From Glory to Glory: Texts from Gregory of Nyssa’s Mystical Writings Selected and introduced by Jean Danielou 978-0913836545

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This copy has all the pages. The previous one is missing pp. 81-147

~Qom TEXTS FROM qQ€qOQy O~ nyssa's MYSTICAL WRITINGS

INTRODUCTION BY

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FROM GLORY TO GLORY Texts from Gregory of Nyssa's Mystical Writings Selected and with an Introduction by JEAN DANIELOU

This collection of the spiritual writings of St Gregory of Nyssa, selected and introduced by Jean Danielou, has long been recognized as an authoritative introduction to the "father of mysticism," who exploded classical antiquity's static understanding of perfection by showing the Christian life as one of never-ending growth, a true dynamic movement "from glory to glory." "Modern thought has come more and more to appreciate the depth and insight of Gregory of Nyssa: he epitomizes, in a sense, all that is best in post-Nicean patristic thought ... ln Gregory's teaching of the sacred history-of the story of God's dealings with men-history and symbol fuse in a way that reveals all the uniqueness of the Christian message. " from the Translator's Preface 'This book is a sheer delight... From Glory to Glory has long been treasured reading for a wide spedrum of Christians. " The Living Church

"[From Glory to Glory] gives the reader a rewarding journey into the mystical writings of St Gregory of Nyssa ... This would be a worthwhile book for any library which has a selection of important theological thought. Ligourian H

ST VLADIMIR'S SEMINARY PRESS

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TEXTS FROM

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MYSTICAL WRITINGS

Selected and

BY JEAN

with an Introduction

DANlt'lou, s.J-

Translated and Edited

BY HERBERT MUSURILLOT S-J.

ST VLADIMIR'S SEMINARY PRESS CRESTWOOD, NY 107 0',7 -1699 1995

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gregorius, Saint, Bp. of Nyssa, fl.379-394 From Glory to glory.

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Reprint ofthe 1961 ed. published by Scribner, New York.

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Mysticism-Early church., ca. 30-600. I. Title.

1BR65.G74E53. t9791 ISBN 0-9 I 3836-54-0

248',.22

79-38

Copyright @ 1961 Charles Scribner's Sons

First published I 96 I by Charles Scribner's Sons First printing of St Vladimir's Seminary Press reprint edition 1979 Second printing 1995

rsBN 0-913836-54-0

PRINTED IN THEUNITED STATES OFAMERICA

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TRANSTATOR'S PREFACE Modern thought has come more and more to appreciate the depth and insight of Gregory of Nyssa: he epitomizes, in a sense, all that is best in post-Nicaean patristic thought, and he reveals in a profound and vital way that undifferentiated contact with the early tradition of Christian fterygma which has often been lost sight of in subsequenr times. In Gregory's teaching of the sacred history-of the story of God's dealings with men-history and symbol fuse in a way that reveals all the uniqueness of the Christian message. And if we sometimes find Gregory's exegesis difficult, we are nonetheless struck by the very modern sound of his voice. As a translator my task has been to render Gregory's very difficult prose style into a modern idiom, although at times I have deliberately retained some of his baroque and quite individual mannerisms. In some cases I have translated disputed texts in ways which might incline the reader to one interpretation even where others were possible; but in most cases the brief notes will indicate some of the complexities and difficulties involved. Two very serious difficulties constantly hover over the theological aspects of our selections: the problem of the co-

operation between man's free activity and God's salutary providence, and the exact extent of the two Ways, the way of asceticism and the way of mysticism, which lead to the Darkness in which the Godhead is seen. This was not the place to enter into controversy; but a clear presentation of Gregory's thought will, one hopes, be an important stage on

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE the road to a solution. Jean Dani6lou's vast labors on the theology of Gregory have established him as a sure guideindeed, as a pillar of fire by night-towards the goal of our deeper comprehension of this important area of early Christian thought.

Hrnsrnr Musunn lo, S. |.

CONTENTS

l:(

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

INrRoDUcrroN 07 Jean Dani\lou, S. J. NOTES TO TIIE INTRODUCTION

3

72

FROM GLORY TO GLORY: TEXTS FROM GRXGORY OF NYSSA'S MYSTICAT WRITINGS

I. TIIE MEANING OF PERFECTION 2. PERFECTION AND PROGRESS 3. TrrE

CYCLB OF

4. THE SYMBOL OF THE BRICK 5. THE LONGING FOR HEAVEN 6. rns ExoDUs FRoM EGYPT

IO.

PURIFICATION OF HEART

rT.

RECOLLECTION

83

MOULD

87 88

9o 93 95

SINAr

96 98

ro2

12. THETRUEBEAUTY 13. THE

8r 84

DESTRE

7. CROSSING THE DESERT 8. nnpao moM HEAVEN g. AT THE FOOT OF MOnNT

79

r04

GRACE OF THE SPIRIT

r07

,

14.

RESTORING GOD S IMAGE

IT2

IJ.

ENTERING THE DARK CLOUD

rr8

CONTENTS

CONTENTS

xlt

xlll

16. THE syMBoL oF ABRAHAM'S MIGnATIoN

II9

4r.

17. THE ABYSS OF KNOWLEDGE

t22

42. "T:rtE WINTER Is

r8- rns

t29

43.

FROM DOVE TO DOVE

r89

19. OUR EARTHLY TABERNACLE

135

44.

TIJ-E CLEFT OF THE ROCK

I9I

20. THE

r37

45.

THE LTTTLE FOXES

r93

2I. THE DOCTRINE OF ETERNAL PROGRESS 22. TH'E SYMBOL OF THE ROCK AND THE SAND

r42 r48

46. "EoncnrrrNc THE 47. rovE's euEsr

23.

FOLLOWTNG THE LORD

r50

48. ruE ITLLAR oF sMoKE IN THE

24.

SPTRTTUAL LOVE

ryz

49. THE

25.

MYSTTCAL MARRTAGE

r53

r56

50. THE DOCTRINE OF INFINITE GROWTH 5r. "coME rRoM LTBANUS"

r58

sz.

r59

53. THE MIRROR OF THE

t63

54. THE

SINGLE EYE

219

t66

55. AN ODOR OF SWEETNESS 56. urE HoNEYcoMB

222

57. rIdE GARMENT OF VIRTUE 58. rHu cARDEN ENcLoSED

zz6

229

174

J9. THE FOUNTAIN SEALED UP 6o. rns PARADISE oF THE soul

176

6r. rns

23r

177

62. rp'n SYMBoL oF

38. rnu wouND oF LovE

178

63. rnE

39. THE DTVTNE OATH 40. TIIE SPRINGTIME OF THE

r8o

64. rnr wELL oF LIvING wATER

235

r83

65. rnr FooD oF THE BRIDEGRooM

237

HEAVENLY TABERNACLE

SYMBOLISM OF THE PRIESTLY VESTMENTS

26. rcrc sPIRrruAL

27. TIIE GOOD 28. rNow

SHEPHERD

THYSELF

29. TrfE ODOR OF 30. THE BUNDLE

3r.

sENsEs

SPTKENARD

OF MYRRH

THE BrRTH OF THE WORD

32. TIJE MTRROR OF THE 33. THE

167

170

SOUL

EYES OF THE DOVE

17r

34. THE LrLY OF THE VALLEY 35. THE FRUIT OF THE APPLE

173 TREE

36. ruE MYSTTc wrNEPREss 37.

TH.E ORDER OF CHARTTY

SPIRIT

r86

"ARISE AND coMEtt

T:rrE

Now PAsr"

THINGS

r87

rHAT ARE

BEHIND

r96 r97

DESERT

GUARDIANS OF THE HEART

203

zo6

2tl 213

215

LIoNs' DEN CHURCH

PoMEGRANATE SAFFRoN

SYMBoL oF cINNAMoN

2r7

224

227

230

233

234

CONTENTS

xiv

66.

48

SOBER INTOXICATION

67. WATCHFW

240

SLEEP

68. ANGELIC VIGILANCE

243

69. BUBBLING SPRING

245

70. THE NOCTURNAL DE.w

246

7r.

250

THE GARMENT OF THE FLESH

72. THE SYMBOL OF PURE

252

FEET

73. THE MYRRH OF PENANCE

254

74. THE DOOR OF THE SPIRIT

z6o

75. THE

263

SUCCESSIVE PURIFICATIONS

76. THE BODY OF CHRIST

27r

77. THE NEU/ CREATION

273

78. THE SYMBOL OF CLOSED EYES

274

79. THE MYSTICAL NIGHT OF THE

SOUL

8o. THE GOOD SAMARITAN

8r.

a(

MY BELOVED TO ME

,,

82. THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 83.

aa

ONE IS MY DOVE

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NorEs oN rHE rExrs by HerbertMusurillo, S.J.

278 279

z8r 284 286 289

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I.

GREGORY: THE MAN AND THE ERA

The life of Gregory of Nyssa was one of successive, sharply marked stages. He was born in Cappadocia, around the year 33o, into a family that was exceptionally Christian; we can see something of its quality in Gregory's biography of his sister St. Macrina. To judge from a letter of Gregory of Nazianzusl (who was a friend of his brother, Basil the Great), it would seem that he was at first destined for the priesthood. But his youthful years coincided with that last revival of pagan culture which was to reach its peak under Julian the Apostate. Gregory tells ust that he was completely won over to the pagan humanistic ideal, especially as he found it in the works of Libanius. He married and became a teacher of rhetoric. After journeying through Palestine and Egypt to visit the settlements of monks and hermits, Basil had settled down in 358 to live at the family estate in Annesis, Pontus, with the idea of leading a monastic life. He was joined there by Gregory of Nazianzus. As for Gregory of Nyssa, Basil tried to draw him to Annesis, as we know from one of his letters,s but there is no proof that he ever succeeded. Gregory was married and it would mean leaving his wife. Years afterwards, in extolling the ideal of celibacy, he was to confess that he never attained it himself.n There is thus no evidence that he ever lived a monastic life. ln 37o Basil was named bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia. The emperor Valens was, at the time, persecuting those who held to the doctrines of the Council of Nicaea. And Basil, desirous of having men about him he could trust, forthwith had his friend, Gregory of Nazianzus, elected to the sea of Sasima, quite against the poor man's wishes in the matter. 3

4

INTRODUCTION

FROM GLORY TO GLORY

Again, in 372 he had his brother appointed bishop of Nyssa. It was with small enthusiasm that Gregory set out for the metropolis. The people he disliked intensely;5 and as for the place itself-so he writes to the rhetorician Stagiriusit was simply a wilderness. Gregory tried to persuade some of his friends to join him here; indeed, if we may judge from his correspondence during these years, he seems to have been living a rather worldly life. It is likely that his wife was still with him; the customs of the times would have allowed it. In any case, he failed to provide the support his brother had expected, and Basil was very annoyed.n Then in the year 374 a series of dramatic events rudely cut short this peaceful existence. Valens tried to get rid of the bishops who were faithful to Nicaea. Gregory himself was accused of squandering funds. The validity of his episcopal election was called into question, and he was banished from his see. Where he went at this time we do not know. It was surely not to the estate at Annesis-for he tells us in the Life of St. Macrina that he was not there betwe en 372 and by 38o. Some of his letters suggest that he was harbored friends. But it was during this period of trial that he seems finally to have been won over to Basil's ideas of religious reform. He began to help Basil in the work of establishing monasticism in Cappadocia, and it was to this end that he composed his first work, T he Treatise on Virginity. At the end of 377, Gregory was restored once more to his see at Nyssa and entered the city to the joyous acclaim of the people.T Almost immediately an event occurred which was to change the entire course of his life : Basil died on lan. r, 379, and Gregory thus fell heir to the whole extent of Basil's far-ranging activity, theological, monastic, and

5

And he seems, at the moment, to have become fully aware of his responsibilities. It may well have been thai Basil's dominant personality had, up till then, prevented Gregory from expressing himself. For despite Basil's affection for his brother, he had no true notion of Gregory's worth. Their characters were essentially too opposed for that. But now, with Basil's death, Gregory was forced to stand on his own, and thus in the years that followed he was able to reveal himself as he really was. Gregory's task, however, was not merely to carry on the work of Basil; he had also to bring it to completion. Basil was a man of action; he was above all else an organizer. He touched on many problems without going into any of them too deeply. It was this deepening, first of all in the area of theology, that Gregory explicitly set as his goal in the work he wrote rn 379, On the Creation of the W orld . In the introduction he says that it was his intention to complete the sermons which Basil delivered on the same subject two years before. But whereas Basil had set forth the facts, Gregory would now try to show their afroluthia,the internal sequence of cause and effect.8 From this time on, his activity was limitless' In the autumn of g7g he took part in the Synod of Antioch, which Meletius had convoked with the hope of ending the schism between East and West. On his way back from Antioch he stopped ofl at Annesis, and was Present at the death of his sister Macrina.e When he arrived back at Nyssa he was to find his ecclesiastical.

diocese invaded by men from Galatia busily spreading heresy,

apparently Eunomianism;to and on the first Sunday after fan. r, 38o, the sermon he preached referred to this crisis.11 Later he was called to lbora, an episcopal see not far from

6

FROM GLORY TO GLORY Annesis, on the occasion of the election of a new

bishop.t' And it was here that he was approached by a delegation from Sebaste in connection with their own local conflict over an

episcopal election.'3 Gregory thus found himself in the middle of a veritable religious war between Arians, Nicaeans, and Sabellians.tn By Easter of 38o he was back in Nyssa; and it is here, I think, that we should place the three short sermons which he delivered for Easter,ts Ascensionrtu and Pentecost.l? Now we begin to detect the influence of Gregory of Nazianzus, who was at the height of his powers at this time. And the references to the divinity of the Holy Spirit become more understandable when we recall that Gregory had just returned from Sebaste; this city had been the center of the heresy of Eustathius, a former bishop of Sebaste. At this time, too, Gregory wrote a letter to his brother Peter, in whose election as bishop of Sebaste he had been instrumental: in it he implies that he had just completed his first book against Eunomius within the space of seventeen days.l8 This was to be the beginning of Gregory's great reply to Eunomius'vicious attack on his brother Basil. The spring of 38r marks the pinnacle of Gregory's career. For it was then that emperor Theodosius convoked the Council of Constantinople. The Council, in which Gregory played such an important role, was to result in a complete victory for the ideas for which Basil and Gregory had fought both on the theological and the ecclesiastical level. Gregory gave the opening address; and we have its text in the sermon, On His Ordination.tn Though scholars like Bardenhewer would date this sermon to the year 3g4, there is every indication that it was pronounced at the Council of 38r.'o

INTRODUC'TION

7

Gregory thereafter became one of the leading personalities of the Eastern Church. The Council gave him jurisdiction, together with Otreius and Helladius, over Cappadocia and Pontus. He was also sent to Arabia: here two bishops were

disputing over the see of Bosra, and the Antidicomarianite heresy was at its height.2l Returning from Arabia, he visited |erusalem and the holy places.'2 While there he was accused of Apollinarianism, and we have a letter in which he defended himself on this score." By the end of 38r we find him back in Nyssa. The following winter was spent com' posing the treatise Against Apollinaris and another work Against Eunomius.2a His mention, in Against Apollinaris,2s of the long journey he has just completed doubtless refers to his mission in Arabia; indeed, his experience in |erusalem showed him how imperative it was to come out clearly on the Christological problem. Theodosius now held a council at Constantinople every year; and at the Council convoked in the spring of 383 Gregory gave a sermon on the divinity of the Son and the Holy Spirit.'6 This discourse can be dated with certainty for Gregory writes: Count now the royal luminaries, of the same number as the Evangelists, that divided among them the whole world and illumine it with the light of

piety and peace. For God has imitated the first miracle He performed at the creation of the world: He has appointed not only the great luminary to rule over all visible things, but He has also joined to it the smaller one, that mingles its own reflected light with its parent's rays.21

8

FROM GLORY TO GLORY

Now this surely fits the spring of 383. For on fanuary 16 of that year the emperor Theodosius had his young son Arcadius proclaimed Augustus. Thus there would have been four "luminaries": Gratian and Valentinian II in the East, Theodosius and Arcadius in the West. The "smaller luminary" obviously refers to Arcadius, who was then only nine years old.

