His works: Sermons, especially those preached at Constantinople in 380, against the Arians; Poems, mostly written during the last contemplative period of his life: on moral and dogmatic topics, and one long autobiographical poem De Vita Sua; Letters, mostly of historical interest. St. Gregory Nazianzen has left us little that is of specific importance for monastic theology and spirituality.
St. Gregory of Nyssa
St. Gregory of Nazianz was a dogmatic theologian and an orator. His writings were more popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, because they had an apologetic trend. But he is not as useful to monks as St. Gregory of Nyssa, who has come into our own as a great comtemplative theologian especially strong in the monastic tradition. Fr. Daniélou’s book Platonisme et Théologie Mystique2 and the French translation of De Vita Moysis, both of which appeared during World War II, started a revival of studies and admiration for St. Gregory of Nyssa, as did also the work of Fr. Hans Urs von Balthasar. It can be said that Gregory of Nyssa is one of the most important figures in the contemplative revival of Patristic studies—a significant spiritual movement of our time.
Gregory was born about 330. He was ordained lector while young, but was seduced by the revival of pagan culture under Julian. He became a professor of rhetoric and then married. But exhorted by St. Basil and St. Gregory Nazianzen, he left the world to join them and live as a monk on the banks of the Iris (about 361). After ten years of solitude, he becomes bishop of Nyssa, 371. Gregory was not happy at Nyssa. He was opposed by the emperor, framed and deposed on charge of wasting funds (374) but was restored as bishop in 377. On the death of St. Basil, January 1, 379, Gregory took over his theological and ecclesiastical work, and carried on where Basil had left off. He was involved in all the political struggles of this time. He too was not very adept at politics, but as a theologian he played an important part in the Council of Constantinople (381) and was one of the outstanding figures there—[he] gained a reputation as a great preacher in Constantinople. The Council of Constantinople was the triumph of St. Basil’s ideas and of those of St. Gregory. After the Council he went to Arabia and Egypt on church business. Returning to Jerusalem he was accused of Apollinarism3 but goes to Constantinople, in high favor; 380–386 marks the peak of his career. From 387 onward, in retirement, he devotes himself to writing.
Of the three great Cappadocian Fathers, Gregory of Nyssa is the greatest as mystic and spiritual theologian. He is the greatest contemplative of the three, the deepest, most mystical, and most spiritual. His theology is drawn from experience and it is evident that his experience was the deepest of all the Greek Fathers, including St. Maximus and Pseudo-Denys. But besides being a mystic he is also a philosopher, a speculative thinker. This combination makes his work original and significant.
The importance of Gregory of Nyssa is as a source of Christian mystical theology. He transmits the tradition of Origen, purified and deepened by a more spiritual experience, to later theologians like Pseudo-Denys. St. Gregory of Nyssa stands side-by-side with another Origenist and mystic, Evagrius Ponticus (a Desert Father), who is more an intellectual. Gregory gives the primacy to love. The influence of St. Gregory of Nyssa is considerable in the West, and especially on the Cistercian William of St. Thierry, through whom the theology of Gregory of Nyssa became part of the Cistercian heritage.
Gregory of Nyssa’s Writings
The dogmatic and controversial writings of St. Gregory of Nyssa are less important. The main one is Contra Eunomium, which carried on controversy begun by St. Basil with the Arian bishop Eunomius. Eunomius held that the essence of God was innascibility, and hence the Son could not be God; also that the essence of God could be clearly known by man: Gregory stands up strongly for the “darkness” which obscures the mind of man in presence of the transcendent mystery of God—this is one of the most important ideas in his mystical theology: to know God “by unknowing.” [Then there is] Contra Apollinarem—against the Apollinarist heresy that in Christ the Word took the place of the human mind; [and] Oratio Catechetica—exposition of dogmas of Trinity, Incarnation, Redemption.
