BASIL'S DOCTRINE OF TRADITION IN RELATION

TO THE HOLY SPIRIT

BY

R. P. C. HANSON

The following texts have been used in this essay:

ATHANASIUS De Synodis and Historia Arianorum, herausg. H. G. Opitz

Apologia contra Arianos, ed. W. Bright, Athanasius' Histori-
cal Writings (Oxford 1881)
Orations against the Arians, ed. W. Bright (Oxford 1884)
Epistles to Serapion, Migne, P.G. 26 (col. nos. in text), and
C. R. B. Shapland, The Letters of Athanasius concerning the
Holy Spirit (London 1951)
Festal Epistles, tr. from Syriac by H. G. Williams (Oxford
1854) (page nos. in text)
BASIL De Spiritu Sancto, ed. B. Pruche (Paris 1946), and Migne,
P.G. 32 (col. nos. in text)
Adversus Eunomium, Migne, P.G. 29 (col. nos. in text)
Letters, ed. Y. Courtonne (Paris 1957) and R. J. Deferrari,
for later letters (with col. nos. of text of Migne, P.G. 32)
De Fide, Migne, P.G. 31 (col. nos in text)
EUNOMIUs Liber Apologeticus, Migne, P.G. 30 [col. ref. in text]
GREGORYOF NAZIANZUS Five Theological Orations, ed. A. J. Mason
(Cambridge 1899)
The Christian writers of the fourth century all shared the tendency,
which had originated long before their day, of ascribing an apostolic
foundation to all contemporary doctrine and practice whose origins went
back beyond living memory. The Arians were no exceptions in this
particular. The Creed of the Dedication (341) begins with the words,
"We believe, following the evangelic and apostolic tradition..."-, Euno-
mius, who would have regarded the Dedication Creed as dangerously
modernist, described the colourless creed upon which, according to his
I Athanasius, De Synodis 23.2 1tl0''t'8ÚO?8V s6ayysXiKfiicai
åKOÂ.oú3roç 't'ij
napa86cyci.
Â.1Kij
242

own account, he had been brought up, as "the orthodox tradition which
has prevailed from the beginning from the Fathers"2 and he characterised
it as a xavmv and a yvmacov and appealed to the "Fathers' " teaching as
authority for his doctrine of God.3 When he places the Holy Spirit third
in rank and nature he claims to be following in all things "the teaching
of the saints",4 a phrase which Basil, no doubt correctly, takes to refer
to the doctrine of the Fathers. And Arius and his supporters claimed that
the statement of faith which they voluntarily submitted to Alexander of
Alexandria was "our creed which we have learnt from our ancestors and
from you, blessed Pope".5 5
Athanasius himself is a good example of the extent and the limits of
appeals to tradition made by writers before Basil. Athanasius appeals to
tradition in a number of forms at various points in his works. He can
appeal to the Kavcov or the -Kav,6vcg, meaning the traditional rules and
customs of the Church.6 He regards these rules as apostolic.' He has
the greatest respect for the doctrinal tradition which had formed in the
history of the Church before his day. Unless we are to prove bastards,
he says, we must approve of what the Fathers say: "we have the traditions
from them, and from them the teaching of orthodoxy."8
In this traditional teaching he emphatically includes the decisions of the
Council of Nicaea of 325. When the Arians attack this council, he says,
they are attacking their own fathers in the faith and disregarding tradi-
tion.9 He cites Christian baptism several times as authoritative traditional
practice from which doctrinal consequences can be drawn, though
practice based on the commandment of the Lord given in Scripture.lo
2 Eunomius, Apologeticus4 (480); Basil, AdversusEunomium1.4 (509) tTtV1CPUtOi)-
aav ävro3Evnupà tWVTtarepfovnapdSooiv.
3 Eunomius, Apol. 7(841); Basil, Adv. Eunom. 1.5(513).
4 Eunomius, Apol. 25(861); Basil, Adv. Eunom. 3.5(653).
5 De Synodis 16.2f¡ níO''ttçh ÉKIrPO76VCOV ijv xai li«6 crobJlEI..lU3i¡KaJlEV,
JluKåplE
But we must remind ourselves that the Arians were ready on occasion to
reverse this tendency. The "Dated Creed" of 359 described the action of the Fathers
at Nicaea as "rather stupid" (a??,ouaTEpov,De Synod. 8.6).
6 E.g. Apologiacontra Arianos 11,21,25, 29 (the last three quoting Julius of Rome),
69 (quoting Arsenius); in 29 the Eusebians are quoted as making the same appeal.
7 Ibid. 30 (KuvcbvånoO''toÀ1KÓÇ and napf60«iq 6no«roXiKfi) 34, 35 (these first
three quoting Julius); Hist. Arian. 14.1, 36.1, 74.5; Festal Epistles II (19-21).
8 De Syn. 47.4 Èç a6rl§v ExouevTd<;napa86ae).<;Kai nap' auTwvT?jv su6s?3eiaS
010UO'KuÀíuv; cf. 7.1, 43.2-3, 54.3; Epistle to Serapion 1.33 (605).
9 De Syn. 13.1-5, 14.1-3.
lo E.g. Orations against Arians II.4I ; Ep. to Serap. 1.28(593, 596), 3.6(633). Cf.
Eusebius Caesariensis, Adv. Marcellum I.1(PG 24, 728) ; he appears to have been the
first to use this argument.
 243

