Basil the Great: his life and works
Basil the Great: his life and works Basil was born around the year 330 into one of the most illustrious Christian families of all time. His father,
Basil, was the son of St Macrina the Elder, and his mother, Emmelia, was the daughter of a Christian martyr. Two of Basil's brothers also became bishops, and Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa, was to be one of the greatest mystical doctors of the Church.
Basil was educated at the rhetorical schools of his native Caesarea in Cappadocia, then in Constantinople and finally in Athens where he met and befriended the great orator Gregory of Nazianzus. He returned to Caesarea in around 356, where he briefly embarked on his career as a rhetorician until the need to devote himself more fully to God led him to receive baptism and to visit the major centres of the ascetical life.
As a result of what he saw there, Basil decided to withdraw into solitude not far from Neocaesarea, where he was later joined by other young men who sought the monastic life. It was here that he wrote the two Rules for which he is justly famous and which both laid the foundation for monastic life in the East down until the present day and had a considerable influence in the West. During this period Basil also founded a number of new communities. In 364, Eusebius persuaded him to become a priest and, in 370, he followed
Eusebius as metropolitan of Caesarea. As bishop, Basil was very active, founding many hospitals for the sick and hospices for travellers.
Basil was also greatly involved in the major controversy of the time, which divided the Church. This centred around the person of Arius and his teaching, known as 'Arianism', according to which the Son is not 'of the same substance as the Father' from eternity but is rather his first creation. Being supported in the East by the Emperor Valens, this heresy remained dominant, and Basil came under great pressure to submit to the Emperor and the Arian camp. Basil resisted however, and became the chief defender of the Catholic cause.
His extensive and brilliant writings on the issue did much to ensure the defeat of the heresy and its eventual overthrow at the Council of Constantinople in 381.
When he died in 379, Basil left a substantial inheritance to the Church in terms of his theological, ascetical and liturgical achievement, which was to remain a vital force in centuries to come.
In the present anthology we have not concentrated so much on those works which tell us of Basil the theologian, although a number of fine passages from his important On the Holy Spirit, which establishes the divinity of the Holy Spirit,have been included.
These reflect Basil's keen sense of the Spirit's capacity to transform us and to make us conform to the divine nature. But we have chosen for this anthology, rather, those texts which convey something of the spiritual and pastoral depth of Basil and his great skill with words.
Extracts from the two Rules as well as An Ascetic Discourse and A Discourse on Ascetic Discipline show his
great grasp of the truths of ascetical living, while the sermon On Faith is a fine example of his exploration of the meaning of faith. The treatise On Paradise holds out to us a wonderfully fresh and dynamic vision of heaven and the life to come (although the authenticity of this work has been questioned, it was long attributed to Basil and contains the rare combination of rhetorical skill and spiritual vision which is so typical of his writing). The treatise Consolation in Adversity is a fine study of how we can best come to terms with the suffering which is an inevitable part of our lives, while the extracts from his Letters show Basil's overriding concern with the unity of the Churches, whose division was for him the greatest scandal. They include also a number of moving and intimate instances in which Basil gives sensitive spiritual counsel to troubled souls, and which show that the brilliance of Basil the theologian was founded upon his living faith and the depths of his spiritual understanding.
Oliver Davies