Does all of this have any sort of rational basis? He appointed his younger brother to the see by which he is now known, and rightly predicted that Gregory would confer more distinction on the obscure town of Nyssa than he would receive from it. Metaphysical Principles of Virtue I 22). The turning point in Gregory’s life came about 379, when both his brother Basil and his sister Macrina died. There are two further characteristics of the human nous according to Gregory. James Herbert Srawley [1868-1954], "St Gregory of Nyssa on the Sinlessness of Christ," Journal of Theological Studies 7 No 27 (April 1906): 434-441. Cambridge: Philadelphia Patristic Foundation, 1984. In fact, in his famous discussion of the postulate of immortality Kant argues that the process of moral perfection is limitless and that if “ought” implies “can” it must be possible for humans to engage in an unending pursuit of perfection (Critique of Practical Reason Dialectic IV; cf. This leads him to expand the nature-energies distinction into a general cosmological principle, to apply it particularly to human nature, which he conceives as having been created in God’s image, and to rear a theory of unending intellectual and moral perfectibility on the premise that the purpose of human life is literally to become like the infinite nature of God. . It doesn’t seem that the cosmological argument rules out either of these two possibilities. general audience august 29, 2007. Using the metaphor of a city in which family members come in by various gates but all meet somewhere inside, Gregory’s answer is that this can occur only if we presuppose a transcendent self to which all of one’s experiences are referred (Making of Man 10 [152 – 153]). The process of becoming ever closer to God does not cease at physical death (which is, after all, just one among many passing events punctuating human existence), but continues forever. Answer: Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335–c. The central feature of Gregory’s very sensitive analysis is the sequence of three theophanies that punctuate Moses’ life (Song of Songs XII [1025 – 1028]). This sort of problem prompted Arius to postulate that Christ was neither divine nor human, but something in between–a demigod, the oldest and most perfect created being, to be sure, but created nonetheless. He was a younger brother of Basil the Great and a good friend of Gregory Nazianzus. Yet the first is clearly more congenial to his distinctive nature-energies understanding of God than the second. He became Bishop of Nyssa and fought Arianism and was a prominent figure at the Council of Constantinople. Thus substance is a “something . However, Gregory makes it clear that this moderation is due only to the exigencies of life in the flesh. was to do in the West. As Gregory puts it, “Deity is in everything, penetrating it, embracing it, and seated in it” (Great Catechism 25 [65]). While their joint accomplishments in doctrinal definition were…. Once again, the similarity to Kant is striking. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. Basil, who became the powerful bishop of Caesarea, was the most politically skilled churchman of the group. To ourselves we owe the effort to overcome the deficiencies in our likeness to God; for we are unable to contemplate God directly, and morally our free will has been compromised by the passions (pathe). Together, the Cappadocians are credited with defining Christian orthodoxy in the Eastern Roman Empire, as Augustine (354—430 C.E.) At one time he portrays philosophy, like Moses’ stepmother, as barren (Life of Moses II 10 – 12 [329]), and, like the Egyptian whom Moses killed, as something to be striven against (Life of Moses 13 – 18 [329 – 332]). GREGORY OF NYSSA. The souls of other species are totally immanent in their bodies. Gregory of Nyssa was born in Caesarea, the capital of Cappadocia (central Turkey) in about 334, the younger brother of Basil the Great and of Macrina (19 July), and of several other distinguished persons. )—especially as “updated” and systematized by Plotinus (204 – 270 CE)–Aristotle (384 – 322 BCE), and the Stoics. Now Gregory lived at a crossroads in the theological understanding of this doctrine. MUNI bus lines 10, 19, 22 and 55 stop within one block. Of the same ilk is Gregory’s hermeneutical principle of distinguishing between the literal narrative (historia) of a Biblical passage and the spiritual contemplation (theoria) of it. And the differences between duties of right and of virtue are similar to the distinctions Gregory draws between moderation and infinite perfection and between the Old and the New Law. Gregory is thoroughly at home with the philosophers that were in vogue in his day: Plato (427—347 B.C.E. Gregory of Nyssa was born about 335 C.E. Gregory indeed addresses this problem and argues, strangely, that each particle of the body is stamped with one’s personal identity, and so it will be possible for the nous to eventually recognize and reassemble them all (Making of Man 26 – 27 [224 – 229], Soul and Resurrection [73 – 80]). . St. Gregory of Nyssa (c 335 – after 394) was a Christian bishop and saint. The final component of Gregory’s eschatology is his famous theory of perfection, which is derived from his conviction, which he inherits from Plato (Theaetetus 176b1 – 2) through Origen (First Principles III 6.1), that the purpose of human life is to achieve nothing less than likeness to God (homoiosis theoi). Gregory’s concept of God is born out of the Arian controversy. Diogenes Laertius, Lives VII 125); but the latter is entirely his own. But that doesn’t mean that striving to become like God is pointless; it only means that the process of perfection is unending (Against Eunomius I 15 [301], 22 [340], II [940 – 941], III 6.5 [707]; Great Catechism 21 [57 – 60]; Making of Man 21 [201 – 204]; Soul and Resurrection [96 – 97, 105]; On Perfection [285]). Basil of Caesarea and their friend St. Gregory of Nazianzus. Corrections? Moses, as Gregory interprets him, is one of those who crave ever more intimate communion with God. Donald L. Ross This critical edition of Gregory’s works is rapidly replacing the much older Migne edition. (Against Eunomius II [949]). these things be in you,” Gregory concludes, “God is indeed in you” (Beatitudes VI [1272]). Pope Benedict XVI offered his reflections on St. Gregory of Nyssa during his general audience on Aug. 29. Later, he recites with approval the common Christian interpretation of the Israelites’ spoiling of the Egyptians as a lesson to Christians on the importance of appropriating pagan wisdom in explaining Christian doctrine (Life of Moses II 115 [360]). So Basil in all probability became the teacher of his younger brother. For most of this period, the brunt of the battle for orthodoxy had been led by Basil; but when he died, and shortly thereafter Gregory’s beloved sister, Gregory felt that the responsibility for defending orthodoxy against the Arian heresy had fallen on his shoulders. That period was launched by the publication of his Against Eunomius, Gregory’s four-book refutation of that last phase of the Arian heresy. He became a great writer and defender of orthodoxy. Please consider adding 3% to offset PayPal's service fee. But we possess no knowledge of their substance . Initially we must pursue the Stoic ideal of apatheia (passionlessness; cf. Basil's training was an antidote to the lessons of the pagan schools, wherein, as we know from a letter of St. Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa spent some time, very probably in his early youth, for it is certain that while still a youth Gregory exercised the ecclesiastical office of rector. . The fact that a phenomenon seems to violate what we think we know of the laws of nature does not imply that it really does violate those laws. Gregory of Nyssa (4th century) and St. Maximus the Confessor (7th century), humans are truly free only when they are in communion with God. In this vein it is significant that, when discussing the spiritual senses, Gregory most often appeals, not to the “higher” senses of sight and hearing, but to the more intimate senses of smell, taste, and touch as metaphors by which to describe them (cf. In Gregory’s words, For although this last form of God’s presence amongst us is not the same as that former presence, still his existence amongst us equally both then and now is evidenced: now he rules in us in order to hold together that nature in being; then he was transfused in our nature, in order that our nature might by this transfusion of the divine become itself divine–being rescued from death and put beyond the reach of the tyranny of the Adversary. If this is all that Gregory means, his argument at best reduces to the cosmological, or “first cause,” argument that any chain of creating or sustaining causes requires a first member, which “everyone would call God,” as Thomas Aquinas puts it (Summa Theologiae I q. Our knowledge may simply be too limited. Gregory’s philosophy of history begins with the fall of Adam from perfection. It was followed by many more works, the most significant being On the Work of the Six Days, Gregory’s account of the creation of the world; On the Making of Man, his account of the creation of humankind; The Great Catechism, the most systematic statement of Gregory’s philosophy of history; On the Soul and the Resurrection, a dialogue with Macrina detailing Gregory’s eschatology; Biblical commentaries on the life of Moses, the inscriptions of the Psalms, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Songs, the Beatitudes, and the Lord’s Prayer; theological works on Trinitarian and Christological doctrine; and shorter ascetic and moral treatises. 