SOURCE: "The Cappadocians" in The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy, edited by A. H. Armstrong, Cambridge University Press, 1967, pp. 432-39.

[In the excerpt below, Sheldon-Williams explicates the Hexaemeron, noting that Basil views the universe as a hierarchy whose parts are bound together in harmonious sympathy. The critic maintains that Basil's conception of creation, time and motion, and material elements is derived from the writings of Greek natural philosophers such as Aristotle and the Stoics, as well as from scripture.]

The Cappadocians inherited the Alexandrian Gnosis through Origen, though each departed from the position of their master, St Basil most of all. He was more interested in the moral and pastoral than in the philosophical implications of the Faith, distrusted allegory,¹ and clung to the literal interpretation of Scripture, to which the pagan learning was to supply rational corroboration as required rather than combine with it to form a synthesis. Therefore, as was to be the case with the Aristotelian Christians,² he made greater use of the physics of the pagans than of their metaphysics, and in his Homilies on the Hexaëmeron,³ intended as a scientific defence of the Mosaic account of creation, he drew chiefly on the current cosmology, meteorology, botany, astronomy and natural history.⁴

As a consequence, the Christian theory of creation assumed certain pagan features, of which the most important were the implied identification of the Platonic Demiurge with Yahweh,⁵ the Aristotelian division of the universe into the supralunar and sublunar spheres, and the notion of a universal harmony … ⁶ 'Although the totality of the universe is composed of dissimilar parts, he binds it together by an indissoluble law of friendship into one communion and harmony, so that even the parts that from the positions they occupy seem most distant from one another are yet shown to be united by the universal sumpatheia. ⁷

Nature is the work of God, who created her in time, or rather created time in the process of creating her.⁸ Matter is a part of creation, for if it were uncreated God would have been dependent upon it for bringing, his plan to fruition;⁹ and if matter were independent of God there would not be that reciprocity between agent and patient which is everywhere apparent.¹⁰

Although Scripture does not speak of the four elements, it mentions earth and implies fire (for since Moses limits his theme to the created universe¹¹ he must mean by heaven the highest part of the physical world, of which the substance is fire¹²), and by speaking of the highest and the lowest it infers the two intermediaries.¹³ Fire (or light) is the substance of heaven because, although the elements were originally intermingled, each tends towards its proper level: fire at the top, extending downward as far as the Firmament;¹⁴ then air; then water; then earth at the base.

Each element also has its proper quality: fire is warm, air moist, water cold, earth dry.¹⁵ But none is found wholly in its place or with its quality unmixed: fire is found below the Firmament, and there are waters above it;¹⁶ earth, as it is experienced, is cold as well as dry, and so can combine with water; water moist as well as cold, and so can combine with air; air warm as well as moist, and so can combine with fire; and finally fire is dry as well as warm, and therefore can mingle with earth. This cyclic movement of the elements¹⁷ produces the variety of combinations out of which all sensible beings are created.¹⁸

This is Aristotelian and Stoic doctrine, except for 'the waters above the Firmament', which is part of revealed truth. The Alexandrians interpreted these allegorically as the intelligible world, separated from the sensible by the Firmament, or First Heaven:¹⁹ Basil characteristically insists on the literal sense on the ground that Moses is only concerning himself with the physical universe. There is water above the Firmament to abate the fiery substance and prevent the Stoic conflagration.²⁰

The Homilies on the Hexaëmeron demonstrate that the truth discovered by man's reason is not different, so far as it goes, from the truth revealed by Scripture. But Scripture also reveals truths inaccessible to man's reason: the Nature of God, which is wholly incomprehensible, as well as the basic principles of the intelligible and sensible worlds. The incomprehensibility of the Divine Nature²¹ was one of the points on which the Cappadocians were at issue with Eunomius, the champion of Arianism; for Eunomius,²² following his master Aëtius,²³ contended that reason is equal in value and power to revelation, and that therefore if the Divine Nature is known through revelation it is also accessible to reason. He further argued that if what we know of God is his Essence, and if we know of him that he is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, then each of the three is his Essence; but that, on the other hand, we deduce that God is not more than Trinity, and that therefore all names given to him by Scripture beyond these Three must be mere metaphor. For instance, the Begotten Word cannot literally be God since God is unbegotten. This line of reasoning imposed upon Basil and the other Cappadocians the task of examining the problem of the Divine Names.²⁴ Basil's answer was that any epithet could be applied to God, but that all fall into one of two classes: those that indicate what he is not …, of which 'unbegotten' is an example; and those which affirm that he is not other than this. … such as 'righteous', 'judge', 'creator'.²⁵ The former can lead the reason to a partial knowledge of God by what the Neoplatonists called aphairesis, the progressive stripping away of every concept that the mind can form about God in the certainty that every one will be inadequate.²⁶Aphairesis by itself, however, will lead to sheer negation;²⁷ and this would be all that could be known of God, did not Scripture reveal that he is, and that he possesses the Attributes with which it endows him. The Scriptural Names or Attributes are therefore outgoings … of God's Nature to the human understanding,²⁸ and are thus the authentic Names of his Energeiai.

