Eschatology of Saint Gregory of Nyssa

Contents The concept and meaning of death Immortality of the soul The connection of the soul with the elements of the deceased body The fate of the soul in the afterlife The state of the righteous The state of the wicked General resurrection The end of the world and the general Judgment Apocatastasis Christian eschatology, despite the fact that its subject is the doctrine of the future, final destinies of the world and man, found detailed and multifaceted development already in the primal Church, in the first Christian centuries. The reason for this was the special historical circumstances of the primacy of the Church. Among the persecutions from the pagan world, the followers of the religion of Christ sought and found consolation and reinforcement only in the hope of a future life, an afterlife. Hence, a characteristic feature of the Christian way of thinking of that time was a passionate desire for the future, for the speedy fulfillment of divine promises. This mood, this intense aspiration of all hopes and thoughts towards the future could not help but be reflected in the first Christian literature. A whole series of church writers, starting from the very apostolic times, were to a greater or lesser extent engaged in the disclosure and possible clarification of eschatological issues, so that by the 3rd century this part of the Christian doctrine already had a long history. Many different opinions, many private judgments, often diverging from each other, were expressed during this time regarding various individual eschatological points. But the very difference and often the contradiction of these opinions and judgments was the reason that Christian eschatology of that time could not be called firmly dogmatically established - at least this must be said regarding some issues of eschatology. That is why, in the 3rd century, Origen, summing up various parts of the Christian doctrine, among the dogmas precisely defined by the Church, did not raise questions regarding the final fate of the world. 1 He considered eschatology not yet examined, its questions open, unresolved. Of course, he did not understand the unresolved nature of these questions in the sense that there would be no answers to them in the living church consciousness of his day; no, he met these answers everywhere around him; but such immediate beliefs, not examined in a strictly scientific manner, in his opinion, are not at all the same as the decisive dogmas of the church; That’s why he considered them not obligatory for himself, and considered himself completely free to have his own personal opinion in this case. Having thus abandoned the ready-made solutions to eschatological questions that existed in the church faith of that time and in the writings of previous fathers and teachers of the church, Origen began to solve them in his own way. Based on his philosophical principles, he built an eschatology that was much more reminiscent of the Platonic teaching about the final destinies of the world of ideas than the biblical and church teaching about that. Origen himself well understood this discord between his views and those of the general church, but he was brought to this by the logical sequence of those principles to which he was faithful throughout his entire dogmatic system. Nevertheless, it was difficult for him to give a completely philosophical tribute to his principles in direct opposition to the teachings of the church; he did not at all want and did not mean to part with this last one completely. In this state of affairs, a middle path lay before him; all that remained, along with philosophical teaching, was to retain the general church belief, but to do this in such a way that the discord between one and the other was not too noticeable and did not immediately catch the eye. Origen's eschatology represents, indeed, such an attempt to combine philosophical, Platonic principles with direct church beliefs. Although this attempt cannot be called completely successful, in any case, Origen’s system will remain an undoubted, holistic idea, if not entirely consistent with the spirit of biblical teaching, then at least strictly logically built on well-known philosophical foundations. Origen's dogmatic views had a great influence on the subsequent history of Christian doctrine. A long line of ecclesiastical writers reflect in their writings clear traces of this influence. In particular, the eschatological judgments of the Alexandrian teacher found an echo in the writings of one of the famous Fathers and teachers of the church of the 4th century, St. Gregory of Nyssa. Questions about the final fate of the world and man occupied and interested the bishop. Nyssa more than any other of his contemporaries, and his eschatology represents one of the most remarkable phenomena of this kind, both in the breadth and depth of his judgments. A characteristic feature of the Christian way of thinking - the desire to penetrate the secrets of the afterlife - is found in St. Gregory's most perfect expression. He does not hide, however, that the thoughts that arise from this desire go beyond the limits of our real power of understanding, that only truth itself can clearly see whether they are approaching the truth; 2 but this could not keep him from giving his opinions on this subject free flow. Like Origen, he did not want to be content with ready-made, already given solutions to the questions that interested him; he wanted to understand, clarify and scientifically substantiate the direct church faith. But St. Gregory wanted to do this, if possible, without deviating from the biblical general church teaching, and therefore his connection with this latter is much stronger than that of Origen. He rather decides to be inconsistent, to admit a contradiction to his scientific views, than to express an idea that does not agree with firmly established church tradition. And only in those few points that, in his opinion, did not have the character of invariably established truths, did he allow himself to deviate from the usual church view and more or less approach Origenism. Justice requires, however, to note that in this last respect, St. Gregory does not carry out his opinions with strict consistency. Along with purely Origenistic opinions, he often comes across thoughts from general church tradition that contradict them. This state of affairs has long posed difficulties for researchers of the St. Gregory and divided them into two camps, one of which was found in the writings of Bishop. Nyssa's Origenistic errors, the other resolutely asserted the correctness and agreement with the church of all points of Gregory's eschatology. From this side, the eschatology of St. Gregory is of particular scientific interest to the researcher. A positive presentation of this, in many respects not devoid of originality, teaching of Bishop. Nyssky about the final destinies of the world and man, on the one hand, and a feasible clarification of the controversial issue of the relationship of Gregory’s eschatology to Origenism, on the other, is the task that our present study has in mind. Philosophizing about man according to the instructions of Holy Scripture, St. Gregory distinguishes three states in the entire life of mankind: 1) the state of original purity and innocence, in which the first people were before the Fall; 2) a state similar to it in everything, which will follow the general resurrection and fulfillment of all times; 3) between one and the other - a middle state, embracing the present, earthly and future afterlife until the general resurrection, as a state of evasion from the first and preparation for the second of the above states. Created in the image of God, with high perfections in soul and body, and destined for the enjoyment of divine blessings, man had to reflect in his life and activity the endless perfections of the Creator - based on the image of God embedded in his nature - to gain the likeness of God. 3 This is the goal, towards the gradual achievement of which, humanity - according to the Creator's thoughts - had to strive for throughout eternity. But since this assimilation to the Divine was left to the free will of man (“so that the participation of goods would be a reward for virtue”), 4 then, along with the possibility of steady striving for the goal intended by the Creator, the primordial man also had the opposite possibility - the possibility of moving away from the straight path towards evil and vice. This last possibility, under the influence of the enemy of the human race (the devil), actually came true in the lives of the first people. Man fell: instead of achieving godlikeness, he darkened the image of God within himself. “Strengthened by God’s blessing, he was great in dignity, because he was appointed to reign over the earth and over everything that is on it; had a beautiful appearance, because he became an image of primitive beauty; he was dispassionate by nature, because he was in the likeness of the Dispassionate; filled with boldness, enjoying the very manifestation of God face to face 5, etc. But with the entry of sin into human nature, God’s blessing in it began to fade and weaken, and with its impoverishment, the place of divine properties, of necessity, took the place directly opposite to them. “Just as the opposite of life is death, and strength is weakness, so blessing is a curse, boldness is shame, and every good thing is the opposite of reason.” 6 Thus, the inclination towards vice that arose from envy became the path to any evil that followed it. “For whoever has once developed an inclination towards evil, having generated envy in himself through aversion from grace, is like a stone that, being torn away from the top of a mountain, is driven down the slope by its own weight, and he himself, having severed his natural ties with goodness, having become burdened and bowed to vice, willfully, as if carried away by some burden, reaches the extreme limit of wickedness.” 7 Since the time of the Fall, a second period has thus begun in human life, the period of development and domination of evil, and with it all the disasters in which we now see humanity. Man himself chose this life, and God left him in it so that, having tasted the evil he desired, he would the more strongly desire the first blessings and, having purified himself, would spontaneously return to the grace originally bestowed on his nature. 8 – That humanity would deviate from good was not unknown to Him who contains everything through the power of clairvoyance and sees the future along with the past. But even knowing the future, He did not stop man’s free striving for evil, because, foreseeing the deviation, He also knew man’s return to good again. 9 Allowed for the purposes of divine economy, evil must remain in our nature forever. God did not completely reject man who sinned; but, on the contrary, through providential guidance, it gradually restores it to the lost purity and bliss. The entire history of fallen humanity is nothing more than the course of an illness and, at the same time, a gradual healing from it. As the Wise One, God knows the most faithful and appropriate means of healing. The goodness of God turns both the present life in the body and the afterlife after the separation of the soul from the body into a means of salvation for us. And through its own self-activity (through virtue - in this life), and purely Divine means (death and “the honor of the purifying fire - after repose from here”), 10 - humanity is gradually cleansed from the filth of sin, enlightens the image of God in itself, although darkened by evil, but not lost at all, and through this comes closer and closer to the original goal of its purpose. – Finally, this period of evasion from primitive bliss and gradual return to it must come to an end. After long centuries of moving away from God and wandering along the path of evil and vice, humanity will again be brought to the right path of serving God and becoming like Him: “again paradise, again that tree, which is the tree of life; again the gift of the image of God and the dignity of authority.” 11 And this (third) period of a renewed blissful state will continue throughout endless eternity: the memory of previous misfortunes will be sufficient to keep our nature from new enslavement to sinful disasters. 12 Of the three, briefly characterized now, states (periods) in the entire life of mankind, - at the request of our direct task - we must subject the thoughts of St. Gregory regarding the last two: a) the state of cleansing from evil and approaching the original grace and b) the final restoration to this latter. And since the first of these two states, in turn, decomposes into two main periods, the dividing point between which is death, then, leaving aside the present earthly life with its preparatory means for the future, we will begin our study from the moment of death, when man’s independent participation in the matter of his restoration to the primitive state ceases and the actual (exclusively) “healing and healing from God, elevating His creation to the original grace” begins. 13 The concept and meaning of death Death was not the lot of the first-created human being, adorned with the image of God and endowed with all Divine blessings. “And since eternity is also among the blessings inherent in the nature of God, it was necessary, without a doubt, for our nature, by its structure, not to be deprived of its share in this, but to have immortality in itself, so that, according to its innate power, it could cognize the Supreme Being and desire the eternity of God.” 14 “Since by free movement we have drawn ourselves into communication with evil, with some kind of pleasure, as if some kind of poison seasoned with honey, mixing evil into nature, and through this, having lost the bliss, which, as we imagine, consists in not suffering, we have been transformed into vice: then for this reason man, like some meager vessel, again decomposes into the earth, so that, after the separation of what he has now perceived defilement, could be recreated in its original form by resurrection.” 15 So death, being a natural, sad consequence of the Fall, is at the same time one of the first “good deeds” (ἠ χάρις) on the part of the merciful God, healing our nature, infected with sin. God decomposes human nature into its component parts in death, so that, after the appropriate purification of each of them separately, he can unite them again in resurrection to form a pure, renewed man. This view of the beneficial meaning of death for a person is St. Gregory tries to explain with the following similitude: “let us suppose,” he says, “that a certain vessel is made of clay, and for some purpose it is filled with melted lead; The lead poured into it has hardened and remains such that it cannot be poured out; but the owner of the vessel wants to make it suitable for himself; Knowing the meager art, he knocks out shards of lead, and then again, for his own use, makes the vessel in its previous form, not filled with the mixed substance. Likewise, the Creator of our vessel, since vice was mixed with the sensory part, I mean the body, having decomposed all the substance that had received evil into itself, and having recreated it again in resurrection without any admixture of the opposite, restores the vessel to primitive goodness.” 16 The possibility of the physical death of the body lies in its complexity and decomposability into the different elements of which it consists. As soon as the soul is separated from the body, the heterogeneous substances that compose it lose their forced and involuntary connection and each of the bodily particles located in us returns to its place: the earth is given to what is earthy, to the air - what is characteristic of it, to water - what belongs to it, and to warmth - what corresponds to it. 17 But through death the body only decomposes, and is by no means completely destroyed: “for destruction is a transformation into nothingness (ἡ εὶς τὸ μὴ ὅν μεταχώρησις), and decomposition is again a resolution to those elements of the world from which a thing was composed (ἡ εὶς τὰ τοῦ κόσμου στοιχεῖα πάλιν… διάλυσις). 18 But what is in these elements did not perish, although it became inaccessible to the perception of our senses. 19 Even more: the parts of our body decomposed by death, even if they are united with the general elements of the world, are by no means mixed with them to the point of indistinguishability, but, as if marked by special, naturally placed signs, always remain, as parts of a known, definite body, so that, having united again in resurrection, they form the same essentially man as was decomposed by death. 20 Death, as we noted above, is - according to the view of St. Gregory is not so much a punishment as a providential (ἐκ προμηϑείας) action of the divine economy, healing our depravity (τὴν κακίαν). In particular, for the body, it serves as a means of healing and cleansing, on the one hand, from those unnatural, sinful passions in which it took part during the continuation of this earthly life, and on the other hand, from those natural, necessary properties and functions that, being adapted to the conditions of this earthly existence, turn out to be unnecessary and not necessary for enjoying the future life. Although the body itself “directs its aspirations only to what serves to preserve its composition and the continuation of life,” these legitimate aspirations, under the influence of a vicious will, often cross their proper boundaries and turn into sinful passion. Thus, for example, according to natural inclination, the body needs food and drink to replenish the lack and exhaustion of strength; the need for marital intercourse and childbearing is the natural desire of a mortal being to become, as it were, immortal; the deprivation of hair gives rise to a legitimate need for the outer clothing of our body, and the inability to endure heat, cold and rain gives rise to a natural need for protection under the roof of houses. 21 “Whoever looks at these and similar needs rationally, calmly accepts each of them, the goal of his aspirations being to supply the necessary: ​​a house, clothing, a spouse, food - with all this satisfying the needs of nature. But the slave of pleasure makes necessary needs the paths of passions: instead of food, he seeks the pleasures of the belly; prefers jewelry to clothes; useful arrangement of dwellings - their great value; instead of childbearing, he turns his attention to lawless and forbidden pleasures. Therefore, covetousness, effeminacy, pride, vanity, and all sorts of debauchery entered into human life through wide gates.” 22 “Death is a thorough purification of all this and the like.” 23 And not only passionate and vicious inclinations that have grown into necessary bodily needs, like unnecessary “offshoots and branches,” will be destroyed by death, but those needs themselves will no longer have a place in the purified body. “For in the future life what is needed for him now will not be suitable, but the structure of our body will be akin to and corresponding to the enjoyment of that life and harmoniously adapted to the use of its benefits. 24 A block of rough iron is useful for blacksmithing in its natural, unprocessed form, serving as an anvil for the blacksmith. But when it is necessary to process iron for some finer thing, then the block is carefully cleaned by fire from everything earthy and useless, which is usually called dross. And thus, the former anvil, having been cleaned by processing, became armor or some other finely crafted thing, having been cleansed through incandescence in a furnace from that excess, which, while it was an anvil, was not considered superfluous for the then use; for the dross that was part of the block brought some benefit, increasing the mass of iron. 25 “So in due time the Artist of all things will melt the lump of (our) body into a weapon of favor, making from it both the breastplate of righteousness, as the Apostle says (Eph. 6:13-18), and the sword of the Spirit and the helmet of hope and the full armor of God.” 26 This is the concept and meaning of death in relation to one side of the human being - the sensory-bodily side. The other side, the spiritual-intelligent side, or the soul in the narrow sense of the word, is not subject to the action of death in the physical sense in which the body is subject to it. True, since evil and sin - these causes of physical death - prevailed in the soul, they subjected it to moral death, i.e. “separation from true life (just as in the body we call death the removal of sensory life), 27 - but death in the sense of destruction and decomposition into its component parts, the soul, by its very nature, cannot experience. She leaves behind her body at death, which now, having lost the life principle, decomposes into its many elements - but she herself only experiences a transmigration from the visible world of phenomena to the invisible region. As a simple and uncomplicated substance (ἁπλῆ καὶ ἀσύνϑετος φύσις), 28 as an incorporeal, akin to the divine Being, a living, intelligent and free essence, it cannot be decomposed into parts, like a body, but remains independently even after the destruction of the bodily composition (σύγκριμα). The truth of the immortality of the soul, which followed with such logical necessity from the concept of death and the concept of the soul, seemed to St. himself. Gregory was so obvious and irrefutable that he considered it not worth the trouble to indulge in extensive reasoning in order to prove it. He calls the doubts of so-called philosophers in this dogma nonsense (λῆροι, nugae), which have so little true meaning that only with the help of the inventor of lies himself could they be given the appearance of probable assumptions. Such doubts can only arise from a vicious root. Only one who has become alien to virtue and has in mind only present pleasures, and has put aside hope for a future, eternal life, where virtue alone is valued, can doubt or deny the immortality of the soul. 29 Faith in the continuation of the existence of the soul after death is, therefore, a necessary postulate of virtue, since the victory over lust and the triumph of virtue are only affirmed on it. But a “moral” proof in favor of immortality is not built directly on this basis (as in Lactantius), but a brief theoretical argument is considered necessary, and St. Gregory directs his thoughts directly against the objections current at that time, in order to, by eliminating them, find a solid foundation of truth ἀντίϑεσιν ἀναζητηϑήσεται λόγος). 