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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 35
From what has been already said, then, we must reject this theory: and there are many other considerations as well which on the grounds of mere consistency lead us away from it. For I have heard persons who hold these opinions [1870] saying that whole nations of souls are hidden away somewhere in a realm of their own, living a life analogous to that of the embodied soul; but such is the fineness and buoyancy of their substance that they themselves' roll round along with the revolution of the universe; and that these souls, having individually lost their wings through some gravitation towards evil, become embodied; first this takes place in men; and after that, passing from a human life, owing to brutish affinities of their passions, they are reduced [1871] to the level of brutes; and, leaving that, drop down to this insensate life of pure nature [1872] which you have been hearing so much of; so that that inherently fine and buoyant thing that the soul is first becomes weighted and downward tending in consequence of some vice, and so migrates to a human body; then its reasoning powers are extinguished, and it goes on living in some brute; and then even this gift of sensation is withdrawn, and it changes into the insensate plant life; but after that mounts up again by the same gradations until it is restored to its place in heaven. Now this doctrine will at once be found, even after a very cursory survey, to have no coherency with itself. For, first, seeing that the soul is to be dragged down from its life in heaven, on account of evil there, to the condition of a tree, and is then from this point, on account of virtue exhibited there, to return to heaven, their theory will be unable to decide which is to have the preference, the life in heaven, or the life in the tree. A circle, in fact, of the same sequences will be perpetually traversed, where the soul, at whatever point it may be, has no resting-place. If it thus lapses from the disembodied state to the embodied, and thence to the insensate, and then springs back to the disembodied, an inextricable confusion of good and evil must result in the minds of those who thus teach. For the life in heaven will no more preserve its blessedness (since evil can touch heaven's denizens), than the life in trees will be devoid of virtue (since it is from this, they say, that the rebound of the soul towards the good begins, while from there it begins the evil life again). Secondly [1873] , seeing that the soul as it moves round in heaven is there entangled with evil and is in consequence dragged down to live in mere matter, from whence, however, it is lifted again into its residence on high, it follows that those philosophers establish the very contrary [1874] of their own views; they establish, namely, that the life in matter is the purgation of evil, while that undeviating revolution along with the stars [1875] is the foundation and cause of evil in every soul: if it is here that the soul by means of virtue grows its wing and then soars upwards, and there that those wings by reason of evil fall off, so that it descends and clings to this lower world and is commingled with the grossness of material nature.
[1870] i.e.Pythagoreans and later Platonists. Cf. Origen, c. Cels. iii. 80. For the losing of the wings, cf. c. Cels iii. 40: "The coats of skins also, which God made for those sinners, the man and the woman cast forth from the garden, have a mystical meaning far deeper than Plato's fancy about the soul shedding its wings, and moving downward till it meets some spot upon the solid earth."
[1871] apoktenousthai
[1872] tes phusikes tautes. This is the common reading: but phusis and phusikos have a rather higher meaning than our equivalent for them: cf. just below, "that inherently (te phusei) fine and buoyant thing": and Krabinger is probably right in reading phutikes from four Codd.
[1873] With the gar here (unlike the three preceding) begins the second "incoherency" of this view. The first is,--"It confuses the ideas of good and evil." The second,--"it is inconsistent with a view already adopted by these teachers." The third (beginning with kai ou mechri touton, k.t.l.),--it contradicts the truth which it assumes, i.e. that there is no change in heaven."
[1874] See just above: "For I have heard persons who hold these opinions saying that whole nations of souls are hidden away somewhere in a realm of their own," &c., and see next note.
[1875] that undeviating revolution along with the stars, ten aplane periphoran. Cf. Origen, De Princip. ii. 3-6 (Rufinus' translation), "Sed et ipsum supereminentem, quem dicunt aplane, globum proprie nihilominus mundum appellari volunt:" Cicero, De Repub. vi. 17: "Novem tibi orbibus ver potius globis connexa sunt omnia: quorum unus est coelestis, extimus, qui reliquos omnes complectitur; in quo infixi sunt illi, qui volvuntur, stellarum cursus sempiterni," i.e. they roll, not on their axes, but only as turning round with the general revolution. They are literally fixed in that heaven (cf. Virg.: "tacito volvuntur sidera lapsu"): and the spiritual beings in it are as fixed and changeless: in fact, with Plato it is the abode only of Divine intelligences, not of the daimones: but the theorists, whom Gregory is refuting, confuse this distinction which their own master drew.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/nyssa/soul-resurrection.asp?pg=35
