On the Soul and the Resurrection: St Gregory of Nyssa

Popular Patristics Series #12

by Gregory of Nyssa

The resurrection of the body, perhaps more than any other Christian doctrine, requires us to face the implications of faith for our personal lives and for our understanding of the world. This issue faced St Paul in his dealing with the early church and also troubles St Gregory of Nyssa in the fourth century AD. St Gregory, educated in the prevailing Greek philosophical system, yearned to synthesize his faith and his philosophy. Struggling with the issue of resurrection, he followed Plato's example and dramatized the interior workings of his mind in dialogue form, in which his elder sister St Macrina plays the role of teacher. The position which Gregory and Macrina eventually reach corresponds essentially to that of St Paul, namely that our bodies will rise again as bodies, but in a finer and more glorious form than we have now. Expressing this belief in terms of Greek silence, the

Genres: Theology, Christianity, Philosophy, Religion, Nonfiction, Christian, Spirituality

126 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 379

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

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you’ve read any of my reviews, you know I love historical theology and specifically Gregory Of Nyssa and the Cappadocians. This work could be seen as a companion to On the Making of Man and the two have been published together.

I first read this in 2019 and reread it over the course of the past two weeks. I found it much more profound and easier to read this time, using a physical copy. My first reading was the old Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers series that was translated in the late 1800s. You can get all 38 or so volumes of this for like 3 bucks as an e-version. But I think it is worth it to, if you’re into this sort of thing, invest in better copies and translations.

Gregory is famous (well, as much as an early church father can be famous) for teaching universal reconciliation: once evil is eliminated from creation, God is everywhere and all are saved in Jesus. This idea is apparent here, though do not think this means there is no justice or hell. For Gregory, hell becomes more like purgatory, as perhaps people, with their wills cleansed, can become virtuous.

This work is a dialogue between Gregory and his sister Macrina. Macrina is the wise teacher, which is a good reminder that there are Church Mothers as well as Church fathers.

Here are some highlights:

The impulses of the soul can be used for good or evil:

“This being so, we shall not pronounce these emotions of the sou, which lie in the power of their possessors for good or ill, to be either virtue or vice. But, whenever their impules is towards what is noble, then they become matter for praise, as his desire did to Daniel, and his anger to Phineas, and their grief to those who nobly mourn. But if they incline to base ness, then these are, and they are called, bad passions”

One day evil will be expunged and God will be all-in all:

“Signifitying in that passage that when evil shall have been some day annihilated in the long revolutions of the ages, nothing shall be left outside the world of goodness, but that even from those evil spirits shall rise in harmony the confession of Christ’s Lordship.”

Grow in virtue and goodness while you can, so you do not have to suffer long tortures in hell:

“Those still living in the flesh must as much as ever they can separate and free themselves in a way from its attachments by virtuous conduct, in order that after death they may not need a second death to cleanse them from the remnants that are owing to this cement of the flesh, and, when once the bonds are loosed from around the soul, her soaring up to the Good may be swift and unimpeded, with no anguish of the body to distract her”

God is the ultimate Love and Beauty:

“Love, therefore, is the foremost of all excellent achievements and the first of the commandments of the law. If ever, then, the soul reaches this goal, it will be in no need of anything else; it will embrace that plenitude of things which are, whereby alone it seems in any way to preserve within itself the stamp of God’s actual blessedness. For the life of the Supreme Being is love, seeing that the Beautiful is necessarily lovable to those who recognize it, and Deity does recognize it, and so this recognition becomes love, that which He recognizes being made beautiful. . . In fact, in the Beautiful no limit is to be found so that love should have to cease with any limit of the Beautiful. . . Then that good will go unchecked into infinity. Moreover, as every being is capable of attracting its like, and humanity is, in a way, like God, as bearing within itself some resemblance to its Prototype, the soul is by a strict necessity attracted to the kindred Deity”

More on evil being purged:

“Not in hatred or revenge for a wicked life, to my thinking, does God bring upon sinners those painful dispensations; He is only claiming and drawing to Himself whatever, to please Him, came into existence. But while He for a noble end is attracting the soul to Himself, the Fountain of all Blessedness, it is the occasion necessarily to the being so attracted of a state of torture. Just as those who refine gold from dross which it contains not only get this base alloy to melt in the fire, but are obliged to melt pure gold along with the alloy, and then while this last is being consumed the gold remains, so, while evil is being consumed in the purgatorial fire, the soul hat is welded to this evil must inevitably be in the fire too, until the spurious material alloy is consumed and annihilated by this fire.. . In such a manner, I think, we may figure to ourselves the agonized struggle of that soul which has wrapped itself up in earthly material passions, when God is drawing it, His own to one, to Himself, and the foreign matter, which has somehow grown into its substance, has to be scraped from it by main force, and so occasions it that keen intolerable anguish”

God created to fill creation with God:

“It was for this that intelligent beings came into existence; namely, that the riches of the Divine blessings should not lie idle. The all-creating Wisdom fashioned these souls, these receptacles with free wills, as vessels as it were, for this very purpose, that there should be some capacities able to receive his blessing and become continually larger with the inpouring of the stream”

Evil is not part of our natural original existence:
“If God really superintends our live, thens, confessedly, evil cannot begin it. But if we do owe our birth to evil, then we must go on living in completely uniformity with it”

All creation will know God:

“His end is one, and one only; it is this: when the complete whole of our race shall have been perfected from the first man to the last, - some having at once in this life been cleansed from evil, others having afterwards int he necessary periods been healed by the Fire, others having in their life here been unconscious equally of good and of evil, - to offer to everyone of us participation int eh blessings which are in Him, which the Scripture tells us, ‘eye hath not seen, nor ear heard,’ nor thought ever reached. But this is nothing else, as I at least understand it, but to be in God Himself; for the God which is above hearing and eye and heart must be that GOod which transcends the universe”

Overall, a taste of historical theology to challenge many accepted views. If that’s your thing, check it out.

[Scriptor Ignotus · Rating 4 out of 5]

“So, you see, if our soul should become free of its attachment to the irrational emotions either by our effort in this life or by the purification hereafter, it will in no way be hindered from the contemplation of the beautiful. For beauty has in its own nature an attractiveness for everyone who looks at it. So if the soul becomes clean of all evil, it will exist entirely in beauty. The divine is beautiful by its own nature. The soul will be joined with the divine through its purity, adhering to that which is proper to it. If this should happen, there will no longer be a need for the impulse of desire to lead us toward the beautiful.”

“[The soul] will go back to itself and see clearly what it is in its nature, and through its own beauty it will look upon the archetype as if in a mirror and an image. We can truly say that the accurate likeness of the divine consists in our soul’s imitation of the superior Nature.”

“Since, then, the soul becomes godlike when it has put off all the varied impulses of its nature, and when it has passed beyond desire it has entered into that towards which it was previously being raised by desire, it no longer gives any place in itself either to hope or to memory. It has what it was hoping for, and it drives out memory from its mind in its occupation with the enjoyment of good things. Thus it imitates the superior life, being conformed to the properties of the divine Nature, so that nothing else is left to it but the disposition of love, as it becomes attached in its nature to the beautiful. This is love, the interior attachment to that which is pleasing. So when the soul […] finds that truly simple and immaterial good, the one thing which is really lovable and desirable, it attaches itself to it and combines with it through the impulse and operation of love. It conforms itself to that which is always being grasped and found, and becomes through its likeness to the good that which the nature is in which it participates […]

"The divine apostle introduced us to this doctrine also, when he predicted a cessation and conclusion of all our eager efforts […] but of love only he did not find a limit […] There is no limit to the operation of love, since the beautiful has no limit, so that love might cease with the limit of the beautiful.”

“When [the sinner] has thus put away all that is alien to him (which is sin) and taken off the shameful garment of his debts, he enters into freedom and confidence. Freedom consists in becoming like that which has no master and is under its own control. This likeness was given to us by God at the beginning, but has been veiled by the shame of our debts. All freedom is one in nature and belongs together. Consequently, therefore, everything which is free will be joined with its like. Virtue has no master. Therefore everything free will be in virtue, for that which is free also has no master. But indeed the divine Nature is the source of all virtue. Hence those who are released from evil will be in the divine Nature, so that, as the apostle says, “God may be all in all.” […] [T]he divine Nature will become everything for us and will replace everything, distributing itself appropriately for every need of that life […] He who becomes all will also be in all. In this the apostle seems to me to teach the complete annihilation of evil.”

