Michael Gibson

Princeton Theological Seminary

Doctrine of God
Dr. Daniel Migliore
Fall 2004

The God Who Has Citizenship Among Us1: Toward a Retrieval

of the Christology of Saint Basil of Casaerea

Basil of Casaerea, along with his fellow Cappadocians, was one of the most

important and influential theologians of the post-Nicene fourth century. Though most

known for his defense of the Holy Spirit, in his treatise De Spiritu Sancto, when ‘the

world awoke to find itself Arian,’2 Basil had a significant role in the defense and

solidification of Nicene Christology. Basil, though less assertive than his counterpart

Gregory Nazianzen, was intimately involved in the defense of the identity of Christ as

homoousion with God the Father, and his consubstantiality of man, within the paradigm

of constructing a doctrine of the Trinity.3 As the political and ecclesial tumult of the

post-Nicene era unfolded, Basil’s contribution in the disputes with Arianism (particularly

Valens and his party), Sabellianism, and Apollinarianism,4 lead to the creation of an

identifiable Orthodox theology of the Trinity, Christ, the Spirit, and the Church.5 Within
1
This title is taken from a phrase found in the anaphora prayer in Basil’s Divine Liturgy, which
reads, e>mpoliteusa>menov to> kosmw tou~to [‘having taken citizenship in this world’]; see, The Divine
Liturgy of Our Father Basil the Great, ed. and trans. Fr. Nomikos M. Vaporis, (Brookline: Holy Cross
Orthodox Press, 2000), 12.
2
Jerome, Dialogus adversus Luciferianos, 19, in Patraologia Latina [PL], ed. J. P. Migne, (Paris,
1850), 23:172C.
3
Alois Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition, vol. 1: From the Apostolic Age to the Council of
Chalcedon, trans. J. S. Bowden, (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1965), 278-279. For the criticisms of
Gregory Naziazen over Basil’s ‘restraint,’ which pertained to the identification of the Spirit as homoousion,
see Nazianzen, Epistles 50, 58, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers [NPNF], 2nd Series, vol. 7, eds. Philip
Schaff and Henry Wace, trans. G. C. Browne, (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1997), 454-455.
4
Basil was a close associate of Apollinarius in the defense of the homoousios clause, along with
Athanasius, but the friendship ruptured toward the end of the careers of both Basil and Apollinarius,
leading to the condemnation of Apollinarius at the Council of Constantinople in 381. Though Basil had
died shortly before the Council, he contributed to the construction of the articles of condemnation.
5
Alexander Schmemann, The Historical Road of Eastern Orthodoxy, (Crestwood: St Vladimir’s
Orthodox Press, 1997); Sergei Bulgakov, The Orthodox Church, trans. Fr. Thomas Hopko, (Crestwood: St
Vladimir’s Orthodox Press, 1996); Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Church, (London: Penguin, 1993), 11-42.
 2

Basil’s theological vision, these coalesce into an organic way of life that is founded upon

the emergence of God into the world to save humankind, a movement of God into the

flesh for the life of the world.6 In this, the church constitutes the living body of Christ,

who lives in the Spirit.

This paper will attempt to make a retrieval of the major contours of the

Christology of Basil, as there exists virtually no secondary literature on the Christology

of Basil, as most scholarly examination of the theology of Basil focuses upon his work on

the Spirit or ascetics. Basil’s one concentrated work on Christology, Adversus Eunomius,

a treatise on the Trinity which takes up an extensive Christological argument, is

untranslated, and is considered spurious.7 Therefore, I will attempt to reconstruct Basil’s

Christology from a close reading of the following texts: De Spiritu Sancto, the Epistles,

his prayers and collects, and The Divine Liturgy. I will analyze the arguments of the texts

in order to discern the Christological content and implications; from this, I hope to show

Basil’s concern for the relationality of the doctrine of Christ with the soteriological and

the ecclesial. Basil’s Christological construction is grounded upon the perception of the

significance of the identity of Christ for us, and is represented in the divine mysteries of

the sacraments and the enactment of Church’s liturgy.

