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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 28
When, then, the soul, having become simple and single in form and so perfectly godlike, finds that perfectly simple and immaterial good which is really worth enthusiasm and love [1838] , it attaches itself to it and blends with it by means of the movement and activity of love, fashioning itself according to that which it is continually finding and grasping. Becoming by this assimilation to the Good all that the nature of that which it participates is, the soul will consequently, owing to there being no lack of any good in that thing itself which it participates, be itself also in no lack of anything, and so will expel from within the activity and the habit of Desire; for this arises only when the thing missed is not found. For this teaching we have the authority of God's own Apostle, who announces a subduing [1839] and a ceasing of all other activities, even for the good, which are within us, and finds no limit for love alone. Prophecies, he says, shall fail; forms of knowledge shall cease; but "charity never faileth;" which is equivalent to its being always as it is: and though [1840] he says that faith and hope have endured so far by the side of love, yet again he prolongs its date beyond theirs, and with good reason too; for hope is in operation only so long as the enjoyment of the things hoped for is not to be had; and faith in the same way is a support [1841] in the uncertainty about the things hoped for; for so he defines it--"the substance [1842] of things hoped for"; but when the thing hoped for actually comes, then all other faculties are reduced to quiescence [1843] , and love alone remains active, finding nothing to succeed itself. Love, therefore, is the foremost of all excellent achievements and the first of the commandments of the law. If ever, then, the soul reach this goal, it will be in no need of anything else; it will embrace that plenitude of things which are, whereby alone [1844] 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 the Deity does recognize it, and so this recognition becomes love, that which He recognizes being essentially beautiful. This True Beauty the insolence of satiety cannot touch [1845] ; and no satiety interrupting this continuous capacity to love the Beautiful, God's life will have its activity in love; which life is thus in itself beautiful, and is essentially of a loving disposition towards the Beautiful, and receives no check to this activity of love.
[1838] to monon to onti agapeton kai erasmion.
[1839] katastolen. Cf. 1 Cor. xiii. 8-13.
[1840] Schmidt well remarks that there lies in legon here not a causal but only a concessive force: and he puts a stop before eikotos. Oehler has not seen that agape is governed by the preposition sun in the verb "by the side of love," and quite mistranslates the passage.
[1841] ereisma.
[1842] hupostasis Heb. xi. 1.
[1843] reduced to quiescence, atremounton. This is the reading adopted by Krabinger, from four Codd., instead of the vox nihili of the editions, euteremonton. The contrast must be between "remaining in activity (energeia)," and "becoming idle," and he quotes a passage from Plotinus to show that atremein has exactly this latter sense. Cf. 1 Cor. xiii. 8, 10, katargethesontai, katargethesetai
[1844] whereby alone, kath' ho dokei monon pos autes, k. t. l, the reading of Sifanus.
[1845] the insolence of satiety cannot touch. Krabinger quotes from two of his Codd. a scholium to this effect: "Then this proves to be nonsense what Origen has imagined about the satiety of minds, and their consequent fall and recall, on which he bases his notorious teaching about the pre-existence and restoration of souls that are always revolving in endless motion, determined as he is, like a retailer of evil, to mingle the Grecian myths with the Church's truth." Gregory, more sober in his idealism, certainly does not follow on this point his great Master. The phrase hubristes koros is used by Gregory Naz. also in his Poems (p. 32 A), and may have been suggested to both by some poet, now lost. "Familiarity breeds contempt" is the modern equivalent.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/nyssa/soul-resurrection.asp?pg=28
