Creation in Saint Basil the Great

Introduction

The nine Homilies on the Hexaemeron of Saint Basil the Great are the most influential patristic reading of the first chapter of the Book of Genesis. Delivered orally before a varied audience gathered in the church of Caesarea in Cappadocia, sometime before the year 370, they fixed for the entire Eastern Tradition the language by which the Church speaks of the creation of the world: out of nothing, in time, through the Word of the Father, in the work of the Spirit who “was bearing care over” the waters.

Saint Gregory the Theologian, in the eulogy delivered at the death of his friend, bears witness to the power of these texts: “Whenever I take his Hexaemeron in hand and read it aloud, I feel close to the Creator, I begin to grasp the foundations of creation, and I admire the Creator more than I did before”¹. This testimony is not a matter of mere protocol. Saint Gregory, himself the most refined orator of the fourth century, recognises that the Hexaemeron works in the reader — moving him from the mere knowledge of the text of Scripture into the contemplation of the reality which the text names.

This article follows, homily by homily, what Saint Basil says about the creation of the world. It is not a thematic synthesis but an exposition: we move through the nine discourses in the order in which they were delivered, preserving the structure of the days of creation as the preacher himself laid it out. All citations are given verbatim, following the standard Romanian translation by Father Dumitru Fecioru². Where necessary, we indicate the correspondence with the critical Greek edition of Stanislas Giet³.

For the Orthodox reader of today, direct contact with this text has a precise importance: Saint Basil speaks at once about the physics of the world and about its theology, without the one contradicting the other and without either absorbing the other. The visible world is, for him, “a work of art, set before the eyes of all, to be viewed and contemplated and to make known the wisdom of the Creator who made it”⁴ — and this is precisely the perspective which modern culture has, to a great extent, lost, both in its materialist version and in its rival spiritualist one.

The Setting of the Discourses

The nine homilies were delivered, according to the most probable dating proposed by the Romanian editorial tradition, in the course of a single week during the Great Lent, before the year 370⁵. Saint Basil was still a priest at Caesarea, under Bishop Eusebius, and was at the peak of his oratorical powers. He preached twice a day — morning and evening — commenting on Genesis 1:1–26, that is, from the beginning of creation up to the threshold of the formation of man, which the preserved cycle does not develop at length. The manuscript tradition and modern scholarship also know two homilies On the Origin of Man, attributed to Saint Basil and critically edited in Sources Chrétiennes; their authenticity has been discussed in the patristic literature, but modern editors (Smets, van Esbroeck) have advanced serious arguments in favour of the Basilian attribution, proposing that they be read as Homilies X and XI of the Hexaemeron. In parallel, Saint Gregory of Nyssa wrote his own work On the Making of Man, explicitly tied to the wish to continue and complete his brother’s exposition⁶.

The audience was varied: townspeople, craftsmen, intellectuals, monastics. Saint Basil does not preach for initiates. He speaks to a living community, sometimes interrupting himself to rebuke those who are distracted, to bid them meditate between the discourses, to apologise for going past his time. This gives the text a particular character: it is not a systematic treatise but a theological conversation sustained with the city, in which metaphysics and naturalistic observation intertwine with moral exhortation and prayer.

Saint Basil draws heavily on the scientific and philosophical knowledge of his age — Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, the Stoics, the zoological and botanical observations of Antiquity. But he draws on it with discernment: not in order to ground the faith upon it, but in order to show that, whenever philosophy has come close to the truth, it has done so by trying to say something which Scripture says better, and whenever it has contradicted Scripture, it has also contradicted itself. This attitude — which is neither fideism nor rationalism — defines the Cappadocian patristic style at its highest expression.

It should also be remembered that the Homilies on the Hexaemeron are not study writings but homilies actually delivered. This has direct consequences for the way in which they must be read. Saint Basil jokes, pauses, returns to an idea when he sees that the audience has not grasped it, hurries when his time has run out. The text preserves the mark of the moment in which it was spoken. For the modern reader, this characteristic is precious: it grants access not only to the Basilian doctrine, but to the way in which a great preacher of the ancient Church shared his teaching in real time, before a living community.

Homily I — “In the Beginning God Made the Heaven and the Earth”

Saint Basil begins not by defining terms, but by showing the gravity of the act of speaking about creation: “It is right that any one beginning to narrate the formation of the world should begin with the good order which reigns in visible things”⁷. The world is not, then, a structure “made spontaneously, as some have imagined,” but “a work which drew its origin from God”⁸.

The first polemical target is the ancient philosophers who made matter a principle coeternal with God — or, worse, who denied any beginning at all. Saint Basil reasons against them: if the world had a beginning in time, it must also end in time. Then comes the cutting irony: “Of what use then are geometry — the calculations of arithmetic — the study of solids and far-famed astronomy, this laborious vanity, if those who pursue them imagine that this visible world is co-eternal with the Creator of all things, with God Himself”⁹?

We note the nuance. Saint Basil does not condemn science. He condemns the science which, having reached the beauty and order of the cosmos, refuses to go further, towards its Cause. “The world is a work of art set before all for contemplation, so that through it the wisdom of Him who created it might be known”¹⁰.

“In the Beginning”

The word “beginning” (ἀρχή) takes on at Saint Basil a depth which the Hebrew text bereshit calls for. “The first movement is called beginning. ‘To do right is the beginning of the good way.’ Just actions are truly the first steps towards a happy life”¹¹. “Beginning” thus means simultaneously: the initial point in time, the cause, the rational principle, the goal. All these senses apply to the verse of Genesis.

Furthermore: Saint Basil suggests that “beginning” indicates the very Son of God, through whom all things were made — without forcing the text, but making audible within it the resonance with John 1:1. Here is Cappadocian theology at work: Scripture reads Scripture, and Genesis is read from the Gospel.

The World of the Angels

One of the most important patristic openings of Homily I is the affirmation of the existence of a creation prior to the visible world — the world of the angels. “It 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”¹².

This more ancient condition is not coeternal with God — it is created, but not in our time. In it, “the Creator and Demiurge of the universe perfected His works, spiritual light for the happiness of all who love the Lord, intellectual and invisible natures, all the orderly arrangement of pure intelligences who are beyond the reach of our mind”¹³. The angels precede the material cosmos. Moses did not speak of them because his audience was “still a babe in knowledge” — the divine pedagogy of Scripture requires accommodation to the reader’s level.

