The Harmonious Diversity of the Great Pageant of the
Cosmos.
Basil spoke of the world's harmonious diversity with the
enthusiastic appreciation of an aesthete. "Everywhere we can see some ineffable
wisdom." The artistic completeness and order of the universe, the great pageant
of the cosmos, elevates the mind to the contemplation of the Creator and Artist
of everything. "The temporal is like the eternal," Basil exclaims. "And if
visible things are so beautiful, the same must be true of invisible things. For
Basil, the whole world bears witness to God. "If you look at even a stone," he
writes, "even that will indicate the might of the Creator. And you will find the
same if you look at an ant or a gnat or a bee. The wisdom of the Creator can be
seen in the very smallest things."
Basil apparently used the commentary of Poseidonius on Plato's
Timaeus, which has not survived, in his own interpretation of the
Hexaemeron. He has translated Biblical imagery into the language of
Hellenistic cosmology.
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