30 From the position that death is the decomposition of a being into component parts, and the soul, as a simple substance, does not have such parts in itself, the immortality of the soul followed, of course, with necessity. But this very position rested on the previously recognized truth that the soul is a special, independent, different from the body, spiritual principle in man. Meanwhile, many and apparently strong objections have long existed against this truth. An entire school of philosophers of the so-called materialist trend has always raised its voice against it. – It is this kind of objection that St. fights against. Gregory, defending the truth of the immortality of the soul. After the dissolution of our bodily composition by death, each of its parts returns to the total sum of the world's elements - where will the soul be after that, if it constitutes a special part of the human being? If it is in the decomposed elements themselves, then it is homogeneous with them and divisible, and, therefore, mortal. If it is different from the elements in its essence, then it is impossible to find in the world any place corresponding to its nature, and because of this, the mind is forced to completely deny its existence. 31 In this or a similar way, the Stoics and Epicureans once assembled in Athens objected to the Apostle. “For for Epicurus the limit of the nature of beings was the visible, and he considered sensation to be the measure of comprehension of the universe.” 32 From this point of view, he generally denied the possibility of any independent immaterial existence, and imagined the human soul as like air, filling a living body like a bubble, and disappearing without a trace with the destruction of this bubble. 33 – But reasoning like this, according to St. Gregory, it is necessary to come to atheism. For if the independent existence of the human soul is denied on the basis that for it, as having nothing in common with the elements of the visible universe, there is no place in the world of existence, then with the same right and on the same considerations the “rational, immaterial and formless Nature (of God)” must be denied. “So,” notes St. Gregory, “from the teachings of them (materialist philosophers) let the Divinity itself, by which beings are contained in being, be completely excluded.” 34 Thus, the truth of the existence of the soul, as a special immaterial principle, stands and falls depending on the truth of the existence of God. But this latter is so firm and undeniable that only a madman, according to the word of the prophet, can say: there is no God (Ts. 13: 1). 35 The entire universe “through miracles performed in it” irresistibly testifies to the existence of its Supreme Organizer and Manager. The world's elements, with all the diversity and opposition of their basic properties, are united by ineffable wisdom into one harmonious, harmonious whole, aimed at achieving one common goal, each bringing from itself a certain force to support the whole. Based on what is visible, we thus clearly learn that the artistic and wise power of God, revealed in beings and penetrating everything, brings the parts into harmony with the whole, and completes the whole in the parts. 36 But just as in the great world (macrocosm) contemplation of the visible leads our thought to the necessary recognition of the One who wisely holds the universe in His hand, so in the small world (microcosm), as the ancient sages recognized man, there is quite a lot of data - from the visible we can infer about the hidden. 37 The very life and activity of a living person already gives evidence that there is in him an immaterial and disembodied soul, acting and moving in accordance with its nature, and detecting its characteristic movements with bodily organs. The organic structure of the body remains in the same form in the dead, but remains motionless and inactive, due to the absence of an animating principle in it. It moves only when there is sensitivity in the organs (αῖσϑησις) and through it the mental force (ἡ νοητὴ δύναμις) acts, which, with its own aspirations, moves the sensory organs as it pleases. 38 By themselves, these latter are nothing more than dead matter, completely incapable of producing those actions and functions that are actually accomplished through them. It is not by itself that the eye sees, the ear hears, the hand touches, the nose smells, but an invisible intelligent force acts and knows through them, or, as one of the learned pagans beautifully put it: “both the mind sees and the mind hears.” 39 And that indeed only the rational soul turns out to have power in the whole matter of knowledge, and the sensory organs serve only as instruments obedient to it, this is most clearly revealed in those cases when the external sense organs give erroneous testimony, which is corrected only with the help of reasoning. Thus, we know and are convinced that the sun in the size of its circumference is not the same as the eye sees, but is many times larger than the entire earth - that the moon is not a self-luminous body, as it appears to ordinary vision, but borrows its light from the sun. No vision would provide such knowledge “if there were not something that sees through sight, which through the visible penetrates into the invisible.” 40 – Such and similar observations of what happens in us physically lead to an irresistible recognition of our rational essence hidden in nature. – But isn’t this rational essence only the result of a certain relationship between the mechanical and physical forces of nature, “just as something similar is produced by the builders of machines, in whom in an artificially arranged substance an imitation of nature occurs, not in appearance alone showing similarity, but on the contrary, it consists in movement, and is even imitated by some words, when the machine makes sounds in its vocal part?” 41 – The very construction of such an objection, according to St. Gregory, contains his refutation. To arrange an inanimate substance so that in movement, sound, and figure it resembles, for example, a living person - this itself already serves as proof of the artist’s intelligence and ingenuity, as properties completely different from matter. To build, for example, a machine that produces sound, you need to first note and study the reasons for the origin of sound - the conditions required for its artificial production, and on the basis of these data build a mental plan, according to which you then need to select suitable material and arrange it into the whole machine. Each machine, therefore, is the fruit of the action of a special intelligent force, standing above matter and dominating it: matter itself will never turn into a work of art, it is only capable of visibly embodying an invisible thought. 42 We have followed the flow of St.'s thoughts. Gregory, aimed at proving two main points - a) the immateriality of the soul, its difference from the body and b) its substantiality, independence. The conclusion from here in relation to the immortality of the soul is clear by itself: as an independent principle (substance), the soul also has independent existence, and as an immaterial (incorporeal) essence, it is not subject to physical death, to which only material existence is subject. 43 So, the soul, by the nature of its nature, continues to exist even after the destruction of the bodily composition in which it lived during life. The connection of the soul with the elements of the deceased body To the features of St. eschatology. Gregory refers, among other things, to the idea that he pursues and defends with particular persistence, that even after the destruction of the body by death, there is a close connection and relationship between its decomposed elements and the soul. It is difficult to find precise logical reasons for this idea. True, in the eschatology of St. Gregory, it has a very close relationship to the dogma of resurrection: it is partly based on the possibility of the resurrection of bodies itself, and mainly on the identity of bodies that have to be resurrected with real ones. But it is not here, it seems to us, that its main basis lies, 44 but in that deep conviction of St. Gregory, that since by the will of God a person came into existence, he with his whole being must live continuously and forever. And since, according to the meaning of Christian teaching, the body always constitutes an essential and necessary organism of the spirit, then, according to the view of St. Gregory, it cannot separate from the soul for a single moment until all communication with it ceases. Death only dismembers, so to speak, a person in order to cleanse him from the defilements of sin, but does not separate or destroy any of the essential parts of his entire composition. And after death, according to St. Gregory, the whole person lives, albeit in a way different from real life: his bodily elements, although often separated by a huge space, are united by the activity of one living principle, the soul. A mystery that surpasses human understanding is the combination in man of such opposing essences as a simple, invisible soul and bodily fatness; however, there is no doubt that such a connection really exists in a living person, and the soul equally penetrates all parts of the body, imparting vital activity to each of them. “So, when the composition decomposes and returns again to what was characteristic of it, there is not the slightest improbability (οὐδέν τοῦ - according to another reading - οὐδέν ἔξω-εἰκότος ἐστίν) in the thought that simple and uncomplicated nature (the soul) remains in each of the parts even after decomposition, but on the contrary, once, according to some inexplicable law, it is coupled with the composition of the elements, forever remains in that with which it is dissolved, in no way being dissolved from that with which it was once brought into conjunction; because when the complex decomposes, the non-complex is not in danger of decomposing along with it.” 45 Neither the difference and opposition of the properties of those elements into which the body breaks up, nor spatial distance, can serve as an obstacle to this. Great, of course, is the difference between light and upward rushing - on the one hand, and between heavy and earthy - on the other hand, between warm and cold, between moist and the opposite of it. However, in real life we ​​see the combination of these opposite elements with the immaterial and rational soul in one human composition. We know, on the other hand, and are convinced that the Divine Nature, being completely different from the sensory and material essence, nevertheless penetrates each of the beings with Itself, supporting them in existence by dissolving its power. There is, therefore, not the slightest reason to assert that the opposition of the elements serves as an obstacle for the soul to be in communion with them even after the decomposition of the body. 46 Even less powerful and significant is the reference to spatial distance as an obstacle to the communication of the soul with the elements of the body scattered throughout the universe. As a “mental and unextended” entity, the soul is not subject to the conditions of spatial limitation. Even in real life, it manifests itself as such: “because even now it is possible at the same time (ὁμοῦ) to survey the sky with thought and to extend curiosity to the limits of the world, and the speculative power of our soul, extending to such latitudes, is not dissolved.” 47 In this regard, it is completely indifferent to the soul whether the bodily elements are united in one concrete whole, as in a living organism, or separated by a vast space, as in a body destroyed by death; In both cases, the unextended nature does not tolerate anything when it comes into contact with what is local. 48 Thus the soul remains in those very elements in which it once began to be, since no necessity separates it from conjugation with them αὐτην ἀποσπώσης). 49 In what particular way is this communication between the immortal soul and the destroyed body expressed, St. Gregory does not explain in detail. From the many expressions related here, one can only conclude that it consists in the constant knowledge of the soul about the elements of its former body and, as it were, in a wakeful guard over them until the time of a new union with them in the resurrection. 50 But how can the soul know and highlight the elements of its body when they are mixed with the world’s similar elements, enter into new combinations with them and thus take on a different form? Answering this question, St. Gregory uses the following examples. Let them agree, he says, although in reality this may not be possible, that the painter knows how not only to mix different colors in order to depict the likeness of a known object, but also to separate the mixture again, returning each paint to its natural color. Suppose that for a certain purpose the artist mixed two colors - black and white; the color thus composed is not the same as each of the colors that composed it. However, having spread the mixture again, the artist can easily recognize both the white and black paints that were part of it. Both in the state of connection and in the state of separation, he knows equally well both the general connected color and each particular of its constituent parts. The same must be said to the human soul in its relation to the elements of its body: it knows them in their combination in one living organism and just as easily recognizes them in their separation, after the death of the human body. 51 Another example: suppose that a large amount of clay was placed in front of the potter, some of which was already used for making vessels, the other was just prepared for this. Let us further assume that the vessels made from this clay are not all of the same shape and type, but one is a barrel, another is a bucket, the third is a dish, the fourth is a cup, etc. and that each of them belongs to its own special owner. As long as the vessels are intact, each owner, of course, knows which one belongs to him; but even after they are broken, it is easy to recognize them by their shards, because a different type of shard comes from a barrel, another from a glass, etc. All the more easily all these shards can be distinguished from clay that has not yet been used. The meaning of the example in relation to the idea being proven is clear: the human body is a kind of vessel, made from a common substance, but each individual has a unique appearance. And the soul, this owner of the body, can easily recognize and distinguish its property, whether it will be among the shards (the remains of other human bodies), or in the mass of common world elements that have not yet been part of human organisms. 52 Some basis for my opinion about the posthumous connection of the soul with the body of St. Gregory thinks to find it in Holy Scripture, namely in the Gospel parable of the rich man and Lazarus. Thus, the very circumstance that the rich man and Lazarus, although both were already detached from their bodies, nevertheless recognized each other even beyond the grave, testifies that in their souls even now some signs of the former union with the body remained, by which only such mutual recognition of each other could occur between them. 53 And the mention in the same parable of the tongue, eyes, finger and other bodily members confirms the same idea in yet another detail. Knowing the general totality of the elements that made up the whole human body, the soul does not remain in the dark regarding the special composition of each individual part of it - it knows what elemental particles our members consisted of. “Therefore, there is no improbability - the soul, which is present in the entirety of the elements, can also be in the elements taken separately.” 54 Affirming with such persistence the idea of ​​the inseparable presence of the soul with the elements of its body, St. Gregory did not at all mean to resolve the question of the place of residence of the soul after detachment from the body. He found this very question inapplicable in relation to the soul, which “being incorporeal, by nature has no need to be contained in any places.” 55 From this point of view, he does not agree with the usual idea of ​​hell “where, in the opinion of everyone, as if into some kind of repository, souls move from here.” 56 The current opinion about hell as a dark underground region, “like a hotel that receives souls caught up from life,” does not stand up to criticism for the sole reason that such a dark underground region in fact does not and cannot exist. All parts of the earth are equally illuminated by the sun, and on the hemisphere opposite to us, darkness and light alternate to exactly the same extent as on ours. 57 Therefore, biblical expressions that mention hell or the underworld should not be understood in the proper sense, allegorically: “this is not the name of some place, but of some invisible and incorporeal state of life, in which, as Scripture teaches us, the soul dwells.” 58 However, without sharing an opinion about the place of residence of the soul, St. Gregory does not want to unconditionally reject the opposite understanding, as long as in the essence of the matter, i.e. in recognizing the immortality of the soul, there was agreement. 59 The fate of the soul in the afterlife With permission from the body, the soul enters a new period of its life. With the death of the body, the time of independent determination towards good or evil ends for her, complete freedom of her own; outside the coffin, a moral state corresponding to this definition begins - a state of bliss or torment. since man voluntarily left the “homogeneous” (μονοειδὴς), (consisting of only good), paradise life and “with free movement he delighted in life dissolved from opposites (good and evil),” then Divine Providence, correcting our foolishness, by death divided human life into two parts - into the present life in the flesh and the life after it outside the body, out of love for mankind giving everyone freedom of choice between good here and evil there, or vice versa - between evil here and good there. Taking advantage of this freedom, some, foolishly not seeing a better good other than sensual carnal pleasures and pleasures, greedily indulge in them with all their souls, and thus here on earth they spend the share of good that follows their nature, saving nothing for the next life. Others, on the contrary, considering good only what is comprehended by thought and reason, and not what gives pleasure to the feeling, prudently and chastely use this short life, enduring various hardships here and saving good things for the future life. 60 With the onset of this last one (after the death of the body), the position of both naturally changes - and, moreover, directly to the opposite. Those who placed all the good of life only in sensuality and carnal passions, now, after detachment from the body, are naturally deprived of the opportunity to satisfy their vicious aspirations. 61 And since they did not develop other, purely spiritual and rational inclinations in earthly life, then being now in such an area of ​​​​being where good and happiness consists only in mental knowledge and contemplation of the Existing, they naturally have no participation in bliss. This impossibility of satisfying sensual passions and this deprivation of true benefits, available only to people who have previously prepared themselves for this, is what becomes for people who are sensually tuned in that flame that scorches the soul, for deliverance from which the rich man asks Lazarus, even a drop from the sea of ​​blessings surrounding the righteous. 62 – This is not at all the afterlife state of the soul, which, like Abraham, exchanged the enjoyment of earthly blessings for the hope of the future. 63 The sorrows and hardships that she experienced in this life, waging a struggle with the flesh and its desires, now cease: “her flow towards good, as if the bonds on her were broken, becomes easy and free, because no bodily sorrow now distracts her to itself.” 64 The very good that was offered to her here on earth only in hope and hope now becomes for her an object of direct possession. All this for a pure soul becomes a source of such bliss, which “is not subject to the power of words and is inaccessible to the fortune-telling of the mind.” 65 – This is the difference in the afterlife fate of souls - this tributary abyss that separates the righteous and the wicked immediately after renunciation from present life. 66 According to St. Gregory, as we have seen, this difference is a direct and necessary consequence of the mental mood that was dominant in everyone in earthly, temporary life and then transferred to the afterlife. Death, separating the soul from the body, produces only a change in the conditions of human existence, and in necessary dependence on this, the fate of the soul also changes. The soul, completely devoted to bodily lusts, and having closed its eyes to contemplate the spiritual, divine world, passing (after the death of the body) into this latter, naturally finds itself here deprived of participation in the true (blessed) life, which is accessible only to an eye clear of carnal attachments. On the contrary, for the soul, still on earth, having renounced all sensual attachments, the transition to the afterlife, purely spiritual realm of existence is, as it were, a return from a distant and unhappy voyage to a quiet, untroubled harbour. 67 From this point of view, St. Gregory notes that just as the communion of the blessed life cannot be called in the proper sense a reward (ἀντίδοσιν) for previous good deeds, so also the deprivation of bliss cannot be called a punishment (τιμωρίαν) for bad deeds. 68 This is not a reward or punishment, as a result of an external, third-party judgment about human activity, but its direct and natural consequence, or, better said, its direct continuation, only under other life conditions. As about a person who has pure vision, we do not say that seeing and perceiving what is visible serves as some kind of reward for him, and on the contrary, about a person with eyesight, we do not say that deprivation of visual activity serves as a punitive punishment for him, because both cases are a matter of natural necessity; “So, similarly, a blessed life is akin to and characteristic of those who have pure feelings of the soul, and for those who have the disease of ignorance (sinful), like some kind of pus, serves as an obstacle to communion with the true light, for this it is a necessary consequence to not have a part in that, the participation of which is called life (bliss) for the one who partakes. 