Basil the Great on Authority of Scripture
Scripture with tradition and church teaching office
De Spiritu Sancto 27.66
THE POSITION
De Spiritu Sancto 27 is the most-quoted patristic text on this, and his claim is unambiguous: some of what the church preserves comes from written teaching, some was delivered "in a mystery" by apostolic tradition, and the two have the same force. Reject the unwritten customs and you would injure the gospel in its vitals. But he is not putting tradition above Scripture — where doctrine is genuinely disputed he makes Scripture the arbiter and refuses to let custom function as the rule of orthodoxy.
7 No, we speak of the mysterious and hidden wisdom of God, which He destined for our glory before time began.
6 OTHERS HOLD THIS
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.
Cite this page
"Basil the Great on Authority of Scripture", Examined Doctrine, July 2026 edition, https://examineddoctrine.com/position/basil/scripture-authority (archived at https://examineddoctrine.com/editions/2026-07/position/basil/scripture-authority).