Ascetical Works

On The Soul And The Resurrection

ON THE SOUL AND THE RESURRECTION INTRODUCTION URIS. DIALOGUE BETWEEN ST. GREGORY and his sister, St. Macrina, during her last hours is reminiscent of Plato's Phaedo in which Socrates and his friends spend the last day of his life discussing the pertinent subject of the possibility of the soul's immortality. The fact that the role of protagonist is given to a saintly woman recalls the Platonic device in The Symposium where Socrates attributes his splendid insights into the nature of love to the instruction of the wise Diotima. St. Macrina's solicitude for her brother's state of mind creates a situation not unlike that in the first Book of The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius. One is reminded also of another conversation between two saints, St. Augustine and his mother, recorded in the Confessions! as taking place shortly before St. Monica's death at Ostia. However , this work is most similar to a dialogue written in the second century by an opponent of Origen named Methodius, entitled On the Resurrection) in which a certain Aglaophon offers objections to the doctrine of the resurrection which Methodius himself resolves. That St. Gregory was concerned with eschatological matters is evident from three other works written by him during the same period: his treatise On the Creation of Man (378), his Sermon on the Resurrection (379), and his Catechetical Oration (385). Father Danielou, who has been particularly interested in this aspect of Gregorian thought,2 has shown that, 1 St. Augustine, Confessions 9.10. 2 Cf. J. Danie1ou, 'La resurrection des corps chez Gregoire de Nysse,' Vigiliae Christianae 7 (1953) 154-170; 'L'apocatastase chez Gregoire de Nysse,' Recherches de science religieuse 30 (1940) 328-347; idem, 'Notes sur trois textes eschato1ogiques de saint Gregoire de Nysse,' loco cit., 348-356. 195 196 SAINT GREGORY OF NYSSA although St. Gregory is in close agreement with Methodius' viewpoint, he has arrived at a more profound interpretation of it. St. Gregory agrees with Methodius in rejecting Origen's theory that it is a spiritualized body which will rise, since he maintains that the earthly body and the risen body are identical, being made up of the same unchanging elements which informed it from the beginning. Furthermore, he believes that the soul is never actually separated from these elements, even during the period between death and the resurrection. Origen held that the two bodies will have different natures; St. Gregory insists that the body will be the same, but the two states of the body different, the risen body being the last of a series of transformations which the body of man goes through from infancy to the resurrection. Related to this speculation on the condition of the soul after death is the more controversial issue of apokatastasis which is also taken up in this dialogue. The word literally means a return to a former state of perfection, and the idea was a familiar one in Greek mythology and philosophy. In Christian literature, it was applied to the idea that there will ultimately be a restoration of all things in Christ. Origen's doctrine of apokatastasis was part of his belief that the souls would return to a purely spiritual condition at the time of the resurrection and it was condemned by the fifth Ecumenical Council. Although St. Gregory does not accept Origen's theory that it is a spiritualized body that will rise, he has been held by somes to come close to Origenistic teaching in his reluctance to accept the view that the punishment of sinners will be eternal. Early attempts were made to prove that certain passages in St. Gregory's writings relating to this question were interpolations, but this is seldom a satisfactory way of dealing with such problems. Danielou thinks that apokata3 e.g., H. Graef in the introduction to her translation of The Lord's Prayer and The Beatitudes (Ancient Christian Writers 18; Westminster, Md. 1954); W. Jaeger, Early Christianity and Greek Paideia, op. cit., 89; E. V. McClear, 'The Fall of Man and Original Sin in the Theology of Gregory of Nyssa' (doct. diss.) (Woodstock, 1948) 206. ON THE SOUL AND THE RESURRECTION 197 stasis in St. Gregory underlines what he calls the 'definitive character of the Incarnation, the social character of salvation,' and he concludes that 'our insufficient notion of eternity' makes it difficult for us to reconcile the notion of a universal physical apokatastasis with an affirmation of the eternal punishment of the damned.4...