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Shorter Rules

St Basil the Great, tr. Lowther Clarke, 1925

Rule 190: Ought We to Pity Our Relations According to the Flesh, Desiring Their…

He that is born of the Spirit according to the utterance of th Lord and has received power to become a child of God, repudiates his kindred according to the flesh, and recognises as his relations those with whom he has the tie of the faith, to whom our Lord bears witness, saying: ‘“My mother and my brethren are these which hear the will of God and do it.”¹ So let him pity all who are far removed from the Lord, and his kindred too, but his relations according to the flesh in the same way as all the rest. E But if any man cherishing a greater attachment to them thinks he has a champion of his special affection in the apostle who says: “For I could wish that I myself were anathema from Christ for my brethren’s sake, my kinsmen according to the flesh,” let such a one learn from what follows that the apostle is honouring not his kinsmen according to the flesh in the usual sense but Israel and God’s special dealings with Israel, and not because the Israelites were his kinsmen but because his kinsmen according to the flesh were Israelites, and were counted worthy of receiving such great and excellent benefits from God. For the adoption was theirs and the glory, and theirs was the giving of the law and the cultus: they had the covenants and the promises, and theirs were the fathers. Since from them was Christ according to the flesh he values their salvation so highly, not regarding his kindred but the Incarnation for them of the Lord Who said: I was not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”²

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