Gregory Of Nyssa On The Human Image Of God 1st St Gregory Of Nyssa by St. Gregory Of Nyssa, John Behr (editor) 9780192843975, 0192843974 instant download after payment.

‘Every logos’—word, argument, treatise—‘is like a living being, with a body of its
own’, so that each member is ‘composed in fitting relation to each other and to the
whole’ (Phaedr. 264c2–5). These words of Plato are certainly true of the treatise
presented here, On the Human Image of God by Gregory of Nyssa (otherwise
known as On the Making of Man). It is one of the most remarkable treatises from
the golden era of Patristic literature, presenting a sophisticated analysis of the
human being that draws upon both Scripture and the prior Christian tradition,
above all Origen, and also the tradition of philosophical and medical reflection
going back to Anaxagoras, and above all Plato’s Timaeus. Although attention is
rarely given to the treatise as a whole, it is, like its subject, a skilfully composed and
arranged complex work, with its own economy, that is, the working together of the
different parts of the text (paralleling, I argue, those of Timaeus’ speech); an
economy, moreover, which reflects, and so contributes to, the economy of God
that is the growth of human being, in the workshop of nature, towards the final
realization of God’s project from the beginning, that of making the human being,
individually and collectively, in his image and likeness.