5. 'The Fall' and 'Male and Female'
with, time itself, resulting in the final transformation heralded by Paul (chapters
16–29); and, in the third part, a description of how this economy is recapitulated in the life of each human being, from the seed being implanted in the womb and growing there through the power of nutrition, then coming into the world of sense-perception, where it continues to grow in both body and soul, learning discernment by experience and growing in virtue, yet needing to be exhorted to put away childish things, the old human being, and put on instead the one being renewed in accordance with the image of God. Gregory does indeed seem to have accomplished the task he set himself, of bringing together, through scriptural guidance and human reason, things that appear contrary, 'to one and the same end, with the divine power finding a hope for things beyond hope and a means of accomplishing things unworkable' (Ep. Pet. 3).
5. 'The Fall' and 'Male and Female'
5.1 The Fall Having paid close attention to the economy of Gregory's text, how he develops his argument, we can now turn to a couple of points that have perplexed interpreters and see how Gregory's position fits with those before and after. Firstly, the question of 'the Fall'.²⁰ Concluding his analysis of human nature in Gregory, in particular his strong understanding of 'universal human nature', Zachhuber comes to the conclusion that here 'there is no room for a Fall of the "nature": . . . Human individuals . . . would not have been able to change that nature on account of its ontological priority (it was complete before Adam was there!)'.²¹ The particular question that interests Zachhuber is: 'Does Gregory, then, or does he not, know of original sin and a single act of disobedience which has caused human nature to be damaged in such a way that it has affected every human being since?'²²
Noting that there are 'possible theories of universal sin different from Augustine's', for which one can find some evidence in other texts of Gregory
(De Virginitate for the 'Neoplatonic pattern'; a number with the 'Origenist pattern; and even some that follow an 'Apollinarian pattern'), Zachhuber concludes: 'A further view might be identified in De Hominis Opificio 16 where
²⁰ For an exhaustive survey of every possible expression pertaining to 'the Fall' in Gregory's writings, see Manfred Hauke, Heilsverlust in Adam: Stationen griechischer Erbsündenlehre: Irenäus-OrigenesKappadozier (Paderborn: Bonifatius, 1992), 572–692. His conclusion is that while Gregory has all the 'building blocks', he lacks the connection of them into a systematic whole and the resolution of the inner contradictions by a proper theology of grace, so that while some aspects of his thought point towards a distinct conception of original sin, others are in tension with it (686–7); at most, Gregory 'is on the way to original sin' (692).
²¹ Zachhuber, Human Nature, 174.
²² Ibid., 175.
Gregory all but says that God himself created the "fallen" state in anticipation of the fall.'²³ But perhaps this is the wrong way of phrasing the question, for, after all,
Gregory has not spoken of 'a' or 'the Fall' as an event describing 'a single act of disobedience' corrupting human nature and beings thereafter; indeed, as Zachhuber notes, 'there was no sign that he attempted an application of his own genuine theory to this doctrinal question'.²⁴ Rather than succumbing to what
Skinner describes as 'the mythology of doctrine', that is, assuming that certain topics are constitutive for a particular discipline, in this case theology, and looking to each historical author to see what they said about it, we should perhaps take
Gregory on his own terms.²⁵ To start by looking for the prelapsarian state and the fall and its effect is to begin with protology, as many interpreters of Gregory (and also Origen, as we noted in the last chapter) do, rather than eschatology. Looking to the end to see what it is that the human being is to become—the one who is first in the foreknowledge of God, the archē that is Christ, but the end in our own temporal horizon of growth, our telos—Gregory contemplates the current state of existence, but also provides a vision of the singular economy of God that leads, in the end, to the outcome envisioned from the beginning. This perspective was not unique to Gregory, and before him, as we have seen, Origen, but was also, of course, clearly held by Irenaeus.
In fact, in Against the Heresies 4.37–39, Irenaeus addresses this very point, responding to his opponents' complaint: God, they say, should not have created
'human beings such that they immediately became ungrateful towards him, because they were created rational and capable of examining and judging and not like irrational or inanimate creatures which are not able to do anything of their own will but are drawn by necessity and force towards the good, with one inclination and tendency, unable to deviate and without the power of judging, and unable to be anything other than what they were created'.²⁶ The last clause is the most important, for, as he argues, only a free, independent, and temporal creature is able to grow, and so change its mode of existence while remaining what it is by nature: in other words, while an uncreated creature is a logical impossibility, God can create those who come to share in his uncreated life, but this requires change, growth, and time. And so, Irenaeus argues, if we had been created
²³ Ibid., 176–86; the first quotation is from 176, the second from 186.
²⁴ Ibid., 185.
²⁵ Cf. Quentin Skinner, 'Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas', History and Theory 8
(1969), 3–53; reprinted in a much abbreviated and extensively revised version in Quentin Skinner,
Visions of Politics, vol. 1, Regarding Method (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 57–89, esp. 59–67.
²⁶ Haer. 4.37.6. Ed. and French trans. A. Rousseau et al., Haer. 1–3, SC 263–4, 293–4, 210–11 (Paris:
Cerf, 1979, 1982, 1974); Haer. 4 SC 100 (Paris: Cerf, 1965); Haer. 5 SC 152–3 (Paris: Cerf, 1969). ET in A. Roberts and J. Donaldson eds., ANF 1 (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1987 [1887]). For full exposition, see Behr, Irenaeus of Lyons: Identifying Christianity, CTC (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2013), 144–203.
as his opponents desired, we would have thought that communion with God is 'by nature', rather than a result of their own proper endeavour, care, or study; it would be misunderstood and no pleasure would be found in it, and so it would have benefitted neither God nor the human being. Instead, Irenaeus points out, 'the violent take it by force' (Matt. 11:12), and we must run the race (1 Cor. 9:24–7).
Moreover, he notes, something is only truly valued once one has experienced its loss, such as the faculty of sight by temporary blindness, health by sickness, and, finally, life by death (Haer. 4.37.7). In all of this, God has been patient, knowing that, as the prophet put it, 'your own apostasy shall instruct you' (Haer. 4.37.7; Jer.
2:19). He concludes this section thus:
God, thus, determined all things beforehand for the perfection of the human being, and towards the realization and manifestation of his economies, that goodness may be displayed and righteousness accomplished, and that the Church may be 'conformed to the image of his Son' [Rom. 8:29], and that, finally, the human being may be brought to such maturity as to see and comprehend God.