Heaven and Earth as the Poles of Creation

The verse “He made heaven and earth” is for Saint Basil a comprehensive formulation: the two extremities contain everything that exists between them. “By naming the two extremes, he suggests the substance of the whole world (…). All intermediate beings were created at the same time as the extremities”¹⁴. Therefore: not a chaotic creation followed by an ordering, but a creation in which the “technical reason” (λόγος τεχνικός) is present from the very first act.

This formulation is crucial. Saint Basil does not separate matter from its reason. From the first moment, creation is formed — not out of a preexisting matter, but brought into being together with its forms, through the Word of God. And time itself begins with the world: “Moses said: ‘In the beginning He created,’ so that we might know that the world came into being without lapse of time, together with the will of God”¹⁵.

Excursus: The Cosmology of Saint Basil — Earth and Sun

Before moving on, it is useful to gather together what Saint Basil says about the physics of the world. The preacher of Caesarea knows the Greco-Roman cosmology and discusses it explicitly. His attitude towards it is nuanced: he neither adopts it as a parallel authority to Scripture, nor does he reject it wholesale. He uses it as observable material which he then reorders under the light of faith.

The Shape of the Earth. Concerning the shape of the earth, Saint Basil has a clear position, which he expresses directly in Homily IX: he does not commit himself to any particular shape and refuses to make of this question a teaching of faith. “Those who have written about the nature of the universe have discussed at length the figure of the earth. If it be spherical or cylindrical, if it resemble a disc and is equally rounded in all parts, or if it has the form of a winnowing basket and is hollow in the middle; all these conjectures have been suggested by cosmographers, each one upsetting that of his predecessor”¹⁶. Saint Basil observes that the philosophers of antiquity propose diverse and contradictory theories: sphere, cylinder, disc, winnowing basket. And he concludes: “Moses, the servant of God, said nothing about figures; he has not said that the earth’s circumference contains a hundred and eighty thousand furlongs”¹⁷. These things belong to “vain matters” — that is, they are not useful for salvation, and they are not part of what the Holy Spirit has ordered to be written in Scripture.

This is a deliberate and important reticence: Saint Basil does not adopt the spherical cosmology of Greek Antiquity as a teaching to be imposed upon Christians. Moreover, when adversaries attempt to trap him with an objection founded on sphericity — “if the firmament is spherical, as it appears to our eyes, and the water is fluid and slides down the surrounding higher places, how can the water remain on a curved surface”¹⁸? — Saint Basil answers that “if a body has a concave appearance to those who look at it, it does not follow that its exterior surface must also be spherical, nor that the whole body must be round and slippery”¹⁹. Not only does he not adopt sphericity; he rejects the idea that a curved appearance imposes a spherical shape. What Moses does not say, neither does Basil say.

The Motion of the Earth. Here Saint Basil is more categorical: the earth is at rest. And he faithfully presents the argument of the Greek physicists (Aristotle’s, through the tradition): “There are inquirers into nature who with a great display of words give reasons for the immobility of the earth. Placed, they say, in the middle of the universe and not being able to incline more to one side than the other because its centre is everywhere the same distance from the surface, it necessarily rests upon itself; since a weight which is everywhere equal cannot lean to either side”²⁰.

Basil renders the argument faithfully — and more, he evaluates it with indulgence: “If there is anything in this system which might appear probable to you, keep your admiration for the source of such perfect order, for the wisdom of God. (…) At all events let us prefer the simplicity of faith to the demonstrations of reason”²¹. This is, moreover, the motto of the entire cycle — used as the epigraph of the Romanian edition PSB 17.

As may be seen, Saint Basil does not declare himself an Aristotelian, a Platonist, or a Stoic. He accepts any natural discovery insofar as it does not contradict Scripture and insofar as it leads to the admiration of the Creator. And if the physicist cannot explain, “the simplicity of faith” becomes the ultimate answer. The earth is in the centre, it is at rest — and Scripture itself bears witness: “Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened?” (Job 38:6)²²; “Upon the seas hath He founded it” (Ps. 23:2)²³; while the arguments of the physics of the time only happen to accord with the scriptural truth. Saint Basil does not read these expressions literally: the “pillars” are “the power which sustains the earth”²⁴, and being founded “upon the seas” does not mean that the earth literally floats, but that “the water is spread all around the earth”²⁵. The language of Scripture is pedagogical and deep, not naïve, but its content — that the earth stands in the midst of creation, held there by God — is affirmed without ambiguity.

The Sun. Saint Basil describes at length the nature of the sun in Homily VI. He knows the theory according to which the sun “is white in colour and is neither red nor yellow, and is therefore not fire by its own nature; but they also say that the heat it sends forth is due to its swift rotation”²⁶ — that is, the old Aristotelian theory that the sun is not properly fire, but produces heat by the friction of the air through its motion. Basil does not decide for or against; he only observes that the result is the same: the sun heats and dries, regardless of the inner mechanism of its heat.

The motion of the sun is described geocentrically, in accord with common observation: the sun moves, the earth stays still. “The sun moves from one part of the world to another, that, by remaining always in the same place, it may not destroy the beauty of the world with too much heat; sometimes it leads the sun to the southern parts at the winter solstice, sometimes it transports it to the signs which mark the equality of day and night; and from there it transports it again to the northern parts at the summer solstice”²⁷. We note that the sun does not move on its own — Someone (God) moves it. The motion of the heavenly bodies is the work of Providence, not the autonomy of the celestial body itself.

Planets and the Fixed Stars. A clarification of vocabulary is here in order. The word “planet” comes from the Greek πλανήτης (planḗtēs) and means “wanderer,” “vagrant.” In the Greco-Roman cosmology which Saint Basil knows, “planets” were the wandering stars — those heavenly bodies which, unlike the “fixed” stars, moved on apparently irregular paths across the heavens. The seven classical “planets” were the Sun, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. The earth, in this vocabulary, was not counted among the “planets”: it was the centre, the dry land (γῆ), the home — the appointed place against which all others were measured. The distinction between the earth and the heavenly bodies — the earth as place, the rest as lights and wanderers around it — is, for Saint Basil and for the whole of patristics, one of ontological category, not merely of cosmic geography.

The Size of the Sun. Here Saint Basil has an exceptional intuition for the fourth century. He grasps that the sun is far greater than it appears — and that our eye, on account of distance, deceives us: “Do not let what your eyes see deceive you. Do not think the sun to be only a cubit broad, because such it appears to those who behold it! It is natural that objects which are at very great distances from our sight should be diminished in size”²⁸. And he draws a comparison: seen from the top of a mountain, the ploughman appears “like an ant”; the great ship looks “smaller than a dove.” The conclusion: “Therefore, as Scripture tells us, this luminary is great, far greater than countless times what it appears to be”²⁹. Saint Basil here uses Scripture (“great lights” — Genesis 1:16) together with physical reasoning to correct naïve perception. The real sun is “countless times” greater than the disc we see.