He insists that an understanding of the skopos, the general burden or

drift, of Scripture, as the Church understands it, is necessary for sound
belief.ll Orthodoxy is for him the message of the Bible interpreted in the
way in which the Church has always interpreted it. He says, for instance,
of the Melitians: "Their conduct is not orthodox, and they do not know
sound faith in Christ, nor generally what Christianity is, nor what sort of
Scriptures we Christians possess."12
But we must modify this account of Athanasius' respect for tradition
by two considerations. In the first place, in those uncritical times tradition
formed very quickly. The Council of Nicaea had taken place when
Athanasius was a young man, but not too young to be an archdeacon, and
he had attended it himself. But in a comparatively short time he was
referring to its decisions as part of the tradition of the Fathers. In one
instance, we can precisely calculate the length of time it had taken for
contemporary decision to become immemorial tradition - thirteen years!
In his Festal Letter for the year 338 Athanasius refers to "the custom
which obtains among you, which has been delivered to us by the Fathers".13
There can be no doubt that Athanasius is here alluding to the observance
instituted by the Council of Nicaea whereby each year the bishop of
Alexandria should announce in advance the date of Easter to all parts
of the Church.
In the second place, Athanasius unmistakably believed in the sufficiency
and primacy of Scripture for doctrinal purposes. Having spoken of "the
burden of Scripture and the characteristic idea of Christianity",14 he
continues, showing that he desires to prove tradition from Scripture:
"This characteristic idea came from the apostles through the Fathers; it
is our task now to search the Bible and to examine and judge when it is
speaking about the divinity of the Word, and when about his humanity."15
Elsewhere 16 he makes a strong plea that the traditional faith (rd TT)1tíO"'tf;t
Kapa6166y£va) associated with baptism must content itself with the words
11 E.g. Orat. against Arians III.28,29,58 ;Ep. to Serap. 2.7(620).
112Hist. Arian. 78.1 ouK 6n6 9EOas(3ou5 ciatv, ot)8Eytv6)oxoucrtv eif;
XPIGT6vuyaivouaav jdanv, ou8' Ti £«rw Xpi«uaw«p6q fi noiag EXOAFV
fipsiq oi Xpwvavoi ypacpas.
13 Festal Epistles X (66-67).
11 Ep. to Serap. 2.7(620) (yK0?6<; 8siaq ypaofiq and
xapaxifjp rot5 Xptcma-
vtagof5.
15 Ibid. 2.8(620) 6 ouv xapaKTT)po6roq T6)v6no«r6Xwv 8ia TeovTcargpcov-
8Ei 8t 2,otTc6v,
tvruyXdvovTaTT) 8oxt?a?gw Kai 8laxpivstv 7c6TE gtv nepi
8s6rqroq ro6 A6you noTE8t 7rF-piTmv6v8pwnivwvabtoo.
16 Ibid.4.5(644).
244

of Scripture and not curiously enquire why they are as they are. When
he recommends silence and belief rather than disbelief and enquiry in the
face of profound and difficult doctrines about God, he makes it clear that
the object of belief is the Scriptures.' The material which provides the
doctrine expressed as the skopos is the Scriptures.18 Let the Arians, he
says, invent another Word or another Christ rather than their own, "for
theirs is not in the Bible".19 To believe that the Word was made by him-
self "is in enmity to God and in opposition to the Scriptures which came
from him".2° Athanasius, then, has a profound, indeed an uncritical
respect for tradition. But he never regards it as a substitute for Scripture
in doctrinal matters. He certainly believes that Scripture must be inter-
preted by tradition, but he never imagines that in doctrinal matters it
must be supplemented by tradition.
In order to illustrate Basil's thought on the subject of tradition, we
shall consider the Adversus Eunomium, a work written about 364, and
then some passages in his letters which may be said roughly to span the
period of time between the Adversus Eunomium and the De Spiritu
Sancto, and then the De Spiritu Sancto itself. In his Adversus Eunomium,
Basil's attitude to tradition is very much like that of Athanasius. He
begins by saying that if everybody who was called Christian made no
attempt to deviate from the truth but was ready "to be content with the
tradition of the apostles and the simplicity of faith",21 then the treatise
need not have been written. He describes the course of Christian doctrine
up to his day as "the tradition which has been held fast during all the past
time by so many saints".22 He combines Scripture and tradition when he
asks rhetorically in what account was it ever known for anyone to claim
that we can know the ousia of the earth (far less of God): "What sort of
an account is this? Where can it be found in the Bible? By which of the
saints was it handed down?"23 And, like Athanasius, he betrays clearly
that he thinks that Scripture is doctrinally sufficient. He does not, for
instance, refuse the title agennetos to God, but describes it as "found

