Critical Review on the Holy Spirit by Basil the Great

"I neither chose to name the Holy Spirit God nor dare to call him a creature," declared Eustathius of Sebaste in response to the Neo-Arian denial of the divinity of the Holy Spirit. At commencement glance, Eustathius's ambiguity seems reasonable. Later on all, where in the Holy Scriptures is the Spirit explicitly stated to be fully divine? Where in the Scriptures is the Spirit said to be God? Is information technology not best to maintain a position of agnosticism, neither identifying the Spirit as a fauna nor affirming him equally consubstantial with the Father?

Merely Eustathius's fence-sitting did not sit well with St Basil the Dandy. He viewed this equivocation as merely a soft version of Arian subordinationism, now applied to the person of the Holy Spirit. He chosen all who refused to affirm the divinity of the Spirit Pneumatomachoi, "fighters against the Spirit." In response to this heresy, St Basil composed maybe his most and influential famous tract.

It's been well over xx years since I read On the Holy Spirit, simply afterwards reading through the Five Theological Orations of St Gregory Nazianzen a few months ago, I idea information technology might exist helpful for me to revisit this book and to compare the respective arguments of these 2 great saints of the Church building. Both were stiff supporters of the trinitarian faith every bit confessed by the Council of Nicaea (though Basil long had reservations nigh the Nicene confession that the Son is homoousios with the Begetter, preferring instead the assertion that the Son is of like substance to the Father). Both were outspoken opponents of the Pneumatomachoi. Both understood that ontological subordination of the Spirit undermines the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Basil'south decisive statement that runs throughout On the Holy Spirit might be described as the denial of the middle footing: in that location is the uncreated Deity, and there is everything he has created from out of nothing. There are no demigods, no semi-divine intermediaries betwixt God and creation; there are no degrees of divinity. At that place is merely God and the world (spiritual and fabric). The radical biblical distinction betwixt Creator and creature is fully embraced and assimilated. The just question therefore is: on what side of the ontological line do we locate the Holy Spirit? Basil's answer is clear: the Holy Spirit is divine; he is not a brute. "The Lord has delivered to united states a necessary and saving dogma," he declares: "the Holy Spirit is to be ranked with the Father" (10.25).

The Bishop of Caeasarea marshals a host of biblical, theological, and liturgical arguments to support his basic thesis. I cannot brainstorm to summarize all of them. Just for me personally the most compelling is this: it is only in and past the Spirit that we can confess and worship the Father and the Son:

If we are illumined by divine power, and prepare our optics on the beauty of the image of the invisible God, and through the image are led upwardly to the indescribable dazzler of its source, information technology is because we have been inseparably joined to the Spirit of knowledge. He gives those who love the vision of truth the power which enables them to see the image, and this power is Himself. He does not reveal it to them from outside sources, but leads them to cognition personally, "No one knows the Father except the Son," and "No one tin can say 'Jesus is Lord' except in the Holy Spirit." Notice that it does not say through the Spirit, but in the Spirit. Information technology besides says, "God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth," and "in Thy light exercise we come across low-cal," through the illumination of the Holy Spirit, "the true calorie-free that enlightens every man that comes into the world." He reveals the celebrity of the Only-Begotten in Himself, and He gives true worshippers the noesis of God in Himself. The way to divine knowledge ascends from one Spirit through the ane Son to the one Begetter. (18.47)

It is but in God and through God that we can know God. It is only in the divine light that we tin run across the divine light. Our knowledge of divinity enjoys a trinitarian construction: the Begetter is revealed through the incarnate Son in and by the illumination and transformative presence of the Holy Spirit.

We learn that just equally the Male parent is made visible in the Son, then as well the Son is recognized in the Spirit. To worship in the Spirit implies that our intelligence has been aware. Consider the words spoken to the Samaritan woman. She was deceived by local custom into assertive that worship could only be offered in a specific place, but the Lord, attempting to correct her, said that worship ought to be offered in Spirit and in truth. Past truth He clearly meant Himself. If we say that worship offered in the Son (the Truth) is worship offered in the Father's image, we can say that same most worship offered in the Spirit since the Spirit in Himself reveals the divinity of the Lord. The Holy Spirit cannot be divided from the Father and the Son in worship. If yous remain exterior the Spirit, you cannot worship at all, and if you are in Him yous cannot dissever Him from God. Lite cannot be separated from what it makes visible, and it is impossible for you to recognize Christ, the Image of the invisible God, unless the Spirit enlightens you. Once yous see the Prototype, y'all cannot ignore the light; you see the Calorie-free and Prototype simultaneously. It is fitting that when we come across Christ, the Brightness of God'south glory, information technology is always through the illumination of the Spirit. Through Christ the Prototype, may we be led to the Father, for He bears the seal of the Father's very likeness. (26.64)

This is an argument that Gregory of Nazianzus will powerfully employ in his defence force of the divinity of the Holy Spirit: in his Light nosotros see Lite.

