Two Simultaneous Operations in the Creation of Man.
Gregory distinguishes two simultaneous operations in the
creation of man. It has been written that "God created man." Gregory explains:
"The indefinite character of this term indicates that it refers to all mankind.
At this point God's creature was not given the name Adam, which he received only
later. On the contrary, the name given to the newly created man refers not to
one man alone, but to the whole race." The whole of humanity was encompassed by
the foresight and power of God from the very beginning. At creation God
established the ultimate goal for each human being because He had complete
foreknowledge about His creatures. The Biblical expression does not mean that
only a single man was created as the sole representative of mankind or that each
individual human came into being at once. Human nature in all its completeness
was created in a single instant, in the same way that the whole world was
created at once.
The first man was not created as a single, isolated individual,
but as the source and first representative of the human race. At his creation
the Divine will encompassed all future men who are consubstantial with each
other and established for each of them a common foundation and a common end or
goal, τελος. Gregory also considers that at
creation God decreed a finite number of individual men and that therefore human
history will come to an end. God “in His foreknowledge made time
commensurate with the human race so that the appearance of a definite number of
souls will correspond to the continuation of time. The flowing motion of time
will cease when the human race stops growing."
At creation God gave a single command but the creature which
originated "at the first ordering" has a double significance. "By virtue of
Divine foresight God encompassed all human nature in a single body," Gregory
writes. He emphasizes that the image of god was given not only to Adam, the
first man, but that "this image is endowed equally to the whole race." "The
whole of mankind is named in this one man because for the power of God there is
no past or future. God's activity comprehends both the present and what will
follow it. Therefore all men, from the first man to the last, are a single image
of the One Who truly is."
Every man contains the complete measure of human nature and
therefore "Adam, the first man, also had everything which each of his
descendants has," at least "as far as concerns his essential nature." The
essence of man is identical in all men but their distinguishing properties are
different and Gregory never implies that they are all contained in the first
man. On the contrary, he emphasizes that descendants "pre-exist in their
forebears by virtue of the common essence of humanity, which is never created
anew and which is not divided according to the number of individuals who share
in it." This essence exists neither before nor outside of its individual
hypostases.
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