St. Basil in praise of Creation

  • gb_hot-springs_sm.jpgGot in some good read­ing when look­ing into Gen­e­sis, and thought this from St. Basil the Great was good enough to pass along. These come to me by way of Vol. I of the Ancient Chris­t­ian Com­men­tary on Scrip­ture**.
    I’m team­ing the quotes up with some of the pic­tures I liked best out of the ones I took recently in Wyoming. In a strange way, they actu­ally seem to work.

     wdc_5.jpgGod, … after cast­ing about in His mind and deter­min­ing to bring into being time which had no being, imag­ined the world such as it ought to be and cre­ated mat­ter in har­mony with the form that He wished to give it. He assigned to the heav­ens the nature adapted for the heav­ens and gave to the earth an essense in accor­dance with its form. He formed, as He wished, fire, air and water, and gave to each the essence that the object of its exis­tence required.

    Finally, He welded all the diverse parts of the uni­verse by links of indis­sol­u­ble attach­ments and estab­lished between them so per­fect a fel­low­ship and har­mony that the most dis­tant, in spite of their dis­tance, appeared united in one uni­ver­sal sym­pa­thy. Let those men, there­fore, renounce their fab­u­lous imag­i­na­tions who, in spite of the weak­ness of their argu­ment, pre­tend to mea­sure a power as incom­pre­hen­si­ble to man’s rea­son as it is unut­ter­able by man’s voice. God cre­ated the heav­ens and the earth, but not only half — He cre­ated all the heav­ens and all the earth, cre­at­ing all the heav­ens and all the earth, cre­at­ing the essence with the form. (Hexa­m­aeron 2.2–3)

    gb-wind-river_3.jpgIt appears, indeed that even before this world an order of things existed of which our mind can form an idea but of which we can say noth­ing, because it is too lofty a sub­ject for men who are but begin­ners and are still babes in knowledge.

    The birth of the world was pre­ceded by a con­di­tion of things suit­able for the exer­cise of super­nat­ural pow­ers, out­strip­ping the lim­its of time, eter­nal and infinite. … 

    gb_img_1435.jpgTo this world at last it was nec­es­sary to add a new world, both a school and train­ing place where the souls of men should be taught and a home for beings des­tined to be born and to die. Thus was cre­ated, of a nature anal­o­gous to that of this world and the ani­mals and plants which live on it, the suc­ces­sion of time, for­ever press­ing on and pass­ing away and never stop­ping in its course. Is not this the nature of time, where the past is no more, the future does not exist, and the present escapes before being recognized? 

    And such also is the nature of the crea­ture that lives in time — con­demned to grow or to per­ish with­out rest and with­out cer­tain stability. 

    gb_cows-in-the-road_2.jpg

    It is there­fore fit that the bod­ies of ani­mals and plants, obliged to fol­low a sort of cur­rent and car­ried away by the motion that leads them to birth or to death, should live in the midst of sur­round­ings whose nature is in accord with beings sub­ject to change. Thus, the writer who wisely tells us of the birth of the uni­verse does not fail to put these words at the head of the nar­ra­tive: “In the begin­ning, God cre­ated.” That is to say, in the begin­ning of time.

    There­fore, if He makes the world appear in the begin­ning, it is not a proof that its birth has pre­ceded that of all other things that were made. He only wishes to tell us that, after the invis­i­ble and intel­lec­tual world, the vis­i­ble world, the world of the senses, began to exist. (Exegetic Hom­i­lies 1.5)

    gb_bighornriver.jpg

    Related posts:

    1. Praise for the Creator
    2. Flow­ers for Maiden Mary
    3. The Sweet-singer
    4. “The Mind of the Maker” and the prob­lem of evil
    5. Today in Beth­le­hem hear I

    May 3rd, 2010 | Grace | No Comments |

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