69 Having renounced the body and moved to that area of ​​existence, which was the subject of constant striving throughout earthly life, the souls of the righteous no longer remain in an inactive, resting state. They continue to live, acquiring more and more new content of consciousness, improving more and more spiritually and achieving higher and higher likeness to the Divine. Such a gradual ascent to the First Image is now accomplished for them much easier and more conveniently than in earthly, bodily life. With renunciation of the body, the righteous soul also renounces those of its forces and movements that took place only in bodily life and to some extent impeded its flow towards the Divine world. According to the terminology accepted in ancient philosophy (Plato and Aristotle), St. Gregory marks these forces that cease in death with two general names: ἐπιϑυμία (lust, desire) and ϑυμὸς (anger, irritability). 70 These forces do not belong to the essence of the soul, but are only its known states (πάθη τῆς φύσεως καὶ οὐκ οὐσία), given not from the beginning, at creation, but only after the Fall. That they do not essentially belong to the soul is clear from the very biblical concept of the soul, according to which it is the likeness of God, and since in God there is neither desire, 71 nor anger, then there should not be them in the essence of the soul that is God-like. 72 In the proper sense, the godlike being of the soul consists only of rational, contemplative power; 73 nevertheless, everything else that is now seen in it and that constitutes the common property of human nature with the plant and dumb (animal) world, are elements that have come from outside to human nature and are given in relation to the conditions of real, bodily life. In themselves they do not constitute evil; on the contrary, under the wise rule of reason, they even serve as necessary means to achieve good. If there were no lust in human nature, “what would delight us to unity with the heavenly? After extinguishing irritation, what weapon would we have against the fighting (evil) with us? 74 But when the mind abandons control of these movements and itself submits to their arbitrary and unreasonable attraction, then they turn into a sinful passion, and a person passes from a reasonable and god-like state into an unreasonable and dumb one. 75 Being thus in themselves indifferent in relation to good and evil, these unreasonable movements, nevertheless, constitute a kind of obstacle, a difficulty for a person who is steadily striving to achieve the heavenly, divine good. Only through the most vigilant, constant observation of them, through the struggle against their false direction, does the mind manage to seclude the soul from them and keep it clean from passionate sinful impulses. 76 With the transition to the afterlife, the dominance of unreasonable movements for the righteous ceases, and at the same time, the difficult struggle of reason with them now no longer takes place. “The soul, pure from all vice, now enters into communion with the Divine, united with what is proper to it.” 77 And when this happens, there is, of course, no longer any need for a desireful movement that would lead us to the Primary Source of all that is beautiful. Only he who dwells in darkness desires light; if it is in the light, then pleasure will take the place of desire. 78 So in the soul, the place of desire for the missing good is now replaced by actual possession and enjoyment of it. She now enters into herself, sees exactly her god-like being, and in her own beauty, as if in a mirror or in an image, contemplates the Prototype. Her life now flows quite like the life of the divine. We - people - constantly pass in real life between hope and memory. The movement forward is controlled by hope, and the place of movement towards hope is taken by memory. If hope has led us to the truly beautiful, a bright trace is noted in our memory; if hope seduces the soul with a false phantom of beauty, the memory of that turns into shame and remorse. In this last case, a, so to speak, internecine war arises in the soul - memory enters into a struggle with hope, which poorly controlled arbitrariness. 79 This is not how divine life flows: here there is no shortage of objects of aspiration (desire), because in God himself there is the fullness of all goods, and therefore there is no alternating movement from hope to memory (for whoever has what he hopes, Rom. 8:24); here is one eternal pleasure of the present. In the same way, the pure soul, having ceased all the various movements of nature, becomes godlike, and having become above desire, it does not give in itself any activity, neither hope nor memory. 80 Only one disposition of love remains in her - this inner attachment to goodness, which makes any other mental movements unnecessary. “Having become completely like God in simplicity and uniformity, the soul loves this simple, immaterial and only good worthy of love, enters into the closest unity with it through love-filled disposition and activity, conforming itself to what is always acquired and accepted by it, and through likeness to the good, becoming similar to the nature of that which it partakes of.” 81 This love for the good (God), which is identical with the knowledge of the good, has no limit to its action, just as good itself is limitless, because its opposite, evil, cannot set a limit for it in one whose nature is not receptive to the worst. 82 Thus, more and more sated and never satiated (“truly beautiful things are not touched by arrogant satiety”) 83 with spiritual goods, the soul will continue this divine life of love into infinity (ἀεὶ ἡ ϑέια ζωὴ δὶ ἀγάπης ἐνεργηϑήσεται). A completely opposite state is experienced beyond the grave by the souls of people who in real life have given themselves over to the slavish service of the flesh and its passions. And in the absence of sensual objects of passion, the attraction to them still continues, and to a greater extent, the more strongly the passion was developed in earthly life. Whoever is completely attached to the flesh with his mind, notes St. Gregory, directing every movement and action of the soul to satisfy her lusts, is not freed from sensual passions even after separation from the body, just as people who have lived for a long time in fetid places, and after moving into well-dissolved air, are not cleansed of the stench with which they were saturated through a long stay in it. “So for carnalists, after the transition to the invisible and subtlest life has been completed, it is of course impossible not to attract with them some kind of carnal stench, from which the torment becomes even more severe for them, because the soul from this circumstance becomes more coarsely reified. 84 That is why the rich man “as if welded by some kind of composition to carnal life,” and after his death he cares only about flesh and blood, constantly asking Lazarus for help to his relatives who remained on earth. 85 This addiction to the flesh necessarily deprives sinners of participation in the purely spiritual benefits of the afterlife, and instead of happiness and bliss it gives them, as it were, a second death, i.e. a life full of hardships and sorrows. Is it possible and is there any means of salvation beyond the grave for these sensually-minded people, or should their sad state of alienation from true life continue without change into eternity? According to St. Gregory, such means are possible and actually exist, “for what is characteristic of God (the God-like human soul) must be saved completely and without fail,” 86 and therefore “the desire for that which is alien to it will not remain in human nature forever.” 87 No matter how strong the soul’s addiction to carnal pleasures is, and no matter how great its deviation from the true good is as a result, but that a new return to this latter is possible, this follows both from the nature of the soul and from the concept of God. Just as every nature by nature feels an attraction to what is characteristic of it, so the soul, because by virtue of its similarity to God it stands in some property with God, by natural necessity is attracted (Ἐλκεται) to the divine and related to it. 88 For a soul that has renounced all attachment to the alien and has completely directed itself towards this dear, divine, such an attraction is both pleasant and convenient. For a soul that has voluntarily deviated from what is characteristic of it by nature, and has become completely addicted to what is not related to it, the return to the divine, if difficult and unpleasant, is, in any case, not impossible (metaphysically). The image of God, which makes man related to the prototype, is not completely lost in her, 89 and at the same time, she always has the possibility of a new restoration of the relationship with God. Another question is from whose side (God or man) does the beginning of this restoration come and in what way is it accomplished; but since the necessary condition for this is never lost, its very possibility cannot be doubted. But if from the side of the nature of the soul there is, therefore, no absolute obstacle to union with God, then from the side of God himself there is positive assistance towards this. The state of deprivation of bliss in which the souls of sinners find themselves upon their transition to the afterlife, as we have seen, is not, according to St. Gregory, some kind of punishment or - so to speak - God's vengeance for a bad life, but only by the sinners themselves - without any punishment of God's judgment - a natural situation created. On souls who voluntarily alienate themselves from the blessed life, there is thus no mark of God’s wrath, and yet in them there is something dear and proper to God (the image of God). And God, as good and philanthropic, does not leave his property (τὸ ῖδιον) under the domination of alien shackles that burden it: “He attracts and appropriates to Himself everything that by His grace (for His sake, αὐτοῦ χάριν, ipsius gratia) came into being.” 90 So, for a soul that did not heal itself on earth with virtue, and transferred sinful habits to the afterlife, healing is reserved in the future life. 91 The beginning and accomplishment of this healing belongs to God, who brings into harmony with His nature everything that in His goodness has both the cause and the final goal of its existence. 92 But for the soul itself, “fleshed from communication with passions,” akin to and, as it were, dissolved with the alien, 93 – this divine action of attraction to bliss, this separation of alien elements that have grown to it becomes the cause of “unspeakable and inexpressible illnesses and torments, the description of which is indescribable in words, to the same extent as the essence of the expected benefits.” 94 Just as in bodily diseases there are some differences: some can be easily and conveniently treated, while others can only be cured by the most painful cuttings and cauterizations; so something similar promises the healing of mental illnesses and the future judgment (κρισις). 95 Just as those who, by cutting or cauterizing, remove unnaturally grown calluses and warts from the body, inflict, of course, severe torment on those, although they do it for the benefit of those suffering torment; Thus, pruning and erasing the unnatural growths of sin through the wisdom and power of the Healer of the sick, although it produces the most painful conditions in the soul, nevertheless does this with the beneficial purpose of its healing. 96 “Only to weak people (τοῖς χαυνοτέροις) such torment seems like a threat and an uprising of sorrows, but according to the faith of more reasonable people (τοῖς συνετωτέροις), this is healing and healing from God, who builds creation Yours into original grace. 97 According to St. Gregory, this is not a punishment at all (κόλασις), but on the contrary, the greatest benefit on the part of God, who attracts all people to participate in bliss, although the necessary consequence of this attraction is revealed by torment for those attracted. 98 Just as those who want to purify gold by fire from the admixture of substances alien to it, of necessity expose pure gold to the action of fire along with the admixture; so when destroying spiritual vices, in the purifying fire 99 it is necessary not only to be sinful admixture, but also to the soul itself that has entered into unity with it. 100 And like a rope, to which the stickiest dirt has stuck along its entire length, being pushed into some narrow hole and attracted by someone from above, although in the process of this attraction it will gradually be freed from dirt, but the process itself will be accomplished with difficulty, only through increased tension on the part of the attractor; so something similar must be imagined about the soul, which, being entangled in material addictions and intensely attracted by God, will be in a tense, suffering state, causing it painful and unbearable torment. 101 The soul must remain in such a painful state until the matter and impurity scattered within it are completely destroyed, being consumed by fire. And this time for each sinner is absolutely accurate and fair in proportion to the number and severity of his vices. The greater the “material burden” that burdens the soul, the stronger and longer will it be exposed to the tormenting fire. And on the contrary, in whom there is less unsuitable admixture - this food of fire - for that reason the torment decreases in strength and duration, completely in accordance with the decrease in vice. 102 For some, due to their extreme depravity, purifying suffering will continue almost forever (εὶς αὶὠνιόν τι διάστημα). 103 Combining together all the thoughts mentioned so far, St. Gregory regarding the afterlife fate of sinners, we receive the following general provisions: upon the transition to the afterlife, for people devoted to sensuality, a period of torment begins, as a natural consequence of their vicious life. But these torments are not the punishment of divine justice, but only the inevitable result of the separation of the soul from sinful growths - a separation produced by the power of the good God. Torment here is not a goal in itself; its goal is the good of the one suffering the torment—his correction. From here it naturally follows that the torment and suffering of the wicked should extend only to their correction, but no further, i.e. must be temporary, not eternal (infinite). Thus, “the difference between a virtuous and a vicious life will be revealed only in the fact that sooner or later a person will partake of the hoped-for bliss, for the extent of the viciousness that has surpassed each one will, of course, correspond to the duration of the healing.” 104 But that for all people the period of torment will one day end, this necessarily follows from the very nature and purpose of these latter. No matter how little this opinion agrees with church teaching on the same subject, it actually takes place in the system of St. Gregory, we think this is quite clear from what was said above. Another question is whether St. always and everywhere carried out the same consistency and rigor. Gregory has such an opinion, but that it has an internal logical connection with his other dogmatic views - this we have partly shown above, and partly we will try to show when we talk about the issue of so-called apokatastasis. Here we consider it appropriate to point out only the noticeable contradiction in which the opinion under consideration turns out to stand with the firm teaching of St. Gregory on human free will. In fact, none of the properties of the godlike nature of man is St. Gregory does not, apparently, value as highly as free will: it is primarily a sign of the royal, god-like greatness of man. Taking away or even just violence against human freedom is tantamount to the complete deprivation of God's likeness and the equalization of man with animals. “Some people who are inanimate and dumb can be led by someone else’s will to anything; a verbal and rational being, if it ceased to act freely, lost at the same time the gift of rationality.” 105 The very deviation towards sin from primitive bliss, no matter how little it agreed with the goals of the divine destiny of man, was allowed by God precisely for the sake of preserving the inviolability of the lofty gift of human freedom. 106 Further, God did not distract fallen humanity from evil against its will and did not forcibly return it to perfection immediately after the fall, although He could have done this. “For if human nature, voluntarily, by the movement of free will, rushing towards something indecent, were forcibly and forcibly removed from what it liked, then this would be the taking away of the good that it had before and the deprivation of god-like honor, because free will is likeness to God.” 107 Meanwhile, it is precisely this violent return to primitive bliss, carried out against a person’s own desire, that St. preaches, apparently. Gregory, affirming the idea of ​​the afterlife cleansing of the sinful soul by God. And the initiative of this matter and its entire continuation, according to his thoughts, belongs exclusively to God: He draws the soul to Himself and cleanses it from the admixture of vice, apparently, decisively against its will. In this whole process, the soul itself reveals, on the contrary, a gravitation towards that from which God’s power distracts it; and the process of purification itself takes place only until the connection with carnal lusts and the desire for them are completely eradicated in the soul. All these are thoughts that seem to stand in direct contradiction with the doctrine of free will. And we must admit that in the system of St. Gregory, such a contradiction really exists and is not sufficiently covered up. Origen, who held the same way of thinking both regarding the purpose of afterlife torment and regarding free will, in order to avoid the conflict that arises here, found himself forced to admit an endless series of worlds and world developments similar to our present one, and at the same time the never-ending possibility of the free appeal of the creature to God. For a soul that has transferred sinful habits to the afterlife, punishment begins here, but punishment with the goal of correction, admonition of the punished. Through bitter experience (torture), God wants to teach the soul - to learn all the great difference between virtue and vice, and thereby induce it to voluntarily abandon the latter and choose only the former. There is no forced distraction from sin here; there is only, so to speak, pedagogical admonition regarding its vileness. If this educational means turns out to be not completely effective, and in the soul of the punished there is no decisive aversion from the vice of constant strengthening in virtue, she is again sent to the earthly world for new independent work in the field of good or evil, depending on her free inclination. This is how countless worlds and reincarnations of souls pass, until finally, through a successive change of deviation towards sin (in earthly life) and educational punishment for it (in the afterlife), they voluntarily leave vice and are established forever in goodness. Thus, while saving the strict concept of human freedom, Origen had to allow for a continuous series of conditions necessary for man’s free return to primitive bliss. – St. is not so consistent. Gregory of Nyssa. Together with the Church, he resolutely rejects the idea of ​​a plurality of worlds and the possibility of new incarnations for souls who have once departed to the afterlife. 108 He limits the period of independent, free preparation for good or evil for a person only within the boundaries of real, earthly life. After death, there is and will not be room for changes and new free determinations of a person towards good or evil, because there are no external conditions necessary for that: once the state has been transferred to the afterlife, it should remain forever, unchanged. 109 Meanwhile, according to St. Gregory, the abnormal position of sinners cannot be established forever: this would not be consistent either with the goodness of God, or with the purpose of man, or, finally, with the nature of evil and sin itself. 110 A change in the condition of sinners must, in his opinion, be accomplished. But since man himself no longer has all the means necessary for this, it must be accomplished by the power of God. And so, directly outside the tomb, God himself begins to attract the sinner to Himself, without waiting for his free, independent conversion. The strict concept of free will is obviously not maintained here. It cannot be said that St. Gregory did not notice the contradiction in which the two indicated points of his system turned out to be. He saw, as it seemed, the difficulty in thought arising from this, and from his point of view he tried to give some explanation. Claiming that the entire process of cleansing the soul from the defilements of sin is accomplished solely by the power of God, he at the same time does not want to see here a restriction of true freedom, but, on the contrary, a restoration of it. True freedom by its nature is something united, not subject to control, always related to itself. As such, it must have essentially one direction, and this is precisely the direction towards virtue, because virtue is not subject to control. 111 Deviation towards sin is a perversion of true freedom - a state of slavery. Therefore, if the power of God cleanses a person from sinful lusts, then it does not at all violate his true freedom, but, on the contrary, leads him to it, freeing him from slavery to sin. When the process of this purification is completed completely, and true freedom returns to man again, he, “voluntarily with a strong desire will return to the former bliss,” having learned through bitter experience what he exchanged it for before. 112 So, after the time of purification (in which, apparently, violence is done to human freedom, although St. Gregory does not want to see such violence), there follows a new, completely free and independent flow of the purified soul towards good, without the danger of a secondary deviation towards evil, the saddest consequences of which have already been sufficiently experienced. 113 The period of separation of the soul from the body, with its purifying significance for both parts, must someday come to an end. The original, heavenly state of man was not contained in spiritual life alone; he emerged from the hands of the Creator as a spiritual-physical being; and, therefore, in this form only, i.e. by uniting soul and body, he can exactly correspond to the purpose given to him by God. 114 The separation of these essential parts of human nature, produced by death, is only a temporary cleansing from evil, determined for good purposes, 115 and as such, it naturally continues only until its goal is achieved. Then a new union of soul and body must follow, the life of the whole person must begin again, as he was originally created. The act of such re-creation is resurrection. In this sense, St. Gregory everywhere defines the resurrection as “the restoration of our nature to the primitive state ἡμῶν ἀποκατάστασις)". 