VI. The fate of man.

The fate of mankind is determined by Divine destiny and the free choice of will. Man is created free and he is given a dynamic task. This task was not solved. The tension of the will weakened, the inertia of nature prevailed over the striving for God. This caused the disintegration of the human being and discord throughout the world. The universe has ceased to be a mirror of Divine beauties, for the image of God inscribed in the world has become clouded. Thus evil entered the world. Evil is one of the bearers, and has no basis for itself in the Divine will. And therefore, there is a bearer — "in itself it does not exist, but — through the deprivation of good"... As Gregory says, "evil is the name of that which is beyond the thought of good"... It is precisely as "bearing" that evil is first of all opposed to the existing Good, that in the world which has its basis in the creative will of God. However, says Gregory, "paradoxically, evil in its very non-existence has its own existence"... Evil is not a phantom, although it has a deprivation of nature, it is a deprivation, a lack of good... "Outside of free will there is no original evil," the whole reality of evil is in perverse volition. This is grass unsown, devoid of roots... And yet, evil is real, although unstable, "has no hypostasis"... This is a kind of shadow that appears when the beam is removed. From this, St. Gregory concludes the final abolition of evil, which, like a growth and bark, must be saved from a good and good nature. But this abolition of evil is not in his eyes the dispelling of a ghost, it is a difficult overcoming of evil reality. This determines the content of the historical process. In these views, Gregory is closer to Origen than to Plato, from whom he takes only words.

The source of evil is in the breakdown of the will, in "the fact that the changeability of man's nature has crept in the opposite direction." This turn of the will is contrary to nature and therefore damages and destroys it. "Falling away from the truly Existing," says Gregory, "is the corruption and destruction of that which exists"... But how is this turn of the will from the existent to the bearer possible? How can the will be influenced and motivated by something that has not been and is not? The key to this mystery of the first sin and falling away is that the first man was given a dynamic task. It is innate in human nature to strive for good, but not to discern good; and the recognition of the good is a task for man. What exactly is good and good had to be known. And the meaning of the fall is in deception: deceived by an external mask, "having made a mistake in wishing for true good," a person took the "ghost of good" for true good, and recklessly recognized as beautiful that which amuses the senses. This is a deception of judgment, a judgment by an inappropriate standard... "For falsehood is a kind of idea born in the mind about the bearer, as if there is something that does not exist — and truth is an indubitable concept of the Being"... — Man was not only deceived, but was deceived — deceived out of envy... A certain higher angel was offended by the creation of man in the image of God... Such is the second root of evil and sin, in the angelic world. And the seduced angel, like a stone, having severed natural ties with the good, rolls down the slope with his own weight. He leads a person into deception, "insidiously approaches a person with deception, persuading himself to cause death and become a suicide"... The serpent seduces Eve with a "phantom of goodness", sensual pleasure, "which is beautiful to the eye and pleasant to the taste". It is difficult to say how St. Gregory understood the forbidden tree, realistically or allegorically; But it is clear in what he saw the meaning of the paradisiacal prohibition: "It was commanded that the forefathers, along with the knowledge of good, should not acquire knowledge of that which is contrary to it, but moving away from that which is both good and evil, to enjoy pure good, not mixed and not partaking in evil"... Evil by its nature is dual, deceptive, poison mixed with honey. And the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is so called because "it brought forth a kind of fused and mixed fruit, dissolved from opposite qualities"... Knowledge of good and evil does not mean distinction, but attraction, attraction to the vague, to evil in the guise of good. The fruit of the forbidden tree is neither detached evil (for it blossomed with beauty), nor pure good (because it concealed evil in itself), it is a mixture of both. In other words, ambiguity... Sensual temptation is born in man from the lower sphere of the soul, from its lustful power, which has been distracted by the material and at the same time has escaped the restraint of the mind, and the mind thereby loses its royal power. And the ban is violated. This means that sin is also disobedience to the will, i.e. evil has not only an objective, but also an ethical meaning. Not the sensual as such, but the attraction to the sensual, the "passion for pleasure," the "material and passionate disposition," is sin and evil, the root and beginning of sin and sinfulness. The mind, like a mirror turned in the opposite direction, "leaves undepicted the bright features of the good, but reflects in itself the ugliness of matter." However, matter turns out to be ugly precisely through isolation from the higher... — Through the Fall, man falls into the laws of the material world, becomes mortal, perishable, and dies. Death, dying, the change of forms and generations, birth and growth, are all originally and naturally in the natural world, and in nature there is neither depravity nor disease. Death is unnatural, and therefore painful, only in man; however, in the opinion of St. Gregory, for man it is at the same time a kind of beneficent healing, a path to resurrection and purification. Therefore, the healing of sinful corruption will be accomplished in the resurrection, which is at the same time the restoration of the original incorruptibility.

This restoration, healing, and conversion of man is impossible, impossible to fulfill by natural forces. There is irreversibility in evil, the inertia of false movement. For salvation, a newly-creative action of God is required and necessary. True, St. Gregory admits a certain self-exhaustion of evil, the impossibility for evil to be endless, infinite, boundless, for these are the properties of existence that presuppose participation in the Eternal, participation in the good. He wants to say that there is an infinite medium only for the pursuit of good, which makes infinite movement possible. For the limit is inaccessible. In the opposite direction, there is no infinite extension. "Since vice does not extend into infinity, but is limited by the necessary limits," says Gregory, "for this reason the succession of good follows beyond the boundaries of evil"... This reasoning is connected with the opinion of St. Gregory about the exhaustive fullness of the coming restoration, about the impossibility of the last perseverance in evil, the persistence of evil. However, at the same time, Gregory already presupposes the coming of Christ, the appearance of the Redeemer, presupposes redemption by what has been accomplished, and precisely cannot admit limitation in the scope of this redemptive action. Apart from the Manifestation of God in Christ, he does not speak of the self-exhaustion of evil. On the contrary, he sees in the Incarnation of the Word the only way out of the "black and dark sea of human life." In the redemptive work of Christ, he, like St. Athanasius, sees first of all the return of life, the victory over death and mortality. This is impossible otherwise than through the union of the Divine life with the human composition — the destruction of death is characteristic of life... "He who is ever-living takes upon himself bodily birth, not having need of life, but returning us from death to life... and by His own body He gives nature the beginning of the resurrection, by His power bringing together the whole man," i.e., the whole human nature... St. St. Gregory also offers another justification for the need for Divine intervention in the world of human evils, following Origen he speaks of ransom to the devil, or more precisely, of ransom from the devil. Man sinned voluntarily, — to that extent the devil justly rules over him, as if he had given himself up to slavery. Therefore, on the one hand, forcible healing is useless and unjust," it would mean to inflict damage on (our) nature in the greatest of blessings, in freedom... That would be a "deprivation of God-like honor." On the other hand, it was unjust to use violence and sovereignty against the devil, who had acquired fallen man into slavery... Hence, the only way of liberation is redemption under a contract... Obviously, the evil demon would not exchange the best for the worst. In Christ he is attracted and as if fascinated (and not frightened) by the extraordinariness of life and miracles. He asks the price and receives it in the hope that "if through death he takes possession of the flesh, he will also possess all the power that is in it." The deceiver's calculation was deceived — "having swallowed the bait of the flesh, he is pierced by the milk of the Divine"... In this unsuccessful "legal" theory, St. Gregory follows Origen and even exaggerates. Apart from the fact that it does not agree well with the basic structure of Gregory's theological system, it is internally contradictory. The basic idea that only God can justly deliver a person from sin turns into a conclusion about deception; and Gregory proves that it is only proper to deceive a deceiver, — "so here, too, according to the law of justice, the deceiver perceives what he has planted seeds of his own volition, and he who deceives a man with the lure of pleasure is himself deceived by the human appearance." Gregory here falls into an inappropriate and unsubstantiated anthropopathism. It should be remembered that this theory was sharply refuted by St. Gregory the Theologian. In any case, the main purpose of the Incarnation of the Word is "the resurrection and deification of man." He "entered into union with our (nature), so that through union with the Divinity it would become Divine, be taken away from death, delivered from the torment of the adversary"... This is the language of Athanasius and Irenaeus.