(Haer. 4.37.7) Worked out in and through the life of each individual human being, the conclusion is, as it is with Gregory, corporate: it is the Church that is conformed to Christ as each human being is brought to see God.²⁷
Irenaeus argues similarly in Haer. 3.20.1–2, using the sign of Jonah to describe the whole economy, from beginning to end. As 'strength is made perfect in weakness' (2 Cor. 12:9), 'foreseeing the victory which would be granted to [the human being] through the Word', God 'was patient' with the human being,
'allowing' him 'from the beginning to be swallowed up by the great whale, who was the author of the transgression', not in ignorance of what would happen and so having to find a remedy later on, but 'arranging and preparing the economy of salvation which was accomplished by the Word through the sign of Jonah', so that the whole economy is arranged in such a way to acquaint human beings with their own weakness in order that they might simultaneously know the strength of God, and having known the experience of death they might thereafter hold ever more firmly to the source of life. There is, thus, for Irenaeus 'an author of the transgression' (though if the analogy with the whale is to hold, God in fact appointed the whale, just as he also sent Satan to tempt Job), and the human race is indeed in apostasy, although seen from the point of view of the end, Christ, the apostasy and death now function pedagogically, the whole being embraced by 'the sign of ²⁷ For Gregory on the Church as the 'manifold wisdom of God', weaving together opposites, life mingled with death, established by Christ as his body through 'the addition of those being saved . . . until we all attain to mature humanity', see his eighth homily on the Song of Songs (Langerbeck, 255–7;
ET 269).
Jonah', who represents both the suffering human race and the Saviour. In other words, the whole economy, including apostasy and death, begins (with God) and ends (for us) with Jesus Christ, who by his death brings eternal life; or, as Irenaeus says a little later, 'Since the Saviour pre-exists, it was necessary that he who would be saved should come into existence so that the Saviour doesn't exist in vain'.²⁸
In Haer. 4.39, Irenaeus develops his analysis further by contrasting two different types of knowledge: that gained, on the one hand, through experience, and that, on the other hand, learned through hearsay (Haer. 4.39.1). It is, he points out, only through experience that the tongue comes to learn of both bitterness and sweetness, and likewise, it is only through experience of both good and evil, the latter being disobedience and death, that the mind receives the knowledge
(disciplina) of the good, that is, obedience to God, which is life for human beings.
By experiencing both, and casting off disobedience through repentance, the human being (as in the case of Jonah) becomes ever more tenacious in obedience to God, growing into the fullness of life. The alternative, Irenaeus says dramatically, is that 'if anyone shuns the knowledge of both of these, and the twofold perception of knowledge, forgetting himself he destroys the human being' (Haer.
4.39.1: latentur semetipsum occidit hominem).
Between Haer. 4.37 and 39 lies chapter 38, which tackles the question from a different angle. Here he suggests that it would have been possible for God to have created the human being perfect, or as a 'god', from the beginning, for all things are possible to him. Yet, as created, human beings are initially 'infantile', and so 'unaccustomed to and unexercised in perfect conduct' (Haer. 4.38.1). Just as a mother could give solid food to a newborn infant, though it would not benefit the infant, 'so also,'
Irenaeus continues, 'it was possible for God himself to have made the human being perfect from the first, but the human being could not receive this, being as yet an infant' (Haer. 4.38.1). What is needed is, again, growth, a process of accustoming the human being to bear the life and glory of God. This pattern of growth is spelled out a few paragraphs later. By definition, ofcourse, the created cannotbeuncreated, butthis is not a restriction upon the omnipotence of God, for this omnipotence is demonstrated, for Irenaeus, in the way that the created is in fact brought in time to share in the uncreated life of God, a change in the 'fashion' of its existence or the mode of its life, which requires preparation and training, and it is to this end that the whole economy has aimed and been tending from the beginning. He begins:
With God power, wisdom, and goodness are demonstrated simultaneously: power and goodness in that he willingly created and made things previously not existing; wisdom in having made those things that have come into being rhythmical and harmonious and elaborate [εὔρυθμα καὶ ἐμμελῆ καὶ ²⁸ Haer. 3.22.3; cf. Behr, '"Since the Saviour Pre-exists": A Reconsideration of Irenaeus 3.22.3', StP
109, vol. 6 (Leuven: Peeters, 2021), 43–54.
ἐγκατάσκευα], which, through the superabundance of his goodness, receiving growth [αὔξησιν] and continuing for a long period [ἐπὶπλεῖον], obtain the glory of the Uncreated [ἀγενήτου δόξαν ἀποίσεται], of the God who ungrudgingly bestows good. By virtue of being created, they are not uncreated; but by virtue of continuing in being throughout a long course of ages, they shall receive the power of the Uncreated [δύναμιν ἀγένητου προσλήψεται], of the God who freely bestows upon them eternal existence.
(Haer. 4.38.3) It is, he continues, by 'this order and such rhythms and such a movement [that] the created and moulded human becomes in the image and likeness of God', with God 'planning everything well', the Son 'executing', the Spirit 'nourishing and increasing', and 'the human making progress day by day, and ascending towards perfection, that is approaching the Uncreated one'. Then, spelling out these stages:
Now, [1] it was first necessary for the human being to be created; [2] and having been created, to increase;
[3] and having increased, to become an adult; [4] and having become an adult, to multiply;
[5] and having multiplied, to become strong; [6] and having been strengthened, to be glorified;
[7] and being glorified, to see his Master; for God is He who is yet to be seen, and the vision of God produces incorruptibility, and "incorruptibility renders one close to God."
(Haer. 4.38.3; Wisd. 6:19) It is striking that the arc of the economy, as sketched here, is patterned upon the life of each human being, the 'seven stages' of life. Such reflection seems to have gone back to John the Evangelist, and the discussions he had with 'the Elders', such as Papias, at the end of the first century. Irenaeus alludes to this elsewhere (cf. Haer. 2.22.4), and Victorinus of Pettau records the same tradition independently of Irenaeus, saying that Christ 'consummates his humanity
[humanitatem . . . consummat] in the number seven: birth, infancy, boyhood, youth, young-manhood,maturity,death'.²⁹AswithGregory,thelifespanofeachhumanbeing recapitulates the whole arc of the economy that culminates in the human plenitude, in the image and likeness of God.³⁰ ²⁹ De Fabrica mundi, 9; for full discussion, see Behr, John the Theologian, 211–13.