[From the] spiritual writings, first it should be remarked that this distinction between “theological writings” and “spiritual writings” is very misleading in St. Gregory of Nyssa. His spirituality is his theology and his theology is entirely spiritual. Nowadays there is a gulf separating theology (technical dogma and moral) from spirituality (meditations, devotions, psychology of the spiritual life, mysticism and asceticism). For St. Gregory and the Greek Fathers the two are inseparable, and especially for St. Gregory. For example his treatise on the creation of man, De Hominis Opificio, is not merely theological and philosophical in the technical sense, but is also a study of man as a creature destined for contemplation. Hence there is spiritual, mystical theology in this work. What we might call more technically theological works of the Greek Fathers are works of controversy with emphasis on special technical points. But we have seen above that even Gregory’s Contra Eunomium has important implications for the mystical life.
For the Greek Fathers, theology is above all and essentially mystical theology, and all learning culminates in true theology, the vision of God. St. Bonaventure above all carries on this tradition in the scholastic era, but scholasticism in general tends to degenerate into technical knowledge about God, and tends less and less to lead to contemplation of Him.
The writings:
De Virginitate—His first book, written to aid St. Basil in establishing his monastery. Theme: Christian perfection. The virgin soul is the spouse of Christ. The monastic life is the best means of living a bios angelikos (angelic life) and cultivating perfect purity of heart.
Short treatises on perfection, mortification, the Christian life.
A biography of his sister St. Macrina.
In Hexameron (379)—A parallel to St. Basil’s treatise on the Hexameron. Purpose: To throw new light on the facts exposed by Basil; to show the deep underlying causes and purposes at work in creation.
De Hominis Opificio—About the same time, completes St. Basil’s treatise on creation. St. Basil had not taken the sixth day, creation of man. Man is made for contemplation. This treatise had considerable influence on William of St. Thierry. Man is made up of psyche (animal nature, body); nous, mens, ratio (rational nature, mind); pneuma, spiritus (spiritual life, grace, divinization). Perfection is the balance and ordering of all these three: body, mind, and spirit—not just the development of the mind in a purely mental spirituality at the expense of body and spirit. Just as God is beyond all clear knowledge, so the image in us is beyond the clear grasp of our intelligence. Man’s job in life is to reproduce in the depths of the soul his divine likeness. This consists in the right use of his freedom, which is his royal dignity and this is entirely summed up in the return to God by pure love.
[On the subject of] spiritual interpretation of Scripture, following Origen and Philo, but going much deeper than either one, Gregory interprets Old Testament books as describing the spiritual ascent of the soul to God. De Vita Moysis, one of the greatest mystical works of the Greek Fathers, is divided into two parts: 1) Historia—the literal sense, but not scientific; emphasis is moral and hortatory, really a kind of saint’s life, rather than a scriptural study. Remember that for the early Fathers, the “saints” were for the most part the saints of the Old Testament (except for the martyrs). Here he follows Philo closely, often word for word. 2) Theoria—the mystical interpretation. Especially notable is the idea that Moses’ ascent of the mountain into the cloud symbolizes contact of the soul with the transcendent “darkness” of God. This is the mysticism of “night”—of darkness (apophatic mysticism) which forms one important tradition in Christian mystical theology contrasted with the mystics of “light” (cataphatic) in another tradition.
The most important mystics of darkness: St. Gregory of Nyssa, Pseudo-Dionysius, St. John of the Cross, Eckhart. Mystics of light: Origen, St. Bernard, St. Teresa of Avila etc. The latter are the more
common. St. Gregory says (concerning Exodus 19):
Religious knowledge starts out as light (the burning bush) when it first appears: for then it is opposed to impiety, which is darkness, and this darkness is scattered by joy in the light. But the more the spirit, in its forward progress attains, by a greater and more perfect application, to the understanding of the realities and comes closer to contemplation, the more it realizes that the divine nature is invisible. Having left behind all appearances, not only those perceived by the senses but also those which the intelligence believes itself to see, the spirit enters more and more into the interior until it penetrates, by its striving, even unto the Invisible and the Unknowable, and there it sees God. The true knowledge of Him that it seeks and the true vision of Him consists in seeing that He is invisible, because He transcends all knowledge, and is hidden on all sides by His incomprehensibility as by shadows. (De Vita Moysis)
Other Scriptural exegesis:
On the Psalms: Here he finds other material on the ascent to perfection. On Ecclesiastes: The illuminative way—subtle and rich discussion of the disillusionment of the soul with material and temporal things, as it ascends to God. Man seeks distraction. He vainly hopes to forget his troubles not so much in enjoying pleasures or acquiring wealth, as in the pursuit of these things. It is the pursuit, the expectation, that gives joy. Hence man lives more and more outside himself and “beyond” himself, and his life becomes a race, a running away from the present into the future, perpetual motion. This is the vanity of Ecclesiastes. The first step to stability is then to be content with what we have and with what we are.