St. Grigory has a premonition; "the economy of God the Word according to mankind" will be found by both Jew and Greek alike "incredible and unseemly." The Jewish and Hellenic temptations are repeated in the Christian heresies, in Arianism and Apollinarianism. In contrast to these heresies, St. Gregory reveals the teaching of the Divine-human unity from a soteriological point of view. "For it is only possible and at the same time proper for him who gave life in the beginning to call for perishing life." And at the same time, "what would be the correction of our nature if... The Divinity took into union with Himself some other celestial being"... Thus, from the reality of redemption it is necessary to conclude about the twofold consubstantiality of Christ, in the "unity of hypostasis" of the God-man. Gregory apparently avoids the expression "two natures" and even expresses himself in the following way: "We know two things in Christ, the Divine and the human, by nature the Divine, and by the economy the human." To describe the Divine-human unity, he does not have a specific terminology – he speaks of sunάjeia, and of mίxiz or krasiz, – he calls Christ "the God-bearer", sometimes he limits himself naked: έnwsiς... This is only a certain verbal carelessness or negligence: as "confusion" it also defines the organic unity of the body; as sunάjeia he also defines the Trinitarian indivisible unity. The image of the union of natures, of course, remains incomprehensible to us, and it is partly clarified by the co-existence of the soul with the body. In his polemics with Apollinarianism, St. Gregory expounds with great completeness the teaching of the Savior about humanity. And, above all, it emphasizes the fullness of the perceived humanity. "None of the Christians says that the man who was united with God was half-man, but in his entirety entered into union with the power of God"... After all, "one cannot call a person one who lacks something without which his nature is incomplete"... This is indisputable from a soteriological point of view. The Lord came and became incarnate for the sake of salvation — "it was not the body that perished, but the whole man, dissolved in the soul, perished; if it is necessary to say a just word, then before the body perished the soul"... The Lord comes to save the lost sheep, "and finds the lost, and takes the whole sheep into his own shoulders, and not only the skin of the sheep," for "it was not in part of the sheep that error followed, but the whole was perverted, and He returns it all." Those who wash clothes never do this, Gregory cites another comparison, in order to leave some stains and remove others, but all the fabric from one end to the other is cleaned of dirt, so that the clothes become of the same price, receiving equal cleanliness in all parts from washing. "Thus, since human life is defiled by sin in the beginning and in the end, and in all the middle parts, the washing power had to touch everything and not make it so that one was healed by purification, and the other left unhealed"... It should be remembered that for Gregory "man" is the name of nature... St. Gregory emphasizes the integrity of the human composition: "A body without a soul is a dead man, and a soul without reason is cattle"... In particular, Gregory (again against the Apollinarians) emphasizes the identity of Christ's flesh "with the rest of humanity," "for we know of what His body was composed, when He lived among men in a human way." The bodily economy confuses many, Gregory notes, "human birth, growth from infancy to adulthood, eating, drinking, weariness, sleeping, sorrow, tears, slander, judgment, the cross, death, the entombment — all this, entering into the sacrament, somehow weakens the faith of people of a low kind of thought." And in response, he develops an apology for human nature. There is nothing vicious in all of the above, only vicious passions are shameful... "But God is born," says Gregory, "not in any vice, but in human nature," and in the human constitution there is nothing contrary to virtue. There is nothing impure in birth itself. Unclean is voluptuousness and lust, but not the birth of man into the world. And "what is unseemly contained in our mystery, when God has entered into union with human life by means of that by which nature struggles with death," remarks Gregory. Only passion is not perceived by the Lord, in the narrow sense of the word. St. Gregory speaks in such detail and often about the corporeality of the Saviour in denunciation of the teaching of the Apollinarians about the "heavenly flesh of Christ," with which they tried to avoid the temptation of the Incarnation, but in vain and unsuccessfully they tried, for all created things are equally infinitely distant from the Creator, and the deification of the flesh is unseemly for the Divinity.

The humanity of the Saviour, firstly, develops according to the primordial norm of nature. Secondly, it is deified in union with God. This is the salvation of nature, salvation, quickening, and restoration in the beginning. In the words of Gregory, God the Word then "became flesh through love for mankind... and took upon Himself all our nature, so that through merging with the Divine the human would be deified, and by the firstfruits of it the whole composition of our nature would be sanctified together." Human nature, united with the Divine, rises to an equal height; and it is that which rises from humility that is exalted. "And everything in general, whatever is weak and perishable in our nature, having merged with the Divinity, has become that which is the Divinity." Following Origen, Gregory sharply distinguishes between two phases in the development or deification of human nature in Christ. The first, until the resurrection, is the time of healing and healing by obedience. Death, which entered through the disobedience of the first man, is expelled by "the obedience of the second man," he says. The "True Physician" frees from illness those who are afflicted with illness because they have departed from God's will—"union with God's will." At the same time, the Divinity heals both the body and the soul. "After the union of the Divinity with each of the parts of man," says Gregory, "in both there appeared signs of an all-transcending nature. For the body revealed (the one in it) the Divinity, performing healings through touch, and the soul showed the Divine power with a mighty power." However, there was still suffering and death, the sacrifice of the cross, when the Saviour "in an ineffable and unseen sacred action offered Himself as a sacrifice and as an offering for us, being both a priest and a lamb of God, taking away the sin of the world"... This means that the weakness of the flesh has not yet been enlivened by the Divine. And in the prayer of Gethsemane is expressed "a weakness equal to that of man." However, Gregory, following Origen, explains: "The Lord assimilates to Himself the humble utterances expressing human fear and the state of fear, in order to show that He truly had our nature, assuring the reality of His human nature through communion with infirmities." Gregory emphasizes the peculiarity of the Savior's death. Death in general is the separation of the soul and the body, and, having lost its "vital force" in the soul, the body decomposes. The death of the Saviour is real death — the soul and the body are separated. However, "having united in Himself the one and the other, i.e. soul and body, He is not separated from either one." And this is the beginning of the resurrection. For both the soul and the body remain in communion with the Divine, that is, with Life. In death itself, the deified body of the Savior remains incorrupt, and through the incorruptibility of the body, mortality is destroyed. The soul enters paradise and dwells in the hands of the Fathers... The reunification of soul and body becomes necessary: "For by the unity of the divine nature, equally present in both body and soul, the separate is again united together. And thus death proceeds from the separation of the united, and the resurrection from the union of the divided"... And this was the resurrection of all being. The Lord gives human nature the "power (or possibility) of resurrection," dύnamiς. The Lord descended into hell, into "this majestic heart of the earth," "to destroy there the mind great in evil and enlighten the darkness, so that the mortal would be swallowed up in life, and evil would turn into nothingness"... On the third day of death, the Lord destroys "all the accumulation of evil that has gathered from the dispensation of the world," he destroys not in struggle, but by His descent alone—"the one simple and incomprehensible advent of Life and the presence of Light for those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death produced the complete annihilation and disappearance of death and darkness." Thus, the death of the Lord turned out to be the resurrection and co-resurrection of all human nature. The second phase of the Divine-human life begins, the final deification and glorification of human nature. "The flesh that has manifested God in itself, after the great mystery of death has been fulfilled through it, is transformed through dissolution into the higher and divine, having become Christ and Lord, having been changed and changed into what He who appeared in this flesh was." Man stands above every name, which is proper to the Godhead (cf. Phil. 2:10). "The perishable nature, through its dissolution with the Divine, having been transformed into the predominant, has become a partaker of the power of the Divine, just as a drop of vinegar mixed with the sea, whereby the natural quality of this liquid is no longer preserved in the infinity of the abiding substance"... Thus salvation was accomplished: "the kingdom of life has come, and the power of death has been destroyed, — a new birth has appeared, another life, the realization of our very nature." In His resurrection, Christ "resurrected all that is lying down," loosed the bonds and sicknesses of death, in order to pave for us "the way to be born through the resurrection," the way "to regeneration from death." In this sense, Christ is the Way, the Resurrection and the Life. In this way, God creates a new heaven and a new earth. "For the structure of the Church is the universe."

