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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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70 Pages
Page 43
XXII. To those who say, "If the resurrection is a thing excellent and good, how is it that it has not happened already, but is hoped for in some periods of time?" [1689]
1. Let us give our attention, however, to the next point of our discussion. It may be that some one, giving his thought wings to soar towards the sweetness of our hope, deems it a burden and a loss that we are not more speedily placed in that good state which is above man's sense and knowledge, and is dissatisfied with the extension of the time that intervenes between him and the object of his desire. Let him cease to vex himself like a child that is discontented at the brief delay of something that gives him pleasure; for since all things are governed by reason and wisdom, we must by no means suppose that anything that happens is done without reason itself and the wisdom that is therein.
2. You will say then, What is this reason, in accordance with which the change of our painful life to that which we desire does not take place at once, but this heavy and corporeal existence of ours waits, extended to some determinate time, for the term of the consummation of all things, that then man's life may be set free as it were from the reins, and revert once more, released and free, to the life of blessedness and impassibility?
3. Well, whether our answer is near the truth of the matter, the Truth Itself may clearly know; but at all events what occurs to our intelligence is as follows. I take up then once more in my argument our first text:--God says, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and God created man, in the image of God created He him [1690] ." Accordingly, the Image of God, which we behold in universal humanity, had its consummation then [1691] ; but Adam as yet was not; for the thing formed from the earth is called Adam, by etymological nomenclature, as those tell us who are acquainted with the Hebrew tongue--wherefore also the apostle, who was specially learned in his native tongue, the tongue of the Israelites, calls the man "of the earth [1692] " choikos, as though translating the name Adam into the Greek word.
[1689] Otherwise Chap. xxiii. The title in the Bodleian ms. of the Latin version is:--"That when the generation of man is finished, time also will come to an end." Some mss. of the Latin version make the first few words part of the preceding chapter.
[1690] Gen. i. 26, 27.
[1691] This Realism is expressed even more strongly in the De Animâ et Resurrectione.
[1692] 1 Cor. xv. 47.
Reference address : https://elpenor.org/nyssa/making-man.asp?pg=43