I. The Nicene Dimension of Basil’s Christology

The conflict over the identity of Jesus Christ as ‘consubstantial’ in his divine

nature after the Nicene council in 325 was prolonged through the continuous influx of

6
Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, (Crestwood: St Vladimir’s
Orthodox Press, 1976), 33.
7
Many scholars consider this treatise, either in whole or in part, to be the product of the pen of
Didymus the Blind, a contemporary Alexandrian theologian.
 3

Arian Germanic ‘invaders,’ and the political instability of the Western Empire.8 Basil

enjoined the defense of the Nicene construction of the full identity of Christ, as ‘truly

God’ and ‘truly man,’ forming “a Neo-Nicene party,”9 with the two Cappadocians,

Gregory Nazianzen and Gregory of Nyssa, and the two Alexandrian theologians,

Athanasius and Didymus the Blind. The overall concern of the party was to protect the

Orthodox doctrine of the Trinity, which they felt was imperiled by the Arian construction

of subordinationism and a ‘creaturely’ view of the Son. Basil, in response, fully

defended the aphorisms of the Nicene platform of the ‘homoousion’ of the Son, and

developed a Trinitarian formula of God in ‘three hypostases’ and ‘one in ousia.’10 The

Trinitarian debates, and the language and terminology that developed, were centrifiugal

to the construction of a doctrine of Christ.

Basil develops a social doctrine of the Trinity within the concept of the three

hypostases of the Godhead, in which, God is conceived of, by Basil, to exist in three

particular ‘personhoods’ that share the same essence (homoousion). Basil states, in his

treatise De Spiritu Sancto, that “we worship God from God, confessing the uniqueness of

the persons (hypostases), while maintaining the unity of the monarchy…. we behold one

Form united by the invariableness of the Godhead, present in God the Father and God the

only-Begotten…. What the Father is, the Son is likewise and vise versa. As unique

Persons, they are one and one; as sharing a common nature, both are one.”11 As a direct
8
Cyril Karam, OSB, “Saint Basil in the Holy Spirit: Some Aspects of His Theology,” Word and
Spirit 1 (1979): 137. See also Henry Chadwick, The Early Church, in Penguin History of the Church,
vol.1, (London: Penguin, 1993), 133-152; and, Richard Cross, “On Generic and Derivation Views of God’s
Trinitarian Substance,” Scottish Journal of Theology 56 (2003): 464-480.
9
Edward R. Hardy, ed., Christology of the Later Fathers, in The Library of Christian Classics,
(Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1954), 23-24.
10
Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition, vol. 2.2: The Church in Constantinople to the 6th
Century, trans. John Cawte and Pauline Allen, (Oxford: Mowbray Press, 1995), 54. Cf. John Meyendorff,
Christ in Eastern Christian Thought, (New York: Fordham University Press, 1975), 30.
11
Basil, On the Holy Spirit, trans. David Anderson, (Crestwood: St Vladimir’s Orthodox Press,
1990), 72. Italics mine.
 4

attack against the Sabellian doctrine of the Godhead, Basil, here, maintains the distinct

identity of each person in the Godhead, while, concomitantly, articulating a view of the

consubstantiality of the Son with the Father, asserting that the Father and Son are

identical in nature and rank. The unity of God consists in the likeness of their substance,

and the koinonia of their natures. Basil upholds the Nicene doctrine of the full deity of

Christ in his sharing of substance and nature with the Father, and in the identification of

the persons with the likeness in nature. Basil is careful, in this, to occlude any confusion

within the Godhead, particularly through the subordination of persons or the assertion of

modality. The Son, in this paradigm, is a unique person, and who exists alongside the

Father, sharing the same essence, of the same nature.

Basil furthers this understanding of the Son, as consubstantial with the Father, and

existing in his own unique personhood, when he counters the supposed formula of Arius

that ‘there was when the Son was not;’ Basil directly confronts this view, contending “is

it not the height of follow to measure the life of Him who transcends all times and ages,

whose existence is incalculably remote from the present?... ‘In the beginning was the

Word.’ Thought cannot reach beyond was, or the imagination beginning. No matter how

far your thoughts travel backward, you cannot get beyond the was.”12 The divine

substance of Christ is fully construed by Basil to mean that there was not a beginning or

ontological point of ‘coming into being’ of the Son, but, contrariwise, the Son is eternally

co-existent with the Father. As above, what the Father is the Son is, and as the Father is

eternally existent, so the Son is eternally existent, and shares in the same essential

substantial being. The Son, according to Basil, “is not different in essence, nor is he

12
Ibid, 30.
 5

different in power from His Father;”13 yet, the Son is not identical with Father or

subordinate to the Father, in that, there is “a fraternal relation which unites [them],”14

protecting the distinction of the persons of the Father and Son.