Night as the Shadow of the Earth. And yet another observation of theological physics: “Night is nothing other, according to its nature, than the shadow of the earth. For as in the daytime shadow is cast behind a body which stands in front of the light, so night comes when the air which surrounds the earth is shaded”³⁰. The observation is offered not as a cosmological demonstration but as a natural explanation of the day-night rhythm within the scriptural register: God separated the light from the darkness, and the darkness of night is, by its nature, the absence of light on the side opposite the rays of the sun.

Conclusion of the Excursus

The Basilian cosmology is therefore:

Geocentric: the earth in the centre of the universe, at rest, sustained “by the power of the Creator” — a positioning which, for Saint Basil, is not accident but ordering with theological meaning, since where the earth stands, there also stands man, and there will the Incarnation take place;
Undecided regarding the shape of the earth: Saint Basil lists the hypotheses of the philosophers (sphere, cylinder, disc, winnowing basket) and refuses to commit himself, grounding himself in the silence of Moses;
Geocentric in the motion of the heavenly bodies: the sun and the moon move, the earth does not;
Anti-autonomous: no heavenly body works of itself — all are moved by divine Providence;
Free in details, firm in foundations: questions of physical detail remain open to observation and inquiry, but the cosmological truths of substance — creation ex nihilo, the sustaining of the world through the Word of God, the appointed place of the earth and of man within the cosmos — pertain to the confession of the faith.

This cosmological and theological positioning together also explains Saint Basil’s attitude towards the physics of his time: he uses it as observable material — which he examines attentively, but does not absolutise — and receives it when it serves to the praise of the Creator, without making of the opinions of the physicists a letter of the faith and without losing himself in their disputes between schools. For Saint Basil, the cosmological question and the theological question are placed together: the world is a creature, sustained in existence by the will and power of the Creator, and the place of each thing within it — earth, waters, heavenly bodies, living creatures, man — is appointed so that, looking about him, man might give Him thanks.

Homily II — “The Earth Was Invisible and Unfinished”

The second homily addresses a technical problem, but one of major dogmatic gravity: what does it mean that “the earth was invisible and unfinished” (Genesis 1:2)?

The philosophers — in particular the Platonists and the Aristotelians — have understood these words as indicating formless matter, prior to God’s work. Saint Basil faithfully renders the opposing position: “This matter, they say, by its nature, was ‘invisible and unfinished’; it was of itself without qualities and devoid of figure and form; this matter the Creator took”³¹ and shaped according to His wisdom.

Saint Basil dismantles the argument not by a direct assault but by reductio ad absurdum: “If matter is uncreated, it follows in the first place that it is of equal honour with God and worthy of the same reverence. But could there be a greater impiety than this — to give to formless, shapeless matter, of the lowest kind (…) — to give, then, to matter the same honour as to the wise, the powerful, and the most beautiful Maker of all”³²?

The argument is formidable. To make matter uncreated is to deify it. And God cannot have a “partner” in being — God is the absolute Cause, without whom nothing exists. Creation is ex nihilo, out of nothing — and this is precisely the teaching which the verse “the earth was invisible and unfinished” presupposes, not contradicts.

Why “Invisible”?

Saint Basil offers two legitimate senses: “The word ‘invisible’ indicates on the one hand what cannot be seen with the eyes of the body; for example, our mind; and on the other hand it indicates what is by nature visible, but is not seen on account of some body covering it”³³. In the case of Genesis, it is the second sense: “the earth is said to have been ‘invisible’ because it was covered by water. Moreover, since light had not yet been made, it is not surprising that the earth should have been in darkness; that the atmosphere above it”³⁴ was dark.

We observe Saint Basil’s exegetical method: when Scripture admits several plausible literal senses, he enumerates them without forcing a single interpretation. This is not eclecticism but the recognition that the scriptural text can have, simultaneously, several layers of truth.

The Holy Spirit “Bearing Care” Over the Waters

The verse “the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters” (Genesis 1:2) receives at Saint Basil a categorical reading. Saint Basil first presents an alternative interpretation (attributed to Origen), which he then rejects: “Moses speaks here of that spirit which is on the earth, that is to say, of the movement of the air”³⁵ — a poor interpretation, for it reduces the expression to a mere enumeration of the elements of the world.

Saint Basil chooses the traditional sense, given by the Fathers who preceded him: it is the Holy Spirit. The verb “moved upon” (ἐπεφέρετο), he says, following a tradition we know from Diodore of Tarsus, has the sense of “to give life,” “to warm towards fruitfulness,” like the bird that broods over the egg. The Holy Spirit did not float indifferently over the waters — He was preparing them for the life that was about to come forth from them.

This is one of the oldest patristic testimonies concerning the work of the Holy Spirit at creation, a testimony which Saint Basil will develop at length in his treatise On the Holy Spirit. The whole Holy Trinity is engaged in the act of creation: the Father who commands, the Word who accomplishes, the Spirit who perfects.

Evil Is Not from God

At the end of Homily II, Saint Basil addresses a problem which deeply concerned him: if darkness is created — and the verse says “darkness was upon the face of the deep” — is evil then also created by God? The answer is categorical: “It is not, then, a pious thought to say that evil is made by God; for nothing among contraries comes from its contrary: neither does life beget death, nor is darkness the beginning of light, nor does sickness produce health”³⁶.

Evil has no proper existence. It is absence, privation, the diversion of the good from its purpose — never a created substance. This teaching, which we shall find again in Saint Dionysius the Areopagite and Saint Maximus the Confessor, receives here one of its first clear patristic formulations.

The Light, the First Day

“And God said: ‘Let there be light!’ And there was light” — the end of Homily II. Saint Basil observes that the first word of God created light. Not the sun, which will come only on the fourth day. A light prior to the heavenly bodies, a light which the “unlit” atmosphere awaited in order to become transparent. This light separates day from night, institutes the fundamental rhythm of created time, and prefigures the uncreated light — for, as Saint Basil will show, God is Light.