On the Canticle of Canticles: Follows the commentary on Ecclesiastes and completes it, going on to the unitive life. It also adds to mystical theology of Origen’s commentary on Canticles, carries it further. It was a more influential work than Origen’s, deeper—describes in some detail the gradual approach to Union—the steps by which the Word makes Himself known to the soul as a faint “perfume,” as a voice, and finally as food for the soul that is “tasted” and sweet. Finally it describes burning love of God which is proper to union and renders the soul impatient of all that separates it from God—themes that reappear in St. John of the Cross, Living Flame of Love.
Two New Testament treatises: On the Lord’s Prayer stresses the idea of sonship and parrhesia (freedom and spontaneity of speech with God) implied by the prayer—man’s vocation to help God establish His Kingdom on earth, in souls, by driving out sin. On the Beatitudes—one of many Patristic commentaries on the eight Beatitudes (Matthew 5) which treats them as an ascent to mystical perfection, with special emphasis on the sixth (“Blessed are the pure in heart”) as referring to contemplation. Here we meet the familiar Patristic doctrine—the soul made in the image of God. The image has been obscured by sin. It must be restored to its perfection by love, then God will again be perfectly mirrored and experienced in the mirror of the soul:
For the Godhead is purity, freedom from passion, and separation from all evil. If therefore these things be in you, God is indeed in you. Hence, if your thought is without any alloy of evil, free from passion, and alien from all stain, you are blessed because you are clear of sight. You are able to perceive what is invisible to those who are not purified, because you have been cleansed; the darkness caused by material entanglements has been removed from the eyes of your soul, and so you see the blessed vision radiant in the pure heaven of your heart. But what is this vision? It is purity, sanctity, simplicity, and other such luminous reflections of the Divine Nature, in which God is contemplated.4
The great problem is the purification of the heart—this is treated at length in the sermon.
St. Gregory also wrote three lives, less important for biographical data than for remarks on spirituality: St. Basil, his brother; St. Macrina, his sister; St. Gregory the Wonderworker (because he was a disciple of Origen).
For all the various reasons expressed above, St. Gregory of Nyssa is the most important and most interesting of the Cappadocian Fathers, at least for contemplatives. He requires to be studied more deeply, however. Perhaps the moment has not yet come when he is accessible to the average monk with ease—at least not in English. He may perhaps remain difficult and inaccessible to most.
__________
1 Most of all, not to be confused by the spelling of the title word. This work is known to readers in English as The Philokalia: The Complete Text, compiled by St. Nikodemos of the Holy Mountain and St. Makarios of Corinth, trans. and ed. G. F. H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, and Kallistos Ware, 4 volumes (London: Faber & Faber, 1979–95).
2 Platonism and Mystical Theology, a work not yet translated into English.
3 Heresy originating with Apollinaris of Laodicea (d. 390) which held that Jesus had a human body but a divine mind. The Council of Constantinople condemned this view in 381, but it persisted in some quarters.
4 St. Gregory of Nyssa, The Lord’s Prayer; The Beatitudes, trans. Hilda C. Graef, Ancient Christian Writers, vol. 18 (Westminster, MD: Newman, 1954), 149–50.
