Doctrine of the Holy Trinity of St. Basil the Great

(From lectures on patrolology for 1911–1912) Saint Basil is revered in the Orthodox Church as one of the three great universal teachers. He is great as a bishop, orator, theologian and ascetic, great for his tireless activities for the benefit of the Orthodox faith, great for his dedication and strength of character. As a man of word and deed, he was rightly called Great by his contemporaries. The harsh lifestyle, the excessive, continuous labors of St. Basil the Great, constant grief and the serious illnesses caused by all this prematurely exhausted his naturally weak body. He died on January 1, 379 at the age of only forty-nine years and was mourned by the entire population of Caesarea, without distinction of creeds or religions. There can be no dispute that the leader among the Cappadocians, both in church-administrative and theological terms, was St. Basil the Great: he drew the main lines within which Saints Gregory the Theologian and Gregory of Nyssa carried out their further constructions. The theological teaching of the Cappadocian fathers is extremely important in the history of theology. In their theological works, the Trinitarian problem received a final resolution, and the understanding they established of the church teaching about the Holy Trinity and the formulas they created became the precious property of Orthodox theological dogma. Saint Basil the Great in one of his epistles (8th, to the Caesarea monks) writes: “We must confess God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, as the words of God taught and those who sublimely understood them. And let it be said to those who reproach us for tritheism that we confess one God not in number, but in nature.” This condensed confession expresses both the essence of St. Basil’s teaching about the Holy Trinity and the peculiarity in the formulation and resolution of the triadological question in comparison with previous theologians, and above all with St. Athanasius of Alexandria († 373, Comm. May 2). Saint Basil, like Saint Athanasius, had to fight mainly against Arianism. Therefore, the theological teaching of the saint has as its primary subject the disclosure and clarification of the dogma of the Holy Trinity. The mystery of the Trinity is the mystery of one God in three Persons, one Nature in three Hypostases, truly distinct. The mystery is the difficulty, or rather the impossibility, for us to understand this Unity in this Multiplicity or this Multiplicity in this Unity. It is inevitable that if the unity of essence is first assumed, then it is difficult to explain the trinity of Persons, and it even seems that trinity is sacrificed to unity, and, on the contrary, if the trinity of Persons is first assumed, then it is difficult to explain the unity of essence, and, in turn, it seems that this is sacrificed in favor of trinity. In the first case, they seem to be inclined towards Sabellianism, in the second - towards tritheism. If Saint Athanasius concentrated all the force of evidence against the Arians on affirming the unity of the being of God, then Saint Basil, together with other Cappadocians, takes the existence of Hypostases in God as the starting point and directs his thought mainly to drawing a line between the Persons of the Holy Trinity. A new formulation of the triadological question also required new terminology in the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. Central was the distinction between the concepts of “essence” (οὐσία) and “hypostasis” (ὑπόστασις), which was initiated by St. Basil. Saint Athanasius and the fathers of the Council of Nicea did not believe there was a difference between them. Over time, the need arose to eliminate the ambiguity and misunderstandings arising from the confusion of the meaning of οὐσία (essence) and ὑπόστασις (hypostasis): St. Basil says that some of those who used these words without distinction argued that both the essence is one and the Hypostasis is one, and, on the contrary, those who recognize three Hypostases think that the division of essences into an equal number (Letter 38). Saint Basil made the question of essence (οὐσία) and hypostasis (ὑπόστασις) the subject of special discussion in a letter to his brother Gregory of Nyssa (Ibid.). Essence and hypostasis, following St. Basil, differ from each other as the general and the particular (κοινόν and ἴδιον). Names are of two kinds, argues Saint Basil: some denote a common nature, for example, “man”; others have a particular meaning, which does not mean the generality of nature, but the outline of an object according to its distinctive feature, for example, “Paul” and “Timothy.” Consequently, there is a collection of common characteristics (τό κοινόν) in individuals of the same species, which they all possess equally, which is why they are all designated by one name, without any one being singled out in particular; in relation to