Homilies on the Six Days of Creation

Moses as trustworthy witness to creation§1

Basil opens his first homily on the Six Days by introducing Moses as the divinely attested author whose account of creation demands a prepared and attentive soul.

1A fitting beginning for one who is about to speak of the constitution of the world is to set before his discourse the beginning of the ordering of visible things. For the making of heaven and earth is about to be handed down to us—not brought together by chance, as some have imagined, but receiving its cause from God. What hearing is worthy of the greatness of what is said? How ought a soul to come prepared for the hearing of such things? It should be pure from the passions of the flesh, unclouded by worldly cares, diligent, searching, looking around from every side to see if it might gain a worthy thought of God. But before we examine the precision in the words and search out how great are the meanings of these small utterances, let us consider who it is who speaks with us. For even if we cannot reach the deep heart of the writer because of the weakness of our understanding, yet if we attend to the trustworthiness of the speaker, we shall be led of our own accord to assent to what is said. Moses, then, is the one who laid down this writing—that Moses who was testified to be pleasing to God while still an infant; whom the daughter of Pharaoh adopted and raised in royal fashion, appointing the wise men of the Egyptians as teachers for his education. He hated the bulk of tyranny and ran back to the lowliness of his own people, choosing to suffer hardship with the people of God rather than to have the temporary enjoyment of sin (Hebrews 11:25). He possessed friendship with righteousness from nature itself, since even before the rule of the people was entrusted to him, he is seen defending against the wicked even to the point of death because of his natural hatred of evil. He was driven into exile by those he had benefited, and gladly left behind the disturbances of Egypt and came to Ethiopia, and there, keeping himself entirely free from other pursuits, he spent forty whole years in the contemplation of realities. When he was already eighty years old, he saw God as far as it is possible for a human being to see—or rather, as it was granted to no one else, according to the very testimony of God: “If there is a prophet among you, I the Lord will make myself known to him in a vision, and I will speak to him in sleep. Not so with my servant Moses; he is faithful in all my house. Mouth to mouth I will speak to him, in visible form, and not in riddles” (Numbers 12:6-8). This man, then, who was counted worthy of the face-to-face vision of God equally with the angels, speaks to us from what he heard from God. Let us listen, then, to words of truth spoken not in persuasive words of human wisdom but in teachings of the Spirit, whose end is not the praise of the hearers but the salvation of those who are taught.

“In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). The wonder of the thought stops my speech. What shall I say first? Where shall I begin the explanation? Shall I refute the vanity of those outside, or shall I praise our truth? The wise men of the Greeks wrote much about nature, and not one doctrine among them has stood fixed and unshaken, since each one always overthrows the one before him. So there is no need for us to refute their teachings, for they are sufficient for one another's overthrow.

The world's beginning refutes godless cosmologies§2

Basil is expounding Genesis 1:1, arguing against Greek philosophers who denied that an intelligent cause stands over the origin of all things.

2Those who did not know God would not allow that an intelligent cause stood over the origin of all things, but drew their conclusions in a way consistent with their initial ignorance. For this reason some fled to material principles, assigning the cause of everything to the elements of the world; others imagined that atoms and partless bodies, masses and pores, hold together the nature of visible things. Now, they said, when the partless bodies come together with one another, and now when they are rearranged, births and destructions come about; and in the case of the more enduring bodies, the stronger interweaving of the atoms provides the cause of their permanence. Truly those who write these things weave a spider's web, setting up such fine and insubstantial principles for heaven and earth and sea. For they did not know how to say, “In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). Because of this they were deceived by the godlessness dwelling within them into thinking that all things are unsteered and ungoverned, carried along as chance would have it. So that we might not suffer this, the one who wrote the account of the world's creation at once, in his very first words, illuminated our minds with the name of God, saying, “In the beginning God made.” How beautiful is the order! He placed “beginning” first, so that no one would think the world is without beginning. Then he added “made,” so that it might be shown that what was made is the smallest part of the Creator's power. For just as a potter, having shaped countless vessels by the same art, has not used up either his art or his power, so also the Creator of this universe does not have a creative power measured to one world alone, but one that surpasses it to an infinite degree, and by the inclination of his will alone he brought the magnitudes of visible things into being. If then the world has a beginning and has been made, ask who gave it its beginning and who is its maker. Or rather, so that you may not be led astray from the truth by searching with human reasonings, he anticipated you with his teaching, placing in our souls as a seal and a safeguard the precious name of God, saying, “In the beginning God made.” The blessed nature, the ungrudging goodness, the one beloved by all who have received reason, the much-longed-for beauty, the beginning of all beings, the source of life, the intelligible light, the unapproachable wisdom—this one “made the heaven and the earth in the beginning” (Genesis 1:1). Do not imagine, then, O man, that visible things are without beginning; and do not suppose, because the things that move in the heavens run round in a circle and the beginning of a circle is not easily grasped by our ordinary perception, that the nature of the bodies that move in circles is without beginning. For this circle—I mean the plane figure enclosed by a single line—even though it escapes our perception, and we cannot discover where it began or where it ended, we are not therefore obliged to suppose that it is without beginning. But even if it escapes perception, in truth it certainly began from some point, drawn by one who marked it out with a center and a radius. So you too, because the things that move in a circle return upon themselves, do not let the smoothness of their motion, uninterrupted by anything in the middle, leave in you the error that the world is without beginning and without end.

The world's beginning implies its end§3

Basil is arguing against those who think the visible world is eternal, showing that because it began in time it must also end, and that the philosophers' wisdom only increased their condemnation.

3“For the form of this world passes away” (1 Corinthians 7:31), and “Heaven and earth will pass away” (Matthew 24:35). These are advance announcements of the teachings about the consummation and about the transformation of the world, delivered now in brief as part of the elementary teaching of the inspired Scripture. “In the beginning God made.” Whatever begins from time must of necessity also be completed in time. If it has a beginning in time, do not doubt about its end. For geometry and arithmetic methods, and the treatises about solid bodies, and the much-talked-about astronomy, the much-busied vanity—to what end do they lead? If those who have devoted themselves to these things have conceived that this visible world is co-eternal with God the Creator of all things, bringing what is circumscribed and has a material body to the same glory as the incomprehensible and invisible nature, not even being able to conceive this much: that what has parts subject to corruption and alteration must of necessity one day undergo the same sufferings as its own parts. But they became vain in their reasonings, and their foolish heart was darkened, and claiming to be wise, they became fools (Romans 1:21-22), so much so that some declared that heaven exists together with God from eternity, while others declared that it is itself God, without beginning and without end, and the cause of the particular ordering of things. Surely their abundance of worldly wisdom will one day bring them an increase of their harsh condemnation, because seeing so sharply into vain things, they were willingly blinded to the understanding of the truth. But those who measure the distances of the stars, and catalogue the ever-visible ones and those near the Bear, and all that lie around the southern pole—visible to some, but unknown to us—and who divide the northern latitude and the zodiacal circle into countless intervals, and who observe with precision the risings of stars, their stations, their declinations, and the forward motion of all of them, and how much time each of the wandering stars takes to complete its own circuit—they have not discovered one single device among all these for conceiving of God as the maker of the universe and a just judge who brings to each the worthy recompense for the life he has lived. Nor have they been able, by the teaching about judgment, to recognize the thought of the consummation that follows from it: that the world must of necessity be transformed, if the condition of souls is also to change to another kind of life. For just as the present life has a nature akin to this world, so also the future existence of our souls will receive an end suited to its condition. But they are so far from attending to these truths that they pour out loud laughter at us when we proclaim the consummation of this world and the regeneration of the age. Since the beginning is by nature set before the things that come from it, when he spoke about the things that have their being from time, he necessarily set this word before all others, saying, “In the beginning God made.” For there was something, it seems, even before this world, which is contemplable by our mind but was left unrecorded, because it was unsuitable for those still being introduced and still infants in knowledge. There was a condition older than the birth of the world, befitting the supercosmic powers, the one above time, the eternal, the everlasting.

The invisible creation and the meanings of 'beginning'§4

Basil is explaining what existed before the visible world and why Genesis says 'In the beginning God made,' distinguishing the invisible creation from the temporal beginning of the visible world.

4In that world the Creator and Maker of all things brought his works to completion: an intelligible light suited to the blessedness of those who love the Lord, the rational and invisible natures, and the whole ordering of the intelligible realm, all that surpasses our understanding, whose very names we cannot discover. These things fill up the substance of the invisible world, as Paul teaches us when he says, “For in him all things were created, whether visible or invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities or powers, whether angelic hosts or archangelic ministries” (Colossians 1:16). But when it was time for this world also to be introduced among the things that exist, it was first of all a school and training place of human souls, and then also a dwelling place suited to all things in generation and corruption. The course of time, then, came into being as something natural to the world and to the animals and plants within it, always pressing forward and flowing past, never pausing in its race. Is time not exactly this: the past has vanished, the future is not yet here, and the present slips away from our perception before it can be known? The nature of things that come to be is like this too: always either growing or wasting away, with no evident fixedness or stability. It was fitting, therefore, that the bodies of animals and plants, bound as if by necessity to some stream and held fast by the movement that leads them toward generation or corruption, should be contained by the nature of time, which possesses a property akin to the things that change. For this reason the one who wisely teaches us the origin of the world fittingly began his account of it by saying, “In the beginning God made”—that is, in this beginning according to time. For he does not say it came to be in the beginning, testifying that it precedes all created things in age; rather, after the invisible and intelligible realities, he recounts the beginning of the existence of these visible things that are grasped by the senses. “Beginning” is also used of first movement, as in, “The beginning of a good way is to do what is right” (Proverbs 16:5 LXX). For it is from righteous actions that we are first moved toward the blessed life. “Beginning” is also used of that from which something comes, as the foundation is in a house and the keel in a ship, according to what is said: “The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord” (Proverbs 1:7; cf. Psalm 111:10 LXX). For reverence is like a base and a pedestal for perfection. The beginning of works of craft is the craft itself, as the wisdom of Bezalel was the beginning of the adornment of the tabernacle. And the beginning of actions is often the useful end of what comes to be, as the acceptance from God is the beginning of almsgiving, and the end stored up in the promises is the beginning of every activity according to virtue. Since “beginning” is used in so many ways, consider whether the present word does not fit all its meanings. You can learn from what time the constitution of this world began, if you go back from the present into the past and earnestly seek to find the first day of the world's origin. For in this way you will discover whence time received its first movement, and then that heaven and earth were laid down beforehand like foundations and bases, and then that there is some craftsmanlike reason that guided the ordering of the visible things, as the word “beginning” indicates to you. And you will discover that the world was not devised at random or in vain, but for some useful end and to contribute great benefit to the things that exist, if indeed it is truly a school for rational souls and a training place for the knowledge of God, providing guidance by the hand to the mind through visible and perceptible things toward the contemplation of the invisible, as the apostle says: “His invisible attributes, understood through the things that have been made since the creation of the world, are clearly seen” (Romans 1:20).

The beginning is not a part of time, and 'made' shows God as craftsman§5

Basil is expounding the first words of Genesis, 'In the beginning God made,' and has just begun his first homily on the six days of creation.

5Or perhaps the words “In the beginning God made” were chosen because the act of creation was instantaneous and outside time, since a beginning is something without parts and without extension. Just as the beginning of a road is not yet a road, and the beginning of a house is not a house, so the beginning of time is not yet time—not even the smallest part of it. And if someone argues contentiously that the beginning is time, let him understand that he will be dividing it into the parts of time: beginning, middle, and end. But to imagine a beginning of a beginning is utterly laughable. The person who cuts the beginning in two will make two beginnings instead of one—or rather many, even infinite, since whatever is divided is always cut into further pieces. So to teach us that the world came into existence together with the will of God, outside time, Scripture says, “In the beginning God made.” Other translators, expressing the meaning more clearly, have said, “In summary God made”—that is, all at once and concisely. Let this much suffice, then, as a brief account drawn from many possible remarks about the beginning.

Now among the arts, some are called productive, others practical, and others theoretical. The end of the theoretical arts is the activity of the mind. The end of the practical arts is the movement of the body itself, and when that movement stops, nothing remains or persists for those who see it; for dancing and flute-playing have no end product, but the activity itself terminates in itself. In the productive arts, however, even when the activity has ceased, the work remains before us—as with house-building, carpentry, metalworking, weaving, and all such crafts. Even if the craftsman is not present, these works sufficiently display the skill of their makers in themselves, and you can admire the builder from his building, the metalworker and the weaver from their work. So to show that the world is a technical construction, set before all for contemplation, so that through it the wisdom of its Maker might be known, the wise Moses used no other word about it. He said, “In the beginning God made”—not “he worked,” nor “he brought into existence,” but “He made.” And since many people have imagined that the world coexisted with God from eternity and was not made by him, but rather came into existence automatically as a kind of shadow of his power—they acknowledge God as its cause, but as a cause without deliberate choice, like a body causing its shadow or a light causing its radiance—the prophet corrects this error by using the precise wording, “In the beginning God made.” God did not merely supply the cause of its being; as good, he made what is useful; as wise, what is most beautiful; as powerful, what is greatest. He has all but shown you a craftsman entering into the substance of all things, fitting each individual part to the others, and producing a whole that is consistent with itself, harmonious, and perfectly ordered. “In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth.” By the two extremes of the universe he indicated its existence obliquely, giving the heaven the first place in origin and saying that the earth holds second place in existence.

The extremes imply the middle; do not probe the substance of heaven or earth§6

Basil is expounding Genesis 1:1, arguing that by naming heaven and earth Moses indicated all that lies between them, and he now warns against inquiring into the substance of heaven and earth.

6And certainly whatever lies between these two also came into being together with the extremes. So even if Moses says nothing about the elements—fire, water, and air—you should understand by your own reasoning, first, that all things are mixed with all things. In earth you will find water, air, and fire: fire leaps out from stones, and from iron—which itself has its origin from the earth—abundant fire is wont to flash forth in friction. This is worth marveling at: fire exists within bodies and lurks there without harm, but once it is called outside, it is destructive of those guarding it for a time. Well-diggers show that the nature of water is present in the earth, and the vapors rising from earth moistened and warmed by the sun show the presence of air. Then further, if heaven by nature occupies the upper region and the earth is the lowest—because light things are carried toward heaven, while heavy things naturally sink down toward the earth, and up and down are most opposite to each other—then the one who mentioned the things most distant from each other by nature also indicated by synecdoche the things that fill the space between them. So do not seek an explanation of each individual thing, but understand what was passed over in silence through what was spoken.

“In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth.” The investigation of the substance of each existing thing—whether of those that fall under our contemplation or of those set before our senses—would introduce a long and detached discourse into the exposition, so that more words would be consumed in examining this problem than all the rest that can be said about each of the questions. And this would be of no benefit for the building up of the Church. But concerning the substance of heaven, we are satisfied with what Isaiah said. In simple words he gave us an adequate understanding of its nature when he said, “He who made firm the heaven as smoke” (Isaiah 40:22)—that is, he gave the heaven a fine nature for its composition, not a solid nor thick one. And concerning its shape, what he said is sufficient for us, when he said in praise of God, “He who set the heaven as a vault” (Isaiah 40:22). Let us give ourselves the same counsel concerning the earth: not to busy ourselves overmuch with its substance, whatever it may be, nor to wear ourselves out with reasonings by seeking out the underlying reality itself, nor to seek some nature devoid of qualities, existing without quality by its own definition. Rather, we should know well that everything observed about the earth is ordered toward the principle of its being, and these things complete its substance. For you will arrive at nothing if you try by reasoning to strip away each of the qualities that exist in it. If you remove the black, the cold, the heavy, the dense, the qualities of taste that exist in it, or any others that are observed about it, there will be no underlying reality left. So I urge you to leave these questions aside, and not to seek on what the earth stands. For the mind will grow dizzy this way too, as the reasoning proceeds toward no agreed-upon end.

The earth's support and the philosophers' theory of its central place§7

Basil is addressing the question of what supports the earth, arguing that every proposed support leads to an infinite regress, and that the only safe answer is that God's power holds all things together.

7For if you say that air is spread beneath the breadth of the earth, you will be at a loss how a soft and porous nature endures being squeezed by such a weight, but does not slip away on every side, fleeing the settling down and always pouring upward past whatever compresses it. Again, if you suppose for yourself that water is what lies beneath the earth, you will likewise ask how the heavy and dense does not sink through the water, but is held by a weaker nature though it so greatly exceeds it in weight. And then you will seek the seat of the water itself, and again be at a loss about what watertight and resisting base its lowest bottom rests upon.

And if you suppose that some other body heavier than the earth prevents the earth from moving downward, you will reflect that that body too needs something similar to cover it and keep it from falling. And if we can contrive something to place beneath that one, our mind will seek again the support of that one, and so we will fall into infinity, always devising other bases for the bases we keep finding. And the further we advance in reasoning, the greater the counter-resisting power we are forced to introduce, one that can push back against the whole weight above it at once.

For this reason, set a boundary to your thought, lest the word of Job overtake you for your meddling as you peer into things incomprehensible, and you too be asked by him, “On what are its rings fastened?” (Job 38:6). But if you ever hear in the Psalms, “I have made firm its pillars” (Psalm 74:3 (LXX)), consider the power that holds it together to be called pillars. For what does “He founded it upon the seas” (Psalm 23:2 (LXX)) indicate, except that the nature of water is poured around the earth on every side? How then, since water is flowing and naturally falls downward, does it remain suspended and never flow away? But do you not consider that the earth hanging by itself, being heavier in nature, presents the same or even greater difficulty for reasoning?

But it is necessary, whether we grant that the earth exists by itself or say that it rests upon the water, never to depart from devout thinking, but to confess that all things are held together by the power of the Creator. So we must say to ourselves, and to those who ask us on what this immense and unbearable weight of the earth is supported, that “In the hand of God are the ends of the earth” (Psalm 94:4 (LXX)). This is safest for our understanding and beneficial for our hearers.

Already some of the natural philosophers cleverly devise such causes for the earth remaining unmoved. They say that because it has taken the middle place of the universe, and because of its equal distance on every side from the extremity, it has nowhere to which it might incline more, and so necessarily remains upon itself, since the surrounding likeness on every side makes any inclination in any direction entirely impossible for it. And they say the earth did not obtain the middle place by lot, nor by chance, but that this position is natural and necessary for the earth. For since the heavenly body occupies the outermost place as regards the upward direction, he says, whatever weights we suppose fall from above will be brought together from every side to the middle.

The earth's natural place and the philosophers' theories of heaven§8

Basil is answering objections about why the earth stays in place, then turns to what the wise of the world have said about the nature of heaven.

8And clearly, wherever the parts are carried, the whole will be pushed together toward that same place. If stones and wood and all earthy things are carried downward, then this would also be the proper and fitting position for the whole earth. And if any light thing is carried from the middle, clearly it will move toward the highest point. So the proper movement for the heaviest things is downward, and reason has shown that downward means toward the middle. Do not be surprised, then, that the earth never falls out of place, since it holds the middle as its natural position. For it is absolutely necessary that it remain in place, or else, if it moves contrary to nature, it departs from its proper seat. If any of these arguments seems persuasive to you, transfer your wonder to the wisdom of God who arranged things this way. For amazement at the greatest things is not diminished when the manner in which something marvelous happens is discovered. But if not, then at least let the simplicity of faith be stronger than logical demonstrations.

We might say the same things about heaven as well: the wise men of the world have composed very many-worded treatises about the heavenly nature. Some have said that it is composed of the four elements, since it is tangible and visible, sharing in earth because of its resistance, in fire because it is seen, and in the remaining elements because of the mixture. Others, rejecting this argument as unconvincing, introduced a certain fifth nature of body for the constitution of heaven, improvising it from themselves and by themselves. And among them there is something called the ethereal body, which they say is neither fire nor air nor earth nor water, nor in general any one of the simple bodies. They reason that the simple bodies have movement in a straight line as their proper motion, light things being carried upward and heavy things downward. But upward and downward are not the same as circular whirling, and in general a straight line differs enormously from revolution in a circle. And things whose natural movements are different must necessarily, they say, also have different essences. But neither can we suppose that heaven is composed of the primary bodies, which we call elements, because things composed of different materials cannot have smooth and unforced movement, since each of the simple bodies present in composite things has one impulse or another from nature. Therefore composite things are first of all held together with labor in their continuous movement, because one movement cannot be well-fitted and congenial to all the opposing elements; rather, the movement proper to the light element is hostile to the heaviest. For when we move upward, we are weighed down by the earthy element; and when we are carried downward, we do violence to the fiery element, dragging it down contrary to nature. And this dragging of the elements in opposite directions is an occasion of falling apart. For what is forced and contrary to nature, after resisting for a little while—and that violently and with difficulty—quickly dissolves into the things from which it was composed, as each of the elements that came together returns to its proper place.

Against the fifth element and the call to glorify the Creator§9

Basil is concluding his refutation of pagan theories about the heavens and turning to the proper response: glorifying God from the visible creation.

9Because of these constraints of reasoning, as they say, those who rejected the arguments of their predecessors needed a hypothesis of their own—the ones who posited a fifth nature of body for the generation of the heaven and the stars in it. Then another of those who swell with plausible argument rose up against them in turn, and he scattered and dissolved their views, introducing his own opinion instead. If we now tried to speak about these matters, we would fall into the same endless chatter as they do. But let us leave them to be overthrown by each other, and let us set aside the question of substance. Persuaded by Moses that God made the heaven and the earth (Genesis 1:1), let us glorify the master craftsman of all that has been made wisely and skillfully, and from the beauty of the visible things let us contemplate the one beyond beauty, and from the magnitude of these perceptible and circumscribed bodies let us reason by analogy to the one who is infinite, beyond all magnitude, and who surpasses every mind in the abundance of his power. For even if we do not know the nature of the things that were made, still what falls wholly under our perception holds so much wonder that even the most skilled mind proves inferior to the least of the things in the world—inferior either to the task of expounding it worthily, or to the task of rendering the praise owed to the Creator. To him be all glory, honor, and might, forever and ever. Amen.

Homily 2: On the earth being invisible and unformed

This morning we lingered over a few small words, and we found the depth of their meaning so hidden that we utterly despaired of what follows. For if the outer courts of the holy places are like this, and the gateways of the temple are so majestic and overwhelming, dazzling the eyes of our mind with the excess of their beauty, what must the holy of holies be? Who is fit to dare enter the inner sanctuaries? Who can look upon the secret things? Their very sight is unapproachable, and the word that would explain what is understood is altogether hard to utter. Nevertheless, since with the righteous judge there are appointed rewards not to be despised even for the mere choice of what is right, let us not shrink from the search. For even if we fall short of what is worthy, if we do not miss the intention of Scripture with the help of the Spirit, we too will not be judged altogether worthless, and with the cooperation of grace we will provide some building up for the Church of God.

Now the earth was, it says, invisible and unformed (Genesis 1:2). How is it that when heaven and earth were both made at the same time, the heaven was completed, while the earth is still incomplete and unworked? Or what, in any case, is the unformed state of the earth? And for what reason was it invisible? The complete formation of the earth is its abundance: the sprouting of all kinds of plants, the putting forth of the tallest trees, both fruitful and unfruitful, the bright colors and sweet fragrances of flowers, and all the things that a little later were about to spring up at the command of God and adorn the earth that gave them birth. Since none of these yet existed, the text rightly called it unformed. We could say the same things about the heaven as well: it too was not yet finished, nor had it received its proper adornment, since it was not yet illuminated by moon or sun, nor crowned with the choirs of the stars.

Why the earth is called invisible; against those who posit uncreated matter§10

Basil is explaining the phrase 'invisible and unformed' from Genesis 1:2, and now turns to refute interpreters who claim it refers to eternal, uncreated matter.

10For none of these things had yet come to be. So you will not stray from the truth if you say that the heaven too was unformed. Scripture calls the earth invisible for two reasons: either because there was not yet a human being to see it, or because it lay submerged beneath the water spreading over its surface and could not be seen. The waters had not yet been gathered into their own gatherings, which God later gathered together and named seas. What then is invisible? One kind is what is not by nature able to be seen by the eyes of flesh, like our mind. Another kind is what is visible by nature but is hidden because a body covering it stands in the way, like iron in the deep. In this latter sense we understand the earth to be called invisible now, since it was covered by the water. And further, since light had not yet come to be, it was no wonder that Scripture also called the earth invisible for this reason: it lay in darkness, because the air above it was unlit.

But the counterfeiters of the truth—those who do not train their own minds to follow Scripture, but twist the meaning of the Scriptures toward their own wish—say that matter is indicated by these words. For this, they say, is by nature both invisible and unformed: without quality in its own right, separated from every form and shape. The craftsman, they say, took it in hand, shaped it by his own wisdom, brought it into order, and so through it gave being to the visible world. Now if this matter is unbegotten, then first of all it is equal in honor to God, deemed worthy of the same privileges. What could be more impious than this—that the qualityless, the formless, the uttermost formlessness, the unformed ugliness (I am using their own terms) should be deemed worthy of the same preeminence as the wise and powerful and all-beautiful craftsman and creator of all things? And further, if matter is so great as to receive the whole knowledge of God, then in some way they set its substance alongside the unsearchable power of God—if indeed it is sufficient to measure out through itself the whole understanding of God. But if matter is less than God's activity, then their argument turns into an even more absurd blasphemy: they would have God held back from his own works, ineffective and inactive, for lack of matter.

