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casparb's review
A really solid medieval I approve. Much seeming ahead of time. The literal second sentence of the Argument oddly functions as a brilliant explanation of the famous Ivan Karamazov morality dictum which is constantly misconstrued it's one of those.
Gregory does a lovely job tying the soul here and there it's rather Platonic for a bit and I appreciate that though there is an amusing moment in the dialogue where the Teacher declares fuck all that philosophical history we're going solo. Good for her
Gregory does a lovely job tying the soul here and there it's rather Platonic for a bit and I appreciate that though there is an amusing moment in the dialogue where the Teacher declares fuck all that philosophical history we're going solo. Good for her
studeronomy's review
5.0
Orthodox Christians will naturally be interested in St. Gregory of Nyssa's treatise on the soul, the soul's origins, its properties, and the doctrine of resurrection and theosis. This review is for non-Orthodox and non-Christians. I recommend On the Soul and Resurrection to general readers of philosophy just as I'd recommend any of Plato's dialogues (St. Gregory's treatise most resembles the Phaedo, as the introduction by Catharine Roth explains—the introduction alone is worth the price of admission).
Whether you're sympathetic to the ideas of Plato and other philosophers who affirm the existence of the soul or you're a hardened materialist, you cannot deny that the soul—the essence and consistency of "the self," our sense of a stable and continuous "self"—is a persistent and fascinating problem within philosophy, western *or* eastern. The soul and its nature have inspired some of the best philosophical writing. On the Soul and Resurrection engages directly with this ongoing conversation and develops classical Greek ideas about the self within a doctrinally sound *and* intellectually rigorous Christian framework. Just as you needn't worship the Greek gods to benefit from Plato, you needn't be Orthodox to benefit from St. Gregory.
I would also recommend this treatise to anyone interested in philosophical Buddhism and eastern conceptions of the self. St. Gregory explores the relationship between our conception of self; our true nature; and their relationship to suffering, pain, and what Orthodox Christians call "the passions." He contrasts our passionate nature with our true nature, which is God-like and love-oriented. He explains why purification—the return of the self to its created nature, which exists in harmony with God and creation—can be such a painful process. Just as you don't need to be a Buddhist to benefit from Buddhist insights, you don't need to be Orthodox to benefit from St. Gregory's insights.
St. Gregory of Nyssa is a sensitive thinker. He "steel-mans" his opponents' best arguments about the existence and nature of the soul. He structures his treatise as a dialogue between him and his sister, St. Macrina the Younger. Both Gregory and Macrina confront death as they discuss the soul: Gregory has just lost a dear friend and Macrina conducts the dialogue from her own deathbed. Within the conceit of the treatise, Macrina explains the doctrine of the soul while Gregory offers objections to the Orthodox view. These objections are powerful. I frequently find myself nodding along as Gregory responds to Macrina's account of Orthodox doctrine...which makes Macrina's responses to Gregory all the more compelling.
Again, you don't need to agree with this treatise to benefit from it. If you enjoy classical Greek philosophy, I strongly recommend the theology of the early Church Fathers, whose intellectual heft rivals that of the best classical philosophy. On the Soul and Resurrection is rigorous, stimulating, and enjoyable to read.
Whether you're sympathetic to the ideas of Plato and other philosophers who affirm the existence of the soul or you're a hardened materialist, you cannot deny that the soul—the essence and consistency of "the self," our sense of a stable and continuous "self"—is a persistent and fascinating problem within philosophy, western *or* eastern. The soul and its nature have inspired some of the best philosophical writing. On the Soul and Resurrection engages directly with this ongoing conversation and develops classical Greek ideas about the self within a doctrinally sound *and* intellectually rigorous Christian framework. Just as you needn't worship the Greek gods to benefit from Plato, you needn't be Orthodox to benefit from St. Gregory.
I would also recommend this treatise to anyone interested in philosophical Buddhism and eastern conceptions of the self. St. Gregory explores the relationship between our conception of self; our true nature; and their relationship to suffering, pain, and what Orthodox Christians call "the passions." He contrasts our passionate nature with our true nature, which is God-like and love-oriented. He explains why purification—the return of the self to its created nature, which exists in harmony with God and creation—can be such a painful process. Just as you don't need to be a Buddhist to benefit from Buddhist insights, you don't need to be Orthodox to benefit from St. Gregory's insights.
St. Gregory of Nyssa is a sensitive thinker. He "steel-mans" his opponents' best arguments about the existence and nature of the soul. He structures his treatise as a dialogue between him and his sister, St. Macrina the Younger. Both Gregory and Macrina confront death as they discuss the soul: Gregory has just lost a dear friend and Macrina conducts the dialogue from her own deathbed. Within the conceit of the treatise, Macrina explains the doctrine of the soul while Gregory offers objections to the Orthodox view. These objections are powerful. I frequently find myself nodding along as Gregory responds to Macrina's account of Orthodox doctrine...which makes Macrina's responses to Gregory all the more compelling.