394), or Gregory Nyssen as he is also known, was born in Neocaesarea, Pontus, now known as the Black Sea region of Turkey. Ring in the new year with a Britannica Membership, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Gregory-of-Nyssa, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Biography of Gregory of Nyssa, The Catholic Encyclopedia - Biography of Saint Gregory of Nyssa. A younger son of a distinguished family, Gregory was educated in his native province but was more deeply influenced by his philosophical training than by the other two Cappadocian Fathers of the Church, his brother St. In fact, so central is the nature-energies distinction to his conception of human personhood, that Gregory, again taking his inspiration from Philo (Creation of the World 46.134 – 46.135), uses it to explain the two accounts of the creation of human beings in Genesis 1 and 2 respectively. Given all that, and given Gregory’s relative absence from most standard treatments of Western thought, I think may be fair to say that Gregory of Nyssa is one of the most under-appreciated figures in Western intellectual history. Prior to the era of the ecumenical councils, the first of which was Nicaea, discussed above, the Trinity tended to be viewed as three stages in the outflow of God into the world, with the Father as its source and the Holy Spirit as its termination. Others, such as Gregory’s attacks on usury and on the postponement of baptism, deal with ethical problems of the church in his time. Because evil is a privation of the good and is therefore limited, Gregory believes that there is a limit to human degradation. Second, the nous is free. St. Gregory of Nyssa spent his life in Cappadocia, a region in central Asia Minor. Both slavery and poverty sully the dignity of human beings by degrading them to a station below the purple to which they were rightfully born; and although we may congratulate ourselves on having outlawed slavery, it is important to remember that for Gregory poverty is no different. The second theophany occurs atop Mount Sinai (Life of Moses II 117 – 201 [360 – 392]), and here we find not light but darkness. When reflecting on Gregory’s theory of knowledge as developed in The Life of Moses, one is struck by his commitment to rationalism–this despite his ambivalence on the value of pagan wisdom. Gregory of Nyssa was a Christian bishop and saint. Within this atemporal framework, the key “event” was the creation of the firmament on the second day (Work of the Six Days [80 – 85]), for it is the firmament that divides the intelligible world, created on the first day (Work of the Six Days [68 – 85]), from the sensible world, created on days three through six (Work of the Six Days [85 – 124])–again, broadly similar to Philo (Creation of the World 7.29 – 10.36, 44.129 – 44.130). For that there are laws of nature is nothing surprising: to have anything at all, from cosmos to quark, is to have order. Along with Basil and fellow-Cappadocian and friend Gregory of Nazianzus (c.… On Pilgrimages. As Gregory of Nyssa teaches, all that we give is in gratitude for God’s gifts to us. Thus, Gregory endorses Origen’s (First Principles I 6.3, II 10.4 – 10.8, III 6.5 – 6.6) much-maligned theories of remedial punishment and universal salvation (Great Catechism 8 [36 – 37], 26 [69], 35 [92]; Making of Man 21 – 22 [201 – 205]; Soul and Resurrection [97 – 105, 152, 157 – 160]). It is the second Person of the Trinity who is the most interesting because it provides Gregory with the conceptual apparatus to explain God’s operation in history, for the point at which the second Person enters the world becomes the point in time in which God is more intimately present to the world than before. Arianism was a Christological heresy, named for its founder Arius (c. 256 – 336), that held that Christ was neither divine nor human, but a sort of demigod. On reading his works, one cannot but be struck by the abundance of allusions to the Platonic dialogues. This intellectual dynamic is paralleled by a moral one, which will be sketched in what follows. In other words, for Gregory as for his intellectual ancestor Origen, everyone–even Satan himself (Great Catechism 26 [68 – 69])–will eventually be saved. Gregory of Nyssa St. Gregory of Nyssa (c. 330-c. 395) was a younger sibling in a family that gave the church many years of service and at least five saints. The created nature of Christ could be derived by an analysis of the very concept of God, Eunomius argued; for it is God’s essential nature to be unbegotten, whereas Christ is confessed to be “begotten of the Father.” If this sort of argument were allowed to stand, what was to become the orthodox faith–the faith enunciated at Nicaea in 325 CE that Christ was literally “of the same substance” with the Father–would be radically transformed. For the existence of the nous rests on a “design” argument analogous to the argument for the energies of God. His significance has long been recognized in the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Roman Catholic branches of Christianity. Nevertheless, if that were the whole story–if we were left with God’s utter incomprehensibility and nothing more–then Gregory’s theology would be a very much stunted exposition of Christianity. The answer lies in the Aristotelian distinction between the category of substance and the other categories–relation, quality, quantity, place, time, action, passion (Categories 1 – 9)–which Gregory designates