“Dear people […] You do not know towards what goal each part of the universe is being directed […] Our rational nature came to birth for this purpose, so that the wealth of divine good things might not be idle. A kind of vessels and voluntary receptacles for souls were fashioned by the Wisdom which constructed the universe, in order that there should be a container to receive good things, a container which would always become larger with the addition of what would be poured into it. For the participation in the divine good is such that it makes anyone into whom it enters greater and more receptive. As it is taken up it increases the power and magnitude of the recipient, so that the person who is nourished always grows and never ceases from growth. Since the fountain of good things flows unfailingly, the nature of the participants who use all the influx to add to their own magnitude (because nothing of what is received is superfluous or useless) becomes at the same time both more capable of attracting the better and more able to contain it.”

[Jacob Aitken · Rating 4 out of 5]

St Gregory of Nyssa. On the Soul and Resurrection. ed. Catherine Roth. Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1993.

The problem: The soul is either material or immaterial. If material, it is dissolved with the body. If immaterial, it cannot be contained in the elements of the universe (Roth 15). And if everything has elements, and the soul does not, then the soul cannot be anywhere.

To what degree was Gregory a Platonist? Let’s ignore the question and highlight just one part: While Plato said the body was a prison, Gregory changes body for “flesh” (sarx), giving it a more biblical feel.

Goal: To provide Gregory comfort in Basil’s death

The proper view of the soul promotes virtue (Cross Reference to Schaff edition, Nyssa 431).

Nyssa anticipates Leibniz’s law of the identity of indiscernibles: (x)(y)[(x=y)--->(P)(Px<-->Py)]. In other words, if the soul is something other than these elements, then it isn’t identical with them.

The God-World Relation

God encompasses all things (432). Indeed, there is a “universal harmony” allowing for “measured intervals.” In fact, “man is a little world in himself and contains all the elements which go to complete the universe” (433).

What is the Soul?

“The soul is an essence created, and living, and intellectual, transmitting from itself to an organized and sentient body the power of living” (433).

Nyssa and his interlocutor bring up analogies between soul, mind, and God (436ff). He does not identify the three but says “one thing is like another.” Prototype and Image. Despite his reputation, Nyssa rejects the Platonic metaphor of the chariot, choosing rather the “divine axiom that there is no excellence in the soul which is not a property as well of the Divine nature. For he who declares the soul to be God’s likeness asserts that anything foreign to HIm is outside the limits of the soul (439).

The Condition of the Soul After Death

Hades is the transition to the Unseen world. Macrina is quick to point out that when we say a soul is “in” Hades we do not mean so spatially. In discussing how the soul will be reunited with the body (e.g., the elements), Gregory suggests that the soul is “stationed like a guard over its own” (Roth 68). That might explain the phenomenon of ghosts, but it doesn’t do justice to the souls being in Abraham’s bosom. Gregory (or Macrina) is aware of that challenge and points out that whatever else is true in the parable, it can’t be about corporeal bodies (since the body is in the tomb). The gulf, then, is not a physical chasm, but a “barrier which prevents incompatible things from coming together” (70). It couldn’t be a physical chasm for the obvious fact that a bodiless spirit could easily fly across it!

The Purification of the Soul

Gregory notes that souls that are too attached to fleshly desires retain the form of the flesh after their passing. This might explain the idea of why ghosts resemble their former lives (76).

Macrina divides the souls faculties accordingly: the godlike power is that of contemplation (77). Indeed, “the accurate likeness of the Divine consists in our soul’s imitation of the superior Nature” (78).

Why is Purification Painful?

It’s painful to remove physical attachments from the soul. But the nature of virtue should spur us onward. Gregory notes that “all freedom is one in nature” and “Virtue has no master. Therefore, everything free will be in virtue, for that which is free also has no master” (86).

Transmigration of Souls

Gregory has to cut reincarnation off at the pass, since it seems his Platonic dialogue is moving in that direction. Macrina points out that by going to lower matter in order to be raised up, reincarnation has to have matter purifying the soul.

The Origin of the Soul

Gregory holds to creationism as opposed to traducianism (98).

[M.G. Bianco · Rating 5 out of 5]

St. Gregory of Nyssa writes a Socratic dialogue in which he plays the part of an interlocutor and his older sister, St. Macrina, plays the part of Socrates. They discuss the soul, its nature and origin, and the resurrection.

It is fascinating how much ground the early Church shares with Plato and the Greek philosophers, and yet how much of Greek philosophy is rejected or corrected. The Church did not, it seems, accept Greek philosophy wholesale, but neither did it reject it wholesale.

The answers to the questions about the soul and the resurrection are thorough, although that doesn't necessarily mean they will be satisfying to all. Some questions, they admit, cannot be answered, but many can. They confront many of the attempts at "reductio ad absurdum" that those who deny the existence of the soul or resurrection make. But I am sure there are other questions those would make that are not answered by Sts. Gregory and Macrina.

All in all, this is a fascinating example of a Church Father taking the form and ideas of Plato and using them in his own pursuit of truth and Christian doctrine.

[Ted · Rating 4 out of 5]

Any of the writings in which Gregory quotes the teachings of his sister Macrina are interesting to me. You do learn a lot about what science they knew or believed - they knew a lot: the moon reflects the earth's sunlight, the sun must be many times larger than the earth, the earth is an orb, night time is nothing more than being in the shadow of the earth when the sun is shining on the other side of the earth. And all this is being a taught by a 4th Century woman. I think the footnotes and introduction by translator Catherine Roth are priceless. Roth points out some inconsistencies in the text, glosses regarding certain bible passages as well as ideas that wouldn't sit well with modern readers.

[Caspar "moved to storygraph" Bryant]

A really solid medieval I approve. Much seeming ahead of time. The literal second sentence of the Argument oddly functions as a brilliant explanation of the famous Ivan Karamazov morality dictum which is constantly misconstrued it's one of those.

Gregory does a lovely job tying the soul here and there it's rather Platonic for a bit and I appreciate that though there is an amusing moment in the dialogue where the Teacher declares fuck all that philosophical history we're going solo. Good for her

[Jarrod Holt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Exceptional and challenging read. A contemplation and reflection on the mysteries of God, primarily the soul and resurrection, and His creation, which filled me with hope for the glory to come.

Written in dialogue form (a Platonic thing I believe) between St. Gregory and his mother (?) Macrina, who is said to be one of the great spiritual mothers alongside Augustine's mother Monica. Mom goals for sure.

Because this work was so good, and the translation so beautiful, rather than attempting to write a less than average review, I'm just gonna drop some fire quotes, and by quotes I mean paragraphs, to look back to when necessary, to wrap my mind around this entire work, and simply to enjoy. Here we go.

Gregory's definition of the soul:
"the soul is an essence which has a beginning; it is a living and intellectual essence which by itself gives to the organic and sensory body the power of life and reception of sense-impressions as long as the nature which can receive these maintains its existence."

On the emotions:
"Therefore if a person uses these emotions according to the right principle, receiving them in himself without falling into their power, he will be like some king who, by using the many hands of his servants for assistance, will easily accomplish his virtuous purpose. If, however, as when slaves revolt against their owner, he falls into the power of his emotions and is enslaved by them, succumbing ignobly to servile mindlessness, so that he choices a puppet of those impulses which by nature are subjected to him, he will be drawn inevitably to those actions to which he forced by the domination of the passions which control him. If this is true, we shall declare that these emotions are neither virtuous nor wicked in themselves, since they are impulse of the soul which lie in the power of the users to serve good or otherwise. When their movement is toward the better, we shall declare that they are material for paise, as desire was for Daniel, anger for Phineas, and grief for the one who mourns rightly. If, on the other hand, their inclination is towards the worse, then they become passion are named accordingly."

