Three States after Death according to Gregory of Nyssa Marta PRZYSZYCHOWSKA, Warsaw, Poland* ABSTRACT The eschatology of Gregory of Nyssa is almost automatically associated with apoka- tastasis. But there is another very interesting aspect of his teaching about man’s fate after death. He distinguishes three possible states after death: ‘The first state applies to the meritorious and just, the second one to those who merited neither praise nor punish- ment, the third one to those, who are being punished for their misdeeds’. In my article, I am trying to answer the question whether those states are temporary or eternal. According to the common opinion apokatastasis understood as the salvation of all human beings 1 is Gregory of Nyssa’s sole idea as regards life after death. Nothing more erroneous. Gregory recognized three states after death. He admitted that straightforwardly in his writing On those who delay baptism: I think that generally without additional divisions men will experience a triple fate. The first state concerns praiseworthy and just people, the second one those who deserve neither praise nor punishment, and the third one those who are punished for their misdeeds. 2 The most important question we should try to answer is whether those states are eternal or temporary. * The author acknowledges financial support from the National Science Centre, Poland, grant number 2013/11/B/HS1/04140. 1 The most influential studies of such a current are books by Morwenna Ludlow, Universal Salvation. Eschatology in the Thought of Gregory of Nyssa and Karl Rahner (Oxford, 2000) and Ilaria Ramelli, The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis (Leiden and Boston, 2013). I conceive Gregory’s apokatastasis differently: as restoration of human nature understood as an indivisible monad to the original state. Individual human beings can exclude themselves from the nature due to their sins. As far as I know the first who suggested that way of interpreting Gregory’s concept of apokatastasis was Jean Daniélou himself. He thought that Gregory focused on the salvation of the entire humanity understood as one reality, one being, and left the problem of individual salvation in the shade, see ‘L’apocatastase chez saint Grégoire de Nysse’, Recherches de Science Religieuse 30 (1940), 328-47, 345. I do not agree with his second statement: Gregory speaks a lot about individual fate after death and this is a subject of my present article. Actually, Giulio Maspero has presented a similar approach to mine in his book Trinity and Man. Gregory of Nyssa’s ‘Ad Ablabium’, Supple- ments to Vigiliae Christianae 86 (Leiden and Boston, 2007). 2 Adversus eos qui baptismum differunt, GNO X/2 367.7-13. Studia Patristica XCV, 377-388. © Peeters Publishers, 2017.