On the Soul and the Resurrection

When Basil, great among the saints, had departed from human life to God, and a common cause of mourning had come upon the churches, while his sister and my teacher was still living, I went in haste to share with her the misfortune of our brother. My soul was in deep pain, grieving excessively at such a loss, and I sought someone to share my tears who bore a burden of grief equal to mine. When we were in each other’s sight, the appearance of my teacher before my eyes stirred my grief again; for she too was already in the grip of the illness that led to her death. But she, like those skilled in horsemanship, gave way to me for a little while, letting me be carried along by the rush of my grief, and afterward tried to curb me with reason, guiding the disorder of my soul by her own reasoning as with a bridle; and she was …

… to be. Gregory: And I, my heart still boiling with grief, said: “How is it possible for this to be achieved among human beings, when there is in each a natural aversion to death, and those who see the dying do not easily bear the sight, while those whom death approaches flee it as far as they can? Even the rulers judge it the extreme law in crimes and the extreme penalty in punishments. What means is there to think the departure from life as nothing, even in the case of strangers, not to speak of friends, when their life ends? We see,” I said, “that all human effort looks to this, that we may remain alive. For this reason houses have been devised for us to live in, so that our bodies may not be distressed by the surrounding air through cold or heat. And what else is farming but a provision for living? And care for life arises entirely from the fear of death. Why is medicine honoured among men? Is it not because by its art it seems in some way to fight against death? Breastplates and shields, greaves and helmets, and the defensive weapons, the encircling walls, iron-bound gates, the safety of trenches and the like, what else are they made for but the fear of death? Since death is thus naturally fearful, how can one easily be persuaded by one who bids us remain without grief …

… over the departed, the survivors? Macrina: “What,” said my teacher, “seems to you most painful about death in itself? For the habit of the more irrational is not sufficient ground to condemn it.” Gregory: “What is there, then, not worthy of grief,” I said to her, “when we see one who until now was living and speaking suddenly become breathless, voiceless, and motionless, and all his natural senses quenched, no sight, no hearing working, nor any other of the things perceived by sense? Bring fire to him, or iron, cut his body with a sword, throw him to carnivorous beasts, hide him in earth: the one lying there is alike toward everything. When, then, such a change is seen in these things, and that life-giving cause, whatever it was, has suddenly become invisible and unknown, as when a lamp is put out and the flame that until then was burning by itself neither remains on the wick nor moves somewhere else but passes into complete disappearance, how could anyone bear such a change without grief, having nothing plain to lean on? For when we hear of the departure of the soul, we see what is left, but we do not know what has been separated, either what it is by nature or where it has gone, since neither earth nor air nor water nor any other of the elements shows in itself that power which has departed from the body, at whose withdrawal what is left is a corpse and already exposed to corruption.”

Gregory: While I was going through this, my teacher, motioning with her hand, said: Macrina: “Is it such a fear that disturbs and grips your mind, that the soul does not remain forever but ends together with the dissolution of the body?” Gregory: And I, for I had not yet recovered my reasoning from my grief, answered rather rashly, without considering what was said very carefully. I said that the divine words seem like commands, by which we are compelled to believe that the soul remains forever, but we have not been brought to such a belief by any reasoning; rather, it seems that our mind within slavishly accepts by fear what is commanded, not agreeing with what is said by any willing impulse. “That is why,” I said, “our griefs over the departed become sharper, since we do not know exactly whether this life-giving cause still exists by itself, and where and how, or whether it does not exist anywhere in any way. For uncertainty about what truly is makes the suppositions on either side equal. Many hold this, and many the opposite. And there are some among the Greeks of no small reputation in philosophy who have thought and declared these things.” Macrina: “Away,” she said, “with that outside nonsense, in which the inventor of falsehood, to the harm of the truth, plausibly constructs suppositions for those he has deceived. But look at this: to hold such a view of the soul is nothing else than to be estranged from virtue, to look only to present pleasure, and to despair of the life seen in the ages, in which virtue alone has the advantage.” Gregory: “And how,” I said, “could we come to have a firm and unchangeable belief in the soul’s remaining …?”

For I myself perceive that human life will be bereft of the finest thing in life, I mean virtue, unless an undoubting faith about this is established in us. For how can virtue have any place in those who suppose that the present life is the limit of their existence and hope for nothing more after it?” Macrina: “We must seek, then,” said my teacher, “where our discussion should properly begin on these things. And if you like, let the alliance of the opposing doctrines come from you; for I see that your mind is somewhat moved toward such a conclusion. Then the account of the truth will be sought after the objection.” Gregory: Since she commanded this, I begged her not to think that I was objecting in earnest, but that the objections to the doctrine might be raised so that the teaching about the soul might be firmly established. “Would not those,” I said, “who stand by the opposite account say this: that the body, being composite, is certainly dissolved into the things of which it is composed; and when the natural union of the elements in the body is dissolved, the inclination of the nature of the elements, as is likely, goes to what is proper to each, a necessary attraction giving back what is its own to what is of its own kind? For the heat in us will be united again with heat, and the earthy with the solid, and each of the rest passes to its kin. Where, then, is the soul after this? If one says that it is in the elements, he will necessarily agree that it is the same as they; for there could be no mixture of something of a different nature with what is foreign to it; and if this were so, it would certainly appear as something varied, mixed with opposite qualities; but what is varied is not simple, but is certainly seen in composition; and everything composite is necessarily dissoluble; and dissolution is the destruction of what was constituted; and what is destroyed …”

“… is not immortal; otherwise the flesh too would be called immortal, since it is dissolved into the things of which it is composed. But if the soul is something else besides these, where does reason suppose it to be, since it is not found in the elements, being of a different nature from them, and there is nothing else in the world in which the soul could live in a way suited to its own nature? But what is nowhere does not exist at all.” Macrina: And my teacher, sighing gently at what had been said, said: “Perhaps such things as these the Stoics and Epicureans brought forward when they gathered against the Apostle at Athens. For I hear that Epicurus was carried away chiefly to such suppositions, that the nature of things was thought to be accidental and spontaneous, with no providence passing through events. And for this reason, consistently, he thought human life too was like a bubble, our body being blown up by some breath, as long as the breath is held in by what encloses it, and that when the bulk collapses what was enclosed is quenched with it. For to him what appears was the limit of the nature of things, and he made sense the measure of his grasp of the universe, having wholly shut the senses of the soul and being unable to look at anything intelligible and incorporeal; like a man shut up in a little hut who remains without sight of the wonders of heaven, hindered by the walls and roof from seeing what is outside. For all the sensible things seen in the universe are simply earthen walls, which by themselves block the more small-minded from the contemplation of intelligible things …”

Such a man sees only earth and water and air and fire; but where each of these comes from, or in what it is, or by what it is held together, he cannot see through because of his narrowness of soul. Yet one who sees a garment reasons to the weaver, and through the ship thinks of the shipwright, and the hand of the builder comes into the mind of those who see the building together with the sight of the building. But those who look at the world are dim-sighted toward the one shown through it. Hence these clever and sharp arguments are put forward by those who teach the annihilation of the soul: body from elements, and elements from body, and that the soul cannot exist by itself if it is neither one of these nor in these. For if the objectors think that the soul is nowhere because it is not of the same nature as the elements, let them first teach that life in the flesh too is without soul; for the body is nothing else than a concurrence of the elements; let them not say, then, that the soul is in these either, giving life to the compound by itself, if, as they think, it is not possible for the soul to exist after these things while the elements exist; so that they show our life to be nothing else than dead. But if they do not doubt that the soul is now in the body, how do they teach its annihilation when the body is dissolved into the elements? Then let them dare the same against the divine nature itself. For how will they say that the intelligent, immaterial, and formless nature, penetrating into moist and soft and solid things, holds existing things together in being, neither being akin to the things in which it comes to be nor unable to be in them because it is of a different kind? Let the divine itself, then, by which existing things are held together, be removed altogether from their doctrine.” Gregory: “But this very thing,” I said, “how could it become undoubted for the objectors, that all things are from God and that existing things are held together in him, or even at all that there is something divine above the nature of existing things?”

Macrina: “It would be more fitting,” she said, “to keep silence on such matters and not to think foolish and impious propositions worthy of an answer, since one of the divine sayings forbids answering a fool according to his folly; and certainly, according to the Prophet, he is a fool who says there is no God. But since this too must be said, I will tell you,” she said, “an argument that is not mine, nor any other human being’s (for that would be small, whoever he was), but one which the creation of existing things itself goes through by the wonders in it, the eye becoming a hearer, as the wise and skilful word resounds in the heart through the things that appear. For creation openly cries out its Maker, the heavens themselves, as the Prophet says, declaring the glory of God with unspoken voices. For who, seeing the harmony of the universe, of the wonders in heaven and on earth, and how the elements, opposite to one another in nature, are all woven together to the same aim by some ineffable communion, each contributing its own power to the preservation of the whole; how things unmixable and incompatible in the property of their qualities are neither separated from one another nor destroyed when blended with one another by their opposite qualities; but even things whose nature is upward-tending are carried downward, as the sun’s heat flows down in its rays, while heavy bodies are lifted up, thinned out into vapours, so that water too becomes upward-tending against its nature, carried through the air on the winds, and the fire of the ether comes down to earth, so that even the depth has its share of heat; and the moisture from the rains poured on the earth, though one in nature, produces countless varieties of plants, growing in a manner suited to each subject; and the swiftest revolution of the pole and the contrary motion of the circles within …

… the motion in the opposite direction, the retrogradations and conjunctions and harmonious distances of the stars: one who sees these with the discerning eye of the soul, is he not clearly taught by what appears that a divine power, skilful and wise, appearing in existing things and pervading all, fits the parts to the whole and fills up the whole in the parts, and that the universe is held together by one power, abiding in itself, never ceasing from motion, nor passing to any other place than that in which it is?” Gregory: “And how,” I said, “does faith in the existence of God also prove the existence of the human soul? For the soul is not the same as God, so that if the one is admitted to exist the other must certainly be admitted too.” Macrina: “It is said by the wise,” she said, “that man is a kind of little world, containing in himself the elements of which the universe is made up. If this account is true (and it seems to be), perhaps we shall need no other ally to confirm what we have supposed about the soul. And we have supposed that it exists by itself in a distinct and peculiar nature, apart from bodily coarseness. For as, recognizing the whole world through sense perception, we are led by the very activity of our senses to the thought of the reality and idea beyond sense, and the eye becomes for us an interpreter of the all-powerful wisdom which is seen in the universe and through itself reveals the one who holds the universe in his grasp, so too, looking at the world within us, we have no small grounds for guessing the hidden through what appears. And that is hidden which, being intelligible and formless in itself, escapes the perception of sense.” Gregory: And I said: “But it is possible to infer the wisdom that is above the universe from the wise and skilful principles seen in the nature of …”

“… existing things, in this harmony and order; but what knowledge of the soul could come, through what is shown in the body, to those who track the hidden from what appears?” Macrina: “Most of all,” said the virgin, “to those who desire to know themselves according to that wise precept; for the soul itself would be the teacher of what is to be supposed about the soul: that it is something immaterial and incorporeal, acting and moving in a way suited to its own nature, and showing its own movements through the bodily organs. For this instrumental construction of the body exists no less in those deadened by death, but it remains motionless and inactive, since the power of soul is not in it. It moves when sense is in the organs and the intelligible power passes through sense, moving the sense organs with its own impulses as it pleases.” Gregory: “What, then,” I said, “is the soul, if its nature can be sketched by some definition, so that through the sketch we may gain some understanding of the subject?” Macrina: My teacher said: “Different people have given different accounts of it, each defining it as seemed good to him; but our opinion of it is this. The soul is a created substance, a living substance, intellectual, which by itself gives to an organic and sentient body a power of life and of perceiving sensible things, as long as the nature capable of receiving these holds together.” And as she said this she pointed with her hand to the physician who was sitting by her to care for her body, and said: “The evidence for what has been said is near us. For how,” she said, “does this man, laying the touch of his fingers on the artery, in a way hear through the sense of touch nature crying out to him and telling its own sufferings: that the disease is intense in the body, that the illness started from these inward parts, and that the intensity of the fever extends so far? He is taught other such things by the eye too, looking at the posture in which the patient lies and at the wasting of the flesh; and the colour of the complexion, sallow and bilious, and the glance of the eyes turning of themselves toward what pains and hurts, show the inward state. Likewise hearing becomes a teacher of similar things, recognizing the suffering by the shortness of breath and the groan that comes out with the breathing. And one might say that not even the expert’s sense of smell is without insight into the suffering, but recognizes by the particular quality of the breath the illness hidden in the inward parts …”