The sociality of the Trinity, who “have to one another the relation of brothers,”15

circumvents the doctrinal errors of the Arian construction, in that, the koinonia of the

persons presupposes equality in rank and nature. The Arian Christ, in Basil’s view, must

necessarily be subordinate to the Father, and, in consequence, cannot share in the work or

glory with the Father in the same manner.16 Basil counters this construction through an

extended defense of the co-equality of Christ with the Father, in rank and in work,

whereby, Christ’s exalted position to ‘the right hand of the Father’ is indicative of “a

relationship of coequality. It cannot be understood as the physical right hand, but rather

the Scripture emphasizes the magnificence of the Son’s great dignity… Christ is the

power of God and the wisdom of God, and the image of the invisible God, and the

brightness of his glory.”17 As Christ is consubstantial with the Father, he is equal in

status and dignity with the Father, and shares in the work and glory with the Father.

There is, thus, a unity in essence and action, will and rank. The koinonia of the Trinity is

fully realized in the economy of salvation, wherein, the work of Christ is not

differentiated or dichotomized from the Father; rather, it is a concert of will and action by

the Father through the Son in the Spirit.18 Basil can say, then, that “the Son’s power [is]

13
Ibid, 39
14
Basil, Epistle 52.1, in The Later Christian Fathers, ed. Henry Bettenson, (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1970), 63.
15
Basil, Epistle 52, in NPNF 8:155.
16
For a constructive revision of the theological interpretation of Arius, see Rowan Williams, Arius:
Heresy and Tradition, (London: Dartman, Longman, and Todd, 1987).
17
Basil, On the Holy Spirit, 30.
18
See M. R. Barnes, “The Visible Christ and the Invisible Trinity,” Modern Theology 19/3 (2003):
329-355.
 6

made manifest in everything that he has accomplished, never separating His work from

the Father’s will,” and that, concomitantly, “the work of the Father is not separate or

distinct from the work of the Son.”19

The divinity of the Son, for Basil, is the fulcrum upon which human salvation

depends, and is the key to the divine-human relationship. At the center of Basil’s vision

of redemption is the concept of theosis, or deification, whereby, the economy of salvation

is defined by the axiom of ‘God has become human in order that humankind should

become gods.’ The deification of humankind, which is “the goal of our calling [to]

realize that we are to become like God,”20 is dependent upon the deity of Christ; the

balance of the equation in human redemption can only be adduced through the

recapitulation of humankind in God through God.21 For Basil, deity is passed onto

humanity through Jesus Christ, so that, humankind becomes consubstantial with the

Father through the divine nature of the Son. Basil’s contention with Arianism is rooted

within the salvific conception of deification, as, in Basil’s mind, a subordinate or

‘generated’ Christ occludes the possibility of the teleological goal of human salvation.

The divinization of humankind can only be achieved in and through one who is ‘truly

God.’

Likewise, the other side of the equation, that God became human, is wholly

important to Basil, and a central axiom of Basil’s Christology. As Grillmeier notes,

Basil’s Christology is centrally focused upon “the divine and human characteristics in

Christ,”22 with a keen eye upon the redemption of humankind. The deity of Christ and

19
Basil, On the Holy Spirit, 37, 39.
20
Ibid, 16.
21
Maximos Aghiorgoussis, “Application of the Theme ‘Eikon Theou’ According to St Basil the
Great,” Greek Orthodox Theological Review 21 (1976): 268-271.
22
Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition, 1:278.
 7

the assumption of human nature are the key to the soteriological depth of Christology,

which leads Basil to uphold the Nicene construction. Within Basil’s vision, the Son, who

is equal in rank and nature with the Father, descends into human flesh, in order to lift up

humankind to become divine. Basil argues that “the infinite God, remaining changeless,

assumed flesh and fought with death, freeing us from suffering by his own suffering….

Thus through Him we have our approach to the Father, who has transferred us from the

dominion of darkness to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.”23 In this atomistic

statement, Basil shows that Christ, as sharer in the essence of God, entered human

existence without diminution of divinity in order to rescue fallen humanity through his

own suffering in human flesh. The ‘happy exchange,’ for Basil, occurs in the divine

movement toward humankind through God becoming truly incarnate, and taking on the

condition of humankind, wherein, “he enlightens those who are confined in the darkness

of ignorance… he raises up from the depths of sin those who have fallen… he heals and

raises up…. Thus God’s blessings reach us through the Son, who guides us to the

knowledge of the Father.”24 In Christ, humanity and divinity meet, and through the union

of the natures, through and what Christ accomplishes as ‘fully God’ and ‘fully human,’

fallen human nature is healed.25 In the second antiphonal recitation in the Divine Liturgy,

