On the Soul and the Resurrection 89–115

“… desire and the like, and it was said that the good use of these is a virtue and that vice arises through their mistaken use; and the argument added the contribution of each of the others to the life of virtue, that through desire we are led up to God, drawn up to him from below as by a kind of chain; the argument seems somehow,” I said, “to go against its aim.” Macrina: “How do you mean?” she said. Gregory: “Because,” I said, “when every irrational movement in us has been quenched after the purification, the desiring part too will certainly not exist; and if this does not exist, neither would there be any longing for the better, no such movement being left in the soul to rouse it to the appetite for good things.” Macrina: “But to this,” she said, “we say that the contemplative and discerning power is proper to the godlike part of the soul, since we grasp the divine too in these. If, then, either by care now or by purification afterward, our soul becomes free from its union with the irrational passions, it will be hindered in nothing toward the contemplation of the beautiful. For the beautiful by its own nature somehow draws everyone who looks toward it. If, then, the soul is purified of all vice, it will certainly be in the beautiful. And the divine is beautiful by its own nature, to which the soul will have union through purity, joined to what is akin to it …”

“… our life … the transcendent substance. For the nature that is above all thought, set far from what is seen in us, passes its own life in another way, and not as we now are in our living. For human beings, because our nature is always in motion, are carried in whatever direction the impulse of choice goes, the soul not being disposed in the same way, as one might say, toward what is in front of it and what is behind. For hope leads the movement forward, while memory receives the movement as it advances toward hope; and if hope leads the soul to what is beautiful by nature, the movement of choice leaves a bright track on the memory; but if it is cheated of the better, hope having deceived the soul by some image of the beautiful, the memory that follows on what happened becomes shame. And so this civil war arises in the soul, memory fighting against hope as having led choice badly. For the passion of shame clearly expresses some such meaning, when the soul is stung at what has resulted, lashing the unwanted impulse with repentance as with a whip and calling in forgetfulness as an ally against what pains it. But our nature, because it is poor in the good, always strives toward what is lacking; and this longing for what is lacking is the desiring disposition of our nature, either mistaken through lack of judgment about the true good or obtaining what it is good to obtain. But the nature that surpasses every thought of good and transcends every power, lacking nothing of what is conceived as good, being itself the fullness of goods, … not by sharing in …”

“… of some good, moving in the good, but being itself the nature of the good, whatever the mind supposes the good to be, it does not admit in itself the movement of hope either. For hope is active only toward what is not present; ‘for what one has, why does he still hope for it?’ says the Apostle. Nor does it need the activity of memory for knowledge of things; for what is seen does not need to be remembered. Since, then, the divine nature is beyond every good, and the good is certainly dear to the good, for this reason, looking into itself, it both wills what it has and has what it wills, receiving nothing from outside into itself; and there is nothing outside it except vice alone, which, paradoxical as it is to say, has its being in not being; for there is no other origin of vice than the privation of being; and what properly is, is the nature of the good. What is not in being, then, is certainly in not being. When, then, the soul too, having put off all the varied movements of nature, becomes godlike, and, having passed beyond desire, is in that toward which it was until then lifted by desire, it no longer gives any room in itself either to hope or to memory: for it has what it hoped for, and its occupation with the enjoyment of good things drives memory out of the mind. And so it imitates the transcendent life, being formed by the properties of the divine nature, so that nothing else is left to it but the disposition of love, which naturally grows to the beautiful. For this is love: the inward attachment to what pleases the heart. When, then, the soul, having become simple and uniform and exactly godlike, finds the truly simple and immaterial good, the only thing that is truly lovable and desirable, it grows to it and is blended with it through the movement and activity of love, forming itself to what is always being grasped and found; and …”

