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Translated by Bl. Jackson.
St Basil the Great Resources Online and in Print
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This Part: 128 Pages
Page 24
Letter IX. [1872]
To Maximus the Philosopher.
1. Speech is really an image of mind: so I have learned to know you from your letters, just as the proverb tells us we may know "the lion from his claws." [1873]
I am delighted to find that your strong inclinations lie in the direction of the first and greatest of good things--love both to God and to your neighbour. Of the latter I find proof in your kindness to myself; of the former, in your zeal for knowledge. It is well known to every disciple of Christ that in these two all is contained.
2. You ask for the writings of Dionysius; [1874] they did indeed reach me, and a great many they were; but I have not the books with me, and so have not sent them. My opinion is, however, as follows. I do not admire everything that is written; indeed of some things I totally disapprove. For it may be, that of the impiety of which we are now hearing so much, I mean the Anomoean, it is he, as far as I know, who first gave men the seeds. I do not trace his so doing to any mental depravity, but only to his earnest desire to resist Sabellius. I often compare him to a woodman trying to straighten some ill-grown sapling, pulling so immoderately in the opposite direction as to exceed the mean, and so dragging the plant awry on the other side. This is very much what we find to be the case with Dionysius. While vehemently opposing the impiety of the Libyan, [1875] he is carried away unawares by his zeal into the opposite error. It would have been quite sufficient for him to have pointed out that the Father and the Son are not identical in substance, [1876] and thus to score against the blasphemer. But, in order to win an unmistakable and superabundant victory, he is not satisfied with laying down a difference of hypostases, but must needs assert also difference of substance, diminution of power, and variableness of glory. So he exchanges one mischief for another, and diverges from the right line of doctrine. In his writings he exhibits a miscellaneous inconsistency, and is at one time to be found disloyal to the homoousion, because of his opponent [1877] who made a bad use of it to the destruction of the hypostases, and at another admitting it in his Apology to his namesake. [1878] Besides this he uttered very unbecoming words about the Spirit, separating Him from the Godhead, the object of worship, and assigning Him an inferior rank with created and subordinate nature. Such is the man's character.
[1872] To be ascribed to the same period as the preceding.
[1873] In Lucian (Hermot. 54) the proverb is traced to a story of Pheidias, who, "after a look at a claw, could tell how big the whole lion, formed in proportion would be." A parallel Greek adage was ektou kraspedou to pan huphasma. Vide Leutsch., Corp. Paroemiog. Graec. I. 252.
[1874] i.e. of Alexandria.
[1875] i.e. Sabellius. Basil is the first writer who asserts his African birth. In Ep. ccvii. he is "Sabellius the Libyan." His active life was Roman; his views popular in the Pentapolis.
[1876] ou tauton to hupokeimeno. Aristotle, Metaph. vi. 3, 1, says, malista dokei einai ousia to hupokeimenon to proton. On the distinction between homoousios and tauton to hupokeimeno, cf. Athan., Exp. Fid. ii., where the Sabellians are accused of holding an huiopator, and Greg. Nyss answer to Eunomius, Second Book, p. 254 in Schaff and Wace's ed. Vide also Prolegg. to Athan., p. xxxi. in this series. Epiphanius says of Noetus, monotupos ton auton patera kai Hui& 232;n kai hagion pneuma...hegsamenos (Haeres. lvii. 2) and of Sabellius, Dogmatizei houtos kai hoi ap' aupou Sabellianoi ton auton einai Patera ton auton Hui& 232;n ton auton einai hagion pneuma, hos einai en mia hupostasei treis onomasias. (Haeres. lxii. i.)
[1877] Sabellius.
[1878] Dionysius of Rome.
Reference address : https://elpenor.org/basil/letters.asp?pg=24
