Friday, February 27, 2015
Of interest ~ Godwin's Law
Godwin's Law (or Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies)[1][2] is an Internet adage asserting that "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1"[2][3]— that is, if an online discussion (regardless of topic or scope) goes on long enough, sooner or later someone will compare someone or something to Hitler or Nazism. Despite being described as universal regarding the subject of the discussion, the Godwin's law is more likely to be applicable to social topics (including politics, law, religion, etc.).
Promulgated by American attorney and author Mike Godwin in 1990,[2] Godwin's Law originally referred, specifically, to Usenet newsgroup discussions.[4] It is now applied to any threaded online discussion, such as Internet forums, chat rooms and blog comment threads, as well as to speeches, articles and other rhetoric.[5][6]
thanks to source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law
Tuesday, February 24, 2015
Quote by James Anthony Froude ~ Moral Law written in eternity
Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral law is written on the tablets of eternity. For every false word or unrighteous deed, for cruelty and oppression, for lust or vanity, the price has to be paid at last.
~ James Anthony Froude
Source:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpMSP-jWoH0
Quote by Simon Greenleaf ~ Evidence of Christ
A person who rejects Christ may choose to say that I do not accept it, he may not choose to say there is not enough evidence.
Source of quote
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpMSP-jWoH0
Friday, February 20, 2015
St Gregory Nazianzen "The Theologian" ~ Theology and Mysticism
Theology and Mysticism in St Gregory Nazianzen
Apophaticism and cataphaticism
There are several reasons for us to state that St Gregory Nazianzen is one of the central figures in the entire history of Eastern Christian theology and mysticism.First of all, Gregory’s theology is very central to the entire Byzantine Tradition. In Byzantium he was known as ‘The Theologian’ and was the most quoted author, after the Bible, in the ecclesiastical literature.[1] The corpus of his writings (especially his Discourses), have become not only an integral part of Byzantine paradosis (Tradition); it was in fact regarded as regula fidei (‘the rule of faith’), almost as sacred scripture. No other Byzantine author ever enjoyed such appreciation, popularity and unquestionable authority.
Secondly, all major Byzantine theologians after Gregory were profoundly influenced by him, including Maximus the Confessor, John of Damascus, Symeon the New Theologian and Gregory Palamas. All of them saw in Gregory not only a gifted dogmatist and Christian rhetorician, but also a profound mystic, whose spiritual insights contributed much to the development of Eastern Christian mystical tradition. It should be noted that, as there was no divorce of dogmatic theology and mysticism in the Christian East,[2] the appellation ‘The Theologian’ referred to both theology and mysticism, or rather it referred to the theology which was deeply rooted in mystical experience.
Thirdly, there are stereotypes in the modern Western scholarship which have led to a certain underestimation of Gregory Nazianzen as a mystical writer. Speaking of Byzantine mysticism, modern scholars most often mention Origen, Gregory of Nyssa and Maximus the Confessor, as well as, sometimes, Evagrius and ‘Macarian Homilies’, but disregard Gregory Nazianzen. This approach, which became common from the time of Jean Daniélou and Hans Urs von Baltasar, has no justification from within the Byzantine tradition itself. By placing Gregory Nazianzen in the very centre of Byzantine mystical tradition I shall try to redress the balance and to restore traditional understanding of this great theologian of the fourth century.
Gregory Nazianzen was born into a noble Christian family: his father was bishop of Nazianzus. After many years of study, first in Cappadocia, then in Alexandria, and finally in Athens, Gregory became a priest helping his father in Nazianzus. He was then made Bishop of Sasima by his friend Basil the Great but never went to his diocese. In the theological controversies of 370s he took a very evident Nicene position, as well as openly proclaiming the divinity of the Holy Spirit. In 379 he was invited by a small group of the Nicene Orthodox to Constantinople (whose churches were still occupied by Arians) and it was there that he preached his famous Theological Discourses, which became a manifesto of the Nicene faith. In 380 Gregory was officially recognized as Archbishop of Constantinople by Emperor Theodosius but was deposed the following year by the Second Ecumenical Council. He spent his last years at the family estate in Arianzus, composing theological and didactic poetry.
In what follows I shall discuss the most characteristic themes of Gregory Nazianzen’s theology and mysticism. I shall begin with the theme of true theology as a mystical ascent to God. I shall then turn to the themes of God as mystery and the divine names. The theme of God as light, which will be discussed next, is very important both for Gregory and for subsequent mystical tradition of the Christian East. Then the themes of illumination, purification, prayer and the vision of God will be reflected upon. I shall then analyze Gregory’s doctrine of deification, which is indeed the very core of his theology and mysticism. Finally, I shall speak of how the mystical theology of St Gregory influenced subsequent Byzantine authors, such as Maximus the Confessor and John of Damascus.
Apophaticism and cataphaticism
The paradox of every word about God is that God in His essence is incomprehensible for the human reasoning and cannot be adequately explained or depicted by any human word. A true Christian piety, in Gregory’s opinion, consists ‘not so much in frequently speaking about God but rather in keeping silence about Him’.[3] God reveals Himself to the human person not through words, but above words, in an encounter with Him in prayer. This encounter takes place in a deep silence of tongue and thought. Hence the preference given by many Eastern Fathers to the apophatic approach in theology, when we speak not about what God is, but about what He is not. Successively denying everything which is not God,- and indeed He is nothing of what could be affirmed,- the person is left somehow deprived of words and falls silent. When all words are exhausted, there opens up the possibility of an encounter with God in a depth where words are no longer necessary.
The apophatic theology, whose roots are found in Philo and Clement of Alexandria, was specially developed by Gregory of Nyssa and Denys the Areopagite. As far as Gregory Nazianzen is concerned, he was not an unreserved adherent of the apophatic approach. He understood its obvious advantages, but he also perceived its major disadvantage, namely that absence of words does not necessarily lead one to a real encounter with the living God. In order to bring people to God, Gregory claims, one should speak about him, and not only in negative terms, but also in positive affirmations: and this is in spite of the fact that no positive affirmation about God can be exhaustive. Gregory Nazianzen was perhaps more pragmatic than his friend Gregory of Nyssa and was more than the latter concerned about the practical usefulness of his preaching: this is why he though that one can speak affirmatively even about God’s nature. The cataphatic theological approach is perhaps only an addendum to the apophatic approach. However, without this addendum the apophatic approach may lead nowhere:
…An inquirer into the nature of a real being cannot stop short at saying what it is not but must add to his denials a positive affirmation… A person who tells you what God is not but fails to tell you what He is, is rather like someone who, asked what twice five are, answers, ‘not two, not three, not four, not five, not twenty, not thirty, no number, in short, under ten or over ten’. He does not deny it is ten, but he is also not settling the questioner’s mind with a firm answer. It is much simpler, much briefer, to indicate all that something is not by indicating what it is, than to reveal what it is by denying what it is not.[4]
This might seem an inadmissible simplification, at least because the nature of God is not the same as ‘twice five’, and if there is a simple answer on ‘what twice five are’, there is and can be no answer of the same kind on ‘what God is’. However, Gregory does not claim that it is possible to give a simple and exhaustive answer about the nature of God. As we shall see soon, when speaking of God, he insists on the incomprehensibility of the divine nature and essence. In practice he uses apophatic terminology as regularly as cataphatic. Yet he argues that a positive affirmation about God can set someone’s mind with an answer about God, while an unbroken chain of negations may at times lead one away from Him.
[1] J. Noret, ‘Grégoire de Nazianze, l’auteur le plus cité, après la Bible, dans la litterature ecclesiastique byzantine. – II Symposium Nazianzenum (Paderborn, 1983), pp. 259-266.
[2] A. Louth, The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition (Oxford, 1981), pp. XII-XIII.
[3] Disc.3,7,13-15; SC 247,250-252.
[4] Disc.28,9,18-32; SC 250,118-120 (translated into English by L. Wickam in Fr.W.Norris. Faith Gives Fullness to Reasoning. The Five Theological Orations of Gregory Nazianzen. Leiden-New York – Kobenhavn – Koln, 1991, p. 229).
Word and silence
The starting point of Gregory’s theological approach is the fact that Christianity deals not with an ‘unknown God’,[1] not with a silent God, but with the God Who revealed Himself to humanity as an incarnate Word. Therefore the sacrifice of word on the part of the humans is ‘more sacred and pure than all wordless sacrifices’;[2] gratitude to God should also be expressed ‘through a word’;[3] before every other offering God should be honoured by means of words, which are ‘common and unanimous offering of all those who have partaken of the divine grace’.[4] The Incarnation of the Word of God makes it possible for humans to speak of God Whom ‘no man hath seen at any time’, but Whom the incarnate Son of God ‘hath declared’, or revealed, explained (exegesato) to people.[5] From the moment when the Word of God explained the ‘unknown God’ to the human race, the task is laid on the ministers of the Word to continue this explanation and to speak to people about God. In other words, Christian theology is the continuation and development of Christ’s message.