Would this be so if there were not some intelligible power present to each of the senses? What would the hand have taught us by itself, if thought did not lead its touch to the knowledge of the subject? What would hearing, separated from understanding, or the eye, or the nostril, or any other sense organ have contributed to the recognition of what is sought, if each of them were by itself alone? But what is truest of all is what one of those educated outside the faith is remembered to have said well: that it is mind that sees and mind that hears. For if one did not grant this to be true, how is it, tell me, that when you look at the sun, as you were taught by your teacher to look, you say that it is not as large as it appears to most people in the size of its disc, but exceeds the whole earth many times in measure? Is it not because, having followed with your understanding, through what appears, its particular motion, the intervals of time and place, and the causes of eclipses, you confidently declare that it is so? And seeing the waning and waxing of the moon, you are taught other things through the appearance of the shapes of that luminary: that it is without light in its own nature and revolves in the circle near the earth, and shines from the sun’s rays, as happens naturally with mirrors, which, receiving the sun on themselves, give back not rays of their own but those of the sun’s light reflected back from the smooth and shining body. To those who look without examination the light seems to come from the moon itself. But it is shown not to have it because, when it stands diametrically opposite the sun, it is lit over the whole disc turned toward us; but going round more quickly in the smaller circle proper to it, it goes round its own circle more than twelve times before the sun has once completed its own course. So it happens that it is not always full …

… of light; for its position opposite does not remain continually in the quickness of its revolution … made the whole part of the moon toward us lit by the sun’s rays; so when it comes to the side of the sun, the hemisphere of the moon always facing the sun being taken up by the embrace of the rays, the side toward us is necessarily shadowed, the brightness moving from the part unable to look at the sun to the part always facing it; until, passing directly beneath the sun’s circle, it receives the ray on its back, and so, the upper hemisphere being lit all round, it makes the part toward us invisible, since by its own nature it is wholly without light and dark; and this is called the complete waning of the luminary. But if it passes the sun again by the motion of its own course and comes to the side of the ray, what was just now without light begins to shine faintly, the ray passing from the lit part to what was until then invisible. Do you see how sight becomes your teacher? It would not give you such knowledge by itself, unless there were something looking through the eyes, which uses the things known by sense as guides and through what appears looks into what is not seen. What need is there to add the methods of geometry, which lead us by the hand through sensible figures to things beyond sense, and countless other things besides, by which it is established that the perception of the intellectual substance hidden in our nature comes about through what is bodily at work in us?” Gregory: “But what,” I said, “if, as the material is common in the sensible nature of the elements, while there is a great difference in what is peculiar to each form of matter (for their motion is opposite, one being upward-tending and the other weighing downward, and the form is not the same, and the quality differs in each), someone were to say that there is a power essentially bound up with these by their principle, which produces these intellectual images and movements from a natural property and power? As we see many things worked by mechanics, in which matter, skilfully …”

“… arranged, imitates nature, showing likeness not in shape only but also coming to be in motion, and it imitates a sound when the vocal part of the machine resounds; yet we see no intelligible power anywhere in what is happening that works the shape, the form, the sound, the motion in each case. If we say this also about this mechanical instrument of our nature, that it comes about with no particular intelligible substance mixed in, but by a moving power lying in the nature of the elements in us, and that such activity is the result of that power by itself, would that intelligible and incorporeal substance of the soul be shown to be anything at all, or not to exist at all?” Macrina: “The example,” she said, “is an ally of our argument too, and the whole construction of the objection you have put to us will contribute not a little to the confirmation of what we have thought.” Gregory: “How do you say that?” Macrina: “Because,” she said, “to know how to handle and arrange lifeless matter so that the art put into the machines almost takes the place of the soul in the matter, by which they imitate motion and sound and shapes and the like, would be a proof that there is something of this kind in man, by which he is naturally able, through his power of contemplation and invention, to conceive these things within himself and design the machines beforehand in his mind, and then bring them into operation by art and show his thought through matter. For first he understood that breath is needed for producing sound; then he examined beforehand by reasoning how breath might be contrived for the machine, considering the nature of the elements: that there is nothing empty in existing things, but what is light is thought empty by comparison with what is heavier, since air itself in its own existence is full and complete. A vessel is called empty by a misuse of the word; for when it is empty of liquid, one who has been taught says that it is no less full of air. A sign of this is that a jar brought down to a pool is not at once filled with water but floats at first, the air enclosed …

… holding the hollow up, until the jar, pressed down by the hand of the one drawing water, goes into the depth and takes in the water at its mouth. When this happens it is shown that it was not empty even before the water. For a kind of battle between the two elements is seen at the mouth: the water forced by its weight into the hollow and flowing in, the air enclosed in the hollow pressed out through the same mouth in the opposite direction against the water and flowing up, so that the water is checked by it and bubbles up, foaming around under the force of the air. He understood these things, then, and devised how breath might be put into the machine through the nature of the elements. Making a hollow of watertight material and enclosing the air in it on every side so that it could not escape, he brings water into the hollow through an opening, measuring the amount of water to the need; then he gives the air a passage into the pipe lying beside it, on the side opposite; and the air, forced out more violently by the water, becomes wind, which, rushing out through the construction of the pipe, makes the sound.

… art is a kind of understanding, a particular movement and activity, then the sequence of what has been said has shown us, even through the objections, that the mind is something other than what appears.” Gregory: And I said: “I too say this is so, that what does not appear is not the same as what appears; but I do not yet see in this argument what is sought. For it is not yet clear to me what we should think that invisible thing to be. I have been taught by the argument that it is not material; but I do not yet know what it is proper to say about it. And this is what I most wanted to learn: not what it is not, but what it is.” Macrina: “We learn many things about many matters,” she said, “by saying that the thing sought is not this or that, thereby explaining what it is. For by calling the good man ‘free from wickedness’ we have presented him, and by naming the coward ‘unmanly’ we have made him known; and one may say many similar things. Through these we either take up the better idea by denying the bad, or conversely turn our thoughts to the worse, showing the bad by the removal of the good. Whoever considers the present argument in this way, then, would not miss the proper understanding of what is sought. And what is sought is what we must think the mind to be in its very substance. One who does not doubt that the thing of which we speak exists, because of the activity it shows us, but wishes to know what it is, would find a sufficient answer by learning that it is not what sense perceives: not colour, not shape, not resistance, not weight, not magnitude, not extension in three dimensions, not position in place, nor anything at all of what is perceived about matter, if there is anything besides these.” Gregory: But while she was still going through this, I said: “I do not know how, when all these are taken away from the account, what is sought is not wiped out with them. For to what the curiosity of comprehension can attach itself apart from these I, at least, do not see. For everywhere in our search into existing things with the examining mind, like blind men led by the hand along walls to …”

“… the door, we certainly touch one of the things mentioned, finding colour or shape or size or some other of the things you have just counted up; but when it is said to be none of these, we are led by narrowness of soul to think it is nothing at all.” Macrina: And she, protesting in the middle of the argument, said: “Alas for the absurdity! To what end this petty and earthbound judgment of existing things leads! For if everything not known by sense is removed from being, one who says this would certainly not admit even the power that presides over the universe and holds existing things in its grasp; but, taught that the divine nature is incorporeal and formless, he would by such a sequence certainly reckon that it does not exist at all. But if there the absence of these things is no limit of being, how is the human mind squeezed out of being, consumed along with the removal of bodily properties?” Gregory: “Then,” I said, “we take another absurdity from absurdities by this sequence. For our argument has come round to thinking that our mind is the same as the divine nature, if each is understood by the removal of what is found by sense.” Macrina: “Do not say ‘the same,’” said my teacher, “(for this account too is impious), but, as you were taught by divine Scripture, say that the one is like the other. For what has come to be according to the image certainly has likeness to the archetype in all things: intellectual like the intellectual, incorporeal like the incorporeal, free from all bulk like it, and escaping all measurement by dimension like it, yet something other than it in the property of its nature. For it would no longer be an image if it were in all things the same as that; but in the very things in which that is seen in the uncreated nature, this is shown by the created nature. And as often in a small fragment of glass, when it happens to lie toward a ray, the whole disc of the sun is seen, appearing in it not in its own size but as far as the smallness of the fragment can contain the reflection of the disc, so in the smallness of our nature the images of those ineffable properties of the Godhead shine out; so that the argument, led by these, neither falls away …”

“… from the comprehension of the mind’s substance, when bodily properties are purged away in examining the question, nor again puts the small and perishable on a level with the boundless and undefiled nature; but thinks the substance intelligible, since it is the image of an intelligible substance, without saying that the image is the same as the archetype. As, then, through the ineffable wisdom of God which appears in the universe we do not doubt that the divine nature and power are in all existing things, so that all things remain in being, even though, if you ask for an account of its nature, the substance of God is vastly distant from each of the things shown and conceived in creation, yet it is admitted that what differs in nature is in them: so it is not incredible that the substance of the soul too, being something other in itself, whatever it is conjectured to be, is not hindered from existing, though the elements seen in the world do not agree with it in the principle of its nature. Even in living bodies, as was said before, whose existence is from the blending of the elements, … there is no communion in the principle of substance between the simple and formless nature of the soul and bodily coarseness; yet it is not doubted that the vital activity of the soul is in them, blended with them by a principle higher than human understanding. Neither, then, when the elements in bodies have been dissolved into themselves, has that which bound them together by its vital activity perished. But as, while the compound of the elements still holds together, each part is given soul, the soul entering all the parts that fill up the body equally and alike, and one would not say that it is either solid and resistant, being mixed with the earthy, or moist or cold or of the quality opposed to cold, though it is in all these and gives the vital power to each; so, when the compound has been dissolved and has run back to its own elements, it is nothing unlikely to think that that simple and uncompounded nature is present to each of the parts even after the dissolution; and that, having once grown together with the compound of the elements by some ineffable principle, it remains forever with those with which it was mixed, in no way torn from the union that once came about for it. For it is not …

“… because the compound is dissolved, that what is not compounded is in danger of being dissolved together with the composite.” Gregory: And I said: “No one would deny that the elements come together with one another and separate from one another, and that this is the constitution and dissolution of the body. But since a great distance is conceived between each of these things that are of different kinds from one another, both in their position in place and in the difference and property of their qualities, when the elements have come together with one another in the subject it follows that this intellectual and unextended nature which we call soul is naturally bound to the united whole; but if these are separated from one another and go wherever nature leads each, what will happen to the soul when its vehicle is scattered in many places? Like a sailor whose merchant ship has broken up in a shipwreck, unable to swim after all the parts of the ship scattered over the sea in different places (for, catching hold of whatever comes to hand, he will leave the rest to be carried by the waves), in the same way the soul, not having a nature that can be split with the separation of the elements, if it is inseparable from the body, will certainly grow fast to one of the elements and be cut off from the others; and the sequence of the argument gives no more reason to think it immortal because it lives in one than mortal because it is not in the many.”

Macrina: “… to be present to each of the things with which it once grew together through blending, not split along with the opposition of the elements. For it is not because these are thought to be far from one another in distance of place and particular property that the unextended nature labours when joined to things separated in place; for even now it is possible for the mind at once to contemplate heaven and to stretch out in its inquiries to the ends of the world, and the contemplative part of our soul is not torn apart when it is stretched to such lengths. Nothing, then, hinders the soul from being present equally to the elements of the body, both when they are blended through their concurrence and when they are released through their dissolution. For as, when gold and silver are fused together, an artistic power is seen which fused the materials, and if the one is melted away again from the other, the principle of the art remains no less in each, and the material has been divided but the art has not been cut along with the material (for how could the indivisible be divided?), by the same reasoning the intellectual nature of the soul too is seen in the concurrence of the elements and is not separated when they are dissolved; it remains in them, and, extending along with them in their separation, is not cut off nor broken into small pieces according to the number of the elements. For this is proper to bodily and extended nature; but the intellectual and unextended nature does not admit the effects of extension. The soul, then, is in those things in which it once came to be, no necessity tearing it away from its union with them. What, then, is gloomy in this, if the visible is exchanged for the invisible? And why is your mind so set against death?” Gregory: And I, recalling the definition she had given of the soul in the earlier discussion, said that that account did not sufficiently show me the powers seen in the soul. “For it says that it is an intellectual substance and produces in the organic body a vital power for the activity of the senses. But our soul is not active only in scientific and contemplative thought, working this in the intellectual part of its substance, nor does it govern only the sense organs for their natural activity; but much movement of desire and much of anger is seen in our nature; and since each of these exists in us in general …”

“… we see the movement of both advancing into many and varied differences in their activities. For one can see many things led by the desiring part, and many again that spring from the cause of anger; and none of this is body; and what is incorporeal is certainly intellectual; and the definition declared the soul to be something intellectual. So one of two absurdities emerges from the sequence of the argument: either anger and desire are other souls in us and a multitude of souls is seen instead of one, or not even the thinking part in us is to be thought a soul. For the intellectual, fitting all of them equally, will either prove them all souls or exclude each of them alike from the property of soul.” Macrina: “You too,” she said, “are asking, as is natural, a question already asked by many others: what we should think the desiring and the spirited parts to be, whether they are of one substance with the soul and coexist from the first with its constitution, or are something else besides it that comes upon us later. For that these are seen in the soul is agreed by all equally; but what we should think about them the argument has not yet found exactly, so as to have a firm belief about them; the many still waver uncertainly among different opinions about them. If the outside philosophy, which treated these things systematically, were truly sufficient for proof, it would perhaps be superfluous to set the discussion of the soul before our inquiry. But whereas they went forward with freedom in their contemplation of the soul according to what appeared to follow, we have no share in this freedom, I mean of saying what we please, since we use holy Scripture as the rule and law of every doctrine; necessarily looking to it, we accept only what agrees with the aim of what is written. Leaving aside, then, the Platonic chariot and the pair of horses yoked to it, which do not have the same impulses toward each other, and the charioteer over them, by all of which he philosophizes in a riddle about such things concerning …”

“… the soul; and whatever the philosopher after him, following appearances systematically and examining with care the questions now before us, declared, showing by them that the soul is mortal; leaving aside all those before and after them, both those who philosophized in prose and those in rhythm and metre, let us make the inspired Scripture the aim of our discussion, which lays down that nothing should be thought peculiar to the soul that is not also proper to the divine nature. For he who said that the soul is a likeness of God declared that whatever is foreign to God is outside the definition of the soul; for likeness could not be preserved in things that differ. Since, then, nothing of this kind is seen together with the divine nature, one could not reasonably suppose that these are of one substance with the soul either. To establish our doctrines too by the art of dialectic, through syllogistic and analytic science, we shall decline, since such a kind of argument is rotten and suspect for the demonstration of truth. For it is plain to all that dialectical subtlety has equal strength on either side, both for overturning truth and for accusing falsehood. Hence we often regard truth itself with suspicion when it is brought forward with some such art, as though the cleverness about it were deceiving our mind and the truth had been missed. But if one will accept an argument that is unadorned and stripped of all dress, we shall speak as far as we can, bringing our contemplation of these things according to the sequence of Scripture’s guidance. What, then, do we say? That this rational animal, man, is capable of mind and knowledge, as has been attested even by those outside our faith; and the definition would not so describe our nature if it saw anger and desire and all such things as of one substance with our nature. For one would not give a definition of any other subject by stating the common instead of the proper.

