Their topics include scholarship on the Old Testament roots of Trinitarian theology: blind spots and blurred vision, the Johannine riddles and their place in the development of Trinitarian theology,
Basil of Caesarea on John 1:1 as an affirmation of pro-Nicene Trinitarian doctrine, Paul and his legacy to Trinitarian theology, the spirit and the letter: 2 Corinthians 3:6 and the legacy of Origen in fourth-century Greek exegesis, and Augustine's move from a Johannine to a Pauline Trinitarian theology.
Basil of Caesarea wrote that we know God by his energies that descend to us, but his essence remains inaccessible.
This exploration of the Early Fathers' thought on work concentrates on
Basil of Caesarea, John Chrysostom, Ambrose of Milan, and Augustine as major figures that laid the foundations of an idea of work that is at the same time theological and ethical-political.
Chapter 3 shows how this subordinationist Pneumatology, and its implicitly anhypostatic (or at least insufficiently hypostatic) conception of the Spirit, are present in Latin theologians such as Augustine, Anselm, and Thomas, and among Greek theologians such as Athanasius and even
Basil of Caesarea and his brother Gregory of Nyssa.
Topics include religious education in classical Greece, learning about the Etruscan religion in ancient Rome, the Gospel of Luke and Acts of the Apostles as precursor of the conjunction of biblical faith and Hellenistic education, religious education in late antique paganism,
Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nazianzus on poetry in Christian education, primary and secondary religious education in Byzantium, and religious education and Bernard of Clairvaux.
Dantiscus carried on a lively correspondence with Erasmus, who dedicated his translation of
Basil of Caesarea's De Spiritu Sancto to his friend and kept a bust of the Polish humanist in his study.
Basil of Caesarea's penance (no reception of communion) of three years for a soldier who kills in war, Bell might not have made the mistake of claiming that the medieval church's requiring soldiers to go to confession upon returning from war was not for killing.
One of these case studies is the election of
Basil of Caesarea. Reading Norton alone, one would not know that Robert Pouchet and Raymond Van Dam have written well on knotty issues of chronology and the social networks that worked for and against Basil.
This section also disappoints in some of the assertions Pearse makes: the number of deaths from the crusades he garners from a website whose author accepts the inflated numbers of the medieval chroniclers; he asserts the univocal stance of the ante-Nicene church against Christian involvement in war, a stance equivocally maintained by Clement of Rome and Clement of Alexandria; and he cites a canon from
Basil of Caesarea in which, Pearse alleges, Basil consciously taught something new, even though Basil himself writes that he followed the Fathers.
In his narrative, Philostorgius rejected Nicene theology and criticized famous Nicene champions such as Athanasius of Alexandria and
Basil of Caesarea. His heroes instead were Aetius and Eunomius, who had promoted the doctrine that the Father and the Son in the Trinity were "dissimilar." As a heterodox theologian, Philostorgius composed a heterodox history that clearly did not mesh with a master narrative of the preordained victory of Nicene doctrines.
Basil of Caesarea - (Roman Catholic Church) the bishop of Caesarea who defended the Roman Catholic Church against the heresies of the 4th century; a saint and Doctor of the Church (329-379)