In the death and resurrection of the Saviour, man truly participates not by blood kinship and consubstantiality, but through faith. "Genesis is accomplished in two ways" – by baptism and resurrection. Baptism is a new birth, "which does not begin with corruption, nor ends with corruption, but brings the begotten into immortal life." Baptism is the beginning of the resurrection, the exit from the "labyrinth" of this life – "I allegorically call the hopeless guardian of death, in which the miserable human race is imprisoned, a labyrinth." The symbolism of baptism points to "three-day deadness and quickening in Christ" – "imitation of death", "imitation of the three-day grace of resurrection"... In death, that which is separated is cleansed of iniquity, in order to be reunited in purity in the resurrection. In the same way, in the baptismal "imitation of death," "in the image of mortification represented by means of water," as the element closest to the earth, which is the proper and natural place for all that is dead, by the Divine power, "by the will of God and by the inspiration of the Spirit, which mysteriously descends for our liberation," there is accomplished, "not a complete annihilation, it is true, but a certain interruption of the continuity of evil"... Here are the "beginnings and causes" of what will be fulfilled in the "great resurrection"—"the beginning of restoration to a state of bliss, divine, and far from all sorrows." Water replaces fire, "those who are washed by mysterious water from the filth of evil have no need of any other kind of purification. And those who are not sanctified by this purification, are of necessity purified by fire"... The visible does not change – the elder does not become a youth, and wrinkles are not smoothed out. But the inner is renewed: "stained by sin and aged in evil habits by royal grace returns to the innocence of the infant," "the original beauty is restored, which God, this greatest artist, imprinted in us at the time of creation." Faith and repentance are required of the person being baptized, i.e. turning away from vice, turning the will. Faith is free—"only the inanimate and dumb can be led to anything by someone else's will"... Grace calls, but will must respond. And baptismal grace must be assimilated and transformed by the will: the signs of a newborn person "consist in an inclination to the better" – in the "free movements of the soul" moving along a new path. The old man disappears only in deeds of truth... Baptismal grace testifies to pardon, but not to the virtue of the forgiven... "A man who has accepted the bath of life is like a young warrior who has just been put on the military lists, but who has not yet shown anything either warlike or courageous"... Heroic deeds are expected from him. And only for podvigs is there a reward and reward – blessedness. "Faith requires the accompaniment of its sister, a good life"... Baptism is birth into sonship with God; and in those who are born the likeness of the Parent must be revealed, "kinship must be justified by life"... "If someone does not justify paternal nobility with deeds, then this is a bad sign – he is illegitimate, a foundling"... St. St. Gregory dares to say that for those whose life after the sacrament is similar to the life before the sacrament, whose soul has not cast off the impurities of passion, "water remains water, because in that which is born there is not the gift of the Holy Spirit, for Christ, Who united man with God, unites only that which is worthy of union with God." The new life must be revealed and revealed in free creativity: "in a renewed birth, the measure and beauty of the soul, granted by grace, depend on our desire, for as much as we extend the feats of a pious life, so does the greatness of the soul." Grace is at work in freedom, and freedom itself is at work — there is no confrontation here, but synergism... The path of podvig is determined by the calling to sonship, "having prescribed in prayer to say that God is our Father, there is no other thing that the Lord commands than to be likened to the heavenly Father by a godly life." In this sense, it can be said that "Christianity is an imitation of God's nature"... The beginning of podvig is in love for God; And love is poured out in prayer: "He who burns with love never finds satisfaction in prayer, but is always burned with the desire for good"... The commandment of assimilation and "imitation" does not exceed the humility and measure of our nature, for the first disposition of man was precisely in imitation of the likeness of God... However, actual likeness to God is possible only for a renewed person, in whom the image is purified and restored, and moreover only through Christ, in whom this renewal was accomplished. At the same time, it is an infinite process, "for there is imitation or conformity with the infinite." The path of ascent can be determined from different angles. First of all, it is the victory over the carnal and sensual, the liberation "from all sensual and irrational movement", the restoration of the royal domination of the mind, this "helmsman of the soul"... "There is no other way to rise to God than by always looking up to the heavens and having an unceasing desire for the highest." This victory is impassibility, says Gregory, "impassibility serves as the beginning and foundation of a virtuous life." It should be emphasized, according to the thought of St. Gregory, that impassibility is the middle path and "the middle way is a property of virtue"; this is according to Aristotle. Virtue must be proportionate and timely. The path of virtue winds like a narrow path over the slopes of two abysses. The soul must conquer sensual addictions, but in the struggle with them it must not fall into excess: too insistent "observation of the body" distracts the soul from the best, draws it "into the circle of petty cares and cares"; and people carried away by the struggle "are no longer able to exalt themselves with their minds and contemplate the things above, being immersed in the care of oppressing and crushing their flesh." The real task of abstinence is not to depress the body, but to turn it to the service of the soul. Neither timidity nor audacity are virtues, but courage is in between. Neither cunning nor simplicity, but wisdom. Neither sensuality nor contempt, but chastity. And even piety is a mean between superstition and godlessness. The string must be stretched in moderation, otherwise it will not produce a clear and good sound. St. Gregory preferred virginity and glorified its purity, but he did not disdain marriage either. And at the same time he emphasized that the main thing is not in physical virginity, but in the "pious way of life", which is equally obligatory for everyone, and in the absence of which virginity itself turns out to be like "an earring in the nose of a pig"... "On no grounds should the demands of nature be rejected and the honorable condemned as dishonorable," he says. And he sharply condemns the squeamish encratites — "taught by demons, they burn out certain signs in their hearts, abhorring God's creations as unclean"... The task of podvig is not to mortify the body, but to mortify the passions and sin, to submit the body to the law of reason, to pacify the soul and body, to "bring the internecine rebellion of nature within itself into peaceful harmony." A virtuous life is the gathering and simplification of the soul—Gregory understands simplicity not in the sense of qualitylessness, but in the sense of wholeness. In the victory over the entertaining and corrupting passions, man "becomes alien to the addition of the dual, returns exactly to the good, becoming simple, indescribable, and as if truly one, so that in him there is one and the same thing between the visible and the secret, and the hidden with the visible"... This wholeness is expressed in love, especially in all-forgiving and merciful love. Whom and for what does the Lord promise to please at the general judgment? "Not because they put on the garment of incorruption, nor because they washed away their sins, but because they did works of love. And immediately follows a list of those who are nourished, watered, and clothed"... As we also forgive our debtors, this is the height of virtue, already beyond the boundaries of nature... For forgiveness belongs to God alone, and whoever forgives, "apparently, himself becomes the second God." In mercy is expressed the consciousness of community, the consciousness of the common debts and sins of human nature, the overcoming of self-love and isolation... All are created in the image of God, all bear the image of our Saviour, and God is pleased with all. Love for one's neighbor is inseparable from love for