116 The most particular features with which he depicts the effect of resurrection in relation to human nature give - apparently - sufficient reason to assume that he understands the moment of resurrection as a complete, final, extending to all people without exception, a return to primitive purity and bliss - both in metaphysical and moral terms, with the destruction of all evil and all its consequences. In fact, speaking generally about the resurrection that it is the return of man “to dispassionate bliss (πρὸς μαχαριότητα ἀπαϑὴν)”, 117 - to the state when human nature was a certain property of God (ϑεῖον τι χρῆμα ἤν ἡ ἀνϑρωπίνη φύσις)”, 118 – or that it is an action “leading someone expelled from paradise back into it”, 119 – St. Gregory does not allow, apparently, any difference in the moral state of the resurrected, promising everyone the same participation in bliss. There is, however, nothing strange or surprising in such a view, if we take into account the views of this saint. father to death and the afterlife, as a means of cleansing a person from any admixture of vice. Once such purification has been completed completely and finally, the renewal of nature, the cessation of torment and the transition to bliss must follow with natural necessity. But in order to assert that the moment of such a transition from torment to bliss for all people without exception is the resurrection, for this we must admit that just at the time of the resurrection the period of cleansing from vices will actually end for all sinners, a period whose duration is most fairly proportionate to the number of sins of each. But it seems that St. did not admit this, and could not admit it. Gregory, remaining consistent. The fact is that he made the coming of the time of general resurrection dependent, as we will see now, on a completely different reason, and not at all on the end of the cleansing period. If so, then the coincidence between one and the other could only be accidental and, in any case, unlikely. It even becomes completely incredible if we take into account that it follows the clear teaching of Ap. Paul, St. Gregory admits that the resurrection will find a whole generation of people still alive. 120 It is self-evident that having not experienced the cleansing effect of death and the inevitable torment during cleansing from vice, they cannot inherit bliss immediately after the change by resurrection, because “the righteous Judgment of God necessarily demands punishment, commensurating it with the severity of the debt and not leaving even the slightest without attention.” 121 – The considerations now expressed necessarily lead to the conclusion that under the restoration (αποκαταστασις), which is effected by the resurrection, St. Gregory understands not a complete return of all humanity to the primitive innocent state - that at least the moral difference, which was not in this last one, remains after the resurrection even before time. 122 Nevertheless, St. Gregory was right in defining the resurrection from his point of view as the restoration of human nature to a primitive state. From here a new period in the history of mankind truly begins - a period, in his opinion, completely similar to the one from which this history began. All the time that has passed between the Fall and the resurrection is a time of evasion from the primitive state and a slow, gradual return to it. For the first time in the resurrection the end is united with the beginning; only now, after a new union of the soul with the body, does man achieve incorruptibility, glory, honor and strength - these god-like properties with which his nature was endowed at creation itself. 123 In relation to one side of the human being, the body, the complete restoration of primitive beauty follows for all people, without exception, immediately after the resurrection. 124 The complete restoration of the image of God and the return of primeval bliss for souls cleansed from the filth of vice will also occur at the moment of resurrection, and for others - after proper cleansing. But for everyone in general, the blessed life, the beginning of which is the resurrection, will be equally achievable: some sooner, others later, but all people, having once entered this life, will steadily and continuously follow that straight path and under the conditions of existence that the resurrection creates. The time of resurrection and the associated change in the present world of St. Gregory makes it directly dependent on the fulfillment of a certain number of souls in the human race. Created for immortality and eternal life, a little lower than the Angel (Ps. 8:6), man, if he had remained forever faithful to his destiny, would not have needed the current method of spreading his family, and like the Angels, without the help of marriage and childbearing, he would have multiplied to the extent determined by the Council of the Creator. 125 But since God foresaw that “man would fall away from the angelic life, so that the number of human souls would not become small, losing the way in which the Angels grew into multitudes, he implanted in humanity a bestial and dumb method of mutual succession” (through natural, carnal birth). 126 In this way, over time, growing and increasing, the human race will finally reach such a limit where the necessary stop will occur in the increase in the number of souls. That such a stop must really take place, and the multiplication of the human race cannot extend to infinity, is required both by the concept of the wisdom of God, for which there is nothing uncertain in created things, but for each of the creatures an exact limit and measure is set, 127 and by the very concept of completeness, which in a certain sense is perfection. “Since every intelligible nature has its own completeness, it is natural that over time the human race will reach its limit (since it also belongs to the intelligible nature), so that they do not think of it as if it always seems insufficient; because the constant addition of new arrivals becomes an accusation to the family that it still lacks.” 128 So, when the human race, after a certain time, reaches its fullness, the place of real life will necessarily be taken by another state, different from the present one, carried out in birth and decay; for with the cessation of birth, corruption (death) must also cease. Then the entire totality of souls that have ever come into existence will again return from an invisible and scattered state to the collected and visible, and the same elements will converge with each other into the same connection again. 129 The possibility of a new restoration of bodies destroyed by death rests with St. Gregory on natural and supernatural grounds. As was already mentioned above, even after death, “some kind of friendly connection and acquaintance” remains in the soul with the elements of the body that was connected with it during life. She “guards her property, penetrates her own elements,” wherever they are scattered across distant world spaces, and no matter what new combinations they enter into. 130 The soul knows its body by known signs (σημείων τινῶν), which are inherent in its elements and by their decomposition. In our nature, upon careful study, it is not difficult to notice two different sides - changeable, fluid and constant, not subject to any change. The first is constantly changing, growing and diminishing, and - like clothing - changes with each age. The second, like the idea and form (τό εῖδος) of the body, always remains the same; she does not lose once and for all the signs placed on her by nature, by which she is always recognized, despite all the changes in the body. Only a severe illness can temporarily close this distinctive appearance (as was the case with Naaman the Syrian or among the evangelical lepers), but after healing from the illness it is restored again with its unchanged signs. 131 Given this state of affairs, there is nothing inconsistent with reason to believe that at a certain time there will again be a separation of the elements of a known body from the general world elements and a new combination of them into one whole organism in accordance with the distinctive form that was originally imprinted on them by nature. Like mercury, spilled on some sloping and dusty place, is divided into small balls and scattered on the ground, but being collected by someone again into one whole, it itself merges with the homogeneous ones, not accepting anything extraneous into its mixture; so the human composition, without any difficulty, will unite by itself in its former parts, as soon as God’s command to do so is followed. 132 And in physical nature we observe that the seeds of various plants, being thrown into the ground, extract food for themselves from the same substances of nature, common to all, but this food, without any coercion, itself passes from the general into the special property of each of the seeds, turning into straw, into awns, into an ear, etc. “What is extraordinary in the doctrine of resurrection, according to which each of those resurrected, like what happens to seeds, is attracted to what is peculiar to him?” So, concludes St. Gregory, - the sermon on the resurrection does not contain anything that is not known from experience. 133 If, from the point of view of natural foundations, the resurrection does not represent anything strange and contrary to reason, then at the thought of the active participation of God’s omnipotence in this matter, all doubts about this should be decisively silenced. Let those who measure Divine power by the standard of human impotence not point to cases of human bodies being burned and turned into ashes, to cases of their being eaten by carnivorous animals and fish. Wherever one takes the mortal remains of a person in one’s imagination, there is no doubt that they are still in the world. And that the world is in the hand of God, this is taught by the Inspired Scripture. If a person knows what is in his fist, then is God’s vision weaker than man’s and is not able to accurately find what is contained in the divine hand? 134 The doctrine of the first creation arouses much more bewilderment and difficulty for the mind than the doctrine of the re-creation of a creature that has already once come into being. If, following the teaching of Scripture and the testimony of creation itself, we unquestionably admit that the power of God is quite sufficient to bring into existence the non-existent and to give qualities to the existing at will, then there is even less reason to consider the transformation of what has already been created as something incredible. 135 In re-creating man by resurrection, divine power deals not only with ready-made material, but with material that already bears ready-made imprints of a certain form (distinctive appearance). From the side of the universe-controlling power (God), now all the ready-made elements of our body, like various ropes attached to one beginning, obeying the attraction of the single power of our soul, are intertwined into one chain of the body, restoring the whole appearance previously familiar to the soul. 136 The very fact of the resurrection of the flesh, resting on the above grounds and having irrefutable evidence for itself in Holy Scripture, 137 could not - in the opinion of St. Gregory - to arouse such strong doubts and inconveniences for the mind as were aroused by the question of the properties of resurrected bodies in their relation to real, earthly bodies. Not only for “outsiders” (philosophers and non-believers in general) this question gave rise to strong attacks on the entire Christian dogma of the resurrection - and for church writers themselves, it has long served as one of the most difficult points of eschatology. Until the 4th century, Christian literature gave two, significantly different, answers to this question. On the one hand, the fathers and teachers of the Church of the first centuries - Justin, Athenagoras, Termullian, Irenaeus and others, professing the truth of the resurrection of the flesh, resolutely affirmed the complete, extending to all parts of the body, identity of the bodies that we have to receive in the resurrection with those that we now wear, leaving in this case from the concept of man, as the average between the disembodied Angels and material creatures of the nature of beings, and from the concept of the human body, as an organism of the spirit, essential not only in general, but also in all its parts and members. On the other hand, Origen, with the principles of whose system the view now indicated was not reconciled, asserted only a certain, and, moreover, such a weak connection between future bodies and present ones that there were serious reasons to doubt whether he really recognized the resurrection of bodies or preached the creation of completely new bodies, not having the slightest resemblance to the previous ones. 138 St. Gregory tries to stay in the middle between the two indicated views, although fairness requires us to note that his inclination towards the Origenian method of presentation significantly predominates. In his own words, he encountered “a whole swarm” of objections from opponents - objections, some of which were directed against the identity of the bodies of the resurrected with the present, others - quite the opposite. 139 To resolve them with sufficient conviction, St. Gregory was forced to walk between two extremes, but he accomplished this task - as we will see below - not with sufficient clarity and consistency. Among other objections to the dogma of the resurrection of St. Gregory knew this: after the decomposition of the bodily composition and the mixing of its elements with homogeneous world elements, it is no longer possible to isolate from the general mixture a special one that belongs to each particular body. And if so, if during the new restoration of a person all his former property does not return exactly, but the place of what previously belonged to him is taken only by something similar to him and homogeneous, then such an action will no longer be a resurrection, but the creation of a new person. If the concept of resurrection requires the necessity that the same person return again to himself, then this identity must extend to all the essential elements of the body without exception. 140 With the answer of St. We already had the opportunity to meet Gregory to this objection above. We have seen with what insistence he asserts the idea that the elements of the human body never lose their specific characteristics, do not lose in the total mass of the world's substance, and with all the transformations and combinations to which they undergo along with this latter, they retain the indelible signs of their belonging to the composition of the known human organism. From this point of view, St. Gregory considers the idea completely irrefutable that the human body, as regards its basic elements, will rise the same as it was in earthly life. 141 If it is relatively so easy St. Gregory manages to put an end to one of the very important objections, then other objections in the same direction were resolved with much less convenience and great difficulty. The concept of identity, from the point of view of which the above objection was posed, could be continued with the same consistency to the most particular and inessential properties of the bodily nature of man; and yet their restoration in a resurrected body seemed unacceptable and impossible from the point of view of the most basic ideas about the conditions of future life. If, so they objected, human bodies will rise in the same form in which they were at the moment of death, then it is better not to desire a resurrection at all, which will bring endless misfortunes to people. In fact, can there be a sight more pitiful and sad than that presented by a body emaciated by old age - with wrinkled skin dried to the bones, with tightened veins, with a head bowed to the knee, with a shaking hand almost completely incapable of activity, etc.? What could be uglier than the appearance of a body that has been destroyed by some serious illness, or mutilated in some accident, or has had mutilated members from birth? What, finally, is more helpless and sadder than the body of a newborn baby suddenly snatched away by death? If in all these and similar cases the resurrected body is in every way the same as the dead one, the position of such resurrected ones will be extremely disastrous. And if not the same, then the resurrected one will be completely different, and not the one who was laid in the tomb. If instead of a child an adult rises, instead of a decrepit old man - blooming with age, instead of an emaciated one - a healthy one, etc.; in this case, it can no longer be said that the dead have risen, but that a completely new man has emerged from the earth. And then the resurrection will no longer concern me, as a certain, well-known person, if someone else comes to life instead of me. In order for there to be talk specifically about my resurrection, it is necessary that I rise “in all the same way with myself.” 142 Further, in our bodily nature, as is known, there is a constant metabolism, constant movement and change of the entire bodily composition, so that in a strict sense it is impossible to indicate even two short moments when a person would be unconditionally identical with himself, not to mention such long periods of time that determine the different ages of a person. If the resurrection restores a person exactly the same as he was during his present life, in this case, instead of one person, a whole “crowd of people” should be resurrected, corresponding to the different ages that the deceased passed on earth: in him there will be a baby, and a child, and a youth, and a youth, and a husband, and a father, and an old man, and all other intermediate ages. Strange as it may seem at first glance, such an assumption, however, the distinction between ages and physical states in general is very important for the purpose of fair distribution of future rewards and punishments for such acts in which the body took a significant part. So, for example, chastity and debauchery are brought into action by the flesh, and therefore, in the reward for the first and in the punishment for the second, the flesh must necessarily participate - and, moreover, the same flesh in which either the feat of abstinence or the criminal fall was accomplished; only in this case can complete justice of retribution be preserved. And in this state of affairs, it is necessary for man to be resurrected in as many different forms as there were different moments of sin or virtue in which the body took part. In any other case, the reward will no longer be payment to the very body that deserves it. 143 Finally, it is known that nature has not left a single part of our body without its corresponding function; some contain the vital force (heart, liver, brain, lung, womb and other internal organs); others are assigned sensual movement; the departure of the third is activity and movement from place to place; the fourth were given the ability to produce offspring, etc. If the future life flows under the same external conditions as the present, then there is no need for a “transition” from one to the other. If there is a significant difference between one and the other, then what will happen to the real bodily organs, which have their direct and complete purpose only for the purposes of this present, earthly life? If not one of the members of the present body, due to its uselessness in the future life, is resurrected, then such a radical change in the body cannot be called a resurrection. If all the organs of the present body appear in the resurrected ones, in this case it is completely incomprehensible and inexplicable how the Author of the resurrection will endow us with something that is not at all necessary and useless. 144 All the objections just mentioned, even if they were not strong enough to pose to St. Gregory into a hopeless situation, then in any case they required significant efforts so that in view of them it was possible to strictly logically retain the basic concept of the identity of future bodies with present ones. With the truncation of all those properties that are outlined in the general set of these objections, almost every idea of ​​the body disappeared for thought, and at the same time the doctrine of identity or even any connection of the resurrected body with the deceased became without any solid support. Meanwhile, St. Gregory, not at all willing to part with this last thought, at the same time resolutely asserts the most significant difference and even the radical contrast between the expected bodies and the earthly, rough ones. All those properties with which our present body is endowed, all bodily organs with their special functions - all these are those leather vestments (Genesis 3:22) with which our nature was equipped after the Fall and which it did not have at all at creation itself. 145 If resurrection, by the very concept of it, is a restoration to a primitive (pre-sin) state, then it goes without saying that these leather vestments will no longer have a place in the bodies of the resurrected. Of course, there was neither old age, nor childhood, nor suffering from various diseases, nor any disastrous physical condition whatsoever in the first life, the Creator of which was God Himself, because it was not natural for God to create something like that. All this invaded us along with the entry of vice, and, without a doubt, must be abandoned upon a new entry into an immaculate life. 146 If, according to the Lord, on the resurrection they neither marry nor commit sexual intercourse (Matthew 22:30), then why the difference between the sexes - male and female? There is no such difference in the prototype (God), nor should there be in the pure image, how man will appear in the resurrection, and what - at least according to the Creator's plan - he should have been in the beginning. 147 The first-created man did not eat material food, just as the resurrected man will not eat it. This will be spiritual food, the enjoyment of which extends to one soul. Eat my bread, wisdom commands those who hunger (Wisdom 9:4); If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink (John 7:37), says the Lord to those who are thirsty for spiritual drink; and the prophet threatens a worthy punishment - not the famine of bread, nor the thirst for water, but the famine of hearing the word of the Lord (Am. 8:11). There is, therefore, food that is higher than material and has no need for its reception in the bodily organs; it is she who will nourish the resurrected. 148 Thus, in the resurrection we will receive bodies that are far from similar to the real ones: there will be no difference in sexes or ages, there will be no material food and drink, nor the very organs intended for all such functions. 