“Since, then, the desiring and the spirited are seen equally in irrational and rational nature, one could not reasonably characterize what is proper by what is common. But how can what is superfluous and to be rejected in describing a nature have the force, as part of the nature, to overturn the definition? For every definition of a substance looks to what is proper to the subject; whatever is outside what is peculiar is disregarded as foreign to the definition. Yet the activity of anger and desire is admitted to be common to all rational and irrational nature; and everything common is not the same as what is peculiar. It is necessary, then, not to reckon these among the things by which human nature is specially characterized. But as one who sees in us the sentient and the nourishing and growing powers does not thereby undo the definition given of the soul (for it is not because this is in the soul that that is not), so one who considers the movements of anger and desire in our nature would not reasonably fight against the definition as showing the nature defectively.” Gregory: “What, then, should we think about this?” I said to my teacher. “For I am not yet able to see how it is fitting to disown things that are in us as foreign to our nature.” Macrina: “You see,” she said, “that there is a battle of reason against these, and an effort to free the soul from them as far as one can … And there are some in whom the effort has succeeded, as we hear of Moses, that he was superior to anger and desire, the history bearing witness to both: that he was meek above all men (meekness shows freedom from anger and estrangement from wrath), and that he desired none of the things about which we see the desiring part at work in most people. This would not have happened if these things were nature and belonged to the definition of the substance. For one who has come to be outside his nature cannot remain in being. But if Moses both was in being and was not in these things, then these are something other than nature, and not nature. For if that is truly nature in which the being of the substance is grasped, while estrangement from these lies in our power, so that their removal is not only no loss but even a gain to the nature, it is clear that they are among the things seen from outside …”

“… these passions belong to the nature and are not its substance. For the substance is what it is; but anger is thought by many to be a boiling of the blood around the heart; by others, a desire to pay back pain to the one who began it; as we would take it, anger is an impulse to harm the one who provokes. None of these fits the definition of the soul. And if we define desire by itself, we shall call it a longing for what is lacking, or a yearning for the enjoyment of pleasure, or grief at a desired thing not in one’s power, or a kind of attachment to the pleasant whose enjoyment is not present. All these and the like show desire, but do not touch the definition of the soul. So too all the other things seen about the soul which are seen as opposite to each other, such as cowardice and boldness, grief and pleasure, fear and contempt, and all such, each of which seems akin to the desiring or the spirited part, but describes its own nature by its own definition. For boldness and contempt suggest a kind of expression of the impulse of anger, while the state arising from cowardice and fear is a kind of lessening and slackening of the same. Grief draws its material from both: the weakness of anger, in the impossibility of avenging oneself on those who have caused pain, becomes grief; and despair of what is desired and the loss of what is pleasing produce this gloomy disposition in the mind. And the idea seen opposite to grief, I mean pleasure, is likewise divided between anger and desire; for pleasure equally leads each of them. All these are about the soul, but are not the soul; they are like warts growing out of the thinking part of the soul, which are thought to be its parts because they have grown on it, yet are not what the soul is in its substance.” Gregory: “And yet we see,” I said to the virgin, “no small contribution to the better arising from these …”

“… for the virtuous. For desire was Daniel’s praise, and Phinehas appeased God by his anger; we have learned that fear is the beginning of wisdom, and we have heard from Paul that the end of godly grief is salvation; the Gospel urges on us contempt of dangers, and not being afraid of terror is nothing else than a description of boldness, which is listed among good things by Wisdom. By such examples, then, the word shows that we should not think such things passions; for they would not be taken up to help in achieving virtue …” Macrina: And my teacher said: “I seem myself to be the cause of such confusion in your reasonings, since I did not divide the discussion of this so as to give the inquiry a consistent order. Now, then, as far as possible, an order will be devised for the inquiry, so that, the contemplation proceeding in sequence, such objections may have no place against us. We say that the power of the soul which contemplates and judges and surveys existing things is proper to it and according to its nature, and that through this godlike grace it preserves the image in itself; since reason conjectures that the divine, whatever it is by nature, lies in these things: in surveying all things and distinguishing the good from the worse. But those things of the soul that lie on the border, inclining by their nature to either of the opposites, whose particular use leads to an outcome either good or the opposite, such as anger or fear or any such movement in the soul without which human nature cannot be seen, these we reckon have come upon it from outside, because no such feature is seen in the archetypal beauty. Let our account of these be set out as in an exercise, so that it may escape the insults of those who listen in order to slander. The word relates that the divine set out upon the making of man by a certain road and order of sequence …”

Macrina: “For when the universe had been constituted, as the history says, man did not come to be on the earth at once; the nature of the irrational creatures came before him, and the plants before them. By this the word shows, I think, that the vital power is mingled with bodily nature in a certain sequence, first entering things without sense, then advancing to the sentient, and then going up to the intellectual and rational. Of existing things, then, some are bodily and some intellectual; of the bodily, some are animate and some inanimate; by animate I mean what shares in life; of the living, some live with sense and some lack it; again, of the sentient, some are rational and some irrational. Since, then, sentient life could not exist without matter, nor could the intellectual come to be in a body otherwise than by being grafted onto the sentient, for this reason the making of man is related last, as of one who has embraced every form of life, both that seen in plants and that seen in irrational creatures. Being nourished and growing he has from the life of plants; for this can be seen in them too, nourishment being drawn in through roots and given off through fruits and leaves; being governed by sense he has from the irrational creatures; but the thinking and rational is unmixed and peculiar in this nature, seen by itself. And as nature has the power of drawing in what is necessary for material life, which in us is called appetite (and we say this belongs to the natural form of life, since one can see in plants too certain impulses working naturally, when they are filled with what is proper to them and swell toward growth), so too the things proper to irrational nature were mingled with the intellectual part of the soul. Theirs, it says, is anger, theirs is fear, theirs are all the other things that work in us in opposition, except the rational and thinking power, which alone is the special mark of our life, having in itself, as was said, the imitation of the divine stamp. But since, according to the argument already given, the rational power cannot come to be in bodily life except by arising through the senses, and sense existed before in the nature of irrational creatures …”

“… so that through the one our soul necessarily comes to have fellowship also with what is joined to it. And these are what are called the passions arising in us, which were not allotted to human life for any evil purpose; otherwise the Creator would be the cause of evils, if the necessities of sins had been laid down in our nature from there. Rather, by the particular use of choice, such movements of the soul become instruments either of virtue or of vice; as iron, shaped by the craftsman’s judgment, is formed into whatever the purpose of the one working it has set, becoming a sword or some farming tool. If, then, reason, which is the special mark of our nature, holds rule over what has been introduced from outside, as the word of Scripture showed in a riddle when it commanded man to rule over all the irrational creatures, none of these movements would work in us in the service of vice: fear would produce obedience, anger courage, cowardice caution, and the impulse of desire would procure for us the divine and undefiled pleasure. But if reason lets go the reins and, like a charioteer entangled in his chariot, is dragged behind it, carried wherever the irrational movement of the yoked animals takes him, then the impulses turn into passion, as can be seen in the irrational creatures too. For since reason does not preside over their naturally implanted movement, the angry animals destroy one another, led on by anger; and the bulky and strong ones gain no good of their own from their strength, becoming the property of the rational because of their lack of reason; the activity of desire and pleasure is busy with nothing lofty; nor is anything else seen in them carried on by reason toward what is profitable. So too in us, if these things are not led by reasoning to what is fitting, but the passions prevail over the rule of the mind, man passes over to the irrational and senseless, being made a brute instead of thinking and godlike by the impulse of such passions …”

“… made brute.” Gregory: And I, much moved by what had been said, said: “For anyone of sense the argument, proceeding in sequence so plainly and without artifice, is enough to seem right and nowhere to have missed the truth. But since for those who have studied the methods of demonstration by art a syllogism seems sufficient for belief, while we agreed that what appears through the sacred teachings of Scripture is more trustworthy than all the conclusions of art, I think we must ask, after what has been said, whether the inspired teaching agrees with it.” Macrina: “And who could deny,” she said, “that truth is to be placed only in that which bears the seal of the witness of Scripture? If, then, something from the teaching of the Gospel must be brought in to support this doctrine, the contemplation of the parable of the tares would not be out of season for us. For there the master of the house sowed the good seed (and we are surely the house); but the enemy, watching for the men to sleep, sowed among the nourishing seed what was useless, putting the tares right in the middle of the wheat. And the seeds sprang up together; for it was not possible for the seed put in the very midst of the wheat not to sprout with it. But the overseer of the farm forbids the servants to pull up the useless plant, because of the union of the opposites at the root, so that the foreign may not uproot the nourishing with it. For we think the word shows by the good seeds such impulses of the soul, each of which, if cultivated only for the good, would certainly have produced the fruit of virtue in us. But since error in judging the good was sown among them through sin, and what is truly and alone good by its own nature was darkened by the growth of deceit that sprang up with it (for the desiring power did not grow and shoot up toward what is good by nature, for whose sake it was sown in us, but changed its shoot toward the brutish and irrational through lack of judgment about the good, bringing the impulse of desire to that …”

“… likewise the seed of anger was not sharpened to courage but armed for battle against one’s own kind; and the power of love departed from intelligible things and raged beyond measure in the enjoyment of sensible things; and the rest in the same way put forth the worse shoots instead of the better); for this reason the wise farmer lets the growth that sprang up in the seed remain in it, taking care that we may not be stripped of the better things, if desire were uprooted altogether together with the useless shoot. For if our nature suffered this, what would lift us up to union with heavenly things? Or, if love were taken away, in what way shall we be joined to God? And if anger were quenched, what weapon shall we have against the one who wrestles with us? The farmer therefore lets the bastard seeds remain in us, not so that they may always prevail over the more precious crop, but so that the field itself (for so he names the heart figuratively), by the natural power lying in it, which is reasoning, may wither the one kind of growth and make the other fruitful and flourishing. But if this does not happen, he reserves for the fire the separation of the crop. If, then, someone uses these things by right reason, holds them within himself and is not held by them, and, like a king, uses the many hands of his subjects as helpers, he will more easily achieve what he pursues for virtue. But if he comes to be in their power, as when slaves rise up against their master, and is enslaved by them, ignobly bowing to slavish designs, and becomes the property of what is by nature yoked under him, he will necessarily be carried over to whatever the domination of those now leading him forces. If this is so, we shall declare these things, which are movements of the soul lying in the power of those who use them to be good or otherwise, to be neither virtue nor vice in themselves. But when their movement is toward the better …”

“… they become matter for praise, as desire was for Daniel, anger for Phinehas, and grief for one who mourns well. But if the inclination is toward the worse, then they become and are named passions.” Gregory: When she had gone through this and had paused briefly in the discussion, I gathered in my mind what had been said and ran back to the earlier sequence of the argument, in which it was established that it is not impossible for the soul to be in the elements when the body has been dissolved. And I said this to my teacher: “Where is that much-talked-of name of Hades, used so much in ordinary life and so much in writings, both those outside and ours, into which all think souls pass from here as into a receptacle? For you would not say the elements are Hades.” Macrina: And my teacher said: “You have clearly not paid much attention to the argument. For when I spoke of the soul’s passing from the visible to the invisible, I thought I had left nothing out of the inquiry about Hades. This name, both in outside writers and in divine Scripture, seems to me to signify nothing else, as the place where they say souls come to be, than their passing into the formless and invisible.” Gregory: “And how,” I said, “do some think that the place under the earth is so called, and that it receives the souls of those down there, as a space fit for such a nature, drawing to itself those that have already flown from human life?” Macrina: “But the doctrine will be no more harmed by this supposition,” said my teacher, “even if the account you mention is true. For if the heavenly pole is continuous with itself and unbroken, containing all things in its own circle, and the earth and what is around it hang in the middle, and the motion of the revolving bodies is certainly around what is fixed and stable, it is entirely necessary,” she said, “that whatever is found for each of the elements on the upper side of the earth is also on the opposite side, since one substance runs around its whole bulk in a circle. And as, when the sun appears above it, the shadow …”