But the poverty of human nature has deceived them. Among us, every craft is occupied with some particular matter—metalworking with iron, carpentry with wood—and in these things one thing is the underlying material, another the form, and another the finished product that results from the form. The matter is taken from outside, the form is applied by the craft, and the finished product is what is composed from both, from the form and the matter. So they suppose it is also with the divine creation: the shape of the world was brought in by the wisdom of the maker of all things, but the matter was supplied from outside to the creator, and the world came to be composite—having its underlying substance and being from elsewhere, but receiving its shape and form from God.

God creates matter itself, not just form§11

Basil is refuting the philosophical idea that matter existed before God and that God only shaped it, arguing instead that God made both the form and the substance of all things.

11From this they go on to deny that the great God presided over the constitution of all things, and to claim that he was like a contributor to some common feast, throwing in only a small portion of his own toward the origin of things. They could not, because of the lowliness of their reasoning, look up to the height of the truth: that here among us the crafts come after their materials, since they were introduced into human life by the necessity of need. The wool existed first, and weaving came afterward, supplying from itself what nature lacked. The wood was there, and carpentry took it in hand, shaping the material for whatever need was sought at the time, and showed us the usefulness of wood—providing an oar for sailors, a winnowing fork for farmers, a spear for soldiers. But God, before any of the things now seen came to be, set his mind to it and resolved to bring the things that were not into being; at one and the same moment he thought what kind of world it should be, and generated together with its form the matter that suited it. For heaven he set apart the nature proper to heaven; for the shape of the earth he supplied the substance that belonged to it and was owed to it. Fire and water and air he shaped as he willed, and brought them into being as the principle of each thing that came to be required. And the whole world, being of unlike parts, he bound together by some unbreakable bond of friendship into one communion and harmony, so that even the things most distant from one another in position seem to be united through their mutual sympathy. Let them cease, then, from their mythical fabrications, measuring by the weakness of their own reasoning the power that is incomprehensible to thought and utterly inexpressible by human speech. “God made the heaven and the earth” (Genesis 1:1)—not each halfway, but the whole heaven and the whole earth, the very substance taken together with the form. For he is not a discoverer of shapes, but the maker of the very nature of things. Otherwise let them answer us: how did the active power of God and the passive nature of matter ever meet one another—the one supplying the underlying thing without form, the other possessing the knowledge of shapes without the matter—so that each might receive from the other what it lacked: the maker having somewhere to display his craft, and the matter putting off its formlessness and its lack of shape? But enough on these matters. Let us return to the beginning. “The earth was invisible and unformed” (Genesis 1:2). When Moses said, “In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth” (Genesis 1:1), he passed over many things in silence: water, air, fire, and the qualities that arise from them. All of these, as things that complete the world, clearly came into being together with the whole; but the account left them out, training our mind toward quickness, giving us from a few starting points the ability to reason out what remains. Since, then, nothing is said about the water—that God made it—but it is said that the earth was invisible, consider for yourself by what covering it was hidden from view. Fire could not have covered it, for fire gives light and makes visible whatever it comes near, rather than casting darkness.

Water and darkness explained literally, against heretical myths§12

Basil is explaining why Genesis says the earth was invisible and unformed, arguing that water covered it and the air above was dark, and he begins refuting those who make darkness an evil power.

12Nor was air the covering of the earth at that time. The nature of air is thin and transparent: it receives every form of visible things and passes them on to the eyes of those who see. What remains, then, is for us to understand that water lay spread over the surface of the earth, since the moist substance had not yet been separated off to its own proper place. And for this reason the earth was not only invisible but also unformed. For even now an excess of moisture hinders the earth from bearing fruit. The same cause, then, accounts both for its not being seen and for its being unformed—if indeed the furnishing of the earth is the order proper to it and according to nature: grain fields swelling in the hollows, meadows green and bursting with varied flowers, fertile glens, and mountain peaks shaded by forests. None of these it yet possessed. It was in labor with the birth of all things through the power placed in it by the Creator, but it was waiting for the appointed times, so that at the divine command it might bring forth its offspring into the open.

But “darkness,” it says, “was over the deep” (Genesis 1:2). Here again are other starting points for myths and beginnings of more impious fabrications, for those who twist the words to their own private notions. They do not explain darkness as it actually is—air without light, or a place shadowed by the blocking of a body, or in general a place deprived of light for whatever reason—but they explain darkness as an evil power, or rather evil itself, having its origin from itself, opposed and contrary to the goodness of God. For if God is light, they say, then clearly the power arrayed against him would be darkness, according to the logic of their thought. Darkness, they say, that does not have its being from another, but is a self-begotten evil. Darkness, an enemy of souls, a maker of death, the opposite of virtue. And they are deceived into thinking that this darkness both exists and was not made by God, on the basis of the very words of the prophet. From this, what wicked and godless doctrines have not been fabricated? What heavy wolves, tearing apart the flock of God, have not taken their start from this little phrase and spread over souls? Were not the Marcionites from here? Were not the Valentinians from here? Was not the abominable heresy of the Manichaeans from here—which one would not be wrong to call a gangrene of the churches? Why do you run so far from the truth, O man, devising for yourself starting points of destruction? The word is simple and easy for all to grasp. The earth was invisible, it says. What is the cause? Because it had the deep spread over it. And what is the meaning of “the deep”? Much water, hard to reach, whose limit is downward. But we know that many bodies often appear through water that is thinner and clear. How then was no part of the earth shown through the waters? Because the air poured over it was still without light and darkened. A ray of the sun passing through waters often shows the pebbles in the depths; but in deep night no one could in any way see what is under the water. So the statement that follows confirms that the earth was invisible: because the deep was what covered it, and this deep was darkened. Therefore the deep is not a multitude of opposing powers, as some have imagined; nor is darkness an original and evil power arrayed against the good.

The nature and origin of evil§13

Basil is refuting the idea that darkness is an independent evil power, and now explains what evil actually is and where it comes from.

13For two things equal to each other in opposition will be entirely destructive of each other's constitution; and they will have and provide unceasing trouble, forever locked in war with one another. And if one of the opposing forces surpasses the other in power, it becomes entirely consuming of the one overcome. So if they say the opposition of evil to good is equally balanced, they introduce unending war and perpetual destruction, with each side conquering and being conquered in turn. But if the good surpasses in power, what is the reason that the nature of evil has not been completely destroyed? And if evil is unbegotten—which is not lawful to say—I wonder how they do not flee from themselves, submitting themselves to such unlawful blasphemies.

Nor is it pious to say that evil has its origin from God, because none of the opposites comes from its opposite. For life does not give birth to death, nor is darkness the source of light, nor is sickness the maker of health. In changes of conditions, the shifts are from opposites to opposites; but in origins, each thing that comes to be proceeds not from opposites but from things of the same kind. If then, someone says, evil is neither unbegotten nor made by God, where does it get its nature? For no one who shares in life will deny that evils exist. What then do we say? That evil is not a living and ensouled substance, but a disposition in the soul opposed to virtue, coming to be in the careless through the falling away from the good.

Do not then look for evil outside yourself; do not imagine some original nature of wickedness. Let each person recognize himself as the originator of his own vice. For of the things that happen to us, some come from nature, such as old age and weaknesses; some from chance, such as irrational misfortunes that befall us from outside causes, often gloomy or sometimes brighter—like the man digging a well finding treasure, or the man hurrying to the marketplace meeting a rabid dog. But some things are in our power, such as mastering desires or not restraining pleasures; such as holding back anger or laying hands on the one who provoked us; telling the truth or lying; being gentle and moderate in character, or puffed up and exalted by arrogance. Of these things, then, of which you yourself are master, do not seek their origins elsewhere, but recognize that evil properly so called has taken its beginning from deliberate falls. For if it were involuntary and not in our power, such great fear from the laws would not hang over wrongdoers, nor would the punishments of the courts be so inexorable, measuring out to criminals what they deserve.

Let this be said by me about evil properly so called. For sickness and poverty and dishonor and death, and all the sorrows of human life, are not yet worthy to be counted in the class of evils, because their opposites are not numbered among our greatest goods. Some of these come from nature, and some appear to have befallen many people for their benefit. So now, silencing every figurative and allegorical explanation for the present, let us receive the meaning of darkness simply and without over-elaboration, following the intention of Scripture.

Darkness as shadow, not substance§14

Basil is answering the question of whether darkness existed before light and what darkness is, continuing his literal reading of Genesis 1:2.

14But the argument presses further: was darkness created along with the world? Is it older than light? And why is the worse thing the more ancient? And why is the worse thing the more ancient? We answer that this darkness did not subsist in its own right as a substance. It is an affection around the air, coming upon it by deprivation of light. What light, then, did the region within the world suddenly find itself without, so that darkness came to be over the water? We reason as follows: if anything existed before the constitution of this perceptible and perishable world, it was clearly in light. For neither the ranks of the angels, nor all the heavenly armies, nor any named or unnamed rational nature or ministering spirit whatsoever, lived in darkness. They held their proper state in light and all spiritual gladness. No one will dispute this—at least no one who awaits the light above the heavens in the promises of good things, about which Solomon says, “Light is always for the righteous” (Proverbs 13:9), and the apostle says, “Giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light” (Colossians 1:12). For if those who are condemned are sent into the outer darkness, then clearly those who have done what is worthy of acceptance have their rest in the light beyond the world.

So when the heaven came into being by God’s command, suddenly stretched around, enclosing the things within by its own circumference—a continuous body able to separate what is inside from what is outside—it necessarily made the space left within it lightless, cutting off the brightness from outside. For three things must come together for a shadow: the light, the body, and the unlit place. The darkness within the world, then, came to subsist by the shadow of the heavenly body. Understand what I am saying from a clear example: at a still midday, someone sets up a tent around himself made of dense, watertight material and shuts himself inside in a makeshift darkness. Suppose that the darkness in question was like that—not subsisting in its own right beforehand, but following upon other things.

This darkness is also said to walk upon the deep, because the outermost part of the air naturally touches the surfaces of bodies. At that time water lay over everything. Therefore it is necessarily said that darkness was over the deep.

“And the Spirit of God,” it says, “was borne upon the water” (Genesis 1:2). If this means the spirit as the pouring of the air, then accept that the writer is enumerating for you the parts of the world: God made heaven, earth, water, air—and this air already being poured out and flowing. But if—what is more true and was approved by those before us—the Spirit of God means the Holy Spirit, then accept this reading, because Scripture especially and uniquely honors the Spirit with this mention, and nothing else is called the Spirit of God except the Holy Spirit, the completing element of the divine and blessed Trinity. If you accept this meaning, you will find the benefit from it greater.

How, then, was this Spirit borne upon the water? I will tell you not my own word, but that of a Syrian man who was as far from worldly wisdom as he was near to the knowledge of true things. He said that the Syriac language is more expressive, and because of its closeness to Hebrew it somehow approaches the meaning of the Scriptures more nearly.

The Spirit's life-giving work and the creation of light§15

Basil is explaining the meaning of the Spirit being borne upon the waters, then moves to God's first spoken command, 'Let there be light.'

15So the meaning of the phrase is this. They explain “was borne upon,” he says, as meaning that the Spirit warmed the nature of the waters and gave it life, in the image of a brooding bird that imparts a vital power to the things being warmed beneath it. They say that this word indicates something like this: the Spirit was borne upon the water—that is, the Spirit was preparing the nature of the water for the production of life. From this the question raised by some is sufficiently answered: the Holy Spirit is not absent even from the creative activity.

And God said, “Let there be light” (Genesis 1:3). The first voice of God created the nature of light, made the darkness vanish, dissolved the gloom, made the world bright, and brought to all things at once a lovely and pleasing appearance. For the heaven appeared, which until then had been hidden by darkness, and its beauty was as great as eyes still testify even now. The air shone round about—or rather, the air held the light wholly mixed through its entire being, sending the sharp transmissions of its radiance everywhere to its own limits. Above, it reached as far as the upper air and heaven itself; in breadth, it illuminated all the parts of the world—north, south, east, and west—in a sharp moment of time. For such is its nature, fine and transparent, that light passing through it needs no extension of time. Just as it carries our sight to visible things without time, so it receives the impulses of light in an instant—in a moment of time smaller than anyone could conceive—to all the limits of the air. And the upper air became more pleasant with the light, and the waters more radiant, not only receiving the radiance but also sending it back from themselves by the reflection of the light, with sparklings flashing from the water on every side. The divine voice transformed all things to the sweetest and most precious state. Just as those who pour oil into the deep make the place transparent, so the Maker of all things, when he spoke, poured the grace of light into the world all at once. “Let there be light.” And the command was a deed; and a nature came into being than which human reasoning cannot conceive anything more delightful for enjoyment.

But when we speak of voice and word and command in relation to God, we do not mean a sound emitted by vocal organs, nor air shaped by the tongue; we understand the divine Word, but we consider the inclination in the will, because it is easily grasped by learners, to be shaped in the form of a command.

And God saw the light, that it was good (Genesis 1:4). What praise worthy of the light could we offer, when it received in advance the testimony of its Creator, that it is good? Among us, too, speech yields the judgment to the eyes, having nothing to say as great as what the senses testify in advance. But if beauty in a body has its being from the symmetry of its parts to one another and from the good color that appears on it, how is the principle of beauty preserved in the case of light, which is simple in nature and of uniform parts? Is it not because what is proportionate in light is testified not in its own parts, but in its painless and gentle effect on sight? For in this way gold is beautiful too, possessing what attracts the eye and gives delight not from the symmetry of its parts, but from its good color alone.

Why the first day is called one, not first§16

Basil is explaining Genesis 1:5, arguing that God's judgment that light was good looked to future benefit, and that the first day is called 'one' to define the measure of a day-night cycle.

16And the evening star is the most beautiful of the stars, not because its parts are in proportion to one another, but because its radiance falls on the eyes in a way that is painless and pleasant. Then again, God's judgment about the beautiful was made not only with a view to what delights the sight, but also with foresight of the benefit that would come from it later. For there were as yet no eyes to judge the beauty in light. And God separated between the light and between the darkness (Genesis 1:4). That is, God made their natures unmixed and opposed to one another in contrariety. For he set them apart and divided them by the greatest distance.

And God called the light day, and the darkness he called night (Genesis 1:5). Now, after the creation of the sun, day is the air lit by the sun when it shines in the hemisphere above the earth, and night is the shadow of the earth that occurs when the sun is hidden. But then it was not according to the sun's movement; rather, as that firstborn light was poured forth and again contracted according to the measure fixed by God, day came to be, and night followed in turn. And there was evening, and there was morning, one day (Genesis 1:5). Evening, then, is the common boundary of day and night; and morning likewise is the neighborhood of night to day. So in order to give the privileges of birth to the day, he first named the end of the day, and then the end of the night, since night follows after day. For the state of the world before the creation of light was not night, but darkness; what was set in contrast to the day was named night, and it received this newer name after the day. So there was evening, and there was morning. He means the day-night. And he no longer named them day and night, but assigned the whole name to the prevailing one. You would find this same custom throughout all Scripture: in the measuring of time, days are counted, and not nights along with the days. The days of our years, says the psalmist (Psalm 89:10 LXX, Hebrew 90:10). And again Jacob: The days of my life are few and evil (Genesis 47:9). And again: All the days of my life (Psalm 26:4 LXX, Hebrew 27:4). So what has now been handed down in the form of history is legislation for what follows. And there was evening, and there was morning, one day (Genesis 1:5). Why did he not say first, but one? And yet it would have been more consistent for the one who was about to bring in a second, third, and fourth day to call the day that begins the sequence first. But he said one, either defining the boundary of the measure of day and night and joining together the time of the day-night, since the twenty-four hours complete the interval of one day—night being clearly included along with the day—so that even if at the turnings of the sun one of them happens to exceed the other, the intervals of both are nevertheless always circumscribed within the appointed time. It is as if he were saying: the measure of twenty-four hours is the interval of one day; or, the return of the heaven from the same point to the same point again happens in one day. So however often evening and morning overtake the world according to the sun's circuit, the period is completed not in more time, but in the interval of one day.

Why the first day is called 'one' not 'first'§17

Basil is expounding the first day of creation and explaining why Scripture calls it 'one day' rather than 'first day'.

17Or perhaps the more authoritative account is the one handed down in secret: that the God who fashioned the nature of time imposed measures and signs upon it—the intervals of days—and measuring it by the week, he commands the week always to return in a circle upon itself, counting out the movement of time. And the week, in turn, is completed by one day, returning upon itself seven times—and this is a circular shape, to begin from itself and end in itself. This is also the special property of eternity: to return upon itself and never come to an end. For this reason he named the head of time not “first day” but “one day,” so that even from the name it would have kinship with eternity. For the name that displays the character of what is solitary and unshared with another was fittingly and properly called “one.” And if Scripture presents many ages to us, speaking in many places of “age of age” and “ages of ages,” yet even there no first or second or third age has been counted out for us—so that from this we are shown differences of various conditions and affairs, not boundaries and limits and successions of ages. For “the day of the Lord,” it says, “is great and glorious” (Joel 2:11). And again, “Why do you seek the day of the Lord? It is darkness and not light” (Amos 5:18). Darkness, clearly, for those who deserve the darkness. For the word knows that day to be without evening, without succession, and without end—the day the psalmist also called the eighth, because it lies outside this sevenfold time. So whether you say “day” or “age,” you will mean the same thing. If that condition is called a day, it is one and not many; if it is called an age, it is solitary and not one of many. So to lead our thought toward the life to come, he named the image of eternity “one”—the firstfruits of days, the same age as the light, the holy Lord’s day, honored by the resurrection of the Lord. “And there was evening,” it says, “and there was morning, one day” (Genesis 1:5). But the words about that evening have been overtaken by the present evening, and here they bring our discourse to a close. May the Father of the true light, who adorned the day with heavenly light, who brightened the night with the rays of fire, who prepared the rest of the coming age with the spiritual and unceasing light, enlighten your hearts in the knowledge of the truth, and keep your life without stumbling, granting us to walk becomingly as in the day, so that you may shine like the sun in the brightness of the saints, for my boast, for the day of Christ—to whom be glory and power forever and ever. Amen.

HOMILY 3. On the Firmament.

The works of the first day—or rather, of the one day; for let us not take away from it the dignity it has in its nature, given by the Creator as a day in its own right, not numbered in sequence with the others—the things that came to be on it, then, our discourse went through yesterday and divided the explanation among the hearers, making the morning food for souls and the evening gladness. Now it moves on to the wonders of the second day.

The Word of God and the Firmament's Purpose§18

Basil is opening his third homily, on the firmament, and has just addressed the crowd, including artisans who want him to keep the sermon short.

18I say this not to point to the power of the one expounding, but to the grace of what is written, which by its nature is readily received and is gentle and dear to every heart among those who prize truth above persuasion. The psalmist shows this sweetness that comes from truth most emphatically when he says, “How sweet are your words to my throat, sweeter than honey to my mouth” (Psalm 118:103 (LXX; Hebrew 119:103)). Yesterday, then, as far as we could, we gladdened your souls by dwelling on the words of God, and today we have met again on the second day to behold the wonders of the second day’s works. But I have not failed to notice that many craftsmen of the manual trades, who lovingly earn their food from their daily labor, have surrounded us and are shortening our discourse so that they are not drawn away from their work for long. What do I say to them? That the portion of time lent to God is not lost, but is repaid by him with great interest. For whatever circumstances produce distraction, the Lord will let these pass by, giving bodily strength, eagerness of soul, ease in dealings, and prosperity through the whole of life to those who make spiritual things their priority. And even if in the present our earnest efforts do not turn out according to our hopes, still for the age to come the teaching of the Spirit is a good treasure. So remove from your heart every care of life, and gather all of yourself here to me. For there is not any benefit in the body’s being present while your heart labors over an earthly treasure.

And God said, “Let a firmament come into being in the midst of the water, and let it separate water from water” (Genesis 1:6). Yesterday we already heard the words of God: “Let light come into being” (Genesis 1:3). And today: “Let a firmament come into being.” But the present words seem to have something more, because the word did not remain in the bare command alone, but also defined in addition the reason for which the construction of the firmament is required. “So that it may separate,” he says, “between water and water.” First, then, let us take up the question of how God speaks. Is it in our manner—first the impression from things arises in the understanding, then after imagining it, he selects from the underlying realities the proper and fitting signs of each and declares them, then hands over what has been understood to the service of the vocal organs, and so through the impression made on the air, by the articulate movement of the voice, makes the thought known secretly? And how is it not mythical to say that God needs such a roundabout way for the declaration of what he has understood? Or is it more reverent to say that the divine will and the first impulse of the intellectual movement—this is the Word of God? Scripture shapes him in a discursive way in order to show that he not only willed the creation to come into being, but also that it was brought into being through some co-worker. For it could have, as it said from the beginning, gone through all things: “In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth” (Genesis 1:1); then, “He made light”; then, “He made the firmament.” But now, by introducing God commanding and speaking, it hints at the one to whom he commands and to whom he speaks, in what is left silent—not begrudging us the knowledge, but kindling us toward desire, through the traces and indications it suggests of the ineffable.

The purpose of God's spoken word and the question of multiple heavens§19

Basil is explaining why Genesis presents God as speaking during creation, then turns to ask whether the firmament is a second heaven distinct from the one made in the beginning.

19What is gained by labor is received with great joy and guarded with diligence, while what comes easily is held cheaply. For this reason Scripture leads us forward by a kind of path and order toward the knowledge of the only Son. And yet the incorporeal nature had no need of spoken words even so, since the very things conceived could be communicated directly to the co-worker. What need would there be for speech among those who can share their counsels with one another from the thought itself? For voice exists for hearing, and hearing for voice. But where there is no air, no tongue, no ear, no winding passage carrying sounds up to the perception in the head, there is no need of words either; the intention is communicated, one might say, from the very thoughts in the heart. So, as I said, this form of discourse has been wisely and skillfully employed in order to rouse our minds to search for the person to whom the words are addressed.

The second question to examine is whether this firmament, which was itself also called heaven, is different from the heaven made in the beginning, and whether there are in fact two heavens. The philosophers of heaven would sooner surrender their tongues than accept this as true. They posit one heaven, and say it has no nature capable of admitting a second, or third, or many more, since all the substance of the heavenly body was used up, as they think, in the constitution of the one. For they say there is one revolving body, and it is finite; and if this was completely fitted together with the first heaven, nothing is left over for the generation of a second or third. These are the imaginings of those who introduce unbegotten matter to the Creator, carried from their first myth-making into the falsehood that follows from it. But we ask the wise men of the Greeks not to mock us before they settle their disputes with one another. For among them there are some who say the heavens and worlds are infinite; and when those who use weightier proofs refute their implausibility and establish by geometric necessities that no other heaven can by nature come into being besides the one, then we will laugh all the more at their geometric and artful nonsense—if, seeing bubbles produced by the same cause, one and many alike, they still doubt about multiple heavens, whether the creative power suffices to bring them into being. When we look to the surpassing power of God, we consider the strength and magnitude of these heavens to differ in no way from the hollow moisture blown up in fountains. So their argument from impossibility is laughable. We, however, are so far from disbelieving in the second that we seek also the third, the vision of which the blessed Paul was counted worthy to receive. And the psalm, naming the heavens of heavens (Psalm 148:4), has given us the idea of still more. Surely these things are no more extraordinary than the seven circles, on which nearly all agree the seven stars are carried, and which they say are fitted one into another, like the image of jars set inside one another. These, moving in a direction opposite to the whole, while the ether is parted by them, produce a clear and harmonious sound, surpassing every pleasure found in melodies.

The firmament's nature and the water above it§20

Basil is expounding the second day of creation, answering objections about how water can rest on the curved firmament and explaining what Scripture means by 'firmament.'

20Then, when those who say these things are asked for the proof of sense perception, what do they answer? They say that because we have been accustomed to the sound from our first origin and have grown used to it from the beginning, we have lost the perception of it through long practice in hearing it—just like people in bronze workshops who have their ears struck continually. To refute the sophistry and rottenness of this argument, which is so plainly evident to everyone at first hearing, is not the work of a man who knows how to spare time or who aims at the understanding of his hearers. But let us leave the things of outsiders to outsiders and return to the ecclesiastical discourse.

Some of those before us have said that this is not the creation of a second heaven, but a further explanation of the first, because there the making of heaven and earth was handed down in summary, while here the Scripture hands down to us in more detailed fashion the manner in which each thing came to be. But we say that since a different name and a special function of the second heaven have been handed down, this one is other than the one made in the beginning, of a firmer nature, and providing an exceptional service to the whole.