149 This, however, does not yet unconditionally deny the identity of future bodies with present ones, but only affirms the essential difference between the two. But in the most particular depiction of the properties of future bodies in St. Gregory there are several such features that too obscure the idea of ​​identity. Based on the words of the Apostle, who preaches not only the resurrection, but also change through the resurrection (1 Cor. 15: 51–52), St. Gregory concludes that real life - in relation to the properties of bodies - has no similarity with the expected one. 150 If, for example, one of the most essential properties of the current body is heaviness, due to which all bodies naturally tend to the bottom; then in the resurrected body this property will not take place at all, since according to the word of Scripture, after the resurrection, we will be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air (1 Thessaloniki 4:17), like disembodied Angels. Accordingly, all other bodily properties will change - color, appearance, outline, etc., and will change “into nothing more divine.” 151 The resurrected will not have that mutual distinction “which our nature now necessarily has from the successive change of its states: all will then become one body of Christ, having taken on one image in form, since the light of the divine image will shine in all equally.” 152 In the absence of a bodily difference, there will then remain a difference of a qualitative, moral nature, which, belonging to the soul itself, will at the same time be reflected in a corresponding way on the body. Something similar can be observed in real life, when the external expression of the face indicates the internal state of the soul, due to which it is easy to recognize a person depressed by sadness, agitated by anger, burning with lust, or vice versa: cheerful, kind, adorned with the venerable quality of chastity, etc. 153 But if in the present life only strong mental movements can be imprinted on the external appearance of a person, and, moreover, sometimes can be hidden at will, then in the future life all even the smallest shades of mental states will be obvious: “not other than what everyone will be (in essence) and different to appear (externally), but as he is, so he will be manifest to everyone.” According to these spiritual qualities, related to perfection or imperfection - with countless intermediate degrees between them - each of the resurrected will receive a different and separate form from the other. 154 If we take into account these last discussions about the properties of resurrected bodies - (reasonings that St. Gregory himself considers nothing more than “fortune-telling”; 155 it seems difficult not to come to the conclusion that these will be bodies that are completely different from the current ones and apparently do not have the slightest connection with them. In fact, St. Gregory does not leave for future bodies any of those properties that characterize the earthly material body - even denies, as we have now seen, that general appearance (εἶδος) or type, which, like a seal impression, is inscribed on each individual body, and which, in his own opinion, remains on the bodily elements even after their decomposition by death. will the bodily elements be included in the renewed body? What does it mean, on the other hand, that the resurrected body will be identical in everything to the one that was originally created by God? 157 It goes without saying that no matter how pure and perfect the first-created body may be, since it was intended for earthly habitation, it cannot be allowed to be completely as the saint portrays it. Gregory is a resurrected body. Therefore, we readily agree with Ritter that the idea of ​​the perfect identity of future bodies with the first-created ones should be attributed to the “inaccuracy (unsatisfactory) of the formula used by St. Gregory." 158 As for the connection between future bodies and our present ones, at least St. Gregory, describing the properties of resurrected bodies in contrast to earthly ones, was quite sure that he did not go beyond the boundaries of such an identity as exists, for example, between an ear of grain and the grain from which it grew. It cannot be said about the grain that it is one and the same with the ear, but one also cannot deny the immediate, genetic connection between them, since the grain in its bud or potential already contains the future ear. The same must be said about the relationship of the future body to the present: like a grain thrown into the ground, our body develops through death and grows into the perfection of the most beautiful ear. 159 Reassured by this analogy, St. Gregory considered himself to have the right to assert the most significant difference between resurrected bodies and dead ones, without fear, at the same time, of losing the genetic connection between them. And if in reality such a connection - behind a too sharply drawn distinction - almost completely disappeared for our thought, then St. Gregory wanted to recognize in this change of bodies the action of the power of God, incomprehensible to us, 160 rather than to abandon the idea of ​​the closest kinship and dependence of the resurrected bodies from the present earthly ones. The end of the world and the universal judgment The resurrection of bodies, according to general church belief, is in close and inextricable connection with the end of the world and the universal judgment. At St. Gregory on these last points of Christian eschatology has only a few and rather fragmentary thoughts, which do not differ in any significant way from ordinary church ideas. – With the fulfillment of a certain number of people, the flowing movement of time will stop, and time itself will end, since it is given and proportioned by the Omniscient God only in relation to the conditions of the successive change of people through gradual birth. And with the cessation of time, the demise of the present temporary world will necessarily follow, and the universe will be renewed and changed in accordance with the conditions of a new, eternal existence. 161 That the present world, which is in constant motion, must someday have an end, this cannot be doubted; for whoever gives movement a beginning will certainly not doubt the end; and whoever does not accept the end does not accept the beginning. 162 The truth of the end of the world is thus inextricably linked with the truth of its beginning; as much as this latter is undoubted and obligatory for reason, the first is just as compulsory. - But how the demise of our world will happen, what form it will take upon renewal - “this should be removed from the objects of our curiosity.” Just as in relation to the first creation of the world, putting aside the study of the incomprehensible, we accept by faith that what is visible is accomplished from things that are not revealed (Heb. 11:3), although reason can present many reasons to doubt what we believe: so with undoubted faith we must also accept the dogma of the end of the world, without entering into rational research about how it will be. 163 When, according to the word of the Apostle, the image of this world passes away (1 Cor. 7:31), then the King and God - Christ - will appear to everyone to carry out a universal righteous judgment and give each of the rationally free beings what they deserve according to their deeds. In living, poetic and figurative features he represents St. Gregory the moment of this trial. “There I see,” he says in one church teaching, 164 “the Son of Man coming from heaven, walking through the air as on earth, surrounded by many darkness of angels; then the towering Throne of Glory and all the tribes of men, whatever came into being, were illuminated by the sun and inhaled this air, divided into two parts and facing the judgment seat. Those on the right side are called sheep, and those on the other, I hear, are called goats, having incurred this name due to their similarity in morals. I hear there the speeches of the Judge to the defendants and the responses of those on trial to the King. Everyone is assigned what is due to him; for those who led a good life - the pleasure of the kingdom, and for those who hate mankind and the evil - fiery torment, and, moreover, eternal. Together with people, the devil will also appear at the final judgment in order to receive the deserved punishment from the righteous Judge. “Then the culprit of the rebellion, who dreamed of the dignity of the Master, will appear before the eyes of everyone as a slave constantly scourged, dragged to execution by the Angels, and all the servants and accomplices of his malice will be subjected to punishments and executions befitting them. 165 – This will be a truly terrible judgment, like the strict judgment of God’s truth, in which even the slightest oversights are examined, and after which unimaginable torments await the wicked - “this is Gehenna, this dark fire, this undying worm of conscience, always gnawing at the soul with shame, renewing suffering with a reminder of the bad things done in life. 166 This painful state of sinners has nothing analogous to the suffering of this life, no matter how strong the latter may sometimes seem. If Scripture speaks of the torment of the wicked by fire, then this fire cannot be thought of by analogy with the present one, because that hellish fire is given a property that ours does not have: that fire does not go out; and if it is again said about a worm that gnaws sinners and does not die, it means that by it we must understand something other than our earth worm. 167 – And sinners will be subjected to such incessant punishments without hope of redemption. They cannot count on the mercy of the Judge after they have voluntarily become unworthy of pardon. “The Truthful Judgment of God fully corresponds to the dispositions taken from life; and whatever is in our will, such will be its reward. Come, he says, blessings (Matthew 25:31); go away cursed (v. 41). Is it really some external necessity that determines this sweet voice for those standing on the right hand, and the stern voice for those standing at the left? Was it not because of what they did that the first received mercy? And others - didn’t they make the Divinity cruel for themselves by treating their fellow tribesmen cruelly? The rich man drowned in luxury did not have mercy on the poor beggar at the gate. By this he deprived himself of mercy, and having the need for mercy, was not heard, not because one drop would have caused damage to the great source, but because even a drop of mercy is incompatible with cruelty. For what fellowship is there between light and darkness (2 Cor. 6:14)? It is said that if a man sows, he will also reap...(Gal. 6:7)". 168 If, therefore, for condemned sinners there is no hope of pardon from the Righteous Judge, then on the other hand they are deprived of the opportunity to change their fate by their own self-correction. "The peculiarity of that life (following the judgment) is that those who are in it are no longer given time to prepare good or evil deeds; but whatever seeds someone sows to himself through his own deeds, the fruits of that will be given to him in return. 169 If, further, in this life a person has sure and saving means for atonement for sins in the divinely established sacraments, then these means will not be available beyond the grave. “Unenlightened by (mysterious) grace, the soul does not have the seal of the Lord on itself and therefore, after leaving the body, can it be accepted by the Angels? It will be in vain for her to cry there, it is useless to repent. Like the rich man dressed in purple and fine linen, she is the food of the unquenchable fire. 170 – The doors of the kingdom of heaven will not open for souls who have passed beyond the grave under church excommunication: “such souls will be pitiful, imprisoned in some dark place, as if in a prison, punished there with endless and forever unceasing crying. 171 That is why we need to take care of cleansing and repentance here on earth, so that sudden death does not deprive us of all the means to heal sinful illnesses. “For in death no one will be able to heal the illness caused by sin by remembering God; because confession has power on earth; but in hell there is no such thing.” 172 If we take into account all the thoughts now revealed about the general judgment and its significance for the fate of the wicked, 173 it seems difficult not to come to the conclusion that it was clearer and more firmly and could not be truly expressed - the church teaching on these issues. Here, the judgment of God is portrayed exclusively as a matter of God’s strict truth, and the punishment awaiting sinners is called eternal, never ending. Meanwhile, we would be mistaken if we assumed that this was really the firm and only conviction of St. himself. Gregory. And first of all, one cannot help but be more bewildered if we compare the concept of judgment given here with that which we have already seen in our place, speaking about the afterlife fate of the wicked. There, the truth of God was not separated in the mind of St. Gregory from goodness, and the trial itself was more a matter of mercy than of strict justice. Here it is completely the opposite: there is no place for divine mercy, here only punitive justice has power. Even if we assume (for which, however, we have no direct grounds) that one judgment takes place only in the intermediate state between death and resurrection (the so-called private trial), and the other refers to the time after the general resurrection - then even in this case the very change in God’s relationship with the defendants will remain completely incomprehensible and inexplicable. – Even more perplexing is the radical contrast between the results of both judgments in relation to the wicked: if before, as we have seen, St. Gregory insisted with all his insistence that the court does not impose punishment (punishment) on the defendants, but only performs temporary healing for them, albeit of a painful, painful nature, but now the result of the court is precisely punitive punishment and, moreover, eternal. And from here naturally flow two completely opposite views on the final end of the world: one, such an end will be dualism, the eternal division of good and evil, the righteous and the wicked; in another way - monism, the union of all in one good and bliss with the destruction of evil and torment. Leaving for now the question of reconciling this contradiction open, we will subject to the most subtle consideration those passages from the writings of St. Gregory, where the last of the views now indicated is expressed with all clarity and furnished with logical arguments. Consistently pursuing the view of torment after death, according to which they are only means of healing and cleansing the soul from sinful growths, St. Gregory could not help but come to the conclusion that sooner or later these means would finally achieve their goal. The purifying fire burns only as long as there is a substance to nourish it; but it goes without saying that a moment must finally come when not only in an individual person, but also in the whole of humanity, food for him will completely dry up, and therefore its effect will necessarily cease. Let this painful operation of healing the soul from the evil that has grown into it be so long for some sinners that it will almost merge with endless eternity, 174 but in any case, world history will not find its final conclusion in it, but in the cessation of all disharmony introduced into creation by sin, in the destruction of all evil and the restoration of all creation to the primitive blissful state. Such was the first beginning of the world, such should be its end: this is demanded by both the divine purpose of the creation of the world and man, and the very concept of evil, which introduced disorder into the correct course of the world; Finally, many testimonies of St. also confirm. Scriptures. 175 In fact, “man is God’s beautiful creation, and brought into being for an even more beautiful one,” 176 for the acceptance of divine benefits and for his own bliss. “For this reason, the verbal (reasonable) nature was brought into being, so that the wealth of divine blessings would not be ineffective; but the all-ordaining wisdom has prepared, as it were, certain vessels and, by will, gifted them with receivers of souls, so that there will be some kind of container that receives blessings.” 177 This divine goal of the creation of rational creatures is achieved when the whole creation actually participates in bliss; with the assumption of eternity of torment, although only for some rational beings, it will not be achieved, and evil conquers the wisdom of God. But isn't this last thought ungodly? Is it really that the wise, world-ruling Providence cannot find ways and means to remove from the world everything that has happened and appeared in it contrary to the purposes of God (evil and sin), which can never be in vain? Be that as it may, in any case, the accusation of failing to achieve the goal of Creation to a certain extent falls on the Creator Himself, Who either would not have been wise enough if he had not foreseen the deviation of man to evil, or would not have been good enough if he had allowed fallen man to remain in evil forever. 178 St. could not recognize either one or the other. Gregory in relation to God, and therefore to the indicated “Manichaean” objection he gave the following answer: as the most supremely wise, God foresaw man’s deviation from good, but as wise and good, He also knew the means to return the fallen again to goodness and bliss. 179 “Everything taken separately in the economy of the universe is directed towards this goal, because everything needs, in some order and sequence, according to the artistic wisdom of the Manager, to come into agreement with the nature of God.” 180 For the almighty power of God there is not and cannot be any difficulty that would pose an insurmountable obstacle to the achievement of the Divine goal. “And God has one goal - when by people, one after the other, the entire fullness of our nature has already been completed, some soon after this life will find themselves clean from vice, others will experience the healing of fire at the appropriate times after this, others will be found to have known neither good nor evil from experience in this life (babies), He will grant to all the communion of the blessings that exist in Him, which, as the Scripture says, neither eye can see nor the ear does not hear, and which are not accessible to thoughts (1 Cor. 2:9). And this, in my opinion, means nothing more than being in God himself; for the good that surpasses the ear, the eye, the heart, will itself be superior to all.” 181 Thus, from the point of view of the divine teleology of the world and man, the destruction of evil, the cessation of torment and the restoration of all humanity to primitive bliss followed for St. Gregory with necessity. He came to the same result from the point of view of metaphysical and philosophical foundations, starting from the very concept of the nature and essence of good and evil. In fact, what is good and what is evil? Good is wealth, a positive force, because it consists of activity according to the will of God and in connection with the power of God; in God it has the basis of its essence, and in Him it finds the support of its existence. Evil is the opposite of good, and therefore it is the deprivation of the power of good - it is an activity outside of God and without God, and as such, it does not have a special, independent essence (φύσις δὲ κακίας οὺκ ἔστι), but is simply the absence of good, its shadow side, simply - μὴ ὄν. 182 The difference between virtue and vice is presented not as a difference between any two hypostatic (χαϑ’ ὑπόστασιν) phenomena. On the contrary, just as the non-existent is opposed to the existing (τὸ μὴ ὄν), and it cannot be said that the non-existent is hypostatically different from the existing, we affirm that non-being is opposite to being, in the same way, vice is opposed to the concept of virtue, not as something existing in itself, but as something understood by the absence of something better. 183 If so, if evil or vice does not have a solid, independent foundation, then within itself it must already bear the beginning of self-decomposition and self-destruction. As something powerless in itself, not having support in God (Who is the Creator of only existing things - τὸ ὄν), 184 and rooted only in the free will of rational creatures, evil must someday be completely destroyed before the positive force of good, which must embrace everything without exception, so that there will be no place left for evil anywhere and in nothing. “Evil must once be completely and certainly removed from (the realm of) what exists, and what, according to what was said above, does not exist in reality, will not exist at all. For vice does not have the property of being outside arbitrariness, and when all will is in God, then vice will come to complete destruction, because there will be no container left for it.” 185 Thus, from the point of view of metaphysical foundations, the fragility of evil is understandable; but can’t it find sufficiently solid psychological support? In other words: can’t our free will be established in evil forever? According to St. Gregory, cannot: “for vice is not so powerful as to overcome good power, and the folly of our nature is not higher and not stronger than divine wisdom. And it is impossible for something perverse and changeable to be stronger and more constant than that which has always been established in goodness. God’s advice is always and certainly immutable, and the vicissitudes of our nature are not firm even in evil.” 186 Vice, by its most negative nature, does not have the property of infinity, but is necessarily limited to certain limits, beyond which the succession of good follows. Thus, one cannot endlessly follow the path of vice, but it is necessary, having reached a certain limit, to find oneself in the region of good. “Thus, the ever-present mobility of our nature, having gone through the entire sinful path to the end, of necessity returns again to goodness, being disciplined by the recollection of previous misfortunes not to again be captivated by such misfortunes.” 187 Therefore again paradise, again the tree of life, again the gift of the image and the dignity of the ruler. 