HUMAN NATURE AND ITS MATERIAL SETTING IN BASIL OF CAESAREA'S SERMONS ON THE CREATION 1
2007; Wiley; Volume: 49; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1111/j.1468-2265.2007.00365.x
ISSN1468-2265
Autores Tópico(s)Historical and Linguistic Studies
ResumoAlthough I refer here and there to the first nine sermons of Basil's Hexaêmeron, I draw mainly upon sermons 10 and 11 – that is to say, upon those sections of the discourses in which human beings make their definitive appearance.2 That implies the belief that these two sermons reflect the mind of Basil, even if we do not regard him as the author, in Amand de Mendieta's words, ‘au sens plénier du terme’.3 There is no doubt that they passed through a mill, within the manuscript tradition, different from that which preserved sermons 1–9. I would allow myself to share the caution of Maximos Aghiorgoussis: ‘they are probably the work of some stenographer who took notes while Saint Basil was lecturing on the subject’.4 But Basil was, I am sure, the source of all that these subsequent sermons contain. In their introduction to their ‘Sources chrétiennes’ edition, Alexis Smets and Michel Van Esbroeck point out how obviously the eleven sermons hang together in a single sequence.5 Difficulties arise largely in relation to later stages of transmission, when textual variations are multiplied and testimonia are either lacking or in conflict (partly because of theological disputes). Closer to the time of composition, Gregory of Nyssa declares (in the preface to his De opificio hominis) that he was ‘completing’ Basil's work on Genesis. This need not mean, however, that the sermons did not (yet) exist or (if they did) that he did not know of them. We have to acknowledge his evident wish to refashion, rather than merely to supplement, the Basilian heritage.6 He may have been particularly eager to obscure or reject a distinction that Basil had made (precisely in the context of the sixth day) between the intrinsic human that resided in being created in God's ‘image’ () and the free act of the will that established a fulfilling ‘likeness’ () to God (we shall have occasion to explore this distinction at length below).7 Sermon 9 had raised the issue (9.6), but only to postpone it: Basil even uses the phrase, ‘in the addresses to follow []’.8 So, the sermon ends with precisely the promise that sermon 10 then fulfils (a promise to explore the distinction further), and Basil now admits (10.1) only that fulfilment had been delayed by ‘bodily weakness []’. That delay may be enough to explain why sermons 10 and 11 were transmitted separately,9 but it would also have allowed scope to Gregory's sense that his brother's arguments required sharpening and adjusting (in the light, for example, of continuing theological debate). It is useful – a second preliminary point – to rehearse what one can about Basil's audience; an audience that included women (10.18), slaves (10.8), and the unbaptized (10.17), all of them addressed directly.10 It is careless to suppose that that breadth of address diminishes the quality of Basil's rhetoric. Even though he admitted Basil's pastoral concern, Amand de Mendieta was unrelentingly disdainful of the supposed crudity of the surviving text; but he seemed to confuse what might have been the shortcomings of a stenographer with an assumed inadequacy on the part of the bishop himself.11 Nor is it helpful, I think, to cast the situation in quasi-‘Origenist’ terms, as illustrating a distinction between the more and the less enlightened.12 The pastoral concern was dominant. In the words of Bernardi, ‘l’évolution de la pensée de Basile est nette, elle affirme avec force, elle est aussi publique que possible'; and Courtonne describes the sermons on Genesis generally as a work ‘ou la science et la légende se font si volontiers les auxiliaries de la morale’.13 Certainly, we are faced with a fine balance, in all the sermons, between a sophistication satisfying to those who knew their Aristotle and their Plato and a moral preoccupation that reached beyond the philosophically informed. But Basil was a master (and mastery was required) in wearing his learning lightly.14 The distinction he wished to highlight was between all those listening to him and those elsewhere who were too ‘clever’ for their own good. So, the art of the sermons resides in making the recognition of Basil's sources – by his own audience, I mean – almost a matter of indifference. He happily fed them riches from the pagan past, but bolstered their confidence explicitly in their Christian distinctiveness.15 The forthright quality of Basil's address is reinforced by vivid and simple examples from daily life. In terms of sheer colour, these are the most engaging components of sermon 10 in particular. We have vignettes drawn from animal behaviour (10.19), from the taming of animals (10.10), from fishing and hunting (10.9–10), and from cooking (10.14), as well as from social relations and political life (10.8 and 19); and to those we may add the