“… becoming through likeness to the good that which the nature of what it shares in is. And since there is no desire in that nature, because there is no lack of any good in it, it would follow that the soul too, when it comes to be in what lacks nothing, casts out from itself the movement and disposition of desire, which arises only when what is longed for is not present. The divine Apostle too has led us to such a doctrine, foretelling a cessation and end of all the things we now pursue, even for the better, and finding no limit for love alone. ‘For prophecies,’ he says, ‘will be done away, and knowledge will cease; but love never fails,’ which is the same as always remaining the same. And though he says that faith and hope have remained along with love, again he rightly sets love above them too. For hope is active only until the enjoyment of what is hoped for is present; and faith likewise becomes a support in the uncertainty of what is hoped for; for so he defined it, saying, ‘Faith is the substance of things hoped for.’ But when what is hoped for comes, while all the rest come to rest, the activity of love remains, finding nothing to succeed it. That is why it takes precedence over all achievements of virtue and all the precepts of the law. If, then, the soul ever reaches this end, it will lack nothing else, since it has grasped the fullness of existing things, and it alone seems in some way to preserve in itself the stamp of the divine blessedness. For the life of the higher nature is love, since the beautiful is certainly lovable to those who know it; and the divine knows it; and knowledge becomes love. Therefore what is known is the beautiful by nature, and no insolent satiety touches the truly beautiful; and since satiety does not cut off the loving relation to the beautiful, the divine life will always be active through love, being beautiful by nature …”

“… is, and has by nature a loving relation to the beautiful, and has no limit to the activity of love, since no limit of the beautiful is found such that love should end with the end of the beautiful; for the beautiful is limited only by its opposite; and where the nature does not admit the worse, the good will advance to the unlimited and boundless. Since, then, every nature draws to itself what is akin to it, and the human is in some way akin to God, as bearing in itself imitations of the archetype, the soul is by every necessity drawn to the divine and akin. For what is God’s own must in every way and altogether be saved for God. But if the soul happens to be light and unencumbered, no bodily burden weighing it down, its approach to the one who draws it is pleasant and easy. But if it has been nailed by the nails of attachment to its relation with material things, it suffers something like what bodies buried in the debris of earthquakes are likely to suffer; and let it be supposed that they are not only weighed down by the fallen ruins but also pierced by stakes or pieces of wood found in the debris. What such bodies are likely to undergo when they are pulled out by their relatives for the sake of burial (for they will certainly be torn and lacerated and suffer every kind of the harshest pain, the debris and the nails tearing them because of the force of those who pull), something of that kind, it seems to me, happens to the soul too, when the divine power, out of love for mankind, draws its own out of the irrational and material ruins. For it is not in hatred, nor in revenge for an evil life, at least in my account, that God brings painful conditions on those who have sinned, he who claims and draws to himself everything that came into being for his sake; rather, he draws the soul to himself, the fountain of all blessedness, for a better purpose, and the painful condition necessarily follows for the one who is drawn.”

“And as those who refine gold from the matter mixed with it by fire not only melt the base metal in the fire, but the pure is necessarily melted together with the dross, and when that is consumed this remains, so too, when vice is consumed by the unsleeping fire, it is entirely necessary that the soul united with it should be in the fire too, until what was sown in it, base and material and counterfeit, has been used up, consumed by the eternal fire. And as, if clay of the stickier kind were plastered deeply around a rope, and then the end of the rope were passed through a narrow hole and someone pulled the rope violently from the end toward the inside, the rope must follow the one who pulls, while the clay plastered on it is scraped off by the violent pulling and remains outside the hole, and it becomes the cause of the rope’s not passing easily but undergoing a violent strain from the one pulling: something of this kind it seems to me we should think about the soul, entangled in material and earthy attachments, that it labours and is strained, God drawing his own to himself, while what is foreign, because it has grown together with it in some way, is violently scraped off and brings it sharp and unbearable pains.” Gregory: “Then,” I said, “it seems that the divine judgment does not primarily bring punishment on sinners, but, as the argument has shown, works only the good, separating from evil and drawing to the fellowship of blessedness; while the tearing apart of what had grown together becomes pain for the one who is drawn.” Macrina: “That is my account too,” said my teacher, “and also that the measure of the pain is the amount of vice in each. For it is not likely that one who has gone so far in forbidden evils and one who has fallen into moderate faults should be pained equally in the judgment of their wicked habit; but according to the amount of the material the painful flame will be kindled more or less, as long as there is something to feed it. One on whom a heavy material burden lies must necessarily have a great and long-lasting flame that consumes it; but for one in whom less of what fire consumes is mixed, the punishment falls short of the more violent and sharper activity …”

