05 — On the Soul and the Resurrection
Gregory’s “Christian Phaedo”: a deathbed dialogue in which his dying sister, “the Teacher,” instructs a grieving Gregory on the immortality of the soul, the passions, the purifying fire, the resurrection of the body, and the final restoration of all things in which “God shall be all in all.” This section sets out the dialogue’s teaching and the source-critical question that haunts it — whether its theology is Macrina’s or Gregory’s.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Church Father / Mother)
On the Soul and the Resurrection (De anima et resurrectione, c. 380) is, with the Life of Macrina, one of the two works that preserve Macrina. Set at the same deathbed, it casts her as a Christian Socrates and Diotima — a woman, unlettered by the schools, who corrects Plato even while borrowing his form, defending the soul’s immortality but insisting against Greek thought on the resurrection of the body. Its eschatology of the medicinal, finite, purifying fire and of “God all in all” is among the most influential and most contested in the Greek Fathers. The apokatastasis it voices is treated here as Gregory’s theologoumenon, handled with the dogma/opinion distinction (METHODOLOGY §4).
Files in this Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| The Christian Phaedo | The deathbed dialogue; Macrina as Socrates and Diotima; the inversion of Plato; the doctrine of the soul (simple, intelligible, immortal); the passions as neutral accretions to be reordered; the resurrection body. |
| Apokatastasis and the Purifying Fire | The eschatology voiced through Macrina; the medicinal, finite, purifying fire (gold in the furnace); evil as privation; “God all in all”; the relation to Gregory’s own universal restoration and the question of its theologoumenon status. |
See Also
- The Vita and Its Genre — the companion work set at the same deathbed
- The Question of Her Voice — whether the dialogue’s arguments are Macrina’s or Gregory’s
- What Is Voiced Through Macrina — the body of doctrine the dialogue puts in her mouth
- Theosis — the deification in which “God all in all” is fulfilled
- St. Gregory of Nyssa — the dialogue’s author and his own eschatology
References
- Gregory of Nyssa. On the Soul and the Resurrection (De anima et resurrectione). PG 46:11–160. Trans. Catharine P. Roth, Popular Patristics Series. Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1993; also NPNF II/5 and Virginia Woods Callahan, FOTC 58.
- Gregory of Nyssa. The Life of Saint Macrina. PG 46:959–1000; GNO VIII/1, ed. V. Woods Callahan. Leiden: Brill, 1952.
- Ramelli, Ilaria L. E. The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis. Leiden: Brill, 2013.