113 Such are the wonders. There is here, Denys (De la Philosophie d'Origene, p. 484) remarks, a great difference between Gregory and Origen. Both speak of an "eternal sabbath," which will end the circle of our destinies. But Origen, after all the progress and peregrinations of the soul, which he loves to describe, establishes "the reasoning nature" at last in an unchangeable quiet and repose; while Gregory sets before the soul an endless career of perfections and ever ncreasing happiness. This is owing to their different conceptions of the Deity. Origen cannot understand how He can know Himself or be accessible to our thonght, if He is Infinite: Gregory on the contrary conceives Him as Infinite, as beyond all real or imaginable boundaries, pashj perigrafhz ektoj (Orat. Cat. viii. 65); this is the modern, rather than the Greek view. In the following description of the life eternal Gregory hardly merits the censure of Ritter that he "introduces absurdity" into it.
114 such a magnitude as. Reading, ef o, with Schmidt. The "limit" is the present body, which must be laid aside in order to cease to be a hindrance to such a growth. Krabinger reads ef wn on the authority of six Codd., and translates "ii in quibus nullus terminus interrumpit incrementum." But tosouton can answer to nothing before, and manifestly refers to the relative clause.
115 Macrina may be here alluding to Gregory's brotherly affection for her.
But on high
A record lives of thine identity!
Thou shalt not lose one charm of lip or eye;
The hues and liquid lights shall wait for thee,
And the fair tissues, whereso'er they be!
Daughter of heaven ! our grieving hearts repose
On the dear thought that we once more shall see
Thy beauty-like Himselfour Master rose.
C. Tennyson Turner.-Anastasis.
117 idein ...ina mh amfiballh. This is the reading of the Paris Editt.: idein seems to go closely with alhfej: so that Krabinger's dein is not absolutely necessary.
118 some extend this absurdity even to trees: Empedocles for instance. Cf. Philosophumena (of Hippolytus, falsely attributed to Origen), p. 50, where two lines of his are quoted. Chrysostom's words (I. iv. p. 196), "There are those amongst them who carry souls into plants, into shrubs, and into dogs," are taken by Matthaeus to refer to Empedocles. Cf. Celsus also (quoted in Origen, c. Cels. viii. 53), "Seeing then men are born bound to a body-no matter whether the economy of the world required this, or that they are paying the penalty for some sin, or that the soul is weighted with certain emotions till it is purified from them at the end of its destined cycle, three myriad hours, according to Empedocles, being the necessary period of its wanderings far away from the Blessed Ones, during which it passes successively into every perishable shape-we must believe any way that there exist certain guardians of this prison-house." See De Hom. Opif. c. 28. Empedocles can be no other, then, than "the philosopher who asserts that the same thing may be born in anything:" below (p. 232 D). Anaxagoras, however, seems to have indulged in the same dictum (pan en panti), but with a difference; as Nicetas explains in his commentary on Gregory Naz., Orations: "That everything is contained in everything Empedocles asserted, and Anaxagoras asserted also: but not with the same meaning. Empedocles said it of the four elements, namely, that they are not only divided and self-centred, but are also mingled with each other. This is clear from the fact that every animal is engendered by all four. But Anaxagoras, finding an old proverb that nothing can be produced out of nothing, did away with creation, and introduced `differentiation 0' instead, &c." See also Greg. Naz., Poems, p. 170.
120 eirmw, i. e. as links in a chain which cannot be altered. Sifanus' "carcere et claustro" is due to eirgmw against all the mss. Krabinger's six have diateixizomena for diastoixizomena of the Editt.
121 oude <\=85_ton botrun. The intensitive need not surprise us, though a grape-bunch does seem a more fitting body for a human soul than a stalk of hemlock: it is explained by the sentence in apposition, "produced ...for the purpose of sustaining life," i. e. it is eaten, and so a soul might be eaten; which increases the horror.
122 kai gar kai autoj twn fuomenwn estin, i. e. the fruit and not the tree only. belongs to the kingdom of plants: futain the next sentence is exactly equivalent to ta fuomena, i.e. plants. The probability that this is the meaning is strengthened by Krabinger's reading outoj, from five of his Codd. But still if autoj be retained, it might have been taken to refer to the man who must needs look suspiciously at a bunch of grapes; "for what, according to this theory, is he himself, but a vegetable!" since all things are mixed, panta omou.
123 Two Codd. Mon. (D, E) omit futon h zwon, which is repeated below.
124 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."