Human word cannot express God but can lead to Him, in the same manner as human reason cannot comprehend God but can approach Him. This is why Gregory regarded word as his only true wealth and the ministry of the word as his only true vocation:
This is what I offer to God, this is what I consecrate, the only thing which I preserved for myself, which is my only possession. For I abandoned the rest, according to the Spirit’s commandment, and I exchanged everything what I ever had for one most precious stone…[6] As a minister of the Word I attach myself to word only,[7] and will never deliberately neglect it, but I highly value it, I greet it and I rejoice about it more than anything else… I make it friend of my whole life, my good counselor and companion, my guide on the way towards the high… All my desire is directed to word, after God, or better to say, to God himself, because it leads to God with the help of intelligence, through which – and only through which – God is comprehended by us, is preserved and grows in us.[8]
Gregory’s entire life consisted of periods of preaching and periods of silence. After his ordination to the priesthood he departed into the desert in order to spend some time in silence; he then returned to his father’s flock asking forgiveness. He acted in the same way after his episcopal ordination. Even during his later years as a Bishop he used to interrupt his activity as a preacher with periods of silence; he preserved silence for the entire period of Lent before Easter. Gregory was convinced that a purified word, a word about what is beyond words, reason and hearing cannot be born but from silence:
You do not know what gift of God is silence, as well as not to be in need of any word, so that on one’s own accord to choose one thing and to avoid another thing, and to be for oneself a dispenser of both words and silence. For every word is by nature weak and shakable… but the word about God is as much more as its object is greater, zeal is stronger and danger more pressing. What are we afraid of, and what shall we set our hopes upon? Shall we set our hopes on our intellect or word or hearing? But there is danger for all three of them. For it is difficult to comprehend (God), it is impossible to express (Him),[9] and the most difficult of all is to find a purified hearing.[10]
In Gregory’s understanding, the ministry of the word must include apophatic silence alongside sermon: this is the nature of theology, which deals with what is beyond words. Gregory speaks of himself as God’s organ,[11] which is played by the Holy Spirit. When it is pleasing to Him, the organ sounds; at other times it is silent:
I opened my mouth and attracted the Spirit,[12] and I give everything which is mine, as well as myself, to the Spirit: action and word, inaction and silence. Let Him possess me, let Him lead my hand, intellect and tongue to what is due and to what He wants… I am a divine organ, an instrument of word, which is tuned and played by the good artist, Spirit. Did he produce silence yesterday? So my philosophy was not to speak. Does he pluck the strings of the intellect today? I will pronounce word and my philosophy will be to speak… I close my door and disclose it for the Intelligence, the Word and the Spirit, united in nature and divinity.[13]
Word and silence are two wings with which the human intellect takes wing towards God. In the same manner negation and affirmation, apophaticism and cataphaticism are two ways by which a theologizing reason can approach its goal. Theology will be integral and authentic only when it recognizes that God is a mystery beyond words. In this case every word emerges from the feeling of weakness and helplessness of the human tongue in the face of this mystery. Every priest, bishop, theologian, every Christian is called to preach God, but their word must be born of prayer, and his prayer, from silence.
Human word cannot express God but can lead to Him, in the same manner as human reason cannot comprehend God but can approach Him. This is why Gregory regarded word as his only true wealth and the ministry of the word as his only true vocation:
This is what I offer to God, this is what I consecrate, the only thing which I preserved for myself, which is my only possession. For I abandoned the rest, according to the Spirit’s commandment, and I exchanged everything what I ever had for one most precious stone…[6] As a minister of the Word I attach myself to word only,[7] and will never deliberately neglect it, but I highly value it, I greet it and I rejoice about it more than anything else… I make it friend of my whole life, my good counselor and companion, my guide on the way towards the high… All my desire is directed to word, after God, or better to say, to God himself, because it leads to God with the help of intelligence, through which – and only through which – God is comprehended by us, is preserved and grows in us.[8]
Gregory’s entire life consisted of periods of preaching and periods of silence. After his ordination to the priesthood he departed into the desert in order to spend some time in silence; he then returned to his father’s flock asking forgiveness. He acted in the same way after his episcopal ordination. Even during his later years as a Bishop he used to interrupt his activity as a preacher with periods of silence; he preserved silence for the entire period of Lent before Easter. Gregory was convinced that a purified word, a word about what is beyond words, reason and hearing cannot be born but from silence:
You do not know what gift of God is silence, as well as not to be in need of any word, so that on one’s own accord to choose one thing and to avoid another thing, and to be for oneself a dispenser of both words and silence. For every word is by nature weak and shakable… but the word about God is as much more as its object is greater, zeal is stronger and danger more pressing. What are we afraid of, and what shall we set our hopes upon? Shall we set our hopes on our intellect or word or hearing? But there is danger for all three of them. For it is difficult to comprehend (God), it is impossible to express (Him),[9] and the most difficult of all is to find a purified hearing.[10]
In Gregory’s understanding, the ministry of the word must include apophatic silence alongside sermon: this is the nature of theology, which deals with what is beyond words. Gregory speaks of himself as God’s organ,[11] which is played by the Holy Spirit. When it is pleasing to Him, the organ sounds; at other times it is silent:
I opened my mouth and attracted the Spirit,[12] and I give everything which is mine, as well as myself, to the Spirit: action and word, inaction and silence. Let Him possess me, let Him lead my hand, intellect and tongue to what is due and to what He wants… I am a divine organ, an instrument of word, which is tuned and played by the good artist, Spirit. Did he produce silence yesterday? So my philosophy was not to speak. Does he pluck the strings of the intellect today? I will pronounce word and my philosophy will be to speak… I close my door and disclose it for the Intelligence, the Word and the Spirit, united in nature and divinity.[13]
Word and silence are two wings with which the human intellect takes wing towards God. In the same manner negation and affirmation, apophaticism and cataphaticism are two ways by which a theologizing reason can approach its goal. Theology will be integral and authentic only when it recognizes that God is a mystery beyond words. In this case every word emerges from the feeling of weakness and helplessness of the human tongue in the face of this mystery. Every priest, bishop, theologian, every Christian is called to preach God, but their word must be born of prayer, and his prayer, from silence.
[1] Acts 17:23.
[2] Disc.4,3,14-15; SC 309,90.
[3] Disc.4,4,5-6; 90 = 1.66.
[4] Disc.4,6,22-24; 96 = 1.67.
[5] Cf. John 1:18.
[6] Cf. Matt. 13:45-46.
[7] The term logos has a wide semantic spectrum in the Greek language. Gregory uses it to refer to human word, human reason (mind), the word of God (Scripture), or the incarnate Word of God (Christ).
[8] Disc.6,5,1-17; SC 405,132-134.
[9] Cf. Plato, Timaeus 28c.
[10] Disc.32,14,11-21; SC 318,114.
[11] He speaks of a stringed musical instrument played by plucking.
[12] Ps.118/119:131, according to LXX.
[13] Disc.12,1,1-15; SC 405,348-350.
Theology as a mystery
Theology ought to be inspired by God: it ought to be not the word of a human person, but the word of the Spirit which is pronounced by human lips. A true Christian theologian is the one who is able to be silent until the Holy Spirit touches the strings of his soul. And it is only when the human word falls silent and the word of the Spirit emerges from his soul, that true theology is born. From this moment ‘a lover of words’ is transformed into ‘a lover of wisdom’, a rhetorician into a theologian.
According to Gregory, not everyone can be a theologian, but only the one who purifies himself for God. Not everyone can participate in theological discussions, but only those who can do it properly. Finally, not every theological theme can be discussed openly:
Discussion of theology is not for everyone, I tell you, not for everyone – it is no such inexpensive and effortless pursuit… It must be reserved for certain occasions, for certain audiences, and certain limits must be observed. It is not for all men, but only for those who have been tested and have found a sound footing in study, and, more importantly, have undergone, or at the very least are undergoing, purification of body and soul. For one who is not pure to lay hold on pure things is dangerous,[1] just as it is for weak eyes to look at the sun’s brightness. What is the right time? Whenever we are free from the mire and noise without, and our commanding faculty[2] is not confused by illusory, wandering images… We need actually to be still[3] in order to know God… What aspects of theology should be investigated, and to what limit? Only aspects within our grasp, and only to the limit of the experience and capacity of our audience… Yet I am not maintaining that we ought not to be mindful of God at all times… It is more important that we should remember God than that we should breathe… So it is not continual remembrance of God that I seek to discourage, but continual discussion of theology. I am not opposed either to theology… but only to its untimely practice…[4]
In Gregory’s discussion of what the true theology is, we find reminiscences of the early Christian idea of disciplina arcana (‘secret teaching’), as well as of its ancient Greek counterpart, the rule according to which it was not allowed to disclose the meaning of the mysteries to those not initiated into them. It is not permitted to discuss theological matters ‘before any and every audience, heathen or Christian, friend or foe, sympathetic or hostile’.[5] Theology is a mystery. When it is turned into an object of public debates, it is desacralized and is deprived of its mystical core:
…(Let us) discuss mystical things in a mystical way and holy things in a holy manner, and not broadcast to profane hearing what is not to be divulged. Do not let us prove that we are less reverent than those who worship demons and venerate obscene tales and objects; they would sooner give their blood than disclose certain words to non-initiates.[6] We must recognize that as in dress, diet, laughter, and deportment there are certain standards of decency, the same is true of utterance and silence, particularly as we pay especial honour to ‘the Word’ among the titles and properties of God. Let even our contentiousness be governed by rules.[7]
Theology is neither science, nor scholarship, art or profession: it is nothing other than the ascent to God. Gregory uses the traditional image of Moses on Mount Sinai to emphasize that the true theologian is only someone who is able to enter the cloud and encounter God face to face. In this multidimensional allegorical picture Moses symbolizes a person whose theology emerges from the experience of an encounter with God; Aaron represents someone whose theology is based on what he heard from others; Nadab and Abihu typify those who theologize because of their high position in the church hierarchy. But neither acquaintance with the experience of others nor an ecclesiastical rank give one the right to theologize. Those Christians who purify themselves according to God’s commandments may take part in a theological discussion; the non-purified ought not to take part in it; as to those who participate in the discussion in order to catch certain expressions of a theologian in order to accuse him in dogmatic unreliability, they should leave the assembly of Christians altogether, for they have no place among the theologians as theology cannot be driven by wickedness:
I eagerly ascend the mount… that I may enter the cloud and company with God… Is any an Aaron? He shall come up with me… Is any of the crowd, unfit, as they are, for so sublime contemplation? Utterly unhallowed? – let him not come near, it is dangerous. Duly prepared? – let him abide below. He shall hear but the voice and the trumpet, true religion’s outer expressions; he shall see the mount in smoke with its lightning flashes, warning and wonder to those who cannot ascend it. Is any an evil, untamed beast, quite impervious to thoughts of contemplation and divinity?.. He shall stand still further off. He shall quit the mount… Our sermon leaves these behind, meaning to be engraved on solid tables of stone and on both sides of these because the Law has an obvious and hidden aspect. The obvious belongs to the crowd waiting below, the hidden to the few who attain the high.[8]
Speaking of obvious and hidden aspects of the Law, Gregory follows the notion of the two levels of the Scripture, which was traditional for the Alexandrians: literal, historic on the one hand (historia), and spiritual, contemplative (theoria) on the other. The literal understanding of Scripture, according to Origen and Clement of Alexandria, is peculiar to the majority of people, whereas its spiritual meaning is disclosed only to those who ‘in everything seek secret wisdom’,[9] to the ‘gnostics of Scriptures’.[10] In Scripture and in religion, there are different levels of understanding: some things is accessible to all, some are reserved for a very few.[11] The same happens in theology. A true theologian is a Moses, a gnostic and an initiate; all the rest, depending on the degree of their purification, are more or less at a distance from him.
