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Gregory of Nyssa GREGORY OF NYSSA Gregory of Nyssa presents new translations of key selections of Gregory’s writings, with an informative introduction and extensive notes and commentary to illuminate Gregory’s writings and to illustrate how educated Christians tried to recommend and explore their faith in the face of a paganism that was still alive. Anthony Meredith presents a diverse range of Gregory’s writings— his contribution to the debates of the period about the nature of God in argument with a form of extreme Arianism, his discussion of the nature and work of the Holy Ghost, against the so-called ‘Spirit fighters’, his defence of the humanity of Christ against those who denied it, notably Apolinarius, and his preoccupations with philosophical questions, above all the nature of fate. Gregory of Nyssa provides a concise and accessible introduction to the thought of this early church father. Anthony Meredith S.J. is Lecturer in Early Christian Doctrine at Heythrop College, University of London and is a curate at Farm Street Church in the West End of London. He is the author of The Cappadocians (1995). THE EARLY CHURCH FATHERS Edited by Carol Harrison University of Durham The Greek and Latin fathers of the Church are central to the creation of Christian doctrine, yet often unapproachable because of the sheer volume of their writings and the relative paucity of accessible translations. This series makes available translations of key selected texts by the major fathers to all students of the early church. Already published: MAXIMUS THE CONFESSOR Andrew Louth IRENAEUS OF LYONS Robert M.Grant AMBROSE Boniface Ramsey O.P. ORIGEN Joseph W.Trigg GREGORY OF NYSSA Anthony Meredith S.J. London and New York First published 1999 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003. Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 © 1999 Anthony Meredith S.J. The right of Anthony Meredith to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book has been requested ISBN 0-203-00653-4 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-21922-8 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-11839-5 (hbk) ISBN 0-415-11840-9 (pbk) TO MY SISTER CONTENTS List of abbreviations ix 1 INTRODUCTION 1 Landscape 1 Background 1 6 Background 2 11 The System of Gregory 15 The Spiritual Teaching of Gregory, between Circularity and Freedom 20 2 DOCTRINAL ISSUES 27 1 Against Eunomius 1.156–182 27 2 Against the Macedonians, On the Holy Spirit 19–26 35 3 The Apolinarian Controversy: Against Apolin(n)arius 16–22 46 3 GREGORY AND PHILOSOPHY 59 1 Contra Fatum 59 2 Oratio Catechetica 19–24 73 4 GREGORY AND SPIRITUALITY 87 1 Against Eunomius 2.84–96 87 2 Homily 6: On the Beatitudes 91 3 On the Life of Moses 99 5 EPILOGUE 129 On Taking Leave of Gregory of Nyssa 129 The Originality of Gregory in Comparison with Origen and Augustine 136 Later influence of Gregory of Nyssa 138 vii CONTENTS Notes 140 Bibliography 162 Index 165 viii ABBREVIATIONS CWS Classics of Western Spirituality ET English Translation GNO Werner Jaeger, Gregorii Nysseni Opera JTS Journal of Theological Studies PG J.-P. Migne, Migne’s Patrologia Graeca PGL Patristic Greek Lexicon (edited by G.W.H.Lampe, Oxford, 1961) PL J.-P.Migne (ed), Patrologia Latina SC Sources Chrétiennes SP Studia Patristica TRE Theologische Realenzyklopädie ix 1 INTRODUCTION LANDSCAPE Gregory of Nyssa was born in about 335 AD in the Roman province of Cappadocia, a somewhat barren region to the north east of modern Turkey. It had been annexed by the emperor Tiberius (14–37 AD) in AD 17 on the deposition of the last native king, Archelaus, in that year. Initially governed by a prefect, like Judaea in the time of Christ, it rose in status in AD 72 and enjoyed the advantages of being a consular province, and so it remained until its division by the emperor Valens in 371/2—an event fraught with considerable consequences both for Gregory himself and for his friend and namesake, Gregory of Nazianzus. As to Cappadocia’s religious history prior to the advent of the Christian gospel, we are remarkably ill-informed. A reference in Gregory of Nazianzus’ oration 18:5 on the death of his father rather suggests that there existed in Cappadocia a sect named Hypsistarians, to which his father belonged1. It appears to derive from the appellation of God as Highest and may well represent an attempt to offer an understanding of God which would please Jews and Pagans alike— a sort of fashionable syncretism which could be applied to Adonai and Zeus indifferently. If this is the case, it suggests that there existed forces in Cappadocia, well