The intelligible world is only accessible to reason in its function of substantiating the sensible. By revelation it is known as the angelic world,²⁹ outside time …, ³⁰ not with the absolute eternity of God, but with that eternity which is consistent with its being a creature; for aion is a limit which precludes even the intellectual activity of man from being infinite.³¹ The angels are substantial and occupy a substantial world, but one which does not share a common matter with the sensible world. It has an intelligible matter,³² which Basil identifies with the light³³ which illuminates the material world, and is therefore the common ground of the whole universe, intelligible and sensible. This leads him to give to Ps. ciii. 4³⁴ a literal interpretation which St Gregory Nazianzen treats with reserve,³⁵ and St Gregory of Nyssa rejects.³⁶

It follows that light is a more general nature than time,³⁷ for time is found only in the sensible world. Because light is not limited to time it was universally diffused at the moment of its creation,³⁸ as it fills the whole room in which a lamp is kindled. Between the intelligible and the sensible worlds the Firmament acts as a barrier, of which the solidity implied by its name is such that light may pass through it (though in a diluted form), but time cannot break out to the world above.³⁹

Bounded within the Firmament, time is the principle of the sensible world, which is more explicable to reason than the intelligible, but still not wholly so; otherwise there would be no purpose in the translucency of the Firmament. It is by revelation that we know that it is not eternal, for reason would suggest the contrary.⁴⁰ It was created with time, or as a logical consequence of time …, which is itself a necessary consequence of the creation of the Firmament rotating in space; for time, motion, and spatial extension⁴¹ are mutually interrelated. Not only can there be no motion without time, but time is only time when measured by motion. Therefore, since there can be no motion that is not from one place or state to another, there can be no first moment of time, and Moses is careful to call the 'First Day' of creation not the first but 'one day':

The God who created the nature of time appointed the periods of the days as its measures and marks, and ordains that the week, by returning upon itself, shall count the motion of time. The week is the fulfilment of the one day seven times returning upon itself: for this is the way of the circle, that it starts from itself and ends in itself. In this it resembles the aeon, which returns upon itself endlessly. Therefore he called the origin of time not a first day but one day, to show that time retains its kinship with eternity.⁴²

But this does not mean that time and eternity are identical or that the physical universe is eternal. In the passage just quoted the last sentence (which is also reproduced in almost the same words by Johannes Lydus)⁴³ comes from a Pythagorean source, but whereas the Pythagoreans held that time was intrinsically eternal, Basil only claims for it an affinity … with eternity. He agreed with Plato⁴⁴ that it is the copy of eternity, but only in so far as what is created can be a copy of what is not. Eternity has no beginning: time has no beginning in itself The beginning … is 'not even the smallest part of time',⁴⁵ but quite outside the temporal process, and therefore no part of the creative act takes place within time. God creates 'in the beginning' … and therefore not in time.… ⁴⁶ The Firmament is created 'before' the earth not in a chronological sense, but as the container precedes the content, and the light the shadow cast by an interposed body.⁴⁷ The creation of the extratemporal circumference was necessarily the cause of the temporal content, and therefore of motion and extension. The effect of extension is that the divine energeiai, which in the intelligible world are one in the Nous or Logos,⁴⁸ now become many, and the effect of motion is to bring them into association to form sensible bodies,⁴⁹ and to separate them again to bring about the dissolution of those bodies. Basil agrees with Aristotle that whatever comes into being in time must perish in time,⁵⁰ for time, as we have seen,⁵¹ cannot pass through the Firmament.

But Aristotle was wrong to apply this principle to the soul, for although the soul is involved in the spatiotemporal world, she is not of it, and therefore is destined to pass beyond it.⁵² By nature she belongs to the intelligible world, and is like the angels a creature of light, to which the Firmament is not a barrier.⁵³ For the same reason the incarnate soul's mode of cognition, which is discursive, is not precluded from the knowledge which is the object of Nous. Since time is the offspring of eternity and resembles it, the content of the temporal world is a copy in this extended medium of the non-extended prototype, as that in its turn it is the expression of the Thoughts of the Divine Mind. Thus the entire universe is linked together by a chain of likeness and exhibits a harmonious sympathy.⁵⁴

As time is co-existent with, and a kind of secondary substance of, the sensible world, so this sympathy is the primary substance of the whole creation, intelligible and sensible, being the mode in which the energeiai express the divine unity. Where it does not reach creation does not reach, and this is the realm of evil, which is no substance, but the absence of good.⁵⁵ It is probably to be identified with the darkness which covered the face of the earth 'before' its creation.⁵⁶