188 No matter how strong and convincing the various logical grounds in favor of a general apokatastasis, but if they did not have the slightest support in the authority of St. Scriptures they could not have for St. Gregory has no price. - With the deep respect that this saint had. Father to the Word of God, when studying all kinds of dogmatic questions, 189 he would never dare to stand in direct opposition to it on the question of the final fate of the world. And if, despite all this, he did not see any inconvenience in teaching and restoring all rational creatures to a blissful state, it was only because he found several points of support for him in the saint himself. Scripture. How correctly he interpreted the passages related to this is another question, but at least he himself believed it. He saw a prophecy about the agreement of all rational creation in goodness in the following words of the Psalmist: God is the Lord and appear to us: make a holiday in the frequenting roads of the altar (Ps. 117:27). “This is a saying,” says St. Gregory, it seems to me, mysteriously foreshadows to all rational creation the formation of a single holiday, on which the lower and the higher rejoice together in the assembly of the good.” 190 The quoted words of the Psalmist have a representative, typical meaning. The image is taken from the tabernacle of Moses. As in the Old Testament tabernacle, not everyone without distinction had access to all parts of the sanctuary, but some (pagans and foreigners) were not allowed to enter even inside the outer fence, and there was a big difference between those who entered there: those who were purified were allowed into a more internal place than the unclean; and of the pure, the very interior of the temple was again not accessible to everyone, but only to the priests: “and that, finally, the hidden and inaccessible part of the temple, in which the altar was erected, decorated with certain fences made of horns, was closed to the entrance of the priests themselves, except for one high priest, who entered there once a year. 191 This arrangement of the tabernacle serves as an exact image and likeness of the present spiritual state of rational creatures: “some of the rational powers, like a holy altar, are erected in the sanctuary of the Divinity, and some of them again appear to be the most excellent, exhibited in the likeness of horns; and the other one next to them, in sequential order, takes first and second places. The human race, due to its innate depravity, is expelled from the divine enclosure.” But it is not to this state of separation that the Psalmist turns his gaze, when in the above words he calls upon all rational creation to form a holiday: he prophetically contemplates the coming of a time when every barrier now separating us from what is inside the divine veil will be destroyed, when all corruption produced by vice will be destroyed. “Then a common holiday will be formed around God, at which everyone will enjoy the same joy, because no difference separates a more rational nature in the communion of equal goods, but even those who are now outside due to depravity will one day be inside the sanctuaries of divine bliss, and will be united among themselves by the horns of the altar, i.e. superior to the world's powers." 192 The Apostle expresses more clearly the same idea about universal agreement in goodness in the words: Every knee will worship Him, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Phil. 2:10–11). “Instead of horns, he names the angelic and heavenly ranks, and by the rest he means the creature, after them, which is intelligible, - i.e. us, who will all be dominated by a single, harmonious holiday. The holiday is the confession and knowledge of the truly Existent. 193 The most important evidence in favor of the considered opinion of St. Gregory thinks to find in the words of the same Apostle (1 Cor. 15:28): may God be all in all. According to the conditions of this life, we have a wide variety of external needs: for example, we need time, air, place, food, drink, clothing, sun, etc., etc. Nothing like this will happen in the future blessed life, the blessed will find the satisfaction of all life’s needs in God, who will be everything for them (“everything”), i.e. source of all kinds of benefits. But, further, as the Apostle puts it, God will be like this in everyone (for everyone). “This, it seems to me,” notes St. Gregory, - Scripture teaches the complete destruction of vice; for if there is God in all beings, then without a doubt there will be no vice in beings. And if anyone assumes that there will be a vice; then how can what is said be preserved in all its power, that God is in all? Because the exclusion of vice makes the concept of the word: everything insufficient. On the contrary, the one who has to be in everything will not be in that which does not exist.” 194 Finally, when analyzing various passages of Scripture cited by St. Gregory, in support of the idea of ​​​​a universal apokatastasis, it is worth mentioning the interpretation he gave to the words of the Apostle: the last enemy will be destroyed - death (1 Cor. 15: 26). Under the name of “the last enemy - death” St. Gregory here means precisely that “second death” of the wicked, 195 about which St. speaks. John in the Apocalypse: both death and hell were quickly cast into the lake of fire: and behold, there is the second death (20: 14; sn. 21: 8). And therefore, discussing the mutual difference of the resurrected according to their perfections and imperfections, St. Gregory notes that such a difference will take place only until “until, according to the word of the Apostle, the last enemy is eliminated, and, after the complete elimination of evil from all beings, the God-like beauty, in the image of which we were created in the beginning, will again shine in all.” 196 It is not for the purposes of our research that it enters into a discussion of how weighty the claims made by St. Gregory's arguments from St. Scripture and how correctly the above meaning is given to them. But we cannot pass in silence the naturally arising question: how did St. think? Gregory regarding those numerous places of St. Scriptures in which the doctrine of the eternity of hellish torment is very clearly expressed? How did he resolve the antimony that arises in thought when comparing this last type of biblical evidence with those cited by him in favor of apokatastasis? It could not, of course, be that such a difficulty did not present itself to his mind; and yet in his writings we do not find definite explanations on this matter. Origen, whose opinion on apocatastasis was maintained with greater firmness and consistency, saw purely pedagogical purposes in the evidence of Scripture regarding the eternity of torment. According to his explanation, the word of God speaks of eternal and terrible (sensual) torment in hell in those forms in order to have a stronger effect on the minds and hearts of people with threats of this kind and thereby keep them from licentiousness and vices. 197 For the benefit of the people themselves, argues Origen, St. Scripture presents future punishments in a much more exaggerated form than what they will actually be (both not eternal, and of a purely spiritual nature). Apparently, St. also has it. Gregory gives some hints at a similar image of representation. This is the place we have already mentioned “Oglas”. words" (chapter 8), where his view of the future judgment and torment of sinners of St. Gregory expresses it this way: “for weak people this is a threat and an uprising of sorrows, so that through the fear of painful retribution we may become chaste until we avoid vice; and according to the faith of more intelligent people, this is healing and healing from God, who elevates His creation to original grace.” Elsewhere, having depicted the picture of the Last Judgment as it is described in the Gospel (Matt. 25:31–46), with a mention of eternal reward, he makes the following remark: “and this strict judgment is vividly depicted in words for no other reason than to teach us the benefits of charity.” 198 Of course, from these brief and rather unclear data it cannot be reliably concluded that the evidence of Scripture about the eternity of the torment of St. Gregory considered it nothing more than a pedagogical device. But in the absence of other, more precise indications, his firm thought on this subject remains in the shadows. With a high probability it can be assumed that since the opinion about apokatastasis was not a firm and exclusive conviction of his (we will talk about this later), he does not find the need to speak out decisively about biblical passages that contradict such an opinion. In all the judgments presented thus far, St. Gregory on the issue of apocatastasis, under the concept of a rational creature to which this restoration will extend, people (sinners) are thought of (and called). 199 Meanwhile, all the arguments aimed at proving such an opinion are of such a general nature that, if their strength is recognized, there is no reason to limit the effect of apocatastasis only to people, and not extend it to evil spirits. On the contrary, with this argumentation, the destruction of evil in demons is a necessary logical conclusion, without which the whole opinion about apokatastasis loses its power. If the restoration of people to primitive bliss is required by the divine teleology of the world, if it necessarily follows from the very nature of evil, then on the same grounds the same thing should be affirmed about evil spirits. If evil, as St. Gregory, must once have been completely driven out of the realm of existence, so that there would be no container left for it anywhere, then, without a doubt, it would not remain in the demons. The idea of ​​​​restoring evil spirits to a primitive pure state is expressed, indeed, in two main places in the works of St. Gregory, although somewhat secretly. This primarily includes the entire 26th chapter. “Ogle. Words". Considering the mystery of our redemption and defending, among other things, the idea that the descent to earth of God Himself was a matter of strict justice, at the request of which fallen humanity could be redeemed from the power of the devil at as high a price as he himself could wish, the enemy who prevailed over us, 200 - St. Gregory was met with the objection that in the very method of atonement, apparently, justice was not observed, but “some kind of deception” was allowed. That God does not directly and openly, with His most divine nature, but under the cover of human nature and unrecognized by the enemy enters the domain of the ruler (ἐντὸς τοῦ κρατοῦντος), - this in some way is a kind of deception and seduction (ἀπάτη τις καὶ παραλογισμός); since it is common for those who deceive to turn the hopes of those against whom they are plotting into one thing, and to do something other than what they hoped. 201 According to St. Gregory, on the contrary, it is precisely this method of atonement that serves most of all as an expression of the most precise justice, combined, moreover, with the greatest goodness and love for mankind. If the law of justice requires that everyone be given their due, then the enemy of the human race, who deceived the ancestors into sin, is quite right and “he himself is now being deceived by the human appearance (of the God-man).” 202 But the deception invented by the God-man and the deception used by the enemy of humanity are completely opposite in purpose. “One (enemy) used deception to corrupt nature; and the just, good and wise (God) used the invention of deception to save the corrupt, benefiting not only the lost, but also the one who caused our destruction (αὐτόν τὸν ἀπώλειαν χαϑ’ ἡμῶν ἐνεργήσαντα)". For God’s acceptance of our nature, contaminated by sin, destroys in it all the products of vice that have arisen “from the inventor of evil,” and thereby destroys the area of ​​domination of our enemy. “And therefore even to the enemy himself, if he felt such a good deed, it would not seem doubtful that what was accomplished (by the redemptive incarnation) is just and saving. Just as today those who are cut and burned during treatment are indignant at doctors, tormented by the pain of cutting; but if they recover from this, and the painful sensation of cauterization passes, then they will give thanks to those who performed this healing on them: in exactly the same way, when, after a long time, the evil that is now mixed with them and akin to them is removed from nature, since the restoration of those who are now in evil to their original state is completed, thanksgiving will unanimously be given to all creation, and to all who suffered torment during the cleansing, and not even those who needed the beginning of purification.” 203 Thus, the final fruit of the incarnation of the Son of God will be “the complete liberation of man from vice and the healing of the inventor of evil himself.” 204 The thought expressed in the chapter discussed, despite the darkness of the outer shell, is completely clear. The devil should not be excluded from that final cleansing from evil and vice, which we once expect due to the redemptive merits of the God-Man, although the deliverance must take place, so to speak, against his will, because the area of ​​his dominion is destroyed and destroyed, as it were, by deception. Subsequently, he himself, however, will understand all the beneficial significance of this deception, and together with all creation will give thanks to God. In vain Vincenzi 205 makes every effort to prove that in the cited chapter “Oglas. There is not the slightest hint of the devil in the words. According to his interpretation, here we are talking (supposedly) only about the restoration by the Redeemer of the vicious nature of man, and under the name of the enemy, from whose power humanity is redeemed, of course, supposedly the sinful flesh, or that “old man,” according to the Apostle (Rom. 6: 6; and ch. 7), which wages a constant struggle against the spirit, the “inner man.” In complete agreement with the Apostle, argues Vinzenzi, St. Gregory asserts here that our flesh, as a result of the sin living in it, has become hostile to both us and God; but having been accepted by the Son of God, she is healed from the filth of sin, so that in the resurrection she may be restored to her former state in which she was originally created by God. 206 – Vinzenzi even points out some particular features of the place in question, which seem to decisively exclude any thought about the devil. So, if St. Gregory expresses that “God is not an open Divinity, but hidden under human nature” enters the possessor “(ἐντὸς τοῦ κρατοῦντος γενέσϑαι, according to Vincenzi’s translation: “is born within (intus) of the possessor)” - that would be extreme It is blasphemy (blasphemia) to see the devil in this “possessor,” because then one would have to assert that the Son of God, with the taking on of flesh, ascended into a demon (!). 207 In our opinion, there is not the slightest reason to understand the expression: ἐντὸς τοῦ κρατοῦντος γενέσϑαι (τὸν θεὸν) in the sense that Vincenzi wants to see here, i.e. in the sense of giving birth to or taking into oneself the “possessor.” This expression, both by the connection of speech and by grammatical construction, means precisely: the entry of God into the area (ἐντὸς) of the dominion of the devil, i.e. into sinful human nature or into the sinful world in general, over which the devil has gained dominion, and not at all into himself. - Arguing in the same spirit, Vinzenzi brings out the next passage of the same chapter, where St. Gregory lists in particular the beneficial actions of the incarnation of the Son of God: “from the approach of death to life, darkness to light, corruption to incorruption, destruction occurs and transformation into nothing worse, but the benefit for the one being purified from this.” 208 With the above words, Vinzenzi notes, the thought of Nyssa is sufficiently clear that he did not at all mean here to talk about the salvation of the devil, who, as a spirit, does not allow darkness, corruption, or death into himself. 209 We completely agree that in the above passage we are really talking about human nature and those destructive consequences of sin, from which now, after union (“approximation”) with the Divine in the Redeemer, it is cleansed. But this does not at all give reason to conclude that there is a decisive contradiction here with the idea of ​​​​the salvation of the devil. St. Gregory, as we have seen more than once, very clearly and separately expresses that the divine work of redemption brought the greatest benefit to a) both the deceased, b) and the one who caused our death. And if in the above passage he depicts in particular features such a benefit in relation to the first (man), then this does not at all require that all the same features be attributed to the last (the devil) for whom - according to the property of his nature - the benefit could be revealed in a different character (in the destruction of spiritual evil and vice). We have noted, one might say, the strongest arguments that Vinzenzi could put forward in defense of his interpretation of Chapter 26. “Ogle. Sl." His other efforts to substitute under all expressions regarding the “enemy” (ἐχϑρὸς) of the human race the concept of sinful flesh (caro) are so strained and weak that only extreme tendentiousness could see any meaning in them. All the features with which this enemy is portrayed in the chapter under consideration, and all the names that are assigned to him here (άπατεών - seducer, ἐπιβουλεύων - attacker, εὑρετὴς τοῦ κακοῦ - inventor of evil, ἀντικείμενος - opponent, etc.), clearly show that he is a living, intelligent being, who, moreover, has “his own will (ἥ ἰδία προαίρεσις).” It is too difficult to see here, together with Vinzenzi, the image of the “flesh of sin”; and, finally, such a view of human flesh would be too reminiscent of dualistic, Manichaean judgments about sensuality as the causes of sin and the focus of evil. Another important confirmation of the opinion is that St. Gregory did not deprive evil spirits of participation in universal bliss; it is found in his work “on the soul and resurrection.” 210 Explaining the words of the Apostle Paul: Every tribe of heaven and earth and under the earth will worship Him (Josh. 2:10) - in the sense that the Apostle “in the depths of wisdom contemplates here that agreement in the good of all rational nature, which will one day happen,” - St. Gregory notes that the Apostle calls the angelic and incorporeal nature by the name of “heavenly” (ἐπουρανίων), by the name of “earthly” (ἐπιγείων) - associated with the body, while “hell” (καταχϑονίων) names or is already separated from bodies through death (the souls of dead people), “or if among the rational natures there is seen any other than those named, which anyone would like to call demons (δαίμονας), or spirits, or something else similar.” 211 “For” – the St. continues further. Gregory, in explaining this last interpretation of the word "underworld", - on the basis of general opinion (ἐκ τῆς χοινῆς ὑπολήψεως) and the tradition of the Scriptures is accepted by faith that outside such bodies there is a certain nature, hostile to good and harmful to human life, voluntarily deposited from the best lot, they say, the Apostle ranks it among the underworlds, meaning by this saying that, finally, after long centuries-old periods, vice will disappear, and nothing will remain outside of goodness; on the contrary, even the underworld (παρ҆ ἐκείνων, lat. daemones) will unanimously confess the Lordship of Christ." 212 The idea of ​​restoring evil spirits to participation in good is expressed in the above words with such irresistible clarity that it seems impossible to invent any other interpretation for it. Evil spirits are here directly called demons, strictly delineated in their distinctive properties and distinguished from all other classes of intelligent creatures. Nevertheless, Vincenzi finds it possible to assert that even here Gregory of Nyssa did not say anything and did not even mean to talk about the salvation of evil demons. 213 And first of all, the “universal worship of Christ” about which the Apostle, St. Gregory seems to understand it in the sense of a simple (external) confession or recognition of Christ as the Son of God - in exactly the same way as the evangelists convey about demons emerging from people that “they confessed Christ,” or as the Apostle James puts it: and the demons believe and tremble (2:19). 214 It is hardly necessary to prove much that the apostolic words about the worship of every tribe of St. Christ. Gregory did not understand at all in the same sense as Vincenzi thinks. This worship, which is identical with him with the concept of universal “agreement in goodness,” refers to the time of the final “disappearance of vice” and the decisive dominance of goodness in all beings and is thus an expression of that spiritual closeness that will once take place between God and a creature pure from all evil. – If the devil also participates in such universal worship, then he too will one day be cleansed of evil and will taste bliss. Intensifying at all costs to defend his preconceived idea, Vincenzi in the concept of “demons, or spirits, or anything else like that,” as St. Gregory, - wants to see rather an indication of the souls of the dead, or, in extreme cases, of spirits in general (geniuses, pagan demons), than in the strict sense of unclean spirits or fallen angels. 215 But from the souls of the dead (people), as well as from the good angels of St. Gregory clearly distinguishes this class of demons. And what he means by them are evil spirits in the biblical sense - this is clear from the description of the most particular properties of their nature: (they are “hostile to good, harmful to human life, voluntarily abandoned a better lot,” etc.). Vincenzi, however, does not find it difficult to see in these features again his favorite concept of the “flesh of sin.” 216 Against such a blatant stretch, there is hardly any need to notice anything. We have looked at more prominent passages in the writings of St. Gregory on the issue of the so-called apokatastasis. Considering all of the above in this direction, one cannot help but come to the conclusion that the final end of the world of St. Gregory recognized the return of all creation to primitive purity and bliss - the restoration of that harmonious harmony that prevailed in the entire creation of God before evil and vice destroyed it. Only in the new unification of all creatures in the most perfect beauty of being, where no discord, no division and no contradiction no longer have a place, does St. find. Gregory is the last goal of the world created by God. This restoration is valid both in relation to everything that exists, and especially in relation to rational beings in whom the truth of the world rests. Without exception, they will all unite at one holiday, at which all earthly and heavenly powers will bow their knees before the Lord and confess that Jesus Christ is to the glory of God the Father. 