“… of the spherical shape turns to the side beneath it, since it cannot be wrapped all round at once by the embrace of the ray; but by every necessity, on whatever part of the earth the sun strikes with its rays, being certainly over some centre on the sphere, at the other end of the straight diameter there will be darkness; and so continually the darkness travels round on the side opposite to the straight line of the ray, along with the course of the sun, so that the region above the earth and the region below are equally in light and darkness in turn. So it is likely that whatever is seen in the elements in our hemisphere of the earth is the same about the other too, and we need not doubt it. Since the surrounding elements are one and the same about every part of the earth, I think we should neither contradict nor support those who insist on these matters, holding that either this place or the place under the earth must be thought assigned to souls released from bodies. For as long as the objection does not unsettle the main doctrine, that souls exist after life in the flesh, our argument will not quarrel about place, holding that position in place is proper to bodies alone, while the soul, being incorporeal, is under no natural necessity to be held in particular places.” Gregory: “What, then,” I said, “if the objector brings forward the Apostle, who says that the whole rational creation looks to the one who leads the universe in the restoration of all, where he mentions some under the earth, saying in the letter to the Philippians, ‘To him every knee will bow, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth’?” Macrina: “We shall hold to the doctrine,” said my teacher, “even if we hear people say this, having the objector on our side about the existence of the soul, and, as was said earlier, not quarrelling about place.” Gregory: “To those who ask the Apostle’s meaning in this saying,” I said, “what would one say, if one removed the word from its local sense?” Macrina: She said: “It does not seem to me that the divine Apostle, dividing the intellectual substance by place, named one part heavenly, another earthly, and another under the earth. But since there are three states of rational nature for us, one that received from the beginning the incorporeal life, which we call angelic; another united with the flesh …”

“… we call human; and another released from the flesh through death. What is seen in souls, I think, the divine Apostle saw with the depth of his wisdom, and indicated the harmony in the good that will one day come about of the whole rational nature: calling the angelic and incorporeal ‘heavenly,’ what is joined to the body ‘earthly,’ and what has already been separated from the body ‘under the earth’; or if some other nature besides these is seen among rational beings, which one may wish to name demons or spirits or something of the kind, we shall not dispute it. For it is believed, both from common opinion and from the tradition of the Scriptures, that there is a nature outside such bodies, opposed to the good and harmful to human life, which of its own will fell away from the better choice and by its departure from the good gave existence in itself to what is conceived as its opposite; and they say the Apostle counts this among those ‘under the earth,’ signifying by that word that, when vice has one day been destroyed in the long periods of the ages, nothing will be left outside the good, but even from them there will be a harmonious confession of the lordship of Christ. This being so, no one could any longer compel us to understand the place under the earth by the name ‘under the earth,’ since the air is poured around the earth equally on every side, so that no part of it is found bare of the covering of the air.” Gregory: When my teacher had gone through this, I paused a little and said: “I do not yet have enough of what is sought; my mind still hesitates somewhat at what has been said, and I ask that the argument be brought back to the same sequence, leaving aside what we have already agreed. For I think that through what has been said those who are not very obstinate will be moderately led not to bring the soul to destruction and non-existence after the dissolution of bodies, nor to maintain that it cannot be anywhere among existing things because it is of a different kind from the substance of the elements. For even if the intellectual and immaterial nature does not agree with these, it is not prevented from being with them, this supposition being confirmed for us in two ways: from the fact that the soul is now in this life in bodies while being something other than the body in substance, and from the argument’s having shown that the divine nature …”

“… is something altogether other than the sensible and material substance, yet passes through each existing thing and by its blending with the universe holds existing things together in being; so that, consistently, we should not think the soul either to be outside existing things when it passes from the life seen in form to the formless.” Gregory: “But how,” I said, “ when the elements, by their mixture with one another, have taken on another form in their union, to which the soul became attached, will the soul follow, when the form too has probably disappeared with the dissolution of the elements? By what sign will it follow, when what it knew has not remained?” Macrina: She paused a little and said: “Let me be allowed to invent freely an illustration to make the matter clear, even if what is said seems impossible. Let it be granted that the painter’s art can not only mix colours of opposite kinds, as they are accustomed to do for the likeness of the form, but also separate what has been mixed and give back to each of the colours its natural tint. If, then, white and black, or red and gold, or any other tint combined for the likeness of the subject, were separated again from its mixture with another and came to be by itself, we say that the artist would no less know the very form of the colour, and that no forgetfulness would come upon him either of the red or of the black, if, having become of other colours by their mixture with one another, they returned again to their natural tint; but, remembering the manner of the blending of the colours with one another, he would know what kind of colour each produced when it was in which, and how, when it was released from the other, it ran back to its own bloom; and if it were necessary to produce the same again by mixing, the preparation would be less laborious for him, having been practised in the earlier work. If the illustration has any consistency,” she said, “we must now examine the matter itself. Instead of the painter’s art let the nature of the elements be understood; and let the mixture of the varied tint of different colours, and again the return to their own, granted us by hypothesis, sketch the concurrence and separation of the elements.

“As, then, we say in the illustration that the artist is not ignorant of the tint of the colour that has returned to its own bloom after mixture, but recognizes the red and the black and anything else that produced the form by its particular fellowship with what is of another kind, what it was like in the mixture, what it is now in its natural state, and what it will be again if the colours are mixed again with one another in a like way: so the soul knows the natural property of the elements that came together for the construction of the body in which it grew, even after their dissolution. And even if nature draws them far from one another because of the oppositions lying in them, keeping each from mixing with its opposite, the soul will be no less with each, laying hold of what is its own by its power of knowledge, and remaining until the concurrence of the separated elements comes about again for the reconstitution of what was dissolved, which will properly be and be named resurrection.” Gregory: And I said: “You seem to me to have fought very well at present for the doctrine of the resurrection. For through these things those who fight against the faith might be gently brought not to think it impossible for the elements to come together again with one another and produce the same man.” Macrina: And my teacher said: “What you say is true. For one may hear those who oppose this doctrine say: ‘Since the dissolution of the elements into the universe takes place according to kinship, what means is there for the heat in this man, which has been mixed into the whole, to be separated again from its kin so that the departed man may be reconstituted? For if exactly what was his own does not return, but something of the same kind is taken instead of what was peculiar, one thing will come to be instead of another, and such a thing would no longer be resurrection but the making of a new man. But if the same man is to return to himself, he must be the same throughout, taking up again his original nature in all the parts of the elements.’” Gregory: “Then,” I said, “such a supposition about the soul would be sufficient for us against this objection: that the soul, having grown together with these elements from the beginning, remains with them after …”

“… the dissolution, set as a kind of guard over what is its own, and in their blending with their kin not letting go of what is its own through the fineness and quickness of its intellectual power, suffering no error amid the fine particles of the elements; but being dispersed along with its own as they mingle with their kind, not failing as it runs along with them when they are poured out into the universe, but always remaining in them, wherever and however nature arranges them. And if the signal for their concurrence is given again to the dissolved elements by the power that governs the universe, then, as when various ropes are fastened to one beginning, they all follow together at once the one that draws them, so, the different elements being drawn by the one power of the soul, the chain of our body will be woven together at once through the soul in the concurrence of its own elements, each being woven again suitably to its ancient and accustomed state and embracing what it knows.” Macrina: “This illustration too,” said my teacher, “might fittingly be added to what has been examined, to show that the soul needs no great instruction to distinguish its own among the elements from what is foreign. Let us suppose a potter with clay, and let it be granted that there is much of it, part of which has already been shaped into vessels and part is yet to be. Let the vessels not all be shaped alike, but let one be a jar, another a pitcher, another a plate or a bowl or some other thing useful for service; and let all these not be owned by one person, but let each be supposed to belong to its own master …”

“… vessel is each individual man, shaped by the concurrence of the elements from the common matter, having a great difference in his particular shape from those of his own kind. When it has been dissolved, the soul that owned the vessel no less recognizes its own from the remains, not departing from its own either in the company of the fragments or if it is mixed with the unworked matter of the elements, but always knowing its own, what it was like when it held together in its shape, and after the dissolution not going astray about its own because of the marks that remain on the remains.” Gregory: Accepting what had been said as fitting and proper to the aim before us, I said: “These things are rightly said and believed so. But if someone brings forward the Lord’s story in the Gospel about those in Hades as not agreeing with what has been examined, how should we prepare our answer?” Macrina: My teacher said: “The word sets out the story in rather bodily terms, but it scatters many hints through which it calls the attentive examiner to a finer contemplation. For by separating the bad from the better by a great chasm, making the sufferer need a drop carried on a finger, and placing the patriarch’s bosom as a rest for the one who was afflicted in this life, and before this relating that they died and were given burial, it draws away not a little from the obvious sense one who follows what is said with understanding. For what eyes does the rich man lift up in Hades, having left those of the flesh in the tomb? How did the incorporeal feel the flame? What tongue does he desire to be cooled by the drop, when he has no tongue of flesh? What is the finger that carries the drop to him? What is the bosom of rest itself? For since the bodies are in the tombs, and the soul is neither in a body nor composed of parts, it would be impossible to fit the details of the story to the truth according to the obvious sense, unless one transfers each detail to intellectual contemplation; so that the chasm separating the fellowship of things that cannot mix should not be thought a distance of earth; for what labour would it be for the incorporeal and intellectual to fly across the chasm, even if it were very wide? For the intellectual is by nature present instantly wherever it wishes.” Gregory: “What, then,” I said, “would be …”

“… the fire, or the chasm, or the rest of what was said, if not what is said?” Macrina: “It seems to me,” she said, “that through each of these the Gospel indicates certain doctrines about what is sought concerning the soul. For the patriarch first said to the rich man, ‘You received your share of good things in the life of the flesh,’ and said the same of the poor man, that he too had his fill of the service of evils during his life; and then, adding the chasm, that they are walled off from each other, he seems by this to indicate something great by the word …”

“… without consideration for the better, these, through gluttony in the life of the flesh, use up beforehand the share of good owed to their nature, storing up nothing for the life after; while those who manage their life with discerning and self-controlled reasoning, being afflicted in this short life by what pains the senses, store up the good for the age that follows, so that the better lot extends for them along with eternal life. This, then, in my account at least, is the chasm: it is not made by the earth parting, but the judgment made during life, divided toward opposite choices, makes it. For one who has once been drawn by pleasure in this life and has not cured his folly by repentance makes the land of the good impassable for himself afterward, digging against himself this impassable necessity like a yawning pit that cannot be crossed. That is why, it seems to me, the word named the good state of the soul, in which it gives rest to the athlete of patience, the bosom of Abraham. For this patriarch is recorded as the first of all who ever lived to exchange the enjoyment of the present for the hope of the future: stripped of everything among which his life was at first, he lived among strangers, purchasing by present hardship the good fortune he hoped for. As, then, by a certain extension of meaning we call a particular outline of the sea a ‘bosom’ (a bay), so the word seems to signify by the name ‘bosom’ the showing forth of those immeasurable goods, in which all who sail through the present life by virtue, when they set out from here, bring their souls to anchor as in a harbour safe from storms, in the good bosom; while for the rest the deprivation of the goods that appear to them becomes a flame smouldering in the soul, needing for consolation a drop from the sea of goods that flows around the holy, and not obtaining it. And when you see tongue and eye and finger and the other bodily names in the dialogue of incorporeal beings, you will agree, on examining the sense of the words, that the conjecture agrees with the account of the soul already reached. For as the concurrence of the elements makes the substance of the whole body, so it is likely that the nature of the parts in the body too is filled up from the same …”

“… cause. If, then, the soul is present to the elements of the body mixed into the universe, it will not only recognize the whole of what came together into the entire compound and be in them, but it will not be ignorant of the particular constitution of each of the parts, of which particles in the elements our members were completed. It is nothing unlikely, then, that the soul which is in the whole of the elements is also in each of them; and so, looking to the elements in which each member of the body exists in potency, one who supposes that Scripture speaks of a finger and an eye and a tongue and all the rest belonging to the soul after the dissolution of the compound will not miss what is probable. If, then, each detail leads the mind away from the bodily understanding of the story, it is surely likely that we should not think the Hades now mentioned to be some place so named, but we are taught by Scripture that it is a formless and incorporeal state of life in which the soul lives. And we learn another doctrine too in the story of the rich man and the poor man, which is closely related to what has been examined. It made that passionate lover of the flesh, when he saw that his own misfortune was inescapable, take thought for those of his family still on earth; and when Abraham said that the life of those living in the flesh was not left without providence, but that the guidance of the law and the prophets was set before them for their use, he still went on pleading with the righteous man that the proclamation might become persuasive to them by being announced, paradoxically, by someone come back to life from the dead.”