essence, Paul, Silouan, and Timothy are one and the same, since no one will see in Paul a different essence than in Silouan or Timothy, and therefore objects brought under one concept of essence are consubstantial with each other. The word “man,” by the uncertainty of its meaning, evokes some kind of extensive thought in the mind, so that although such a name reveals the nature of the object, it does not yet designate a real object that actually exists and has its own distinctive name. But if we add characteristic individual features to the essence (οὐσία), then we get a hypostasis: a hypostasis, says St. Basil, is a concept that is general and unlimited in a certain subject, defines and describes through the indicated features. Thus, a hypostasis is a specific individual, existing separately (καθ ’ ἕ καστον), which contains and possesses an essence (οὐσία), but is opposed to it as a particular to a general. “Essence and hypostasis,” writes St. Basil, “have the same difference between themselves as there is between the general and the individual, for example, between a living being and a certain person” (Letter 236); “essence has the same relation to hypostasis as the general has to the particular” (Letter 214). The essence of God is incomprehensible and completely ineffable for human nature. The Arians Aetius and Eunomius argued that with the help of the dialectical method, a person can know the very essence of the Divine as God Himself knows it. Having set himself the task of accurately determining the essence of the Father, Eunomius found that such an essence is the “ungeneracy” of the Father, or His absolute originality... Ungeneration - as an exclusively property of God - is incommunicable to other entities. Since the essence of the Son is “begottenness,” He cannot be from the essence of the Father, is not consubstantial with the Father, because this would introduce division into the essence of God, absolutely simple, and is not subsistent, because begottenness cannot be similar to unbornness... Based on general usage and Holy Scripture, Saint Basil explains that the essence of things is comprehended by the human mind in parts, and is not perceived directly, and is expressed by several different names, each of which defines only one particular sign. The names assigned to God have the same meaning, both positive - Holy, Good and others, and negative - Unborn, Immortal, Invisible, etc. Only from the totality of all names is it possible to form a very weak idea of ​​​​the image of God in comparison with reality. Therefore, the term “unborn” in itself cannot be a perfect and complete definition of the being of God; one can say that the being of God is ungenerate, but it cannot be said that ungeneracy is the being of God. The term “unborn” only indicates the origin or mode of being of something, but does not define the nature or being. About the paradoxical statement of Eunomius that he comprehended the very essence of God, St. Basil says that the human mind testifies only to the existence of God, and does not determine what God is, and the Holy Scripture certifies that the essence of God is incomprehensible to the human mind and, in general, to any creature. Saint Basil speaks of the communicability of the Divine nature through birth and the equality of the Father and the Son. The Son is truly and from eternity begotten, since in God there is no time. God has in Himself paternity, co-extended with His eternity, therefore the Son, pre-eternally existing and always existing, did not begin to be someday, but when the Father, then the Son. The Son is not a creature or creation, but, as born from the Father, He is of the same essence with Him and equal in dignity with Him. St. Basil the Great formulates the distinctive properties of the Hypostases, what gives them a special image, as follows. The Father is a certain Power, existing unbornly and without beginning, and She is the Cause of the cause of all things. He alone has that predominant sign of His Hypostasis, that He is the Father, and His existence is not due to any reason. Everything came into being through the Son; He alone shone forth from the Unborn Light. A distinctive sign of the hypostatic property of the Spirit is that He is known through the Son and with the Son and has being from the Father, proceeding from the Father (Letter 38). In the epistles to Terentius Comitus and Saint Amphilochius († 394, commemorated November 23) (Letters 214 and 236), the properties of the Hypostases are defined as Fatherland, Sonship and Sanctifying Power. It should be noted that Saint Basil, quite accurately and definitely naming the distinctive features of the Father and the Son: unbornness and birth (ὰγεννησία - γέννησις) or Fatherland and Sonship (πατὴρ - υίός, πατρὁτης – υίὁτης ), (Against Eunomius I, 5, II, 28) at the same time does not find such a term that would clearly designate the image or method of origin or procession (or being. - Ed.) ( τρόπος ὑπάρξεως ) of the Saint Spirit: he did not find it in the Holy Scriptures. Therefore, he says: “It is common for a pious mind to be afraid to say about the Holy Spirit what is silent in the Holy Scriptures, but to believe that experimental knowledge of Him and accurate comprehension is provided to us in the coming age, when, having ceased to see the truth in the mirror and fortune-telling (1 Cor. 13:12), we will be worthy to contemplate it face to face” (Against Eunomius III.) Saint Basil is not ashamed to admit ignorance about the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, as coming from God, does not proceed through birth, like the Son, but as the Spirit of the mouth of God. The image of the procession remains inexplicable (On the Holy Spirit, Conversation 24.). Accordingly, in the Trinitarian formula of St. Basil we do not find the distinctive property (γνώρισμα) of the Holy Spirit. But this ignorance about the method of procession (τρὁπος ὑπάρξεως) of the Holy Spirit in Saint Basil did not prevent him from unquestioningly giving the Holy Spirit the glorification attested in Scripture and confessing Him as God, consubstantial and equal in honor with the Father and the Son. Usually prayers and hymns ended with a doxology “to the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit.” This formula was also accepted by the Arians and Doukhobors, since it allowed for the possibility of explaining it in the sense of their doctrine of the created subordination of the Son and the Spirit. The heretics referred to this formula to support their opinion. To make such references impossible, Saint Basil began to preferentially use the doxology “to the Father with the Son and the Holy Spirit.” Saint Basil points out that it is necessary to discover the hidden meaning in every utterance and in every syllable, but that the heretics direct their sophistic reasoning about syllables and prepositions to the affirmation of the false teaching about the difference in essence of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. The subtle distinction of the prepositions “with”, “through”, “in” was borrowed by heretics from external wisdom, and in the Holy Scriptures the use of these prepositions is not strictly observed, so that confirmation for Arian views cannot be found in the previous doxology. The heretics argued that since the Son is not together with the Father, but is necessarily after the Father, and therefore below the Father, then glory to the Father is given through the Son, and not with the Son, since the last expression (“with the Son”) denotes equality, and the first (“through the Son”) a service relationship. Saint Basil proves that the Son cannot be inferior either in time, or in rank, or in dignity. Therefore, both formulas of doxology can be allowed in the church, with the only difference being that “when we take into account the greatness of the nature in the Only Begotten and the excellence of His dignity, then we testify that He has glory with the Father; and when we imagine that He gives us blessings and brings us to God and makes Him His own, then we confess that this grace is accomplished by Him and in Him. Therefore, speaking with Him is characteristic of those who glorify, and speaking with Him is especially appropriate for those who give thanks.” Speaking about the glorification of the Holy Spirit, Saint Basil first of all proposes to explore the ideas common to all Christians about the Holy Spirit, borrowed from the Holy Scriptures and from the unwritten Tradition of the Fathers, namely about His greatness and dignity, about His actions in the world, especially about His influence on the soul. The heretics’ assertion that the Holy Spirit should not be placed along with the Father and the Son, because He is both alien to Them by nature and inferior in dignity to Them, Saint Basil refutes by pointing to the commandment of the Lord about baptism in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit and to the confession pronounced before baptism, which the heretics now renounce: “Whoever rejects the Spirit has faith in the Father and the Son will be reduced to futility, and he cannot have this faith unless the Spirit is present.” References to baptism only into the Lord, into Moses, and baptism into water cannot serve as an objection to the conclusions drawn. In this regard, Saint Basil turns to the study of the Old Testament prototypes of the actions of baptism and finds out that the union of the name of the Holy Spirit with the Father and the Son in the sacrament of Baptism, where life-giving power is given, elevating our nature from a state of destruction to immortality, establishes a unity that cannot be thought of as accidental - either existing or ceasing, but necessarily presupposes the consubstantiality of the united Persons. This unconditionally inseparable unity of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit is also obvious from the unity of Their actions in creation, where the Father is the original Cause, the Son is the creative Cause and the Holy Spirit is the perfect Cause: “Imagine Three - the Commanding Lord, the Creating Word and the Affirming Spirit,” one and doing in the Spirit. They are united in the Economy of human salvation, in the distribution of spiritual gifts and in the future Judgment. But the most important proof of the union of the Spirit with the Father and the Son is what has been said, that He has the same relationship to God as the spirit in him has to everyone. Who is the message from man who is in man, but the spirit of man living in him? In the same way, no one knows God’s message, but the Spirit of God (1 Cor. 2:11). Saint Basil decisively asserts that the Holy Spirit is due glorification, completely equal with the Father and the Son, and proves this on the basis of the identity of the names assigned to the Holy Spirit in the Holy Scriptures with the names of the Father and the Son, the identity of the Divine properties: incomprehensibility for man, omnipresence, omnipotence, etc., as well as on the basis of the full communion of the Spirit with the Father and the Son both in actions and essentially. Opponents of Saint Basil argued that Scripture nowhere indicates the glorification of the Spirit with the Father and the Son, but carefully avoids the expression “with the Spirit” and always prefers the expression “glorify in the Spirit.” Saint Basil objects to them that the second form of doxology is used in the Holy Scriptures in such a way that it glorifies the Holy Spirit no less than the first, and in no way expresses His official position. But the second formula in its entirety is not found in Holy Scripture; and if it is borrowed from custom, then the Orthodox, finding both sayings in use among the faithful, use both, being confident that the glory of the Spirit is equally given to both. But since the opponents are not actually arguing about the word, but have made it an expression of an incorrect thought not contained in the Holy Scriptures, we should prefer the preposition “with”, which gives a very clear concept of consubstantiality. Having posed the question where the preposition “with” got its beginning, what power it has and to what extent he agrees with Tradition, Saint Basil answers it in a famous place (On the Holy Spirit, 27), beginning with the words: “Of the dogmas and sermons observed in the Church, some we have in the teaching set forth in Scripture, and others that have come down to us from the Apostolic Tradition, we have accepted in secret. But both have the same power for piety.” To the objection that the doxology “with the Spirit” is not attested and not set forth in Scripture, Saint Basil replies: “I consider it an apostolic rule to adhere to traditions not set forth in Scripture.” One of such traditions is the doxology in question, in support of which Saint Basil refers to the bishop from whom he himself received Baptism, and gives examples of the use of this formula by Saint Clement of Rome († 101, commemorated November 25), Saint Irenaeus († 202, commemorated August 23), Saint Gregory the Wonderworker († c. 270, commemorated November 17), Saint Dionysius of Alexandria (October 5), Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Martyr Athenogenes, Firmilion and Meletius. But if essence and hypostasis differ from each other only as the general (τὸ κοινόν) and the particular (τὁ ἴδιον), then does it not follow from this that the general - the essence ( οὐσία) - does not have its own separate existence and is realized only in the particular, that the community has unity, represented only mentally, as an aggregate essential characteristics of individuals, in this case Hypostases? Saint Basil strongly objects to this: “I don’t believe,” he says, “that they [the pneumatomachs] would reach such stupidity and begin to assert that the God of all, like some general concept represented only in the mind, did not have any independent existence” (On the Holy Spirit, 16). Between the Hypostases, considered in relation to the Essence, there is no gap, there is nothing between Them intercalated or independent and different from God's nature so that this Nature could be separated from Itself by the insertion of an extraneous person, nor the emptiness of any unfilled space that would produce interruptions in the unity of God's Essence with Itself, dividing the continuous with empty intervals (Letter 38). The essence of God cannot be equated with the essence of man and essence in general: while in the comprehended world the essence manifests itself in separate species and is, as it were, fragmented between them, in the Divine it at every moment and at the same time belongs to all Hypostases and is not only logically comprehended, but the real basis of Their existence. On the other hand, Saint Basil also rejects the idea that