During these years Gregory enjoyed the favor of the imperial court. In 385 he was chosen to deliver the funeral eulogies in honor of the departed empress Flacilla and her daughter Pulcheria. At Constantinople, too, Gregory enjoyed the friendship of Olympias, one of the most outstanding women of the age. This was the lady to whom St. |ohn Chrysostom was to address so many letters during his exile' And it was to her, some years later, that Gregory would dedicate his Cornmentary on the Canticle o"f Canticles about the year 389. During these years Gregory played an important role in the ecclesiastical afiairs of Asia Minor. It was undoubtedly in 382 that he wrote to the church of Nicomedia in connection with the election of their new bishop." And at Easter, 383, he sent Letoiushis Canonical Epistle: Letoius had succeeded Otreius as bishop of Melitene in Cappadocia, and the document is extremely valuable for the information it gives

in Asia Minor at this period. Meanwhile his theological activity did not abate. The winter of 382/3 saw the publication of his third and longest treatise against Eunomius;" the last installment was not composed until after the Council of Constantinople in 383,

us on ecclesiastical discipline

at which Eunomius made his solemn profession of faith. The Grea, Catechetical Discourse belongs perhaps to the winter of

INTRODUCTION 9 S8Z/a,.In any case, it would fit a period of Gregory's life

when he was in close contact with philosophical circles at Constantinople and felt he had to make some reply to their objections to the dogma of the Incarnation. The treatise Against the Pneumatornachi perhaps belongs to the following winter, Z8+/S.But it is admittedly difficult to date these works with any certainty. Gregory's influence, at its peak during the years 38o-385, seems to decline sharply after 386. He began to be attacked from different quarters. In 386, for example, he wrote to Theophilus, who had been elected bishop of Alexandria in the previous year, to defend himself against the charge that his Christological doctrine was tainted with Antiochene tendencies.so We have several other pieces on the Trinity written during the same period, 386387, in which he defends himself on the charge that his Trinitarian doctrine was tritheistic. And, finally, his influence at the imperial court of Constantinople was on the wane. Chrysostom's star was in the ascendant; and there is a brief, sad allusion, in one of Gregory's discourses,st to the oratorical success of younger men-perhaps a reference to John Chrysostom. Finally, in Asia Minor the prerogatives of the bishcps began to be restricted to their own dioceses; and Gregory was coming into conflict with his metropolitan, Helladius.3' Such trials, however, did not curtail his activity; they merely gave it a new direction. Once freed from administra' tive burdens and the heat of theological controversy, Gregory now turned himself whoily towards the life of the spirit' It was a change rvhich reflected the interior evolution which he had been undergoing. The writings that come from this period reveal an extraordinary originality and mastery of his

INTRODUCTION

IO

FROM GLORY TO GLORY subject. We now see him completely in control of a solid spiritual doctrine, as we find it in the brilliant Commentary on the Canticle of Canticles, and the little treatise,The Lile of Moses. Gregory's intention, as Werner faeger has shown,u' was to give a mystical orientation to the monastic rnovement organized by his brother Basil. Now he began to resume the thinking which had occupied him at the time of his first work, the Treatise on Virginity. In the De instituto chris' tiano, a treatise on the goal of Christian asceticism, he sets forth in complete outline the fundamental spiritual doctrine of St. Basil. These works contain the essence of Gregory's

spiritual message. But in the l-i't'e of Moses there are clear allusions to his old age.tn And though there are a number of works which belong to this final period, we hear no more of Gregory after the Council of Constantinople which he attended in 394. He must have been already infirm at this time; and he probably did not have much longer to live.

2.

GREGORY'S DOCTRINE ON THE IMAGE OF GOD

II

text (Gen. r.z6), recognizing no clistinction between image and hrteness. There is no opposition in his teaching between the natural and the supernatural man of modern terminology. For him the natural man is man as he was created in God's concrete plan-that is, man with all those gifts which we now call supernatural. This is clear from his treatjse Oz tlte Creation of Man: for here the gifts of purity, charity and happiness are considered as belonging to human nature in the same way as intelligence and free wiil.3'i But man as he is now is far from being an image of God in this sense. "Wherer" he asks, "is the divine character in the soul ? Where is that freedom from pain ? Where is our immortality 1"36 How are we to explain this I Human nature, as it is now, cannot be as God intended it in the beginning, and as it will surely be in the end. What has been added to human nature, to this image of God in man, according to Gregory, is the garment of sftin (Gen.3.zr). This garrnent of sftin in us is made up of all tliose things which we have in common with animals; it is:

IN MAN

Gregory's spiritual doctrine is intimately bound up with his concept of man's nature, and its fundamental direction consists in th.e restoration of the image of God in man. Hence for our present study we must begin with Gregory's teaching on the nature of man-one of the most difficult as well as one of the most interesting areas of his thought. His doctrine can be found, substantially, in the Great Cate' chetical Discourse and in the treatise On the Creation of Man. He begins, of course, with the biblical doctrine that man was created in God's image. But departing from an interpretation held by other Fathers of the Church, Gregory adhcres more closely to the literal meaning of the Scriptural

sexual union, conception, childbirth, dirt, nursing, food, excrement, the gradual growth of the body towards maturity, adulthood, old age, sickness and death.37

Wlrat is implied, therefore, in the garment of s\in is not, as Origen thought, the body as such; for in Gregory's view both the soul and the body were part of human nature in the beginning. Rather, it comprises all that implies mortality and corruptibility; and man's true nature is to e njoy the incorruptibility of the risen body.ut How then did this new state arise which is so contrary to

T2

FROM GLORY TO GLORY

our original conclition

I The ultimate

cause is man's freedom.

For freedom is a divine quality, and God could not create man in His image without giving him free will. And it may be noted here that Gregory, following Origen (and, indeed, anticipating St. Bernard), stresses free will more than intelligence in his analysis of man's likeness to God.'n Now since all created things are by nature changeable,no it follows that created freedom could separate itself from God. More proximately, holvever, man's sin was brought about by the iealousy of the angel to whom the universe had been entrusted, and who hated to see in his realm a man who was made in the image of God.n' This was a traditionally fewish concept of the relation between angels and the universe; the angel of the earth is troubled at the appearance of the first man, jrtst as the Prince of this world is vexed by the triumph of the new Adam. As soon, then, as man turned away from God, the source of life, his body was deprived of immortality and was clad in tlre garment of sftin. And yet, though this was a consequence of sin, it is intended to be more of a remedy than a punishment-an idea that is very important for an understanding of Gregory's thought. It is an idea that goes back to Origen's view of the medicinal character of suffering.n' In Gregory there are two aspects to be considered. In his work On t/te Dead he explains that the garment of sfrin aliows man to turn back again freely to God: since man had despised the life of the spirit for carnal pleasure, God did not wish man "to withdraw from sin unwillingly and be forced by necessity towards the good,"'3 for this would have destroyed man's freedom and the image of God within him. Hence He macle use of man's very tenclency by giving him

I

NTR

O

DU CTI

ON

13

the garmcnt of sftin. This would cause man to experience a

with the things of the world, and thus "he would willingly desire to return to his former blessedness."an In the Great Catechetical Discourse Gregory puts forward disgust

the second reason for the garnlent ol sftin, which derives not from Origen but from St. Athanasius. The idea is that the garment of sfrin, our present state of mortality, permits the bodily part of man to be destroyed; but since evil is so closely bound up with the body, evil too is destroyed, and thus man can be restored to his original innocence. Man's body returns

to earth like a vase of baked clay; thus the evil that was mingled with his body is now released, and the divine Potter can raise him up once more to his original beauty." Thus the garment of sftin, though really foreign to human nature,

was only given to man by a sollicitous providence, as by

a

doctor giving us a medicine to cure our inclination to evil without its being intended to last forever.ou In answer to the question whether man was created without the garnuent of sftin (that is, without mortality and all the things that sex implies), Gregory gives one answer in his work On the Creation of Man: "The grace of the resurrection is the restoration of fallen man to his primitive state."47 But in another passage in On the Creation of Man he puts forward another hypothesis, "as a kind of exercise."n* Here he suggests that God in His foreknowledge knew that man would abuse his freedom and would fall; and hence seeing that mait by his sin had fallen from his blessed angelic state, God established a rvay by which the human race could be propagated in accordance with our nature; thus the total number

t4

FROM GLORY TO GLORY

I

NTRO DUCTI ON

in his power. But on the Sunday, Christ breaks down the gates of Easter

of human souls would not be deficient, even though

convinced that Christ is definitely

man had now lost the method of propagation by which the angelic hosts had multiplied.ae

morning of

On this view (which is the one most important for us), God would have created man from the beginning with a mortal body through His foreknowledge of man's sin. It is against the background of this doctrine that Gregory explains the two accounts in Genesis of the creation of man. Philo had already detected in Genesis two stages in man's creation: in the first account, man, the first-born, is created in God's image as the predxistent archetype of the intelligible world; in the second, man, created as male and female, is man as he actually appears on earth. Gregory also retains a distinction; but he will have no use for any theory of real predxistence along the lines followed by Origen in dependence on Philo. But in man created in God's image he sees the predxistence of human nature in the perfection of the divine knowledge-such as it will be only at the end of time.5o Thus for Gregory, man created as male and female though first in the order of time is only second in the order of intention.sl In discussing the Fall Gregory emphasizes the same two aspects which characterize his doctrine of the Atonement: man's mortality and the role of the devil.52 The role of the devil is one of the least understood of Gregory's doctrines. It was traditional in the early Church to consider Christ's Atonement as a victory over the devil. There are two stages in this account: after the Temptation, the devil has suspected that Jesus would be a formidable adversary in his dominion over the world; then, on the night of Good Friday he is

r5

death, releasing all whom the devil had held

in his power.

In this way, fesus, Who the devil thought would be the means of his victory, becomes the source of his utter defeat. On this view, the devil was thought to be deceived; and this is the theory that Gregory emphasizes: The Godhead hid under the covering of our human nature so as to offer an easy bait to him who sought to exchange us for a more precious prize. And the aim was that just like a greedy fish he would swal-

low the hook of divinity together with the bait of the flesh. Thus life would come to dwell in death, light would appear in darkness, and thus light and life would achieve the destruction of all that stood against them.53

Gregory's imagery is clear. The trick consisted in letting the devil take the bait in hopes that he will gain a greater prize:' but he is caught in the trap, and losing this he loses all. And

Gregory concludes: That the deceiver was deceived and got his deserts shows forth God's justice; the entire aim of the transaction bears witness to the goodness of its Author.5a

It is clear that there is no trace here of the theory of the devil's rights in the strict sense.tt In attempting to explain why God chose to become man and suffer death, when He could have broken the power of the devil by a simple decree, Gregory suggests that this was in accord with divine justice-

16

FROM GLORY TO GLORY a justice which consisted in deceiving the deceiver according to his deserts. There is thus no question of any real right which the devil had over the souls of men. As Gregory profoundly saw, the devil could not have exercised his tyranny over man if man had not deliberately sold himself to the devil.uu Hence, seeing that it was God's will that the Atonement should bring about the restoration of all that had been lost ih Adam, God's plan dernanded that human nature should cooperate in its own liberation: what was lost through Adam would be restored through the new Adam. Now the second aspect of man's Fall which we must consider is its effects on the body, especially corruptibility and death. We have already seen that for Gregory this was not merely a punishment, but it was also to be a means of man's elevation, to his ultimate elimination of sin. But it remains true that this is still a purely negative consequence; it does not of itself restore man's original state. But Christ by His redemptive mission united Himself, by His death, to man in a state of dissolution: He reunited all the separated elements as though by a glue, that is, by the divine Power' and fitted together into an indissoluble union all that had been separated. This is the meaning of the resurrection: it is the restoration' of the elements that had been separated, to an indissoluble union' that the original grace that hurnan nature possessed might be recovered, now that the evil that adhered to it has been dissipated by dissolution.sT should here be remarked that for Gregory the Incarnation and the Atonement would appear to be identical. The

It

INTRODUCTION

t7

Incarnation is the union of the Word not merely with human nature as such but with fallen nature,the sarx. Now the state of fallen nature is chiefly characterized by death. Thus Christ did not suffer death because He had been born; rather, it was because of death that He chose to be born. Eternal Life had no need of life, but He entered our bodily existence in order to restore us from death to life. Our eritire nature had to be recalled from death; hence He stretched forth His hand, as it were, to the dead body, and came to see the place where we had fallen. Indeed He came so close to death as to touch mortality itself, that He might make of our own nature, in His body, a principle of resurrection.s8

Thus the Incarnation-Atonement is the union of the Word with man in a state of death to bring about man's resurrection. Christ's resurrection is indeed "a principle of resurrection" for all humanity: Just as death was transmitted to all men by a single act, so too, by the action of one Man the principle

of resurrection is extended to all humanity.so

And this should be understood in a very real way: for no theologian has insisted more than Gregory uPon the solidarity of all mankind. Thus the image of God in man consists, for him, in the concrete totality of all mankind, united in one body,uo as foreseen in God's eternal knowledge and to be realized in fact at the end of time. It follows that the Word could not be united with a specific

I8

FROM GLORY TO GLORY

human nature without having an effect upon the whole of humanity. This is the doctrine of the treatise Against ApolIinaris, and Gregory expresses it in some striking imagery. Humanity is the lost sheep that has wandcred from the ninety-nine angelic spirits, and Christ the Good Shepherd has come to find it. Referring to the Incarnation Gregory says: "He took upon FIis shoulders the whole sheep."ul Again, he compares fallen nature to a broken reed; Christ in fining together the pieces at one point restores the whole.62 Some scholars have wrongly thought that Gregory is here teaching that the Word was hypostatically united with all humanity; but it is clear from a good number of texts that he is merely emphasizing, in a very real sense, the solidarity of all mankind. Now Christ has won for all humanity the right to resurrection, but each individual must acquire it for himself by means of the sacraments. In Gregory's doctrine sacramental theology plays a very important role. In the treatise Against Eunomius he insists that the "strength of Christianity" consists not in philosophical speculation but in the "power of regeneration by faith" and in the "participation in mystical symbols and rites."6t In accordance with ancient tradition, Gregory's sacramental theology has three principal aspects. The first is the explanation of the sacramental symbols found in the Old Testament; the most important text for this aspect is the sermon On the Baptism of Christ.oa The second is rnystagogia, or mystical initiation properly so-called, which consists of an explanation of the symbolism involved in the sacramental rites; here the most interesting discussion is found in the sermon Against Those Who Put Ofr Baptism.Bs The third and final aspect is the strict theological exposition

such as we find

INTRODUCTION

rg

it principally in the Great

Cathechetical Dis-

course.

