CHAPTER 7
HOLY PEDAGOGUE,
PERFECTING GUIDE
The Holy Spirit’s Presence in Creation
DANIEL LEE HILL
“WHERE SHALL I GO FROM YOUR SPIRIT? Or where shall I flee from your presence?” the psalmist wonders, “if I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are here” (Ps 139:7–8).1 In these brief sentences, the Psalmist confesses that the Lord’s presence and nearness is a source of great comfort for his people. Yet in so doing, the Psalmist also raises significant questions regarding the meaning of divine presence. What does it mean for God to be present in his world? Moreover, how can such language be meaningfully applied to the Holy Spirit, the one whom we confess as Lord and life-giver?
Traditionally, the church has affirmed that the triune God is omnipresent. And if what is true of the essence is indeed true of the Trinitarian persons, then the Holy Spirit must be omnipresent as well. Yet, at the same time, the church has affirmed that there are unique “sites” of the Spirit’s presence in the temple, church, and believer. How can we conceive of these latter instances without predicating spatial categories to God? Put differently, what are we to make of the language of divine presence throughout the Scriptures, particularly as it relates to the third person of the Holy Trinity? This paper will attempt to move toward an answer through a dialogue with Basil of Caesarea. In it I will argue that a retrieval of Basil’s account of conceptualization and his particular pneumatological points of emphasis provides a helpful resource for responding to questions of divine presence. More specifically, I will argue that the Spirit’s presence should be understood predominantly as an articulation of the Spirit’s role in inscribing creation with its telos, training creation in wisdom, and guiding creation toward its ultimate end: reconciliation in Christ. This essay will consist in three parts. First, I will give an overview of the problem of divine presence as it is raised in the work of Robert Jenson. From there, I will explore Basil’s view of the Holy Spirit, focusing specifically on his approach to theological language and his emphasis on the Spirit’s work as an active participant in the work of creation and sanctification, wherein the Spirit not only inscribes creation with its telos but also works within the creature to realize its true end. Finally, I will retrieve Basil’s insights, arguing that language of the Spirit’s presence is perhaps best understood as description of how God uses space to train creation in wisdom and providentially direct it toward reconciliation in Christ.
THE QUESTION OF SPACE
The question regarding divine presence is perhaps uniquely raised when we consider the person of Jesus Christ and the mission of the Spirit. While the church has traditionally confessed that spacetime is a creation of the triune God, it has also affirmed that God is uniquely present on earth in the incarnation. But if Jesus Christ is the condition for the possibility of the knowledge of God as well as the perfect revelation of the Godhead, and Jesus Christ exists in space, does this not then require us to conceive of God in spatial terms? After all, it is in Jesus Christ and not in Peter or Pilate that God is uniquely present.2 Furthermore, how are we to make sense of notions of the temple and church as unique loci of the Holy Spirit’s presence? Scripture seems to describe the Holy Spirit as uniquely present in the church and believer (cf. 1 Cor 6:19; Eph 2:22), at least in a way that appears to be dissimilar to his presence in the rest of creation. In order to make sense of these doctrinal commitments, are we not required to appeal to spatial categories to articulate cogently how God can be more present or uniquely present in certain locations as opposed to others?
Robert Jenson, for his part, wonders if traditional accounts of divine omnipresence and timelessness have much to offer in response to these questions. He writes, “So we may say that God transcends space, meaning perhaps that if he is present in one place he is not necessarily absent from any other. But this tells us very little about God’s actual relation to space, certainly far from enough to form any decisive part of the distinction between Creator and creature.”3 Jenson worries that such interpretations either completely divorce God from the created order or subsume the world within the divine essence in a way that obliterates creaturely integrity. Instead, Jenson proposes that we reconstruct our understanding of the Creator’s relationship to creation so as to avoid obfuscating the distinctiveness of creation. “For God to create is for him to open a place in his triune life for others than the three whose mutual life he is. . . . He makes room, and that act is the event of creation. If creation is God’s making room in himself, then God must be roomy.”4 This room or space is a “conversational space,” since the triune persons of the Godhead and creation itself are constituted by a communal conversation.5 Consequently, time, and by extension space, are not things that differentiate the Creator and creature; they are that which the Creator shares in common with his creature.
For Jenson, then, the Spirit is present within creation as its liberator, freeing it for a future life with God.6 As it relates to the questions of the believer and the church, Jenson argues that the Spirit is present within the ecclesial community as its spirit—that is, he is its animating principle and the center of its polity.7
While Jenson desires to avoid appeals to substance ontology, one cannot shake the feeling that he still depicts the Godhead as the larger container that surrounds the created order. If this is the case, it seems that we quickly transition from discussing God’s mode of being to exploring the mysteries of the divine essence itself. And it is unclear to me how such claims do not presume to possess an essential knowledge of God. Moreover, there is the worry that such spatial metaphors commit the error of projection, pushing us down the Feuerbachian rabbit hole into a land where God truly is beholden to the creature’s imagination.8
BASIL, THE HOLY SPIRIT, AND DIVINE PRESENCE
However, in exploring Basil’s Trinitarian theology with special reference to his pneumatology, it seems that we are presented with another option. But first we must stop to engage Basil on account of how language functions in relation to the divine essence. From there, we will turn to articulate his particular points of emphasis vis-à-vis the mission of the Holy Spirit before appropriating it in the task of theological retrieval.