And God said, “Let a firmament come into being in the midst of the water, and let it be separating between water and water.” And God made the firmament, and God separated between the water that was beneath the firmament and between the water that was above the firmament (Genesis 1:6-7). But before we touch the meaning of what is written, let us try to dissolve the objection brought against us by others. For they ask us: if the body of the firmament is spherical, as sight shows, and water is fluid and slips off high places, how could it have been made to sit firmly on the curved surface of the firmament? What then shall we say to this? That it is not at all necessary that what appears circular to us in its inner concavity should also have its outer surface finished spherically, and be perfectly turned and smoothly rounded throughout. For we see the stone roofs of baths and the construction of cave-like buildings, which are rounded into a semicircular shape on the inner view, yet often have a flat surface on the top of the roof. So for this reason let them neither make trouble for themselves nor cause trouble for us, as though we could not hold the water in the upper regions.

Next it would be right to say what the nature of the firmament is, and for what reason it was appointed to mediate between the waters. The name “firmament” is customary in Scripture for things that excel in strength. For example, when it says, “The Lord is my firmament and my refuge” (Psalm 17:3 LXX [Hebrew 18:2]), and “I have made firm its pillars” (Psalm 74:4 LXX [Hebrew 75:3]), and “Praise him in the firmament of his power” (Psalm 150:1 LXX [Hebrew 150:1]). Those outside call a solid body something dense and full, which is said in contrast to the mathematical. The mathematical is that which has its being only in dimensions—in breadth, I mean, and depth and height—while the solid is that which has resistance in addition to the dimensions. But it is customary for Scripture to call what is strong and unyielding a firmament, as it often uses this word even of air that has been greatly condensed, as when it says, “He who makes firm the thunder” (Job 37:4 LXX [Hebrew 37:4]).

The firmament is solid but not ice or crystal§21

Basil is explaining the firmament God commands on the second day to divide water from water.

21Scripture speaks of the solidity and resistance of the wind that is caught in the hollows of the clouds. When that wind bursts out violently, it produces the sounds of thunder. Scripture called this force the making firm of thunder (Amos 4:13). Basil says we hold that this utterance about the firmament has been appointed for a different purpose: for a solid nature strong enough to hold back what is slippery and easily dissolved in water.

That does not mean we should suppose the firmament looks like frozen water, merely because the common view holds that it takes its origin from water. Nor should we suppose it is made of some matter that begins when moisture is filtered, like crystal stone or like the mica that forms in mines. People say water is changed into crystal stone by extreme freezing. Mica is a transparent stone with its own very pure clearness. If a piece is found true to its nature, neither eaten away by any decay nor split through its depth by cracks, its brightness is almost like air. Basil says we liken the firmament to none of these things. To hold such notions about heaven is truly the mark of a childish and simple mind. It is true that all things are in all things: fire is in earth, air is in water, and each of the other elements is likewise in another. None of the elements perceived by the senses is pure and unmixed, whether by sharing in what tends toward the middle or in what tends toward its opposite. For that reason Basil says we do not accept saying that the firmament either comes from one of the simple elements or is a mixture made from them. Scripture has taught us to allow our minds to imagine nothing beyond what has been granted.

Basil says we should not pass over one point without marking it. After God gave the command, “Let there be a firmament” (Genesis 1:6), Scripture does not simply add, “and there was a firmament.” It says instead, “And God made the firmament” (Genesis 1:7), and again, “God divided.” Scripture says, “You deaf, hear, and you blind, look up” (Isaiah 42:18). Basil asks who is deaf except the one who does not hear the Spirit crying out so loudly. And who is blind except the one who does not see such clear proofs concerning the only Son. “Let there be a firmament” is the voice of the preliminary cause. “God made the firmament” bears witness to his making and fashioning power.

But Basil says let us return our speech to the course of the explanation. God says, “Let it be dividing between water and water” (Genesis 1:6). The outpouring of the waters was boundless, it seems, surging over the earth from every side and hanging above it, so that it seemed to exceed its due proportion to the other elements. For this reason it was said earlier that the earth was clothed all around by the deep. Basil says he will give the reason for this abundance later. Certainly none of you will object to this account as if it assumed impossible or invented things, not even those among you whose minds are highly trained and keenly observant of this perishable and fleeting nature. Nor will you demand from us an account of what the nature of the waters rested upon. By the same reasoning by which they hold the earth suspended in the middle, though it is heavier than water, drawing it away from the outermost bounds, they will surely also grant that the countless water rests motionless around the earth, both because it naturally moves downward and because it is evenly balanced on every side.

Why the waters were created in such abundance§22

Basil is explaining why the earth was initially covered with far more water than it needed, arguing that the excess was stored up to fuel the sun's fire over the whole duration of the world.

22So the boundless nature of the water had been poured around the earth, not in proportion to it, but exceeding it many times over. From the beginning the great craftsman foresaw what was to come and arranged the first things for the need that would follow. What need was there, then, for the water to exceed by an unspeakable amount? Because the substance of fire is necessary to the whole—not only for the ordering of things around the earth, but also for the completion of the universe. For the whole would have been maimed if it lacked the one greatest and most vital element of all. These two are opposed to each other, and each is destructive of the other: fire destroys water when it prevails by force, and water destroys fire when it exceeds in quantity. But there had to be neither a standoff between them nor any occasion given to the universe for dissolution through the complete failure of one of them. The One who orders all things arranged in advance such a quantity of the moist nature that, as it is gradually consumed by the power of fire, it would hold out until the appointed limits of the world's duration. For the One who arranged all things by weight and measure—since, according to Job, even the drops of rain are numbered by him (Job 38:37 (LXX))—knew how much time he had marked off for the world to endure, and how much expenditure he needed to set aside in advance for the fire. This is the reason for the abundance of water at creation.

But surely no one is so entirely outside of life as to need instruction from this discourse that fire is necessary to the world. Not only because all the crafts that sustain our lives require the work of fire—I mean weaving, leather-working, building, and farming—but because neither the sprouting of trees, nor the ripening of fruits, nor the generation of land animals or water creatures, nor their nourishment, would ever have come into being in the beginning or endured over time if heat were absent. So the creation of heat is necessary for the formation and continuance of things that come into being, and the abundance of moisture is necessary because the consumption of fire is unceasing and unavoidable.

Look around at the whole creation, and you will see the power of heat ruling over everything that comes into being and decays. For this reason much water was poured over the earth, carried beyond the visible regions, and in addition sown throughout the entire depth of the earth. From there come abundant springs, the gathering of wells, the streams of rivers—both winter torrents and ever-flowing ones—so that the moisture is preserved in many and varied storehouses. From the east, from the winter solstice, flows the Indus River, the greatest stream of all river waters, as those who have written accounts of the earth's regions have recorded. From the middle of the east flow the Bactrus, the Choaspes, and the Araxes, from which the Tanais branches off and empties into the Sea of Azov. And besides these, the Phasis flows down from the Caucasus Mountains, and countless other rivers from the northern regions rush toward the Black Sea. From the west, from the summer solstice, beneath the Pyrenees, flow the Tartessus and the Ister. One of these pours into the sea beyond the Pillars of Hercules, while the Ister flows through Europe and empties into the Black Sea.

Rivers and the fiery heaven: why water abounds§23

Basil is still cataloguing the rivers of the world and now turns to explain why the earth is so abundantly watered, arguing that water tempers the fiery nature of the upper region.

23And why should I list the rest of the rivers born from the Rhipaean mountains, the heights beyond the innermost part of Scythia? Among them is the Rhone, along with countless other rivers, themselves navigable, which pass by the western Gauls and Celts and the barbarians bordering them, and all pour into the western sea. Others come from the south, from above through Ethiopia: some flow toward our sea, while others empty into the sea beyond the one that is sailed. There are the Aegon, the Nyses, and the one called Chremetes, and besides these the Nile, whose nature is not even like that of rivers when it floods Egypt like a sea. So the region of our inhabited world is surrounded by water, bound by immense seas and watered by countless ever-flowing rivers, through the ineffable wisdom of the One who arranged that the nature opposed to fire should be hard to consume. Yet there will come a time when all things will be burned up by fire, as Isaiah says in the words he addresses to the God of all: 'He who says to the deep, You shall be made desolate, and I will dry up all your rivers' (Isaiah 44:27). Therefore cast away the wisdom that has become foolish, and accept with us the teaching of truth, plain in its speech but infallible in its knowledge.

For this reason: 'Let a firmament come into being in the midst of the water, and let it separate water from water' (Genesis 1:6). We have already said what the name 'firmament' means in Scripture. It does not mean a resistant and solid nature, one that has weight and offers resistance—Scripture does not call that a firmament. If it did, the earth would more properly have been given that name. But because the nature of the things above is fine and loose and not graspable by any sense, Scripture named it 'firmament' by comparison with the finest things that are imperceptible to the senses. And understand it as a place that separates the moist element: the fine and filtered part passes through to the upper regions, while the thickest and earthiest part is released below, so that from beginning to end the same good temperature may be preserved, as the moist elements are gradually drawn off in part. But you distrust the abundance of water, while you do not consider the abundance of heat—which, even if small in size, is capable of consuming a great deal of moisture because of its power. For it draws in the moisture that lies near it, as the cupping glass shows; and it consumes what it has drawn in, like the fire of a lamp, which draws up the fuel that lies near it through the wick and quickly turns it to ash through the change. And who doubts that the ether is fiery and burning hot? If it were not held back by the necessary limit set by its Maker, what would prevent it from setting everything ablaze and burning up all that is near it, consuming at once all the moisture in all things? For this reason there is aerial water, as the upper region becomes cloudy from the rising of vapors that rivers and springs and marshes and lakes and seas all send forth, so that the ether may not seize everything and set it on fire. Indeed, we see this very sun, in the summer season, often leaving a soaked and marshy land completely dry and parched in the briefest moment of time.

The sun's heat and the naming of the firmament§24

Basil is answering opponents who deny that the sun is hot, then turns to the naming of the firmament as heaven.

24Where then is that water? Let those who are clever in all things show us. Is it not obvious to everyone that it was cut through by the heat of the sun and used up? And yet those same people say the sun is not even hot—so much surplus of speaking is theirs. Consider what kind of proof they rely on when they oppose what is plainly evident. Because the sun is white in color, they say, and not reddish or yellow, for this reason it is not fiery in nature; but its heat, they say, comes from its rapid rotation. What do they gain for themselves by this? That the sun should not seem to consume any of the waters. For my part, even if what they say is not true, I do not reject it, since it helps to build my argument. For it was said that the abundance of waters was necessary because of the consumption caused by heat. And it makes no difference whether the sun is hot by nature or has its burning from an acquired condition, at least as far as producing the same results in the same materials. For whether wood rubbed together kindles fire and flame, or whether it is burned up by a kindled flame, the end from both is equal and alike. And indeed we see the great wisdom of him who governs all things, moving the sun from one region to another, so that by not always lingering upon the same places it may not damage the ordered arrangement by the excess of heat; but now he leads it toward the southern region at the winter solstice, now moves it to the equinoctial points, and from there brings it back toward the north at the summer solstice, so that by its gradual movement the good temperature of the region around the earth may be preserved. Let them consider whether they do not contradict themselves—they who say that the sea is not made to overflow by the rivers because of the sun's consumption, and moreover that it is left salty and bitter because the fine and drinkable part is used up by the heat; which happens especially from the separation accomplished by the sun, drawing off the light part and causing the thick and earthy part to settle like some mud and sediment; from this the bitter and salty and drying quality belongs to the sea. Those who say these things about the sea, turning around again, say that no diminution of moisture comes from the sun. And God called the firmament heaven (Genesis 1:8)—the name properly belongs to another, but this also shares in the title by way of likeness. We have observed that in many places the visible region is called heaven, because the solid and continuous air clearly falls under our sight, and because it is seen it is deemed worthy of the name of heaven; as in the words, The birds of heaven (Genesis 1:26). And again: The things that fly across the firmament of heaven (Genesis 1:20). Of this kind also is the saying, They go up to the heavens. And Moses, blessing the tribe of Joseph, gives blessings from the seasons of heaven and the dew, and from the sun's turnings and the meetings of months, and from the tops of mountains and everlasting hills (Deuteronomy 33:13-15), since the region around the earth is made fruitful through the good order in these things. But also in the curses upon Israel he says, The heaven over your head shall be bronze (Deuteronomy 28:23).

Literal water above the firmament, not spiritual powers§25

Basil is explaining the waters above the firmament from Genesis 1:6-7 and rejecting allegorical readings that turn them into spiritual powers.

25What does he mean by this? He means complete dryness and the failure of the waters in the air, through which the earth has its power to bear fruit. So when he says that dew or rain is carried from heaven, we understand it as the waters that have been appointed to occupy the upper region. For when the exhalations gather in the heights, and the air is compressed by the force of the winds, the moisture that until then was scattered through the cloud in vapor-like, fine particles draws together, and drops form, carried downward by the weight of what has collected—and this is how rain comes to be. But when the moisture is made to foam, beaten back by the violence of the winds, and then is chilled to the utmost and frozen through and through, the cloud breaks apart and snow falls down. In short, by the same principle you can observe the whole nature of moisture taking shape in the air above our heads.

And let no one compare the simple and unadorned character of the spiritual words with the over-curious speculations of those who have philosophized about the heavens. For as much as the beauty of a chaste woman is to be preferred to that of a courtesan, so great is the difference between our words and those from outside. Those men impose a forced plausibility on their arguments; here the truth lies open, stripped of artifice. And why should we trouble ourselves to refute their falsehood, when it is enough to set their own books against one another and sit quietly as spectators of their war? For they are neither fewer in number nor inferior in rank, but they stand opposed to one another with great many-voicedness, some saying that the universe is consumed by fire and comes to life again from the seminal principles that remain in the burned remains—which is how they introduce endless destructions of the world and rebirths. But those men, splitting away from the truth on both sides, discover for themselves the paths of error in every direction.

But we also have a word to address to those from the Church concerning the separated waters—those who, on the pretext of anagogy and higher thoughts, have fled to allegories, saying that spiritual and incorporeal powers are figuratively signified by the waters: that the better powers remained above on the firmament, while the evil ones stayed below in the earthly and material regions. For this reason, they say, the waters above the heavens praise God—that is, the good powers, being worthy through the purity of their governing part, render fitting praise to the Creator. But the waters below the heavens, they say, are the spiritual powers of wickedness, which fell from their natural height into the depth of evil. Because they are turbulent and rebellious and tossed by the disturbances of the passions, they were named 'sea' on account of the changeableness and instability of their movements of choice.

Let us send such arguments away as comparisons of dreams and old wives' tales, and let us understand water as water, and let us accept the separation made by the firmament according to the reason already given. And indeed, even if the waters above the heavens are sometimes taken up for the praise of the common Lord of all, we do not therefore assign them a rational nature. For the heavens are not ensouled just because they declare the glory of God (Psalm 18:2 LXX), nor is the firmament a living, perceiving creature just because it announces the work of his hands (Psalm 18:2 LXX).

Literal sense defended; God approves each work as good§26

Basil is closing Homily 3 on the firmament, rejecting allegorical readings of the waters above and explaining why God saw that the work was good.

26If someone says that the heavens are the contemplative powers and the firmament is the practical and productive powers concerned with duties, we accept the argument as elegant, but we will not at all grant that it is true. For by that logic dew, frost, cold, and heat—since they were commanded in Daniel to hymn the creator of all things—would be some intelligent and invisible nature. But when thoughtful people interpret the language in these passages with discernment, it is a completion of the praise of the creator. For not only does the water above the heavens fulfill its praise to God, as holding first place in honor because of the superiority it possesses from virtue, but, as it says, 'Praise him, also the things from the earth, dragons and all deeps' (Psalm 148:7). So even the deep, which the allegorizers cast away into the worse portion, was not judged rejectable by the psalmist, but was received into the common chorus of creation; and it too, according to the principles inherent in it, harmoniously completes the hymn to its maker.

And God saw that it was good. The things made by God do not provide pleasure to God's eyes, nor is his acceptance of good things the same as ours. Rather, what is good is what has been completed by the principle of his art and what conduces to the useful service of its purpose. So the one who set before himself the clear goal of the things being made, and who examined each thing made in its parts as contributing to the completion of that end by his own artistic principles, approved them. After all, a hand by itself, an eye on its own, and each of the limbs of a statue lying separately would not appear beautiful to just anyone; but when they are set in their proper order, the beauty that comes from proportion becomes evident, even to the untrained eye, though only with difficulty. The craftsman, however, knows the beauty of each part even before the composition, and he praises each individual part, referring his thought back to their end. Such, then, is the kind of artistic praiser of the individual works that God is now recorded to be; and he is going to complete the fitting praise also for the whole world together when it is finished.

But let our words about the second day come to an end here, so as to give the diligent hearers time to examine what they have heard, so that if there is anything useful in it, they may hold it fast in memory, and through diligent meditation—as through a kind of digestion—await the distribution of what is beneficial. And for those occupied with the affairs of life, let this interval give them leisure to set their cares in order, so that with a soul cleansed of anxieties they may come to the evening feast of words. May the God who created the great things and who has arranged for these small things to be spoken give you understanding in all his truth, so that from the things that are seen you may perceive the invisible, and from the greatness and beauty of the creatures you may take up the fitting glory concerning the one who created us. For his invisible things, understood from the creation of the world by the things made, are clearly seen, both his eternal power and divinity (Romans 1:20), so that in earth, in air, in heaven, in water, in night, in day, and in all things visible, we may receive clear reminders of our benefactor.

The soul's theatre versus God's workshop§27

Basil has just closed the third homily with a prayer and now opens the fourth homily, contrasting the empty spectacles of the cities with the spectacle of God's creation that Scripture sets before his hearers.

27For we will give no occasion to sins, nor will we leave any place for the enemy in our hearts, since through constant remembrance we have God dwelling within us. To him be all glory and worship, now and always, and to the ages of ages. Amen.

Homily 4: On the gathering of the waters

There are some cities that feast the eyes with all kinds of spectacles by wonder-workers from early dawn until evening itself. And indeed, though they listen at great length to certain broken and corrupted melodies that plant every kind of wantonness in the soul, they are never filled. Many count such crowds blessed, because they abandon the business of the marketplace and the crafts devised for making a living, and pass through the appointed time of their life in complete ease and pleasure. They do not know that a theatre flourishing with licentious spectacles is a common and public school of wantonness for those who sit together in it, and that the harmonious melodies of the flutes and the songs of wantonness, sitting in the souls of those who hear them, persuade everyone to behave shamefully, imitating the strumming of the harpists or the flute-players. And already some of the horse-mad even fight about horses in their dreams, re-yoking chariots and changing charioteers, and in the fantasies of sleep they do not depart at all from their daytime folly.

But shall we, whom the Lord, the great wonder-worker and craftsman, has summoned to the display of his own works, grow weary of the sight, or shrink from hearing the words of the Spirit? Rather, let us stand around this great and varied workshop of the divine creation, and let each of us return in thought to the ancient times, and shall we not see the ordering of the universe: heaven standing, according to the prophetic word, like a vault; the earth, infinite in size and weight, fixed upon itself; air poured out, soft and moist by nature, providing a proper and constant nourishment to those who breathe, yielding and parting before those who move through it because of its softness, so that it offers no obstacle to those who rush forward, always flowing around to meet from behind those who cut through it. And the nature of water, prepared for us both for nourishment and for other uses, and its orderly gathering into the appointed places, you will see from what has just been read to us.

And God said, 'Let the water under heaven be gathered into one gathering, and let the dry land appear.' And it was so, and the water under heaven was gathered into their gatherings, and the dry land appeared. And God called the dry land earth, and the gatherings of the waters he called seas (Genesis 1:9-10).

How much trouble you gave me in the previous words, demanding the reason why the earth was invisible, since color is naturally present with every body, and every color is perceptible to sight! And perhaps what was said did not seem sufficient to you: that 'invisible' was said with reference to us, not with reference to its nature, because of the covering of water that then concealed all the earth. See now, hear the Scripture itself revealing itself.

Why God commanded the waters to gather§28

Basil is answering objections about God's command 'Let the waters be gathered' in Genesis 1:9, explaining why a command was needed for what seems natural to water.

28'Let the waters be gathered, and let the dry land appear' (Genesis 1:9). The curtains are drawn together, so that what was previously unseen may become visible. Perhaps someone might seek in addition this further point. First, why does the account attribute to the command of the Creator what belongs to water by nature—its movement toward a downward slope? For as long as water happens to lie on level ground, it is still, having nowhere to flow. But when it takes hold of some downward incline, when the leading water rushes forward, the water continuous with it seizes the base of the one that moved, and the following water seizes the base of that one. And so the leading water always escapes from under, while the water coming after pushes it on. And the flow becomes swifter the greater the weight of what is carried down and the deeper the hollow into which the influx runs. If water is like this by nature, then the command ordering it to be gathered into one gathering would be superfluous. For it was bound to run together of its own accord, because of the downward tendency of its nature, into the deepest region of all, and not to stop until its surface was leveled. For no place is as level as the surface of water. Then, someone says, how was the water commanded to run together into one gathering, when there are clearly many seas, separated from one another by great distances in their position? To the first of these questions we say this: you have come to know the movements of water after the Master's command—that it flows downward and is unstable, and is carried by nature toward slopes and hollows. But before that, what power it had before the course from this command was born in it, you neither saw yourself nor heard from anyone who saw. Understand that the voice of God is maker of nature, and the command given then to creation provided the continuity for what was created thereafter. Day and night were made once, and from that time until now they succeed one another and divide time in equal portions without ceasing. 'Let the waters be gathered.' The nature of the waters was commanded to run, and it never grows weary, urged on continually by that command. I say this with reference to the flowing portion of the waters. For some flow of their own accord, such as springs and rivers; others are artificially collected and without outlet. But my subject now is the rushing waters. 'Let the waters be gathered into one gathering.' If you have ever stood by a spring that sends up abundant water and wondered: Who is it that pushes this water from the flanks of the earth? Who urges it forward? What are the storehouses from which it comes? What is the place to which it hurries? How is it that these do not fail, and those are not filled up? All this depends on that first voice. From there the water received the signal to run. In every account of waters, remember the first voice: 'Let the waters be gathered.' They had to run, so that each might reach its proper place; then, having come into the appointed regions, to remain by themselves and go no further. For this reason, according to the word of Ecclesiastes, 'All the torrents go to the sea, and the sea is not filled' (Ecclesiastes 1:7).

The sea's boundary is God's command§29

Basil is expounding the command 'Let the waters be gathered into one gathering' from Genesis 1:9, arguing that the sea's limits are fixed by divine decree, not by nature.

29The flowing of the waters and the sea's confinement within its boundaries both come from that first legislation: "Let the waters be gathered into one gathering" (Genesis 1:9). The water that kept flowing in would have overflowed the places that received it, always moving on and filling one place after another, until it flooded the whole continent in an unbroken sweep. So it was commanded to be gathered into one gathering. That is why the sea, even when it rages under the winds and its waves rear up to an enormous height, the moment it touches the shore, dissolves its force into foam and turns back. "Will you not fear me, says the Lord, who set the sand as a boundary for the sea?" (Jeremiah 5:22). The sea, whose violence cannot be withstood, is bridled by the weakest thing of all—sand. What else kept the Red Sea from sweeping over all Egypt, which lies lower than the sea itself, and joining the ocean that borders Egypt, if it was not bound by the command of its Creator? That Egypt is lower than the Red Sea has been proved to us in practice by those who wanted to join the two seas to each other—the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, in which the Red Sea lies. That is why they abandoned the attempt: first Sesostris the Egyptian, who began it, and then Darius the Mede, who later wanted to carry it through. I have said all this so that we may understand the power of the command: "Let the waters be gathered into one gathering." That is, let no other gathering be produced from this one, but let what is gathered remain in that first collection.

Then the one who said that the waters should be gathered into one gathering showed you that the waters had been many, divided among many places. The hollows of the mountains, split by deep ravines, held their own collections of water. And in addition, many broad and level plains, no smaller in extent than the greatest seas, and countless valleys and basins hollowed out in every kind of shape—all of them, filled with water at that time, were emptied by the divine command, as the water from every direction was driven together into one gathering. And let no one say: if there was water above the earth, then surely all the hollows that now hold the sea must already have been full. Where, then, were the gatherings of the waters going to form, if the hollows were already occupied? To this we will answer that the vessels were prepared at that very time, when the water had to be set apart into one mass. For the sea beyond Cadiz did not yet exist, nor that great ocean untried by sailors, which embraces the island of Britain and the western Iberians. But at that time, when the wide expanse was created by God's command, the masses of water were gathered together into it.

