Preliminary Remarks on the Analysis of Internal Evidence in Basil Letter 8 for Evagrian Authorship and Dating, with reference to the Theological Orations of St Gregory the Theologian

In the Greek manuscript tradition, the letter entitled To the Caesareans, apologia concerning his departure is ascribed to St Basil the Great and given in his collected correspondence as Letter 8.[1] However, because of the existence in the Syriac manuscript tradition of a very early manuscript containing the letter in Syriac translation, which manuscript ascribes the letter to Evagrius Ponticus, and because of the style and content of the Letter, the letter has relatively recently been assigned to Evagrius.

Why should we be interested in Basil Letter 8 if it is by the hand of Evagrius?

In his recent book, Evagrius Ponticus, Dr. Augustine Casiday writes: ‘In the light of how trenchantly orthodox Evagrius is shown to have been by [Basil Letter 8] … it seems far more sensible to begin our attempts to understand his admittedly obscure writings from the presumption of his Cappadocian orthodoxy than to work backward from the presumption of Origenist heresy.’[2]

The arguments that Dr Casiday presents are very close to what we were written by Fr Gabriel Bunge, to whom Dr Casiday’s book is dedicated.[3]

We are therefore examining a major support of what we would like to call the ‘Bungean narrative’. To what extent can we be sure that Basil Letter 8 was written by Evagrius in Constantinople at the feet of St Gregory and that all the concepts expressed in the Letter are perfectly orthodox, so that Basil Letter 8 would provide us with a template to interpret the Kephalaia Gnostica and other works of Evagrius in a way different from the template of heresy provided by the posthumous condemnations of Evagrius, especially the Anathemas Against Origenism of the Fifth Ecumenical Synod?[4]

In view of time limitations on the presentation of this paper, we will proceed in summary fashion.

One of the things we shall do is compare Basil Letter 8 to the Theological Orations of St Gregory the Theologian.

If Letter 8 is by Evagrius, its natural setting would be Evagrius’ sojourn in Constantinople with St Gregory. This would be during the period 379 – 381. We ourselves date the Letter, if it of Evagrius, to mid- to late 379. The Theological Orations of St Gregory are dated to mid- to late 380.[5] Hence, if Letter 8 is by Evagrius, it would have been written at the feet of St Gregory a year before St Gregory spoke the Theological Orations. However, clearly, the Orations were not impromptu: St Gregory would have thought his positions through in some detail before pronouncing them. At the time that Evagrius arrived in Constantinople, St Gregory would already have been composing the Orations in his mind’s eye. It is plausible that the theological content of the Orations formed a topic of his discussions with Evagrius before Evagrius would have written Letter 8. Where the two texts discuss similar issues—and they do—comparing them should be a fruitful check on the theory that Evagrius wrote the whole letter under the eye of St Gregory and that St Gregory approved of it.

Let us turn to the text of Basil Letter 8.

Basil Letter 8 is not a homogeneous text. There are passages in it, one very long, which summarize the mystical theology of the mature Evagrius. Moreover, it can be shown that the long passage is in all likelihood an interpolation and that other such passages very well may be.

In the Letter, the first part, about 5% of the Letter,[6] is an apologia for someone’s absence to study theology and philosophy with ‘Gregory’, evidently St Gregory the Theologian. Let us call it Section 1.

The tone of Section 1 is supplicatory and pleading, as one might expect from someone who is absent without leave and must not only justify his absence but also seek permission of the other party to continue as he is. Section 1 closes with ‘And those things which concern us are in this wise,’ something that might be taken to be the closing line of a short note about one’s personal situation.

The Letter then abruptly begins a scriptural exegesis that advances the doctrine of the divinity first of the Son and then of the Holy Spirit. The tone changes: from pleading for a little more time together with Gregory, the Letter begins to teach in an authoritative tone. Let us call this Section 2: from the end of Section 1 to the end of the Letter.[7]

There is no further reference in Section 2 to Section 1, although the conclusion does refer to the text as a letter. Since there is very little transition from Section 1 to Section 2 and no further reference in Section 2 to Section 1, the two sections might be thought to be independent texts brought together in the manuscript tradition.

Let us now compare Section 1[8] to the Letter’s conclusion.[9] In Section 1 the author is requesting more time with Gregory because he is being benefited by saying something with Gregory concerning the divine dogmas but in more often hearing: clearly the situation of someone presenting himself as a student in need of leave to continue his studies. In the conclusion, however, the author refers not to his situation with Gregory but to the examination of the ‘word concerning the Holy Trinity’, enjoining his readers to make the most of his discussion because he will ‘demand interest on these things’—surely the words of a teacher with his students. The difference in tone is obvious.