³⁰ This recapitulation calls to mind Ernst Haeckel's formulation that 'ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny'; although this has been debunked as an account of a possible similarity of the embryonic development to evolutionary history, it has, however, been picked up by evolutionary anthropologists: as Mary LeCron Foster put it: 'both biological evolution and the stages in the child's cognitive development follow much the same progression of evolutionary stages as that suggested in the archaeological record'. Mary LeCron Foster, 'Symbolism: the Foundation of Culture' in Companion
Encyclopedia of Anthropology: Humanity, Culture, Social Life, ed. Tim Ingold (London: Routledge,
1993), 366–95, at 386.
It is, thus, at the end that the human being becomes 'according to the image and likeness of God': 'never at any time did Adam escape the Hands of God', that is the Word and the Wisdom of God, to who he speaks saying 'Let us make the human being in our image after our likeness. And for this reason, at the end [fine], "not by the will of the flesh nor by the will of men" [John 1:13], but by the good pleasure of the Father, his Hands perfected a living human being, in order that Adam might become in the image and likeness of God' (Haer. 5.1.3). It is intriguing that for Irenaeus it is Adam who at the end becomes the perfected living human being, in the image and likeness of God, whereas for Gregory (at least in De hom. 22.3, though he does not provide a full, positive exposition of Adam even there), Adam is the first particular human being, for the head or archē is always Christ, while at the end Christ encompasses the totality of humanity. The difference can perhaps be reconciled in terms of how Origen understood Paul to assert that 'Adam is
Christ' (Princ. 4.3.7); seen from the point of view of the end Adam is indeed (the total) Christ, whereas from our own beginning we first know Adam in humanity's infancy and subjection to sense-perception and the resulting passions.
A further possible similarity to Irenaeus can perhaps be seen in the way in which both speak of the relationship between the text of Gen. 1:26–7 and the human being that is to come about at the end. What the human being 'will be', we saw Gregory say, 'is foreshadowed by the Artist through the writing of the account
[διὰτῆς τοῦλόγου γραφῆς]', along with what kind of being he should be, his archetype, and for what purpose he shall come into being (De hom. 3.1). In a similar manner, Irenaeus describes how Christ recapitulates Adam 'so that he might also demonstrate the likeness of enfleshment to Adam [i.e. Virgin birth// virgin earth], and might become the human being, written in the beginning
[γένηται ὁγεγραμμένος ἐν ἀρχῇἄνθρωπος] "according to the image and likeness of God"'.³¹ Or, as he puts it elsewhere, previously it was only 'said, that the human being was created according to the image of God, but it was not shown', and for this reason, not seeing what the image looks like, the human being 'easily lost the similitude'; but when the Word became flesh, he confirms both, truly showing the image of God, 'since he became himself what was his image', and so also 'he reestablished the similitude in a sure manner, assimilating the human being to the invisible Father through the visible Word' (Haer. 5.16.2). In the same way, for Gregory, although it was certainly foreshadowed in the writing of Genesis 1:26–7 what the human being was called to be, this was not shown until Christ, enabling human beings now to put off the old human being and put on the one being renewed in accordance with the image of God. If this is so, then, while Gregory's treatise structurally parallels the Timaeus, he has nevertheless reversed the task of their respective texts. If Timaeus concludes his speech with a prayer 'to the god
³¹ Irenaeus, Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching, 32; trans. John Behr, PPS 17 (New York: Saint
Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1997); the Greek is Rousseau's retroversion from the Armenian.
[i.e. the world] who previously of old came to be in reality and just now comes to be in words' (Crit. 106a3–4), for Gregory it is that which was in words that comes to be in reality at the end, doing so through the economy sketched out in Gregory's words and the exhortation he gives at the end.
That human beings have been in apostasy 'from the beginning', as Irenaeus put it, yet that this is in fact a pedagogy, is maintained in the later tradition. Indeed,
Maximos puts this idea in a more emphatic form, which does not permit taking the expression 'from the beginning' as meaning no more than 'from of old', 'a long time ago', but before which there nevertheless was a primordial age of perfection.
Maximos opens his response to Thalasius's question about the meaning of a passage in First Peter, with this striking paragraph:
When God crafted [δημιουργήσας] the nature of human beings, he did not cocreate with it sense-perceptive pleasure and pain [οὐσυνέκτισεν αὐτῇκατὰτὴν αἴσθησιν οὔτε ἡδονὴν οὔτε ὀδύνην], but a certain capacity for pleasure according to the intellect [δύναμίν τινα κατὰνοῦν αὐτῇπρὸς ἡδονήν], by which [the human] would be able to enjoy him ineffably. Together with coming into being [ἅμα τῷ γενέσθαι], the first human, by sense-perception [τῇαἰσθήσει], gave this capacity—the natural desire [ἔφεσιν] of the intellect towards God—to things of sense-perception [τὰαἰσθητὰ], activating, in the very first movement [κατ᾽αὐτὴν τὴν πρώτην κίνησιν], an unnatural pleasure [ἡδονήν] through the medium of sense-perception. Being, in his providence, concerned for our salvation, God therefore affixed pain alongside this sensible pleasure as a kind of punitive faculty
[ὥσπερ τινὰτιμωρὸν δύναμιν], whereby the law of death was wisely implanted in our corporeal nature to curb the folly of the intellect [τῆς τοῦνοῦμανίας] moving desire [ἔφεσιν], against nature, toward sense-perceptible things.³²
Given the simultaneity between the movement towards sense-perceptible things, squandering the desire for God and the intellectual pleasure he provides, and 'coming into being', it would seem that what Maximos is speaking about here correlates to what Gregory describes as the parturition of the infant: after human seed has been deposited in the womb, and the body has grown by the soul's power of nutrition and growth, it then emerges into the world of sense-perception, where both body and soul are to grow further, not only in stature but also learning discernment through experience, and especially coming to learn that what appears to be good is not the true criterion for what is good, so as to attain proper intellectual understanding.³³ The world of sense-perception is like a womb,
³² Maximos, Ad Thalassium (Ad Thal.) 61. Ed. C. Laga and C. Steel, CCSG 22 (Turnhout: Brepols,
1990), 86.8–21; ET Maximos Constas, On Difficulties in Sacred Scripture: The Responses to Thalassios,
FC 136 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2018), 434, modified.
