Q & R: Was this original to you?
Here’s the Q:
I thought of “The Story We Find Ourselves in” when I read this from Gregory of Nyssa Reminded me strongly of your description of Resurrected body as composite of every moment of the human’s life, all remembered by God into existence . Did his work inspire yours, or were they just similar thoughts ?
Gregory wrote:“But still the question remains: Is the state which we are to expect to be like the present state of the body? Because if so, then, as I was saying, men had better avoid hoping for any Resurrection at all. For if our bodies are to be restored to life again in the same sort of condition as they are in when they cease to breathe, then all that man can look forward to in the Resurrection is an unending calamity….”
“If, then, a particular man is not the same even as he was yesterday, but is made different by this transmutation, when so be that the Resurrection shall restore our body to life again, that single man will become a crowd of human beings, so that with his rising again there will be found the babe, the child, the boy, the youth, the man, the father, the old man, and all the intermediate persons that he once was.”
Here’s the R: I hadn’t heard of anyone talking about this … but it’s pretty encouraging to find that one has stumbled on one’s own (so to speak) into an insight articulated by a great theologian centuries ago. Thanks for sharing this!