SOURCE: "The Cappadocians" in The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy, edited by A. H. Armstrong, Cambridge University Press, 1967, pp. 432-39.

In the excerpt below, Sheldon-Williams explicates the Hexaemeron, noting that Basil views the universe as a hierarchy whose parts are bound together in harmonious sympathy. The critic maintains that Basil's conception of creation, time and motion, and material elements is derived from the writings of Greek natural philosophers such as Aristotle and the Stoics, as well as from scripture.

The Cappadocians inherited the Alexandrian Gnosis through Origen, though each departed from the position of their master, St Basil most of all. He was more interested in the moral and pastoral than in the philosophical implications of the Faith, distrusted allegory,¹ and clung to the literal interpretation of Scripture, to which the pagan learning was to supply rational corroboration as required rather than combine with...