1922 Dr. H. Schmidt has an admirable note here, pointing out the great and important difference between S. Paul’s use of this analogy of the grain of wheat, and that of our Saviour in S. John xii. 23, whence S. Paul took it. In the words, “The hour is come that the Son of man should be glorified. Verily, verily I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit” (A.V.), the fact and the similitude exactly correspond. To the corn with its life-engendering shoot, answers the man with his vivifying soul. The shoot, when the necessary conditions are fulfilled, breaks through the corn, and mounts up into an ear, exquisitely developed: so the soul, when the due time is come, bursts from the body into a nobler form. Again, through the death of the integument a number of new corns are produced: so through the death of the body that encases a perfect soul (i.e. that of Jesus), an abundance of blessings is produced for mankind. Everything here exactly corresponds; the principle of life, on the one hand in the corn, on the other hand in the human body, breaks, by dying, into a more beautiful existence. But this comparison in S. Paul becomes a similitude rather than an analogy. With him the lifeless body is set over against the life-containing corn; he does not compare the lifeless body with the lifeless corn: because out of the latter no stalk and ear would ever grow. The comparison, therefore, is not exact: it is not pretended that the rising to life of the dead human body is not a process transcendently above the natural process of the rising of the ear of wheat. But the similitude serves to illustrate the form and the quality of the risen body, which has been in question since v. 35 (1 Cor. xv.), “with what body do they come?” and the salient point is that the risen body will be as little like the buried body, as the ear of wheat is like its corn. The possibility of the Resurrection has been already proved by S. Paul in this chapter by Christ’s own Resurrection, which he states from the very commencement as a fact: it is not proved by this similitude.
On the Soul and the Resurrection.
“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.” The grain of wheat, after its dissolution in the soil, leaves behind the slightness of its bulk and the peculiar quality of its shape, and yet it has not left and lost itself, but, still self-centred, grows into the ear, though in many points it has made an advance upon itself, viz. in size, in splendour, in complexity, in form. In the same fashion the human being deposits in death all those peculiar surroundings which it has acquired from passionate propensities; dishonour, I mean, and corruption and weakness and characteristics of age; and yet the human being does not lose itself. It changes into an ear of corn as it were; into incorruption, that is, and glory and honour and power and absolute perfection; into a con- dition in which its life is no longer carried on in the ways peculiar to mere nature, but has passed into a spiritual and passionless existence. For it is the peculiarity of the natural body to be always moving on a stream, to be always altering from its state for the moment and changing into something else; but none of these processes, which we observe not in man only but also in plants and brutes will be found remaining in the life that shall be then.
Further, it seems to me that the words of the Apostle in every respect harmonize with our own conception of what the Resurrection is. They indicate the very same thing that we have embodied in our own definition of it, wherein we said that the Resurrection is no other thing than “the re-constitution of our nature in its original form.” For, whereas we learn from 1925 ‘that first the earth brought forth “the green herb” (as the narrative says), and that then from this plant seed was yielded, from which, Scripture in the account of the first Creation when it was shed on the ground, the same form of the original plant again sprang up, the Apostle, it is to be observed, declares that this very same thing happens in the Resurrection also; and so we learn from him the fact, not only!?~4 that our humanity will be then changed into something nobler, but also that what we have therein to expect is nothing else than that which was at the beginning. In the beginning, we see, it was not an ear rising from a grain, but a grain coming from an ear, and, after that, the ear grows round the grain: and so the order indicated in this similitude!?”° clearly shows that all that blessed state, which arises for us by means of the Resurrection is only a return to our pristine state of grace. We too, in fact, were once ina fashion a full ear!?”°; but the burning heat of sin withered us up, and then on our dissolution by death the earth received us: but in the spring of the Resurrection 1923. The Resurrection being the second. The éme151 here does not give the reason for what precedes: that is given in the words, prot 51) tobto 6 andotoAog, to which the leading yap therefore belongs: the colon should be replaced (after avé5pauev) by a comma.