On the purification of the soul:
"So you see, if our soul should become free of its attachment to the irrational emotions whether by our effort in this life or by the purification hereafter, it will in no way be hindered from the contemplation of the beautiful. For beauty has in its own nature an attractiveness for everyone who looks at it ("beauty will save the world"). So if the soul comes clean of all evil, it will exist entirely in beauty. The divine is beautiful by its own nature. The soul will be joined with the divine through its purity, adhering to that which is proper to it. If this should happen, there will no longer be a need for the impulse of desire to lead us toward the beautiful. He who passes his life in darkness will desire the light; (SO FLIPPING GOOD) if he should come into the light, attainment will replace desire. The possibility of attainment makes desire useless and vain. Therefore the soul will not receive any disadvantage in respect to the participation in the good, if it should be freed from these impulses. It will go back to itself and see clearly what it is in its nature, and though its own beauty it will look upon the archetype as if in a mirror and an image. We can truly say that the accurate likeness of the divine consists in our soul's imitation of the superior Nature."

More on the purification of the soul, specifically love:
"The divine apostle introduced us to this doctrine also, when he predicted a cessation and conclusion of all our eager efforts, even those which are directed towards the good, but of love only he did not find a limit: for he says, 'prophecies will pass away, and knowledge will pass away, but love never ends, which is equivalent to being always the same. But when he says that faith and hope remain along with love, again he rightly puts love ahead of the the others; for hope acts so long as the enjoyment of what is hoped for is not present, and faith in the same way becomes a support for the uncertainty of the things hoped for. This is how he definee it when he said, 'faith is the assurance of things hoped for.' But when the thing hoped for comes, all the others grow quiet while the operation of love remains, not finding anything to take its place. For this reason also it has the primacy among all virtuous actions as well as among the commandments of the law. So if the soul should ever reach this goal, it will have no need of the others, as it embraces the fullness of existing things and seems somehow alone to preserve in itself the impression of divine blessedness. For the life of the superior nature is love, since the beautiful is in every respect lovable for those who know it, and the Divine knows Itself. But knowledge becomes love, because that which is known is beautiful in nature. Insolent satiety does not touch the truly beautiful. Since satiety does not cut off the attachment of love to the beautiful, the divine life will always operate through love, the divine life which is beautiful by nature and from its nature is lovingly disposed towards the beautiful. There is no limit to the operation of love, since the beautiful has no limit, so that love might cease with the limit of the beautiful is limited only by its opposite. But whatever by its nature cannot admit anything worse will proceed towards the limitless and unbounded good."

On why purification is painful:
"We should talk to them like this, my teacher said. Dear people, it useless for you to grumble and complain at the necessary order and sequence of events. You do not know towards what goal each part in the universe is being directed, because everything must be united to the divine Nature in a certain order and sequence according the skillful wisdom of the Governor. Our rational nature came to brith for this purpose, so that the wealth of divine good things might not be idle. A kind of vessels and voluntary receptacles for souls were fashioned by the Wisdom which constructed the universe, in order that there should be a container to receive good things, a container which would always become larger with the addition of what would be poured into it. For the participation in the divine good is such that it makes anyone into whom it enters greater and more receptive. As it is taken up it increases the power and magnitude of the recipient, that the person who is nourished always grows and never ceases from growth. Since the fountain of good things flows unfailingly, the nature of the participants who use all the influx to add to their own magnitude (because nothing of what is received is superfluous or useless) becomes at the same time both more capable of attracting the better and more able to contain it. Each adds to the other: the one who is nourished gains greater power from the abundance of good things, and the nourishing supply rises in flood to match the increase of the one who is growing. Those whose growth is not cut off by any limit will surely continue to increase in this manner. Then, when such prospects lie before us, do you complain because nature proceeds by the road which is ordained for us towards its proper goal? Otherwise our course cannot reach those good things, if we have not shaken off from our soul this heaviness which weighs us down (I mean this earthly burden). Unless we have been cleansed by better pursuits form the attachment to it which we have acquired in this life, we cannot be united in purity to that which we resemble. But if you have some fondness for this body, and you are sorry to be unyoked from acts you love, do not be in despair about this either. For although this bodily covering is now dissolved by death, you will see it woven again from the same elements, not indeed with its present coarse and heavy texture, but with the thread respun into something subtler and lighter, so that the beloved body may be with you and be restored to you again in better and even more lovable beauty."

On the doctrine of resurrection (and a good conclusion on the matter):
"I am not able to orate against your speech in the same style. The truth about this is stored up in the hidden treasury of wisdom and will be disclosed at the time when we are taught the mystery of the resurrection in deed, when we will no longer need words to reveal what we hope for. If at night wakeful people discuss at length what the light of the sun is like, the grace of the rays by its mere appearance makes vain the verbal description; in the same way every reasoning which conjectures about the further restoration will be proved worthless when what we expect comes to us in experience."

[Ethan Zimmerman · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this for some research I'm doing. There's a lot to love about this treatise. It's easy to forget that some Christian claims are truly scandalous. God became a man? Humans will be bodily resurrected? God will prevail over all evil and suffering? But these things are at the core of the Christian faith and yet are profoundly mysterious.

I'll name a couple things I loved. 1) Gregory Nyssen, one of the greatest theologians in Christian history, repeatedly names his sister Macrina as his teacher. We might not have this bastion of orthodoxy without his sister. 2) Evil is finite and has no ontological substance. It necessarily must cease to exist. 3) God's purpose for humanity is complete purification and healing from all evil.

I recommend this relatively short and highly accessible work.

[Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

I actually find it kind of hard to believe that I had never really heard of this before quite recently (in reading Hosle's book on the philosophical dialogue) -- it has so much going for it that is interesting and original. For one thing, it is a direct response, written by one of the more significant Fathers of the Church, to Plato's Phaedo, contrasting two conceptions of the philosophical life, two conceptions of immortality, and two conceptions of the cosmos. Despite a very Neo-Platonic feel, at the heart of the work Gregory inverts a great deal of the Platonic picture and fights against central aspects of its view of the world and the human person.

Gregory of Nyssa, for those who don't know, was one of the great "Cappadocian Fathers," along with his brother Basil the Great and Gregory Nazianzus, who were instrumental in winning the day, alongside Athanasius, for Trinitarianism against the regent Arianism of their day. He is therefore regarded as one of the great guardians of what emerged as orthodox thought, yet in this dialogue some of his speculative theology is quite daring in its exploration of certain doctrines.

There are many works written in the early Christian era accomplishing that task; what makes _On the Soul and the Resurrection_ so distinctive in this genre is its mirroring of the Phaedo and, part and parcel of this, its silent reversal of Greek conceptions of gender. The dialogue takes place between Gregory and his sister Macrina, whom he frequently refers to simply as "The Teacher." She is dying, just as their brother Basil has recently died, and just as Socrates' final argument is made to console his followers before his death, by convincing them of the immortality of the soul, so Macrina must argue for the endurance of the soul and future resurrection of the person, body and soul, to console Gregory, who believes this "as a command" but without deep mental assent. Whereas women were purposefully excluded from the Phaedo -- Xanthippe is sent away, for despite Plato's arguments in the Republic for female philosopher kings, women never play a significant role in his dialogues, for he knew no female philosophers and had no real models to work from -- this argument takes place within a convent, where Gregory has been invited, and is led by a woman. This, I take it, is how Gregory understood "there is no male or female in Christ": gender is always considered real, but it is a reality of the body, and the image of God resides in the soul and the mind, which men and women share. Although this is extremely striking -- if Hosle is to be believed, there are almost zero philosophical dialogues where women play a significant role until the twentieth century; even Castiglione's The Book of the Courtier, a Renaissance dialogue, gives the Duchess Elisabetta Gonzaga and Emilia the role of guiding the conversation but they make no significant contributions to it, nor any of the other women present -- it is not a theme of the dialogue as such, and seems to have been a conclusion Gregory reached by experience rather than by theory.