11 Ta YEypaJ.1J.1Éva Orat. against Arians IL36.

18 Orat. against Arians III.28,29.
19 ob yap yÉypama1 ibid. 111.64.
2o Kai Tatq nap' a6Io6 ypa(pa-tqàvav't1O?'tatibid. 111.65.
J.1áXE'tat
21 Tr) napaõõcrE1't&v 6no«I6kwv Kai rfl 6nk6IQu Tin nicrsws Adv. Eunom.
1.1(500).
22 IfiVtv 7r(ivrt napEÀ3óvn xp6VQ?fl6 Toaoviwv ayfmvxsxpaiulav flG p1i60ClV
ibid. 1.3(508).
23 ji0t({)-ro6T(p;§ fl06 ypGlpfigKE1J.1ÉVqJ; únó TivoS't&v dyi(ovnapaSo4gvTt;§
 245

nowhere in Scripture" (quoting Matt. 28 : 19).24 Later he declares that

there is no necessity to call the Son a gennema, as Scripture does not do
so. We should not give the Son names which may easily occur to us
simply because they are a literal development (EK Tfig rov §qy6Twv
we should confine ourselves to the names given in
Scriptures.25 Why do you not, he says to his opponent, "knowing how
great is the danger in subtracting anything from or adding anything to the
things handed down by the Spirit, abandon your ambition to produce
new doctrines of your own, and rest content with the things which have
already been declared by the saints?".26 It is interesting to note that in the
Homily De Fide, which is usually dated 374/5, Basil repeats these senti-
ments. He insists that it is clearly a sin of pride and arrogance ? 6ScTciv
w TCovyEypappEVCOV, lj È1tEtcráYEtvTl6v uf) Ysypauuevcov, and declares
that at Gal. 3:15 the apostle has forbidden us io 1tpocr?Eivat f¡
it Av calg ScoKv£6aTaig ?ypacpaiS.2' This doctrine of the sufficiency of
Scripture is not easy to reconcile with the words of the De Spiritu Sancto
which we shall be examining presently. Perhaps this is an argument for
placing the Homily De Fide at a rather earlier period than the De Spiritu
Sancto.28
Eunomius, in his rationalist Unitarian way, had been quite confident
about what the Spirit is. He described the Spirit as ipiiov... à1;troJlan Kai
TpiTov... Kai (puaei. His nature is accordingly different from
that of the Father and from that of the Son. He distinguishes between
T6 1tPOcrKUVOÚJlEVOV and ?V 1tpocrKuVEt"Cat(quoting John 4:24). He
thinks that John 14:16, 26 sufficiently assures us that the Spirit has his
own JK6aTaaig (which he does not seem to distinguish from ouaia). He
describes the Spirit as "third in nature and order, coming into existence

2 Ibid. 1.5(517). '

2 Ibid. 2.7(584-585).
26 sls6ia oaos ? iciv6uvog?cpE?,Elv flpOC8SiVGl ioi5 napa8p,6og9votgunto
I06 7cve?garog, pfi ?ap' £GVI06(PIa,OTI?.lE16?a1 icatvo-copsiv, rotq npOKa'tTlY-
yeÀJlÉvme;; napà trov 6yiwv t(pilaL)X6t?etv ibid. 2.8(585).
2' De Fide 1 (680).
28 But in one respect at least Basil has changed his mind since writing the Adversus
Eunomium, because in the De Fide, in a passage to which Dr. E. A.de Mendieta has
recently drawn attention, he distinguishes between non-Scriptural language which he
thinks it right to use in controversies and simpler language drawn from Scripture itself
(1(677)). See de Mendieta, The Unwritten and Secret Apostolic Traditions in the
TheologicalThoughtof St Basil of Caesarea (Scottish Journal of Theology Occasional
Papers, No. 13, Edinburgh 1965), pp. 19-20. This work will henceforward be referred
to as UAT.
246