Baptism is primarily

for Gregory a sacramental initiation

into the mystery of Christ's death and resurrection, which at the same time accomplishes in us the efiect of Christ's action.

Unfortunate humanity was imprisoned

in

the

prison of this life. What then did the Author of our salvation do ? After three days of death He rose again. . . . So too by plunging three times in water instead of earth, by entering and rising three times we imitate the grace of the resurrection on the third d"y.ou

Gregory further clarifies this concept within the framework of his own Atonement theology. ]ust as Christ's death purified human nature of all that had modified it, and His resurrection restored humanity in its entirety, so too Baptism achieves the same effect, although, it is true, in an inchoate way. For sin to be destroyed completely, one would have to undergo complete death.67 Gregory's doctrine on Baptism makes use of the various Biblical types, especially the crossing of the Red Sea.68 In another image which he uses we find the River fordan considered as one of the rivers of Paradise, and this symbolism stresses the idea of rebirth-Baptism is thus represented as a return to the Garden of Eden.on The entrance into the baptistery means that "the Garden of Paradise and, indeed, heaven itself is once again accessible to man" and that "the sword of flame no longer prevents his approach."?' The

2c'

FROM GLORY TO GLORY change of garments at Baptism signifies the removal of the garment of 69 leaves which man wore after the Fall and the recovery of the "tunic of incorruptibility."?1 Again, the ]ordan is considered as a figure of Baptism in the traditional way, as for example, by reference to the cure of Naaman the leperrt'or to the entrance of the ]ews into the Promised Land. Cross the Jordan, [he says,] hasten towards the new life in Christ, to the land that bears fruit in happiness, flowing with milk and honey according to the promise. Overthrow Jericho, your former way of life! . . . All these things are figures of the reality

which is now made manifest.Ts

But what is original with Gregory is the linking of the |ordan with the Garden of Eden. Taking up an idea which seems to have been first developed by the Gnostics, Gregory contrasts the rivers that flow down from Paradise with the Jordan, which flows back to heaven and has its source in

INTRODUCTION

zt

into an immense stream which carries men back to Paradiie. Gregory considers the Eucharist primarily as the realization of the eschatological meal foretold in the Old Testament. The three important texts in this connection are Prov. 9.5, Ps. 22.5, and Cant. 5.r;?5 and all of these are explained by Gregory in a Eucharistic sense. Wisdom's cup, as we find it in Proverbs, frequently has in Gregory a Eucharistic meaning.t6 The sermon On the Ascension gives us an excellent commentary on Ps. 22,77 a text which is indeed most important in the ancient sacramental liturgy. There is a similar treatment of the invitation which the Spouse of the Canticle offers to his friends to attend the marriage banquet: Eat, my friends, and drin\, and be inebriated, my brothers (Cant. 5.r). For one who is familiar with the mysteries of the Gospel there will appear no difierence between this text and the words used in the mystic initiation of the Apostles. For there too does He say. Eat and drinft.I8

Christ.

Hurry to my Jordan, not at the call of fohn, but at the command of Christ. For the river of grace does not rise in Palestine and flow into the nearby sea, but flows everywhere, circling the entire world, and empties into Paradise. For it flows in a different direction from those four streams which flow from Eden and bears a cargo much more precious than that which was borne out by them. . . . For it brings back those who have been reborn by the Spirit.?a The true |ordan that covers the entire world is the water of Baptism, consecrated by the Baptism of Christ, and it grows

Gregory's theological explanation of the Eucharist follows the same eschatological lines. If the soul is regenerated by Baptism, our corruptible bodies need a remedy which would make them immortal. And this remedy is the risen body of

Christ, now become for us a source of Life: ]ust as a little bit of leaven, as the Apostle says, changes all of the dough into itself, so too that body which was brought to death by God, once it enters into us transforms and changes all unto itself.Te

In order to enter into our bodies, the glorious body of Christ takes on the appearances of bread and wine. Such a realistic

t 22

INTRODUCTION

FROM GLORY TO GLORY

doctrine of the Eucharist is in the same direction as the teach' ing of Ignatius of Antioch, Irenaeus, and Athanasius. Ignatius had already spoken of the Eucharist as the "medicine of immortality";to and Irenaeus had written: "Our bodies, receiving the Eucharist, are no longer corruptible."sl But Gregory also discusses the Eucharist as a sacrifice as well as a sacrament. Here we should quote a rather striking passage, which was utilized by Pdre de la Taille in his Mls-

teriam Fidei.In wishing to point out the voluntary asPect of Christ's death, and hence its sacrificial character, Gregory shows that this death was already accomplished at the Last Supper: for the Victim cannot be given to the Apostles to eat unless it is dead. Hence the ofiering of the Last Supper appears as a sacramental anticipation of the sacrifice of the

23

tered throughout his Scriptural commentaries.tn Here, however, I must content myself with indicating merely the general lines of development, emphasizing the more characteristic traits of Gregorian spirituality.

3.

THE SYMBOL OF DARKNESS

Following an idea already found in Origen, Gregory distinguished three broad ways within the spiritual life. In Gregory, however, these three ways are quite different from those we commonly meet with: Moses' vision of God began with light; afterwards God spoke to him in a cloud. But when Moses rose higher and became more perfect, he saw God in the darkness.8s

Cross:

When He gave His disciples His body to eat and His blood to drink, His body was already immolated according to the will of Him Who by His power accomplished this mystery in an invisible and ineflable manner.82

Now Gregory's spiritual doctrine, which is undoubtedly the most important part of his work, must be seen as an extension of His sacramental theology. The spiritual life of which he speaks is merely the flowering of the faculties of the soul, insofar as they have been raised to the supernatural level by the sacraments. In a favorite image, Gregory com' has been vivified by the sacraments to the trees that were planted in the Garden of

pares the virtues

of the soul that

Paradise.es Gregory's

spiritual teaching can be found

scat-

Thus the spiritual life is represented as moving from light to darkness. Paradoxical as this may at first seem, it is precisely Gregory's thought; and thus we may see at once his fundamental originality, and, especially, his advance beyond Origen's position. Gregory emphasizes the importance of the obscurity of the mystical union as opposed to the clear contemplation of the spirit, insisting that it is only through this obscurity that the soul can reach Him Who is beyond all intellectual comprehension.

Thus the first waf, the way of light, is for beginners' In contrast with the darkness of sin, the supernatural life is an illumination. This way is marked by the purification of the soul from all foreign elements and by the restoration of the image of God. The first stage consists in a struggle against the passions-and the passions, for Gregory' are not our

FROM GLORY TO GLORY bodily inclinations as such, for these will not be removed

INTRODUCTION

24

until the resurrection, but rather their perversion. The struggle against the passions involves an intensification of the soul's inner life by the practice of recollection: the soul seeks to unify its faculties by turning away from the multiplicity of external things.*u In this way is the image of God restored. And for Gregory its characteristic marks are aPathia, or detachment from all worldly distractions, and panhtsia, or a childlike confidence in God which man regains as soon as all fear and shame are banished.s? This process of unification and purification makes the soul more like God, and hence allows it to attain its first knowledge of Him within itself. And so the second way is characterized by this knowledge of God "within the mirror of the soul." Gregory compares it to a cloud: Next comes a closer awareness of hidden things, and by this the soul is guided through sense phenomena to the world of the invisible. And this awaren€ss is a kind of cloud, which overshadows all appearances, and slowly guides and accustoms the soul to look towards what is hidden.88

Here we enter, properly speaking into the realm of mysticism. But it should, however, be noted that the three ways are not strictly exclusive of one another. Though each way has its dominant trait, the trait may also be found to some extent in the others. For example, the first way is characterized by purification, but this remains as well in the other two stages; the second way is characterized by knowledge, but this had already begun in the first way and, of course, continues in the third.

What does Gregory mean by the knowledge of God in the mirror of the soul ? This is a most important aspect of his mystical doctrine. But there is no question here of any experiential knowledge of the soul's own substance in the Platonic sense, as E. von Ivanka has rightly pointed out. It is an awareness of grace; and this awareness is expressed by Gregory in the doctrine of the spiritual senses which he had inherited from Origen and developed quite extensively. In this awareness, then, there is knowledge of God; but it is not a knowledge of His essence (and this is the important point), which is inaccessible, but rather an experience of His presence. Gregory uses the extraordinary expression, "the feeling

of

presence."se

The basis of this awareness, and that which gives it its special character as an essentially Christian experience, is the inhabitation of the Trinity within the soul. This divinization of the soul is indeed a divine activity, implying the special presence of God within the soul. And this Presence Gregory compares with a sachet of myrrh without which clothing can lose its fragrance. Thus grace is like the fragrance which betrays the presence of spikenard, the ray that refects the sun, the taste that reveals the substance. Thus the knowledge of God in the mirror of the soul is truly knowledge of God and not of the soul; but it is not a direct knowledge, inasmuch as God's presence is known by and through His activity in the soul; in explaining the meaning of the verse My spifrenard sent forth the odor of him (Cant. r.rr), Gregory comments that no matter how perfect a Person might become,

even then he would not be able to look steadily upon the Word of God, no more than he could the

r i i'

I

26

FROM GLORY TO GLORY

INTRODUCTION

sun. But he can look upon this Sun within himself in a mirror.eo

Such knowledge only becomes possible by the grace of Christ, which elevates man's mind above itself; by it the invisible becomes visible. And this illumination of the human spirit is the grace of contemplation. But in Gregory of Nyssa, and especially in his later works, as the Life ol Moses, and the Commentary on the Canticle of Canticles, the term "darkness" takes on a new meaning and an essentially mystical connotation. It expresses the fact that the divine essence remains inaccesible even to the mind that has been enlightened by grace, and that the awareness of this inaccessibility constitutes the highest form of contemplation. Gregory's originality consists in the fact that he was the first to express this characteristic of the highest stages of mystical experience. We find the theme of darkness employed by Gregory in three difierent ways. In one passage, which is not too relevant here, the darkness refers to the inability of the fews to comprehend the glory of God.ea In its second meaning, the darkness is used of the knowledge of those divine truths which we could not have known without revelation. This knowledge or gnosis is indeed an illumination, but it is a kind of darkness for those who have not been granted it. We find this usage, for example, in the Commentary on the Sir Days of Creation, where Gregory, in speaking of Moses, says that, elevated in spirit above the rest, he enjoyed the contemplation of heavenly things "within the darkness of his vision."e5 But the text here is concerned with Moses receiving the revelation about the creation of the world. In a similar way Gregory speaks of the divine secrets being revealed to the saints of the Christian dispensation. Thus of Gregory Thaumarurgus, he says:

as

In this way the soul can experience the indwelling of God within it. At first this experience is capable of satisfying it. But the more the soul makes progress, the more it discovers that God infinitely transcends all that it can ever know of Him. At this point we are introduced to the third way, which is the knowledge of God in the darkness. This knowledge consists in being aware that the true knowledge of God is to know that our goal transcends all knowledge and is everywhere cut ofi from us by the darkness of incompre-

hensibility.el

At first this awareness

makes the soul despair, until, as Gregory tells us, it discovers that to find God is to seek Him without endrn' and that the true satisfaction of her desire consists in constantly going on with her quest and never ceasing in her ascente3 towards God. Here we are at the very heart of Gregory's spiritual doctrine. However, Gregory is not the first writer in whom we find this theme of darkness. It appears on occasion in Clement of Alexandria and Origen. But its true meaning is to be sought on a theological level. It means that to man's natural powers the knowledge of the divine essence is impossible.

27

FROM GLORY TO GLORY

INTRODUCTION

His darkness was a vision not vouchsafed to others.

know God, but also to the impenetrable depths of the divine essence.nt It is this sense which will become clear from the decisive quotations from the Life of Moses and the Com' rnentary on the Canticle ol Canticles. Our most important text on this problem comes from the Life of Moses and should be quoted in full:

28

. . . Thus he received (and all those who were initiated by him) a revelation of the mysteries.eo

In a similar vein he speaks of his brother Basil: Often we saw him enter into the darkness where God was. By the mystical guidance of the Spirit he understood what was invisible to others, so that he seemed to be enveloped in that darkness in which the Word of God is concealed.oT

29

What now is the meaning of Moses' entry into the darkness and of the vision of God that he enjoyed in it? ... The sacred text is here teaching us that . . . as the soul makes progress' and by a greater and more perfect concentration comes to appreciate

be noted, however, that in all these passages it is a question of knowledge that is communicated only to a privileged person and is concealed from the rest. This is really the Pauline concept of mystery: it is God's hidden design, which cannot be known without revelation, but can be understood once it is revealed. Thus there is no question here of the essential incomprehensibility of the divine nature. It is the third use of the term "darkness" in which we are primarily interested here, and it occurs in a most important group of texts. We first see it in the Commentary on thc Psalms, where Gregory speaks of Moses,

It will

whose eyes sharply penetrated the divine darkness, and therein contemplated the invisible.o8

In itself the passage might

have been taken another way, as referring to the fact that Moses saw what had in itself been invisible. But it would seem that Gregory is already using

the term (to borrow the terminology of Pdre Mardchal) to refer not merely to the relative incapacity of our minds to

what the knowledge of truth is, the more it approaches this vision, and so much the more does it see that the divine nature is invisible. It thus leaves all surface appearances, not only those that can be grasped by the senses but also those which the mind itself seems to see, and it keeps on going deeper until by the operation of the spirit it Penetrates the

invisible and incomprehensible, and it is there that it sees God. The true vision and the true knowledge of what we seek consists precisely in not seeing, in

an awareness that our goal transcends all knowledge and is everywhere cut ofi from us by the darkness of incomprehensibility. Thus that profound evangelist, fohn, who penetrated into this luminous darkness, tells us that no man hath seen God at any

time, teachrng us by this negation that no manindeed, no created intellect-can attain a knowledge of God.loo

Now it is clear that the point here is not that supernatural truths are relatively obscure for the natural man; for Gregory

