On the Making of Man - Enhanced

by Gregory of Nyssa

This edition of On the Making of Man comes complete with a Touch-or-Click Table of Contents, divided by each chapter.

St. Gregory of Nyssa was a Christian bishop and saint. He was a younger brother of Basil the Great and a good friend of Gregory of Nazianzus. His significance has long been recognized in the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Eastern Catholic and Roman Catholic branches of Christianity.

Some historians identify Theosebia the deaconess as his wife, others hold that she, like Macrina the Younger, was actually a sister of Gregory and Basil. Gregory along with his brother Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nazianzus are known as the Cappadocian Fathers. They attempted to establish Christian philosophy as superior to Greek philosophy.

On the Making of Man was intended to supplement and complete the Hexaëmeron of St. Basil, and it presupposes an acquaintance with that treatise. The narrative of the creation of the world is not discussed in detail: it is referred to, but chiefly in order to insist on the idea that the world was prepared to be the sphere of man's sovereignty.

On the other hand, Gregory shows that man was made with circumspection, fitted by nature for rule over the other creatures, made in the likeness of God in respect of various moral attributes, and in the possession of reason, while differing from the Divine nature in that the human mind receives its information by means of the senses and is dependent on them for its perception of external things.

The body is fitted to be the instrument of the mind, adapted to the use of a reasonable being: and it is by the possession of the rational soul, as well as of the natural or vegetative and the sensible soul, that man differs from the lower animals.

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Enjoy.

Genres: Theology, Religion, Christianity, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Church History

121 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 365

About the author

Gregory of Nyssa was a Christian bishop and saint. He was a younger brother of Basil the Great and a good friend of Gregory Nazianzus. His significance has long been recognized in the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Roman Catholic branches of Christianity.

Gregory along with his brother Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nazianzus are known as the Cappadocian Fathers. They attempted to establish Christian philosophy as superior to Greek philosophy.

Reviews

[Laura Howard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Delightful reflections on what it means to be human. I cried twice. My favorite thing I've read in a while.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gregory of Nyssa is such a refreshing theologian to read! Anyone interested in historical theology ought to dig into Gregory His most famous work may be The Life of Moses which is not included in collections of his work (at least, that I’ve found). Most collections include On The Making of Man, On the Soul and Resurrection, The Great Catechism and a few others (the longest of which, Against Eunomias, I have not read!).

To read any of the church fathers is to discover nuggets of brilliance that shine through. Admittedly, there are oddities and historical points that may be interesting or tedious unless you’re a historical scholar (which I am not).

In chapter twelve he discusses how humans, properly oriented, move towards the good. Evil is a corruption of this good. We can see here the idea that while good possesses a sort of being, being created by god, evil is a parasite. Further, it’s a high view of humans with our natural inclination to good.

A few quotes:

God is the Supreme Good and we are good as we participate in the Divine:
“For since the most beautiful and supreme good of all is the Divinity Itself, to which incline all things that have a tendency towards what is beautiful and good, we therefore say that the mind, as being in the image of the most beautiful, itself also remains in beauty and goodness so long as it partakes as far as is possible in its likeness to the archetype; but if it were at al to depart from this it is deprived of the beauty in which it was” (XII)

Evil is a parasite that corrupts us:

“When there is any interruption of this beneficent connection, or when, on the contrary, the superior comes to follow the inferior, then is displayed the misshaped character of matter, when it is isolated from nature. . . And by its shapelessness is also destroyed that beauty of nature with which it is adorned through the mind; and so the transmission of the ugliness of matter reaches through the nature to the mind itself, so that the image of God is no longer seen in the figure expressed by that which was molded according to it; for the mind, setting the idea of good like a mirror behind th back, turns off the incident rays of the effulgence of the good, and it receives into itself the impress of the shapelessness of matter.
And in this way is brought about the genesis of evil, arising through the withdrawal of that which is beautiful and good. Now all is beautiful and good that is closely related to the First Good; but that which departs from its relation and likeness to this is certainly devoid of beauty and goodness” (XII)

God creates because God is Good:

