Below is an excerpt from my exposition of St. Basil[1], from his treatise, On the Spirit . I thought it was a helpful example of doing theology correctly—the way of the Great Tradition. He begins this work examining the heretics’ (the Arians) “use of syllables” to distort the doctrine of the Trinity. They posit that when Scripture uses prepositional phrases (i.e., syllables) speaking of the activity of God, these phrases create a subordinate ranking, which makes the Son and the Spirit of a different nature from the Father. The heresy is promoted as such: In the words of the apostle: “‘One God and Father of whom are all things, . . . and one Lord Jesus Christ by whom are all things’ (1 Cor 8:6) ‘Whatever, then,’ he goes on, ‘is the relation of these terms to one another, such will be the relation of the natures indicated by them; and as the term ‘of whom’ is unlike the term ‘by whom,’ so is the Father unlike the Son” ( Spir . 2.4). And following this manner of thought, the differing p