Saint Gregory of Nyssa – His Life
St. Gregory of Nyssa, the younger brother of St. Basil the Great (c. 330-379) was born around 330 and was educated chiefly by Basil. Like his older brother, he opted at first for a secular career in rhetoric. Unlike Basil, he even married. Under the influence of his friends, especially St. Gregory of Nazianzus (c. 329-389), he retired to the same monastery on the Iris which his brother, St. Basil, founded.
In 371, his ecclesiastical career advanced further, being elevated to the episcopal seat of Nyssa (in modern central Turkey), a small town in St. Basil’s metropolitan district of Caesarea. Unlike St. Gregory of Nazianzus, St. Basil’s brother actually went to his see and stayed there, although he was elevated against his will.1 Not being the able administrator that St. Basil was, St. Gregory disappointed his brother, who frequently faulted the latter for his political ineptitude and his lack of firmness in dealing with people.
St. Gregory of Nyssa was no financial wizard either, and St. Basil criticized him for this. Even worse, his Arian opponents exploited Gregory’s financial administrative slackness to manufacture charges of misappropriating Church funds. In 376, while St. Gregory was absent, a synod of Arian bishops and court prelates gathered in Nyssa and deposed him. In 378, after the death of the Arian emperor Valens, St. Gregory returned to his see in Nyssa.2
A year later, St. Gregory attended a Synod at Antioch and was subsequently sent by the synod as a visitor to the diocese of Pontus. While there, he was elected archbishop of Sebaste (380) which he had to administer for a few months, although much against his will.
In 381, together with St. Gregory of Nazianzus, St. Gregory of Nyssa, took a prominent role at the Second Ecumenical Council in Constantinople wherein the trinitarian dogmas of Nicene Orthodoxy prevailed. He visited the capital frequently afterwards. In 385 he delivered a funeral oration for the princess Pulcheria and, not much later that of her mother, the empress Flacilla, as well. The last time he appeared in Constantinople was in 394 for a synod called by the Patriarch Nectarios. Apparently he died soon afterward. The Orthodox celebrate his memory on 10 January.3
An administrator and politician he may not have been, but among the Cappadocian Fathers he was perhaps the deepest thinker and most versatile author. He was less restrained in his use of the literary motifs of his day and clearly displayed a more positive evaluation of contemporary philosophical thought. Atticisms abound in his works, but, as a Christian theologian, he is hardly shy in citing either the common Greek of the New Testament or the Greek of the Septuagint (henceforth LXX). Although he accepted the influence of contemporary Hellenistic rhetoric, he was never its master.4
His often less-than-charming literary style did not prevent him from becoming perhaps the foremost thinker and theologian of the Cappadocian Fathers. Together with St. Gregory of Nazianzus, St. Gregory of Nyssa helped develop fully the trinitarian theology and terminology of his elder brother, St. Basil theGreat. At the Second Ecumenical Council in Constantinople, together with St. Gregory of Nazianzus, he led in advocating the official adoption of Nicene trinitarian thought. His vision of Christian divinization is perhaps one of the most inspiring elaborations of this concept. His philosophical and intellectual broad-mindedness together with his very positive evaluation of Greek literature gave him perhaps a certain flexibility and originality not seen in the other Cappadocian Fathers.
On the Soul and the Resurrection
After St. Basil’s death in early 379, St. Gregory of Nyssa visited his sister, St. Macrina, at the convent on the Iris where she was the abbess. Here he sought consolation concerning the recent loss of his brother, only to find that his sister too was soon to die. His deathbed discussions with her concerning the immortality of the soul and the Resurrection apparently raised his spirits greatly.5 St. Macrina died the next day and St. Gregory probably composed On the Soul and the Resurrection shortly afterwards.6
Modeled upon the deathbed dialogue of Socrates in Plato’s, Phaedo, St. Gregory composes a deathbed dialogue between St. Macrina and himself wherein he plays the “devil’s advocate” while St. Macrina presents the proper Christian understanding concerning the immortality of the soul and the hope of the Resurrection. The ideas attributed to St. Macrina, naturally, are those of the author himself. Holy Writ is utterly authoritative in Christian theology. But St. Gregory confesses that, since what Holy Writ posits is to be accepted as divine commands, the soul lacks a certain assurance which comes from reasoning out an issue thoroughly. Hence he finds his own faith standing, but without the level of assurance he would desire, leaving his soul distraught at the recent departure of St. Basil and at the immanent departure of St. Macrina.7
In this deathbed discussion, St. Macrina and St. Gregory reason out the philosophical underpinnings of the Christian’s hope. Holy Writ is the authoritative source of Christian theology, but human reason enlightened by the Holy Spirit can supplement one’s theological endeavors and thus bolster one’s faith. Reason, therefore, serves as a handmaiden to theology which can buttress one’s faith when it wavers as did St. Gregory’s. This method reveals the work’s primary audience, namely a Christian one.
As a result, this work displays quite well St. Gregory’s philosophical and literary learning. It also serves as an example of the positive role secular learning can play in Christian life and thought. This work therefore displays much of the flexibility toward contemporary Greek though and literary style discussed above. Due to the nature of this work, theological anthropology plays a key role, especially concerning the nature of the human soul in its relationship to the human body and to the divine nature. The theological anthropology which underlies this book will prove very influential in later Orthodox Christian ascetical and theological writings.
~Brian Ephrem Fitzgerald, Ph.D., St. Philip’s Antiochian Orthodox Church, Souderton, PA, http://www.st-philip.net/files/Fitzgerald%20Patristic%20series/Gregory-Nyssa_soul_and_resurrection.pdf.
1 St. Gregory of Nazianzus never took possession of the see assigned to him by Basil, namely that of Sasima. He remained with his father in Nazianzus and, upon his father’s death in 374, he took over administration of this diocese, but only for a short time.
2 The Arian emperor Valens died in the catastrophic battle of Adrianople (9 August 378) and was succeeded by the orthodox emperor, Theodosius I (ruled 379-395).
3 Johannes Quasten, Patrology III (Westminster, MD: Christian Classics, 1983) 254-255. See also The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (ed. F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingston; Oxford University Press, 2nd ed. 1985) 599-600.
4 Johannes Quasten, Patrology III 255-56.
5 Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nyssa: Dogmatic Treatises, etc. (ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace; trans. William Moore, M.A. and Henry Austin Wilson, M.A.; NPNF 5, Second Series; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1983) 430 (see note 1).
6 Johannes Quasten, Patrology III 261.
7 Gregory of Nyssa, On the Soul and the Resurrection (trans. Catharine P. Roth; Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’_s Seminary Press, 2002) 27-29.