217 The doctrine of apocatastasis, no matter how clearly it is expressed in the writings of St. Gregory, however, not all researchers recognized and recognize the sincere and only conviction of Bishop. Nyssa. Better to say, this is a question in the St. father, about which there were as many different opinions and considerations as there were individuals involved in resolving it. Two main circumstances posed difficulties for researchers here. First of all and mainly, the duality of the views of St. was perplexing. Gregory, by virtue of which both the doctrine of the cessation of evil and torment, and the doctrine of their eternal, endless continuation equally found a place in his writings. It was difficult, of course, to admit that such a contradiction could coexist in the mind of such a profound thinker. Hence the need to sacrifice one teaching in favor of another, to recognize one as the true and firm conviction of St. teachers, others casually and casually expressed or even directly false. It goes without saying that such a distinction between the genuine and the false, the solid and the superficial could not be achieved easily in view of the fact that both opposing views had support in the authentic writings of St. Gregory. On the other hand, no less disconcerting was the very fact of the presence in the writings of the holy and respected father of such a teaching, which went directly against the general church beliefs and was even solemnly condemned at the 5th Ecumenical Council as a decisive error. 218 In deciding which of the two above-mentioned teachings to recognize as truly belonging to St. Gregory, this circumstance spoke, of course, not in favor of apocatastasis. At least for many ancient and modern studies, it served as a strong motivation to free St. Gregory from the reproach of Origenistic error. An ardent defender of St. Gregory, on this last basis, back in the 9th century. St. spoke Herman, Patriarch of Constantinople. He wrote a whole essay on this subject entitled “Ἀνταποδοτικός”, or what is also “about the true legal reward of people according to the way they live.” This work has not reached us; it is known only from the review of Photius. 219 According to his testimony, in the indicated work, Herman argued that Gregory Bishop. Nyssa and his writings are completely free from the errors of Origen. “But those who liked the absurdity that for demons and people subject to eternal punishment there is no time to wait for deliverance - since Gregory was known as a man famous for learning and famous in eloquence, and saw a clear testimony of his holiness, uttered by the lips of everyone, proceeded to his pure and sound writings and mixed the dark and fatal poison of Origen's nonsense - to virtue and heretical madness was secretly added to the teachings of the famous man.” They did this partly with the help of false additions, partly with the help of violent distortion of his correct arguments. “Against them,” notes Photius, “Germanus, the zealot of piety, drew the sharp sword of truth, and, having defeated the wounded enemies, presented as the winner the one against whom the heretical rabble had plotted their intrigues.” Photius further notes that Germanus proved his opinion that some of Gregory’s works were damaged by the previous connection of speech in them and evidence from other countless writings of Gregory. The opinion of Herman and Photius on the falsification of the works of Bishop. Nyssa's idea was repeated more than once by the Origenists in subsequent theological literature. 220 In the absence of manuscripts that would clearly prove the third-party hand of the interpolator, it is, of course, difficult to verify this opinion in fact. And Herman himself, as far as can be seen from the testimony of Photius, did not have such factual support; but tried to confirm his thought only by the connection of speech and the demolition of other passages from the works of St. Gregory. And given this state of affairs, there are very serious reasons to doubt the validity of the very opinion about falsification. And first of all, as far as the context of the speech is concerned, here it is impossible to notice any traces of anyone’s extraneous insertions. “It is not easy,” Petavius ​​rightly notes, 221 “it is not easy to be convinced of this (of the falsity of all passages about apocatastasis) for those who carefully read the writings of Gregory; since the style, the character of expression, and the whole sequence of speech clearly prove their true origin.” It is difficult, in our opinion, to admit the possibility of insertions of so numerous, scattered across different parts of works and even across many different works, as we saw in St. Gregory. The falsifiers, it seems, could not have done this, there were sufficient reasons, and they would hardly have had the art to make insertions always as successfully and, by the way, as we see in reality. Further, it should be noted that the opinion about apokatastasis, as we already know, is not an accidental, fragmentary or casually expressed judgment in the writings of Bishop. Nyssky: it is deeply rooted in his other main views (for example, on the nature and essence of evil), and is furnished, whenever possible, with solid logical arguments. And these are circumstances that make the idea of ​​interpolation almost incredible. Finally, the bewilderment expressed by Gaines also applies here. “I see no reason,” he says, “why such a fate should befall Gregory alone; why, in the same forms, the Origenists did not consider it necessary to deface the monuments of other men who enjoyed great fame in the ancient church.” The explanation that Herman gives on this score and which Tilmon repeats after him, 222 can hardly be considered sufficiently thorough: in the ancient church and in the century of St. Gregory, indeed, there were quite a few fathers and teachers as famous as, if not more than, him. All the indications now and considerations so undermine faith in the validity of the opinion about the falsification of Gregory’s works by the Origenists that recently even the most zealous defenders of Bishop. Nyssa does not consider it possible to dwell on this assumption alone. “We must admit,” says Vinzenzi, “that hitherto the defenders of Gregory were rather simply cutting through the knot (of a controversial issue) than giving an accurate and reasonable solution to it.” 223 This is the permission he himself is trying to give. If previous defenders recognized as undoubted the presence in the writings of St. Gregory of Origenistic errors and only attributed them to the number of false insertions; then Vincenzi does the exact opposite: while admitting that the writings of Gregory have reached us without any damage, he at the same time finds it possible not to see in them the slightest hint of anything similar to the teaching that is known under the name of apocatastasis. For this purpose, he subjects to a detailed analysis all relevant passages from the works of St. Gregory, and with the help of a peculiar reinterpretation of them he comes to the conclusion that if there is a mention in them of the restoration (ἀποκατάστασις) of people, then this does not mean a change in the moral fate of condemned sinners, but only a metaphysical renewal of their essence, which will take place at the moment of the general resurrection. Sinners will be resurrected with the same pure nature as the righteous, but not to bliss, like these latter, but to eternal torment. We consider it unnecessary to speculate on how well-founded such a conclusion is, since this would mean repeating what has already been discussed. We also do not consider it necessary to follow in detail all the judgments and explanations of Vinzenzi, since this would lead us too far without any significant benefit to the matter. We became partially familiar with the methods of his reasoning already when analyzing those passages from the works of St. Gregory, which contain the idea of ​​​​the restoration of evil spirits. All his other arguments are in the same spirit. In view of the failure of any such attempts to free St. Gregory from the reproach of error, most of the newest researchers come to the conclusion that indeed the bishop himself. Nyssa held an Origenistic way of thinking on the question of the final fate of the world. 224 But at the same time, the same difficult question arises again: how could they appear in the writings of St. Gregory, along with Origenistic views - directly opposite and excluding them thoughts about the eternity of hellish torment? If there is no reason to consider the opinion of apokatastasis to be falsified, then it is even less possible to allow falsification in relation to this kind of thoughts, which are in full agreement with the general church faith. Meanwhile, of the researchers just mentioned, as far as we know, only Kleinheidt pays due attention to this difficulty; yet others limit themselves to the bare assertion that Gregory of Nyssa preached the doctrine of apocatastasis. Kleinheidt gives two, in his opinion, probable explanations for the contradiction that is noticed in the writings of St. Gregory on the question of the final end of the world. 1) It is possible, he says, 225 - that the works containing erroneous Origenistic thoughts were written and published earlier than those in which the correct general church teaching is presented. And Gregory, as often happens with students and imitators of the most famous men, was carried away at first by Origenism, then little by little he realized how much Origen had erred on this point, and in his subsequent writings he completely freed himself from his influence. But such an explanation can be considered nothing more than an arbitrary guess with too little probability. Due to the lack of positive data, a strict chronological distribution of Gregory's works is absolutely impossible. Kleinheidt himself could approve such a distribution of time only in relation to two works (“On the Soul and the Resurrection,” written 379 and “Speech on his ordination” - 394), and then with very dubious accuracy. – 2) “It cannot be denied,” the further mentioned theologian continues, “that Gregory was a great philosopher and orator. And the experience of various centuries shows how easily philosophers, while philosophizing, deviated from the right path, and speakers, using hyperbole, transgressed the limit. It could just as easily have happened that Gregory, while philosophizing and expressing himself hyperbolically, fell into error - and, moreover, in such an opinion that St. the fathers neither denied nor affirmed, but simply passed by in silence, so as not to reveal what was very dark for many. - The very brevity of the speech with which St. Gregory teaches about the eternity of punishments, giving reason to doubt whether he really wanted to present himself as a witness to this church tradition. From the arguments that are given in support of the opposite opinion, it seems that one can notice that Gregory himself understood that the cessation of hellish punishments cannot be proven by tradition.” 226 According to this last explanation of Kleinheidt, it turns out that the doctrine of apocatastasis was the firm philosophical opinion of St. Gregory, which he preached, despite the awareness of his disagreement with church tradition. The doctrine of the eternity of punishment, although he sometimes expressed it, was so brief and vague that it is not even possible to notice whether he really attached to it the significance that it had in the general church conviction. 227 There is, in our opinion, a significant amount of truth in this explanation. Indeed, if we compare the evidence in favor of apocatastasis, as they are developed in the works of Gregory of Nyssa, with the expressions in which his doctrine of the eternity of torment is expressed, one cannot help but notice a very significant difference between the two. While the first ones are revealed with possible completeness and thoroughness, imbued to some extent with the character of a firm conviction and generally expressed in such a way that it is noticeable that the writer’s mind primarily gravitated towards them, the second ones, on the contrary, appear only in the form of scattered, fragmentary, as if in passing statements. In addition, it is worthy of note that thoughts of the first kind are carried out mainly in works of a philosophical nature, having the form of either a separate scientific treatise (“On the Soul and the Resurrection”), or an entire, albeit brief, dogmatic system (“Oglas. Slovo”). The doctrine of the eternity of torment is found most often in the church teachings of St. Gregory, and, moreover, as we have already seen in part, always almost with a practical application, with the goal of encouraging listeners to practice well-known Christian virtues and to avoid the vices opposite to them. By making such a remark, we do not want to assert that the church teaching was with St. Gregory is only a pedagogical means for the purpose of having a strong impact on the minds and hearts of his listeners (as was actually the case with Origen, who in many of his homilies threatened his listeners with eternal punishment in hell). In our understanding, this circumstance indicates only that one teaching was more internal, so to speak, the subjective (esoteric) opinion of St. Gregory, the other is an external, walking, openly expressed (exoteric) teaching. This does not mean, however, that he was decisively convinced of one thing, as unconditionally true, and put the other only, so to speak, for show, as required by necessity, and in fact did not attach any degree of probability to it. He could consider both absolutely equally probable, and at the same time not give decisive preference to either, as completely irrefutable. From our present point of view, such duality may seem strange, but for the writer of the time when St. lived. Grigory, it is quite understandable and natural. The fact is that the doctrine of the final end of the world had not yet been fully examined at that time, and - what is especially important - had not yet received an exact church definition. 228 Everything that was previously expressed on this issue did not go beyond private theological opinions and did not have the character of strictly dogmatic truth. True, most of the ancient Christian writers spoke in favor of the doctrine of the eternal separation of the righteous from the wicked, of the endless bliss of the former and the never-ending torment of the latter. But as long as this teaching did not bear the stamp of indisputable truth approved by the entire Church, it could not be unconditionally obligatory for every member of the Church. On the other hand, a number of church writers coming out of the Alexandrian school held the opposite opinion and put a general apocatastasis as the final end of the world. In this state of affairs, for the writer who undertook to clarify this issue, there seemed to be some scope to make a choice between two different opinions, according to which one seemed to him more consistent with the nature of the whole Christian worldview. He was not constrained by the authority of the Church, and in resolving the issue he had to be guided by Holy Scripture and considerations of common reason. Turning to the primary source of Christian teaching, Holy Scripture, he might not have found here a strictly defined answer to the question that occupied him. There are too many absolutely clear and precise passages in Holy Scripture which, if understood in a strictly literal sense, undoubtedly point to the eternal damnation of the wicked. But if, on the other hand, there are other kinds of passages that, being understood also in their direct and immediate meaning, are capable of providing fairly solid support for the doctrine of apokatastasis. 229 That the word of God cannot contradict itself, and that consequently the antimony that these discordant passages of Holy Scripture represent at first glance is actually resolved in its depths - this, of course, cannot be subject to the slightest doubt. But for an outside researcher, such a resolution might not be entirely obvious, or at least would not completely take away the opportunity to follow a different opinion. Turning then to the medium of sound reason and inner religious feeling, the Christian theologian here also encountered the same antinomy regarding the final end of the world. Coming from a purely theological point of view, from the Christian idea of ​​God, he had very strong motivations to recognize such an end as a universal apokatastasis. The highest and all-encompassing principle that determines all the relations of the Christian God to the world is goodness, the love of God: the beginning of the world comes from it, its continuation rests on it, and its end must also be determined by it. But now the doctrine of the eternal condemnation of many, perhaps even an incomparably greater half of rational beings, is too difficult to reconcile with the teleology of divine love. Be that as it may, the divine goal of the world is not fully achieved here. If they point out that the world’s goal is also fulfilled in relation to the condemned, since they have a revelation of God’s punishing justice (his greatness), then against this they rightly note that the manifestation of simple justice, in which love is relegated to the background, cannot be recognized as the perfect form of revelation of the will of God. If, on the other hand, they assume in creation a will that eternally continues to be at enmity against God, then at the same time they also posit a limit that the divine loving will cannot overcome forever. 230 But if, starting from the idea of ​​God, it is easy to come to apokatastasis, then the anthropological, psychological and ethical point of view leads, on the contrary, to the call of eternity of condemnation. If a person achieves bliss not through a process of natural necessity, but through free self-determination, then is it impossible for the will, having rejected grace, to forever strengthen its bitterness and thus itself choose condemnation? If they say that this possibility of ongoing hardening must also have with it a permanent possibility of conversion, then this is a hasty judgment. And under the conditions of present earthly existence, one can often observe how evil in certain individuals, becoming more and more rooted, takes on the character of an unchangeable, natural necessity. True, psychological experience also shows that a sudden strong revolution can sometimes occur in the human soul, as a result of which the previous mood disappears and the development of the individual’s character takes a new direction. But a conversion of this kind is possible only as long as there are external and internal conditions for it. In relation to the future life, we are certainly forced to accept such an external limit, beyond which true repentance and conversion are impossible. According to Christian teaching, such a boundary is set at the last (second) coming of Christ. As long as there is time, conversion should be possible, because the Christian concept of time is at the same time the concept of the action of grace and testing; and as long as the sinner remains in time, he stands under the long-suffering of God. But if not only this or that measure of time, but also time itself ceases, then it is not clear how conversion could be possible, because conversion is unthinkable without the history of conversion. It is quite natural, therefore, if Origen, while preaching apokatastasis, was at the same time forced to allow an infinite number of worlds and world developments, in order to thus preserve for sinners the never-ending possibility of conversion. But this image of representation cannot in any way be reconciled with the Christian view, according to which the last coming of the Lord is absolutely final for all creation without exception, so that after it there can be no talk of either history or historical progress, but only of life and being in a self-closed eternity. The eternal damnation of the wicked rests, therefore, on the absence of the external conditions necessary for their conversion. For the condemned there is no future, he has no history and turns his gaze only to the lost past. 231 We deliberately focused on clarifying the antinomies that the thought of a Christian theologian encounters in resolving the question of the final end of the world. Two completely different views on this subject find common ground in the Christian consciousness. It is clear that in this state of affairs the theologian found himself in great difficulty, especially until the Church had yet said her last word here. He had no decisive compulsion to choose one of two different opinions with the direct exclusion of the other, and if he was prompted to do so by the force of logical necessity (the law of the “excluded middle”), he could do this only by weakening and limiting those arguments on which the opposite opinion was based, which could not be achieved easily. – In this exact position, in our opinion, St. found himself. Gregory when deciding the question of the final fate of the world. His predominant point of view on the subject is theological; he wants to solve the problem by starting from the idea of ​​God; the study of the conditions of salvation on the part of man himself remains in the shadows. He looks at evil from the same angle. He does not pay due attention to how deeply and strongly it can take root in human nature; he puts him only before the court of the Christian concept of God and the divine government of the world, and from here he naturally sees in him rather weakness, powerlessness, insignificance (μὴ ὄν) than something solid and positive. It is quite understandable that such a way of thinking in relation to the question of the final end of the world should have revealed a strong attraction to the doctrine of apocatastasis, which we actually saw in St. Gregory. He collects and brings into logical connection all the arguments that he could find in favor of this teaching - he openly and clearly expresses them in his philosophical writings and generally makes it clear that it is more consistent with his general dogmatic point of view. But at the same time, he makes no effort to isolate this teaching, to present it as the only one, and even only as more probable in comparison with another, opposite to it. He is aware of the great strength of the arguments on the side of the doctrine of the eternity of torment, and does not try to destroy, or at least weaken them through any reinterpretations. Even more: he does not hesitate to express them openly, especially in church teachings. For listeners who did not have the opportunity to delve deeper into the essence of the issue and were accustomed to hearing a sermon about the eternity of hellish torment, the opposite teaching could seem both strange and somewhat tempting for morality. To introduce them into the circle of all the logical and philosophical evidence on which the doctrine of apocatastasis rested in the mind of the preacher himself would be too difficult, and hardly advisable, especially in view of the fact that this teaching did not constitute a solid, immutable truth for the church speaker himself. It’s another thing to express your sympathies for such a teaching in front of people who are able to understand and, purely philosophically, independently check their comparative merits and not share them at all if they find themselves not entirely comfortable with something. But to set the masses in this mood, incapable of treating the matter critically and taking every word on faith, would be too self-confident and dangerous in view of the fact that the Church, perhaps, will speak out decisively not in favor of this teaching. So naturally, in our opinion, that duality in the judgments of St. can be explained. Gregory on the issue of the final end of the world, which has long confused the researchers of his system and forced them to use various efforts to reconcile it. In all previous attempts, they came from the position that one and the same writer could not separate two different views on the same subject - that, therefore, only one doctrine should be recognized as a true belief, and the other - interpolated, spurious, or - in extreme cases - one to which the writer himself did not attach strict significance. This last fate, of course, fell to the lot of the doctrine of apokatastasis, as a false, heretical teaching, rejected by the Church, and therefore as one which, according to the consciousness of the defenders of St. Gregory - could not and should not have preached to St. father and church teacher. But relying on such a consideration, they completely lost sight of the era when St. lived. Gregory, and without any reason they transferred the modern standard of judgment there. Before the council’s definition, the opinion of apocatastasis was not a heresy, and preaching about it could not cast a shadow of suspicion on the Orthodoxy of St. father, or undermine due respect for him. This was a simple theological and philosophical opinion, quite common among writers of a well-known (Alexandrian) movement. 