³³ See also Gregory of Nyssa, De Mortuis: 'For since the perfect power of the soul is still not contained in the infantile body, while the operation of the senses is born immediately perfect together
a space for this further growth, resulting in the emergence of a fully mature human being. As Maximos puts it:
For it is true—though it may be a jarring and unusual thing to say—that both we and the Word of God, the Creator and Master of the universe, exist in a kind of womb, owing to the present conditions of our life. In this sense-perceptible world, just as if he were enclosed in a womb, the Word of God appears only obscurely, and only to those who have the spirit of John the Baptist, while, on the other hand, human beings, gazing through the womb of the material world, catch but a glimpse of the Word who is concealed within beings (and this, again, only if they are endowed with John's spiritual gifts). For when compared to the ineffable glory and splendor of the age to come, and to the kind of life that awaits us there, this present life differs in no way from a womb swathed in darkness, in which, for the sake of us who were infantile in mind, the infinitely perfect Word of God, who loves mankind, became an infant.³⁴ Returning to Ad Thal. 61, the act of expending the capacity meant for the enjoyment of God upon things of sense-perception in themselves results in the pedagogic cycle of pleasure and pain, established by the provision of God, culminating in death, but a death which Christ has now turned inside out, changing its 'use': when Christ 'naturally willed to undergo death itself in the passibility of his human nature, clearly suffering, he converted the use of death, so that henceforth in him death would no longer be a condemnation of nature but clearly of sin', and in this way, 'the baptised', that is, those who conform themselves to Christ's death (cf. Rom. 6:3), also 'acquires the use of death to condemn sin, which in turn mystically leads that person to divine and unending life'.³⁵
Whereas in our 'genesis' (γένεσις) we are passive, our 'birth' (γέννησις) into life through death is active.
Rather than seeing Gregory as having the building blocks of an Augustinian understanding of 'the Fall' and 'original sin', but not yet having put them together with the baby, because of this reasoning in judging of the good is prejudged by sense-perception and what already appears to the senses is also supposed to be good' (τούτου χάριν προλαμβάνεται ὑπὸτῆς αἰσθήσεως ἡδιάνοια ἐν τῇτοῦκαλοῦκρίσει καὶτὸτοῖς αἰσθητηρίοις φανὲν ἤδη καὶνομισθὲν εἶναι καλὸν). Ed. Gunter Heil, in GNO 9.1 (Leiden: Brill, 1967), 28–68; ET by Rowan A. Greer in One Path for All: Gregory of Nyssa on the Christian Life and Human Destiny (Eugene, OR:
Cascade, 2014), 94–117. The text is not divided into sections. Here, Heil 48 (ET 105).
³⁴ Maximos, Ambiguum (Ambig.) 6; ed. and ET Nicholas Constas, On Difficulties in the Church
Fathers: The Ambiguum, DOML 2 vols (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), vol. 1, 72–3, modified.
³⁵ Maximos, Ad Thal. 61 (95.187–91): αὐτὸν δὲκατὰφύσιν θέλων ἐν τῷπαθητῷτῆς φύσεως καταδεξάμενος τὸν θάνατον, δηλονότι πάσχων, τὴν τοῦθανάτου χρῆσιν ἀντέστρεψεν, οὐκ ὄντα λοιπὸν ἐν αὐτῷτῆς φύσεως, ἀλλὰτῆς ἁμαρτίας προδήλως, κατάκρισιν· (99.247–9): εἰς κατάκρισιν τῆς ἁμαρτίας τὴν αὐτοῦ[i.e. τοῦθανάτου] καταδέχεται χρῆσιν, πρὸς τὴν θείαν καὶἀτελεύτητον ζωὴν μυστικῶς αὐτὸν παραπέμπουσαν.
coherently, Gregory's understanding of the economy of creation, from its beginning (in Christ) to its end (in and as Christ), clearly falls within the pattern developed before him by Irenaeus and after him by Maximos, and also, as we saw in the previous chapter, with Origen. It is, as we have seen, thoroughly teleological, based on the pattern of growth that we see in the case of each human being. It does not attempt to look back to a lost golden age of primordial perfection in any kind of actualized state, any more than one might, by the customary misuse of language as Gregory would say, describe a newborn infant as 'perfect'. This growth towards perfection of the human being is bound up, for Gregory, with the dynamics of the cosmos: cosmology and anthropology form an integral way of thinking for him, just as it did for Anaxagoras, Timaeus and Philo.
But whereas for them the goal of the pedagogy was to produce rational citizens of the polis or the cosmos, for Gregory (as for Irenaeus, Origen, and Maximos), the teleology is eschatological, that is, the coming to be of the entire plenitude of human beings that is the total Christ, the human being, the very image of God, something achieved, as we have seen Maximos say, but not yet Gregory, through the conversion of death.
5.2 Male and Female The question of death, and resurrectional transformation, raises the second problem perplexing commentators of Gregory, and that is, what becomes of the distinction between male and female in the resurrection. It has been argued above, that the division of the human being into male and female is not a second act in a two-stage creation, belonging only to the second stage so that the resurrectional transformation is a restoration to what was actually and temporally from the beginning, and thus a resumption of a sexless existence. If, instead, existence as male and female is the condition in which God 'made' the human being from the beginning, and is indeed both the means for growth to the plenitude of human beings and, together with the more material and animallike attributes of the soul, the horizon for the growth of each to the perfection of being human, what then happens to the division into male and female in the resurrectional transformation? Gregory does not address this issue directly in On the Human Image; the nearest he gets is when he suggests that the human need to eat would be fulfilled in the other forms of eating spoken about by Scripture (De hom. 20). In two other works from around the same period, On the Soul and Resurrection and especially On Those Who Have Fallen Asleep, however, Gregory addresses the issue directly.
In On the Soul, Gregory, taking the part of those who object to the teaching of the resurrection, phrases the problem in a distinctively bodily manner: if there is to be no procreation in the resurrection (cf. Matt. 22:30), and the resurrectional
life will not be maintained by eating and drinking (cf. Rom. 14:17), then 'what use shall there be for these parts of our body, if the activities for which our members now exist are no longer to be expected in that life?' Specifically: 'If the organs for marriage exist for the sake of marriage, then when this is no more, we shall have no need of those organs for this purpose', and similarly for the hands, feet, mouth, and teeth.³⁶ Gregory is, however, rebuffed by Macrina, as arguing 'not without gallantry using the rhetorical art as it is called, running around the truth with attractively subversive arguments' (An. et res. 10.64). She resorts to saying that 'the true rationale [λόγος] of these things is still laid up in the hidden treasuries of Wisdom, and will not come to light until we are taught the mystery of the resurrection by the deed' (An. et res. 10.66). Pointing out, she continues, that as the body of one travelling in icy conditions becomes cold, while the bodily complexion of those under the hot sun becomes darkened, in the same way, if 'all that was mingled with our human nature from the irrational life was not in us before our humanity fell through vice into passion, then of necessity when we abandon passion, we shall also abandon all that is observed in company with it'
(An. et res. 10.74). As such, 'when we have put off that dead and repulsive tunic made for use from the skins of irrational animals—for when I hear "skins" [cf.