God. One is impossible without the other. And love is a kind of inner connection or dissolution with the beloved. This connection is realized in the Church – in the symbolism of the Song of Songs, the Church is designated by the "likeness of the rope", "so that everything is made by one cord and one chain"... Perfect love casts out fear, and fear is transformed into love, and "that which is saved then turns out to be a unit in the mutual union of all in kinship with the one Good." This affinity with the one Good, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, is the foundation of the human unity of love. Only in the Spirit-bearing life is humanity reunited and the unity of personal life strengthened by the unity of brotherly life. — The pinnacle of Christian life is in the sacrament of the Eucharist. And at the same time, it is the food of incorruption, the antidote to the deadly poison, the "healing power" – "having tasted of Him who destroys our nature, we of necessity had need that what is being destroyed should again copulate into incorruption"... This antidote is the Body "which proved stronger than death," resurrected and glorified... How is it possible that this one body, which is divided and divided by the believer, is not divided, but, on the contrary, reunites those who are divided, "in each of the parts it becomes whole, and in itself it also remains whole?" Gregory responds with a comparison with food, from which the natural body is composed. "The Word of God," continues Gregory, "entered into unity with human nature, and being in our body, it did not create any other new composition for human nature, but by ordinary and decent means continued the existence of its Body, supporting its hypostasis by food and drink... And the other body was in reality bread, illuminated by the indwelling of the Word... Therefore, from what the bread in this Body, having been transformed, received the Divine power, the same thing happens now. For it was the grace of the Word that made the body of the saints, which was composed of bread, and which itself was in a certain way heb. And here, too, the bread, according to the words of the Apostle, is sanctified by the word of God and by prayer (1 Tim. 4:5), not by eating and drinking entering into the Body of the Word, but directly being transformed into the Body of the Word." The God-receiving flesh of God the Word receives new particles "into its composition," and through them "communicates itself to all who believe, merging with their bodies, so that by union with the immortal man also may become a partaker of incorruption"... Thus, in the sacrament of the Eucharist, both the reunification of mankind in Christ and the resurrection are realized... However, only the beginnings of the resurrection. Only in the general resurrection will the victory over corruption and death, fully accomplished by the Saviour, be fulfilled.

By the Resurrection of Christ, Death is defeated, but not stopped... Defeated, for all will be resurrected. It has not ceased, for all die, and will die until the circle of sensual time is completed. And then the shift will stop. This transient and transient time will stop, for "the need to come into being will pass away, and there will be no more that which can be destroyed"—"there will no longer be the force that brings into existence and destruction." Then the resurrection will take place, and nature will be transformed into some other state of life. Until this period, until the expiration of the Great Seven Days, the action of death continues. Death is the separation of soul and body, and the body left by the soul is dissolved into its constituent elements — each component part of the body returns to a homogeneous element, but not a single particle is destroyed, does not turn into nothing, does not go beyond the boundaries of the world, but remains in it... This is decay, but not death, not a transition into non-existence. "The body does not disappear completely, but dissolves into the parts of which it is composed, and these parts of it exist in water, in air, in earth, and in fire... And in these elements, the parts of the human body that have returned to them remain completely intact." At the same time, the particles of the body retain special signs that testify to their belonging to a particular body — the soul leaves its special seal on them, as on wax. Following Origen, Gregory calls this seal imposed by the soul on the corporeal elements which it unites into its body, the "appearance" or "form," είδος, it is the inner image, idea, or form of the body. It does not change in the transformations of life, it is the unique and discriminating, ideal face of man. Only in heavy, passionate falls is it distorted, or rather, "covered by an alien mask," by the ugliness of illness. By this "appearance" in the resurrection the soul "recognizes its body as a garment different from others"... In death, in this process of disintegration of the living wholeness of man, the soul is not affected, for being simple and uncomplicated, it cannot disintegrate... The soul is immortal and extends into eternity. In death, only the way of its existence changes. First of all, its connection with the decaying body is not broken—the soul finds its "cognitive power" with all its elements, like a kind of guardian, "without any difficulty knows the location of each particle of the whole body that once belonged to it"... And in the soul there remain certain "signs of unity," a certain "bodily sign," imprinted in the soul like a seal impression. This is a new image of the connection between the soul and the body, however, similar to the image of union that exists during life, when the soul, as a kind of "living force," penetrates all parts of the body evenly and uniformly and animates them. The soul during earthly life has some kind of natural friendship and love for its cohabitant, the body, and this friendship and "acquaintance" is secretly preserved in the afterlife. And this living connection is incomprehensible to us – of course, this is not the spatial distribution of the soul – the soul is not located in any special place of the body – it is not spatial – and therefore space does not limit it – "the soul freely extends throughout all creation by the movements of thought", sometimes ascending to heavenly miracles. "The communion of the mind with the corporeal," says St. Gregory, "consists in a kind of ineffable and inconceivable contact: it does not take place within, because the incorporeal is not held by the body, and does not encompass from without, because the incorporeal does not surround anything." The mind is nowhere, not in any part of the body, neither in all nor outside — "but in such a way that it is impossible to say or imagine it"... Therefore, the spatial dispersion of the particles of the dead body does not interfere with the knowledge and connection of the soul with them: "spiritual and non-extended nature does not experience the consequences of distance"... This connection between soul and body has a strictly individual character, and therefore St. Gregory considers the teaching of the transmigration of souls absurd. Death is a special stage of the human path, a moment in the formation or, better to say, in the restoration of a person. "After all, the Creator did not predespose us to remain in the form of embryos," says Gregory. "And the purpose of our nature is neither the state of infancy, nor the ages that follow it, which successively clothe us, changing our species in the course of time, nor, finally, the destruction of the body that occurs on account of death, but all these and the like are parts of the path that we walk... And the goal and limit of this pilgrimage is the restoration to the ancient state"... Death is the path and the path of transformation into the better... In death, the soul, freed from the body, is more conveniently likened to its kindred beauty. It is as if the body is remelted and purified in the earth, cleansed of vicious passions and addictions, freed from the needs connected with the conditions of this life, and in general changed in order to be recreated for another life. "The artist of everything melts down the lump of our body into the weapon of benevolence," concludes St. Gregory. This is a time of waiting and preparation, for resurrection and judgment. And it is already a kind of judgment. For not everyone has the same fate, not everyone walks the same path... The difference relates to souls. The righteous receive praise, the sinners receive punishment. But there are also those who are given a certain middle place, neither with the honored, nor with the punished... To this unresolved category Gregory includes those who were baptized before death