FROM GLORY TO GLORY

3o

that the soul has already been enlightened by grace, and is discussing its further progress in contemplation. After learning all that can be known of God, the soul discovers the limits of this knowledge; and this discovery is an advance, because now there is an awareness of the divine transcendence and incomprehensibility. We have then arrived at a negative, "apophatic" theology. For we have now an authentic experience, a true vision. And the darkness is a positive reality that helps us to know God-that is why it is called luminous. For it implies an awareness of God that transcends all determination, and thus it is far truer than any determined categorical knowledge. For here in this obscurity the soul experiences the transcendence of the divine nature, that infinite distance by which God surpasses all creation. Thus the soul finds itself as it were elevated above all created things and at the same time lost in an infinite darkness wherein it loses its contact with things, though it is aware of God despite the total incapacity of its knowledge. The mystical character of this experience is more clearly developed in the Commentary on the Canticle of Canticles. In commenting on the verse, In my bed by night I sought him . . . and found hint not (Cant. 3.r), Gregory explains that the word "bed" suggests that the soul has become the spouse of the Word, and being united to Him by love, she has received a share in His goods.tot With regard to the "nightr" he says:

presupposes

By the night she refers to the contemplation of the invisible, just as Moses, who entered into the derkness to the place rvhere God wasl and God, as the Prophet says, matle tlte darftness his couert rottnd

INTRODUCTION

3r

about him. . . . Now, she says, that I have been deemed worthy of the nuptial rites, I rest as it were upon the bed of all that I have hitherto understood. But I am suddenly introduced into the realm of the invisible, surrounded by the divine darkness, searching for Him Who is hidden in the darft cloud. Then it was that I felt that love for Him Whom I desired-though the Beloved Himself resists the grasp of our thoughts. . . . Then at last she gives up all she has found; for she realizes that

what she seeks can be understood only in the very inability to comprehend His essence, and that every intelligible attribute becomes merely a hindrance

to those who seek to find Him. This is why she says: When I had a little passed by them,I abandoned ali creatures and passed by all that is intelligible in creation; and when I gave up every finite mode of comprehension, then it was that I found my Beloved by faith. And 1 uill neuer let Him go, now that I have found Him, from the grasp of faith, until He comes within my charnber. For the heart is indeed a chamber to be filled by the divine

indwelling-that is, when it is restored to the state that it had in the beginning.lo2 This text provides an important clarification. For it is clear now that Gregory is speaking of a soul that has already arrived at a high degree of union with God by divine love. We are thus at the very summit of the spiritual life. One would have thought that such a union would involve a vision of the divine essence. But this is not so: God escapes the grasp of the intellect; and the soul then realizes that the true knowledge of God is not where it had looked for it. "Any

32

INTRODUCTION

FROM GLORY TO GLORY

representation," says Gregory, "is nothing but an obstacle."lO3 For God is beyond every representation. This does not, however, mean that there is no contact with God, but merely that this contact is not by way of the understanding but by faith. It is only in the obscurity of faith that the soul can grasp the transcendent Godhead. And thus we are directly on the way that leads to St. john of the Cross. God, as He is in Himself, is Darkness for the intellect, but can be grasped by faith. In this way it is clear that the knowledge of God in the darkness is not merely negative. It is truly an experience of the presence of God as He is in Himself, in such wise that this awareness is completely blinding for the mind, and all the more so, the closer it is to Him. In fact, one might

almost say that the darkness expresses the divine presence, and that the closer He comes to the soul, the more intense is the darkness. The image of darkness is merely a way of expressing the fact that the awesomeness of the divine essence is more than human nature can endure. Hence the fullness of the divine existence-for that is really what the darkness means-does not draw close to the soul save by slow stages. At first it does not experience the darkness itself, but rather those drops of night (Cant. 5.2)-for as yet it could not endure more. And this Gregory explains in a final pasage: The reward for receiving Me fsays the Beloved] and taking Me into your house will be the deru of. My head, with which I am 6lled, and, the drops ol the night which flow down from My locfts. . . . When a man enters into the precinct of the hidden and invisible, it is impossible that he should en-

33

counter a storm or a torrent of illumination. Rather it is sufficient if Truth merely whets our knowledge

with some meagre and obscure ideas; and

these

spiritual drops flow through the saints and God's representatives.lo4

4.

SOBER TNEBRIATION

In this union

between God and the soul, the closeness of the divine nature (designated by the darkness) causes the soul, as it were, to go out of itself, by reason of the attraction which God exercises upon it. This state is primarily characterized by a passivity; indeed, the influence exercised on the soul is from without, and the soul itself is completely overpowered. This is the reason why the terms used to describe this state are those which usually apply to the passions, as, for example, love, intoxication, and so forth. Tlie soul enters into a sphere which transcends its own limitations:

from the laws of its own nature and intelligence. Lastly, the intensity of this state may manifest itself in such an absorption in God that the soul becomes unconscious of all else. This, however, is secondary. The essential element of any ecstas/: as I. Hausherr has rightly said, is "a going out of oneself, not by an unconsciousness involving the suspension of sense activity, but by a kind of projection of the soul beyond the laws of reason under the impulse of love."105 This going out of oneself, which is characteristic of the mystical experience of Darkness, is designated by Gregory in different ways: he speaks of ecstasy' inebriation, the passion of love, dizziness, sleep, madness, wounding. Now although each of these images suggests different nuances of

thus

it

experiences a true withdrawal

FROM GLORY TO GLORY

J't

it would

think that they designate different states of soul. Actually the choice of expression depends primarily on the Scriptural context which is being discussed. Thus the word darkness is always used in connection with Moses. The word ecstasy appears when the Scriptural text refers to it, and, especially in Gregory's discussion of Abraham (Gen. r5.n), David (Ps. rr5.z), Paul (Ps.67.28), and Peter (Acts ro.ro). Similarly, the expression "inebriation" is found in connection with Wisdom's banquet (Prov. 9.3), the Canticle (5.2), and the goodly chalice of the meaning,

be a mistake to

Psalms (Ps. zz.5). Finally, the idea of passionate love, or eros, is linked in general with the Canticle of Canticles. The first of these expressions, ecstasy, designates, as we have said, the soul's going out of itself by reason of the intensity of the divine presence, and we find it so used from the time

of Gregory's first published work, the Treatise on Virginity. Gregory, in explaining how God transcends all created goods, says that these are as clrops of water to the boundless depths of the sea, or as sparks to the brilliance of the sun. Hence

The soul that does see [God's beauty] by some divine gift and inspiration, retains his ecstasy unexpressed in the secret of his consciousness. . . . The great David rightly shows us how impossible this is. Lifted out of himself by the Spirit, he glimpsed in that blessed ecstasy God's infinite and incomprehensible beauty. . . . And though yearning to say something which would do justice to his vision, he can only cry out. . . : Euery man is a liar.ro6

Gregory speaks clearly here of the transcendence of the divine nature, which sweeps the soul out of itself into a state

INTRODUCTI ON also note the reference to the "impossible," which we have met before; it clearly shows that the soul is completely overpowered.

of awe and ecstasy. We may

In another passage, from the treatise Against

Eunomius,

we will see the same ideas occurring in connection with Abraham's ecstasy as we found in the discussion of Moses' experience of darkness: By going out of his native land, that is, out of himself, out of the realm of base and earthly thoughts,

Abraham raised his mind as far as possible above the common limits of our human nature. Abraham passed ti-rrough all the reasoning that is possible to human nature about the divine attributes, and after he had purified his mind of all such concepts) he took hold of a faith that was unmixed and pure of any concept, and he fashioned for himself this token of knowledge of God that is completely clear and free of error, namely the belief that God completely transcends any knowable symbol. And so, after this ecstasy which came upon him as a result of these lofty visions, Abraham returned once more to his human frailty: I am,he admits, dust and ashes, mute, inert, incapable of explaining rationally the Godhead that my mind has seen. . . . In his life we are taught that for those u,ho are advancing in the divine paths there is no other way of drawing near to God than by the intermediary of faith; it is only through faith that the questing soul can unite itself with the incomprehensible Godhead.loT

Our text, of course, occurs in a theological, not a mystical, work. And this explains why Gregory emphasizes the fact

FROM GLORY TO GLORY that the divine nature transcends all determination. This is

INTRODUCTION

36

not, however, a negative sort of transcendence, like that of the Neo-platonic One. The text speaks of an ecstasy which "comes upon" the soul, causing it to go out of itself, and enter into the realm of the Godhead, from which it returns again to its human frailty. Again, the ecstasy is linked with the proximity, that is, the presence, of God; hence the soul is united with the living God of the Bible and not with the abstract essence of the Neo-platonists. Finally, the most important point is that faith is seen to be the only way by which the soul can be united to the Transcendent. And as can be seen from the similarity of treatment, we are on the same level as we were in the Cotnmentary on the Canticle of Canticles in connection with the image of darkness. But what is most important here is the connection between Gregory's mystical doctrine and his theology. The progress made by the theology of transcendence during the fourth century brought about a more scientific formulation of an experience which, we may be sure, had not been unknown to the mystics of previous centuries, even though they had been unable to give it such accurate expression. The idea of ecstasy in Gregory is intimately connected with that of "sober inebriation." The expression, as we know, originates with Philo,lot and shows once again, as in the case of the notions of darkness and ecstasy, Gregory's dependence upon the great fewish mystic. The expression, "sober inebriation," is a paradox, very much like the "luminous darkness." It emphasizes the passivity of true ecstasy as compared with the effects of actual intoxication. And it is called "sober" to suggest that the state is not infra-rational but rather supraratronal. So too, the expression "luminous darkness" suggested

37

that the obscurity of the mind was not a defect-as, for example, if one would speak of the darkness of ignorancebut, on the contrary, the efiect of an excess of light' The theme of sober inebriation apPears in Gregory's works a number of times;ton but the most imPortant text is one from the ninth sermon of the Commentary on the Canticle of Canticles, which offers a commentary on Cant' 5't: Eat' my friends, and drinft, and be inebriated, my brothers' Gregory explains that

All intoxication causes the mind, overwhelmed with wine, to go into an

ecstasy,

but here there is an ecstasy involving a transformation

from

a worse to a better condition'

He thus brings out clearly the difierence between ecstasy and inebriation. He then continues:

In this way the mighty David became intoxicated and went out of himself : he saw, while in ecstasy' that divine beauty which no mortal can behold' and cried out in those famous words: Euery man is a liar.rro

Once again we find the theme of David's ecstasy together with thi same exPressions that occurred in the Treatise on Virginity. David,indeed, occupies Gregory in a number of othJr passag.r.ttt Here, however, the concePt of ecstasy is furthei clat-ified by that of inebriation' And the "beauty

t 38

INTRODUCTION

FROM GLORY TO GLORY

which no mortal can behold"-just as we have seen it in our discussion of the darkness-refers to the ultimate incomprehensibility of the divine nature, and not merely to the inability of man to understand supernatural reality. Gregory gives other examples of this ecstatic inebriation as it is found in the Scriptures: So too Paul, the new Benjamin, while in ecstasy, said: Whether ue be transported in mind, it is to God, for this ecstasy was a moverqent towards the Godhead; or uhether we be sober, it is for you.tt'

"new Benjamin in ecstasy" is based on the verse of the Psalm, There is Beniantin a youth, in ecstasy of mind."3 And Gregory explains this as follows: The reference to Paul

as a

The Old Testament foreshadowed the characteristic traits of the Apostles by the use of figures and symbols. Among these is, for example, the reference to Beniamin a youth, in ecstasy ol mind, instructed in the mysteries. And this is none other than Paul, the divine Apostle, of the race of Abraham and the tribe of Benjamin.lla

Here Gregory points out another characteristic of ecstasy: being inexpressible it cannot serve the purposes of instruction.

And we may recall in this connection St. Paul's distinction between the charism of prophecy and the charisms of revelation and the gift of tongues.

Finally, after Paul, we have St. Peter, who thus completes Gregory's list of those who enjoyed ecstasy.

39

I

am aware also [he says] that the blessed Peter experienced this sort of intoxication, hungry and drunk as he was at the same time. For even before real food was brought to him, being hungry and desirous to taste, while his household tuere Pre' paring,he experienced that divine and sober inebriation. And thus he went out of himself. . . .115

Here Gregory is referring to the pasage in Acts ro'ro, where the word ecsiasy is indeed used. In Gregory's description of it as a "divine and sober inebriation" we see, once again, the traditional paradox. And Gregory further emphasizes the "sober" quality of the experience by remarking that Peter was still lasting. This is perhaps an allusion to Peter's discourse in Acts zt5: These are not drunft as yoa suqPose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day. Again the inebriation is said to come upon Peter in the same way as the ecstasy of Abraham. In this way the passivity, the violence and suddenness of the experience is again clearly emphasized' In the twelfth sermon from the Cornmentary on the Can' ticle, the passage on inebriation is immediately followed by a discussion of "sleep," in accordance with the verse that follows in the Canticle I sleep and my heart utatcheth (Cant' suited to express the 5.2). The notion of sleep is admirably e*p.rier,.e of ecstasy. For sleep is, in the strict sense, a kind of pathos, a passive experience, in which the mind goes out of itself and is under the control of the imagination' From this point of view the spiritual life is seen as an awakening' a waiching, that withdraws the soul from the illusory dreams of sensual pleasure.ttu But in the sleep of ecstasy the soul is swept out of itself and the limitations of its understanding'

FROM GLORY TO GLORY

INTRODUCTION

not by illusory dreams but by the sovereign reality of the presence of God. This sort of sleep is far superior to being awake; and this gives rise to a new expression, the paradox of "watchful sleep."

naked intuition. May we make ourselves worthy of this vision, achieving by this sleep the arvakening

40

Sleep usually follows drinking. . . . But this is indeed a strange sleep and foreign to nature's custom. In natural sleep the sleeper is not wide awake, and he who is wide awake is not sleeping. Sleeping and waking are contraries, and they succeed and follow one another. But in this case there is a strange and

contradictory fusion

of

opposites

in the same

state.1r7

In this notion of

sleep Gregory stresses a new characteristic of ecstasy. The soul is so carried away by God's reality and so absorbed in her contemplation of Him that she loses consciousness

of everything else:

The contemplation of our true good makes us despise all these things; and so the eye of the body sleeps. Anything that the eye reveals does not attract the perfect soul, because by reason it looks

only to those things which transcend the visible universe. . . . When all of [the senses] have been lulled into inactivity by a kind of sleep, the hearr's functioning becomes pure, the reason looks up to heaven, unshaken and unperturbed by the motion of the senses. . . . Thus the soul, enjoying alone the contemplation of Being, will not awake for anything that arouses sensual pleasure. After lulling to sleep every bodily motion, it receives the vision of God in a divine wakefulness with pure and

of the

4r

soul!118

Note that here, as always, Gregory does not stress the Psychological phenomenon of the suspension of the senses-which can be, in itself, very ambiguous-but rather the mystical experience of the intensity of the divine presence which sweeps the soul and absorbs all its attention. Gregory does not, of course, exclude the psychological repercussions; indeed, they would seem to be suggested by the concrete, experiential way in which he describes the phenomenon. Now the darkening of the intelligence, which is suggested by the image of darkness, expresses the inability of the soul to endure the brilliance of the divine light. The image of inebration suggests the soul's inability to endure the divine happiness. The symbol of vertigo, dizziness, refers to the immensity of the divine nature. It expresses the soul's complete confusion in the presence of a reality for which there is no common measure. For, as Gregory explains inhis Commentary on Ecclesiastes,the soul is imprisoned within its own limitations, in accordance with its condition in space and time