“God is in His own nature all that which our mind can conceive of good; - rather, transcending all good that we can conceive or comprehend. He creates man for no other reason than that He is good; and being such, and having this as His reason for entering upon the creation of our nature, He would not exhibit the power of His goodness in an imperfect form, giving our nature some one of the things at His disposal, and grudging it a share in another; but the perfect form of goodness is here to be seen by His both bringing man into being from nothing, and fully supplying him with all good gifts: but since the list of individual good gifts is a long one, it is out of the question to apprehend it numerically. The language of scripture therefore expresses it concisely by a comprehensive phrase, in saying that man was made ‘in the image of God’: for this is the same as to pray that He made human nature participants in all good; for if the Deity is the fullness of good, and this is His image, then the image finds its resemblance to the archetype in being filled with all good” (XVI)

The “man” God created is not merely the individual but the whole of humanity. This, perhaps above all else, is a theme that contrasts with how we conceptualize what it means to be human. We, influenced by hyper-individualism, imagine ourselves as free-floating atoms (and don’t take away our rights!). Gregory sees all humanity as one:

“In saying that, ‘God created maan’ the text indicates, by the indefinite character of the term, al mankind; for was not Adam here named together with the creation, as the history tells us in what follows? Yet the name given to the man created is not particular, butt he general name: thus we are led by the employment of the general name of our nature to some such view as this - that in the Divine foreknowledge and power all humanity is included in the first creation: for it is fitting for God not to regard any of the things made by Him as indeterminate, but that each existing thing should have some limit and measure prescribed by the wisdom of its Maker” (XVI)

“The entire plenitude of humanity was included by the God of all, by His power of foreknowledge, as it were in one body, and that this is what the text teaches us which says, ‘God created man, in the image of God created him’” (XVI)

Finally, creation will not be complete until it is consummated in the end:

“The man that was manifested at the first creation of the world, and he that shall be after the consummation of all, are alike: they equally bear in themselves the Divine image” (XVI)

Gregory’s theology is brilliant: from his understanding of God to what it mans to be humans. Humans, made in God’s image and properly oriented move towards God (the Good and Beautiful). Humans are created in God’s image which is Jesus, for Jesus is the image of God in flesh. In some way human creation is not complete yet as we still need to become like Christ. Evil is a parasite, not part of God, which will be annihilated and creation of the one humanity in Jesus will be complete. There’s deep community here.

Overall, I love Gregory’s emphasis on the goodness of creation. He certainly believes in sin, but the negativity of Augustine seems far away. How different would Christianity in the west be if the Cappadocian fathers and not Augustine had set the tone? Thankfully today, it seems we’re regaining this more eastern flavor and hearing what they had to say in a renewed light.

[Kexuan Yang · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gregory seems to suggest that only God is immovable, while it is the nature of creatures to move. The problem is in which direction. For Gregory the impulse towards evil is finite and when exhausted, our natural impulse to goodness will direct us to the infinite progression towards God. This kind of view was echoed in the theories of Kant, Fichte and Schiller, although in a less religious fashion. I am not sure whether Gregory has treated evilness as something positive despite its minuteness, but if evilness is posited as a force contrary to goodness (instead of pure ineffectualness) that can create some initial acceleration (in Newtonian terminology) then it is natural to conclude thus. Gregory elsewhere mentioned that nothing is pure evil and whatever is evil has to be disguised in goodness. This sounds similar to the Neoplatonic privatio boni ontology prevalent during his ages and used by both pagans (Plotinus) and Christians (Augustine). However, Gregory did not treat evilness as if it is something powerless as his contemporaries did and he noted that higher development will magnify evilness. This foreshadowed Schelling (and perhaps Proclus). Was Gregory deeper than Plotinus and Augustine here? I believe so. But was he more consistent? In my humble opinion at least in this book he left too many things unexplained and needed to incorporate his insights into his wholesome theological visions.

To some extent Gregory insisted in the preexistence of soul: the Archetype of the soul exists timelessly. I agree with him that the soul has a development along with the body in a parallel fashion. What he was against was Origen's (or ultimately Pythagoras and Plato's) theory of transfiguration. But Origen's view cannot be treated in isolation: he needed to refute some Gnostic theory of predestination (very close to Calvinism) so he had to introduce a pre-life to explain the misfortune in this life. If Gregory did not accept this, he posed a further question considering the existence of suffering. Neither did he elaborate on it here.

