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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 25
What then, I asked, is the doctrine here?
Why, seeing that Lazarus' soul is occupied [1829] with his present blessings and turns round to look at nothing that he has left, while the rich man is still attached, with a cement as it were, even after death, to the life of feeling, which he does not divest himself of even when he has ceased to live, still keeping as he does flesh and blood in his thoughts (for in his entreaty that his kindred may be exempted from his sufferings he plainly shows that he is not freed yet from fleshly feeling),--in such details of the story (she continued) I think our Lord teaches us this; that 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 [1830] of the flesh, and, when once the bonds are loosed from around the soul, her soaring [1831] up to the Good may be swift and unimpeded, with no anguish of the body to distract her. For if any one becomes wholly and thoroughly carnal in thought, such an one, with every motion and energy of the soul absorbed in fleshly desires, is not parted from such attachments, even in the disembodied state; just as those who have lingered long in noisome places do not part with the unpleasantness contracted by that lengthened stay, even when they pass into a sweet atmosphere. So [1832] it is that, when the change is made into the impalpable Unseen, not even then will it be possible for the lovers of the flesh to avoid dragging away with them under any circumstances some fleshly foulness; and thereby their torment will be intensified, their soul having been materialized by such surroundings. I think too that this view of the matter harmonizes to a certain extent with the assertion made by some persons that around their graves shadowy phantoms of the departed are often seen [1833] . If this is really so, an inordinate attachment of that particular soul to the life in the flesh is proved to have existed, causing it to be unwilling, even when expelled from the flesh, to fly clean away and to admit the complete change of its form into the impalpable; it remains near the frame even after the dissolution of the frame, and though now outside it, hovers regretfully over the place where its material is and continues to haunt it.
[1829] is occupied with his present blessings (ascholos tois parousin); surely not, with Oehler, "is not occupied with the present world"!
[1830] kolles. The metaphor is Platonic. "The soul...absolutely bound and glued to the body" (Phaedo, p. 82 E).
[1831] her soaring. Plato first spoke (Phaedrus, p. 248 C) of "that growth of wing, by which the soul is lifted." Once these natural wings can get expanded, her flight upwards is a matter of course. This image is reproduced by Plotinus p. 769 A (end of Enneads); Libanius, Pro Socrate, p. 258; Synesius, De Providentiâ, p. 90 D, and Hymn i. III, where he speaks of the halma kouphon of the soul, and Hymn iii. 42. But there is mixed here with the idea of a flight upwards (i.e. anadrome), that of the running-ground as well (cf. Greg. De scopo Christian. III. p. 299, tois tes aretes dromois), which, as sanctioned in the New Testament, Chrysostom so often uses.
[1832] houtos answers to kathaper, not to hos above.
[1833] shadowy phantoms of the departed are often seen. Cf. Origen c. Cels. ii. 60 (in answer to Celsus' "Epicurean" opinion that ghosts are pure illusion): "He who does believe this (i.e. in ghosts) necessarily believes in the immortality, or at all events the long continuance of the soul: as Plato does in his treatise on the soul (i.e. the Phaedo) when he says that the shadowy apparitions of the dead hover round their tombs. These apparitions, then, have some substance: it is the so-called radiant' frame in which the soul exists. But Celsus, not liking this, would have us believe that people have waking dreams and imagine as true, in accordance with their wishes, a wild piece of unreality.' In sleep we may well believe that this is the case: not so in waking hours, unless some one is quite out of his senses, or is melancholy mad." But Origen here quotes Plato in connection with the reality of the Resurrection body of Christ: Gregory refers to ghosts only, with regard to the philosomatoi, whose whole condition after death he represents very much in Plato's words. See Phaedo, p. 81 B.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/nyssa/soul-resurrection.asp?pg=25
