The Essential Contribution of St. Basil the Great

St. Basil the Great

By Bp Joseph (Ancient Church of the West) 

“Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.” I John 4:7-8

Introduction 

Today is the feast of St. Basil of Caesarea, also called St. Basil the Great. He died on today's date, AD 379. He was the bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, Asia Minor, in the country of Turkey. He was a brilliant theologian who supported the Nicene Council, helped to propose wording that influenced the section of the Creed regarding the Holy Spirit at Constantinople I, through his friend and confidant, Gregory of Nazianzus, and opposed the many heresies that tormented the early church. He nobly fought Arianism, which denied Christ's divinity, and also the followers of Apollinaris of Laodicea, who denied Christ had a rational human soul. His ability to balance his creative theological insights with his scholarly and political connections made St. Basil a powerful advocate for the Nicene position. In addition to his theological work, St. Basil was known for his care of the poor and underprivileged, his founding of the first hospitals, and his seminal study of monasticism. St. Basil established guidelines for monastic life which focus on community life, liturgical prayer, and manual labor, influencing all of Christian Monasticism into the present day. St. Basil is considered a great saint by all ancient Apostolic Churches. 

The "Essential" Theology

One of St. Basil's greatest contributions to theology is often overlooked, but which is central to our understanding of the practical Christian life, our understanding of Scripture, and our definition of salvation. In his letter to Amphilochius of Iconium regarding the differentiation of theological terms, St. Basil the Great divides “Hypostasis” and “Ousia.” These words had meant the same thing in Aristotle’s work (Categories V) and the early Fathers previously had used them interchangeably, as they did to some extent with the word “Physis.” Now Ousia represented a generality, a transcendent reality, antecedent to modes of existence, and Hypostasis represents a unique mode of existence through which the “Idioma,” the “particular,” is discerned. God could be described as One Divine Essence in three different, distinct Hypostatic Persons. 

“The distinction between essence and hypostasis is the same as that between the general and the particular; as, for instance, between the animal and the particular human. Therefore, concerning the divinity, we confess one essence, so as not to give a differing principle of being; but the hypostasis, on the other hand, is particularizing, in order that our conception of Father, Son and Holy Spirit may be unconfused and clear. If we have no distinct perception of the separate characteristics, namely, fatherhood, sonship, and sanctification, but confess God from the common notion of existence, we cannot possibly give a sound account of our faith. We must, therefore, confess the faith by adding the particularizing to the common. Divinity is common; fatherhood is particular; and we combine them to say, ‘I believe in God the Father.’ And again in the confession of the Son, it is necessary to do the same, to unite the particular to the common and to say ‘I believe in God the Son.’ Likewise for the Holy Spirit, we must conform our words according to the sequence, and say ‘I believe in the divine Holy Spirit.’ So that the unity is completely preserved in the confession of the one divinity, while the particularizing properties of the persons is confessed in the distinction of the properties understood in each.” (Ep. 236; quoted in John Behr, Nicene Faith, II:298)

St. Basil excludes Ousia from Gnosis in this process and focuses on Pistis, “Faith,” making Christianity “Agnostic” without abandoning the techniques of Alexandrian Christian Gnosticism and making the path of knowing and becoming exclusionary of what makes God Uncreated and man created, God’s true being. This is how the Cappadocians “saved” Origen and created a synthesis of his work that would undergird the development of Greek theology, culminating in St. Maximos Confessor. One could receive the process of "ascent" and "purification" without receiving the false forms of “knowledge” that could be said to arise from these Gnostic metaphors. 

  

If the Greek process of “Theosis,” a philosophical process of “Kenosis/Henosis,” which elides with the Platonic ideal of transformation and the unity of knowledge and action, was to be used, the Biblical distinction between God and Man had to be maintained - and this was accomplished through the setting apart of the Ousia and the establishment of limitations to human knowledge. No matter how much man may know, God is always beyond our mental comprehension, greater than the sum of all the created analogies that we might use to try to define the Creator. Scripture did not focus on this philosophical reality, because it is a record of God revealing Himself, which is a kataphatic process through the person of God’s own Son. God allows us to know what He desires us to know, of His own perfect will. 

On Unity and Trinity

  

St. Basil’s philosophical solution also rectified the manner in which God was a Monad, and the way in which God was a Trinity. By creating the distinction between these two forms of existence, Ousia and Hypostasis, then the strict monotheism of Judaism and Islam can be avoided, while the convolution of Persons into separate existences, and thus returning to polytheism, could also be avoided. 

  

This vision unites Hypostasis and Prosopon as equivalent terms, which was not clear in the writings of the Early Fathers, and continued to be a problem in Syriac Christian linguistic usage. The Divine Names and Prosopon/Hypostasis can be understood through the revelation/activity of the Holy Spirit - this activity is called “energy,” and the human will’s ability to manifest it is called “synergy.” Energies are then defined as the manifestation of God’s grace and Presence through the Holy Spirit in the actions of a submitted and cooperating human will. Thus, God can only be known through virtue, the activities of the human will submitted to God’s will, which manifests His Presence and reveals God’s will. In an absolute sense, then, our “morality dictates our philosophy,” because our moral conduct defines our modes of knowing. 