As for the objection that our account of the world's making contradicts experience—since not all the water appears to have run together into one gathering—there is much to say, and it is obvious to everyone. Perhaps it is even ridiculous to argue against such objections. Surely they do not mean to bring up marsh water and rainwater collected in pools, and think they are refuting our argument with these? No, he called the greatest and most complete running together of the waters "one gathering."

Lakes are gatherings but only the greatest water is seas§30

Basil is continuing his literal exposition of the third day when God gathers the waters.

30Even wells are man-made gatherings of waters. Moisture sown through the earth flows together into its hollowed place. So the title of gathering does not mean chance heaps of water. It means the outstanding and greatest gathering, in which the whole element appears together.

Fire is broken into small pieces for our use here, yet it pours together in full in the upper air. Air also divides into small portions, yet together it embraces the whole region around the earth. So it is with water. There are some small and divided formations, yet there is one gathering that separates the whole element from the rest.

The lakes are clearly gatherings of waters, both those in the northern regions and those around the Greek land, occupying Macedonia and Bithynia and Palestine. But my present subject is the greatest of them all, which rivals the earth itself in size. No one will deny that those lakes hold an abundance of water, yet no reasonable account would call them seas. This holds even if some have salt and an earthy quality like the great sea, such as the Asphaltitis lake in Judea and Serbonis between Egypt and Palestine, stretching alongside the Arabian desert. These are lakes, but the sea is one, as those who have traveled around the earth report. Even if some think the Caspian Sea lies enclosed by itself, if we must attend to the maps of those who have investigated, its parts break through to one another and all open together into the greatest sea. In the same way they say the Red Sea joins with the sea beyond Gadeira. At this point someone asks, “How then did God call the systems of the waters seas?” The waters did run together into one gathering. But the systems of the waters, that is, the gulfs cut off in their own shape by the surrounding land, these the Lord called seas. There is a northern sea and a southern sea, an eastern sea and another western one. The open seas also have their own names: the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara, the Dardanelles, the Aegean and the Ionian, the Sea of Sardinia and the Sea of Sicily, and another Tyrrhenian. There are countless names of the open seas, and to list them precisely now would be long and full of lack of taste.

For this reason God called the systems of the waters seas. The sequence of my argument has brought me to this point, but let me return to the beginning. And God said, “Let the waters be brought together into one gathering, and let the dry land appear” (Genesis 1:9). He did not say, “Let the earth appear.” He refused to display it again as unformed, since it lay as mud and mixed with water, and had not yet received its own form and power. At the same time the Creator made the dryness of the earth older than the birth of the sun, so that we would not assign to the sun the cause of drying the earth.

Fix your mind on what is written. Not only did the excess water flow off the earth. Whatever water had mixed with it through its depth also withdrew in obedience. It yielded to the compelling command of the Master.

The dry land's proper quality and the naming of earth§31

Basil is explaining why Genesis says 'the dry land appeared' and then 'God called the dry land earth,' arguing that dryness is the defining quality of earth, and he extends this to the four elements and their paired qualities.

31“And it became so.” This sequel is sufficient to show that the Creator’s voice came to fulfillment in deed. But in many copies there is added: “And the water under heaven was gathered into its gatherings, and the dry land appeared”—which neither some of the other translators have published, nor does the usage of the Hebrews appear to contain. For in truth, after the testimony that “It became so,” the further detailed narration of the same things is redundant. In the accurate copies, then, these words have been marked with an obelus; and the obelus is a sign of rejection. “And God called the dry land earth, and the gatherings of the waters he called seas” (Genesis 1:10). Why is it that earlier it says, “Let the waters be gathered into one gathering, and let the dry land appear” (Genesis 1:9), but it is not written, “and let the earth appear”? And here again, “The dry land appeared, and God called the dry land earth”? Because “dry” is the peculiar property, the as it were characteristic of the nature of the underlying thing, while “earth” is a bare appellation of the thing. For just as rationality is the peculiar property of a human being, while the word “human being” signifies the animal in which that property resides, so also dryness is the peculiar and exceptional property of earth. That, then, which properly possesses dryness is called earth—just as that which properly possesses the neighing property is called a horse. And this is true not only of earth, but each of the other elements also has a peculiar and allotted quality, by which it is distinguished from the rest and by which each is recognized for what it is. Water has coldness as its own quality; air has moisture; fire has heat. But these, as the first elements of composite things, are contemplated by reason in the manner described; the things already arranged in body and falling under sense perception have their qualities joined together. And nothing among visible and perceptible things is absolutely single or simple and pure; rather, earth is dry and cold, water is moist and cold, air is hot and moist, fire is hot and dry. For in this way, through the paired quality, the power of each to mix with each comes forth. Each element is blended with its neighboring element through their common quality, and through its fellowship with what is near it is joined to its opposite. For example, earth, being dry and cold, is united to water through the kinship of coldness, and through water it is united to air; since water is placed in the middle between both, as if by the laying on of two hands it touches each of the adjacent elements with each quality—earth with its coldness, air with its moisture. Again, air by its own mediation becomes reconciler of the warring nature of water and fire, being intertwined with water through moisture and with fire through heat. And fire, being hot and dry in nature, is bound to air by its heat, and by its dryness it returns again to fellowship with earth.

The circle of elements and the goodness of the sea§32

Basil is explaining why God called the dry land 'earth' rather than calling the earth 'dry,' and now turns to the meaning of 'And God saw that it was good' regarding the gathered waters.

32And so a circle and a harmonious dance comes into being, with all things in agreement and standing in order with one another. This is why the name “elements” is properly fitted to them. I have said all this to show the reason God called the dry land “earth,” but did not call the earth “dry land.” For dryness is not one of the things added to the earth later; it is one of the things that fill up its substance from the beginning. And the things that give it its cause of being are prior by nature and more honorable than the things added afterward. So it was reasonable that the earth’s distinguishing marks were conceived from what pre-existed and was older.

“And God saw that it was good” (Genesis 1:10). The text does not mean that some pleasant sight of the sea appeared to God. For the Maker does not see the beauties of creation with eyes, but contemplates what comes into being with ineffable wisdom. A whitening sea is a sweet sight when a steady calm holds it; it is sweet too when its back is roughened by gentle breezes and it casts a purple or dark-blue color before those who watch—when it does not strike the neighboring land violently, but kisses it as if with peaceful embraces. But we must not think Scripture means that the sea appeared beautiful and sweet to God in this way. Rather, the good there is judged by the reasoning of the Creator's work.

First, the water of the sea is the source of all moisture around the earth. It is distributed through hidden channels, as the porous and cavernous places of the continents show. Beneath them the flowing sea runs in channels, and when it is caught in winding passages that do not run straight, it is pushed by the spirit that moves it, breaks through the surface, and flows outside—and becomes drinkable, its bitterness healed by the filtering. Sometimes it also takes on a hotter quality from metals along the way, and from the same cause that moves it, it often becomes boiling and fiery. This can be observed in many islands and many coastal places. Even inland, some places near river waters—to compare small things with great—suffer something similar. Why have I said this? Because all the earth is undermined, with water making its way beneath from the sources of the sea through hidden pores.

So the sea is good to God also because of the under-running of moisture in its depths. It is good also because it is the reservoir of rivers, receiving streams from everywhere into itself, and yet remains within its own boundaries. It is good also because it is a beginning and source for the waters in the air: it is warmed by the sun’s ray and sends off the fine part of the water through vapors. This is drawn up to the upper region, then cooled because it has risen higher than the reflection of the rays from the ground—and at the same time the shade from the cloud intensifies the cooling—and it becomes rain and enriches the earth. No one doubts these things who has considered heated cauldrons: full of liquid, they are often left empty when everything being boiled has been dispersed into vapor.

The sea's beauty and the church's calm§33

Basil is concluding his praise of the sea's usefulness and beauty, then turns to praise the gathered church and introduces the fifth homily on vegetation.

33You can also see the water of the sea being boiled by sailors: they catch the vapors with sponges and so relieve their need in emergencies, sufficiently. It is beautiful in another way in God's sight as well, because it encircles the islands, providing them at once with adornment and with safety through itself. Then too, because it joins together the continents that stand farthest apart from one another, offering sailors unhindered intercourse; through this it grants knowledge of things unknown, becomes a source of wealth for merchants, and easily supplies the needs of life, providing export for the surplus of those who abound and granting relief for the lack of those in need. And how could I see with precision the whole beauty of the sea, as much as appeared to the eye of its Maker? If the sea is beautiful and praiseworthy to God, how much more beautiful is the assembly of such a church, in which a mingled sound—like a wave breaking on the shore—is sent up from men and women and infants in their prayers to our God. A deep calm preserves it unshaken, since the spirits of wickedness have not been able to trouble it with heretical words. May you then become worthy of the Lord's approval, preserving this good order in the most fitting way, in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be glory and power forever and ever. Amen.

HOMILY 5: On the Sprouting of the Earth

And God said, "Let the earth sprout the herb of grass, seed-bearing according to kind, and the fruit tree producing fruit according to kind, whose seed is in it" (Genesis 1:11). It follows that after the earth had rested, having put off the weight of the water, the command came to it to sprout first herb, then tree—which we still see happening now. For that voice then, and that first command, became like a law of nature and remained in the earth, granting it the power to generate and bear fruit for the time to come. "Let the earth sprout." First in the generation of growing things is the sprouting; then, when the sprouts come up a little, herb appears; then, when it has grown, it is grass, as the growing things are gradually articulated and advance to the completion of the seed. For the green and grassy state is similar in all of them. "Let the earth sprout the herb of grass." Let the earth bring forth the sprouting by itself, needing no cooperation from any other source. Since some people think the sun is the cause of the things that grow from the earth, drawing up the power from the depths to the surface by the attraction of heat, for this reason the ordering of the earth is older than the sun—so that those who have gone astray may stop worshiping the sun as though it provided the cause of life. If they are persuaded that everything concerning the earth was ordered before the sun's creation, they will also let go of their excessive wonder at it, considering that it is younger than grass and herb in its origin. Was food then laid out beforehand for the cattle, while our own provision appeared worthy of no forethought? But surely the one who stored up fodder for cattle and horses beforehand is above all preparing wealth and enjoyment for you.

Seed and succession in plants§34

Basil is explaining Genesis 1:11, arguing that every plant has seed or a seedlike power, and then turns to the moral lesson of grass and flower as an image of human frailty.

34For the one who feeds your flocks is also building up the provision for your own life. And then, what is the origin of seeds if not a preparation for your way of living? Besides, many of the things that are still among grasses and garden herbs serve as food for human beings. "Let the earth sprout the herb of grass, sowing seed," it says, "according to kind" (Genesis 1:11). So even if some kind of herb differs from others, its benefit comes back to us, and the use of the seeds is set apart for us. The meaning of the words, then, is this: "Let the earth sprout the herb of grass, and seed sowing according to kind." In this way the sequence of the wording can be restored—since the syntax now seems inconsistent—and the necessary order of what nature arranges will be preserved. For first comes sprouting, then the green shoot, then the growth of the grass, then the completion of what grows through the seed. How then, they say, does the text show that everything growing from the earth has seed, when neither reed nor couch grass nor mint, not crocus, not garlic, not sedge, nor countless other kinds of plants appear to produce seed? To this we answer that many of the things growing from the earth have the power of their seeds in the base and the root. Just as the reed, after its yearly growth, sends out from the root a certain shoot having the principle of seed for the future. Countless other plants do the same, all that spread through the ground and possess their succession in their roots. So it is truer than anything that for each thing that grows there is either a seed or some seedlike power existing within it. And this is what "according to kind" means. For the shoot of the reed does not produce an olive tree, but from a reed comes another reed, and from seeds the things related to what was sown spring up. And so what the earth brought forth in the first creation is preserved even until now, the kind being guarded by the sequence of succession. "Let the earth sprout." Consider for me how from a small utterance and so brief a command, the frozen and barren earth suddenly travails and is stirred toward fruit-bearing, as though throwing off a gloomy and mournful garment and clothing herself in a brighter one, rejoicing in her proper ornaments and putting forth the countless kinds of growing things. I want the wonder of creation to be fixed in you more intensely, so that wherever you find yourself, and whatever kind of growing thing you stand beside, you may receive a vivid reminder of the Maker. First, then, when you see the herb of grass and a flower, bring to mind human nature, remembering the image of the wise Isaiah, that "All flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass" (Isaiah 40:6). For the brevity of life, and the short-lived joy and brightness of human prosperity, has found in the prophet a most fitting image. Today a man flourishes in body, fleshed out by luxury, with his good color blooming from the prime of his age, vigorous and taut and irresistible in impulse; tomorrow this same man is pitiable, either withered by time or dissolved by disease.

The fleeting glory of the powerful and the ordered growth of plants§35

Basil is preaching on the creation of vegetation, and has just compared human glory to the flower of grass; he now expands that comparison with a portrait of a powerful man, then turns to the literal process by which seeds sprout and grow.

35One man is admired for his abundance of wealth. Around him is a crowd of flatterers, a bodyguard of pretended friends who court his favor, a host of relatives, and these too merely for show. There is a vast swarm of attendants, some for his table and some for his daily needs, whom he drags along as he goes out and comes back, and he is envied by those who meet him. Add to the wealth some political power, or honors from kings, or the governance of nations, or command of armies: the herald shouting loudly before him, the lictors on either side striking blows that fill the governed with the heaviest dread, the confiscations, the arrests, the prisons, from which an unbearable fear is gathered from those under his hand. And what comes after this? One night, or a single fever, or pleurisy, or pneumonia, carries the man off, snatched away from among human beings, and is gone, suddenly stripping bare the whole stage-setting around him, and that glory was confuted like a dream. So the prophet's comparison of human glory to the weakest flower has hit the mark.

"Let the earth sprout the herb of grass, bearing seed according to kind and according to likeness" (Genesis 1:11). Even now the order of growing things testifies to that first arrangement. For sprouting comes first for every herb and every grass. Whether something is sent out from a root by a shoot from below, like the crocus and the dog's-tooth grass, it must first sprout and push out to the surface; or whether it comes from seed, in that case too there must first be sprouting, then the herb, then the green grass, then the fruit ripening on the now dry and thick stalk. "Let the earth sprout the herb of grass." When the seed falls into earth that has a proper measure of moisture and warmth, it becomes porous and full of holes, takes hold of the surrounding earth, and draws to itself the things that are akin and of the same kind. The finest particles of the seed enter the pores of the earth and slip through them, and they widen its own bulk more and more, so that the seed takes root downward and pushes upward, sending out stalks equal in number to the roots. As the sprout is continually warmed, the moisture drawn through the roots brings up with it, by the pull of the heat, a measured amount of the earth's nourishment, and distributes it into stalk and husk and the sheaths of the grain, and into the grain itself and the awns. And so, as the growth proceeds little by little, each of the growing things reaches its proper measure, whether it is one of the grains, or the legumes, or the vegetables, or the brushwood.

One grass and one herb is enough to occupy your whole mind in contemplating the skill that produced them: how the stalk of the grain is girded with joints, so that like some kind of bindings they easily bear the weight of the ears when they are full of fruit and bend down toward the ground. For this reason brome-grass is entirely hollow, since its head is weighed down by nothing; but the grain nature has secured with these bindings. And it has placed the kernel in a sheath so that it is not easily snatched away by seed-pickers; and further, by the projection of the awns, as with points, it keeps off the harm from small creatures.

Poisonous plants and the purpose of all creation§36

Basil is expounding the command 'Let the earth bring forth the herb of grass' and answering the objection that God created harmful plants.

36What shall I say? What shall I pass over in silence? In the rich treasuries of creation, the discovery of the more valuable thing is difficult, and most grievous is the loss of what has been set before us. "Let the earth sprout the herb of grass" (Genesis 1:11). And immediately the poisons were sent out together with the nourishing plants: with the grain, hemlock; with the other foods, hellebore, and aconite, and mandrake, and the juice of the poppy. What then? Shall we abandon giving thanks for the useful things and accuse the Creator for the things that destroy our life? And shall we not reckon this: that not all things have been created for the sake of our stomach? But the foods assigned to us are ready at hand and easily recognized by all; yet each of the things that came into being fulfills its own particular purpose in creation. For since bull's blood is poison to you, was it necessary for this reason either that the bull not be created, or that it be created without blood—whose strength our life needs for so many purposes? But the reason that dwells with you is sufficient for guarding against destructive things. For surely sheep and goats know how to flee from what harms their life, distinguishing what is harmful by sense perception alone; but for you, who have reason at hand, and the medical art supplying what is useful, and the experience of those who came before suggesting flight from harmful things—tell me, is it difficult to avoid poisons? And none of these things has come into being idly, none uselessly. For either it provides food for some of the brute animals, or it has been discovered by the medical art for our own relief from certain illnesses. For starlings feed on hemlock, escaping the harm of the poison through the construction of their bodies. Since they have narrow passages around the heart, they digest what they have swallowed before the chill from it can seize their vital parts. Hellebore is food for quails, which escape the harm by the peculiarity of their constitution. And these very things are also useful to us at times. For through mandrake doctors induce sleep; and with opium they lull the violent pains of the body. Some have already withered the rabid frenzy of appetites with hemlock; and with hellebore they have pried out many chronic afflictions. So what you thought you had as an accusation against the Creator has turned around for you into an increase of thanksgiving.

"Let the earth sprout the herb of grass" (Genesis 1:11). How much spontaneous food he speaks of in these words—the food in roots, and in the herb itself, and already in fruits? And how much that comes to us from care and farming? He did not command seed and fruit to be produced immediately, but the earth to sprout and grow green, and then to be perfected into seed, so that that first command might become a teacher to nature for the sequence that followed. How then, someone says, does the earth bring forth seeds according to kind, when we often sow wheat and harvest this black wheat? But this is not a change to another kind, but a kind of disease and weakness of the seed. For it has not put off being wheat, but has been blackened through scorching, as one can learn from the very name.

The earth's first vegetation and the seed-bearing trees§37

Basil is explaining the third day of creation, arguing that every plant and tree came forth at God's command with its own seed and kind, not by transformation from one kind into another.

37For when it is burned by excess of cold, it changes to another color and taste. And indeed it is said that when it finds suitable soil and temperate air, it returns to its original form. So you would find nothing among growing things that comes to pass apart from the command. But the so-called darnel, and all the other bastard seeds mixed in with the nourishing ones—which Scripture customarily calls tares—do not come from a change in the wheat, but arise from their own origin, having their own kind. These fill out the image of those who counterfeit the Lord's teachings and are not genuinely discipled by the word, but are corrupted by the teaching of the evil one and mix themselves into the healthy body of the Church, so that from hiding they may inflict their own harms on the more innocent. Already the Lord also likens the perfecting of those who have believed in him to the growth of seeds, saying: "As when a man casts the seed on the ground, and sleeps, and rises night and day, and the seed rises and lengthens, he does not know how. For the earth bears fruit by itself: first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear" (Mark 4:26-28). "Let the earth bring forth vegetation" (Genesis 1:11). And in the briefest moment of time, the earth began from the sprouting, so that it might keep the laws of its Creator, and passing through every form of growth, it immediately brought the sprouts to completion. The meadows were deep with the abundance of grass, and the fruitful plains, bristling with standing crops, preserved the image of a swelling sea in the movement of the ears of grain. Every herb and every kind of vegetable, and whatever belongs to brushwood and whatever belongs to pulses, then abounded on the earth in all abundance. For there was no failure among the things then brought forth: neither the inexperience of farmers, nor the harshness of the air, nor any other cause was harming what came to be. Nor indeed did the condemnation hinder the fertility of the earth. For these things are older than the sin for which we were condemned to eat our bread in the sweat of our face (Genesis 3:19).

But also, he says, "a fruit-bearing tree, producing fruit, whose seed is in it according to kind and according to likeness upon the earth" (Genesis 1:11). At this word all the thickets grew dense; all the trees sprang up—those that by nature rise to the greatest height, firs and cedars, cypresses and pines. All the shrubs were at once leafy on both sides and thick. And the plants called garland-making—the rosebeds and myrtles and laurels—all in one moment of time, not previously existing above the earth, came into being, each with its own proper character, separated by the clearest differences from those of other kinds, and each recognized by its own mark. Except that the rose was then without a thorn; later the thorn was yoked to the beauty of the flower, so that close beside the delight of enjoyment we might have the grief placed nearby, remembering the sin for which the earth was condemned to bring forth thorns and thistles for us (Genesis 3:18). But it was commanded, he says, that the earth put forth "a fruit-bearing tree, producing fruit upon the earth, whose seed is in it." Yet we see many trees that have neither fruit nor seed.

Trees without visible fruit still have seed; the vine as image of the soul§38

Basil is answering an objection about Genesis 1:11, that many trees seem to have neither fruit nor seed, and then turns to the vine as a moral image.

38What shall we say then? That the more valuable things by nature have obtained the first mention; and then, that to one who examines carefully, all things will appear either to use seed or to have what is equivalent to seed. For poplars, and willows, and elms, and white poplars, and all such trees seem to bear no fruit from what is evident, but one who examines carefully would discover that each of these has seed. For the kernel under the leaf, which some of those who have occupied themselves with word-making call 'mischos,' has the power of seed. For whatever naturally comes to be from branches, for the most part puts forth roots from this. And perhaps the offshoots of the roots also hold the place of seed, which the gardeners pull off and increase the kind. But first, as we said, the things more essential to our life were deemed worthy of mention, all that were going to receive man with their own fruits and prepare for him an abundant way of life: the vine producing wine that was going to gladden the heart of man, and the olive providing fruit able to make the face cheerful with oil (Psalm 103:15 (104:15)). How many things came together at the same time, brought forth urgently by nature? The root of the vine; the branches around it, flourishing and great, spread above the ground; the shoot, the tendrils, the unripe grape, the clusters. A vine seen with understanding is enough for your sight to produce in you a reminder of nature. For you remember clearly the image of the Lord, that he calls himself the vine, and the Father the vinedresser, and he called each one of us, having been grafted into the Church through faith, branches (John 15:1-2). And he summons us to abundant fruit, so that we may not be condemned for uselessness and handed over to the fire. And he does not cease everywhere to compare the souls of men to vines. For a vineyard was made for the beloved, he says, on a horn, in a rich place (Isaiah 5:1). And, I planted a vineyard, and put a hedge around it (Isaiah 5:2). He clearly means the human souls as the vineyard, around which he put a hedge—the security from the commandments and the guard of the angels. For the angel of the Lord will encamp around those who fear him (Psalm 33:8 (34:7)). Then he also fixed stakes for us, as it were, placing in the Church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers (1 Corinthians 12:28). And by the examples of the ancient and blessed men he leads our thoughts to the height, and did not leave them thrown on the ground and worthy of being trampled. He also wants us to hold fast to our neighbors by the twining of love, as if by tendrils, and to rest upon them, so that always having our impulse toward what is above, like some climbing vines we may set ourselves beside the tops of the highest things. He also requires us to accept being dug around. And the soul is dug around in the putting away of the cares of the world, which are a weight on our hearts. So the one who has put away fleshly love, and the friendship toward money, or has considered the anxiety for this wretched little glory to be spit upon and contemptible, has been dug around, as it were, and has breathed again, having put off the vain weight of the earthly mind. But it is necessary, according to the word of the proverb, not to grow wild like wood—that is, not to live ostentatiously, nor to hunt for praise from outsiders—but to be fruitful, storing up the display of works for the true vinedresser.

The olive tree, the variety of plants, and the moral lesson of cultivation§39

Basil is addressing his congregation, drawing moral lessons from the plant world as he continues his exposition of the third day of creation.

39And you, be as a fruitful olive tree in the house of God, never being stripped of hope, but always keeping the salvation through faith flourishing around you. For in this way you will imitate the evergreen quality of the plant, and you will also rival its abundance of fruit, offering generous almsgiving at every season. But let us return to the investigation of the skilled arrangements. How many kinds of plants sprang up then—some bearing fruit, some for roofing, others suitable for shipbuilding, others for burning? In these again, the arrangement of each tree's parts is varied, and the discovery of each one's particular character is hard to attain, as is the observation of its difference from each of the other kinds. How is it that some of them are deep-rooted and others shallow-rooted, and some grow upright with a single stem, while others are low-growing and immediately divided from the root into many shoots? How is it that those whose branches stretch far out into the air also have deep roots, spreading widely in a circle, as if nature places certain foundations beneath, corresponding to the weight of the things above? How many are the differences of the barks? For some plants are smooth-barked, others cracked-barked; and some of them have a single layer of bark, others many folds. And what is wonderful is that you would find in plants symptoms closely resembling those of human youth and old age. For in the young and flourishing the bark is stretched tight around them, but in those that grow old it becomes wrinkled, as it were, and rough. And some, when cut, sprout again; but others remain without successors, as if enduring the cutting as a kind of death. Indeed, some have observed that pines, when cut down or even burned over, turn into oak forests. And we know that some trees are cured of their natural badness by the care of farmers—for example, the sharp pomegranates and the more bitter almonds, when their trunk near the root is pierced and they receive a greasy wedge of pine driven through the middle of the pith, then change the unpleasantness of their juice into usefulness. Let no one, then, who lives in wickedness despair of himself, knowing that farming changes the qualities of plants, and the care of the soul according to virtue is able to overcome all kinds of infirmities. And the difference in the fruit-bearing of fruit trees is so great that no one could even cover it in speech. For not only are there differences of fruit among the different kinds, but even within the very species of a tree there is much variation; indeed, the growers distinguish one character of fruit for the male trees and another for the female, and they divide even the palms into male and female. And you might at some time see the one they call female letting down her branches, as if in heat, and longing for the embrace of the male; and the tenders of the plants cast into the branches, as it were, certain seeds of the males, the so-called gall-insects, and so she becomes, as it were, aware of the enjoyment, and her branches straighten up again, and her foliage is restored to the proper shape of the plant. They say the same things also about the fig trees.