and therefore did not have time to bear fruit, "infants who were prematurely snatched away by death" and therefore did not bring anything with them and did not receive any recompense — "moreover, due to their lack of development and ignorance, they are incapable of participating in the blessings of true life"... Incidentally, this is a new manifestation of how much Gregory of Nyssa valued the dynamism and feat of empirical life... They still have to develop... — The righteous ascend to heaven, the sinners descend to hell. Although Gregory speaks of heaven and hell as places, and even distinguishes between different kinds of heavenly dwellings, in the final analysis he considers the concept of "place" to be only a metaphor, for "the soul, being incorporeal by nature, has no need to dwell in any places"... Rather, they are images of existence, and images of being that cannot be described and defined, "do not obey the power of words and are inaccessible to the divination of reason"... In his teaching about the world beyond the grave, Gregory spoke in the language of Origen, and from Origen he also received this geography of the world beyond the grave. From Origen he also borrows the idea of the afterlife as a path. However, it agrees with his basic idea of human life as a path — beyond the grave the journey continues, — and continues to infinity... Heavenly blessings, which aphids do not corrupt, "not only remain always, but like seeds, increase in every way." First, "there is no limit that can stop the growth of heavenly bliss," and the benefits sought "are always equally higher and superior than the power of those who are exalted"... Secondly, it is characteristic of the soul to strive, and beyond the grave nothing opposes this attraction – it becomes light and free, the soul rises higher and higher. "And she will always make a flight to the highest, constantly renewing the effort to fly by the very thing that she has already achieved." In this ascent there is order and sequence, in accordance with the measure of capacity for each soul, that is, with the measure of its striving for the Good. This is a height similar to the growth of infants... These blessings are the contemplation of God... It is not accessible to the wicked, they are spiritually blind, and therefore inevitably find themselves outside of life and bliss — they are banished into utter darkness... They bring with them the stench of the flesh, with which they have been soaked from a long life in carnal passions... Of course, we are talking about unrepentant sins, but only on earth does confession have power, and in hell it is not... In particular, St. Gregory speaks of the souls of the unbaptized, unsealed, "bearing no sign of the Lord." "It is natural," he thinks, "that such a soul will whirl in the air, wandering, rushing hither and thither, unchallenged by anyone, as having no Master, desiring peace and shelter, and not finding, grieving in vain, fruitlessly repenting"... The torment of the sinner, according to St. Gregory, is first of all in his nakedness and hunger, in the deprivation of blessings. At the same time, it is fire, the "furnace of Gehenna," the "undying worm," both inextinguishable fire and "utter darkness." These are all metaphors and symbols that point to spiritual realities. This is also a process, a continuation of the earthly path, and again a path – the path of purification. The mysterious fire of hell, in the opinion of St. Gregory, is the fire of purification and baptism, — "there is in fire and in water a certain purifying power," those who are not worthy of purification through the mysterious water "are of necessity purified by fire"... There is healing in the future life as well. The afterlife of impure and unrepentant souls is a kind of healing, cleansing from evil... In the fire burn the empty plans of life. This is not an external or violent process. And in hellish healing, the domineering freedom of man is observed. Repentance is awakened by fire, and the soul, attached to the material, suddenly sees the unexpected and recognizes the vainness of all that it has striven for, and repents with tears... As Gregory says, it clearly "recognizes the difference between virtue and vice, from the impossibility of being a partaker of the Divine." For it is natural for the soul to strive for God. And when she turns away from evil, she is met by God, "appropriating and attracting to Himself everything that only through His mercy came into being"... In other words: beyond the threshold of death, sinful deception is dissipated. And the revelation of the truth shakes the soul. And it turns "with all necessity" — the stubbornness of the evil will weakens and is exhausted. St. Gregory cannot imagine that the evil stubbornness of the created will, turned into non-existence, will be infinite. He considers such extreme folly of the will to be excluded and improbable, especially when the bonds of matter fall or are loosened, which seems to him incompatible with the God-like nature of man. "Not forever," says Gregory, "does the passionate desire for that which is alien to nature remain in nature... Everyone is satiated and burdened by what is not peculiar to him, with which nature itself had no communion in the beginning. Only that which is akin and homogeneous remains desired and loved forever"... "Evil is not so powerful," Gregory argues, "that it can overcome the good power and folly of our nature no higher or stronger than Divine Wisdom... And it is impossible for the perverse and changeable to be higher and stronger than that which is always identical and firmly established in the good"... This is the necessity of the process, the "necessity" of free circulation. And conversion opens up the possibility of healing, fiery burning from sin, "from impurities" and "material excrescences", "from the remnants of fleshly fast ice"... This is a painful process, but a healing process. St. Gregory compares this cleansing to cutting off warts or calluses. But this is too pale an image. Purification is division and judgment — God's love irresistibly draws to itself the God-like nature. But this attraction is easy only for the pure. Torment in bifurcation: the soul, entangled in addiction to material and earthly things, "suffers and is in a tense state, when God draws His property to Himself, and what is alien to it, as to a certain extent grown together with it, destroys by force, and causes it unbearable painful suffering"... The purifying task of torment determines its duration and measure, the "duration of healing"... "The measure of suffering is the amount of evil found in each person." And from this it necessarily follows that the torment will end, for the "quantity" of evil, the "quantity of matter" in the soul of the sinner cannot be infinite, since infinity is not characteristic of evil. Sooner or later, over a long period of time, the exterminating power of fire will destroy all impurity and evil. This healing with "fire and bitter medicines" may turn out to be very long, "commensurate with eternity" or "eternal time," but all this is time. St. Gregory of Nyssa definitely distinguishes between the expressions: άιώνιος from άιών and άίδιος from άεί, and never applies the second to torture, just as he does not apply the first to blessedness and to the Divine Good itself. ̉Αεί means super-temporality and timelessness, "immeasurability by centuries and immobility in time"... This is the realm of the Divine. And creation dwells in time, "measured by the distance of ages"... Άιών means precisely temporality, something in time. This is precisely the key to Gregory's alleged self-contradiction, when he proves the temporality of torment with the texts of Scripture that speak of "eternity." This is the eternity of time, all-temporality, but all-temporality is not super-temporality. And it is not necessary to ascribe to Gregory the idea that the Scriptures only prophesy about eternal torment, in case of impenitence. This would not have been enough for him, for the finitude of purification is for him a fundamental and self-evident truth, and it cannot but end. Pedagogical interpretation does not solve the problem either. The main thing for Gregory is the necessary finitude of all created things in his only created things. Thus, time, as the realm of death (for there can be dying only in time and in change), is at the same time the realm of purification, the purification of man through death for eternity. The body is purified through decomposition into the elements, the soul is purified and matures in the mysterious abodes and paths. And when the time is fulfilled, it will cease, the Lord will come, the resurrection and judgment will take place. This will be the first recovery.

