Abstract

Abstract:

Basil of Ancyra, an important bishop and theologian in the decades following the Council of Nicaea, famously argued that the Son is like (homoios), but not identical, to the Father, just as Christ is like, but not identical, to other human beings. This article seeks to explain this complicated analogy between Christ's humanity and his relationship with the Father by looking at the logic of Basil's synodal letter of 358. Rejecting the argument that Basil saw consubstantiality in itself as the peculiar mark of passionate, material generation, this paper highlights the role of sin, rather than pathos, in Basil's anthropology and christology. For Basil, the dynamic of sin serves to differentiate Christ from other human beings, just as the idiom of paternity and an unoriginate mode of possessing divinity distinguish the Father from the Son. As a way of navigating between the extremes of Heteroousian and Marcellan theologies, Basil's theology was an important attempt at articulating what would become the hypostatic distinction between the Father and the Son.

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