The Body of Paradise and the Body of the Resurrection: Gender and the Angelic Life in Gregory of Nyssa's De hominis opificio

Abstract

As one of the central concerns of De hominis opificio, Gregory of Nyssa attempts to reconcile the biblical claim that God made human beings in the image of God (, Gen 1:27) with the reality of humanity's present misery and corruption. How, Nyssen asks, can God invest human beings with rational faculties that equip them as God's viceroys over creation and yet find themselves subject to the dominion of non-rational, sensual impulses? He answers the question by distinguishing human nature in its present form and orientation from those lofty, intellectual aspects of human nature that God intended for humanity in the beginning and in the resurrection. He characterizes the former by passions and pain; the latter, by the blessedness of communion with God. But this raises some key questions: If the passions cause our present misery, what does that say about gender and sexuality? Does he associate them solely with our present condition? Do they represent an accommodation or a cause of our present corruption? Or do gender and sexuality form part and parcel of human nature as God willed it from the beginning?