1. The Letter to Peter
In Chapter 16, Gregory explicitly returns to the key scriptural text, Gen. 1:26–7, with the question: where do we in fact see this? His response is long and complex, involving changes of voice and detours, explaining the provision of God with respect to the waywardness of human beings (like Timaeus' account of 'the straying cause', Tim. 48a7), ensuring that the pleroma, the plenitude of the human being and human beings, the image of God, is attained at the end.
Finally, in Chapter 30, Gregory gives a medical account of the formation of the human being in concrete terms, just as Timaeus had 'put a final head on our story'
(Tim. 69b1) by bringing the two preceding accounts together. Because our concern is with the economy of the text—how the treatise as a whole works, how the different parts fit and work together, and to what end—it will be necessary to review the development of Gregory's argument in detail, only occasionally bringing in other texts of Gregory (his first homily on Ecclesiastes to expound further the relationship between the beginning and end touched upon in the Letter to Peter, and his Hexaemeron to illustrate his understanding of creation), reserving further comment and comparison to other texts, of both Gregory and others, to the concluding section of this chapter. And although we will see plenty of similarities with what we have found in the earlier writers we have examined, they will generally not be noted, nor will parallels with a further range of literature
(which are given in the footnotes to the translation).
1. The Letter to Peter In his cover letter to Peter, offering him this treatise as a paschal gift, Gregory promises to complete the work of Basil, 'who by his own contemplation made the sublime adornment of the universe accessible to many, making the world established by God in true wisdom known to those who are led, by means of his understanding, to contemplation' (Ep. Pet. 1), that is, he will now provide 'the contemplation of the human being' (Ep. Pet. 2). The scope of the proposed contemplation, he points out, is greater than anything else in creation, for the human being alone is made in the image of God (Ep. Pet. 3). Gregory then makes a couple of important points regarding how he understands his particular task.
First, that he must examine everything pertaining to the human being, specifically:
'of what we believe to have taken place previously, of what we now contemplate, and of what we expect to transpire afterwards' (Ep. Pet. 3). This threefold categorization, with three different verbs, echoes what we saw in Origen: while we can contemplate that which presently is, what comes afterwards is expected, while that which took place previously is believed. The beginning, middle, and end, therefore, are not equally in view, subject to similar scrutiny, or placed on the same plane or horizon of investigation.
Gregory provides a further analysis on the relationship between the end, the beginning, and the middle, in the concluding paragraphs of his first homily on Ecclesiastes, written about the same time.⁶ Here he is commenting on verses
1:9–11, beginning with: 'What is it that has come to be? The same as what shall be. And what is it that has been made? The same as shall be made'. To the rhetorical question 'Do you wish to know what it is that came to be?', Gregory replies: 'Think what it is that will be, and you will know what has been.'⁷ He then continues more fully and clearly:
'Think, you human being', he says, 'what you will become by exalting yourself [σεαυτὸν ὑψώσας] through virtue. If you shape your soul in every respect with good characteristics . . . what will you become as you beautify yourself in such ways? What loveliness will you put on? If you carefully consider this with your mind, you will have been taught what came to be in the first [things], which indeed will truly come to be [τὸἐν τοῖς πρώτοις γενόμενον, ὅγε ἀληθῶς ἐστι γενησόμενον], that which is "in the image and likeness of God"'.
(295.8–16) It is by looking to the end, and becoming beautified by exaltation through virtue
(ὑψώσας, with its unmistakable allusions back to Isa. 52:13 and John 3:14; 8:28;
12:34), that we come to know what came to be 'in the first [things]' and 'will truly come to be' in the future. Gregory continues by arguing that in using two different verbs—'what has come to be' and 'what is made'—the Ecclesiast indicates a distinction between them: 'the soul has come to be and the body has been made' (296.4–8). And this is done, moreover, so that we might understand
'what is advantageous in each case'. Specifically:
The soul came to be in accordance with the archē [κατ᾽ἀρχὰς] the same as it will again appear hereafter, when it has been purified. The body moulded by the hands of God was made what the resurrection of the dead in due time will reveal it to be. For such as it is after the resurrection from the dead, just such it was made at the first [παρὰτὴν πρώτην]. The resurrection of the dead is nothing but the complete restoration to the original [state] [εἰς τὸἀρχαῖον ἀποκατάστασις].
(296.12–18) Gregory's theological outlook is thoroughly eschatological. By considering what we are called to be, exalting ourselves through virtue, we finally, 'truly', come to be in the image, that which was made in the archē.
⁶ Maraval, 'Chronology of Works', places it c.379–80 .
⁷ Ed. J. McDonough and P. Alexander GNO 5 (Leiden: Brill, 1986), 295.6–8: τίἐστι τὸγενόμενον; νόησον, τίἐστι τὸἐσόμενον, καὶἐπιγνώσῃὃγέγονε. ET Stuart G. Hall, in idem, ed., Gregory of Nyssa,
Homilies on Ecclesiastes (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1993), 45–6, modified occasionally.