by the command of the Father and the operation of the Son, honoured
in the third place as first and greater than all and sole creation (7tOÍlll.ta)
of this only-begotten Son described above (Toio6Tov), inferior indeed
(6KoX£iK6y£vov) in godhead and creative power but complete in
sanctifying and instructing power". It is absurd to regard the Spirit as
an ÈVÉpYElaof the Father and at the same time to put him in the category
of oùcrÍat. 29 Basil has little difficulty in exposing the weakness of
Eunomius' account of the Holy Spirit, but he does not find it easy to
match Eunomius' confidence in stating the nature of the Spirit. He
frankly declares that we do not know what exactly the Spirit is and we
must admit our ignorance. He is not agenneton (for Basil agrees with
Eunomius that there can be only one such). He is not a Son. But we can
be sure that he is beyond creatureliness, as the source, and not the
receiver, of holiness and instruction and revelation. Then he goes on to
describe, without defining, the Spirit.3° He ends his treatise a little later
by saying that it is the mark of an orthodox mind "to be careful to inter-
pret the silence of Scripture as acclaiming the Holy Spirit".31 These
passages leave the impression that Basil is troubled about the deficiency
of evidence in Scripture on the subject of the Spirit, even though Eunomius
had laid no great stress upon the necessity of confining the argument to
Scriptural evidence. Basil never uses the argument from extra-Scriptural
tradition in this work, and though he has two references to baptism32 he
does not develop them.
Basil's Letters enable us to obtain an ampler view of his attitude to
tradition. He shows, as we should expect, considerable respect for
established custom; he calls, for instance, the traditional rules about the
examination of candidates for holy orders "the canons of the Fathers".33
His three Canonical Letters34 provide many instances of his support for
already established custom. He has a firm respect for the tradition of
doctrine already established in the Church. The man who exalts the Holy
Spirit above the Father and the Son, he says, is "alien from sound faith
and does not preserve the manner of cult which he has received".35

29 Eunomius, Apol. 25(861).

Ibid. 3.6(668).
31 Ta å1tOO"tffi1t1l3tv'ta
tv raig 6,yiatq 'Ypa<paiçs6XaQsi«8ai È1tt<PllJ.tíÇEtV
to ayiw
nve6ga-Ttibid. 3.7(669).
a2 3.2(657)and 3.5(665).
gg 01 TOV1ta'ttpffivKGV6VSg Letters LIV.
34 Letters CLXXXVIII, CXCIX, and CCXVII.
35 Ibid. LII.4.
 247

Enumerating the woes of the Eastern church of his day, he writes, "the
decisions of the Fathers have been despised, the apostolic tradition has
been set at naught, the inventions of the modernists are controlling the
churches, they teach, in short, the devices of men and not the doctrine
of God". 36 Though he regarded dogma as only a necessity to be invoked
in order to settle disputes37 (just as Athanasius did), he unhesitatingly
included the doctrinal decisions of the Council of Nicaea among "the
traditions of the Fathers",3g the Nicene Creed is "what we have been
taught from the holy Fathers". 39
In fact Basil has a remarkably strong consciousness, evidenced in
several places in his letters, of the traditional nature of the Christian faith,
that he has been, as a Christian, entrusted with a divine deposit preserved
intact by those who went before him. "We have been taught in the
tradition of the faith", he says, "that there is only one Only-begotten 1140
and he uses the phrase "the traditional rule of orthodoxy".41 On two
occasions he recounts with pride the care shown by his mother and his
grandmother (and he seems particularly to emphasize the part played by
his grandmother) to bring him up in the orthodox faith.42 Consistent
with this is the argument which occurs again and again in his letters drawn
from Christian baptism. "May the good teaching of our Fathers who
assembled at Nicaea shine out again", he says, "so that the ascription of
glory (60§oXoyia) to the blessed Trinity may be completed in a manner
harmonious with the saving baptism."43 When he is giving a kind of rule
of faith to a group of deaconesses to whom he is writing, he ends it with
the clause "as also the tradition of saving baptism witnesses".44 His
argument, of course, is that we cannot be baptised into any name that is
less than the name of God, and that it is absurd to imagine that we are

36 Kœram:CPPÓVTl'tat id 'trov1ta'tÉprovSoyuaia, a?o6TOW xai1tapaÕÓ01>tç SÇOU9ÉVllV-

Tat, VECOTTPCOVåv9pro1trovScpEuP1ÍJlata iais ÈKKÀ.llaíatç SJl1tOÀ.ttEÚEtat,
isxvo?,oyoiSrn
ob 8soXoyo6m ibid. XC.2.
37 See ibid. CXXV.3, CXL.2.
38 Ibid. LII, 1 .
39 éi1tEP1tapà iwvayiwv 1tatÉprovsssisaypE9a ibid. CXL.2 (cf. XC.2, CXXV.1).
40 tva ydp povoysvfi tv napa66«si 1tía'tEroçôEôtôáYJlE3aibid. CXXV. 3.
41 't11?apa8o9EVTtxavovt 'tfíç EuoEpEta<; ibid. CCIV. 6.
42 Ibid. CCIV.6 and CCXXIII
(825). Dehnhard (Das Problem der Abhdngigkeitdes
Basilius von Plotin (Berlin 1964), pp. 20-21, 32-38) has shown that this doctrinal
tradition which was so strongly en trenched in Basil's family went back to the Symbolum
of Gregory Theodorus (later called Thaumaturgus).
43 Ibid. XCI.
44 Ibid. CV Kai h Tou ominptou pa1t'tÍaJla'toçnapd5oot<;uapiupsi.
248

