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Translated by W. Moore and H. A. Wilson
St Gregory of Nyssa Resources Online.Please note that a bilingual edition (Greek original / English translation) is being prepared and will be published in print soon; if you are interested bookmark this page to know when it is ready and available.
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53 Pages
Page 22
You seem, I interrupted, in this passing remark to have made an excellent defence of the faith in the Resurrection. By it, I think, the opponents of this doctrine might be gradually led to consider it not as a thing absolutely impossible that the atoms should again coalesce and form the same man as before.
That is very true, the Teacher replied. For we may hear these opponents urging the following difficulty. "The atoms are resolved, like to like, into the universe; by what device, then, does the warmth, for instance, residing in such and such a man, after joining the universal warmth, again dissociate itself from this connection with its kindred [1821] , so as to form this man who is being remoulded'? For if the identical individual particle does not return and only something that is homogeneous but not identical is fetched, you will have something else in the place of that first thing, and such a process will cease to be a resurrection and will be merely the creation of a new man. But if the same man is to return into himself, he must be the same entirely, and regain his original formation in every single atom of his elements."
Then to meet such an objection, I rejoined, the above opinion about the soul will, as I said, avail; namely, that she remains after dissolution in those very atoms in which she first grew up, and, like a guardian placed over private property, does not abandon them when they are mingled with their kindred atoms, and by the subtle ubiquity of her intelligence makes no mistake about them, with all their subtle minuteness, but diffuses herself along with those which belong to herself when they are being mingled with their kindred dust, and suffers no exhaustion in keeping up with the whole number of them when they stream back into the universe, but remains with them, no matter in what direction or in what fashion Nature may arrange them. But should the signal be given by the All-disposing Power for these scattered atoms to combine again, then, just as when every one of the various ropes that hang from one block answer at one and the same moment [1822] to the pull from that centre, so, following this force of the soul which acts upon the various atoms, all these, once so familiar with each other, rush simultaneously together and form the cable of the body by means of the soul, each single one of them being wedded to its former neighbour and embracing an old acquaintance.
The following illustration also, the Teacher went on, might be very properly added to those already brought forward, to show that the soul has not need of much teaching in order to distinguish its own from the alien amongst the atoms. Imagine a potter with a supply of clay; and let the supply be a large one; and let part of it have been already moulded to form finished vessels, while the rest is still waiting to be moulded; and suppose the vessels themselves not to be all of similar shape, but one to be a jug, for instance, and another a wine-jar, another a plate, another a cup or any other useful vessel; and further, let not one owner possess them all, but let us fancy for each a special owner. Now as long as these vessels are unbroken they are of course recognizable by their owners, and none the less so, even should they be broken in pieces; for from those pieces each will know, for instance, that this belongs to a jar [1823] , and, again, what sort of fragment belongs to a cup. And if they are plunged again into the unworked clay, the discernment between what has been already worked and that clay will be a more unerring one still. The individual man is as such a vessel; he has been moulded out of the universal matter, owing to the concourse of his atoms; and he exhibits in a form peculiarly his own a marked distinction from his kind; and when that form has gone to pieces the soul that has been mistress of this particular vessel will have an exact knowledge of it, derived even from its fragments; nor will she leave this property, either, in the common blending with all the other fragments, or if it be plunged into the still formless part of the matter from which the atoms have come [1824] ; she always remembers her own as it was when compact in bodily form, and after dissolution she never makes any mistake about it, led by marks still clinging to the remains.
[1821] amiges tou sungenous palin apokrithenai. Krabinger's and Oehler's reading. But Krabinger, more correctly than Oehler, opposes en tode to en to kath' holou (quod est hic calidum, si fuerit in universo): though neither he, nor Oehler, nor Schmidt himself appears to have any suspicion that tode maymean "so and so:" and yet it is quite in accordance with Gregory's usage, and makes better sense, as contrasting the particular and universal heat more completely. 'Amiges is proleptic: the genitive may depend either on it or on the verb. Just below anaplassomenon is read by 5 of Krabinger's Codd. (including the Hasselmann). This is better than Migne's apallassomenon, which is hardly supported by 1 Cor. xv. 51.
[1822] same moment. kata tauton: on the authority of 2 Codd. Mon.
[1823] Reading hoti to men to ek tou pithou, poion de to ek tou poteriou, k. t. l.
[1824] pros to akatergaston tes ton stoicheion hules. There is the same sort of distinction above, 215 A, i.e. between the kindred dust first, and then the universe (to pan) into which the atoms may stream back.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/nyssa/soul-resurrection.asp?pg=22
