Gregory of Nyssa made important contributions to both theological thought and the understanding of the spiritual life. He was especially significant in adapting the thought of Origen to fourth century orthodoxy. The early treatise on the inscriptions of the Psalms shows the early stages of the development of Gregory's thought. This book presents the first translation of the treatise in a modern language. The annotations show Gregory's indebtedness to the thought of classical antiquity as well as (...) to the Bible. The Introduction sets forth the structure of Gregory's treatise, and places it in the context of earlier Christian commentaries on the Psalms. It shows how his hermeneutical approach was influenced by both Iamblichus the Neo-Platonist and Origen. Finally, Dr Heine compares Gregory's understanding of the stages of the spiritual life in the treatise with that in his later and more widely known writings on the life of Moses and the Song of Songs. (shrink)
This is a general account of the Cappadocian Christian Father Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335 - c. 395 CE) as a philosopher. The article is divided into a discussion of his life and his views on God, the world, humanity, history, knowledge, and virtue. A common thread, which would later be systematized in the Palamite essence-energies distinction, is traced in all these topics. Of particular interest to philosophers are comparisons with John Locke and Immanuel Kant.
Andrew Radde‐Gallwitz probes Gregory of Nyssa on divine simplicity, a topic that Radde‐Gallwitz treated earlier in a book‐length monograph and takes further here in response to critics. As he notes, the Cappadocians and their opponents shared belief in divine simplicity. But for Gregory, simplicity functions as part of affirming the co‐equal divinity of the Father and Son, against his opponents. Radde‐Gallwitz lists six negative claims that Gregory’s understanding of divine simplicity supports: (1) God is immaterial; (2) (...) God is without parts; (3) God does not possess any perfection “by acquisition”; (4) God does not possess any perfection “by participation”; (5) in God, there is no mixture or conflux of qualities, especially opposite qualities; (6) in God, there are no degrees of more or less. Yet with regard to positive statements about God’s perfections—for example the relation of God’s goodness to God’s wisdom—things are more difficult, as Radde‐Gallwitz shows. Interpreters of Gregory have differed sharply on this issue, in part because Gregory does not make his position crystal clear. Radde‐Gallwitz himself earlier held that Gregory considers God to have real but non‐definitive perfections distinct from the divine essence. Indebted to Richard Cross, however, Radde‐Gallwitz here adjusts his view, distinguishing more firmly between the divine essence itself and our limited concepts. He draws upon the Platonic distinction between natural and conventional naming, which differ in their accounts of what makes words meaningful. Arguing that Gregory is a “naturalist,” he reads Gregory’s texts on divine simplicity in this light. (shrink)
Resumen El presente artículo pretende poner de relieve a partir de la obra In Canticum canticorum de Gregorio de Nisa, el recorrido que el autor realiza en torno al tema de la visión mística. De esta manera se podrá analizar algunos conceptos que lo comprenden: luz y su antítesis noche; así como también detenerse en la formulación de los términos ojos-visión; lo cual nos remitirá a la pregunta, ¿qué es lo que se ve? y/o ¿quiénes contemplan a Dios como El (...) es? De este modo, la contemplación en la obra del Niseno obtendrá alcances significativos desde una lectura antropológica cristiana.This paper intends to highlight, from Gregory of Nyssa’s In Canticum canticorum, the author’s journey around the issue of mystic vision. In this way, some of his concepts can be analyzed: light and its antithesis night, along with making a stop in the formulation of the terms eyes-vision, which will lead us to the question, what is that which is seen? and/or, who contemplates God as He is? So, contemplation in the work of the Nicene will have meaningful approaches from a Christian anthropological reading. (shrink)
Resumen El presente artículo pretende poner de relieve a partir de la obra In Canticum canticorum de Gregorio de Nisa, el recorrido que el autor realiza en torno al tema de la visión mística. De esta manera se podrá analizar algunos conceptos que lo comprenden: luz y su antítesis noche; así como también detenerse en la formulación de los términos ojos-visión; lo cual nos remitirá a la pregunta, ¿qué es lo que se ve? y/o ¿quiénes contemplan a Dios como El (...) es? De este modo, la contemplación en la obra del Niseno obtendrá alcances significativos desde una lectura antropológica cristiana.This paper intends to highlight, from Gregory of Nyssa’s In Canticum canticorum, the author’s journey around the issue of mystic vision. In this way, some of his concepts can be analyzed: light and its antithesis night, along with making a stop in the formulation of the terms eyes-vision, which will lead us to the question, what is that which is seen? and/or, who contemplates God as He is? So, contemplation in the work of the Nicene will have meaningful approaches from a Christian anthropological reading. (shrink)
Recent postmodern discussions of the Christian apophatic tradition level a noteworthy criticism: after all its negations doesn't Christian apophatic discourse in fact slip back into kataphatic assertions about God? This article seeks to address this claim by bringing into concert two important Christian apophaticists in order to designate a type of discourse that emerges from apophatic union, a discourse that is not kataphatic but logophatic.
