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Examined Doctrine

Basil the Great on Baptism

C.330 – 379 · GREEK FATHER
NOT LOCATED IN A SOURCENO POSITION FOUND°
NO STANCE — AND WHY

No position located in this corpus

Searched in the sources read for this figure and not found. A limit of the reading rather than a claim about the figure — a source not yet read could settle it.

De Spiritu Sancto 15.35
"This then is what it is to be born again of water and of the Spirit"

THE POSITION

What baptism does he states strongly — burial with Christ, the water fulfilling the image of death while the Spirit gives the earnest of life, three immersions with three invocations, and any grace in the water coming not from the water but from the Spirit's presence. Who it is for he never says.

SCRIPTURE
ROMANS 6:4 · BSB

4 We were therefore buried with Him through baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may walk in newness of life.

WHAT OTHERS HOLD HERE

Believers only, on profession of faithVODDIE BAUCHAM · THE CHURCH OF ELEVEN22 STATEMENT OF FAITH · JOSH HOWERTON · SECOND LONDON BAPTIST CONFESSION · JOHN MACARTHUR · GAVIN ORTLUND · JUSTIN PETERS · JOHN PIPER · CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON
Infants included, as a covenant signJACOBUS ARMINIUS · CALVIN · JONATHAN EDWARDS · TIM KELLER · JOHN OWEN · R.C. SPROUL · WESTMINSTER CONFESSION · ZWINGLI
Infants included, and effective for regenerationAQUINAS · AUGUSTINE · CHRYSOSTOM · CONSTANTINOPLE I · IRENAEUS · LUTHER · PHILIP MELANCHTHON · NICAEA I · WESLEY
See all 29 figures on baptism →

ABOUT THIS FIGURE

Bishop of Caesarea and monastic legislator. Supplied the Trinitarian vocabulary the church still uses — one ousia, three hypostases — and argued the Spirit's deity in De Spiritu Sancto while deliberately never calling him God outright.

7 OF 11 POSITIONS QUOTED
Everything Basil the Great holds →
Cite this page

"Basil the Great on Baptism", Examined Doctrine, July 2026 edition, https://examineddoctrine.com/position/basil/baptism (archived at https://examineddoctrine.com/editions/2026-07/position/basil/baptism).

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