§ 137. Содержание третьей книги против Евномия и достоинства всего сочинения.

The third book exposes the wicked teaching of Eunomius about the Holy Spirit. Eunomius wrote that since the Holy Spirit, according to the teaching of the saints, is third in order and dignity, then He is third in nature. St. Basil answers: a) Eunomius’s silence about those saints from whom he supposedly learned to consider the Holy Spirit third in order and dignity, makes it clear that the teaching of Eunomius belongs only to him. b) What need does the Holy Spirit have to be third in nature, if He is also third in order and dignity? We have not learned this from Scripture and we cannot conclude this from what has been said. In support of the latter, he points to the ranks of angels, the difference of which, as he says, is not proof of the difference in their nature. Then, as a demonstration of the divine nature of the Holy Spirit, he points out: aa) that the Holy Spirit is called God and the Holy in the same way as the Father and the Son (Ex. 6:3) bb) His actions as the Creator Spirit (Ps. 33:6, John 33:4, Ps. 139:7), as the Comforter Spirit and the dispenser of all spiritual gifts (John. 14:26. 1 Cor. 12:4–11); c) to the fact that “just as an outsider and stranger cannot see the thoughts of the soul, so the Holy Spirit cannot see. because, as someone who is not a stranger or a stranger, he has communion with God and in secrets can experience the depths of God’s destinies (1 Cor. 2:41). d) He gives life just like the Father and the Son (Rom. 8:11). Eunomius wrote: “The spirit is the creation of the Only Begotten, who has no deity and no creative power.” St. Basil answers that if people are adored, how come the one by whom deification is performed is not involved in the deity? In refutation of blasphemy, he says that we are baptized in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Finally, in explaining the Scripture (Am. 4:13. John 1:3), which the Eunomians so foolishly cited to confirm their opinion, he says that the words of the prophet: strengthen the thunder and create the spirit, refer to the breath of the wind, and about the words: all that was, he notes that the concept of the Spirit does not allow the Spirit to be included in the number of all created things. This is the content of the three books of St. Basil against Eunomius. With consolation for the Christian feeling, with peace for the testing mind, everyone can read such a work as the work of St. Basil against Eunomius. Upon a detailed examination of the work: a) first of all and on almost every page, a sublime, noble tone is presented in which the Great Teacher denounces his opponent and expresses his own thoughts. His following words about Aetie are beautiful, at the beginning of his first word: “I will not talk about him, what sciences he first studied, how he burst into destruction into the Church of God, so as not to seem to me a reproacher who has forgotten the duty of an accuser.” This rule is followed by Vasily throughout the entire essay. He is too far from humiliating the face of the defender of truth with harsh, passionate reproaches to the enemy. No matter how impudent the objections and expressions of Eunomius were in places, St. Vasily either silence, or a calm, but breathing piety, indication of their insolence. b) Following step by step the first dialectician of the Arian dialecticians, he dwells on every important thought, but does not enter into the empty subtleties of dialectics, fruitless for the mind and heart: “I do not want to expose the vanity of these words,” says St. Basil, citing one of the empty sophisms of Eunomius and adds: “he who only argues in some way resembles idle talkers” 502; c) he begins almost every answer to Eunomius by disassembling the dialectical construction of Eunomius into its component parts, after which the reader or listener himself sees not only the content of the construction, but sometimes he himself sees its emptiness, and what he would not have seen is shown in his refutation by St. Vasily, d) The first support for the thoughts of St. Basil's word of God; but how does he use it? the most severe criticism will not find a single text in his work that does not forcefully confirm his thoughts; finally, e) the entire work against Eunomius is distinguished by strictness of order, strength and consistency of thoughts and piety. r. 223. Slav. page 13. “Why argue with the unreasonable? It would be as if we began to argue with those who have lost their minds from inflammation in the brain,” p. 252. Slav. l. 35. “I am afraid,” he says in another place, lest we, as we utter other people’s blasphemies, defile our minds and take part in their condemnation,” p. 229. Slav. l. 17. next p. You might be interested in: