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Translated by Bl. Jackson.
St Basil the Great Resources Online and in Print
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80 Pages (Homilies: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)
Page 4
2. "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." [1369] I stop struck with admiration at this thought. What shall I first say? Where shall I begin my story? Shall I show forth the vanity of the Gentiles? Shall I exalt the truth of our faith? The philosophers of Greece have made much ado to explain nature, and not one of their systems has remained firm and unshaken, each being overturned by its successor. It is vain to refute them; they are sufficient in themselves to destroy one another. Those who were too ignorant to rise to a knowledge of a God, could not allow that an intelligent cause presided at the birth of the Universe; a primary error that involved them in sad consequences. Some had recourse to material principles and attributed the origin of the Universe [1370] to the elements of the world. Others imagined that atoms, [1371] and indivisible bodies, molecules and ducts, form, by their union, the nature of the visible world. Atoms reuniting or separating, produce births and deaths and the most durable bodies only owe their consistency to the strength of their mutual adhesion: a true spider's web woven by these writers who give to heaven, to earth, and to sea so weak an origin and so little consistency! It is because they knew not how to say "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." Deceived by their inherent atheism it appeared to them that nothing governed or ruled the universe, and that was all was given up to chance. [1372] To guard us against this error the writer on the creation, from the very first words, enlightens our understanding with the name of God; "In the beginning God created." What a glorious order! He first establishes a beginning, so that it might not be supposed that the world never had a beginning. Then he adds "Created" to show that which was made was a very small part of the power of the Creator. In the same way that the potter, after having made with equal pains a great number of vessels, has not exhausted either his art or his talent; thus the Maker of the Universe, whose creative power, far from being bounded by one world, could extend to the infinite, needed only the impulse of His will to bring the immensities of the visible world into being. If then the world has a beginning, and if it has been created, enquire who gave it this beginning, and who was the Creator: or rather, in the fear that human reasonings may make you wander from the truth, Moses has anticipated enquiry by engraving in our hearts, as a seal and a safeguard, the awful name of God: "In the beginning God created"--It is He, beneficent Nature, Goodness without measure, a worthy object of love for all beings endowed with reason, the beauty the most to be desired, the origin of all that exists, the source of life, intellectual light, impenetrable wisdom, it is He who "in the beginning created heaven and earth."
[1369] Gen. i. 1.
[1370] cf. note on Letter viii. on the stoicheia or elements which the Ionian philosophers made the archai of the universe. Vide Plato, Legg. x. S: 4 and Arist., Met. i. 3.
[1371] Posidonius the Stoic names Moschus, or Mochus of Sidon, as the originator of the atomic theory "before the Trojan period." Vide Strabo, xvi. 757. But the most famous Atomists, Leucippus and Democritus of Abdera, in the 5th c. b.c., arose in opposition to the Eleatic school, and were followed in the 3d by Epicurus. Vide Diog. Laert. ix. S: 30, sq. and Cicero, De Nat. Deor. i. 24-26. Ista enim flagitia Democriti, sive etiam ante Leucippi, esse corpuscula quaedam laevia, alia aspera, rotunda alia, partim autem angulata, curvata quaedam, et quasi adunca; ex his effectum esse coelum atque terram, nulla cogente natura, sed concursu quodam fortuito. Atqui, si haec Democritea non audisset, quid audierat? quid est in physicis Epicuri non a Democrito? Nam, etsi quaedam commodavit, ut, quod paulo ante de inclinatione atomorum dixi: tamen pleraque dixit eadem; atomos, inane, imagines, infinitatem locorum, innumerabilitatemque mundorum eorum ortus, interitus, omnia fere, quibus naturae ratio continetur.
[1372] cf. the Fortuna gubernans of Lucretius (v. 108).
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/basil/hexaemeron.asp?pg=4