In other words, everyone can be a good Christian, but not everyone is able to investigate the depths of dogmas, in which many things should be covered by an apophatic silence. Everyone can contemplate on matters of theology, but not everyone can be initiated into its mysteries. All Christians must purify themselves for God: the more a person is purified, the more discernible are the words of the Spirit in his mouth. True theology is born out of a silent and humble standing before God rather than out of speculations on theological matters.
According to Gregory, not everyone can be a theologian, but only the one who purifies himself for God. Not everyone can participate in theological discussions, but only those who can do it properly. Finally, not every theological theme can be discussed openly:
Discussion of theology is not for everyone, I tell you, not for everyone – it is no such inexpensive and effortless pursuit… It must be reserved for certain occasions, for certain audiences, and certain limits must be observed. It is not for all men, but only for those who have been tested and have found a sound footing in study, and, more importantly, have undergone, or at the very least are undergoing, purification of body and soul. For one who is not pure to lay hold on pure things is dangerous,[1] just as it is for weak eyes to look at the sun’s brightness. What is the right time? Whenever we are free from the mire and noise without, and our commanding faculty[2] is not confused by illusory, wandering images… We need actually to be still[3] in order to know God… What aspects of theology should be investigated, and to what limit? Only aspects within our grasp, and only to the limit of the experience and capacity of our audience… Yet I am not maintaining that we ought not to be mindful of God at all times… It is more important that we should remember God than that we should breathe… So it is not continual remembrance of God that I seek to discourage, but continual discussion of theology. I am not opposed either to theology… but only to its untimely practice…[4]
In Gregory’s discussion of what the true theology is, we find reminiscences of the early Christian idea of disciplina arcana (‘secret teaching’), as well as of its ancient Greek counterpart, the rule according to which it was not allowed to disclose the meaning of the mysteries to those not initiated into them. It is not permitted to discuss theological matters ‘before any and every audience, heathen or Christian, friend or foe, sympathetic or hostile’.[5] Theology is a mystery. When it is turned into an object of public debates, it is desacralized and is deprived of its mystical core:
…(Let us) discuss mystical things in a mystical way and holy things in a holy manner, and not broadcast to profane hearing what is not to be divulged. Do not let us prove that we are less reverent than those who worship demons and venerate obscene tales and objects; they would sooner give their blood than disclose certain words to non-initiates.[6] We must recognize that as in dress, diet, laughter, and deportment there are certain standards of decency, the same is true of utterance and silence, particularly as we pay especial honour to ‘the Word’ among the titles and properties of God. Let even our contentiousness be governed by rules.[7]
Theology is neither science, nor scholarship, art or profession: it is nothing other than the ascent to God. Gregory uses the traditional image of Moses on Mount Sinai to emphasize that the true theologian is only someone who is able to enter the cloud and encounter God face to face. In this multidimensional allegorical picture Moses symbolizes a person whose theology emerges from the experience of an encounter with God; Aaron represents someone whose theology is based on what he heard from others; Nadab and Abihu typify those who theologize because of their high position in the church hierarchy. But neither acquaintance with the experience of others nor an ecclesiastical rank give one the right to theologize. Those Christians who purify themselves according to God’s commandments may take part in a theological discussion; the non-purified ought not to take part in it; as to those who participate in the discussion in order to catch certain expressions of a theologian in order to accuse him in dogmatic unreliability, they should leave the assembly of Christians altogether, for they have no place among the theologians as theology cannot be driven by wickedness:
I eagerly ascend the mount… that I may enter the cloud and company with God… Is any an Aaron? He shall come up with me… Is any of the crowd, unfit, as they are, for so sublime contemplation? Utterly unhallowed? – let him not come near, it is dangerous. Duly prepared? – let him abide below. He shall hear but the voice and the trumpet, true religion’s outer expressions; he shall see the mount in smoke with its lightning flashes, warning and wonder to those who cannot ascend it. Is any an evil, untamed beast, quite impervious to thoughts of contemplation and divinity?.. He shall stand still further off. He shall quit the mount… Our sermon leaves these behind, meaning to be engraved on solid tables of stone and on both sides of these because the Law has an obvious and hidden aspect. The obvious belongs to the crowd waiting below, the hidden to the few who attain the high.[8]
Speaking of obvious and hidden aspects of the Law, Gregory follows the notion of the two levels of the Scripture, which was traditional for the Alexandrians: literal, historic on the one hand (historia), and spiritual, contemplative (theoria) on the other. The literal understanding of Scripture, according to Origen and Clement of Alexandria, is peculiar to the majority of people, whereas its spiritual meaning is disclosed only to those who ‘in everything seek secret wisdom’,[9] to the ‘gnostics of Scriptures’.[10] In Scripture and in religion, there are different levels of understanding: some things is accessible to all, some are reserved for a very few.[11] The same happens in theology. A true theologian is a Moses, a gnostic and an initiate; all the rest, depending on the degree of their purification, are more or less at a distance from him.
In other words, everyone can be a good Christian, but not everyone is able to investigate the depths of dogmas, in which many things should be covered by an apophatic silence. Everyone can contemplate on matters of theology, but not everyone can be initiated into its mysteries. All Christians must purify themselves for God: the more a person is purified, the more discernible are the words of the Spirit in his mouth. True theology is born out of a silent and humble standing before God rather than out of speculations on theological matters.
[1] Cf. Plato, Phaedon 67b.
[2] I.e. the intellect.
[3] Cf. Ps.45:11/46:10.
[4] Disc.27,3,1-4,12; SC 250,76-80 (Wickham, 218-219).
[5] Disc.27,5,9-10; 82 (Wickham, 219-220).
[6] Cf. Diogenis Laertius, Lives of philosophers II,101: ‘Tell me, Euricledes, what the defilers of mysteries do?’ – ‘They disclose the mysteries to non-initiates’.
[7] Disc.27,5,23-32; 82-84 (Wickham, 220).
[8] Disc.28,2,1-39; SC 250,102-104 = (Wickham, 224-225). Cf. Ex.19 and 24.
[9] Origen, On the First Principles 4,13.
[10] Clement, Stromata 6,15.
[11] Cf. Origen, On the Fist Principles, Introduction.
God as a mystery
One of the main themes of Gregory Nazianzen’s theology was the theme of the incomprehensibility of God. Its historical context was the polemic with Eunomius, in which many fourth-century theologians were involved, including all the three Great Cappadocians. Eunomius claimed that God’s essence is comprehensible for a human person: ‘God does not know about His own nature more than we do’.[1] Eunomius is reported to have said, ‘I know God in the same manner as He knows Himself’.[2] If what we know about Eunomius from his hostile opponents is true, then his teaching may be considered as a rationalization of Christianity, in which no room is left for a miracle, for a mystery, for anything beyond the limits of human reasoning. ‘The religion within the boundaries of reason’, which was sought for by the European rationalist philosophers of the nineteenth century,[3] was, it seems, invented long before them.