baptised into the name of two divine beings and one creature, and that
therefore the Holy Spirit must enjoy divinity equally with the Father and
the Son. Many more examples of this argument might be given. 45
We find Basil in his letters, therefore, displaying a readiness to ap-
preciate the value of Christian tradition and to understand its possibilities
for arguing even theological points which we could hardly have expected
had we confined ourselves to the Adversus Eumonium. This observation
is significant when we turn to the De Spiritu Sancto.
The quite new step which Basil was to take in his greatest work, the
De Spiritu Sancto, is not evident at the beginning of the treatise. He is
anxious, in the course of his argument about the divinity of the Holy
Spirit, to establish as authoritative the doxological expression current in
his church, "Glory be to the Father along with the Son with the Holy
Spirit" -r0 7ta-rpi JlEtà TO(5vlo6 a6v Trp Kvc6yaTi TO ayiw) as
opposed to the expression "through" the Son (8td). His opponents quote
church custom in support of their formula, but Basil is convinced that his
form is the more ancient and ranks as "the tradition of the Fathers". 46
But he hastily adds, "but this is not sufficient for us, that it is the tradition
of the Fathers; they too followed the intention of Scripture," and proceeds
to quote appropriate texts. Later, however, he reveals that the sources
of his doctrine about the Spirit are general ideas (Kowai Evvotat) derived
both from the Scriptures and from the "extra-Scriptural tradition of the
Fathers".4a
The "general ideas" he expounds in a noble passage which Dehnhard
has shown to owe much to the earlier document which also came from his
pen, the De Spiritu. This document was greatly influenced by Gregory
Theodorus' Symbolum, by Origen, and by Eusebius of Caesarea, and only
to a relatively small extent by the work of Plotinus.49 It is impossible to
exclude from these "general ideas" a contribution from Greek philoso-
phy.5° That by the phrase d.ypacpou Kapa66a£wg Basil meant in this work
4s E.g. ibid. CXXV.3; CLIX.2; CLXXXVIII.1; CCXXVI(849). The fact that
Letters CLXXXIX.3 contains a passage decrying custom in contrast to Scripture adds
to the suspicion that this letter is from the hand of Gregory of Nyssa and not of Basil.
46 De Spiritu Sancto VII. 16(93-96).
" Ibid.
(Evvotat) IE r?v ypa(pwv1tEpict6roL)cruvax3ëícraç1ÍJ..liv, Kai aS EK
6ypfoov napa66«swq rwv 1ta'ttprov8vs8g?aus9a ibid. IX.22(108).
4s De Spiritu Sancto IX.22(108-109). Dehnhard, op. cit., passim. See also de
Mendieta, UAT, pp. 25-26. For an interesting and typical use of K01vai Ëvv01alsee
Letters CCXXXVI, 1 (877).
50 See Dehnhard, op. cit., pp. 85-86.
 249

"extra-Scriptural" and not "unwritten" tradition has been amply

demonstrated by de Mendieta.51 It is, of course, perfectly possible for
Basil elsewhere to use the word 6-lpa(pog and its cognates in a different
sense, meaning "oral" as opposed to "written". He can, for instance,
contrast his writings with what he has spoken aypacpw5 in church.52
Shortly after expounding these "general ideas" Basil emphasises strongly
the necessity of preserving the baptismal formula intact during the whole
of the Christian's life and even says that the loss entailed in receiving
something from tradition in a deficient state is as great as that entailed
in dying without baptism.53 He deals with the Scriptural evidence
briefly, without much success or conviction, and then comes to the subject
of extra-Scriptural tradition.
In the twenty-seventh chapter therefore he boldly defends his own
formula of doxology by claiming that tradition independent of the Bible
is important, indeed essential, in doctrinal matters as well as merely
practical. "Secret doctrines (6oyy6Twv) and public teachings (Kqpvy-
paiwv) have been preserved in the Church, and some of them we have
from Scriptural teaching (ty-lp6(pou 6i6aaKaXiag), and others we have
handed down in a mystery from the tradition of the apostles (Ex T6)v
6KoaT6Xwv napaõó0"8roç). Both sets have the same value for piety ... if
we were to try to disregard the extra-Scriptural ordinances of custom
(rd dypaga TCov on the ground that they had no great force, we
would be unawares damaging the Gospel in the most important points
themselves (si5 auia id Kaipta), or rather, reducing the public teaching
to a mere name."54 Instances of this extra-Scriptural tradition are the
custom of Christians crossing themselves, turning to the east for prayer,
the words of the consecration-prayer at the eucharist, the
formula for blessing the water for baptism and the oil of anointing, and
indeed the anointing with oil itself and the triple immersion in baptism.55
Later he adds to this list the custom of praying in a standing posture on
Sundays, the observance of Pentecost, the confession of faith (6yoXoyiai
níO"'t8roç) at baptism and (as climax) the doxology.56 He insists that
this extra-Scriptural tradition is secret, using such phrases as "the esoteric

si UAT, pp. 23-29.