Again, you don't need to agree with this treatise to benefit from it. If you enjoy classical Greek philosophy, I strongly recommend the theology of the early Church Fathers, whose intellectual heft rivals that of the best classical philosophy. On the Soul and Resurrection is rigorous, stimulating, and enjoyable to read.
regularreadingruth's review
informative
medium-paced
3.25
Informative read for my uni course. Actually quite interesting points
davehershey's review
4.0
If you’ve read any of my reviews, you know I love historical theology and specifically Gregory Of Nyssa and the Cappadocians. This work could be seen as a companion to On the Making of Man and the two have been published together.
I first read this in 2019 and reread it over the course of the past two weeks. I found it much more profound and easier to read this time, using a physical copy. My first reading was the old Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers series that was translated in the late 1800s. You can get all 38 or so volumes of this for like 3 bucks as an e-version. But I think it is worth it to, if you’re into this sort of thing, invest in better copies and translations.
Gregory is famous (well, as much as an early church father can be famous) for teaching universal reconciliation: once evil is eliminated from creation, God is everywhere and all are saved in Jesus. This idea is apparent here, though do not think this means there is no justice or hell. For Gregory, hell becomes more like purgatory, as perhaps people, with their wills cleansed, can become virtuous.
This work is a dialogue between Gregory and his sister Macrina. Macrina is the wise teacher, which is a good reminder that there are Church Mothers as well as Church fathers.
Here are some highlights:
The impulses of the soul can be used for good or evil:
“This being so, we shall not pronounce these emotions of the sou, which lie in the power of their possessors for good or ill, to be either virtue or vice. But, whenever their impules is towards what is noble, then they become matter for praise, as his desire did to Daniel, and his anger to Phineas, and their grief to those who nobly mourn. But if they incline to base ness, then these are, and they are called, bad passions”
One day evil will be expunged and God will be all-in all:
“Signifitying in that passage that when evil shall have been some day annihilated in the long revolutions of the ages, nothing shall be left outside the world of goodness, but that even from those evil spirits shall rise in harmony the confession of Christ’s Lordship.”
Grow in virtue and goodness while you can, so you do not have to suffer long tortures in hell:
“Those still living in the flesh must as much as ever they can separate and free themselves in a way from its attachments by virtuous conduct, in order that after death they may not need a second death to cleanse them from the remnants that are owing to this cement of the flesh, and, when once the bonds are loosed from around the soul, her soaring up to the Good may be swift and unimpeded, with no anguish of the body to distract her”
God is the ultimate Love and Beauty:
“Love, therefore, is the foremost of all excellent achievements and the first of the commandments of the law. If ever, then, the soul reaches this goal, it will be in no need of anything else; it will embrace that plenitude of things which are, whereby alone it seems in any way to preserve within itself the stamp of God’s actual blessedness. For the life of the Supreme Being is love, seeing that the Beautiful is necessarily lovable to those who recognize it, and Deity does recognize it, and so this recognition becomes love, that which He recognizes being made beautiful. . . In fact, in the Beautiful no limit is to be found so that love should have to cease with any limit of the Beautiful. . . Then that good will go unchecked into infinity. Moreover, as every being is capable of attracting its like, and humanity is, in a way, like God, as bearing within itself some resemblance to its Prototype, the soul is by a strict necessity attracted to the kindred Deity”
More on evil being purged:
“Not in hatred or revenge for a wicked life, to my thinking, does God bring upon sinners those painful dispensations; He is only claiming and drawing to Himself whatever, to please Him, came into existence. But while He for a noble end is attracting the soul to Himself, the Fountain of all Blessedness, it is the occasion necessarily to the being so attracted of a state of torture. Just as those who refine gold from dross which it contains not only get this base alloy to melt in the fire, but are obliged to melt pure gold along with the alloy, and then while this last is being consumed the gold remains, so, while evil is being consumed in the purgatorial fire, the soul hat is welded to this evil must inevitably be in the fire too, until the spurious material alloy is consumed and annihilated by this fire.. . In such a manner, I think, we may figure to ourselves the agonized struggle of that soul which has wrapped itself up in earthly material passions, when God is drawing it, His own to one, to Himself, and the foreign matter, which has somehow grown into its substance, has to be scraped from it by main force, and so occasions it that keen intolerable anguish”
God created to fill creation with God:
“It was for this that intelligent beings came into existence; namely, that the riches of the Divine blessings should not lie idle. The all-creating Wisdom fashioned these souls, these receptacles with free wills, as vessels as it were, for this very purpose, that there should be some capacities able to receive his blessing and become continually larger with the inpouring of the stream”
Evil is not part of our natural original existence:
“If God really superintends our live, thens, confessedly, evil cannot begin it. But if we do owe our birth to evil, then we must go on living in completely uniformity with it”
All creation will know God:
“His end is one, and one only; it is this: when the complete whole of our race shall have been perfected from the first man to the last, - some having at once in this life been cleansed from evil, others having afterwards int he necessary periods been healed by the Fire, others having in their life here been unconscious equally of good and of evil, - to offer to everyone of us participation int eh blessings which are in Him, which the Scripture tells us, ‘eye hath not seen, nor ear heard,’ nor thought ever reached. But this is nothing else, as I at least understand it, but to be in God Himself; for the God which is above hearing and eye and heart must be that GOod which transcends the universe”
Overall, a taste of historical theology to challenge many accepted views. If that’s your thing, check it out.