Gen. 3:21], I take it to mean the aspect of the irrational nature with which we clothed when we became habituated to passion. . . . And what we received from the skin of the irrational animals was sexual intercourse, conception, childbearing, sordidness, breastfeeding, nourishing, excreting, gradual growth into maturity, the prime of life, old age, disease, and death' (An. et res. 10.75). The resurrection is not about the resumption of such activities, however much they have enabled attaining the plenitude of human beings and 'the gradual growth into maturity'. Rather,
'the rationale of the resurrection requires only one thing, that a human being is brought forth through birth [ἓν ζητεῖμόνον ὁτῆς ἀναστάσεως λόγος τὸφυῆναι διὰ γεννήσεως ἄνθρωπον], or rather as the Gospel says, that "a human being is born into this world"'.³⁷ It is this birth through death that Macrina then further expounds upon, reflecting upon Paul's words about that which is sown and raised in 1 Cor. 15:38–44, especially the play between the continuity and discontinuity from the seed of corn to the full ear that is raised, a full ear which is implicitly already there in the seed, but is transformed into its fullness through death and resurrection. In all this, however, Macrina does not directly return to the question of male and female.
In his work On Those Who Have Fallen Asleep, Gregory deals extensively with the question of the role of death in life and the transformation that comes about ³⁶ An. et res. 10.58–9 (Spira, 110.16–111.3). The material discussed in this paragraph extends to the end of the treatise; hereafter, reference will be given to Silvas' chapter and section numbers.
³⁷ An. et res. 10.78 (Spira, 114.14–15); John 16:21. For this passage in John, see Behr, John the Theologian, 211–17.
through resurrection. Those displeased by this forthcoming transformation are, he says, like those who would prefer to remain as embryos in the womb, 'for since the birth-pangs of death serve as the midwife assisting the birth of humans to another life, when they go forth to that light and draw in the pure Spirit they know by experience what a great difference there is between that life and the present one, while those left behind in this moist and flabby life, since they are simply embryos and not humans [ἔμβρυα ὄντες ἀτεχνῶς καὶοὐκ ἄνθρωποι]', call the departed
'unhappy' (Mort., 47; ET 104–5). Just as with the newborn infant, so too 'an eye is opened for him when he leaves what now afflicts him', and also the other spiritual senses—hearing (quoting 2 Cor. 12:4), taste (Ps. 33:9), smell (2 Cor. 2:14), and touch (1 John 1:1)—'if these and such things are stored up for humans after the birth through death [τὸν διὰτοῦθανάτου τόκον], what is the purpose of grief, sorrow, and dejection' (Mort., 47; ET 105)? According to Gregory: nature always trains us by death [ἐμμελετᾷτῷθανάτῳ] and death has been made to grow together with life as it passes through time. For since life is always moved from the past to the future, and never does away with what follows afterwards, death is what always accompanies the life-giving activity by being united with it.
For in past times every life-giving movement and activity certainly ceases. Since, then, impotence and inactivity are the special property of death, and certainly this always follows after the life-giving activity, it is not outside the truth to say that death has been woven together with life. . . . That is why, according to the words of the great Paul, 'we die daily' (1 Cor. 15:31), not remaining constantly the same in the same house of the body, but from time to time we become different from something else, by addition and subtraction, being constantly changed as though to a new body [οὐχ οἱαὐτοὶδιὰπαντὸς ἐν τῷαὐτῷ διαμένοντες οἴκῳτοῦσώματος ἀλλ᾽ἑκάστοτε ἄλλοι ἐξ ἄλλου γινόμενοι, διὰ προσθήκης τε καὶἀλλοιούμενοι]. Why, then, are we astonished at death when the life existing through the flesh has been demonstrated to be its constant care and its training ground?
(Mort. 52–3; ET 107–8) If we were what we became from the archē, Gregory continues, we would not have needed the garments of skin, for the divine image would have shone upon us
(Mort. 52; ET 108). But, in order to maintain human autonomy and to ensure that evil would in due course pass away, 'God's wisdom found this device to permit humanity to become what it wished, so that by tasting the evils it desired and learning by experience what sort of things it had exchanged for the kinds it chose, it might return willingly by desire to its first blessedness' (Mort. 54; ET 109).
With regard to the final transformation that will be effected when our desire returns again to God, Gregory begins urging that 'since the craftsman of the universe will at the appropriate time forge the lump of the body into a "weapon of good pleasure" [Ps. 5:13], "the breastplate of righteousness" as the apostle says,
and the "sword of the Spirit" and the "helmet" of hope, and the whole armor of God" [Eph. 6:14–17], love your own body [ἀγάπα τὸἴδιον σῶμα] according to the law of the apostle who says "no one has hated his own body"' (Mort. 61–2; ET 113; cf. Eph. 5:29). But if, as Paul says, we will have a 'house not made by hands, eternal in the heavens' (2 Cor. 5:1), a worthy 'dwelling place of God in the Spirit' (Eph.
2:22), how can that be described physically as our present state of embodiment can be?
Let no one describe to me the mark, shape, and form of that house not made with hands according to the likeness of the characteristic marks that now appear to us and that distinguish us from one another by special properties. For since it is not only the resurrection that has been preached to us by the divine oracles, but also that those who are being renewed by the resurrection pledged by divine scripture must be changed [cf. 1 Cor. 15:51], it is entirely necessary that what we shall be changed to has been hidden from absolutely everyone and is unknown, because no example of what is hoped is to be seen in the life we now live.
(Mort. 62; ET 113) The heaviness now characteristic of the body will be transformed for those 'whose elements of their bodies have been changed to a more divine condition' so that they may rise in the air to meet the Lord (Mort. 62, ET 113–14; 1 Thess. 4:17). In this condition, 'there will be one kind for all when all of us become one body of Christ, having been shaped by one characteristic mark' so that 'since the divine image shines equally on all, as to what will become ours in the change of nature instead of such properties we shall appear to be something better than any thought can guess' (Mort 63; ET 114).
Then, finally:
But lest our account of this should be left entirely unexercised, we say that since the difference between male and female functions with our nature for nothing other than the procreation of children, perhaps it is possible to adopt some guess worthy of God's promised blessing of good things by saying about this that the procreative power of nature will be changed to that service of birth [εἰς τὴν ἐκείνου τοῦτόκου ὑπηρεσίαν μεταβήσεται ἡγεννητικὴν τῆς φύσεως δύναμις] in which the great Isaiah participated when he said, 'From fear of you, Lord, we have received in the womb, have undergone labor-pangs, and have given birth; we have conceived the spirit of salvation on earth" [Isa. 26:18]. If such a birth is good, and the procreation of children becomes the cause of salvation, as the apostle says [cf. 1 Tim. 2:15], someone who has once by such a birth produced as children for himself a multitude of good things never ceases begetting the spirit of salvation.
