Saint Gregory of Nyssa Ascetical Works 978-0813209692

Table of contents :
INTRODUCTION IX
Preface XX
ON VIRGINITY 3
ON WHAT IT MEANS TO CALL
ONESELF A CHRISTIAN 79
ON PERFECTION 93
ON THE CHRISTIAN MODE OF LIFE 125
THE LIFE OF SAINT MACRINA . . 161
ON THE SOUL AND THE RESURRECTION 195
INDICES 275

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THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH A NEW TRANSLATION

VOLUME 58

THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH A NEW TRANSLATION

EDITORIAL BOARD Roy

JOSEPH DEFERRARI

The Catholic University ot America Editorial Director

MSGR. JAMES A. MAGNER

BERNARD M. PEEBLES

The Catholic University of America

The Catholic University of America

MARTIN R. P. MCGuIRE

REV. THOMAS HALTON

The Catholic University of America

The Catholic University of America

ROBERT P. RUSSELL,O.S.A.

WILLIAM R. TONGUE

Villanova University

The Catholic University ot America

HERMIGILD DRESSLER, O.F.M.

REv.

The Catholic University ot America

The Catholic University ot America

SISTER

PETER J. RAHILL

M. JOSEPHINE BRENNAN, I.H.M.

Marywood College

SAINT GREGORY OF NYSSA ASCETICAL WORKS

Translated by VIRGINIA WOODS CALLAHAN Howard University Washington, DC.

THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA PRESS Washington, D.C. 20017

NIHIL OBSTAT:

JOHN C. SELNER, S.S. Censor Librorum

IMPRIMATUR:

+

PATRICKA. O'BOYLE, D.D. Archbishop of Washington

The Nihil obstat and Imprimatur are official declarations that a book or pamphlet is free of doctrinal or moral error. No implication is contained therein that those who have granted the Nihil obstat and Imprimatur agree with the contents, opinions, or statements expressed.

Copyright © 1967

THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA PRESS All rights reserved Reprinted 1990 First short-run reprint 1999

Library of Congress Catalog Card No.: 66-30561

ISBN 0-8132-0969-2

To the dear memory of the great scholar WERNER JAEGER who taught us to know and understand St. Gregory of Nyssa this volume is affectionately and gratefully dedicated.

CONTENTS Page

INTRODUCTION

IX

Preface

XX

ON VIRGINITY

3

ON WHAT IT MEANS TO CALL ONESELF A CHRISTIAN

79

ON PERFECTION

93

ON THE CHRISTIAN MODE OF LIFE

125

THE LIFE OF SAINT MACRINA

161

. .

ON THE SOUL AND THE RESURRECTION

195

INDICES

275

vii

INTRODUCTION

of the Church, St. Basil, St. Gregory of N azianzus, and St. Gregory of Nyssa, the last is the least well-known and until recently the most neglected. His brother, St. Basil, called the Great, is famous as the founder of monasticism in the East and as a forceful opponent of the Arian heresy. Their close friend, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, is renowned for the glory of his eloquence and the sweetness of his poetry. And yet at the Ecumenical Council of 787, St. Gregory of Nyssa was given the title 'Father of the Fathers.' Modern writers agree that 'he surpassed the other Cappadocians as a philosopher and theologian,'l that he was 'more learned and profound'2 than the others, that he was 'possibly the most versatile theologian of the century,'3 and that 'as a speculative theologian and mystic he is certainly the most gifted of the three: 4 The importance of St. Gregory of Nyssa is attested to particularly by the fact that Werner Jaeger, the great Hellenist of our time, devoted much of the last twenty years of his life to the editing of the first critical edition of his complete works and that the distinguished theologian, Jean Danielou, S.]., has returned again and again to a consideration of his life and work. In the Christian world of the fourth century, the family of St. Gregory of Nyssa was distinguished for its leadership in civic and religious affairs in the region of the Roman Empire known as the Pontus. Cardinal Newman, in an essay on the f'!'IlI"!!:.'!'l;l'1!i F THE THREE CAPPADOCIAN FATHERS