I first read this in 2019 and reread it over the course of the past two weeks. I found it much more profound and easier to read this time, using a physical copy. My first reading was the old Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers series that was translated in the late 1800s. You can get all 38 or so volumes of this for like 3 bucks as an e-version. But I think it is worth it to, if you’re into this sort of thing, invest in better copies and translations.
Gregory is famous (well, as much as an early church father can be famous) for teaching universal reconciliation: once evil is eliminated from creation, God is everywhere and all are saved in Jesus. This idea is apparent here, though do not think this means there is no justice or hell. For Gregory, hell becomes more like purgatory, as perhaps people, with their wills cleansed, can become virtuous.
This work is a dialogue between Gregory and his sister Macrina. Macrina is the wise teacher, which is a good reminder that there are Church Mothers as well as Church fathers.
Here are some highlights:
The impulses of the soul can be used for good or evil:
“This being so, we shall not pronounce these emotions of the sou, which lie in the power of their possessors for good or ill, to be either virtue or vice. But, whenever their impules is towards what is noble, then they become matter for praise, as his desire did to Daniel, and his anger to Phineas, and their grief to those who nobly mourn. But if they incline to base ness, then these are, and they are called, bad passions”
One day evil will be expunged and God will be all-in all:
“Signifitying in that passage that when evil shall have been some day annihilated in the long revolutions of the ages, nothing shall be left outside the world of goodness, but that even from those evil spirits shall rise in harmony the confession of Christ’s Lordship.”
Grow in virtue and goodness while you can, so you do not have to suffer long tortures in hell:
“Those still living in the flesh must as much as ever they can separate and free themselves in a way from its attachments by virtuous conduct, in order that after death they may not need a second death to cleanse them from the remnants that are owing to this cement of the flesh, and, when once the bonds are loosed from around the soul, her soaring up to the Good may be swift and unimpeded, with no anguish of the body to distract her”
God is the ultimate Love and Beauty:
“Love, therefore, is the foremost of all excellent achievements and the first of the commandments of the law. If ever, then, the soul reaches this goal, it will be in no need of anything else; it will embrace that plenitude of things which are, whereby alone it seems in any way to preserve within itself the stamp of God’s actual blessedness. For the life of the Supreme Being is love, seeing that the Beautiful is necessarily lovable to those who recognize it, and Deity does recognize it, and so this recognition becomes love, that which He recognizes being made beautiful. . . In fact, in the Beautiful no limit is to be found so that love should have to cease with any limit of the Beautiful. . . Then that good will go unchecked into infinity. Moreover, as every being is capable of attracting its like, and humanity is, in a way, like God, as bearing within itself some resemblance to its Prototype, the soul is by a strict necessity attracted to the kindred Deity”
More on evil being purged:
“Not in hatred or revenge for a wicked life, to my thinking, does God bring upon sinners those painful dispensations; He is only claiming and drawing to Himself whatever, to please Him, came into existence. But while He for a noble end is attracting the soul to Himself, the Fountain of all Blessedness, it is the occasion necessarily to the being so attracted of a state of torture. Just as those who refine gold from dross which it contains not only get this base alloy to melt in the fire, but are obliged to melt pure gold along with the alloy, and then while this last is being consumed the gold remains, so, while evil is being consumed in the purgatorial fire, the soul hat is welded to this evil must inevitably be in the fire too, until the spurious material alloy is consumed and annihilated by this fire.. . In such a manner, I think, we may figure to ourselves the agonized struggle of that soul which has wrapped itself up in earthly material passions, when God is drawing it, His own to one, to Himself, and the foreign matter, which has somehow grown into its substance, has to be scraped from it by main force, and so occasions it that keen intolerable anguish”
God created to fill creation with God:
“It was for this that intelligent beings came into existence; namely, that the riches of the Divine blessings should not lie idle. The all-creating Wisdom fashioned these souls, these receptacles with free wills, as vessels as it were, for this very purpose, that there should be some capacities able to receive his blessing and become continually larger with the inpouring of the stream”
Evil is not part of our natural original existence:
“If God really superintends our live, thens, confessedly, evil cannot begin it. But if we do owe our birth to evil, then we must go on living in completely uniformity with it”
All creation will know God:
“His end is one, and one only; it is this: when the complete whole of our race shall have been perfected from the first man to the last, - some having at once in this life been cleansed from evil, others having afterwards int he necessary periods been healed by the Fire, others having in their life here been unconscious equally of good and of evil, - to offer to everyone of us participation int eh blessings which are in Him, which the Scripture tells us, ‘eye hath not seen, nor ear heard,’ nor thought ever reached. But this is nothing else, as I at least understand it, but to be in God Himself; for the God which is above hearing and eye and heart must be that GOod which transcends the universe”
Overall, a taste of historical theology to challenge many accepted views. If that’s your thing, check it out.