This rationalization of religion was something quite opposite to what Gregory Nazianzen believed in. He regarded the whole of Christian faith as first of all a mystery. The way of a theologian, as we have just seen, is considered by him as a mystical ascent to the peak of Mount Sinai. However, this way leads only to seeing the ‘averted figure’ of God, that is, not to the comprehension of God’s nature, but to some sort of revelation about God though the incarnate Word and through the visible universe:
What experience of this have I had, you friends of truth, her initiates, her lovers, as I am? I was running with a mind to see God and so it was that I ascended the mount. I penetrated the cloud, became enclosed in it, detached from matter and material things and concentrated, so far as might be, in myself. But when I directed my gaze I scarcely saw the averted figure of God, and this whilst sheltering in the rock,[4] God the Word incarnate for us. Peering in I saw not the Nature prime, self apprehended… but as it reaches us at its furthest remove from God, being, so far as I can understand, the Grandeur, or… the ‘majesty’[5] inherent in the created things He has brought forth and governs.[6]
The human person cannot know God in the same manner as God knows Himself: one can only learn about God through Christ and through the things of the visible world. God’s essence and nature is inaccessible for the human intellect. In this affirmation we find the most fundamental disparity between Gregory’s and Eunomius’ theories of knowledge of God. For the former, the knowledge of God is a way leading beyond the limits of discursive knowledge, for the latter, a movement within its limits. Gregory Nazianzen was himself a rhetorician and a philosopher: he was a defender of Christian paideia, scholarship and knowledge. However, he understood that human knowledge has its limits and that human reason cannot grasp the nature of the divine things. Reason can lead one to the recognition of God’s existence, but in no way can penetrate into God’s essence. Speaking of this, Gregory polemicizes not only with Eunomius, but also with Plato, ‘the theologian’ of Greek antiquity. Gregory quotes his famous saying which was quoted by many Christian writers:[7]
To know God is hard, to describe Him impossible, as a pagan philosopher taught.[8] …No – to tell of God is not possible, so my argument runs, but to know Him is even less possible. For language may show the known if not adequately, at least faintly… But mentally to grasp so great a matter is utterly beyond real possibility… Whether higher, incorporeal natures can grasp it, I do not know. They may, perhaps, through their proximity to God and their illumination by light in its fullness know God if not with total clarity, at least more completely, more distinctly than we do.[9] …The incomprehensible and boundless nature (of God) passes understanding. I mean understanding what that nature is, not understanding that it exists. Our preaching is not vain, our faith empty;[10] it is not that doctrine we are propounding. Do not take our frankness as ground for atheistic caviling and exalt yourselves over against us for acknowledging our ignorance.[11]
Now, according to the Eunomians, atheism is the affirmation of the incomprehensibility of God. On the contrary, according to Gregory, the claim that God is comprehensible in His nature and essence is the highest degree of atheism and blasphemy. A Christian theologian humbly confesses that he deals with a mystery beyond comprehension, while a rationalist pretends that he knows God no less than God knows Himself. A Christian theologian knows that we can only speak about what is ‘around God’, but not about what He is:
God always was, is and shall be; or rather, He always ‘is’. For ‘was’ and ‘shall be’ are taken from our divisions of time and from transient nature, whereas God is He Who always is, and this is how He calls Himself in his revelation to Moses on the mountain. He possesses concentrated in Himself the entirety of being (to einai) without beginning and without termination, like an ocean of substance,[12] limitless and indefinite, which surpasses any idea of either time or nature. Only the intellect might roughly depict Him, however, in some obscure and mediocre manner, and not in His nature, but in what is around Him, joining certain elements of representation in one image of truth, which runs away before you can overtake it, and which escapes before you can comprehend it… So, the divinity is limitless in it is difficult to contemplate it. And only this is comprehensible in it: its limitlessness, even of someone would think that it is pertinent to a simple nature to be either totally incomprehensible or entirely comprehensible.[13]
Speaking of God in His nature, Gregory makes mostly negative statements. He is boundless, limitless, formless, impalpable, invisible; there is no composition, no conflict, no division, no dissolution in His nature.[14] Therefore God is not a body. But the term ‘incorporeal’ does not give all-embracing revelation of God’s essence. The same is true of the terms ‘ingenerate’, ‘unoriginate’, ‘immutable’, ‘immortal’, and all other expressions which refer to God’s attributes.[15] These and similar apophatic expressions only tell us of what God is not, but cannot explain what He is in His essence. Is God somewhere or nowhere? If we say that He is nowhere, one can ask whether He exists at all. But if we say that He is somewhere, this would mean that He is limited in space.[16] Every term is inadequate to express the nature of the incomprehensible.
Why is God incomprehensible? ‘Not that deity resents our knowledge’, Gregory answers, ‘resentment is a far cry from the divine nature, serene as it is, uniquely and properly “good”, especially resentment of its most prized creation’.[17] We do not know the reason for God’s incomprehensibility. However, we know that there is this ‘corporeal gloom’ which ‘stands barrier between us and God like the cloud of old time between Hebrews and Egyptians’.[18] Only a few can peer through the ‘darkness which He made His hiding place’,[19] which is our body.[20] In this idea, one can discern the influence of Plato, who said that to reach pure knowledge is only possible when one is liberated from one’s body and contemplates things with one’s soul alone.[21]
Gregory compares the way of the knowledge of God with the pursuit of one’s own shadow, which is impossible to outrun. God’s nature always escapes the human tongue and reason, however much they may strive to describe or present God. Being encircled by the material, one cannot reach the level in which true knowledge of God is possible. Yet knowledge of God in this life is only possible through the instrumentality of something material. Therefore, the full knowledge of God is not attainable for the person clothed in the material body:
…You cannot cross your own shadow, however much you haste – it is always exactly ahead of your grasp. Sight cannot approach its objects without the medium of light and atmosphere; fish cannot swim out of water; and no more can embodied beings keep incorporeal company with things ideal. Some corporeal factor of our will always intrude itself, even if the mind will be most fully detached from the visible world… This way our mind tires of getting past bodily conditions and companying with things sheerly incorporeal, and meanwhile it gazes in impotence at what lies beyond its power.[22]
The way of the knowledge of God is also compared with the descent into a bottomless abyss: the lower the reason descends, the more dense darkness around it is, while the reason never achieves its goal. The immersion into the depths of the divinity is endless, and this is again connected with limitations of human reason and word, which are unable to peer into the mysteries of God’s essence and God’s prodigies:
So it was with Solomon… The more he entered into profundities, the more his mind reeled. He made it a goal of his wisdom to discover just how far off it was.[23] Paul tried to get there – I do not mean God’s nature, that he knew to be quite impossible, but only to God’s judgments.[24] The marvel of all – I share his feeling as he closes his argument with impassioned wonder at the sort of things he calls the wealth and depth of God in acknowledgment of the incomprehensibility of God’s judgments.[25] His language is almost the same as David used. David at one point calls God’s judgments a great abyss fathomless by sense;[26] at another point he says that the knowledge even of his own make-up was too wonderful for him, too excellent for him to be able to grasp.[27]
The way of the knowledge of God is accomplished with wonder and astonishment at a miracle. In this state all discursive knowledge discontinues, the word falls silent. This state is not a knowledge of God’s essence, but is silence of every human knowledge in face of God’s limitlessness and bottomlessness. The knowledge of God’s essence is inaccessible for a person, while he is in a body, speaks earthly language and thinks in earthly categories.
Does it mean that the human person will know God’s essence when he becomes free from the body? Gregory leaves the question open. It seems, however, that he is inclined to a positive answer. The full knowledge of God will become possible in the state of deification, when the person’s intellect is united to what is related to it by nature, that is, to the divinity:
No one has yet discovered or ever shall discover what God is in His nature and essence. As for a discovery some time in the future, let those who have a mind to it research and speculate. The discovery will take place, so my reason tells me, when this God-like, divine thing, I mean our intellect and reason (noun kai logon), mingles with its kin, when the copy returns to the pattern it now longs after. This seems to me to be the meaning of the great dictum that we shall, in time to come, know even as we are known.[28] But for the present what reaches us is a scant emanation, as it were a small beam of a great light…[29]
So, Gregory leaves us with hope that in the age to come, when we are liberated from our material bodies, some fuller knowledge of God will be possible for us. Even then, though, we shall not know God as He knows Himself: there can be no identity between our knowledge of God and God’s self-knowledge. The possibility which opens to a person in the future world is that of knowledge of God as He knows the human person.[30] What this entails, one does not know now. One can only guess that this idea of St Paul implies a certain fullness and immediacy of the knowledge of God in the age to come. When the barrier of the body has been destroyed, an encounter face to face with God will become possible for the human person. As far as earthly life is concerned, only some kind of coming closer to this encounter is possible here, something like Moses’ ascent on Mount Sinai, where in darkness and cloud he recognizes God’s presence, but cannot see His essence.
This rationalization of religion was something quite opposite to what Gregory Nazianzen believed in. He regarded the whole of Christian faith as first of all a mystery. The way of a theologian, as we have just seen, is considered by him as a mystical ascent to the peak of Mount Sinai. However, this way leads only to seeing the ‘averted figure’ of God, that is, not to the comprehension of God’s nature, but to some sort of revelation about God though the incarnate Word and through the visible universe:
What experience of this have I had, you friends of truth, her initiates, her lovers, as I am? I was running with a mind to see God and so it was that I ascended the mount. I penetrated the cloud, became enclosed in it, detached from matter and material things and concentrated, so far as might be, in myself. But when I directed my gaze I scarcely saw the averted figure of God, and this whilst sheltering in the rock,[4] God the Word incarnate for us. Peering in I saw not the Nature prime, self apprehended… but as it reaches us at its furthest remove from God, being, so far as I can understand, the Grandeur, or… the ‘majesty’[5] inherent in the created things He has brought forth and governs.[6]
The human person cannot know God in the same manner as God knows Himself: one can only learn about God through Christ and through the things of the visible world. God’s essence and nature is inaccessible for the human intellect. In this affirmation we find the most fundamental disparity between Gregory’s and Eunomius’ theories of knowledge of God. For the former, the knowledge of God is a way leading beyond the limits of discursive knowledge, for the latter, a movement within its limits. Gregory Nazianzen was himself a rhetorician and a philosopher: he was a defender of Christian paideia, scholarship and knowledge. However, he understood that human knowledge has its limits and that human reason cannot grasp the nature of the divine things. Reason can lead one to the recognition of God’s existence, but in no way can penetrate into God’s essence. Speaking of this, Gregory polemicizes not only with Eunomius, but also with Plato, ‘the theologian’ of Greek antiquity. Gregory quotes his famous saying which was quoted by many Christian writers:[7]
To know God is hard, to describe Him impossible, as a pagan philosopher taught.[8] …No – to tell of God is not possible, so my argument runs, but to know Him is even less possible. For language may show the known if not adequately, at least faintly… But mentally to grasp so great a matter is utterly beyond real possibility… Whether higher, incorporeal natures can grasp it, I do not know. They may, perhaps, through their proximity to God and their illumination by light in its fullness know God if not with total clarity, at least more completely, more distinctly than we do.[9] …The incomprehensible and boundless nature (of God) passes understanding. I mean understanding what that nature is, not understanding that it exists. Our preaching is not vain, our faith empty;[10] it is not that doctrine we are propounding. Do not take our frankness as ground for atheistic caviling and exalt yourselves over against us for acknowledging our ignorance.[11]
Now, according to the Eunomians, atheism is the affirmation of the incomprehensibility of God. On the contrary, according to Gregory, the claim that God is comprehensible in His nature and essence is the highest degree of atheism and blasphemy. A Christian theologian humbly confesses that he deals with a mystery beyond comprehension, while a rationalist pretends that he knows God no less than God knows Himself. A Christian theologian knows that we can only speak about what is ‘around God’, but not about what He is:
God always was, is and shall be; or rather, He always ‘is’. For ‘was’ and ‘shall be’ are taken from our divisions of time and from transient nature, whereas God is He Who always is, and this is how He calls Himself in his revelation to Moses on the mountain. He possesses concentrated in Himself the entirety of being (to einai) without beginning and without termination, like an ocean of substance,[12] limitless and indefinite, which surpasses any idea of either time or nature. Only the intellect might roughly depict Him, however, in some obscure and mediocre manner, and not in His nature, but in what is around Him, joining certain elements of representation in one image of truth, which runs away before you can overtake it, and which escapes before you can comprehend it… So, the divinity is limitless in it is difficult to contemplate it. And only this is comprehensible in it: its limitlessness, even of someone would think that it is pertinent to a simple nature to be either totally incomprehensible or entirely comprehensible.[13]
Speaking of God in His nature, Gregory makes mostly negative statements. He is boundless, limitless, formless, impalpable, invisible; there is no composition, no conflict, no division, no dissolution in His nature.[14] Therefore God is not a body. But the term ‘incorporeal’ does not give all-embracing revelation of God’s essence. The same is true of the terms ‘ingenerate’, ‘unoriginate’, ‘immutable’, ‘immortal’, and all other expressions which refer to God’s attributes.[15] These and similar apophatic expressions only tell us of what God is not, but cannot explain what He is in His essence. Is God somewhere or nowhere? If we say that He is nowhere, one can ask whether He exists at all. But if we say that He is somewhere, this would mean that He is limited in space.[16] Every term is inadequate to express the nature of the incomprehensible.
