Homilies on the Hexaemeron

Contents

Reading pages: 1.1–1.11 · 2.1–2.8 · 3.1–3.9 · 3.10–4.7 · 5.1–5.10 · 6.1–6.8 · 6.9–6.11 · 7.1–8.1 · 8.2–8.8 · 9.1–9.6

1. 1.1Basil opens by calling for a prepared hearer and by commending the trustworthiness of Moses, the writer of Genesis.
2. 1.2The first words of Genesis name God as the maker, against Greek theories that ascribe the world to elements or atoms and chance.
3. 1.3Circular motion does not prove the world eternal: what began in time will end in time, and the philosophers who made the heaven eternal or divine became fools.
4. 1.4Astronomers who chart the heavens precisely failed to recognize God as Creator and Judge, and mock the doctrine of the world's end.
5. 1.5Before the visible world God made the invisible, intelligible creation; the visible world and time began together; and "beginning" has several senses.
6. 1.6"In the beginning" fits all senses of "beginning" and may also mean that creation was instantaneous and timeless.
7. 1.7Moses says God "made" the world, as a craftsman makes a lasting work, against those who made the world an involuntary shadow of God; heaven and earth imply everything between them.
8. 1.8The substance of heaven and earth and what the earth rests on are not worth searching out; Scripture's plain words suffice.
9. 1.9Every theory of what supports the earth leads to an infinite regress; the earth is held by the power of God.
10. 1.10Basil reports the philosophers' argument that the earth rests at the center of the universe, and refers the wonder to God's wisdom.
11. 1.11The philosophers contradict one another about the substance of heaven; believers should leave the question and glorify the Creator from the beauty of his works.
12. 2.1The earth was "invisible and unformed" because it was not yet furnished with plants and lay hidden under water and darkness.
13. 2.2Basil rejects the view that "invisible and unformed" means an eternal, uncreated matter: God created matter together with form.
14. 2.3God created both substance and form; Moses leaves the elements to be inferred, and the earth was hidden by water and not yet adorned with growth.
15. 2.4Darkness over the abyss is not an evil power opposed to God, as Marcionites, Valentinians, and Manichees claim; evil is not a substance but the soul's falling away from the good.
16. 2.5Evil is chosen, not a nature; the darkness of Genesis 1:2 is the shadow cast by the newly made heaven, which shut out the light in which the spiritual creation already lived.
17. 2.6The Spirit of God over the waters is the Holy Spirit, who, as a Syrian interpreter explained, brooded over the waters like a bird to make them life-bearing.
18. 2.7God's first word created light, which instantly filled the air; God's "word" is the inclination of his will, and light is good both in its pleasantness and its future usefulness.
19. 2.8Day and night first came from the primal light; Moses says "one day," not "first day," to fix the measure of a day and to point to the one eternal day, the Lord's day of the resurrection.
20. 3.1Basil opens the second day, assuring the working people in his audience that time lent to God is repaid.
21. 3.2God does not speak as we do: Scripture presents God commanding in order to point to the Word, the fellow worker through whom creation was made.
22. 3.3The firmament is a second heaven distinct from the first; the philosophers who deny more than one heaven, or teach the music of the spheres, refute themselves.
23. 3.4Water can rest above the firmament; "firmament" means something firm, not a crystal or ice; and "God made" after "Let there be" points to the Son as maker.
24. 3.5The vast quantity of water was created to be consumed little by little by fire, which the world needs, until the appointed end of the world.
25. 3.6God spread water over the earth in seas, springs, and great rivers so that it could hold out against fire until the end.
26. 3.7The firmament separates fine from coarse moisture; abundant water is needed because heat, even the sun's, constantly consumes it, as the philosophers' own arguments admit.
27. 3.8The firmament is called heaven by likeness; rain and snow come from the waters above it; the simple words of Scripture surpass the philosophers' contradictory theories.
28. 3.9Basil rejects the allegory that the waters above and below the firmament are good and evil powers: water means water, and all creation, even the abyss, praises God.
29. 3.10God calls each work good as a craftsman judges parts by their purpose; Basil closes the second homily with a prayer that his hearers see the invisible God through creation.
30. 4.1Instead of the theater and the races, Basil invites his hearers to the spectacle of God's works.
31. 4.2God's command to gather the waters made the earth visible, and gave water its nature to flow, as his word gives every created nature its course.
32. 4.3The first command set the waters running and confined the sea within its bounds, as the failed attempts to join the Red Sea to the Mediterranean show.
33. 4.4The many waters were gathered into one great sea, with basins made for it; lakes are not "the gathering," and the separate gulfs of the one sea are called seas.
34. 4.5God made the dry land appear before the sun existed; the extra clause in many copies is marked as spurious; dryness, the earth's defining property, gives it its name, and the paired qualities bind the four elements in a circle.
35. 4.6God judges the sea good not by its beauty but by its use: it feeds the springs of the earth through hidden channels.
36. 4.7The sea is good because it feeds springs and rain, receives the rivers, and links lands and peoples; the praying church is more beautiful still.
37. 5.1The earth was commanded to sprout before the sun existed, so that no one would worship the sun as the source of life.
38. 5.2"According to its kind" means that every plant keeps its kind through seed or root; the grass of the field is the image of the brevity of human life and glory.
39. 5.3Every plant grows by the same ordered stages as at the first; the structure of a single stalk of wheat displays the Creator's art.