The core of Section 2 is scriptural exegesis: commentary explaining in an apparently orthodox way a chain of Scripture passages used by the Arians to oppose the divinity of the Word and the Holy Spirit. This core has much in common with St Gregory’s Theological Orations. It also has a number of striking differences.

However, in ¶6 [20] we find:

Already it is necessary to examine the meaning of the text in a higher way and it is necessary to knock on the door of knowledge….

The author then proceeds to give a very long, dense and polished allegorical exegesis why Jesus was ignorant of the day and hour of the Last Judgement. The style is more sophisticated than that of the preceding part of Section 2, and certainly more sophisticated than that of Section 1.[10] Let us call this ‘Passage A of Section 2’.

Passage A is difficult to summarize but depends on the notion that the Kingdom of the Christ is natural contemplation while the Kingdom of the Father is the immaterial contemplation of the Divinity, coupled with the notion that Jesus’ ignorance is ontological because ontologically his Kingdom has only to do with natural contemplation, whereas ontologically the immaterial contemplation of the Divinity pertains to the Kingdom of the Father.[11]

The return from Passage A to the remainder of Section 2 is a very abrupt return to the train of thought that ended with the beginning of Passage A. However if Passage A is elided, along with the sentence just before it, then the Letter reads much more naturally. Let us call the result of eliding Passage A the ‘reconstructed Letter’.[12]

As one can see by comparing the reconstructed Letter with Passage A, there is a great difference in tone, sophistication and content between the reconstructed Letter and Passage A. The reconstructed Letter is a straightforward commentary on Scripture defending the divinity of the Word. Passage A, however, is a very sophisticated presentation of mature Evagrian doctrine. In the reconstructed Letter Jesus’ ignorance is feigned, whereas in Passage A it is ontological. The reconstructed Letter, moreover, has much in common with Theological Oration 4—although there are important differences.

Given this difference in tone and content between the reconstructed Letter and Passage A, and given the unnatural transitions into and out of Passage A, we would like to treat Passage A as an interpolation into the original text of Section 2. That would give us at least two layers of text in Section 2: the original commentary on Scripture, and Passage A, the interpolated presentation of mature Evagrian doctrine.

Did Evagrius in a revision in Constantinople do a poor job of stitching in Passage A? Did the Letter enter into the manuscript tradition from Evagrius’ own copy of it in his archives in Egypt,[13] so that he might have edited it later in life, adding passages which summarized his mature mystical theology? Did someone else, perhaps from his circle, add the interpolation? To a letter by Evagrius? To a letter not by Evagrius? Is it really a letter by Evagrius?

We do not know. There is no reference in ancient authors to the Letter giving fragments of it the way we have ancient fragments attesting to the content of the Kephalaia Gnostica. So while the Letter entered into the Syriac manuscript tradition quite early under the name of Evagrius, we have no idea what happened before that—from the time of the composition of the Letter to the time of its entry into the Greek and Syriac manuscript traditions.

Moreover, and this is very important, we have no written record that St Gregory the Theologian ever read the Letter; and if he did, in what form; and, if so, what he thought of it.

In general, we can hypothesize three distinct layers to the Letter, with distinct differences in tone:

Layer 1 is Section 1, a brief apologia for someone’s absence to study with ‘Gregory’.

Layer 2 comprises those parts of Section 2 that are a straightforward commentary on a chain of Scripture passages along the lines of the Nicene School, with similarities to and differences from the Theological Orations of St Gregory the Theologian.

Layer 3 comprises a series of interpolations into Section 2 that present mature Evagrian doctrine, including additional, more Evagrian, interpretations of the Scripture passages that form the backbone of Layer 2. Layer 3 would include, as a major part, Passage A discussed above. Layer 3 would also include the conclusion to the Letter at the end of Section 2. In some cases, Layer 3 addresses issues that are addressed both in Layer 2 and in St Gregory’s Theological Orations.

Let us return to Passage A. To our ear it sounds like Evagrius wrote it but with several reservations.

First, the author of Passage A uses the Greek word epinoia a number of times, but with different meanings, so that for each instance of the word the reader or translator has to find the right sense in context. While we have not been able to come up with unequivocal conclusions about the use of epinoia in Basil Letter 8, it is clear that questions are possible about the stylistic consistency of the Letter with other known works of Evagrius.