1 B. Altaner, Patrology (New York 1960) 352. 2 J. M. Campbell, The Greek Fathers (New York 1963) 62. 3 H. V. Campenhausen, The Fathers of the Greek Church (New York 1955) 109. 4 J. Quasten, Patrology 3 (Westminster 1963) 254. IX

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SAINT GREGORY OF NYSSA

trials of St. Basil, refers to the family circle which produced these two eminent Fathers as 'a sort of nursery of bishops and saints.'5 From St. Gregory's life of his sister, St. Macrina, a work included in this volume,6 we learn of the fortitude of the three preceding generations. On her death-bed, St. Macrina, recalling details of their family history, speaks of a greatgrandfather martyred and all his property confiscated and grandparents deprived of their possessions at the time of the Diocletian persecutions. Their father, Basil of Caesarea, a successful rhetorician, outstanding for his judgment and wellknown for the dignity of his life, died leaving to his wife, Emmelia, the care of four sons and five daughters. St. Gregory praises his mother for her virtue and for her eagerness to have her children educated in Holy Scripture. After managing their estate and arranging for the future of her children, she was persuaded by St. Macrina to retire from the world and to enter a life in common with her maids as sisters and equals. This community of women would have been a counterpart of the monastery founded nearby by St. Basil on the banks of the Iris River. In a moving scene, St. Gregory tells of his mother's death at a rich old age in the arms of her oldest and youngest children, Macrina and Peter. Blessing all of her children, she prays in particular for the sanctification of these two who were, indeed, later canonized as saints. Newman notes the strong influence of the women in the family, 7 and in one of his letters, St. Basil gives credit to his mother and his grandmother, the elder Macrina, for his clear and steadfast idea of God. s Of all the qualities of his oldest sister singled out by St. Gregory, none is more striking than her ability to influence the other members of her family. Betrothed at the age of twelve to a young lawyer who died before they could marry, 5 J. H. Newman, Historical Sketches 2 (London 1906) 17. 6 Cf. 'The Life of St. Macrina: p. 159 II. 7 Newman, op. cit., 18. 8 St. Basil, Letters, translated by Sister Agnes Clare Way in The Fathers of the Church Series, Vol. 28 (1955), 76.

INTRODUCTION

xi

St. Macrina persuaded her father that it would be wrong for her to consider marriage to another because the young man was not dead but living in God because of the hope of the resurrection. After her father's death, she became the inseparable companion of her mother and led her to what St. Gregory calls the goal of the philosophical life. When St. Basil returned from his studies in Constantinople and Athens, 'puffed up,' as St. Gregory says, because of his intellectual gifts, it was St. Macrina who lured him from the worldliness of the rhetorical profession to the service of God. St. Peter, born after their father's death, had been St. Macrina's special charge from infancy. What she meant to St. Gregory himself as guide and mentor is made clear, not only in the biography, but also in the final work in this volume, a dialogue between St. Gregory and his sister on the condition of the soul after death where it is she who dominates the discussion.9 Clearly, the two most influential persons in the forming of St. Gregory's character were St. Macrina and St. Basil. Since he was not educated abroad as St. Basil and St. Gregory of Nazianzus had been, it was to his oldest brother that Gregory looked for instruction in matters secular as well as spiritual. St. Gregory's insights into the thought of Plato and other ancient philosophers prove that he took to heart his brother's views on the profitable use of pagan literature. 10 One can imagine how much the young Gregory must have been impressed by his brother's decision to withdraw from the world and with what interest he must have listened to St. Basil's account of his visits to the centers of ascetism in Egypt which prompted him to establish his monastic community in Neocaesarea. In St. Gregory's earliest ascetical treatise, On Virginity, when he wants to set before the monks a model for the ascetic life, it is a portrait of St. Basil that he draws for them.l l 9 Cf. 'On the Soul and the Resurrection: p. 195 If. 10 Cf. St. Basil, Address to Young Men on Reading Greek Literature, translated by R. J. Deferrari and M. R. P. McGuire in Loeb Classical Library, Vol. 4 (London and Cambridge, Mass. 1950) 249-348. 11 Cf. 'On Virginity,' p. 72.