Basil recounts the redemptive economy in that “the Only-begotten Son and Word of God,

although immortal, You humbled Yourself for our salvation, talking flesh from the Holy

Theotokos and ever-virgin Mary and, without change, becoming man. Christ, our God,

You were crucified but conquered death by death. You are one of the Holy Trinity,
23
Basil, On the Holy Spirit, 37.
24
Ibid, 37-39.
25
Ibid, 57. Basil writes that “God our Savior planned to recall man from the fall. Man’s
disobedience separated him from God’s household, and God wished to bring him back. That is why Christ
took human flesh, and accomplished everything in the Gospels: His sufferings, the cross, the tomb, and the
resurrection, so that man might be saved.”
 8

glorified with the Father and the Holy Spirit.”26 For Basil, the redemption of humanity is

bound up in the assumptio carnis of Christ, who maintains, without change or confusion,

his divine nature, in order to transfer to mortal humankind immortality.

The linguistic categories of the Nicene council, the homoousion of Christ, his

consubstantiality with God and with humanity, and Basil’s improvisational construction

of the three hypostases in the one ousia of the Godhead, become substantial within the

context of the soteriological ramifications of Christology. The doctrine of the Trinity

developed by Basil provides the appropriate paradigm within which to construct a

multidimensional Christology that safeguards the ability to fully realize the redemption of

humankind.27 Basil eclipses the perceived liabilities of the modalistic construction of

Sabelleanism through his conception of the sociality of the Trinity, in which, the distinct

persons in the Godhead cannot be subsumed or confused in each other; the Trinity as

unity-in-distinction obstructs the Arian view of the subordination of the Son, and protects

the equality of Christ and his identity with the Father. The incarnation of Christ does not

create a caesura in the Godhead, but, for Basil, is the uniting of divine and human in one

hypostasis in Jesus Christ, who, in turn, opens the path for humankind to God. In the

economy of the Incarnation, the Son maintains his status as homoousion with God, and

becomes homoousion with humankind – the pivotal point for the transaction on the cross.

As truly God and truly man, Jesus Christ suffers the suffering of humankind, and

transfers the potentiality of divinization upon those with whom he shares their likeness.

For Basil, the dyophysitism of Nicea was of the utmost importance, in this sense, as only

26
Basil, Divine Liturgy, 5.
27
See especially T. F. Torrance, The Trinitarian Faith: the Evangelical Theology of the Ancient
Catholic Church, (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1988), 146-190.
 9

one who was concomitantly divine and human, without confusion or change,28 could

bring healing and redemption to humanity; the salvation of humankind as deification

depends upon the unification of the divine and the human, which occurs in Christ, and is

gifted to the human race through him. Basil perceives the Arian construction as an

obfuscation of the possibility of the redemption of humankind, and as undermining the

order and glory of God:

I am told that there are some who are endeavoring to deprave the right doctrine
of the Lord’s incarnation by perverse opinions…. I mean that God Himself was
turned into flesh; that He did not assume, through the Holy Mary, the nature of
Adam, but, in His own proper Godhead, was changed into a material nature. This
absurd position can be easily refuted…. How could the benefit of the Incarnation
be conveyed to us, unless our body, joined to the Godhead, was made superior to
the dominion of death? If He was changed, He no longer constituted a proper
body, such as subsisted after the combination with it of the divine body. But how,
if all the nature of the Only-begotten was changed, could the incomprehensible
Godhead be circumscribed within the limit of the mass of a little body?29

The assumptio carnis of the eternal Word, the Son, is the path to human salvation, and,

according to Basil, any obstruction of the conception of the divine and the human as

concomitantly existing in Christ is a subversion of the work of God in Christ, and

overturns the atonement.