(Mort. 63; ET 114)
In a similar way to Origen, then, who took the male and female in the 'inner human being' to refer to the spirit and the soul, respectively, which, if 'they have concord and agreement among themselves, they increase and multiply by the very accord among themselves and they produce sons, good inclinations and understandings and good thoughts, by which they fill the earth and have dominion over it' (Hom. Gen. 1.15), for Gregory, while the bodily forms of male and female are transformed into the one body of Christ, in whom there is neither male nor female, 'the procreative power of nature' continues, now elevated by the intellect rather than brought down by its 'evil husbandry', so that even this movement is conformed to the beauty of the divine image (De hom. 18.4–5), and the spirit of salvation is constantly begotten.³⁸ To say otherwise, and to try to hold on to our current experience of what it is to be human, is ultimately futile, for, again, 'a human does not always remain the same as himself with respect to the form of his characteristic mark', as he is 'refashioned by the stages of life', from infancy to maturity, to old age (Mort. 64; ET 114).
With respect to the question of male and female, we might profitably conclude by turning once again to Maximos, who develops these reflections of Gregory in his Ambiguum 41. Maximos opens this text by asserting that 'the existence
(ὑπόστασιν) of all things that have come into being is distinguished by five divisions: created/uncreated, intelligible/perceptible, heaven/earth, paradise/ inhabited world', and finally, 'the fifth is that according to which the human being who is above all—like a most capacious workshop containing all things and naturally mediating through itself all the divided extremities, having been placed amidst beings according to genesis [κατὰγένεσιν]—is divided into male and female'.³⁹ Maximos seems to be playing upon the word genesis, referring both to how the human being comes to be, and also to the book which relates this.
Mediating between all these extremities the human being has the potential, and vocation to bring them all into unity, and so 'establish clearly through itself the great mystery of the divine goal [τοῦθείου σκοποῦ]'.⁴⁰ These divisions, it shouldn't need stating, are not the result of a 'fall', but rather the God-given structure and framework for the vocation of the human being.
³⁸ For spiritual generation more generally in the Cappadocians, see Verna E. Harrison, 'Gender,
Generation, and Virginity in Cappadocian Theology', JTS NS 47 (1997), 38–68.
³⁹ Maximos, Ambig. 41; Constas, vol. 2, 102–21 (and notes on 345–6); and PG 91.1304d–1316a.
Here, vol. 2, 102.20–104.4 (PG 91.1305ab): the clause between the dashes in Greek occurs between the article and the noun: ὁἐπὶπᾶσιν, ὥσπερ τι τῶν ὅλων συνεκτικώτατον ἐργαστήριον καὶπᾶσι τοῖς κατὰπᾶσαν διαίρεσιν ἄκροις δι᾿ἑαυτοῦφυσικῶς μεσιτεύων ἀγαθοπρεπῶς κατὰγένεσιν τοῖς οὗσιν ἐπεισαχθεὶς ἄνθρωπος διαιρεῖται εἰς ἄρρεν καὶθῦλη. As will become clear, I have heavily modified parts of Constas' translation. A further ET by Andrew Louth, Maximus the Confessor, Early Christian
Fathers (London: Routledge, 1996), 156–62; French translation by Emmanuel Ponsoye, with an introduction by Jean-Claude Larchet and commentary by Dumitru Staniloae, Saint Maxime le
Confesseur: Ambigua, Collection l'Arbre de Jessé (Paris–Suresnes: Éditions de l'Ancre, 1994),
292–99.
⁴⁰ Constas, 104.7–10 (PG 91.1305b).
In what follows, there are three passages where Maximos addresses how the distinction between male and female is to be overcome, each of which requires close attention to matters of translation. The first occurs when describing the task set before the human being, that is, to unite all things in God, beginning from their own division by: τὴν μηδαμῶς ἠρτημένην δηλαδὴκατὰτὸν προηγούμενον λόγον τῆς περὶτὴν γένεσιν τοῦἀνθρώπου θείας προθέσεως κατὰτὸθῆλυ καὶτὸἄρσεν ἰδιότητα τῇ περὶτὴν θείαν ἀρετὴν ἀπαθεστάτῃσχέσει πάντη τῆς φύσεως ἐκτιναξάμενος, ὥστε δειχθῆναίτε καὶγενέσθαι κατὰτὴν θείαν πρόθεσιν ἄνθρωπον μόνον, τῇκατὰτὸ ἄρρεν καὶτὸθῆλυ προσηγορίᾳμὴδιαιρούμενον, καθ᾽ὃν καὶπροηγουμένως γεγένηται λόγον, τοῖς νῦν περὶαὐτὸν οὗσι τμήμασι μὴμεριζόμενον διὰτὴν τελείαν πρὸς τὸν ἴδιον, ὡς ἔφην, λόγον, καθ᾽ὅν ἐστιν, ἕνωσιν,⁴¹ completely shaking off from nature, by means of a supremely dispassionate condition of divine virtue, the property according to the female and the male, which clearly in no way depends, according to the foregoing account [or: the guiding principle], upon the divine purpose concerning the genesis of the human being, so that it might be shown to be, and becomes, simply a human being according to the divine purpose, not divided by the designation according to the male and the female, in accordance with the principle by which it primarily came to be, nor divided into the parts that now appear around it, thanks to the perfect union, as I said, with its own principle, according to which it exists.