Homily III — On the Firmament

The second day of creation focuses on a single verse: “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters” (Genesis 1:6). Saint Basil begins with an observation on method: “We have now recounted the works of the first day, or rather of one day. (…) Yesterday we heard God’s decree, ‘Let there be light.’ Today we hear another decree of God: ‘Let there be a firmament'”³⁷ — for the verse adds the explanation: “to divide the waters from the waters.”

How Does God Speak?

Saint Basil poses a seemingly naïve question, but one of considerable depth: “Let us first investigate how it is that God speaks. Is it in our manner? Does His intelligence receive an impression from objects, and, after having conceived them, make them known by particular signs appropriate to each one of them”³⁸? Is the divine intelligence formed first by external impressions, and then does it choose the words proper to express them through vocal organs?

The answer, obviously, is negative. The anthropomorphism of Scripture has a pedagogical purpose: it makes us understand what would otherwise remain inaccessible. The Word of God is not sound, but creative act — it is the very Son of God, through whom all things were made.

The Firmament and Ancient Cosmology

Saint Basil knows the cosmological theories of antiquity — Aristotle’s crystalline spheres, the Stoic celestial ether, the four elements. He does not reject them automatically, but subordinates them to the scriptural text. The “firmament” (στερέωμα) is for him neither a crystalline sphere nor a material film, but a reality created by God to separate the waters above from the waters below — a separation that is real, physical, but whose ultimate nature remains hidden in mystery.

What is important is that Saint Basil refuses to oblige Scripture to say what the physics of his time says. He keeps the biblical text in its letter and draws upon natural philosophy only where it aids understanding, never where it would force it.

Divine Approval: “And God Saw That It Was Good”

The recurring formula of Genesis — “and God saw that it was good” — receives at Saint Basil an elegant interpretation. It is not that “things charmed the eyes of God, nor that God beholds the beauty of creatures as we do; but the beautiful, in the sense given here by Scripture, is that which is made in fitting”³⁹ perfection, that which serves the purpose for which it was made.

God does not “discover” that His work is good. He knows it from the beginning. His approval is the affirmation of the coincidence between the creative intention and its result — and this complete coincidence is the very definition of the beauty of the world.

The Goal: The Contemplation of the Creator

The end of the homily again places the centre of gravity in its proper place. The world is a pedagogy. “From the beauty of visible things let us conceive of Him who is above all beauty; from the greatness of these sensible and limited bodies let us raise ourselves with our mind”⁴⁰ to the unlimited One. Its beauty is not the end in itself — it is the call towards the One who made it. And man, as the only creature capable of this ascent, is summoned to undertake it.

Homily IV — On the Gathering Together of the Waters

The third day begins. “Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear!” (Genesis 1:9). Saint Basil observes that the waters, though by their nature they flow down to lower places, had not gathered before this command. A divine act was needed for a natural property to become functional.

“To all these questions there is only one answer: it is the result of that first voice! That command makes the water flow”⁴¹. The laws of nature are not autonomous — they are the expression of the creative will of God, who has set the nature of each thing to serve the cosmic order. Water “flows” not because it is in its nature to do so in the abstract, but because God gave the nature of water this calling. When you speak of the waters, says Saint Basil, “remember that first voice.”

The homily contains numerous geographical observations — the names of the seas, descriptions of provinces, comments on the reserves of fresh and salt water. Saint Basil, who had travelled much — in Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Mesopotamia — speaks from direct experience. But all these details serve a single purpose: to show that “the Lord, the great Worker of wonders and Craftsman”⁴² placed each element exactly where it ought to be, in the service of a single plan.

The Earth, “Natural Mother” of Life

The most important part of Homily IV comes at the end, when Saint Basil prefigures the third day in its fullness. The earth is ready. The waters have withdrawn. The dry land waits to receive the command to bear fruit. And here Saint Basil prepares a teaching he will develop in Homily V: the earth is not an inert surface, but a reality prepared by God to bear life, to give it birth.

Homily V — On the Germination of the Earth

This is one of the most beautiful homilies of the entire cycle. “And God said: ‘Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself'”⁴³.

The Divine Word Works Through Created Nature

“A single blade of grass, a single plant is enough to make your mind contemplate the skill with which all things have been made!”⁴⁴. Saint Basil stands in wonder before a single flower. Not because he is sentimental, but because he sees in the blade of grass the entire rationality of creation: the root, the stem, the leaf, the flower, the seed, the cycle of reproduction — all linked, all functional, all beautiful.

And more: God’s command “let the earth bring forth grass” has placed within the nature of the earth a capacity that is not exhausted. The earth continues to bear fruit. There is here a subtle but important teaching: the sun is not the source of plant life, for God gave this adornment to the earth before the making of the sun. For the ancients — and for a certain natural philosophy — the sun was the vital principle of the world. Saint Basil tears down this claim with a single scriptural argument: Scripture places the plants before the sun.

This is not cosmological naïveté. Saint Basil knows very well that plants depend on sunlight. But he affirms, dogmatically, that the sun is an instrument, not a cause. The ultimate source of all that lives is the divine command of the third day, which continues to work to this day.

The Rose Without Thorns

One of Saint Basil’s most delicate observations comes here. Discussing the state of things before the fall, he says: “But then the rose was without thorns; later was added the thorn to the beauty of the flower, that we might have sorrow near the joy of pleasure, to remind us of sin, on account of which the earth was condemned to bring forth thorns”⁴⁵.

Thorns do not belong to the primordial creation — they are the consequence of the fall. Not a new invention of God, but a working of human freedom which has diverted nature. The beauty of the rose remains; but it now comes accompanied by pain. This interweaving — joy near suffering — is post-lapsarian pedagogy. The world, after the fall, teaches us through wounding.

The Old Age and Youth of Trees

A charming naturalistic observation: “And it is a wonderful thing that you may find in trees signs resembling the youth and old age of man. In young trees, with abundant foliage, the bark is taut; but in old trees it becomes wrinkled”⁴⁶. Saint Basil, who loved concrete nature, sees in the old tree — with its hollow trunk, its thinned crown — an icon of the old man; and in the young tree — upright, vigorous — an icon of youth. Not a mere poetic conceit: a cosmic pedagogy. Nature teaches us about ourselves, if we look at it as we ought.

Homily VI — On the Creation of the Luminous Bodies

The fourth day: the sun, the moon, the stars. “Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, and to divide the day from the night” (Genesis 1:14).