I will read more books by Gregory of Nyssa to understand him systematically.

[Christian Barrett · Rating 4 out of 5]

What an amazing work from the early ages of the church. Gregory finds a way to articulate the ultimate pursuit of life is to be like Christ and how that fulfillment is met at the death of oneself. A great read for someone wanting to dive into the fathers and understand some of the early theology of the church.

[Zachary · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is only flawed because it is a poor nineteenth-century translation that obfuscates more than it reveals. For starters, its title here is unfortunately rendered and better translated as On the Formation of the Human, where the emphasis is on the process by which one becomes human rather than on the divine craftwork involved in the creation of any one human creature. Fortunately, Father John Behr, a renowned Orthodox priest and scholar, will soon release a new, more accurate translation of what is both a beautiful and instructive text from one of the most tenderhearted and astute Church Fathers. Per Behr, Gregory’s text is divided into two main parts: the first fifteen chapters articulate what it means that God creates the human person in the imago Dei, while the second half of the text describes its economy—how the imago Dei is worked out in the process by which one becomes more fully human. In accordance with his didactic purpose, Gregory therefore tackles several pertinent questions with respect to human subjectivity: is mind visible or invisible; how many parts are there to the human soul; what is the relation between soul and body; does the soul reside in a particular location or does it, as immaterial, have no specific locus; why did God create humans male and female; is there a resurrection, and if so, why has it not yet happened; how will human souls inhabit resurrected bodies if our physical bodies decay; when is the human soul created; and, on more practical terrain, what is the functional relationship between the brain, the heart, and the liver? On its own, the text is an excellent primer for those new to the Christian faith, for those who are troubled by some of its principal doctrines, or even for those comfortable with the tradition who nevertheless seek to more fully understand that which most fundamentally makes humans distinct from the rest of creation—namely, the imago Dei.

The question I aim to focus on here concerns why God created humans male and female in the text of Genesis, which presents interpreters with a hermeneutical problem. Gregory writes: “That which was made ‘in the image’ is one thing, and that which is now manifested in wretchedness is another. ‘God created man,’ it says; ‘in the image of God [He] created him.’ There is an end of the creation of that which was made ‘in the image’: then it makes a resumption of the account of creation, and says, ‘male and female [He] created them.’ I presume that everyone knows that this is a departure from the Prototype: for ‘in Christ Jesus,’ as the apostle says, ‘there is neither male nor female’ (Galatians 3:28). Yet the phrase declares that man is thus divided” (16.7, my emphasis).

Unfortunately, Philip Schaff’s translation obscures the fact that in the Greek text, the word translated as “end”—as in, “there is an end of the creation . . .”—is telos, that is, the final cause or ultimate purpose of the human created in the imago Dei. The imago Dei, then, is the ultimate aim of human existence to which God creates humans to conform in voluntary self-sacrificial love, and which humans do not by virtue of sheer existence necessarily embody. One becomes like the imago Dei, whom Christ alone perfectly exemplifies, and thus en route to the imago Dei, one becomes Christlike. Still, the hermeneutical aporia persists, since the distinction between male and female, Gregory observes, “is alien from our conceptions of God” (16.8): If God creates humans in the imago Dei, then why does he fashion human creatures with a distinction not found in the divine? Gregory’s response: “I think that by these words Holy Scripture conveys to us a great and lofty doctrine, and the doctrine is this: While two natures—the Divine and incorporeal nature, and the irrational life of brutes—are separate from each other as extremes, human nature is the mean between them: for in the compound nature of man we may behold a part of each of the natures I have mentioned—of the Divine, the rational and intelligent element, which does not admit the distinction of male and female; of the irrational, our bodily form and structure, divided into male and female: for each of these elements is certainly to be found in all that partakes of human life” (16.9).