126 thj fusikhj tauthj. This is the common reading: but fusij and fusikoj have a rather higher meaning than our equivalent for them: cf. just below, "that inherently (th fusei) fine and buoyant thing": and Krabinger is probably right in reading futikhj from four Codd.
127 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 mexri toutwn, k.t.l.),-it contradicts the truth which it assumes, i. e. that there is no change in heaven."
128 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.
129 that undeviating revolution along with the stars, thn aplanh periforan. Cf. Origen, De Princip. ii 3-6 (Rufinus' translation), "Sed et ipsum supereminentem, quem dicunt aplanh, globum proprie nihilominus mundum appellari volunt:" Cicero. De Repub. vi. 17: "Novem tibi orbibus ver potius globis connexa sunt omnia: quorum unus est choelestis, 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 daimonej: but the theorists, whom Gregory is refuting, confuse this distinction which their own master drew.
131 Such theories are developed in the Phaedo of Plato; and constitute o etepoj twn logwn, criticized more fully below.
132 Reading dokei, h to empalin, instead of the corrupt dokeih to empalin.
133 o protepoj (logoj). The second is mentioned below. "The same absurdity exists in the other of the two theories as well." Obviously these two theories are those alluded to at the beginning of this last speech of Macrina, where, speaking of the heathen transmigration, she says, "While some of them extend this absurdity even to trees and shrubs, so that they consider their wooden life as corresponding and akin to humanity (i.e. o protepuj logoj), others of them opine only thus much, that the soul exchanges one man for another man." &c. (i.e. o etepoj). In either case the soul is supposed to return from the dead body to heaven, and then by a fresh fall into sin there, to sink down again. The absurdity and the godlessness is just as glaring, Macrina says, in the last case (the Platonic soul-rotation) as in the first (Transmigration pure and simple). But the one point in both in contact with the Christian Resurrection is this, that the soul of the departed does assume another body.
134 h kat auton (i. e. bion) diecodoj. The Editions have kat autwn. Krabinger well translates by "percursatio." Cf. Phoedrus, p. 247 A.
136 alla mhn introduces a fact into the argument (cf. kai mhn); Lat. "verum enimvero."
140 that it is an object of his faith, &c. In the Greek the men contrasts the Apostle's declaration on this point with his silence as to the "how."
141 militates against, &c. 'All' oux omologeitai (reading then oti to eterogenej exei proj ekeinhn ta onta). Cf. Plato, Tim. 29 C, autoi autoij oux omologoumenoi logoi, "theories that contradict each other." This world cannot come out of the Supreme Being: its alien nature contradicts that. Krabinger's translation is therefore wrong, "sed non constat:" and Oehler's, "Aber das ist nicht angemacht."
145 The long Greek sentence, which begins here with a genitive absolute (thj de swmatikhj ktisewj, k.t.l.), leading up to nothing but the anacoluthon peri wn tosouton k.t.l., has been broken up in translating. Doubtless this anacoluthon can be explained by the sentences linked on to the last words (tw logw) of the genitive clause, which are so long as to throw that clause quite into the background. There is no need therefore to take the words where this anacoluthon begins, down to swma ginetai, as a parenthesis, with Krabinger and Oehler; especially as the words that follow ginetai are a direct recapitulation of what immediately precedes.
146 Reading, as Dr. H. Schmidt conjectures, kai toutou palin, cf. 205 C.
147 Origen, Gregory's master in most of his theology, did teach this very thing, the pre-existence of the soul: nor did he attempt to deny that some degree of transmigration was a necessary accompaniment of such teaching; only he would adjust the moral meaning of it. Cf. c. Celsum, Lib. iii. 75. "And even if we should treat (i. e. medically) those who have caught the folly of the transmigration of souls from doctors who push down a reasoning nature into any of the unreasoning natures, or even into that which is insensate, how can any say that we shall not work improvement in their souls by teaching them that the bad do not have allotted to them by way of punishment that insensate or unreasoning state, but that what is inflicted by God upon the bad, be it pain or affliction, is only in the way of a very efficacious cure for them? This is the teaching of the wise Christian: he attempts to teach the simpler of his flock as fathers do the merest infants." Not the theory itself, but the exaggeration of it, is here combated.
150 This seems like a prelude to the Realism of the Middle Ages.
151 Each individual soul represents, to Gregory's view, a "thought" of God, which becomes visible by the soul being born. There will come a time when all these "thoughts," which complete, and do not destroy, each other, will have completed the plhrwma (Humanity) which the Deity contemplates. This immediate apparition of a soul, as a "thought" of God, is very unlike the teaching of his master Origen: and yet more sober, and more scriptural.
