3. The Prevision and Provision of God (16–29)

All we can say, he concludes, is that while nature is in proper order, the intellect is active; if any misfortune (πλημμέλημα) comes upon it, then the movement of thought falters accordingly.

In these ﬁrst 15 chapters, Gregory has presented us with a wholly positive picture of the human being as the image of God, the culmination of, and reason for, creation, whose body is adapted in its very structure for the exercise (through weakness) of kingly sovereignty, fashioned in such a way as to enable this animal to become rational, sharing in the intellect and reason that adorns the divine nature itself, and so to be the living image, decked out in virtue. But of whom is

Gregory speaking? It is notable that Gregory does not speak in the way that Philo and Origen do, in their own ways, of the 'intelligible' or 'inner' human, contrasted with the bodily or outward one (though, as we have seen, in their case they are also speaking of the single human being in two aspects). Nor has he been speaking about the 'prelapsarian' Adam (for despite allusions to Gen. 2:7, Adam has not been mentioned), and his analysis of 'the genesis of evil'—in the midst of a detour and thoroughly and discretely padded within an extensive discussion about bodily phenomena, all of which was aimed to show that the intellect pervades the human being throughout—is not straightforwardly the narration of an event called 'the Fall'. Given that he has spoken about 'the goal' for which the human being was to come into existence (De hom. 4), and that it is in the exercise of virtue that the human being becomes a 'living image', is he in this ﬁrst part speaking of the eschatological reality that will come to be at the end (and as such, as he put it in his ﬁrst homily on Ecclesiastes, is that which was made in the archē)? Or perhaps he is talking about Christ? His language at the end of De hom. 15 about how the incorporeal interacts with the body—pervading the body but not being contained by it, united to it through an 'unspeakable and inconceivable conjunction', not conﬁned to any one part but 'equally in all and through all'—might be taken to intimate this. To go further, we must turn to the next section.

3. The Prevision and Provision of God (16–29) Gregory begins the second part of his treatise, designated as 'a contemplation', by saying: 'Let us now take up again [ἐπαναλάβωμεν πάλιν] the divine saying, "Let us make the human being in accordance with our image and likeness"' (De hom.

16.1). What follows is not a mere resumption of a continuous analysis. Rather Gregory now turns to the central problematic of his treatise. The dignity of the human being is not, as some say, in being 'a little cosmos' made of the same elements as the universe, for so too are gnats and mice; rather, 'according to the ecclesiastical teaching', the dignity is shown in the human being coming to be 'in accordance with the image' of God (De hom. 16.2). However, what is 'the deﬁnition of the image', and how can the incorporeal be likened to the body,

the temporal to the eternal, that which grows up with evil with that which is unmixed with evil (De hom. 16.3)? 'How, then, is the human being, this mortal being, subject to passions and short-lived, an image of that undeﬁled and pure and everlasting nature?' (De hom. 16.4). While only 'the very Truth clearly knows the true account regarding this', Gregory nevertheless ventures to explain what 'we, so far as we are able, tracking down the truth by guesses and suspicions, apprehend' regarding these things (De hom. 16.4). To do so, he must navigate his way between an apparent contradiction, both elements of which must be maintained: that the divine word doesn't lie in saying that the human being came to be in accordance with the image of God, and yet that one cannot liken 'the pitiable wretchedness of human nature' to 'the blessedness of the impassible life'. Nevertheless, an account must be given to hold these two truths together, and so, as he put it in the Epistle to Peter, bring things that seem contradictory 'to one and the same end'.

So, Scripture must be 'taken up again'. In so doing, Gregory focuses not on the difference between the two creation accounts, that made in the image (Gen.

1:26–7) and that moulded from earth (Gen. 2:7), as did Philo and Origen in their own ways, but on a tension between the clauses of Gen. 1:27: '[a] And God made the human, [b] according to the image of God he made it, [c] male and female made he them'. These clauses, he says, 'must be examined with precision', and so his analysis must also be given in full and examined precisely:

[16.7] For we ﬁnd that what came to be [γενόμενον] 'in accordance with the image' is one [ἕτερον μέν], and what is now manifest in wretchedness is another

[ἕτερον δὲ]. 'God made [ἐποίησεν]', it says, 'the human being, in accordance with the image of God he made it'. The creation of that which came to be 'in accordance with the image' has an end [τέλος ἔχει ἡτοῦκατ᾽εἰκόνα γεγενημένου κτίσις]; then it makes a repetition [ἐπανάληψιν] of the account regarding the formation [τοῦκατὰτὴν κατασκευὴν λόγου], and says, 'male and female he made them'. I think it is known to everyone that this is understood to be outside the Prototype, 'for in Christ Jesus', as the apostle says, 'there is neither male nor female' [Gal. 3:28], but the account [ὁλόγος] says that the human being is indeed divided [διηρῆσθαι] into these. Therefore, the formation of our nature is in a sense twofold [Οὐκοῦν διπλῆτίς ἐστιν ἡτῆς φύσεως ἡμῶν κατασκευὴ], that being likened to the divine [ἥτε πρὸς τὸθεῖον ὡμοιωμένη], [and] that being divided according to this difference [ἥτε πρὸς τὴν διαφορὰν ταύτην διηρημένη]; for something like this the account hints at by the syntax of what is written, ﬁrst saying,

'God made the human being, in accordance with the image of God he made it', and then, adding to what has been said, 'male and female made he them', something that is foreign to what is conceived about God.

