Gregory of Nyssa on the Soul (and the Restoration)
In this chapter, Gregory’s treatment of the soul is examined against the backdrop of philosophical treatises On the Soul and in conversation with Origen’s psychology and On the Resurrection (while Origen never wrote On the Soul, for reasons that are here clarified). Tertullian composed both On the Soul and On the Resurrection; Gregory combined the two discussions in a remake of Plato’s Phaedo on the immortality of the soul—here analysed in many of its philosophical components and their treatment until Plotinus and Proclus, and in light of Gregory’s definition of soul and relation between resurrection and restoration. The chapter examines the role of the soul in Gregory’s ‘theology of freedom’—rooted in Plato’s philosophy—and the influence Gregory exerted on Evagrius’ theories of the threefold resurrection and of the subsumption of body into soul and soul into ‘unified nous’: Eriugena was right to trace the latter theory back to Gregory.