Gregory of Nyssa (d 385/6) intended a work "On The Making of Man" as a supplement and completion of the Hexaëmeron (The Six Days) of his father, St Basil (329-369).
The narrative of the creation of the world is not discussed in detail. For Gregory, the world is created as the sphere of man's sovereignty, but man is not the equal of his Creator. He is the gardener in the estate of the Lord. His art is husbandry. Gregory argues that man was made with circumspection, fitted by nature for rule over the other creatures, made in the likeness of God in respect of his possession of a reasoning nature, while differing from the Divine in that he is a contained within a nature, albeit one cast in the Divine Image.
Man is a being, like all being, by virtue of the fact that he participates in Being — he is not self-sufficient but dependent upon his participation in Being, and derives his knowledge of things — including himself — not innately, but first by by means of the physical senses for the apprehension of things, and by means of the spiritual senses for the truth of things.
The body is fitted to be the instrument of the mind, shaped to the use of a reasonable being: and it is by the possession of the rational soul, as well as of the natural or vegetative and the sensible soul, that man differs from the lower animals. At the same time, his mind works by means of the senses: it is incomprehensible in its nature (resembling in this the Divine nature of which it is the image). The connection between mind and body is ineffable: it is not to be accounted for by supposing that the mind resides in any particular part of the body: the mind acts upon and is acted upon by the whole body, depending on the corporeal and material nature for one element of perception, so that perception requires both body and mind.
Bodies are the means by which essences are manifest in a finite nature; individuality is the means by which universals are realised.
Man was first made in the image of God: and this conception excludes the idea of distinction of sex. In the first creation of man all humanity is included, according to the Divine foreknowledge: our whole nature extending from the first to the last is one image of Him Who is. But for the Fall, the increase of the human race would have taken place as the increase of the angelic race takes place, in some way unknown to us.
In the Fall, man over-reached his nature. Made in the Divine Image, he seeks to be, in the world, that which God is, rather than act as the bridgemaker between the Image and the reality, he seeks to be the image of the world in himself, and thus sunders the foundation of the relationship with God. In so doing, by breaking the first covenant with God, the grace that would elevate his nature, that opens the essence of himself to the essence of God on the one hand and nature on the other, his inner (single) eye is closed, and his external, sensible, (dual) eyes are opened — where once he saw all in all, now he sees only things as other than himself.
The Fall from makes succession by generation a necessity. No longer nourished by God, he finds himself in need of nourishment by food. Where once he was pontifex, now he is one with the lower creation.
But these necessities are not permanent: God will not abandon His creation, but seeks man out where he has fallen ... and will restore him to his former excellence.
Man's restoration, the apocatastasis, follows from the finite nature of evil: it is deferred until the sum of humanity is complete. As to the mode in which the present state of things will end, we know nothing: but that it will end is inferred from the non-eternity of matter.
Gregory maintains that the body and the soul come into existence together, a potentially in the Divine will, an actually at the moment when each individual man comes into being by generation.
Gregory concludes that man is generated as a living and animated being, and that the power of the soul is gradually manifested in, and by means of, the material substratum of the body; so that man is brought to perfection by the aid of the lower attributes of the soul that stives towards its end.
The true perfection of the soul is not in the material domain however; man will not find God in the world, but God will be revealed in the world through man, which will ultimately be put away, but in the higher attributes which constitute for man the image of God, that image which is his own true nature, his good and his end, for which he must strive beyond all worldly attractions in the pursuit of 'the one thing necessary' (Luke 10:42).
Hebrews 8:3
"For every high priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices: wherefore it is necessary that he also should have some thing to offer."
The gift and sacrifice is himself: Mark 10:21
"And Jesus looking on him, loved him, and said to him: One thing is wanting unto thee: go, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me."
Mark 12:33
"And that he (God) should be loved with the whole heart, and with the whole understanding, and with the whole soul, and with the whole strength; and to love one's neighbour as one's self, is a greater thing than all holocausts and sacrifices."
Panentheism is a noble endeavour, to seek God in the world, and love Him there: But Christianity is a higher calling, to seek God in God alone, for where man finds God, the world finds God with him.
The reality of the world is revealed then as theophany (a divine manifestation, which derives from epiphany "to appear") when man offers himself as sacrifice to God, in the footsteps of Christ, he becomes one in Him, and the Sacrament of the World. The Divine Nature indwells the spiritual soul (shekinah) and because the soul of man is one, so too are the lower orders, the natural orders, deified.
Man is called to know God not in things (pantheism) nor in the appearance of things (panentheism), but as the source and cause of things.
Thomas
