And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength: this is the first commandment.
All Commentaries on Mark 12:30 Go To Mark 12
Gregory of Nyssa
AD 394
Human life consists in a threefold unity. We are taught similarly by the apostle in what he says to the Ephesians, praying for them that the complete grace of their “body and soul and spirit” may be preserved at the coming of the Lord. We use the word “body,” for the nutritive part, the word for the vital, “soul,” and the word “spirit” for the intellective dimension. In just this way the Lord instructs the writer of the Gospel that he should set before every commandment that love to God which is exercised with all the heart and soul and mind. This single phrase embraces the human whole: the corporeal heart, the mind as the higher intellectual and mental nature, and the soul as their mediator.