“… of the punishment, as much as what lies upon it is lessened in the measure of vice. For evil must in every way and altogether one day be removed from existence, and, as was said before, what truly is not must not exist at all. For since vice cannot exist outside choice, when every choice comes to be in God, vice will pass into complete disappearance, no receptacle of it being left.” Gregory: “But what gain is there in this good hope,” I said, “for one who reckons how great an evil it is to undergo pain even for a single year? And if that intolerable pain is extended over an eternal interval, what consolation is left from the later hope, when the punishment is measured out along with a whole age?” Macrina: “So we must take care either to keep the soul altogether unmixed with and without share in the defilements of vice, or, if this is wholly impossible because of the passionate character of our nature, that our failures in virtue may be as moderate and easily cured as possible. For the teaching of the Gospel knows a debtor of ten thousand talents, and of five hundred denarii, and of fifty, and of a farthing, which is the least of coins; and that the just judgment of God passes through all, increasing the strictness of the demand with the weight of the debt, and not overlooking even the smallest. And the Gospel said that the payment of debts is not made by settlement in money, but that the debtor is handed over to the torturers until, it says, he pays all that is owed; which is nothing else than paying the necessary debt through torment, the debt of sharing in painful things, which he incurred during life when in his folly he chose pleasure unmixed and untempered with its opposite; and so, having put off all that is foreign to himself, which is sin, and stripped off the shame of his debts, he comes to be in freedom and boldness. And freedom is likeness to what has no master and rules itself, given to us by God at the beginning but covered over by the shame of our debts. And all freedom is by nature one and akin to itself. Consistently, then, everything free will be joined to its like; and virtue is without a master …”

“… for freedom is without a master. But the divine nature is the fountain of all virtue. Those freed from vice, then, will come to be in it, so that, as the Apostle says, God may be all in all. For this saying seems to me clearly to confirm the meaning examined earlier, which says that God becomes both all and in all. For while the present life is carried on in us in varied and manifold ways, there are many things we share in, such as time and air and place, food and drink, clothing and sunlight and lamplight, and many others for the needs of life, none of which is God; but the blessedness we expect needs none of these, and the divine nature will become all things to us and instead of all things, distributing itself suitably for every need of that life. And this is clear from the divine words, that God becomes for the worthy place and house and clothing and food and drink and light and wealth and kingdom, and every thought and name of what contributes to the good life for us. And he who becomes all comes to be in all. In this the saying seems to me to teach the complete disappearance of vice. For if God will be in all existing things, vice clearly will not be among existing things. For if one supposed that it too exists, how will God’s being in all be preserved? For its exception makes the inclusion of all defective …”

“… of all. But he who will be in all will not be in what does not exist.” Gregory: “What, then,” I said, “should we say to those who are faint-hearted about these comparisons?” Macrina: “To them,” said my teacher, “we say: ‘In vain, sirs, do you chafe and fret at the connection of the necessary sequence of things, not knowing to what aim each thing in the universe is ordered and carried: that all things must, in a certain order and sequence, according to the skilful wisdom of the One who guides them, be made akin to the divine nature. For this reason rational nature came into being, so that the wealth of the divine goods might not be idle; but souls were constructed by the wisdom that established the universe as vessels with free choice, so to speak, so that there might be a capacity able to receive goods, always becoming greater by the addition of what is poured in …’”

