The original liturgy:
The Roman liturgy:
Basil of Caesarea (330-378)
Recall in Part 25: Gregory Nazianzus, that Basil attended the funeral of Gregory Nazianzus (the Elder). That eulogy was given by Gregory (the Younger). Basil and Gregory were friends. Given that Gregory (the Younger) agreed with the doctrinal views of Gregory (the Elder) and that Basil was in attendance at the funeral of the Elder where those views were put on display, it is reasonable to guess that all of them held similar viewpoints.
Basil wrote a lot. Among his works are 366 letters and 9 homilies. But let’s start by looking at De Spiritu Sancto:
It is an extraordinary statement, but it is none the less true, that the Spirit is frequently spoken of as the place of them that are being sanctified, and it will become evident that even by this figure the Spirit, so far from being degraded, is rather glorified. For words applicable to the body are, for the sake of clearness, frequently transferred in scripture to spiritual conceptions. Accordingly we find the Psalmist, even in reference to God, saying Be Thou to me a champion God and a strong place to save me and concerning the Spirit behold there is place by me, and stand upon a rock. Plainly meaning the place or contemplation in the Spirit wherein, after Moses had entered there, he was able to see God intelligibly manifested to him. This is the special and peculiar place of true worship; for it is said Take heed to yourself that thou offer not your burnt offerings in every place…but in the place the Lord your God shall choose. Deuteronomy 12:13-14 Now what is a spiritual burnt offering? The sacrifice of praise. And in what place do we offer it? In the Holy Spirit. Where have we learned this? From the Lord himself in the words The true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth. This place Jacob saw and said The Lord is in this place. Genesis 28:16 It follows that the Spirit is verily the place of the saints and the saint is the proper place for the Spirit, offering himself as he does for the indwelling of God, and called God’s Temple…
…And the doxology which we offer in the Spirit is not an acknowledgment of His rank; it is rather a confession of our own weakness, while we show that we are not sufficient to glorify Him of ourselves, but our sufficiency is in the Holy Spirit. Enabled in, [or by,] Him we render thanks to our God for the benefits we have received, according to the measure of our purification from evil, as we receive one a larger and another a smaller share of the aid of the Spirit, that we may offer the sacrifice of praise to God. Hebrews 13:15 According to one use, then, it is thus that we offer our thanksgiving, as the true religion requires, in the Spirit; although it is not quite unobjectionable that any one should testify of himself the Spirit of God is in me, and I offer glory after being made wise through the grace that flows from Him.
Another sense may however be given to the phrase, that just as the Father is seen in the Son, so is the Son in the Spirit. The worship in the Spirit suggests the idea of the operation of our intelligence being carried on in the light, as may be learned from the words spoken to the woman of Samaria. Deceived as she was by the customs of her country into the belief that worship was local, our Lord, with the object of giving her better instruction, said that worship ought to be offered in Spirit and in Truth, John 4:24 plainly meaning by the Truth, Himself.
Citation: Basil of Caesarea, “De Spiritu Sancto.” §26 ¶62,63,64
When Basil answers where we learned to make sacrifices (¶62), he points not to the Lord’s Supper, but to Christ’s words to the Samaritan women at the Well (¶64)! We noted this in Part 6: Irenaeus, Part 8: Interlude, Part 10: Origen, and Part 21: Eusebius. Critically, as we noted in our Part 27: Interlude response to FishEaters on the Eucharist, Jesus instructed us on what the true sacrifice was—in fulfillment of Malachi 1:11—long before the Last Supper and the crucifixion. The reason the early writers keep failing to identify Christ’s body and blood with our true sacrifice is because no writer in the first 300 years of the church ever offered Christ’s body and blood as a sacrifice, whether figuratively or literally.
But Basil did talk about the offering of Christ! He did not say that we offer Christ, he said that Christ offered himself. What do we offer instead? The true religion of the thanksgiving sacrifice of praise, of glory, of Spirit. Like the incense of Malachi 1:13 and Revelation 5:8, we offer spiritual burnt offerings of thanksgiving in prayer.
Which of the saints has left us in writing the words of the invocation at the displaying of the bread of the Eucharist and the cup of blessing?
…
Of necessity, then, the church teaches her own foster children to offer their prayers on that day standing, to the end that through continual reminder of the endless life we may not neglect to make provision for our removal there. Moreover all Pentecost is a reminder of the resurrection expected in the age to come. For that one and first day, if seven times multiplied by seven, completes the seven weeks of the holy Pentecost; for, beginning at the first, Pentecost ends with the same, making fifty revolutions through the like intervening days. And so it is a likeness of eternity, beginning as it does and ending, as in a circling course, at the same point. On this day the rules of the church have educated us to prefer the upright attitude of prayer, for by their plain reminder they, as it were, make our mind to dwell no longer in the present but in the future. Moreover every time we fall upon our knees and rise from off them we show by the very deed that by our sin we fell down to earth, and by the loving kindness of our Creator were called back to heaven.
Citation: Basil of Caesarea, “De Spiritu Sancto.” §27 ¶66
The bread is displayed and the prayers are offered. The bread is not offered and prayers are not displayed.
The bread displays—that is, figures—the body of Christ. When we break the bread, this is a figure of Christ’s body being broken on the cross. The bread is a display—or symbol—of the crucifixion. It is not offered. Prayer is offered, it is a true sacrifice. It is not a display.
Notice how Basil calls attention to the thanksgiving—eucharist—as a reminder (or remembrance) of the gift of eternal life.