The dialogue's structure largely mirrors that of the Phaedo, and many of the implausible ideas forwarded in that dialogue -- as noticed by many an undergraduate -- come under powerful attack by Macrina, though without ever directly mentioning the point. The dialogue even ends with Macrina thinking she has satisfied Gregory, only to be confronted by two new objections, Gregory's most powerful objections to the idea of a general resurrection, just as Socrates is confronted by Cebes and Simmias afresh at the end of the Phaedo. The dialogue, with a length of over a hundred pages, suffers for taking place between only two participants; one begins to weary of Gregory's complaints and wishes for Macrina to have the chance to confront a fresh perspective. In terms of form, the Phaedo is more successful.

The basic ideas of the dialogue are somewhat heterodox. If I understand it properly Gregory means to argue for a form of universalism, where hell is replaced by purgatory; there is no eternal punishments for anyone, only temporal suffering related to the process of purification, as the soul parts with invidious passions, with greater purification required for those who passions are most opposed to reason than those whose passions are less opposed. During this discussion it becomes clear that Gregory / Macrina lacks a sufficiently worked out conception of the will, because several matters seem obscure due to a lacking clear statement of its nature and functions. Surrounding this are extremely interesting ideas about the nature of the passions, sanctification, and the relationship of soul and body. There is also an interesting development of the macrocosm / microcosm analogy, which was far more plausible here than as I've seen it presented elsewhere.

I highly recommend the dialogue to anyone interested in the history of philosophical discussions of the soul and immortality or otherwise interested in the development of patristic thought and late Platonism. Gregory of Nyssa provides an extremely interesting viewpoint within the great conversation of Christian theology that it would benefit many to take consideration of; I therefore also recommend it to anyone trying to get a better understanding of theology within the Christian tradition of thought.

[Evan Jackson · Rating 5 out of 5]

“… not only that out humanity will be then changed into something nobler, but also that what we have therein to expect is nothing else than that which was at the beginning.”

Timeless classic. Happy to dip into St. Gregory of Nyssa for the first time. Obviously incorporates much of Platonic thought, but is deeply (and rewardingly) influenced by Aristotle as well.

[Dany · Rating 4 out of 5]

M… (On Epicurus) For, to him, the limit of reality was what is perceived and he made perception the measure of the comprehension of everything. He closed his eyes completely to the perceptions of the soul and was unable to recognize anything intelligible and incorporeal, just as someone kept in a little house is excluded from the sight of the wonders of the heavens, being cut off by the walls and roof from the sight of what is outside. There really are walls which prevent small-souled folk through their own fault from the contemplation of the intelligible. Such a person looks to the earth alone and to water and air and fire.

M… Thus, looking at the cosmos within us, we have no small starting point for conjecturing as to what is hidden through those things that appear.

M… What is made as an image is in every way similar to its archetype, intellectual if the archetype is intellectual, incorporeal, weightless, without di- mension. But, in keeping with the peculiar nature of the image, there is something different from the archetype, for it would not be an image if it were identical with it in all re- spects. The created nature shows this in the same features in which the archetype is seen in its uncreated nature. Just as when a small fragment of glass happens to be exposed to a ray, the entire circle of the sun is seen in it, not appearing in it in conformity with the sun's size; as the smallness of the fragment receives the reflection, so, in the smallness of our nature, the images of those ineffable peculiarities of the God- head shine forth. Consequently, the argument does not cut us off from a comprehension of the essence of the mind, since the subject has been clarified by our investigation; nor, again, does it lead us to equate the small and mortal with the unseen and incorruptible nature (of God), but it does affirm that its being is intelligible since it is an image of what is intelligible. Nevertheless, the image is not the same as the archetype.

M… Even now, it is possible to contemplate the sky in our thought and to reach the boundaries of the universe in our curiosity, and the contemplative faculty of our soul is not distended by such distances.

M… Therefore, if reason, which is the special ingredient of our nature, is in control of the
faculties imposed upon us externally, then, as scripture has made clear through the symbol of man being ordered to rule over all irrational things, none of these faculties within us is activated towards the service of evil-fear engenders obedi- ence, anger courage, cowardice caution; the desiring faculty fosters in us the divine and pure pleasures. However, if reason lets go of the reins like a charioteer who has become entangled in his chariot and is dragged along by it, being pulled wher- ever the irrational impulse of the team carries him, then, our faculties are turned towards emotions such as are seen among the irrational animals.

M. She, after a brief hesitation, said: 'Allow me to fashion an argument by analogy, to clarify what we have proposed, even if what I say does not seem to be pertinent. Imagine that in the art of painting colors could not only be mixed as they usually are, but that those already mixed could be separated from each other and that each color could return to its original hue In that case, if the white and the black or the red and the gold, or any other shade mixed to match the color of the object being painted, should be separated from its mixture with another color and should become itself again, we would say that the appearance of the color is no less known to the artist and that he does not forget the red or the black even if the various colors which entered into the mixture re- turn to their natural state. He recalls how the mixture of the colors was achieved and he knows that if one of the colors is washed out the original shade recurs. And if it is necessary for him to produce a similar effect again, the preparation of the mixture will be easy because of his previous experience. Now,' she said, 'if this analogy is pertinent to our argument, we must find out how to apply it to our proposition. Let the soul in the argument correspond to the art of painting and let the nature of the elements correspond to the colors. Let the mixing of the various different colors and their being resolved again into their individual shades correspond, ac- cording to our hypothesis, to the union and dissolution of the elements. Then, just as we said in our analogy that the painter is not ignorant of the color he had produced, even after it is dissolved into the individual colors, and he knows the red and the black and any other quality which produced the mixture, he knows what was in the mixture, what it has become, and what wiIl occur again if the colors are mixed again with each other in the same way. Thus the soul knows the individual elements which formed the body in which it dwelt, even after the dissolution of those elements. Even if nature drags them far apart from each other and, because of their basic differences prevents each of them from mixing with its opposite, the soul will, nevertheless, exist along with each element, fastening upon what is its own by its power of knowing it and it wiIl remain there until the union of the separated parts occurs again in the reforming of the dis- solved being which is properly called "the resurrection."

M. My teacher said: 'The following analogy could also be added reasonably to those already examined as proof that the soul has no difficulty in distinguishing from among the ele- ments what is her own and what is alien to her. Let us as- sume as a hypothesis that some clay exists for the making of pots, a large amount of it, some already prepared to be made into vases and the rest about to be. Let us design all the vases in different shapes, making one a wine jar, another an amphora, another a plate or a bowl or any other useful con- tainer. For the sake of argument, imagine that all the vases do not belong to one person, but that each is owned by a different person. As long as they remain intact, their owners recognize them and, even if they are broken, they are still identified by their owners, one fragment as belonging to a particular jug and another to a particular cup. And even if the clay of the fragments is mixed in with the unused clay, the owner still recognizes the parts already worked. In the same way, each man has his own form resulting from the union of elements. Molded from a common material, each being has its own individual form which differs greatly from the others in the same genus. When the dissolution occurs, the soul, which is the owner of the vase, recognizes its own in what remains, and it is not separated from it in the mass of the fragments even if the material of the elements is mixed with the unused matter. It always recognizes its own, what it was like when it had its form, and, even after the dissolution, recognizing the specific features surviving in the remains, it will not be in error about what belongs to it.'

M . She said: 'To this, we reply that the faculty of contempla- tion and of making distinctions is characteristic of the god- like portion of the soul, since, by these, we comprehend even the divine. When, either because of our effort here on earth or because of our purgation afterwards, our soul is freed from its association with the emotions, we shall in no way be impeded in our contemplation of the beautiful. The beautiful, by its very nature, is somehow attractive to everyone looking at it. If the soul is freed from all evil, it will exist entirely in the realm of the beautiful. But beautiful is the divine to which the soul will be joined on account of its purity, uniting with what is proper to it. If this occurs, there will no longer be a need for any movement based on desire to lead us to the beautiful. The one who lives in darkness has a desire for the light. If he comes into the light, the enjoyment of it follows upon the desire and the power of enjoying makes the desire useless and foolish. Nor, as far as our own participation in the good is concerned, will there be any penalty if the soul, freed from such impulses, turns back upon itself and sees itself clearly (that is, what its nature is) and looks towards the archetype because of its own beauty as if looking into a mirror and image. It is truly possible to say that in our soul's imitation of the nature above it, there is complete assimilation to the divine. The nature beyond thought, far removed from what is seen in us, leads its own life in some other manner and not as we do in our present life. Man, because it is his nature to be always in movement, is borne wherever the onset of choice takes him, for the soul is not affected in the same way by what comes before and what comes later. Hope is the guide in our motion forward and memory follows upon the motion effected by hope. If hope leads the soul to what is beautiful by nature, the motion of choice imprints a bright track upon our memory; but, if the soul is defrauded of what is better, hope having deluded it by some false image of beauty, shame follows upon what has happened. In this way, civil war is set up in the soul and memory fights with hope on the grounds that it has led the soul astray. (!!!!)