“… from these stories,” she said, “we think the Lord teaches this: that those who live in the flesh must as far as possible, through the life of virtue, be separated and released in some way from attachment to it, so that after death we may not need another death to cleanse away the remnants of the fleshly glue, but, the bonds as it were having been broken from round the soul, its course to the good may be light and free, no bodily pain dragging it back to itself. But if someone has become wholly and entirely fleshly in mind, occupying every movement and activity of the soul with the wills of the flesh, such a one, even when he has come outside the flesh, is not separated from its passions; as those who have stayed long in foul-smelling places are not free of the unpleasantness they have taken in through their long stay, even if they move to fresh air; so too, when the change to the unpleasant and invisible life comes about, it would not be possible for lovers of the flesh not to draw with them something of the fleshly foulness, by which their pain is made heavier, the soul having become more material from such a circumstance. And what some say seems somehow to agree with such a supposition, that shadowy phantoms of the departed are often seen about the places where bodies lie. For if anything of the kind happens, the soul’s excessive attachment now to the life of the flesh is thereby shown: even when thrust out of the flesh it does not wish to fly away cleanly, nor allow its complete change into the formless, but still remains with the form after the form has been dissolved, and, though already outside it, wanders out of longing about the places of matter and lingers around them.” Gregory: Pausing a little and taking up the sense of what had been said, I said: “It seems to me that a contradiction arises from what has been said with what was examined earlier about the passions. For if such movements of the soul were thought to work in us from kinship with the irrational creatures, the ones the argument listed, anger and fear and pleasure and …”

“… desire and the like, and it was said that the good use of these is a virtue and that vice arises through their mistaken use; and the argument added the contribution of each of the others to the life of virtue, that through desire we are led up to God, drawn up to him from below as by a kind of chain; the argument seems somehow,” I said, “to go against its aim.” Macrina: “How do you mean?” she said. Gregory: “Because,” I said, “when every irrational movement in us has been quenched after the purification, the desiring part too will certainly not exist; and if this does not exist, neither would there be any longing for the better, no such movement being left in the soul to rouse it to the appetite for good things.” Macrina: “But to this,” she said, “we say that the contemplative and discerning power is proper to the godlike part of the soul, since we grasp the divine too in these. If, then, either by care now or by purification afterward, our soul becomes free from its union with the irrational passions, it will be hindered in nothing toward the contemplation of the beautiful. For the beautiful by its own nature somehow draws everyone who looks toward it. If, then, the soul is purified of all vice, it will certainly be in the beautiful. And the divine is beautiful by its own nature, to which the soul will have union through purity, joined to what is akin to it …”

“… our life … the transcendent substance. For the nature that is above all thought, set far from what is seen in us, passes its own life in another way, and not as we now are in our living. For human beings, because our nature is always in motion, are carried in whatever direction the impulse of choice goes, the soul not being disposed in the same way, as one might say, toward what is in front of it and what is behind. For hope leads the movement forward, while memory receives the movement as it advances toward hope; and if hope leads the soul to what is beautiful by nature, the movement of choice leaves a bright track on the memory; but if it is cheated of the better, hope having deceived the soul by some image of the beautiful, the memory that follows on what happened becomes shame. And so this civil war arises in the soul, memory fighting against hope as having led choice badly. For the passion of shame clearly expresses some such meaning, when the soul is stung at what has resulted, lashing the unwanted impulse with repentance as with a whip and calling in forgetfulness as an ally against what pains it. But our nature, because it is poor in the good, always strives toward what is lacking; and this longing for what is lacking is the desiring disposition of our nature, either mistaken through lack of judgment about the true good or obtaining what it is good to obtain. But the nature that surpasses every thought of good and transcends every power, lacking nothing of what is conceived as good, being itself the fullness of goods, … not by sharing in …”

“… of some good, moving in the good, but being itself the nature of the good, whatever the mind supposes the good to be, it does not admit in itself the movement of hope either. For hope is active only toward what is not present; ‘for what one has, why does he still hope for it?’ says the Apostle. Nor does it need the activity of memory for knowledge of things; for what is seen does not need to be remembered. Since, then, the divine nature is beyond every good, and the good is certainly dear to the good, for this reason, looking into itself, it both wills what it has and has what it wills, receiving nothing from outside into itself; and there is nothing outside it except vice alone, which, paradoxical as it is to say, has its being in not being; for there is no other origin of vice than the privation of being; and what properly is, is the nature of the good. What is not in being, then, is certainly in not being. When, then, the soul too, having put off all the varied movements of nature, becomes godlike, and, having passed beyond desire, is in that toward which it was until then lifted by desire, it no longer gives any room in itself either to hope or to memory: for it has what it hoped for, and its occupation with the enjoyment of good things drives memory out of the mind. And so it imitates the transcendent life, being formed by the properties of the divine nature, so that nothing else is left to it but the disposition of love, which naturally grows to the beautiful. For this is love: the inward attachment to what pleases the heart. When, then, the soul, having become simple and uniform and exactly godlike, finds the truly simple and immaterial good, the only thing that is truly lovable and desirable, it grows to it and is blended with it through the movement and activity of love, forming itself to what is always being grasped and found; and …”

“… becoming through likeness to the good that which the nature of what it shares in is. And since there is no desire in that nature, because there is no lack of any good in it, it would follow that the soul too, when it comes to be in what lacks nothing, casts out from itself the movement and disposition of desire, which arises only when what is longed for is not present. The divine Apostle too has led us to such a doctrine, foretelling a cessation and end of all the things we now pursue, even for the better, and finding no limit for love alone. ‘For prophecies,’ he says, ‘will be done away, and knowledge will cease; but love never fails,’ which is the same as always remaining the same. And though he says that faith and hope have remained along with love, again he rightly sets love above them too. For hope is active only until the enjoyment of what is hoped for is present; and faith likewise becomes a support in the uncertainty of what is hoped for; for so he defined it, saying, ‘Faith is the substance of things hoped for.’ But when what is hoped for comes, while all the rest come to rest, the activity of love remains, finding nothing to succeed it. That is why it takes precedence over all achievements of virtue and all the precepts of the law. If, then, the soul ever reaches this end, it will lack nothing else, since it has grasped the fullness of existing things, and it alone seems in some way to preserve in itself the stamp of the divine blessedness. For the life of the higher nature is love, since the beautiful is certainly lovable to those who know it; and the divine knows it; and knowledge becomes love. Therefore what is known is the beautiful by nature, and no insolent satiety touches the truly beautiful; and since satiety does not cut off the loving relation to the beautiful, the divine life will always be active through love, being beautiful by nature …”

“… is, and has by nature a loving relation to the beautiful, and has no limit to the activity of love, since no limit of the beautiful is found such that love should end with the end of the beautiful; for the beautiful is limited only by its opposite; and where the nature does not admit the worse, the good will advance to the unlimited and boundless. Since, then, every nature draws to itself what is akin to it, and the human is in some way akin to God, as bearing in itself imitations of the archetype, the soul is by every necessity drawn to the divine and akin. For what is God’s own must in every way and altogether be saved for God. But if the soul happens to be light and unencumbered, no bodily burden weighing it down, its approach to the one who draws it is pleasant and easy. But if it has been nailed by the nails of attachment to its relation with material things, it suffers something like what bodies buried in the debris of earthquakes are likely to suffer; and let it be supposed that they are not only weighed down by the fallen ruins but also pierced by stakes or pieces of wood found in the debris. What such bodies are likely to undergo when they are pulled out by their relatives for the sake of burial (for they will certainly be torn and lacerated and suffer every kind of the harshest pain, the debris and the nails tearing them because of the force of those who pull), something of that kind, it seems to me, happens to the soul too, when the divine power, out of love for mankind, draws its own out of the irrational and material ruins. For it is not in hatred, nor in revenge for an evil life, at least in my account, that God brings painful conditions on those who have sinned, he who claims and draws to himself everything that came into being for his sake; rather, he draws the soul to himself, the fountain of all blessedness, for a better purpose, and the painful condition necessarily follows for the one who is drawn.”

“And as those who refine gold from the matter mixed with it by fire not only melt the base metal in the fire, but the pure is necessarily melted together with the dross, and when that is consumed this remains, so too, when vice is consumed by the unsleeping fire, it is entirely necessary that the soul united with it should be in the fire too, until what was sown in it, base and material and counterfeit, has been used up, consumed by the eternal fire. And as, if clay of the stickier kind were plastered deeply around a rope, and then the end of the rope were passed through a narrow hole and someone pulled the rope violently from the end toward the inside, the rope must follow the one who pulls, while the clay plastered on it is scraped off by the violent pulling and remains outside the hole, and it becomes the cause of the rope’s not passing easily but undergoing a violent strain from the one pulling: something of this kind it seems to me we should think about the soul, entangled in material and earthy attachments, that it labours and is strained, God drawing his own to himself, while what is foreign, because it has grown together with it in some way, is violently scraped off and brings it sharp and unbearable pains.” Gregory: “Then,” I said, “it seems that the divine judgment does not primarily bring punishment on sinners, but, as the argument has shown, works only the good, separating from evil and drawing to the fellowship of blessedness; while the tearing apart of what had grown together becomes pain for the one who is drawn.” Macrina: “That is my account too,” said my teacher, “and also that the measure of the pain is the amount of vice in each. For it is not likely that one who has gone so far in forbidden evils and one who has fallen into moderate faults should be pained equally in the judgment of their wicked habit; but according to the amount of the material the painful flame will be kindled more or less, as long as there is something to feed it. One on whom a heavy material burden lies must necessarily have a great and long-lasting flame that consumes it; but for one in whom less of what fire consumes is mixed, the punishment falls short of the more violent and sharper activity …”

“… of the punishment, as much as what lies upon it is lessened in the measure of vice. For evil must in every way and altogether one day be removed from existence, and, as was said before, what truly is not must not exist at all. For since vice cannot exist outside choice, when every choice comes to be in God, vice will pass into complete disappearance, no receptacle of it being left.” Gregory: “But what gain is there in this good hope,” I said, “for one who reckons how great an evil it is to undergo pain even for a single year? And if that intolerable pain is extended over an eternal interval, what consolation is left from the later hope, when the punishment is measured out along with a whole age?” Macrina: “So we must take care either to keep the soul altogether unmixed with and without share in the defilements of vice, or, if this is wholly impossible because of the passionate character of our nature, that our failures in virtue may be as moderate and easily cured as possible. For the teaching of the Gospel knows a debtor of ten thousand talents, and of five hundred denarii, and of fifty, and of a farthing, which is the least of coins; and that the just judgment of God passes through all, increasing the strictness of the demand with the weight of the debt, and not overlooking even the smallest. And the Gospel said that the payment of debts is not made by settlement in money, but that the debtor is handed over to the torturers until, it says, he pays all that is owed; which is nothing else than paying the necessary debt through torment, the debt of sharing in painful things, which he incurred during life when in his folly he chose pleasure unmixed and untempered with its opposite; and so, having put off all that is foreign to himself, which is sin, and stripped off the shame of his debts, he comes to be in freedom and boldness. And freedom is likeness to what has no master and rules itself, given to us by God at the beginning but covered over by the shame of our debts. And all freedom is by nature one and akin to itself. Consistently, then, everything free will be joined to its like; and virtue is without a master …”

“… for freedom is without a master. But the divine nature is the fountain of all virtue. Those freed from vice, then, will come to be in it, so that, as the Apostle says, God may be all in all. For this saying seems to me clearly to confirm the meaning examined earlier, which says that God becomes both all and in all. For while the present life is carried on in us in varied and manifold ways, there are many things we share in, such as time and air and place, food and drink, clothing and sunlight and lamplight, and many others for the needs of life, none of which is God; but the blessedness we expect needs none of these, and the divine nature will become all things to us and instead of all things, distributing itself suitably for every need of that life. And this is clear from the divine words, that God becomes for the worthy place and house and clothing and food and drink and light and wealth and kingdom, and every thought and name of what contributes to the good life for us. And he who becomes all comes to be in all. In this the saying seems to me to teach the complete disappearance of vice. For if God will be in all existing things, vice clearly will not be among existing things. For if one supposed that it too exists, how will God’s being in all be preserved? For its exception makes the inclusion of all defective …”

“… of all. But he who will be in all will not be in what does not exist.” Gregory: “What, then,” I said, “should we say to those who are faint-hearted about these comparisons?” Macrina: “To them,” said my teacher, “we say: ‘In vain, sirs, do you chafe and fret at the connection of the necessary sequence of things, not knowing to what aim each thing in the universe is ordered and carried: that all things must, in a certain order and sequence, according to the skilful wisdom of the One who guides them, be made akin to the divine nature. For this reason rational nature came into being, so that the wealth of the divine goods might not be idle; but souls were constructed by the wisdom that established the universe as vessels with free choice, so to speak, so that there might be a capacity able to receive goods, always becoming greater by the addition of what is poured in …’”

