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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 30
Then it seems, I said, that it is not punishment chiefly and principally that the Deity, as Judge, afflicts sinners with; but He operates, as your argument has shown, only to get the good separated from the evil and to attract it into the communion of blessedness.
That, said the Teacher, is my meaning; and also that the agony will be measured by the amount of evil there is in each individual. For it would not be reasonable to think that the man who has remained so long as we have supposed in evil known to be forbidden, and the man who has fallen only into moderate sins, should be tortured to the same amount in the judgment upon their vicious habit; but according to the quantity of material will be the longer or shorter time that that agonizing flame will be burning; that is, as long as there is fuel to feed it. In the case of the man who has acquired a heavy weight of material, the consuming fire must necessarily be very searching; but where that which the fire has to feed upon [1849] has spread less far, there the penetrating fierceness of the punishment is mitigated, so far as the subject itself, in the amount of its evil, is diminished. In any and every case evil must be removed out of existence, so that, as we said above, the absolutely non-existent should cease to be at all. Since it is not in its nature that evil should exist outside the will, does it not follow that when it shall be that every will rests in God, evil will be reduced to complete annihilation, owing to no receptacle being left for it?
But, said I, what help can one find in this devout hope, when one considers the greatness of the evil in undergoing torture even for a single year; and if that intolerable anguish be prolonged for the interval of an age, what grain of comfort is left from any subsequent expectation to him whose purgation is thus commensurate with an entire age? [1850]
Why [1851] , either we must plan to keep the soul absolutely untouched and free from any stain of evil; or, if our passionate nature makes that quite impossible, then we must plan that our failures in excellence consist only in mild and easily-curable derelictions. For the Gospel in its teaching distinguishes between [1852] a debtor of ten thousand talents and a debtor of five hundred pence, and of fifty pence and of a farthing [1853] , which is "the uttermost" of coins; it proclaims that God's just judgment reaches to all, and enhances the payment necessary as the weight of the debt increases, and on the other hand does not overlook the very smallest debts.
[1849] he tou puros dapane. These words can have no other meaning to suit the sense. Krabinger's reproduction of Sifanus' Latin, "ignis ille consumens," makes the sentence a tautology.
[1850] pros holon ai& 242;na. But cf. Plato, Timaeus, 37, 39 D.
[1851] Macrina's answer must begin here, though the Paris Editt. take no notice of a break. Krabinger on the authority of one of his Codd. has inserted phesin he didaskalos after pronoeteon
[1852] distinguishes between. The word here is oiden, which is used of "teaching," "telling," after the fashion of the later Greek writers, in making a quotation.
[1853] of a farthing. No mention is made of this in the Parable (S. Matt. xviii. 23; S. Luke vii. 41). The "uttermost farthing" of S. Matt. v. 26 does not apply here.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/nyssa/soul-resurrection.asp?pg=30
