I've been away from my computer for a couple of weeks, but the conversation
on the list seems rather familiar.
Allen Roy contributed one perspective on Basil's portrait of God's creative
work. Here's another, an excerpt from an essay published for me by Science
and Christian Belief, April 1996, pp. 21-38. (Footnotes seem to have
disappeared in this rendition.)
Howard Van Till
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BASIL'S HEXAEMERON
As one Patristic scholar has expressed it, 'Saint Basil's work on the
Hexaemeron is one of the most important Patristic works on the doctrine of
creation.' Delivered as a series of nine homilies, this work has the style
of material spoken to inspire praise of the Creator‹it is not a treatise
written to be subjected to philosophical scrutiny‹and its central concern is
the meaningful interrelationship of God and mankind, not the relationship of
natural philosophy and Christian theology. Nonetheless, I have found it
profitable to examine Basil's homilies for their general concept of the
nature of the created world and the character of God's creative activity in
it.
Consistent with the way in which the doctrine of creation had come to be
articulated by early Christian theologians, Basil affirms his conviction
that the existence of the world is neither eternal nor self-caused. Rather,
the world has both a temporal beginning and an ontological origin in the
effective will of a transcendent Creator who created the world we see, not
from pre-existing matter, but from nothing. Therefore, whatever the visible
world's properties and capabilities may be, these must be seen as endowments
freely and thoughtfully contributed by the Creator alone‹no other source is
conceivable to Basil.
Summarized as succinctly as possible, Basil's picture of creation is one in
which God, by the unconstrained impulse of his effective will,
instantaneously called the substance of the entire Creation into being at
the beginning and gave to the several created substances the harmoniously
integrated powers to actualize, in time, the wonderful array of specific
forms that the Creator had in mind from the outset. Both matter and the
forms it was later to attain were the product of God's primary act of
creation. In contrast to those philosophers who spoke of a creator adding
form to a pre-existent matter, Basil says: 'But God, before all those things
which now attract our notice existed, after casting about in his mind and
determining to bring into being that which had no being, imagined the world
as it ought to be, and created matter in harmony with the form which he
wished to give it' (II.3). And reflecting on the earth being initially
without the adornment of grass, cornfields or forests, Basil notes that, 'Of
all this nothing was yet produced; the earth was in travail with it in
virtue of the power that she had received from the Creator. But she was
waiting for the appointed time and the divine order to bring forth' (II.3).
In Basil's judgment, harmony, balance and provision for all future needs are
characteristics of the created world that deserve our profound appreciation.
Both fire and water, for example, are necessary for the economy of
terrestrial life as we know it. But these two elements (as understood in
Basil's day) must be provided in correct proportions so that neither one
will consume the other. Observing the comfortable balance that appeared to
prevail between these two contending substances, Basil says that we owe
'thanks to the foresight of the supreme Artificer, Who, from the beginning,
foresaw what was to come, and at the first provided all for the future needs
of the world' (III.5). From this it follows, of course, that the Creator
need make no special adjustments at some later date to compensate for
inadequate provision at the beginning. 'He who, according to the word of
Job, knows the number of the drops of rain, knew how long His work would
last, and for how much consumption of fire he ought to allow. This is the
reason for the abundance of water at the creation' (III.5).
Because each element is called upon to contribute its natural activity to
the functional and developmental economies of the created world, it is
essential for Basil to make clear that even these natures are the product of
God's creative word and are not the manifestation of any powers independent
of God. 'Think, in reality, that a word of God makes the nature, and this
order is for the creature a direction for its future course' (IV.2). The
divine command recorded in Gen. 1:11, 'Let the earth bring forth grass...,'
is for Basil God's empowering of the earth for all time with the capacities
to assemble and sustain all manner of plant life. This command from God
'gave fertility and the power to produce fruit for all ages to come' (V.1).
In several ways Basil expresses his conviction that although the Creator's
word is spoken in an instant, the Creation's obedient response is extended
in time. 'God did not command the earth immediately to give forth seed and
fruit, but to produce germs, to grow green, and to arrive at maturity in the
seed; so that this first command teaches nature what she has to do in the
course of the ages' (V.5, emphasis added). And in language that seems almost
to anticipate modern scientific concepts Basil goes on to say that, 'Like
tops, which after the first impulse, continue their evolutions, turning
themselves when once fixed in their centre; thus nature, receiving the
impulse of this first command, follows without interruption the course of
the ages, until the consummation of all things' (V.10).
