[1861] Macrina may be here alluding to Gregory's brotherly affection for her.
[1862] But on high A record lives of thine identity! Thou shalt not lose one charm of lip or eye; The hues and liquid lights shall wait for thee, And the fair tissues, whereso'er they be! Daughter of heaven! our grieving hearts repose On the dear thought that we once more shall see Thy beauty--like Himself our Master rose. C. Tennyson Turner.--Anastasis.
[1863] idein...hina me amphiballe. This is the reading of the Paris Editt.: idein seems to go closely with alethes: so that Krabinger's dein is not absolutely necessary.
[1864] some extend this absurdity even to trees: Empedocles for instance. Cf. Philosophumena (of Hippolytus, falsely attributed to Origen), p. 50, where two lines of his are quoted. Chrysostom's words (I. iv. p. 196), "There are those amongst them who carry souls into plants, into shrubs, and into dogs," are taken by Matthæus to refer to Empedocles. Cf. Celsus also (quoted in Origen, c. Cels. viii. 53), "Seeing then men are born bound to a body--no matter whether the economy of the world required this, or that they are paying the penalty for some sin, or that the soul is weighted with certain emotions till it is purified from them at the end of its destined cycle, three myriad hours, according to Empedocles, being the necessary period of its wanderings far away from the Blessed Ones, during which it passes successively into every perishable shape--we must believe any way that there exist certain guardians of this prison-house." See De Hom. Opif. c. 28. Empedocles can be no other, then, than "the philosopher who asserts that the same thing may be born in anything:" below (p. 232 D). Anaxagoras, however, seems to have indulged in the same dictum (pan en panti), but with a difference; as Nicetas explains in his commentary on Gregory Naz., Orations: "That everything is contained in everything Empedocles asserted, and Anaxagoras asserted also: but not with the same meaning. Empedocles said it of the four elements, namely, that they are not only divided and self-centred, but are also mingled with each other. This is clear from the fact that every animal is engendered by all four. But Anaxagoras, finding an old proverb that nothing can be produced out of nothing, did away with creation, and introduced differentiation' instead, &c." See also Greg. Naz., Poems, p. 170.
[1865] sundromes
[1866] eirmo, i.e. as links in a chain which cannot be altered. Sifanus' "carcere et claustro" is due to heirgmo against all the mss. Krabinger's six have diateichizomena for diastoichizomena of the Editt.
[1867] oude...ton botrun. The intensitive need not surprise us, though a grape-bunch does seem a more fitting body for a human soul than a stalk of hemlock: it is explained by the sentence in apposition, "produced...for the purpose of sustaining life," i.e. it is eaten, and so a soul might be eaten; which increases the horror.
[1868] kai gar kai autos ton phuomenon estin, i.e. the fruit, and not the tree only, belongs to the kingdom of plants: phuta in the next sentence is exactly equivalent to ta phuomena, i.e. plants. The probability that this is the meaning is strengthened by Krabinger's reading houtos, from five of his Codd. But still if autos be retained, it might have been taken to refer to the man who must needs look suspiciously at a bunch of grapes; "for what, according to this theory, is he himself, but a vegetable!" since all things are mixed, panta homou.
[1869] Two Codd. Mon. (D, E) omit phuton e zoon, which is repeated below.
[1870] i.e.Pythagoreans and later Platonists. Cf. Origen, c. Cels. iii. 80. For the losing of the wings, cf. c. Cels iii. 40: "The coats of skins also, which God made for those sinners, the man and the woman cast forth from the garden, have a mystical meaning far deeper than Plato's fancy about the soul shedding its wings, and moving downward till it meets some spot upon the solid earth."
[1871] apoktenousthai
[1872] tes phusikes tautes. This is the common reading: but phusis and phusikos have a rather higher meaning than our equivalent for them: cf. just below, "that inherently (te phusei) fine and buoyant thing": and Krabinger is probably right in reading phutikes from four Codd.
[1873] With the gar here (unlike the three preceding) begins the second "incoherency" of this view. The first is,--"It confuses the ideas of good and evil." The second,--"it is inconsistent with a view already adopted by these teachers." The third (beginning with kai ou mechri touton, k.t.l.),--it contradicts the truth which it assumes, i.e. that there is no change in heaven."