Wild figs help tame figs; nature's hidden wisdom§40

Basil is still expounding the vegetation of the third day, drawing moral and theological lessons from the way plants grow and bear fruit.

40That is why some growers plant wild fig trees beside the cultivated ones, while others tie wild figs onto the fruitful, tame fig trees and so cure their weakness, using the wild figs to stop the fruit when it is already running off and scattering. What does this riddle from nature mean for you? It means that we must often draw a certain vigor even from those outside the faith, for the display of good works. If you see someone living a pagan life, or cut off from the Church by some crooked heresy, yet practicing a self-controlled life and the rest of good order in conduct, then stretch your own zeal further, so that you may become like the fruit-bearing fig tree, which gathers strength from the presence of the wild figs, stops its running, and nourishes its fruit more carefully. Such, then, are the differences in the manner of their generation, to mention only a very few out of very many. And who could go through the variety of the fruits themselves—their shapes, their colors, the peculiar quality of their juices, the usefulness of each one? How is it that some ripen naked in the sun, while others are filled out covered in husks? And why is the covering of the leaf thick for those whose fruit is soft, as with the fig tree, while for those whose fruits are more tightly enclosed, the growth of leaves is light, as with the walnut tree? Because the former, being weak, needed more help, while for the latter a thicker covering would have been harmful because of the shade it cast. How is the leaf of the vine split apart, so that the grape cluster can withstand the harms that come from the air, and yet receive the sun's ray generously through the open spaces? Nothing is without cause; nothing happens by chance; everything contains some inexpressible wisdom. What words could reach it? How could the human mind go through everything with precision, so as to observe the peculiarities, clearly distinguish the differences in each case, and set forth the hidden causes without omission? One and the same water is drawn up through the root, yet it nourishes the root itself in one way, the bark of the stem in another, the wood in another, and the pith in yet another. The same water becomes leaf, and is divided out into shoots and branches, and supplies growth to the fruits, and from the same source comes the tear of the plant and its resinous juice—and no words could reach how great the difference among these is. For the tear of the mastic tree is one thing, and the sap of the balsam is another; and certain giant fennel plants in Egypt and Libya weep out another kind of sap. There is also a story that amber is the sap of plants, hardened into the nature of stone. The bits of wood and the tiniest creatures that appear inside it bear witness to this story, since they were caught and held while the sap was still soft. In general, someone who has not been taught by experience will find no account that can set forth the activity behind the differences in the qualities of these saps. Again, how is it that from the same moisture wine is formed in the vine, and oil in the olive? And this is not the only wonder—how the liquid is sweetened here and becomes oily there—but also that among the sweet fruits there is an indescribable variation of quality.

One water, many tastes and colors in plants§41

Basil is expounding the third day of creation, showing how the same water produces different qualities in different plants, and then turns to the command 'Let the earth bring forth' as the source of all plant life.

41For the sweet quality in the vine is one thing, and that in the apple tree, the fig, and the date palm is another. I want you to linger with me over this inquiry a little longer: how the same water is smooth to the senses at one moment, when it becomes sweetened in certain plants, and at another moment it is striking to the taste, when it is made sour as it passes through other plants. And again, when it changes into extreme bitterness, it roughens the sense, as happens in wormwood or scammony. In acorns, or the fruit of the cornel tree, it changes into an astringent and harsh quality; but in terebinths and walnut trees, it is transformed into a soft and oily nature.

And why speak of distant examples, when in the same fig tree it passes over into the most opposite qualities? For it is most bitter in the sap, but most sweet in the fruit itself. And on the vine it is most astringent in the shoots, but most pleasant in the grape clusters. And how many are the differences in colors? You could see in a meadow the same water reddened in one flower, and in another purple, and dark blue in this one, and white in another; and again it provides a difference in scents that is even greater than the variety in colors.

But I see that my discourse is falling into excess through the insatiability of contemplation. Unless I bind it and lead it back to the necessity of the creation account, the day will fail me while I am presenting to you the great wisdom from the smallest things. “Let the earth sprout a fruit-bearing tree, producing fruit upon the earth” (Genesis 1:11). And immediately the mountain peaks were covered with foliage, and gardens were artfully arranged, and riverbanks were adorned with countless kinds of plants. Some had been prepared to adorn the human table; others were providing food for the herds, from their leaves and from their fruits. Others were furnishing us in advance with the benefits of medicine: their juices, their saps, their twigs, their barks, their fruit. And in a word, all the useful things that long experience has discovered for us, gathering what is beneficial from particular occurrences—these the keen forethought of the Creator, foreseeing them from the beginning, brought into being.

But you, whenever you see the cultivated plants, the wild ones, those that love water, those that grow on dry land, those that bear flowers, or those without flowers—recognizing the great in the small—always add to your wonder, and increase for me your love of the Creator. Examine how he made some plants evergreen, and others that are stripped bare; and among the evergreen ones, some shed their leaves, while others are ever-leafed. For both the olive and the pine shed their leaves, even if they exchange their foliage imperceptibly, so that they never seem to be stripped of their covering. But the date palm is ever-leafed, keeping the same leaf from its first sprouting to the end. Then consider also this: how the tamarisk is like an amphibious creature, numbered among the plants that love water, and yet multiplying in the deserts. For this reason Jeremiah fittingly compares the more wicked and wavering characters to this plant.

“Let the earth sprout” (Genesis 1:11). This small command was immediately a great nature and an artful principle, completing the countless properties of growing things more swiftly than our thought.

The command still drives the earth, and the hearer must come prepared§42

Basil is closing his homily on the third day's vegetation and opening the sixth homily, on the creation of the lights, by urging his hearers to come as fellow contestants, not mere judges.

42That command still even now existing in the earth urges it on, in each yearly cycle, to bring out all the power it has for the generation of plants, seeds, and trees. For just as tops, once the first blow is given them, make their subsequent rotations when they fix their point in themselves and spin around, so too the sequence of nature, having received its beginning from the first command, passes through all the time that follows, until it arrives at the common completion of the universe. Toward that completion may we all press on, fruitful and full of good works, so that, planted in the house of the Lord, we may bloom in the courts of our God, in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be glory and power forever and ever. Amen.

Homily 6: On the creation of the lights.

A spectator of athletes ought to share in some measure of their vigor. One can see this from the rules of the festivals, which prescribe that those sitting together in the stadium sit with bare heads—in my opinion, so that each person may be not only a spectator of the contestants but also in his own turn a contestant. So too, then, the examiner of great and extraordinary spectacles, and the hearer of truly supreme and ineffable wisdom, ought to come with some resources of his own for the contemplation of what lies before us, and to share in my struggle as far as he is able—standing by not so much as a judge as a fellow contestant. Otherwise the discovery of the truth may escape us, and my error may become a common loss for the hearers.

Why do I say this? Because since our task is the examination of the world's constitution and the contemplation of the universe—a task whose principles come not from the wisdom of the world, but from what God taught his servant, speaking to him plainly and not through riddles—it is altogether necessary that those who love to behold great things not have an untrained mind for the understanding of what lies before us. If ever, then, on a clear night you have gazed at the ineffable beauties of the stars and received a thought of the craftsman of all things—who it is who has adorned the heaven with these flowers, and how in visible things the necessary exceeds the delightful—and again by day, if with sober reasoning you have studied the wonders of the day and through visible things have inferred the invisible one, you have come as a prepared hearer, fit for the fullness of this solemn and blessed theater.

Come then—just as those who take strangers by the hand and lead them around a city—so I myself will guide you through the hidden wonders of this great city. In this city is our ancient homeland, from which the man-slaying demon removed us, having enslaved man by his own enticements. Here you will see the first origin of man, and the death that immediately overtook us—death, which sin bore, the firstborn offspring of the evil-originating demon. And you will come to know yourself: earthly in nature, yet the work of divine hands; in power far inferior to the irrational animals, yet appointed ruler by election of the irrational and the lifeless.

Man lifted toward heaven and the lights of the fourth day§43

Basil finishes urging his hearers to know themselves and then starts explaining the fourth day of creation.

43By nature he falls short of the animals in bodily gifts, yet by abundance of reason he can be lifted toward heaven. If we learn this, we shall know ourselves fully, we shall know God, we shall worship our Creator, we shall serve the Master, we shall glorify the Father, we shall love our nourisher, we shall revere our benefactor, and we shall never cease worshipping the author of our present life and the life to come, who confirms His promises by the riches He has already given and makes our hopes secure by the proof of present blessings.

If passing things are so rich, what must eternal things be like? If visible things are so beautiful, what must invisible things be like? If the vastness of heaven surpasses the measure of human thought, what mind could trace out the nature of eternal things?

The sun is subject to decay, yet it is so beautiful and so great, swift in movement and returning in well-ordered circuits, with a size fitted to the whole so that it keeps proportion to the universe, and by natural beauty shining upon creation like a bright eye. If gazing at it never wearies us, how beautiful must the sun of righteousness be? If it is a loss for a blind man not to see this sun, how great a loss is it for a sinner to be cut off from the true light?

Heaven and earth already existed. Light had been made over them. Day and night had been divided. Then came the firmament once more, and the revealing of dry land. The water had been gathered into one settled and separate gathering. The earth was full of its own offspring, sprouting countless kinds of plants and rich with every sort of plant. Yet sun and moon did not yet exist, so that those who do not know God would neither name the sun the first source and father of light nor reckon it the maker of what grows from the earth. For this reason the fourth day came, and then, Basil says, God said, "Let there be lights in the firmament of heaven for shining upon the earth, to divide between day and between night" (Genesis 1:14).

When you are taught who spoke, join the hearer to Him at once in thought. For Scripture says God said, "Let there be lights," and then that God made the two lights (Genesis 1:16). Who spoke and who made? Basil asks you to see in this doubling the two persons. Throughout the history the teaching about God is sown like seed in mystery. The purpose for the birth of the lights is also added: for shining, Scripture says, upon the earth. If light had already come to be, how is the sun now said to have come to be again for shining? First, Basil says, let no strangeness in the wording move you to laughter. We do not follow your fine choice of words, nor do we chase neat rhythm in placing them. We are no polishers of phrases. Everywhere we prize clear meaning in words above sweet sound. See whether by shining he showed well enough what he wished, for he said shining instead of illumination. This quarrels in nothing with what was said about light. Then the very nature of light was brought forth, while now this body of the sun has been prepared as a vehicle for that first-born light.

Light and its vehicle are distinct§44

Basil is explaining the fourth day of creation, arguing that the sun and moon are not the light itself but vehicles prepared for the first-created light.

44For just as fire is one thing and a lamp another—the one possessing the power to give light, the other made to shine for those who need it—so also the lights were now prepared as a vehicle for that purest and unmixed and immaterial light. For as the apostle says, there are certain lights in the world (Philippians 2:15), but the true light of the world is something else (John 1:9), and by sharing in it the saints became lights for the souls they taught, rescuing them from the darkness of ignorance. In the same way, the Maker of all things fitted this sun to that most radiant light and kindled it around the world.

And let no one think what has been said is unbelievable—that the brightness of light is one thing, and the body underlying the light is another. First, then, from the fact that all composite things are divided by us in this way, into the receptive substance and the quality that has come upon it. Just as whiteness is one thing by nature and the whitened body another, so also the things now spoken of, being different by nature, have been united by the power of the Creator. And do not tell me that it is impossible for these to be divided from one another. For I do not claim that the division of light from the solar body is possible for you and me, but that what is separable for us in thought can also be separated in actual operation by the Maker of their nature. Since even for you it is impossible to separate the burning power of fire from its brightness; yet God, wishing to turn his servant by a marvelous sight, placed fire on the bush that was active from its brightness alone, while its power to burn remained idle (Exodus 3:2). As the psalmist also testifies when he says, “The voice of the Lord divides the flame of fire” (Psalm 28:7 LXX). From this also, in the repayment of the lives we have lived, a certain teaching instructs us in mystery: that the nature of fire will be divided, and the light will be assigned for the enjoyment of the righteous, while the painful part of burning will be appointed for those being punished.

Then, moreover, from the phenomena concerning the moon, it is possible for us to find faith in what we are seeking. For when it wanes and decreases, it is not consumed in its whole body, but by putting off the light that surrounds it and taking it on again, it presents to us the appearances of decrease and increase. And that its body itself is not consumed when it wanes has clear testimony in what is seen. For you can, in clear air free from all mist, especially when it happens to be crescent-shaped, observe and see its unlit and unilluminated part outlined by an arc as large as the one that fills the whole of it at full moon. So the completed circle is clearly seen, with the eye bringing together the shadowy and misty hollow with the illuminated part. And do not tell me that the moon's light is imported, because it decreases as it moves toward the sun and increases again as it draws away. For that is not what we are examining at present, but rather that its body is one thing, and what gives it light is another.

Sun and moon as signs and the nature of night§45

Basil is explaining the fourth day's creation of the sun and moon, arguing that night is simply the earth's shadow and that the lights were appointed to mark times and give signs for human life.

45Think of the sun in the same way, with one difference: the sun received the light once and holds it blended with itself, and never puts it off. The moon, by contrast, is continually stripping off the light, so to speak, and putting it on again, and by its own behavior it confirms what has been said about the sun. These lights were also appointed to separate between the day and between the night. For above, God separated between the light and between the darkness; then he set their natures in opposition to each other, so that they have no mixing with one another, and light has nothing in common with darkness. What a shadow is in the daytime, that is what we should understand the nature of darkness to be at night. For every shadow falls from bodies that block a shining ray, lying opposite the light; in the morning it stretches toward the west, in the evening it leans toward the east, and at noon it lies to the north. So too the night withdraws in the direction opposite the sun's rays, being nothing other in its nature than a shadowing of the earth. Just as in the daytime a shadow comes into being from whatever blocks the light, so the night naturally comes into being when the air around the earth is cast into shadow. This, then, is what is meant by the words, God separated between the light and between the darkness: the darkness flees the assaults of the light, because at the first creation their estrangement from one another was built into their natures. But now he commanded the sun to govern the measures of the day, and the moon, whenever it completes its own cycle, he made the ruler of the night. For at that time the lights stand nearly opposite one another across the diameter. When the sun rises at the full moon, the moon sinks down out of sight; and when the sun sets again, the moon often rises opposite it from the east. If in its other phases the moon's light does not exactly coincide with the night, that has no bearing on the present discussion. The point is that when the moon is at its fullest, it begins the night, outshining the stars with its own light and illuminating the earth, and it divides the measures of time equally with the sun. "And let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years" (Genesis 1:14). The indications given by the lights are necessary for human life. If one does not busy himself beyond measure with the signs they give, he will find their observations, gained from long experience, useful. From them one can learn many things about heavy rain, and many things about droughts and the movement of winds, whether local or general, violent or gentle. One of the signs drawn from the sun the Lord himself has handed on to us, when he said, "There will be a storm, for the sky reddens, being gloomy" (Matthew 16:3). For when the sun rises through mist, its rays are dimmed, and its color appears like coals and tinged with blood, because the thickness of the air produces this appearance to the eyes. The air, which until then was dense and compact and not dispersed by the ray, shows that it could not be overcome because of the influx of vapors from the earth, but by the excess of moisture it will bring a storm upon the regions where it gathers.

Weather signs and the refutation of astrology§46

Basil is explaining the usefulness of the heavenly lights as signs for weather and seasons, then begins refuting those who misuse them for astrology.

46In the same way, when the moon is surrounded by a halo, and when the so-called halos form around the sun, they indicate either an abundance of moisture in the air or the onset of violent winds. And when what they call counter-suns accompany the sun's course, these too become signs of certain disturbances in the air. So also the rods that appear upright in the clouds with the color of a rainbow point to rain or extraordinary storms, or in general indicate above all a change in the atmosphere. Those who have devoted themselves to these matters have also observed many signs connected with the moon's waxing and waning, since the air around the earth necessarily changes along with the moon's phases. For when the moon is thin and clear on about the third day, it promises settled fair weather; but when it appears thick, with reddish horns, it threatens either violent rain from the clouds or a forceful south wind. Who does not know how much benefit these signs bring to daily life? A sailor can keep his vessel inside the harbor when he foresees the dangers from the winds. A traveler can avoid harm from afar by waiting out the change signaled by the gloominess of the air. And farmers, who labor over seeds and the care of plants, find from these signs all the right times for their work. The Lord has also foretold that signs of the dissolution of the universe will appear in the sun and the moon and the stars: "The sun will be turned to blood, and the moon will not give its light" (Joel 2:31; cf. Acts 2:20). These are signs of the completion of all things.

But those who leap beyond the bounds drag the discussion to the defense of astrology, and they say that our life is bound to the movement of the heavenly bodies, and that this is why the Chaldeans derive from the stars their predictions of what happens to us. They take the simple statement of Scripture, "Let them be for signs," and twist it to their own liking, as if it referred not to changes in the air or the seasons but to the allotment of human lives. For what do they say? They say that the interweaving of certain moving stars with the stars positioned in the zodiac, when they come together in a particular configuration, produces certain births; and that a different relation of these same stars produces the opposite allotment of life. About these matters it is perhaps not useless, for the sake of clarity, to go back a little and speak. I will say nothing of my own invention, but I will use their own arguments against them for their refutation—offering a kind of healing to those already caught in the harm, and security to the rest so that they do not fall into the same errors. The inventors of this astrology, having observed that in the broad span of time many of the configurations escaped them, confined the measures of time to an extremely narrow point. They claim that even the very smallest and most instantaneous moment—what the apostle calls "in an atom, in the twinkling of an eye" (1 Corinthians 15:52)—makes the greatest difference between one birth and another. The one born in this instant, they say, will be a tyrant over cities and a ruler of peoples, exceedingly wealthy and powerful; while the one born in the other moment of time will be a beggar and a vagabond, going from door to door for his daily food.

Astrology's absurd precision and its animal logic§47

Basil is refuting astrology by showing that its own demand for exact birth-times is impossible, and then mocking its use of zodiac animals to explain human character.

47For this reason they divided the circle called the zodiac into twelve parts, and because the sun passes through one twelfth of the sphere called the fixed sphere in thirty days, they divided each of the twelfth-parts into thirty degrees. Then they divided each degree into sixty parts, and each of those sixtieths they cut again sixty times. So when they set down the births of children, let us see whether they can preserve this precision in dividing time. For the child is born, and at the same moment the midwife examines whether the newborn is male or female; then she waits for the cry, which is the sign that the child is alive. How many sixtieths do you suppose pass by in that time? Then she tells the Chaldean that the child has been born. Through how many of the very finest divisions, do you suppose, the midwife's voice travels—especially if the one who is supposed to fix the hour happens to be standing outside the women's quarters? For the one who intends to study horoscopes must record the hour with precision, whether it is by day or by night. What a swarm of sixtieths passes by again in that time! For it is necessary, they say, to determine not only in which twelfth-part the star that marks the hour is, but also in which degree of that twelfth-part, and in which sixtieth—into which we said the degree is divided—or, to find the exact point, in which sixtieth of the subdivisions of the first sixtieths. And they say it is necessary to make this extremely fine and incomprehensible determination of time for each of the planets, so as to find what relation they had to the fixed stars, and what configuration they had toward one another at the moment of the child's birth. So if it is impossible to hit upon the hour exactly, and the variation of the very briefest moment causes one to miss everything, then both those who have devoted themselves to this non-existent art are ridiculous, and so are those who gape at them as though they could know what concerns them. 6.6 And what are the results like? 'So-and-so,' he says, 'is curly-haired and bright-eyed, for he has the Ram as his ascendant; for the animal is seen somewhat like that.' But he is also high-minded, because the Ram is a leader; and open-handed, and again resourceful, because this animal both sheds its wool without pain and is easily clothed again by nature. 'But the one born under the Bull,' he says, 'is hardy and servile, because the bull is under the yoke.' And the one born under the Scorpion is a striker, because of his likeness to the beast. The one born under the Scales is just, because of the equality of scales among us. What could be more ridiculous than these things? The Ram, from which you take the birth of a human being, is a twelfth part of heaven, in which the sun comes to touch the signs of spring. And the Scales and the Bull likewise—each of these is a twelfth-part of the circle called the zodiac. How then, when you say that the primary causes for human lives exist, do you characterize the characters of people born from our domestic animals? For the one born under the Ram is open-handed, not because that part of heaven produces such a character, but because the sheep has such a nature. Why then do you try to overawe us with the authority of the stars, while attempting to persuade us through bleatings? For if heaven received such peculiarities of character from the animals, then heaven itself is subject to alien principles, having its causes derived from cattle. But if it is ridiculous to say this, it is far more ridiculous to try to bring into the argument plausibilities drawn from things that have nothing in common with it.

Astrology's webs and the absurdity of fate§48

Basil is refuting astrology, having just shown that the zodiac signs' supposed characters are borrowed from animals; now he turns to the astrologers' claims about the stars governing human choices and actions.

48But these clever arguments of theirs are like spider webs: when a gnat or a fly or some other weak creature of that kind gets caught in them, it is held fast; but when one of the stronger animals comes near, it slips through easily and tears the flimsy webs apart and destroys them.

And they do not stop at these things alone. Even the things over which each of us has authority by our own choice—I mean the pursuits of virtue or vice—even these they connect to causes in the heavens. To argue against them in any other way would be laughable, but because so many people are already held captive by the deception, it is perhaps necessary not to pass over it in silence.

First, then, let us ask them this: do not the configurations of the stars change countless times every day? For the so-called planets are always in motion, and some overtake one another more quickly, while others make their circuits more slowly, and at the same hour they often both see one another and are hidden from one another. And the greatest power in nativities, as they themselves say, lies in whether a person is watched over by a beneficent star or a maleficent one. And often, when they fail to discover the exact moment at which the beneficent star was bearing witness, because of ignorance of one of the smallest details, they record the person as lying under evil fortune. For I am compelled to use their own words.

In such arguments there is much foolishness, and far more impiety. For the maleficent stars transfer the cause of their own wickedness to the one who made them. If their evil comes from their nature, then the Creator will be the maker of evil. But if they become evil by choice, then first of all they will be creatures with choice, using free and self-governing impulses—which is beyond madness to attribute falsely to soulless things. And then how irrational it is: evil and good are not distributed to each according to merit, but because a star happens to be in a certain place, it is beneficent, and because it is seen by another star, the same one becomes maleficent; and again, when it shifts a little from its configuration, it immediately forgets its wickedness.

But let this be enough on those points. If at every indivisible moment of time the stars are rearranged into one configuration after another, and in these countless changes, many times a day, the configurations that produce royal nativities are completed, why are kings not born every day? Or why do they have hereditary successions of kingdoms at all? For surely each king does not carefully arrange the birth of his own son to fit the royal configuration of the stars. What human being has control over such a thing? How then did Uzziah beget Jotham, Jotham Ahaz, Ahaz Hezekiah? And in none of these did anyone happen upon a servile hour of birth?

Furthermore, if the origins of our actions in vice and virtue are not within our power, but the necessities come from our nativity, then lawmakers are superfluous, defining what we should do and what we should avoid; and judges are superfluous too, honoring virtue and punishing wickedness. For the theft is not the thief's fault, nor the murder the murderer's—since it was not possible for him, even if he wanted to, to control his hand, because of the inescapable necessity driving him to the deed.

The seasons follow the ordered motion of the lights§49

Basil is expounding Genesis 1:14, explaining that the lights serve 'for seasons' by governing the orderly cycle of winter, spring, summer, and autumn.

49But the most foolish of all are those who labor at the crafts. The farmer will prosper, they say, without sowing seed or sharpening a sickle, and the merchant will become exceedingly rich whether he wants to or not, because fate gathers wealth for him. Our great Christian hopes will vanish into nothing, since righteousness is not honored and sin is not condemned, because nothing is accomplished by human choice. For where necessity and fate rule, there is no place for what is deserved, which is the special mark of just judgment. So much for those people. You do not need more words from me, since you are sound in your own thinking, and the time does not allow me to stretch out my response to them beyond measure.

