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

Dogmatic.On Mark x. 18. There is none Good, etc.“If the Saviour is not good, He is necessarily bad. For He is simple, and His characterdoes not admit of any intermediate quality. How can it be otherwise than absurd that theCreator of good should be bad? And if life is good, and the words of the Son are life, as HeHimself said, ‘the words which I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life,’ 403 in whatsense, when He hears one of the Pharisees address Him as good Master does He rejoin,‘There is none good but One, that is God’? It was not when He had heard no more thangood that he said, ‘there is none good,’ but when He had heard good Master. He answeredas to one tempting Him, as the gospel expresses it, or to one ignorant, that God is good, andnot simply a good master.”On John xvii. 5. Father, glorify Me.“If when the Son asked to be glorified of the Father He was asking in respect of HisGodhead, and not of His manhood, He asked for what He did not possess. Therefore theevangelist speaks falsely when he says ‘we beheld His glory’; 404 and the apostle, in the words‘They would not have crucified the Lord of glory,’ 405 and David in the words ‘And the Kingof glory shall come in.’ 406 It is not therefore an increase of glory which he asks. He asksthat there may be a manifestation of the œconomy. 407 Again, if He really asked that theglory which He had before the world might be given Him of the Father, He asked it becauseHe had lost it. He would never have sought to receive that of which He was in possession.But if this was the case, He had lost not only the glory, but also the Godhead. For the gloryis inseparable from the Godhead. Therefore, according to Photinus, 408 He was mere man.It is then clear that He spoke these words in accordance with the œconomy of the manhood,and not through failure in the Godhead.”ejus Filium credamus, non est ex voluntate Filius, quippe nostra in ipsum fides aut cum ipso aut ante ipsuminvenitur. Subtilis hæc ratiocinatio illustratur ex alia simili, quæ reperitur (i.e. at the beginning of Book IV.).Si fides in Filium nostra opus est Dei, ipse Dei opus esse non potest. Nam fides in ipsum et ipse non idem.”403 John vi. 64.404 John i. 14.405 1 Cor. ii. 8.406 Ps. xxiv. 7.407 i.e. of the incarnation, cf. pp. 7, 12.408 On Photinus cf. Socrates, Ecc. Hist. ii. 29, and Theodoret, Hær. Fab. iii. 1, and Epiphanius, Hær. lxxi. §2. The question as to what Synod condemned and deposed him has been thought to have been settled in favourof that of Sirmium in 349. (D.C.B. iv. 394.) cf. Hefele’s Councils, tr. Oxenham, ii. 188.67