Basil of Caesarea taught three divine Beings.

Hanson, Bishop RPC
The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God –
The Arian Controversy 318-381, 1988

Ayres, Lewis
Nicaea and its legacy, 2004
Ayres is a Professor of Catholic and Historical Theology

“Basil was born around 330” and “was extremely well educated in rhetoric and philosophy” (Ayres, p. 187-188)

“In 370 … Basil was elected bishop.” (Ayres, p. 188)

The three ‘Cappadocian theologians’, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa “were together decisively influential in bringing about the final form of the doctrine of the Trinity.” (Hanson, p. 676)

“In some accounts Basil is the architect of the pro-Nicene triumph.” (Ayres, p. 187)

“For many people at the beginning of the fourth century the word hypostasis and the word ousia had pretty well the same meaning.” (Hanson, p. 181)

Importantly, Athanasius, the paragon of the West, also used these terms as synonyms: “Clearly for him hypostasis and ousia were still synonymous.” (Hanson, 440)

Hypostasis defined:

• • • An “individual existence” (Hanson, p. 193);
    • “Something that really exists, and exists in itself, as distinguished from an accident or a quality;” (Lienhard)
    • “Distinct personalities,” “distinct existences,” and “to be existent.” (Litfin)
    • “Concrete individuals” (Anatolios, xiii)

Emperor Constantine proposed and insisted on the term homoousios (literally, same substance) but he also advised the delegates not to interpret it literally. He glossed it by saying that it only means that the Son is truly from the Father. Based on this non-literal but vague meaning, which means neither one substance nor three distinct existences, the majority accepted the term homoousios and the Creed.

Sabellianism was still a strong force during the fourth century. The Sabellian minority at Nicaea supported the term homoousios and understood it to mean one hypostasis; one distinct existence. In their view, the Son emerges from the Father merely as an energy. E.g.:

“Marcellus of Ancyra uses the language of ἐνέργεια (energy) to explain how it is that the Son can come forth and work without God being extended materially.” (Ayres, p. 197) (Read more)

Alexander of Alexandria also understood homoousios as meaning one hypostasis. E.g.:

“The fragments of Eustathius that survive present a doctrine that is close to Marcellus, and to Alexander and Athanasius. Eustathius insists there is only one hypostasis.“ (Ayres, p. 69) (Read more)

‘Arians’ believed that the Father, Son, and Spirit are three unequal hypostases (Beings).

For example, commenting on the Arian (Eastern) Dedication Creed of 341: “The bishops of Antioch … [were] insisting that Father, Son, and Spirit are three hypostaseis.” (Anatolios, p. 24)

“With the exception of Athanasius virtually every theologian, East and West, accepted some form of subordinationism at least up to the year 355; subordinationism might indeed, until the denouement (end) of the controversy, have been described as accepted orthodoxy.” (Hanson, p. xix)

Even Athanasius:

For example, “Athanasius’ pointed lack of willingness to” say that the Father is homoousios with the Son.

Athanasius described the Word “as proper to the Father, as the Father’s own wisdom,” namely, as being part of the Father, never the other way round. (Ayres, p. 206

Basil – equal

Lewis Ayres says that “in all the previous discussions (before Basil of Caesarea) of the term (homoousios) … a certain ontological subordination is at least implied.” (Ayres, p. 206)

“In Basil, the Father’s sharing of his being involves the generation of one identical in substance and power.” (Ayres, p. 207)

Basil “says, of the Three Persons of the Trinity ‘their nature is the same and their Godhead one’.” (Hanson, p. 688) 

He taught a “distinction between a unitary shared nature at one level, and the personal distinctions of Father, Son, and Spirit at another.” (Ayres, p. 190)

“Community of essence is the core of his teaching.” (Ayres, p. 194)

“Basil emerged from a background, not of the strongly pro-Nicene theology of Athanasius, but of the school of Basil of Ancyra.” (Hanson, p. 693) “He came from what might be called an ‘Homoiousian’ background.” (Hanson, p. 699)

“We may even think of Basil’s major dogmatic work, the Contra Eunomium, as the logical conclusion of one strand of Homoiousian theology.” (Ayres, p. 189)

“Through the 360s and especially in the 370s we see him gradually … (traveling) his road towards pro-Nicene theology.” (Ayres, p. 189)

“None of the Cappadocian theologians derived their theological tradition directly from him (Athanasius). Their intellectual pedigree stemmed from the school of Basil of Ancyra. … The doctrine of ‘like in respect of ousia’ was one which they could accept, or at least take as a startingpoint, and which caused them no uneasiness.” (Hanson, p. 678)

In the Trinitarian understanding, it means ‘one substance’, saying that Father and Son are one single substance. This is called numerical sameness because there is only one.