BASIL AND THEOLOGICAL LANGUAGE
In order to understand Basil’s Trinitarian theology and his approach to theological language, it is helpful to begin with his dispute with Eunomius of Cyzicus. Eunomius, in his Apology, claimed to possess knowledge of the very essence of God and in so doing concluded that only the Father, as the unbegotten one, was truly God. “God is the only true and only wise God because only he is unbegotten.”9 For Eunomius, the logic is rather clear. Since God is not composed of parts, we cannot claim that only part of God is unbegotten, nor can we state that there is anything else within God other than unbegottenness. Moreover, God cannot be both begotten and unbegotten, because God is one. In Eunomius’s understanding, then, a commitment to both divine simplicity and unity precludes the Son, who is begotten, from being divine. Divinity qua divinity just is essentially unbegottenness and, as a result, the Son differs from the Father on the level of being.10
It is important to note that a quest to stabilize theological epistemology fuels Eunomius’s project: he wants to ensure that we can have true knowledge of God. Eunomius posited that our knowledge of God is immediate and that this enables theological language to be predicated of him univocally. As Andrew Radde-Gallwitz explains, “The only way theology can be meaningful is if the ontology of simple divine being is perfectly reflected in our speech about it.”11 For Eunomius, then, names grant us actual contact with essences they represent, and so to know God’s name is to have God’s actual essence present in one’s mind.12
According to Basil, Eunomius errs in that he has claimed access to a kind of knowledge that is not readily available: essential knowledge. For Basil, neither unbegottenness nor any other name can exhaust the knowledge of God. Rather, the essence of God is fundamentally beyond us, and names contribute to our knowledge of God.13 Basil argues that “unbegottenness” and “begottenness” are properties of the Father and Son, but that neither defines the divine essence en toto.14 Consequently, the divine substance is something we can describe but is beyond our ability to define.15
So how then do we apply the names and concepts of Scripture to God in a way that avoids Eunomius’s error while still granting us true knowledge of the triune God? Due to our proclivity to project creaturely categories onto God, Basil suggests that we must undergo a process of “conceptualization” where our creaturely knowledge of God is refined. Basil writes, “Godly thoughts about God must be pure so far as is possible for the human mind.”16As Dragos Giulea observes, conceptualization is “the intellectual process of identifying the distinct attributes (ίδιόματα) of a certain class of realities.”17 For example, Basil recognizes that in ordinary language “to beget” refers to either the process of procreation or affinity of nature.18 Instead of assuming that such language has to do with degrees of greatness or priority of existence, “begottenness and unbegottenness are distinctive features that enable identification.”19 As Radde-Gallwitz notes, “Basil is clear . . . that we need to ‘purify’ certain concepts, like the concepts of Fatherhood and generation or begetting, in order to grasp them rightly in the case of God. On the one hand, we apply ordinary language to God without altering its basic meaning; on the other, we must modify ordinary language to avoid problematic connotations.”20 According to Basil, we can indeed have positive knowledge of God, but this knowledge is always chastened by the reality that we can only know God, who is simple, in a piecemeal fashion.21
Bringing this issue to bear on our question of divine presence in general and the Spirit’s presence in particular, it seems that Basil would charge us to “purify” the concept of space in a way not dissimilar from his purification of the term begottenness. The question we must ask is: What then is the language divine presence intended to communicate? Is such language intended to give us essential knowledge of God? Or something else? T. F. Torrance avers that space is perhaps better understood as the place where God meets and interacts with his world.22 Just as Basil argued that a commonality of power between the Son and Father presupposed a commonality of essence, so too we might argue that divine activity presupposes divine presence.23 In other words, the language of divine presence in Scripture is intended to draw our attention to what God is doing, and if God is doing something, then he is present. Accordingly, our inquiry into the Spirit’s presence in creation will turn to focus on the question of the Spirit’s activity in the created world, a question that takes us back to Basil, who depicts the Spirit as the giver of life and sanctification.
