Nicene · c. 330 – 379
St. Basil the Great
Caesarea, Cappadocia
Biography
Basil, one of the three Cappadocian Fathers, was Bishop of Caesarea and a tireless organizer of monastic life, charitable institutions, and orthodox resistance to Arianism in the Greek East. He founded a great complex of hospitals and hospices for the poor known as the Basileiad. His writings on the Holy Spirit helped secure the Spirit's full divinity at the Council of Constantinople two years after his death.
Historical background
Writing around AD 375 as Arian emperors pressured the Eastern churches, Basil's On the Holy Spirit carefully defended the divinity of the Spirit partly by appeal to unwritten liturgical customs handed down from the apostles, a key patristic witness to the authority of Tradition alongside Scripture.
Major writings
On the Holy Spirit
Defends the Spirit's divinity and the authority of unwritten apostolic tradition.
The Long Rules and Short Rules
Foundational monastic legislation still influential in Eastern monasticism.
Important teachings
Basil teaches that many essential Christian practices, such as the sign of the cross, facing east in prayer, and the words of eucharistic consecration, come from unwritten apostolic tradition equal in authority to Scripture. He also insists on the full divinity of the Holy Spirit, worshipped and glorified together with the Father and the Son.
Quotations
“Of the beliefs and practices... some we possess derived from written teaching; others we have received delivered to us in a mystery by the tradition of the apostles.”
“Both are of equal force in relation to true religion.”
“The Holy Spirit... is glorified together with the Father and the Son.”