splendid portrait of the supposedly ‘great man’ in sermon 11 (11.13). At the end of that same sermon, we have the magnificent digression on the human eye, with its casual asides about flowing water, the difficulties of old age, shoelaces, midges, sweat, and the cultivation of vines (11.16–17). The section might appear oddly self-indulgent, or at least forgetful of the clock, but ends with no apology: ‘from this one [example], gain understanding of everything []’. As the statement implies, Basil could offer relief without risking irrelevance; but what I hope most to show here is that none of the material detail that he so skilfully described made any sense to him if separated from a reading of scripture. Let me turn, therefore, to the issue of the text itself: for, as I suggest, the first necessary key to an understanding of these two sermons, and indeed of the Hexaêmeron as a whole, is the very notion of text. At the outset of sermon 1, Basil describes the reading of Genesis as a dialogue with Moses (the assumed writer, of course). Before establishing the exact sense of what is being said [he writes], and before exploring the enormous significance of these pithy statements, let us consider deeply who is conversing with us. For even if, because of our weakened capacity for understanding, we do not gain access to the deep heart of the writer, still we proceed on the basis of the trust that we think the speaker deserves, [and so] we shall come spontaneously to agree with what he says. Moses, therefore, is the one composing here (1.1). After recounting the major stages of Moses's career, including his privileged experience of face-to-face dialogue with God, Basil concludes, ‘Let us take these words … not as plausible in the sense understood by human wisdom but as an instructive discourse delivered by the Spirit’. Two features here deserve notice: first, the way in which Basil slips back and forth between ‘speaking’ and ‘writing’ terminology; second, his constant use thereafter of words based on and , which leaves it frequently open as to whether we should think of ‘he’ (that is, Moses) or ‘it’ (that is, scripture) as the subject of the verb. Given both the intimacy and the awe that must accompany a reading or hearing of scripture, Basil attaches great importance to fidelity. What does it mean, he asks, when scripture says that we ‘came into existence ‘according to God's image’?’ And ‘how, therefore, shall we go about discovering [what is meant by] this ‘according to God's image’?’ Then, promptly: ‘In those places where the Lord himself has spoken’; to which he adds, ‘if I speak here words of my own, do not accept them; but if I speak as does the Master, then seize upon it’. (All this in 10.6.) Later in the same sermon, we see Basil worrying at precisely that task. Discussing the thorny issue of image and likeness, and twisting his way through the obscurities of the text, he is guided most by a desire to make sense of the whole. ‘Let us make a human being according to our image and according to likeness’. There are two elements in this declaration: according to ‘image’ and according to ‘likeness’. Yet the creative act is one. Did [God] decide one way, and then change his plan? Did a species of regret affect the process of creation? Was there some lassitude in the creator, so that he chose to do one thing but actually did another? Or are the words mere prattle? Perhaps it is one and the same thing to say, ‘Let us make a human being according to image and according to likeness’. But to have said ‘according to image’ is not to have said ‘according to likeness’. Whatever explanation we adopt, we seem to call to account what [we find] written. … However, to say that [even a single] word in scripture is fruitless is a dreadful blasphemy. In fact the statement is not fruitless. So, we have to conclude that humans came into existence according to image and according to likeness (10.15). Loyal engagement with an account that imparted both the voice of Moses and the instruction of the Spirit underpinned, moreover, a construction of the self. It is vital to grasp here the centrality of ‘man’. Quite apart from the distinction between ‘image’ and ‘likeness’ (of which more shortly), ‘image’ here is something intrinsic to the human being. Basil is not attending immediately to Christ as the ‘image’ of the Father, even though there is a firm theological bridge between the two lines of thought. Human identity is at root the identity of a hearer or reader (albeit inspired by the Spirit and alert to the presence of Christ).16 As Basil puts it in the opening section of sermon 10, ‘our mind cannot look upon itself other than by bending over the scriptures: the light reflected there causes each of us to see ourselves clearly’ (10.1). Of course, as I say, there is affinity here with the relation between Father and Son; but that is not the focus of the account. Discussing (in 10.4) the import of the phrase ‘Let us make a human being’, Basil, having alluded to his earlier discussion in 9.6, continues, ‘You have already discovered that two persons [] are involved here: one who speaks, and one who is spoken to []’.17 But we are immediately transported back to the response of the reader: ‘You were brought into existence as the common work of both (that is, Father and Son), so that a common worship should be offered to them both – not splitting the act of worship but keeping the godhead one’. Basil continues, ‘We have, on the one hand, you see, what looks, in its form, like a story, but is, on the other hand, at the level of power, a theology []: ‘God made a human being’, but also ‘let us make’’. After mentioning again ‘a single honour’ and ‘one act of worship’, he concludes by repeating his point: ‘This preface to our coming into existence is a veritable theology []’. That distinction between and is not designed to cut the reader off from elevated truths: rather, it instructs one how to ‘read’ such a text. For Basil, knowledge of God is inseparable from knowledge of the Bible.18‘Theology’, in this sense, transfers a reader to a less particular level of experience – less located, less circumscribed by time. Sermon 11 offers a good example of how such a transference might be achieved. When human beings are exhorted to ‘fill the earth’, a corporate allusion is implied: as Basil puts it (in 11.5), ‘Theology is not circumscribed within one []’– that is, a theological statement is not restricted, in its address, to a single person: ‘the good news of salvation is proclaimed to the whole world’. But we are dealing here with more than breadth: the passage is filled with a sense of movement, not least upward movement. When human beings are commanded to ‘grow’, the word refers to what Basil calls ‘our inner humanity []’ (I shall return to this ‘inner humanity’) and to ‘progress [] towards God’ (as Brooks Otis put it, ‘the infinitely progressive character of the spiritual life was … the really distinctive element in Cappadocian thought’19). Isaac, proposed as a model, was ‘exalted []’: ‘He strode in the works of virtue; he strode with a mighty step to acquire prudence; he set out to acquire justice; from there, he mounted up [] to manliness. Moving forward in that way, one who is just will have breasted the highest peak of goodness []’. Now, there is an immediate corollary to this immersion in reading and hearing; in particular, to this emphasis on the ‘theological’ nature of the text and on the discovery of the self as a reader or hearer. The opening sections of Genesis do indeed provide a description of the material world; but Basil's point is that accurate observation of that materiality is subsequent to an appreciation of this dialogue between Moses, the Spirit, or God on the one hand and the believing and worshipping ɛρμηνɛυς on the other. Basil is censorious of any readiness to take short cuts here: he has no time for mere observation. He rails (in 10.2) against the minutiae, the sheer effort of medical and other scientific inquiry, which tells the inquirer so little about ‘the wonder within you []’. ‘Each of us remains ignorant of who we are: we are happy to know more about heaven than about ourselves’. Yet knowledge of God, on the other hand, demonstrates the complexity of the caution demanded. Even though ‘God is known by his power’, by the power he manifests in the material world, he is not ‘constrained within our understanding []: ‘He is simple in nature, immense in greatness. He is in all places, and exceeds the sum of all things. This God – beyond touch or vision – has escaped [has escaped also, in other words] your mind's grasp []’ (10.5).20 Basil is anxious, therefore, to express accurately the relations set up between observers and the observed. Such relations are hermeneutic in character, and they subordinate descriptions to interpretations. We can illustrate his preoccupation in at least four ways. I would anticipate them briefly under the following headings: the relation between observation and understanding, which implies transition from one level of experience to another; the relation between nature and society; the relation between mastery over nature and mastery over self; and the relation between an appreciation of scripture and practical morality. So how, first, does the ‘aesthetic’ component, an alert eye, bring about ‘cognition’, in the sense of true understanding? To take a precise example, what can we gather from the observation that humans have mastery over fish? Basil describes how a human shadow, passing across a rocky pool on the shore, can scatter fish in fear. Then, he draws a social parallel: ‘Does not the master of a household, in the same way, when the household is disturbed, by his sudden appearance bring tranquillity, changing everything in a moment back to decent order by his controlling presence?’ Finally, we reach the universal level: ‘you see how your reason reaches into all things and controls all things? … So it is that the power to rule, implanted in humanity by the creator, reaches everywhere’ (all this in 10.9). This ascent from level to level illustrates how Basil's vivid observations are made part of a logic that reaches beyond observation itself. His peroration (in sermon 10) enumerates the pathways whereby a Christian can make that ascent: God ‘arranged for these things to be written’; Basil has expatiated upon them with a ‘weak and puny voice’; and, in spite of ‘our feeble capacity for understanding’, God has revealed ‘great treasures in a few enshadowed truths’. The community can hope, then, for ‘a perfection of the understanding based upon a few implanted powers’, and for ‘the final reward for the choices we have made’. The logic should be clear: scripture has been providentially supplied; the community of exegetes shares in a realization of interpretative powers; and they can thus commit themselves to a moral programme at once fulfilling and deserving of reward.21 The endeavour will represent ‘the full fruit of [a] delight in the divine words []’ (all this in 10.20). The image of the commanding paterfamilias serves to illustrate, second, the interplay, in Basil's eyes, between nature and society. Nothing would have seemed to him more appropriate: ‘The church is not gathered here to listen to obscurities, but seeks rather to unravel insights that will build up the community []’ (11.8). Why, for example, can a weak human dominate even the greatest fish? ‘Because’, says Basil, ‘drawing from an abundance of reason the power to rule, humans force the least obedient, like no-good runaways, to the path of discipline. Those whom they cannot bring to heel by gentleness they make subservient by force’ (10.9). He is not just talking about fish – the allusion to absconding slaves or tenants [] is particularly telling, but the generality of the phrase that follows provides a chilling epitome of government at every level. In a later section, Basil parades before his listeners' imaginations a veritable gallery of wildlife photographs; of dogs, bears, scorpions, vipers, wolves, and horses. But those animals are not mere emblems or analogies: their keenly observed behaviour is designed to explain how anger, trickery, insincerity, insolence, revenge, exploitation, and lust – the very stuff of social experience – actually work. ‘What species of wild animal is there’, Basil concludes, ‘that we do not have within ourselves []?’ (10.19).22 There is, third, a natural relation between mastery over others (beginning with the non-human creation) and mastery over oneself. That was an ancient verity, of course; but Basil presents the relation as almost logical in character, not just a matter of comparability: God ‘granted that you should rule over the irrational fish, so that [] you might become also the ruler of irrational passions’ (10.19). And a little later, ‘Thus it is that the authority we have been given over living things trains us in an ordered way [] to rule over ourselves’. Finally, we have the way in which the study of scripture governs demonstrations of practical morality. Starting with the command ‘Grow, increase, and fill the earth’, Basil ends up with ‘good works’ and ‘visits to the sick’. Why? Because a human being's spiritual growth (in contrast to the merely physical growth of an animal) is dependent on material circumstances.23‘Animals’, says Basil, ‘fill the earth by sheer number: we, however, fill with our good enterprises [] the earth to which we are yoked []’; and he explains at once what he means here by ‘the earth’: , which has to mean something like ‘the capacity for service that our bodies provide’ (all in 11.5). Similarly, in the previous sermon, before he launches into his wild-life allusions, Basil combines the progress of ascent to godly likeness with total engagement among one's fellows: ‘Become like God, therefore [], through your goodness, through forbearance, through a life shared with others []’ (10.18). Let us bear in mind what we are about here. We start, as Basil starts, with a text and a reader. The issue is, what does the text (here, of course, scripture) provide access to, and what does it tell readers about themselves? Basil unfolds his answers, as I say, in four ways: by relating levels of access, by relating nature to society, by relating mastery over creation to mastery over self, and by relating the text to the embodied morality that it demands. Here we have, if you like, the circuitry of his argument, the intertwined fibres that carry the force of his pastoral rhetoric. In all four sets of relations, the experience that results is unintelligible without a prior reading that invites one to embrace it. And that brings us to the argument itself, the meat of the matter. Basil's central theme is paradox – a paradox he observes in the sacred account.24 We see it expressed at the very beginning of sermon 10. ‘Do not think lightly of the wonder within you’, he says. ‘You are of small account, so you think; but the words that are coming up now will disclose your greatness []’ (10.2). But the full treatment of the theme – great, yet small; or small, yet great – is reserved for sermon 11. ‘I, for my part’, says Basil, ‘sought in vain within myself to see what there was in my own way of thinking, and what scripture had taught, concerning the human race. I expressed it to myself in this way: how [can] a human being [be] ‘great’, a perishable life-form, subject to a thousand passions, sapped from birth to old age by a thousand ills?’ (11.1). Then at once comes a hint at the solution. For me, the account we have heard read of the origin of human beings resolves this enigma. We have heard just now that God took ‘soil from the earth’ and ‘moulded a human being’. I find two elements in that statement: that a human being is nothing, and that a human being is great. If you look only at the nature of human beings, there is nothing, and a human being is worthy of nothing; but if you look at the honour with which human beings have been honoured, then a human being is great (11.2). I shall return shortly to this contrast between and . Of course, as we would have known from having sat through sermon 10, the ‘greatness’ to which Basil refers is a greatness built upon reason and the associated right or ability to rule.25‘In what’, he asks, ‘does this ruling reside? In our abundant capacity for thought. What we lack in bodily power we possess in the way our reasoning is ordered’ (10.6). ‘The power to rule comes first, given effect at the same moment we are’; ‘you, the human creature, are a living ruler’; and – with a hint here of what else is to come –‘where you find the power to rule, there you find the image of God’ (all in 10.8). Moreover, as we have seen, the sheer reach of that power is what helps to give it importance: ‘the power to rule, implanted in humanity by the creator, reaches everywhere’ (10.9). Basil concludes this section of the sermon by claiming, ‘Is it not for me to order matters as I wish, since I have become a lord [] by the gift of the Master creating me?’ And after repeating the verse about ruling, he exclaims, ‘Here is a blessing for the future, here is an ordinance; this is the dignity [] bestowed upon us by God’ (10.14). So, the challenge for Basil was how to retain a sense of smallness, as it were, without being tempted to underestimate the dignity of the human creature. He tackles the task in two stages. First, he shows that God went about creating the first human being in a manner different from that adopted in relation to other creatures; and it is in that difference that human dignity is rooted. Repeating God's statement, ‘Let us make a human being’, Basil comments, ‘There is no record of that same statement being used about any other thing completed’. Specifically, they ‘‘came into existence’ at a simple command … without discussion []’. But then, when there were still no human beings, there was discussion about them []. He did not say, as he had for the others, ‘Let a human being come into existence’. Observe closely what honour you possess []. He did not toss you into existence with a brusque command. There was debate within God as to how this honourable living thing should be brought to life []. ‘Let us make’: the wise one deliberates; the craftsman ponders deeply [] (10.3). So it is that guarantees dignity; and what makes that discussion possible is the relationship between the two , the Father and the Son – which in turn makes the communicative vitality of the Trinity itself an essential precondition of a human being's . Basil's second attempt at preserving both humility and pride is reserved for sermon 11. The general context I have provided already: ‘God took ‘soil from the earth’ and ‘moulded the first human being’ []’, thus prompting the belief ‘that a human being is nothing, and that a human being is great’ (11.2). And it is here that Basil contrasts with , as I adumbrated above. A contrast that is surely analogous, if not equivalent, occurs at the end of the same section: ‘A human is nothing at the level of matter [], but great at the level of honour []’ (11.2). ‘Soil’ and ‘moulding’, therefore, form the poles of Basil's anthropology, as well as the natural and the honourable. ‘If you focus your mind's attention on the one who moulds, then human beings are great’ (11.2).26 He admits, however, that there is more than one way of carrying the argument further. Some have already suggested that the phrase ‘moulded’ refers to the body, while [the earlier phrase] ‘made’ refers to the soul. Such a proposition may well keep within the bounds of truth. Where it was said, ‘And God made a human being, according to the image of God’, there the word ‘made’ was used. Where, subsequently, we are informed about bodily substance, there it says ‘moulded’. … He made the inner humanity, he moulded the outer []. ‘Moulding’ is appropriate in relation to clay, ‘making’ in relation to accordance with image. So, the flesh was moulded, but the soul was made (11.3). Note the shift of focus to a distinction between the inner and the outer human being, combined with reference to the image of God. This