1924 Reading ov pdvov S¢ tobto, x.t.A. The d¢ is not found in two Codd.
1925 _i.e.of grain, adopted by the Apostle.
1926 otc&xuc here might be the nom. plur. Any way it is a “nominativus pendens.”
On the Soul and the Resurrection.
she will reproduce this naked grain!?””
of our body in the form of an ear, tall, well-propor- tioned, and erect, reaching to the heights of heaven, and, for blade and beard, resplendent in incorruption, and with all the other godlike marks. For “this corruptible must put on in- corruption”; and this incorruption and glory and honour and power are those distinct and acknowledged marks of Deity which once belonged to him who was created in God’s image, and which we hope for hereafter. The first man Adam, that is, was the first ear; but with the arrival of evil human nature was diminished into a mere multitude!?”®; and, as happens to the grain!”
on the ear, each individual man was denuded of the beauty of that primal ear, and mouldered in the soil: but in the Resurrection we are born again in our original splendour; only instead of that single primitive ear we become the countless myriads of ears 1927 This “naked grain” is suggested by the words of S. Paul, not so much 1 Cor. xv. 37, as 2 Cor. v. 4: “For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened: not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon.” Tertullian’s words (de resurr. carnis c. 52) deserve to be quoted, “Seritur granum sine folliculi veste, sine funda- mento spice, sine munimento arist, sine superbia culmi. Exsurgit copia feneratum, compagine edificatum, ordine structum, cultu munitum, et usquequaque vestitum.” In allusion to this passage (2 Cor. v. 4), Origen says, “Our theory of the Resurrection teaches that the relations of a seed attach to that which the Scriptures call the ‘tabernacle of the soul,’ in which the righteous ‘do groan being burdened,’ not wishing to put it off, but ‘to be clothed upon’ (with something else). We do not, as Celsus thinks, mean by the resurrection anything like the transmigration of souls. The soul, in its essence unbodied and invisible, when it comes into material space, requires a body fitted to the conditions of that particular space: which body it wears, having either put off a former body, or else having put it on over its former body...For instance, when it comes to the actual birth into this world it lays aside the environment (xwptov) which was needed as long as it is in the womb of her that is with child: and it clothes itself with that which is necessary for one destined to pass through life. Then there is a ‘tabernacle,’ and ‘an earthly house,’ as well: and the Scriptures tell us that this ‘earthly house’ of the tabernacle is to be dissolved, but that the tabernacle itself is to surround itself with another house not made with hands. The men of God declare that the corruptible must put on incorruption (which is a different thing from the incorruptible), and the mortal must put on immortality (which is different from the immortal: just as the relative quality of wisdom is different from that which is absolutely wise). Observe, then, where this system leads us. It says that the souls put on incorruption and immortality like garments which keep their wearer from corruption, and their inmate (tov mepikeivevov avtc) from death” (c. Cels. vii. 32). We see at once this is another explanation of the Resur- rection, by the omeppatiKoc Adyos of the soul, and not Gregory’s; with him the soul recollects its scattered atoms, and he thus saves the true scriptural view.
» 1928 This connection of “evil” and “multitude” is essentially Platonic. Cf. also Plotinus, vi. 6. 1: “Multitude, then, is a revolt from unity, and infinity a more complete revolt by being infinite multitude: and so infinity is bad, and we are bad, when we are a multitude” (cf. “Legion” in the parable).
1929 as happens to the grain, i.e. to become bare, as compared with the beautiful envelopments of the entire ear.