[1874] See just above: "For I have heard persons who hold these opinions saying that whole nations of souls are hidden away somewhere in a realm of their own," &c., and see next note.
[1875] that undeviating revolution along with the stars, ten aplane periphoran. Cf. Origen, De Princip. ii. 3-6 (Rufinus' translation), "Sed et ipsum supereminentem, quem dicunt aplane, globum proprie nihilominus mundum appellari volunt:" Cicero, De Repub. vi. 17: "Novem tibi orbibus ver potius globis connexa sunt omnia: quorum unus est coelestis, extimus, qui reliquos omnes complectitur; in quo infixi sunt illi, qui volvuntur, stellarum cursus sempiterni," i.e. they roll, not on their axes, but only as turning round with the general revolution. They are literally fixed in that heaven (cf. Virg.: "tacito volvuntur sidera lapsu"): and the spiritual beings in it are as fixed and changeless: in fact, with Plato it is the abode only of Divine intelligences, not of the daimones: but the theorists, whom Gregory is refuting, confuse this distinction which their own master drew.
[1876] huponoia.
[1877] Such theories are developed in the Phædo of Plato; and constitute ho heteros ton logon, criticized more fully below.
[1878] Reading dokei, e to empalin, instead of the corrupt dokeie to empalin.
[1879] ho proteros (logos). The second is mentioned below. "The same absurdity exists in the other of the two theories as well." Obviously these two theories are those alluded to at the beginning of this last speech of Macrina, where, speaking of the heathen transmigration, she says, "While some of them extend this absurdity even to trees and shrubs, so that they consider their wooden life as corresponding and akin to humanity (i.e. ho proteros logos), others of them opine only thus much, that the soul exchanges one man for another man," &c. (i.e. ho heteros). In either case the soul is supposed to return from the dead body to heaven, and then by a fresh fall into sin there, to sink down again. The absurdity and the godlessness is just as glaring, Macrina says, in the last case (the Platonic soul-rotation) as in the first (Transmigration pure and simple). But the one point in both in contact with the Christian Resurrection is this, that the soul of the departed does assume another body.
[1880] he kat' auton (i.e. bion) diexodos. The Editions have kat' auton. Krabinger well translates by "percursatio." Cf. Phædrus, p. 247 A.
[1881] suntropho
[1882] alla men introduces a fact into the argument (cf. kai men); Lat. "verum enimvero."
[1883] ton ophthalmon blaptomenen
[1884] logo.
[1885] Heb. xi. 3.
[1886] that it is an object of his faith, &c. In the Greek the men contrasts the Apostle's declaration on this point with his silence as to the "how."
[1887] militates against, &c. 'All' ouch homologeitai (reading then, hoti to heterogenes echei pros ekeinen ta onta). Cf. Plato, Tim. 29 C, autoi hautois ouch homologoumenoi logoi, "theories that contradict each other." This world cannot come out of the Supreme Being: its alien nature contradicts that. Krabinger's translation is therefore wrong, "sed non constat:" and Oehler's, "Aber das ist nicht angemacht."
[1888] ho logos.
[1889] Reading ise de.
[1890] he phusis.
[1891] The long Greek sentence, which begins here with a genitive absolute (tes de somatikes ktiseos, k.t.l.), leading up to nothing but the anacoluthon peri hon tosouton k.t.l., has been broken up in translating. Doubtless this anacoluthon can be explained by the sentences linked on to the last words (to logo) of the genitive clause, which are so long as to throw that clause quite into the background. There is no need therefore to take the words where this anacoluthon begins, down to soma ginetai, as a parenthesis, with Krabinger and Oehler; especially as the words that follow ginetai are a direct recapitulation of what immediately precedes.
[1892] Reading, as Dr. H. Schmidt conjectures, kai toutou palin, cf. 205 C.
[1893] Origen, Gregory's master in most of his theology, did teach this very thing, the pre-existence of the soul: nor did he attempt to deny that some degree of transmigration was a necessary accompaniment of such teaching; only he would adjust the moral meaning of it. Cf. c. Celsum, Lib. iii. 75. "And even if we should treat (i e. medically) those who have caught the folly of the transmigration of souls from doctors who push down a reasoning nature into any of the unreasoning natures, or even into that which is insensate, how can any say that we shall not work improvement in their souls by teaching them that the bad do not have allotted to them by way of punishment that insensate or unreasoning state, but that what is inflicted by God upon the bad, be it pain or affliction, is only in the way of a very efficacious cure for them? This is the teaching of the wise Christian: he attempts to teach the simpler of his flock as fathers do the merest infants." Not the theory itself, but the exaggeration of it, is here combated.
