5. Yet receive what I say as at best a token and reflexion of the truth; not as the actual truth itself. For it is not possible that there should be complete correspondence between what is seen in the tokens and the objects in reference to which the use of tokens is adopted. Why then do I say that an analogy of the separate and the conjoined is found in objects perceptible to the senses? You have before now, in springtime, beheld the brightness of the bow in the cloud; the bow, I mean, which, in our common parlance, is called Iris, and is said by persons skilled in such matters to be formed when a certain moisture is mingled with the air, and the force of the winds expresses what is dense and moist in the vapour, after it has become cloudy, into rain. The bow is said to be formed as follows. When the sunbeam, after traversing obliquely the dense and darkened portion of the cloud-formation, has directly cast its own orb on some cloud, the radiance is then reflected back from what is moist and shining, and the result is a bending and return, as it were, of the light upon itself. For flame-like flashings are so constituted that if they fall on any smooth surface they are refracted on themselves; and the shape of the sun, which by means of the beam is formed on the moist and smooth part of the air, is round. The necessary consequence therefore is that the air adjacent to the cloud is marked out by means of the radiant brilliance in conformity with the shape of the sun's disc. Now this brilliance is both continuous and divided. It is of many colours; it is of many forms; it is insensibly steeped in the variegated bright tints of its dye; imperceptibly abstracting from our vision the combination of many coloured things, with the result that no space, mixing or paring within itself the difference of colour, can be discerned either between blue and flame-coloured, or between flame-coloured and red, or between red and amber. For all the rays, seen at the same time, are far shining, and while they give no signs of their mutual combination, are incapable of being tested, so that it is impossible to discover the limits of the flame-coloured or of the emerald portion of the light, and at what point each originates before it appears as it does in glory. As then in the token we clearly distinguish the difference of the colours, and yet it is impossible for us to apprehend by our senses any interval between them; so in like manner conclude, I pray you, that you may reason concerning the divine dogmas; that the peculiar properties of the hypostases, like colours seen in the Iris, flash their brightness on each of the Persons Whom we believe to exist in the Holy Trinity; but that of the proper nature no difference can be conceived as existing between one and the other, the peculiar characteristics shining, in community of essence, upon each. Even in our example, the essence emitting the many-coloured radiance, and refracted by the sunbeam, was one essence; it is the colour of the phænomenon which is multiform. My argument thus teaches us, even by the aid of the visible creation, not to feel distressed at points of doctrine whenever we meet with questions difficult of solution, and when at the thought of accepting what is proposed to us, our brains begin to reel. In regard to visible objects experience appears better than theories of causation, and so in matters transcending all knowledge, the apprehension of argument is inferior to the faith which teaches us at once the distinction in hypostasis and the conjunction in essence. Since then our discussion has included both what is common and what is distinctive in the Holy Trinity, the common is to be understood as referring to the essence; the hypostasis on the other hand is the several distinctive sign. [2041]
6. It may however be thought that the account here given of the hypostasis does not tally with the sense of the Apostle's words, where he says concerning the Lord that He is "the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His person," [2042] for if we have taught hypostasis to be the conflux of the several properties; and if it is confessed that, as in the case of the Father something is contemplated as proper and peculiar, whereby He alone is known, so in the same way is it believed about the Only-begotten; how then does Scripture in this place ascribe the name of the hypostasis to the Father alone, and describes the Son as form of the hypostasis, and designated not by His own proper notes, but by those of the Father? For if the hypostasis is the sign of several existence, and the property of the Father is confined to the unbegotten being, and the Son is fashioned according to His Father's properties, then the term unbegotten can no longer be predicated exclusively of the Father, the existence of the Only-begotten being denoted by the distinctive note of the Father.