The atonement, for Basil, is predicated upon this understanding of Christ as divine

and human in their full dimensions. Basil asserts that “man is utterly powerless to make

atonement to God for the sinner, since every man is charged with sin…. Therefore do not

seek a brother to effect your ransom. But there is one superior to nature; not a mere man,

but one who is man and God, Jesus Christ, who alone is able to make atonement for us

all.”30 The necessity of the divine-human paradigm is twofold, in that through the sinful

28
In several places Basil utilizes these key phrases that would be calcified in the Christological
formula of the ecumenical council of Chalcedon in 451.
29
Basil, Epistle 262, in NPNF 7:301.
30
Basil, Exegetical Homilies on Psalms 48.3; quoted in, Bettenson, Later Christian Fathers, 70.
 10

composition of human nature, humankind is unable to offer a sufficient expiation for

herself, which necessitates a divine ‘exchange;’ moreover, Basil perceives the atonement

as a ransom that is paid, which, is, in essence, a trap that is set for the devil. Basil argues

that the assumption of humanity by Christ was the conceptual deception of the devil, who

was defeated on account of the divinity of Christ, in that, the victim of the cross

overcame the cross.31 The defeat of sin, death, and the devil, for Basil, cannot be

construed in any other manner than through the death and resurrection of the Incarnate

God-man. Basil argues that “if the Lord did not come to dwell in our flesh, then the

ransom did not pay the fine due to death on our behalf, nor did he destroy through

himself the reign of death. For if the Lord did not assume that over which death reigned,

death would not have been stopped… nor would the suffering of the God-bearing flesh

have become our gain.”32 The rescue of humankind from the peril of her sinfulness, and

from the reign of death over the creation is secured in the indwelling-in-flesh by God,

who purchases forgiveness and divinization through his own flesh and by his own deity.

II. The Spirit of Life: Spirit-Christology in Basil

A second layer undergirding Basil’s Christology is the nascent development of a

Spirit Christology, which is a residual substratum that organically links the work of

Christ to the fuller dimension of his doctrine of the Trinity.33 Basil locates the entire

economy of the Incarnation of Christ, which he perceives as the movement from the

divine birth through the passion and resurrection of Jesus, within the paradigm of ‘life in

31
Karam, “Some Aspects of the Anaphora,” 168. Karam writes that “Satan was not sure of the
divinity of Christ, and thought that he had won with the crucifixion – only to discover that he had quite
literally bitten more than he could chew, and taken a Prisoner whom he could not hold.”
32
Basil, Epistle 261.2, in NPNF 7:300.
33
Andreas Papanikolaou, “Divine Energies and Divine Personhood,” Modern Theology 19/3
(2003): 366-370.
 11

the Spirit.’ In this, Basil contends that the whole of Christ’s salvific work is, in esse, a

work of the Spirit, which is to say that, as the Father and Son work in tandem, as seen

above, so the Spirit is at work as well. As Basil states, “when we speak of the plan of

salvation for men, accomplished in God’s goodness by our great God and Savior Jesus

Christ, who would deny that it was all made possible through the grace of the Spirit.”34

The whole of redemption is a work of the Trinity, which becomes visible and ontological

in the coming of Christ in the Spirit to the world.

In his Christological vision, Basil maintains the inseparability of Christ and the

Spirit, and correlates the entirety of Christ’s life and work within the dimension of the

Spirit, who is consubstantial with the Son and the Father. Basil states that “the

incarnation of Christ, of which the Spirit was the forerunner… [Christ’s] coming was in

the flesh, but the Spirit is inseparable”35 For Basil, the Spirit is one who ‘breathes’ the

Word of the Father in creation, and, even more, is the energeia of the miraculous birth of

Christ in the flesh. The Spirit is the identifiable power throughout the life and ministry of

Christ, from the very beginning in his birth in the flesh. Torrance writes that in Basil’s

vision, “not only does the Spirit have koinonia kata physin” [participation by nature]

“with the Father and the Son, but he is peculiarly closely related to the nature of the Son,

and it is in this connection that his operations are to be discerned and understood. This

relation of the Spirit to the Son is seen above all in the birth of the Lord in the flesh, in his

life and work.”36 For Basil, the koinonia of the Spirit with the Father and the Son extends

beyond a sharing in nature and essence to a participation in the divine activity of

salvation in the advent of the Son.