To continue, the author of passage A emphasizes the recognition of God in second natural contemplation in the ‘operations of the Creator, and in the beginning [the mind] understands these from the results’.[14] In the other works of Evagrius, Evagrius does not discuss the role in second natural contemplation of the ‘operations’ and ‘results’ of God in Creation. When discussing second natural contemplation in his other works, Evagrius discusses the ‘reasons’ of created objects.

It is clear from a passage of the Theological Orations that St Gregory is familiar with this concept of the reasons of created objects, although he does not dwell on it.[15]

A case can be made that the author of passage A is not Evagrius: he is not using words as the late Evagrius used them. There is clearly a difference in Passage A from the way that Evagrius normally writes.

Finally, more generally, some of the passages that constitute Layer 3 of the Letter are imprecise as concerns the stages of Evagrian contemplation. For example, there seems to be some confusion in the mind of the author of the conclusion of Letter 8 about the nature of the presence of the Holy Trinity in Creation. The author begins by referring to the ‘reason concerning the Holy Trinity’ in a discursive way and very soon proceeds to discuss how the ‘reason concerning the Holy Trinity’ is mixed into natural contemplation, ‘if indeed from the beauty of creatures the Generator is proportionately seen’.

It might be wondered if the Letter’s problems with diction constitute immature foreshadowings of a later, more mature mystical doctrine. It seems to us, no. The presentation of mystical doctrine in Layer 3 of the Letter is quite sophisticated and definite, as if the author knows the system quite well, not as if he is about to think it through. It is just that the author of Layer 3 understands the Evagrian system a little differently from Evagrius in the genuine works that we know of Evagrius, and perhaps in a somewhat less mystically accomplished way.

Moreover, when compared to the Theological Orations, the presentation in Basil Letter 8 of the stages of contemplation is far more articulated and definite than we would expect from a student of St Gregory writing within a year of the Orations.

This passage of Letter 8, for example, outlines the whole mystical ascent as delineated by the mature Evagrius:

For ‘flesh and blood’ he called his whole mystical sojourn; and he made known the teaching constituted from praktiki, physiki and theologiki….[16]

To suggest that this particular passage was written by Evagrius before he left Constantinople is to suggest that he developed his mature mystical system, and had it approved by St Gregory, before he left Constantinople, became a monk and went to Egypt. But the Theological Orations do not present such an articulated analysis of the mystical ascent into praktiki, physiki and theologiki. Moreover, what we know of Evagrius’ personal history in this period of his life is simply inconsistent with his having had such advanced mystical ruminations at this time, ruminations that not even his master presents in the Theological Orations.

Let us now compare the content of Passage A to the Theological Orations.

Let us consider a passage from Theological Orations 2.[17] The seeker ascends Mount Sinai and penetrates the cloud which covers the mountain. He goes beyond material things, turning into himself as much as is possible. He then looks on and sees the hind parts of God, having been covered by the Rock which is the Incarnate Word. But in this he sees not the actual nature of God but the little that arrives even to Man. This little that arrives even to Man is the magnificence that is present in God’s creatures. This little is the identifying marks of the God who cannot directly be seen, just as we who have weak vision must be content with the reflections of the sun on the water since we cannot look directly at the sun. And this is the way we must do theology, of whatever spiritual height or attainment we might be—for every celestial or supracelestial being is further from the true knowledge of God than it is above us

Let us now see how the author of Passage A handles the same theme.

7 [21] The holy disciples of our Saviour, coming beyond [natural] contemplation as it is possible to men, and having been purified by the word, seek the end, and desire to know the final blessedness, of which very thing our Lord declared both the angels and himself to be ignorant. On the one hand, he called ‘day’ the exact apprehension of the conceptions of God; on the other hand, ‘hour’ the contemplation of the Monad and Unity, the notification of which things he granted only to the Father. … [22] If, therefore, whatever God is, is said to be known by God of himself and that which he is not, not to be known—then our Lord, according to the notion of the Incarnation and the grosser teaching, is not the final object of desire; and therefore our Saviour did not know the end and the final blessedness. ‘But neither the angels know,’ he said—that is, neither the contemplation which is in them nor the reasons of their ministries are the final object of desire. For the knowledge of these things is gross in comparison with the ‘person to person’. The Father alone knows, he says, because [the Father] is indeed the end and the final blessedness. For when we know God no longer in mirrors, neither by means of alien things, but we come forth to him as to ‘only’ and ‘one’, then we will see the final end. For they say that the Kingdom of Christ is all the knowledge that is implicated in material [objects] and that the Kingdom of the God and Father is the immaterial contemplation, and, as one might say, the contemplation of the very Divinity.