There is much more to say about Gregory’s interpretation than I have room for here. A brief sketch of John Behr’s interpretation of Gregory’s remarks will have to suffice. For starters, Behr notes that Gregory claims that the interpretation he proposes constitutes doctrine—and a “lofty” one at that. This characterization renders Gregory’s claim about human nature as the mean between the divine and the natural (or irrational) extremely important. On Behr’s interpretation, which I find persuasive, Gregory does not intend to communicate to his readers, as is commonly stated, that God foresaw the Fall—i.e. that humans would turn away from God in sin, which would, in turn, necessitate the salvific sacrifice of Christ on the cross—and that, in accordance with this inexorable betrayal, God created humans as male and female so that they could procreate in a manner suitable to their sinful state. On such an interpretation, Gregory intimates that humans would have procreated in some other, less sinful way had they not sinned, yet God knew that they would sin, so he created them with their fallen nature in mind. Behr, however, suspects that this is not what Gregory actually means by his aforementioned comments on Genesis 1:27.

Instead, Behr proposes that Gregory identifies in the text of Genesis 1:27 a process by which the human creature becomes fully itself. If the imago Dei is the proper end of the human creature, then the human must necessarily start from someplace else—namely, as either male or female. In Christ, to be sure, there is neither male nor female, yet humans born of the flesh are not, as such, Christlike—they must become like Christ, as mentioned earlier. Humans must, in the sacramental vocabulary of Christian baptism, die to their earthly selves in order to be born into their divine-like selves, and in this baptism—which is no mere one-off event, but rather a ceaseless, iterative process over the course of the Christian life, taken up each day and at every moment—transcend the division between male and female to become like Christ—that is, to become most fully human. Thus in Adam, the first man, there is male and female, yet in Christ, the new man, there is neither male nor female, and this represents a maturation or journey by which humans conform to the imago Dei. Behr also adds that, on this interpretation, Christian matrimony is not, as is likewise commonly assumed, ultimately about procreation or the space in which permissible sexual activity can take place, but about martyrdom—that is, it concerns the union in which one learns to lay down one’s life in voluntary, self-sacrificial love for the sake of one’s friend in imitation of Christ on the cross. By martyrdom in the context of marital union and friendship, one transcends the division between male and female and becomes more fully human—more accurately, one dies to one’s self in Adam and is born to one’s self in Christ. If this interpretation is plausible, then Gregory does not so much seek to explain why God created humans as male and female, but rather aims to demonstrate that God created humans with initial and final states, where the former is not the result of sinfulness but, rather, the point of necessary departure on each of our respective life journeys with the imago Dei and Christ in view.

[Wagner Floriani · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thought provoking throughout. Real long stretches where it’s just a slog of metaphysical brain workouts. Insightful for those considering the nature of man and the image of God.

[Ted · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gregory aims at completing St. Basil the Great's commentary on the creation of the world by focusing specifically on the creation of humans. I was reading this time with a focus on "science" - what "science" does Gregory mention and can we extrapolate from that how he might have viewed modern science. He accepts without question the science of his day - all physical things being made from the four "elements" - fire, water, earth and air. He accepts the science of his day on human anatomy. It certainly makes me think he would also have accepted modern science as well and attempted to adapt his interpretation of humans to modern science. [I am often amazed at how much the ancients had figured out about the world through observation - while lacking any modern instruments and technology. They totally used the lens of the science of their day to interpret things, which makes me think they would have done the same in the modern world].

[Squire Whitney: Hufflepuff Book Reviwer · Rating 3 out of 5]

DNF. I am a huge admirer of Gregory of Nyssa’s theology, and I have all the respect in the world for his immense legacy. Some of Nyssa's quotes shine as stunningly beautiful. His contributions toward the doctrine of the Trinity and his related work in formulating the Nicene Creed proved ever-so influential. Nyssa’s effort to interpret all of scripture through the lens of God being love is revolutionary, and his success in setting forth a theologically robust understanding of universal reconciliation is second-to-none. Having lauded Nyssa thoroughly, I will admit that I wish that I could get more invested in his actual work; I end up becoming deeply bored upon every attempt to read one of his books or even to listen to one via audio. His theology is superb, but the way that he goes about building up to or establishing his views leaves a great deal to be desired for me, personally.

[Mina Sherif Soliman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gregory of Nyssa speaks of a spiritual food that only the soul can comprehend, the bread of life, that was present in Eden, and that humanity rejected arrogantly seeking to learn the discernment of the good and evil in order to choose evil over and over again.

