Pseudo-Basil

In his own words on Acts

• Acts 10:38

  He is Christ [Anointed] because of the Spirit and the anointing that is in the Spirit. Therefore, the anointing of the Lord is not of something foreign to the divinity, nor is the name Christ nor those called Christian after him. For, in truth, someone would lament if the name of our salvation both had its source in a creature and were derived from a creature and if we had our adoption through a slave. A creature does not make a creature holy, but all creation is made holy by the sole holy one who says concerning himself, "I sanctify myself." But through the Spirit he sanctifies.… The Spirit, of course, is not a creature but the mark of the sanctity of God and the fountain of holiness for all. In the holiness of the Spirit were we called, as the apostle teaches. This renews us and shows us once again to be the images of God, and through the bath of rebirth and renewal of the Holy Spirit we are made adopted sons [children] of God.

  AGAINST EUNOMIUS 5

• Acts 13:3

  The Lord, upon appearing to Paul from heaven, said, "Go to Damascus, and you shall be told that you are my chosen vessel," because [the Lord] had established him as the herald of the gospel to all the world. Then Ananias said to him, when he arrived in Damascus, "Brother Saul, see once more: the God of the fathers has preordained you."8 And lest you think this word [i.e., God] refers to Christ, he adds, "to do his will and to know his just one Jesus." [Paul], making this calling and preordaining a title, says, "Paul a slave of Jesus Christ, called apostle."10 Then he says something else regarding this calling, "Set aside for the gospel of God." The Acts of the Apostles taught that the Spirit directed the setting aside, for it says, "While the apostles were fasting and praying, the Holy Spirit said, 'Set aside for me Paul and Barnabas for the work to which I have called them.' " If the Lord, the God of the fathers, chose him whom he had preordained, while the Son called him forth, and the Spirit, using the operation of [the divine] nature, set the same one aside, how is there a difference of nature in the Trinity in which an identity of operation is found?

  AGAINST Eunomius 5