Античная космология и становление учения о тверди в раннегреческой патристике

Вестник Русской христианской гуманитарной академии. 2022. Т. 23. № 4. С. 51–63.

Kurdybaylo D.

The biblical narrative on the creation of the heaven, firmament and celestial bodies introduced several difficulties for early Christian commentators of Genesis 1 caused by significant contradictions with traditional ancient conceptions of the universe and its inner structure. The Timaeus of Plato and De caelo of Aristoteles had been considered a standard of cosmological discourse for a long time, including the third and fourth centuries A. D., when the first verbose commentaries on the six days of creation emerged. In this article, we discuss the ways to solve the contradictions between the ancient Greek cosmology and the cosmology of the Bible in the writings of Origen, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and John of Damascus. There are several elements of Platonic and Aristotelian discourse, which a strictly rejected from the Christian cosmologic models, while other propositions are accepted into the explanations of the Bible narrative. However, harmonisation of physics and metaphysics in the theological context faces several problems related to the nature of selected exegetical patterns.

Keywords: Аристотель, cosmology, космология, Origen, Василий Великий, Ориген, Шестоднев, Василий Кесарийский, hexaemeron, Григорий Нисский, Gregory of Nyssa, небо, Aristoteles, Basil of Caesarea, concept of heaven, firmament, De caelo, твердь, О небе