Today, the Church remembers and gives thanks for one of the greatest Christian thinkers, teachers, and saints: Gregory of Nyssa.
Ora pro nobis.
Gregory of Nyssa (c. A.D. 335 – 395), was bishop of Nyssa from 372 to 376 and again from 378 until his death. Gregory, his elder brother, Basil of Caesarea, and their friend Gregory of Nazianzus, are collectively known as the Cappadocian Fathers.
Gregory lacked the administrative ability of his brother Basil or the contemporary influence of Gregory of Nazianzus, but he was an erudite theologian who made significant contributions to the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity and the Nicene Creed.
Gregory’s parents had suffered persecution for their faith: he writes that they “had their goods confiscated for confessing Christ.” Gregory’s maternal grandmother, Macrina the Elder is also revered as a saint and his maternal grandfather was a martyr as Gregory put it “killed by Imperial wrath” under the persecution of the Roman Emperor Maximinus II.
Gregory’s temperament is said to have been quiet and meek, in contrast to his brother Basil, who was known to be much more outspoken.
Gregory was first educated at home, by his mother Emmelia and sister Macrina. Little is known of what further education he received. It seems likely that he continued his studies in Caesarea, where he read classical literature, philosophy and perhaps medicine. Gregory himself claimed that his only teachers were Basil, “Paul, John and the rest of the Apostles and prophets.”
Gregory was a highly original and sophisticated thinker, and his writings are often difficult to classify. This is often due to the lack of systematic structure and the presence of terminological inconsistencies in Gregory’s work.
Gregory, following Basil, defined the Trinity as “one essence in three persons”, the formula adopted by the Council of Constantinople in 381. Like the other Cappadocian Fathers, he was a “homoousian”, a believer in the essential oneness of God, three in person but one in being. According to Gregory, the differences between the three persons of the Trinity reside in their relationships with each other, and the triune nature of God is revealed through divine action (despite the unity of God in His action).
Gregory was one of the first theologians to argue that God is infinite. His main argument for the infinity of God is that God’s goodness is an essential characteristic of God, and that being limitless it follows that God is also limitless. An important consequence of Gregory’s belief in the infinity of God is his belief that God, as limitless, is essentially incomprehensible to the limited minds of created beings, in contrast to some of his contemporaries, and of many preachers today. In his ‘Life of Moses’, Gregory writes: “…every concept that comes from some comprehensible image, by an approximate understanding and by guessing at the Divine nature, constitutes a idol of God and does not proclaim God.”
Gregory’s theology was thus apophatic: that is, he proposed that God should be defined in terms of what we know He is not rather than what we might speculate Him to be. Accordingly, he taught that due to God’s infinitude, a created being can never reach an absolute understanding of God, and thus for man in both life and the afterlife there is a constant progression towards the unreachable knowledge of God, as the individual continually transcends all which has been reached before. In the ‘Life of Moses’, Gregory speaks of three stages of this spiritual growth: initial darkness of ignorance, then spiritual illumination, and finally a darkness of the mind in mystic contemplation of the God who cannot be comprehended.
Gregory seems to have believed so deeply in the love of God that ultimately nothing and no one in creation could fail to accept God’s love, and so believed that humankind will be collectively returned to sinlessness, while still paradoxically maintaining the orthodox belief in the necessary sacrament of Baptism for salvation, and that human free will, even in the full presence of God, could still choose to remain separated from God.
Gregory’s beliefs about human nature were founded on the essential distinction between the created and uncreated. Man is a material creation, and thus limited, but created with limitless capacity in that his immortal soul has an indefinite capacity to grow closer to God through the imitation of Christ. Gregory also held such a high view of humankind the he strongly believed that the soul is created simultaneous to the creation of the body at conception, and that unborn children were thus full and true persons made in the image of God. This also informed his teachings about the inherent evil of slavery.
To Gregory, the human being is exceptional, being created in the image of God. Humanity is theomorphic both in having self-awareness and free will, the latter which gives each individual existential power, because to Gregory, in disregarding God one negates one’s own existence. In his ‘Song of Songs’, Gregory metaphorically describes human lives as paintings created by apprentices to a master: the apprentices (the human wills) imitate their master’s work (the life of Christ) with beautiful colors (virtues), and thus man strives to be a reflection of Christ.
Gregory was one of the first Christian voices to say that slavery as an institution was inherently evil and sinful. He believed that slavery, as did abortion, violated mankind’s inherent worth, and the nature of humanity to be free; a departure from classical, and Judeo-Christian precedent which he rooted in Genesis, arguing that man was given mastery of animals but not of humans. His was the first and only sustained critique of the institution of slavery and infanticide made in the ancient world.
Anthony Meredith writes of Gregory’s mystical and apophatic writings in his book Gregory of Nyssa (The Early Church Fathers) (1999):
“Gregory has often been credited with the discovery of mystical theology, or rather with the perception that darkness is an appropriate symbol under which God can be discussed. There is much truth in this….Gregory seems to have been the first Christian writer to have made this important point…”
J. Kameron Carter writes about Gregory’s stance on slavery, in the book Race a Theological Account (2008):
“What interests me is the defining features of Gregory’s vision of the just society: his unequivocal stance against ‘the peculiar institution of slavery’ and his call for the manumission of all slaves. I am interested in reading Gregory as a fourth century abolitionist intellectual….His outlook surpassed not only St. Paul’s more moderate (but to be fair to Paul, in his moment, revolutionary) stance on the subject but also those of all ancient intellectuals — Pagan, Jewish and Christian – from Aristotle to Cicero and from Augustine in the Christian West to his contemporary, the golden mouthed preacher himself, John Crysotom in the East. Indeed, the world would have to wait another fifteen centuries — until the nineteenth century, late into the modern abolitionist movement — before such an unequivocal stance against slavery would appear again.”
Blessed Gregory, we remain still so mired in sin that there are more humans being held in slavery, or murdered as infants, today than at any time in recorded history. There are so many who believe that they know with certainty the mind of God that they invoke the Holy One to do terrible acts of violence, or lead them away from the true Faith and lead many astray.
That we, made in the image of God, called to pursue the imitation of Christ and work for the freedom, life, and salvation of all peoples, might return in all humility to the mystical/interior meditation upon the absolute love of God… ora pro nobis.
Amen.
Almighty God, you have revealed to your Church your eternal Being of glorious majesty and perfect love as one God in Trinity of Persons: Give us grace that, like your bishop Gregory of Nyssa, we may continue steadfast in the confession of this faith, and constant in our worship of you, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; for you live and reign for ever and ever.
Amen.
#Saints #Jesus #UnbornLivesMatter #AbortionIsMurder #slaveryisevil #Godlovesyou