Macrina: “… separation, let not even this be without hope for you. For you will see this bodily covering, now dissolved by death, woven again from the same materials, not in this coarse and heavy construction, but with the thread spun into something finer and airier, so that what you love will be with you and will be restored again in a better and more lovely beauty.” Gregory: “But it seems,” I said, “that the doctrine of the resurrection has come into the discussion by the sequence of the argument. It seems to me true and trustworthy from the teaching of the Scriptures, so that I do not doubt it; but since the weakness of the human mind is somehow more strengthened in such faith by reasonings within our reach, it would be well not to pass this part over unexamined either. Let us consider, then, what must be said.” Macrina: And my teacher said: “Those outside our philosophy, in different suppositions, one in one way and another in another, have touched on some part of the doctrine of the resurrection, neither agreeing exactly with ours nor wholly missing such a hope. For some insult humanity by making it common with the brutes, defining that the same soul becomes in turn that of a man and of an irrational animal, changing bodies like clothes and always passing to what pleases it, becoming after the man a bird or a water creature or a land animal, and from these returning again to human nature. Others extend such nonsense as far as bushes, so as to think the life of trees suited and proper to it too. Others hold only that another man always takes the soul from a man, and that human life is always carried on through the same souls, now in these and again in others, forever. But we say, starting from the doctrines of the Church, that it is right to accept from those who have philosophized in this way only so much as shows them in some way agreeing with the doctrine of the resurrection. For their saying that the soul, after its dissolution from this body, enters again into certain bodies is not far from the revival we hope for. For our account too says that our body is constituted, both now and hereafter, from the elements of the world; and those outside …”

“… seem to think the same. For you will not conceive of any other nature of the body outside the concurrence of the elements. The difference is this: we say that the same body is compacted again around the soul, fitted together from the same elements; while they think that the soul falls into other bodies, rational and irrational and without sense. They agree that the constitution is from the parts of the world, but disagree in not thinking it is from the same elements that grew with the soul at the beginning in its life in the flesh. That it is not beyond what is probable for the soul to come to be in a body again, then, let it be witnessed by the outside philosophy; but it is time to examine the incoherence of their doctrine, and the truth can easily be made plain through the very sequence that emerges reasonably for us. What, then, is the account of these things? Those who move the soul into different natures seem to me to confuse the properties of nature and mix and jumble everything together, the irrational, the rational, the sentient, the insentient, if these come to be in one another, not separated from one another by any unchangeable sequence of nature. For to say that the same soul is now rational and thinking through such a covering of the body, and again lurks in holes with reptiles, or flocks with birds, or carries burdens, or eats flesh, or lives under water, or even falls to the insensible, taking root and becoming a tree and sprouting outgrowths of branches, and in them growing as a flower or a thorn or something nourishing or poisonous, is nothing else than to think all things the same, and that there is one nature in existing things, jumbled in a confused and undistinguished communion, no property separating one from another. For one who says that the same thing comes to be in everything wishes nothing else than that all things are one, the difference appearing in existing things in no way hindering the mixture of incompatible things; so that it would be necessary, if one sees one of the venomous or carnivorous animals, to think …”

