21851. I have been very much distressed by a painful report which reached my ears; but Ihave been equally delighted by my brother, beloved of God, bishop Bosporius, 2186 who hasbrought a more satisfactory account of you. He avers by God’s grace that all those storiesspread abroad about you are inventions of men who are not exactly informed as to the truthabout you. He added, moreover, that he found among you impious calumnies about me,of a kind likely to be uttered by those who do not expect to have to give the Judge in the dayof His righteous retribution an account of even an idle word. I thank God, then, both becauseI am cured of my damaging opinion of you, an opinion which I have derived from thecalumnies of men, and because I have heard of your abandonment of those baseless notionsabout me, on hearing the assurances of my brother. He, in all that he has said as comingfrom himself, has also completely expressed my own feeling. For in us both there is onemind about the faith, as being heirs of the same Fathers who once at Nicæa promulgatedtheir great decree 2187 concerning the faith. Of this, some portions are universally acceptedwithout cavil, but the homoousion, ill received in certain quarters, is still rejected by some.These objectors we may very properly blame, and yet on the contrary deem them deservingof pardon. To refuse to follow the Fathers, not holding their declaration of more authoritythan one’s own opinion, is conduct worthy of blame, as being brimful of self-sufficiency.On the other hand the fact that they view with suspicion a phrase which is misrepresentedby an opposite party does seem to a small extent to relieve them from blame. Moreover, asa matter of fact, the members of the synods which met to discuss the case of Paul of Samosata2188 did find fault with the term as an unfortunate one.2184 Placed at the beginning of St. Basil’s episcopate, c. 370.2185 Canonicæ, in the early church, were women enrolled in a list in the churches, devoted to works ofcharity, and living apart from men, though not under vows, nor always in a cœnobium. In Soc., H.E.i. 17 theyare described as the recipients of St. Helena’s hospitality. St. Basil is supposed to refuse to recognise marriagewith them as legitimate in Ep. cclxxxviii. The word κανονικῶν may stand for either gender, but the marriageof Canonici was commonly allowed. Letter clxxiii. is addressed to the canonica Theodora.2186 Vide the Letter li.2187 κήρυγμα. On Basil’s use of this word and of dogma, vide note on p. 41.2188 i.e.the two remarkable Antiochene synods of 264 and 269, to enforce the ultimate decisions of whichagainst Paul of Samosata appeal was made to the pagan Aurelian. On the explanation of how the Homoousioncame to be condemned in one sense by the Origenist bishops at Antioch in 269, and asserted in another by the318 at Nicæa in 325, see prolegomena to Athanasius in Schaff and Wace’s ed. p. xxxi. cf. Ath.,De Syn. § 45, Hil.,De Trin. iv. 4, and Basil, Cont. Eunom. i. 19. “Wurde seiner Lehre: ‘Gott sey mit dem Logos zugleich Eine Person,464