34
Basil, On the Holy Spirit, 65.
35
Oliver Davies, ed., Gateway to Paradise: Basil the Great, in The Spirituality of the Fathers,
(Brooklyn: New City Press, 1991), 94.
36
T. F. Torrance, Theology in Reconstruction, (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1965), 222.
 12

Basil’s Spirit Christology embraces the totality of the incarnate existence and

activity of the Son. Following the birth of Christ in the flesh, Basil discerns the baptism

of Christ as the public and visible manifestation of Christ’s life in the Spirit through his

anointing with the Spirit. This does not assume that the Spirit was given to Christ at this

point, but that, from the public proclamation of Christ as the bearer of the divine Spirit,

the actions of Christ in his ministry and death would be perceived as a synergistic

performance and enactment in the Spirit. Basil states that at his baptism “the Lord was

anointed with the Holy Spirit, who would henceforth be inseparably united to His flesh,

as it is written, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain… this is my Beloved

Son…. The Spirit was united with Jesus when He performed miracles [and in] His

resurrection from the dead.”37 The life of Christ, for Basil, is a movement of koinonia of

the Spirit and Jesus in all of his acts on behalf of humankind. Basil writes, further, that

the “working of miracles and gifts of healing [performed by Christ] come from the Holy

Spirit.”38

Basil connects this dimension of the Spirit in the life of Christ to the soteriological

category of the atonement as well. In this, the despoilment of the devil in the death and

resurrection of Christ are concomitantly linked, by Basil, to the divinity of Christ in his

ousia, and to the inseparable connection of the Spirit to Christ. For Basil, the atonement

is secured through the Spirit in that “the presence of the Spirit despoils the Devil [and]

remission of sins is given through the gift of the Spirit.”39 The Spirit sustains the work of

Christ, and it is through the Spirit that the saving effects of the incarnate economy of the

Son are suffused into the created world.

37
Basil, On the Holy Spirit, 65.
38
Ibid, 77.
39
Ibid, 94.
 13

The Spirit is the foundation of the epistemological ascent of humankind in the

work of Christ; for, as the Spirit is operative throughout the work of Christ, he is, as well,

given to humankind to initiate her and sustain her in the saving knowledge of Christ and

his passion and resurrection.40 Basil declares this organic link in the knowledge of the

Son and the Spirit, in that “the Son and the Holy Spirit are the source of sanctification by

which every reasonable creature is hallowed.”41 The Holy Spirit gives the gift of

participation in the knowledge of Christ, and initiates humankind into the life of the

Trinity itself through ‘ascent’ in sanctification, which is identifiable, for Basil, with the

works of Christ, in that the life of the Christian in the Spirit is an extension of the life of

Christ himself, who lived in the Spirit.42 For Basil, there is a discernible unity in the

pneumatological vision of the incarnate mission of Christ, which is, a fully Trinitarian

movement, and the redemptive return of humankind to God through the knowledge of

Christ and a reception of his benefits in the Spirit. Basil’s vision is summed up, as he

writes: “Through the Holy Spirit comes our restoration to Paradise, our ascension to the

Kingdom of heaven, our adoption as God’s sons, our freedom to call God our Father, our

becoming partakers of the grace of Christ, being called children of light, sharing in

eternal glory, and in a word, our inheritance of the fullness of blessing, both in this world

and the world to come.”43

III. The Ecclesial ‘Mystery’ of Christ

The apex of Basil’s Christological construction is the correlation of Christ to the

ecclesial body, particularly in Basil’s vision of the enactment of the liturgy and the
40
Torrance, Theology in Reconstruction, 222-227.
41
Basil, Epistle 8.3, in NPNF 7:116.
42
See Basil, Epistle 8 and 38; see also Lossy, Mystical Theology, 60-62. Cf., Gladys Neufeld,
Becoming Divine: Authentic Human Being, (Saskatchewan: Saskatchewan University Press, 2003), ch. 2.
43
Basil, On the Holy Spirit, 59.
 14

‘divine mysteries,’ or sacraments. The full dimensions of Basil’s Christology are

embedded within the performance of ecclesial worship, and presented in the liturgical

drama of the text and the sacraments. In this, the ecclesial liturgy and sacraments are the

embodied re-presentations of Christ to the church, and, thus, Basil’s Christology takes on

liturgical and Eucharistic traits. For Basil, the real presence of Christ is located in the

church, and most essentially, in the liturgical practice of worship and participation in the

sacraments.