(De hom. 16.7–8) In each clause of Gen. 1:27, the word used for God's action is the same: he 'made'

(ἐποίησεν). What it is that is 'made' in these causes, however, is expounded by

Gregory with different words.⁹ With Gen. 1:27ab, Gregory uses the word 'creation'

(κτίσις) for 'that which has come to be [τοῦ. . . γεγενημένου] in accordance with the image'. He does not say that this 'creation' has 'come to an end', but rather 'has an end', that is, it has an end in view, a goal or ﬁnal cause, which is, as he puts it in the next sentence, its Prototype, that is, Christ Jesus. It is very important to register this point: it is Christ who is the Prototype, not Adam, who in fact has not yet been mentioned, either by Scripture or by Gregory (until De hom. 16.16 and 22.3, in both cases specifying that he is not talking about Adam). Gregory then takes v. 27c as being an 'ἐπανάληψις of the account of the κατασκευὴ': both words used here need to be carefully considered. The word ἐπανάληψις can mean either a 'resumption' or a 'repetition', while the word κατασκευὴ, as noted in Chapter 1, can mean

'construction' in the sense of 'ﬁtting-out' or 'preparing', but also in the sense of 'state, condition, constitution' (cf. LSJ s.v.). The result of God's 'making' in v. 27c is, in Gregory's words, the 'division' of the human being into male and female.

Finally, the conclusion he draws from all this is that 'the κατασκευὴof our nature is in a sense twofold', that 'being likened to the divine' and that divided into male and female. Gregory continues in the next sentence (De hom. 16.9, cited below) by reiterating this twofold aspect of the human being, as the 'span', sharing in both the divine, by its intellect, and in the irrational, by its bodily construction, which in turn is divided into male and female. As such, it would seem that we should take the word κατασκευὴ, 'formation', in the sense of 'constitution', so that it is the structure of human nature that is 'twofold' (the rational and intellectual, and the irrational and corporeal), rather than God's act of 'making', played out in two distinct stages.¹⁰ As we saw in Gregory's Hexaemeron, and as we will see again with regard to the human plenitude discussed shortly, God's act of making is instantaneous, encompassing all that is to be, while what comes into being is

'manifested' (Hex. 64), and the human being 'presented' and 'introduced' (De hom. 2), in proper order, a sequence moreover, in which, according to Moses'

⁹ Wilson translated all these words simply as 'create' or 'creation': '"God created man . . ." There is an end of the creation of that which was made in the image; then it makes a resumption of the account of creation . . .'

¹⁰ Cf. Eugenio Corsini, 'Plérôme humain et plérôme cosmique chez Grégoire de Nysse', in Marguerite Harl, ed., Écriture et culture philosophique dans la pensée de Grégoire de Nysse: Actes du

Colloque de Chevetogne (22–26 Septembre 1969) (Leiden: Brill, 1971), 111–26, at 115: 'Il ne dit nullement qu'il y a eu deux créations pour les deux aspects: il dit tout simplement qu'il y a deux expressions de l'Écriture pour indiquer que l'acte créateur de Dieu s'est porté sur deux aspects différents de l'homme. Grégoire ne dit pas, non plus, que l'homme «à l'image» n'avait pas de sexe: il veut dire que dans l'archétype (Dieu) il n'y a pas de sexe et que le sexe est, en conséquence, exclu du κατ᾽εἰκόνα.' For a valiant attempt to argue that the διπλῆκατασκευὴdenotes a 'two stage creation' in De hom. 16, see

Johannes Zachhuber, Human Nature in Gregory: Philosophical Background and Theological

Signiﬁcance (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 166–74, yet this leads him to conclude that 'there ultimately remains a grave tension between this theory and the role of man as a mediator between the sensible and the intelligible envisaged in the earlier parts of his writing . . . the rudimentary nature of Gregory's

Origenism itself is responsible for a number of severe inconsistencies' (166), and that therefore

'Gregory here effectively undermines his own previous argument' (171).

'philosophy of the soul', 'nature makes an ascent' from the lower to the perfect

(De hom. 8.4–7).

This, in turn, would suggest that ἐπανάληψις has the force of 'repetition' not 'resumption': rather than continuing to a second stage of a two-step account of creation, Gen. 1:27c repeats the account of God's single act of making, but now under a different aspect, one that includes human existence as male and female.

There would then be a parallel between these two clauses of Genesis (1:27ab and 1:27c), on the one hand, and, on the other, the ﬁrst 15 chapters and what follows: this part of the treatise presents a 'repetition' of the 'construction' of the human being but under a different aspect or from a different perspective; indeed, it really only now becomes apparent that he had said nothing about male and female when describing the human being in the ﬁrst part of the treatise. Finally, as such, this second part of Gregory's treatise corresponds to the second part of Timaeus' speech, when, realizing that he has so far given an account of 'what was crafted by Intellect', he notes that he must start again, for 'if one is to speak of how it really came to be [γέγονεν . . . ὄντως] one would have to introduce the character of the Straying Cause' (cf. Tim. 47e3–48b3)—which is precisely what Gregory does in what follows.