Why is God incomprehensible? ‘Not that deity resents our knowledge’, Gregory answers, ‘resentment is a far cry from the divine nature, serene as it is, uniquely and properly “good”, especially resentment of its most prized creation’.[17] We do not know the reason for God’s incomprehensibility. However, we know that there is this ‘corporeal gloom’ which ‘stands barrier between us and God like the cloud of old time between Hebrews and Egyptians’.[18] Only a few can peer through the ‘darkness which He made His hiding place’,[19] which is our body.[20] In this idea, one can discern the influence of Plato, who said that to reach pure knowledge is only possible when one is liberated from one’s body and contemplates things with one’s soul alone.[21]
Gregory compares the way of the knowledge of God with the pursuit of one’s own shadow, which is impossible to outrun. God’s nature always escapes the human tongue and reason, however much they may strive to describe or present God. Being encircled by the material, one cannot reach the level in which true knowledge of God is possible. Yet knowledge of God in this life is only possible through the instrumentality of something material. Therefore, the full knowledge of God is not attainable for the person clothed in the material body:
…You cannot cross your own shadow, however much you haste – it is always exactly ahead of your grasp. Sight cannot approach its objects without the medium of light and atmosphere; fish cannot swim out of water; and no more can embodied beings keep incorporeal company with things ideal. Some corporeal factor of our will always intrude itself, even if the mind will be most fully detached from the visible world… This way our mind tires of getting past bodily conditions and companying with things sheerly incorporeal, and meanwhile it gazes in impotence at what lies beyond its power.[22]
The way of the knowledge of God is also compared with the descent into a bottomless abyss: the lower the reason descends, the more dense darkness around it is, while the reason never achieves its goal. The immersion into the depths of the divinity is endless, and this is again connected with limitations of human reason and word, which are unable to peer into the mysteries of God’s essence and God’s prodigies:
So it was with Solomon… The more he entered into profundities, the more his mind reeled. He made it a goal of his wisdom to discover just how far off it was.[23] Paul tried to get there – I do not mean God’s nature, that he knew to be quite impossible, but only to God’s judgments.[24] The marvel of all – I share his feeling as he closes his argument with impassioned wonder at the sort of things he calls the wealth and depth of God in acknowledgment of the incomprehensibility of God’s judgments.[25] His language is almost the same as David used. David at one point calls God’s judgments a great abyss fathomless by sense;[26] at another point he says that the knowledge even of his own make-up was too wonderful for him, too excellent for him to be able to grasp.[27]
The way of the knowledge of God is accomplished with wonder and astonishment at a miracle. In this state all discursive knowledge discontinues, the word falls silent. This state is not a knowledge of God’s essence, but is silence of every human knowledge in face of God’s limitlessness and bottomlessness. The knowledge of God’s essence is inaccessible for a person, while he is in a body, speaks earthly language and thinks in earthly categories.
Does it mean that the human person will know God’s essence when he becomes free from the body? Gregory leaves the question open. It seems, however, that he is inclined to a positive answer. The full knowledge of God will become possible in the state of deification, when the person’s intellect is united to what is related to it by nature, that is, to the divinity:
No one has yet discovered or ever shall discover what God is in His nature and essence. As for a discovery some time in the future, let those who have a mind to it research and speculate. The discovery will take place, so my reason tells me, when this God-like, divine thing, I mean our intellect and reason (noun kai logon), mingles with its kin, when the copy returns to the pattern it now longs after. This seems to me to be the meaning of the great dictum that we shall, in time to come, know even as we are known.[28] But for the present what reaches us is a scant emanation, as it were a small beam of a great light…[29]
So, Gregory leaves us with hope that in the age to come, when we are liberated from our material bodies, some fuller knowledge of God will be possible for us. Even then, though, we shall not know God as He knows Himself: there can be no identity between our knowledge of God and God’s self-knowledge. The possibility which opens to a person in the future world is that of knowledge of God as He knows the human person.[30] What this entails, one does not know now. One can only guess that this idea of St Paul implies a certain fullness and immediacy of the knowledge of God in the age to come. When the barrier of the body has been destroyed, an encounter face to face with God will become possible for the human person. As far as earthly life is concerned, only some kind of coming closer to this encounter is possible here, something like Moses’ ascent on Mount Sinai, where in darkness and cloud he recognizes God’s presence, but cannot see His essence.
[1] Cited in Socrates, Ecclesiastical History 4,7.
[2] Cited in Gregory of Nyssa, On the Divinity of the Son and the Spirit; PG 46,857.
[3] Kant, Renan, Tolstoy and others.
[4] Cf. Ex.33:22-23.
[5] Cf. Ps.8:2/8:1.
[6] Disc.28,3,1-14; SC 250,104-106 = (Wickham, 225).
[7] Cf. Justin, Apology II,10; Athenagoras, Apology 6; Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 5,12, etc.
[8] Cf. Plato, Timaeus 28c. Gregory does not quote Plato literally. See J. Pepin, De la philosophie ancienne à la théologie patristique (London, 1986), p. XIV, 251-260.
[9] The degree of the knowledge of God by angels was an open question for Gregory: ‘It is only God Himself who knows whether He is thoroughly comprehensible for the higher intellects’; PG 37,687.
[10] Cf. 1 Cor.15:14.
[11] Disc.28,4,1-5,16; 106-110 (Wickham, 226-227).
[12] Cf. Plato, Symposium 210d.
[13] Disc.38,7,1-25; SC 358,114-116.
[14] Disc.28,7,4-16; 112-114 (Wickham, 227-228).
[15] Disc.28,9,1-8; 116-118 (Wickham, 228).
[16] Disc.28,10,2-22; 120 (Wickham, 229).
[17] Disc.28,11,13-16; 122 (Wickham, 230).
[18] Cf. Ex.10:22.
[19] Ps.17:12/18:11.
[20] Disc.28,12,1-21; 124 (Wickham, 230-231).
[21] Plato, Phaedo 65e-66d.
[22] Disc.28,12,23-34; 13,21-24; 124-128 (Wickham, 230-231).
[23] Cf. Eccl.7:24.
[24] Cf. Rom.11:33.
[25] Cf. Rom.11:33.
[26] Cf. Ps.35:7/36:6.
[27] Disc.28,21,1-34; 142-144 (Wickham, 236). Cf. Ps.138/139:6.
[28] Cf. 1 Cor.13:12.
[29] Disc.28,17,1-11; 134-136 (Wickham, 223).
[30] Cf. also Disc.26,19,12-14; SC 284, 272.
The vision of God
The doctrine of the knowledge of God is closely related in Gregory to the doctrine of the vision of God. In both doctrines the incomprehensibility of God, the impossibility to comprehend His nature and to see Him in His essence is a starting-point. ‘God’, says Gregory, ‘is light unapproachable, unceasing, which has no beginning, no cessation, which is immeasurable, always shining, thrice-resplendent: only a few can see it as it is, I think, not even a few’.[1] In other places, however, Gregory speaks of people who ‘see God with their pure eyes’.[2] The virgins who have reached the state of deification ‘see God, and God sees them, for they belong to God’.[3]
We should note that the theme of the vision of God is a leitmotif of the entire Eastern Christian Tradition. St Irenaeus said that ‘the glory of God is the living man, and the life of man is the vision of God’.[4]
The initial paradox of the theme of the vision of God is that, according to the biblical and patristic tradition, God is invisible in His nature and therefor any kind of vision of Him ‘as He is’ is impossible for the human person. There are, however, several qualifications to this statement. First, the invisible God becomes visible in the person of Jesus Christ: ‘No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him’.[5] According to Irenaeus, ‘the Father is the invisible of the Son, and the Son is the visible of the Father’.[6] Secondly, God, Who is invisible for the human person in his fallen state, can become visible for those who have attained the state of deification and have their ‘eyes of the soul’ open.[7] Thirdly, God, Who is invisible in His essence, can reveal Himself to a human person in His energies, through which it is possible to see God.[8] Finally, God, Who is invisible for the human person in the present life, might become visible in the age to come: ‘Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is’.[9]
According to Gregory, the vision of God is possible in the present life, even though for a very few, but it will be much fuller in the future age:
With the help of the great books of the divine prophets
and the God-inspired disciples of Christ the Guide,
whose thought was sharpened by the resplendent Spirit
and who with their pure hearts saw the great God,-[10]
for this is the only way to receive the invisible Deity,-
with their help we came to know the divine, became illumined by God, ascending higher,
as far as it is possible for ephemeral creatures to ascend to God in this life.