232 And even less reason does St. Gregory to see in such an opinion some kind of conscious or persistent error or heresy. He expresses it everywhere hesitantly, conditionally, qualifies it with insertions like: “it seems to me,” “in my opinion,” etc., and finally does not even give it exclusive preference over the opposite teaching. All this, without a doubt, was seen and understood by the fathers of the councils of Ephesus and Constantinople, and therefore they did not find the erroneous opinions of St. Gregory there is not the slightest obstacle to classify him among the holy fathers, teachers and witnesses of the truth. Taking a general final look at the theology of St. Gregory on the question of the final destinies of the world, we must repeat the judgment expressed at the beginning of our study that the eschatology of Bishop. Nyssky represents an original and remarkable phenomenon of its kind. It significantly deviates from the general church towards Origenism, but does not completely coincide with this latter; it has a unique character - the fruit of the deep independent thought of St. father. This is, first of all, Gregory’s view of the meaning of death. His attention is not drawn here to the side in which death is a sad, terrible consequence of sin and divine retribution for it; he sees in it the first providential action of God’s goodness, healing a person infected with sin - by decomposing him into his component parts. Therefore, teaches St. Gregory, one should not turn away from death. Just as it is foolish to regret the life we ​​had in our mother’s womb, so it is foolish to regret the present life, which is also in relation to the future, as life in the womb is in relation to life in the world. 233 For the righteous, such a bright, blissful life, consisting of the contemplation of God and gradually increasing knowledge of Him, 234 begins immediately upon relocation to the afterlife. The wicked are not without hope for it, although bliss is achievable for them only through the most painful cleansing from sinful habits. “But both the bliss of the righteous and the torment of the wicked,” according to the original view of St. Gregory, is not something that comes from outside to the fate of rational beings, but only the result of their natural relationship to God, this only source of life and bliss of creatures. Whoever has passed into the afterlife with pure spiritual eyes naturally contemplates God there, and in this contemplation receives inexhaustible bliss, and whoever has darkened his spiritual eye with an addiction to carnal pleasures just as naturally finds himself deprived of divine contemplation and in need of a painful operation of healing from spiritual blindness. The difference in the afterlife fate of people depends, therefore, on the extent to which each of them is able to enter into communication with God - on the basis of the mood acquired in earthly life. With such a view, St. Gregory, as far as we know, stands alone among other Christian writers who, to a greater or lesser extent, saw in the bliss of the righteous and the torment of the wicked a seal of God’s favor or wrath, as a consequence of God’s judgment on man’s earthly activities. – There are, however, similarities between St. Gregory and Origen in their view of the purpose of afterlife torment, since both of them see in them a means of healing from evil and getting closer to God. But their views on the essence and nature of this torment are different. Whereas Origen looked at hellish torment as a divine punishment imposed in those forms so that the cruelty of suffering would encourage free will to renounce sin and choose the path of virtue; – St. Gregory did not see any punishment in them, even if it was educational, but only a consequence of the separation of the soul from the sinful habits that had grown into it. – This leads to a further significant difference. If Origen teaches that torment only intends to induce the sinner to voluntary self-correction, then the achievement of the goal of torment is made completely dependent on the free will of man. Afterlife punishments may not produce the desired effect on a will rooted in evil and may not induce the sinner to moral self-improvement. Origen admits this possibility and at the same time recognizes the need for a whole series of corrective experiments: once a soul has not been brought to its senses by punishment, it is sent to the earthly world for free activity, for which after death there again follows a corresponding punishment or reward, etc. And given this state of affairs, there is no strictological necessity why, in the end, a universal restoration to goodness must certainly follow, as Origen teaches, and why those who, despite reasonable punishments, have not become forever entrenched in evil, could not remain among the ranks of rational beings. - Not so with St. Gregory of Nyssa. In his opinion, afterlife torment is not just an incentive to free correction, but this correction itself, and as such, they obviously cannot fail to achieve their goal. Simply put: the matter of restoring a person to the purity and bliss of St. Gregory makes it dependent only on divine power, without attaching special importance to free will, and therefore the general apocatastasis here is completely understandable and necessary. – If Origen, therefore, has more consistency in relation to the question of free will and less consistency in the doctrine of apocatastasis, then St. Gregory is just the opposite. This difference in points of view on the same subject should not be overlooked when judging the so-called “Origenism” of Bishop. Nyssa: the influence of Origen's ideas did not pass on to St. Gregory in slavish repetition of them; all his judgments bear the stamp of independent thought. So in the above points of eschatology, so - finally - in the question of the resurrection of the flesh and the properties of resurrected bodies. Here, as we have seen, St. Gregory maintains a middle ground between two extremes: on the one hand, he does not recognize the complete identity of future bodies with present ones, as most of the leading fathers taught; on the other hand, he does not want to deny any connection between bodies, as Origen did. He recognizes the restoration of the former type (είδος), - this essential, unchangeable side of our present body. – Justice requires, however, to note that the dogma of the resurrection of the flesh (as such) was in little agreement with the general idealistic point of view of St. Gregory and with his views on the body (as a complex of “concepts and naked mental representations”); 235 nevertheless, he retains and defends it in view of the fact that this dogma has firmly established its place in the formulas of faith of all times, as a fundamental and immutable Christian truth. And such truths are for St. Gregory were beyond doubt. Praefatio ad libros περὶ ἀρχῶν… et lib, de Princ. I. c. VI n. 1. On the structure of man, ch. 22. Russian translation of op. St. Gr. Nis. Part I. p. 164. Sn. ib. Ch. 17. The big one will announce. Word, ch. 5, – Russian. lane part 4. The big one will announce. Word, ch. 6, p. 24. Ibid. p. 25. Sn. Ch. 8. page 35. The big one will announce. Word, ch. 6, p. 23. A word to the mourners. about the dead, rus. lane Part 7, page 516. Will announce. Word. Ch. 8, p. 33. A word for sorrow. about the deceased page 517. Everything is arranged. people Ch. 21, p. 163. Everything is arranged. people page 162. Will announce. Word, ch. 8, p. 32. Will announce. Word, ch. 5, p. 16. Ibid., ch. 8, pp. 28–29. Will announce. Word, ch. 8, pp. 30–31. Word in sorrow. about the dead... p. 490. Publicity Word, ch. 8. – Patr. Curs. compl. T. XLV, col. 33. Oh shower. and Sunday pp. 254–5. About the device people Ch. 27, pp. 187–8. A word for sorrow. about the dead, p. 521. Word in sorrow. about died. page 522. A word for sorrow. about died. p. 525. A more detailed description of those properties (- “dross”, in the figurative expression of St. Gregory) that can be taken away from our body through death will be given below, when we talk about the properties of resurrected bodies. Ogl. Word, ch. 8, p. 31. About the soul and resurrection, p. 227. About the soul and resurrection. p. 205. Ibid. p. 206; – Curs compl. Patr. T. XLVI, col. 20. About the soul and resurrection. page 208. Ibid. p. 215. The saying of the learned pagan quoted here is attributed to Epicharmus. As far as one can judge from the general course of the eschatological reasoning of St. Gregory, rather the idea of ​​the identity of resurrected bodies with real ones is a consequence of the thought under consideration, rather than vice versa. Only by virtue of the previously affirmed position about the continuous connection of the soul with the elements of the once given body, Gregory was forced to affirm the essential identity of resurrected bodies with current earthly ones, although this last teaching, as we will see below, is not entirely in harmony with his own idea of ​​resurrected bodies. Ibid. – Patr. Curs Compl. T. XLVI, col. 44–5; rus. lane page 227. Ibid. p. 229.– Sn. Ogl. Sl. Ch. 10, p. 38. About the soul and resurrection. page 229. Ibid. p. 230; Curs Compl. Col. 48. Oh shower. and Sunday “The soul will be (after the death of the body) with each element, with a cognitive power, touching and holding on to what is peculiar to it καὶ παραμένουσα)" – Curs. compl. col.76; rus. lane p. 254. “The soul remains with the elements, initially united with it, and by resolution, as if placed as guardian of its property (οἴον εἰ φύλαχα τῶν οἰκλίων καϑισταμένην).” Curs. compl. col. 77; rus. lane p. 255. About the soul and resurrection. pp. 252–3. About the device people page 188. About the soul and resurrection. p. 262. We do not consider it necessary to enter into detailed discussions about the extent to which the indicated features of the Gospel parable actually confirm the idea being defended. The tension of the interpretation of tributary (allegorical) speech given here seems clear to us. Sl. to sorrow about died. p. 509. About the soul and resurrection. page 262. About the soul and resurrection. page 261. Let's talk about babies. kidnapped by death. Curs. compl. Patr. T. LXVI, col.176; rus. lane Part 4. p.343. About the soul and resurrection. page 230. Curs. compl. T. LXVI, col. 48. There is no desire in God, in the sense of striving for anything external that is lacking in His nature, because the object of Divine desire can only be good, and all good, to the highest degree, is united in His own Being. That is why God “desires what to have and to have what he desires, not accepting anything from outside into Himself.” Ibid. page 269. Ibid. p. 235. Sn. Sl. to sorrow about the deceased page 503. Ibid. page 272. Curs. compl. T. XLVI, col. 97: δεῖ γὰρ πάντη καὶ πάντως τῷ θεῷ ἀποσωϑῆναι τό ῖδιον. Sl. to sorrow about the deceased page 519. About the soul and resurrection. page 272. About the Beatitudes, lyrics. 6. Rus. lane Part 2. About the soul and resurrection. page 273. About the soul and resurrection. page 279. Ibid. p. 31. In the name of the “court” of St. Gregory names here, as in many other places, precisely the process of cleansing the soul from “carnal fast ice.” See eg. About the soul and resurrection. p. 274. This kind of judgment (κρίσις from κρίνω, proper. Separation - good from evil), as the court of God's goodness, should already be philologically distinguished from another court (δίκη, justice), which will take place after the general resurrection. About the soul and resurrection. pp. 274–5. Very often used in writing. St. Gregory “purifying fire” (πύρ καϑάρσιος) as the name of a means of divine healing of the soul from sinful dispositions, has an obviously metaphorical meaning, and is taken from the action of material fire during the chemical separation and purification of substances. That the “purifying fire” is not some kind of material flame is clear from op. About the soul and resurrection. page 258. Ibid. p. 276; – Curs. compl. Patr. col. 101. Ogl. Words Ch. 31, p. 79. Sl. to sorrow about the dead, p. 516. About the device people Ch. 28. About the soul and resurrection. p. 281 and gave. About the inscription. Psalm. Ch. II rus. lane Part 2, page 125. These thoughts will be revealed in more detail when presenting the doctrine of apokatastasis. About the soul and resurrection. page 277. Sl. to the mourners about the deceased, pp. 516, 518, 519. Having outlined the teachings of St. Gregory about the afterlife state of sinners, we consider it not superfluous to make a few brief comments regarding the imaginary similarity of this teaching with the Roman Catholic teaching on purgatory, which some of the learned Catholic theologians stubbornly insisted on (for example, Bellarmine, De purg. t. 1 p. 10). To deny such a similarity, it is enough to put into perspective only the following two essential points: 1) whereas, according to Catholic teaching, only a few are subject to purifying fire, and, moreover, people devoted to virtue and piety (but who did not have time in real life to bear punishment for absolution sins), - according to St. Gregory, none of the virtuous and pious people are subject to the action of the purifying fire, but all sinners without exception are subject to it; 2) according to Catholics, the state in purgatory fire does not produce any change in the moral being of the soul, does not affect its skills or affects, but is only a simple, externally legal act of repaying a debt to divine justice; - according to St. Gregory, as we have seen, this is not punishment at all, in the sense of satisfying justice, but the separation in the soul of bad inclinations or passions from good ones. – See Heens. De Gregorio Nysseno, p. 177. Ogl. sl. Ch. 17, p. 49. To the cellar. Pulcheria, Russian lane Part 8, page 302. About the soul and resurrection. p. 314; - to the cellar. Pulch. page 302. About the device. people Ch. 17, p. 146, etc. About the soul and resurrection. p. 315. About the device people Ch. 17, p. 146. About the soul and resurrection. page 276. Ibid. p. 324. – Announcement. Sl. Ch. 35, p. 94. About the soul and resurrection. page 322. About the device people Ch. 17, p. 147. Ibid. Ch. 16, p. 144. – Wed. Orig. Hom. in Math. XIII, 569. About the soul and resurrection, p. 299. Oh shower. and Sunday p. 255. About the device people Ch. 27, p. 189. Ibid. Ch. 26, pp. 185–7. About the soul and resurrection. p. 256. This and some other similar passages show that St. Gregory attributed a very significant share of participation in the resurrection of the flesh and his own strength of the soul. Evidence in favor of the truth and reality of the resurrection, borrowed by St. Gregory of St. We leave the Scriptures, due to their numerousness and well-known nature. They are set out in op. “Oh shower. and resurrected." pp. 301–7 and “About the device.” people." Ch. 25, pp. 175–185. In the works of Origen there are, for example. Places where it is stated that the soul itself constantly carries within itself a living, intelligent germ of the future body (λόγον σπερματικὸν), which at the appropriate times it will revive, at the command of God, with its own vital force, and form its new body from it. - Contra Cels. lib. VIII. n. 32. – Cp. Ib. lib. II. n. 23. About the soul and resurrection. page 300. About the soul and resurrection. pp. 254–5. Ibid. – Cp. About the device people Ch. 27. Ibid. p. 316. Sl. to sorrow about the deceased, p. 515. Oh shower. and Sunday page 316. Sl. to sorrow about the deceased page 526. About the soul and resurrection. page 314. Note There are, however, places where the restoration of this species (εἶδος) is clearly recognized by St. Grigory. – See eg. sl. 3rd about Sunday. Christov. r. lane part 8, page 87. On Ecclesiastes, Conversations. 1st, page 223. Ritter. Gesch. Der christl. Philos. T. II. S. 133. About the soul and resurrection. p. 321 and gave. About the device people Ch. 22, p. 166. About love of poverty, lyrics. 1, – Russian lane Part 7, p. 402. For Holy Easter, lyrics. III, - Russian lane Part 8, pp. 57–8. About the inscription. Psalm. Part 2, page 198. Publicity Sl. Ch. 40, pp. 109–10. About bliss, lyrics. 5, – Russian lane Part 2, pp. 427–8. About nadp. Psalm. – page 125. Anti-deposit baptism; – Russian lane Part 7, page 442. Against the oppressive churches. punished. Part 7, page 480. About the inscription. Psalm. page 200. We have already had occasion to speak above about the state of bliss of the righteous. Here we have deliberately selected and linked only those passages from the works of St. Gregory, in which there is any mention of the eternity of hellish punishments, in order to more clearly demonstrate the contradiction in which this kind of judgment appears to stand with other views of the same saint. Father. Reconciliation of this contradiction has long been one of the most important and difficult tasks for researchers of the eschatology of St. Gregory. About the soul and resurrection. p. 276; n. ib page 350. Thoughts of St. Gregory about the conditions for deliverance from evil and torment on the part of intelligent creatures (people) themselves, we have already revealed above. About the soul and resurrection. pp. 279–80. About the soul and resurrection. page 275. About the device people Ch. 21, pp. 160–1. Ibid. p. 163. – Sn. Sl. about the deceased page 520. About the soul and resurrection. page 243. About the soul and resurrection. page 302. Ibid. pp. 277–9. Regarding the above words of St. Gregory Petavius ​​(De Angelis, lib. III. c. VII. n. 3) makes the following remark: “These last words are somewhat obscure, but they must be understood this way: since it is said that God will one day be in everyone, then vice or sin should by no means exist. For if he is found somewhere, God will not be there, and then the position that God is in everyone will be false; because the exclusion of sin, by virtue of which its existence is assumed in any thing, prevents the general expression from being true: God is in all. For God cannot be in sin, since sin is nothing. About the soul and resurrection. page 264. Contra Cels. Lib. VIII. n. 72. About love of poverty and charity. Sl. 1, pp. 402–3. That the restoration will extend to the entire human race (and not just Christians) is clear both from all the passages discussed above, and in particular from Chapter 35. “Ogle. Sl.”, where people who have not taken advantage of the Christian sacraments (baptism and repentance) in real life are promised restoration to a pure, god-like state, after preliminary purification by fire (pp. 94–95). Ibid. Ch. 26, p. 67. – Patrol. Curs. Compl. T. XLV, col. 68. Alois Vencenzi, In s. Gregorii Nys. Et Orig. scripta et doctrinam nova recension, c. IV, p. 20–28. Rom. 1862. Ogl. Sl. Ch. 26, p. 69. Page 249 – 50. – Patr. Curs. Compl. col. 69–72. About the soul and resurrection. page 250. About the soul and resurrection, p. 305. – Ritter, S. 143. Def. 5th Universal personal information, see Chr. Thurs. 1847 part IV. Photii, Bibliotheca, cod. CCXXIII. Alex. Natalis, H.E. ed. Bing. 1786.vol. VI. – Tillemont, Mem. Pour server a l'hist. Eccles. Tom. IX. – Skvortsov, “philosophy of St. Gregory of Nyssa" Tr. K. D. Ak. 1863, October. De Angelis, III. c. VII n. VI. Tillemont, p. 602: “Cela” – (i.e. the respect that St. Gregory enjoyed in the church) – “pent server a faire croire ce que dit saint Germain de Ctple que les heretiques ont corrompu quelques – uns des ses ouvrages et y ont mele diverses erreurs que nous y lisons aujourd’ huit, surtout pour le salut de tous les pecheurs et des demons memes.” Among the researchers of this kind, in addition to Petavius ​​and Schreck (N. E. T. XIV), worthy of mention are: Neander, Christl. Dogmegesch. Theill. s. 433; - Kleinheidt, Gr. Nyssene doctrina de Angelis, ed. Friburg. 1860, p. 41–52; – Stigler, Die Psychol. Des heil. Gr. v. Nys., ed. Regensburg. 1857. S. 13–4; Heyns, – p. 17–6, and many others. As we noted, the Church gave such a definition only for 5 Universes. Sob., solemnly condemning the false teaching of Origen, that the torment of demons and the wicked is not eternal, and after some time will have an end: and then the restoration of demons and wicked people to their primitive state will follow. Places of this kind are usually referred to as: Phil. 2, 10. 11; Heb. 2, 6–9; 1 Cor. 15, 27. 28; Col. 1, 20; Eph. 1, 10, etc. Martensen, Christl Dogmat. § 285. St. was no stranger to this opinion. Gregory the Theologian, although he expressed it less clearly and decisively than Gregory of Nyssa (see Ullmann, Gregor v. Nazianz. Gotha, 1866. s. 351–2). Sl. to sorrow about the deceased – page 507. This idealistic idea of the nature of future bliss is common to St. Gregory with the writers of the Alexandrian school. About the six-day period, part I, pp. 10–11. – Ritter, s. 134.