THE ONE WHO GIVES LIFE
One of the primary ways that Basil describes the Spirit’s presence in creation is in virtue of his activity of creating and sustaining the created world. In his defense of the deity of the Holy Spirit, Basil argues that the Holy Spirit shares in the work of creation and is therefore divine. For Basil, there is a sharp distinction differentiating the Creator from creation. He writes, “Either [the Holy Spirit] is a creature and therefore a slave . . . or else he is above creation and shares in the kingship.”24 According to Basil, if the Spirit is not numbered among the creatures, then he stands on the “Creator” side of the dividing line, sharing in the kingship and power of the Godhead.25 However, Basil not only argues that the Spirit is to be identified with the Creator, but he also posits that the Spirit was active in the very act of creation.26
What then is the Spirit’s particular contribution to the creative process? On the one hand, Basil affirms the inseparable operations of the Trinity, especially vis-à-vis the act of creation.27 The triune God, Father, Son, and Spirit, is the maker of heaven and earth. At the same time, Basil appropriates the acts of sustaining the created order and inscribing each creature with its proper telos to the Holy Spirit. As the sustainer of the created order, the Spirit “quickens” living creatures and works together with the Father and Son to ensure creation’s continued existence.28 For Basil, the Spirit gives the waters the power to produce life and “bestows firmness and steadfastness upon the heavenly powers.”29 However, not only does the Spirit sustain creation, but he also inscribes each creature with its respective telos, which is essential to the identity of each creature. Timothy McConnell avers that Basil’s description of the Spirit as the perfecting cause of creation is rooted in an argument from teleology. The Spirit inscribes a telos into each creature, and this telos is essential to the substantial identity of each created thing. McConnell writes, “Following Aristotle, Basil is confident in saying that this purpose is constitutive of the essence of the cosmos. There is no essence without a purpose, no ousia without a telos.”30 Moreover, Basil argues that God’s pronouncement of creation’s goodness in Genesis 1 is a reflection of creation’s fulfillment of the purposes that God has given to it.31 And for Basil, the inscription of this telos is appropriated to the Holy Spirit.32
THE ONE WHO SANCTIFIES
However, the Spirit is present to creation not only as its creator and sustainer but also as its perfecter, drawing it into communion with God.33 Perhaps the most lucid portrait of the Spirit’s perfecting work appears in Basil’s discussion of the Spirit’s role in the sanctification of believers. Basil argues that the Spirit “teaches us who were blinded, and guides us to the choice of what profits us.”34 On the one hand, Basil repeatedly accentuates the Spirit’s work in advancing the believer in piety.35 Whether it is from dispositions of gluttony, greed, anger, or lust, the Spirit works to “liberate creation,” cleansing us from vice and lifting our eyes away from corruptible things so that we might “behold the ‘Brightness of the glory’ of God.”36 Consequently, one’s growth in piety cannot be disconnected from the Spirit’s work of illumination, as he grants us the ability to contemplate God in Christ. For Basil, the Spirit “shows the glory of the only begotten, and on true worshipers He in Himself bestows the knowledge of God. Thus the way of the knowledge of God lies from One Spirit through the One Son to the One Father.”37 We might say, then, that the Spirit is the one who guides us and shapes us so that our lives are molded in the wisdom of God.
But we must remember that the Spirit is not merely the perfecter of humanity but the perfecting cause of all of creation. In other words, if creation is to become holy—whatever that might entail—it can do so only on account of the Spirit’s presence and work. Admittedly, Basil is less interested in delineating the exact details of the perfection of nonangelic and nonhuman creatures. However, it seems that his logic must run strongly in this direction since “nothing is made holy, except by the presence of the Spirit.”38
TRACES OF DIVINE PRESENCE
One cannot help but notice that, for Basil, discussion of God’s presence focuses predominantly on God’s activity in the world. It begins with a focus on divine action, that is, the Spirit’s activity in the world, and reasons backward to the reality of divine presence. In other words, we can affirm that the Spirit of God is present within the created order by paying attention to what God is doing in the world he created as the Spirit sustains, orders, and directs creation to the fulfill the purposes God assigned to it.
RETRIEVING AND EXTENDING BASIL’S PNEUMATOLOGY
It seems to me that Basil provides two primary goods for a theological understanding of the Spirit’s presence in all of creation. First, his process of conceptualization should chasten our proclivity to predicate spatial or local language of God. Simply put, we must recognize the significant dissonance that ideas such as “space” and “locality” will retain when referring to the God who is “before all things.” For our purposes, we might say that the Spirit’s presence in creation does not mean that God or the Spirit “occupies space” but that the Spirit is present to and active in creation. The second emphasis builds on the first: our focus must shift from what to how in regards to the Spirit’s presence in creation. In virtue of the Spirit’s presence, how is he relating to the created order? Extending Basil’s thought, we can describe the Spirit’s presence in creation in two regards. First, the Spirit is present to creation as the one who trains and marks creation with the wisdom of God. Second, the Spirit is present to creation as the one who sustains as he directs creation to its ultimate telos: reconciliation in Christ.