The Heavenly Bodies: Vehicles, Not Sources

Saint Basil here makes a distinction of immense cosmological importance: “In the beginning, the nature of light was brought into being; now, this heavenly body has been made to be the vehicle of that first-born light. Just as fire is one thing and the lamp another”⁴⁷ — the fire placed within the lamp that carries it — so the light created on the first day does not coincide with the sun, but is carried by it from the fourth day onwards.

This distinction is one of the most elegant patristic solutions to a problem the text of Genesis poses sharply: how can there be light before there are heavenly bodies? Answer: light is a reality, and the heavenly bodies are the organic means by which this reality reaches us. The light remains a creation of God; the heavenly bodies are the instruments by which it serves time and life.

A Starry Heaven, Not Zodiacs

Saint Basil contemplates the heavens with pure emotion: “If, on a clear night, gazing with attention upon the inexpressible beauty of the stars, you have formed an idea of the Architect of the universe, and have asked yourself who has embroidered the heaven with these flowers”⁴⁸, you have come close to the beginning of the knowledge of God. Not the astrological gaze, but the contemplative gaze. The cosmos is not a book to be read in order to find your destiny; it is a mirror in which the glory of the Creator is seen.

And precisely because this is so, Saint Basil finely combats astrology. For the ancient world — even for intellectuals — the fate of man depended on the position of the heavenly bodies at his birth. Saint Basil shows that such a teaching is at once physically absurd and morally destructive. How can so many men born simultaneously, in the same astral configuration, have such different lives? And worse: if life is predestined by the stars, there is no more responsibility, no more virtue, no more sin. The entire moral life collapses.

Saint Basil sees in astrology not a science but a capitulation. And he does not hesitate to strike without restraint: “Laughable fables have been spread by drunken old women, who chatter everywhere”⁴⁹ — the formulation is harsh because the danger was very real in fourth-century Caesarea.

The Light and the Fire of Judgement

A remarkable note: discussing the nature of fire, Saint Basil suggests something profound about eschatology. “A mysterious teaching of Scripture warns us that, when we shall give account for the deeds done in our life, the nature of fire shall be divided, on the one hand into light, for the delight of the righteous, and on the other into burning pain, prepared for the condemned”⁵⁰.

The same reality — the divine fire, the glory of God — will be at once light for the righteous and pain for the unrepentant. There are not two different “fires.” There is only one — that of God’s presence — which works differently according to the state of the one who meets it. This teaching, later developed by Saint Maximus the Confessor, Saint Symeon the New Theologian, and especially Saint Gregory Palamas in the controversy with Barlaam, has here one of its oldest formulations.

“Two Great Lights”

“And God made two great lights” (Genesis 1:16). Saint Basil observes with semantic finesse: “The word ‘great’ has sometimes an absolute meaning — as when we say that the heaven is great, that the earth is great, that the sea is great — and sometimes a relative one”⁵¹. The sun and the moon are “great” in a relative sense — in comparison with the other heavenly bodies visible to us, and in the sense that their light encompasses the whole earth. But in comparison with the majesty of God, they are, as Saint Basil warns, as ants.

Homily VII — On the Creeping Things of the Waters

The fifth day brings the first living creatures: fish and the creeping things of the waters. “Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven!” (Genesis 1:20).

Life, At Once With the Command

Saint Basil emphasises that life appears at once with the word of God. Not gradually, not by spontaneous evolution, not through a transformation of dead matter into living — but all at once, by command. The waters which yesterday were empty, today teem with creatures.

Saint Basil describes at length the kinds of fish, their manner of reproduction, their instincts — all that ancient zoology knew, plus his own naturalistic observation. But each description ends with a moral lesson. The fish that guard their young teach us of parental care. The fish that migrate with the seasons teach us of God’s ordering. The great cetaceans, the leviathans, teach us of the greatness of the Creator who made all things “with measure and design.”

Providence Down to the Smallest Creature

One of the major themes of Homily VII is divine Providence. Saint Basil attacks, without naming them directly, two categories of opponents: on the one hand, the Epicureans and the adherents of any kind of ancient “deism,” for whom the gods no longer care for the world once they have set it in motion; on the other hand, the fatalists and astrologers, for whom the world is governed by impersonal necessity, not by a personal benevolent will. Against both, Saint Basil affirms that God has not abandoned the world after He made it, but preserves and governs it. And this governance extends to the smallest creatures.

Divine Providence is not for Saint Basil an abstract doctrine, but a reality observable in the wisdom with which each animal is fashioned. The fins of the fish are placed exactly where they ought to be. The scales are arranged so as to give the body flexibility. The gills are built for the exchange of air in the water. This economy of life is not accidental. It is the expression of a creative mind that has thought of every detail.

A Pastoral Word on Poverty

In the very middle of the homily, Saint Basil inserts one of those unexpected pastoral observations. Speaking of envy and of those who lie in wait for misfortunes to fall upon their neighbour, that they may rejoice in his ruin, he urges his hearer: “Do not imitate these men, condemned to perdition! Be content with what you have! For the wise man it is better to be poor and have enough for his needs, than to live in luxury and excess”⁵².

The Father of Caesarea never forgets that he speaks before a real community, with real needs. And that the homily on creation is not an aesthetic escape, but a re-placing of man — including hungry man — within the true order of things.

The homily ends on a moving personal note: “But the weakness of my body, and the lateness of the evening, compel me to stop my words here. Although I had still much to add for those who listen with delight”⁵³. Saint Basil, already weakened by the illness that would carry him off at forty-nine, preached against his own exhaustion.

Homily VIII — On Winged Creatures and Those of the Water

The fifth day continues, completing the picture with the birds. The commentary of Homily VIII begins with the title: “On Winged Creatures and Those of the Water”⁵⁴.

The Soul of the Animal

Saint Basil makes a crucial anthropological distinction. Commenting on the expression “let the earth bring forth living soul,” he anticipates it from this very homily: “Why does the earth bring forth living soul? That you may know the difference between the soul of the animal and the soul of man. A little later you will learn how the soul of man also was made. Now hear about the soul of the animals”⁵⁵. Animals have soul — they have life, motion, sensation — but this soul is not immortal. It is bound to the body, comes into being together with it, perishes together with it.

This distinction prepares the anthropological theology which Saint Basil will develop at the making of man. Man has a soul of another nature — a soul that is not born of matter and does not perish with the body. The soul of man is the breath of God, given directly, not mediated through the nature of the earth.

The distinction is, however, more nuanced than it may appear at first sight. Saint Basil does not say that animals are mere machines, devoid of any kind of psychic life (as the Cartesians will claim a millennium later). Animals feel, rejoice, suffer, raise their young, defend their territory, even show rudimentary forms of intelligence. All that Saint Basil denies is the immortality of this psychic life. The animal dies entirely when it dies biologically.