On the Soul and the Resurrection.
in the cornfields. The virtuous life as contrasted with that of vice is distinguished thus: those who while living have by virtuous conduct exercised husbandry on themselves are at once revealed in all the qualities of a perfect ear, while those whose bare grain (that is the forces of their natural soul) has become through evil habits degenerate, as it were, and hardened by the weather (as the so-called “hornstruck” seeds'?*° , according to the experts in such things, grow up), will, though they live again in the Resurrection, experience very great severity from their Judge, because they do not possess the strength to shoot up into the full proportions of an ear, and thereby become that which we were before our earthly fall?" The remedy offered by the Overseer of the produce is to collect together the tares and the thorns, which have grown up with the good seed, and into whose bastard life all the secret forces that once nourished its root have passed, so that it not only has had to remain without its nutriment, but has been choked and so rendered unproductive by this unnatural growth. When from the nutritive part within them everything that is the reverse or the counterfeit of it has been picked out, and has been committed to the fire that consumes everything unnatural, and so has disappeared, then in this class also their humanity will thrive and will ripen into fruit-bearing, owing to such husbandry, and some day after long courses of ages will get back again that universal form which God stamped upon us at the beginning. Blessed are they, indeed, in whom the full beauty of those ears shall be developed directly they are born in the Resurrection. Yet we say this without implying that any merely bodily distinctions will be manifest between those who have lived virtuously and those who have lived viciously in this life, as if we ought to think that one will be imperfect as regards his material frame, while another will win perfection as regards it. The prisoner and the free, here in this present world, are just alike as regards the constitutions of their two bodies; though as regards en- joyment and suffering the gulfis wide between them. In this way, I take it, should we reckon the difference between the good and the bad in that intervening time!?**. For the perfection 1930 “hornstruck” seeds, i.e. those which have been struck by, or have struck, the horns of the oxen, in the process of sowing: according to the rustic superstition, which Gregory Nazianz. in some very excellent hexameters alludes to (Opp. t. II. pp. 66-163): “There is,” he says, “a dry unsoakable seed, which never sinks into the ground, or fattens with the rain; it is harder than horn; its horn has struck the horn of the ox, what time the ploughman’s hand is scattering the grain over his land.” Ruhnken (ad Timeum, p. 155) has collected the ancient authorities on this point. The word is used by Plato of a “hard,” “intractable” person. The “bare grain” of the wicked is here compared to these hard seeds, which even though they may sink into the earth and rise again, yet have a poor and stunted blade, which may never grow.
1931 Reading Emi tij¢ yijs, instead of trv yij\v: for a fall “on to the earth,” instead of “on the earth,” agrees neither with what Gregory (speaking by Macrina) has urged against the heathen doctrine of Transmigration, nor with the words of Scripture which he follows. The “earthly fall” is compared with the heavenly rising: Katantwots, in the sense of a “moral fall,” is used in 3 Maccab. ii. 14 (quoted by Schmidt).
1932 Between the Resurrection and the Anoxatéotaoic On the Soul and the Resurrection.
of bodies that rise from that sowing of death is, as the Apostle tells us, to consist in incorrup- tion and glory and honour and power; but any diminution in such excellences does not denote a corresponding bodily mutilation of him who has risen again, but a withdrawal and estrangement from each one of those things which are conceived of as belonging to the good. Seeing, then, that one or the other of these two diametrically opposed ideas, I mean good and evil, must any way attach to us, it is clear that to say a man is not included in the good is a necessary demonstration that he is included in the evil. But then, in connection with evil, we find no honour, no glory, no incorruption, no power; and so we are forced to dismiss all doubt that a man who has nothing to do with these last-mentioned things must be connected with their opposites, viz. with weakness, with dishonour, with corruption, with everything of that nature, such as we spoke of in the previous parts of the discussion, when we said how many were the passions, sprung from evil, which are so hard for the soul to get rid of, when they have infused themselves into the very substance of its entire nature and become one with it. When such, then, have been purged from it and utterly removed by the healing processes worked out by the Fire, then every one of the things which make up our conception of the good will come to take their place; incorruption, that is, and life, and honour, and grace, and glory, and everything else that we conjecture is to be seen in God, and in His Image, man as he was made.
Apologetic Works.
IV.—Apologetic Works.
The Great Catechism.
The Great Catechism)”.
The Trinity.