The liturgical worship of the church is a participation, a koinonia, in the ‘once-

for-all’ life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and is the centerpiece of the

celebration of the church. Basil constructs an ecclesial paradigm for interpreting the

Trinitarian economy of redemption, in that the church’s liturgical service is a re-

presenting of the salvific act of God in Christ – an act that Basil perceives as

accomplished in the Spirit, who directs the celebratory latria of the church. The liturgy

re-presents to the ecclesial body the act of redemption in Christ; the apostrophes to the

cross, in Basil’s liturgy, are a centrifugal element, wherein, the church participates in the

veneration of the death and resurrection of Christ.44 Christ is at the center of ecclesial

worship in Basil’s liturgy, and the cross and resurrection constitute the axiom of the

existence of the church:

Having beheld the resurrection of Christ, let us worship the holy Lord Jesus,
the only sinless One. We venerate Your cross, O Christ, and we praise and
glorify Your holy resurrection. You are our God. We know no other than You,
and we call upon Your name. Come, all faithful, let us venerate the holy
44
Pelikan notes, “the specification of what is meant and how salvation has been achieved came
especially in the liturgical apostrophes to the holy cross. Christ had ‘given himself over to death as an
exchange’ and had ‘come by the cross into Hades, in order that he might fulfill in himself the pangs of
death, and by arising on the third day, open the way for all flesh to the resurrection of the dead.’ The
centrality of the resurrection to the atonement is emphasized even further” throughout the liturgical act.
See Pelikan, The Christian Tradition, vol. 2, The Spirit of Eastern Christendom, (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1975), 139.
 15

resurrection of Christ. For behold, through the cross joy has come to all the
world. Blessing the Lord always, let us praise His resurrection. For enduring the
cross for us, He destroyed death by death.45

The worship of the church is a participation in this history of the cross and resurrection of

Christ, and the church, through the Spirit, lives in the reality of the resurrection which

opens up to the world the hope of the future resurrection of all. The liturgical

performance of ecclesial worship is the recitation of the acts of the vanquishing of sin and

death by Christ through his own death and resurrection, and the epiclesis to the Spirit to

empower and unite the ecclesial body into the presence and life of the Triune God. God,

in His Trinitarian being, is made visible and manifest to the church through the unique

incarnation of Christ, and His presence is known and celebrated through the

pneumatological worship of the church – a worship that is centered upon the person of

Christ.

The Spirit, who is the life of the church and ushers her into the presence of Christ,

is the same Spirit who is identified with the work of Christ, and creates koinonia and

unity for the church with Christ through the worship in the church.46 The epiclesis unites

the work of Christ and the coming of the Spirit to the life of the church, in which, the

church’s prayer for the Spirit is a prayer for the presence of Christ. The church, for Basil,

is grounded upon the content of this prayer, in which, “through Christ the Holy Spirit was

manifested, the spirit of truth, the gift of sonship, the pledge of our future inheritance, the

first fruits of eternal blessings, the life giving power, the source of sanctification” – and

in this the church lives and moves and has her being.47 The Spirit, in being identified

45
Basil, Divine Liturgy, 9.
46
The first antiphonal prayer reads “You have appointed us to this service by the power of Your
Holy Spirit,” Divine Liturgy, 12.
47
Ibid, 14.
 16

with Christ himself, bestows upon the church the gifts that come from Christ and his life,

and connects the church to the divine life.

The sacraments, the ‘mysteries,’ represent, for Basil, the pivotal point of the

ecclesial worship, and are the true center of participation in Christ, particularly the

Eucharist. In the celebration of bread and wine, there is a spiritual and metaphysical

connection between the ecclesial body and Christ himself. The sacrament of the

Eucharist visibly re-presents and embodies the mystery of Christ’s death and

resurrection, now manifest in the church. Basil makes the explicit connection in the

liturgical prayer of institution, in which “remembering His saving passion and life-giving

cross, His three-day burial and resurrection from dead, His ascension into Heacen, and

enthronement, and His glorious and awesome second coming,” are all recapitulated in the

mysteries of bread and wine.48 The Eucharist is a participation in the entire history of

Christ, so that Basil discerns both a perfect and a future dimension in the eucharistic

celebration. The unification of the cross and resurrection, and the future coming of Christ

is represented in the one sacrament, whereby, the redemption secured in Christ’s death

and resurrection, and the future life in the presence of Christ are given to the church

through the presence of the Spirit in the sacrament. As the sacrament is consecrated, the

prayer is offered “unite us all to one another who become partakers of the one Bread and

Cup in the communion of the one Holy Spirit.”49 The Spirit unites the perfect and future

tenses of salvation, and the life of Christ, which are dialectically embodied within the

sacrament, and in which the church participates.