Saint Basil here avoids both Stoic materialism (which made the soul a kind of physical “pneuma”) and radical Platonism (which made the soul preexistent and independent of the body). The animal soul is real, but mortal; the human soul is real and immortal — because it comes from God, not from the earth. This position will later be codified by Saint John Damascene in his Exposition and will remain the common teaching of the Eastern Tradition.

The Winged Parables

Saint Basil becomes surprisingly tender as he describes the birds. “The cock is proud, the peacock loves beauty, the doves and the hens are wanton”⁵⁶. And then the turtledove, of which “it is said that the turtledove, once separated from her mate, does not seek another, but remains alone, in the memory of her former mate refusing all new union”⁵⁷ — an example for Christian widows, who do not hasten to a second marriage. The swan, which thrusts its neck into the deep water to gather its food, of which “you will discover even here the wisdom of the Creator, that He gave the swan its neck longer than its legs”⁵⁸. Each bird has its nature given by God, and each of these natures contains a teaching.

The fundamental principle, formulated at the end of Homily VIII, is: “Our God has created nothing in vain, nor has He left out anything that was necessary”⁵⁹. This is the Basilian axiom of the teleology of creation. All that exists has a purpose. Nothing is accidental. Nothing is lacking. The world is perfectly calibrated — not for utilitarian efficiency, but for a service that ascends, step by step, to the worship which man brings to the Creator.

Homily IX — On Terrestrial Creatures

The sixth day begins — the terrestrial animals. “And God said: ‘Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind'”⁶⁰.

The Dignity of Man — A Promise Kept for Another Time

Saint Basil makes a promise which will not be fulfilled in this cycle of homilies (those preserved): to speak about the creation of man. But before this, he already places man within the vision of creation. The whole order of the animals — fish in the water, birds in the air, beasts on the earth — prepares the framework within which man, as sole ruler, will be set.

This placement has a precise logic. Man comes last, not because he is the least important, but because he is the most important. Just as the master of the house enters last, after the house has been prepared, the table set, the servants gathered — so God first prepares the whole of creation as a great house, then brings man into it. This syntax of creation testifies to the final dignity of man without need of an explicit word. And Saint Basil, like a good pedagogue, lets it be observed rather than stated.

“The animals of the earth look towards the earth; but man, the heavenly plant, differs from the animals both in the form of his bodily frame and in the dignity of his soul”⁶¹. The Basilian anthropology is announced here: man is phyton ouranion, heavenly plant — sprung from the earth as body, but come from heaven as soul. The expression is memorable: not a philosophical metaphor, but an ontological description of the creature which, though rooted in the earth, has its crown turned towards heaven.

What Is the Form of Man?

Saint Basil contrasts the verticality of man with the horizontality of the animals: “What is the form of four-footed creatures? Their head bends down to the earth, their gaze looks towards the belly, and they seek in every way to please the belly. But your head is raised towards heaven; your eyes look upon things above. So that, if ever you make yourself ridiculous through the passions of the body, serving the body and the things beneath the belly, you have joined the brute beasts, and have become like unto them”⁶².

The body of man bears witness to his calling. Physical verticality is the symbol of spiritual verticality. And the man who devotes his life to the belly denies his own body — makes it speak falsely against its created structure.

Your Homeland Is the Jerusalem Above

The end of the homily places everything that has been said about creation within an eschatological tension: “Another care is fitting for you! Seek the things that are above, where Christ is! Let your mind be above earthly things! Order your life according to the form God has given you! Let your conversation be in heaven! Your true homeland is the heavenly Jerusalem. Your fellow citizens and countrymen are the firstborn enrolled in heaven”⁶³.

Creation is not man’s homeland. It is his school. The homeland is in Christ, “where Christ is.” All six days prepare the seventh day — the rest in God — which is itself a prefiguration of the eighth, the day of the age to come.

The Four Axes of the Basilian Teaching on Creation

Recapitulating the nine homilies, Saint Basil’s teaching on creation is structured along four main axes.

1. Creation Ex Nihilo, in Time, Through the Word

The world is not coeternal with God. There is no eternal matter which God merely shaped (against Plato, Plotinus, Aristotle). The world was brought from non-being into being by the command of God — and it was brought in time, having therefore a beginning and, necessarily, an end. Time itself is created together with the world; it is not a preexisting container, but a dimension of created being. “Moses said: ‘In the beginning He created,’ so that we might know that the world came into being without lapse of time, together with the will of God”⁶⁴.

2. The Trinity at Creation

The whole Holy Trinity is engaged in the creative act. The Father commands. The Word/Son works. The Spirit perfects, “bearing care” over the waters, giving them life. This teaching, later developed in the treatise On the Holy Spirit, already has, in the Hexaemeron, its dogmatic formulation. The world is, in the patristic expression, “full of the Trinity.”

3. The World as Theological Work of Art

The cosmos is not utilitarian. It is beautiful, rational, ordered — and it is so that man, contemplating it, may ascend to the Creator. “From the beauty of visible things let us conceive of Him who is above all beauty; from the greatness of these sensible and limited bodies let us raise ourselves with our mind”⁶⁵ to the unlimited One. The world is a pedagogy — a pedagogy which does not substitute for God, but points to God.

4. Man as Cosmic Verticality

In the order of creation, man holds a unique place. He is the only one who looks up. The only one who contemplates. The only one who can offer thanksgiving. And through his fall, the whole of creation has been touched — the rose has received its thorns, the earth has received its curse. The redemption of man is, therefore, also the redemption of the entire cosmos. Saint Basil does not yet say explicitly what Saint Maximus will develop, but he lays the foundations: man is not a piece in a cosmic mechanism; he is the priest of the cosmos, called to offer the whole world as a sacrifice to God.

Reception: The Continuation of the Work by Saint Gregory of Nyssa and Saint Ambrose

Saint Basil’s Hexaemeron did not remain isolated. It became, for the entire patristic Tradition that followed, the model of the exegesis of the first chapter of Genesis.

Saint Gregory of Nyssa

The closest continuator was Saint Basil’s own brother, Saint Gregory of Nyssa. Shortly after Saint Basil’s death (1 January 379), Saint Gregory wrote two complementary works: On the Making of Man (Περὶ κατασκευῆς ἀνθρώπου) and Apology on the Hexaemeron (addressed to their younger brother, Peter of Sebaste).

