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Fourth-Century CE Perspective
Jeffrey P. Bishop
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MIND-BODY UNITY: GREGORY OF NYSSA AND A
SURPRISING FOURTH-CENTURY CE PERSPECTIVE
JEFFREY P. BISHOP*
For it is our business, I suppose, to leave nothing unexamined of all that concerns
man,—of what we believe to have taken place previously, of what we now see, and
of the results which are expected afterwards to appear. . . . and, moreover, we must
fit together, according to the explanation of Scripture and to that derived from rea-
soning, those statements concerning him which seem, by a kind of necessary
sequence, to be opposed, so that our whole subject may be consistent in train of
thought and in order, as the statements that seem to be contrary are brought . . .
to one and the same end. [6, p. 387]
Any one too may learn everything accurately who takes up the researches which
those skilled in such matters have worked out in books, and of these writers some
learnt by dissection the position of our individual organs; others also considered and
expounded the reason for the existence of all the parts of the body; so that the knowl-
edge of the human frame which hence results is sufficient for students. [6, p. 422]
Gregory goes on to say that, if some are unwilling to accept the teachings
of those outside the Church, he will venture to discuss the human body as
a bishop and shepherd of the Church. An examination of his understand-
ing of anatomy and physiology allows us to see exactly how Gregory uses
For Gregory, the brain, while it is the cause of life, is not the seat of the soul.
As will be seen later, he is unwilling to have the soul housed in this organ.
The heart is the source of heat in the body, since the nature of heat is
motion and the heart is in perpetual motion. The lungs serve as the bel-
This ability of the mind leaves Gregory in awe. He continues in this same
line of inquiry by noting the oneness of the mind. He refers to the mind
as a “spacious territory:”
for often the knowledge which we gather from the different organs of sense is one,
as the same object is divided into several parts in relation to the sense. . . . For when
one sees honey, and hears its name, and receives it by taste, and recognizes its
odour by smell, and tests it by touch, he recognizes the same thing by means of
each of his senses. [6, p. 396]
Because of this ability of the mind to provide unity to the world of the
senses, Gregory proclaims the mind’s unity. There is only one soul:
The true and perfect soul is naturally one, the intellectual and immaterial, which
mingles with our material nature by the agency of the senses; but all that is of mate-
rial nature, being subject to mutation and alteration, will, if it should partake of the
animating power, move by way of growth: if, on the contrary, it should fall away
from the vital energy, it will reduce its motion to destruction. Thus, neither is there
perception without material substance, nor does the act of perception take place
without the intellectual faculty. [6, p. 403]
We see here, not only a mingling of the corporeal and incorporeal exis-
tence’s, but a unity. There is a notion that neither can exist without the
other and be truly human.
Gregory illuminates the unity and incorporeality of the soul. For Gregory
there can be but one faculty that interprets all the inputs from the corpo-
Hence the mind of man clearly proves its claim to connection with his nature, itself
also co-operating and moving with the nature in its sound and waking state, but
remaining unmoved when it is abandoned to sleep, unless any supposes that the
imagery of dreams is a motion of the mind exercised in sleep. We for our part say
that it is only the conscious and sound action of the intellect which we ought to
refer to mind; and as to the fantastic sense which occurs to us in sleep, we suppose
that some appearances of the operations of the mind are accidentally molded in
the less rational part of the soul; for the soul, being by sleep dissociated from the
senses, is also of necessity outside the range of the operations of the mind; for it is
through the senses that the union of mind with man takes place. [6, pp. 400–401]
What is this less rational part of the soul? Very likely Gregory refers to the
vegetative form of the soul. This is interesting because the mind, the high-
est faculty of the soul, connects to the vegetative faculty through the ani-
mal (sense perceiving) faculty. In this discussion we see that when at rest,
the higher element of the soul is inactive. Thus, the vegetative and sensi-
tive faculties are operative in dreams, whereas the rational faculty is inac-
tive. However, the reminiscent part of the mind remains somewhat active,
though clouded by the state of rest in the body. Dreams relate to the situ-
ation of the person in the wakeful state. This relationship shows that the
reminiscent part of the mind is active. If thirsty, one may dream of water
or, if hungry, of food. Because the senses are at rest, the mind is not able
to control the body. In this discussion we see that the control of the high-
Therefore the mind permeates the entirety of the physical body for the
good of the whole.
J. P. Cavarnos, examining On the Making of Man and another of Gregory’s
works called On the Soul and Resurrection, concludes that Gregory, like his
predecessors, sees the body as a “hindrance to the full and unimpeded
exercise of the soul’s power” [10, p. 78]. However, in my examination of
On the Making of Man I have not found this to be the case. Gregory is writ-
ing to larger issues of Christian theology, and therefore his language about
mind-body unity perhaps changes between the two treatises [11]. On the
Resurrection and the Body is a slightly earlier work and appears to be a much
more pastoral and moral treatise. In contrast, On the Making of Man is a
much more systematic work of early Christian anthropology, even though
it is influenced by issues affecting other areas of Christian theology, specif-
ically Trinitarian theology. In this more systematic work, the mind, like
God, is incomprehensible. As in Origen, if the mind continues to partake
of God in its likeness to God, it remains beautiful. However, Gregory does
not stop here with regard to the person’s relation to God. Connected
through the mind, the material portion of the person—the body—
becomes, likewise beautiful. Gregory states:
And as we said that the mind was adorned by the likeness of the archetypal beauty,
being formed as though it were a mirror to receive the figure of that which it
expresses, we consider that the nature which is governed by it is attached to the mind
in the same relation, and that it too is adorned by the beauty that the mind gives,
being, so to say, a mirror of the mirror; and that by it is swayed and sustained the
material element of that existence in which the nature is contemplated. [6, p. 399]
The mind then is the link between God and the body. This link is part of
the existence of the person, and the participation of the mind in the image
of God elevates the whole nature, corporeal and incorporeal, of the per-
son. For Gregory, contrary to Origen and the Neo-Platonists, there are no
negative aspects of the body simply because it is material, but rather mat-
ter, or body, becomes formless if it lacks participation in God through the
mind. Gregory acknowledges the necessity of the body and insists that
without it the person is not complete. The mind has no “perception with-
out the material” body, but neither can there be perception without the
“intellectual faculty” [6, p. 403].
A Possible System
While Gregory’s primary purpose in launching his treatise On the Making
of Man was to complete and expand his brother’s sermons in the Hexa-
Conclusions
I have shown the eclecticism of a thinker like Gregory. He is able to draw
from the perspectives of very different sources, and his brilliance lies in
resisting the tendency to idealize the human person into Platonic or
Neoplatonic categories or to reduce the human being to matter. He avoids
a position that would have an organ as the seat of the soul, which would
reduce the mind to the body. Gregory chooses to synthesize the two posi-
tions and ends in an affirmation of his religious commitments.
Today, in biology and medicine, we tend to reduce mind to body rather
than to idealize the mind opposing the body, as Gregory’s contemporaries
did. Today, we equate mind and brain. For the most part, we reduce
thoughts to an identity with the processes of the brain. Mind or awareness
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