HistoricalChristian.Faith

Basil of Caesarea on the Old Testament Canon

Dates: c. 330–379 AD (Basil "the Great," bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia from 370, the elder of the three Cappadocian Fathers; the citations below come from the Hexaemeron, the treatise On the Holy Spirit [De Spiritu Sancto], and his Letters, all from his episcopate of the 370s) · Wikipedia
Verdict on the deuterocanon: YES — cites it as Scripture in his own argument; leaves no canon-list. Basil draws up no catalogue of the Old Testament books, so he renders no formal canon-verdict. But across his exegetical and doctrinal works he quotes the disputed books as authority: Sirach under the bare formula "What Scripture says is very true," Wisdom as the word that the Lord "ordereth all things in measure and weight," and Baruch and Judith by name as the voices that establish points of doctrine, with the Maccabean mother held up as a martyr-model. His practice puts him squarely on the "using" side of the divide, beside the Greek-East witnesses Dionysius, Methodius, and his own contemporary Athanasius — even as his fellow Cappadocians Gregory of Nazianzus and Amphilochius were versifying Hebrew-sized lists that left the same books out.

Claims & evidence

Sirach quoted as "Scripture": "As for a fool he changeth as the moon"

The clearest case is in the sixth homily of the Hexaemeron, Basil's celebrated sermons on the six days of creation. Reflecting on the waxing and waning of the moon as an image of the instability of the soul that "after having possessed virtue, loses its beauty by neglect," he clinches the lesson with a verse of the deuterocanonical Sirach (Ecclesiasticus 27:11), introduced by the bare label he reserves for the protocanon:¹

If you cannot behold without sadness the moon losing its splendour by gradual and imperceptible decrease, how much more distressed should you be at the sight of a soul, who, after having possessed virtue, loses its beauty by neglect, and does not remain constant to its affections, but is agitated and constantly changes because its purposes are unstable. What Scripture says is very true, "As for a fool he changeth as the moon."

This is the firmest kind of "using" witness: the disputed book is not merely woven in but expressly named "Scripture" (ἡ γραφή) and adduced as true, the same formula Basil uses for Moses and the Psalms. A few lines further on he reaches for it again — "Evidently the moon must be, as Scripture says, of enormous size and power" — treating the wisdom book as a settled source of cosmological doctrine.¹

Wisdom: the Lord "ordereth all things in measure and weight"

Writing to console a persecuted congregation (Letter 219), Basil opens by grounding the providence that proportions every trial in a verse of the deuterocanonical Wisdom of Solomon (11:20), set in the same breath as Paul's promise that God will not suffer His own "to be tempted above that they are able to bear" (1 Corinthians 10:13):²

The Lord ordereth "all things in measure and weight," and brings on us the temptations which do not exceed our power to endure them, but tests all that fight in the cause of true religion by affliction, not suffering them to be tempted above that they are able to bear.

The Wisdom phrase carries the argument and is handled exactly like the Pauline text braided beside it; Basil marks it off with no "it is written," but neither does he flag it as lesser — it functions as authoritative Scripture in a pastoral letter.

Baruch named to settle a point of doctrine

In On the Holy Spirit, defending the equal honour of the Son against those who would seat Him "below" the Father, Basil reads the language of God's "sitting" as an image of the divine immutability — and proves the point from the deuterocanonical Baruch (3:3), cited under the prophet's own name:³

Standing and sitting, I apprehend, indicate the fixity and entire stability of the nature, as Baruch, when he wishes to exhibit the immutability and immobility of the Divine mode of existence, says, "For thou sittest for ever and we perish utterly."

Baruch was reckoned in the Greek tradition an appendix to Jeremiah, and Basil cites him exactly as Irenaeus, Hippolytus, and Athenagoras had — as a named prophetic voice whose word fixes a doctrinal truth.

Judith named as the authority on God's omniscient will

In the same treatise (8.19), expounding how the Son "upholds all things by the word of His power" without bodily labour, Basil clinches the point with a line of the deuterocanonical Judith (9:5–6), again ascribed to the speaker by name:⁴

So as Judith says, "Thou hast thought, and what things thou didst determine were ready at hand."

Where Clement of Rome had adduced "the blessed Judith" as a historical example of faith, Basil cites the book for its words — a sentence of Judith's prayer pressed into service as a theological proof that God's purpose and its accomplishment are one.

The Maccabean mother as a pattern of martyrdom

The softest of the five uses is a letter of consolation to the bereaved wife of Nectarius (Letter 6), where Basil holds up the mother of the seven sons from 2 Maccabees (6:18–7:42) as the model of a faith that gives thanks even in the loss of children, set beside the Gospel's sparrow that does not fall "without the will of our Father" (Matthew 10:29):⁵

The mother of the Maccabees saw the death of seven sons without a sigh, without even shedding one unworthy tear. She gave thanks to God for seeing them freed from the fetters of the flesh by fire and steel and cruel blows, and she won praise from God, and fame among men.

This is the historical-example kind of use, not a Scripture-formula citation — but it shows the Maccabean narrative living in Basil's pastoral imagination as sacred history, the deuterocanonical martyrs braided into the same exhortation as the words of Christ.

Notes

• The "rejecter" label does not fit his practice. Basil is sometimes counted among the Fathers who "rejected" the deuterocanon — the apologist James White, for instance, names "Basil the Great" in such a list. The classification rests on association, not on anything Basil wrote: he left no canon-list, and the Hebrew-sized catalogues that mark the Cappadocian circle belong to his friends Gregory of Nazianzus and Amphilochius, not to him. Basil's own surviving witness — Sirach called "Scripture," Baruch and Judith cited by name to settle doctrine, Wisdom grounding the doctrine of providence — runs the other way. He is better read as a "using" witness whom the Cappadocian company has lent a reputation his texts do not support.
• List versus usage, the Cappadocian case. Basil sharpens the recurring fourth-century tension between the list a Father will draw up and the books he actually reads as Scripture — only here the list is supplied by his associates and the usage by Basil himself. The same gap appears within single figures elsewhere on the timeline: Athanasius, Cyril of Jerusalem, and Hilary each recite a Hebrew-sized canon yet quote the disputed books in argument. Basil, lacking a list of his own, shows the "usage" half of that split in its purest form.
• The Sirach citation is the strongest. Of the five, only the Hexaemeron's "What Scripture says is very true" attaches the explicit word "Scripture" to a deuterocanonical text; the Baruch and Judith citations name the human author and use the book to prove doctrine; the Wisdom citation weaves the verse in as providence's own word; the Maccabean mother is a moral example. Graded together they make Basil a clear, many-sided "using" witness rather than a one-off.

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