For St Basil, as for every Christian philosopher, the central theme is God, his dealings with the world, and especially with man. God creates the world, and sets in it his own image, man.⁵⁷ But this is man's eternal, not his contemporary condition. Created in the intelligible order, he falls into the sensible; designed for eternity, he is enmeshed in time, and in danger of a further fall into the total dissolution which is a concomitant of temporality, that is to say, into absolute evil. The philosopher's task is to reverse this trend, converting the descent into an ascent, first by a purification of the carnal passions, which leads to the First Heaven, the Firmament; then by the acquisition of wisdom to which the soul, no longer clouded by these obscurities, now has access, and by which she rises, illumined, to the summit of the intelligible world, which is the Second Heaven; from which she is finally drawn up to the Third Heaven of deification.…

Notes

¹ Cf. Hex. IX I (PG 29. 188B-C).

² Below, p. 478.

³PG 29. 4A-208C, ed. S. Giet, Paris, 1950 (Sources chrét. 26). References are to this edition by numbers of columns in PG.

⁴ Giet, op. cit. 56-69. Cf. St Greg. Naz. Orat. XLIII (PG 36. 528A).

⁵ Below, p. 439.

⁶ Cf. Philo ap. É. Bréhier, Les Idées philosophiques et religieuses de Philon d'Alexandrie (Paris, 1925), pp. 158-61.

⁷Hex. II 2, 33A. Cf. Proclus, who taught that the Hierarchies are connected by love … or friendship … which is [enopoios]. (In Tim. 155-6, II 53. 24-54. 25 Diels (Leipzig, 1904)). See also below, p. 437.

⁸ Cf. below, pp. 437; 447; 487; 501.

⁹Hex. II 3, 32A-B. Cf. Origen, De princ. II I. 4 (PG 11. 185C-D, 110. 1-111. I Koetschau).

¹⁰Hex. II 3, 33B-C. See below, p. 500.

¹¹ See below, p. 440.

¹² See below, p. 448.

¹³Hex. I 7, 20B-C. For air and water as intermediaries cf. Plato, Tim. 32B.

¹⁴ See below, p. 448.

¹⁵ Cf. Aristotle, De gen. et corr. II 3, 331a4.

¹⁶ Gen. i. 6.

¹⁷ Cf. Aristotle, op. cit. II 4, 331b2.

¹⁸Hex. IV 5, 89B-92A. See below, pp. 437; 448; 520. The doctrine that the elements pass into one another is a Stoic variation of the Heraclitean theory of flux.

¹⁹ See below, p. 448.

²⁰ See below, pp. 479-80.

²¹ See below, p. 460.

²² Cf. Eunomius ap. Socrates, Hist. eccl. IV 7. 13-14, 482. 10-14 Hussey (Oxford, 1853); Theodoret, Haeres. fat. comp. IV 3; idem, In Dan. VIII.

²³ Cf. Aëtius ap. Theodoret, Hist. eccl. II 24 (PG 82. 1072C2-5).

²⁴ … St Greg. Naz. Orat. xxx 16 ad fin. (134. 17-18 Mason). See below, p. 441.

²⁵ St Basil, Adv. Eun. I 10.

²⁶ St Basil, Ep. ccxxxv 2 (PG 32. 869C1-2); Adv. Eun. 114 (PG 29. 544A10-B15); cf. Plotinus, v 5 [32] 13, 11-13. See below, p. 440; ps.-Dionys. pp.468-70.

²⁷ Plotinus, v 5 [32] 6, 11-13. See below, p. 468.

²⁸ This is the subject of the ps.-Dionysius' treatise On the Divine Names, for which see below, p. 461. Cf. above, p. 431.

²⁹ … Hex. I 5, 13A. Cf. St Greg. Nyss. below, p. 454 ps.-Dionys. below, p. 464.

³⁰Hex. loc. cit. See below, p.

³¹ Cf. St Greg. Nyss. C. Eun. I (PG 44. 365C (I 135 Jaeger)); Lossky, op. cit. p. 97.

³² St Basil, Hom. in ps. xlviii, 8 (PG 29. 449B (I 148E ed. Maur.)).

³³ Idem, Hex. II 5, 40C-41A. See below, pp. 437; 507-8.

³⁴ Quoted by St Paul, Hebr. i. 7.

³⁵ St Greg. Naz. Orat. XXVIII 31 (70. 3-7 Mason) (PG 36. 72A). See below, p. 443.

³⁶ According to Greg. Nyss. fire is intermediary between the intelligible and sensible nature (C. Eun. II (XII B/XIII) (PG 45. 1004A, I 306 Jaeger); In Hex. PG 44. 80D-81A; 81C-D; 116B; 121 A), and therefore the angelic intelligences are of a higher order than fire. See below, p. 448.