He proposes that by abiding by the scriptures and reuniting with "the bread of life" we might regain our divine-like prototype state as originally created in the image of the Divine.
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[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although this book has its dull moments it also has enough to keep my interest. Basically, it is what the title says, an inquiry into the making of man at the creation and then further about man, the soul, the mind, and the body. Some parts are with insight and what you expect from a learned man of the church, while others are just observations about the nature of man.

[Luke Merrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found the mode of Gregory’s thought to be brilliantly refreshing. It seems as if many modern theologians spend much of their time explaining rather simple concepts in overly complicated ways - either to explain apparent contradictions within their hermeneutic or because they simply don't grasp the simplicity of christianities first principles.

Gregory’s knowledge of the human body was surprising to me as he scientifically explored the various interior and exterior functions of the human body. I was not aware that such knowledge was available in the 4th Century. Though it truly made me consider the construction of the body. It is not as if God created the world in a stable state with the right physical properties then engineered humanity to fit. Instead, every element of creation is in and of itself perfectly and intentionally designed in unison with the whole. We should not seek then to understand the necessity of the various physical properties of created phenomena but rather wonder at the alignment of such things. We do not need to have many internal organs, but we were moulded like beautiful sculptures - painted with intentionality. This means that we shouldn't ask how we exist, but why. Why do we and the world around us exist in the way it does?

As he moved on to consider the functions of a soul in relation to the body he suggested that they were inseparable. The soul is not a product of the body, nor is the soul a ghost in the machine but somehow they are entwined together in their growth. This was illuminative as elsewhere he has spoken of the soul as the ethos (or intentionality) of the painter and the portrait as the body.

I especially enjoyed his summary of evil as a withdrawal of the good and not as an opposing power. This leads to some interesting conclusions that I have considered before. Namely, if evil is ultimately a privation of the good, it is limited. Where as “the good” is infinite. This would suggest that given enough time one could make all the wrong choices possible that would lead them to the true source of satisfaction. In the end God will be the only thing we can choose.

His grasp on the image of God totally blew me away. He defined it not as an individual reality or even a capacity for divine imitation but instead leads us to consider how Adam is the image of God. This is not to say that only the first man was and we are not, but that we all pre-existed in Adam and all humanity, together, is the image of God. Of course this has a deep significance for the Apokatastasis but It really seems to fit with Paul’s understanding of Jesus being the “New Adam”. All in Adam die but all those in Christ live and Christ is in all people! This is because he is the image of God.

Finally there was some language surrounding the fall of humanity toward a more butish state. He argues that humanity was once like the angels but then due to the sin of humanity (Which God foreknew and purposed for our growth?) we took on more animalistic qualities that we know of as sin. From the present state we are supposed to rise out over and above the angels toward a more heavenly perfection. Due to the brief nature of this section it was hard to ascertain the angle he was working with but it was nonetheless a curious idea. I did not think that this was Gregory’s hint as a sympathetic semi-pelagian framework.

All in all, a brilliant piece of work. Could have done with a little less scientific exploration and would have loved for him to expand on certain points.

[Jesse · Rating 4 out of 5]

An admirably straightforward attempt to reconcile Platonic & Aristotelian ideas about the soul and the relation of mind to body with the creation myths of Genesis and the early Christian understanding of the bodily resurrection. I think he's correct that the order of creation in Genesis (inanimate things, plants, animals, man) is related to Aristotle's division of vegetative soul/sensitive soul/rational soul, but this seems sort of obvious. On the other hand, his interpretation of the apple, where "knowledge of good and evil" is turned into "acquaintance with evil that just happens to be mixed the good for the purpose of deceit" is a bit forced. Gregory's understanding of gender/procreation is also a bit strange, as his emphasis that man is made in god's image, combined with the refusal to find any duality in god, means that Man/Woman is part of the imperfections introduced to the image due to the fall - but why were Adam and Eve together in Eden?

