Abstract

In the middle of the sixth century, John Philoponus wrote a commentary on the first chapter of Genesis entitled the de Opificio Mundi . Educated at the Neoplatonic Academy, he attempted to integrate as much Greek natural philosophy into his biblical exegesis as dogmatic restrictions would permit. He wrote it in response to Cosmas Indicopleustes, a member of the rival theological faction known as the Nestorians, who had accused Philoponus of failing to take scripture into account in his earlier attempts to Christianize pagan natural philosophy. In response, Philoponus composed the de Opificio Mundi both to demonstrate the general harmony between the biblical creation narrative and pagan philosophy, and at the same time to condemn Cosmas and the Nestorians he represents as ignorant, absurd and heretical. Thus, although the Monophysites---with whom Philoponus identified himself---and the Nestorians; were opposed to one other primarily with respect to theological issues, the debate between Philoponus and Cosmas exposes much broader cultural differences between the two parties. ;Philoponus' methods for constructing a Christian natural philosophy followed two main lines. First, he attempted to naturalize pagan cosmology in the sense that he removed divine causes from the workings of the cosmos. In the same way, he naturalized scripture by discovering the harmony between the events described in Genesis and philosophical explanations of natural phenomena. Thus, he rejected Cosmas' arguments that the universe is shaped like the Tabernacle described in Exodus, and demonstrated that scripture agrees with the philosophical conclusion that the cosmos is spherical. Second, he relied on the power and preeminence of rationality for understanding the universe and our place within it. In this way, he rejected the Nestorian arguments that the reasoning angels exist within the universe and thereby revealed their misunderstanding of human nature's primacy in the cosmos. In the de Opificio Mundi, then, Philoponus; attempted to produce a rationalist and natural philosophical exegesis of Genesis, legitimized by the rationality of Academic philosophical methods. At the same time, he refuted the Nestorians by exposing the irrationality and unnaturalness of their cosmological speculations