The importance of seeing this emphasis in Basil has also been noted by
Thomas F. Torrance:
"...[I]n commenting upon the Genesis account of creation through the
majestic fiat of God: 'Let there be,' Basil pointed out that though acts of
divine creation took place timelessly, the creative commands of God gave
rise to orderly sequences and enduring structures in the world of time and
space. It was thus that the voice of God in creation gave rise to laws of
nature. Expressed the other way round, this means that all the laws of
nature, all its intelligible order, are to be regarded as dependent on the
word of God as their source and ground."
In his reflections on the words, 'Let the earth bring forth the living
creature,' Basil speaks eloquently of the Creation acting throughout the
course of time (action understood to be possible only by God's having gifted
it with the requisite dynamic capacities) to carry out the effective will of
the Creator expressed at the beginning. 'Behold the word of God pervading
creation, beginning even then the efficacy which is seen displayed today,
and will be displayed to the end of the world! As a ball, which one pushes,
if it meet a declivity, descends, carried by its form and the nature of the
ground and does not stop until it has reached a level surface; so nature,
once put in motion by the divine command, traverses creation with an equal
step through birth and death, and keeps up the succession of kinds through
resemblance, to the last' (IX.2). In an earlier comment on the Holy Spirit's
activity in creation Basil remarked that 'The Spirit...prepared the nature
of the water to produce living beings' (II.6).
Consistent with the world picture of his day, Basil does not envision any
historical transformation of the varied 'kinds'; but at the same time‹and
more relevant to our present concerns‹he offers no theological objection
whatever to the spontaneous generation of living creatures from inanimate
earthly substance alone. For instance, 'We see mud alone produce eels; they
do not proceed from an egg, nor in any other manner; it is the earth alone
which gives them birth. "Let the earth produce a living creature"' (IX.2).
It would seem, then, that Basil envisions the first appearance of each kind
of living creature occurring in like manner, the earth having been endowed
from the beginning with all of the dynamic capacities necessary to
physically actualize in the course of time the whole array of life forms
first conceived in the mind of God. The elements of the world, created by
God from nothing at the beginning, lacked none of the capacities that would
be needed in the course of the ages to bring forth what God intended.
As we noted earlier, Kaiser finds in Basil a strong affirmation for the
principle of the 'relative autonomy' of the created world. Commenting on
Basil's references to the continuation of motion exhibited by a rolling ball
or a spinning top, Kaiser says:
"It would be over twelve hundred years before Galileo, Descartes and Newton
would formulate a principle of inertia in mathematical terms that could be
used in calculations. However, the idea of relative autonomy that lay behind
it was clearly fixed by the time of Basil. Indeed it was deeply embedded in
the Hellenistic-Jewish-Christian tradition that Basil inherited.... Basil
merely gave practical examples from everyday experience to illustrate the
principle of relative autonomy of nature as it had been understood since the
time of Jesus ben Sirach and Aristobulus."
However, where Kaiser chooses to refer to the God-given self-sufficiency and
ability of matter and material systems to exhibit lawfully-patterned
behavior as being the expression of Creation's 'relative autonomy,' I would
prefer the more inclusive term, 'functional integrity.' By the use of the
latter term I wish not only to affirm, with both Kaiser and Torrance, the
idea that the Creation has been given by God the capacities to act in
accordance with universally applicable laws, but also to call especial
attention to the idea that these God-given creaturely capacities‹what I have
called Creation's functional and developmental economies‹are sufficiently
robust so as not to require additional occasional acts of special creation
in time in order to actualize the full array of physical structures and life
forms that have ever existed.
As I read Basil's Hexaemeron, I see in it considerable encouragement for the
vision of a world brought into being with gapless and robust functional and
developmental economies, economies that were, from the outset,
complete‹neither cluttered with powers that had no useful function nor
lacking any capacity that is necessary for the world's functioning at any
one time or for its actualization of any physical or biotic form over the
course of time. In Basil's words, 'Our God has created nothing unnecessarily
and has omitted nothing that is necessary' (VIII.7, emphasis added).
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