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SAINT GREGORY OF NYSSA

In his encomium of St. Basil after his death in 379, St. Gregory voices his pride in his brother's courage as priest and bishop in the fight against Arianism.1 2 It was St. Basil who had presided at St. Gregory's ordination to the priesthood, and in 371, when St. Basil thought it desirable for the episcopal sees to be safeguarded against Arian intrigue, St. Gregory had allowed himself to be consecrated Bishop of Nyssa. Unfortunately, he seems not to have shared St. Basil's gifts as an administrator, and political enemies, agents of the Arian emperor, were able to bring against him the charge of mismanagement of the diocese. He was deposed in 376 and returned from exile only after Valens' death in 378, not long before St. Basil's death. From then on, he was, as his brother had been, a strong defender of orthodoxy in the councils, at one of which he made the acquaintance of St. Jerome. He was elected Archbishop of Sebaste at the Synod of Antioch in 379 and played a prominent role in the second Ecumenical Council in Constantinople in 381. That he was esteemed by the imperial court is clear, since he was chosen to deliver the funeral orations for the Empress FlacciIla and the Princess Pulcheria in 385. There is no reference to him after 394, in which year he attended a synod at Constantinople.13 St. Gregory's writings as well as his activities indicate how persistently he was committed to his brother's interests. Among his dogmatic-works, for example, are four treatises against the Arian theologian, Eunomius, who had singled St. Basil out for special attack. 14 Two of his exegetical treatises, On the Creation of Man and On the Hexaemeronp> are an explication of St. Basil's homilies On the Hexaemeron. The earliest of the 12 St. Gregory of Nyssa, Encomium of St. Basil, translated by Sister James Aloysius Stein (Washington 1928) 16 ff. 13 For a discussion of St. Gregory's marriage, to which he seems to allude in 'On Virginity' (p. 12), cf. J. Danielou, 'Le mariage de Gregoire de Nysse et la chronologie de sa vie,' Revue des £tudes Augustiniennes 2 (1956) 71-78. 14 Contra Eunomium, ed. W. Jaeger (Leiden 1960). 15 These two works will be published as Volume IV of the Jaeger edition.

INTRODUCTION

xiii

ascetical works, On Virginity, was written at St. Basil's request and each of the later ascetical writings is a return to the task of giving depth and added substance to his brother's concept of the ascetic ideal. The contents of this volume are a splendid proof of St. Gregory's desire to cooperate with his brother in his efforts to promote monasticism. St. Basil, in his Rules,16 sought to systematize the ascetic life; St. Gregory, in his treatises on virginity and the life of perfect virtue in union with Christ, undertook to interpret the philosophical, theological, and mystical implications of the Rules. Related to these are three exegetical treatises: On the Life of Mosesp On the Psalms,18 and On the Canticle of Canticles,19 which in jaeger's opinion should be placed among the ascetical writings because they, too, are written as aids to attaining the highest goals of asceticism.2() If Jaeger and Danielou are correct in their dating of the ascetical works from internal evidence, they cover a period of about twenty years beginning with On Virginity written about 37l.21 The theme of virginity had probably been suggested to him by St. Basil while he was pursuing his studies in the monastery on the Iris. His approach to it is that of a man whose mind is imbued with the elements of Greek philosophical thought. Although he does not mention Plato by name in this treatise, he does adopt the Platonic psychology, as Cherniss points out,22 with his emphasis on the dualism of man's nature and the conflict of body and soul, which he illus16 St. Basil, Ascetical Works, translated by Sister Monica Wagner in The Fathers of the Church Series, Vol. 9 (1950). 17 Cf. new critical edition and French translation by Danielou in the series, Sources ChTlftiennes (Paris 1955). 18 In Inscriptiones Psalmorum, Vol. V of the Jaeger edition, edited by J. MacDonough. 19 In Canticum Canticorum, Vol. VI of the Jaeger edition, edited by H. Langerbeck (Leiden 1962). 20 W. Jaeger, Two Rediscovered Works of Ancient Christian Literature (Leiden 1954) 32. 21 W. Jaeger, ibid. 24; J. Danielou, From Glory to Glory (New York 1961) 4. 22 H. Cherniss, The Platonism of Gregory of Nyssa (Berkeley 1930) 15 fl'.