;

Thus how can our mind, which always operates on a dimensional image, comprehend a nature that . And though the mind in its restlessness ranges through all that is knowable,

has no dimensionl . .

it

of comprehending might place itself out-

has never yet discovered a way

eternity in such wise that it side of it, and go beyond the idea of eternity itself and that Being which is above all being.l1e

INTRODUCTION

FROM GLORY TO GLORY

42

Again we see the soul's incapacity; it lacks a"way of comprehending"; and this, as we have already seen in our discussion of darkness, is characteristic of the created intellect completely overpowered in the presence of transcendent Being. But the image of vertigo is not merely for Gregory a speculative consideration, but is rather the expression of a concrete experience. It occurs twice in his works. The first passage is, once again, from the Commentary on Ecclesiastes: Imagine a sheer, steep crag, of reddish appearance below, extending into eternity; on top there is this ridge which looks down over a projecting rim into a bottomless chasm. Now imagine what a person would probably experience if he put his foot on the edge of this ridge which overlooks the chasm and and found no solid footing nor anything to hold on to. This is what I think the soul experiences when it goes beyond its footing in material things, in its quest for that which has no dimension and which exists for all eternity. For here there is nothing it can take hold of, neither place nor time, neither measure nor anything else; it does not allow our minds to approach. And thus the soul, slipping at every point from what cannot be grasped, becomes dizzy and perplexed and returns once again to

what is connatural to

it.12o

A similar

image occurs in the sixth sermon from the Commentary on the Beatitudes. Here again is the cliff projecting over an abyss:

Along the

you may often see mountains facing the sea, sheer and steep from top to bottom, sea-coast

43

while a proiection at the top forms a cliff oversomeone suddenly hanging the depths. Now looked down from such a clif{ to the depths below he would become dizzy. So too is my soul seized with dizziness now as it is raised on high by this great saying of the Lord, Blessed are the clean ol But no tnan heart, lor tltey sltall see God. says the any titne, great hath seen God at fohn. . .. This then is the steep and sheer rock that Moses taught us was inaccessibie, so that our minds can

if

.

approach it. For every possibility of apprehension is excluded by the words: No man can see the Lord and liue.r2r

in no way

The reference to Exodus 33.20722 gives us a clue to the interpretation of the passage. The image of vertigo is used to express man's anguish as he realizes ltis inability to endure the overpowering presence of the Godhead. And just as the symbol of vertigo expressed the soul's anguish before the infinite majesty of God, the notion of Eros denotes the surge of love which sweePs thc soul out of itself in proportion to its awareness of God's infinite loveliness. It should be noted here that Gregory's notion of Eros has nothing in common with the Platonic concept of love-an unfortunate confusion of which Anders Nygren is guilty in his chapter on Gregory in his book, Eros and Agape.t" Rather must it be explained in terms of ecstasy and "inebriation," as we have explained them: as God's adorable presence becomes more and more intense, the soul is, as it were, forced to go out of itself by a kind of infatuation, and to withdraw from its usual mode of existence, to be swept along the ways of God. Eros, then, is not a longing for possession in a self-centered

I--ROM GLORY TO GLORY

INTRODUCTION

way, but a truly ecstatic love. As Gregory explicitly tells us, Eros here is simply the Agape of the Gospels in its most intense form.

supra-rational attraction which draws the soul irresistibly towards God by a kind of "passionless passion."t'u We have here again another paradox. But what is most important here is that Eros expresses the experience of the soul as the infinite beauty of God becomes more and more present to it. The more the soul is aware of this beauty, the more it sees that it is inaccessible. And it then realizes that it attains this beauty more by desire than by actual possession, just as it comprehends it rather by darkness than in the light.

44

The bride then puts the veil from her eyes and with pure vision sees the ineffable beauty of her Spouse. And thus she is wounded by a spiritual and fiery

dart of desire (Eros). For love (Agape) that

is

strained to intensity is called desire (Eros).124

It is clear then that Gregory uses the word because he feels that the passionate aspect of Eros is a more suggestive symbol for the passivity of the soul as it is overpowered by the revelation of the infinite beauty of God. In this way, toor Gregory iustifies the use of nuptial imagery in the Canticle of Canticles to symbolize the love of God:

In order to have us understand its profoundest doctrine, the Scriptures use as a symbol that which is the most violent of all our pieasurable inclinations, I mean the passion of love. Thus we are meant to understand that the soul that contemplates the inaccessible beauty of the divine nature falls in love with it in much the same way as the body is attracted towards things that are connatural with it. But here the entire disturbance of the soul has been transformed into impassibility, all carnal passion is extinguished in us and the soul burns with love by the sole flame of the Spirit.125

Thus that irrational Eros, which violently draws bodies together by a physical attraction, becomes here a symbol of that

The soul, having gone out at the word of her Beloved, looks for Him but does not find Him. ' . . In this way she is, in a certain sense, wounded and beaten because of the frustration of what she desires, now that she thinks that her yearning for the Other cannot be fulfilled or satisfied. But the veil of her grief is removed when she learns that the true satisfaction of her desire consists in constantly going on in her quest and never ceasing in her ascent, seeing that every fulfilment of her desire continually generates a further desire for the Transcendent. Thus the veil of her despair is torn away and the bride realizes that she will always discover more and more of the incomprehensible and unhoped for beauty of her Spouse throughout all eternity. Then she is torn by an even more urgent she communicates to her Belonging, and loved the dispositions of her heart. For she has received within her God's special dart' she has been wounded in the heart by the point of faith, she has been n-rortally wounded by the arrow of love'l2?

45

46

Thus the ecstatic nature of Eros in Gregory becomes clear. Once again, the doctrine touches the very summit of the spiritual life, where the soul, in discovering more and more of God, more fully realizes His transcendence. But this discovery, far from making the soul despair, is actually an experience of God's fuller presence. It becomes a yearning which fills the soul more fully than any actual possession, in the same way that darkness was a truer knowledge than light. It is, again, the expression of a lively faith which the love of God excites in the soul, bringing about the indwelling of the Trinity with the experience of God's infinite beauty. We should add, however, that it removes any Pretensions the soul may have to a union with God wherein God would be subordinate; rather it displaces the soul and forces it to center itself on God in an act of total dispossession. It is here that we touch at the heart of Gregory's mystical theology in the doctrine of ecstatic love. And it is this that distinguishes his doctrine from the more intellectualistic approach of those great contemplative writers, Origen and Evagrius. In Gregory, "knowledge becomes love."t'8

5.

PROGRESS

I

FROM GLORY TO GLORY

IN

SANCTITY

In our discussion of the last text we left out a most important concept, to which we must now at last return: the soul's perpetual progress in sanctity. Ecstasy, which is ultimately the experience of God's presence, is not, for Gregory, a phenomenon urhich recurs in the same way each time; rather, it involves a process of infinite growth. Though God never ceases to remain the Darkness, the soul advances farther and farther into this Darkness. Nothing indeed could show

NTRODUCTI ON

47

more clearly the positive character of this experience. In any case, we have here what is Gregory's most characteristic doctrine: perfection considered as perpetual progress. We find

it

developed especially

inhis Life of Moses.

Gregory's notion of perfection implies a positive idea of the process of change which is a most important contribution to the Christian theology of man. For the Platonist, change is a defect; and the intelligible world is superior to the world of the senses insofar as it is immutable. Even the Christian Platonism of Origen cannot avoid this difficulty. Change is always thought of as a degeneration from a state of initial perfection; and the transformation wrought by Christ has for its sole purpose to destroy change and restore immutability. But change, after all, is essential to man's nature; it is that which distinguishes him from God. The logical consequence of tliis point of view is clear, and Gregory shrewdly saw it.

If

change is essential to the human condition, and change is

essentially degeneration, then it follows that the possibility of clegeneration must be essential to man' and that good can never be secure. In this case the activity of God would be a

continual restoration of man to his primitive immortality, and man would constantly tend to fall from it. Such a movement would be a continual back-and-forth, a continual falling and rising and beginning over again. "The soul," he writes, "is always unstable, wherever it is; and there is as it were a cycle in which the same things tend to recur."tt' Now to overcome this difficulty Gregory had to destroy the equation: good:immutabilit|, and evil:change. And consequently he had to show the possibility of a type of change which would not merely be a return to immobility-that is, to the mere negation of change. Here then is the revolution

INTRODUCTION already filled I Why does the sea continue to re-

FROM GLORY TO GLORY

48

in thought which Gregory accomplished. He begins by agree' ing with Origen that change is essential to created being:

of water without being increased by the additionl ... Rising up in the northern ceive this stream

part of the earth, the sun proceeds to the south, and then going underneath, it moves in the opposite

Our nature is essentially changeable. For whatever has received its internal principle by the process of change must necessarily be mutable. Now the passage from non-being to being is indeed a type of change, wherein the insubstantial is transformed into substance by the Power of God.13o

And again:

direction until northern side

it

comes

up again under the

of the earth; revolving about

con-

stantly in this way it rolls through the same course, and after its revolution it comes back again. /l turns in its circuit, says Ecclesiastes.ls2

it is with the cycle of human generation. It is, indeed, the life cycle as such. Now the man who is immersed in the life of the body is So too

Everyone is aware that all beings that are subiect to change never remain identical with themselves, but are constantly moving from one state to another by a perpetual change which is either for good or for ill. . . . Now to be subject to change is, ir, ,.rrr., constantly to be born again.131

"

But Gregory's contribution consists of the idea that this change can take place in one of two directions, and that the two sorts of motions are different. As for the inferior sort of change, it is cyclic, repetitious, a kind of marking time. It is characteristic of the biological world, and, so far as mere movement is concerned, reduces us to the animal level. This is the sort of change we find in

aware only of this cyclic motion:

The pleasure of drinking ceases when one's thirst is quenched; and similarly in eating, satiety extinguishes our appetite. So every desire ceases with the possession of its object, and if it comes again, it also goes away again.133

A man who is addicted to the satisfaction of his

desires is like

the Hebrews who, while they were prisoners of the Egyptians (a 6gure of the devil), were forced into brick-making: Those who yearn after these pleasures of clay, and

nature:

themselves, can never keep the receptacle for these pleasures full; though it is always being filled it always keeps emptying again before

keep

for the waters which flow the inflow never is the purpose What stops, the sea grows no larger. of this passage of water constantly filling what is

The

49

sea is the receptacle

into it from all sides, and though

filling

the next pouring. Thus it is just like the brick mason who throws more and more clay into his

FROM GLORY TO GLORY mouid as it keeps constantly emptying. Now I think that you will easily understand this symbol if you consider the appetitive power of the soul. For as soon as a man satisfies his desire by obtaining what he wants, he starts to desire something else and finds himself empty again; and if he satisfies his desire with this, he becomes emPty once again and ready for another. And this never stoPs until we depart from this material world.13a

INTR

Like the animals who labor and sweat in a mill with their eyes blindfolded, we go about the mill of life always going through the same motions and always coming back to the same place again. I mean that round of hunger, satiety, going to bed, getting up, emptying ourselves and filling ourselves follows the other, and we -one thing constantly never stop going round in circles until we get out of the mill.135 We may note that Gregory uses the same words for the cycle of desire as he does for the periodic motion of the sea ever filling and emptying. Man is captive within the prison of the cosmos.

A final characteristic of this movement is its insubstantial, illusory quality. It is motion without Progress; and for this Gregory uses the image of sand: men's interests in the things of this life are like castles children build in sand. The enioyment is

All

DUCTI ON

5r

limited merely to the effort one puts into building them. And as soon as you stop, the sand collapses and leaves not a trace of the work you put in.136

Still more clearly in another

passage:

It is like men who try to climb

through sand. It

big strides or not; they waste their effort. For their feet constantiy slip to the bottom with the sand, and so, despite all their energy, they make no progress does not matter whether they take

$

$

Again, man is locked in the prison of a perpetual cycle, and Gregory compares him with the beasts who turn a mill-stone:

O

t

whatsoever.l3T

We thus arrive at the paradox that what the Platonists call motion is, in reality, immobility; for the energy expended leaves the object exactly as it was and involves no spiritual change.

Now the second, and higher, type of movement is summarized by Gregory in a most unusual passage: For man does not merely have an inclination to evil; were this so, it would be impossible for him to grow in good, if his nature possessed only an inclination towards the contrary. But in truth the finest aspect of our mutability is the possibility of growth in good; and this capacity for improvement transforms the soul, as it changes) more and more into the divine. And so . . . what appears so terrifying (I mean the mutability of our nature) can really be a pinion in our flight towards higher things, and indeed it would be a hardship if we were not susceptible of the sort of change which is towards the better. One ought not then to be dis-

52

FROM GLORY TO GLORY

INTRODUCTION

tressed when one considers this tendency in our nature; rather let us change in such a way that we may constantly evolve towards what is better, being translormed frorn glory to glory, and thus always improving and ever becoming more perfect by

acquired is merely the beginning of a new acquisition. In this way, the notion of change, which is essential to the human

daily growth, and never arriving at any limit of perfection. For that perfection consists in our never stopping in our growth in good, never circumscrib-

53

condition, can take on a wholly positive aspect. By a reversal of values, the constant change of the physical world was seen as a real immobility; so too here, permanence in good becomes, paradoxically, the principle of authentic change. He says:

ing our perfection by any limitation.rss

We should note some of the expressions used in this text. First of all there is man's anxiety and distress in the face of change. It may be said that this is characteristic of every natural religion: it is an anxiety that is associated with a purely negative concept of change, change that can only be for evil. But as Gregory so often reminds us, there is a higher type of motion, a "good changer" a "change for the better";l3e and it is this sort of movement that St. Paul means when he speaks of our transformation 't'rom glory to glory (z Cor. :.r8); it is the perpetual growth in good. It is thus a mistake to imagine perfection as a state of complete immobility in restored innocence. Perfection is progress itself: the perfect man is the one who continually makes progress. And this cannot have a limit. The "pinion" or wing refers to the transformation into Spirit (pneuma),into the Dove; and the wing becomes a new principle of activity and not merely a negative thing, not merely the cessation of all evil change. In other words, and here is the solution to our problem, once the good has been won and the soul has been transformed into the Dove, it is no longer a question of protecting this possession against the threat of a change or a fall; rather, the good once

