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Theologian Thursday: Saint Basil the Great (330-379)

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 (image found here)
If you subscribe to Greek Orthodox hagiography, Basil comes from a family full of saints. Can you imagine? His brothers Gregory of Nyssa (whom we'll talk about next week) and Peter, sisters Macrina and Theosebius, mother Emily and grandmother Macrina were all saints. The Roman Catholic Church also includes his father, Basil, among the saints.

He became the bishop at Caesarea, and used his position, along with his relationships with Gregory of Nazianzus and Athanasius, to fight the heresies of Arianism and modalism. These early discussions about the Trinity are so interesting because they wrestle with all these ridiculously fine points of theology. Basically, Basil & Co. wanted the Holy Spirit to be considered homoousios (ὁμοούσιος--same essence) with the Father and Son, however, faithful to the Greek tradition, he was wary of considering the Son homoousious with the Father, even though the Nicene Creed and the Western church had established this as orthodox. But obviously (because of his disdain for Arianism) he wanted to uphold the divinity of Christ. Crazy fine points!

I feel like in this time period of debate and compromise, no one really got everything they wanted, and I think this can speak to the church today--despite conflicting beliefs, there really is room at the table for everyone.


What you should read:
Ratings:
(To read more about my rating system, click HERE.)
Gender Equality:
Coming from such a holy family, Basil had a lot of respect for his grandmother, his mother, and his sisters. They all had significant influence on his spiritual development and his life in general.
Environmental Sensibility:
It's probably safe to say that Basil falls in line with the other Church Fathers here. It wasn't a high priority at the time, but surely, if questioned, he would support a positive environmental ethic.
Heretical Tendencies:
Though he (and the other Cappadocians, for that matter) were influenced by the work of Origen, they were staunchly orthodox.
General Badassery: 
Honestly, Basil doesn't seem too crazy. I think anyone who was part of these crazy theological debates in the fourth century had to be pretty intense, but I haven't read any stories of Basil being especially badass.

And a quote. This one is longer than the ones I usually share, but I think it's important, and very convicting!
“The bread which you do not use is the bread of the hungry; the garment hanging in your wardrobe is the garment of him who is naked; the shoes that you do not wear are the shoes of the one who is barefoot; the money that you keep locked away is the money of the poor; the acts of charity that you do not perform are so many injustices that you commit.”

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Do You Want to be a Librarian?

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A librarian friend posted this video on her Facebook this week, and it is awesome. It was shot in 1947, and besides a couple points of blatant sexism is still a pretty good representation of the heart of librarianship. Love!




My favorite part is the guy at 3:09 who's like "I don't know the author or the title, but it's a blue book," and the librarian says, "I think we can help you," instead of punching him in the face, which is what I would have done. OK, not really. But geez. Actually, that's something I've brought up in my metadata class--that the physical description, while not super helpful for organizing, is more important for recall than you might imagine. I've seen more than enough people asking for a certain color book or book with certain cover art to know that sometimes that's really all a person knows, so we should be able to work with that to help them out.
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Emily Dickinson

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I can't believe it's already the last week of April. This month has just flown by! So this is my last National Poetry Month post, and I couldn't well forget Emily Dickinson (actually, I feel like there are a lot of poets I wish I could spotlight... one month of poetry just isn't enough!). She's one of my favorites, I think mostly for how prolific she is--it seems like there's always a poem of hers I haven't yet read.

Here's one of my favorites--in fact, I'm scheming a tattoo inspired by this poem... but that's a post for another time!
XXXII

HOPE is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,
  
And sweetest in the gale is heard;       
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
  
I’ve heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;       
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

I hope you've enjoyed these weekly poems as much as I have, and I encourage you to make poetry a part of your everyday life--even after National Poetry Month is over!
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Theologian Thursday: Gregory of Nazianzus (c.329-c.390)

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For the next few weeks, Theologian Thursday is going to highlight the Cappadocian Fathers (and sister Macrina)--perhaps the most important Greek influence in church history. I'm pretty excited about it, because I love rediscovering pre-schism Christian thought--eastern ideas that were lost and have been lacking in the western church. It really helps develop a fuller, more rounded theology.

(image from here)

Gregory of Nazianzus was an acetic monk at heart, but after traveling and studying extensively spent a good deal of his life in the priesthood and public ministry--mostly due to the prodding of his father and his friend Basil the Great. He became the bishop of Constantinople, the goal of this position being to rid the church of Arian and Apollinarian heresies.

His life work was upholding Nicene orthodoxy, as well as developing an orthodox theology of the Trinity and a fleshed-out pneumatology. Gregory is usually credited with the formation of the idea of "procession" of the Holy Spirit--that it proceeds from both the Father and the Son, and yet, since Father and Son are one, that which proceeds from them is also one with them (I know, crazy stuff, right?). I'll probably discuss more about his trinitarian thought and the "social" trinity in later Cappadocian posts--it was kind of a team effort.

What you should read:
Ratings:
(To read more about my rating system, click HERE.)
Gender Equality:
Gregory is another of the super-early Church Fathers, so it's hardly fair to rate him here. But since he was one of the Cappadocian Fathers, I imagine he did get some influence from Macrina (about whom I'll post later), so surely he had a little respect for the ideas of women.
Environmental Sensibility:
I think Gregory was much more concerned with spiritual issues than those regarding creation. However, one could interpret his belief about Christ's assuming humanity for the purpose of its redemption to be assuming creation as a whole.
Heretical Tendencies:
Super orthodox. He lived and breathed the Nicene Creed. And while the western church may have shelved his ideas, I think it's definitely safe to say he's nowhere near heresy.
General Badassery: 
Gregory was pretty tame. He spoke harshly against Arians, but that's to be expected from such an orthodox bishop. I'm more convinced of his character by the fact that, though he wasn't really interested in being a high-profile church leader, and would rather live the monastic life, he basically did as he was told by those around him. He's also the least-well-known of the Cappadocians. Pretty vanilla, I'd say. But of course that doesn't make his work any less important!

And lastly, a quote:
"That which was not assumed is not redeemed; but that which is united to God is saved."