Translators and commentators have invariably read this passage, and the two following, against the background of Gregory's supposed teaching of a two-stage creation and the possibility of multiplying sexlessly, 'as the angels', and so rendered the expression τῆς περὶτὴν γένεσιν τοῦἀνθρώπου θείας προθέσεως in terms that suggest this: the divine purpose concerning human generation or procreation. The Greek, however, is simpler and more direct: the divine purpose concerns 'the genesis of the human being'. It is not a divine intention about how humans should multiply (angelically or otherwise), but rather that the human being should come to be, which alone is given as the divine purpose in Gen. 1:26, or, as Maximos had put it earlier, the accomplishment of the task set before the human being to reconcile all things, bringing them into union, and so establish
'the great mystery of the divine goal'. The preceding words, then, κατὰτὸν προηγούμενον λόγον, could refer to the 'preceding account', that is, most immediately, Maximos' own account of the divisions found in creation needing to be reconciled, and behind that Gen. 1:26 (the text of Genesis already perhaps being alluded to earlier); but it can also refer to the 'governing principle' of that divine
⁴¹ Constas, 104.23–106.4 (PG 91.1305cd, which has γνῶσιν as the last word rather than ἕνωσιν).
purpose, which, as it concerns the genesis of the human being, is a governing principle that is common to both male and female. This division into male and female, Maximos says, is clearly in no way at all dependent [μηδαμῶς ἠρτημένην δηλαδὴ] upon the divine purpose concerning the genesis of the human being: that is, this divine purpose is not the reason for the division of the human being into male and female, for, as Gregory already pointed out, the purpose of Gen. 1:27c
('male and female made he them') is given in Gen. 1:28 ('increase and multiply'; cf.
De hom. 22.4), and such multiplication, in turn, does not for Maximos (at least here) seem to contribute to the completion of the plenitude of human beings as it did for Gregory. In other words, in the opening clauses of this sentence, Maximos is not speaking about the means or modes of procreation, but rather about the divine purpose that the human being should come to be: it is this that God proposes or 'purposes' to make (Gen. 1:26), not 'male and female' (Gen. 1:27c), though of course this too is of his making, but for a different purpose (given in Gen. 1:28). In Ambig. 41, existence as male and female is, nevertheless, established by God, and forms part of the framework, the fivefold divisions, that the human is to reconcile. Finally, in the passage under consideration, Maximos says that we are to 'shake off from nature the property according to the female and the male'.
Why Maximos puts it in this order is unclear, other than that it forms a chiasm: female-male—simply human—male-female. But, importantly, this 'shaking off ' is accomplished not through a transition into a sexless existence, but through the acquisition of virtue and the removal of the 'designation' of male and female that currently divides the human being. In this way, 'it is shown to be and becomes simply human [ἄνθρωπον μόνον] in accordance with the divine purpose'.⁴²
After describing how the human being did not accomplish the task set before it, but rather overturned 'the natural power to unite what was separated . . . for the division rather of what was united', Maximos then turns to Christ's work of unification. Christ initiates the universal union of all things with himself: 'beginning with our own division, he became the perfect human [γίνεται τέλειος ἄνθρωπος]', like us in every way except sin (Heb. 4:15), and 'needing for this
[i.e. becoming the perfect human] nothing of the natural process of marital intercourse' (τῆς κατὰτὴν φύσιν γαμικῆς ἀκολουθίας οὐδόλως εἰς τοῦτο προσδεηθείς). Maximos continues: καὶκατὰτὸαὐτὸδεικνὺς, ὡς οἷμαι, τυχὸν, ὡς ἦν ἄλλος τρόπος τῆς εἰς πλῆθος τῶν ἀνθρώπων αὐξήσεως προεγνωσμένος Θεῷ, εἰτὴν ἐντολὴν ὁπρῶτος ἐφύλαξεν ἄνθρωπος καὶπρὸς κτηνωδίαν ἑαυτὸν τῷκατὰπαράχρησιν τρόπῳτῶν οἰκείων δυνάμεων μὴκατέβαλε ⁴² Is it possible that in the phrase ἄνθρωπον μόνον Maximos enigmatically hints towards Gen. 2:18, where this is the first and only thing said to be 'not good'? For this human life of virtue, see Doru
Costache, 'Living Above Gender: Insights from Maximus the Confessor', JECS 21.2 (2013), 261–90.
In this way, he showed, I think, that there was perhaps another mode, foreknown by God, for the growth to the multitude of human beings, had the first human kept the commandment and not cast himself down to the level of irrational animals by misusing the mode of his proper power⁴³
Again, Maximos is not simply speaking about 'the multiplication of human beings', which might be taken as suggesting that there was another means for procreation had things been otherwise, but rather about the αὔξησις towards the multitude of human beings, a word which simply means 'growth' or 'increase'.
Most importantly, Maximos' point here is that God could 'perhaps' have arranged things in such a way that the desired number of human beings was attained otherwise, for all things are possible for God, but that he has in fact chosen the route we do indeed have. And, moreover, as we have seen, as the way in which we
'are shown to be and become simply human' is through the acquisition of virtue, so attaining the perfection of being human, as exemplified in Christ, it is not the result of, nor does it even need, 'the natural process of marital intercourse'.
Maximos then continues the sentence: καὶτὴν κατὰτὸἄρρεν καὶθῆλυ διαφοράν τε καὶδιαίρεσιν τῆς φύσεως ἐξωθούμενος, ἦς πρὸς τὸγενέσθαι, καθάπερ ἔφην, ἄνθρωπος, οὐδόλως προσεδεήθη, ὧν δὲἄνευ εἶναι τυχόν ἐστι δυνατόν. and so he drove out from nature the difference and division into male and female, which he in no way needed to become human, as I have said, and without which existence would perhaps have been possible.
Clearly, for Maximos the distinction between male and female is not needed to become human—virtue is—and existence without this distinction is 'perhaps' possible. He then concludes this sentence by citing, as Gregory does, Gal. 3:28:
'there is no need for this division to last perpetually, for in Christ Jesus, says the divine apostle, there is neither male nor female.'
The third mention of this discussion is in the section devoted to describing Christ's work of recapitulation, how 'as human' Christ appears before the God and Father, he who, 'as Word' can never be separated from the Father, 'fulfilling as human, in deed and truth, and with perfect obedience, all that he himself as God had preordained should take place, having completed the whole plan of God the Father for us'. Maximos now describes how Christ's work of unification is effected in us, beginning again from the division into male and female:
Thus he united, first of all, ourselves in himself, through the removal of the difference according to the male and the female [τῆς κατὰτὸἄρρεν καὶτὸθῆλυ
⁴³ Constas, 110.5–21 (PG 91.1308d–1309b).
διαφορᾶς], and instead of men and women [ἀντὶἀνδρῶν καὶγυναικῶν], in whom this mode of division is especially evident [ἐνθεωρεῖται μάλιστα], he showed us as properly and truly to be simply human beings, thoroughly formed according to him, bearing his image intact and completely unadulterated, touched in no way by any marks of corruption.⁴⁴ For the first time in this treatise, Maximos now speaks of 'men' and 'women', and it is in these that the division between 'male and female' is most particularly seen.