Notice also that Basil has each person offering the thanksgiving standing up on Pentecost. Unlike in the Roman liturgy, where the laity kneel during the Eucharist, the early church banned kneeling on Sunday and during the seven weeks of Pentecost. The reason kneeling was banned was because kneeling represents sin falling mankind, but after our redemption represented by Sunday (Easter) and Pentecost, kneeling then would be an affront to Christ’s salvation. Standing represents the eternity of eternal life, so we do not do so on Sunday or Pentecost.
There is the famous Irenæus, and Clement of Rome; Dionysius of Rome, and, strange to say, Dionysius of Alexandria, in his second Letter to his namesake, on Conviction and Defence, so concludes. I will give you his very words.
Citation: Basil of Caesarea, “De Spiritu Sancto.” §29 ¶72
What did the presbyters who came before Basil teach that the church should offer? What did the presbyters who came before Dionysius of Alexandria and Dionysius of Rome say should be offered? Was it the body and blood of Christ? Was it the “Mass Sacrifice?” No, it was thanksgiving.
Basil, doing much the same as we have done in this series, examined the historical record and drew the same conclusion that we have made: the testimony of the early church writers is that the sacrifice the early church offered was thanksgiving, not the body and blood of Christ. But even as Basil wrote these words, the change to offering Christ’s body and blood as a sacrifice had already begun.
Now, let’s look at parts of one of Basil’s letters and two of his Homilies.
Citation: Basil of Caesarea, “Letter 8.” §4
Basil explicitly states that to eat his flesh and drink his flesh is, through his incarnation, to partake in his Word and his Wisdom. These are symbols of spiritual realities. Indeed, “his mystic sojourn” and “teaching” are his flesh and blood, and these nourish our soul.
Citation: Basil of Caesarea, “Homily 6.” §11
What does Basil tell us to offer? Ourselves. Our thanks. We do not find Christ’s body and blood offered.
And what do we find in the barley bread? We find spiritual food. We do not find in the bread the literal body and blood of Christ.
Citation: Basil of Caesarea, “Homily 8.” §8
Here Basil tells that the riches of God’s beautiful creation are a morning banquet, a visible memorial of his wonder. So wonderful are God’s creations that our awe of them risks minimizing the evening banquet, which is a visible memorial of Christ. The Lord’s Supper is both a celebration and a memorial. As with the beauty found in nature, the point of the bread and wine is to make the spiritual realities visible symbolically.
Basil died in 378, on the cusp of the rise of Roman Catholicism. While his views more-or-less coincide with the ancient liturgy found in Gregory Nazianzus the Elder (276-374), only five years later in 385 his friend Gregory the Younger (329-390) would make a propitiatory sacrifice, in the eucharist, of the body and blood of Christ. Basil’s brother, Gregory of Nyssa (335-395) would similarly depart from the ancient tradition. How did this change take place so quickly?
The answer is found here:
For we are not, as is well known, content with what the apostle or the Gospel has recorded, but both in preface and conclusion we add other words as being of great importance to the validity of the ministry, and these we derive from unwritten teaching. Moreover we bless the water of baptism and the oil of the chrism, and besides this the catechumen who is being baptized. On what written authority do we do this? Is not our authority silent and mystical tradition? Nay, by what written word is the anointing of oil itself taught? And whence comes the custom of baptizing thrice? And as to the other customs of baptism from what Scripture do we derive the renunciation of Satan and his angels? Does not this come from that unpublished and secret teaching which our fathers guarded in a silence out of the reach of curious meddling and inquisitive investigation? Well had they learned the lesson that the awful dignity of the mysteries is best preserved by silence. What the uninitiated are not even allowed to look at was hardly likely to be publicly paraded about in written documents.
Citation: Basil of Caesarea, “De Spiritu Sancto.” §27 ¶66
The Church was going through a transition phase where no longer was the written Word of God considered the sole revelation of God. Now, suddenly, secret and mysterious doctrines could be added that were previously unpublished and silent.
This was a major red flag: the new Roman Catholic Church would be unmoored from scripture. A massive flood of doctrinal error was introduced when doctrines no longer had to be rooted in written scripture, and (as in the Latin Vulgate) scripture could be now be rewritten to suit those new doctrines.
Recall how in Part 17: Interlude, we briefly discussed how Jerome translated the Greek “mystery” (musterion) into the Latin “sacrament” (sacramentum) in the Latin Vulgate Bible? This corruption had the effect of turning ritual observances into mysteries at the level of scripture. But the idea didn’t begin with Jerome. Here in Basil we see a peek into the movement throughout the church to introduce new doctrines under the guise of silent, unwritten mysteries.
The irony here is great. Tertullian talked about the sacred secrets—revealed mysteries—of the Christian faith and he talked about the sacraments—initiation pledges—of faith in Christ (sealed through baptism and thanksgiving). He even talked about those things in relation to one another, after all it is through the initiation into the faith that one gains access to the sacred secrets of faith. But he never equated those things. By contrast, Basil hid what Christ revealed to all, and in doing so opened the door to the introduction of private revelations into new church doctrines. The sacred secrets of the gospel of grace became the unknown, silent, hidden, unwritten mysteries only revealed to certain, privileged initiated members of the church.
In Part 34: Hilary of Poiters (310-367), we explore this theme in more depth.
But before we go, let’s at least consider that Basil still loved the scriptures and considered them to be the final and inspired Word of God:
Citation: Basil of Caesarea, “Letter 189.” §3
Imagine being able to go to scripture to determine whether a doctrine should be binding!
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