While maintaining Plato's insistence that the mind is sovereign over the body, and that material/animal nature is evil, or at least only good if it serves higher principles, Gregory maintains a much closer connection of the body to the soul. The body and soul are co-created, instead of a Platonic cycle of reincarnation where the eternal soul descends to various bodies. In this sense it seems like the soul didn't really exist forever backwards in time, but Gregory doesn't seem bothered by this, perhaps because the form of the soul pre-existed in the mind of god. Further, the soul, despite being incorporeal, is so closely tied to the body that it marks every piece of bodily matter as its own, so that god can shepherd all of the separated matter of the decayed body back to you at the resurrection. I had a gruesome vision of all the lesser animals being ripped apart as the bits of people in them return... Why not simply argue that God recreates the body from new matter? Perhaps because that's not what happened in Jesus's miracles, especially the story of Lazarus, which Gregory places a lot of emphasis on when he's telling the reader how to convince non-Christians of the possibility of bodily resurrection.

There's also a bit of philosophical maneuvering that seemed quite ahead of its time, foreshadowing George Berkeley's idealist philosophy. In order to say that an immaterial thing, God, could create the material world, Gregory points out that whenever we talk about matter, we just identify various qualities, such as length, shape, and color. If one removed all qualities, matter would disappear. But qualities are themselves a mental abstraction! So as long as God is incorporeal but mental, he ought to be able to create qualities! This practically implies that matter isn't really real, that all things subsist in the mind of God, but Gregory doesn't reach those conclusions.

I actually picked up this book because I am planning on reading Eriugena, and I heard that Gregory introduced the idea that the unknowability of God implies the unknowability of Man, which Eriugena will make a great deal of. It's true that Gregory mentions this, but almost offhandedly, doing nothing with it. I wonder if he writes more about it elsewhere, or if it can be traced to any earlier philosophers who cared more about it.

[Nicolay Hvidsten · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gregory of Nyssa was a pretty impressive guy.

He made the Christian case for the abolition of slavery about 1400 years before the British Empire came to the same conclusion—likewise motivated by Christian values. The abolition movement in the U.S. was also heavily influenced by Quakers—Tom Holland (the historian, not Spider-Man) has argued that quaker Benjamin Lay was the first abolition activist—so the Christian ideological foundations are readily apparent.

Regardless, it's still incredibly impressive that Gregory made the arguments as early as the 4th century.

Of course, his plea fell on deaf ears—a world where slavery has been the norm for thousands of years is not so easily changed. Indeed, there are many places in the world where the abominable practice is still in effect, but I digress.

Gregory of Nyssa and his brother Basil were a rather formidable duo in early Christendom. They comprised two thirds of what is now known as the Cappadocian Fathers, all of whom made important contributions to Christian theology.

This particular book gives the Christian rationale for the creation of man, and provides an epistemic foundation for the origin of the body, mind, and soul. Gregory particularly emphasised the difference between different kinds of men: carnal (those driven by appetite and pleasure, i.e. hedonists), natural (those who see men as fleshy automata, basically modern atheists), and spiritual (those who believe in a soul).

My favourite part was Gregory's defence of free will, given that God exists and is omnipotent—namely that it doesn't necessarily follow that because an all-powerful being could ensure people only did good, that because all people don't do good, then either (1) the all-powerful being does not exist, or (2) he's a bit of a prick.

Indeed, a big point of Christianity is that people are shitty by nature. The Bible goes out of its way to demonstrate that the very best—Abraham, David, Solomon, even Moses—were all flawed.

The point Christianity makes—and Gregory emphasises—is that people can choose not to be shitty, and that's the entire point. By making an active choice in the matter, they behave according to the will of God. And without free will, that choice becomes meaningless. As Gregory himself puts it:

"(...) for virtue is no voluntary thing, subject to no dominion: that which is the result of compulstion and force cannot be virtue."

Or, as John Steinbeck would put it: Timshel!

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

An exceptional work! I loved his life of moses where he had several wonderful parallels between the similarities of moses with Christ. For example when the hebrews are attacked by serpents in the wilderness journey, and moses lifts up a serpent on his staff and holds it up in the air so all the Hebrews who looked upon the staff with faith were saved is identical to the symbolism of the cross where all people who turn towards God and look upon Christ on the cross are saved. He had some allegories that were a stretch, but I loved that book so much that I decided to read many more of his books including this one on the making of man.

Overall I agreed with this book on the making of man. My favorite part is his explanation of original sin ultimately being the sin of vanity where man was so vain that he believed that if he ate of the forbidden fruit that he would be like God. This echoes the book of ecclesiastics where it says I have seen all the deeds under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a chasing after wind. As ecclesiastics continues, the only meaning of life is to fear God and obey his natural law. Adam and Eve failed to obey.

