{"id":4695,"date":"2010-07-31T21:02:36","date_gmt":"2010-07-31T20:02:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/?p=4695"},"modified":"2010-07-31T21:02:36","modified_gmt":"2010-07-31T20:02:36","slug":"gregory-of-nyssa-fails-to-adapt-to-then-contemporary-attitudes-on-slavery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/2010\/07\/31\/gregory-of-nyssa-fails-to-adapt-to-then-contemporary-attitudes-on-slavery\/","title":{"rendered":"Gregory of Nyssa fails to adapt to then contemporary attitudes on slavery"},"content":{"rendered":"

Look at who is linking to you, and you can find some interesting things!\u00a0 One was this post<\/a>, and of course I shall have to read this blog some more!<\/p>\n

Another\u00a0of these is an extract from Gregory of Nyssa’s Homilies on Ecclesiastes here<\/a>\u00a0(over-paragraphing by me).\u00a0 This is from Homily 4, on Ecclesiastes 2:7.<\/p>\n

‘I got me slave-girls and slaves.’ For what price, tell me? What did you find in existence worth as much as this human nature? What price did you put on rationality? How many obols did you reckon the equivalent of the likeness of God? How many staters did you get for selling that being shaped by God?<\/p>\n

God said, Let us make man in our own image and likeness. If he is in the likeness of God, and rules the whole earth, and has been granted authority over everything on earth from God, who is his buyer, tell me? Who is his seller?<\/p>\n

To God alone belongs this power; or, rather, not even to God himself. For his gracious gifts, it says, are irrevocable. God would not therefore reduce the human race to slavery, since he himself, when we had been enslaved to sin, spontaneously recalled us to freedom.<\/p>\n

But if God does not enslave what is free, who is he that sets his own power above God’s?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This from St. Gregory of Nyssa, Homilies on Ecclesiastes<\/em>; Hall and Moriarty, trs., de Gruyter (New York, 1993) p. 74.<\/p>\n

It is a pity that only the page reference to the translation is quoted, not the text reference with homily, chapter, etc.\u00a0 But it is in fact I find from Homily 4, in the Greek p.335,4 – 338,22.[ref]As given in the Hall translation pp.73-4.\u00a0 The edition translated is In Ecclesiasten homiliae. Edidit Paulus Alexander in Gregorii Nysseni opera. Auxilio aliorum virorum doctorum edenda curavit Wernerus Jaeger<\/em>. Volumen V (Leiden 1986), pp. 195-442.[\/ref]<\/p>\n

What a world away this is, from the attitudes expressed in Martial, a man whose idea of a pleasant afternoon is to\u00a0summon one of his slaves, and\u00a0the girl-slave that the lad loves,\u00a0and rape both of them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Look at who is linking to you, and you can find some interesting things!\u00a0 One was this post, and of course I shall have to read this blog some more! Another\u00a0of these is an extract from Gregory of Nyssa’s Homilies on Ecclesiastes here\u00a0(over-paragraphing by me).\u00a0 This is from Homily 4, on Ecclesiastes 2:7. ‘I got […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[170,798,1287,1544],"class_list":["post-4695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ancient-world","tag-ancient-world","tag-gregory-of-nyssa","tag-patristics","tag-slavery"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4695"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4695\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}