4. The Life of the Human Being (30)
to shine, just like some fruit, not all appearing at once, but by diligence growing with the perfection of the instrument, always bearing as much fruit as the power of the subject grants.
(De hom. 29.8) There is, once again, a proper order and sequence for the growth of both body and soul: nourished in the womb, when it is sufficiently grown it emerges, through parturition, into the world of sense-perception, and then in this world (as another womb, as Maximos, as we will see, puts it) the newborn human takes time to grow in stature of body and reasoning power of soul, and, further, to learn the discernment that is needed with regard to sense-perception (for that which appears is 'mixed'). As such it is only with time that the power of the soul reaches perfection with the body. 'Take heed to yourself ' says Moses, and Gregory adds that in doing so 'you will read, as in a book, the account of the works of the soul'
(De hom. 29.9; Deut. 4:23). Finally, as the end of human beings in this world is to be placed in the earth, we can learn from what we see in agriculture: what is sown in the earth—'kernels of fruit and portions torn from roots, not deadened [by being deprived] of the vital power naturally residing in them, but preserving in themselves, hidden, indeed, but certainly living, the property of their prototype'— is surrounded by the earth, not in such a way as to give it life (for then even dead wood would grow), but rather such that it 'makes manifest that which resides within them, nourishing by its own moisture, perfecting the plant' in all its dimensions (De hom. 29.11).
4. The Life of the Human Being (30) In the third and final part of the work (a lengthy chapter, designated along with Chapter 16 as 'a contemplation'), Gregory turns, just as did Timaeus in the third part of his speech, to a detailed medical account of the human being. Gregory notes that there are many books on the topic, but as those inside the church prefer not to hear those outside, he has taken it upon himself to give an account also of these matters (De hom. 30.1). As mentioned earlier, Cornford, while accepting that the Timaeus as a whole is not an easy read, thought that 'the physiological and medical chapters towards the end would be repellent to many.'¹⁷ It is likely that this last chapter of Gregory had the same effect; indeed, it is one of the least commented on parts of this treatise. But, as with the Timaeus, where the third part puts a 'head' on the two preceding parts, both of which only give a partial account and need to be combined, so too this part of Gregory's treatise now gives the ¹⁷ Cornford, Plato's Cosmology, 20.
account of the actual constitution of the human being, in anatomical terms, and how the human being comes into life and grows.
He begins by noting that there are three things pertaining to the nature of the human body for the sake of which the particular parts are formed: 'some are for the sake of living, others for living well, others are adapted towards the succession of descendants'; those without which we cannot live, such as the brain, the heart, and the liver, fall in the first category; the organs of sense bestow the gift of living well and so fall in the second group; while the third group 'looks to what comes after and the succession of life' (De hom. 30.2). Gregory then spends many pages exploring the anatomical arrangement and purposes of the parts of the body, until he pulls himself short, commenting that 'our argument, however, has wandered far from the matters at hand, going deep into the works of nature' to describe the constitution of the organs, 'those intended for life, and those for the good life, and any other category after these that we considered in the first division'
(De hom. 30.28).
His purpose, he notes, alluding back to the concluding chapters of the second part of the work, was to show that 'the seminal cause of our constitution is neither a soul without body, nor a body without soul, but that, from animated and living bodies a being, living and animated from the first, is generated, human nature receiving it to be cherished, like a nursling, with her own powers' so that it grows appropriately in each part, 'for it immediately displays, by this artistic and scientific process of formation, the power of the soul interwoven with it, appearing at first somewhat obscurely, but afterwards increasing in radiance concurrently with the perfecting of the organism' (De hom. 30.29).
Gregory then goes on to compare this process to that of a sculptor: intending to produce the figure of an animal in stone, the sculptor first separates the stone from its quarry, then chips away the superfluous parts, proceeding through the various steps of the first outline, when even an inexperienced observer can conjecture what the final figure will be; and then working again at the material, till at last
'producing in the material the perfect and exact form, he brings his art to its conclusion', and what had been shapeless stone is now a perfect figure of a lion or a human, 'not by the material being changed into the figure, but by the figure being wrought upon the matter' (De hom. 30.30). In the same way, Gregory proposes, we say that the all-contriving nature taking from the kindred matter within herself the part that comes from the human being crafts the statue [τὴν γὰρ πάντα τεχνιτεύουσαν φύσιν ἐκ τῆς ὁμογενοῦς ὕλης λαβοῦσαν, ἐν ἑαυτῇτὸἐκ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου μέρος δημιουργεῖν ἀνδριάντα φαμέν]. And just as the form follows upon the gradual working of the stone, at first somewhat indistinct, but more perfect after the completion of the work, so also in the carving of the organism the form of the soul, by the analogy, is displayed in the substratum, incompletely in that
which is incomplete, and perfectly in that which is perfect; but it would have been perfect from the beginning had nature not been maimed by evil [ἀλλ᾽ἐξ ἀρχῆς ἂν τέλειον ἦν εἰμὴδιὰτῆς κακίας ἡφύσις ἐκολοβώθη]. For this reason our sharing in that impassioned and animal-like genesis brings it about that the divine image does not shine forth immediately in the moulded figure, but, by a certain method and sequence, through those material and more animal-like properties of the soul, brings to perfection the human being [διὰτοῦτο ἡπρὸς τὴν ἐμπαθῆκαὶ ζωώδη γένεσιν κοινωνία οὐκ εὐθὺς ἐκλάμπειν ἐν τῷπλάσματι τὴν θείαν εἰκόνα ἐποίησεν ἀλλ᾽ὁδῷτινι καὶἀκολουθίᾳδιὰτῶν ὑλικῶν τε καὶζωωδεστέρων τῆς ψυχῆς ἰδιωμάτων ἐπὶτὸτέλειον ἄγει τὸν ἄνθρωπον].