The Homilies on the Beatitudes are believed to be Gregory of Nyssa’s earliest existing homilies, dating most probably from the Lenten season of 378. In them we can clearly see, although still at an early stage, his thoughts on the problem of evil in the world and its effects on human nature. Reading the homilies from this angle, one can show his original ideas on the introduction of sin in human nature, on the state of the man enslaved (...) by sin and on sin’s effects on him. Gregory also gives some useful and practical suggestions as to how sin can be overcome. Even though in later homilies he goes more deeply into these themes, and sometimes his thought develops and points to different conclusions, it is here in this first set of homilies that we start to see his ideas on sin and redemption taking shape. (shrink)
This article follows Ludwig Wittgenstein, Stanley Cavell, and Gregory of Nyssa in a journey of epistemic dispossession. It begins by tracing two ways of wandering off this trail, two epistemological sirens that tempt wayfarers from a path of epistemic dispossession. These are skepticism and anti‐skepticism, elaborated by Wittgenstein and Cavell as joined in their enthronement of epistemically‐anchored certainty. Following Wittgenstein and Cavell into an exploration of the forms of life and death that sustain and are sustained by grasping (...) at such certainty, this article yet identifies two sources of un‐peace in their projects. One is an ill‐confessed threat that looms over their work, and the other is the inhuman difficulty of resisting the skeptical temptations of isolation and domination after this threat is named. It is the threat of death, which becomes, under the skeptic's anxiety, the threat of murder. That is, the skeptic denies finitude in such a way that he refuses to come to terms with the way that death attends life, and such refusal introduces as a skeptical temptation the further threat of murder. The difficulty of resisting skeptical temptations rides on the incompleteness of epistemic dispossession, which will always undo itself unless deepened into a more radical form of dispossession. Such forms of dispossession are suggested by Cavell and perfected in Gregory's descriptions of his sister Macrina. Macrina illumines epistemic dispossession as a form of love that refuses certain relationships to property. Yielding a vision for how dispossession might meet the threat of murderousness, Macrina's life thus interprets relationships of property, love, and death that complete epistemic dispossession. (shrink)
In this study, Andrew Radde-Gallwitz argues that Basil and Gregory develop an understanding of divine simplicity which does not require that God be identical with the properties of God or that these be identical with one another. Their motivation is that they want to hold that we cannot, in all eternity, know God's essence and yet that we have knowledge of God. Radde-Gallwitz argues that, for Basil and especially Gregory, in addition to our "conceptualizations" (epinoiai), we also have (...) knowledge of propria, properties necessarily connected to God's essence.In the early chapters, Radde-Gallwitz surveys the background to the Cappadocians, beginning with the second century. He argues that in early Christianity the .. (shrink)
The aim of this article is twofold. Both Origen and Gregory of Nyssa treat of the Lord’s Prayer, the former in his own treatise On Prayer, the latter in the course of five sermons on the same prayer. By means of an analysis of the methods of both writers and of the results at which they arrive I hope to illustrate their respective treatments of the same text and so to show how what began life as an eschatological (...) prayer became in the course of three or four centuries something rather different. A major difficulty faced by both writers is how to understand the coming of the kingdom, if it is already there.My second intention, beyond that of comparison is to assess what influence, if any, was exercised by Origen on Gregory. The answer arrived at is rather disappointing, above all for those who believe in a strong influence on Gregory of his predecessor, by way of his grandmother, Macrina. Not only are the styles of the two men quite different, but also, apart from a sort of common Platonism, their answers are often quite distinct. (shrink)
How ought we to deal with our embodied existence–-and particularly the emotion of grief–-in the light of the gospel? Gregory of Nyssa recognizes the embodied character of our emotional lives, but he refuses to exempt the passion of grief from moral evaluation. While the Cappadocian father is attuned to the powerful role that the emotion of grief plays in our lives, he is also keenly aware of the fallen character of the body and of the problematic character of (...) the passions. For Nyssen, grief and moral theology do not belong to two separate worlds. (shrink)