48
Ibid, 16.
49
Ibid, 17.
 17

The sacrament of the Eucharist embodies the person and work of Christ through

the Spirit, connecting the visible body of the church with the divine reality of the

presence of Christ, which is manifest in the elements, and also conjoins the church to the

life-giving economy of the Incarnation. As the Eucharist presents the emblems of

Christ’s flesh and blood to the church, the Spirit unites the church in participation in the

reality of Christ’s coming in the flesh, and in the passion of Christ. The life of the church

flows from this source of eucharistic participation, as it is lead to truly partake of the

reality of the Incarnate Christ through the power of the Spirit, which is the Spirit of

Christ. The Church lives as it partakes of Christ, and is given a true share in his presence

and reality.50 Basil contends that the living reality of Christ is the constituent foundation

of the church, and that Christ himself gives his own life to the church in the Eucharist;

herein, the identity of Christ corresponds with the gift offered in the Eucharist.51 The

Eucharist is the ecclesial ascent in the true knowledge of Christ, and a participation in the

lived life of Christ, and a sealing in the sharing of Christ’s future; eucharistic

participation in the mystery of Christ leads the church onward in the process of

unification with Christ and deification. The Eucharist presents the gift of the promise of

the deification of humankind in its participation in, and identification with the Christ who

has joined divinity to human flesh.

Basil constructs an understanding of the identification of the church and the

sacrament of the Eucharist fully within the paradigm of the Nicene formulation of

50
Basil, On the Holy Spirit, 119.
51
Basil notes “Christ, having the word of God in Himself, is able to call the life which He leads,
life, and that his is His meaning we shall learn from what follows: ‘He that eats me…he also shall live
because of me;’ for we eat His flesh, and drink His blood, being made through His incarnation and His
visible life partakers of His Word and of His Wisdom. For all His mystic sojourn among us He called flesh
and blood, and set forth the teaching whereby our soul is nourished and is meanwhile trained for the
contemplation of actual realities.” In Epistle 8.4, NPNF, 8:118.
 18

Christology. Herein, the constituent relationship of Christ, as fully God and fully human,

is parallel to, and undergirds the relation of Christ and the Eucharist, and the Church’s

participation in Christ. The Eucharist mirrors the unified divine-human being of Christ

through the koinonia of the materiality of bread and wine with the divine reality of the

flesh and blood of Christ, corporeally present in heaven – the substantial gulf affixed

between the divine and human is bridged in their unification in the being of Christ, as the

dimensional aporia between sign and substance is elided through the energeia of the

Spirit, represented in the epiclesis.

Basil’s contention against the Arian construction of Christology emanated not

only from a concern for the essential doctrine of Christ, but also from concern for the

doctrine of the Eucharist, and the essentiality of human participation. For Basil, the

proper interpretation of the doctrine of Christ corresponds to the ability of the Eucharist

to open the divine life to human participation, in that the gift of Christ in flesh is re-

presented to the church in the Eucharist; yet, a Christ not concomitantly fully divine and

fully human cannot adequately heal our fragile human nature. In the same manner, the

Eucharist without the presence of the Spirit of Christ could not inscribe the economy of

the cross and resurrection, and the future life with Christ upon the hearts of the church.

Conclusion

The Christology of Basil of Caesarea stands at a particularly important juncture

between the ecumenical council of Nicea and the tumultuous Christological debates of

the fourth and fifth centuries, leading to Chalcedon. Basil engaged in multi-front
 19

disputes over the nature and identity of Jesus Christ, and the implications of the

theological construction of Nicea upon Christian thought. Though Basil has often

receded behind the celebrated personalities of the two Gregory’s, his construction of the

doctrine of Christ within the paradigm established by Nicea contributed to the

solidification of the Orthodox position, and helped to establish the boundaries of

Christology that would be further defined at Epheseus and Chalcedon.

Basil’s own Christology is rendered within the triplex loci of Nicea, the Spirit,

and the ecclesiastical, whereby these dimensional categories develop the shape and

contours of Basil’s construction. The apex of Basil’s thought is achieved in the liturgical

and eucharistic complex of the church, which, for Basil, signifies a cotangent unification

of the broader categories of theology within the community of the ecclesial body. The

work of Christ, an economic movement of God in Incarnation, which embraces the

totality of the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus, is manifest in the Spirit,

and issued forth into the ecclesial body of Christ. Basil holds together the person and

work of Christ through the Nicene articulation of Christ as consubtantial with God and

with humanity, an incarnation of God in flesh through the Spirit. The Holy Spirit, in

Basil, is the connective link between the personal history of Christ and the participatory

history of the church in Christ, and is the substantial presence of Christ himself that gives

hope to all who participate in the mysteries, which proclaim the ever-lasting gift of life in

the divine.
 20

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