(De hom. 30.30) There are two things that need to be carefully considered in this climactic paragraph. First, the 'maiming by evil' that has prevented the end result from being perfect from the beginning. What this refers to is not stated by Gregory.
However, it is important to note that it is not 'our nature' (as Wilson translated it) that has been 'maimed', which might be taken to refer to a 'fall'. Rather it is
'nature' as the 'all-contriving', the active agent of the process of that which comes into being, as it has been frequently throughout the treatise (e.g. De hom. 8.4–7).
Moreover, as we have seen, 'the genesis of evil' for Gregory lies in the turning of intellect from the good to matter, receiving its shapelessness into itself rather than beautifying matter as 'an image of an image' (De hom. 12.9–13); and, as we have further seen, this has been played out across the second part of the treatise in terms of the waywardness of the inclination of the human will, learning discernment through experience so that it returns, in the end, to what it was made in the beginning, the archē. As such, if the analogy with sculpting is to be followed, then the 'evil' which 'maims' nature, such that the human being is not brought to perfection at the beginning but at the end, is more like the recalcitrance of that upon which nature is working, which in this case is the waywardness of the human will. Like Timaeus' 'straying cause', it needs to be persuaded by intellect, or, in Origen's terms, by the omnipotence of the Almighty Creator working through the 'persuasion of Word and Wisdom'.
The second point is Gregory's striking concluding words: it is not simply by 'sharing in the impassioned and animal-like genesis' that the human race reaches the plenitude foreseen by God (cf. De hom. 22.4), but that this entails that the human being is brought to perfection in a proper order and sequence, and,
Gregory now adds, this happens 'through those more material and animal-like properties of the soul'.¹⁸ If it is 'the evil husbandry of the intellect' that has
¹⁸ Cf. Eric Daryl Meyer, 'On Making Fleshly Difference: Humanity and Animality in Gregory of Nyssa', Relegere: Studies in Religion and Reception, 7.1–2 (2017), 39–58, at 56: 'Animal flesh, then, is the foil that generates the fragile space of human virtue, freedom, and discursiveness, while simultaneously serving as a threatening example of what may become of those who fail to exercise these gifts.'
perverted all the motions and impulses shared with the animals into forms of passion not known amongst the animals, it is the intellect which needs training, to raise all these motions so that they too are 'conformed to the beauty of the divine image' (De hom. 18. 4–5), so that the beauty of the divine image in the moulded figure can truly shine forth. It is, as we noted earlier, through the body, both its excellent structure and its weakness, that 'we have become rational'
(De hom. 10.1).
And so, in the concluding paragraphs of the work, Gregory exhorts his reader to be like Paul, putting away childish things (1 Cor. 13:11): not that the soul of the adult is other than that in the child, 'but that the same soul displays its imperfect condition in that one and the perfect state in this' (De hom. 30.31). After reiterating the account of the ascent of nature through the different levels of life,
Gregory again points out that 'the true and perfect soul is the human', whereas anything else is only called 'soul' by 'customary misuse of language', for in those cases the soul is not perfect 'but only certain parts of the animated activity which, we have learnt, have also arisen [ἐπιγεγενῆσθαι] in the human being, according to Moses' mystical account of the human origin [ἀνθρωπογονίαν], through kinship
[οἰκειότητα] with the impassioned' (De hom. 30.32–3). And so, Gregory concludes his work with the same words of Paul that Origen cited in his exhortation to 'Be transformed!' (Dial. 13.26–16.17): if we wish to reach perfection 'it is necessary "to put off the old human being" and "put on the one being renewed in accordance with the image of God"' (De hom. 30.33; Col. 3:9–10), and so, 'let us all ascend
[ἐπανέλθωμεν or 'return'] to the divine grace in which God created the human being in accordance with the archē [κατ᾽ἀρχὰς], saying, 'Let us make the human being in accordance with our image and likeness' (De hom. 30.34).
Gregory has presented us with a very sophisticated analysis of the human being.
It is, however, emphatically not presented as a description of a 'prelapsarian'
Adam, followed by 'the Fall' and 'postlapsarian' existence, awaiting for the redeeming work of salvation, as commentators, myself included, have assumed.¹⁹
At its heart, thematically and structurally, it is an account of the condition in which we find ourselves, in which it is hard to see the truth of the scriptural affirmation that the human being is made in the image of God. Structuring his treatise in parallel with the Timaeus, Gregory offers, in the first part, a vision of the human being (Chapters 1–15); in the second part, an analysis of the prevision and provision of God with respect to the wavering inclination of our will and the evil husbandry of the intellect, sketching out the economy, or the 'anthropogony', on the one hand, traced in the ascent of nature to the more perfect form of life, and, on the other hand, leading to the completion of the plenitude of the human race as the image of God, the total Christ, a process which requires, and is co-extensive
¹⁹ See my earlier piece, 'The Rational Animal: A Rereading of Gregory of Nyssa's De hominis opificio', JECS 7 (1999), 219–47.