152 The situation here is, as Dr. H. Schmidt points out, just like that in the Phaedo of Plato, where all are satisfied with Socrates' discourse, except Kebes and Simmias, who seize the precious moments still left, to bring forward an objection which none but their great Teacher could remove.
153 periodikhn: a better reading than parodikhn, which most Codd, have.
154 receiving the same term (sunonomazomenhj) as the raising up of that which is actually prostate on the ground (tou gewdouj), i. e. the term anastasij is extended by analogy to embrace the entire movement of the atoms; Though there is here of course an allusion to the elevation of the nature from the "earthly" to the "heavenly," and perhaps to the raising of the body from the tomb, yet the primary meaning is that the term anastasij is derived from its special use of raising from the ground one who lies prostrate (as a suppliant). Some of the elements of the body are supposed to be gewdh, i. e. mingled with their kindred earth. But though strictly the word anastasij should apply to them alone, it does not do so, but denotes more generally the movement of all the atoms to reform the body.
155 Gregory quotes as usual the LXX. for this Psalm (cxviii. 27): Qeoj kurioj, kai epefanen hmin susthsasqe thn eorthn en toij pukazousin ewj twn keratwn tou qusiasthriou. [Krabinger has replaced suathsasqe from one of his Codd. for the common susthsasqai; but if this is retained wste must be understood. Cf. Matt., Gr. Gr. §532.] The LXX. is rendered by the Psalterium Romanum "constitute diem in confrequentatianibus." So also Eusebius, Theodoret, and Chrysostom interpret. But the Psalterium Gallicanum reproduces the LXX. otherwise, i.e. in condensis, as Apollinaris and Jerome (in frondosis) also understand it. "Adorn the feast with green boughs, even to the horns of the altar": Luther. "It is true that during the time of the second temple the altar of burnt offering was planted round about at the Feast of Tabernacles with large branches of osiers, which leaned over the edge of that altar": Delitzsch (who however says that this is, linguistically, untenable). Gregory's rendering differs from this only in making pukazousin masculine.
156 Reading toij ezwfen peribolhj.
159 Gregory, as often, seems to quote from memory (upameifqhsesqai, but 1 Cor. xv. 52 allaghsomeqa; and St. Paul says hmeij de, i.e. "we shall be changed," in distinction from the dead generally, who "shall be raised incorruptible"). But the doctrine of a general resurrection, with or without change, is quite in harmony with the end of this treatise. Cf. p. 468.
160 the incorruptible tribunal. The Judgment comes after the Resurrection (cf. 250 A, 254 A, 258 D), and after the purifying and chastising detailed above. The latter is represented by Gregory as a necessary process of nature: but not till the Judgment will the moral value of each life be revealed. There is no contradiction, such as Moller tries to find, between this Dialogue and Gregory's Oratio Catechetica. There too he is speaking of chastisement after the Resurrection and before the Judgment. "For not everything that is granted in the resurrection a return to existence will return to the same kind of life. There is a wide interval between those who have been purified (i. e. by baptism) and those who still need purification." ..."But as for those whose weaknesses have become inveterate, and to whom no purgation of their defilement has been applied, no mystic water, no invocation of the Divine power, no amendment by repentance, it is absolutely necessary that they should be submitted to something proper to their case," i.e. to compensate for Baptism, which they have never received (c. 35).
161 fhsin should probably be struck out (as the insertion of a copyist encouraged by eipon below): five of Krabinger's Codd. omit it.
162 eipon. Cf. 243 C: kai ama legein epexeiroun osa proj anatrophn thj anastasewj para twn eristikwn efeurisketai. So that this is not the first occasion on which objections to the Resurrection have been started by Gregory, and there is no occasion to adopt the conjecture of Augentius and Sifanus, an eipoimi, "dixerim", especially as eipon is found in all Codd. without exception.
164 eira nosw. That these words can mean leprosy, as well as epilepsy, seems clear from Eusebius.
165 to touch twice the very same flame. Albert Jahn (quoted by Krabinger) here remarks that Gregory's comparison rivals that of Heraclitus: and that there is a deliberate intention of improving on the expression of the latter, "you cannot step twice into the same stream." Above (p. 459), Gregory has used directly Heraclitus' image, "so that Nature's stream may not flow on for ever, pouring forward in her successive births," &c. See also De Hom. Opif. c. 13 (beginning).