M… Therefore, since the divine nature is superior to every good and the good is altogether pleasing to the good, because of seeing itself, it desires what it has and has what it desires and takes into itself nothing from the outside. But outside of the divine nature, nothing exists except evil which (although this is paradoxical) has its existence in not existing. For what is the origin of evil if it is not the deprivation of being? What actually exists is the nature of the good. Consequently, that which does not exist in reality exists entirely in non-being. When the soul, separated from all the emotions, becomes god- like and goes beyond desire, existing in that towards which its desire tended, it no longer has in itself any place for hope or memory. For it has what it had hoped for and, because of its concentration on its enjoyment of the good, it drives memory from its thought. And thus it imitates the life beyond, being informed by the characteristics of the divine nature, so that none of the other things is left in it except the disposition to love and to attach itself naturally to the beautiful. For this is what love is: a state of mind directed towards what is pleas- ing to the mind. When the soul, having become simple and uncomplex and entirely god-like, discovers the good that is truly simple and incorporeal, the only thing in existence which is absolutely delectable and loveable, it clings to it and mingles itself with it through its affectionate movement and activity. It conforms itself to that which is always compre- hended and discovered and, once it has become, through its similarity to the good, identical with the nature of what it participates in, desire is no longer present in it because there is no need of any of the goods. Consequently, the soul in this state of abundance expels from itself the desiring motion and disposition which existed only when what was desired was not present. The divine apostle led the way in such an idea when he predicted the end and overthrow of all the things we desire (even those which aim at what is better) and found love alone to be without limit. For he says: "Prophecies will dis- appear and knowledge will be destroyed, but charity never fails,"20 which is equal to saying that love is always the same. And when he says that faith and hope remain with love,21 he again places love above these and rightly so. For hope moti- vates a person as long as he is not enjoying what is hoped for. In the same way, faith is a support of the uncertainty of what is hoped for. This is the way he defines it: "Faith is the substance of things to be hoped for."22 When what is hoped for arrives, the other emotions desist, and what remains is the activity connected with love which finds nothing to succeed it. On this account, love is first among all the activities con- nected with virtue and all the commandments of the law. If, therefore, the soul ever attains this goal, it will need none of the others, having reached the fullness of its being, and it seems that it alone preserves in itself the character of the divine blessedness. And knowledge becomes love because what is known is, by nature, beautiful. (!!!!!)

M… Let us understand the argument from the analogy of the eye which has the power to see by nature, but the power of not seeing by choice or because of disease. Sometimes, what is unnatural could occur instead of the natural: someone might voluntarily close his eyes or be deprived of sight through disease. Thus it is also possible to say in connection with the soul that its constitution comes from God and that, since no evil is known to be in the divine, the soul itself is outside of evil. However, once it has been born, it is led by its own judgment to what seems good to it. Either it closes its eyes to the beautiful by choice or the eye of the soul is harmed by a conspiracy of the enemy which is involved in our life and the soul lives in the darkness of deceit, or it is cured of the disease which causes the darkness and purely looks again towards the truth.

M… But,' she said, 'this is not the truth, even if we are unable to match the rhetoric in word. The true reasoning on these matters is stored in the hidden treasures of wisdom and will come into the open only when we have experienced the mystery of the resurrection; then there will no longer be any need for a verbal statement of what is to be hoped for. But as for those speculating at night about the light of the sun, what it is, the splendor of its beam as it comes forth makes a verbal description unnecessary, so any speculation touching on our future condition amounts to nothing once we experience what has been expected.

M… In order to form a judgment of those who have lived, it would be necessary for a judge to investigate a man's experience; the indignities he has suffered, the sickness he has had, his old age, his prime, his youth, his wealth and his poverty; how each man has conducted himself in the various cir- cumstances of the life allotted to him, whether he has been the recipient of goods or of evils in a long life, or whether he was deprived of these from the beginning, having ceased to live before he reached maturity. However, when God through the resurrection brings man's nature back to its original condition, it will be vain to speak of such matters and to think of God's power being kept back from its goal. For Him, the one goal is this, the perfection of the universe through each man individually, the fulfillment of our nature.

M… Blessed are those who come immediately to a complete perfection of growth. We say this, not because there will be some visible corporeal difference between those who have lived good or bad lives or because we think one will be imperfect in body and the other perfect, but it will be like the difference between one who lives in chains and one who is free, a question of pleasure and pain. That I think is the kind of difference we must expect between the good and bad in the time to come.

[Dustin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gregory of Nyssa, On the Soul and Resurrection, translated by Catherine P. Roth (Crestwood: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1993). Pp. 130. Paperback $21.00.

St. Gregory of Nyssa's On the Soul and Resurrection is one of those rare patristic works that manages to be both philosophically rigorous and pastorally tender. Written as a dialogue with his sister, St. Macrina, as she lay dying, this fourth-century text wrestles with questions that remain urgently relevant: What happens when we die? What is the soul? How do we prepare for resurrection?

For modern Christians, engaging the Church Fathers isn't merely an academic exercise in historical theology. It's about recovering a way of seeing ourselves and God that predates many of our contemporary dichotomies—body versus soul, emotion versus reason, heaven as escape versus heaven as restoration. Gregory offers us a vision of human nature and destiny that is simultaneously more holistic and more hopeful than much of what we encounter today.

Gregory begins with an elegant cosmological argument: just as we infer a weaver from observing a tapestry, we recognize divine power in creation's design. The human body, he argues, is a microcosm of this creation, and therefore must possess an "animating power"—the soul—that corresponds to the divine power animating the cosmos.

What makes Gregory's anthropology particularly helpful is his nuanced understanding of emotions. Desire and anger aren't inherently evil; they're part of the "irrational" aspect of the soul we share with animals. The key is direction. When reason guides these emotions toward virtue, they serve our flourishing. When they direct us instead, they become passions that drag us toward vice. This framework offers contemporary Christians a way to move beyond simplistic "suppression versus expression" approaches to emotional life.

One of the most striking sections addresses what happens after death. Gregory rejects the notion that souls inhabit literal "places"—how can incorporeal beings be located anywhere? Instead, the state of the dead reflects choices made in life: whether our rational soul drew us toward virtue or vice. This isn't cosmic scorekeeping; it's the natural consequence of becoming a certain kind of person.

Gregory's vision of purification is neither the sanitized sentimentalism of modern universalism nor the retributive punishment of pop eschatology. Purification is painful only to the degree we remain attached to material things and sensible life. It's a "tearing off of what is not natural to us"—not punishment, but healing. God becomes "all in all," and evil, being merely the absence of good, ceases to exist.

The movement toward resurrection requires releasing our grip on this world. Yet Gregory doesn't advocate Gnostic escapism. Our emotions can serve good purposes in this life, but in the resurrection, we won't need desire (which reaches for what we lack) because we'll have love (enjoying what we possess). We won't need memory (which chains us to past traumas) because hope will draw us ever deeper into God's love. Deification happens when we finally rest in what we've been hoping for.

Gregory engages pagan philosophy on its own terms, acknowledging similarities while exposing crucial differences. Yes, both Christians and pagans affirm that souls can return to bodily life—but pagans erred in believing souls transmigrate into different bodies. Gregory's response is both clever and profound: the soul will recognize the elements of its original body the way a painter recognizes the precise colors mixed to create a particular hue.

Perhaps most radical is Gregory's claim that virtue is natural to us—evil is a defect of our nature, arising from choice or disease, not from our created essence. This stands in stark contrast to views that see human nature itself as corrupted beyond recognition.

