Imago Dei. Forscher aus dem Osten und Westen Europas an den Quellen des gemeinsamen Glaubens. Studientagung L’viv, 12.-14. September 2019 “Imago Dei”, ed. Th. Hainthaler, F. Mali, G. Emmenegger, A. Morozov, Tyrolia Verlag, 2021
Gregory of Nyssa is absolutely clear that the present human body is something alien to human natu... more Gregory of Nyssa is absolutely clear that the present human body is something alien to human nature and definitely is not part of the image of God. At the beginning there was human nature as such, as an indivisible monad, the unity without any corporal or bodily dimension. Already because of the sin (the concept of dual creation and the garments of skin differ in applying the time of diversification) individual human beings started to exist. Every individual human being was planned at the very moment of creation of human nature and would come into existence anyway. If it were not for the sin the anticipated number of people would come to the world in the angelical (mysterious) way. My question is whether the individualization of nature (both human and angelic) does necessarily involve any kind of body or could have been purely spiritual. It is not a theoretical divagation but absolutely crucial issue if we remember that at the moment of resurrection and apokatastasis human nature will return to its beginning.
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The article analyses Gregory of Nyssa’s references to Jews, starting with undermining the authorship of the homily from which comes the most often quoted anti-Jewish fragment attributed to Gregory. That the text is apocryphal is also confirmed by the analysis of texts of certain authorship. Although clearly negative statements could be found there, Gregory usually speaks about Jews neutrally in the denominational or ethnic sense, sometimes interchangeably with the term “Hebrews”. Most of the references to Jews appear in Gregory in the context of polemics with Anomeans and Macedonians; there are traces of Gregory’s personal experiences with Jews, and we also know that he knew groups of Christians that adopted some Jewish customs. In view of vaguely defined orthodoxy and great attractiveness of other religious groups, there was a pressing need to emphasize the identity of Christians and to shape their self-awareness. Therefore, Gregory placed great emphasis on the fact that neither the Jews nor other groups that denied the deity of the Son and the Holy Spirit had the right to be called “Christians”; he referred to such other beliefs as error, unbelief or heresy. Only when the anti-Trinitarian movements lost their importance under Theodosius and the need to defend his position disappeared, Gregory in his (probably) last work called Jews brothers of believing pagans.
essential current in his thought: Gregory speaks equally clearly about man’s freedom, his free will, his right to make free choices, and about consequences of such choices, which may as well be eternal damnation. In order to understand that Gregory’s teaching about apokatastasis does not stand in contradiction to his conviction about free will and possible damnation we have to remember his teaching about grace. He thinks that human nature is not so much oriented to God as that it contains grace in itself. A man was created in such a way that grace constitutes a part of his nature. Human nature will be restored, but there are people who will not take part in that restoration because out of the original sin in which they were born or out of their own evil choices they do not partake in human nature.
It is certain that Athanasius of Alexandria did not write On definitions (Liber de definitionibus). The juxtaposition of the translated texts shows that it is surprisingly similar to the second chapter of Hodegos (Viae dux) by Anastasius of Sinai. Maybe it was the similarity of names that caused attributing On definitions to Athanasius. But it was not without reason that it was published as a separate writing. The part with definitions was published much more often than the entire Hodegos. In my paper, I have presented different theories on the dating and authorship of Hodegos and its second chapter. Although it is commonly assumed that it was Anastasius who died around 700 that wrote Hodegos (together with its second chapter), I think we cannot state with certainty which Anastasius was the author of Hodegos. Neither can we be sure that Hodegos is not a compilation of various writings.
information about historical events and persons. In my opinion, all four sources about Macrina were written according to the rules of literary genres that do not have as their objective to report history but have other purposes such as edification, polemics or honouring somebody. In addition to that, Macrina did not appear in many other sources in which she should have been mentioned if she had been an inspirer and leader of monasticism in Pontus. I think that Macrina, as described by Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory of Nazianzus, was invented by them in order to substitute the true inspirer and leader of asceticism in Pontus – Eustathius of Sebastea.
The methods used by Eunomius and Gregory of Nyssa show that their dispute was not what we would today call a religious issue, but a truly scientific/philosophical debate conducted in accordance with the commonly accepted (nomen omen!) rules.
Translating a text, especially from any ancient language, requires not only the knowledge of grammar, but also some information about the author, the circumstances in which the text was written, specifics of the language used at that time and place, influence of other authors/texts/philosophical ideas. Every translation is an interpretation - a good or a bad one. So every translation is in the strict sense hermeneutics understood as an art of interpreting texts. In my article I have analyzed an excerpt from the dialog De anima et resurrectione, where Gregory (allegedly) speaks about the salvation of Satan, in the Greek original and ten translations into Latin, Polish, Italian, French, English and German. The differences between the translations are enormous; I had an impression at times that some translators used different Greek texts. That example prooves that translating is an art of no small importance; it requires ample amounts of knowledge and talent. As such it must be recognized as a real scientific work, what is more - as a basis and a point of departure for other research work.
