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

Dogmatic.“If the Son is subjected to the Father in the Godhead, then He must have been subjectedfrom the beginning, from whence He was God. But if He was not subjected, but shall besubjected, it is in the manhood, as for us, not in the Godhead, as for Himself.”Philipp. ii. 9. On the Name above every Name.“If the name above every name was given by the Father to the Son, Who was God, andevery tongue owned Him Lord, after the incarnation, because of His obedience, then beforethe incarnation He neither had the name above every name nor was owned by all to beLord. It follows then that after the incarnation He was greater than before the incarnation,which is absurd.” So of Matt. xxviii. 18. “We must understand this of the incarnation, andnot of the Godhead.”John xiv. 28. “My Father is Greater than I.”“‘Greater’ is predicated in bulk, in time, in dignity, in power, or as cause. The Fathercannot be called greater than the Son in bulk, for He is incorporeal: nor yet in time, for theSon is Creator of times: nor yet in dignity, for He was not made what He had once notbeen: nor yet in power, for ‘what things the Father doeth, these also doeth the son likewise’:374 nor as cause, since (the Father) would be similarly greater than He and than we,if He is cause of Him and of us. The words express rather the honour given by the Son tothe Father than any depreciation by the speaker; moreover what is greater is not necessarilyof a different essence. Man is called greater than man, and horse than horse. If the Fatheris called greater, it does not immediately follow that He is of another substance. In a word,the comparison lies between beings of one substance, not between those of different substances.375“A man is not properly said to be greater than a brute, than an inanimate thing, butman than man and brute than brute. The Father is therefore of one substance with the Son,even though He be called greater.” 376374 John v. 19.375 ἐπὶ τῶν ὁμοουσίων οὐκ ἐπὶ τῶν ἑτεροουσίων.376 It will be noted that Basil explains this passage on different grounds from those suggested by the Clausein the Athanasian Creed, on which Waterland’s remark is that it “needs no comment.” St. Athanasius himselfinterpreted the “minority” not of the humanity, or of the special subordination of the time when the words wereuttered. cf. Ath., Orat. c. Ar. i. § 58: “The Son says not ‘my Father is better than I,’ lest we should conceive Himto be foreign to His nature, but ‘greater,’ not indeed in size, nor in time, but because of His generation from theFather Himself; nay, in saying ‘greater,’ He again shews that He is proper to His essence” (Newman’s transl.).The explanation given in Letter viii., p. 118, does include the inferiority as touching His manhood.63