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

Dogmatic.essence. I need not mention taste or smell, which apprehend respectively savour and scent.Hearing perceives sounds and voices, which have no affinity with earth. They must thensay that they have found out the earth’s essence by reason. What? In what part of Scripture?A tradition from what saint? 329“In a word, if any one wishes to realise the truth of what I am urging, let him ask himselfthis question; when he wishes to understand anything about God, does he approach themeaning of ‘the unbegotten’? I for my part see that, just us when we extend our thoughtover the ages that are yet to come, we say that the life bounded by no limit is without end,so is it when we contemplate in thought the ages of the past, and gaze on the infinity of thelife of God as we might into some unfathomable ocean. We can conceive of no beginningfrom which He originated: we perceive that the life of God always transcends the boundsof our intelligence; and so we call that in His life which is without origin, unbegotten. 330The meaning of the unbegotten is the having no origin from without.” 331 As Eunomiusmade ingenerateness the essence of the Divine, so, with the object of establishing the contrastbetween Father and Son, he represented the being begotten to indicate the essence of theSon. 332 God, said Eunomius, being ingenerate, could never admit of generation. Thisstatement, Basil points out, may be understood in either of two ways. It may mean that ingeneratenature cannot be subjected to generation. It may mean that ingenerate naturecannot generate. Eunomius, he says, really means the latter, while he makes converts of themultitude on the lines of the former. Eunomius makes his real meaning evident by whathe adds to his dictum, for, after saying “could never admit of generation,” he goes on, “soas to impart His own proper nature to the begotten.” 333 As in relation to the Father, so nowin relation to the Son, Basil objects to the term. Why “begotten”? 334 Where did he get thisword? From what teaching? From what prophet? Basil nowhere finds the Son called “begotten”in Scripture. 335 We read that the Father begat, but nowhere that the Son was a begottenthing. “Unto us a child is born, 336 unto us a Son is given.” 337 But His name is notbegotten thing but “angel of great counsel.” 338 If this word had indicated the essence of the329 Id. i. 13.330 τοῦτο τὸ ἄναρχον τῆς ζωῆς ἀγέννητον προσειρήκαμεν.331 Id. i. 16.332 τὸ γέννημα. Id. ii. 6.333 Id. i. 16.334 γέννημα, i.e., “thing begotten;” the distinction between this substantive and the scriptural adjectiveμονογενής must be borne in mind.335 Id. ii. 6.336 LXX., ἐγεννήθη.337 Is. ix. 6.338 Id. LXX.58