Alternatively, it means two different substances with the same qualities. That is called generic sameness.

Basil insists that “the Son, like the Father, is simple and uncompound.” (Ayres, p. 204)

He described the Father and Son as “invariably like according to essence” (Ayres, p. 189) or “like without a difference” (Ayres, p. 190).

“Throughout Contra Eunomium 1–2 Basil continues to speak of essential ‘likeness’.” (Ayres, p. 204)

“Basil still seems to view the relationship between Father and Son in a fundamentally Homoiousian way.” (Ayres, p. 190) 

“Basil … gives his own interpretation of it (homoousios).” He said: “Whatever ousia is hypothetically taken to be the Father’s, that certainly must also be taken to be the Son’s.” He proposes “like unalterably according to ousia.” (Hanson, p. 696-7)

“He says that in his own view ‘like in respect of ousia’ the slogan of the party of Basil of Ancyra) was an acceptable formula, provided that the word ‘unalterably’ was added to it, for then it would be equivalent to homoousios.” (Hanson, p. 694)

Generic interpretation

Adolf von Harnack “argued that Basil and all the Cappadocians interpreted homoousios only in a ‘generic’ sense … that unity of substance was turned into equality of substance.” (Hanson, p. 696) 

“Later, when he (Basil) had accepted homoousios as a proper term to apply to the Son, he still argued that it was preferable because it actually excluded identity of hypostases. This … forms the strongest argument for Harnack’s hypothesis.” (Hanson, p. 697)

Basil wrote: “This expression (homoousios) also corrects the fault of Sabellius for … (it keeps) … the Persons (prosopon) intact, for nothing is consubstantial with itself.” (Hanson, p. 694-5) (The Sabellians taught that the Father, Son, and Spirit are only one single Person.) 

A semi-homoiousian

“Basil has moved away from but has not completely repudiated his origins.” (Hanson, p. 694)

Basil “discusses the idea that the distinction between the Godhead and the Persons is that between an abstract essence, such as humanity, and its concrete manifestations, such as man.” (Hanson, p. 698)

Basil explains that “that relation which the general has to the particular, such a relation has the ousia to the hypostasis.” (Hanson, p. 692)

“He can compare the relation of ousia to hypostasis to that of ‘living being’ to a particular man and apply this distinction directly to the three Persons of the Trinity.” This suggests “that the three are each particular examples of a ‘generic’ Godhead.” (Hanson, p. 692)

Human persons are examples.

Basil assumed “that human persons are particularly appropriate examples” of “the nature of an individual divine person.” (Ayres, p. 207-8)

“Basil discusses the individuation of Peter and Paul as analogous to the individuation of Father and Son.” (Ayres, p. 207)

The strongest argument

“The instances … in which Basil compared the relation of hypostasis to ousia in the Godhead to that of particular to general, or of a man to ‘living beings’ … (is one of) the strongest argument for Harnack’s hypothesis.” (Hanson, p. 697) 

“Basil … speaks of the Father choosing to work through the Son—not needing to. Similarly, the Son chooses to work through the Spirit, but does not need to.” (Ayres, p. 208)

“The Father, who creates by His sole will … the Son too wills.” (Basil in De Spiritu Sancto)

Basil said that the Son’s statements that he does the will of the Father “is not because He lacks deliberate purpose or power of initiation” but because “His own will is connected in indissoluble union with the Father:”

“When then He says, ‘I have not spoken of myself,’ and again, ‘As the Father said unto me, so I speak,’ and ‘The word which ye hear is not mine. but [the Father’s] which sent me,’ and in another place, ‘As the Father gave me commandment, even so I do,’ it is not because He lacks deliberate purpose or power of initiation, nor yet because He has to wait for the preconcerted key-note, that he employs language of this kind. His object is to make it plain that His own will is connected in indissoluble union with the Father. Do not then let us understand by what is called a ‘commandment’ a peremptory mandate delivered by organs of speech, and giving orders to the Son, as to a subordinate, concerning what He ought to do. Let us rather, in a sense befitting the Godhead, perceive a transmission of will, like the reflection of an object in a mirror, passing without note of time from Father to Son.” (Basil in his treatise, “De Spiritu Sancto”)

“Basil showed himself reluctant to apply homoousios to the Holy Spirit. … Homoousios was a word which applied particularly to the relation of the Son to the Father.” (Hanson, p. 698)

“The On the Holy Spirit of 375 is notoriously reticent about using homoousios of the Spirit.” (Ayres, p. 211)

“Basil goes on to defend the application of homoousios to the Son … he never applies this term to the Holy Spirit.” (Hanson, p. 694)

“Its treatment of the Holy Spirit as uncreated and endowed with every exalted epithet except homoousion and theos is eminently reminiscent of Basil.” (Hanson, p. 687)

“To speak of Father and Son as simply having the same ousia would be … to present him as logically another God.” (Ayres, p. 190)

The Father alone exists without cause.