Time will end someday, when the inner measure of the universe is fulfilled, and further emergence will no longer be possible, and therefore the flow of time will be unnecessary. "When our nature in a certain order and connection completes a complete turn of time," says St. Gregory, "this fluid movement, accomplished by the succession of those who are born, will certainly cease"... The meaning of the movement of time is precisely in human births, in which the "fullness of humanity" predestined by God is realized. "In the increase in the number of souls," says Gregory, "reason must necessarily foresee a stop, so that there is no endless flow in nature, which always flows in births and does not stop" — the measure and limit belong to the perfection of nature... "And when this birth of men ceases, then time will end with it, and thus the renewal of the universe will be accomplished." It is not only exhaustion — what has begun will end — but it is precisely fulfillment, fulfillment, gathering—the realization of fullness, the gathering and reunion of fullness. The seven days of fluid time will come to an end, and the day will come, "the great day of the age to come" — a new life will come — "constant and inviolable, unchangeable neither by birth nor by corruption"... Christ will come again and the general resurrection will take place. The Lord will come for the sake of resurrection, "to restore the dead to incorruption." He will come in glory, adorned by the thousands of angels who worship Him as King — "all the worldly creation will worship Him," "the fullness of all the angels, rejoicing in the calling of people back to the original grace." This calling is the resurrection, the restoration and fulfillment of fullness, the gathering of creation, "and all creation will be united in one rejoicing from the lands below and on high"... This gathering will begin with the resurrection of the dead. It is the bodies that will be resurrected, for the soul does not die, but the bodies decompose. The soul will not be resurrected, but will return—"souls will return again from the invisible and scattered state to the visible and self-collected." This is the restoration of the whole man, "the return of the separated to an indissoluble union." In this way the bodies are restored to the primitive beauty of all men, and there will be no bodily distinction between the virtuous and the vicious. However, this does not mean that there will be no difference between the purified and the uncleansed, but it is a difference in their inner fate and condition. The fate of people after death is purification. With the resurrection for all, the purification, renewal and restoration of the body ends. But the purification of souls for others will continue. Here a certain duality is revealed in the thought of St. Gregory, apparently because he preserves Origen's schemes, rejecting the basic ideas of Origen. In his opinion, resurrection is precisely restoration, "the restoration of the Divine image to its primitive state," a new introduction to paradise... However, the main thing is not yet restored – impurity still remains, only the deadness engendered by sin is cut off. The soul is not already healed in everyone, but in it is precisely the image of God... True apocatastasis is separated from the resurrection and pushed somewhere forward; And this turns out to be contradictory and unexpected — after all, time has ended and the flow of time has stopped. Humanity has not yet been introduced into paradise, only righteous people have been introduced, and unpurified souls cannot enter there, because paradise is purity. If we expect times of universal restoration to be fulfilled, it cannot be divided into parts, for by this division the wholeness and completeness are violated. For Origen there was no contradiction, since for him the "resurrection of the dead" was not the final restoration, it was not the fulfillment of universal destiny, but only a transitional and turning point in the lasting course of centuries. And for Origen, bodily fate is not yet decided by the resurrection, which will be followed by empirical life in future ages. Origen's physical and spiritual fate is not torn apart. Gregory repeats Origen, although the meaning of the main eschatological moments in his understanding is different. Time is over, the last time is done; And now it turns out that it did not happen... The indivisible fate of man is divided; and at the same time it remains incomprehensible how the body can be incorruptible and radiant, if it is ensouled and revived by a soul that has not yet been purified (if it has been converted), and therefore is still dead and as it were smouldering: through such a soul the power of Divine life cannot act, and the body itself, without a soul, is dead and is a corpse. Incidentally, Origen consistently distinguished between the bodies of the righteous and the sinners, although this is connected with his idea of the progressive overcoming of all corporeality... One of two things. Either the resurrection is the restoration of fullness, it is a "catholic resurrection," as St. Gregory says; And then the process ceases, — it does not matter whether all are cleansed or not all, and sinners fall under eternal (i.e., timeless) torment, — so thought St. John the Great. Maximus the Confessor. Or the resurrection is not yet restoration, so thought Origen. St. Gregory also repeats Origen in that which is no longer logically compatible with the changed prerequisites. Origen's scheme cracks and disintegrates into contradictions. Gregory of Nyssa tried in vain to combine in a single synthesis the eschatology of Origen and the eschatology of Methodius of Olympia, from whom he borrowed the doctrine of the resurrection... St. St. Gregory compares the resurrection with the germination of seeds, with the blossoming of trees, with the origin of the human organism from the seed – this is an analogy that has long been in Christian circulation. "Thus, according to the words of the Apostle," he reminds us, "the mystery of the resurrection is already clarified through that which is wonderful in the seeds"... "Ear" and "seed" are the favorite images of St. Gregory. Gregory emphasizes two motives. First, all development begins with a formless state—"the seed, being formless in the beginning, built up by the ineffable art of God, is formed into an outline and grows into a dense body." In the same way, there is nothing exceptional in the germination of the seeds of a dead body and in the restoration of the former form, "from the whole human substance"... Secondly, all germination is accomplished through decay and death, and there is a kind of resurrection, a victory over death. The bond between soul and body in an individual organic unity makes resurrection possible, but it is the power of God that resurrects, just as the power of God imparts to all nature the capacity for birth, renewal, and life. The Resurrection is a miracle of Divine omnipotence, but a miracle in accordance with the fundamental laws of nature is a new manifestation of the universal mystery of life. Therefore, the resurrection is a kind of fulfillment, the fulfillment of nature. And, on the one hand, the same bodies will be resurrected, otherwise there would be no resurrection, but a new creation. Resurrected bodies are composed of former elements, collected from everywhere by the life-giving power of the soul. "Thus, because of the attraction of the various elements by the single power of the soul... then the soul will weave the chain of our body"... On the other