HOLY PEDAGOGUE
First, then, the Spirit is present in creation as its pedagogue, training and forming creation in wisdom. In confessing that the Spirit is present in creation, we confess him as the one who inscribes creation with the wisdom of God and trains it to reflect the wisdom of God. “Observe well, [the psalmist] says, the creation, and, aided by the order in it, thus ascend to the contemplation of the Creator.”39 While Basil is clear that humans are rational animals, he seems to suggest that creation itself is marked with the wisdom of God.40 Whether it is in the gnats, bees, ants, or stones, Basil argues that “frequently in the smallest objects the wisdom of the Creator shines forth.”41 He argues that the created world “is really the school where reasonable souls exercise themselves, the training ground where they learn to know God; since by the sight of visible and sensible things the mind is led, as by a hand, to the contemplation of invisible things.”42 Elsewhere, Basil notes that to hear the voice of God is to “entertain noble thoughts of God, contemplating sublimely the reasons for creation, and being able to comprehend to a certain extent at least the goodness of God’s providence.”43 Creation, in a sense, is inscribed with the very wisdom of the “supreme Artificer.”44 It is for this reason that Basil encourages the saints to contemplate “the Creator in relation to the created world” in order to grow “in knowledge and praise of the Creator.”45 While Basil seems to be primarily emphasizing an anthropological point, it has clear implications for our understanding of how the Spirit is present in creation. It is the Spirit’s task to communicate the knowledge of God in Christ to the believer.46 Furthermore, for Basil, the end and final purpose of perfection is ingrained into the very fabric of creation. Consequently, if this wisdom is not merely subjectively perceived, albeit in virtue of the Spirit’s aid, but actually present, then it stands to reason that the Spirit is writing the wisdom of Christ in the created world.
However, Basil also seems to hint that things may be taken a step further. Not only is creation intended to direct us in praise of God and is thereby indelibly marked by the presence of the Spirit, all created things, inanimate and animate, are to join in praise of God. He writes, “If there should be the noise of waters breaking against some barrier, and if the sea, thrown into confusion by the winds, should seethe and send forth a mighty sound, these inanimate creatures have voice from the Lord, since Scripture shows that every creature all but cries out, proclaiming the Creator.”47 However, we must remember that, for Basil, the Spirit enables any creature—angelic, human, or otherwise—to offer praise to God.48 The Spirit is present in creation, teaching it to offer praise to God. Admittedly, Basil does not elaborate much on this point. In fact, he could be simply stating that inanimate creation glorifies God in virtue of its being.49 And this certainly does seem to be a theme throughout Basil’s corpus. However, I believe there are grounds to think that creation’s glorification of God entails more than that when viewed through the lens of wisdom. Wisdom, at least in part, involves the ability to navigate one’s proximate contexts. Ephraim Radner writes, “Wisdom . . . is precisely the fruit of the life, at least one that is well ordered. Thus, the shape of a life over time is one aimed at wisdom.”50 Concerning creation, there does seem to be a grain that it ought to follow and a particular way that its existence ought to be shaped, even while it remains subjected to decay. If this is the case, the Spirit is present in creation, directing, guiding, and sustaining it in its proximate contexts. Just as the Spirit is the teacher of those who believe in Christ, we might also say that the Spirit is present in creation, training it in the wisdom of Christ.51
Yet, after a second glance, this only seems to be applicable to rational and semirational living creatures or, at the very least, those creatures endowed with some semblance of agency. After all, it is difficult to ascertain how a piece of granite or pile of sand might grow in wisdom. What then does it mean for nonliving creatures to be inscribed and trained in wisdom? While the Scriptures do seem to indicate that nonliving creatures offer praise to God (cf. Ps 65:11–13; Isa 44:23), we may be hard pressed to elucidate the mysteries such texts connote. After all, as Robert Spaemann notes, our understanding of the internal life of other living creatures is constrained by the limits of anthropomorphism.52 So how then can we account for the Spirit’s work in leading all of creation to glory in the wisdom of God?
For our purposes, it might be helpful to think of nature’s participation in the glorification of God along symphonic lines. Consider, for example, a snare drum, consisting of a rawhide covering stretched across and latched to a wooden shell. When the rawhide is struck with a hand or drumstick, a series of sounds ring forth, sounds which are ordered and measured to make music. However, those sounds, and the subsequent performance that they will comprise, do not seem to be reducible to either the drumstick, the hand, or the snare drum. Rather, the sound emerges from the encounter between the wood of the drumstick and the canvas of the drum. Additionally, in order for a proper sound to emerge from the drum, it is not enough for the drummer to merely perceive the instrument in a particular way. Switching sections, from percussion to strings, a cello’s strings must be properly tuned and the appropriate amount of rosin must be applied to the bow in order for the instrument to realize its telos. It is not enough for the cellist to subjectively appreciate the instrument, but a change must take place in the objects themselves. Recognizing the limits of analogy, then, it seems that we can say that the Spirit is the one who affects this change; he “tunes” the animate and inanimate objects that comprise the creaturely orchestra so that starry hosts and limestone alike can in fact “declare the glory of the Lord” (Ps 19:1). And for those galaxies and comets which blink in and out of existence without being perceived by the human eye, we would do well to remember how the angels themselves offer a “Spirited” praise, as the diversity of creation leads them to worship the wisdom of the Creator (cf. Rev. 4:11). In the event that any such praise is taking place, we recall from Basil that it is only in virtue of the Spirit’s work that any creature, living or otherwise, is given a voice whereby it might rightly participate in the praise of God. In essence, the Spirit is creation’s maestro, enabling it to become “well-pleasing to God” and leading it in worship of its Creator.53
