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Translated by Bl. Jackson.
St Basil the Great Resources Online and in Print
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88 Pages
Page 24
21. "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father; [900] not the express image, nor yet the form, for the divine nature does not admit of combination; but the goodness of the will, which, being concurrent with the essence, is beheld as like and equal, or rather the same, in the Father as in the Son. [901]
What then is meant by "became subject"? [902] What by "delivered him up for us all"? [903] It is meant that the Son has it of the Father that He works in goodness on behalf of men. But you must hear too the words, "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law;" [904] and "while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." [905]
Give careful heed, too, to the words of the Lord, and note how, whenever He instructs us about His Father, He is in the habit of using terms of personal authority, saying, "I will; be thou clean;" [906] and "Peace, be still;" [907] and "But I say unto you;" [908] and "Thou dumb and deaf spirit, I charge thee;" [909] and all other expressions of the same kind, in order that by these we may recognise our Master and Maker, and by the former may be taught the Father of our Master and Creator. [910] Thus on all sides is demonstrated the true doctrine that the fact that the Father creates through the Son neither constitutes the creation of the Father imperfect nor exhibits the active energy of the Son as feeble, but indicates the unity of the will; so the expression "through whom" contains a confession of an antecedent Cause, and is not adopted in objection to the efficient Cause.
[900] John xiv. 9.
[901] The argument appears to be not that Christ is not the "express image," or impress of the Father, as He is described in Heb. i. 3, or form, as in Phil. ii. 6, but that this is not the sense in which our Lord's words in St. John xiv. 9, must be understood to describe "seeing the Father." Charakter and morphe are equivalent to he theia phusis, and morphe is used by St. Basil as it is used by St. Paul,--coinciding with, if not following, the usage of the older Greek philosophy,--to mean essential attributes which the Divine Word had before the incarnation (cf. Eustathius in Theod. Dial. II. [Wace and Schaff Ed., p. 203]; "the express image made man,"--ho to pneumati somatopoietheis anthropos charakter.) The divine nature does not admit of combination, in the sense of confusion (cf. the protests of Theodoret in his Dialogues against the confusion of the Godhead and manhood in the Christ), with the human nature in our Lord, and remains invisible. On the word charakter vide Suicer, and on morphe Archbp. Trench's New Testament Synonyms and Bp. Lightfoot on Philippians ii. 6.
[902] Phil. ii. 8.
[903] Rom. viii. 32.
[904] Gal. iii. 13.
[905] Rom. v. 8.
[906] Matt. viii. 3.
[907] Mark iv. 39.
[908] Matt. v. 22, etc.
[909] Mark ix. 25.
[910] There is a difficulty in following the argument in the foregoing quotations. F. Combefis, the French Dominican editor of Basil, would boldly interpose a "not," and read whenever he does not instruct us concerning the Father.' But there is no ms. authority for this violent remedy. The Benedictine Editors say all is plain if we render "postquam nos de patre erudivit." But the Greek will not admit of this.
Reference address : https://elpenor.org/basil/holy-spirit.asp?pg=24