Prologue and Chapter 1.—The belief in God rests on the art and wisdom displayed in the order of the world: the belief in the Unity of God, on the perfection that must belong to Him in respect of power, goodness, wisdom, etc. Still, the Christian who combats polytheism has need of care lest in contending against Hellenism he should fall unconsciously into Judaism. For God has a Logos: else He would be without reason. And this Logos cannot be merely an attribute of God. We are led to a more exalted conception of the Logos by the consideration that in the measure in which God is greater than we, all His predicates must also be higher than those which belong to us. Our logos is limited and transient; but the subsistence of the Divine Logos must be indestructible; and at the same time living, since the rational cannot be lifeless, like a stone. It must also have an independent life, not a par- ticipated life, else it would lose its simplicity; and, as living, it must also have the faculty of will. This will of the Logos must be equalled by his power: for a mixture of choice and im- potence would, again, destroy the simplicity. His will, as being Divine, must be also good. From this ability and will to work there follows the realization of the good; hence the bringing into existence of the wisely and artfully adjusted world. But since, still further, the logical conception of the Word is in a certain sense a relative one, it follows that together with the Word He Who speaks it, i.e. the Father of the Word, must be recognized as existing. Thus the mystery of the faith avoids equally the absurdity of Jewish monotheism, and that of heathen polytheism. On the one hand, we say that the Word has life and activity; on the other, we affirm that we find in the Adyoc, whose existence is derived from the Father, all the attributes of the Father’s nature.
Chapter II.—By the analogy of human breath, which is nothing but inhaled and exhaled fire, i.e. an object foreign to us, is demonstrated the community of the Divine Spirit with the essence of God, and yet the independence of Its existence.
1933 It is not exactly clear why this Instruction for Catechizers is called the “Great”: perhaps with reference to some lesser manual. For its apologetic intention, see Prolegomena, p. 12. Its genuineness, which has been called in question by a few merely on the ground of opinions in it Origenistic and even Eutychian, is confirmed by Theodoret, Dial. ii. 3, contr. Eutych. Aubertin and Casaubon both recognize Gregory as its author. The division, however, of the chapters, by whoever made, is far from a correct guide to the contents; but, by grouping them, the main argument can be made clear.
Summary.
Chapter III.—From the Jewish doctrine, then, the unity of the Divine nature has been retained: from Hellenism the distinction into hypostases. Chapter IV.—The Jew convicted from Scripture.
Reasonableness of the Incarnation.
Chapters V. and VI.—God created the world by His reason and wisdom; for He cannot have proceeded irrationally in that work; but His reason and wisdom are, as above shown, not to be conceived as a spoken word, or as the mere possession of knowledge, but as a personal and willing potency. If the entire world was created by this second Divine hypo- stasis, then certainly was man also thus created; yet not in view of any necessity, but from superabounding love, that there might exist a being who should participate in the Divine perfections. If man was to be receptive of these, it was necessary that his nature should contain an element akin to God; and, in particular, that he should be immortal. Thus, then, man was created in the image of God. He could not therefore be without the gifts of freedom, independence, self-determination; and his participation in the Divine gifts was consequently made dependent on his virtue. Owing to this freedom he could decide in favour of evil, which cannot have its origin in the Divine will, but only in our inner selves, where it arises in the form of a deviation from good, and so a privation of it. Vice is opposed to virtue only as the absence of the better. Since, then, all that is created is subject to change, it was possible that, in the first instance, one of the created spirits should turn his eye away from the good, and become envious, and that from this envy should arise a leaning towards badness, which should, in natural sequence, prepare the way for all other evil. He seduced the first men into the folly of turning away from goodness, by disturbing the Divinely ordered harmony between their sensuous and intellectual natures; and guilefully tainting their wills with evil.
Chapters VII. and VII.—God did not, on account of His foreknowledge of the evil that would result from man’s creation, leave man uncreated; for it was better to bring back sinners to original grace by the way of repentance and physical suffering than not to create man at all. The raising up of the fallen was a work befitting the Giver of life, Who is the wisdom and power of God; and for this purpose He became man.