On Special Revelation and Divine Knowledge 

  

This understanding of revelation gradually created the possibility of a new hermeneutical paradigm in the Church. This paradigm focused attention on the testimonies of Christian experience, the “Lives of the Saints,” which reinforces the revelation of divine knowledge through obedience. Such a focus is extremely valuable, in that it helps us to know how to live and gives us strategies for our own askesis, our "struggle" to do what God commands. It can also become an over-emphasis if it leads us to focus on things other than the Life of Christ and the Holy Scriptures, especially as hagiographies historically became increasingly subjected to the degrading elements of secular politics and ecclesial schisms. In contrast, the Holy Scriptures, under increasing scrutiny, shine with self-effacement (reporting the good and the bad), love, power and the authority to undercut the proud human narratives that compete with the Kingdom of God. 

  

The question then becomes, is this approach only confirming the Scripture and the Gospel once and for all delivered to God’s Church, an untouchable “Ousia” of revelation through which all other knowledge of God comes, while good works and inner revelation are the internalization and confirmation of this revealed truth, our sanctification a process of individual hypostatic knowledge? Or, is the Scripture and its Gospel only a hypostatic “name,” never fully able to fully reveal God (as those who quote John 21:25 and argue for an “unwritten tradition” would insist), and who see Scripture as the beginning of a process in which the “testimony of the church” becomes the primary medium through which we know God, the Church as a whole, forming the “Ousia” of revelation? 

The Witness and Application of Scripture

The witness of the Early Church is that the Scriptures, revealing God’s will for our salvation and the Person of Christ as they do, are the unmovable essence of Christian Faith, forming the “Ousia” of God’s revelation; while our internalization and acquisition of this message in our personal context, our acquisition of virtue, forms the hypostatic and knowable aspect. This process is witnessed and preserved in the Church, forming holy tradition and the paradigms of saintly life that we protect and propagate. The traditions are only true in as much as they agree with, support, communicate, interpret, and contextualize Scripture in this vital process of sanctification. When it contradicts or undermines this process, as we have seen in the Roman schism with Orthodoxy, it loses context and is merely a product of culture, not interchangeable with the Word of God. This is also how we know the "Big T" Tradition that is universal to the Church and the "little t" tradition of local variance and practice. Just as God’s Ousia cannot be defined intellectually, but must be believed in faith, so the Scriptures cannot be fully comprehended in the fleshly mind, but must be believed in faith. Our sanctification is the only thing that will give us the needed context for eventual interpretation. Just as God’s hypostatic reality makes things comprehensible and contextual, allowing us to enter into the fellowship of the Trinity and the communion of the Holy Spirit, so our individual application of the Gospel and its Truths make Scripture meaningful, and allow us to do the works of God, commune with the saints, and manifest works worthy of repentance and faith through God’s grace. 

  

This is why, as in the early Fathers, one must have a strict reliance on Scripture and shine with the power of the Holy Spirit, doing the works of mercy and acts of preaching that transformed the world. It also shows why clerical culture, which often mistakes certain schools of local interpretation for the Scripture itself, mistaking the Ousia for the Hypostasis of Revelation, grows more and more cold, less focused on missions (doing the works that actually manifest the Presence of the Spirit), and less active in Christian virtue all around. This approach reduces itself to the imitation of certain theological opinions, rather than the imitation of Christ, believing that one could “apprehend the mind of the Church” through this intellectual process, comprehending the Ousia of Revelation. It would mistakenly lead one to believe that they could become a saint in the Church without any of the fruits of its catholicity or any likeness of Christ’s own earthly ministry! 

Summary

Thus, St. Basil’s theological paradigm matches his pneumatological paradigm and his exposition of human sanctification, expounded so beautifully in his work, “On the Holy Spirit.” This process is a fully integral and wholistic vision of God’s life connecting to our lives. It shows how the Life of the Holy Trinity, shining in the Incarnation, entered into through the Sacraments of the Church, is revealed in our hearts through obedience to the Holy Spirit, and realized in a sanctified Christian Life. Practically, St. Basil's understanding helps us to see that we do not gain special knowledge through holiness, and therefore, holiness cannot be used as a scholastic quality that allows us to claim concrete knowledge on every theological issue. Rather, the Church must always be humble, constantly working through moral, theological and canonical matters, realizing that our canons are not infallible statements, but are pastoral tools that are flexible to the working of the Holy Spirit. Canonical "economia" is therefore an outworking of the very essence of our knowledge of God. We can never justify a Gnostic, Pharisaical or inflexible approach, and must constantly seek for and submit to God’s will, which is the very definition of holiness in Christian life.

COLLECT 

ALMIGHTY GOD, Whose servant St. Basil proclaimed the mystery of Thy Word made flesh, to build up Thy Church in wisdom and strength: grant that we, like St. Basil, may rejoice in Thy holy presence amongst us, and so be brought with him to know the power of Thy unending love and the shared life of Thy Holy Trinity; and grant that St. Basil may continually pray for the Church on earth as he stands before Christ’s heavenly throne, praying that we may be ever victorious over the deceitful heresies and doctrines of devils that cloud our minds and attempt to replace right worship with the veneration of false idols; through Jesus Christ Thy Son our Lord, who livest and reignest with Thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.