Concluding this examination of the verse of Scripture, Gregory sets out unambiguously what its teaching is:

I think that by these words, Holy Scripture conveys to us a certain great and lofty doctrine [δόγμα]; and the doctrine is this. While two [elements]—the divine and incorporeal nature [φύσεως], and the irrational and animal life [ζωῆς]—are separated from each other as extremes, humankind is the span [μέσον]. For there is to be beheld in the human compound a share of each of those mentioned—of the divine, the rational and intelligent, which does not admit the distinction of male and female; of the irrational, the bodily formation and construction, divided into male and female—for each of them is certainly in all that partakes of human life [ζωῆς]. But the intellectual takes precedence

[προτερεύειν], as we have learnt from one who gives in detail an ordered account of the origin of the human being [ἀνθρωπογονίαν]; participation and kinship with the irrational is concomitant to being human [ἐπιγεννηματικὴν δὲεἶναι τῷ ἀνθρώπῳ], for he ﬁrst says that 'God made the human being in accordance with the image' of God, showing by what was said, just as the Apostle says, that in such a being 'there is no male and female', then he adds the particularities of human nature [τῆς ἀνθρωπίνης φύσεως τὰἰδιώματα], that 'male and female he made them'.

(De hom. 16.9) The explicit teaching of Scripture, for Gregory, is that the human being is the 'span' between the divine nature and animal life, participating in both. The 'precedence' or 'priority' of the intellectual over the irrational, bodily, and sexed,

in the twofold human formation or construction is not, however, chronological (as would be implied by a two-step creation); indeed, as we have already seen, he regards Moses' 'philosophy of the soul' in terms of an advance in the other direction, from the nutritive to the sense-perceptive to, lastly, the intellectual

(De hom. 8.4–7), a pattern we will see again in medical terms at the end of his treatise. The 'precedence' is certainly an ontological priority: it is this that distinguishes the human being from the irrational animals and so it should take the lead; the overturning of this order, indeed, results in the 'genesis of evil' (De hom.

12.11). But in this passage, the priority primarily pertains to the literary order, for, as Gregory explains, it is spoken of ﬁrst in Moses' 'anthropogony': it is written ﬁrst, but it only comes into actual existence at the end.

This being stated ﬁrst, what then follows, human existence as male and female, is ἐπιγεννηματικὴν. Wilson, following Dionysius Exiguus' Latin translation, rendered this word as 'a provision for reproduction'.¹¹ The word in fact means 'of the nature of an ἐπιγέννημα, resulting, consequential', it is that which comes upon something else, something that is concomitant to something else; it does not deﬁne what it is to be, in this case, a human being, but is, nevertheless, as Gregory puts it at the end of the sentence, the 'particularities of human nature'.¹²

The verbal form of the word is used by Gregory in De hom. 17.4 and 30.33, and in the latter, as we will see, the subject is again Moses' 'anthropogony'. There is no explicit purpose assigned here, where Gregory presents the teaching of Scripture, to human existence as male and female; in distinction to God, they are simply 'the particularities of human nature', part of the bodily construction and formation, and are found in everything that partakes of human life.

Turning next to what we can learn from this, Gregory emphasizes that God, being good or beyond any good we can understand, created the human being for no other reason than his own goodness, and bestowed upon human beings all possible goods, which is summed up in the assertion that the human being is made

'according to the image' of God, so that there is in the human being 'a form of every beauty, all virtue and wisdom', and especially the 'self-determining deliberation' without which there would be no virtue (De hom. 16.10–11). But there must also be a difference between the archetype and the image, Gregory notes, for otherwise they would be the same. Strikingly, however, given what he has just said

¹¹ Dionysius rendered the sentence thus: 'But from one who speaks about the very order of creation we have learnt that what is intellectual in us takes precedence before that which we see serves for the propagation of the human race [taking ἀνθρωπογονία as a reference to sexual reproduction], for in fact there is some kind of innate conjunction of the human with irrational things for the accomplishing of generation'. Eriugena, on the other hand, translated the word ἐπιγεννηματικὴν as 'supergenituam'.

¹² Cf. LSJ s.v. In philosophy, the terms seems to have been a Stoic term, for whom joy, cheerfulness, and the like are 'by-products' of virtue (SVF 3.19.29); according to Cicero, 'In the other arts, when we speak of an "artistic" performance, this quality must be considered as in a sense subsequent to and a result of the action, it is what the Stoics call ἐπιγεννηματικόν'. On Ends (Fin.) 3.9.32; ed. and ET

H. Rackham, LCL 40, Cicero 17 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1914).

about the distinctive property of human nature, Gregory does not point to human existence as male and female as the locus of this difference, but rather to the fact that, as created, the human being cannot exist without change, 'for its very passage from non-being into being is a kind of movement and alteration of the nonexistent being changed by the divine purpose into being' (De hom. 16.12). As such, while the attributes bestowed by God upon the human being are indeed his own, the difference between the two is found in the substratum seen in the uncreated and created (De hom. 16.13).

It is on this basis that Gregory can now respond to the predicament he posed at the beginning of the chapter, and he does so by appealing to the wavering, mutable will of human beings (the equivalent of Timaeus' 'straying cause'), foreseen by God in his prevision of and provision for the waywardness of the human will.

