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

Dogmatic.servant to do His work! ‘He commanded and they were created.’ 366 What service wasneeded by Him Who creates by His will alone? But in what sense are all things said by usto be ‘through the Son’? In that the divine will, starting from the prime cause, as it werefrom a source, proceeds to operation through its own image, God the Word.” 367 Basil seesthat if the Son is a creature mankind is still without a revelation of the Divine. He sees thatEunomius, “by alienating the Only Begotten from the Father, and altogether cutting Himoff from communion with Him, as far as he can, deprives us of the ascent of knowledgewhich is made through the Son. Our Lord says that all that is the Father’s is His. 368 Eunomiusstates that there is no fellowship between the Father and Him Who is of Him.” 369 Ifso there is no “brightness” of glory; no “express image of hypostasis.” 370 So Dorner, 371 whofreely uses the latter portion of the treatise, “The main point of Basil’s opposition to Eunomiusis that the word unbegotten is not a name indicative of the essence of God, but onlyof a condition of existence. 372 The divine essence has other predicates. If every peculiarmode of existence causes a distinction in essence also, then the Son cannot be of the sameessence with the Father, because He has a peculiar mode of existence, and the Father another;and men cannot be of the same essence, because each of them represents a different modeof existence. By the names of Father, Son, and Spirit, we do not understand different essences,(οὐσίας), but they are names which distinguish the ὕπαρξις of each. All are God, and theFather is no more God than the Son, as one man is no more man than another. Quantitativedifferences are not reckoned in respect of essence; the question is only of being or non-being.But this does not exclude the idea of a variety in condition in the Father and the Son (ἑτέρωςἕχειν),—the generation of the Latter. The dignity of both is equal. The essence of Begetterand Begotten is identical. 373The Fourth Book contains notes on the chief passages of Scripture which were reliedon by Arian disputants. Among these arexxxviiiI Cor. xv. 28. On the Subjection of the Son.366 Ps. cxlviii. 5.367 Id. i. 21.368 cf. John xvii. 10.369 Id. i. 18.370 On this brief summary of Basil’s controversy with Eunomius, cf. Böhringer, Kirchengeschichte, vii. 62,seqq.371 Christologie, i. 906.372 τὸ ἀγέννητος ὑπάρξεώς τρόπος καὶ οὐκ οὐσίας ὄνομα. Adv. Eunom. iv.373 cf. De Sp. Scto. pp. 13, 39, and notes; Thomasius, Dogmengeschichte, i. 245; Herzog, Real-Encycl. “Eunomiusund Eunomianer.”62