with the Stoic term “qualities” (poiotetes). Gregory was primarily a scholar, whose chief contribution lay in his writings. But Gregory’s true position seems to lie between these two extremes: philosophy is useful if properly “circumcised,” that is, culled of any “foreskin” alien to the spirit of Christianity (Life of Moses II 39 – 40 [337]). . Taken together, Gregory of Nyssa’s XV Homilies In Canticum Canticorum are at the same time – as if in unison – a work of spiritual, exegetical, and theological doctrine. Against Eunomius II [941])–but nevertheless “what Moses yearned for is satisfied by the very things which leave his desire unsatisfied” (Life of Moses II 235 [404]). But Gregory moves beyond Aristotle’s psychological explanation. So the fact that we find order in nature that we don’t expect may simply be a function of the limitation of our knowledge rather than of the intervention of God in the world. GREGORY OF NYSSA (c. 330 – c. 394). . However, it is not all that difficult to abstract the general point from Gregory’s particular examples and to bring his argument up-to-date by replacing motion and rest, heaviness and lightness, and so forth with modern examples of phenomena that cannot be explained by any known law of physics (the “lumpiness” of the universe, for example). Gregory was a highly original thinker, drawing inspiration from the pagan Greek philosophical schools, as well as from the Jewish and Eastern Christian traditions, and formulating an original synthesis that was to influence later Byzantine, and possibly even modern European, thought. Gregory’s family is significant, for two of the most influential people on his thought are two of his elder siblings–his sister Macrina (c.327—379) and Basil (c.330—379), the oldest boy in the family. Earlier he had requested to know God’s name; now he asks to behold God’s glory. Callahan, J. F. “Greek Philosophy and the Cappadocian Cosmology.”, Heine, Ronald E. “Gregory of Nyssa’s Apology for Allegory.”, Keenan, Mary Emily. Thus the resurrection and deification of Christ’s human nature are the prototypes of those to follow. Now, I make bold to add a In Gregory’s account of creation, the nature-energies distinction, developed to counter Eunomius’ defense of the Arian heresy, becomes extended into a general cosmological principle. (Great Catechism 25 [65 – 68]). by Henry Wace and William C. Piercy, London: John Murray (1911) For God, being dependent on nothing, governs the universe through the free exercise of will; and the nous is created in God’s image (Making of Man 4 [136]). Only the human nous has a transcendent nature in addition to its energies. Energies, Gregory contends, are the “powers” and “movements” by which substances are “manifested”; the energy of each thing is its “distinguishing property” (idioma)–a technical Stoic term for a specific, as opposed to a generic, quality. So we directly experience the divine energies in the only thing in the universe that we can view from within–ourselves. Gregory never doubts that this matrix should be internally consistent; and he unselfconsciously employs the rule that of two claims that are mutually inconsistent, the more trumps the less edifying. His more intimate discourses on the Lord’s Prayer and the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3–12) combine ethical and devotional interests, as does his commentary on the Song of Solomon. Gregory’s position bears a curious resemblance to that of John Locke; for according to Locke we know only the nominal essences of things, not their real essences. The former idea, the unity of the virtues, Gregory derives, once again, from the Stoics (cf. They have only energies, in other words. The account unfolds via an allegorical reflection on the first chapter of Genesis, and closely follows the much earlier work of Philo of Alexandria. 2 a. In themselves, qualities are ideas in the mind of God. All services live-streamed on Facebook Because God is an infinite being, the desire to know God is an infinite process; but in Gregory’s eyes this really makes it much more satisfying than some static Beatific Vision. If so, he certainly did an excellent job, for in this case the pupil went on to outshine the teacher. However, as a highly original and sophisticated thinker, Gregory is difficult to classify, and many aspects of his theology are contentious among both conservative Orthodox theologians and Western academic scholarship. St Gregory of Nyssa Resources Online and in Print. 