Chapter [X.—The Incarnation was not unworthy of Him; for only evil brings degradation.
Chapter X.—The objection that the finite cannot contain the infinite, and that therefore the human nature could not receive into itself the Divine, is founded on the false supposition that the Incarnation of the Word means that the infinity of God was contained in the limits of the flesh, as in a vessel —Comparison of the flame and wick.
Chapters XI., XII, XIII.—For the rest, the manner in which the Divine nature was united to the human surpasses our power of comprehension; although we are not permitted to doubt the fact of that union in Jesus, on account of the miracles which He wrought. The su- pernatural character of those miracles bears witness to their Divine origin.
Summary.
Summary.
Chapters XIV., XV., XVI., XVII.—The scheme of the Incarnation is still further drawn out, to show that this way for man’s salvation was preferable to a single fiat of God’s will. Christ took human weakness upon Him; but it was physical, not moral, weakness. In other words the Divine goodness did not change to its opposite, which is only vice. In Him soul and body were united, and then separated, according to the course of nature; but after He had thus purged human life, He reunited them upon a more general scale, for all, and for ever, in the Resurrection.
Chapter XVIII.—The ceasing of demon-worship, the Christian martyrdoms, and the devastation of Jerusalem, are accepted by some as proofs of the Incarnation— Chapters XIX., XX.—But not by the Greek and the Jew. To return, then, to its reason- ableness. Whether we regard the goodness, the power, the wisdom, or the justice of God, it displays a combination of all these acknowledged attributes, which, if one be wanting, cease to be Divine. It is therefore true to the Divine perfection.
Chapters XXI., XXII., XXIII.—What, then, is the justice in it? We must remember that man was necessarily created subject to change (to better or to worse). Moral beauty was to be the direction in which his free will was to move; but then he was deceived, to his ruin, by an illusion of that beauty. After we had thus freely sold ourselves to the deceiver, He who of His goodness sought to restore us to liberty could not, because He was just too, for this end have recourse to measures of arbitrary violence. It was necessary therefore that a ransom should be paid, which should exceed in value that which was to be ransomed; and hence it was necessary that the Son of God should surrender Himself to the power of death. God’s justice then impelled Him to choose a method of exchange, as His wisdom was seen in ex- ecuting it.
Chapters XXIV., XXV.—But how about the power? That was more conspicuously dis- played in Deity descending to lowliness, than in all the natural wonders of the universe. It was like flame being made to stream downwards. Then, after such a birth, Christ conquered death.
Chapter XXVI.—A certain deception was indeed practised upon the Evil one, by con- cealing the Divine nature within the human; but for the latter, as himself a deceiver, it was only a just recompense that he should be deceived himself: the great adversary must himself at last find that what has been done is just and salutary, when he also shall experience the benefit of the Incarnation. He, as well as humanity, will be purged.
Chapters XXVII., XXVIH.—A patient, to be healed, must be touched; and humanity had to be touched by Christ. It was not in “heaven”; so only through the Incarnation could it be healed.—It was, besides, no more inconsistent with His Divinity to assume a human than a “heavenly” body; all created beings are on a level beneath Deity. Even “abundant honour” is due to the instruments of human birth.
Summary.
Summary.
Chapters XXIX., XXX., XXXI.—As to the delay of the Incarnation, it was necessary that human degeneracy should have reached the lowest point, before the work of salvation could enter in. That, however, grace through faith has not come to all must be laid to the account of human freedom; if God were to break down our opposition by violent means, the praise- worthiness of human conduct would be destroyed.
Chapter XXXII.—Even the death on the Cross was sublime: for it was the culminating and necessary point in that scheme of Love in which death was to be followed by blessed resurrection for the whole “lump” of humanity: and the Cross itself has a mystic meaning.
The Sacraments.