I found the section on the resurrection of the body interesting. I am too neoplatonist or too much of a mystic to believe in the resurrection of physical bodies, the whole goal of the spiritual journey is to gain unity with the One and forever be in his court which is a spiritual realm not another physical reality like we are trapped in. Both Gregory and st. augustine strongly argue for the resurrection of the body at the end of time and use for scriptural evidence of the several miracles of Christ raising the dead and in the prophet of Ezekiel where God takes the prophet to a desert area and shows him a miracle where the bones in the sand join back together and flesh and the breath of life return to them and the point is that God can resurrect the dead. But I just can't buy a physical resurrection where our new bodies are incurroptable in God's new creation in the book of revelation. I can only comprehend spiritual resurrection.

The only part that I did not care for was the ending section where he gets into anatomy and classical medicine. I have read Hippocrates, Galen, and Aristotle's biological tracts and classical and medieval medicine overall are ridiculous in their understanding of the biological functions of man, but they didn't know better. For example where does the mind exist in the body? Is it the heart, brain, or as Gregory proposes in the entire body.

[Peter Stephan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great meditation on the opening chapters of Genesis. For those wanting to read it, it's worth mentioning that this is supposed to be an addition to St. Basil's Hexaemeron. However I didn't read that beforehand and didn't feel like I was missing anything important. Definitely worth reading if you're interested in the meaning of our existence, what we are made of and our relation to God and nature. I also found the last chapter rather entertaining, which describes the human body from a medical point of view.

[Hope Helms · Rating 4 out of 5]

A favorite ancient read with some fascinating concepts I thoroughly enjoyed and a splash of weird.

Concepts that stuck out: hands being important proof of our uniqueness and being intelligent beings…a trickle down proof of us being made in the image of God and the divine mind. Additional takeaways on leadership and how our unique bodily limits as humans push us to creative dependence in our exercise of dominion.

[Aaron Irlbacher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting read. Gregory was a brilliant theologian and this book is very interesting. The highlight of this book in my opinion was his brief but excellent discussion of theology proper. It’s interesting to think that modern evangelicals who affirm social Trinitarian models imagine Gregory is one of them.

[Dan Glover · Rating 4 out of 5]

Even when I did not agree, I was challenged and edified. Such rich reflection on the creation of humanity, our purpose, our functioning, our bearing God's image, the fall and sin's affect on humanity, what we share with the rest of creation and what is different, and so much more.

[Jon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Works like this critique you - not the other way around.

[Chandler Collins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible work! A very foundational and primary resource for understanding the development of theological anthropology in church history.

[Adonis McReynolds · Rating 4 out of 5]

The greatest book regarding the Christian understanding of human nature before and after sin. Truly brilliant! ☦️

[Brian Glass · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a profoundly different way to look at the world than the modern epicurean worldview. I spent a great deal of time studying Chinese medicine years ago and thought I was experiencing an understanding from an alien culture. While that was certainly partially true, what I've found as I've read the Fathers, is that I was merely experiencing a more ancient understanding. Of course, the modern worldview is equally ancient in that it is rooted in Epicurean teachings from before Christ. This book is an indispensable tour through the anthropology of the Fathers of the Church. In my mind, perhaps the most stark difference between the modern view and the Orthodox view is the role of the soul or spirit. Modern science really doesn't account for the existence of the soul and that is where it makes its biggest mistake.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

The church fathers offer such a different way of looking at some, to us, familiar subjects. In 30 chapters Gregory ranges from how our bodies are made up, to the resurrection of the body.
A consistent theme, is that man is the king of creation and therefore possesses certain qualities as the image of God. Man is therefore a beholder and the Lord.
God is the Artificer them and is made after his image in virtue, righteousness, and immortality.
There are numerous quirky statements and comments and observations which make the fathers worthwhile.

[Brian Collins · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book includes some excellent material on the image of God in man, the creation blessing, and the distinction of man from animals. However, is efforts to argue that humans would have reproduced asexually if they had not fallen is a casebook example of allowing one's cultural situation drive one's interpretation.