The most obvious difference is the treatment by St Gregory of God who is the goal as the Trinity. The author of Passage A, on the other hand, has a somewhat more Neoplatonic view that treats the Monad and Unity, identified with the Father, as the goal. The words we have translated ‘Monad’ and ‘Unity’ are technical terms in Neoplatonic philosophy used by Proclus for the highest aspect of the Godhead.

In Passage A, the Kingdom of Christ is the contemplation implicated in material things. It is to be surpassed so as to attain to the Kingdom of the Father, which is the final goal and blessedness. The Kingdom of the Father is the contemplation of the very Divinity, the contemplation of the ‘Monad’ and ‘Unity’.

St Gregory makes no such distinctions in the passage summarized here, or anywhere else in the Theological Orations, and indeed rejects the notion that there is an end to the Kingdom of Christ. However, the distinctions of Passage A are to be found in the Kephalaia Gnostica and in Evagrius’ other late works.

St Gregory speaks of seeing the hind parts of God, that which the divine David calls the ‘magnificence’ which is to be found in the creatures, just as we see the reflections of the sun upon the waters. The author of Passage A on the other hand is explicit that when we proceed beyond seeing God in mirrors, or by means of alien things, ‘but we come forth to him as to “only” and “one”, then we will see the final end’.

St Gregory is diffident about the possibility of Man’s knowing the nature of God.[18] The author of Passage A, however, is quite explicit that the contemplation of the very Divinity is the goal, a goal which is attainable.

It is as if the author of Passage A is relegating St Gregory the Theologian to the rank of beginner. That is hardly consistent with his being a student of St Gregory writing a year before St Gregory spoke the Theological Orations and expecting St Gregory to review his Letter before he sends it to the brethren back home.

The author of Passage A states that seen from the point of view of the Incarnation and the grosser teaching, ‘our Lord’—Jesus Christ—is not the end and the goal of the mystical ascent, but seen from the point of view of the Word, he is.

St Gregory makes no such distinctions.

If Evagrius wrote Passage A a year before St Gregory wrote the Theological Orations, how is it that he is making these distinctions? How is it that St Gregory accepted these distinctions as being genuinely orthodox without adopting them in his own Orations?

From a Christological point of view, just what does the author of Passage A mean concerning how we view ‘our Lord’ in regard to the end and goal of the mystical ascent? If we take into consideration Chapter IV, 18 of the Kephalaia Gnostica, then one interpretation is that the author is saying the same thing here: the Christ as seen from the point of view of the created mind which, united to the Word of God, took on human flesh for the salvation of men is not the final object of desire; but the Word to which that mind called the Christ is united is the final object of desire.[19] The natural explanation is that the author of Passage A is advancing a different Christology from St Gregory, a Christology developed at great length in Evagrius’ late works, especially the Kephalaia Gnostica.

A detailed reflection on the Theological Orations of St Gregory in comparison with Passage A indicates that Passage A was not written under the watchful eye of St Gregory. If Passage A is by Evagrius it was written much later, when he was working on works such as the Kephalaia Gnostica.

There are a number of apparent allusions in Basil Letter 8 to the mature system of the Kephalaia Gnostica that time constraints prevent us from discussing.

Fr Gabriel Bunge and Dr Casiday take the position that since Basil Letter 8 was written under the eye of St Gregory the Theologian in Constantinople, all of the concepts expressed in it are orthodox. In their view, we cannot use an interpretation of the Kephalaia Gnostica which yields a heterodox Evagrius to interpret Basil Letter 8: on the contrary we must use the fact that Basil Letter 8 is orthodox to interpret the rest of the Evagrian corpus in an orthodox way.

It does not seem to us methodologically sound to impose on Evagrius the a priori template of orthodoxy.

The issue is this: Should we assume, on the basis of his early association with St Gregory and St Basil, that Evagrius is orthodox and give him the benefit of the doubt in interpreting such passages as this of Basil Letter 8, and then continue with that orthodox interpretation into the Kephalaia Gnostica, denying the a posteriori template that the Anathemas of the Fifth Ecumenical Synod supposedly put on the Kephalaia Gnostica?