Here we have a very great paradox: motion and stability are the same. For usually speaking, one who is rising is not standing still, and the man who is standing still is not rising. But here he arises precisely because he is stationary. This means that a man advances farther on the path of perfection precisely insofar as he remains fixed and immovable in good. . . . It is like men who try to climb through sand. It does not matter whether they take big strides or not; they waste their effort. For their feet constantly slip to the bottom with the sand, and so despite all their energy, they make no progress whatsoever. But if, in the words of the Psalmist, a man drags his feet from the mire of the pit and sets them firmly upon the rock, . . . the more steadfast and unshakable he becomes in good, so much the more quickly will he accomplish his course. His very stability becomes as a wing in his flight towards heaven; his heart becomes winged because of his stability

in

good.1ao

We have thus reached the most important intuition of all of Gregory's mystical theology. The wings of the Dove refer to the participation in the divine life; they are the entire posi-

INTRODUCTION

FROM GLORY TO GLORY

54

tive aspect of all the forces that have transformed the soul. But these wings only help it to rise ever higher and higher, because the heavens to which it soars are an infinite abyss. God becomes ever more intimate and ever more distant: more

intimate as the Dove, more distant as the Darkness, known by the smallest child and yet unknown to the greatest mystic. For the soul possesses God and yet still seeks Him: it is at once changeable and unchanging:

Now here is a very strange paradox. All wells hold stili water; only in the bride is there said to be running water. She has the depth of a well together with the constant flow of a river.lal

Indeed, this dual aspect is essential to the human condition. It is man that is to be transformed into Spirit, and it is essential to man that this transformation be a constant becoming. This, then, is the meaning of the image of God in man, which indicates at once the process of divinization as well as the distinction that exists between God and man. Thus

it

can be shown that man must necessarily be changeable insofar as he is but an imitation of the divine nature. For an imitation would be identical rvith its model if it did not exist in a difierent way. So here the precise difference betrveen the image and its archetype is that the archetype is immutable and the image is not, but is essentially changeable, as we have said. Now change is motion which con-

stantly progresses from one state to another. But there are two kinds of motion: the one, which is always towards the good, never ceases in its prog-

ress, because there is no

55

limit to its possible trans'

formation.la2

And this is a direct consequence of the divine transcendence. However much the soul may be transformed into the Dove and participate in God, God remains ever beyond, and the soul must constantly move forward: The divine nature . . . is utterly immune to any participation in evil and thus Possesses the good without limit. . . . When therefore it draws human nature to participate in its perfection, because of the divine transcendence it must always be superior to our nature in the same degree. The soul grows by its constant participation in that which transcends it; and yet the perfection in which the soul shares remains ever the same, and is always discovered by the soul to be transcendent to the same degree.laa

then why it was that Moses, though he had seen God face to face, asked God to show Himself still more: We can

see

Indeed He would not have shown Himself to His servant if the vision would have been such as to terminate Moses' desire; for the true vision of God consists rather in this, that the soul that looks up to God never ceases to desire Him. . . . The man who thinks that God can be known does not really have life; for he has been falsely diverted from true Being to something devised by his own imagination. For true Being is true Life, and cannot be known by us. If then this life-giving nature transcends knowledge, what our minds attain in this

56

FROM GLORY TO GLORY case is surely not life. . . . Thus it is that Moses' desire is filled by the very fact that it remains unfulfilled. . . . And this is the reai meaning of seeing God: never to have this desire satisfied.laa

These passages, then, bring us to the very heart of Gregory's thought. As we have seen, the Darkness is not merely a negative thing, not merely the negation of all knowledge of God. Indeed, He is truly known insofar as the soul participates in Him. To know God "in the mirror of the soul" and to know Him in the Darkness are not two different experiences, but two aspects of the same phenomenbn. This awareness of God always falls short of the divine reality, and hence it is always oriented towards a more and more perfect knowledge. Mystical knowledge is thus always a mixture of knowledge and ignorance, possession and quest, immanence and Transcendence-it is a "luminous Darkness." This imperfect awareness is the only authentic knowledge of God, inasmuch as it retains within the finite area of knowledge the infinite realm of ignorance.

6. cnrconv's

DoCTRINE oF PERpETUAL pRocREss

(Errcrasrs)

Thus far we have seen how change can be an essential constituent of the created spirit by the rigorous affirmation of the principles of participation and transcendence. For the Platonist, on the other hand, change can only be deterioration; for the spiritual and the divine are identical, and the divine is unchangeable. But once we establish the transcendence of the divine with respect to the created spirit, another sort of change becomes possible, the movement of perpetual

INTRODUCTION

57

This movement tends towards the Immovable, and under this aspect it is at the opposite pole to the meaningless motion of the material world: it is a process of unification and concentration. But the ultimate unity and stability are

ascent.

never achieved; the soul is conceived as a spiritual universe in eternal expansion towards the infinite Darkness. To describe this perpetual growth of the soul Gregory uses the

Greek term epectasis ("tensionr" "expansion"):

All

heavy bodies that receive a downward motion

. are rapidly carried downwards of themselves, provided that any surface on which they are moving is graded and sloping, and that they meet no obstacle to interrupt their motion. So too, the soul moves in the opposite direction, lightly and swiftly moving upwards once it is released from sensuous and earthly attachments, soaring from the world below up towards the heavens. And if nothing comes from above to intercept its flight, seeing that it is of the nature of Goodness to attract those who raise their eyes towards it, the soul keeps rising ever higher and higher, stretching with its desire for heavenly things ro those that are before, as the Apostle tells us, and thus it will always continue to soar ever higher. For because of what it has already attained, the soul does not wish to abandon the heights that lie beyond it. And thus the soul moves ceaselessly upwards, always reviving its tension for its onward flight by means of the progress it has already realized. Indeed, it is only spiritual activity that nourishes its force by exercise; it does not slacken its tension by action but rather increases

it. This is the reason why we

say that the great

58

INTRODUCTION

FROM GLORY TO GLORY Moses, moving ever forwards,

did not stop in his

vine Goodness, and they will always enjoy a greater in grace throughout all

upward climb. He set no limit to his rise to the stars. But once l're had put his foot upon the ladder on which the Lord had leaned, as Jacob tells us, he constantly kept moving to the next step; and he continued to go ever higher because he always found another step that lay beyond the highest one that he had reached.ras

We may note here the use of the word epecta.rzs, which Gregory has borrowed from St. Paul (Phil. 3.13). It is an especially apt word to express the soul's constant motion forward, as it constantly forgets what is past, continually open to new graces. The term is thus explained by Gregory: The great Apostle told the Corinthians of the wonderful visions he enjoyed during the time of his mystical initiation in Paradise . . . and he testifies: I do not count myseff to haue apprehended. But forgetting the things that are behind, I stretch mysefi lorth to those that are before. And clearly this is meant to include even that third heauen which Paul alone saw; for even Moses told us nothing of it in his cosmogony. Yet even after listening in secret to the mysteries of heaven, Paul does not let the graces he has obtained become the limit of his desire, but he continues to go on and on, never ceasing his ascent. Thus he teaches us, I think, that in our constant participation in the blessed nature of the Good, the graces that we receive at every

59

and greater participation eternity.146

It

is clear that the Greek word epectasis is very suitable to

of the soul's progress. On the one hand, there is a certain contact with God, a real participation, a divinization (Greek epi: "at" or "towards"). The soul is, in a true sense, transformed into the divine; it truly participates in the Spirit, the pneuma. But God at the same time express the double aspect

remains constantly beyond, and the soul must always go out of itself (Greek eft: "out of")-or, rather, it must continually go beyond the stage it has reached to make a further discovery. Thus Gregory says of Abraham: Relying on what he had already found he stretched himself forth to the things that were before. . . . And as he disposed all these things in his heart, he kept constantly transcending what he had grasped by his own power, for this was far inferior to what he sought.laT

Thus each stage is important: it is, as Gregory says, a "glory"; but the brilliance of each stage is always being obscured by the new "glory" that is constantly rising. So too the sun of the new creation, the New Testament, obscures the brightness

point are indeed great, but the path that lies beyond

of that first sun, the Old Law. And the laws of the soul's growth are parallel with those of man's collective history. And yet this is by no means to depreciate the value of each

our immediate grasp is in6nite. This will constantly happen to those who thus share in the di-

particular stage-all are good, all are stages of perfection. But the mistake would be to try to hold on to any one of them, to

6o

FROM GLORY TO GLORY

put a stop to the movement of the soul. For sin is ultimately a refusal to grow.

Gregory has also expressed this idea in his symbol of the of garments:

succession

After removing her old tunic and divesting herself of all further clothing, fthe spouse of the Canticle] became much purer than she was. And yet, in comparison with this newly acquired purity, she does not seem to have removed her headcovering. Even after that complete stripping of herself she still 6nds something further to remove. So it is with our ascent towards God: each stage that we reach always

reveals something heavy weighing on the soul. Thus

in

comparison with her new found purity, that very stripping of her tunic now becomes a kind of garment which those who find her must once again

remove.las

The soul was indeed stripped; but this very nakedness becomes a kind of covering in comparison with the ever greater purity which is growing within it. The soul could not have known this before ; it had every reason to think it was completely stripped; it could not then have known the possibility of a greater purity. It would seem, then, that human nature is, as it were, made up of a series of spheres or layers of reality, each one inside the other. The successive removal of the "tunics" or the outer layers allows a gradual penetration into man's interior life. And all these successive deaths and resurrections bring the soul in intimate contact with God Who dwells at its center, though ever inaccessible; the spheres or levels of intensity are

INTITODUCTION

6r

infinite, and thus perfection consists in this perpetual penetration into the interior, a perpetual discovery of God. This is essentially what Gregory is describing. Men always have the tendency to stabilize, to fix, the various stages of perfection which they have attained, and to see in the timeprocess a threat to their very transitory moments of happiness.

They want to recover their past ecstasies, to go, like Marcel Proust, in search of Time Past. For Gregory, on the contrary, the future is always better than the past. But to overcome this natural tendency of the soul, Gregory ofiers the support of faith, which is an adherence to a promise. Here we have the transition from poetry to prophecy, from the anthropology of the Platonists to that of the Bible. Paradise-and creationis yet to come. We must no longer try to recall it, but to hope for its accomplishment. And thus forgetfulness, a sin to the Platonist, here becomes a virtue. We must leave the known to go towards the unknown, to go out, as Rainer Maria Rilke would say, into the Open. This is indeed the journey of Abraham, ventured during the Night. As fean Hering has written: "The model of the Christian is not the princess who has come down from heaven and longs to return; it is Abraham that starts on his way towards an unknown country which God will point out to him." But a difficulty still arises: is not this progress rather a state of sufiering, if indeed the soul is never to find consolation I Gregory does take this objection into account, as he discusses on various occasions the despair of the soul and its constant disappointment at seeing itself deprived of what it is seeking. He speaks thus of Moses,tnn and, in another passage, of the bride of the Canticle of Canticles:

FROM GLORY TO GLORY

INTRODUCTION

The soul, having gone out at the word of her Beloved, looks for Him but does not find Him. She calls on Him, though FIe cannot be reached by any verbal symbol, and she is told by the watchmen (the angels) that she is in love with the unattainable, and that the object of her longing cannot be apprehended. In this way she is, in a certain sense, wounded and beaten because of the frustration of

crease in size and strength, in such wise that the participant, nourished in this way, never stops growing and keeps getting larger and larger. Indeed, as the Source of good keeps flowing and welling up without end, so too the participant, as it becomes larger, grows more and more in desire, by the fact that nothing that it receivcs is lost or left unused, and everything that flows in produces an increase in capacity. Thus the two are functions of each other:

6z

what she desires, now that she thinks that her yearning for the Other cannot be fulfilled or satisfied. But the veil of her grief is removed when she learns that the true satisfaction of her desire consists in constantly going on with her quest and never ceasing in her ascent, seeing that every fulfilment of her desire continually generates a further desire for the Transcendent. Thus the veil of despair is torn away and the bride realizes that she will always discover more and more of the incomprehensible and unhoped for beauty of her Spouse throughout all eternity. Then she is torn by an even more urgent longing.lso

The important point to note in this text is that the soul's desire is at each moment fulfilled. The soul is a potency; and this potency is fulfilled by its participation in God, and in this way it attains some perfection, some completion, as we have pointed out earlier. But this participation expands the soul further and makes it capable of a still higher degree of participation: Participation in the divine good is such that, where occurs, it makes the participant ever greater and more spacious than before, bringing to it an in-

it

63

the potency that is nourished grows by the reception of the good, and the nourishing Sorrrce keeps over-

flowing

as

thc increased store of goods becomes ever

greater. It is clear, then, how large it can become, since there is no limit to stop its growth.151

The expressions used here are very much like those one would use of ordinary nourishment. Bodily nourishment, however, would, for Gregory, come under the heading of "cyclic motion;" it is like the brick-mason's mould that fills up and empties again, and its capacity never increases; there is simply a constant passing through. Spiritual nourishment, on the other hand, increases the capacity of the soul that receives it;15? all of it can be assimilated, and nothing iost. Hence in the spiritual order the soul can grow PerPetually; ahvays filled to capacity, it can always receive more. In this way, then, perpetual growth implies no sense of dissatisfaction. As Charles du Bos, in an essay on Wordsworth,lo3 has defined the spiritual, it is "the presence of more where there had been no awareness of less." This is the essence of the gratuitous gift, the gift of pure liberality, that it creates where there had been nothing. And it is true of the gift as well as

64

FROM GLORY TO GLORY

INTRODUCTION

the recipient: grace endlessly creates ever new eyes to look uPon ever new suns. Thus Gregory, in commenting on the text of the Canticle, Thy eyes are of tltose of doues (Cant. r.r4), explains:

limits. Spiritual substances are further divided as follows: first there is the uncreated substance, itself the Creator of all things, that remains eternally what it is. Remaining ever unchangeable, it transcends all addition or diminution; it cannot receive any further perfection. The other class of spiritual substance has been brought into being by creation; thus it constantly looks towards the first Cause, and is preserved in existence by a continual participation in transcendent Being. Thus, in a certain sense, it is constantly being created, ever changing for the better in its growth in perfection; along these lines no limit can be envisaged, nor can irs progressive growth in perfection be limited by any term. In this way, its present state of perfection, no matter how great and perfect it may be, is merely the beginning of a greater and superior stage. Thus

Thus the beauty of the bride's eyes is praised because of the image of the Dove which appears in her pupils. For we receive within ourselves a likeness of whatever we look upon. Norv the man who no longer looks toward flesh and blood, gazes rather on the life of the spirit; as the Aposrle says, he lives and walks in the spirit, and by killing the deeds of the flesh by means of the spirit, he becomes neither natural nor carnal but wholly spiritual. This is the reason why the Bridegroom praises the soul that has been freed of all carnal passions by saying that the image of the Dove is in its eyes; for this means that the impression of the spiritual life shines within the clarity of the soul. And when the puri6ed eye of the sou! has received the impression of the Dove, it turns to contemplate the Bridegroom's beauty. For no man can say ,he Lord lesus, but by the Holy Ghost.rsa

