(cont)
37. Let us then revert to the point raised from the outset, that in all things the Holy Spirit is inseparable and wholly incapable of being parted from the Father and the Son. St. Paul, in the passage about the gift of tongues, writes to the Corinthians, “If ye all prophesy and there come in one that believeth not, or one unlearned, he is convinced of all, he is judged of all; and thus are the secrets of the heart made manifest; and so falling down on his face he will worship God and report that God is in you of a truth.”
1030 If then God is known to be in the prophets by the prophesying that is acting according to the distribution of the gifts of the Spirit, let our adversaries consider what kind of place they will attribute to the Holy Spirit. Let them say whether it is more proper to rank Him with God or to thrust Him forth to the place of the creature. Peter’s words to Sapphira, “How is it that ye have agreed together to tempt the Spirit of the Lord? Ye have not lied unto men, but unto God,”1031 show that sins against the Holy Spirit and against God are the same; and thus you might learn that in every operation the Spirit is closely conjoined with, and inseparable from, the Father and the Son. God works the differences of operations, and the Lord the diversities of administrations,
but all the while the Holy Spirit is present too of His own will, dispensing distribution of the gifts according to each recipient’s worth.
For, it is said, “there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit; and differences of administrations, but the same Lord; and there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all.”1032
38.
. . . And in the creation bethink thee first, I pray thee, of the original cause of all things that are made, the Father; of the creative cause, the Son; of the perfecting cause, the Spirit; so that the ministering spirits subsist by the will of the Father, are brought into being by the operation of the Son, and perfected by the presence of the Spirit. Moreover, the perfection of angels is sanctification and continuance in it. And let no one imagine me either to affirm that there are three original hypostases
1035 or to allege the operation of the Son to be imperfect.
For the first principle of existing things is One, creating through the Son and perfecting through the Spirit.1036 The operation of the Father who worketh all in all is not imperfect, neither is the creating work of the Son incomplete if not perfected by the Spirit. The Father, who creates by His sole will, could not stand in any need of the Son, but nevertheless He wills through the Son;
nor could the Son, who works according to the likeness of the Father, need co-operation, but the Son too wills to make perfect through the Spirit. “For by the word of the Lord were the
24heavens made, and all the host of them by the breath [the Spirit] of His mouth.”
1037 The Word then is not a mere significant impression on the air, borne by the organs of speech; nor is the Spirit of His mouth a vapour, emitted by the organs of respiration; but the Word is He who “was with God in the beginning” and “was God,”
1038 and the Spirit of the mouth of God is “the Spirit of truth which proceedeth from the Father.”
1039 You are therefore to perceive three, the Lord who gives the order, the Word who creates, and the Spirit who confirms.
53. Moreover the surpassing excellence of the nature of the Spirit is to be learned not only from His having the same title as the Father and the Son, and sharing in their operations, but also from His being, like the Father and the Son, unapproachable in thought. For what our Lord says of the Father as being above and beyond human conception, and what He says of the Son, this same language He uses also of the Holy Ghost. “O righteous Father,” He says, “the world hath not known Thee,”
1168 meaning here by the world not the complex whole compounded of heaven and earth, but this life of ours subject to death,
1169 and exposed to innumerable vicissitudes. And when discoursing of Himself He says, “Yet a little while and the world seeth me no more, but ye see me;”
1170 again in this passage, applying the word
world to those who being bound down by this material and carnal life, and beholding
1171 the truth by material sight alone,
1172 were ordained, through their unbelief in the resurrection, to see our Lord no more with the eyes of the heart. And He said the same concerning the Spirit. “The Spirit of truth,” He says, “whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him: but ye know Him, for He dwelleth with you.”
1173 For the carnal man, who has never trained his mind to contemplation,
1174 but rather keeps it buried deep in lust of the flesh,
1175 as in mud, is powerless to look up to the spiritual light of the truth. And so the world, that is life enslaved by the affections of the flesh, can no more receive the grace of the Spirit than a weak eye the light of a sunbeam. But the Lord, who by His teaching bore witness to purity of life, gives to His disciples the power of now both beholding and contemplating the Spirit. For “now,” He says, “Ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you,”
1176 wherefore “the world cannot receive Him, because it seeth Him not,…but ye know Him; for he dwelleth with you.”
1177 And so says Isaiah;—“He that spread forth the earth and that which cometh out of it; he that giveth breath unto the people upon it, and Spirit to them that trample on it”
1178; for they that trample down earthly things and rise above them are borne witness to as worthy of the gift of the Holy Ghost. What then ought to be thought of Him whom the world cannot receive, and Whom saints alone can contemplate through pureness of heart? What kind of honours can be deemed adequate to Him?
^So you can see clearly, St. Basil can never be made to support the Baha'i position. He is solidly Orthodox in his interpretation, and would have immediately deemed the Baha'i position as heresy. The Baha'i assert that Jesus is a created being, which St. Basil casts off as merely a revival of the Arian heresy, which he doesn't even waste time on because he's already refuted it so many times. The Baha'i assert that the Son and the Spirit are neither equal to the Father, nor one in being with Him, which St. Basil refutes and calls blasphemy and madness.
God bless...
