Mystery within Us
The Apostle Paul says: ‘Who has known the mind of the Lord?’ [Rom. 11:34]
To this I would add, ‘Who knows his own mind?’
Let those who pretend that God’s nature is within their comprehension explain their own nature. Do they understand the functioning of their own mind? It has many parts and many components. How does it comprehend knowledge? How are its different elements brought together? The mind is a single entity, not a compound. How is it divided among the various senses? How does this diversity in unity arise? How unity in diversity?
I know the solution to this problem. I have recourse to the pronouncement of God when he said: ‘Let us make human beings in our image and likeness.’
As long as a copy in no respect departs from the intentions of the original, it is a proper copy. Insofar as it falls short of likeness to the original, it is not, to that extent, a copy. Therefore, since one of the qualities reckoned to belong to the divine nature is its incomprehensibility, there is no escape from the conclusion that in this respect the copy must have the same quality as the original.
If the nature of the copy was thought to be intelligible while the original was beyond comprehension, when you saw the two together you would discover that a mistake had been made. Since the nature of our intellect, like that of its Creator, is beyond understanding, its own incomprehensibility gives an accurate picture of the original. It remains a mystery.
Gregory of Nyssa, The Creation of Man, II (PG44, 153)
The Two Faces of the Human Race
What is the origin of the passions? We have no right to blame our human nature for their origin, because it was formed in God’s likeness.
The animals came into this world before we did and we have inherited some of their qualities. This is the spring from which our emotions are derived. Those qualities which secure self-preservation in animals have been transferred into human life and become passions.
For instance, a fighting spirit keeps some animals alive; the pleasure of sex produces fertility; cowardice saves the timid animal; fear keeps the vulnerable animal safe from stronger predators; gluttony preserves the obese. Animals are unhappy when they fail to obtain any pleasure they are seeking. These qualities have found their way into the human condition from the animal creation.
But the likeness of God is not revealed by a fighting spirit in the human race. The supreme nature is not characterized by the pleasure of procreation, or by cowardice, greed, or dislike of inferiority. These passions are very far from being marks of divinity.
So let me illustrate humanity’s dual nature by an analogy. A creative artist may mould two different faces on one sculptured head to arrest the spectator’s attention. Human nature is like that. It has a double likeness. In the drive of the passions it reproduces the signs of the animal creation, but in the soul it has the features of the divine beauty.
Gregory of Nyssa, The Creation of Man, 18 (PG44, 192)
~Thomas Spidlik, Drinking from the Hidden Fountain: A Patristic Breviary, Ancient Wisdom for Today’s World