His treatment of matter's origin is equally fascinating. Since God is immaterial and matter doesn't come from God's nature, Gregory concludes that matter must be a combination of immaterial qualities: shape, color, weight, dimension. The soul and body come into existence simultaneously, and when the number of human beings is complete, the process ends.

Resurrection, then, is "the restoration of our nature to its original condition"—free from evil, passion, hunger, reproduction, birth, aging, and death. These belong to the "garments of skin" we received upon leaving paradise, not to our true nature.

In an age of transhumanism, where we're promised technological transcendence of our bodily limits, Gregory reminds us that embodiment isn't the problem—it's our disordered relationship to creation. In an age of therapeutic spirituality, where growth is framed as self-actualization, Gregory points us toward the counterintuitive path of detachment and hope. In an age of information overload, where we're drowning in memories and trauma narratives, Gregory suggests that resurrection means liberation from the past into an ever-expanding future in God.

On the Soul and Resurrection isn't easy reading—it requires patience with ancient philosophical categories and theological assumptions. But for those willing to sit with Gregory and Macrina beside that deathbed, the rewards are immense: a richer understanding of what it means to be human, a more hopeful vision of death and resurrection, and a path of transformation that begins now.

This is why we read the Church Fathers. Not to return to the fourth century, but to allow voices from across the centuries to challenge our provincial assumptions and expand our vision of what God is doing in Christ. Gregory doesn't give us tidy answers to contemporary questions, but he does something better: he teaches us to ask better questions and to see our struggles as part of a much grander story of return and restoration.

Highly recommended for: Christians interested in patristic theology, those wrestling with questions about death and afterlife, readers of contemplative spirituality, and anyone seeking a more robust theological anthropology.

[Sean-Paul Kosina · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Seeing, then, that one or the other of these two diametrically opposed ideas, I mean good and evil, must any way attach to us, it is clear that to say a man is not included in the good is a necessary demonstration that he is included in the evil. But then, in connection with evil, we find no honour, no glory, no incorruption, no power; and so we are forced to dismiss all doubt that a man who has nothing to do with these last-mentioned things must be connected with their opposites, viz. with weakness, with dishonour, with corruption, with everything of that nature, such as we spoke of in the previous parts of the discussion, when we said how many were the passions, sprung from evil, which are so hard for the soul to get rid of, when they have infused themselves into the very substance of its entire nature and become one with it. When such, then, have been purged from it and utterly removed by the healing processes worked out by the Fire, then every one of the things which make up our conception of the good will come to take their place; incorruption, that is, and life, and honour, and grace, and glory, and everything else that we conjecture is to be seen in God, and in His Image, man as he was made.” -Marcina the Younger (Elder Sister to Gregory of Nyssa)

[Derek Barber · Rating 5 out of 5]

A timeless classic of early Christian thought. This book is written in the style of a Socratic dialog between St. Gregory of Nyssa himself and his sister Macrina. If you have ever read Plato you will feel at home in its pages. It is ancient and yet I found so much of it is relevant for today. My understanding is that much of this is a response or development upon Platos' Phaedo.

I found this to be very readable and I'm sure much of that has to do with the excellent translation by Catharine P. Roth. I also really appreciated her introduction. Over the years I have become fascinated by how the early Christians took Platonic philosophy and evolved it into what might be called Christian Platonism. I found this book to be an important work in that tradition and helped me gain a greater understanding of those developments. So this book is highly recommended if you also are into such things.

[Tim Van · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm very new to reading the church fathers. So it was tough at times. Some of the exegetical jumps seemed like a stretch.

But I enjoyed reading a book written in a dialog style and benefited from most of it. It also showed how some popular ideas about the early church are so wrong. The number of times this book disagrees with some kind of Greek philosophy was eye-opening. It is contextual theology that made me think about how I do theology, how I interact with how others wrestle with deep theological questions (especially those in a very different context) more in awe of the resurrection and therefore my faith in Jesus.

[Jacob Chapman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some enjoyable conversation surrounding beauty came out of this book, but in regards to the literal soul and resurrection, most of Gregory and Macrina’s words felt redundant in regard to what is already established within faith conversations and they always just end up back with Paul’s words. Just a whole bunch of speculative dialogue for redundant answers Paul already gave.

[Carson Harraman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Doing research on early christian universalism

[Mathias · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bra! Platonsk dialektik tillämpad på metafysiken men dock genom i huvudsak fenomenologiska beskrivningar och en beskrivning av skulden i proportion till passionerna och Guds vredes straff som renande smärtsam eld i proportion till människans passioner. Helt bortglömt i svensk kristenhet

[Lukas Merrell · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is like reading Plato, if Plato was explicitly Christian. I really enjoyed this dialogue and I want to continue to read more Gregory of Nyssa.

[Christian · Rating 4 out of 5]

An Apt Title

Though the least known of the Cappadocian Fathers, the Nyssen was one of two famous Gregories of the fourth century who contributed to the council of Nicaea and helped to formulate the doctrine of the Trinity. He here tackles two topics of considerable importance in Christian theology: the immortality of the soul and the physicality of the resurrection. His ideas are often startling. Biblical interpretation is mostly allegorical, and philosophy Platonic. The work comes from his mourning the death of his elder brother Basil (another Cappadocian Father) and working out death's implications in dialogue with his sister Macrina, who here plays Socrates to his devil's advocate.
It is worth reading for his depth of thought and place in history. Some ideas have not aged well, particularly his repeated assertion that the soul resides in the fixed atoms of the body, which recognize their "kindred dust" and will be reconstituted in the very same atoms at the end of time.

Gregory drops various hints of universalism throughout the book, culminating with his position in the final pages: eventually all beings are purified of sin, whether through speedy entrance to Heaven for the elect, or by a refining fire which consists of God drawing his divine image-bearers toward himself, stripping away passions and accretions until "every knee must bow" and God becomes "all in all". The whole of intelligent existence will contemplate the Good and Beautiful, and in eternity even the demons may come to repentance.

This particular Kindle edition contains very few typographical errors, but is difficult to recommend; there is no introduction and no section headings, and the translators are not specified. Comparing some passages it appears to be from the old Schaff Nicene Fathers (&etc) collection, which is in the public domain.

[Cameron Brooks · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.14159 stars.

Gregory's sister Macrina "the Younger" offers some beautiful passages about the resurrection in the final few chapter, but they're preambled by 85 pages of neoplatonic ontology—if the soul exists, what its essence is, what happens when the body decomposes, that sort of thing. All necessary pieces of the resurrection puzzle, I suppose, but the final chapter was what I came for. And it was certainly worth the wait.

Macrina: "But if you have some fondness for this body, and you are sorry to be unyoked from what you love, do not be in despair about this either. For although this bodily covering is now dissolved by death, you will see it woven again from the same elements, not indeed with its present coarse and heavy texture, but with the thread respun into something subtler and lighter, so that the beloved body may be with you and be restored to you again in better and even more lovable beauty" (88).

[Melanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book is an exploration of the nature of the soul and the resurrection written in dialogue form by Gregory of Nyssa after the death of Basil, circa 379 AD. While the doctrinal conclusions are cadaverous and unsatisfying (particularly since the more difficult questions are met by gentle rebuke and an exhortation for faith, or a reminder that some things can only be known by negative description!), this work provides an intriguing look, not only at the struggle of the 4th century church to solidify and systematize its doctrinal beliefs, but also at the apparent struggle within Gregory himself as he tried to synthesize Christianity with the Greek culture he immersed himself in as a philosopher and rhetorician. All in all, the "debate" between himself and his "wise" sister Macrina (written in similar fashion to Plato's Phaedo), is an entertaining and educational read.

[Dan Glover · Rating 4 out of 5]

No time to review fully, but this is a very good read. Lots of Platonism here and much of Greek philosophy also rejected. Ultimately there is a clear biblical basis to the hope and promise of a bodily resurrection based on the teaching of Scripture. I really enjoyed this dialogue between Gregory and his dying sister, Macrina, upon the occasion of the death of their brother, Basil. The occasion and circumstance of this conversation makes their dialogue not merely and philosophical or theoretical debate but very much a matter of real life and death...and life after death, thanks to God.