According to Gregory:

Since, then, as the one always remains as it is, while the other, having come into being though creation, began to exist from alteration and has kinship with such change, on this account 'he who knows all things before their genesis', as the prophecy says [Sus. (Θ) 42], following, or rather knowing beforehand, by his faculty of foreknowledge towards what the movement of human choice inclines, in accordance with its independence and self-determination—since he knows what is to be, he devised for the image the difference of male and female, which no longer looks to the divine archetype but, as was said, assimilates

[προσῳκείωται] to the less rational nature.

(De hom. 16.14) What is striking about this paragraph is that it is not only a response to the problem of why we don't (immediately) see the image of God in human beings, but that it is phrased as an aetiological account for what he has just established as the scriptural teaching regarding the human as a twofold being, intellectual and corporeal, with the particularities of being male and female. That is, if the purpose of God is to make a human being in accordance with his image (Gen. 1:26), and in the Prototype there 'is not male and female' (Gal. 3:28), why and for what purpose did God also make the human being 'male and female'? That God has done so, and that the human being is such, is not in question: the issue is why? And his answer here is that this assimilation to the less rational is a provision made in anticipation of the divinely foreseen waywardness of the human will.

However, this is immediately followed by Gregory registering a change in his mode of his discourse:

The reason [τὴν αἰτίαν] for such a device only those who were 'eyewitnesses' of the truth 'and ministers of the Word' [Luke 1:2] can know; but we, as far as is possible, by means of some guesses and images picturing the truth [εἰκόνων φαντασθέντες τὴν ἀλήθειαν], do not set forth categorically what comes to mind,

but add it in a form of an exercise [ἐν γυμνασίας εἴδει] for our well-disposed hearers.

(De hom. 16.15) This is strong language indeed, contrasting greatly with the categorical 'great and lofty doctrine' given by Scripture a few paragraphs earlier. The 'exercise' that he offers, moreover, is not simply his best conjecture at that which cannot ultimately be known except by those who were eyewitnesses, for it is combined with the assertion that he is not going to say directly what comes to mind, but instead offer images that 'picture the truth'.¹³ Gregory offers two further aetiological accounts of the relationship between God's prevision and human existence as male and female (De hom. 17.4–5 and 22); it is only in the latter where he ﬁnally states 'what comes to our mind' (De hom. 22.3). The sequence of Gregory's argument over these chapters is, moreover, convoluted, with apparent detours tackling a range of topics (in the same way that when Timaeus' treats what is only a 'likely story' his account tends to be 'casual and random'; cf. Tim. 34c2–4), before he is prepared to state his position.

Gregory begins by observing that the statement 'God made the human being' does not in fact refer to Adam; he is introduced later in the narrative (De hom.

16.16). Rather 'the indeﬁnite character of the term' indicates, for Gregory, that the text is not speaking of the particular but the universal, and so 'we are led by the universal name of the nature to suppose something such as this, that by divine foreknowledge and power all humanity is included in the ﬁrst formation' (De hom.

16.16: πᾶσα ἡἀνθρωπότης ἐν τῇπρώτῃκατασκευῇπεριείληται). But, as God does not make anything indeterminate, each being made by him must have 'some limit and measure' prescribed by the wisdom of God. And so, 'the entire plenitude of humanity [ὅλον τὸτῆς ἀνθρωπότητος πλήρωμα] was included by the God of all, by his power of foreknowledge, as in one body', and this, in turn, means that 'the image is not in part of our nature', but rather 'extends equally to the whole genus', as is shown by the fact that 'the intellect is seated alike in all' (De hom. 16.16–17), that is, in both males and females alike, and in each and all. He then concludes this

¹³ Cf. Gregory of Nyssa, De Anima et resurrectione (An. et res.), 3.36, where the subject is similarly the question of the status of the 'concomitants' (translated by Silvas as 'accretions'): 'All these we reckon as accretions from without, because no such characteristics are to be found in the beauty of the archetype. In the meantime, let the following argument of these matters be offered as a kind of training exercise (ὁδὲδὴπερὶτούτων λόγος ἡμῖν τέως ὡς ἐν γυμνασίῳπροκείσθω), to avoid the sneers of contentious hearers. The Word tells us that the divine proceeded by a certain gradual and orderly sequence to the creation of man.' Ed. Andreas Spira, GNO 3.3 (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 40; ET in Anna

M. Silvas, Macrina the Younger: Philosopher of God, Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts, 22

(Turnhout: Brepols, 2008). The Greek text is not divided into chapters and paragraphs; these are supplied by Silvas. See also Hex. 9 and De Tridui Spatio, ed. E. Gebhardt, GNO 9 (Leiden: Brill, 1967),

286.15–16; ET Stuart Hall, in Andreas Spira and Christoph Klock, The Easter Sermons of Gregory of Nyssa: Translation and Commentary: Proceedings of the Fourth International Colloquium on Gregory of Nyssa, Cambridge, England: 11–15 September, 1978, Patristic Monograph Series, 9 (Cambridge, MA:

Philadelphia Patristic Foundation, 1981), 31–50, at 38.

reﬂection on the pleromatic character of the human being created in the image this way:

The human being manifested together with the ﬁrst formation of the world [ὅτε τῇπρώτῃτοῦκόσμου κατασκευῇσυναναδειχθεὶς ἄνθρωπος], and he who shall come to be after consummation of all [ὁμετὰτὴν τοῦπαντὸς συντέλειαν γενησόμενος], both likewise have this: they equally bear in themselves the divine image. For this reason the whole was called one human being, because to the power of God nothing has either passed or is to come, but even that which is looked for is held fast equally with the present by his all-embracing activity. The whole nature [πᾶσα ἡφύσις], then, extending from the ﬁrst [πρώτων] to the last

[ἐσχάτων], is a kind of single image of He Who Is. But the difference between male and female was additionally fashioned for the creature last, I suppose, for this reason.