essence (οὐσία) represents the highest principle from which the Father and Son (and the Holy Spirit) receive existence; in relation to God the Father and God the Son, no essence is seen that would be more primary and higher than both, so to think and say this is above all wickedness. For what could be more primal than the Unborn? Such blasphemy would destroy faith in the Father and the Son, because those who came from one are already brothers among themselves (Letter 52. Compare Conversation 24: Against the Sabellians, Arius and Anomeans). Contemporaries accused Saint Basil, like other Cappadocians, of tritheism (Letter 189). Saint Basil reveals the doctrine that each of the Three Persons represents an absolute Unity, a whole in Itself, and therefore cannot be added to one sum with another, and that which unites Them into unity (θεότης) is identical in all. “Either silence is almost Ineffable,” writes Saint Basil, “or piously count the Holy. There is One God and Father, and One Only Begotten Son, and One Holy Spirit. We proclaim each of the Hypostases separately; but when it becomes necessary to count, then we will not allow ignorant calculation to lead us to the concept of polytheism. We do not count through addition, incrementing from one to many and saying: “One, two, three” or: “First, second, third.” I am God first, and I am unto this (Isa. 44:6). We have never heard of the second God even until now. In worshiping God from God, we confess the distinction of the Hypostases, and remain under unity of command, without dividing theology into fragmented multitudes, because in God the Father and in God the Only Begotten [Son] we contemplate one, as it were, image, imprinted in the immutability of the Divinity. For the Son is in the Father and the Father in the Son, because the Son is the same as the Father is, and the Father is the same as the Son, and in this they are one. Why, according to the distinctive property of the Persons, is one and one, and according to the community of nature, Both are one... But the Holy Spirit is also one, and He is proclaimed separately; through the one Son He is united with the one Father and with Himself completes the revered and blessed Trinity... As there is one Father and one Son, so there is one Holy Spirit... Thus the Hypostases are confessed, and the pious dogma of unity of command does not fall. Those who allow calculation, saying: first, second and third, introduce into Christian theology the polytheism of the Hellenic error (On the Holy Spirit, 18). The unity of the Divine is established primarily on the unity of the Divine Being in the Three Persons of the Holy Trinity. “Although two in number [Father and Son], they are inseparable by nature... One God, He is also the Father, one God and Son. And not two Gods, because the Son has identity with the Father. For I do not contemplate another Divinity in the Father, but another in the Son; not another nature is the Father’s, but another is the Son’s. Therefore, in order for you to understand the peculiarity of the Persons, consider the Father especially and the Son especially, but in order not to fall into polytheism, confess a single essence in both. So Sabellius will fall, and Anomeus will be crushed” (Conversation 24, Against the Sabellians). “Whatever you ever imagine about the being of the Father... imagine the same about the Son, and likewise the same about the Holy Spirit. The concept of the uncreated and incomprehensible is one and the same in the reasoning of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit... And as for infinity, incomprehensibility, uncreatedness, inextensibility by place and everything like this, then there is no difference in the Life-giving Nature, I mean the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, but some kind of continuous and indissoluble communion is seen in Them... It is impossible to mentally imagine any section or division, so that either the Son is imagined without the Father, or the Spirit is separated from the Son, but, on the contrary, we find between Them some kind of ineffable and inconceivable communication and division; neither the difference of hypostases dissolves the continuity of nature, nor the community of essence merges the distinctive features” (Letter 38). Saint Basil asks not to be surprised if he says that the One and the Same is both united and divided, and if he imagines mentally, as if in fortune-telling, some new and extraordinary both a united division and a divided unity. “You will accept my word,” he says, “as a likeness and shadow of the truth, and not as the actual truth itself. For it is impossible for what is represented in likenesses to be in every way similar to what it is taken to represent” (Letter 38). Another basis for affirming the unity of the Divine is the unity of command (μοναρχία) of the Father. Like Saint Athanasius, Saint Basil confesses that the Father is the Beginning and Cause