Let us return to the next words of the text. "Let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and for years," it says (Genesis 1:14). We have already spoken about the signs. By seasons, I think he means the alternations of the year's periods: winter, spring, summer, and autumn. The ordered movement of the lights causes us to pass through these in good order. Winter comes when the sun lingers in the southern regions and produces a long stretch of nighttime shadow over our part of the earth, so that the air around the earth grows cold, and all the moist vapors gather around us and bring about rain, frost, and boundless snow. But when the sun returns again from the southern regions and reaches the midpoint, so that it divides the time equally between night and day, the more it lingers over the places above the earth, the more it gradually brings back a mild temperature. Then spring comes, which is the beginning of sprouting for all plants, grants renewal of life to most trees, and preserves the race of all land and water creatures through the succession of their offspring. From there the sun drives on toward the summer solstice, toward the Bear itself, and brings about the longest days for us. Because it stays in contact with the air for the greatest length of time, it scorches the air above our heads and dries out the whole earth, and in this way it helps the seeds to mature and urges the fruits of the trees toward ripeness. At that time the sun is at its most blazing, making the shadows short at midday, because it shines down on our region from on high. The longest days are those in which the shadows are shortest, and the shortest days are those in which the shadows are longest. This is true for us who are called different-shadowed, all of us who inhabit the northern parts of the earth. For there are already some people who, for two days of the whole year, become completely shadowless at midday. The sun shines down on them from directly overhead and illuminates them equally from every side, so that even the water in deep wells is lit up through their narrow openings. That is why some call them shadowless. But those beyond the spice-bearing land cast their shadows alternately to both sides. They are the only ones in our inhabited world who send their shadows toward the south at midday. That is why some have named them double-shadowed.

The sun's course and the greatness of the lights§50

Basil is explaining the fourth day's creation of the sun and moon, arguing that their size is absolute, not merely relative to smaller stars.

50All these things happen when the sun has already passed by toward the northern region. From these facts one can infer how great the burning is that the sun's ray produces in the air, and what kinds of effects it brings about. Then the season of autumn receives us, and it breaks down the excess of the stifling heat. Little by little it lets up on the warmth, and through the moderate mean of its mixture it leads us unharmed through itself into winter—clearly because the sun is turning back again from the northern regions toward the south. These turnings of the seasons, which follow the movements of the sun, order our life for us.

But let them be, Scripture says, also for days—not so as to make days, but so as to rule over the days. For day and night are older than the creation of the lights. The psalm shows us this when it says: He set the sun for authority over the day, the moon and stars for authority over the night (Psalm 135:8-9 LXX; Hebrew 136:8-9). How then does the sun have authority over the day? Because it carries light in itself, and whenever it rises above our horizon, it provides day by dissolving the darkness. So no one would go wrong in defining day as the air illuminated by the sun, or in defining day as a measure of time in which the sun spends its course in the hemisphere above the earth.

But the sun and moon were also appointed for years. The moon, whenever it completes its own course twelve times, produces a year—except that it often needs an intercalary month for the exact convergence of the seasons, as the Hebrews of old reckoned the year, and the most ancient of the Greeks. A solar year is the return of the sun by its own movement from the same point back to the same point.

And God made the two great lights. Since the word great in one sense has an absolute meaning—as in great is the heaven, and great is the earth, and great is the sea—but in most cases it naturally refers to something else—as in great is the horse, and the ox is great, for such things receive their testimony of greatness not in the excess of their bodily bulk but in comparison with things like themselves—how then shall we understand the meaning of great? Is it as when we call the ant or some other naturally small thing great, testifying to its superiority by comparison with things of the same kind? Or is great used here in such a way that the greatness is displayed in the very construction of the lights themselves? I think the latter. For they are not great because they are larger than the smaller stars, but because their circumference is so vast that the radiance poured out from them is sufficient to illuminate both heaven and the air, and at the same time to extend over all the earth and the sea. Since they appear in every part of the heaven, rising and setting and holding the middle, they show themselves equal to human beings from every direction. This is clear proof of the abundance of their greatness: the breadth of the earth causes no variation in them so that they seem larger or smaller.

The sun's apparent size and true greatness§51

Basil is explaining why the sun's apparent smallness to human eyes does not disprove its true vastness, arguing from the limits of sight over great distances.

51For things that stand far off we see as somehow smaller, and the closer we draw to them, the more we discover their true size. But with the sun, no one is closer and no one farther away; it strikes those settled in every part of the earth from an equal distance. A proof of this is that both Indians and Britons see it the same. For it does not diminish in size as it sets for those who live in the east, nor does it appear smaller as it rises for those settled toward the west; and when it is at mid-heaven, it does not differ from the view on either side. Do not let the appearance deceive you, and do not reckon that because it seems a cubit long to those who see it, it is actually that size. For the sizes of visible things naturally contract at great distances, since the power of sight cannot cross the intervening space, but is, as it were, used up in the middle, and only a small part of it reaches the visible objects. So our sight becomes small, and it makes the things seen be thought small, imposing its own condition on what is visible. Therefore sight lies, and its judgment is untrustworthy. But recall your own experiences, and you will have from yourself the proof of what I am saying. If you have ever seen from a high mountain peak a plain that is broad and level, how large did the teams of oxen appear to you? How big were the plowmen themselves? Did they not give you the impression of ants? And if from a lookout turned toward the open sea you cast your eyes upon the water, how large did the greatest of the islands seem to you? How big did one of the ten-thousand-burden cargo ships appear, carried over the dark blue sea with white sails? Did it not present an impression smaller than any dove? Because, as I said, sight is used up in the air, becomes faint, and is not sufficient for an accurate grasp of what is seen. And indeed, the greatest mountains, cut through with deep ravines, sight declares to be round and smooth, because it reaches only the projections and through weakness cannot enter the hollows between. So it does not even preserve the shapes of bodies as they are, but thinks square towers are round. Thus it is clear from every side that at the greatest distances sight receives not a distinct but a confused impression of bodies. Great, then, is the light, according to the testimony of Scripture, and infinitely greater than what appears.

And let this also be a clear sign to you of its size. Though the stars in heaven are countless in number, the light gathered from them is not enough to dissolve the gloom of night. But this one alone, appearing above the horizon—or rather, even while still expected, before it has fully risen over the earth—makes the darkness vanish, outshines the stars, and melts and disperses the air around the earth that had been fixed and packed together. From this come the morning winds and the dews that flow over the earth in clear weather. And how could it illuminate the whole earth, vast as it is, in a single moment of time, unless it cast its radiance from a great circle? Here learn the wisdom of the craftsman: how he gave it heat proportionate to this distance.

The moon's changing shapes teach human mutability§52

Basil is explaining the fourth day's creation of the sun and moon, and has just described the sun's heat; he now turns to the moon's changing phases and their moral and physical effects.

52Its fiery quality is so measured that it neither burns up the earth through excess nor leaves it frozen and barren through deficiency. And what has been said about the sun should be understood as applying in kind to the moon as well. For its body is also great, and it is the brightest light after the sun. Yet its size does not remain always visible. At one time it appears completed in its circle, at another lacking and diminished, showing its missing part on one side or another. For as it waxes, one part of it is shadowed, and at the time of its waning another part is hidden. There is some inexpressible design of the wise craftsman in this varied alternation of shapes. It is as though he were giving us a clear example of our own nature: that nothing human is stable, but some things proceed from non-being into perfection, while others, after reaching their proper prime and growing to their fullest measure, waste away and perish again through gradual subtractions, and as they diminish they are brought low. So from the sight of the moon we are taught about our own condition, and by taking thought of the swift turning of human affairs we learn not to think highly of life's successes, not to exult in positions of power, not to be lifted up by the uncertainty of wealth, to despise the flesh around which change revolves, and to care for the soul whose good is unshaken. If the moon troubles you as it gradually consumes its light through subtractions, let a soul trouble you more—a soul that has acquired virtue and then through carelessness destroys what is good, never remaining in the same disposition but constantly turning and shifting because of the instability of its purpose. For truly, as it is said, "The fool changes like the moon" (Sirach 27:11). I think too that the change of the moon contributes no small benefit to the constitution of living creatures and to the other things that grow from the earth. Bodies are disposed differently when the moon wanes and when it waxes: when it is declining they become porous and empty, and when it is waxing and hastening toward fullness they are filled up again, because the moon secretly sends down a certain moisture mixed with warmth that reaches into the depths. Those who sleep under the moon show this, as the spaces of their heads are filled with excess moisture; so do freshly slaughtered meats, which quickly turn at the touch of the moon, and the brains of animals, and the moistest parts of sea creatures, and the piths of trees. All these things the moon could not have power to change along with its own alteration unless it were something extraordinary and surpassing in power, according to the testimony of Scripture. And the conditions of the air are also affected along with the moon's changes, as the sudden disturbances at the new moon bear witness to us—when calm and stillness often give way to turmoil, clouds shaken and colliding with one another—and the backflows in the straits, and the ebb tide around what is called the ocean, which those who live nearby have discovered follows the cycles of the moon in an orderly way. For the straits flow back and forth in either direction according to the remaining phases of the moon, but at the time of its birth they do not remain still even for the briefest moment; they are in constant surge and swaying until the moon appears again and gives a certain regularity to the backflow.

The moon's size and the limits of human reasoning§53

Basil is concluding his discussion of the fourth day's lights, arguing that the moon's vast size is proven by its simultaneous visibility across distant cities, and that even the greatest heavenly bodies are small compared to God.

53The western sea, by contrast, undergoes its ebb tides, now receding and then flooding over again, as if drawn backward by the moon's exhalations and then pushed forward to its proper measure by her out-breathings. I have said these things to demonstrate the size of the lights and to establish that not even a syllable of the God-inspired words is idle. And yet my discourse has touched on almost none of the essential points. For those who have examined the workings and powers of the sun and moon with care can discover by reasoning a great deal about their sizes and distances. We ought, then, to accuse ourselves honestly of our own weakness, so that the greatest of created works are not measured by our own speech, but rather so that from the few things said we may reckon for ourselves how many and how great are the things left unmentioned.

Do not, therefore, measure even the moon with your eye, but with reasoning, which is far more accurate than the eyes for discovering truth. Some laughable myths, babbled everywhere by old women in their cups, have spread the claim that the moon is moved from her own seat by certain sorceries and brought down to the earth. How could a magician's incantation move her whom the Most High himself established? And what place could receive her if she were dragged down? Do you want to grasp the proof of her size from small indications? The cities throughout the inhabited world, though separated from one another by the greatest distances, all receive the moon's light equally in their streets turned toward the east. If she were not directly opposite them all, she would certainly illuminate those in the straight line of the narrow streets, but for those beyond her breadth she would cast her rays obliquely, slanting them to the sides. This is what one can see happening with lamps in houses. When several people stand around a lamp, the shadow of the one standing directly in front of it extends upright, while the remaining shadows incline to each side. So if the moon's body were not immense and surpassing in size, it would not extend equally opposite to all.

For when she rises from the equatorial regions, those who dwell in the frozen zone and lie beneath the turnings of the Bear receive her light just as those who live in the hollows of the south, neighbors of the scorched zone. Extending opposite to all of them across her breadth, she provides the clearest testimony of her size. Who, then, will deny that her body is enormous, matching such great and numerous distances at once? Let this suffice concerning the sizes of the sun and moon.

May he who granted us understanding to learn the great wisdom of the Craftsman from the smallest things of creation also grant us to receive from the great things even greater conceptions of the Creator. And yet, in comparison with the Maker, the sun and moon hold the rank of a gnat and an ant. For it is not possible to gain from these a vision worthy of the greatness of the God of all things, but only to be led forward by small and faint impressions through them, just as through each of the smallest things among animals or plants.

Let us be content with what has been said. I give thanks to him who granted me this small ministry of the word, and you to him who nourishes you with spiritual food—who even now has fed you, as with some barley bread, through the humble quality of our voice. And may he nourish you forever, granting you the manifestation of the Spirit according to the measure of your faith, in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be glory and power forever and ever.

The waters bring forth living creatures§54

Basil has finished the fourth day's lights and now expounds the fifth day's command, when God fills the waters with living creatures.

54Amen. Homily 7: On Creeping Things. “And God said, ‘Let the waters bring forth creeping things of living souls according to kind, and winged creatures flying across the firmament of heaven according to kind’” (Genesis 1:20). After the creation of the lights, the waters are now filled with living things, so that this region too may be adorned. The earth had already received its adornment from its own plants; the heaven had received the flowers of the stars, and had been adorned as it were by the twin beams of the great lights, like a pair of eyes. What remained was for the waters to receive their own adornment as well. The command came, and at once rivers became active and lakes productive, each of them bringing forth their own natural kinds. The sea gave birth to all the varied kinds of swimming creatures, and not even what was in the mud and pools of water—not even this remained idle or without its share in the work of creation. For frogs and gnats and mosquitoes were clearly produced from them. The things we still see now are proof of what happened then. So every water hastened to serve the creative command; and the great and ineffable power of God showed at once the life of creatures whose kinds no one could even count, active and moving, the moment the command was given and the waters received their fitness for producing life. “Let the waters bring forth creeping things of living souls.” Now for the first time a living creature is made that has a soul and shares in sensation. For plants and trees, even if they are said to live because they share in the power of nourishment and growth, are not animals, nor do they have souls. For this reason: “Let the waters bring forth creeping things.” Everything that swims—whether it floats on the surface of the water or cuts through the depths—belongs to the nature of creeping things, since it moves along through the body of the water. And even if some water creatures have feet and walk (most of these are amphibious—for example, seals, crocodiles, river horses, frogs, and crabs), their primary characteristic is still swimming. For this reason: “Let the waters bring forth creeping things.” In these few words, what kind has been left out? What has not been included in the command of creation? Are not the live-bearing creatures included—seals, dolphins, torpedo rays, and the similar ones called cartilaginous fish? Are not the egg-laying ones, which are nearly all the kinds of fish? Are not all the scaly ones, all those with rough skins, all those with fins and those without? The sound of the command is small—or rather, it is not even a sound, but only an inclination and impulse of the will. Yet the meaning contained in the command is as vast as all the differences and common features of fish. To go through all of them in detail would be like counting the waves of the sea, or trying to measure the water of the ocean with cups. “Let the waters bring forth creeping things.” In these are included the creatures of the open sea, the creatures of the shores, the creatures of the depths, the creatures of the rocks, those that move in schools, those that scatter, the sea-monsters, the enormous ones, and the smallest of fish. For by the same power and the same command, both the great and the small receive their existence.

Fish belong to the water by nature§55

Basil is expounding the command 'Let the waters bring forth' from Genesis 1:20, explaining why fish are naturally suited to water and enumerating the kinds of water creatures.

55"Let the waters bring forth." This shows you the natural kinship of swimming creatures with water, which is why fish perish when separated from water even for a short time. They do not have breathing to draw in this air; rather, what air is to land animals, water is to the swimming kind. And the reason is clear. In us, the lung lies within—a porous organ with many passages—which receives air through the expansion of the chest and fans and cools our inner heat. But in them, the expansion and contraction of the gills, receiving the water and letting it pass through, fulfills the function of breathing. Fish have their own lot, their own nature, a separate way of life, a distinct manner of living. For this reason, none of the swimming creatures allows itself to be tamed, nor does it endure at all the touch of a human hand.

"Let the waters bring forth creeping things that are living creatures according to kind" (Genesis 1:20). He commands that the first beginnings of each kind be brought forth now, as seeds of nature, so to speak; their abundance is stored up for the succession that follows, when they must increase and multiply. One kind is what are called shell-skinned creatures: mussels, scallops, sea snails, conches, and the countless varieties of oysters. Another kind besides these is what are called soft-shelled creatures: crayfish, crabs, and those similar to them. Another kind besides these is the soft-bodied creatures, so named because their flesh is soft and yielding: octopuses, cuttlefish, and those like them. And among these again there are countless differences. For sea serpents, moray eels, and eels—which are found in muddy rivers and lakes—approach the poisonous reptiles more closely than fish in the similarity of their nature. One kind is that of egg-laying creatures, and another that of creatures bearing live young. The dogfish-like creatures and the small sharks bear live young, and in general the so-called cartilaginous fish. And most of the sea-monsters bear live young: dolphins and seals, which are said to receive their young back into the belly and shelter them when they are still young and frightened by some cause.

"Let the waters bring forth according to kind." The sea-monster kind is one thing, and the kind of small fish is another. Again, among fish there are countless differences divided according to kinds, with their own names, different food, shape, size, and qualities of flesh—all separated from one another by the greatest differences and established in different forms. What tuna-watchers, then, can enumerate for us the differences of the kinds? Yet they say that they can report the number of fish in great schools. And who among those who have grown old along the shores and coasts can make known to us the account of all of them with precision? Those who fish the Indian Ocean know some creatures; those who hunt the Egyptian gulf know others; islanders know others; and the Maurusians know others. But all alike, small and great, that first command and that ineffable power brought forth. Many are the variations of ways of life; many also are the differences in the succession of each kind. Most fish do not brood over their eggs as birds do, nor do they build nests, nor do they raise their young with labor; but the water receives the egg that falls out and makes it a living creature.

Fish kinds, greed, and the crab's cunning§56

Basil continues his moral reading of sea creatures, contrasting the fixed kinds of fish with human greed and the craftiness of the crab and octopus.

56For each kind the succession is unchangeable and unmixed with another nature. It is not like the mules on dry land, or the couplings of certain birds that falsify the kinds. Among fish nothing is armed with teeth only halfway, as the ox is among us and the sheep; for nothing among them chews the cud, except the scarus alone, as some report. All of them are packed thick with the sharpest points of teeth, so that their food may not slip away through prolonged chewing; for if it were not cut up quickly and sent on to the stomach, it would be dissolved in the fine dividing by the water.

The food of fish is different for different kinds, marked out according to kind. Some feed on mud; others on seaweed; others are satisfied with the plants that grow in the water. But most fish are eaters of one another, and among them the smaller is food for the larger. And if it ever happens that the one that overpowered the smaller becomes the prey of another, they are brought under the single stomach of the last one. What then do we human beings do differently in our domination of those who are weaker? How does the man differ from the last fish, who with gluttonous love of wealth hides the weak in the insatiable folds of his greed? That one had what belonged to the poor man; you took this and made it part of your own surplus. You have shown yourself more unjust than the unjust, and more greedy than the greedy. Beware lest the same end as the fish await you—some hook, or weel, or net. For certainly we too, after passing through many acts of injustice, will not escape the final punishment.

Now that I have observed in a weak animal the great cunning and treachery, I want you to flee the imitation of evildoers. The crab desires the flesh of the oyster; but the catch is hard for it to make because of the shell's covering. For nature has secured the soft flesh with an unbreakable fence. This is why it is called shell-skinned. And since two hollows fitted precisely to each other enfold the oyster, the claws of the crab are necessarily ineffective. What then does it do? When it sees the oyster in windless places warming itself with pleasure, and spreading out its folds toward the ray of the sun, then it secretly slips in a pebble and prevents the closing, and the deficiency of its power is found to be supplied by its cunning. This is the wickedness of creatures that share neither reason nor voice. But I want you, admiring the resourceful ingenuity of crabs, to refrain from harming your neighbors. Such is the one who proceeds against his brother with deceit, and attacks his neighbors in their moments of vulnerability, and revels in the misfortunes of others. Flee the imitations of those who stand condemned. Be content with what is your own. Poverty with true self-sufficiency is more precious to the wise than every enjoyment.

I would not pass over the deceit and trickery of the octopus, which takes on the color of whatever rock it clings to at any given time. So most fish, swimming without foresight, fall upon the octopus as if it were the rock, and become ready prey for the cunning creature. Such in character are those who go along with the powers that always prevail, and adapt themselves to each occasion's needs, never standing on the same fixed purpose, but easily becoming different people at different times—honoring self-control among the self-controlled, but licentious among the licentious, shifting their judgments to please each person.

Fish keep their bounds; humans do not§57

Basil is preaching on the fifth day's water creatures, drawing a moral contrast between the orderly behavior of fish and human greed.

57It is not easy to avoid such people, nor to guard against the harm they do, because their wickedness is deeply hidden under the guise of friendship. The Lord calls such characters ravenous wolves, appearing in garments of sheep (Matthew 7:15). Flee the varied and many-sided character; pursue truth, sincerity, simplicity. The serpent is subtle; for this reason it was condemned to crawl. The righteous man is without guile, like Jacob. For this reason the Lord settles the solitary in a home (Psalm 67:7 LXX (Hebrew 68:6)). This is the great and wide sea; there are creeping things without number, small animals with great (Psalm 103:25 LXX). Yet among them there is a wise and orderly arrangement. We cannot only find fault with fish; there are also things in them worth imitating. How is it that each kind of fish, having distributed to itself the region suited to it, does not encroach upon the others, but remains within its own boundaries? No surveyor among them divided up their dwellings; they are not marked off by walls; they are not separated by boundary stones; yet what is useful for each has been assigned to each automatically. This bay feeds certain kinds of fish, and that one others; and the kinds that multiply here are not found among others. No mountain rising with sharp peaks separates them, no river cuts off their passage, but there is a law of nature that allots to each its way of life equitably and justly according to what each needs.

But we are not like this. How could we be? We remove the ancient boundaries that our fathers set (Proverbs 22:28). We cut off land, we join house to house and field to field, so that we may take something from our neighbor (Isaiah 5:8). The sea monsters know the way of life marked out for them by nature; they have taken possession of the sea outside the inhabited regions, the desolate region of islands, where no continent stands opposite on the other side. For this reason it is unnavigable, since neither inquiry nor any need persuades sailors to venture upon it. The sea monsters, which in size resemble the greatest mountains, as those who have seen them say, have taken possession of that sea and remain within their own boundaries, harming neither the islands nor the coastal cities. So each kind, as if in cities or villages or ancient homelands, makes its dwelling in the parts of the sea assigned to it.

And some fish are migratory, as if setting out from a common council chamber for foreign territory; they all depart at a single signal. For when the appointed time of breeding arrives, different fish from different bays migrate, stirred by the common law of nature, and press on toward the northern sea. And at the time of their ascent you could see the fish united like a current, flowing through the Sea of Marmara toward the Black Sea. Who moves them? What king's command? What edicts posted in the marketplace announce the appointed time? Who are the guides? You see the divine order filling all things and extending through the smallest creatures. A fish does not oppose the law of God, and we human beings do not endure saving teachings. Do not despise fish because they are voiceless and completely without reason; rather, fear that you may be more without reason than they are, by resisting the command of the Creator. Listen to the fish, who all but utter a voice through what they do: we undertake this long journey for the continuance of our kind.

Fish and sea urchin teach providence and marital fidelity§58

Basil is preaching on the fifth day's water creatures, drawing moral lessons from fish migrations and the sea urchin's storm-sensing behavior.

58They have no reason of their own, but they have the law of nature strongly implanted in them, pointing out what must be done. "Let us go," they say, "to the northern sea." For its water is sweeter than the rest of the sea, because the sun spends only a little time upon it and does not draw out all its drinkable quality through its rays. Sea creatures also delight in sweet water; that is why they often swim up into rivers and travel far from the sea. For this reason the Black Sea is more prized by them than the other gulfs, as a place suited for hatching and rearing their young. But when the object of their eagerness has been sufficiently accomplished, all together in a body they all return home again. And what is the reason? Let us hear it from those who are silent. "The northern sea," they say, "is shallow, and lying flat and exposed to the forces of the winds, it has few shores and places of refuge. Therefore the winds easily turn it over from its very depths, so that even the sand from the bottom is mixed with the waves. It is also cold in the winter season, filled by many great rivers." For this reason, after enjoying it moderately in the summer, in winter they hasten again to the warmth in the deep and the sun-facing regions, and fleeing the storminess of the northern waters, they anchor in the gulfs that are less shaken.

I have seen these things myself, and I marveled at the wisdom of God in all things. If irrational creatures are inventive and protective of their own safety, and the fish knows what is to be chosen and what is to be avoided, what shall we say—we who have been honored with reason, instructed by law, urged on by promises, made wise by the Spirit—if we then manage our own affairs more irrationally than the fish? For they know how to exercise some forethought for the future, while we, through hopelessness about what is to come, consume our lives in a beast-like way. A fish crosses such vast seas to find some benefit. What will you say, you who live with idleness? Idleness is the beginning of wickedness. Let no one plead ignorance. A natural reason has been sown within us, showing us our kinship with the good and our alienation from harmful things.

I do not depart from the examples of the sea, since these are set before us for examination. I have heard from one of the coastal people that the sea urchin, that tiny and utterly contemptible creature, often becomes a teacher of calm and of storm to sailors. Whenever it foresees a disturbance from the winds, it gets under a sizable pebble and rides securely upon it as upon an anchor, held by the weight so that it is not easily dragged away by the waves. When sailors see this sign, they know that a violent movement of the winds is to be expected. No astrologer, no Chaldean, who infers disturbances of the air from the risings of the stars, taught these things to the urchin; rather, the Lord of the sea and the winds placed in this small creature a clear trace of his great wisdom. Nothing is without providence, nothing is neglected by God. The unsleeping eye watches over all things. He is present to all, providing safety for each one. If God did not leave the urchin outside his own care, does he not watch over your affairs?

