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

Dogmatic.the Son may be styled God, but He is a creature, and therefore, in the strict sense of theterm, not God at all, and, at best, a hero or demigod. The Father, unbegotten, stood aloneand supreme; the very idea of “begotten” implied posteriority, inferiority, and unlikeness.Against this position Basil 314 protests. The arguments of Eunomius, he urges, are tantamountto an adoption of what was probably an Arian formula, “We believe that ingenerateness isthe essence of God,” 315 i.e., we believe that the Only-begotten is essentially unlike theFather. 316 This word “unbegotten,” of which Eunomius and his supporters make so much,what is its real value? Basil admits that it is apparently a convenient term for human intelligenceto use; but, he urges, “It is nowhere to be found in Scripture; it is one of the mainelements in the Arian blasphemy; it had better be left alone. The word ‘Father’ implies allthat is meant by ‘Unbegotten,’ and has moreover the advantage of suggesting at the sametime the idea of the Son. He Who is essentially Father is alone of no other. In this being ofno other is involved the sense of ‘Unbegotten.’ The title ‘unbegotten’ will not be preferredby us to that of Father, unless we wish to make ourselves wiser than the Saviour, Who said,‘Go and baptize in the name’ not of the Unbegotten, but ‘of the Father.’” 317 To the Eunomiancontention that the word “Unbegotten” is no mere complimentary title, but requiredby the strictest necessity, in that it involves the confession of what He is, 318 Basil rejoinsthat it is only one of many negative terms applied to the Deity, none of which completelyexpresses the Divine Essence. “There exists no name which embraces the whole nature ofGod, and is sufficient to declare it; more names than one, and these of very various kinds,each in accordance with its own proper connotation, give a collective idea which may bedim indeed and poor when compared with the whole, but is enough for us.” 319 The word“unbegotten,” like “immortal,” “invisible,” and the like, expresses only negation. “Yet essence320 is not one of the qualities which are absent, but signifies the very being of God; toreckon this in the same category as the non-existent is to the last degree unreasonable.” 321Basil “would be quite ready to admit that the essence of God is unbegotten,” but he objectsto the statement that the essence and the unbegotten are identical. 322 It is sometimes supposedthat the Catholic theologians have been hair-splitters in the sphere of the inconceivable,314 Adv. Eunom. i. 5.315 πιστεύομεν τὴν ἀγεννησίαν οὐσίαν εἶνας τοῦ Θεου. For the word ἀγεννησία cf. Letter ccxxxiv. p. 274.316 Adv. Eunom. i. 4.317 Matt. xxviii. 19. Adv. Eun. i. 5.318 ἐν τῇ τοῦ εῖναι ὅ ἐστιν ὁμολογί& 139·. Adv. Eunom. i. 8.319 Id. i. 10.320 οὐσία.321 Id.322 Id. ii.56