PERFECTING GUIDE
Second, the Spirit is present in creation as its perfecting guide. Here, we extend Basil’s discussion of the Spirit’s role as the agent of sanctification to describe how he works to cleanse and purify creation from corruption, readying it for eschatological rest. In other words, in stating that the Spirit of God is present in creation, Christians confess that the Spirit is providentially at work in his world, directing creation toward its telos: reconciliation in Christ (cf. Col 1:20). For Basil, creation is teleological and can only be understood teleologically.54 This is evident in Basil’s discussion of the goodness of creation in Genesis 1. Throughout the creation account, God repeatedly observes that his creative work “is good.” For Basil, this communicates a divine affirmation of creation’s suitedness to accomplish the ends for which it was created.55 However, the realization of the creature’s purpose and telos is fundamentally dependent upon the work of the Spirit. As McConnell notes, “Human beings, like the rest of creation of which they are a part, are measured in goodness by their orientation toward their proper end. They are helpless in being directed toward their proper end, as in fact all of creation is helpless in being oriented toward its proper end, without the Spirit of God.”56 All of creation is intended to experience reconciliation with God, and it is the Spirit of God who enables this telos to be realized. While, as Ian McFarland rightly cautions us, we must maintain a healthy level of agnosticism regarding the degree to which God’s glory is manifested in the perfection of mayflies, cicadas, and echidnas, we do see glimpses throughout the Scriptures of creation lamenting the futility and corruption to which it has been subjected (cf. Rom 8:20–21) and ultimately rejoicing in the consummated victory of God in Christ (cf. Isa 55:12).57 The Spirit actively sustains creation in being and directs it toward this future consummation, the end for which it was created. Gunton writes, “We must say that through his Son and Spirit . . . the Father both prevents creation from slipping back into the nothingness from which it came and restores its teleology, its movement to perfection.”58 The Spirit of God guides creation toward the realization of its telos and ensures that it can be what God has created it to be.
The Spirit, as creation’s perfecting cause, is the one who works to bring creation into a place of eschatological rest. On the one hand, the Spirit works to communicate the blessings of divine providence, as God actively upholds the integrity of the created order and directs it in faithful care.59 Yet more than that, the Spirit leads creation onward, directing it toward the realization of its telos. Robert Wilken notes that for Basil the work of God’s creation ex nihilo implies that there is a particular telos toward which creation is intended. He writes, “Beginning also implies end, not only in the sense that the world will come to an end, but that its created was directed to a ‘useful end.’ Basil recognizes . . . that creation is an ongoing work of God, and the world is providentially ordered by God’s guiding hand.”60 While the providence of God in the present is a confession of faith and seems to be clouded in mystery, particularly in a world that appears to swarm with chaos, Basil reminds us that created things are headed in a particular direction and it is the Spirit’s presence that both undergirds the creature’s existence and ensures the realization of this telos. Ultimately, the Spirit is creation’s guide and his presence testifies to the fact that God has not abandoned his world and is committed to faithfully caring for it.
DIVINE PRESENCE AS COMMUNICATIVE PRESENCE
As John Webster reminds us, “The centre of theological concern, we might say, is less the physics of space or the poetics of space than the ‘economics’ of space, its significance in God’s ordered administration of created reality.”61 Questions regarding the nature of divine presence ought to be developed with an eye and ear toward the communication of the blessings of divine providence to his creatures. With Basil, then, we can restrain any proclivities to capture divine presence with the creaturely categories of space and time. Rather, in saying that God’s is present in creation, we focus on a much more fundamental claim: God the Father, with his two hands of Son and Spirit, is providentially sustaining the created world as he prevents it from slipping into nothingness, directs it toward eschatological rest, and trains and conforms it in divine wisdom. Creaturely space, as Webster reminds us, serves as the realm in which the omnipresent Creator affirms the distinction of his creation while enabling the creature to be confronted with the saving reality of God in Christ. “In him all creaturely places are reordered, by being claimed with the full authority of the one who is Lord of heaven and earth, as the spaces in which we are to discover the presence of God.”62 It seems, then, following Webster, that when the Christian confesses the Spirit’s presence among creation she is affirming a form of communicative presence, that is, the Spirit of God’s active communication of the blessings of redemption and providence to the created world.63 The Spirit directs creatures in wisdom so that they can navigate their proximate contexts and reach their intended ends. The Spirit brings creatures into being, inscribes them with their telos, and trains them in wisdom. But more than that, the Holy Spirit is also the Spirit of perfection, that is, the Spirit guides the created world away from corruption and away from futility to a place of rest, enabling it to participate in its ultimate purpose: the worship of God.
NOTES
1. Unless indicated otherwise, Scripture quotations in this chapter come from the ESV.
2. This conundrum is perhaps heightened when we consider the theophanies of the Old Testament. To consider just a few examples, it is near the oaks of Mamre, the burning bush at Mount Horeb, and in the clefts of Mount Sinai that God appears to Abraham and Moses respectively (cf. Gen 18:1–5; Ex 3:4–6; 33:18–23). These texts certainly seem to indicate that God’s presence is localized in these three locations on these three occasions in a way that God was not present in the clefts of Kilimanjaro, near the oak trees of Ann Arbor, or the depths of the Mariana Trench.