Now this idea of the appearance of being where there had been nothing corresponds precisely with the Biblical notion of creation (fttisis); it designates an absolute beginning, that which is totally new. Gregory uses rhis terminology, too, in this connection: What is spiritual and immaterial . . . is free of all such determinations, it evades all terms and has no

65

the words of the Apostle are verified: the stretching

forth to the things that are belore involves the forgetting of what has already been attained.l5d Thus each stage of spiritual growth is the development of a reality that is entirely new, and hence can be compared with the first creation: Now the voice of the Word is ever a voice of power. At the creation, light shone forth at His command, and again at His order, the firmament arose. . So too now, when the Word calls a soul that has advanced to come unto Him, it is immediately empowered at His command and becomes what the Bridegroom wishes. It is transformed into something divine, and it is translormed lrom the glory

66

FROM GLORY TO GLORY

INTRODUCTION

in which it exists to a higher glory by a perfect kind of alteration.lsG

Thus Baptism, too, is a new creation, raised up by the Holy Spirit out of the baptismal water, just as the same Spirit had brought the first creation into being. Finally, every stage of spiritual growth is another creation accomplished by the Spirit. For God, as Paul wrote, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts (z Cor. 4.6). Thus Gregory further explains:

Thus every stage of growth in the soul is an absolute beginning; as he has said: [The created spiritual substance] is constantly being created, ever changing for the better by its growth in perfection. . . . In this way, its present state of perfection, no matter how great and perfect it may be, is merely the beginning of a greater and su-

You were buried with Me in Baptism unto death; /u, you rose again and ascendi in communion with my divinity. This is what is meant by the word Libanus. So rise up now from here and go on towards other peaks, advancing and ever rising by operative knowledge. . . . For no one can live with Me as My bride unless by the myrrh of death she is transformed into the incense of Libanus. Since you have reached this height, do not stop climbing as though you had already attained. This Libanus is the beginning of your faith, in which you shared by the resurrection, and it is the beginning of your progress towards the highest graces. From this beginning, then, which is faith, thou shalt pass and come: that is, you will now arrive and at the same time not cease to pass on perpetually by continuing to rise.159

perior stage. Thus the words of the Apostle are veri-

fied: the stretching forth to the things that are before involves the forgetting of what has already been attained.l5?

Thus the notion of epectasis as a perpetual creation sets Gregory's theology of man directly in the line of Biblical thought and the history of salvation. Indeed, it shows how the history of salvation is made up of a series of divine acts which are continually new achievements. The origin of the world was the first creation; the Resurrection of the Word is the new creation: There are two creations: the first, by which we were made, and the second one, by which we were redeemed. . . Because that old creation had been ruined and blotted out by sin, there had to be a new creation in Christ. . . . For this new creation Christ led the way, being called the first-born, for indeed FIe was the first-fruits of all men, of those who are begotten unto life, and those who, though dead,

were given life through His resurrection.ls8

67

This passage introduces us to another theme which is characteristic of Biblical theology: the notion of end as beginning, that is, that every perfection is a principle of a higher good.

We

see the Word, then, leading the bride up a rising staircase, as it were, up to the heights by the

68

FROM GLORY TO GLORY ascent of perfection. . . . He bids the bride

INTRODUCTION draw

near to the light and then to become beautiful by

in the light, into the form of

the her has enjoyed Dove. And then, even though she share of good things as far as was in her power,

being changed,

He nonetheless continues to draw her on to a Participation in transcendent Beauty as though she had not yet tasted of it. In this way her desire grows in proportion with her Progress to each new stage of development; and because of the transcendence of the graces which she finds ever beyond her, she always seems to be beginning anew. For this reason the Word says once again to His awakened bride Arise,' and, when she has come, Come' For he who is rising can always rise further; and for him who runs to the Lord the open field of the divine course is never exhausted. We must therefore constantly arouse ourselves and never stop drawing closer and closer in our course. For as often as He says Arise, and Come, He gives us the Power to rise

hope for. Similarly, though the bride is a dove because of her previous perfection, she is ordered to become a dove once more by way of being transformed into what is more perfect. And r'vhen she

has achieved this, the Word is even beyond that.161

will show her what

I need not emphasizehere the fundamental unity we find in all these texts in which Gregory develops in various ways the theme of transformation into the Dove. One might also consider the allusion to the Pauline notion of transformation front glory to glory (z Cor.3.r8). But I wish merely to stress the very important idea that every ending is but a beginning, and every arrival but a new departure. Everything seems as though it has always been known-and yet it is ever new.

This notion of a perpetual beginning, that is not merely a repetition but something always new and fresh, is one of Gregory's most germinal ideas.lu' I shall quote just one Passage:

and make progress.loo

Now the soul is not simply transformed into the Dove, but it is transformed "from Dove to Dove." For the Spirit accomplishes within the soul ever new creations in His image:

In bidding the bride to become beautiful even though she is beautiful, He reminds us of the words of the Apostle who bids the same image to be trans'

lormed from glory to glory (z Cor. 3.rB)- This means that though what we find and grasp is alu'ays glory, no matter how great or sublime it may be, we always believe it to be less than what rve

69

Thou, indeed, art the most High, abiding forever, and canst never seem smaller to those who approach Thee, for Thou art always to the same degree higher and loftier than the faculties of those who are rising to Thee. . . . Thus the new grace we may obtain is greater than what we had before, it does not put a limit on our final goal; rather, for those rvho are rising in perfection, the limit of the good that is attained becomes the beginning of the discovery of higher goods. Thus they never stoP rising,

moving from one beginning to the next, and the beginning of ever greater graces is never limited.l63

70

FROM GLORY TO GLORY

In this way Gregory answers the Origenist objection, which would suggest that change and motion are ultimately due to satiety and tedium. This difficulty would imply that the good can produce a certain weariness, and hence that a relapse and a fall from good are always possible. But Gregory shows us -and this, as E. von Ivanka has pointed out,l8a is one of his greatest contributions-that it is characteristic of this spiritual movement not to produce any satiety, precisely because it is a continual discovery of what is new. Here it is not a question of instability, but of growth. Only the flesh can know satiety; the Spirit never wearies: The soul that looks up towards God, and conceives that good desire for His eternal beautyr constantly experiences an ever new yearning for that which lies

ahead, and her desire is never given its full satisfaction. Hence she never ceases ,o stretch herself forth to those things that are before, ever leaving the stage in which she is to enter more deeply into the interior, into the stage which lies ahead.165

Such spiritual activity develops by being exercised. As Gregory explains,

A greedy appetite for food is terminated by satiety, and the pleasure of drinking ends when our thirst is quenched. And so it is with the other things. . . . But the possession of virtue, once it is solidly achieved, cannot be measured by time nor limited by satiety. Rather, to those who are its disciples it always appears as something ever new and fresh.166

Here again Gregory resumes the Biblical theme of the end as a beginning. It is, however, completely difierent from that

INTRODUCTI ON 7t of the Alpha-Omega, for it stresses the close articulation, the intimate sequence of the various stages in the process of growth. It applies, as well, to the history of salvation, in which each era marks an end. Thus Justin had shown how Noah marked the end of the ancient world and the beginning of the new one. Cyril of Jerusalem had seen in the Baptism of Christ, and in the |ordan itself, the boundary between the Old and the New Testament. Christ is essentially the End and the Beginning, destroying by His death the old world and inaugurating the new. Baptism, too, is an end and a beginning.tut So too, every stage in the spiritual life is an ever new beginning. And that which had seemed to be a limitation, each perfection, which is, at every point, precisely proportioned to the soul's capacity, becomes a new point of departure. Each peak we strive for fills our entire horizon, and, when we reach it, another rises up beyond. Such is the eternal process of man's discovery of the divine glory. And each stage is as nothing before the rest that still remains-"a drop of the night dew that dampens the locks of the Beloved."tut Indeed it is but a drop of dew in the ocean of infinite Darkness. Dove will give place to Dove, and Darkness to Darkness. There will always be the Dove and always the Darkdess, forever obscure and yet forever bright. Such is the spiritual message of Gregory of Nyssa.

NOTES TO THE INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

: Lp;.tlc r 3. PG 46.ro49A. 3 I'c; 32.276A-8. a

PG

t9;z), :'Cf. c

l'G

22Episrle 23

facger, Gregorii N),sseni olrcra ascetica (cd. J. P. Cavernos).

46.;:5A:W. 256.q

iI.

Epistles

ro-rz, PG

YIll.r

(Leiden, Brill:

8Sce J. Dani6lor, "Aftoluthia chcz Grdgoire de Nysse," Reuuc de rcltgicrrscs, r9;j, zt9 lI.

Lilc ol

St. Maoina, PG +6.giSD-g76A=W. lrcger, op. Virginia \\'. Callahen).

loEpistle r9, PG 46.ro768-C. 11 In the sermon, Against Those Who Arc Inpatient in Suflering, PG +6.;o83r6. 12Epistlc r9, PG 46.ro76C. t3

[pi,tl.

PG 46.to76D-to77A. See also F. Diekamp, "Die Wahl Grcgors vrrn Nlssa zunr Metropoliten von Sebaste ," Theologische Quartalschrilt, tgo8, :8+

19,

{T.

1a

Epistle t9, PG 46.to77A-8. r; Gregory's Fouth Scrnron on Ealtel, PG +6.68r-68+. lt Serrnon on the Ascension, PG 46.689-693. 1i Sernton on the

Holy Spi'it,PG 46.696-7or. 13 Epistle to Peter, PG 45.47A.. [Gregory's rvork against Eunomius falls into four parts: thc 6rst work rvhich is our lrescnt book r; the second which is the second part of our present book rz; the third and longest section comprising books 3-r:a, and finally the critique of Eunomius'profcssion of faith, which is our present book z. F-or the best edition, see now W. Jaeger, Contra Eunontium (z vols. Berlin rgzr-zz); cf. B. Altaner, Patologie (z ed., Freiburg, Herder: r95o), pp. z6t-2, a.nd s€e our notes to the translation, n. 15, below.l le PG 46.544-553.

For example, the references to discussions on the Holy Spirit, the mention of the expected arrival of delegates from Egypt (:SEA). Again, Meletius of Antioch died during the Council, and it was Gregory who gave the funeral panegyric (PG a6.85z8-863A). Now the panegyric clearly refers to the discourse On His Ordination: cf. 85zC-853A. This is a decisive proof of its date. 21

The "Antidico-marianites" denied the perpetual virginity of the Virgin Mary. 72

above,

PG 45.rrz9D.

2':

Pc

27

PG 46.56oA.

28

Epistle t7, PG 46.to1? fr,

29See

46.553-576.

n. r8,

above.

Against Apollinaris, to Theophilus ol Alexandria, PG 45.1259-1277. See l. Liebaert, La doctrinc chrktologique dc Saint Cyrille d'llcrandrie auant la qaerellc nestoricnne (Paris r95r), p. r53. 30

37

On IIis Ordination, PG 46.544B. r, PG 46.roooD-roo4B. 33Tuo Rediscoacrcd Wotfts ol Ancient Christian litcratare: Grcgory and Iv!acarius (Leiden, Britl: r954), pp. t33-r42. 32See Epistle

34 Lile ol Moses,PG 44.3oo8, ed. f. Danidlou ry55), t.2, with the note. 35 On the Creation ol Man, PG q+.rl7A-C.

(Sources chr6tiennes,

36

Great Catechctical Discourse 5, PG 45.24P.

s7

On the Soul and Rcsarrcction, PG 46,148C-r49A.

r

ol

Nyssa

bis, Paris:

On thc Crcation of Man, PG 44.r84B. It is thus clear that Gregory's ultimate idea is based on the Biblical opposition between flcsh and spirit, sarx and pncuma, that is, between man vivified by the divine activity-which is in accord with his nature-and man deprivcd of it, in a state of misery. 38

3s

On the Crcation

ol Man, PG 44.r8aC-D.

40

Great Catechetical Discourse 6, PG 45,zBC-zgD,

a\

Ibid., PG 45.zgC.

a2See

20

n. 18,

25

sciences

cit., 386.22fr. (ed.

3, PG 46.ror6B-C.

Epistle 3, PG 46.rorGroz4.

24See

46.ro4oC-ro.15C.

.3:..1roB C, 5osA D.

?Fpistlc 6, PG 46.ro33A-ro36B.

e

73

E. von lvanka, Hcllenittischcs und Chistliches in friihbyzaxtinischen Zcitalter (Vienna r95z), p. roo.

See

t Set T. P. Migne, I'atrologit graeca (=PG) vol. 37.41P.-448.

J. Dani€lou, Origine

(Ptis tg48),

pp. 272fr,

a3

On the Dcad,PG 46.5zzD-524A.

14

lb;d., PG 46.5248.

45

Great Catechctical Discotrse g, PG qS.:58.

4s

lbid., PG 4536C-D. a7 On the Creation ol Man, PG 44.r88C. 48 Ibid., PG +q.r 8:A.

INTRODUCTION

FROM GLORY,TO GLORY

74 4s 50

lbid., PG 44.r89C-D.

72

On ,/tc Baptism

Ibid.,PG.44.r85B.

73

Against Tltose lVho Pwt Off Baptisnt, PG 46.42rA.

51 On the entire question, see Hans Urs von Balthasar, Pftsence ct Pcttsic (Paris r95z), pp. z5-2g, and J. Dani€lou, Platonisme et thiologie mystique (Paris tg4d, pp. 52-55. 52 Gregory always treats the Incarnation in terms of the Atonement, and I am not aware of a passage devoted exclusively to the Incarnation as such. It should be noted, however, that in the Treatise Against Apollinaris he shows that it was essential for the complete meaning of the Incarnation that the Word should have assumed an integral human nature.

53

Grca, Catcchetical Discourse 24, PG 45.64D-65A.

Ibid. 26, PG a5.68D. 55 This point was completely missed by fean Riviire in his work, Le dogme 5a

de la Rldemption: Endes critiques ct docilments (Paris parison literally. 56 57 58

5s

r93r); he

takes t}re com'

Great Catechetical Discoursc zz, PG 45.6oD.

lbid. ft, PG 45.528-c. lhid. 32, PG 45.8oA-B. lbid. t6, PG

On the Creation ol Man, PG 44.r85C. gTTreatise

Againa Apollinaris, PG 45.u53A; see also Against Eunomius z, PG +s.SqSC. 62Trcatise Against Apollinaris, PG 45.rz6oA-C. On Gregory's doctrine of the solidarity of all men in Christ, see Louis Malevez, "L'6glise dans le Christ," Recherchcs de scicnces religieuses (tS:S), pp, z6o-z8o; S. Gonzalez, "El realismo platonico de S. Gregorio de Nisa," Gregorianum (rSSq), pp. 189-2o6.

rr,

PG 45.88o8-C.

6a See

PG 46.577-6oo. 65 See PG 46.4t6-62; see also

.

