[1907] phesin should probably be struck out (as the insertion of a copyist encouraged by eipon below): five of Krabinger's Codd. omit it.
[1908] eipon. Cf. 243 C: kai hama legein epecheiroun hosa pros anatropen tes anastaseos para ton eristikon epheurisketai. So that this is not the first occasion on which objections to the Resurrection have been started by Gregory, and there is no occasion to adopt the conjecture of Augentius and Sifanus, an eipoimi, "dixerim", especially as eipon is found in all Codd. without exception.
[1909] Reading katar& 191;iknothenta
[1910] hiera noso. That these words can mean leprosy, as well as epilepsy, seems clear from Eusebius.
[1911] to touch twice the very same flame. Albert Jahn (quoted by Krabinger) here remarks that Gregory's comparison rivals that of Heraclitus: and that there is a deliberate intention of improving on the expression of the latter, "you cannot step twice into the same stream." Above (p. 459), Gregory has used directly Heraclitus' image, "so that Nature's stream may not flow on for ever, pouring forward in her successive births," &c. See also De Hom. Opif. c. 13 (beginning).
[1912] not the same even as he was yesterday. Cf. Gregory's Oratio de Mortuis, t. III. p. 633 A. "It is not exaggeration to say that death is woven into our life. Practically such an idea will be found by any one to be based on a reality: for experiment would confirm this belief that the man of yesterday is not the same as the man of today in material substance, but that something of him must be alway becoming dead, or be growing, or being destroyed, or ejected:...Wherefore, according to the expression of the mighty Paul, we die daily': we are not always the same people remaining in the same homes of the body, but each moment we change from what we were by reception and ejectment, altering continually into a fresh body."
[1913] A fresh objection is here started. It is answered (254 A, B).
[1914] Which succeeds (and is bound up with) the Resurrection. The argument is, "the flesh has behaved differently in different persons here; how then can it be treated alike in all by being allowed to rise again? Even before the judgment an injustice has been done by all rising in the same way to a new life."--In what follows, e tou autou nun men, k.t.l., the difficulty of different dispositions in the same person is considered.
[1915] parektikes kai metabatikes energeias. To the latter expression, which simply means walking, belong the words below, kai pros ton dromon oi podes (p. 464). Schmidt well remarks that a simpler form than metabatikos does not exist, because in all walking the notion of putting one foot in the place of the other (meta) is implied; and shows that Krabinger's translation "transeundi officium" makes too much of the word.
[1916] Reading hos an ananken einai, ei me eie peri to soma ta pros ouden, k.t.l. The an seems required by the protasis ei me eie, and two Codd. supply it. The interrogative sentence ends with estai.--Below (hoste pathein an), an is found with the same force with the infinitive; "so that those...might possibly be affected."
[1917] Reading en allois ar' he zoe, as Schmidt suggests, and as the sense seems to require, although there is no ms. authority except for gar.
[1918] saved to the last. The word here is diasozein; lit. to "preserve through danger," but it is used by later writers mostly of dialectic battles, and Plato himself uses it so (e.g. Timæus, p. 56, 68, Polit. p. 395) always of "probability." It is used by Gregory, literally, in his letter to Flavian, "we at last arrived alive in our own district," and, with a slight difference, On Pilgrimages, "it is impossible for a woman to accomplish so long a journey without a conductor, on account of her natural weakness." Hence the late word diasostes, dux itineris.
[1919] The actual language of this definition is Platonic (cf. Sympos. p. 193 D), but it is Gregory's constant formula for the Christian Resurrection; see De Hom. Opif. c. 17; In Ecclesiast. I. p. 385 A; Funeral Oration for Pulcheria, III. p. 523 C; Orat. de Mortuis, III. p. 632 C; De Virginitate, c. xii. p. 358.