One can see that a key element in the establishment of the School of Bunge’s interpretation of Evagrius is precisely to remove the possibility of interpreting Evagrius on the basis of the Kephalaia Gnostica—‘it is too difficult a work’—while simultaneously establishing that Basil Letter 8 is an unequivocally orthodox work written by Evagrius under the watchful eye of St Gregory the Theologian, a work that is to be used as an orthodox template to re-interpret Evagrius as an orthodox thinker.

However, since we have no documentary evidence that St Gregory approved of Basil Letter 8 in the form we now have it, we can use the doctrines found in the Kephalaia Gnostica—much more clearly than either Fr Gabriel or Dr Casiday care to admit—to shed light on the meaning of passages of Letter 8, and even to raise the possibility that some passages of the letter, expressive of mature Evagrian doctrine as found in the Kephalaia Gnostica, are in fact late interpolations in the letter, perhaps by Evagrius, perhaps by one of his circle.

It cannot be asserted that the author’s reasoning is inherently orthodox both in the Letter and throughout his life, and must be presumed to be orthodox, because of Evagrius’ early association with St Basil the Great and St Gregory the Theologian. People change over the course of their life, for the better or for the worse.

It is useful to consider Evagrius the person at the time he was with St Gregory the Theologian in Constantinople and is supposed to have written Basil Letter 8. From what we know of his personal history Evagrius was not an advanced mystic. He was known for his vainglory. He got involved with a married woman and while the affair was never consummated he was in danger of his life and after a monitory dream suddenly left Constantinople. He went to Jerusalem, where he put off his clerical garb and led a worldly life again given over to vainglory; he was then sick in bed for six months because he was not living up to his vow to become a monk, the vow that he had made in the dream that had prompted him to leave Constantinople. After a talk in Jerusalem with Melania the Elder, he consented to be tonsured a monk and afterwards went to Egypt to live as a monk.

This history is simply not consistent with Evagius' having articulated an advanced mystical system before he left Constantinople, a mystical system that on the face of it is more advanced than the mystical doctrine being advanced in the same period by his teacher, St Gregory the Theologian. Hence, we have to consider whether the passages of Basil Letter 8 expressive of advanced mystical doctrine were written later than Constantinople, after Evagrius had spent some time in asceticism in Egypt, whether by him or by one of his circle.

Bibliography

ACO 4, 1 Acta Conciliorvm Oecvmenicorvm. Ivssv atqve mandato Societatis Scientiarvm Argentoratensis. Edenda intitvit Edvardvs Schwartz. Continvavit Johannes Straub. Tomvs Qvartvs. Volvmen Primvm. MDCCCLXXI. In Aedibvs Walter de Gruyter & Co. Berolini. (Tome 4, Volume 1. 1971. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co.)

Basil 1 Basil the Great. Collected Works. Volume 1. Under the direction of Stylianos G. Pappadopoulos. Editor of Volume I: Nikodimos (Mpilales), Monk of New Skete, Mount Athos. Text: Y. Courtonne (edition of Budé). In the series: Bibliothiki ton Ellenon, Apanta ton Hagion Pateron. No date. No place: Ellenikos Ekdotikos Oikos.

Bousset Bousset, Wilhelm. Apophthegmata: Studien zur Geschichte des Altesten Munchtums. Tubingen: Mohr, 1923.

Casiday Casiday, A. M. Evagrius Ponticus. 2006. In the series: The Early Church Fathers, edited by Carol Harrison. London and New York: Routledge (Taylor and Francis Group).

Constantine (Constantine), Fr Theophanes. The Psychological Basis of Mental Prayer in the Heart. Volume I: The Orthodox Doctrine of the Person. Volume II: The Evagrian Ascetical System. (Volume III: Hesychian Sobriety). 2006. Mount Athos, Greece: Timios Prodromos. http://timiosprodromos4.blogspot.com/ et seq.

Melcher Melcher, Robert. Der achte Brief des hl. Basilius: Ein Werk des Evagrius Pontikus. Münsterische Beiträge zur Theologie 1. Münster i.W: Aschendorff, 1923.

Pitra Origenes in Psalmos. Pitra, éditeur. Analecta Sacra Vol. 2, pp. 444 – 483 and Analecta Sacra Vol. 3 pp. 1 – 364.

Rondeau Rondeau, Marie-Josephe. Le Commentaire sur les Psaumes d’ Évagre Le Pontique. Orientalia Christiana Periodica 1960 pp. 307 – 348.