Macrina: “… separation, let not even this be without hope for you. For you will see this bodily covering, now dissolved by death, woven again from the same materials, not in this coarse and heavy construction, but with the thread spun into something finer and airier, so that what you love will be with you and will be restored again in a better and more lovely beauty.” Gregory: “But it seems,” I said, “that the doctrine of the resurrection has come into the discussion by the sequence of the argument. It seems to me true and trustworthy from the teaching of the Scriptures, so that I do not doubt it; but since the weakness of the human mind is somehow more strengthened in such faith by reasonings within our reach, it would be well not to pass this part over unexamined either. Let us consider, then, what must be said.” Macrina: And my teacher said: “Those outside our philosophy, in different suppositions, one in one way and another in another, have touched on some part of the doctrine of the resurrection, neither agreeing exactly with ours nor wholly missing such a hope. For some insult humanity by making it common with the brutes, defining that the same soul becomes in turn that of a man and of an irrational animal, changing bodies like clothes and always passing to what pleases it, becoming after the man a bird or a water creature or a land animal, and from these returning again to human nature. Others extend such nonsense as far as bushes, so as to think the life of trees suited and proper to it too. Others hold only that another man always takes the soul from a man, and that human life is always carried on through the same souls, now in these and again in others, forever. But we say, starting from the doctrines of the Church, that it is right to accept from those who have philosophized in this way only so much as shows them in some way agreeing with the doctrine of the resurrection. For their saying that the soul, after its dissolution from this body, enters again into certain bodies is not far from the revival we hope for. For our account too says that our body is constituted, both now and hereafter, from the elements of the world; and those outside …”

“… seem to think the same. For you will not conceive of any other nature of the body outside the concurrence of the elements. The difference is this: we say that the same body is compacted again around the soul, fitted together from the same elements; while they think that the soul falls into other bodies, rational and irrational and without sense. They agree that the constitution is from the parts of the world, but disagree in not thinking it is from the same elements that grew with the soul at the beginning in its life in the flesh. That it is not beyond what is probable for the soul to come to be in a body again, then, let it be witnessed by the outside philosophy; but it is time to examine the incoherence of their doctrine, and the truth can easily be made plain through the very sequence that emerges reasonably for us. What, then, is the account of these things? Those who move the soul into different natures seem to me to confuse the properties of nature and mix and jumble everything together, the irrational, the rational, the sentient, the insentient, if these come to be in one another, not separated from one another by any unchangeable sequence of nature. For to say that the same soul is now rational and thinking through such a covering of the body, and again lurks in holes with reptiles, or flocks with birds, or carries burdens, or eats flesh, or lives under water, or even falls to the insensible, taking root and becoming a tree and sprouting outgrowths of branches, and in them growing as a flower or a thorn or something nourishing or poisonous, is nothing else than to think all things the same, and that there is one nature in existing things, jumbled in a confused and undistinguished communion, no property separating one from another. For one who says that the same thing comes to be in everything wishes nothing else than that all things are one, the difference appearing in existing things in no way hindering the mixture of incompatible things; so that it would be necessary, if one sees one of the venomous or carnivorous animals, to think …”

“… what appears akin and related to himself; nor will such a man look on hemlock as foreign to his own nature, if he sees the human in plants too; nor will he be free from suspicion even toward the grape cultivated for the needs of life, for it too is among the things that grow; and the products of the ears of grain by which we are fed are plants to us. How, then, will he set the sickle to the cutting of the ears? How will he press the grape, or dig the thorn out of the field, or pluck the flower, or hunt birds, or light a fire from wood, when it is uncertain whether his hand is not moving against kinsmen or ancestors or those of his own race, and whether it is through their body that the fire is kindled or the bowl mixed or the food prepared? For if one thinks that through each of these the soul of a man becomes a plant or an animal, while there are no marks set on them to show which plant or animal comes from a man and which came about otherwise, one prepossessed by such a supposition will be disposed equally toward all, so that necessarily either he is harsh even toward the human beings living by nature, or, if he inclines by nature to love toward those of his own race, he is similarly disposed toward every living thing, even reptiles and wild beasts; indeed, if he goes into a wood, one who has accepted this doctrine will think the trees a people of human beings. What, then, would the life of such a person be, either cautious toward everything because of kinship, or harsh toward human beings too because of his indifference toward the others? Such an account, then, is to be rejected from what has been said, many other things too leading us reasonably away from such a supposition. For I have heard those who teach such things say that nations of souls are kept in a commonwealth of their own before life in the body, living in the fineness and mobility of their nature together with the whirling of the universe; and that by some inclination to vice the souls lose their wings and come to be in bodies, first in human beings, and then, through fellowship with the irrational passions, after leaving human life, become brutes, and from there fall as far as this natural and insensible life …”

“… so that what is by nature fine and mobile, which the soul is, first becomes heavy and downward-tending, settling into human bodies through vice; then, when its rational power has been quenched, lives in the irrational creatures; and from there, when even this gift of the senses has been taken away, takes on this insensible life in plants; and from this goes up again by the same steps and is restored to the heavenly region. Such a doctrine is refuted at once for those who have examined it even moderately, as having no stability in itself. For if the soul is dragged down by vice from the heavenly life to the life of a tree, and from this runs back up again by virtue to the heavenly, their argument is found at a loss as to which it thinks more honourable, the life of wood or the heavenly. For there is a circle going round through the same things, the soul never being stable wherever it is. For if it falls from the incorporeal life to the bodily, and from this to the insensible, and from there runs back again to the incorporeal, those who teach this suppose nothing else than an indiscriminate confusion of evil and good. For neither does the heavenly way of life remain in blessedness, if vice touches those who live there, nor will trees be without a share of virtue, if they think the soul runs back from here to the good, and from there begins vice. For if the soul, revolving in heaven, is entangled with vice and, dragged down by it to the material life, is drawn up again from here to the life on high, then the opposite is established by them: that the material life is a purification from vice, while the unerring revolution becomes the leader and cause of evils for souls, if from here they grow wings through virtue and travel aloft, while from there, their wings falling off through vice, they become earthbound, mixed with the coarseness of material nature. And the absurdity of such doctrines does not stop at this, that their suppositions are turned into their opposites; but not even …”

“… this supposition itself remains firm for them throughout. For if they call the heavenly nature unchangeable, how does passion have room in what is unchangeable? And if the nature below is subject to passion, how is freedom from passion achieved in what is passible? But they mix what cannot be mixed and unite what is incompatible, seeing the unchangeable in passion and freedom from passion again in what changes. And they do not even remain in this; but where they exiled the soul from because of vice, there they settle it again from the material life, as in a safe and undefiled life, as if forgetting that vice, springing up there, made it mingle with the nature below. So the condemnation of life here and the praise of heavenly things are confused with one another and turned upside down, what is condemned in their opinion leading to the good, while what was supposed better gives the soul the occasion for its inclination to the worse. Every mistaken and unstable supposition about such things, then, must be cast out from the doctrines of truth; nor should we follow, as aiming at the truth, those who say that souls go down from women’s bodies to manly life, or conversely that souls separated from men’s bodies come to be in women, or pass from men to men and from women to women. For the former account was rejected not only because it is unstable and deceptive, turning round in itself to contrary suppositions, but also because it is impious, teaching that none of existing things is brought into being unless vice gives the beginning to the nature of each. For if neither men nor plants nor cattle grow unless a soul falls on them from above, and the fall comes about through vice, then they think vice begins the constitution of existing things. And somehow both things happen at the same time, a man growing from marriage and the soul’s fall coinciding with the zeal of mar…”

“… riage. And what is still more absurd, most of the irrational creatures mate in spring. Can one say, then, that spring, coming on in the revolution above, produces vice, so that souls fall filled with evil at the same time as the wombs of irrational creatures conceive? And what would one say about the farmer who plants cuttings of plants in the earth? How has his hand buried a human soul together with the plant, the shedding of wings coinciding with the man’s impulse to plant? The same absurdity attends the other account too, thinking that the soul busies itself about the unions of living things in pairs or watches for births, so as to enter the bodies being born. And if the man renounces marriage, and the woman frees herself from the necessity of labour pains, will vice not weigh down the soul? Then either marriage gives the signal to the vice above against souls, or even without it the attachment to the opposite takes hold of the soul. Then the soul will wander homeless and vagrant in the middle, having fallen from heaven and perhaps having no body to receive it. Then too, how will they suppose by this that the divine presides over existing things, ascribing the beginnings of human life to this accidental and irrational fall of souls? For what follows must necessarily agree with the beginning. If life began from some spontaneous chance, its course too will certainly be by chance. And in vain do such people make existing things depend on the divine power, when they say that the things in the world grow not by divine will but refer the beginnings of what comes to be to an evil chance, as though human life could not have come to exist unless evil had given the signal to life. If, then, the beginning of life is such, clearly what follows will move according to the beginning; for no one would say that good grows from evil or the opposite from good; but we expect the fruits according to the nature of the seed. This spontaneous and chance movement, then, would rule the whole of life, no providence passing through existing things.”

“For everything will certainly lie with the one who carries it along, and life will differ in nothing from ships without ballast, carried now to one harbour, now to another, of good or bad fortune, by spontaneous chances as by waves. For there can be no gain from virtue for those whose nature has its beginning from the opposite. For if our life is governed by God, it is admitted that vice cannot begin our life; but if we grow through vice, we shall live entirely and altogether according to it. The tribunals after life here, and repayment according to worth, and all else that is said and believed for the abolition of vice, will then be shown by this to be nonsense. For how can a man who grew through vice be outside it? And how could there be any impulse of choice in man toward the life of virtue, if his nature has its beginning from vice, as they say? For as none of the irrational creatures attempts to speak like a human being, but, using the voice natural to it and bred with it, thinks it no loss to lack speech, in the same way those for whom vice is thought to be the beginning and cause of life would not come to desire virtue, as being outside their nature. But for all who have purified their soul by reasoning, the life of virtue is a matter of zeal and desire. By this, then, it is clearly shown that vice is not older than life, and that nature did not have its first beginnings from it, but that the wisdom of God, which governs the universe, begins our life. And when the soul has come into being in the manner pleasing to the Creator, then it chooses by its own authority, from its power of choice, whatever it wishes, and becomes that. We may learn the point from the example of the eyes, for which seeing is from nature and not seeing from choice or from affliction. For what is against nature may sometimes come in place of nature, either when someone closes his eye of his own will or is deprived of sight by affliction. So one may say that the soul has its constitution from God, and, since no vice is conceived in the divine, it is outside the necessity of vice; but having come into being in this way, it is led by its own judgment to what it thinks good, either closing its eye to the good by choice, or having its eye harmed by the plotting of the enemy who dwells with our life, and living in the darkness of deceit …”

“… and, conversely, looking purely at the truth, comes to be far from the passions of darkness. When, then, someone will say, does it come into being, and how? But the inquiry into how each thing came to be must be removed from the discussion altogether. For not even about the things readily open to our understanding, which we perceive through sense, would it be possible for searching reason to understand how what appears came to exist, so that such a thing was not thought within the grasp even of inspired and holy men. ‘For by faith we understand,’ says the Apostle, ‘that the ages were framed by the word of God, so that what is seen came to be from things that do not appear’; he would not have said this, I think, if he had thought that what is sought could be known by reasonings. But the Apostle says he has believed that the age itself, and all that has come to be in it (whatever this age is, in which the whole visible and invisible creation is seen), was framed by the divine will; but the how he left unsearched. For I think such a thing is not attainable by those who search, since the question about these things shows us many perplexities: how the moving comes from the stable nature, and the extended and composite from the simple and unextended. From the transcendent substance itself? But what exists does not admit being of a different kind from it. From elsewhere, then? But reason sees nothing outside the divine nature. For our conception would be split into different principles if anything were thought to be outside the making cause, from which the skilful wisdom collected its materials for creation. Since, then, the cause of existing things is one, while the things brought into being through it are not of the same kind as the transcendent nature, and the absurdity is equal either way in the suppositions, both to think that creation is from the nature of God and that all things came to exist from some other substance (for either the divine will be supposed to be in the properties of creation, if the things that came to be are of the same kind as God, or some material nature outside the divine substance will be set up against God …”

