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Translated by W. Moore and H. A. Wilson
St Gregory of Nyssa Resources Online and in Print
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54 Pages
Page 19
In like manner whatever material excrescences are hardening on our souls, that have been sensualized by fellowship with the body's affections, are, in the day of the judgment [1965] , as it were cut and scraped away by the ineffable wisdom and power of Him Who, as the Gospel says, "healeth those that are sick [1966] ." For, as He says again, "they that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick [1967] ." Since, then, there has been inbred in the soul a strong natural tendency to evil, it must suffer, just as the excision of a wart [1968] gives a sharp pain to the skin of the body; for whatever contrary to the nature has been inbred in the nature attaches itself to the subject in a certain union of feeling, and hence there is produced an abnormal intermixture of our own with an alien quality, so that the feelings, when the separation from this abnormal growth comes, are hurt and lacerated. Thus when the soul pines and melts away under the correction of its sins, as prophecy somewhere tells us [1969] , there necessarily follow, from its deep and intimate connection with evil, certain unspeakable and inexpressible pangs, the description of which is as difficult to render as is that of the nature of those good things which are the subjects of our hope. For neither the one nor the other is capable of being expressed in words, or brought within reach of the understanding. If, then, any one looks to the ultimate aim of the Wisdom of Him Who directs the economy of the universe, he would be very unreasonable and narrow-minded to call the Maker of man the Author of evil; or to say that He is ignorant of the future, or that, if He knows it and has made him, He is not uninfluenced by the impulse to what is bad. He knew what was going to be, yet did not prevent the tendency towards that which actually happened. That humanity, indeed, would be diverted from the good, could not be unknown to Him Who grasps all things by His power of foresight, and Whose eyes behold the coming equally with the past events. As, then, He had in sight the perversion, so He devised man's recall to good. Accordingly, which was the better way?--never to have brought our nature into existence at all, since He foresaw that the being about to be created would fall away from that which is morally beautiful; or to bring him back by repentance, and restore his diseased nature to its original beauty? But, because of the pains and sufferings of the body which are the necessary accidents of its unstable nature, to call God on that account the Maker of evil, or to think that He is not the Creator of man at all, in hopes thereby to prevent the supposition of His being the Author of what gives us pain,--all this is an instance of that extreme narrow-mindedness which is the mark of those who judge of moral good and moral evil by mere sensation.
[1965] in the day of the judgment. The reading ktiseos, which Hervetus has followed, must be wrong here.
[1966] S. Matt. ix. 12
[1967] S. Mark ii. 17
[1968] of a wart; murmekias. Gregory uses the same simile in his treatise On the Soul (iii. p. 204). The following "scholium" in Greek is found in the margin of two mss. of that treatise, and in that of one ms. of this treatise: "There is an affection of the skin which is called a wart. A small fleshy excrescence projects from the skin, which seems a part of it, and a natural growth upon it: but this is not really so; and therefore it requires removal for its cure. This illustration made use of by Gregory is exceedingly appropriate to the matter in hand."
[1969] Ps. xxxix. (xxxviii.) 11: "When thou with rebukes dost correct man for iniquity, thou makest his beauty to consume away" (A.V).
Reference address : https://elpenor.org/nyssa/great-catechism.asp?pg=19
