Life and setting
Basil helped defend Nicene theology, wrote influential works on the Holy Spirit and organized Christian charitable and monastic life in Cappadocia.
Cappadocian Fathers • Eastern / Nicene Christianity
Basil of Caesarea
c. 330 – 379 • Bishop, theologian and monastic organizer
Why this person matters
Together with Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa, he helped clarify fourth-century language about one divine essence and three persons.
What should not be sanitized
Later traditions remember the Cappadocians as a unified school, but their arguments and emphases were not identical.