On the Making of Man

On the Making of Man by Gregory of Nyssa

Gregory of Nyssa composed On the Making of Man as a dedicatory Easter gift to his "common father and teacher" Basil, intending it to supply what was lacking on the subject of man in Basil's Hexaemeron. He opens by describing the cosmos as already finished and adorned before man's arrival, likening creation to a royal palace and banquet prepared in advance for a king who would be its last and most deliberated work; unlike the rest of creation, which came into being by a single divine command, man alone was formed "with circumspection," as foretold and planned beforehand, fashioned as a living image of divine sovereignty. Gregory argues that man's upright form, his hands, and his lack of natural weapons or coverings all mark him as suited for rule rather than deficient: his need of the horse, sheep, ox, dog, and iron compensates for what he lacks directly, while his freed mouth and face, unlike those of grass-eating or carnivorous beasts, make him capable of speech. He traces a threefold division of the soul—vegetative, sensitive, and rational—arguing man alone unites all three, and that the "soul" properly so called belongs only to the rational element. He then explores how mind relates to body: the mind is incomprehensible like God, is not confined to any bodily organ (against those who locate it in the heart or brain), yet operates throughout the body like a musician playing an instrument, inoperative when the instrument is impaired, as in sleep, intoxication, or disease; he explains sleep, yawning, tears, laughter, and dreams on this physiological basis, distinguishing ordinary dreams (echoes of waking experience or bodily states) from the divinely granted foreknowledge given to figures like Daniel and Joseph. Turning to Genesis, Gregory contends that being made "in the image of God" pertains to the whole of humanity, foreknown by God "from the first to the last" as a single image, prior to and apart from the division into male and female; that division was added afterward because God foresaw the Fall and the consequent need for generation by succession, as a substitute for the angelic mode of increase humanity would otherwise have shared. From this animal mode of generation man also acquired passions—anger, pleasure, fear, desire—akin to the brutes, which become virtues or vices depending on whether reason governs them. He addresses the food of Paradise and the "tree of the knowledge of good and evil," reading the forbidden fruit as a mixed fruit of good and evil appearance, deceptively attractive, contrasted with the "tree of life," which is Wisdom. Because evil is finite and good is infinite, Gregory reasons that humanity's decline cannot continue forever and must eventually revert to good once evil's limit is reached; restoration is deferred only until the total predetermined number of souls has been completed, at which point generation and time itself will cease, and all things will be transformed instantaneously, "in the twinkling of an eye." He defends the doctrine of the resurrection by appealing to the proven truth of Christ's other predictions, to lesser scriptural miracles of raising the dead (Simon's mother-in-law, the nobleman's son, the ruler's daughter, the young man of Nain, and Lazarus) as a graduated preparation for belief in the general resurrection, and finally to Christ's own resurrection. He rebuts objections based on bodily dissolution by arguing that the soul retains a natural affinity for its own dispersed matter, and counters the claim that matter is coeternal with God by proposing that bodily qualities (color, resistance, quantity) are themselves intelligible and can originate from an intelligible, immaterial God. Gregory then rejects both the theory of the soul's preexistence (which he connects to pagan notions of transmigration and reduces to absurdity) and the view that body precedes soul; instead body and soul originate together at the moment of generation, present potentially as in a seed, unfolding in sequence much as a stalk of wheat is latent in the grain. He closes with an extended account of human physiology considered "from a medical point of view"—the roles of brain, heart, and liver as the three principal organs sustaining life, the function of nerves, arteries, veins, respiration, and digestion—framing the body as the instrument through which the soul's powers are gradually manifested, culminating in reason. The true perfection of the soul, however, lies not in these lower, animal-derived faculties, which will ultimately be "put away," but in the higher attributes constituting the image of God, to which Gregory prays mankind may be restored.

By Gregory of Nyssa · First published 379 · Genre: Theological Treatise, Philosophical Anthropology, Metaphysics · 31 chapters · 40,100 words

First lines

If we had to honour with rewards of money those who excel in virtue, the whole world of money, as Solomon says, would seem but small to be made equal to your virtue in the balance. Since, however, the debt of gratitude due to your Reverence is greater than can be valued in money, and the holy Eastertide demands the accustomed gift of love, we offer to your greatness of mind, O man of God, a gift too small indeed to be worthy of presentation to you, yet not falling short of the extent of our power. The gift is a discourse, like a mean garment, woven not without toil from our poor wit, and the subject of the discourse, while it will perhaps be generally thought audacious, yet seemed not unfitting. For he alone has worthily considered the creation of God who truly was created after God, and whose soul was fashioned in the image of Him Who created him -- Basil, our common father and teacher -- who by his own speculation made the sublime ordering of the universe generally intelligible, making the world as established by God in the true Wisdom known to those who by means of his understanding are led to such contemplation: but we, who fall short even of worthily admiring him, yet intend to add to the great writer's speculations that which is lacking in them, not so as to interpolate his work by insertion (for it is not to be thought of that that lofty mouth should suffer the insult of being given as authority for our discourses), but so that the glory of the teacher may not seem to be failing among his disciples.

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theological anthropology · imago Dei · human nature · soul and body relationship · rationality · divine image · human dignity · virtue ethics · human dominion over animals · Genesis interpretation · resurrection doctrine · divine sovereignty

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