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

Dogmatic.‘Who is like unto Thee?’ 462 and adds, ‘among the gods, O Lord,’ and Moses, in the words,‘So the Lord alone did lead them, and there was no strange god with him.’ 463 And yet although,as the Apostle says, the Saviour was with them, ‘They drank of that spiritual rockthat followed them, and that rock was Christ,’ 464 and Jeremiah, ‘The gods that have notmade the heavens and the earth,…let them perish under the heavens.’ 465 The Son is notmeant among these, for He is himself Creator of all. It is then the idols and images of theheathen who are meant alike by the preceding passage and by the words, ‘I am the first Godand I am the last, and beside me there is no God,’ 466 and also, ‘Before me there was no Godformed, neither shall there be after me,’ 467 and ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is oneLord.’ 468 None of these passages must be understood as referring to the Son.”The Fifth Book against Eunomius is on the Holy Spirit, and therefore, even if it were ofindubitable genuineness, it would be of comparatively little importance, as the subject isfully discussed in the treatise of his mature life. A reason advanced against its genuinenesshas been the use concerning the Holy Ghost of the term God. (§ 3.) But it has been repliedthat the reserve which St. Basil practiced after his elevation to the episcopate was but for aspecial and temporary purpose. He calls the Spirit God in Ep. VIII. §11. At the time of thepublication of the Books against Eunomius there would be no such reason for any “economy”469 as in 374.(ii) De Spiritu Sancto. To the illustration and elucidation of this work I have little toadd to what is furnished, however inadequately, by the translation and notes in the followingpages. The famous treatise of St. Basil was one of several put out about the same time bythe champions of the Catholic cause. Amphilochius, to whom it was addressed, was theauthor of a work which Jerome describes (De Vir. Ill., cxxxiii.) as arguing that He is GodAlmighty, and to be worshipped. The Ancoratus of Epiphanius was issued in 373 in supportof the same doctrine. At about the same time Didymus, the blind master of the catecheticalschool at Alexandria, wrote a treatise which is extant in St. Jerome’s Latin; and of which thexliv462 Ps. lxxxvi. 8.463 Deut. xxxii. 12.464 1 Cor. x. 4.465 Jer. x. 2, LXX.466 Is. xliv. 6, “God” inserted.467 Is. xliii. 10.468 Deut. vi. 4.469 cf. remarks in § vi. p. xxiii. of Prolegomena.74