(De hom. 16.17–18) This very strong understanding of the unity of all human beings—past, present, and future—as one human being is, again, an expression of God's instantaneous and comprehensive act of making which unfolds through its own sequence and order. Embracing all that would come to be, the human being 'manifested' at the beginning, and the one who 'comes to be after the consummation of all', bear the divine image. Here now we see the signiﬁcance of the fact that to this point

Gregory has not been speaking of Adam, the ﬁrst particular human being in the Genesis narrative, but only appearing in its second chapter: to apply a point we noted when discussing Origen, Adam might be the ﬁrst, but he is not the archē.¹⁴

The image of God in accordance with whom God makes the human being in Gen.

1:27 is, as we saw in De hom. 16.7, Christ Jesus, the 'Prototype'. Yet so too is the one who 'comes to be' at the end, but then, 'after the consummation of all', in 'the entire plenitude of humanity' foreseen by God from or in the beginning, the archē.

Or, as von Balthasar more elegantly put it: 'The total Christ is none other than the total humanity'.¹⁵ Although Gregory says that he will next turn to the reason for creatures also being fashioned as male and female, he in fact defers that discussion, turning ﬁrst to another matter, that is the argument of his 'opponents' who teach that as there

¹⁴ Zachhuber (Human Nature, 35–40, 128–44) makes a strong case that Gregory's understanding of the 'plenitude' of humanity derives ultimately from the idea of a 'derivative genus' ('a class of things that share their derivation from the same being, which is thus both the ﬁrst element of the class and of the genus itself ', p. 37), developed by Apollinarius, with the important difference that (p. 161) 'Their chief divergence appears to consist in the fact that with Apollinarius the principle (ἀρχή) of humanity is identical with the ﬁrst human individual, whereas with Gregory it is not. Thus, Apollinarius would see Adam as both the archē and the ﬁrst individual person, while for Gregory the archē is as distinct from Adam as from all other men.'

¹⁵ Hans Urs von Balthasar, Presence and Thought: An Essay on the Religious Philosophy of Gregory of Nyssa, trans. Mark Sebanc (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1995 [1944]), 87.

is no account of procreation before the sin, marriage did not exist in paradise, and so humanity would not have come to plurality if the grace of immortality had not fallen away and the fear of death impelled the ﬁrst-formed to provide succession of the race (De hom. 17.1). Gregory, again accepting that 'the true account' is only known to those like Paul who had been initiated into the mysteries of Paradise, responds by citing the word of Christ to the Sadducees, that in the resurrection there will be no more 'marrying and giving in marriage . . . for they are like the angels' (Luke 20:35–6), arguing that 'if the life [ζωὴ] of those restored is akin to that of the angels, it is clear that the mode of life [βίος] before the transgression was something angelic, and hence our ascent to the primordial condition of life

[ἡπρὸς τὸἀρχαῖον τῆς ζωῆς ἡμῶν ἐπάνοδος] is likened to the angels' (De hom. 17.2).

Gregory seems to be playing here, as we will see more clearly later, between two different words for 'life': ζωὴ, that which characterizes the nature of something (as for instance it seems to do in De hom. 16.9, cited above) and βίος, which has more the sense of 'mode of life'. This would suggest that, at least in this rhetorical argument, before the transgression humans lived a human life in an angelic manner, and ascending to this ancient condition it will be such again. And so,

Gregory argues, as the angels clearly exist in multitudes, 'if there had not come upon us as a result of sin a turning away and a displacement from equality of honour with the angels, neither should we have needed marriage for multiplying, but whatever the mode of increase [τοῦπλεονασμοῦτρόπος] is in the nature of the angels (unspeakable and inconceivable by human guesses, except that it assuredly exists), it would have operated also in the case of human beings, "made a little lower than the angels", increasing humankind to the measure determined by the will of the Maker' (De hom. 17.2; Ps. 8:6).

'Having cleared up these matters', at least as far as it serves his purpose, Gregory then offers his second aetiological account of God's prevision and provision as it pertains to human existence as male and female:

He who brought all things into being, and modelled the human being as a whole by his own will into the divine image, did not wait to see the number of souls made complete in its proper plenitude by the gradual addition of those subsequently coming to be, but considering the human nature as a whole, in its plenitude, by the activity of foreknowledge, and honouring it with an allocation exalted and equal to the angels, since he foresaw by his visionary power the [human] will not keeping a straight course towards the good and, because of this, falling away from the angelic life [ζωὴ], in order that the multitude of human souls should not be cut short, by falling from that mode [τοῦτρόπου] by which the angels increased to a multitude, for this reason he formed in our nature that device for increase [τῆς αὐξήσεως ἐπίνοιαν ἐγκατασκευάζει τῇφύσει] appropriate to those who had slipped into sin, implanting in humanity, instead of the angelic nobility, the animal and irrational mode of succession from one another. Hence

also, it seems to me, the great David, lamenting the misery of the human being, mourns over his nature with such words as these, that, 'the human being in honour knew it not' (meaning by 'honour' the equality of honour with the angels), [and] therefore, he says, 'he was compared to senseless beasts, and made like them' [Ps. 48:13]. For the one who received in his nature this genesis subject to ﬂux on account of his inclination to things material truly became like a beast [ὄντως γὰρ κτηνώδης ἐγένετο ὁτὴν ῥοώδη ταύτην γένεσιν τῇφύσει παραδεξάμενος διὰτὴν πρὸς τὸὑλῶδες ῥοπήν].