is actually a shift back, since Basil had already touched on the matter in sermon 10. ‘When [God] says, ‘Let us make a human being [according to our image]’, he is talking [as Basil puts it] about the human being within []’. He goes on to explain, There are two kinds of human being – one that is apparent, and one that is hidden beneath the apparent, unseen, the human within. … When I say ‘I’, I am talking about the inner person. What is outside is not ‘me’ but ‘mine’. … So the body is a person's organ, the organ of the soul; but ‘human being’ refers chiefly to the soul itself. Basil entertains another possibility: the possibility that the separation of the making from the moulding accounts is designed to achieve a distinction between the fact that God creates and the issue of how he creates. (He makes the distinction himself: .) If – God's unique discussion about the human being before its creation – helps to an understanding of , then God's act of taking up soil into his hand () introduces us to what Basil calls ‘the workshop in which your nature was formed []’. The ‘earthiness’ of the procedure is nevertheless just as considered, just as deliberate, as the behind : it forces upon our attention ‘the particular care and skill [] employed by God on your account’ (all in 11.4). After discussing other verses, Basil resumes his analysis, albeit it in a less than carefully edited way. Let me try to unravel the tangle. First, he says that one should not fear or resent the reality of the ‘soil’ in one's makeup. Indeed, awareness of that ingredient is an invaluable counterweight to pride. One should retain what he calls a ‘natural attachment’ to the earth (, in that way ‘you hold close the recollection of your humble state’. But, as he says later at greater length, to be embedded in that way is not to surrender what is best in one's humanity. ‘Let the earth be an ally of reason [], always present, always a reminder’. That prepares us for a second striking emphasis, charged in this case with great self-assurance: I, for my part, look upon the earth as an ancient mother, so that I do not take it as an insult to be born of a slave [for example], but rather find it an honour [] to have been ensouled in my becoming []. Anyone who thinks to insult me forgets that he honours me the more [] by the insult: for I, understanding my own nature [], know who I am and where I come from (11.1). The overlapping and intertwining in this section is, as I say, confusing. A sharpened separation of two images, and , is now made more hazy. But one begins to see how Basil is trying to elevate the character of the human component most conducive to self-effacement, so that the very baseness of material experience is made the means to a true understanding of human dignity. The third step in this particular exposition relates once again the concept of moulding with the concept of the inner and the outer human being. Obviously, God did not ‘mould’ the first human being as a craftsman might mould a statue. What Basil suggests instead is that God works from the inside outwards. As he puts it, ‘[God's] primal and active skill ordered things at the deepest level, working progressively from within’ (11.14). This is an infuriatingly brief statement: . Basil seems to think at this point that he does not have time to develop the notion. It has, however, profound implications for his argument. In particular, it shows further what might be meant by the inner and the outer human being: not just a contrast, but the setting up, by the creator, of a pathway that humans themselves can follow in their progress from an earthly to a heavenly way of life. Thus, the dignifying impact of , itself the source of , is allowed to pass freely back and forth between the realms of and . The sequel in this sermon appeals to precisely that cartography of moral development. Human beings stand erect, says Basil, in contrast to cattle; and that is a feature of their particular moulding. ‘The very manner of your moulding is a lesson’, he says: ‘it teaches you about the goal towards which your creation has turned you. You came into existence in order to look upon God’ (11.15). To that extent, therefore, Basil had dismantled, or at least smoothed over, the distinction between and . He had introduced instead the element of motion, of drama, of progress; and he had allowed the dignity bestowed by God's to affect every level or stage of the creative process. That divine deliberation was, from the point of view of human experience, a continuous reality, which made possible the creature's return to humanity's most fundamentally ‘natural’ relationship with God. I would like, in my final section, to examine three other preoccupations lodged within Basil's general theme: the elision of time (which I shall explain); image and likeness; and the Fall. They are not introduced accidentally: rather, they apply finer detail to the logic of the sermons – to Basil's interest, first, in the r
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