“… as unbegotten, made equal to the eternity of Being; which indeed the Manichees imagined, and some of the Greek philosophy, carried along by like suppositions, have made this fancy a doctrine). So that we may best escape the absurdity on either side in our inquiry into existing things, following the Apostle’s example we shall leave the question how each thing exists uninquired into, pointing out only this: that the impulse of the divine choice, when it wills, becomes fact, and the purpose at once becomes nature and is given substance, the all-powerful authority not leaving unrealized whatever it wills wisely and skilfully; and the existence of the will is substance. Since existing things are divided in two, into the intellectual and the bodily, the creation of intellectual things does not seem in any way out of keeping with the incorporeal nature, but shows its nearness in being formless, intangible, and unextended; and one who supposes this about the transcendent nature too will not be wrong. But since bodily creation is seen in properties that have no communion with the divine, it produces the greatest perplexity for reason, which cannot see how the visible comes from the invisible, the solid and resistant from the intangible, the limited from the unlimited, from what has no quantity or magnitude what is certainly bounded by measures seen in quantity, and each of the other things grasped about bodily nature. About these we say only this: that nothing seen about the body is body by itself, not shape, not colour, not weight, not extension, not magnitude, nor anything else seen as a quality; but each of these is a principle (a thought); and their concurrence and union with one another becomes body. Since, then, the qualities that complete the body are grasped by mind and not by sense, and the divine is intellectual, what labour is it for the intelligible to produce the thoughts, whose concurrence with one another has produced for us the nature of the body? But these things …”

“… were examined outside the subject. What was sought was whether souls exist before bodies, and when or how they come to be. And for this reason the argument left the inquiry about how uninvestigated, as being beyond reach. It remains to seek when souls have the beginning of their existence, as following from what was examined earlier. For if it were granted that the soul lives in a state of its own before the body, it would necessarily follow that those absurd doctrines have force which settle souls in bodies because of vice. But no sensible person would suppose that souls are later in their genesis and younger than the forming of bodies, since it is plain to all that nothing … of what is soulless has in itself a power of motion and growth. But of those nourished in the womb neither growth nor local motion is doubtful …”

“… of the human constitution, the power of the soul too shows itself in proportion to the bodily quantity: first arising in those being formed within through the nourishing and growing power, then bringing the gift of sense to those who have come out into the light, and then, like a fruit when the plant has already grown, showing the rational power moderately, not all at once, but growing along with the plant’s rising by a sequence of progress. Since, then, what is taken from living beings as the beginning of a living constitution cannot be dead (for deadness comes by privation of soul, and privation would not come before the possession), we gather from this that the compound made of both has a common passage into being, neither the one coming first nor the other later. But reason necessarily foresees a halt one day to the increase in the number of souls, so that nature may not always be flowing, always poured forward through those who come after and never ceasing its motion. And we think the reason why our nature too must certainly one day become stable is this: since the whole intelligible nature stands in its own fullness, it is likely that humanity too will one day come to an end; for this too is not estranged from the intelligible nature; so that it may not always seem to be seen in want. For the continual addition of those born afterward becomes a charge that the nature has something lacking. When, then, humanity reaches its own fullness, this flowing movement of nature will certainly stop, having come to its necessary end, and another state will succeed life, separated from the present one carried on in birth and corruption. For when there is no birth, there will by every necessity be nothing that perishes either. For if composition comes before dissolution (and by composition we mean the passage through birth), it certainly follows that if composition does not go before, dissolution will not follow. The life after this, then, appears by consequence to be stable and indissoluble, not altered by birth …”

Gregory: When my teacher had gone through this, since it seemed to the many sitting by that the discussion had reached its fitting end, I was afraid that there would no longer be anyone to resolve for us the objections brought by those outside against the resurrection, if anything should happen to my teacher from her illness, as indeed it did. “The discussion,” I said, “has not yet touched the most important of the questions of doctrine. For the inspired Scripture says, both in the new and in the ancient teaching, that when our nature has passed through the passing movement of time in a certain order and sequence, this flowing course, which proceeds through the succession of those born afterward, will certainly stop one day; and when the completion of the universe no longer admits increase, the whole fullness of souls will return from the invisible and scattered to the compacted and visible, the same elements running together again in the same order. And such a state of life is called resurrection in the Scriptures of divine teaching, the whole movement of the elements being named together with the raising up of what is earthy.” Macrina: “What, then,” she said, “of these things has not been mentioned in what was said?” Gregory: “The very doctrine of the resurrection,” I said.

Macrina: “… the face of the earth.’ He says that the power of the Spirit, working all in all, gives life to those in whom it comes to be and removes from life again those from whom it departs. Since, then, he says that the failing of the living comes about by the withdrawal of the Spirit, and the renewal of those who have failed by its presence, and in the order of the saying the failing of those renewed comes first, we say that by this the mystery of the resurrection is proclaimed to the Church, the prophetic spirit of David having foretold this grace. And elsewhere this same prophet says that the God of all, the Lord of existing things, appeared to us to establish the feast with thick branches, interpreting the feast of Tabernacles by the word ‘thick branches.’ This feast had long been customary from the tradition of Moses, the lawgiver, I think, foretelling the future prophetically; and though it was always being kept, it had not yet taken place. For the truth was foreshown figuratively in the riddles of what was done, but this true pitching of tabernacles had not yet come. For this reason, according to the prophetic word, the God and Lord of all showed himself to us, so that the pitching of the tabernacle of our dissolved dwelling might be established for human nature, being covered again bodily, thick with branches, through the coming together of the elements. For the word ‘thick branches’ by its proper sense signifies the covering and the adornment from it. The saying of the psalm runs thus: ‘God is the Lord, and he has appeared to us; establish the feast with thick branches, up to the horns of the altar.’ This seems to me to foretell in a riddle that one feast is being established for the whole rational creation, the lesser dancing together with the higher in the gathering of good things. For in the figurative construction of the temple not all were allowed within the outer enclosure, but every Gentile and foreigner was kept from entering; and of those who came within, not all had equal share in the passage further in, unless purified by a purer way of life and certain sprinklings; and again even among these the inner temple was not accessible to all, but …”

“… it was lawful only for the priests to go within the veil as the service required; while the hidden and inaccessible part of the temple, in which the altar stood adorned with projecting horns, was not to be entered even by the priests themselves, except by the one at the head of the priesthood, who slipped in alone once a year on a certain appointed day, bringing a more secret and mystical service. Since there was such distinction in this temple, because it was an image and imitation of the intelligible state, the bodily observance taught this: that not the whole rational nature draws near to the temple of God, that is, to the confession of the great God; but those who have wandered into false suppositions are outside the divine enclosure; and of those who have come within through confession, those purified beforehand by sprinklings and purifications are more honoured than the others, and of these, those already consecrated have more, so as to be counted worthy of the inner initiation, as one might bring the sense of the riddle to greater clarity. One can learn this from the word’s teaching: that of the rational powers some are set like the holy altar in the sanctuary of the Godhead; others again among these are seen in prominence, projecting like horns; and others around them come first and second in an order of sequence; while the human race, because of the vice that came about, was driven outside the divine enclosure, and is brought within when purified by the washing of sprinkling. But since the barriers by which vice walled us off from what is within the veil will one day be dissolved, when our nature has its tabernacle pitched again through the resurrection and all the corruption that came about through vice has disappeared from existing things, then a common feast around God will be established for those covered thick through the resurrection, so that one and the same joy is set before all, no longer any difference in sharing equal things dividing the rational nature, but those who are now outside because of vice will one day be within the sanctuary of the divine blessedness, and will join themselves to the horns of the altar, that is, to the prominent ones among the supramundane powers.”

“The Apostle says this more plainly, explaining the harmony of the universe in the good, that to him every knee will bow, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father; meaning by the horns the angelic and heavenly, and signifying by the rest the creation understood as coming after them, us, all of whom one harmonious feast will hold. The feast is the confession and recognition of Him who truly is. There are also many other passages of holy Scripture,” she said, “that one could gather for establishing the doctrine of the resurrection. For Ezekiel, by the prophetic spirit, passing over the whole intervening time and the interval in it, stands at the very moment of the resurrection by his power of foreknowledge, and, as having already seen what will be, brings it before our eyes in his narrative. He saw a great plain spread out without limit, and a great heap of bones on it, scattered here and there at random; then, by divine power, moving to what was akin and their own and growing into their proper joints; then covered with sinews and flesh and skin (which the psalm calls being covered with thick branches); and a spirit giving life and raising up all that lay there. And why should one speak of the Apostle’s description of the wonders at the resurrection, since it is ready to hand for readers: how, at a command and the sound of trumpets, the word says, in an instant of time all at once everything dead and lying will be changed into an immortal nature? We have passed over the sayings of the Gospel too, as plain to all. For the Lord does not only say by word that the dead will rise, but works the resurrection itself, beginning his miracles from things nearer to us and less able to be disbelieved. First …”

“… he shows his life-giving power in deadly diseases, driving away the afflictions by command and word; then he raises a child just dead; then he raises a young man already being carried to the tomb from the bier and gives him to his mother; after this he brings Lazarus, already decayed after four days, out of the tomb, giving life to the one lying there by voice and command; then he raises his own man, pierced with nails and spear, from the dead on the third day, bringing the marks of the nails and the wound of the spear as witness of the resurrection. About these I think there is no need to go through anything, since no doubt remains for those who have accepted what is written.” Gregory: “But that was not what was in question,” I said. “Most of those who hear will agree, both from the proofs of Scripture and from what has already been examined, that there will one day be a resurrection and that man will be brought to the impartial judgment. What remains to consider,” I said, “is whether the body will be such as it is now. If it really is, I said, people should flee the hope of the resurrection. For if human bodies are restored to life such as they are when they cease to live, then an endless misfortune is expected for people through the resurrection. For what could be a more pitiable sight than when bodies, shrivelled in extreme old age, are changed into what is hideous and shapeless, the flesh withered away, the skin hardened, the sinews contracted because no longer fattened by natural moisture, and so the whole body drawn together; an absurd and pitiable sight arises, the head bent down toward the knee, the hands on either side idle for their natural activity and always shaking with involuntary trembling? And what of the bodies of those wasted by long diseases, which differ from bare bones only in seeming to be covered with thin and already consumed skin? And what of those swollen with dropsical …”

“… diseases; and the shameful mutilation of those overcome by the sacred disease, what word could bring before the eyes, how the rot, advancing little by little, feeds on all their organic and sentient members? And what could one say about those maimed in earthquakes or wars or from some other cause, who live in this misfortune for some time before death, or those born with some mutilation in twisted limbs? About newborn infants, those exposed, those smothered, and those who die of themselves, what can one reckon, if such are brought back to life? Will they remain in infancy, and what could be more wretched? Or will they reach full age, and with what milk will nature nurse them again? So if our body comes to life again the same in all respects, what we expect will be a misfortune; but if not the same, the one raised will be someone other than the one who lies dead. For if a child has fallen but a grown man rises, or the opposite, how can one say that the one who lay dead has been raised, when the one who fell has been changed in the difference of age? For one who sees a grown man instead of the child, and one in his prime instead of the old man, has seen one instead of another; and one whole instead of the mutilated, and well-fleshed instead of the wasted, and so with all the rest, so that one need not burden the discussion by going through each. If, then, the body does not come to life again such as it was when it was mingled with the earth, the dead will not rise, but the earth will be formed into another man. What, then, is the resurrection to me, if another will come to life instead of me? How could I recognize myself, seeing in myself not myself? For I would not truly be I, unless I were in every respect the same as myself. For as in the present life, if I have in memory the features of someone, and let it be supposed for argument that he is bald, with thick lips, snub-nosed, pale, grey-eyed, grey-haired, and wrinkled, then looking for him …”

“… such a one, I met a young man, long-haired, hook-nosed, dark-skinned, and differing in all the rest of the features of his form, would I, seeing this one, think him to be that one? But rather, why should I linger on the lesser objections and pass over the stronger? For who does not know that human nature is like a stream, always advancing by a kind of motion from birth to death, and ceasing from motion only when it ceases to exist? This motion is not a change of place (for nature does not step out of itself), but proceeds by alteration, and never remains in the same state (for how could what is altered be kept in sameness?); but as the fire on a wick seems always to appear the same (for the continuity of its motion shows it unbroken and united with itself), but in truth always succeeds itself and never remains the same (for the moisture drawn up by the heat is at once set ablaze and burned into smoke, and the motion of the flame is always worked by its altering power, turning what underlies it into smoke through itself); as, then, one who touches the flame twice in the same place cannot touch the same flame twice (for the quickness of the alteration does not wait for one who touches it a second time, however quickly he does it), but the flame is always new and fresh, always coming to be and succeeding itself and never remaining the same: something of this kind is the nature of our body too. For what flows into our nature and what flows out of it, always proceeding by the altering motion, stops moving only when it ceases from life; while it is in life it has no rest; for it is either being filled or exhaled, or always carried on by both. If, then, a person is not the same even as yesterday, but becomes another by the change, when the resurrection brings our body back to life the one man will certainly become a whole crowd of people, so that nothing may be lacking to the one who rises: the baby, the infant, the child, the boy, the man, the father, the old man, and all the stages between. And since self-control and licentiousness are exercised through the flesh, and of those who endure …”