The fourth-century thinker and theologian Gregory of Nyssa was a convinced realist about universals. According to him, there is just one substance man for all the individuals of the species man and this universal substance is completely instantiated by each individual. In two of his treatises – the Ad Ablabium and the Ad Graecos – he draws linguistic consequences from this realist position. This enquiry results in the thesis according to which it is incorrect to use natural kind (...) terms in the plural form, because that would involve stating a plurality of substances, when in fact there is just one substance for all the individuals of a given kind. In consequence, since the substance of all individual human beings is the same, the word ‘man’ can only be used adequately in the singular form. In this contribution, Gregory's reasoning is reconstructed. In the second part of the paper, the posterity of his theory and its endorsement by Theodore Abū Qurrah at the turn of the eighth and ninth centuries are examined. (shrink)
In On the Soul and the Resurrection, St Macrina and St Gregory of Nyssa consider what the soul is, and its relationship to our body and identity. Gregory notes the way that our bodies are always changing, and asks which is most truly our ‘real’ body if we are always in a state of growth, decay and transience? What physical body will be with us at the resurrection? If our body is as important to our identity as (...) our soul, then who am I when my body changes? Macrina answers that our identity is bodily, but that the sufferings and passages of time that alter our bodies mean that we are an imperfect version of ourselves in this life. The person that we will be at the resurrection will be free from the influence of evil and the ravages of impermanence. Modern-day science fiction wrestles with Gregory’s problem—where is my identity located? If my body is altered beyond recognition, or my mind transferred to a new body, am I still me? These cyberpunk and transhumanist worries call to mind the ancient topic of mind/body dualism, and Macrina and Gregory have some surprisingly relevant insights to offer to our contemporary technological dilemmas. (shrink)
This article seeks to extend and refine Alastair MacIntyre’s moral theory of virtue ethics, by probing behind the Benedictine Rule—so fulsomely invoked at the end of After Virtue—to the ascetical theology of the noted, Eastern, ‘Cappadocian’ theologian of the fourth century: Gregory of Nyssa. I shall argue that Gregory’s vision of ascetical bodily practice complicates MacIntyre’s contemporary appropriation of virtue ethics. It does so by underscoring the diachronic, developmental character of personal ethical maturation—a theme which finds no (...) expression in MacIntyre’s otherwise sophisticated account of ‘narrative’. (shrink)
El presente artículo trata de mostrar la presencia del pensamiento de Ireneo de Lyon en el sustrato del pensamiento de Gregorio de Nisa en una de sus obras cumbres: el Comentario al Cantar de los Cantares. Esta obra refleja la confluencia de una profunda reflexión a partir del texto bíblico y la filosofía de la época. El niseno se ubica en la tradición de los autores eclesiásticos que han comentado este bello poema de amor veterotestamentario. Si bien es cierto que (...) en la edición crítica de la obra no aparece nunca citado el lugdunense se pueden encontrar ciertos núcleos conceptuales y temáticos que ayudan a descubrir una recepción de Ireneo en el Comentario al Cantar de Gregorio. Esos elementos permiten poner de relevancia la relación existente entre estos dos autores patrísticos que se conectan para mostrar la realidad esponsal de la iglesia que posee un dinamismo pneumático-salvífico abierto a toda la humanidad. The purpose of this article is to show how Ireneus of Lyon´s thought was present in one of Gregory of Nyssa´s fundamental works: Commentary on The Song of Songs. This work reflects a convergence of deep biblical reflection and the philoshophy of the time. Gregory is among the ecclesiastical writers who have commented on this beautiful love poem in the Old Testament. Even though there is no mention of the Lugdunian in the critical edition of the work, some concepts and themes may be found which help identify an influence form Ireneus on Gregory´s Commentary on the Song of Songs. These elements allow us to give relevance to the relationship between these two patristic authors, who come into contact in order to show the church´s spousal reality, which has a pneumatological-salvific dynamics, open to all mankind. (shrink)