3. Robert Jenson, “Creator and Creature,” in Theology as Revisionary Metaphysics: Essays on God and Creation, ed. Stephen John Wright (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2014), 157. Jenson is not alone in this. Jürgen Moltmann writes, “In order to create a world ‘outside’ himself, the infinite God must have made room beforehand for a finitude in himself. It is only a withdrawal by God into himself that can free the space into which God can act creatively.” Jürgen Moltmann, God in Creation: A New Theology of Creation and the Spirit of God, trans. Margaret Kohl, The Gifford Lectures 1984–1985 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 86. For Moltmann, God carves out space in creation, and then returns to preserve it in virtue of the Spirit’s presence, preventing creation from returning to the nihil from whence it came and preparing it for Sabbath rest (150). See also Richard Bauckham, The Theology of Jürgen Moltmann (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995), 184–85.
4. Robert Jenson, “Aspects of a Doctrine of Creation,” in The Doctrine of Creation: Essays in Dogmatics, History, and Philosophy, ed. Colin E. Gunton (London: T&T Clark, 2004), 24. Elsewhere Jenson writes, “We arrive at the idea of envelopment: to be a creature is to be in a specific way bracketed by the life of the triune persons. . . . For God to create is for him to make accommodation in his triune life for other person and things than the three whose mutual life he is. In himself, he opens room, and that act is the event of creation.” Robert Jenson, Systematic Theology, vol. 2, The Works of God (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 25. See also Robert Jenson, “Does God Have Time?,” in Essays in Theology of Culture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 190–201.
5. Paul Cumin, “Robert Jenson and the Spirit of It All: or, You (Sometimes) Wonder Where Everything Else Went,” Scottish Journal of Theology 60, no. 2 (2007): 169.
6. Jenson, The Works of God, 28.
7. Jenson, The Works of God, 197. Earlier, Jenson writes, “The spirit of the church is the Holy Spirit himself ” (182). For a discussion of Jenson’s pneumatology and ecclesiology, see Michael Mawson, “The Spirit and the Community: Pneumatology and Ecclesiology in Jenson, Hütter and Bonhoeffer,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 15, no. 4 (2013): 454–59.
8. Karen Kilby, “Perichoresis and Projection: Problems with Social Doctrines of the Trinity,” New Blackfriars 81, no. 956 (2000): 442. See also Alan J. Torrance, “Creatio Ex Nihilo and the Spatio-Temporal Dimensions, with Special Reference to Jürgen Moltmann and D. C. Williams,” in Doctrine of Creation: Essays in Dogmatics, History, and Philosophy, ed. Colin E. Gunton (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1997), 90–91.
9. Eunomius, Eunomius: The Extant Works, trans. Richard P. Vaggione (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 62–63.
10. Eunomius, The Extant Works, 46–47. Gregory Lee provides a helpful summary of Eunomius’s argument. He writes, “On [Eunomius and Aetius’] account, the essence of God is to be unbegotten. But the Son is begotten of the Father and not unbegotten. Therefore, the Father alone is God, and the Son is not. The Son is, moreover, of a different essence (ousia) from the Father, which means he is actually ‘unlike’ the Father.” Gregory Lee, “The Spirit’s Self-Testimony: Pneumatology in Basil of Caesarea and Augustine of Hippo,” in Spirit of God: Christian Renewal in the Community of Faith, ed. Jeffrey W. Barbeau and Beth Felker Jones (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2015), 41. For an excellent discussion of Eunomius’s argument in favor of limiting divinity to the Father, see Michel René Barnes, The Power of God: Dynamis in Gregory of Nyssa’s Trinitarian Theology, repr. ed. (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2016), 173–219.
11. Andrew Radde-Gallwitz, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and the Transformation of Divine Simplicity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 114.
12. Richard Paul Vaggione, Eunomius of Cyzicus and the Nicene Revolution, Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 254. For an explanation of the origin and reasoning behind Eunomius’s theory of names, see Mark DelCogliano, Basil of Caesarea’s Anti-Eunomian Theory of Names: Christian Theology and Late-Antique Philosophy in the Fourth Century Trinitarian Controversy, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae, (Boston: Brill, 2010), 49–134.
13. Radde-Gallwitz, Basil of Caesarea, 152.
14. Alco Meesters, “The Cappadocians and Their Trinitarian Conceptions of God,” Neue Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie 54, no. 4 (2012): 404. DelCogliano notes, “In Basil’s notionalist theory of names, all names—including proper and absolute names—do not communicate substance, but properties, often called distinguishing marks. Different kinds of names simply disclose different kinds of properties” (DelCogliano, Basil of Caesarea’s Anti-Eunomian Theory of Names, 221).
15. Radde-Gallwtiz, Basil of Caesarea, 157.
16. Basil, On Faith, 3.94.
17. Dragos A. Giulea “Divine Being’s Modulations: Ousia in the Pro-Nicene Context of the Fourth Century,” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 59, no. 3 (2015): 331.
18. Basil, Against Eunomius, 2.24.
19. Basil, Against Eunomius, 2.29.
20. Andrew Radde-Gallwitz, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and the Transformation of Divine Simplicity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 117–18.