[1920] egennethe. S. John xvi. 21
[1921] ton gar tou zen arxamenon, zesai chre pantos. The present infinitive here expresses only a new state of existence, the aorist a continued act. The aorist may have this force, if (as a whole) it is viewed as a single event in past time. Cf. Appian. Bell. Civ. ii. 91, elthon, eidon, enikesa.
[1922] Reading with Krabinger, en to nun kairo instead of en to meta tauta, which cannot possibly refer to what immediately precedes, i.e. the union with God, by means of the Resurrection. If meta tauta is retained, it must = meta touton ton bion. Gregory here implies that the Resurrection is not a single contemporaneous act, but differs in time, as individuals differ; carrying out the Scriptural distinction of a first and second Resurrection.
[1923] Dr. H. Schmidt has an admirable note here, pointing out the great and important difference between S. Paul's use of this analogy of the grain of wheat, and that of our Saviour in S. John xii. 23, whence S. Paul took it. In the words, "The hour is come that the Son of man should be glorified. Verily, verily I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit" (A.V.), the fact and the similitude exactly correspond. To the corn with its life-engendering shoot, answers the man with his vivifying soul. The shoot, when the necessary conditions are fulfilled, breaks through the corn, and mounts up into an ear, exquisitely developed: so the soul, when the due time is come, bursts from the body into a nobler form. Again, through the death of the integument a number of new corns are produced: so through the death of the body that encases a perfect soul (i.e. that of Jesus), an abundance of blessings is produced for mankind. Everything here exactly corresponds; the principle of life, on the one hand in the corn, on the other hand in the human body, breaks, by dying, into a more beautiful existence. But this comparison in S. Paul becomes a similitude rather than an analogy. With him the lifeless body is set over against the life-containing corn; he does not compare the lifeless body with the lifeless corn: because out of the latter no stalk and ear would ever grow. The comparison, therefore, is not exact: it is not pretended that the rising to life of the dead human body is not a process transcendently above the natural process of the rising of the ear of wheat. But the similitude serves to illustrate the form and the quality of the risen body, which has been in question since v. 35 (1 Cor. xv.), "with what body do they come?" and the salient point is that the risen body will be as little like the buried body, as the ear of wheat is like its corn. The possibility of the Resurrection has been already proved by S. Paul in this chapter by Christ's own Resurrection, which he states from the very commencement as a fact: it is not proved by this similitude.
[1924] The Resurrection being the second. The epeide here does not give the reason for what precedes: that is given in the words, phesi de touto ho apostolos, to which the leading gar therefore belongs: the colon should be replaced (after anedramen) by a comma.
[1925] Reading ou monon de touto, k.t.l. The de is not found in two Codd.
[1926] i.e.of grain, adopted by the Apostle.
[1927] stachus here might be the nom. plur. Any way it is a "nominativus pendens."
[1928] This "naked grain" is suggested by the words of S. Paul, not so much 1 Cor. xv. 37, as 2 Cor. v. 4: "For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened: not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon." Tertullian's words (de resurr. carnis c. 52) deserve to be quoted, "Seritur granum sine folliculi veste, sine fundamento spicæ, sine munimento aristæ, sine superbiâ culmi. Exsurgit copiâ feneratum, compagine ædificatum, ordine structum, cultu munitum, et usquequaque vestitum." In allusion to this passage (2 Cor. v. 4), Origen says, "Our theory of the Resurrection teaches that the relations of a seed attach to that which the Scriptures call the tabernacle of the soul,' in which the righteous do groan being burdened,' not wishing to put it off, but to be clothed upon' (with something else). We do not, as Celsus thinks, mean by the resurrection anything like the transmigration of souls. The soul, in its essence unbodied and invisible, when it comes into material space, requires a body fitted to the conditions of that particular space: which body it wears, having either put off a former body, or else having put it on over its former body...For instance, when it comes to the actual birth into this world it lays aside the environment (chorion) which was needed as long as it is in the womb of her that is with child: and it clothes itself with that which is necessary for one destined to pass through life. Then there is a tabernacle,' and an earthly house,' as well: and the Scriptures tell us that this earthly house' of the tabernacle is to be dissolved, but that the tabernacle itself is to surround itself with another house not made with hands. The men of God declare that the corruptible must put on incorruption (which is a different thing from the incorruptible), and the mortal must put on immortality (which is different from the immortal: just as the relative quality of wisdom is different from that which is absolutely wise). Observe, then, where this system leads us. It says that the souls put on incorruption and immortality like garments which keep their wearer from corruption, and their inmate (ton perikeimenon auta) from death" (c. Cels. vii. 32). We see at once this is another explanation of the Resurrection, by the spermatikos logos of the soul, and not Gregory's; with him the soul recollects its scattered atoms, and he thus saves the true scriptural view.
