Creation and Time.
Basil the Great begins his commentary on the Hexaemeron
by affirming the truth of the account it gives of the creation of the world.
"The creation of heaven and earth did not take place by itself, as some people
have imagined," he writes, "but it had its reason in God." The world had a
source. The bodies in the heavens move in a circular motion, and "just because
our senses do not see the source of this circling" does not give us reason to
conclude that the nature of these rotating bodies is eternal. Circular motion
begins from some point on a circumference; the point is simply unknown to us.
That which had a beginning will end, and whatever will end had a beginning. The
world exists in time and is composed of substances which are subject to genesis
and destruction.
Basil asserts that time was created by God as an environment
for the material world. Time is succession and replacement, and it is always
flowing and moving forward. At the beginning of time God created the world. But,
the beginning of time is not time itself. "Just as the beginning of a path is
not yet a path, or as the beginning of a house is not yet a house, so also the
beginning of time is not yet time, nor even the very smallest part of time." The
beginning is simple and has no duration. The beginning of time can be approached
by moving backwards from the present. If God created heaven and earth "at the
beginning," this means that "the act of creation was instantaneous and not
subject to time." God's creation of the world by His will did not take place in
time, but He created suddenly and instantaneously, or, in the words of the
"ancient commentators," "briefly" (Basil is referring to the translation of
Akila). Time began with the world. "Time is continuation which is co-extensive
with the existence of the world."
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