Gregory's Opposition to Eunomian Confidence in Rationalism —
Contemplation of God.
Gregory's quarrel with the Eunomians was not only about their
methods of teaching. Their loquaciousness was fed by their optimistic confidence
in their own rationalism, which Gregory did not accept. He opposed it with his
doctrine of the limitation of man's ability to know God. Once again he turned to
Hellenistic terminology and imagery in order to convey the teaching of the
Bible. God is the ultimate desire of all
speculation. The greatest good is the knowledge of God, and this can be attained
through contemplation, θεωρια. “What seems to me to be best of all,” Gregory
writes, “is to shut off my senses, escape from my flesh and the world,
maintain no communication with human affairs that is not absolutely
necessary, and to speak to myself and God, to live superior to visible things,
to always carry the divine image within myself, pure and unmixed with the
deceptive impressions of the lower world, and to be and to constantly become
more and more a clear mirror of God and divine things, to add light to light and
greater radiance to that which is less clear, until I ascend to the source of
that illumination and achieve the bliss of my ultimate goal. This truth will
make mirrors unnecessary."
In contemplation we do not only passively reflect the Divinity,
and the soul is not simply a mirror. Contemplation means union with God and it
must be achieved through practice, through πραξις. This is the only w
ay
to establish contact with God. Man is united with God and God is united with
people, with "gods." As man strives to ascend, he is renewed. "I am transformed
and I am improved. From being one man I become another, and I experience a
divine change." Even at these heights, however, God is hidden from man. "But
what has happened to me, my friends, you who share the mystery and, like me,
love the truth?" Gregory exclaims. "I went forward to attain God. With this in
mind I freed myself from the material world, gathered myself into myself as much
as I could, and started to ascend the mountain, but when I looked around myself
I hardly saw the back of God (cf. Exodus 33:11-23) or the spiritual Rock
(I Corinthians 10:4), the Word who became incarnate for our sakes.
Looking more closely, I saw that I contemplated not the first and pure nature of
the Trinity, which is known to its own self. I contemplated not that which
abides behind the first curtain and is veiled by the cherubim, but I saw that
which is further outside and stretches itself towards us. What I saw is the
grandeur which is visible in the creatures made and ruled by God." In other
words, even in the highest stages of contemplation it is not God Himself which
is revealed, but only His glory and magnificence; not the light, but the
radiance of the light. Gregory insists that the nature of the Divinity is
unknowable. "To claim a knowledge of what God is is to be deluded."
Gregory writes that the Godhead is the "Holy of Holies, hidden
even from the seraphim." God is infinite and impossible to behold, and it is
only the fact that He is infinite which is accessible to us. God is "like a sea
of being, unlimited and infinite, extending round the boundaries of all
conception of time and nature, and only by His intellect that we have an
indication of His truth. God's image, however, is lost before we can catch it,
and it slips away before we can grasp it. It illuminates that which holds pinion
in us, if that is pure, in the same way that flashes of fining illuminate our
vision." God is known "not by considering at is in Him, but what is around Him."
Even at the highest point is striving the human mind can contemplate only an
"image of truth." This image is similar to the sun's reflection on the water,
which is the only means for weak eyes to know the sun. This has clearly been
drawn from a passage in Plato's Politicus: this is shadows and images on
the water." Gregory may have taken the comparison of the contemplation of God to
the observation of a reflection in a mirror from either St. Paul (I Corinthians
13:12) or Plato (through Plotinus).
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