(De hom. 17.4–5) The brief aetiology given in De hom. 16.14, which made no connection between existence as male and female and procreation (human or angelic), is now further developed, but has also become somewhat circular: God, foreseeing the waywardness of the human will, that it would fall away from the angelic life and their mode of increase, formed for humans 'that device for increase' beﬁtting those who had fallen into sin, although it is only because God thus creates the human twofold that they are able to fall away in this way. There is, moreover, an ambiguity in the last line: Does the human become like a beast when (and because) God implants this device for increase, or when the (twofold) human no longer directs his will towards the good, but assimilates himself to the animals, and in that way becomes like a beast? And if God did indeed form in our nature this device for procreation before the human turned away from the good, were humans in fact ever able to multiply 'as the angels'? And, ﬁnally, whom has Gregory been speaking about so far, or even, for that matter, is he saying what he actually thinks (recall

De hom. 16.15)?

Gregory goes on in the following chapter to give a very nuanced account of how the passions arise in human beings. It is 'from this beginning' (referring back to the last line of De hom. 17.5, cited above), that 'the passions of each one issue as from a spring, to ﬂow over in human life' (De hom. 18.1). It cannot be, he argues, that 'the ﬁrst beginnings of the impassioned disposition' derive from that modelled in the divine form; rather, as the irrational animals entered the world ﬁrst,

'the human being, for the reason already mentioned, has something of their nature

(I mean regarding genesis)', and therefore also partakes of the other attributes of that nature, such as the incensive faculty, cowardice, rashness, and so on (De hom.

18.1). But, while animals possess these attributes for the sake of 'self-preservation',

'when transferred to human life [they] become passions' (De hom. 18.2). The human being is, again, twofold, modelled on divine beauty but 'also bearing, in the passionate impulses that arise in him, a relationship to the animal-like [form]'

(De hom. 18.3). Because of this, 'the love of pleasure had its beginning from the likeness to the irrational animals, but was increased by human transgressions

[πλημμελήμασι], begetting such varieties of sinning for pleasure' that are not found amongst the animals; more speciﬁcally it is 'the evil husbandry of the

intellect' that perverts 'the impulses of the irrational animals', turning them into the vices (De hom. 18.4)—it is the intellect that is the problem, not the body (made male and female) and its impulses that humans share with the animals. But, on the other hand, Gregory continues, 'if the passion were stripped of the alliance with calculating thoughts, the anger that is left behind is short-lived and weak, like a bubble, bursting as soon as it comes into being' (De hom. 18.4). Even more, the impulses of the irrational nature, rather than becoming vices through misuse by the intellect, can instead be transformed into virtue: anger produces courage, cowardice caution, and so on: in fact, 'every such movement, when elevated by the loftiness of mind, is conformed to the beauty of the divine image' (De hom.

18.5). Within the twofold compound that is the human being, however, the soul is more frequently drawn downwards by the weight of the irrational nature than is the earthy element raised by loftiness of mind. What we thus more frequently see is the passions covering over the beauty of the image, though it is nevertheless possible to see the divine form in those who have ordered their lives aright, such as Moses (De hom. 18.6–8).

Gregory then turns his reﬂection to the question of eating, another feature we share in common with the irrational animals, and those who feel ashamed that our life is sustained by food (De hom. 18.9). We might, Gregory suggests, hope that this function (along with procreation) will pass away in the age to come, as is perhaps suggested by various scriptural verses (Rom. 14:17 and Matt. 4:4), and by the idea that 'as the resurrection indicates to us a life equal to the angels, and with the angels there is no food' (De hom. 18.9). Gregory, however, points out that there are many other ways in which 'eating' is spoken of in Scripture, and that the 'tree' in Paradise, called 'all' (τὸπᾶν ξύλον; cf. Gen. 2:16) from which we are invited to eat, is none other than Wisdom herself, who is 'a tree of life' (Prov. 3:18; De hom. 19.1–4). Opposed to this tree is the tree of 'the knowledge of good and evil'

(which also stands at the centre of the garden), offering a mixed fruit, that is, one that appears to be good but contains evil (De hom. 19.5; Gen. 2:9, 17). Noting that Scripture makes a distinction between 'knowledge' and 'discernment', Gregory argues that in fact the latter is the higher condition: 'for to "discern" skilfully "the good from the evil", the Apostle says is of a more perfect condition and "of exercised senses", on which account he also gives the injunction "test all things" and says that "discernment" belongs to the "spiritual"' (De hom. 20.1; Heb. 5:14;

1 Thess. 5:21; 1 Cor. 2:15). However, as 'the majority judge the good to be in that which gratiﬁes the senses', they are attracted by the appearance of the mixed fruit, and so receive also the evil within, 'the knowledge of which, that is, its reception by experience, is the beginning and ground of death and destruction' (De hom. 20.3).