21. As Radde-Gallwitz observes, Basil predicates a number of terms as common to the divine substance as a whole, including but not limited to life, light, and goodness (Basil of Caesarea, 157–62). For example, Basil writes, “For we claim to know the greatness, the power, the wisdom, the goodness of God, as well as the providence by which he cares for us and the justice of his judgments, but not the very essence. For the one who claims that he does not know the essence does not admit that he does not know God, since our notion of God is drawn together from many things which we have enumerated” (Ep. 234.1.5–12).
22. Thomas F. Torrance, Space, Time, and Incarnation (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1997), 13.
23. Basil writes, “Christ is the power of God, therefore, he is called the Unicorn on the ground that he has one horn, that is, one common power with the Father” (Basil, Hom., 13.5). Michel Barnes helps to clarify Basil’s reasoning, which is rooted in exegesis of Jn 5:19 and 1 Cor 2:24. Barnes explains that Basil makes “explicit the link between Christ’s actions and the power that produces these actions. . . . The similarity of action testified to in John 5:19 is thus witness to the identical power that must exist to produce the common actions. And the common power means common essence.” Michel René Barnes, The Power of God: Dynamis in Gregory of Nyssa’s Trinitarian Theology, repr. ed. (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2016), 164.
24. Basil, On the Holy Spirit, 20.51.48–50. Hildebrand notes that for Basil “all human beings . . . are homotimoi, sharing the rank of slaves before the creator. But there is no mediating rank between creator and creature, and the Spirit cannot be ranked with creatures—he is not homotimos with creatures.” Hildebrand, The Trinitarian Theology of Basil of Caesarea (New York: Routledge, 2018), 96.
25. Basil, Ep., 105.
26. Basil, Hexaemeron 2.6.
27. Basil writes, “Since, then, the Savior is the Word of the Lord, and the Holy Spirit is the Spirit from His mouth, both joined with Him in the creation of the heavens and the powers in them” (Basil, Hom., 15.4). Elsewhere, we see Basil argue in a manner similar to his argument on behalf of the deity of the Son: if the Spirit shares in the creative power of God, he must also share in the essence of God (cf. Basil, Ep., 105).
28. Basil writes, the Spirit “quickens together with God, who produces and preserves all things alive, and together with the Son, who gives life” (On the Holy Spirit, 24.56).
29. Basil, Hexaemeron, 2.6; Against Eunomius, 3.4. Elsewhere, Basil describes the Spirit as the “life-giving Power” (Basil, Ep. 105). Timothy McConnell writes, “Basil’s theology includes the Spirit in the divine act of creation and gives the Spirit a divine role in the continuous sustaining of the created order.” McConnell, Illumination in Basil of Caesarea’s Doctrine of the Holy Spirit (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2014), 98.
30. McConnell, Illumination in Basil of Caesarea, 103. This is not intended to imply, however, that Basil was a thoroughgoing Aristotelian. As David Robertson observes, in Basil’s time the distinction between Stoic and Aristotelian had dissolved. “Basil is somewhere in between the Stoic and Aristotelian doctrines of substance, while his mind is also guided on these matters by his theological predecessors and contemporaries.” Robertson, “Stoic and Aristotelian Notions of Substance in Basil of Caesarea,” Vigiliae Christianeae 52, no. 4 (1998): 417.
31. Basil writes, “It is not to the eyes of God that things made by him afford pleasure, nor is his approbation of beautiful objects such as it is with us; but, beauty is that which is brought to perfection according to the principle of art and which contributes to the usefulness of its ends” (Hexaemeron 3.10). Notice here that Basil connects the “perfection” of creaturely realities with their specific telos, a perfection that is brought about through the work of the Spirit.
32. McConnell, Illumination in Basil of Caesarea, 104.
33. Basil, On the Holy Spirit, 9.23.
34. Basil, On the Holy Spirit, 19.50.
35. Basil, Hom., 17.2. As Christopher Beeley notes, “Basil identifies the Holy Spirit primarily with the work of sanctification and the Christian’s progress in virtue. In Basil’s view, human beings fulfill their purpose to become fully the image and likeness of God chiefly through the mastery of the passions.” Beeley, “The Holy Spirit in the Cappadocians: Past and Present,” Modern Theology 26, no. 1 (2010): 96.
36. Basil, On the Holy Spirit, 26.64; cf. Hom., 14. Elsewhere, Basil describes piety as “the groundwork and foundation of perfection (Hexaemeron 1.5).
37. Basil, On the Holy Spirit, 18.47. In wonderfully poetic language, Basil posits that Ps 45:2 refers to the Holy Spirit “because he is wise and apt teacher of all” (Hom., 17.3). In another homily, he writes, “The common Director of our lives, the great Teacher, the Spirit of truth, wisely and cleverly set forth the rewards, in order that, rising above the present labors, we might press on in spirit to the enjoyment of eternal blessings” (Hom., 10.3).