XIV

SAINT GREGORY OF NYSSA

trates by borrowing the Platonic myth from the Phaedrus of the charioteer and the two horses, 'a handy allegory' as Cherniss puts it. Like Plato, St. Gregory stresses the unity of the virtues and defines virtue as the perfection of our nature. In his warning that the ascetic goal is not attained if man goes to the extreme, St. Gregory makes use of the Aristotelian conviction that virtue lies in the mean. Cherniss finds the Platonic reminiscences 'shadowy' and thinks that 'Gregory must have experienced an acute civil war within himself' because of the strong attraction of Greek philosophy. Danielou, however, maintains that the extent to which St. Gregory uses the Platonic vocabulary without resorting to literal quotations shows us clearly how much he was impregnated by the Platonic imagery, but at the same time not a slave to it. 23 Jaeger, in his numerous discussions of the impact of Greek philosophy on the formation of Christian concepts, looks upon St. Gregory's utilization of the wisdom of the earlier thinkers as the proper working of paideia. 24 In the second of the ascetical treatises, On What It Means to Call Oneself a Christian, St. Gregory suggests that he is no longer young, and, since the treatise On Perfection is a continuation of this work, it is believed that it was written shortly thereafter. Taken together, these two are a kind of diptych in which the question is asked, what is the nature of the true Christian? But the two analyses of the question differ, the former being philosophical in method and the latter more theologica1. 25 In On What It Means to Call Oneself a Christian, a letter written by St. Gregory to a young friend, he begins by setting up a problem as if he and his correspondent were about to engage in a philosophical dialogue. Like Socrates directing a search for a definition of piety 23 J. Danielou, Platonisme et theologie mystique (Paris 1954) 164. 24 W. Jaeger, Early Christianity and Greek Paideia (Cambridge, Mass. 1961) 86·89. 25 For the relation of these two treatises, d. Sister Mary Emily Keenan, 'De protessione and De perteetione. A Study of the Ascetical Doctrine of St. Gregory of Nyssa,' Dumbarton Oaks Papers 5 (1950) 167·207.

INTRODUCTION

xv

or courage in one of the early works of Plato, St. Gregory seeks to determine the essential meaning of the term 'Christian.' In connection with its etymology, he stresses the need for the person who calls himself a Christian to reflect in his life the nature of Christ whose name he has assumed. He then lists ten expressions which, applied to Christ, reveal his nature to us. It is interesting to note, as an example of St. Gregory's method, that the first seven of the ten are Biblical testimonia, but for the last three, there are no literal corresponding references in the Bible. These are terms which would normally be found in the vocabulary of the philosopher. When St. Gregory defines Christianity as 'an imitation of the divine nature: he has, as Jaeger indicates in his edition of this work, paraphrased Plato's definition of arete in the Theaetetus. Having offered this definition, he warns that if a Christian's life is not a true reflection of Christ he gives the world a distorted notion of the Archetype, that is, he misrepresents Christ. What man must strive for, therefore, is perfection. In concluding the treatise, St. Gregory anticipates two objections which might be made to his definition. Someone, he suggests, might wonder how human nature with its limitations can hope to imitate the divine nature of Christ. To this, he answers that the first man, according to Scripture, was 'made in the image of God,'26 so that anyone who succeeds in imitating the divine nature in his life is merely returning to man's original state. And to those who might doubt that man can hope to attain perfection in an imperfect world, he replies that man has the power of thought which transcends the world and the imperfections of an earthly environment, and he also has the faculty of choosing which makes separation from God not a matter of place but of choice. In the treatise On Perfection, which is also a letter, but much longer and more impersonal, St. Gregory continues to maintain that the true Christian is one whose life is Christ26 Cf. H. Merki,Op.otwfn