Chapters XXXIIL., XXXIV., XXXV., XXXVI.—The saving nature of Baptism depends on three things; Prayer, Water, and Faith. 1. It is shown how Prayer secures the Divine Presence. God is a God of truth; and He has promised to come (as Miracles prove that He has come already) if invoked in a particular way. 2. It is shown how the Deity gives life from water. In human generation, even without prayer, He gives life from a small beginning. In a higher generation He transforms matter, not into soul, but into spirit. 3. Human freedom, as evinced in faith and repentance, is also necessary to Regeneration. Being thrice dipped in the water is our earliest mortification; coming out of it is a forecast of the ease with which the pure shall rise in a blessed resurrection: the whole process is an imitation of Christ.
Chapter XXXVII.—The Eucharist unites the body, as Baptism the soul, to God. Our bodies, having received poison, need an Antidote; and only by eating and drinking can it enter. One Body, the receptacle of Deity, is this Antidote, thus received. But how can it enter whole into each one of the Faithful? This needs an illustration. Water gives its own body to a skin-bottle. So nourishment (bread and wine) by becoming flesh and blood gives bulk to the human frame: the nourishment is the body. Just as in the case of other men, our Saviour’s nourishment (bread and wine) was His Body; but these, nourishment and Body, were in Him changed into the Body of God by the Word indwelling. So now repeatedly the bread and wine, sanctified by the Word (the sacred Benediction), is at the same time changed into the Body of that Word; and this Flesh is disseminated amongst all the Faithful.
Chapters XXXVIII., XXXIX.—It is essential for Regeneration to believe that the Son and the Spirit are not created spirits, but of like nature with God the Father; for he who would make his salvation dependent (in the baptismal Invocation) on anything created would trust to an imperfect nature, and one itself needing a saviour.
Chapter XL.—He alone has truly become a child of God who gives evidence of his re- generation by putting away from himself all vice.
Prologue.
Prologue.
The presiding ministers of the “mystery of godliness”!?*4 have need of a system in their instructions, in order that the Church may be replenished by the accession of such as should be saved!?3° , through the teaching of the word of Faith being brought home to the hearing of unbelievers. Not that the same method of instruction will be suitable in the case of all who approach the word. The catechism must be adapted to the diversities of their religious worship; with an eye, indeed, to the one aim and end of the system, but not using the same method of preparation in each individual case. The Judaizer has been preoccupied with one set of notions, one conversant with Hellenism, with others; while the Anomcean, and the me. and the rest on Manichee, with the followers of Marcion!?”®, Valentinus, and Basilides the list of those who have wandered into heresy, each of them being prepossessed with their peculiar notions, necessitate a special controversy with their several. opinions. The method of recovery must be adapted to the form of the disease. You will not by the same means cure the polytheism of the Greek, and the unbelief of the Jew as to the Only-begotten God: nor as regards those who have wandered into heresy will you, by the same arguments in each case, upset their misleading romances as to the tenets of the Faith. No one could set Sabelli- 1936 Marcion, a disciple of Cerdo, added a third Principle to the two which his master taught. The first is an unnamed, invisible, and good God, but no creator; the second is a visible and creative God, i.e. the Demiurge; the third intermediate between the invisible and visible God, i.e. the Devil. The Demiurge is the God and Judge of the Jews. Marcion affirmed the Resurrection of the soul alone. He rejected the Law and the Prophets as pro- ceeding from the Demiurge; only Christ came down from the unnamed and invisible Father to save the soul, and to confute this God of the Jews. The only Gospel he acknowledged was S. Luke’s, omitting the beginning which details our Lord’s Conception and Incarnation. Other portions also both in the middle and the end he curtailed. Besides this broken Gospel of S. Luke he retained ten of the Apostolic letters, but garbled even them. Gregory says elsewhere that the followers of Eunomius got their “duality of Gods” from Marcion, but went beyond him in denying essential goodness to the Only-begotten, the “God of the Gospel.”