[1929] This connection of "evil" and "multitude" is essentially Platonic. Cf. also Plotinus, vi. 6. 1: "Multitude, then, is a revolt from unity, and infinity a more complete revolt by being infinite multitude: and so infinity is bad, and we are bad, when we are a multitude" (cf. "Legion" in the parable).
[1930] as happens to the grain, i.e. to become bare, as compared with the beautiful envelopments of the entire ear.
[1931] "hornstruck" seeds, i.e. those which have been struck by, or have struck, the horns of the oxen, in the process of sowing: according to the rustic superstition, which Gregory Nazianz. in some very excellent hexameters alludes to (Opp. t. II. pp. 66-163): "There is," he says, "a dry unsoakable seed, which never sinks into the ground, or fattens with the rain; it is harder than horn; its horn has struck the horn of the ox, what time the ploughman's hand is scattering the grain over his land." Ruhnken (ad Timæum, p. 155) has collected the ancient authorities on this point. The word is used by Plato of a "hard," "intractable" person. The "bare grain" of the wicked is here compared to these hard seeds, which even though they may sink into the earth and rise again, yet have a poor and stunted blade, which may never grow.
[1932] Reading epi tes ges, instead of ten gen: for a fall "on to the earth," instead of "on the earth," agrees neither with what Gregory (speaking by Macrina) has urged against the heathen doctrine of Transmigration, nor with the words of Scripture which he follows. The "earthly fall" is compared with the heavenly rising: kataptosis, in the sense of a "moral fall," is used in 3 Maccab. ii. 14 (quoted by Schmidt).
[1933] Between the Resurrection and the Apokatastasis
IV.--Apologetic Works.
The Great Catechism [1934] .
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Summary.
The Trinity.
Prologue and Chapter 1.--The belief in God rests on the art and wisdom displayed in the order of the world: the belief in the Unity of God, on the perfection that must belong to Him in respect of power, goodness, wisdom, etc. Still, the Christian who combats polytheism has need of care lest in contending against Hellenism he should fall unconsciously into Judaism. For God has a Logos: else He would be without reason. And this Logos cannot be merely an attribute of God. We are led to a more exalted conception of the Logos by the consideration that in the measure in which God is greater than we, all His predicates must also be higher than those which belong to us. Our logos is limited and transient; but the subsistence of the Divine Logos must be indestructible; and at the same time living, since the rational cannot be lifeless, like a stone. It must also have an independent life, not a participated life, else it would lose its simplicity; and, as living, it must also have the faculty of will. This will of the Logos must be equalled by his power: for a mixture of choice and impotence would, again, destroy the simplicity. His will, as being Divine, must be also good. From this ability and will to work there follows the realization of the good; hence the bringing into existence of the wisely and artfully adjusted world. But since, still further, the logical conception of the Word is in a certain sense a relative one, it follows that together with the Word He Who speaks it, i.e. the Father of the Word, must be recognized as existing. Thus the mystery of the faith avoids equally the absurdity of Jewish monotheism, and that of heathen polytheism. On the one hand, we say that the Word has life and activity; on the other, we affirm that we find in the Logos, whose existence is derived from the Father, all the attributes of the Father's nature.