LECTURE 8
Palestinian Monasticism and St. Jerome
About 390 (about the time Cassian was in Egypt), St. Jerome wrote the life of St. Hilarion. Hilarion, as a founder of Palestinian monasticism and disciple of St. Anthony, is an important if somewhat legendary figure. Jerome presents him as the model monk, the type of Palestinian monasticism.
St. Hilarion was born at Tabatha, near Gaza, in Palestine, of pagan parents. He was sent to study in Alexandria, and there became a Christian. Attracted by the fame of St. Anthony, he went to see him, became a monk, spent several months with him, then returned to Palestine to live the monastic life. He was then fifteen years old. He retired to [a] desert place on the coast, infested with robbers: contempsit mortem, ut mortem evaderet, “He scorned death that he might escape death.” He embraced a life of strict fasting, labor, solitude and penance, suffered temptations like those of St. Anthony, cut his hair once a year—at Easter, never washed his hairshirt, alleging that cleanliness was useless in one who wore a hairshirt.
His fasts: from [ages] twenty-one to twenty-four, he ate a half-pint of lentils soaked in water once a day; from twenty-four to twenty-seven: ate only dry bread with water and salt; from twenty-seven to thirty-one: ate wild herbs and raw roots; from thirty-one to thirty-five: six ounces of barley bread a day, with a few herbs; from thirty-five to sixty-four: “But perceiving his sight to grow dim, and his body to be subject to an itching, with an unnatural kind of scurf and roughness, he added a little oil to this diet,” [wrote Alban] Butler; from sixty-four to eighty: cut down one ounce on the bread, ate only five ounces; and at eighty:
When he was fourscore years of age there were made for him little weak broths or gruels of flour and herbs, the whole quantity of his meat and drink amounting to the weight of four ounces. Thus he passed his whole life; and he never broke his fast until sunset, not even upon the highest feasts, nor in his greatest sickness. [quoting Alban Butler]
Point of this: [the] essential importance of fasting in the ascetic and contemplative life. Not that everyone is obliged to keep the measure of St. Hilarion, but all must fast according to their measure. Fasting is not something one takes on for a time, hoping to give it up. It is a lifelong part of the monastic vocation, with of course room left for modifications in case of need. But we should not seek them without necessity, or be looking for pretexts to give up fasting. (Note: St. Benedict [later] stresses that obedience is more important than fasting.)1
When he was eighteen, robbers came to him and said: What would you do if robbers found you? His reply: “The naked person is not afraid of robbers.” You can be killed, they continue. “I could,” he said, “I could, and so I am not afraid of robbers because I am ready to die.” They were edified and converted. Note—the hermit life involves the facing of every possible danger.
At the age of twenty-two he worked his first miracle which was the cure of a barren woman. After that his life is a catalogue of mi
racles. He cures men from all over the world, and animals, including a mad camel tied and dragged by thirty men! He converted many pagans (note missionary aspect of his hermit life).
From his twenties to his seventies, working miracles everywhere, he became the center of a great attraction and cult. Finally, seeing himself surrounded by many monks and pilgrims at all times, he lived in great sorrow, weeping daily, saying, “I have returned to the world—I am receiving my reward in this present life.” In the lives of solitary and monastic saints, apostolate is charismatic and is fruitful because of contradiction. He had prophetic knowledge of the death of St. Anthony.
Although a crowd of 10,000 pilgrims tried to hold him back, he went into the desert of Egypt with a few monks to see that place where St. Anthony had lived and died. St. Anthony had been buried in a secret place, at his own command, lest his bones be taken away and made a center of pilgrimage. After this, he fled into Sicily, where he was unknown. Avoiding the ports, where he might be recognized by oriental traders, he fled inland and lived as a beggar, bringing firewood to town on his back for a livelihood. He was discovered through an announcement made by the devil in a possessed person, who came and threw himself down to be cured at the hut where Hilarion was living in the hills. The miracles begin again. Hilarion then went to Dalmatia, then to Cyprus. Finally he found a very remote place in some mountains of Cyprus where there were no Christians and lived there in peace five years (cf. Charles de Foucauld). There he died at the age of 80.
A Course in Desert Spirituality Page 6