The declared motive: Saint Basil, in Homily IX, had promised a homily on the creation of man, but it has not been preserved within the corpus of the Hexaemeron proper. Saint Gregory of Nyssa wished to fill this gap, while remaining faithful to the framework established by his brother.

On the Making of Man develops the anthropology which in the Hexaemeron had remained in seed. The verticality of man, his freedom, reason, the image and likeness of God — all receive a fuller treatment. Above all the theme of the image: for Saint Gregory of Nyssa, man is in the image of God not by some single feature, but by his entire ontological structure — mind, freedom, capacity for love, vocation to grow without end in the knowledge of God (epektasis).

It should be noted that, in the editorial history, the works On the Making of Man attributed to Saint Basil have long been confused with the work of Saint Gregory of Nyssa. Modern patristic scholarship (Smets and van Esbroeck) has, however, established that these are two distinct authorships — and that the work attributed to Saint Basil (sometimes appearing under the title De hominis structura) most likely belongs to him⁶⁶. This means that the cycle of Basilian homilies on the Hexaemeron receives its anthropological completion also from the hand of the original preacher.

Saint Ambrose of Milan

In the West, the reception of the Hexaemeron was immediate and enthusiastic. Saint Ambrose of Milan, a great connoisseur of Greek and an avid reader of the Eastern Fathers, wrote his own cycle of Hexaemeron (at the end of the 380s) closely following — sometimes translating almost word for word — Basil’s text.

Saint Ambrose transmitted the Basilian teaching to the entire Latin world through his own work. The influence was so great that even Blessed Augustine, when he wrote De Genesi ad litteram, found himself in tacit dialogue with Saint Basil through the mediation of Saint Ambrose. About two decades after Saint Basil’s death, around the year 400, Eustathius the African translated the Hexaemeron directly into Latin — so that the Western world might also read it in the original form.

This dual transmission — through Saint Gregory of Nyssa toward the East, through Saint Ambrose toward the West — made the Hexaemeron the founding text of Christian cosmology for the entire first millennium. All the great later theologians who wrote about creation — Saint Maximus the Confessor, Saint John Damascene, Saint Gregory Palamas, Saint Anastasius of Sinai — have, declared or not, Saint Basil behind them.

A Few Notes of Present Relevance

Read today, Saint Basil’s Hexaemeron is surprisingly alive. The physical details — the names of seas, descriptions of animals, the scientific terminology of the time — bear, naturally, the mark of the fourth century. But the theological structure of the text is intact and remains the constant teaching of the Church: the same for the reader of today as for the audience of Caesarea.

A few observations.

First: Saint Basil shows, in exemplary fashion, how to do a theology of creation without concordism and without disjunction. He does not try to make Scripture agree with the physics of his time (as some apologists will later do). Nor does he withdraw Scripture from contact with natural reality (as radical spiritualists will do). He keeps the biblical text in its letter and uses the natural knowledge of his time as a help, not as an authority. This is a method which, mutatis mutandis, could also be exercised today — in a dialogue with modern physics that falls neither into fundamentalist creationism nor into liberal concordism.

Second: Basil’s struggle against the idea of “matter coeternal with God” remains extremely current. The idea of the universe as ultimate reality — whether formulated in materialist language, or in spiritualist or pantheist variants — repeats, in modern forms, the temptation of a reality without beginning that limits or replaces the total dependence of creation upon God. The Basilian response — creation ex nihilo, the total ontological dependence of created being upon the Creator — keeps its sharpness.

Third: Saint Basil’s vision of the cosmos as pedagogy for the contemplation of God is one which modern man, estranged from nature and technicalised, urgently needs to recover. Not in order to return to a pre-technological naïveté, but in order to rediscover the contemplative attitude towards the world. “A single blade of grass, a single plant is enough to make your mind contemplate the skill with which all things have been made.” This sentence, written in the fourth century, is today more necessary than ever.

Fourth: Against astrology and all modern forms of horoscope, divination and fatalism, the Basilian teaching about stars as vehicles of light, not as forces that determine destiny, remains unexpectedly fresh. The visible reappearance of astrology in contemporary popular culture — in seemingly light forms, but in fact serious for those who practise them — repeats exactly the problem Saint Basil faced in the fourth century. His answer remains valid: to entrust one’s life to the stars is to renounce freedom, responsibility and, ultimately, one’s own dignity as a rational creature called to rule creation, not to be ruled by it.

Fifth: From the standpoint of man’s relation to creation, the Hexaemeron offers a theology that reduces the world neither to a resource (as industrial exploitation does) nor to an idol (as a certain contemporary naturist spirituality does). The world is gift and pedagogy — received with thanksgiving, used with measure, contemplated with wonder. Man is placed to rule it, but rule is understood in the Basilian way: not as tyranny, but as priesthood. And the thorned rose of Homily V reminds us that we have disordered the world through sin, and that its restoration passes through the restoration of man.

Conclusion

The nine Homilies on the Hexaemeron are not merely a commentary on the first chapter of Genesis. They are a catechesis on the way in which the Orthodox Christian beholds the world — with wonder, with thanksgiving, with discernment, with hope. They are a school of theological vision, among the best the Church has given.

In the classical cycle of the nine homilies, Saint Basil does not develop at length the creation of man. This absence was felt from antiquity, which is why the Tradition has preserved both the continuation by Saint Gregory of Nyssa and the homilies On the Origin of Man attributed to Basil himself. But the entire exposition on non-human creation was preparing the sixth day — the moment when God the Trinity turned His gaze towards the adorned earth and said: “Let us make man in Our image, after Our likeness.” This goal of creation — man as priest of the cosmos, called to deification — remains, in the Hexaemeron, as a longing which the text contains without unfolding. And it leaves to us, the readers, the task of unfolding it in our own lives.

For, in the end, the goal of the Hexaemeron — as of Saint Basil’s whole theology — is simply formulated: that man should never cease to admire and to glorify the Creator through all of creation.