[Tyler Collins · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book for my Special Topics in Theology: Gregory of Nyssa course under Dr. Jacob Lett. This was a very interesting read and prompted rich and fun class discussions about the nature of the body/soul and their relationship to one another. While I did not find agreement with the totality of what Gregory teaches in this book, I did with much of it, and I found his particular ways of articulating and answering the many questions people at his time (and in our time) had about the body, the soul, death, and resurrection to be enriching to my own understanding of the Christian faith. This book helped me flesh out my answer to my midterm question about the relationship between the body and the soul. Here is what I came up with (with inspiration from Gregory and from the class lectures and from peer/professor discussion):

Compelled by the biblical evidence and writings of the early church fathers and mothers, I feel it is not irresponsible to accept the reality of our beings having both physical and a non-physical elements, a body and a soul. While I would contend that one is not more “important” than the other per say, I would argue that the soul contains the essence of one’s being while the body gives shape to one’s self-understanding. The soul contains the essence of one’s being in that it is the part of us which is eternal (following its finite creation at conception) and it holds our capacity for free will (and therefore reason). The soul, I would contend, is closely linked with the functioning of our brain; however, the soul is independent from any physical part of our bodies. What makes me me, for example, is not any part of my physical body. Even if I lose my arm or have a heart transplant or my brain is damaged, I am still Tyler, because my soul transcends my material elements.

However, the soul is unknowable in a primarily-material creation apart from the body in which it is contained. Our sensory perceptions, including our interactions with others, are what give form to our individual and corporate understanding of our soul. I would further argue that our soul is not necessarily particular to our being. What do I mean by that? I mean that every human has, what I would call, a “common human soul.” Our common human soul, at conception, is no different from any other common human soul created at conception; however, immediately it begins to be shaped by our particular body in which it is housed. As one grows and develops, the soul (again, our eternality and free will) are given individual self-understanding through the senses. This reality is why the importance of our bodies (and taking care of them) must not be diminished. This common human soul is what Jesus took on when he bore humanity. But, he also he took on a particular physical body which gave particular form to his and our understanding of his human self.

Furthermore, we will indeed shed our present physical bodies upon death, as Christ did and as did all those in Hades to whom Christ went. However, I maintain a supra-physical bodily resurrection by the Father in Christ through the power of the Spirit, where our soul is re-united with “our” body. What I mean by this is that our bodies will be re-formed by God from the most basic elements but into the same combination which made our physical bodies unique (e.g. Christ still looked and felt like the same Jesus after being raised—additionally, I say “basic elements” because our scientific understanding of that continues to shift over time). However, these do not have to be the exact-same basic elements of which our physical bodies were originally composed, simply the same combination of basic elements. This physical body will be restored of all of the scars (read: infirmities) characteristic of the marred creation of which we were previously a part—including health defects and physical/mental disabilities (which we all have to some varying degree).

But we will not just be physically raised to the same type of physical body, we will be supra-physically raised (the church in the past has sometimes called this being raised in a body which is glorified). As evidence for this, I look to the reality of Christ’s resurrected body which (while it was recognizable as Him, could be sensory perceived with touch, and was able to consume physical food) had the supernatural characteristic of being able to appear and disappear, seemingly traveling through physical barriers like walls. Likewise, although our bodies will be composed of the same basic physical elements as they are now composed, God will create for us resurrected bodies which are supra-physical and are not limited by natural laws in the same ways our current physical bodies are. To summarize, we are souls with particular physical bodies which will be supra-physically bodily resurrected by God at the eschaton.

[Kyle Church · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful book, and not too long either. It took me a few chapters to get into it as he laid groundwork for what a soul is and how it differs from the body, emotions, etc. Once I settled in by chapter 4ish, I really enjoyed the second half of it on the soul and its condition after death, the refining and restorative purpose of hell (in his view), and what resurrection entails. His vision of ultimate redemption is compelling.

Some highlighted quotes below:

On hell and why it’s painful and yet necessary:
"Something like this I think we should imagine for the state of the soul. Wrapped up as it is in material and earthly attachments, it struggles and is stretched, as God draws His own to Himself. What is alien to God has to be scraped off forcibly because it has somehow grown onto the soul. This is the cause of the sharp and unbearable pains which the soul must endure.”

“So the divine judgment," I said, "as it seems, does not primarily bring punishment on sinners. As our discourse has just shown, it operates only by separating good from evil and pulling the soul towards the fellowship of blessedness. It is the tearing apart of what has grown together which brings pain to the one who is being pulled.”

“Probably that painful fire is kindled more or less hotly depending on the quantity of the matter, and it burns as long as it has fuel. So if a person's material burden is great, the consuming flame must also become great and long-lasting; but if someone is exposed to the consuming fire more briefly, the punishment relaxes its severe and piercing operation in proportion to the smaller measure of evil in the subject. For evil must be altogether removed in every way from being, and, as we have said before, that which does not really exist must cease to exist at all.”

On why holiness still matters:
“This is why we must take care, either to keep our soul altogether pure and free from fellowship with evil, or, if this is utterly impossible because of our passionate nature, to limit our failures in virtue as much as possible to moderate lapses which are easily cured.”

On the Resurrection:
“… the resurrection is nothing other than the restoration of our nature to its original state.”

He compares resurrection to seed.

“It is sown,' he says, ' in corruption; it is raised in incorruption; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body.”

“When we are dried up by the hot summer of evil, the earth, which receives us dissolved by death, in the spring of the resurrection will reveal this bare seed of the body again an ear, large, abundant, upright, and reaching to the height of heaven, adorned not with a stalk or a beard but with incorruptibility and the rest of the godlike qualities; for he says, ‘This corruptible nature must put on incorruptibility.”

On the final judgment and ultimate redemption:
“The farmer will heal the harvest by gathering the tares and thorns which have grown up along with the seed and taken all the power which should have nourished the roots. Because of these bastard plants the genuine seed has remained undeveloped and immature, smothered by the unnatural growth." So when all that is illegitimate and alien has been plucked out from the nourishing grain and is eliminated, after the fire has consumed whatever is contrary to nature, then the nature of these people also will flourish and will ripen into fruit through this kind of treatment, receiving again after a long period of time the common form which was set upon us by God in the beginning.”

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

"On the Soul and the Resurrection" is definitely one of the highpoints of St. Gregory of Nyssa's writings. In this book, he goes into a dialogue with his sister, that he had in high regard, as his teacher whereas they go into depth of all things the soul, life, death, and resurrection.

It is a comprehensive kind of study where they go quite into details of the Christian opinion of the time. It is also laid out a cosmology and scientific worldview that was common knowledge, and it has importance on several levels. For instance, they believed that the soul had a home in bonding with the atoms, when a body it was bonded to a body and when the body died it was bonded to the atoms of that body. The spherical earth also becomes an analogy on the state of the soul, where one side is in light and the other side in darkness when death occurs. Now we do have a more accurate view on science, and I believe there is no theology on the soul being bonded to atoms when the body dies anymore, but it is a theory that back then was promising and that was built upon later. It seems like Aquinas separates the two(soul and body/atoms) to a bigger degree. But, as Aquinas and Plato believed, so did Gregory, that the soul was immortal. However, the worldview works mostly as an analogy to the soul, so it is not too important that it is correct.

Because most things soul and the afterlife is for us unknown, there is a lot of things that cannot be answered and admitted so by the author, but also a few things that are a challenge to accept as a good enough explanation. It seems this is written in a defining time, where the effort is made to advance the Christian doctrine into a more systematic form but at the same time acknowledging it is a work in progress - all the time both inquiring with and challenging the philosophers(mainly Plato) and thinking before. It also seems to get inspiration from Phaedo regarding theme and Socrates speech in the Symposium regarding form. It seems to me that Christians that found themselves rejecting aspects of the philosophy of Plato, tried to patch it up, but in that way also left the door open for Aquinas to more completely merge the two(theology and philosophy) when Aristotle was rediscovered. This was written in the time of neo-platonism, and the uneasiness with it is clear.

