April 4. Book II par. 1-10

[Ruth]

(I've taken the liberty to start this topic, I hope that is according to the schedule)

In p.3: We are in some manner our own parents, giving birth to ourselves by our own free choice in accordance with whatever we wish to be, whether male or female, moulding ourselves to the teaching of virtue or vice.

I like the first part of that sentence. I think it is true that we need to become our own parents, and make the right choices. In the rest of the sentence he make 'male' an allegory for virtue and 'female' for vice. I know that it is done more often to make allegorical explanations for male/female, and that this doesn't have anything to do with men/women, because in this allegorical sense we all have both parts. However I still think that it can't be right to let 'female' point to vice. I do not think that is in line with scripture at all.

[Kerstin]

I'm not sure what he is referring to here either. I found it rather bizarre. I wonder if there is some influence of stoicism or gnosticism here.

[Rex]

I think Gregory's use of allegory here is relatively consistent with his general approach: assess the "roles" within a given situation and assign to them spiritual meanings based on this context. Here at the beginning we have a tyrant who commands female babies live and male babies die; thus Gregory sees the female babies as an allegory for the lower disposition of the soul and male babies for the higher. The birth of the male foretells the overthrow of the tyrant, that is, the birth of a virtuous disposition threatens the reign of sin in the heart. Virtue, born of free will, is saved from the waves of the passions by education or spiritual preparation (the ark).

[Nemo]

I see here Origen’s influence on Gregory on the relation between free choice of will and being. Origen goes further and posits that the diversity of living species is the result of free will. (He anticipated Darwin’s Origin Of Species.)

Regarding the male/female relation in the allegory, I note that the tyrant is male and represents the rule of lower desires and passions. So the story doesn’t support a simple allegorical divide between the two genders.

The tyrant allows the female babies to live, perhaps because they represent the objects of desires and passions. In other words, they might be accomplices to vice, but not necessarily vice in and of themselves.