The article analyses Gregory of Nyssa’s references to Jews, starting with undermining the authorship of the homily from which comes the most often quoted anti-Jewish fragment attributed to Gregory. That the text is apocryphal is also confirmed by the analysis of texts of certain authorship. Although clearly negative statements could be found there, Gregory usually speaks about Jews neutrally in the denominational or ethnic sense, sometimes interchangeably with the term “Hebrews”. Most of the references to Jews appear in Gregory in the context of polemics with Anomeans and Macedonians; there are traces of Gregory’s personal experiences with Jews, and we also know that he knew groups of Christians that adopted some Jewish customs. In view of vaguely defined orthodoxy and great attractiveness of other religious groups, there was a pressing need to emphasize the identity of Christians and to shape their self-awareness. Therefore, Gregory placed great emphasis on the fact that neither the Jews nor other groups that denied the deity of the Son and the Holy Spirit had the right to be called “Christians”; he referred to such other beliefs as error, unbelief or heresy. Only when the anti-Trinitarian movements lost their importance under Theodosius and the need to defend his position disappeared, Gregory in his (probably) last work called Jews brothers of believing pagans.
essential current in his thought: Gregory speaks equally clearly about man’s freedom, his free will, his right to make free choices, and about consequences of such choices, which may as well be eternal damnation. In order to understand that Gregory’s teaching about apokatastasis does not stand in contradiction to his conviction about free will and possible damnation we have to remember his teaching about grace. He thinks that human nature is not so much oriented to God as that it contains grace in itself. A man was created in such a way that grace constitutes a part of his nature. Human nature will be restored, but there are people who will not take part in that restoration because out of the original sin in which they were born or out of their own evil choices they do not partake in human nature.
It is certain that Athanasius of Alexandria did not write On definitions (Liber de definitionibus). The juxtaposition of the translated texts shows that it is surprisingly similar to the second chapter of Hodegos (Viae dux) by Anastasius of Sinai. Maybe it was the similarity of names that caused attributing On definitions to Athanasius. But it was not without reason that it was published as a separate writing. The part with definitions was published much more often than the entire Hodegos. In my paper, I have presented different theories on the dating and authorship of Hodegos and its second chapter. Although it is commonly assumed that it was Anastasius who died around 700 that wrote Hodegos (together with its second chapter), I think we cannot state with certainty which Anastasius was the author of Hodegos. Neither can we be sure that Hodegos is not a compilation of various writings.
information about historical events and persons. In my opinion, all four sources about Macrina were written according to the rules of literary genres that do not have as their objective to report history but have other purposes such as edification, polemics or honouring somebody. In addition to that, Macrina did not appear in many other sources in which she should have been mentioned if she had been an inspirer and leader of monasticism in Pontus. I think that Macrina, as described by Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory of Nazianzus, was invented by them in order to substitute the true inspirer and leader of asceticism in Pontus – Eustathius of Sebastea.
The methods used by Eunomius and Gregory of Nyssa show that their dispute was not what we would today call a religious issue, but a truly scientific/philosophical debate conducted in accordance with the commonly accepted (nomen omen!) rules.
Translating a text, especially from any ancient language, requires not only the knowledge of grammar, but also some information about the author, the circumstances in which the text was written, specifics of the language used at that time and place, influence of other authors/texts/philosophical ideas. Every translation is an interpretation - a good or a bad one. So every translation is in the strict sense hermeneutics understood as an art of interpreting texts. In my article I have analyzed an excerpt from the dialog De anima et resurrectione, where Gregory (allegedly) speaks about the salvation of Satan, in the Greek original and ten translations into Latin, Polish, Italian, French, English and German. The differences between the translations are enormous; I had an impression at times that some translators used different Greek texts. That example prooves that translating is an art of no small importance; it requires ample amounts of knowledge and talent. As such it must be recognized as a real scientific work, what is more - as a basis and a point of departure for other research work.
wrote De anima et resurrectione in the form of a dialogue – one of the two
dialogues in his entire literary legacy? Second, why did he write a dialogue
with Macrina rather than with his great, saint brother Basil? Those two questions led me to the large-scale research concerning the literary
genres of Macrina writings, the life of Eustathius of Seabastea, the
relationships between Basil and Eustathius on one hand and Basil and
Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory of Nazianzus on the other, the administrative issues of the Church in Asia Minor, and many others problems.