This book explores Basil's Trinitarian thought as the meeting place of the worlds within which he lived, that of ancient Greek culture and learning, and that of Christian faith lived in the liturgy and expressed in the Scripture.

Fourth-century church father Basil of Caesarea was an erudite Scripture commentator, an architect of Trinitarian theology, a founder of monasticism, and a metropolitan bishop. This introduction to Basil's thought surveys his theological, spiritual, and monastic writings, showing the importance of his work for contemporary theology and spirituality. It brings together various aspects of Basil's thought into a single whole and explores his uniqueness and creativity as a theologian. The volume engages specialized scholarship on Basil but makes his thought accessible to a wider audience. It is the third book in a series on the church fathers edited by Hans Boersma and Matthew Levering.

Studying the early church can feel like entering a maze of bishops, emperors, councils, and arcane controversies. This book introduces early Christian theology by focusing on one particularly influential figure, Basil of Caesarea (ca. AD 330-378). It views Basil against the backdrop of a Roman Empire that was adopting Christianity. In Basil's day, Christians were looking for unity in the teaching and practice of their faith. This study acquaints the student with Basil's brilliant--and often neglected--theological writings. In particular, Saint Basil's reflections on the Trinity emerge from these pages as fascinating and illuminating testimonies to the faith of early Christians.

Basil of Caesarea is considered one of the architects of the Pro-Nicene Trinitarian doctrine adopted at the Council of Constantinople in 381, which eastern and western Christians to this day profess as ""orthodox."" Nowhere is his Trinitarian theology more clearly expressed than in his first major doctrinal work, Against Eunomius, finished in 364 or 365 CE. Responding to Eunomius, whose Apology gave renewed impetus to a tradition of starkly subordinationist Trinitarian theology that would survive for decades, Basil's Against Eunomius reflects the intense controversy raging at that time among Christians across the Mediterranean world over who God is. In this treatise, Basil attempts to articulate a theology both of God's unitary essence and of the distinctive features that characterize the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit--a distinction that some hail as the cornerstone of ""Cappadocian"" theology. In Against Eunomius, we see the clash not simply of two dogmatic positions on the doctrine of the Trinity, but of two fundamentally opposed theological methods. Basil's treatise is as much about how theology ought to be done and what human beings can and cannot know about God as it is about the exposition of Trinitarian doctrine. Thus Against Eunomius marks a turning point in the Trinitarian debates of the fourth century, for the first time addressing the methodological and epistemological differences that gave rise to theological differences. Amidst the polemical vitriol of Against Eunomius is a call to epistemological humility on the part of the theologian, a call to recognize the limitations of even the best theology. While Basil refined his theology through the course of his career, Against Eunomius remains a testament to his early theological development and a privileged window into the Trinitarian controversies of the mid-fourth century.

This book offers a revisionist interpretation of the fourth-century debate between the theologians Basil of Caesarea and Eunomius of Cyzicus by situating their rival theories of names in their proper historical, philosophical, and theological context.

In this book Olga Druzhinina analyzes St. Basil's understanding of the church, paying special attention to his Trinitarian approach to its life. Although the role of God the Trinity in the life of the church occupies a considerable place in St. Basil's thought, as Druzhinina demonstrates, it is a subject that has not previously been addressed by scholars. The analysis offered here of the life of the church as grounded in Trinitarian philanthropy provides fresh insights into St. Basil's understanding of the worldwide fellowship of believers. Druzhinina also brings into focus another neglected aspect of St. Basil's ecclesiology--his perception of the church as a two-dimensional, heaven-and-earth mystical reality with a strong bond between both parts (the heavenly and the earthly).

On the Holy Spirit is a theological treatise by Basil the Great, bishop of Caesarea and one of the Cappadocian Fathers. It presents a lucid and edifying appeal to Scripture and early Christian tradition in order to prove the divinity of the Holy Spirit. St. Basil forms clear and careful arguments against heresy of the early Christian church, mainly the second wave of Arianism. Basil proves that the Holy Spirit and the Son are not, by any margin, lesser in divinity than the Father, placing his defense of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit within the tradition of the Church.