“… what appears akin and related to himself; nor will such a man look on hemlock as foreign to his own nature, if he sees the human in plants too; nor will he be free from suspicion even toward the grape cultivated for the needs of life, for it too is among the things that grow; and the products of the ears of grain by which we are fed are plants to us. How, then, will he set the sickle to the cutting of the ears? How will he press the grape, or dig the thorn out of the field, or pluck the flower, or hunt birds, or light a fire from wood, when it is uncertain whether his hand is not moving against kinsmen or ancestors or those of his own race, and whether it is through their body that the fire is kindled or the bowl mixed or the food prepared? For if one thinks that through each of these the soul of a man becomes a plant or an animal, while there are no marks set on them to show which plant or animal comes from a man and which came about otherwise, one prepossessed by such a supposition will be disposed equally toward all, so that necessarily either he is harsh even toward the human beings living by nature, or, if he inclines by nature to love toward those of his own race, he is similarly disposed toward every living thing, even reptiles and wild beasts; indeed, if he goes into a wood, one who has accepted this doctrine will think the trees a people of human beings. What, then, would the life of such a person be, either cautious toward everything because of kinship, or harsh toward human beings too because of his indifference toward the others? Such an account, then, is to be rejected from what has been said, many other things too leading us reasonably away from such a supposition. For I have heard those who teach such things say that nations of souls are kept in a commonwealth of their own before life in the body, living in the fineness and mobility of their nature together with the whirling of the universe; and that by some inclination to vice the souls lose their wings and come to be in bodies, first in human beings, and then, through fellowship with the irrational passions, after leaving human life, become brutes, and from there fall as far as this natural and insensible life …”

“… so that what is by nature fine and mobile, which the soul is, first becomes heavy and downward-tending, settling into human bodies through vice; then, when its rational power has been quenched, lives in the irrational creatures; and from there, when even this gift of the senses has been taken away, takes on this insensible life in plants; and from this goes up again by the same steps and is restored to the heavenly region. Such a doctrine is refuted at once for those who have examined it even moderately, as having no stability in itself. For if the soul is dragged down by vice from the heavenly life to the life of a tree, and from this runs back up again by virtue to the heavenly, their argument is found at a loss as to which it thinks more honourable, the life of wood or the heavenly. For there is a circle going round through the same things, the soul never being stable wherever it is. For if it falls from the incorporeal life to the bodily, and from this to the insensible, and from there runs back again to the incorporeal, those who teach this suppose nothing else than an indiscriminate confusion of evil and good. For neither does the heavenly way of life remain in blessedness, if vice touches those who live there, nor will trees be without a share of virtue, if they think the soul runs back from here to the good, and from there begins vice. For if the soul, revolving in heaven, is entangled with vice and, dragged down by it to the material life, is drawn up again from here to the life on high, then the opposite is established by them: that the material life is a purification from vice, while the unerring revolution becomes the leader and cause of evils for souls, if from here they grow wings through virtue and travel aloft, while from there, their wings falling off through vice, they become earthbound, mixed with the coarseness of material nature. And the absurdity of such doctrines does not stop at this, that their suppositions are turned into their opposites; but not even …”

“… this supposition itself remains firm for them throughout. For if they call the heavenly nature unchangeable, how does passion have room in what is unchangeable? And if the nature below is subject to passion, how is freedom from passion achieved in what is passible? But they mix what cannot be mixed and unite what is incompatible, seeing the unchangeable in passion and freedom from passion again in what changes. And they do not even remain in this; but where they exiled the soul from because of vice, there they settle it again from the material life, as in a safe and undefiled life, as if forgetting that vice, springing up there, made it mingle with the nature below. So the condemnation of life here and the praise of heavenly things are confused with one another and turned upside down, what is condemned in their opinion leading to the good, while what was supposed better gives the soul the occasion for its inclination to the worse. Every mistaken and unstable supposition about such things, then, must be cast out from the doctrines of truth; nor should we follow, as aiming at the truth, those who say that souls go down from women’s bodies to manly life, or conversely that souls separated from men’s bodies come to be in women, or pass from men to men and from women to women. For the former account was rejected not only because it is unstable and deceptive, turning round in itself to contrary suppositions, but also because it is impious, teaching that none of existing things is brought into being unless vice gives the beginning to the nature of each. For if neither men nor plants nor cattle grow unless a soul falls on them from above, and the fall comes about through vice, then they think vice begins the constitution of existing things. And somehow both things happen at the same time, a man growing from marriage and the soul’s fall coinciding with the zeal of mar…”