hand, the resurrection is not a return to the former life and to the former way of existence, for that would be the greatest misfortune, and then it would be better not to have the hope of the resurrection. The resurrection is the restoration of the whole man, and therefore the renewal, the transition to the better and fuller, nevertheless passes over to the same body. Not only the unity of the subject is preserved, but also the identity of the substratum, not only the individual identity of the person, but also the continuity of matter. This is not disturbed by its renewal and its transformation. "The bodily veil destroyed by death," says Gregory, "will again be woven from the same substance... But not in this coarse and heavy composition, but in such a way that its thread will consist of something light and airy, which is why it will be restored to its best and most desirable beauty." The same one who lies in the tomb returns to life, and no one else, the same with himself... But he returns different... After all, earthly life is also a constant change and renewal – "human nature is like a kind of stream," remarks Gregory. And this does not turn a person into a "crowd of people". A person will be resurrected not at one age, but not at all at once. For the very concept of age is removed by the resurrection and does not belong to the primordial nature. "In the first life there was probably no old age, no childhood, no suffering from various diseases, no other miserable bodily condition, because it is not in God's nature to create anything like this... All this has invaded us along with the entrance of vice"... And therefore all this is not subject to, but does not hinder the integral resurrection. Only nature is resurrected, but not the admixture of vice and passion. This is the essence of renewal, liberation from the heritage and traces of an evil life, a life of evil. Resurrection is a transfiguration into incorruption and immortality, and therefore it is a victory over death. An ear grows tall, branchy, straight and stretching into the heavenly heights... Nothing connected with illness, decrepitude, or deformity is resurrected. Neither senile wrinkles, nor mutilations, nor infantile immaturity are resurrected. And moreover, in the resurrected bodies there will be no organs and parts connected with the needs of this sinful life – "death will cleanse the body of what is superfluous and unnecessary for the enjoyment of the future life"... This applies to the organs of nutrition and in general to the functions of plant life associated with the rotation of matter and growth. First of all, to the difference between the sexes. In general, all coarse materiality is overcome and the weight of the flesh disappears. The body becomes light, striving upwards... And in general, all the properties of the body—color, appearance, outline, etc.—are "transformed into something Divine"... Impenetrability disappears, accidental differences are removed, "which our nature now necessarily has from the successive change of its states." In this sense, Gregory says that in the resurrection all will take on one form: "we will all become one body of Christ, having taken on one image and form, because in all the light of the Divine image will shine in the same way"... This means that the appearance will be determined from within: "the distinctive appearance will be communicated to everyone not by the elements, but by the peculiarities of vice and virtue." But this does not mean that everyone will be the same. Thus, resurrection is, on the one hand, a restoration to the original state, and on the other, it is not only a return, but also a gathering of all that has happened in a past life. Not only άποκατάστασις, but also recapitulatio... It should be emphasized that for Gregory of Nyssa the concept of apocatastasis did not have the same meaning as for Origen, precisely because he did not recognize the pre-existence of souls. Restoration is not a return to the past, but the realization of what has not been realized, or, more precisely, the completion of what has not been completed, is fulfillment, not oblivion. This applies first of all to the body: it is not abolished, but transformed, and thus achieves its destination; to be the mirror of the soul.

The resurrection is followed by judgment. And the judgment of all, the judgment of the universe. The Son of God will come again for judgment. For judgment is given to the Son. But the Father also judges through the Son. And to it, in fact, "belongs everything done by the Only-begotten during the Last Judgment." However, the Son of man judges, and as if on the basis of his personal experience measures the circumstances and difficulties of human life, "and whether each one has experienced many good or evils for a long time, or whether he has not touched the beginning of both at all, since he ended his life in an imperfect mind"... This is the judgment of Divine love rather than of God's Truth. However, the judgment is just, i.e., exactly proportionate to the merits of each; and Christ is "the righteousness of God, revealed by the gospel"... In a sense, everyone will be his own judge. Having awakened in the resurrection, each will remember his whole life and give a fair assessment of it – everyone will appear at the judgment with full consciousness of both merit and guilt. At the judgment, as in an exact mirror, everything will be reflected... — In the judgment, the equal glory of the Son will be revealed. The judgment will be universal, before the royal throne of the Son will gather and appear "the entire human race, from the first creation to the fullness of those brought into being"... And with him the devil and his angels will be brought to trial, "then," says Gregory, "the author of the rebellion, who dreamed of the dignity of the Lord, will appear before the eyes of all as a servant constantly scourged, dragged by the angels to execution, and all the servants and accomplices of his wickedness will be subjected to punishments and executions befitting them." The last deception will be revealed, and the one real King will appear, who will be recognized and sung by both the vanquished and the victors. — On the Last Judgment of St. St. Gregory says comparatively little, although he paints vivid images of the terrible day, but this is more homiletic poetry than theology in the proper sense. In the eschatological perspectives of St. Gregory, the judgment does not occupy a central place. And this is understandable. Judgment is not the final decision of fate. This is only a preliminary summary of history, a mirror of the past, and only the beginning of the eighth day, in which the process continues. Only the resurrection is final, on the one hand, the appearance of Christ in glory, on the other. The judgment of the Son is not so much a decision as a revelation of all human deeds and thoughts. There is little new at the trial itself. The blessedness of the righteous is determined by the resurrection. The torments of sinners begin before the resurrection and will continue after the judgment. The whole point of the idea of judgment is to wait for it. The thought of judgment is a factor in our present religious and moral success—"the future judgment for weak people is a threat and an increase in sorrow, so that by the fear of painful retribution we may be wise to avoid evil." "This strict judgment seat is vividly depicted in words for nothing else than to teach us the benefits of charity," remarks Gregory. In the doctrine of the Last Judgment, Gregory repeats Origen.