SC 170 Évagre Le Pontique. Traité pratique ou Le moine (Practical Treatise or The Monk). Tome I. Introduction. Antoine Guillaumont et Claire Guillaumont. 1971. In Sources chrétiennes, No 170. Paris, France: Les Éditions du Cerf.

SC 171 Évagre Le Pontique. Traité pratique ou Le moine (Practical Treatise or The Monk). Tome II. Édition critique du texte grec… Antoine Guillaumont et Claire Guillaumont. 1971. In Sources chrétiennes, No 171. Paris, France: Les Éditions du Cerf.

SC 250 Grégoire de Nazianze. Discours 27 – 31 (Discours Théologiques). (Orations 27 – 31 (Theological Orations)). Introduction, texte critique … par Paul Gallay avec … Maurice Jourjon. 1978. In Sources chrétiennes, No 250. Paris, France: Les Éditions du Cerf.

SC 340 Évagre Le Pontique. Scholies aux Proverbes (Scholia on Proverbs). Paul Géhin. 1987. In Sources chrétiennes, No 340. Paris, France: Les Éditions du Cerf.

SC 356 Évagre Le Pontique. Le Gnostique ou A celui qui est devenu digne de la science (The Gnostic or To Him who has Become Worthy of Gnosis). Antoine Guillaumont et Claire Guillaumont. 1989. In Sources chrétiennes, No 356. Paris, France: Les Éditions du Cerf.

SC 397 Évagre Le Pontique. Scholies a L’Ecclésiaste (Scholia on Ecclesiastes). Paul Géhin. 1993. In Sources chrétiennes, No 397. Paris, France: Les Éditions du Cerf.

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[1] Migne 32 cols. 245C – 268B. All quotations from Basil Letter 8 are from our own translation, given at http://timiosprodromos5.blogspot.com/. Fr Gabriel Bunge calls this letter ‘Epistula Fidei’. Our title To the Caesareans, apologia concerning his departure is taken from the manuscript.

[2] Casiday p. 30.

[3] Personal communication, 9 November 2005.

[4] These Anathemas were discovered in the 17th Century by Peter Lambeck, the Librarian of Vienna, and since then have been the subject of much scholarly controversy as to their genuineness as Acts of the Fifth Ecumenical Synod.

[5] SC 250 p. 14.

[6] ¶1 [1] – 1 [3]

[7] ¶2 [4] to ¶12 [40].

[8] Basil Letter 8 ¶1 [3].

[9] Basil Letter 8 ¶12 [36].

[10] This passage ends at ¶7 [26], giving us a unitary passage from ¶6 [20] to ¶7 [26].

[11] Basil Letter 8 ¶7 [22].)

[12] After the elision, the text of the reconstructed Letter reads as follows:

For you, he is even ignorant of the hour and the day of the Judgement; and further, nothing escapes the notice of true Wisdom; all things came to be through it. Neither, then, has any man ever been ignorant of what he has done. But this he manages for the sake of your infirmity, so that neither might sinners fall into despondency at the shortness of the delay, there not remaining a time of repentance; nor again might those desert who for a long time are giving battle with the opposed power, on account of the length of time. He therefore manages both by means of the feigned ignorance; for the one, cutting short the time on account of the good struggle; for the other, storing up a season of repentance on account of the sins. (Basil Letter 8 ¶6 [19].)

…

8 [27] Again, by means of the wise Solomon in Proverbs he is created. For he says: ‘The Lord created me.’ And the beginning of the evangelical ways he is called, leading us towards the Kingdom of the Heavens—not a creation according to substance, but having become a way according to dispensation. For ‘to have become’ and ‘to be created’ make known the same thing. (Basil Letter 8 ¶8 [27].)

[13] It does seem that when he left Constantinople, he took everything with him. See Palladius Lausiac History Chapter 86: Migne 34 col. 1193 C.

[14] Basil Letter 8 ¶7 [23].

[15] He is called ‘Wisdom’ as the science (episteme) of divine and human things, for how would he who has made [all things] be ignorant of the reasons (logoi) of the things he has made? (SC 250 Oration 28 (= Theological Oration 2) 30, 15 – 16, pp. 268.)

[16] Basil Letter 8 ¶4 [15].

[17] Cf. SC 250 Oration 28 (= Theological Oration 2) 3, 1 – 26, pp. 104 – 106.

[18] SC 250 Oration 28 (= Theological Oration 2) 6, 19 – 26, p. 112.

[19] Cf. also KG III, 72 and KG IV, 21.