s2 Letters CCXXIII.4(828).
53 De Spiritu Sancto X.26(113).
54 Ibid. XXVII.66(188).
55 Ibid. 66(188-189). ,
ss Ibid. 66(192); 67(193).
 250

and mystical tradition" Kai yvaTiKfig napa86ae(0(;)

CHC01tCO¡.tÉVllÇ
"unpublicised (a8rlpoaiEUiov) and secret teaching", and "the teaching of
that which it is not permitted to the uninitiated to gaze upon" (£KOKT£6£w
Toig all phrases reminiscent of the mystery-religions. 57 A
little later he makes it quite clear that he regards these traditions as
deriving independently of the Bible from the apostles.58
In two recent works de Mendieta has thrown much light on what Basil
means by this extra-Scriptural apostolic tradition.59 The contents of this
secret tradition can be divided into three categories:
I Extra-Scriptural traditions in .
(i) sacramental rites and prayers, and .
(ii) ecclesiastical customs and practices.
II Extra-Scriptural traditions of doctrines implied in these rites and
prayers.
III Extra-Scriptural traditions of the Fathers about some theological
dogmata of an advanced sort, and especially about the Holy Spirit.
Under I, (ii) come Trinitarian doxologies, of which Basil, though greatly
attached to his favourite formula auv ro nvF,6gart, is ready to accept all
current ones. Under II Basil includes the equality of the Father, the Son
and the Holy Spirit in honour and dignity and godhead, a doctrine
derived from the use of the Trinitarian doxology. Under III Basil
includes extra-Scriptural doctrine about the dignity and operations of the
Holy Spirit derived largely from Kotvai EVVOat.60 Basil probably meant
the more advanced of the secret doctrines to be reserved for specially
pious and meditative souls, for the most part monks. The other doctrines
were confined to "the initiated", i.e. all baptised and communicating
Christians. 61 What in fact Basil was describing in these terms was a union
(but not necessarily a confusion) of two things:
(i) The disciplina arcani, which had been imposed by the Church of the
'
fourth century as a necessity forced upon it by the increased interest taken
by pagans in the doctrines and rites of the Church.
(ii) The practice of reserve in communicating advanced or difficult

5' Ibid. 66(189).

58 Ibid.,
XXIX.7 1 (200).
59 UAT(referred to already) and "The Pair K1ÍPUYJ,tU and S6yp,ain the Theological
Thought of St. Basil of Caesarea", Journal of TheologicalStudies, Vol. xvi(NS)I(1965),
'
pp. 129-145), henceforward referred to as PKD.
60 UAT, pp. 60-70; PKD, pp. 135-138.
61 UAT, pp. 41-42; PKD, p. 136.
 251

doctrine, so that weak or badly educated Christians should not be shocked

or upset by what was only fit for mature and educated and intellectual
people. This reserve had been taught and practised by Clement of
Alexandria and Origen, and was associated with the disciplina arcani by
Basil in his day. Basil applied this reserve more specifically than had
Origen to the interpretation of rites and customs.62 De Mendieta admits
that Basil did think that these traditions had been transmitted secretly
(and that this is the meaning of ?u6i?jpva in De Spiritu Sancto XXVII.67
(193)),63 and that Basil did use concerning them the language of the
mystery-religions .64 He allows that Basil did think that the secret
tradition of which he spoke had come down originally from the apostles
and that the situation was in his day much as it had been in theirs, that he
did not clearly distinguish between what the apostles established and what
the Fathers established, and in particular that he nourished the illusion
that his own cherished Trinitarian formula To naipi uerd iou uiou
auv Tq) Kv£6yaTi rCp ayiw) had been instituted by the apostles and that
by this institution they had intended to transmit the doctrine of the
perfect equality of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And de Mendieta
concedes that these convictions on Basil's part cannot bear historical
investigation.65
Even reduced to the moderate and precisely-defined terms in which the
careful scholarship of de Mendieta has presented it, Basil's doctrine of
secret tradition is a startling innovation. He is not content to say that the
Scriptures must be interpreted by the mind of the Church and in ac-
cordance with the Church's traditional way of interpreting them, as all
Christian writers had claimed since Irenaeus. He is not content to say
that customs and rites which had been established beyond living memory
must be regarded as deriving from the apostles, as had been unreflectingly
but harmlessly assumed everywhere long before his day. He claims that
the extra-Scriptural traditions which he is concerned to defend not only
had been handed down by the apostles and preserved intact from their
time, but that this had been done secretly and that to reject them would
be to damage the gospel in the most important points and to reduce the
public teaching to a mere name. Had Irenaeus or Tertullian encountered

sz UAT, pp. 39-50.