38. Basil, Hom., 15.4.
39. Basil, Hom., 17.10.
40. Basil, Hexaemeron, 6.10. Matthew Levering is helpful here as he notes that for Basil, “Genesis focuses upon the wisdom and goodness of creation, and upon the multitudes of diverse creatures that give glory to the creator in all sorts of ways.” Levering, Engaging the Doctrine of Creation: Cosmos, Creatures, and the Wise and Good Creator (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2017), 128.
41. Basil, Hom., 15.3. Earlier in this same homily Basil writes, “If you see the heavens . . . and the order in them, they are a guide to faith, for through themselves they show the Craftsmen; and if you see the orderly arrangement about the earth, again through these things also your faith in God is increased.”
42. Basil, Hexaemeron, 1.6.
43. Basil, Hom., 13.4.
44. Basil, Hom., 1.11. Stephen Hildebrand sees a similar theme in Basil’s work, arguing that for Basil, “The behavior of animals . . . is designed by God to instruct men in the way of virtue and awe them with divine wisdom” (Stephen M. Hildebrand, Basil of Caesarea, Foundations of Theological Exegesis and Christian Spirituality [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2014], 39).
45. Paul Blowers, “Beauty, Tragedy and New Creation: Theology and Contemplation in Cappadocian Cosmology,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 18, no. 1 (2016): 12.
46. Basil, On the Holy Spirit, 9.23. See also Lee, “The Spirit’s Self-Testimony,” 45.
47. Basil, Hom., 13.3. Later, after discussing the doxological vocation of the angels, Basil again highlights the task of both inanimate and animate creatures in offering praise to God: “Every creature, whether silent or uttering sound, whether celestial or terrestrial, gives glory to the Creator” (13.7).
48. Basil, On the Holy Spirit, 18.46.
49. Richard Bauckham writes, “All creatures bring glory to God simply by being themselves and fulfilling their God-given roles in God’s creation. . . . Frogs praise God by their jumping, their feeding, their mating, and whatever else belongs to being a frog, just as much as by their croaking.” Bauckham, “Joining Creation’s Praise of God,” Ecotheology 7, no. 1 (2002): 47–48. Levering makes a similar observation. Arguing from the analogia entis, he posits that all of creation, from rocks to dinosaurs, glorifies God in virtue of its existence. He writes, “Rather than being useless, dinosaurs and galactic systems are theophanic: in their finite actuality, they point to the creator who is pure act. . . . Everything points to God, participates in God, and glorifies the wondrous activity that God is” (Levering, Engaging the Doctrine of Creation, 138).
50. Ephraim Radner, A Time to Keep: Theology, Mortality, and the Shape of the Human Life (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2016), 125.
51. Basil, Against Eunomius, 3.4
52. Robert Spaemann posits, “We can, of course, never know what it is like to be a bat. We can only understand the question by analogy, from knowledge of what it is like to be a human being, or, more precisely, what it is like to be this human being.” Spaemann, Persons: The Difference between “Someone” and “Something” (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 30. Paul Griffiths is also helpful here in calling into question our sentimental proclivities to project our mental states onto the inner life of non-human creatures. He writes, “It is a mistake because we have no idea what that inner life is like even where there is, or may be one, and we deceive ourselves if we think we do. Even those nonhuman animals most physiologically like us . . . are still deeply different from us physiologically, so different that we can imagine little or nothing of the quality of their sensory experience, and still less of their affective or intellectual life, should they have one.” Griffiths, Decreation: The Last Things of Creatures (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2016), 284.
53. Basil, Against Eunomius, 3.2. Colin Gunton is helpful here, in noting that while creation is currently able to praise God, it awaits its glorification and it is only in that glorification that creation can offer its maker the right kind of praise. “Creation praises its maker, as it is; yet without healing it cannot praise its maker as universally as it should do.” Gunton, “The Spirit Moved Over the Face of the Waters: The Holy Spirit and the Created Order,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 4, no. 2 (2006): 197.
54. Blowers, “Beauty, Tragedy, and New Creation,” 16.
55. Basil, Hexaemeron, 3.10; cf. McConnell, Illumination in Basil, 118.
56. McConnell, Illumination in Basil, 120.
57. Ian McFarland, From Nothing (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2014), 135n1.
58. Gunton, “The Spirit Moved,” 198.
59. John Webster writes, “Indeed, providence is in a certain way the special dimension of Christian belief in God the creator, because it specifies the act of creation as the beginning not simply of contingency but also of faithful care.” Webster, “Providence,” in Christian Dogmatics: Reformed Theology for the Church Catholic, ed. R. Michael Allen and Scott Swain (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2017), 157.
60. Robert Louis Wilken, The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 142.
61. John Webster, “The Immensity and Ubiquity of God,” in Confessing God: Essays in Christian Dogmatics II (New York: T&T Clark, 2016), 105.
62. Webster, “The Immensity and Ubiquity of God,” 106.
63. There are some similarities here with Michael Horton’s observation that the concepts of divine presence and absence are less focused on ontological categories, and more on ethical or relational categories. See Michael Scott Horton, Lord and Servant: A Covenant Christology (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2005), 12.