Thomas Tatterfield: Basil of Caesarea on Stoic Sympathy and the Body of Christ

It has been long noted that Basil of Caesarea utilizes the Stoic concept of sympathy. N. Joseph Torchia, for instance, has shown how Basil receives an account of sympathy mediated through Plotinus and applies it to the cosmos as a whole. What he and others have not sufficiently highlighted is that while Basil does use sympathy as a way of explaining how bodies relate to other bodies he also uses it within explicitly theological contexts. I will demonstrate how Basil uses stoic sympathy to make sense of Pauline passages concerning the body of Christ and its members. These members united by the Spirit experience sympathy with one another by virtue of their belonging to the one body of Christ. For Basil sympathy doesn’t merely explain how bodies relate to bodies but elucidates the unique bond of the ecclesial body. My paper will explore this uniquely theological application of Stoic sympathy and place it within the philosophical context of Basil’s thought as a whole.