Dani€lou, "Le mystlre du culte dans les hom6lies liturgiques du S. Gr6goire de Nysse," Festgabe Casel (tg5o), pp.25fr. 68 87

f

lb;d. 3s, Pc On

l.

Dani6lou, "Les repas de la Bible et lcur signification," La Maison-Dieu,

76 See

the Commentary on the Canticle of Canticles, PG 44.9894 and following.

77

PG 46.692A*8. 78 Comn. on the Cant., PG 4a.989C. See Selection 66 below. 7s

Great Catechetical Discottrse 37, PG 45.qP'-C,

80

Ignatius, Epistle to the Ephesians zo.z,

81

Irenaeus, Against the Heresies, 4.r8.5.

82

on

83

Cornm. on the Caflt., PG 44.rogzC-D.

84

For a fuller treatment, see J. Dani€lou, Platonisme et thlologie mystique

Christ's Resutcction, sermon

r,

PG 46.6rrC-D.

Comm. on the Cant., PG 44.roooC. See Selection 7o below. 86For a discussion, see Dani6lou, Platonisme et th6ologie nystique, pp. 38-rro.

87

45.89A'-8.

tie

Against Those Who Put Off Baptism, PG 46.4zoC-D; cf. also On the Baptism ol Christ, PG 46.6ooA-8. See Dani€lou, Sactamcntum Fnuti, pp. r3'zo.

ea

ol Christ,PG 46.6ooA-8.

On the Baptism

77

Against Thosc Who Put Off Baptism, PG 46.42oC.

Comm. on the Cant., PG 44.roooC. See Selection 7o below.

80 See

E. von Ivanka, "Vom Platonismus zur Theorie der Mystik," Schotastift

(rS:6), pp. r85f{., esp. rgz-r93. On the soul's knowledge of God as in mirror,

see Dani€lou, Platonisme

eo

a

et th|ologie mystique, pp. 221-274; A. Lieske,

"Die Theologie der Christusmystik Gregors von Nyssa," Zeitschrift Thcologie (r94o7, pp. rz-r6.

lir

ftatholischc

Comm. on the Cant., PG 44.8248-C, See Selection z9 below. Cf. also

Comm. on the Cant., PG 44.8zrA-8.

Lile ol

r955), e2

Moses,

PG 44877At ed. Dani€lou

ii. r63. See Selection

(Sources chritiennes

(z

Comm. on the Cant., PG 44.rq7C, See Selection 75 below.

ea

On the Lord's Prayer, PG 44.rt37A-P.

ffi

bis: Paris

f. Mar6chal, Essai sur la vols., Brussels-Paris t937-38), ii, pp. ro5-rrr.

es

ss On

r

15 below.

On the Soul and Rcsunection, PG 46.97A. Cf.

psychologie des mystiques

6s

7o

Cf. Erik Petcrson, "Zur Bedeutungsgeschichte von parrhlsia," Festschrilt ftil

Reinhold Seebcrg (1929).

e7

Great Catechetical Discourse :S, PG +S.888-D.

Baptism ol Christ, PG +6.S8gD, and see J. Dani6[ou, Sacramentam Futuri (Paris r95o), pp. t52-r76. 68

7s See

xviii, pp. 8 fi.

a5

45.52C.

Against Eunomius

I4lbid.,PG 46.42oC,. Sce also F. J. D6lger, "Der Durchzug durch das Rote Mecr als Sinnbild der christlichen 'laufe," Anti/1e and Christcntatn z (r93o), pp. 63 fi., esp. pp. 76-79.

(Paris r944).

60

63

ol

75

Christ, PG 46.592C-D.

thc Crcation ol thc World

(=In

Hetaemeron),PG 44.68P.

Life ol Gregory Thaumaturgus, PG 46.gt3C.

s7

On His Brother Basil, PG

46.8r2C.

s8

On thc Psalms 7, PG 44.457A.

ee

Mar6chal, op. cit., ii,

10o

INTRODUCTION

FROM GLORY TO GLORY

76

Lile ol

Moses,

r5 below.

p. trt.

PG 44a76C177Ai ed. Dani6lou, ii.t6z-rfu. Scc Sclcctior

r33

(rS:6),

p.

(W, Jaeger, Gregorii opcro

Against Eunomius

asceticd,

Ylll.r)

rz, PG 45.94oAj4rB.

735

liir

netdestancntliche

14issen-

See the Comm. on the Cant., PG 44.9898 and following (Selection 66 below), On Christ's Ascension, PG 46.6928-C, and elsewhere. Comm. on the Cant., PG 44.989C-D. See Selection 66 below.

111 See

774

Oz the Psalms 6, PG 44.5o9C; On Christ's Ascension, PG a6.693A. Comm. on tltc Cant,, PG ++.g8qD. See Selection 66 below.

Ps. 67.28, discussed by Gregory On the Psalms

in

t4,PG a,q.SlZB.

Comm. on the Cant., PG 44.989C (Selection 66 bclow); and cf. 99uA (Selection 67 below). t\6 lbid., PG 44.996A-D. See Selection 68 below. 717

lbid., PG 44.992C. See Selection 67 below. lbid., PG 44.993At. See Selection 67 below.

rre On Ecclesiaster, sermon 7,

PG 44,72gC. See Selection 17 below. azo lb;d., PG qq.TzgD-?zzA. See Selection r7 below. 72r On the Beatitadcs, sermon 6, PG 44.r264C.

And again he saiil: Thou cans, tot sce fiy face: lor man shall fiot sec mc and liac (Ex. 3j.zo). 123 Anders Nygren, Erot ct Agape: La notion chrltienne de I'amour et ses tanslormations (Paris r944): Eng. transl. by P. S. Watson (Philadelphia r953). 722

124

Comm. ofl the Cdnt., PG 44.ro48C. See Selection 76 below.

On Ecclesiastes, sermon

r,

PG 44.628C-D.

Lile ol Moses, PG. 44.4o5C-D; ed. Danidlou, ii.z44 (Selection zz below); cf. also Oz tltc Dctd, PG 46.5ooD-5olD. ritsOn Perlcction, PG (Selection z bclorv); see the edition by 46.2858-C W. faeger, op. cit., zr3.t4-2t4.6, 73s On the Psalms 3, PG 44.460B-C; ibid. a, PG 44.5ooB. 14o Lile ol hloses, PG 44.4o7C-D; ed. Danidlou, ii.z43-244. See Selection :z

below,

'4r Comm. on the Cant., PG 4a.g77C. See Selection 64 below, 7a2

On thc Psalms 14, PG qq.SlZB.

t15

7r8

45.57D.

137

108

113

1:r$

z8g.z7-z9o.rt.

See Selection 16 below,

108See Hans Lewy, Sobria ebrietas (Zeitsehrift schalt,Berheft 9, Giessen r9z9).

zr, PG

On Ecclesiastcr, sermon 3, PG a4.6a8D. L;le ol Moses,PC 44344A; ed. Dani6lou, ii.6o-6r. See Seletion 4 below. Funeral Oration 'for Placilla, PG q6.888D.

134

On Virginity, PG q636fi. See Selection rz below. Cf. the text by f.

r72

lbid., pG 44.r r3B.

L;le ol Moses, PG 44328A-B; ed. Daniilou, ii.z-3. 732 On Ecclesitstcr, sernon r, PG 44.624D-625A. See Selection 3 below,

356.

r7o

Ibid.,PG 44.to37C. See Selection 75 below. On thc Soul and Re.rurrection, PG a6.96D.

77

r31

See Selection 47 below.

105L Hausherr, "Ignorance in6nie," Orientalia christiana poiodica

701

lbid., PG 44.772A.

a27

lso Great Catec/reticsl Discotrrse

lbid., PG 44.roo4A. See Selection 7o below.

Cavarnos

126

12s

a$lbid., PG 44.8938.

76

Ibid., PG qa,.ZZsC-D.

a23

tol Comm. on the Cant., PG 44.892C-D. See Selection 47 below. t02lb;d., PG See Selection 47 below. 44.892C-893C. 704

125

a13

raa

zr

zr, PG 45.57D-6oA. Comm. ofi the Cant., PG 4a.873D-876A. See Selection 43 below.

Graat Catechctical Discourse

Lile ol Moscs, PG 44.4o4A-D; ed. Dani€lou, ii.zg3-235, 239.

See Selection

below.

\4s t+6

Ibid., PG 44.4ooD-4orB; ed. Dani€lou, ii.zz4-227. See Selection zr below. Comm. on the Cant., PG 44,94oD-g4rA. See Selection 5o below.

ra1

Against Eanomius

7a8

Comm. on the Cant., PG 44.roz9B-C. See Selection 75 below.

tz,

PG 45.94oD-94rD. See Selection

r6

below,

ras

Lile ol Moscs, PG 443gg{t ed. Dani€lou, ii.zzo. See Selection zr below. a5o Comm. on thc Cant., PG 44.ro378-C. See Selection 75 below. 151On the Soul and Rentrection, PG 46.ro5B-C.

rtzCf. On the Beatitades, sermon PG 4, 44.ru44A-rz48C. 153See r54

"Du spirituel dans I'ordre litt6raire," Vigile 3

G

Cahier, r93r), p. zoo.

Comm. on thc Cant., PG 44.833D-836A. See Selection 33 below. 1ss Ibid., PG 44.885D-888A. See Selection 46 below.

FROM GLORY TO GLORY

78 756

lbid., PG qq.gqSD-gq8A.

157

Cf. Comm. on the Cant., PG q+.88:D-888A and see note r55 above.

!58

Against Eunomius q,

Cant., PG 44.ro4gB-C, and a'e Comm. 760

See Selection 53 below.

PG qS.6S6D-fu7A; and cf. also the Comtn. on

the

ror6D-ror7A.

on ,he Caflt., PG qq.g++B-C. See Selection 5r below'

lbid., PG q+.876B-C.

Fnoff glon'y fo

See Selection 43 below.

a6a

Ibid., PG ++.826C-D. See Selection 43 below. 162 lbid., PG q+.88q8-C; cf. also 8928, 94tB-C, 997D. a8s

Comm. on the Cant., PG 44.94rB-C. See Selection 5o below.

a9a

Hcllenistisches und Christliches

im lrtihbyzdnt;rrischcn

Geistedeben (Vienna

rys"), pp- 4s-53. L65

Comm. on the Cant., PG 44.ro33D-ro36A. See Selection 75 below. 1ffi On thc Beatitudes, scrmon 4, PG 44.r244D-t245L' Cf. also the Comm. on the Caflt., PG 44.ro84C-D.

Futuri, pp. 6r-77.

16?

See Danidlou, Sacraffienturn

168

Comm. on the Cdat., PG 44.roo4A.

gLonry

TEXTS FROM

gp,€gop.a o+ Y)atsss's MYSTICAL WRITINGS

t.

The. Meaning of Perfeuion (The

Life of Moses, PG 44.3oo

B-3orC; ed. Dani6lou, i.3-ro)' You earnestly requested, my dear friend, that I should set down for you some account of the life of perfection; and your aim was clearly that, if you found in my discussion rvhat you sought, you would take the grace revealed in my words and apply it to your own life. Yet in both of these points I lind difiiculty: for I feel that either to describe perfection or to realize it in my life is beyond my powers. Nor am I perhaps aione in this view. Many great men, even among those who excel in virtue, would admit that such a goal is impossible. But as I do not wish to give the impression, as the Psalmist says, of having fear, uhere there was no f ear (Ps. r3.5), I am going to set forth more clearly v,'hat I mean. Now in all things which can be measured in the order of sensual things, perfection is always bounded by certain definite limits, as, for example, in the case of extension, whether it be continuous or discrete. Every quantitative measurement presupposes its own proper limits. Anyone who considers, for example, the cubit, or the nuntber ten, will see that their perfection consists in their having a beginning and an end. But with regard to virtue we know from the Apostle that the one determination of perfection is its not having any limit. For the divine Apostle, a man who was vast and profound in spirit, in his course on the path of virtue constantly stretched forward to the things that lay ahead (Phil.3.r3). To stop in his course, he felt, was unsafe. Why ? Because every good is by its very nature unlimited, and is bounded only by the presence of its contrary-as life is bounded by death, and light by darkness. Thus everything that is wholly good ceases

8z

GREGORY OF NYSSA

FROM GLORY TO GLORY

only at the point where its opposite begins. Thus, just as the end of life is the beginning of death, so too, to stop on the path of virtue is to begin on the path of evil. Hence my statement was not incorrect when I said that it was impossible to define perfection. For we have shown that what can be contained within limits is not virtue. Now my saying that it is impossible for those who pursue a life of virtue ever to attain perfection I shall also explain in the following way. The sovereign and highest Good, whose nature is goodness, this is divine nature itself ; and whatever perfection can be conceived in such a nature, this He is called and is. Now since we have shown that the only limitation of virtue is vice, and since the divine nature excludes anything that is contrary to it, then it follows that the divine nature is conceived without bound or limit. But the soul that pursues true virtue actually participates in God Himself, because He is infinite virtue. Now since those who have come to know the highest good, desire completely to share in it, and since this good is limitless, it follows that their desire must necessarily be coextensive with the limitless, and therefore have no limit. Thus it is absolutely impossible to attain perfection; for, as I have said, it cannot be confined within limits, and the only determination of virtue is that it is boundless. How then can a man reach the boundary he is looking for if it

then make every effort not to fall short utterly of the perfection that is possible for us, and to try to come as close to it and possess as much of it as possible. For it may be that human perfection consists precisely in this constant growth

does

not

exist

I

But though my argument has shown that we cannot attain our goal, we must not, for all that, neglect the divine command, Be you perfect, as your heauenly Father is perfect (Matth. 5.48). For though it may not be possible completely to attain the ultimate and sovereign good, it is most desirable for those who are wise to have at least a share in it. We should

83

in the good.

z.

Perfection and Progress (On Perfection, PG 46.285A-D)'z

The perfection of the Christian life-and I mean that life which is the only one the name of Christ is used to designate we participate not only by our mind and -is that in which soul but in all the actions of our lives, so that our holiness may be complete, in accordance with the blessing pronounced by Paul, in our athole body and soul and spirit (r Thess. 5.4), constantly guarded from all admixture with evil. Now it may be objected that such a good is hard to achieve, seeing that only the Lord of creation is constant and that human nature is mutable and prone to change. How then is it possible to establish in our changeable nature this permanence and immutability in goodl To this then we answer: there can be no crown unless the contest is fair, and the contest is fair only if there is an adversary to fight with. Thus, if there is no adversary, there is no crown. There is no victory unless there is conquest. Let us then struggle against this very mutability of our nature, coming to grips as it were with our adversary in spirit; and we become victors not by holding our adversary down but rather by not allowing him to fall. For man does not merely have an inclination to evil; were this so, it would be impossible for him to grow in good, if his nature possessed only an inclination towards the contrary. But in

84

FROM GLORY TO

GREGORY OF NYSSA

lruth the 6nest aspect of our mutability is the p