before the arrival of Christianity, which favoured a generous attitude to the surrounding culture. The Cappadocians mentioned in the second chapter of Acts were the first Christians there, and we must assume from the opening verse of 1 Peter that the faith continued there perhaps a hundred years later. Further, in his Ecclesiastical History 6.11, Eusebius mentions a certain Alexander who previously had been bishop in the 1 INTRODUCTION land of the Cappadocians and subsequently became bishop of Jerusalem, in which place he ordained Origen. Clearly there was some form of organized Church in Cappadocia well before the middle of the third century, before the arrival from Caesarea sometime in the 250s of the ‘Apostle of Cappadocia’, Gregory the Wonderworker. Even the graphic and laudatory account of his pioneering exploits left to us by Gregory of Nyssa,2 should not be allowed to obscure the importance of the conversion of Cappadocia prior to the arrival of Gregory Thaumaturgos. Even so, what he actually discovered when he arrived in Cappadocia is hard for us at this distance of time to reconstruct, above all because of the paucity of our evidence. Yet Gregory Thaumaturgos is interesting and important for two reasons: (1) He brought with him the teachings and theology of his master, Origen, who died not long after 254 in the aftermath of the Decian persecution (250–251). Origen’s influence, everywhere present in the writings of Gregory of Nyssa, is doubtless due in no small measure to Gregory Thaumaturgos;3 (2) Gregory (the Wonderworker) was responsible for the conversion to the faith of Macrina the Elder, the paternal grandmother of Gregory of Nyssa. In the course of his letters, Basil often refers with great respect to this same Macrina the Elder.4 Gregory of Nyssa himself came from a large family5 of ten children, five boys and five girls. Of his five sisters we know the name of only one for certain, Macrina the Younger. (The Theosebeia, mentioned by Gregory of Nazianzus in his Letter 197.6 as being a was in all probability Gregory of Nyssa’s wife, not his sister.) Her influence upon her brother was considerable. He wrote her Life and used her deathbed as the setting for his dialogue On the Soul and Resurrection, his own version of Plato’s Phaedo. Socrates becomes Macrina, talking to her brother about the nature of the soul and of its destiny after death, and about the relationship between the Platonic belief in the natural immateriality of the soul with the Christian belief in the resurrection of the body. We know the names of all but one of the boys of the family— Basil, Peter (later bishop of Sebaste in Armenia), Naucratias (killed by a boar), Gregory himself and the missing fifth brother. The family was distinguished and propertied, Christian and cultivated.6 Basil certainly enjoyed the benefit of an extensive university education under the most celebrated ‘rhetors’ or professional teachers of the day—Libanius, in Constantinople7 and Himerius at Athens, where he spent the years from 351–356 in the company of his soul friend, Gregory of Nazianzus. 2 INTRODUCTION On the face of it Gregory’s own education was far less cosmopolitan. Apparently he attended none of the great universities of the day, and was entirely dependent upon Basil for his cultural and philosophical training. In a letter to the sophist, Libanius (number 13), Gregory mentions Basil as the pupil of Libanius and as his own ‘father and master’. This being the case it must be admitted that Basil did a very competent job in training his younger brother. Gregory may have lacked some of his great brother’s flair as a leader, and his political sense in the difficult years prior to the second ecumenical council of Constantinople, but he is no way inferior to him either in his use of sophisticated language or in his powers of speculative thought and spiritual insight. What is surprising is the fact that, although he lacked the training and expertise of Basil, he moved so much more sympathetically in the thought world of his day. On several occasions in his treatises Basil expresses his unease with the pointlessness of much contemporary education—an attitude we never find in his younger brother, except when he wishes to attribute heretical opinions to the influence of Aristotle.8 We must assume not only that he had a subtler mind, but that he had at his disposal sources of information, in the shape of a library, which enabled him to supplement his own less elaborate education, although any attempt to reconstruct its possible contents is doomed to failure from lack of evidence.
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