In my case, when theology or philosophy starts talking about soul and afterlife it becomes a few notches more speculative and a few notches less concrete(for instance, it seems that Gregory embraced some kind of universalism) - so it is with this too, but what a work it is anyway. I tend to shy away from this kind of books, but sometimes, like this time, I went into it - and regretted it not. It seems like this kind of writing also is dwelling on the sidelines of philosophy and are not as important or in the spotlight to be noticed too easily, and it is almost a shame.

I read this book as an ebook, without commentary. I would have loved to had this in print with commentary and notes one day, if I find it in myself to build a library of the best books of old.

[‎Seth Studer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Orthodox Christians will naturally be interested in St. Gregory of Nyssa's treatise on the soul, the soul's origins, its properties, and the doctrine of resurrection and theosis. This review is for non-Orthodox and non-Christians. I recommend On the Soul and Resurrection to general readers of philosophy just as I'd recommend any of Plato's dialogues (St. Gregory's treatise most resembles the Phaedo, as the introduction by Catharine Roth explains—the introduction alone is worth the price of admission).

Whether you're sympathetic to the ideas of Plato and other philosophers who affirm the existence of the soul or you're a hardened materialist, you cannot deny that the soul—the essence and consistency of "the self," our sense of a stable and continuous "self"—is a persistent and fascinating problem within philosophy, western *or* eastern. The soul and its nature have inspired some of the best philosophical writing. On the Soul and Resurrection engages directly with this ongoing conversation and develops classical Greek ideas about the self within a doctrinally sound *and* intellectually rigorous Christian framework. Just as you needn't worship the Greek gods to benefit from Plato, you needn't be Orthodox to benefit from St. Gregory.

I would also recommend this treatise to anyone interested in philosophical Buddhism and eastern conceptions of the self. St. Gregory explores the relationship between our conception of self; our true nature; and their relationship to suffering, pain, and what Orthodox Christians call "the passions." He contrasts our passionate nature with our true nature, which is God-like and love-oriented. He explains why purification—the return of the self to its created nature, which exists in harmony with God and creation—can be such a painful process. Just as you don't need to be a Buddhist to benefit from Buddhist insights, you don't need to be Orthodox to benefit from St. Gregory's insights.

St. Gregory of Nyssa is a sensitive thinker. He "steel-mans" his opponents' best arguments about the existence and nature of the soul. He structures his treatise as a dialogue between him and his sister, St. Macrina the Younger. Both Gregory and Macrina confront death as they discuss the soul: Gregory has just lost a dear friend and Macrina conducts the dialogue from her own deathbed. Within the conceit of the treatise, Macrina explains the doctrine of the soul while Gregory offers objections to the Orthodox view. These objections are powerful. I frequently find myself nodding along as Gregory responds to Macrina's account of Orthodox doctrine...which makes Macrina's responses to Gregory all the more compelling.

Again, you don't need to agree with this treatise to benefit from it. If you enjoy classical Greek philosophy, I strongly recommend the theology of the early Church Fathers, whose intellectual heft rivals that of the best classical philosophy. On the Soul and Resurrection is rigorous, stimulating, and enjoyable to read.

[Luke Merrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

An engaging book where St Gregory and his sister St Macrina the younger engage in a conversation about the nature of the soul and the various aspects of the resurrection.

A contemporary to Augustine, Gregory offers an alternative understanding to the destiny of the soul after death. He likens the purification of the soul to a muddy rope being pulled through a tight hole. The rope represents the part of the soul that is to be kept and the mud is all the imperfections we gather over the course of a life - it is God who is the one who pulls the rope through the hole towards himself.
Using some and rejecting other platonic thoughts, Macrina and Gregory explore the nature of the soul. At conception, like a type of fabric the body is woven into the soul. It is said the body and the soul begin existing at the same time, though this raises an interesting problem: what happens when the body dies and is dissolved into the elements? Where does the soul go? The discussion puts forth the idea that the soul is in the body, even in death. This is where Macrina offers a brilliant remedy to the issue: it is like a work of art. The artwork gathers all sorts of elements and colors to form a painting, the painting lasts for a while but eventually will decay and return to the ground. But, the essence, or the artwork remains. God is able to reconstitute the painting and at that, with even greater colors and lighter elements!

Here we find that we are in the midst of the resurrection. The resurrection body will be like that of our first parents before the fall. Gregory says that Adam and eve were covered not with animal skins after the fall, but simply skin. We must change our garments to a heavenly fabric that was modeled after the resurrection of Christ or pioneer. This is a radical interpretation that seems to make a lot of sense. In the epistles of Paul, he states that the seeds must die in order to come to life. If we run with this idea, it could be said that the body before the fall was a type of fruit, it died (as promised by God) and all of our bodies are like scattered seed in the ground. Later on in the resurrection, these seeds will come to life as the fruit they were supposed to be.

Ultimately, Gregory offers a type of eschatology that is redemptive. The rope is healed and the seeds grow after they die - he even goes so far as to say that the demons will one day worship God.

[Kiwi Comiendo Kiwi · Rating 4 out of 5]

An inspiring study about souls in the form of a dialogue between Gregory and his sister Macrina the teacher. Some notable ideas revolve around the nature of evil and sin: they are not qualities of souls, a human being isn't evil, a human being has evil. Vice takes possession and grows on the surface of souls, but it doesn't define them. Therefore, God won't destroy the soul entirely and abandon his creation, rather, as 1 Corinthians 15 suggests, God would eradicate the evil that persists on enslaving his creation, leaving souls as they were created. The fire of hell would work to purify and accomplish this purgatorial vision. His interpretation of the parable of wheat and tares is interesting, the soil is a human being, no one is fully wheat or tare (or a sheep or a goat) but rather has elements of both. God, then, works to transform us into his image by eliminating all the harm we have brought to ourselves.

Greogory also rejects the notion of hell as a physical place. Analyzing the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, Macrina argues that hell is not a physical thing (how could the soul of the rich man feel thirst or heat if his physical body wasn't alive). Rather, she expresses a view of hell as a sensation of separation felt by the soul, as a psychological state of alienation. The fire is, then, metaphorical and, as we have noted, not eternal.

With regards to the resurrection, an interesting thing consists of his (or rather, her, as Macrina does most of the teaching) idea on what kind of body would we have on the resurrection. Would we be young or old? What about those whose body was burned or were decomposed? She answers that, just as a baby and an old person don't have the same body but are the same person, a resurrected human being would have a body on a wholly new stage of growth, which is young and old at the same time, being "one human being a town of persons".

Overall, a very interesting understanding of early patristic neo-platonic thought. It's funny how this text speaks about the dangers of Plato and similar "pagan philosophy" but is written like a Socratic dialogue and presents platonic ideas. But it's all around an illuminating read.

[Bruce]

A conversation supposedly between Gregory and Macrina the day before she died in 379 AD. Read after Holland's high praise for Macrina.

The proof of the soul is Platonic (reason sees beyond senses). But the soul is Christian. Passions and anger are not separate souls from reason, but faculties attached to the soul encompassing the physical side of creation. Passions are indifferent, but become sinful if not controlled by reason. Behind this claim is the impassible God. The idea that the soul recognizes its own atoms at the resurrection is implausible. Makes a good point on the parable of rich man and Lazarus about the physical details in the story referring to a bodiless consciousness. She claims these details are an allegories of spiritual habits formed while in the body. The distance between Sheol and the bosom of Abraham is an impassible barrier formed by the life of physical pleasures without virtue, whereas the bosom represents rest and enjoyment of God. Dives is still concerned with life on earth, whereas Lazarus is concerned with spiritual pleasures. The reference to Socrates as an explanation for why ghosts linger around graves shows Gregory's heterodox methods.

The Resurrection raises an important objection to the psychology of sanctification. A passionless soul would be without desire for the good. But Macrina points out that desire arises from lack, whereas contemplation of beauty arises from sharing in the good. The soul ponders the good within as a reflection of the good in God.

So when the soul which has become simple and uniform and an accurate image of God finds that truly simple and immaterial good, the one thing which is really lovable and desirable, it attaches itself to it and combines with it through the impulse and operation of love. It conforms itself to that which is always being grasped and found, and becomes through its likeness to the good that which the nature is in which it participates.