s3 UAT, pp. 30-31.
UAT, p. 43, especially n. 3. Cf. De Spiritu Sancto XXVII.66(189) a yap 065t
£nonrs6sw 94CUTtV TOLC,d?UT)TOK;.
sb UAT, pp. 43, 52, 55, 57, 58.
 252

this doctrine, they would have branded it as typical of the Gnostics.

Whether he is aware of the fact or not, Basil is introducing a new doctrine.
In spite of de Mendieta's deprecatory words,66 it is idle to deny this fact.
Why did Basil produce this new doctrine, so little consistent with the
words of his Homily De Fide which he had apparently written not long
before? The answer to this lies in the subject of the work in which he had
propounded this new doctrine, his greatest, the De Spiritu Sancto. It is
significant that it was not in connection with a defence of the position of
the Son in the Trinity, but of the Spirit, that Basil felt the need of having
recourse to a theory of secret tradition. We have seen that Basil, in
writing against Eunomius, gave signs of uneasiness at the scarcity of
Scriptural evidence to support a doctrine of the Spirit as a fully divine
independent hypostasis within the Trinity. But Eunomius, at least in his
Apologeticus, had not laid much emphasis upon the necessity of pro-
ducing Scriptural evidence for doctrine about the Spirit. His main
arguments were in fact philosophical, and he could well have described
them as Kowai Evvotat. The case was different with the opponents
against whom Basil was defending his doctrine of the Spirit in the De
Spiritu Sancto. These were Eustathius, bishop of Sebaste, and his
followers. Indeed, if we accept the thesis of H. D6rries in his book on
the De Spiritu Sancto, we may conclude that behind chapter X-XV,
XX-XXI, XXIV-XXV, and the beginning of chapter XXVII of this work
lies the "protocol", the proceedings of the conference held between Basil
and Eustathius in Sebaste in Armenia Prima in June 372. We must not
unreflectingly identify Eustathius' position with that of Eunomius.
According to Basil, Eustathius had taken a variety of viewpoints towards
. the great subject of controversy during his career, among them one very
like that of Nicene orthodoxy and, at another time, a semi-Arian position.
But it is clear that Eustathius and his followers distinguished themselves
by insisting upon proofs from Scripture for Basil's (or anybody else's)
doctrine of the Spirit. Eustathius would not go further than the letter
of the New Testament, and the appeal to 't1)v 6ypagov 1ta'tÉprov {mprupiav
made no impression on him
Basil could not meet Eustathius' demand for a full documentation
from Scripture of his doctrine of the Holy Spirit. The methods of inter-
preting the Bible which were accepted and conventional in the fourth-

se UAT, pp. 58-59.

e' De Spiritu Sancto X.25(112). De Mendieta, UAT, pp. 23-24.
 253

century Church simply did not admit of such a possibility. Basil was
quite perspicacious enough to realize this. So he took the alternative
course of developing to an extent not previously achieved the support
which extra-Scriptural tradition could give to the Church's doctrine. The
Church's practice and the Church's experience could combine with the
ideas of Scripture to produce xowai Evvotat, general ideas about the Holy
Spirit clothed in philosophical language and articulated by the aid of
recent philosophy. Stated like this, Basil's strategy devised to circumvent
the Eustathians sounds innocent and justifiable. But in the form in which
Basil presented it, that of secret extra-Scriptural tradition deriving from
the apostles, it was a doctrine which was destined to cause a great deal
of confusion and mischief in later ages.
It is instructive to compare the manner in which Basil's great friend and
fellow defender of Nicene orthodoxy, Gregory of Nazianzus, deals in one
of his works with exactly the same problem. Towards the end of the fifth
of his Theological Orations, delivered in Constantinople not long after
Basil's death and within perhaps five years of the writing of Basil's De
Spiritu Sancto, Gregory comes to deal with the Holy Spirit. He is just
as aware of the difficulty of the problem of finding Scriptural evidence to
support the doctrine of the homoousia of the Spirit as an hypostasis
within the Trinity as was Basil, but he solves it in quite a different way.
He argues first that we are bound by the logical consequences of Scripture,
even though they are not stated in Scripture. If his opponents said
"twice five" or "twice seven", he would be justified in concluding that
they meant "ten" or "fourteen", and these would be virtually his op-
ponents' words even though they had not stated them: 65cynF-po6v
Èv'taùaa OJK dv T6 X£y6y£va ÈcrK01tOÙV f¡ TG VooÚ?Eva. 68 Then he
launches into a fine exposition of the gradualness of God's revelation,
very largely borrowed from Origen, but put to good use here in explaining
our gradual understanding of the significance of the Holy Spirit. He
insists that the reason for this gradualness was that God would coerce
nobody. Gregory divides history into two great epochs, each introduced
by a aswpoS but so gradual an earthquake that it was not immediate-
ly noticed - the giving of the Law and the coming of the gospel. There is
to be a third earthquake - Tfiv 8VTsu9ev È1ti rid §K£ia£ psia6iawv, 'tà
yqK§Ti xwoup8va yq6£ aaXcv6y£va (Heb. 12: 28). What is voluntarily
accepted lasts, that which is imposed by coercion does not do so. First,