[1894] ek trephomenou trephomenon
[1895] kata logon.
[1896] This seems like a prelude to the Realism of the Middle Ages.
[1897] Each individual soul represents, to Gregory's view, a "thought" of God, which becomes visible by the soul being born. There will come a time when all these "thoughts," which complete, and do not destroy, each other, will have completed the pleroma (Humanity) which the Deity contemplates. This immediate apparition of a soul, as a "thought" of God, is very unlike the teaching of his master Origen: and yet more sober, and more scriptural.
[1898] The situation here is, as Dr. H. Schmidt points out, just like that in the Phædo of Plato, where all are satisfied with Socrates' discourse, except Kebes and Simmias, who seize the precious moments still left, to bring forward an objection which none but their great Teacher could remove.
[1899] periodiken: a better reading than parodiken, which most Codd. have.
[1900] receiving the same term (sunonomazomenes) as the raising up of that which is actually prostate on the ground (tou geodous), i.e. the term anastasis is extended by analogy to embrace the entire movement of the atoms. Though there is here of course an allusion to the elevation of the nature from the "earthly" to the "heavenly," and perhaps to the raising of the body from the tomb, yet the primary meaning is that the term anastasis is derived from its special use of raising from the ground one who lies prostrate (as a suppliant). Some of the elements of the body are supposed to be geode, i.e. mingled with their kindred earth. But though strictly the word anastasis should apply to them alone, it does not do so, but denotes more generally the movement of all the atoms to reform the body.
[1901] Gregory quotes as usual the LXX. for this Psalm (cxviii. 27): Theos kurios, kai epephanen hemin; sustesasthe ten eorten en tois pukazousin heos ton keraton tou thusiasteriou. [Krabinger has replaced sustesasthe from one of his Codd. for the common sustesasthai; but if this is retained hoste must be understood. Cf. Matt., Gr. Gr. §532.] The LXX. is rendered by the Psalterium Romanum "constitute diem in confrequentationibus." So also Eusebius, Theodoret, and Chrysostom interpret. But the Psalterium Gallicanum reproduces the LXX. otherwise, i.e. in condensis, as Apollinaris and Jerome (in frondosis) also understand it. "Adorn the feast with green boughs, even to the horns of the altar": Luther. "It is true that during the time of the second temple the altar of burnt offering was planted round about at the Feast of Tabernacles with large branches of osiers, which leaned over the edge of that altar": Delitzsch (who however says that this is, linguistically, untenable). Gregory's rendering differs from this only in making pukazousin masculine.
[1902] Reading tois exothen periboles
[1903] Reading delonoti
[1904] Ezek. xxxvii. 1-10.
[1905] Gregory, as often, seems to quote from memory (hupameiphthesesthai, but 1 Cor. xv. 52 allagesometha; and St. Paul says hemeis de, i.e. "we shall be changed," in distinction from the dead generally, who "shall be raised incorruptible"). But the doctrine of a general resurrection, with or without change, is quite in harmony with the end of this treatise. Cf. p. 468.
[1906] the incorruptible tribunal. The Judgment comes after the Resurrection (cf. 250 A, 254 A, 258 D), and after the purifying and chastising detailed above. The latter is represented by Gregory as a necessary process of nature: but not till the Judgment will the moral value of each life be revealed. There is no contradiction, such as Möller tries to find, between this Dialogue and Gregory's Oratio Catechetica. There too he is speaking of chastisement after the Resurrection and before the Judgment. "For not everything that is granted in the resurrection a return to existence will return to the same kind of life. There is a wide interval between those who have been purified (i.e. by baptism) and those who still need purification."..."But as for those whose weaknesses have become inveterate, and to whom no purgation of their defilement has been applied, no mystic water, no invocation of the Divine power, no amendment by repentance, it is absolutely necessary that they should be submitted to something proper to their case," i.e. to compensate for Baptism, which they have never received (c. 35).