40. 5.4Poisonous plants are not a charge against the Creator: they feed some animals, serve medicine, and can be avoided by reason.
41. 5.5The earth brings forth according to kind; smutted wheat is a disease and darnel a distinct kind, an image of heretics; the first growth was perfect, before the curse.
42. 5.6The trees and shrubs appeared at once; every tree has seed or its equivalent; the vine is an image of the soul in the church, hedged, staked, pruned, and called to bear fruit.
43. 5.7The variety of trees displays God's art; grafting and fig-caprification teach that sinners can be reformed and that Christians should learn zeal even from the good conduct of outsiders.
44. 5.8The variety of fruits, leaves, saps, and flavors, all drawn from one water, shows a wisdom that no word can fully express.
45. 5.9The same water becomes bitter, sweet, and colored in different plants; God foresaw every use of plants; the tamarisk, at home in water and desert, is Jeremiah's image of a double character.
46. 5.10The first command still works in the earth like the first blow that keeps a top spinning, until the end of the world; Basil closes the homily.
47. 6.1Basil asks his hearers to come prepared to contemplate creation as fellow contestants, and draws from the sun's beauty the greater beauty of the sun of righteousness.
48. 6.2The sun and moon were made after the plants so that no one would think them the source of light or growth; they are vehicles for the light already created, and "God said … God made" points to two persons.
49. 6.3Light and the body of a luminary are distinct, as the burning bush and the phases of the moon show; night is the shadow of the earth, and sun and moon were set to rule day and night.
50. 6.4The lights serve as signs of weather useful to sailors, travelers, and farmers, and will be signs of the end of the world.
51. 6.5Basil refutes astrology: the precise moment of birth on which horoscopes depend can never be fixed.
52. 6.6Astrological character readings drawn from the zodiac's animal names are absurd, like spiders' webs that hold only the weak.
53. 6.7If the stars determined virtue and vice, God would be the author of evil, kings would be born daily, and laws, judges, work, and Christian hope would all be pointless.
54. 6.8The lights mark the four seasons, which Basil describes with the sun's yearly course, and they rule the days and years.
55. 6.9The sun and moon are "great" in absolute terms: they light the whole world and look the same size everywhere, and sight shrinks distant objects.
56. 6.10The sun's power and the moon's phases show their greatness; the waxing and waning moon teaches the instability of human fortune and of the careless soul.
57. 6.11The moon governs weather and tides; no syllable of Scripture is idle; the moon's size is shown by its equal light everywhere; even sun and moon are tiny beside their Creator.
58. 7.1The waters are commanded to bring forth the first animate creatures, the swimming things, whose many kinds were all included in God's one command.
59. 7.2Each kind of sea creature was created as firstfruits that reproduce unmixed; Basil surveys their varieties, breeding, and teeth.
60. 7.3Fish that devour one another, the crab, and the octopus illustrate greed, deceit, and flattery among men; yet the fishes also keep their appointed regions.
61. 7.4Unlike greedy men who move boundaries, the sea creatures keep their regions, and migrating fish obey the law of nature by going to the Black Sea to breed.
62. 7.5God's providence, shown even in the sea urchin's weather sense, extends to us; the viper and lamprey teach spouses to bear with each other and keep their union.
63. 7.6Husbands too must lay aside harshness; Basil lists more marvels of the sea, the great sea monsters and small but dangerous fish, and closes the homily.
64. 8.1The earth brings forth living souls not from a soul within it, as the Manichees say, but by God's gift; land animals have a fuller soul-life than fish.
65. 8.2The soul of beasts is earthy and perishes with the body, against the doctrine of transmigration; Basil returns to the birds, created from the waters because flight is a kind of swimming.
66. 8.3Birds differ endlessly in kind, food, social habit, migration, tameness, and voice.
67. 8.4The bees' commonwealth under a gentle king, their harmless gathering of honey, and their hexagonal combs teach Christians not to return evil for evil.
68. 8.5Cranes keep watch in turns, storks care for their aged, the swallow builds with ingenuity, and the halcyon calms the sea: lessons in hospitality, filial love, hope, and prayer.
69. 8.6Birds teach lessons on widowhood, the cruelty of exposing children, fair inheritance, and, from the vulture, the credibility of the virgin birth.
70. 8.7Night birds, the bat, the owl, the rooster, the geese of Rome, vultures, locusts, cicadas, insects, and water birds all display the Creator's wisdom.
71. 8.8Basil closes the homily on birds, points to the silkworm's metamorphosis as an image of the resurrection, and urges his hearers to spend their fast on spiritual food rather than dice.
72. 9.1Basil rejects allegorizing the creation narrative and defends Moses' silence about scientific questions: "when I hear grass, I understand grass."
73. 9.2God's command still works in the earth, preserving the kinds; man, made upright, should live for heaven, not like the beasts bent toward the belly.
74. 9.3Each animal has its own nature and an untaught instinct for self-preservation and foresight, as the ant shows; humans too have a natural law of good and evil.
75. 9.4Virtue is natural to the soul as health to the body; animals' love for their young and the dog's reasoning and loyalty shame ungrateful and impious men.
76. 9.5Prey animals are prolific and predators few; every limb, from the camel's neck to the elephant's trunk, is fitted to its use; even venomous creatures serve to discipline us.
77. 9.6Faith overcomes wild beasts; turning to man, Basil argues from "Let us make man in our image" that God spoke to his Son, the one image of the Father, against Jewish and Anomoean interpretations.