of the Son and the Spirit, but the nature of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is one and the same and the Divinity is one. “The Father, having a perfect being and lacking in nothing, is the root and source of the Son and the Holy Spirit” (Conversation 24). Recognizing the unity of the Divine essence, Saint Basil definitely declares that he also accepts consubstantial (ὁμοούσιος), explaining that consubstantial means that in essence God is consubstantial with God in essence (Letter 8). From this, as a direct conclusion, it follows that the Son is the only begotten Son of God, the radiance of the Glory of the Father, His living Image (Conversations on the Sixth Day, 9), Consubstantial with the Father (Conversation 24), always Perfect, without teaching, the Wise, the Power of God (On the Holy Spirit, 8); He is before the ages, always is and never began to be (Against Eunomius II). The Son has glory in common with the Father (On the Holy Spirit, 8); everything that the Father has belongs to the Son (On the Holy Spirit, 14); He has perfect power, and His will is inseparable from the Father (On the Holy Spirit, 8), united and inseparable from it; Having no difference in essence with the Father, He has no difference in power. The Spirit is numbered in the blessed and Holy Trinity, participates in the Godhead (Against Eunomius III), is united with the Father and the Son in everything - in glory and eternity, in power and in the kingdom, in dominion and in the Godhead (Letter 105), in all things inseparable and inseparable from the Father (On the Holy Spirit, 14). The content of the concept of “consubstantial” (ὁμοούσιος), which Saint Basil connects with it in his works, indisputably shows that in relation to the doctrine of consubstantiality, he was a genuine Nicene, a continuator of the theology of Saint Athanasius. Whenever a saint speaks of the trinity of Persons, he warns against doubting the unity, and specifically the numerical unity, of the Divine Essence (Against Eunomius, II, On the Holy Spirit, 18. Discourse 24). Therefore, he wrote to Saint Epiphanius (May 12): “...to the Nicene Confession of Faith we cannot add anything, even the briefest, except glorification of the Holy Spirit, because our fathers mentioned this member of the faith briefly for the reason that the question did not yet arise about this” (Letter 258). Moreover, Saint Basil expresses the requirement that one must adhere not only to the sayings that were proposed by the fathers in Nicaea, but also to the meaning that, according to common understanding, is expressed by these sayings (Letter 125). The essence of the teaching of Basil the Great about the Holy Trinity is expressed in the following words of his in his letter to Saint Amphilochius: “...we confess in the Divinity one essence and do not define the concepts of being differently, but we confess the Hypostasis in particular, so that our thoughts about the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are unified and clear. For if we do not represent the distinctive characteristics of each Person, namely: Fatherland, Sonship and Shrine, and we confess God under the general concept of Being, then it is impossible for us to sensibly present the teachings of faith. Therefore, adding the distinctive to the general, one must confess faith like this: the Divinity is general, the Fatherland is special. Combining this, one must say: “I believe in God the Father.” And again we must act in a similar way when confessing the Son, combining the particular with the general, and saying: “I believe in God the Son.” And in the same way, about the Holy Spirit, combining the sentence according to the same pattern, it should be said: “I also believe in God the Holy Spirit,” so that unity in the confession of one Deity may be completely observed, and the distinctiveness of the Persons may be confessed by distinguishing the properties assigned to each Person” (Letter 236). This formulation of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity means that the essence of God and its distinctive properties belong equally to all Three Hypostases: Father, Son and Spirit - its manifestation in Persons, of which Each possesses the fullness of the absolute Essence and is in inseparable unity with It. The difference between the Hypostases lies in their internal relationship, since the Father is not born from anyone and does not come from anyone, the Son is born from the Father and the Spirit comes from the Father. As possessing all the fullness of the Divine essence and all its inherent properties, each Hypostasis is God, and since She possesses this essence not by herself taken separately, but in an inextricable connection and in an invariable relationship with the other Two Hypostases, then all Three Hypostases are One God. This precise definition of the relationship between the essence and the Hypostases in God is the important merit of St. Basil.