For it is not easy for the eye to penetrate through a cloud,
even if the sight is very sharp. But what is more than that, is only possible for us later.
The reward for one’s desire is when one reaches the desirable.[11]
Therefore Gregory understands the words ‘Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God’[12] as a promise that God can be seen in this life, but he emphasizes, following biblical and patristic tradition, that a fuller vision is possible only in the eschatological age to come. What is visible in the present life is only ‘a certain sketch (skiagrafia) and an outline (procharagma) of the invisible’.[13] In earthly life the human person desires to see God and to a certain degree sees Him, but a fuller vision belongs to the life after death:
For it is said, For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known’.[14] What is our humiliation, but what great also is a promise, to know God as also we are known (by Him)! This is what Paul says, a great messenger of the truth, an instructor of pagans in faith, who… reached up to the third heaven, who saw paradise[15] and who for the sale of perfection had a desire to depart.[16] Moses also could hardly see the averted figure of God from behind the rock[17] – whatever is the meaning of ‘the averted figure’ and ‘the rock’ – and this was after he had prayed a lot and had received a promise. However, even he did not see as much as he wanted to see, for what escaped from his sight was greater than what appeared to him.[18]
Moses ascending Mount Sinai is, from Philo of Alexandria onwards, a traditional image of the mystic.[19] The vision of ‘the averted figure’ (opisthion) of God is allegorically interpreted in the sense that God can be seen in His energies but not in His invisible essence.[20] According to another interpretation, Moses sees God in the bodily image of the incarnate Word.[21] This interpretation is closer to Gregory.[22] He suggests that Moses could not see the invisible and ungraspable God, Who becomes ‘graspable’ (comprehensible) only because of His self-emptying:
Had God remained in His heights,[23] had He not descended to our weakness, had He remained what He was, preserving Himself unapproachable and ungraspable, perhaps only a few people would have followed Him. I do not even know whether a few would follow Him: perhaps only one Moses, and even he up to seeing the averted figure of God. For, though he penetrated through the cloud, after having become outside bodily grossness and having reduced his senses, he could not see the subtleness and incorporeality of God – or I do not know how to name this – for he was in the body and watched with bodily eyes. However, as God empties Himself for us, as He descends,- I call self-emptying (kenosis) this sort of weakening and wearing down of glory,- so He becomes graspable.[24]
Speaking of the appearances of God to the Old Testament righteous people, Gregory says that not one of them could see God in His incorporeal and invisible essence. They could only see Him in human form:
Abraham, mighty patriarch that he was, was justified by faith.[25] The sacrifice he offered was unusual in its foreshadowing of the great one to come.[26] Yet he did not see God directly. No, he gave Him food as man and was commended because his awe matched his comprehension.[27] Jacob dreamed of a lofty ladder and of angels ascending it.[28] His anointing a pillar had a hidden meaning perhaps…[29] He gave place the name ‘vision of God’[30] in honour of what he dreamed. He wrestled as man with God[31] – whatever ‘wrestling between God and man may be: the comparison of human excellence with God, perhaps?.. Yet neither he, nor any other after him… could boast this: that he had taken in the nature, the total vision, of God.[32]
The human person is able to sense God’s presence, to see God in certain mysterious symbols and images, to be taken in mystical rapture up to the third heaven and encounter God there; however, God remains invisible and His essence, inaccessible. Every appearance of God, as Gregory emphasizes, is only a certain degree of the presence of the One Who by His nature is greater than any of His own visible appearances. And even this presence can be unbearable for the human person; even this partial and incomplete experience of vision he is unable to express in words:
For Elijah, so the narrative tells us, it was not the mighty wind or the earthquake but a light breeze which gave outline to the presence, but not the nature, of God.[33] …Manoah was overwhelmed by the sight of God in a vision. ‘Wife’, he said, ‘we are lost, we have seen God’[34]- meaning with this that even a vision of God is too much for men let alone God’s nature. Peter would not let the apparition of Christ on board the boat and so bade Him depart…[35] Isaiah saw the Lord Sabaoth seated on His throne of glory, surrounded, enveloped, by six-winged Seraphim passing Him.[36] …Ezekiel describes God’s chariot of Cherubim, the throne above them, and beyond the throne the firmament. He describes the visionary figure he saw in the firmament, certain sounds, movements, and actions too.[37] Was this a day-time appearance, the kind seen only by saints? A veridical vision of the night? I cannot say. The God of the prophets – He knows; so do the prophetically inspired. But none of those I talk of, nor any other of their sort, stood within the essential ‘basis’, as Scripture has it, ‘of the Lord’.[38] None saw, none told, of God’s nature. Had Paul been able to express the experiences gained from the third heaven,[39] and his progress, ascent, or assumption to it, we should, perhaps, have known more about God – if this really was the secret meaning of his rapture. But since they were ineffable, let them have the tribute of our silence.[40]
Thus, both the knowledge of God and the vision of God belong to the human person in the highest stages of his mystical progress, and even this only as far as it is possible for the human nature. The vision of God becomes possible for the one who has purified himself, has attained to deification and remains in prayer. However, the human person can only have a partial and incomplete experience of this vision: he can feel the mysterious presence of God, but God remains ungraspable, inexpressible, inaccessible and invisible.
We should note that the theme of the vision of God is a leitmotif of the entire Eastern Christian Tradition. St Irenaeus said that ‘the glory of God is the living man, and the life of man is the vision of God’.[4]
The initial paradox of the theme of the vision of God is that, according to the biblical and patristic tradition, God is invisible in His nature and therefor any kind of vision of Him ‘as He is’ is impossible for the human person. There are, however, several qualifications to this statement. First, the invisible God becomes visible in the person of Jesus Christ: ‘No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him’.[5] According to Irenaeus, ‘the Father is the invisible of the Son, and the Son is the visible of the Father’.[6] Secondly, God, Who is invisible for the human person in his fallen state, can become visible for those who have attained the state of deification and have their ‘eyes of the soul’ open.[7] Thirdly, God, Who is invisible in His essence, can reveal Himself to a human person in His energies, through which it is possible to see God.[8] Finally, God, Who is invisible for the human person in the present life, might become visible in the age to come: ‘Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is’.[9]
According to Gregory, the vision of God is possible in the present life, even though for a very few, but it will be much fuller in the future age:
With the help of the great books of the divine prophets
and the God-inspired disciples of Christ the Guide,
whose thought was sharpened by the resplendent Spirit
and who with their pure hearts saw the great God,-[10]
for this is the only way to receive the invisible Deity,-
with their help we came to know the divine, became illumined by God, ascending higher,
as far as it is possible for ephemeral creatures to ascend to God in this life.
For it is not easy for the eye to penetrate through a cloud,
even if the sight is very sharp. But what is more than that, is only possible for us later.
The reward for one’s desire is when one reaches the desirable.[11]
Therefore Gregory understands the words ‘Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God’[12] as a promise that God can be seen in this life, but he emphasizes, following biblical and patristic tradition, that a fuller vision is possible only in the eschatological age to come. What is visible in the present life is only ‘a certain sketch (skiagrafia) and an outline (procharagma) of the invisible’.[13] In earthly life the human person desires to see God and to a certain degree sees Him, but a fuller vision belongs to the life after death:
For it is said, For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known’.[14] What is our humiliation, but what great also is a promise, to know God as also we are known (by Him)! This is what Paul says, a great messenger of the truth, an instructor of pagans in faith, who… reached up to the third heaven, who saw paradise[15] and who for the sale of perfection had a desire to depart.[16] Moses also could hardly see the averted figure of God from behind the rock[17] – whatever is the meaning of ‘the averted figure’ and ‘the rock’ – and this was after he had prayed a lot and had received a promise. However, even he did not see as much as he wanted to see, for what escaped from his sight was greater than what appeared to him.[18]
Moses ascending Mount Sinai is, from Philo of Alexandria onwards, a traditional image of the mystic.[19] The vision of ‘the averted figure’ (opisthion) of God is allegorically interpreted in the sense that God can be seen in His energies but not in His invisible essence.[20] According to another interpretation, Moses sees God in the bodily image of the incarnate Word.[21] This interpretation is closer to Gregory.[22] He suggests that Moses could not see the invisible and ungraspable God, Who becomes ‘graspable’ (comprehensible) only because of His self-emptying:
Had God remained in His heights,[23] had He not descended to our weakness, had He remained what He was, preserving Himself unapproachable and ungraspable, perhaps only a few people would have followed Him. I do not even know whether a few would follow Him: perhaps only one Moses, and even he up to seeing the averted figure of God. For, though he penetrated through the cloud, after having become outside bodily grossness and having reduced his senses, he could not see the subtleness and incorporeality of God – or I do not know how to name this – for he was in the body and watched with bodily eyes. However, as God empties Himself for us, as He descends,- I call self-emptying (kenosis) this sort of weakening and wearing down of glory,- so He becomes graspable.[24]
Speaking of the appearances of God to the Old Testament righteous people, Gregory says that not one of them could see God in His incorporeal and invisible essence. They could only see Him in human form:
Abraham, mighty patriarch that he was, was justified by faith.[25] The sacrifice he offered was unusual in its foreshadowing of the great one to come.[26] Yet he did not see God directly. No, he gave Him food as man and was commended because his awe matched his comprehension.[27] Jacob dreamed of a lofty ladder and of angels ascending it.[28] His anointing a pillar had a hidden meaning perhaps…[29] He gave place the name ‘vision of God’[30] in honour of what he dreamed. He wrestled as man with God[31] – whatever ‘wrestling between God and man may be: the comparison of human excellence with God, perhaps?.. Yet neither he, nor any other after him… could boast this: that he had taken in the nature, the total vision, of God.[32]
The human person is able to sense God’s presence, to see God in certain mysterious symbols and images, to be taken in mystical rapture up to the third heaven and encounter God there; however, God remains invisible and His essence, inaccessible. Every appearance of God, as Gregory emphasizes, is only a certain degree of the presence of the One Who by His nature is greater than any of His own visible appearances. And even this presence can be unbearable for the human person; even this partial and incomplete experience of vision he is unable to express in words:
For Elijah, so the narrative tells us, it was not the mighty wind or the earthquake but a light breeze which gave outline to the presence, but not the nature, of God.[33] …Manoah was overwhelmed by the sight of God in a vision. ‘Wife’, he said, ‘we are lost, we have seen God’[34]- meaning with this that even a vision of God is too much for men let alone God’s nature. Peter would not let the apparition of Christ on board the boat and so bade Him depart…[35] Isaiah saw the Lord Sabaoth seated on His throne of glory, surrounded, enveloped, by six-winged Seraphim passing Him.[36] …Ezekiel describes God’s chariot of Cherubim, the throne above them, and beyond the throne the firmament. He describes the visionary figure he saw in the firmament, certain sounds, movements, and actions too.[37] Was this a day-time appearance, the kind seen only by saints? A veridical vision of the night? I cannot say. The God of the prophets – He knows; so do the prophetically inspired. But none of those I talk of, nor any other of their sort, stood within the essential ‘basis’, as Scripture has it, ‘of the Lord’.[38] None saw, none told, of God’s nature. Had Paul been able to express the experiences gained from the third heaven,[39] and his progress, ascent, or assumption to it, we should, perhaps, have known more about God – if this really was the secret meaning of his rapture. But since they were ineffable, let them have the tribute of our silence.[40]
Thus, both the knowledge of God and the vision of God belong to the human person in the highest stages of his mystical progress, and even this only as far as it is possible for the human nature. The vision of God becomes possible for the one who has purified himself, has attained to deification and remains in prayer. However, the human person can only have a partial and incomplete experience of this vision: he can feel the mysterious presence of God, but God remains ungraspable, inexpressible, inaccessible and invisible.