Husbands, love your wives, even if you have come together from distant lands for the communion of marriage. Let the bond of nature, the yoke given through blessing, be the union of those who were separated.

The viper and the moray as marriage lessons§59

Basil is drawing moral lessons from sea creatures, now using the viper and moray eel to teach spouses to endure each other and to warn adulterers.

59The viper, the most dangerous of reptiles, goes to meet the moray eel of the sea for marriage, and by hissing announces his presence, calling her up from the depths for the nuptial embrace. She obeys and unites herself with the venomous one. What does this account mean for me? That even if the housemate is harsh or savage in character, one must bear the yokemate and accept no pretext for tearing apart the union. Is he a striker? But he is a husband. Is he a drunkard? But he is united to you by nature. Is he harsh and hard to please? But he is already your member, and the most honored of your members.

Let the husband also hear the counsel that belongs to him. The viper vomits out its venom out of reverence for marriage; do you not put away the harshness and inhumanity of your soul out of reverence for the union? Perhaps the example of the viper will serve us in yet another way: the coupling of the viper and the moray eel is a kind of adultery against nature. Let those who plot against the marriages of others learn, then, what kind of reptile they resemble. My one aim is that the Church be built up from every side. Let the passions of the licentious be restrained, instructed by examples from land and sea.

Here the weakness of my body and the lateness of the hour compel me to stop my discourse, though I could still add many things worthy of wonder for those who love to hear—about the things that grow in the sea, and about the sea itself. How water solidifies into salt; how the precious stone, coral, is a plant in the sea, but when brought out into the air it hardens into the solidity of stone; from where nature placed the costly pearl inside the cheapest of creatures, the oyster. For the treasures that kings desire are scattered along shores and beaches and rough rocks, lying inside the shells of oysters. From where do the pinnae produce their golden wool, which no dyer of flowers has ever imitated until now? From where do the murex shells bestow their royal purple on kings, shells that have surpassed the flowers of the meadows in beauty of color?

"Let the waters bring forth" (Genesis 1:20). And what necessary thing has not come to be? What costly thing has not been granted to life? Some things are for the service of human beings; others are for the contemplation of the wonder in creation. Others are fearsome, disciplining our slackness.

"God made the great sea creatures" (Genesis 1:21). They are not called great merely because they are larger than a shrimp or a sprat, but because they rival the greatest mountains in the bulk of their bodies. They often present the appearance of islands whenever they swim up to the very surface of the water. Yet these creatures, enormous as they are, do not linger near shores or beaches, but inhabit the ocean called the Atlantic. Such are the animals created for our fear and astonishment.

But if you hear that the remora, the smallest little fish, so easily stops the largest ships sailing with spread sails and driven by a fair wind, keeping the vessel motionless for a very long time as if it were rooted in the middle of the sea—do you not receive in this small creature the same proof of the Creator's power? For not only swordfish, sawfish, dogfish, whales, and hammerhead sharks are fearsome, but also the stingray's barb, even when the stingray is dead, and the sea hare are no less fearsome, bringing swift and inescapable destruction.

The Creator's wonders on land and the transition to land animals§60

Basil is closing his homily on sea creatures and beginning the next homily, where he turns to the land animals created on the sixth day.

60So through all these things the Creator wants you to stay awake, so that by your hope in God you may escape the harm they can do. But let us now run back up from the depths and flee for refuge to the mainland. For the wonders of creation, coming upon us one after another like waves, have led our discourse under water by their continuous and successive assaults. And yet I would be surprised if our mind, once it encounters the greater marvels of the land, does not again run away to the sea like Jonah. It seems to me that our discourse, having fallen among countless wonders, has forgotten its measure, and has suffered the same thing as those who sail on the open sea: with no fixed point by which to judge their movement, they often do not know how far they have traveled. This seems to have happened to us as well: as our discourse ran through creation, we did not perceive the sheer number of things said. But even if this august theater loves to listen, and the telling of the Master's wonders is sweet to the ears of His servants, let us anchor our discourse here and wait for the day to render what remains. And when we all rise, let us give thanks for what has been said, and ask for the completion of what remains. May there also be for you, in the partaking of your food, table-talk about all that came to you this morning and all that our discourse brought this evening. And may you be overtaken by sleep with thoughts about these things, so that even while sleeping you enjoy the daytime's gladness, and may it be possible for you to say, "I sleep, but my heart is awake," meditating night and day on the law of the Lord, to whom be glory and power forever and ever. Amen. Homily 8: On birds and water creatures. 8.1 And God said, "Let the earth bring forth a living creature according to kind: four-footed animals and creeping things and wild beasts according to kind." And it was so (Genesis 1:24). The command came walking along its path, and the earth received its own adornment. There, "Let the waters bring forth creeping things of living creatures" (Genesis 1:20); here, "Let the earth bring forth a living creature." Is the earth then ensouled? Do the foolish Manichaeans have any ground for putting a soul into the earth? It is not because He said "Let it bring forth" that the earth brought out what was stored up within it; rather, the One who gave the command also granted it the power to bring forth. For when the earth heard, "Let it sprout the herb of grass and the fruit tree" (Genesis 1:11), it did not bring out grass it had hidden within itself; it did not send up to the surface a palm tree or an oak or a cypress that had been stored away somewhere in its hollows. No, the divine word is the nature of the things that come to be. "Let the earth sprout": not "let it cast out what it has," but "let it acquire what it does not have," since God grants the power to be active. So now also, "Let the earth bring forth a living creature": not the one stored up within it, but the one given to it by God through the command. And then the argument will turn back against them in the opposite direction. For if the earth brought out the soul, it left itself bereft of soul. But their abomination is obvious immediately. Why, however, were the waters commanded to bring forth creeping things of living creatures, while the earth was commanded to bring forth a living creature? We reason, then, that the nature of swimming things seems to share in a life that is somehow less complete, because they live in the thickness of the water.

Souls of water creatures and land animals compared§61

Basil is comparing the souls of water creatures with those of land animals, arguing that land animals have a fuller share of psychic life, and he is about to explain why the earth is commanded to bring forth a living creature.

61For among water creatures hearing is dull, and their sight is blurred as they look through the water. They have no memory, no imagination, no recognition of what is familiar. This is why the text seems to indicate that for water creatures, fleshly life directs the movements of the soul, whereas for land animals, since their life is more complete, the soul has been entrusted with the entire leadership. For their senses are rather sharpened, and sharp are the perceptions of things present; and accurate are the memories of things past among most of the four-footed animals. So it seems that in the case of water creatures, ensouled bodies were created—for creeping things of living creatures were brought forth from the waters—but in the case of land animals, a soul managing bodies was commanded to come into being, since those that live on the earth have received a greater share of vital power. Land animals too are without reason, yet each one, by the voice nature gives it, signals many of the passions of the soul. By sound it reveals joy and grief, recognition of what is familiar, lack of food, separation from its companions, and countless other passions. But water creatures are not only voiceless; they are also wild, unteachable, and unmanageable for any shared life with human beings. The ox knows its owner and the donkey its master's manger (Isaiah 1:3), but a fish would not recognize the one who feeds it. The donkey knows the familiar voice. It knows the road it has often traveled, and sometimes it even becomes a guide for a person who has lost the way. And no other land animal is said to have hearing as sharp as this creature. As for the camel's holding of grudges, its heavy anger, its lasting rage—what sea creature could imitate that? A camel struck once long ago stores up its wrath for a long time, and when it finds the opportunity, it pays back the harm. Listen, you who are slow to forgive, you who cultivate the holding of grudges as if it were a virtue: whom do you resemble when you guard your grief against your neighbor like a spark hidden in ashes, until you find fuel and kindle your anger into a flame?

"Let the earth bring forth a living creature" (Genesis 1:24). Why does the earth bring forth a living creature? So that you may learn the difference between the soul of an animal and the soul of a human being. A little later you will learn how the human soul was constituted; for now, hear about the soul of creatures without reason. Since, as it is written, the soul of every living creature is its blood (Leviticus 17:11), and blood when it congeals naturally changes into flesh, and flesh when it decays dissolves into earth, the soul of animals is reasonably something earthy. "Let the earth bring forth a living creature," then. Observe the sequence: soul to blood, blood to flesh, flesh to earth. And again, reversing the steps, go back from earth to flesh, from flesh to blood, from blood to soul, and you will find that the soul of animals is earth. Do not think that it is older than the substance of their body, or that it remains after the dissolution of the flesh. Flee the nonsense of the pompous philosophers, who are not ashamed to make their own souls and the souls of bitches of the same kind as one another—who say that they themselves were once women, and bushes, and fish of the sea.

The omitted birds must be treated§62

Basil is preaching on the creation of animals and has just discussed land animals, but he realizes he skipped the birds, which were created on the fifth day from the waters.

62Now I would not say that I myself was ever a fish, but I would maintain most vigorously that in the passage where I was writing these things, I was more irrational than the fish. “Let the earth bring forth a living creature” (Genesis 1:24). Why, when the discourse was running on so swiftly, did I fall silent for no small time? Perhaps many are wondering, but the more diligent among my hearers know the cause of my speechlessness. How? They are the ones who, by looking at one another and nodding, turned me back to themselves and brought to mind what had been passed over. For a whole class of creation, and not the least important one, had escaped us, and the discourse nearly went on its way leaving it completely unexamined. “Let the waters bring forth creeping things of living souls according to kind, and winged creatures flying over the earth across the firmament of heaven according to kind” (Genesis 1:20). We spoke about the swimming creatures, as much as the evening allowed; today we moved on to the examination of the land animals. The winged creature slipped through in the middle. So then, like forgetful travelers who, when they leave behind something essential, even if they have gone far along the road, turn back again, paying the penalty for their carelessness with the toil of the journey—so we too, it seems, must walk the same road again. For what was passed over is not something to be despised; it seems to be a third part of the creation of living things, if indeed there are three kinds of living creatures: the land animal, the winged, and the water-dwelling. “Let the waters bring forth,” it says, “creeping things of living souls according to kind, and winged creatures flying over the earth across the firmament of heaven according to kind” (Genesis 1:20). Why did he give the winged creatures their origin from the waters? Because there is a certain kinship between flying creatures and swimming creatures. For just as fish cut through the water, moving forward by the motion of their wings, and steering their turns and straight courses by the movement of their tail, so also in the case of winged creatures one can see them swimming through the air with their wings in a similar way. Therefore, since swimming is one distinctive property in both, a single kinship was provided for them from their origin in the waters. Except that no winged creature is footless, because all of them have their sustenance from the earth, and all necessarily require the service of feet. For the predatory ones have sharp points of claws for the hunt; for the rest, the service of feet has been granted as necessary both for procuring food and for the rest of life's conduct. But a few birds are bad-footed, suited neither for walking nor for hunting with their feet—as the swallows are, unable either to walk or to hunt, and the so-called scythe-birds, whose food is contrived from things carried in the air. For the swallow, its low flight near the ground takes the place of the service of feet. There are, however, countless differences of kinds among the birds, which if someone examines in the same way that we partially took up the examination of the fish, he will find that there is one name for winged creatures, but countless differences among them in sizes and in shapes and in colors; and in their ways of life, their activities, and their habits, their variation from one another is beyond telling.

Kinds of birds and the polity of bees§63

Basil is still expounding the fifth day's creation of birds, now surveying differences among bird kinds and then turning to bees as an example of political order among irrational creatures.

63Some people have already tried to use name-makings, so that the distinctive character of each kind might be recognized through these unfamiliar and strange names, as if by branding marks. They called some split-winged, like the eagles; others skin-winged, like the bats; others feathered, like the wasps; others sheath-winged, like the beetles and all those that are born inside certain cases and coverings, and when their sheath breaks open they are set free for flight. But for us, common usage is a sufficient indication of the distinctiveness of the kinds, along with the distinctions in Scripture concerning clean and unclean creatures.

So one kind is that of the flesh-eaters, and their equipment is suited to their manner of life: sharp talons, a hooked beak, and a pointed wing, so that the prey can be seized easily and, once torn apart, become food for the one who caught it. The equipment of the seed-pickers is different; that of those that feed on whatever they happen to find is different again. And among these there are very many differences.

Some of them are gregarious, except for the predatory ones; none of these is social except for the pairing of mates. Countless others have chosen the life of the flock, like doves, cranes, starlings, and jackdaws. Again, among these some have no ruler and are, so to speak, self-governing; others accept being arranged under a leader, like the cranes. And there is yet another difference among them, according to which some are stay-at-home and native to a place, while others are by nature inclined to depart very far, and for the most part to move away when winter approaches.

Many birds, when raised by hand, become tame and domesticated—except, of course, the weak ones, which because of their excessive timidity and lack of spirit cannot endure the constant disturbance of the hand. But some birds are human-companionable, accepting the same dwellings as we do; others are mountain-dwellers and lovers of solitude. The greatest difference is also the distinctive character of each one's voice. Some birds are chatterers and talkative; others are silent. Some are songful and have many voices; others are entirely without music and have no share in song. Some are imitative, either having the ability to imitate by nature or acquiring it through practice; others send forth a voice of one single type, unchangeable.

The rooster is proud; the peacock is a lover of beauty; doves and domestic hens are lustful, having the impulse to mate at every season. The partridge is deceitful and jealous, working knavishly with the hunters toward the capture.

There are countless differences, as we said, in their activities and their ways of life. And there are even some political ones among the irrational creatures—if indeed the mark of a political community is that the activity of each individual converges toward one common end, as one might see in the case of the bees. For their dwelling is common, their flight is common, and the work of all is one; and what is greatest, they set about their tasks under a king and a commander of some sort, not consenting to go out to the meadows until they see the king take the lead in flight. And their king is not elected by vote—for often the poor judgment of the people has set the worst man in power—nor does he hold his authority by lot, for the chances of the lot are irrational and often bring power to the lowest of all; nor does he sit in the royal palace by paternal succession, for such kings also become uneducated and ignorant of every virtue, for the most part through luxury and flattery. Rather, he has his preeminence over all from nature, excelling in size and in form and in the gentleness of his character.

The bee's sting, honeycomb geometry, and the order of cranes and storks§64

Basil is continuing his survey of the natural world, now describing the bee's restraint and craftsmanship, then turning to the orderly behavior of cranes and storks as moral examples for Christians.

64The king does have a sting, but he does not use it for self-defense. These are unwritten laws of nature: that those who mount the greatest powers are slow to punish. And among the bees, any that do not follow the example of the king quickly regret their folly, because they die upon the blow of the sting. Let Christians hear this—Christians who have the command to repay no one evil for evil, but to overcome evil with good (Romans 12:17, 21). Imitate the peculiar character of the bee: it harms no one, it destroys no one else's fruit, and yet it builds its combs. For it gathers the wax openly from the flowers, and the honey—the dew-like moisture scattered in the flowers—it draws in with its mouth and pours into the hollows of the combs. At first the honey is liquid; then, ripened by time, it returns to its own proper consistency and sweetness. This bee has received fine and fitting praise from Proverbs, where it is called wise and a worker (Proverbs 6:8)—so industriously does it gather its food (whose labors, it says, kings and common people alike consume for their health), and so wisely does it craft its storehouses of honey. For it stretches the wax into a thin membrane and builds the hollows close together and continuous with one another, so that the density of the tiny cells bound to each other becomes a support for the whole. Each little cell holds to the next, separated from it by a thin dividing wall and at the same time joined to it. Then these tubes are built upon one another in two and three stories. The bee has been careful not to make one hollow running straight through, so that the liquid does not escape to the outside under its own weight. Learn how the discoveries of geometry are the by-work of the most wise bee. All the tubes of the combs are hexagonal and equal-sided, and they do not lie directly on top of one another, so that the bottoms do not suffer strain when fitted onto empty gaps. Rather, the angles of the hexagons below serve as a base and support for those above, so that they safely hold up the weights above them, and the liquid is contained separately in each hollow.

How could I go through for you in detail all the distinctive traits in the lives of birds? How the cranes take up the night watches in turn: some sleep, while others circle around and provide them with complete safety in their sleep; then, when the time of the watch is fulfilled, the one that has called out turns to sleep, and the one that takes over the succession gives back in turn the safety it received. You will see this same good order in their flight. For at different times a different crane takes up the lead, and after guiding the flight for a fixed time, it moves to the rear and hands over the leadership of the way to the one behind it. The behavior of the storks is not far from rational understanding: they all arrive in these regions at one and the same season, and they all depart at one and the same signal. Our crows escort them and accompany them, providing, it seems to me, a kind of alliance against hostile birds. The proof is, first, that no crow appears at all during that season, and second, that when they return with wounds, they carry clear signs of the battle fought and the defense given.

Birds as moral teachers: hospitality, care for parents, poverty, and providence§65

Basil continues his survey of bird behavior, drawing moral lessons for his congregation from the stork, swallow, halcyon, turtledove, and eagle.

65Who defined the laws of hospitality among them? Who threatened them with a charge of desertion, so that not one of them fails to join the escort? Let the inhospitable listen—those who shut their doors and do not even share a roof with travelers in winter and at night. The care storks show for their aged parents would be enough to make our children lovers of their fathers, if they were willing to pay attention. For surely no one is so lacking in understanding as to think it not worthy of shame to fall behind the most irrational birds in virtue. When the father has shed his feathers from old age, they stand around him in a circle and warm him with their own feathers, and they provide food in abundance, and they give him all the help they can in flight, gently lifting him on either side with their wings. And this is so widely celebrated that some people already call the repayment of benefits 'antipelargosis.' Let no one lament poverty; let no one despair of his life who has left no wealth at home, when he looks at the swallow's ingenuity. For when she builds her nest, she carries the twigs in her mouth; and since she cannot lift mud with her feet, she wets the tips of her wings with water, then rolls them in the finest dust, and in this way she devises the use of mud. And little by little she binds the twigs together with the mud as with a kind of glue, and in it she raises her young. If someone pierces out their eyes, she has a certain healing remedy from nature, through which she restores the sight of her offspring to health. Let these things admonish you not to turn to wickedness because of poverty, and not to cast away all hope in the most grievous sufferings and lie idle and inactive, but to flee to God—who, if he grants such great things to the swallow, how much greater things will he give to those who call upon him from a whole heart? The halcyon is a sea bird. It naturally nests on the very shores, laying its eggs on the sand itself; and it nests around the middle of winter, when the sea is dashed against the land by many violent winds. But nevertheless all the winds are lulled to sleep, and the sea wave is still, whenever the halcyon broods for the seven days. For in only so many days it hatches out its young. And since they also need food, the God who gives great gifts granted another seven days to the smallest creature for the growth of the young. So all sailors know this, and they call those days the halcyon days. These things have been ordained for you as an encouragement to ask God for the things that lead to salvation, through God's providence for the irrational creatures. What paradoxical thing would not happen for your sake, you who have been made according to the image of God, when for the sake of so small a bird the great and fearful sea is held back, commanded to keep calm in the middle of winter? 8.6 They say that the turtledove, once separated from her mate, no longer accepts union with another, but remains unpaired, refusing union with another out of memory of the one to whom she was once joined. Let women hear how the dignity of widowhood is preferred, even among irrational creatures, to the indecency of polygamy. The eagle is most unjust in the rearing of its young. For when it has brought out two chicks, it dashes one of them down to the ground, thrusting it away with blows of its wings; and taking up only the other one, it makes it its own, rejecting the one it begat because of the painful toil of feeding.

Birds as moral examples and the fifth day command§66

Basil is still expounding the moral lessons from birds, then moves to the fifth day of creation when God commands the waters to bring forth living creatures and birds.

66But the vulture, they say, does not allow it to perish. It takes the chick up and rears it together with its own young. Such are those parents who expose their infants on the pretext of poverty, or who are most unfair to their offspring in the division of an inheritance. For it is right that, just as they have given each one a share in being equally, so they should provide the means for living to them equally and with equal honor. Do not imitate the cruelty of the birds with curved talons. When they see their young now daring to fly, they drive them out of the nest, striking them with their wings and pushing them, and they take no further care of them. The love of the crow for its young is praiseworthy: it accompanies them even when they are already flying, feeding them and rearing them for a very long time. Many kinds of birds need no intercourse with males for conception. In other birds the wind-eggs are infertile, but they say that vultures for the most part give birth without pairing, and these are very long-lived; their life extends for the most part to a hundred years. Keep this noted down for yourself from the study of birds, so that whenever you see people laughing at our mystery, as though it were impossible and outside nature for a virgin to give birth while her virginity remains undefiled, you may remember that the One who was pleased to save those who believe through the foolishness of the proclamation (1 Corinthians 1:21) prepared in advance countless starting points from nature for faith in things beyond expectation. "Let the waters bring forth creeping things of living souls, and winged creatures flying upon the earth, across the firmament of heaven" (Genesis 1:20). They were commanded to fly upon the earth because food for all comes from the earth. And "across the firmament of heaven," as we have already explained, because the air is here called "heaven" from being seen, and "firmament" because the air above our heads is somehow denser in comparison with the ethereal body, and more compressed by the exhalations from below. You have, then, a heaven adorned, an earth beautified, a sea teeming with its own offspring, an air full of the birds that fly through it. All things were brought by the command of God from non-being into being. And whatever the discourse has now passed over, avoiding a longer dwelling on these matters so as not to seem to exceed its measure, you who love labor should reason out for yourself, learning the wisdom of God in all things, and never cease from wonder, nor from glorifying the Maker through all creation. You have in the darkness the night-roaming kinds of birds; in the light, those that go about by day. Bats, owls, and night-ravens are among the night-dwellers. So when sleep is not present at some time, it is enough for you to spend time on these things and to examine the properties they possess for the glorification of the Maker. How sleepless the nightingale is when she sits on her eggs, not ceasing from her song through the whole night. How the bat is at once four-footed and winged. How it alone among birds uses teeth, and gives birth to live young like four-footed animals, and floats upon the air, not lifted by a wing, but by a certain membrane of skin.

Wonders of birds and insects§67

Basil is still expounding the fifth day's creation of birds and water creatures, drawing moral and theological lessons from their natural behaviors.

67Consider too how this mutual-loving trait exists in their nature: bats cling to one another like a string, each hanging from the next—a thing not easy for us human beings to achieve. For what is detached and private is preferred to what is shared and united with the many. How like the eyes of the owl are those who devote themselves to vain wisdom. The owl's sight is strong at night, but when the sun shines it grows dim. So too their mind is sharpest for contemplating vanity, but for perceiving the true light it has been dimmed.

By day it is very easy for you to gather wonder at the Creator from every side. The bird that lives with you rouses you to work, crying out with a sharp voice and announcing from afar that the sun is approaching, rousing travelers at dawn alongside them and leading farmers out to the harvest. How sleepless is the race of geese, and how sharp their perception of things that escape notice—they once even saved the royal city, revealing enemies who were already about to seize the citadel of Rome through hidden tunnels underground.

In what kind of birds does nature not display some wonder of its own? Who announces to vultures the death of human beings, when they march to war against one another? You could see countless flocks of vultures following the armies, inferring the outcome from the preparation of weapons. This is not far from human reasoning.

How shall I describe to you the fearful campaigns of the locust, which rises all at once at a single signal and encamps across the breadth of the land, and does not touch the crops until the divine command has been given to it? How does the seleucis bird follow as a remedy for the plague, possessing an endless power of eating, since the God who loves humankind made its nature insatiable for the benefit of human beings?

What is the manner of the cicada's song? And how are they more musical at midday, by the drawing of air that they make in the expansion of the chest, as the sound is given forth? But I seem to fall further behind in my account of the wonder of winged creatures than if I tried to reach their speed with my feet.

When you see the winged creatures called insects, such as bees and wasps—for they have been named this because they show incisions on every side—consider that these have no breath and no lung, but are nourished entirely through their whole body by the air. Therefore they are destroyed when dipped in oil, since their pores are blocked; but when vinegar is applied at once, they revive again, since the passages are opened. Our God created nothing superfluous to need, nor lacking in any necessity.

Again, when you study the water-loving animals, you will find a different construction in them: feet that are neither split, like those of the crow, nor hooked, like those of flesh-eaters, but broad and membrane-like, so that they may swim easily on the water, pushing through the liquid with the membranes of their feet as with oars. And if you observe how the swan lowers its neck into the deep and brings up its food from below, then you will discover the wisdom of the Creator—that for this reason he gave it a neck longer than its feet, so that, letting it down like a fishing line, it may procure the food hidden in the depth.

The wonder of winged creatures and the profit of staying§68

Basil is preaching on the fifth day's creation of birds and water creatures, and now turns to the wonder of winged creatures, then urges his hearers to stay for spiritual nourishment rather than idle pursuits.