Notes

Saint Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 43 (Funeral Oration on Saint Basil), cited from the Romanian translation by Fr. Prof. N. Donos, Sf. Grigore de Nazianz, Apologia sau cuvântarea în care arată motivele care l-au îndemnat să fugă de preoţie şi Elogiul sfântului Vasile, Huşi, 1931, p. 187–188. For English see NPNF Series II, Vol. 7. ↩
Saint Basil the Great, Omilii la Hexaemeron, translation, introduction, notes and indices by Fr. Dumitru Fecioru, in the collection Părinţi şi Scriitori Bisericeşti, vol. 17 — Scrieri, Partea I, Romanian Patriarchate Publishing House, Bucharest, 1986. The Homilies on the Hexaemeron occupy pp. 53–146 of this volume. Hereafter: PSB 17. For the English citations we follow the translation by Blomfield Jackson in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 8 (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1895). Hereafter: NPNF. ↩
Basile de Césarée, Homélies sur l’Hexaéméron, Greek text, introduction and translation by Stanislas Giet, 2nd edition revised and expanded, Paris, 1968 (Sources Chrétiennes, 26 bis). References to the internal divisions of the homilies (“Homily I, 1,” etc.) follow Giet’s edition. ↩
Homily I, 7; NPNF, p. 56; cf. PSB 17, p. 60. ↩
On the dating of the Homilies before the year 370 (the period of the presbyterate), see Fr. D. Fecioru’s introductory study to PSB 17, pp. 35–40. ↩
For the attribution of the two Homilies on the Origin of Man to Saint Basil, see A. Smets and M. van Esbroeck (eds.), Basile de Césarée, Sur l’origine de l’homme, Sources Chrétiennes 160, Paris, 1970. ↩
Homily I, 1; NPNF, p. 52; PSB 17, p. 53. ↩
Homily I, 1; NPNF, p. 52; PSB 17, p. 53. ↩
Homily I, 3; NPNF, p. 54; PSB 17, p. 57. ↩
Homily I, 7; NPNF, p. 56; PSB 17, p. 60. ↩
Homily I, 5; NPNF, p. 55; PSB 17, p. 59. ↩
Homily I, 5; NPNF, p. 55; PSB 17, p. 58. ↩
Homily I, 5; NPNF, p. 55; PSB 17, p. 58. ↩
Homily I, 7; NPNF, p. 56; PSB 17, p. 59. ↩
Homily I, 6; NPNF, p. 55; PSB 17, p. 60. ↩
Homily IX, 1; NPNF, p. 102; PSB 17, p. 139. ↩
Homily IX, 1; NPNF, p. 102; PSB 17, p. 139. ↩
Homily III, 4; NPNF, p. 67; PSB 17, p. 79. ↩
Homily III, 4; NPNF, p. 67; PSB 17, p. 79. ↩
Homily I, 10; NPNF, p. 58; PSB 17, p. 63. ↩
Homily I, 10; NPNF, p. 58; PSB 17, p. 63 (used as epigraph of the PSB 17 volume, p. 53). ↩
Job 38:6 — cited in Homily I, 9; NPNF, p. 57; PSB 17, p. 63. ↩
Ps. 23 (24):2 — cited in Homily I, 9; NPNF, p. 57; PSB 17, p. 63. ↩
Homily I, 9; NPNF, p. 57; PSB 17, p. 63. ↩
Homily I, 9; NPNF, p. 57; PSB 17, p. 63. ↩
Homily III, 7; NPNF, p. 69; PSB 17, p. 83. ↩
Homily III, 7; NPNF, p. 69; PSB 17, p. 83. ↩
Homily VI, 9; NPNF, p. 86; PSB 17, p. 114. ↩
Homily VI, 9; NPNF, p. 86; PSB 17, p. 114. ↩
Homily VI, 5; NPNF, p. 84; PSB 17, p. 109. ↩
Homily II, 2; NPNF, p. 60; PSB 17, p. 66. ↩
Homily II, 2; NPNF, p. 60; PSB 17, p. 66. ↩
Homily II, 1; NPNF, p. 59; PSB 17, p. 66. ↩
Homily II, 1; NPNF, p. 59; PSB 17, p. 66. ↩
Homily II, 6; NPNF, p. 62; PSB 17, p. 72. ↩
Homily II, 4; NPNF, p. 61; PSB 17, p. 70. ↩
Homily III, 1; NPNF, p. 65; PSB 17, p. 77. ↩
Homily III, 2; NPNF, p. 66; PSB 17, p. 77. ↩
Homily III, 10; NPNF, p. 71; PSB 17, p. 85. ↩
Homily III, 10; NPNF, p. 71; PSB 17, p. 86. ↩
Homily IV, 4; NPNF, p. 74; PSB 17, p. 89. ↩
Homily IV, 1; NPNF, p. 73; PSB 17, p. 87. ↩
Homily V, 1; NPNF, p. 76; PSB 17, p. 95. ↩
Homily V, 2; NPNF, p. 76; PSB 17, p. 98. ↩
Homily V, 6; NPNF, p. 79; PSB 17, p. 100. ↩
Homily V, 7; NPNF, p. 80; PSB 17, p. 102. ↩
Homily VI, 2; NPNF, p. 82; PSB 17, p. 107. ↩
Homily VI, 1; NPNF, p. 82; PSB 17, p. 106. ↩
Homily VI, 8; NPNF, p. 86; PSB 17, p. 118. ↩
Homily VI, 3; NPNF, p. 83; PSB 17, p. 108. ↩
Homily VI, 9; NPNF, p. 87; PSB 17, p. 115. ↩
Homily VII, 4; NPNF, p. 92; PSB 17, p. 122. ↩
Homily VII, 6; NPNF, p. 93; PSB 17, p. 125. ↩
Title of Homily VIII; NPNF, p. 94; PSB 17, p. 127. ↩
Homily VIII, 2; NPNF, p. 95; PSB 17, p. 129. ↩
Homily VIII, 5; NPNF, p. 97; PSB 17, p. 131. ↩
Homily VIII, 6; NPNF, p. 98; PSB 17, p. 134. ↩
Homily VIII, 7; NPNF, p. 99; PSB 17, p. 137. ↩
Homily VIII, 8; NPNF, p. 100; PSB 17, p. 136. ↩
Homily IX, 1; NPNF, p. 101; PSB 17, p. 138. ↩
Homily IX, 2; NPNF, p. 103; PSB 17, p. 140. ↩
Homily IX, 2; NPNF, p. 103; PSB 17, p. 140. ↩
Homily IX, 2; NPNF, p. 103; PSB 17, p. 141. ↩
Homily I, 6; NPNF, p. 55; PSB 17, p. 60. ↩
Homily III, 10 (with reiteration in Homily IX); NPNF, p. 71; PSB 17, p. 86. ↩
On the history of the question of authenticity and the modern arguments in favour of Basilian attribution, see A. Smets and M. van Esbroeck in Sources Chrétiennes 160 (Paris, 1970). ↩