[1] Disc.44,3; PG 36,609 = 1.656.
[2] PG 37,973 = 2.53.
[3] PG 37,538 = 2.138.
[4] Against the heresies 4,20,7.
[5] John 1:18.
[6] Irenaeus, Against the heresies 4,6,6.
[7] Theophilus of Antioch. To Autolycos 1.2.
[8] Gregory of Nyssa, On the Beatitudes 6.
[9] 1 John 3:2.
[10] Cf. Matt.5:8.
[11] PG 37,1559-1560.
[12] Matt.5:8.
[13] Disc.45,11; PG 36,637.
[14] 1 Cor.13:12.
[15] Cf. 2 Cor.12:2-4.
[16] Cf. Philip.1:23.
[17] Cf. Ex.33:18-23.
[18] Disc.32,15,18-16,5; SC 318,118.
[19] Cf. A. Louth, Origins of Christian Mystical Tradition, pp. 20-22, 32, 63, 84-88.
[20] Cf. Origen, Homilies on Jeremiah 16,2; PG 13,441 A.
[21] Cf. Origen, Hom. 4,1 on Ps.36; PG 12,1350 C.
[22] Cf. Disc.28,3,5-7; SC 250,104 (Wickham, 225).
[23] Literally, ‘in His watch-tower’.
[24] Disc.37,3,2-13; SC 318,276.
[25] Cf. Rom.4:3; 3:28; Hebrews 11:8-9.
[26] Cf. Gen.22:2-14. The story of the sacrifice of Abraham is traditionally regarded as a type of the redemptive sacrifice of Jesus.
[27] Cf. Gen.18:1-15.
[28] Cf. Gen.28:12.
[29] Cf. Gen.28:18; 35:14.
[30] Cf. Gen.32:30-31.
[31] Cf. Gen.32:24-30.
[32] Disc.28,18,7-24; SC 250,136-138 (Wickham, 234).
[33] Cf. 1 (3) Kings 19:11-12.
[34] Judges 13:22.
[35] Cf. Mark 6:49; Luke 5:8.
[36] Cf. Is.6:1-8.
[37] Cf. Ezek.1:4-28.
[38] Jerem.23:18, according to LXX.
[39] Cf. 2 Cor.12:2-4.
[40] Disc.28,19,1-20,5; 138-140 (Wickham, 234-235).
The divine names
A human person thinks in categories of names, images and definitions. Everything that exists in this world, every living creature, material thing, intelligible reality, have their names in human language. The name points to the place its bearer occupies in the hierarchy of the created world. Giving names to the realities of the material world, the human person demonstrates his knowledge of these realities, his ability to grasp their meaning.[1] The name becomes a symbol of the reality, it encompasses our comprehension of this reality; being uttered, it reminds us of what stands behind it.
All names and images which we use are taken from the material world, including those we use to describe the divine. God is outside the hierarchy of created things. Therefore, though there are names and images that can remind us of Him, there is no name in the human language which would be able to characterize God’s nature. Every name is subject to human reason, but the name of God is not. God answers the question about His name with a counter-question, ‘Why askest thou thus after My name, seeing it is secret?’[2] God reveals Himself to Moses with the name of ‘I am that I am’ (Yahweh),[3] but this name does not say anything about what God’s essence is: it only shows that God is the One Who exists. Calling Himself ‘I am that I am’, God says, as it were, ‘Only I know what I am’. Therefore, not only the names which people give to God but also those with which God reveals Himself to them, do not exhaust His nature.[4]
In ancient Israel the name of God was surrounded by reverence, in writing it was expressed using the sacred Tetragrammaton YHWH. After the Babylonian captivity the name of Yahweh was not pronounced by the Jews at all. In all this Gregory perceives a direct indication of the fact that God’s nature surpasses every name:
Our starting-point must be that God cannot be named. Not only will deductive arguments (logismoi) prove it, but the wisest Hebrews of antiquity, so far as can be gathered, will too. The ancient Hebrews used special symbols to venerate the divine and did not allow anything inferior to God to be written with the same letter as the word ‘God’, on the ground that the divine should not be put on even this much of a level with things human. Would they ever have accepted the idea that the uniquely indissoluble nature could be expressed by evanescent speech? No man has yet breathed all the air; no mind has yet contained or language embraced God’s essence in its fullness.[5]
The names of God which exist in the human language are divided by Gregory into three categories: those which refer to His essence, those which show His power over the material world, and those related to His ‘providential ordering’ (oikonomia), that is, to His actions directed towards created things. The names of the first category are O On (‘He Who is’), Theos (God) and Kyrios (Lord).[6] The second category includes such names as ‘Almighty’, ‘King of glory’, ‘of the ages’, ‘of the forces’, ‘of the Beloved’, ‘of rulers’, ‘Lord Sabaoth’, ‘Lord of forces’, ‘Lord of masters’. To the third category belong the names of ‘God of salvation’, ‘of retribution’, ‘peace’, righteousness’, ‘of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob’, of ‘Israel’, and other names related to the acts of God in the history of ancient Israel. The same category includes God’s names ‘after incarnation’, that is, the names of Christ.[7] Preferably to all other names God is called ‘peace’ and ‘love’,[8] and the name of ‘love’ is the one most pleasing to Him.[9]
Every divine name refers to a certain quality of God. However, all these names are relative and incomplete: neither each one of them separately, not all of them together are able to give a comprehensive picture of God in His nature. Even if one puts together all the names of God from Holy Scripture and all the traditional images used to depict God, one will have as a result of this only an artificial picture, an idol rather than God. Divine names which are taken from the visible universe can lead one to veneration of God the Creator. However, it happened in history that people deified visible things and venerated creatures instead of their Creator. Thus a distorted theology gives birth to paganism:
‘Spirit’, ‘fire’, and ‘light’, ‘love’, ‘wisdom’, and ‘righteousness’, ‘mind’, and ‘reason’, and so forth, are titles of the prime reality, are they not? Can you think of wind without movement or dispersal? Or fire without matter, with no rising motion, no colour and shape of its own? Or light unmixed with atmosphere, detached from what shines to give it birth, so to say?.. As for wisdom, how can you think of it except at a state involved in investigations human or divine? Justice and love are commended dispositions… they make us and change us, as complexions do our bodies… How can the simple, unpicturable reality be all these images and each in its entirety?.. Though every thinking being longs for God… it is powerless… to grasp Him… Either it looks at things visible and makes of these a god… or else it discovers God through the beauty and order of things seen, using sight as a guide to what transcends sight without losing God through the grandeur of what it sees.[10]
Every simplistic, partial, cataphatic idea about God is close to idol-worship: it clothes God in categories of the human thought. Those anthropomorphic concepts of God which are found in Holy Scriptures must be understood as an allegory: through the ‘written text’ of Scriptures one must penetrate into their ‘inner meaning’.[11] There are things in the Bible which are not factual: for example, when it says that God ‘sleeps’, ‘wakes up’, ‘is angered’, ‘walks’, and has a ‘throne of Cherubim’. These are all anthropomorphisms taken from the human reality and applied to God. When God retires from us, we say He ‘sleeps’; when He suddenly benefits us, we claim He ‘woke up’. His punishing us we call ‘anger’; His acting in different places, ‘walking’; His resting among the heavenly powers, ‘sitting’; His swift motion, ‘flight’; His watching over us, ‘face’; His giving and receiving, ‘hand’. ‘In short every faculty or activity of God has given us a corresponding picture in terms of something bodily’.[12]
Gregory’s teaching on the relative and partial character of the names of God, which was to become very important for the subsequent theological tradition of the Orthodox East, is expressed in both his orations and mystical poetry. One of his poems is addressed to God as a bearer of all names and at the same time someone beyond any name, Who is glorified by both word and silence:
O You Who are beyond everything (o panton epekeina)! For what else can be sung about You?