It is this 'evil poison' working its effect upon the human being, likening the human being to 'vanity' and the result is all that which is 'painful and wretched' in our mode of life (βίος) in its estrangement from likeness to the divine (De hom. 20.4–5;

Ps. 143:3). However, as evil is ﬁnite and God inﬁnite, it must needs be, Gregory

points out, that, as the very character of our nature and life is mutability and movement, we will all ultimately return to God: 'as evil does not extend to inﬁnity, but is bounded by necessary limits, the accession of the good consequently succeeds the limit of evil, and thus, as we have said, the ever-moving character of our nature runs its journey once more at last towards the good, chastened by the memory of its former misfortunes so that it will never again be in the same circumstances' (De hom. 21.2). Paradise will be restored, and so too the tree of life, and the grace and dignity of the image (De hom. 21.4).

It is only now, having explored in a rather rambling manner these different issues, that Gregory returns, for the third and ﬁnal time, to the question of God's prevision and provision, the relationship between the plenitude of the human race, as one human being, and particular human beings, and the relationship between human existence as male and female and procreation, angelic or human—doing all this now, moreover, in accord with 'what comes to our mind' rather than as an 'exercise'. He begins by posing a problem, in the form of a question from someone complaining, like a vexed child, about the delay of the good things promised: 'What is this reason, in accordance with which the transformation of our painful mode of life [βίος] to that which is desired does not take place immediately, but that this heavy and corporeal life [ζωὴ] itself waits, extended to some determined time, for the limit of the consummation of all things, in order that then the human life [ζωὴ] may be set free, as it were from the bridle, ascending again, released and free, to the blessed and impassible mode of life [βίος]? (De hom. 22.2). Saying now 'what comes to our mind' in returning again to Gen. 1:26–7, Gregory begins with the observation that 'the image of God, then, that which is contemplated in the universal nature, had its end [τὸτέλος ἔσχεν], but as yet, Adam was not', for it is 'the earthy moulded ﬁgure' (τὸγὰρ γήϊνον πλάσμα) that is called, etymologically, 'Adam', as Paul, who knew Hebrew, designates 'the human being from the earth "earthy" as though translating the name Adam into the Greek language' (De hom. 22.3; 1 Cor. 15:47). Gregory then continues:

In accordance with the image, then, the human being came to be, that is, the universal nature [ἡκαθόλου φύσις], the godlike thing; by the omnipotent wisdom not a part of the whole, but the plenitude of nature as a whole came to be

[γέγονε . . . ἅπαν ἀθρόως τὸτῆς φύσεως πλήρωμα]. He who holds all limits in his grasp saw, as the Scripture says, 'all the ends of the earth in his hands' [Ps. 94:4], he

'who knows all things even before their genesis' [Sus. (Θ) 42] saw, embracing in his knowledge, how many in number humanity will be in its individuals. Since he perceived in our moulded ﬁgure [ἐν τῷπλάσματι ἡμῶν] the inclination towards the worse, and that, voluntarily falling from equality of honour with the angels, it would appropriate fellowship with the lowly nature, he mingled [κατέμιξε], for this reason, an element of the irrational with his own image, for the distinction

between male and female is not in the divine and blessed nature; but, when transferring [μετενεγκὼν] the property of the irrational formation to the human being, he bestowed upon our race the power of multiplying [τὸν πλεονασμὸν], not according to the lofty character of our creation, for it was not when he made that which was in accordance with the image that he added the power to increase and multiply, but when he divided it [διέκρινε] by the distinction of male and female that he then said, 'Increase and multiply and ﬁll the earth' [Gen. 1:28]. For such is not a property of the divine nature, but of the irrational element, as the narrative indicates, when it narrates that this was ﬁrst said by God in the case of the irrational animal [cf. Gen. 1:22]; since if, before putting on our nature the distinction between male and female, he had added the power for 'increase' expressed by this utterance, we should not have needed this form of birth, by which the irrational animals are born.

(De hom. 22.4) It is the plenitude of human beings, not simply as an abstract category ('the universal nature'), but also the 'number humanity will be in its individuals', that is created in accordance with the image. Gregory again appeals to the prevision of God, foreseeing the voluntary fall from equality with the angels, and his provision by dividing the human into male and female, a property not belonging to the high character of human existence as made according to the image but that which is shared with the animals. But this time Gregory notes a further dimension in the scriptural text, bringing in the following verse: it is only when God 'divided' the human being into male and female that he bestowed the power of increasing and multiplying, just as he had earlier done with the animals, so that any suggestion that humans might have multiplied otherwise is ﬁnally, scripturally, and deﬁnitively excluded. Only now—after 'exercising' our reasoning powers, so that we might no longer think, like his 'opponents', that procreation is for the sake of preserving the human race (cf. De hom. 17), or that the problem lies with the body and its impulses shared with the irrational animals rather than with the 'evil husbandry of the intellect' (cf. De hom. 18.4), taking 'what gratiﬁes our senses' as the criterion of the good, but have instead learnt 'discernment' (cf. De hom. 20)— can we perhaps sense how 'every movement, when elevated by loftiness of mind, is conformed to the beauty of the divine image' (De hom. 18.5), for sexual procreation (and it was never otherwise) thus contributes to the completion of the plenitude of humanity in its individuals that is the divine image of God.¹⁶

¹⁶ Cf. Balthasar, Presence and Thought, 174: 'The introduction of the realm of possibilities remains licit, henceforth, only if it is understood as a "mythical" way of expressing the real. We had reason to believe that the myth of an asexual generation of humanity was understood by Gregory as being just such.' Though at an earlier stage in the development of his analysis, Balthasar had commented (73–4):

'Not that procreation is bad in itself, but it is, as it were, the sacrament of sin.'