Quite what Maximos means by this is not clear, apart from the fact that he is evidently not equating 'male and female' with 'men and women', raising the question of whether he has even been talking about the latter in the previous passages. One final point of interest in Ambig. 41, for us in this volume, is that in concluding his description of how Christ has divinely 'recapitulated all things in himself ' (Eph. 1:10), Maximos comments that Christ 'shows that the whole creation exists as one, like another human being [μίαν ὑπάρχουσαν τὴν ἄπασαν κτίσιν δείξας, καθάπερ ἄνθρωπον ἄλλον]' brought to perfection through the convergence of all its parts, united 'according to the one and simple and undefined and undifferentiated concept of its derivation from non-being, in accordance with which the whole of creation admits of one and the same absolutely undiscriminated logos, that non-being is prior to being'.⁴⁵
Elsewhere in his writings, Maximos almost invariably takes 'male and female' in a 'spiritual' sense. For instance, in his Commentary on the Our Father, he simply and directly takes the 'male and female' of Gal. 3:28 to indicate 'anger and desire'
(τουτέστι θυμός καὶἐπιθυμία).⁴⁶ When these contrary dispositions are put aside, so that the logos is not enslaved by them, he continues, the divine image shines forth, remoulding the soul to the divine likeness, according to its will. In this way,
'it comes to be [γενέσθαι] in the great kingdom, subsisting essentially [συνυφισταμένης οὐσιωδῶς] with the God and Father of all, as a radiant dwelling place of the Spirit, wholly receiving, if one may so speak, the power of the knowledge of the divine nature as far as possible', and it is in this way, finally, that 'Christ always wills to be born mystically, becoming incarnate in those being saved, and rendering the soul begetting him to be a virgin mother, not having, to speak concisely, according to the comparison, as male and female, the properties of nature subject to corruption and genesis'.⁴⁷
⁴⁴ Constas, 114.1–8 (PG 91.1309d–1312a).
⁴⁵ Maximos, Ambig. 41; Constas, 114.16–23 (PG 91.1312ab).
⁴⁶ Ed. Peter van Deun, CCSG 23 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1991), 47.342–3; ET George Berthold, CWS
(London: SPCK, 1985), 108, modified.
⁴⁷ Ibid., 50; ET 109. For Maximos' cosmological understanding of 'incarnation', see Jordan Wood,
The Whole Mystery of Christ: Creation as Incarnation in Maximus Confessor (Notre Dame, IN: Notre
Dame Press, 2022).
What then, finally, of existence as men and women (if not male and female) in the resurrection as understood by the authors we have been considering? Much of what we have seen in Gregory and Maximos is primarily concerned with modes of identification: it is by the mark of Christ, that the human being is known, not by the properties of male and female, and this, they would argue, is based upon a careful consideration of the different clauses in Gen. 1:27 (and, of course,
Gal. 3:28). It might be helpful to borrow the image of Origen: when iron is in the fire, although it remains iron, it is no longer known by its own properties but is now known by the properties of the fire (Princ. 2.6.6). Origen, so far as we can tell, did not use this image with regard to Gal. 3:28, though he did speak of how, when
God is 'all in all', the human being 'will no longer sense anything else apart from God: it will think God, see God, hold God; God will be the mode and measure of its every movement; and thus "God" will be "all" to it' (Princ. 3.6.3). Gregory, in the passages especially from De Mortuis considered above, similarly holds that there will be no 'mark, shape, and form of that house not made with hands'; it is only by the characteristic mark of Christ that we are known in the resurrection.
Whether Gregory intends that the resurrectional transformation is such that the reweaving of the elements of the body (i.e. intellectual properties) actually eradicates bodily differences or whether such differences no longer, as it were, register, in the way that, to adapt Origen's image, iron and bronze in the fire would be indistinguishable, is not clear. But Gregory does allow, as we have seen, that the procreative power remains, now giving birth to virtue and the spirit of salvation.
Maximos, however, adapts the image of fire in a most interesting way. When a sword is heated in a fire, he points out: the quality of sharpness assumes the quality of heat, and the quality of heat that of sharpness (for just as the fire is united to the iron, so too is the heat of the fire diffused throughout the cutting edge of the sword), and the iron becomes burning hot through its union with the fire, and the fire acquires a cutting edge through its union with the iron. Yet neither of the elements undergoes any change in the exchange that results from the union, but each remains secure in its own natural properties, even though it has acquired the property of the other to which it has been joined.⁴⁸ Maximos' purpose here is to argue that in the mystery of the divine incarnation divinity and humanity, united in the one hypostasis, maintain both their natural properties and energies, or rather, that it is here, in the union, that we see what their natural properties are, for after all, if the sharpness of the sword has assumed the quality of heat, the coldness that would have identified the iron, with which the ⁴⁸ Maximos, Ambig. 5; Constas, vol. 1, 54.25–55.8.
sword is made, outside the fire would no longer be present when united with it.
That there 'is not male and female' in Christ, as the word of the Apostle, is a given for our figures; what becomes of men and women, for Maximos, when they finally become and are shown to be simply human, and how he would adapt the iron sword and fire analogy, remains another question. Undoubtedly, each of the figures we have considered take seriously Paul's mysteriological proclamation that 'we all shall be changed' (1 Cor. 15:51), and would have regarded any attempt to hold on to our current experience of existence as, in Gregory's striking image, embryos wanting to remain in the womb rather than becoming human.
The further legacy of Gregory's work in Maximos and beyond him in Eriugena is, however, for another work. Given Gregory's conclusion prior to his final exhortation at the end of On the Human Image, that it is 'through those material and more animal-like attributes of the soul' that the human being is brought to perfection, it seems apt to end this introduction with the words of Stavrogin, the last line of which was used as an epigraph for this volume:
'I don't understand why you consider the possession of a mind, that is, consciousness, the greatest of all possible existences? . . . Why do you reject the possibility of a secret? Note also that, perhaps, unbelief is natural for man, and this precisely because he puts mind above all; since mind is a property only of the human organism, he thereby neither understands nor wishes to understand life in another form, that is, life beyond the grave—he does not believe that that life is higher. On the other hand, by nature the sense of despair and wretchedness is proper to man, for the human mind is so constituted that at every moment it doubts itself, is not satisfied with himself, and man is therefore prone to consider his existence inadequate. We are, clearly, transitory beings and our existence on earth is, clearly, a process, the uninterrupted existence of a chrysalis transitioning into a butterfly.'⁴⁹ ⁴⁹ Dostoevsky, in appendix to eighth volume of sixth printing of The Demons, Stavrogin to Shatov; quoted in Bulgakov, The Sophiology of Death, essay 1, pp. 1–2, ftn. 1.