The aspect of the Body in the writing On the Soul and the Resurrection of Gregory of Nyssa

Abstract

The dialogue entitled On the Soul and the Resurrection can be considered as the most important one of Gregory of Nyssa. This work, a dialogue between Gregory himself and his sister Macrina, was modeled on Plato's Phaedo and shows quite clearly the debt our author owes to Plato for his literary form, besides the borrowing of ideas. This paper will examine the connection of the body and the soul. The soul is totally unlike the body in essence, still dwells in it and vivifies it while the body is alive. It coalesces with the union of the bodily elements. But when the body is dissolved in death and its elements return to their own, the soul does not perish with it. Due to its intellectual and dimensionless nature, the soul does not dissolve but survives and remains attached to all the elements which were once crafted into its body. Being dimensionless, the soul is neither contracted nor dispersed as are dimensional things. Hence nothing prevents the soul from remaining present with all of natural elements of its former body, regardless of how they are dispersed. So even in death the soul survives in union with the body’s elements. We will examine how Gregory has been influenced by Platonic and Neo-Platonic ideas about the body and the soul and what are his views about the Body, the soul and Desire and their connections to gender, sex, and sexuality.