St. Gregory taught about "universal restoration." "Everyone is expected to share in the benefits," he said. Some achieve this already by the podvig of earthly life. Others must pass through the fire of purification. However, in the end, "after long periods of centuries, vice will disappear and nothing will remain outside the good. And this will be the complete return of all rational beings to the primordial state in which they were created, when there was no evil"... One day it will happen that "evil will disappear from the realm of existence and will again become bearing"... There will be no trace of evil; and then, Gregory believes, "God-like beauty will shine again in all, by which we were formed from the beginning"... "There was a time," says Gregory, "that rational nature was a single assembly, and through the fulfillment of the commandments it brought itself into harmony with the harmony which its Chief established by His movement. But after the intruding sin had disturbed the Divine harmony of the assembly, and after it had poured under the feet of the first men, who were one with the angelic powers, something which had made them inclined to deceit, thereby led them to fall, and man was deprived of communion with the angels, so that through the fall their unanimity ceased, — after this the fallen man needed much labor and sweat, so that, having overcome and freed himself from the power that had been extended over him during the fall, he would rise up again — and receive as a reward for the victory over the enemy the right to participate in the Divine exultation"... In this exultation, the human and angelic natures will unite together and form a kind of "Divine Regiment"... A great and common feast will be revealed, at which nothing will divide the rational creature; and the lower and the higher will rejoice with common gladness, and all will bow down with one accord and praise the Father through the Son. All veils will be lifted, one joy and glory will shine in all. This final restoration will embrace everyone: all people or the whole race, all human nature. But, moreover, evil spirits; And the triumphant council will be joined in the last by the "inventor of evil" himself... And he will be healed, for in the three days of His death, the Lord healed all three vessels of evil: the devil's nature, the female sex, and the male sex. Finally, it also expels evil "from the race of serpents, in which the nature of evil found its birth in the first"... In the teaching of universal restoration, of the restoration of everything to its primordial state, St. Gregory repeats Origen. And his motives are the same. The main argument is from the omnipotence of the Good, as the only Being, as the only foundation and goal of all existence. "The counsel of God is always and in all things immutable," says St. Gregory... "In vain do you, people, be indignant and look with displeasure at this chain of the necessary sequence of things, not knowing to what end everything separate in the economy of the universe is directed, for everything is necessary in a certain order and sequence, in accordance with the true Wisdom of the Governing, to come into agreement with the Divine nature"... The opposition of good and evil in the understanding of St. Gregory is the opposition of being and will, in other words: necessary and accidental. There is no evil; it does not exist, but only happens, it happens. That which happens inevitably has an end, "that which has not always been, will not always be"... That which has arisen can be eternally preserved only through the eternal will for it, only in the eternal and existent, through participation in the Existent, through the communion of the Good. Thus the creature will be preserved; but evil cannot be preserved in this way, for it is not of God, and it is precisely "deprivation of goodness," ungoodness, i.e., non-existence. "After all, if evil does not possess the property of being outside of volition," Gregory argues, "then when all volition is in God, evil will reach its complete annihilation, for there will be nowhere for it to be"... Following Origen, St. Gregory reminds us of the Apostle's words: God will be all in all... "By this the Scriptures teach about the complete destruction of evil," Gregory explains, "for if there is God in all beings, it is evident that there will be no evil or vice in creatures"... The exclusion of someone from the total number would make the volume of all... God is in everything, which means that everything is in God, in the communion of Good. — St. Gregory sidesteps one of Origen's difficulties. For him, time is not a fall out of eternity, it is not a medium only for sin and for the fallen. He does not admit the pre-existence of an eternal creature — the creature is realized for the first time in a single historical process. This radically changes the meaning of apocatastasis — and saves the positive meaning of the story. But in St. Gregory this is weakened by another motive: God is the only worthy object of contemplation and searching, and therefore nothing created in essence has value. That is why he teaches about the last oblivion... "The remembrance of what happened after the initial prosperity and from which mankind plunged into evil, will be erased by what will finally come to pass after the lapse of time. For the remembrance of this will cease when it is finally accomplished. This means that the last restoration in Christ Jesus will completely blot out the memory of evil"... It is unlikely that it is only about evil, for it cannot be without the remembrance of evil and the memory of podvig, of victories over evil... St. St. Gregory explicitly or implicitly assumes that in God the coming creation will find everything, its entirety, to a certain self-forgetfulness, or at least to self-forgetfulness of everything that is not part of the likeness of God, so that people will see only God in each other, and in all there will be one image of God. In these correct considerations, however, there is a certain tinge of historical docetism. It is associated with the underestimation of human will. This is the reason why St. Gregory does not allow the persistence of evil. The human will cannot persist before the revelation of the Good. It is also weak in resistance. To this is added the intellectualistic motive: the will is uniquely determined by reason. Reason can only err in deception, and cannot persist in an error that has been exposed: a clear vision of the truth, according to Gregory, will necessarily determine the will to truth. In this way he combines the pathos of freedom and the motive of necessity in the concept of the necessary conversion of free will. For him, this is the basic question of eschatological theology. At the same time, the will is subject to the law of good nature. The content of the eschatological process is determined by the overcoming of the consequences of the generation of evil—this is the meaning of the purifying fire. In this respect, St. Gregory follows the Alexandrian tradition and differs from Basil the Great. It should be noted that the obscure features of Origenism can be noticed in Gregory the Theologian, the idea of fiery baptism, but not apocatastasis. Contemporaries did not speak out about the eschatology of Gregory of Nyssa. The first mention we find in St. Barsanuphius (died about 550), he believed that Gregory uncritically followed Origen. Later, St. St. Maximus the Confessor explained Gregory's teaching on apocatastasis in the sense that "restoration" refers only to the "totality of the powers of the soul," so that every soul will turn to the contemplation of God, "for it is fitting that, just as the whole of nature in the expected time through the resurrection of the flesh should receive incorruption, so the damaged powers of the soul in the course of ages should remove the evil images that are in it, and that the soul, having reached the end of the ages, and finding no rest, it came to the infinite God, and in this way, in recognition, but not in communion of blessings, it regained its strength, was restored to its primitive state, and it would become clear that the Creator is not the author of sin." Prep. Maximus distinguished: έπίγνωσις and μέθεξις — for the latter the conversion of the will is necessary. Such was his view, but St. Gregory thought differently. He did not distinguish between the obviousness of consciousness and the inclination of will... In any case, the explanation of St. Maxim did not satisfy his contemporaries. A few decades later, Patriarch Germanus spoke about the Origenistic insertions in Gregory. His opinion is quoted and accepted by Patriarch Photius. The assumption is unacceptable – the system of St. Gregory is too organically connected in itself. But on the contrary, it shows how Gregory was understood in the eighth and ninth centuries. The silence of Justinian in the well-known epistle to Pat. The minus about Gregory (as well as the silence of the Fathers of the Fifth Council) is fully explained by the historical situation: it was a question of the errors of the Origenists, who proceeded from the presupposition of Origen, the pre-existence of souls and the primordial pure spirituality of all creatures, which St. Gregory rejected. Perhaps it is no accident that the Fathers of the Council expressed themselves in their anathemas: "Who affirms the pre-existence of souls and the apocatastasis that is connected with it"... It can be thought that the universally recognized authority and holiness of Gregory of Nyssa predisposed the opponents of Origenism in the sixth century to keep silent about his views, which did not coincide, but reminded of the "impious, obscene, and criminal teaching of Origen." In any case, the Origenism of St. Gregory was reflected in his authority – he was read and referred to less often than to other, "chosen fathers"...

7. Lesser theologians of the fourth century.

I. St. Eustathius of Antioch.

1. We know little about the life of St. Eustathius. At the direction of Blzh. Jerome, he was a native of the Pamphylian city of Cid. But the year of his birth is difficult to establish—the year of his episcopal consecration is unknown, and therefore there is no data at all to judge even approximately his age. From about 319 to 320 he was bishop of Verria, in Syria, during which years, as bishop of Verra, as bishop of Verra, he received from Alexander of Alexandria a copy of his famous letter against Arius to Alexander of Thessalonica. Just before the Council of Nicaea, Eustathius was elected to the Antiochian cathedra. The Arian turmoil had already heated up, and Eustathius was immediately drawn into the struggle. He was apparently not universally recognized in Antioch... At the Council of Nicaea, St. Eustathius was one of the main defenders of consubstantiality. This explains the subsequent struggle of the anti-Nicaeans against him. In Antioch, Eustathius waged an intense struggle with the Arians and the Arians, including a literary one. Ancient authors highly valued his dogmatic activity, and Athanasius called him a "confessor." Enmity boiled around him and suspicion soon hung over him. in Sabeilancy. In the year 330 a rather large council was assembled at Antioch, with Eusebius of Nicomedia and Theognis of Nicaea at its head, who had returned from exile, and at it Eustathius was deposed, "in fact," says Sozomen, "because he approved of the Nicene faith." It is difficult to decide what pretext was put forward for cover. Eustathius was exiled "to the western borders of the state" and went into exile with a multitude of clergymen. The place of exile is not known exactly. In 337, when all the exiled Nicaeans were returned from exile, Eustathius was no longer alive.