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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 3
And pray how, I asked, are we to get a firm and unmovable belief in the soul's continuance? I, too, am sensible of the fact that human life will be bereft of the most beautiful ornament that life has to give, I mean virtue, unless an undoubting confidence with regard to this be established within us. What, indeed, has virtue to stand upon in the case of those persons who conceive of this present life as the limit of their existence, and hope for nothing beyond?
Well, replied the Teacher, we must seek where we may get a beginning for our discussion upon this point; and if you please, let the defence of the opposing views be undertaken by yourself; for I see that your mind is a little inclined to accept such a brief. Then, after the conflicting belief has been stated, we shall be able to look for the truth.
When she made this request, and I had deprecated the suspicion that I was making the objections in real earnest, instead of only wishing to get a firm ground for the belief about the soul by calling into court [1752] first what is aimed against this view, I began--
Would not the defenders of the opposite belief say this: that the body, being composite, must necessarily be resolved into that of which it is composed? And when the coalition of elements in the body ceases, each of those elements naturally gravitates towards its kindred element with the irresistible bias of like to like; the heat in us will thus unite with heat, the earthy with the solid, and each of the other elements also will pass towards its like. Where, then, will the soul be after that? If one affirm that it is in those elements, one will be obliged to admit that it is identical with them, for this fusion could not possibly take place between two things of different natures. But this being granted, the soul must necessarily be viewed as a complex thing, fused as it is with qualities so opposite. But the complex is not simple, but must be classed with the composite, and the composite is necessarily dissoluble; and dissolution means the destruction of the compound; and the destructible is not immortal, else the flesh itself, resolvable as it is into its constituent elements, might so be called immortal. If, on the other hand, the soul is something other than these elements, where can our reason suggest a place for it to be, when it is thus, by virtue of its alien nature, not to be discovered in those elements, and there is no other place in the world, either, where it may continue, in harmony with its own peculiar character, to exist? But, if a thing can be found nowhere, plainly it has no existence.
[1752] antipiptonton pros ton skopon touton hupoklethenton: the reading of the Parisian Editions. But the preponderance of ms. authority is in favour of hupekluthenton, "si quae ad hoc propositum opponuntur soluta fuerint," Krabinger. The force of hupo will then be "by way of rejoinder." The idea in skopon seems to be that of a butt set up to be shot at. All the mss. but not the Paris Editions, have the article before antipiptoton: but it is not absolutely necessary, for Gregory not unfrequently omits it before participles, when his meaning is general, i.e. "Everything that," &c.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/nyssa/soul-resurrection.asp?pg=3