Gregory continues by returning to the question of his interlocutor: why the delay?

With the plenitude of human beings, then, preconceived by the activity of foreknowledge, coming into life by means of this more animal form of birth,

God, who guides all things in a certain order and sequence—since the inclination of our nature to what is lowly (which he who beholds, equally with the present, what is to be before it happens) made this form of birth absolutely necessary

[ὅλως . . . ἀναγκαῖον] for humanity—therefore also foreknew the time coextensive with the formation of human beings: so that the extent of time should be adapted for the entrance of the predetermined souls, and that the ﬂowing movement of time should then halt, when humanity is no longer produced by it; and when the genesis of human beings is completed, time should stop together with the end of it, and then should take place the reconstitution of all things, and with the changing of the whole, humanity should also be changed, from the corruptible and earthy to the impassible and eternal.

(De hom. 22.5) What was seen earlier (De hom. 21) as the wayward movement of human beings running its course in ﬁnite evil, to return, necessarily, to the good but now with experienced discernment, a higher state than mere knowledge, is now also seen as the completion of God's own work of making the human being in his image, the completion of the plenitude of human beings, the end of time, and 'the reconstitution of all things'. It is this promise, Gregory says, that the divine Apostle holds out before us: 'Behold I tell you a mystery: we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet' (1 Cor.

15:51–2), the 'moment' and the 'twinkling of an eye' designating 'an instant of time', that limit 'which has no parts or extension', and the transformation through the resurrection effecting a change so that 'the weight of the ﬂesh no longer weighs downwards nor does its burden hold them to the earth' and they can arise through the air, 'caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall ever be with the Lord' (De hom. 22.6; 1 Thess. 4:17). So, he concludes, we must 'wait the time necessarily co-extensive with human increase' (De hom. 22.7), as did the Patriarchs, who desired to see the good things and sought the heavenly homeland, but waited with patience and hope, for as the Apostle said 'God having foreseen something better for us, that without us they would not be made perfect' (De hom.

22.7; Heb. 11:40).

In the remaining chapters of this second part of the treatise, Gregory deals with various sundry points that arise out of further reﬂection on the end and the transformation to be effected through the resurrection. In Chapter 23, he addresses the point that if one holds that the world had a beginning, one must also hold that it has an end. Although the heading for Chapter 24 suggests that its concern is with those who say that matter is co-eternal with God, its main theme

(though it is 'a digression', cf. De hom. 24.3) is one that we considered earlier when looking at Gregory's Hexaemeron (and Anaxagoras and Origen), that is, that matter is nothing other than a combination of intellectual qualities, brought together by God, and so can be changed into another state. Chapter 25 discusses the way in which others can be persuaded regarding the resurrection, appealing to the course of nature, with seeds dying and rising to bear fruit (De hom. 25.5), and suggesting that the Gospel narratives can be read as a gradually increasing instruction into the mystery of the resurrection, with Christ ﬁrst healing illnesses, then curing one about to die, then raising the dead, and ﬁnally, as the Physician, healing himself (De hom. 25.7–12). In the following two chapters, Gregory argues that the resurrection is not beyond probability, even with dead bodies dissolving into the elements of the earth, for he who brought all things into being to begin with must certainly have the power to bring them back into existence (De hom.

26–7). And then ﬁnally, the issue currently being discussed in the churches, he says, that is whether soul or body has priority (De hom. 28), with Gregory taking the position that 'as the human being is one, consisting of soul and body, it is to be supposed that the principle of his constitution is one and common to both', so that 'the whole human plenitude' can be afﬁrmed 'to have pre-existed in the power of God's foreknowledge (according to the account given a little earlier)' (De hom.

29.1), just as 'in the grain, or in any other seed, the whole form of the ear of corn is potentially included' (De hom. 29.3).

This image of the seed, in which the fullness of the whole is already contained and which only comes to its fullness by being sown in the earth, used by Paul to provide an account of the resurrection and ﬁnal transformation (1 Cor. 15:35–54), is something that Gregory uses repeatedly. Here he points out that the coming to be of both soul and body together, and their growth together, is what we see in the case of each particular human being: the seed is 'warm and active' so that we must conclude that it is not inanimate. And even if we don't see in it ﬂesh, bones, hair, and all the other things we see in human beings, 'it is potentially each of these things, although it does not yet visibly appear to be so', and so also with respect to the animated part, the faculties of the soul are not yet visible, but rather 'analogously to the formation and perfection of the body, so also the activities of the soul grow with the subject' (De hom. 29.6). In this process, we can see, once again, the threefold power of the soul that Moses, according to Gregory, narrates:

For just as the body proceeds from a very small original to the perfect state, so also the activity of the soul, growing in step with the subject, gains and increases with it. For in its ﬁrst formation, ﬁrst of all comes the power of growth and nourishment alone, as though some root buried in the ground, for the smallness of the one receiving does not admit of more; then, as the plant comes to light and shows it shoot to the sun, the gift of the sense-perception blossoms; and when at last it is ripened and has grown up to its proper height, the rational faculty begins

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