68Read simply, the words of Scripture are only small syllables: “Let the waters bring forth winged creatures flying upon the earth along the firmament of heaven” (Genesis 1:20). But when the meaning within the words is searched out, then the great wonder of the Creator’s wisdom is revealed. How many varieties of birds did he foresee? How did he separate them from one another according to kind? How did he mark each one with distinct characteristics? The day fails me as I describe to you the wonders of the air. The dry land calls us to the display of wild beasts, reptiles, and cattle, ready to show in return creatures equal in honor to the plants, the swimming kind, and all the birds. “Let the earth bring forth the living creature of cattle and wild beasts and reptiles according to kind” (Genesis 1:24). What do you say, you who disbelieve Paul about the change at the resurrection, when you see many of the creatures of the air changing their forms? Such is the story told about the horned Indian worm: it first changes into a caterpillar, then as it advances becomes a chrysalis, and it does not stop at this form, but is furnished with wings of loose and broad leaf-like scales. So when you women sit unwinding the work of these creatures—I mean the threads the Chinese send you for the making of soft garments—remember the change of this animal, and receive a vivid conception of the resurrection, and do not disbelieve the change that Paul proclaims to all. But I sense that my discourse is going beyond its proper measure. When I look at the abundance of what has been said, I see myself carried beyond the limit; but when I look again at the variety of wisdom in the created works, I think I have not even begun the account. And at the same time, keeping you here longer is not without benefit. For what would one do with the time until evening? No hosts are pressing you; no banquets await you. Therefore, if it seems good, let us use the bodily fast for the gladness of our souls. You have often served the flesh for enjoyment; today remain in the service of the soul. Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the requests of your heart (Psalm 36:4 LXX). If you love wealth, you have spiritual wealth: the judgments of the Lord, the true ones, justified altogether, desirable beyond gold and much precious stone (Psalm 18:10-11 LXX [Hebrew 19:9-10]). If you love enjoyment and pleasure, you have the words of God, which to the one strong in spiritual perception are sweeter than honey and the honeycomb (Psalm 18:11 LXX [Hebrew 19:10]). If I dismiss you and dissolve the assembly, some will run to the dice. There are oaths, harsh quarrels, and the pangs of greed. A demon stands by, kindling madness through the marked bones, shifting the same money to one side or the other—now lifting this one up with victory and filling that one with gloom, then showing that one exulting and this one put to shame. What profit is there in fasting in the body while the soul is filled with countless evils? The one who does not gamble but passes his leisure otherwise—what vain things does he not utter? What absurd things does he not hear? For leisure without the fear of God is a teacher of wickedness to those who use their time badly. Perhaps, then, some benefit will be found in what has been said; but if not, at least the avoidance of sin comes to you from your occupation here.

Defense of literal reading of creation§69

Basil is closing the eighth homily and opening the ninth, defending his literal reading of Genesis against allegorizers.

69So the longer I hold you here, the longer I withdraw you from evils. What I have said is enough for a fair-minded judge—unless he looks not at the wealth of creation but at the weakness of my own ability, and at what is sufficient for the joy of those who have gathered. The earth welcomed you with its own plants; the sea with its fish; the air with its birds. The dry land is ready to display in return things equal in honor to these. But let this be the measure of the morning feast, so that excessive fullness does not make you dull for the enjoyment of the evening. May he who filled all things with his creation, and who left in all things clear reminders of his own wonders for us, fill your hearts with all spiritual joy, in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be glory and power, forever and ever. Amen.

HOMILY 9: On Land Animals

How did the morning table of words appear to you? For my part, it occurred to me to compare my own efforts to the hospitality of some poor host who, eager to be thought a fine entertainer, wearies his guests by the lack of costlier dishes, piling his meager provisions lavishly on the table—so that his ambition turns into a reproach for tastelessness. Something like that is true of us too, unless you say otherwise. But whatever it may be, you must not despise it. For the people of that time did not reject Elisha as a poor host, even though he entertained his friends with wild vegetables.

I know the rules of allegory—not because I discovered them myself, but because I have encountered the labors of others. Those who do not accept the ordinary meanings of what is written say that water is not water but some other nature, and they interpret plant and fish according to their own fancy, and they explain the origin of reptiles and wild beasts by twisting them into their own private notions—just as dream interpreters make their explanations of what appears in sleep-visions fit their own purpose. But when I hear grass, I understand grass, and plant, and fish, and wild beast, and cattle—I take everything just as it is said. For I am not ashamed of the gospel (Romans 1:16).

Nor is it because those who have written about the world have said many things about the shapes of the earth—whether the earth is a sphere, or a cylinder, or like a disk, and whether it is turned equally on all sides, or is winnowing-fan-shaped and hollow in the middle (for the writers about the world have been carried into all these notions, each one demolishing the others)—I will not for that reason be led to call our world-making less honorable, just because Moses, the servant of God, said nothing about shapes, nor said that the earth's circumference is one hundred eighty thousand stadia, nor measured how far its shadow extends through the air when the sun moves beneath the earth, nor how this shadow, when it reaches the moon, produces eclipses. Since he passed over in silence the things that are of no use to us, shall I for this reason consider the oracles of the Spirit less honorable than the wisdom that has been made foolish (1 Corinthians 1:20)? Or rather, shall I glorify him who did not occupy our minds with vain things, but arranged for everything to be written for the building up and perfecting of our souls? Some people, it seems to me, have not understood this, and with certain derivations and figurative interpretations they have attempted to attach a certain dignity from their own thinking to what is written.

The earth's command to bring forth living creatures§70

Basil is expounding Genesis 1:24, where God commands the earth to bring forth living creatures, and is contrasting the earth-bound posture of animals with the heavenward posture of man.

70But this is what someone does when he makes himself wiser than the oracles of the Spirit, and under the pretense of interpretation smuggles in his own ideas. Let it be understood, then, as it is written.

“Let the earth bring forth the living creature of cattle and wild beasts and creeping things” (Genesis 1:24). Consider the word of God running through creation, beginning then and still at work now, and pressing on to a prosperous end until the world is completed. For just as a ball, when someone pushes it and it finds a slope, is carried downhill by its own construction and the suitability of the ground, and does not stop until something level receives it, so the nature of existing things, set in motion by a single command, passes evenly through the creation that is subject to birth and decay, preserving the successions of kinds through likeness, until it arrives at the end itself. For it makes a horse the successor of a horse, and a lion of a lion, and an eagle of an eagle, and it hands on each of the animals, preserved through successive generations, until the completion of all things. No time corrupts or makes obsolete the distinctive traits of animals, but their nature, as if just now established, always fresh, runs along with time.

“Let the earth bring forth the living creature.” This command remained in the earth, and it does not cease serving the Creator. For some creatures are brought forth from the succession of those that existed before, but others are shown even now to be generated alive from the earth itself. For not only does it send up cicadas in rainy seasons, and countless other kinds of winged creatures borne in the air, most of which are nameless because of their smallness, but it already also produces mice and frogs from itself. Indeed, around Thebes in Egypt, whenever it rains heavily in the heat, the country is immediately filled with field mice. And we see that eels are formed in no other way than from the mud; neither an egg nor any other method establishes their succession, but their origin is from the earth.

“Let the earth bring forth the living creature.” The cattle are earthy and bent toward the ground, but man, the heavenly plant, differs as much in the dignity of his soul as in the shape of his bodily form. What is the shape of the four-footed animals? Their head is bent down toward the earth, it looks toward the belly, and it pursues the belly's pleasure in every way. Your head stands upright toward heaven; your eyes look upward. So if you ever dishonor yourself with the passions of the flesh, serving the belly and the parts beneath it, you have been grouped with the senseless cattle and have become like them. A different concern befits you: to seek the things above, where Christ is (Colossians 3:1-2), and to be above earthly things in your mind. As you have been shaped, so order your life as well. Have your citizenship in heaven (Philippians 3:20). Your true homeland is the Jerusalem above, and your fellow citizens and kin are the firstborn, enrolled in heaven (Hebrews 12:22-23).

“Let the earth bring forth the living creature.” The soul of the irrational animals, then, was not stored up in the earth and then revealed, but came into existence together with the command. And the soul of the irrational animals is one. For the one thing that characterizes it is irrationality.

Each animal's natural character and the lessons for humans§71

Basil is describing how each kind of animal was created with its own distinctive natural character, and then draws moral lessons from their instinctive care for themselves.

71Each animal is distinguished by its own characteristics. The ox is steady, the donkey sluggish; the horse is hot in its desire for the female; the wolf is untamable, and the fox is cunning; the deer is timid; the ant is industrious; the dog is grateful and remembers friendship. For each was created at the same moment, and it brought along with itself the characteristic of its nature. The lion's anger was born together with it, along with its solitary way of life and its not sharing communion with its own kind. For like some tyrant among the irrational animals, because of its natural arrogance it does not accept equal honor with the many. It does not even accept yesterday's food, nor would it even go near the remains of its own hunt. Nature has placed in it such powerful organs of voice that many animals that surpass it in speed are often caught by the roar alone. The leopard is impetuous and swift in its impulses; its body has been joined to it as suitable, following the movements of its soul with suppleness and lightness. The bear's nature is sluggish, and its character is peculiar, deceitful, deeply hidden. Its body is clothed to match: heavy, compact, without joints, fitting for a creature that is actually a den-dweller, chilled. If we go through in our discussion how much untaught and natural care for their own life exists in these irrational animals, we shall either be moved toward guarding ourselves and providing for the salvation of our souls, or we shall be condemned all the more when we are found falling short even of imitating the irrational animals. A bear, often wounded with the deepest gashes, heals itself, stopping up its wounds by every means with the mullein plant, whose nature is dry. You could also see a fox healing itself with the resin of the pine tree. A tortoise, when it has gorged on viper flesh, escapes the harm of the venom through the antidote of oregano. And a snake heals the damage in its eyes by feeding on fennel. And what rational understanding do the animals' forecasts of changes in the weather not reveal? The sheep, when winter is approaching, takes in its food greedily, as if storing up provisions for the coming scarcity. Cattle that have been shut up for a long time in the winter season, when spring is already approaching, perceive the change by natural sensation and look from their stalls toward the exits, all shifting their posture at a single signal. And already some industrious people have observed that the land hedgehog makes two breathing holes in its burrow, and when the north wind is about to blow, it blocks up the one facing north; but when the south wind takes over again, it moves to the one facing south. What is being shown to us human beings through these things? Not only that the care of our Creator extends through all things, but also that among the irrational animals there is some perception of the future, so that we too should not cling to the present life, but should have all our zeal for the age to come. Will you not labor on your own behalf, O man? Will you not store up beforehand in the present age the rests of the age to come, looking to the example of the ant? It treasures up its winter food in summer, and not because the hardships of winter are not yet here does it let the time pass in idleness; but with an unrelenting eagerness it strains toward the work, until it has stored away sufficient food in its chambers. And it does not do this carelessly, but by some wise contrivance it makes the food last as long as possible.

Nature's untaught wisdom and the soul's natural virtues§72

Basil is drawing moral lessons from animal behavior, arguing that animals know by nature what preserves them, and now extends this to the soul's natural inclination toward virtue.

72For it cuts through the very middle of the grains with its own claws, so that they will not sprout and become useless to it for food. And it dries them out whenever it perceives that they are soaked through. It does not bring them out at every season, but only when it perceives beforehand that the air is holding in a fair-weather condition. Indeed, you would not see rain pouring from the clouds for as long as the grain has been brought out by the ants. What speech could reach all this? What hearing could contain it? What time would be enough to tell and recount all the wonders of the Craftsman? Let us too say with the prophet, “How great are your works, O Lord; in wisdom you made them all” (Psalm 104:24, LXX Psalm 103:24). So it is not enough for our defense that we were not taught what is beneficial by letters, since we have received the choice of what is advantageous by the untaught law of nature. Do you know what good you will do to your neighbor? What you wish to have done to yourself by another. Do you know what evil is? What you yourself would not choose to suffer from another. No root-cutting skill and no botanical experience discovered the teaching of what is beneficial for the irrational animals. Rather, each of the animals is naturally resourceful for providing its own safety, and possesses a certain inexpressible affinity for what is according to nature. 9.4 There are also among us virtues according to nature, toward which the soul’s affinity exists not from human teaching but from nature itself. For just as no argument teaches us to hate sickness, but we have an automatic aversion to what causes pain, so too the soul has a certain untaught avoidance of evil. Every evil is a sickness of the soul, and virtue holds the place of health. For some have well defined health as the stability of the natural activities. If one says this also about the good condition of the soul, he will not miss what is fitting. From this the soul is, without teaching, desiring of what is its own and according to nature. Therefore temperance is praised by all, and justice is accepted, and courage is admired, and prudence is eagerly sought. These are more akin to the soul than health is to the body. Children, love your fathers. Parents, do not provoke your children. Does not nature itself say these things? Paul urges nothing new, but tightens the bonds of nature. If the lioness loves her offspring, and the wolf fights for its pups, what can a person say who both disobeys the commandment and falsifies nature, when either a child dishonors the old age of a father, or a father through a second marriage forgets his earlier children? The mutual affection of children and parents toward one another is irresistible in the irrational animals, because the God who created them compensated for the lack of reason through the abundance of their senses. For how is it that among countless sheep a lamb, leaping out from the folds, knows the very color and the voice of its mother, and hurries toward her, and seeks out its own fountains of milk? And if it happens upon its mother’s poor teats, it is content with those, having run past many heavy udders. And how does the mother among countless lambs recognize her own? The voice is one, the color the same, the smell alike from all, as far as it presents itself to our sense of smell—but nevertheless there is in them a perception sharper than our comprehension, by which each one has the recognition of its own.

Animal instincts and anatomy show the Creator's wisdom§73

Basil is still expounding the fifth day's creatures, arguing that even brute animals display innate wisdom and that every part of their bodies is fitted by the Creator for their needs.

73The puppy does not yet have teeth, and yet it defends itself with its mouth against whatever hurts it. The calf does not yet have horns, and yet it knows where its weapons will grow in. These things prove that the natures of all creatures are untaught, and that nothing among existing things is disordered or undefined, but all things bear traces of the wisdom of their Maker, showing in themselves that they were brought forth equipped beforehand for the guarding of their own safety. The dog has no share in reason, but nevertheless it has a perception equal in power to reason. For what the wise men of the world, sitting down over the long leisure of their lives, have barely discovered—I mean the tangles of syllogisms—the dog is shown to have been taught by nature. For when it searches out the track of a wild animal and finds it split in many directions, it goes over the turnings that lead each way, and all but lets out the syllogistic voice through what it does: either the animal turned this way, it says, or that way, or toward this other part; but it did not turn this way or that way; therefore it remains that it rushed off that way. And so by the removal of the false things it finds the true thing. What more do those who sit solemnly over their diagrams and scratch in the dust accomplish, when they remove two of three propositions and discover the truth in the one that remains? And as for the memory of gratitude in this animal, which of the ungrateful toward their benefactors does it not put to shame? Many dogs are remembered for having died together with their masters when they were murdered in a deserted place. And some, while their grief was still fresh, even became guides to those searching for the murderers, and caused the criminals to be brought to trial. What will they say—those who not only do not love the Lord who made them and feeds them, but even treat as friends those who speak injustice against God, and share the same table with them, and put up with blasphemies against the One who feeds them right at the very meal? But let us return to the contemplation of creation. The animals that are more easily caught are more prolific. For this reason hares are prolific, and wild goats and wild sheep bear twins, so that the kind may not fail when it is consumed by flesh-eaters. But those that destroy others bear few young. Hence a lioness is barely the mother of one lion. For the lion tears the womb apart with the points of its claws and so comes forth, as they say; and vipers come forth by eating through the womb, paying back fitting wages to the mother that bore them. So nothing among existing things is without providence, nor without the care that belongs to it. And if you study the very limbs of animals, you will find that the Creator neither added anything superfluous nor removed anything necessary. To the flesh-eating animals he fitted sharp teeth; for such teeth were needed for the kind of food they eat. But those that are only half armed with teeth he prepared with many and varied storehouses of food. For because their food is not sufficiently ground up at the first pass, he gave them the ability to bring back up what they have swallowed, so that, after it is ground fine by chewing the cud, it may be assimilated to the one being nourished. Stomachs and omasums, and net-like stomachs, and rennet stomachs are not placed idly in the animals that have them, but each one fulfills the need of necessary functions. The neck of the camel is long, so that it may be equal to its feet and reach the grass on which it lives.

The elephant's fitted frame and the wisdom in small creatures§74

Basil is still describing how God fitted each land animal's body to its food and life, and now turns to the bear, lion, tiger, and especially the elephant, before drawing a lesson about God's wisdom in both great and small creatures.

74The bear's neck is short and sunk into its shoulders, and so is the lion's, and the tiger's, and the rest of that kind, because their food does not come from grass and they have no need to bend down to the ground, since they are flesh-eaters and sustain themselves by hunting other animals. What is the purpose of the elephant's trunk? Because the animal is large—the largest of the land animals—and was brought forth to terrify whatever it meets, its body had to be massive and compacted. If a neck as large and proportionate to its feet had been added to this body, the animal would have been hard to manage, always dragged downward by its excessive weight. As it is, the head is joined to the spine by only a few vertebrae of the neck, and it has the trunk, which fulfills the function of a neck: through it the elephant brings food to its mouth and draws up its drink. Its feet, moreover, are unjointed, like solid pillars, to support the weight. For if its limbs had been set beneath it loose and flexible, its joints would have been constantly dislocated, since they could not bear the weight when the animal crouched down and rose up again. As it is, a short ankle-bone lies under the elephant's foot, and it is not jointed either at the bend or at the knee. For the slipperiness of joints could never have endured the great mass of flesh poured around the animal and quivering on every side. Hence the need for that trunk that reaches down to its feet. Do you not see in wars how they go before the battle-line like living towers, or like hills of flesh, and with their irresistible onset they break through the shield-wall of the enemy? If their lower parts were not proportionate, the animal would not have survived for any length of time. As it is, some report that the elephant lives three hundred years and more; for this reason its limbs are solidly fixed and not jointed. Its food, as we said, the trunk carries up from the ground to the height—a trunk that is serpent-like and rather supple by nature. So true is the saying that nothing superfluous and nothing lacking can be found among created things. This animal, though so great in size, God has made subject to us—so much so that it understands when taught and submits when struck—clearly teaching us that he has subjected all things to us, because we have been made according to the image of the Creator (Genesis 1:26). And not only in the large animals is it possible to behold the unsearchable wisdom of God; in the very smallest, no less, we can gather the same wonder. For just as I do not marvel more at the great peaks of the mountains, which by being near the clouds preserve their wintry character through constant exposure to the winds, than at the hollow in the ravines, which not only escapes the harsh winds of the heights but also keeps the air always warm—so also in the construction of animals I do not admire the elephant for its size more than the mouse, because the mouse is feared by the elephant; or the scorpion's very fine sting, how the Craftsman hollowed it out like a pipe, so that through it the venom is injected into those who are struck. And let no one accuse the Maker on this account, that he has introduced venomous and destructive creatures that are hostile to our life. Otherwise one might as well accuse a tutor who brings the easy-going ways of youth into order and disciplines what is undisciplined with blows and whips.

The plural 'Let us make man' silences Jewish objections§75

Basil is concluding his treatment of the land animals and turning to the creation of humanity, where he will argue that the plural verb in Genesis 1:26 reveals the Father speaking to the Son.

75The wild beasts are a demonstration of faith. Have you trusted in the Lord? Upon asp and basilisk you will tread, and you will trample lion and dragon (Psalm 90:13 (LXX; Hebrew 91:13)). And you have through faith the authority to tread upon snakes and scorpions (Luke 10:19). Or do you not see that when Paul was gathering sticks, the viper fastened on him and caused him no harm, because the holy man was found to be full of faith (Acts 28:3-5)? But if you are faithless, fear not so much the wild beast as your own faithlessness, through which you have made yourself easy prey to every corruption.

But indeed I sense that I have long been called upon to speak about the creation of man, and I almost seem to hear my hearers crying out in their hearts, 'We are being taught what sort of nature our own things have, but we are ignorant of ourselves.' So I must speak, having pushed aside the hesitation that holds us. For truly it seems to be the most difficult thing of all to know oneself. Not only does the eye, which sees things outside, not use its seeing upon itself, but also our very mind, which sharply discerns another's sin, is slow to recognize its own defects. For this reason even now my discourse, having swiftly gone through things outside us, is sluggish and full of hesitation when it comes to examining our own affairs. And yet it is no more possible to know God from heaven and earth than from our own constitution, at least for the one who examines himself intelligently. As the prophet says, 'Your knowledge became wonderful from me' (Psalm 138:6 (LXX; Hebrew 139:6))—that is, by learning to know myself, I was taught the surpassing greatness of the wisdom in you.

And God said, 'Let us make man' (Genesis 1:26). Where now is the Jew who, in the passages before, when the light of theology was shining through as if through certain windows, and a second Person was being indicated mystically but not yet clearly revealed, fought against the truth, saying that God was conversing with himself? For he himself said, he says, and he himself made. 'Let there be light,' and there was light (Genesis 1:3). Even then, of course, the absurdity in what they said was obvious. For what blacksmith, or carpenter, or leatherworker, sitting alone with the tools of his trade and with no one working with him, says to himself, 'Let us make the knife,' or 'Let us fit together the plow,' or 'Let us finish the sandal'? Does he not rather carry out the work before him in silence? For it is truly terrible nonsense to say that someone sits as ruler and overseer of himself, giving orders to himself in a lordly and urgent manner. But still, those who did not hesitate to slander the Lord himself—what would they not say, having tongues trained for falsehood? The present word, however, completely stops their mouth. 'And God said, Let us make man.' Tell me, is the Person solitary even now? For it is not written, 'Let man be made,' but 'Let us make man.' As long as the one being taught had not yet appeared, the proclamation of theology was hidden in depth. But when the creation of man is now expected, the faith is laid bare, and the doctrine of the truth is shown more clearly. 'Let us make man.' Do you hear, O fighter against Christ, that he is conversing with the partner of his creation, through whom he also made the ages, who upholds all things by the word of his power (Hebrews 1:2-3)? But he does not quietly accept the word of piety. Just as the most man-hating of wild beasts, when they are shut up in cages, roar around the bars, showing the bitter and savage character of their nature but unable to fulfill their rage, so also the race hostile to the truth, the Jews, being hard pressed, say, 'There are many persons to whom the word of God was addressed.'

Against Jewish and Anomoian denials of the Son's co-creative dignity§76

Basil is closing his exposition of Genesis 1:26, refuting the Jewish evasion that God addressed angels, and the Anomoian denial that the Son shares the Father's image.

76For they say he is speaking to the angels who stand beside him: 'Let us make man.' The fabrication is Jewish, the myth-making born of their ease in argument. So that they may not accept the one, they introduce countless persons. And rejecting the Son, they attach the dignity of counsel to servants, and make our fellow slaves lords of our creation. A man who is being perfected is raised up to the dignity of angels. But what created thing can be equal to its creator? Consider also what follows: 'According to our image.' What do you say to this? Is there one image of God and of angels? For of the Son and the Father there is every necessity that the form be the same—the form being understood, of course, in a way befitting God, not in bodily shape, but in the distinctive character of the Godhead. Hear also, you who are from the new mutilation, you who promote Judaism under the pretense of Christianity. To whom does he say, 'According to our image'? To whom else but the radiance of his glory and the exact impress of his substance, who is the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15)? To his own living image, then, to the one who said, 'I and the Father are one' (John 10:30), and 'Whoever has seen me has seen the Father' (John 14:9)—to this one he says, 'Let us make man according to our image' (Genesis 1:26). Where there is one image, where is the dissimilarity? 'And God made the man' (Genesis 1:27). He did not say, 'They made.' Here he fled from the plurality of persons. Through those words he instructs the Jew, and through these he shuts out Hellenism, and he safely ran back up to the monad, so that you may understand the Son with the Father, and may escape the danger of polytheism. 'In the image of God he made him' (Genesis 1:27). Again he introduced the person of the co-worker. For he did not say, 'In his own image,' but, 'In the image of God.' In what respect, then, man has that which is according to the image of God, and how he receives a share of that which is according to the likeness, will be said in what follows, God granting it. But for now let this much be said: if there is one image, where did you get the idea to commit unbearable impiety, saying that the Son is unlike the Father? O the ingratitude! The likeness you received, this you do not share with your benefactor? And you think that the things granted to you by grace remain yours by right, but you do not permit the Son to have the likeness to the one who begot him that is his by nature? But the evening now commands us to silence, having long ago sent the sun toward its setting. Here, then, let us also put the word to rest, content with what has been said. For now we have touched upon the matter only enough to awaken your zeal for the word; but we will give a more complete examination of the things before us in what follows, with the cooperation of the Spirit. Go in joy, O Christ-loving church, adorning your august tables with the memory of what has been said instead of every costly dish and varied seasoning. Let the one who says the Son is unlike be put to shame; let the Jew be confounded; let the pious rejoice in the doctrines of the truth; let the Lord be glorified, to whom be glory and might forever and ever. Amen.