166 not the same even as he was yesterday. Cf. Gregory's Oratio de Mortuis, t. III. p. 633 A. "It is not exaggeration to say that death is woven into our life. Practically such an idea will be found by any one to be based on a reality: for experiment would confirm this belief that the man of yesterday is not the same as the man of today in material substance, but that something of him must be alway becoming dead, or be growing, or being destroyed, or ejected: ...Wherefore, according to the expression of the mighty Paul, `we die daily 0': we are not always the same people remaining in the same homes of the body, but each moment we change from what we were by reception and ejectment, altering continually into a fresh body."
167 A fresh objection is here started. It is answered (254 A, B).
168 Which succeeds (and is bound up with) the Resurrection. The argument is, "the flesh has behaved differently in different persons here; how then can it be treated alike in all by being allowed to rise again? Even before the judgment an injustice has been done by all rising in the same way to a new life."-In what follows, n tou autou nun men, k.t.l., the difficulty of different dispositions in the same person is considered.
169 parektikhj kai metabatikhj energeiaj. To the latter expression, which simply means walking, belong the words below, kai proj ton dromon oi podej (p. 464) Schmidt well remarks that a simpler form than metabatikoj does not exist, because in all walking the notion of putting one foot in the place of the other (meta) is implied; and shows that Krabinger's translation "transeundi officium" makes too much of the word.
170 Reading wj an anagkhn einai, ei mh eih peri to swma ta proj ouden, k.t.l. The an seems required by the protasis ei mh eih, and two Codd. supply it. The interrogative sentence ends with estai.-Below (wste paqein an), an is found with the same force with the infinitive; "so that those...might possibly be affected."
171 Reading en alloij ar h zwn, as Schmidt suggests, and as the sense seems to require, although there is no ms. authority except for gar.
172 saved to the last. The word here is diaswzein; lit. to "preserve through danger," but it is used by later writers mostly of dialectic battles, and Plato himself rises it so (e.g. Timaeus, p. 56, 68, Polit. p. 395) always of "probability." It is used by Gregory, literally, in his letter to Flavian, "we at last arrived alive in our own district," and, with a slight difference, On Pilgrimages, "it is impossible for a woman to accomplish so long a journey without a conductor, on account of her natural weakness." Hence the late word diaswsthj, dux itineris.
173 The actual language of this definition is Platonic (cf. Sympos. p. 193 D), but it is Gregory's constant formula for the Christian Resurrection; see De Hom. Opif. c. 17; In Ecclesiast. I. p. 385 A; Funeral Oration for Pulcheria, III. p. 523 C; Orat. de Mortuis, III. p. 632 C; De Virginitate, c. xii. p. 358.
174 egennhqh. S. John xvi. 21.
175 ton gar tou zhn arcamenon, zhsai xrh pantwj. The present infinitive here expresses only a new state of existence, the aorist a continued act. The aorist may have this force, if (as a whole) it is viewed as a single event in past time. Cf. Appian. Bell. Civ. ii. 91, hlqon, eiqon, enikhsa.
176 Reading with Krabinger, en tw nun kairw instead of en tw meta tauta, which cannot possibly refer to what immediately precedes, i. e. the union with God, by means of the Resurrection. If meta tauta is retained, it must = meta touton ton bion. Gregory here implies that the Resurrection is not a single contemporaneous act, but differs in time, as individuals differ; carrying out the Scriptural distinction of a first and second Resurrection.
177 Dr. H. Schmidt has an admirable note here, pointing out the great and important difference between S. Paul's use of this analogy of the grain of wheat, and that of our Saviour in S. John xii. 23, whence S. Paul took it. In the words, "The hour is come that the Son of man should be glorified. Verily, verily I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit" (A. V.), the fact and the similitude exactly correspond. To the corn with its life-engendering shoot, answers the man with his vivifying soul. The shoot, when the necessary conditions are fulfilled, breaks through the corn, and mounts up into an ear, exquisitely developed: so the soul, when the due time is come, bursts from the body into a nobler form. Again, through the death of the integument a number of new corns are produced: so through the death of the body that encases a perfect soul (i. e. that of Jesus), an abundance of blessings is produced for mankind. Everything here exactly corresponds; the principle of life, on the one hand in the corn, on the other hand in the human body, breaks, by dying, into a more beautiful existence. But this comparison in S. Paul becomes a similitude rather than an analogy. With him the lifeless body is set over against the life-containing corn; he does not compare the lifeless body with the lifeless corn: because out of the latter no stalk and ear would ever grow. The comparison, therefore, is not exact: it is not pretended that the rising to life of the dead human body is not a process transcendently above the natural process of the rising of the ear of wheat. But the similitude serves to illustrate the form and the quality of the risen body, which has been in question since v. 35 (1 Cor. xv.), "with what body do they come?" and the salient point is that the risen body will be as little like the buried body, as the ear of wheat is like its corn. The possibility of the Resurrection has been already proved by S. Paul in this chapter by Christ's own Resurrection, which he states from the very commencement as a fact: it is not proved by this similitude.