“… endure the painful punishments for godliness, and of those who are soft toward them through bodily sensation, since both show themselves in this, how can justice be preserved at the judgment? Or, when the same man has now sinned and then purified himself by repentance and then perhaps slipped back into sin, and both the defiled and the undefiled body have been changed by the sequence of nature, and neither of them has lasted continuously, what kind of body will be punished along with the licentious man? The one shrivelled in old age near death? But this was other than the one that did the sin. The one defiled by passion, then? And where is the old man? For either this one will not rise, and the resurrection is not effective; or this one will be raised, and the guilty one will escape justice. Let me say something else too of what is brought against us by those who have not accepted the doctrine. Nature, they say, made none of the parts in the body idle. Some have in us the cause and power of living, without which our life through the flesh cannot exist, such as the heart, liver, brain, lungs, stomach, and the other inner organs; others are allotted to the movement of sense; others belong to the activity of handling and moving about; others are fitted for the succession of offspring. If, then, the life afterward is to be in the same things, the change is for nothing; but if the saying is true (as indeed it is) which lays down that marriage has no place in the life after the resurrection, and that life then is not sustained by food and drink, what use will there be for the parts of the body, when the things for which the members now exist are no longer hoped for in that life? For if the members for marriage exist for marriage, when that is not, we do not need what is for it either. So the hands are for work, the feet for running, the mouth for receiving food, the teeth for serving nourishment, the inner organs for digestion, and the passages for expelling what is useless. When those things are not, how or …”

“… for what will they be? So that necessarily, if the bodies are superfluous, going to contribute nothing to that life, none of the things that now make up our body will exist (for that life is in other things); and one would no longer call such a thing resurrection, the individual members not rising with the body because of their uselessness for that life. But if the resurrection is to be effective in all of them, the one who works the resurrection will make for us things vain and useless for that life. Yet we must believe both that the resurrection exists and that it is not vain. We must attend to the argument, then, so that what is probable may be preserved for us in the doctrine in every respect.” Macrina: When I had gone through this, my teacher said: “You have attacked the doctrines of the resurrection not ignobly, according to what is called rhetoric, running round the truth plausibly with arguments of refutation, so that those who have not examined the mystery of the truth very carefully might be somewhat affected by the argument as probable, and think that the difficulty has not been raised against what was said without reason. But the truth is not so,” she said, “even if we cannot rhetorically argue back against the argument in like terms. The true account of these things is stored in the hidden treasures of wisdom, to come into the open when we are taught the mystery of the resurrection by the fact, when we shall no longer need words to make plain what we hope for. But as, at night, when many words are moved by those keeping watch about the brightness of the sun, what it is like, the mere appearance of the grace of the ray makes the description by words idle, so the coming of what we expect, when it happens in our experience, will show to be nothing every reasoning that conjecturally touches the future state. But since the objections raised against us must not be left wholly unexamined, we shall treat the account of them in this way. We must first understand what the aim of the doctrine of the resurrection is, and for what reason it has been spoken by the holy voice and believed. So, as one might sketch such a thing by comprising it in a definition, we shall say …”

“… that the resurrection is the restoration of our nature to its ancient state. But in the first life, of which God himself was the maker, there was, as is likely, neither old age nor infancy nor the sufferings of the many kinds of disease nor any other bodily misery (for it was not fitting for God to make such things); rather, human nature was something divine before humanity came under the impulse of evil. All these things came in upon us with the entrance of vice. The life without vice, then, will have no necessity to be in what happened through vice. For as it follows for one travelling in frost that his body is chilled, or for one walking in hot rays that his skin is darkened, but if he is out of both he will certainly be free of both the darkening and the chilling, and no one would reasonably look for what happens from some cause when the cause does not exist: so our nature, having become passionate, fell in with the things that necessarily follow a life of passion; but when it runs back to the passionless blessedness it will no longer fall in with what follows vice. Since, then, whatever was mingled with human nature from irrational life was not in us before humanity fell into passion through vice, when we leave the passion we shall necessarily leave together all that is seen with it. So no one would reasonably look in that life for what happened to us from the passion. For as, if someone wearing a ragged tunic were stripped of the covering, he would no longer see on himself the unsightliness of what had been thrown off, so too, when we have put off that dead and hideous tunic, made from the skins of irrational creatures and laid upon us (when I hear ‘skin’ I think I understand the form of irrational nature, with which we were clothed when we became akin to passion), we cast off together, in the stripping off of the tunic, all that belonged to the irrational skin around us. And the things it took from the irrational skin are: intercourse, conception, birth, filth, the breast, nourishment, ex…”

“… cretion, gradual growth to maturity, the prime, old age, disease, death. If, then, that is not about us, how will what comes from it be left to us? So it is vain, when another state is hoped for in the life to come, to object to the doctrine of the resurrection things that have nothing in common with it. For what do shrivelling and fatness, wasting and plethora, and anything else that befalls the flowing nature of bodies, have in common with that life, which is estranged from the flowing and passing course of this life? The account of the resurrection seeks one thing only: that a man has come into being by birth; or rather, as the Gospel says, that a man has been born into the world; whether his life was long or short, or his manner of death this or another, it is vain to examine along with the account of the resurrection. For however we suppose this to be, it is all the same; there is neither difficulty nor ease for the resurrection from such difference. For one who has begun to live must certainly live, the dissolution that came about in the middle through death being set right in the resurrection. But how or when the dissolution happens, what has that to do with the resurrection? The consideration of this looks to another aim: for example, whether someone lived in pleasure or in pain, in virtue or in vice, praiseworthy or blameworthy, whether he passed his time pitiably or blessedly. For all these and the like are found from the measure of life and the form of one’s life; and so, for the judgment of what has been lived, it would be necessary for the judge to search out passion and mutilation, disease and age, prime and youth, wealth and poverty: how each man, having been in each of these, passed the life allotted to him well or badly, and whether he received many goods or evils in a long time, or did not touch even the beginning of either, ceasing to live with an immature mind. But when God brings back our nature through the resurrection to the first construction of man, it would be idle to say such things and to think that God’s power is hindered from its aim by such objections.”

“His aim is one: when the whole fullness of our nature has been completed in each human being, some already purified from vice in this life, others healed afterward through fire in the proper times, and others who in this life equally did not know the experience of either good or evil, to set before all the participation in the good things in him, which, Scripture says, eye has not seen, nor ear received, nor have they come within reach of reasonings. And this is nothing else, in my account at least, than to come to be in God himself; for the good beyond ear and eye and heart would be the very thing that is above all. And the difference between the life of virtue and of vice will be shown afterward chiefly in this: in sharing sooner or later in the blessedness we hope for. For the length of the healing will certainly correspond to the measure of the vice in each. And the healing of the soul would be the cleansing of vice; and this cannot be achieved without a painful condition, as was examined earlier. But one would recognize better how superfluous and irrelevant the objections are by looking into the depth of the apostolic wisdom. For, making the mystery of these things clear to the Corinthians, who perhaps also put to him what is now brought forward by those who attack the doctrine to overturn what is believed, cutting short the boldness of their ignorance by his own authority, he speaks thus: ‘You will say to me, How are the dead raised? With what body do they come? Fool! What you sow is not made alive unless it dies; and what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare grain, perhaps of wheat or of some other seed; but God gives it a body as he willed.’ Here he seems to me to silence those who do not know the proper measures of nature, who compare the divine power with their own strength and think that as much is possible to God as human comprehension can contain, and that what is beyond us passes beyond God’s power too. For the one who asked the Apostle how the dead are raised declares it impossible for the scattered elements of the body to come together again; and since this is not possible and no other body is left besides the concurrence of the elements, he concludes, in the manner of skilled debaters, by a certain sequence from what he supposed …”

“… thus: if a body is a concurrence of elements, and their coming together a second time is impossible, what body will those who rise use? This, then, which seemed to them woven together by some artful skill, he called folly, coming from people who did not see the surpassing divine power in the rest of creation. For, leaving aside the loftier wonders of God, by which he could have brought the hearer to perplexity, such as what the heavenly body is and where from, what the body of the sun or the moon or that seen in the stars, the ether, the air, the water, the earth, he refutes the thoughtlessness of the objectors from things that grow with us and are more common. ‘Does not even farming teach you,’ he says, ‘that he is a fool who guesses the surpassing divine power by his own measure? Where do the bodies that grow around seeds come from? What goes before their sprouting? Is it not death, if death is the dissolution of what was compounded?’ For the seed would not come up to growth unless it were dissolved in the clod and became loose and porous, so as to mix its own quality with the surrounding moisture and so be changed into root and shoot; and not to stop even at this, but to change into a stalk girded with joints between, as with bands, so as to be able to carry upright the ear weighed down with its fruit. Where, then, were these things in the wheat before its dissolution in the clod? Yet this is from there; for if that had not been first, the ear would not have come to be. As, then, the body of the ear appears from the seed, the divine power skilfully making this from that very thing, and it is neither wholly the same as the seed nor altogether different, so too, he says, the mystery of the resurrection is interpreted to you beforehand through the wonders worked in seeds: that the divine power, in the abundance of its authority, not only gives you back what was dissolved, but adds great and beautiful things, by which your nature is furnished more magnificently. ‘It is sown,’ he says, ‘in corruption, it is raised in incorruption; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.’ For as, having left behind after its dissolu…”

“… tion in the clod its smallness in quantity and the particular property of its shape, the wheat did not abandon itself, but, remaining itself, becomes an ear, differing very greatly from itself in size and beauty and variety and shape: in the same way human nature too, leaving to death all the properties it acquired through its passionate disposition (I mean dishonour, corruption, weakness, the difference of age), does not abandon itself, but changes as into an ear into incorruption and glory and honour and power and perfection in everything, and into its life being no longer governed by natural properties, but passing into a spiritual and passionless state. For this is the property of the natural body: always, through some flow and motion, to be altered from the state it is in and to change into another. None of these things, which we see not only in human beings but also in plants and cattle, will be left in the life then. And it seems to me that the apostolic saying agrees in every way with our understanding of the resurrection, and shows what our definition contains, which says that the resurrection is nothing else than the restoration of our nature to its ancient state. For since we have learned from Scripture in the first creation of the world that first the earth sprouted green grass, as the word says, and then seed came from the plant, which, when it fell to the earth, sprang up again in the same form as what grew at the beginning, the divine Apostle says that this happens in the resurrection too. And we are taught by him not only that humanity changes to what is most magnificent, but that what we hope for is nothing else than what was at the beginning. For since at the beginning it was not an ear from the seed, but the seed from there, and afterward the ear grows around the seed, the sequence of the illustration clearly shows that all the blessedness that will spring up for us through the resurrection returns to the original grace. For we too were in a way an ear at the beginning; but since we were withered by the heat of …”

“… vice, the earth received us when we were dissolved through death, and again in the spring of the resurrection it will show this bare grain of the body as an ear, tall and full and upright, stretched up to the heavenly height, adorned instead of stalk and beard with incorruption and the other marks befitting God. ‘For this corruptible must put on incorruption.’ And incorruption and glory and honour and power are admitted to be proper to the divine nature; they belonged formerly to the one made according to the image, and are hoped for again. For the first ear was the first man, Adam. But since with the entrance of vice the nature was divided into a multitude, as happens with the fruit in the ear, so we, each stripped of the form of that ear and mingled with the earth, grow up again in the resurrection in the original beauty, becoming countless myriads of crops instead of the one first ear. And the life of virtue differs from vice in this: those who have cultivated themselves by virtue during life here appear at once in the perfect ear; while those in whom, through vice during this life, the power in the soul’s seed has become faded and blasted by the wind, as experts in such things say happens with the so-called hard-horned seeds, these too, even if they grow up through the resurrection, will find much severity with the judge, since they are not able to run up to the form of the ear and become what we were before the fall to earth. And the care given by the overseer of the crops is the gathering of the tares and the thorns that grew up with the seed, all the power that nourishes the root having flowed into the bastard growth, by which the genuine seed has remained unfed and unfruitful, entangled with the unnatural growth. When, then, all that is bastard and foreign has been plucked out from what nourishes and has come to disappearance, the fire having consumed what is against nature, handed over to the eternal fire, then nature will thrive in these too and ripen into fruit through such care, receiving back one day, in long periods, the common form laid upon us from God at the beginning. Blessed are those in whom the perfect …”

“… beauty of the ears rises together with those who grow up through the resurrection. We say this not as though a bodily difference will appear in the resurrection among those who have lived in virtue or vice, so that one would think one has an imperfect body and the other the perfect one; but as in life the prisoner and the free man have bodies much alike, while there is a great difference between them in pleasure and pain, so I think we must reckon the difference between the good and the bad in the time between. For the perfecting of bodies that grow up from corruption is said by the Apostle to be in incorruption and glory and honour and power; and the lessening of these does not signify some bodily mutilation of what has grown, but the deprivation of and estrangement from each of the things conceived as good. Since, then, one of the two opposites, good or evil, must certainly be about us, it is clear that to say someone is not in the good is a proof that he is certainly in evil. But about vice there is no honour, no glory, no incorruption, no power. It is entirely necessary that where these are not, their opposites are present: weakness, dishonour, corruption, and all such things, which were spoken of in the earlier discussion, the passions from vice that are hard for the soul to be rid of, blended with and grown into the whole of it and become one with it. When, then, these have been cleansed and made to disappear by the healings through fire, each of the things conceived as better will come in their place: incorruption, life, honour, grace, glory, power, and whatever else of this kind we conjecture to be seen both in God and in his image, which is human nature.”