To deny the divinity of the Spirit, or even to equivocate, as the Pneumatomachoi were doing, is to ultimately deny the gospel and the gift of salvation in Jesus Christ:

I swear to every man who confesses Christ just denies the Father: Christ volition profit him nothing. If a homo calls upon God, but rejects the Son, his faith is empty. If someone rejects the Spirit, his faith in the Begetter and the Son is made useless; information technology is impossible to believe in the Father and the Son without the presence of the Spirit. He who rejects the Spirit rejects the Son, and he who rejects the Son rejects the Father. "No on can say 'Jesus is Lord' except in the Holy Spirit," and "no ane has ever seen God; the just-begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has made Him known." Such a person has no part in truthful worship. Information technology is impossible to worship the Son except in the Holy Spirit; it is impossible to phone call upon the Father except in the Spirit of adoption. (11.27)

Precisely because the Father, Son, and Spirit are inseparable in this mode, all suggestions that the Spirit does not share in or possess the essence of the Begetter are excluded. "Only the Spirit is organically united with God," St Basil explains, "not because of the needs of each moment, but through communion in the divine nature" (13.twenty). Not three Gods, of form. There is ane God, the Father Omnipotent. In that location is one merely begotten Son. And in that location is i Holy Spirit. Whichever divine hypostasis we contemplate, we run into only the i God: "The Spirit is one, and we speak of Him as unique, since through the one Son He is joined to the Father. He completes the all-praised and blessed Trinity. He is non ranked with the plurality of creation, just is described in the singular; this is sufficient show of His intimacy with the Father and the Son. He is non ane of many but 1 only: just as there is ane Father and one Son, there is one Holy Spirit" (18.45). (I am struck by the clause "since through the one Son He is joined to the Father." I wonder precisely what this means.)

The Male parent is God. The Son is God. And the Spirit is … divine. St Basil balks at explicitly naming the Spirit "God." He prefers to remain within the modesty of biblical usage. Merely maybe some other dynamic is at piece of work here, namely, the monarchy of the Father. John Behr explains:

For the Christian faith at that place is, unequivocally, but one God, and that is the Father: "In that location is one God and Male parent." For Basil, the one God is not the i divine substance, or a notion of "divinity" which is ascribed to each person of the Trinity, nor is it some kind of unity or communion in which they all exist; the one God is the Father. But this "monarchy" of the Male parent does not undermine the confession of the truthful divinity of the Son and the Spirit. Jesus Christ is certainly "true God of true God," equally the Nicene Creed puts it, but he is such equally the Son of God, the God who is thus the Male parent. If the term "God" (theos) is used of Jesus Christ, not just as a predicate, just likewise as a name with an article, this is merely washed on the prior confession of him as "Son of God," and and then every bit other than "the one God" of whom he is the Son; it is necessary to bear in mind this order of Christian theology, lest it collapse in confusion. Basil … followed Scripture in non applying the term "God" to the Holy Spirit, preferring instead the discussion "divine," simply he is nevertheless clear that the Spirit must belong together with the Male parent and the Son rather than amongst created things. (The Nicene Faith, 2:307-308)

St Basil's restraint at this point, however, somewhen became a point of contention betwixt him and his old friend from Cappadocia. St Gregory saw that ultimate victory over Arianism required the categorical naming of the Spirit every bit God and the confession of the consubstantiality of the Spirit with the Father. In his Theological Orations he volition interruption with Basil and make the affirmation that the Church catholic subsequently made her ain: the Holy Spirit is God.

(xxx Nov 2012; mildly edited)

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Source: https://afkimel.wordpress.com/2018/07/17/st-basil-the-great-and-the-divinity-of-the-holy-spirit-3/

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