Basil of Caesarea's letter 207, to the clergy of Neocaesarea, tackles
a quarrel between the parties. Although the underlying differences are
doctrinal, the immediate points of contention are the singing of psalms
and Cappadocian monasticism. A strong theme of heavenly citizenship runs
through the letter and is traced from Basil's first mention of the
monastics to the quotation from the hymn of Isaiah 26 with which he
opens the description of a service at which psalms are sung. Though
undoubtedly functioning here as a rhetorical device contrasting orderly
monastic life with the disorganised attacks of his opponents, this theme
lies at the heart of Basil's view of monasticism. He sees his monastics
as citizens of heaven in the sense of living the ideal Christian life
in which worship is central. Thus the theme of heavenly citizenship fits
with ideas that associate human worship with that of angels. This
concept has its full development in the hymn of Oxyrhynchus Papyrus
1786, Gregory of Nyssa's exposition of Psalm 150 as the eschatological
union of human and angelic worship, and the poetry of Gregory Nazianzen
in which that eschatological future breaks into the present.
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