³⁷ Proclus identified light with space, which he held to be an immovable, indivisible immaterial body: idem ap. Simpl. Phys. ed. Diels (Berlin, 1882), pp. 611-12.

³⁸Hex. II 7, 45A.

³⁹ See below, p. 437.

⁴⁰ See above, p. 426.

⁴¹ St Bas. Adv. Eun. I 21 (PG 29. 560 B, 1 233 A-B ed. Maur.). The identification of time and extension is Stoic: see Simplicius, In Categ. 350 Kalbfleisch; Plutarch, Quaest. plat. 1007; Philo, Leg. alleg. 11 2.

⁴²Hex. II 8, 49 B-C.

⁴³ loan. Lyd. De mens. III 3, 39. 4-14 Wuensch. Cf. J. Danielou, 'La typologie de la semaine au iv^e sièecle', Recherches de science religieuse, XXXV (1948), p. 399. For Lydus, see also below, p. 522.

⁴⁴Tim. 37D. Cf. Plotinus, III 7 [45] 13, 23-5.

⁴⁵Hex. I 6, 16C.

⁴⁶Hex. IX 2, 189 B.

⁴⁷Hex. II 5, 41 A-B.

⁴⁸ See above, p. 429.

⁴⁹ See above, p. 433.

⁵⁰Hex. I 3, 9C. Cf. Aristotle, De caelo I 12, 288 b 4; St Greg. Nyss. De hom. opif XXIII (PG 44. 209 B); Baudry, Le Problème de l'origine et de l'éternité du monde dans la philosophie grecque de Platon á l'ere chrétienne (Paris, 1931), p. III; below, p. 496.

⁵¹ Above, p. 435.

⁵²Hex. I 5, 12C.

⁵³ See above, p. 435. Cf. H. Urs von Balthasar, Présence et pensé (Paris, 1943), pp. 8-9.

⁵⁴Hex. II2, 33A. See above, p. 432. The idea comes from Plato (cf. Tim. 32A), and plays an important part in the philosophy of Posidonius: cf. Cleomedes, De motu circ. I I, 4, 8 Ziegler; Sextus Empiricus, Adv. math. IX = C. phys. I 78-80; Karl Reinhardt, Kosmos und Sympathie (Munich, 1928), pp. 52 f. However, L. Edelstein, 'The physical system of Posidonius', American Journal of Philology, LVII (1936), p. 324, considers that its importance for Posidonius has been overrated.

⁵⁵Hex. II 4, 37 C-D. This definition of evil, which derives from Plotinus (cf. I 8 [51] II, 8-9; III 2 [47] 5, 25-6), was held in common by all the Cappadocians, and was developed at length in the Neoplatonic tradition that was drawn upon by Proclus and the ps.-Dionysius.

⁵⁶Hex. II 5, 41 B.

⁵⁷ St Basil left his exposition of the theme uncompleted, for the Homilies on the Hexaëmeron break off at the point where God creates man in his own image. A treatise on this was promised, but the promise was long deferred. See below, p. 449.

Abbreviations

… PG Migne, Patrologia Graeca …

SC Sources Chrétiennes …

ARISTOTLE
… De gen. et corr. De generatione et corruptione …

PLUTARCH
… Plat qu … Platonicae quaestiones …

PHILO
… Leg. Alleg. Legum Allegoriae …

ORIGEN
… Princ. De principiis …

PROCLUS
… In Tim. In Platonis Timaeum commentarii …

PSEUDO-DIONYSIUS
… CH De caelesti hierarchia …

ST BASH
… Hex. Hom. in Hexaemeron

Adv. Eun. Adversus Eunomium

ST GREGORY NAZIANZENOrat. Orationes

Orat. theol. Orationes theologicae

ST GREGORY OF NYSSAC. Eun. Contra Eunomium …

De hom. opif De hominis opificio …

PLATO
… Hippias major …

Timaeus …

Select Bibliography

ST BASIL

Works, PG 29-32.

Homiliae in Hexaëmeron, ed. and tr. S. Giet (Sources Chretiennes). Paris, 1950.

On the Holy Spirit, ed. and tr. B. Pruche (Sources Chretiennes). Paris, 1947.

ST GREGORY NAZIANZEN

Works, PG 35-8.

Orationes 27-31 (Orationes theologicae), ed. A. J. Mason. Cambridge, 1899.

ST GREGORY OF NYSSA

Works, PG 44-6.

Works, ed. W. Jaeger, H. Langerbeck, etc. Leiden, 1952, in progress.…

PSEUDO-DIONYSIUS

Works, PG 3.

De caelesti hierarchia, ed. and tr. R. Roques, G. Heil, M. de Gandillac (Sources Chrétiennes). Paris, 1958.…