178 The Resurrection being the second. The epeidh here does not give the reason for what precedes: that is given in the words, fhsi dh touto o apostoloj, to which the leading gar therefore belongs: the colon should be replaced (after anedramen) by a comma.
179 Reading ou monon de touto, k.t.l. The de is not found in two Codd.
180 i. e. of grain, adopted by the Apostle.
181 staxuj here might be the nom. plur. Any way it is a "nominativus pendens."
182 This "naked grain" is suggested by the words of S. Paul, not so much 1 Cor. xv. 37, as 2 Cor. v. 4: "For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened: not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon." Tertullian's words (de resurr. carnis c. 52) deserve to be quoted, "Seritur granum sine folliculi veste, sine fundamento spicae, sine munimento aristae, sine superbiâ culmi. Exsurgit copiâ feneratum, compagine aedificatum, ordine structum, cultu munitum, et usquequaque vestitum." In allusion to this passage (2 Cor. v. 4), Origen says, "Our theory of the Resurrection teaches that the relations of a seed attach to that which the Scriptures call the `tabernacle of the soul, 0' in which the righteous `do groan being burdened, 0' not wishing to put it off, but `to be clothed upon 0' (with something else). We do not, as Celsus thinks, mean by the resurrection anything like the transmigration of souls. The soul, in its essence unbodied and invisible, when it comes into material space, requires a body fitted to the conditions of that particular space: which body it wears, having either put off a former body, or else having put it on over its former body ...For instance, when it comes to the actual birth into this world it lays aside the environment (xwrion) which was needed as long as it is in the womb of her that is with child: and it clothes itself with that which is necessary for one destined to pass through life. Then there is a `tabernacle, 0' and `an earthly house, 0' as well: and the Scriptures tell us that this `earthly house 0' of the tabernacle is to be dissolved, but that the tabernacle itself is to surround itself with another house not made with hands. The men of God declare that the corruptible must put on incorruption (which is a different thing from the incorruptible), and the mortal must put on immortality (which is different from the immortal: just as the relative quality of wisdom is different from that which is absolutely wise). Observe, then, where this system leads us. It says that the souls put on incorruption and immortality like garments which keep their wearer from corruption, and their inmate (ton perikeimenon auta) from death" (c. Cels. vii. 32). We see at once this is another explanation of the Resurrection, by the spermatikoj logoj of the soul, and not Gregory's; with him the soul recollects its scattered atoms, and he thus saves the true scriptural view.
183 This connection of "evil" and "multitude" is essentially Platonic. Cf. also Plotinus, vi. 6. 1: "Multitude, then, is a revolt from unity, and infinity a more complete revolt by being infinite multitude: and so infinity is bad, and we are bad, when we are a multitude" (cf. "Legion" in the parable).
184 as happens to the grain, i. e. to become bare, as compared with the beautiful envelopments of the entire ear.
185 "hornstruck" seeds, i. e. those which have been struck by, or have struck, the horns of the oxen, in the process of sowing: according to the rustic superstition, which Gregory Nazianz. in some very excellent hexameters alludes to (Opp. t. II. pp. 66-163): "There is," he says. "a dry unsoakable seed, which never sinks into the ground, or fattens with the rain; it is harder than horn; its horn has struck the horn of the ox, what time the ploughman's hand is scattering the grain over his land." Ruhnken (ad Timoeum, p. 155) has collected the ancient authorities on this point. The word is used by Plato of a "hard," "intractable" person. The "bare grain" of the wicked is here compared to these hard seeds, which even though they may sink into the earth and rise again, yet have a poor and stunted blade, which may never grow.
186 Reading epi thj ghj, instead of thn ghn: for a fall "on to the earth," instead of "on the earth," agrees neither with what Gregory (speaking by Macrina) has urged against the heathen doctrine of Transmigration, nor with the words of Scripture which he follows. The "earthly fall" is compared with the heavenly rising: kataptwsij, in the sense of a "moral fall," is used in 3 Maccab. ii. 14 (quoted by Schmidt).