68 Gregory of Nazianzus, Five TheologicalOrations, V.24.

254

in order to abolish idolatry, God instituted sacrifices but allowed circum-

cision to be retained voluntarily until it was gradually abolished. 69
Similarly, Gregory continues, in teaching doctrine God acted gradually,
but in an opposite direction, by adding new revelations of himself, not by
subtracting (as in the case of sacrifices and circumcision). The Old
Testament could suffice to reveal fully only the Father, the New to reveal
fully the Son, but even the New could only suffice to give a faint impres-
sion of the Spirit: ÈK1Í PUO"O"EqmvEproç 1Í KaXaiJ iov ?ai?pa, iov uiov

87rupopTi?8o9ai.? "You perceive", he goes on, "stages of illumination

gradually shining on us and neither indiscriminately revealing nor entirely
obscuring the order of the knowledge of God which it is better for us to
preserve." Perhaps the divinity of the Spirit was one of those things
which the disciples could not bear "now" (John 16: 12), but which were
to be disclosed later.71
Gregory does later very briefly mention the argument from baptism;
his words do not go beyond what Athanasius had suggested and betray
no influence from Basil.'2 All these arguments drawn from the gradual-
ness of revelation and from baptism he describes as 'to aypacpov, in other
words, arguments not directly drawn from Scripture. He then expounds
the testimonies from Scripture in a densely packed and beautifully
expressed cento of biblical allusions, none of which, of course, directly
involves the divinity of the Holy Spirit as a separate hypostasis, a doctrine
for which in fact Gregory does not attempt to produce Scriptural
evidence.'3 It is difficult to imagine that Gregory had not read Basil's
work De Spiritu Sancto when he composed this Oration. But he deliber-

69 Op. cit., V.25.

70 Op. cit., V.26.
71 Op. cit. V.27. The words which have been here translated from the Greek are
6p4q (ptonauouf;Ka'rà PtPOg fipiv ÈÀÀá/J1tovtaçKai iayv 9so7?oyias ljv Kai
TT)pElV dpetvov, tiT)TEa9pow5 tic(paivovtag phrc dç TE7?oS K'p()7TTOVTa<;.
72 Op. cit., V.28 Ei ydp 066£1tPOcrKUVTJtÓV, gpt 9soi 8id Io6 (3a?TiapaTOs,
7tCog
El 8E 1tpOCíKUVTJtÓV,ou crETtTov; gi 8E CíE1ttÓV, ob 3wç;§
'3 The nearest he comes to dealing with this point is to say, elliptically (op. cit., V.
30) iaov yap Eig ?.aE?3svav,Kai Ea(3s?,?,iwsauvayrav Kai 'Apetav6q 8vaairjaav, r6
uEVtop r6 8E iai5 cpuasatv. The allusion to To 67PU(POv occurs at V.29.
 255

ately chose quite a different way of defending the same doctrine which
Basil had formulated. The twentieth-century reader is likely to conclude
that Gregory's method was a much preferable one to Basil's.
Basil and Gregory were facing a problem which faces us today. It is
not simply the distinction between "what is the nucleus or core of
Christian knowledge and truth, the accepted faith, and what is its full
theological development".'4 It involves the delicate and complex task of
articulating a doctrine of the place of the Holy Spirit within the Trinity.
This subject is rendered all the more difficult because it involves the
intimate and subjective field of the individual's and the Church's ex-
perience, and it is one for which the Bible supplies the essential materials
for the doctrine but gives very little help towards formulating it. We may
well sympathize with the demand of the Eustathians for a doctrine which
should be Scriptural, as we sympathize with Basil's predicament in face
of this demand. We can understand his good intentions in meeting the
predicament by the argument for secret, extra-Scriptural apostolic
tradition, set forth in the De Spiritu Sancto, and we may think that what
he was trying to express corresponds in some sense to something which
we can recognize as true and necessary. But that the expression of this
necessary truth should have taken the form of a claim for secret, extra-
Scriptural, apostolic tradition we must regard as unfortunate and un-
necessary.

Nottingham University

74 De Mendieta, PKD, p. 140.