7. My opinion is, however, that in this passage the Apostle's argument is directed to a different end; and it is looking to this that he uses the terms "brightness of glory," and "express image of person." Whoever keeps this carefully in view will find nothing that clashes with what I have said, but that the argument is conducted in a special and peculiar sense. For the object of the apostolic argument is not the distinction of the hypostases from one another by means of the apparent notes; it is rather the apprehension of the natural, inseparable, and close relationship of the Son to the Father. He does not say "Who being the glory of the Father" (although in truth He is); he omits this as admitted, and then in the endeavour to teach that we must not think of one form of glory in the case of the Father and of another in that of the Son, He defines the glory of the Only-begotten as the brightness of the glory of the Father, and, by the use of the example of the light, causes the Son to be thought of in indissoluble association with the Father. For just as the brightness is emitted by the flame, and the brightness is not after the flame, but at one and the same moment the flame shines and the light beams brightly, so does the Apostle mean the Son to be thought of as deriving existence from the Father, and yet the Only-begotten not to be divided from the existence of the Father by any intervening extension in space, but the caused to be always conceived of together with the cause. Precisely in the same manner, as though by way of interpretation of the meaning of the preceding cause, and with the object of guiding us to the conception of the invisible by means of material examples, he speaks also of "express image of person." For as the body is wholly in form, and yet the definition of the body and the definition of the form are distinct, and no one wishing to give the definition of the one would be found in agreement with that of the other; and yet, even if in theory you separate the form from the body, nature does not admit of the distinction, and both are inseparably apprehended; just so the Apostle thinks that even if the doctrine of the faith represents the difference of the hypostases as unconfounded and distinct, he is bound by his language to set forth also the continuous and as it were concrete relation of the Only-begotten to the Father. And this he states, not as though the Only-begotten had not also a hypostatic being, but in that the union does not admit of anything intervening between the Son and the Father, with the result that he, who with his soul's eyes fixes his gaze earnestly on the express image of the Only-begotten, is made perceptive also of the hypostasis of the Father. Yet the proper quality contemplated in them is not subject to change, nor yet to commixture, in such wise as that we should attribute either an origin of generation to the Father or an origin without generation to the Son, but so that if we could compass the impossibility of detaching one from the other, that one might be apprehended severally and alone, for, since the mere name implies the Father, it is not possible that any one should even name the Son without apprehending the Father. [2043]
8. Since then, as says the Lord in the Gospels, [2044] he that hath seen the Son sees the Father also; on this account he says that the Only-begotten is the express image of His Father's person. That this may be made still plainer I will quote also other passages of the apostle in which he calls the Son "the image of the invisible God," [2045] and again "image of His goodness;" [2046] not because the image differs from the Archetype according to the definition of indivisibility and goodness, but that it may be shewn that it is the same as the prototype, even though it be different. For the idea of the image would be lost were it not to preserve throughout the plain and invariable likeness. He therefore that has perception of the beauty of the image is made perceptive of the Archetype. So he, who has, as it were mental apprehension of the form of the Son, prints the express image of the Father's hypostasis, beholding the latter in the former, not beholding in the reflection the unbegotten being of the Father (for thus there would be complete identity and no distinction), but gazing at the unbegotten beauty in the Begotten. Just as he who in a polished mirror beholds the reflection of the form as plain knowledge of the represented face, so he, who has knowledge of the Son, through his knowledge of the Son receives in his heart the express image of the Father's Person. For all things that are the Father's are beheld in the Son, and all things that are the Son's are the Father's; because the whole Son is in the Father and has all the Father in Himself. [2047] Thus the hypostasis of the Son becomes as it were form and face of the knowledge of the Father, and the hypostasis of the Father is known in the form of the Son, while the proper quality which is contemplated therein remains for the plain distinction of the hypostases.
[2022] This important letter is included as among the works of Gregory of Nyssa, as addressed to Peter, bp. of Sebaste, brother of Basil and Gregory. The Ben. note says: "Stylus Basilii fetum esse clamitat." It was moreover, referred to at Chalcedon as Basil's. [Mansi, T. vii. col. 464.]
[2023] homoousioi.
[2024] huphestosan. hupostasis is derivatively that which "stands under" or subsists, ho huphesteke. cf. my note on Theodoret, p. 36.
[2025] Job i. 1, LXX.
[2026] Job ii. 11.
[2027] The mss. vary as to this parenthetical clause, and are apparently corrupt. The rendering above is conjectural, but not satisfactory.
[2028] 1 Cor. xii. 11.
[2029] ho monogenes theos is the reading of the Sinaitic and Vatican mss. in John i. 18. The insertion of the words oude ho uiios, adopted by R.V. in Matt. xxiv. 36, but of which St. Basil knows nothing, as appears from his argument on the difference between the statements of St. Matthew and St. Mark on this subject in Letter ccxxxvi., is supported by these same two mss.
[2030] John i. 3.
[2031] Col. i. 17.
[2032] anarchos.
[2033] agennetos kai anarchos huphestosa.
[2034] For similar statements by St. Basil, cf. De Sp. S. p. cf. also Cont. Eunom. i: epeide gar apo tou patros he arche to huio, kata touto meizon ho pater hos aitios kai arche.
[2035] cf. notes, pp. 15, 24.
[2036] meta ton huion. So the Benedictine text with four mss. in the Paris Library, and the note. "meta tou huiou" is a reading which is inadmissible, repeating as it does the sense of the following clause kai sun auto. The sense in which the Son is both "after the Son" and "with the Son" is explained further on by St. Basil, where he says that the three Persons are known in consecution of order but in conjunction of nature.
[2037] hupostenai.
[2038] Rom. viii. 9; 1 Cor. ii. 12.
[2039] Apparently a mistaken interpretation of the LXX. version of Ps. cxix. 131, heilkusa pneuma="I drew breath." A.V. and R.V., "I panted." Vulg., attraxi spiritum.
[2040] hosper ek ainigmati. cf. 1 Cor. xiii. 12. en ainigmati or ex ainigmaton, as in Æsch., Ag. 1113=by dark hints. The bold oxymoron concluding this sentence is illustrated by Ovid's "impietate pia" (Met. viii. 477), Lucan's "concordia discors" (Phars. i. 98), or Tennyson's "faith unfaithful."
[2041] The scientific part of the analogy of the rainbow is of course obsolete and valueless. The general principle holds good that what is beyond comprehension in theology finds its parallel in what is beyond comprehension in the visible world. We are not to be staggered and turn dizzy in either sphere of thought at the discovery that we have reached a limit beyond which thought cannot go. We may live in a finite world, though infinite space is beyond our powers of thought: we may trust in God revealed in the Trinity, though we cannot analyse or define Him.