Letter CCCXXVIII. To Hyperectius. [On Basil's health.] · Letter CCCXXIX. To Phalirius. With Thanks for a Present of Fish.]
Letter CCCLX
Page 393 of 394
Of the Holy Trinity, the Incarnation, the invocation of Saints, and their Images.
According to the blameless faith of the Christians which we have obtained from God, I confess and agree that I believe in one God the Father Almighty; God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost; I adore and worship one God, the Three.3290 I confess to the oeconomy of the Son in the flesh,3291 and that the holy Mary, who gave birth to Him according to the flesh, was Mother of God.3292 I acknowledge also the holy apostles, prophets, and martyrs; and I invoke them to supplication to God, that through them, that is, through their mediation, the merciful God may be propitious to me, and that a ransom may be made and given me for my sins. Wherefore also I honour and kiss the features of their images, inasmuch as they have been handed down from the holy apostles, and are not forbidden, but are in all our churches.
Letters CCCLXI. and CCCLXIII., to Apollinarius, and Letters CCCLXII. and CCCLXIV., from Apollinarius to Basil, are condemned as indubitably spurious, not only on internal evidence, but also on the ground of Basil's asseveration that he had never written but once to Apollinarius, and that "as layman to layman."3293 Letter CCCLXV., "to the great emperor Theodosius," on an inundation in Cappadocia, is also condemned by the Ben. Ed. as spurious, and contains nothing of ecclesiastical or theological interest. Tillemont however (vol. v., p. 739) thought its style not unworthy of a young man and a rhetorician, and conjectures the Theodosius to whom it is addressed to be not the great emperor, but some magistrate of Cappadocia.
Notes
- 3289
This letter is almost undoubtedly spurious, but it has a certain interest, from the fact of its having been quoted at the so-called 7th Council (2d of Nicæa) in 787. Maran (Vit. Bas. xxxix.) is of opinion that it is proved by internal evidence to be the work of some Greek writer at the time of the Iconoclastic controversy. The vocabulary and style are unlike that of Basil.
- 3290
Neuter sc. prosopa, not hupostaseis, as we should expect in Basil.
- 3291
ensarkon oikonomian, an expression I do not recall in Basil's genuine writings.
- 3292
Theotokon, the watchword of the Nestorian controversy, which was after Basil's time.
- 3293
Ep. ccxxiv. § 2.
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series II, Volume 8, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (1890–1900). Public domain. Text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library.