34 [85]). In an early work Gregory argues strenuously against astral determinism (On Fate [145 – 173]). All we really know of substances are their attributes, which constitute their nominal essences (Essay II xxxi 6 – 10, III iii 15 – 19). But they can also be projected out from God; and when that happens, they become visible. In his more mature reflections, Gregory derives the freedom of the nous from the freedom of God. Before entering the monastery of his brother, Basil the Great, Gregory was a rhetorician. Duties of virtue, on the other hand, tend to deal with the will and, as “thou shalts,” can never be completely fulfilled. The traditional view of Gregory is that he was an orthodox Trinitarian theologian, who was influenced by the neoplatonism of Plotinus and believed in universal salvation following Origen. As Gregory puts it in a colorful metaphor, the process of purgation is like drawing a rope encrusted with dried mud through a small aperture: it’s hard on the rope, but it does come out clean on the other side (Soul and Resurrection [100]). Resisting the invitation of his brother, Basil the Great, to join his monastic community at Annesis, Gregory married and became a teacher of rhetoric. For Gregory what is central is God's infinitely transcendant Being, which by virtue of its metaphysical infinity is entirely incomprehensible in every way to the human mind. Gregory’s ethical thought explores the implications of the theme of the “dignity of royalty” of the human person, which, as has been seen, derives from the idea that humans, and humans alone, were created in the image of God. The parallels between the divine and the human extend all the way down to the evidential basis for the existence of the human nous. . God is incomprehensible; thus, it is presumptuous in the extreme to suppose that God can be defined by a set of human concepts. merely applied Christian names to Plato’s doctrine and called it Christian theology” (The Platonism of Gregory of Nyssa: 62). In the Resurrection, Christ “knitted together [the soul and body of humankind] . Given his apophatic approach to theology (described above), Gregory suggests that the religious life must eventually transcend intellectual knowing and ground itself faithful praxis. His significance has long been recognized in the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Eastern Catholic and Roman Catholic branches of Christianity. To do this, Gregory recognizes, one must resort to philosophy as a source of conceptual tools. Gregory stands at a crossroads in the theological development of the Christian East: he sums up many of the ideas of his great predecessors, such as the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria (c.20 B.C.E.—c.54 C.E.) And just as Gregory bases his indirect argument for the existence of God’s energies on the unexpected order of natural phenomena, so here he argues that because the components of a living body are observed to behave in a manner “contrary to [their] nature”–air being harnessed to produce sound, water impelled to move upward, and so forth–we may infer the existence of a nous imposing its will upon recalcitrant matter through its energies (Soul and Resurrection [33 – 40]). For when you take from a body its color, its shape, its hardness, its weight, its quantity, its position, its forces active or passive, its relation to other objects, what remains that can still be called a body, we can neither see of ourselves nor are taught by Scripture. Now there are several things to notice about this argument. we know not what” (Essay II xxiii 3). But the deepest thinker of the three was Gregory of Nyssa. Thus we encounter them in the experience of virtues such as purity, passionlessness, sanctity, and simplicity in our own moral character: “if . 2 Pages. What is also of great historical interest is Gregory’s pivotal role in the development of Western consciousness. Groundwork II – III); and that similarity will only become more obvious when the ways in which Gregory applies these ideas are explored within the context of his philosophy of history. Second, it was shown above that Gregory uses the concept of God’s energeiai to explain how the “pure in heart” can “see God.” Once again, one cannot “see God” in God’s operations, except in a metaphorical sense; but one can literally “see God” with the spiritual sense of sight (on the spiritual senses, see below) if God is, as Gregory claims, actually “present within oneself” (Beatitudes VI [1269]). Pope Benedict XVI. “Cappadocian Thought as a Coherent System.”, Stramara, Daniel F. “Gregory of Nyssa: An Ardent Abolitionist?”. Such an argument, however, is not very convincing. 8:22-31) of God, incarnated as Jesus Christ; and a Holy Spirit, who is sent into the world by the Father. In noting this, Gregory is relying on an argument that had been around since the early Stoics–the argument from design (cf. Thus, for example, whereas the Old Law prohibited murder, the New Law forbids even anger; and whereas the Old Law prohibited adultery, the New Law forbids even lust. But God’s existence is derived from our knowledge of God’s energies, and those energies are in turn known both indirectly and directly. Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. Gregory of Nyssa is revealed by Balthasar as both an outstanding theologian and philosopher, who applies Greek metaphysical ideas of Being and Infinity to the God of Christian belief. Recasts this problem in theological terms: how could God ever have a of! Known and appreciated in the mind of God explained by the Father ed. 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