Journal: Southern Baptist Journal of Theology
Volume: SBJT 27:2 (Summer 2023)
Article: “Most God-Beloved Father”: Eusebius Of Samosata In The Letters Of Basil Of Caesarea
Author: Michael A. G. Azad Haykin

“Most God-Beloved Father”: Eusebius Of Samosata In The Letters Of Basil Of Caesarea1

Michael A. G. Azad Haykin

Michael A. G. Azad Haykin is Professor and Chair of Church History at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky, and Director of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies, located at Southern Seminary. Dr. Haykin is the author of many books, including “At the Pure Fountain of Thy Word”: Andrew Fuller As an Apologist (Paternoster Press, 2004), Jonathan Edwards: The Holy Spirit in Revival (Evangelical Press, 2005), The God Who Draws Near: An Introduction to Biblical Spirituality (Evangelical Press, 2007), Rediscovering the Church Fathers: Who They Were and How They Shaped the Church (Crossway, 2011), Patrick of Ireland: His Life and Impact (Christian Focus, 2014), Kiffen, Knollys, and Keach: Rediscovering our English Baptist Heritage (H&E, 2019), Reading Andrew Fuller (H&E, 2020), Iron Sharpens Iron: Friendship and the Grace of God (Union Publishing, 2022), and Amidst Us Our Beloved Saints: Recovering Sacrament in the Baptist Tradition (Lexham, 2022).

By 376 Basil of Caesarea’s (c.329–379) long-standing friendship with his mentor Eustathius of Sebaste (c.300–c.377) had completely disintegrated.2 His relationship with Eustathius had been one of the most significant friendships of his life and stretched back twenty years to the time of Basil’s conversion in the mid-350s. At the very beginning of his Christian life, Basil had purposely sought out men whose lives were marked by godliness and whom he could regard, in his own words, as “fathers and guides of my soul on the journey to God.”3 Eustathius was initially such a man, but by the late 360s and early 370s it became apparent to Basil that there were large differences between them when it came to Trinitarian doctrine. Eustathius was

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largely unconcerned about questions of dogma such as the nature and status of the Holy Spirit, and it was undoubtedly because he was not a theologian that none of his writings have been transmitted. As Wolf-Dieter Hauschild once described the keynote of his pneumatology: “the Holy Spirit was… a charismatic reality primarily to be experienced.”4 Eustathius appears to have been quite happy to affirm the Nicene Creed as it stood, but he had a deep aversion to expanding it to include a dogmatic assertion with regard to the Spirit. He was committed essentially to a Binitarianism that was hostile to any conglorification of the Spirit with the Father and the Son. His refusal to take a clear stance on th...