“Let no one think that I am saying that there are “three ultimate principles … There is one ultimate principle of all existent things, creating through the Son and perfecting in the Spirit.” (Hanson, p. 691)

“Basil consistently presents the Father as the source of the Trinitarian persons and of the essence that the three share.” (Ayres, p. 206)

He explains John 14:28 (‘the Father is greater than I’) by saying that “the Father is greater only by being the cause, not at the level of substance.” (Ayres, p. 206)

“It is the Father’s characteristic ‘to be Father and to exist as derived from no cause’.” (Hanson, p. 689)

“Father and Son are, indeed, the same in essence, but distinct at another level thus preserving a certain order among the persons.” (Ayres, p. 195)

“The Spirit is third in order and dignity.” (Ayres, p. 216)

“The Spirit is third in order and even rank.” (Hanson, p. 689)

The priority of the Father:

“By the 370s Basil had evolved a formula stating that the activities of God all come from the Father, are worked in the Son, and are completed in the Spirit. In this formula Basil seems … to find a way to speak of the unity of divine action while still preserving the priority of the Father.” (Ayres, p. 196)

Not homoousios

“Its treatment of the Holy Spirit as uncreated and endowed with every exalted epithet except homoousion and theos is eminently reminiscent of Basil.” (Hanson, p. 687)

Not ‘God’

“While the Spirit is third in order and dignity, the Spirit is not third in an order of essences. Basil insists that the Spirit is to be accorded equal worship and honour with the Father and the Son, even if he is not willing to say directly that the Spirit is God in the same terms as Father and Son.” (Ayres, p. 216)

“Perhaps the major contribution of pro-Nicene pneumatology is the insistence that the work of the Spirit is inseparable from Father and Son … but on the subject of the Spirit’s place in the Godhead as such little progress is made.” (Ayres, p. 217)

But how did Basil know that these verses point to “a community of essence?” Basil answers:

“By ἐπίνοια [epinoia] we know that there is a unity of ousia between Father and Son.” (Ayres, p. 194)

Ayres explains epinoia as:

• • • “Concepts developed by the human mind,” (Ayres, p. 191-2) as
    • “A process of reflection and abstraction” (Ayres, p. 192), and as
    • “An intellectual contemplation of the reality of things” (Ayres, p. 193)

For Basil, we can only understand the Father, Son, and Spirit through “contemplation:”

Contemplation “throws away the letter and turns to the Lord.” (Ayres, p. 219)

“The contemplation of the Spirit necessary to understand the Spirit is itself at the core of Christian life.” (Ayres, p. 219) 

That sort of contemplation is only available to “Christians who have attained ‘purity of heart’.” (Ayres, p. 219)

But Eunomius, Basil’s rival against whom he wrote three books, dismissed ἐπίνοια as a way of gaining knowledge of God, as unreliable (Ayres, p. 191-2) and condemned it. (Ayres, p. 193) He argued:

“If we know God only according to ἐπίνοια, then our knowledge is insignificant and our faith useless.” (Ayres, p. 195)

For example, he argued that “particularities, being added onto the substance … distinguish what is common by means of individual characteristics … For instance, deity is common, fatherhood and sonship are individualities.” (Ayres, p. 198)

Influences

Ayres identifies “three basic influences on Basil’s account:”

“The first is Stoic terminologies about the relationship between general and individuated existence. … Stoics posited a universal … substrate (or ousia). … At the level of concrete existence individuals are also qualified by further qualities.” (Ayres, p. 199-200)

Secondly, “Neoplatonic-Aristotelian conceptions are used to interpret a basically Stoic scheme.” (Ayres, p. 202)

Thirdly, “we cannot, however, treat Basil’s distinction against a purely philosophical background. … It seems most likely that Basil’s evolution of the distinction occurred within a context where some such distinction was already clearly in the air.” (Ayres, p. 202) 

The Cappadocians relied on philosophy:

Hanson concludes that “the Cappadocians all relied on the aid of contemporary philosophy more than … Athanasius and Hilary.” (Hanson, p. 677) “A small work (by Basil) … at the end of Book V of Adversus Eunomium … is full of echoes of passages in Plotinus’ Enneads.” (Hanson, p. 687)