What word can glorify You? For You are unutterable for any word!
What intellect can look at You? For You are incomprehensible for any intellect!
You alone are unspeakable, for You have begotten all speakable things.
You alone are unknowable, for You have generated all that is knowable.
Everything that has speech and that has not proclaimed You.
Everything reasonable and unreasonable venerates You.
The desires and pains which are common for all
Are directed at You! Everything prays to You.
Everything capable to understand Your commandment sends to You a speechless hymn.
All exists because of You alone. All in its entirety longs for You.
You are the limit of all, You are both One and All, yet You are None,
And You are neither One, nor All. O You Who have all names! How can I name You,
Who are alone nameless? What heavenly intellect
Would be able to break through clouds that hide You? Be merciful,
O You, Who are beyond everything. For what else can be sung about You?[13]
Denys the Areopagite probably had in mind precisely this poem when he said that ‘the theologians hymn’ God ‘as both unnamable and possessing all names’.[14] In Denys’ classical treatise the theme of the divine names was further developed and systematized. However, it was Gregory who first created in Eastern Christian tradition a coherent teaching on the names of God, Who is ‘beyond everything’, beyond all human names, terms, images, definitions and descriptions.
All names and images which we use are taken from the material world, including those we use to describe the divine. God is outside the hierarchy of created things. Therefore, though there are names and images that can remind us of Him, there is no name in the human language which would be able to characterize God’s nature. Every name is subject to human reason, but the name of God is not. God answers the question about His name with a counter-question, ‘Why askest thou thus after My name, seeing it is secret?’[2] God reveals Himself to Moses with the name of ‘I am that I am’ (Yahweh),[3] but this name does not say anything about what God’s essence is: it only shows that God is the One Who exists. Calling Himself ‘I am that I am’, God says, as it were, ‘Only I know what I am’. Therefore, not only the names which people give to God but also those with which God reveals Himself to them, do not exhaust His nature.[4]
In ancient Israel the name of God was surrounded by reverence, in writing it was expressed using the sacred Tetragrammaton YHWH. After the Babylonian captivity the name of Yahweh was not pronounced by the Jews at all. In all this Gregory perceives a direct indication of the fact that God’s nature surpasses every name:
Our starting-point must be that God cannot be named. Not only will deductive arguments (logismoi) prove it, but the wisest Hebrews of antiquity, so far as can be gathered, will too. The ancient Hebrews used special symbols to venerate the divine and did not allow anything inferior to God to be written with the same letter as the word ‘God’, on the ground that the divine should not be put on even this much of a level with things human. Would they ever have accepted the idea that the uniquely indissoluble nature could be expressed by evanescent speech? No man has yet breathed all the air; no mind has yet contained or language embraced God’s essence in its fullness.[5]
The names of God which exist in the human language are divided by Gregory into three categories: those which refer to His essence, those which show His power over the material world, and those related to His ‘providential ordering’ (oikonomia), that is, to His actions directed towards created things. The names of the first category are O On (‘He Who is’), Theos (God) and Kyrios (Lord).[6] The second category includes such names as ‘Almighty’, ‘King of glory’, ‘of the ages’, ‘of the forces’, ‘of the Beloved’, ‘of rulers’, ‘Lord Sabaoth’, ‘Lord of forces’, ‘Lord of masters’. To the third category belong the names of ‘God of salvation’, ‘of retribution’, ‘peace’, righteousness’, ‘of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob’, of ‘Israel’, and other names related to the acts of God in the history of ancient Israel. The same category includes God’s names ‘after incarnation’, that is, the names of Christ.[7] Preferably to all other names God is called ‘peace’ and ‘love’,[8] and the name of ‘love’ is the one most pleasing to Him.[9]
Every divine name refers to a certain quality of God. However, all these names are relative and incomplete: neither each one of them separately, not all of them together are able to give a comprehensive picture of God in His nature. Even if one puts together all the names of God from Holy Scripture and all the traditional images used to depict God, one will have as a result of this only an artificial picture, an idol rather than God. Divine names which are taken from the visible universe can lead one to veneration of God the Creator. However, it happened in history that people deified visible things and venerated creatures instead of their Creator. Thus a distorted theology gives birth to paganism:
‘Spirit’, ‘fire’, and ‘light’, ‘love’, ‘wisdom’, and ‘righteousness’, ‘mind’, and ‘reason’, and so forth, are titles of the prime reality, are they not? Can you think of wind without movement or dispersal? Or fire without matter, with no rising motion, no colour and shape of its own? Or light unmixed with atmosphere, detached from what shines to give it birth, so to say?.. As for wisdom, how can you think of it except at a state involved in investigations human or divine? Justice and love are commended dispositions… they make us and change us, as complexions do our bodies… How can the simple, unpicturable reality be all these images and each in its entirety?.. Though every thinking being longs for God… it is powerless… to grasp Him… Either it looks at things visible and makes of these a god… or else it discovers God through the beauty and order of things seen, using sight as a guide to what transcends sight without losing God through the grandeur of what it sees.[10]
Every simplistic, partial, cataphatic idea about God is close to idol-worship: it clothes God in categories of the human thought. Those anthropomorphic concepts of God which are found in Holy Scriptures must be understood as an allegory: through the ‘written text’ of Scriptures one must penetrate into their ‘inner meaning’.[11] There are things in the Bible which are not factual: for example, when it says that God ‘sleeps’, ‘wakes up’, ‘is angered’, ‘walks’, and has a ‘throne of Cherubim’. These are all anthropomorphisms taken from the human reality and applied to God. When God retires from us, we say He ‘sleeps’; when He suddenly benefits us, we claim He ‘woke up’. His punishing us we call ‘anger’; His acting in different places, ‘walking’; His resting among the heavenly powers, ‘sitting’; His swift motion, ‘flight’; His watching over us, ‘face’; His giving and receiving, ‘hand’. ‘In short every faculty or activity of God has given us a corresponding picture in terms of something bodily’.[12]
Gregory’s teaching on the relative and partial character of the names of God, which was to become very important for the subsequent theological tradition of the Orthodox East, is expressed in both his orations and mystical poetry. One of his poems is addressed to God as a bearer of all names and at the same time someone beyond any name, Who is glorified by both word and silence:
O You Who are beyond everything (o panton epekeina)! For what else can be sung about You?
What word can glorify You? For You are unutterable for any word!
What intellect can look at You? For You are incomprehensible for any intellect!
You alone are unspeakable, for You have begotten all speakable things.
You alone are unknowable, for You have generated all that is knowable.
Everything that has speech and that has not proclaimed You.
Everything reasonable and unreasonable venerates You.
The desires and pains which are common for all
Are directed at You! Everything prays to You.
Everything capable to understand Your commandment sends to You a speechless hymn.
All exists because of You alone. All in its entirety longs for You.
You are the limit of all, You are both One and All, yet You are None,
And You are neither One, nor All. O You Who have all names! How can I name You,
Who are alone nameless? What heavenly intellect
Would be able to break through clouds that hide You? Be merciful,
O You, Who are beyond everything. For what else can be sung about You?[13]
Denys the Areopagite probably had in mind precisely this poem when he said that ‘the theologians hymn’ God ‘as both unnamable and possessing all names’.[14] In Denys’ classical treatise the theme of the divine names was further developed and systematized. However, it was Gregory who first created in Eastern Christian tradition a coherent teaching on the names of God, Who is ‘beyond everything’, beyond all human names, terms, images, definitions and descriptions.
[1] Cf. Gen.2:19-20.
[2] Cf. Judges 13:18; Gen.32:29.
[3] Ex.3:14.
[4] Cf. Origen, On Prayer 24.
[5] Disc.30,17,1-10; SC 250,260-262 (Wickham, 273-274).
[6] Disc.30,18,1-18; 262-264 (Wickham, 274).
[7] Disc.30,19,1-12; 264 (Wickham, 274-275).
[8] Disc.6,12,25-32; SC 405,154.
[9] Disc.22,4,1-4; SC 270,226.
[10] Disc.28,13,1-34; 126-128 (Wickham, 231-232).
[11] Disc.31,21,5-7; SC 250,316 (Wickham, 290).
[12] Disc.31,22,1-23; 316-318 (Wickham, 290-291).
[13] PG 37,507-508.
[14] On the Divine Names 1,6.
God as light
St John the Evangelist was the first Christian theologian in whom we find the affirmation that ‘God is light’. He claims that he heard this truth from Jesus Christ Himself: ‘This then is the message which we have heard of him and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all’.[1] This phrase is probably one of those logia Iesou (sayings of Jesus) which were remembered by Jesus’ disciples and were partly included into the New Testament, partly into the apocrypha, and partly were preserved for a long time in oral tradition. Of himself Jesus said: ‘I am the light of the world‘.[2] For St John Jesus was the light which ‘shined in the darkness’, the light that ‘lighteth every man that cometh into the world’.[3]
The theme of God as light was a leitmotif of the entire corpus of writings of St Gregory Nazianzen.[4] The very nature of God in Gregory is most commonly characterized as ‘light’ (fos), and the ‘terminology of light is one of the basic elements of Gregory’s theological language through his entire career as a church writer’.[5] This terminology appears as early as in his Second Discourse, which was delivered after Gregory’s ordination into priesthood: here he says that the angels ‘hardly contain the splendour of God, Who is covered by darkness, for He is light the most pure and inaccessible for most creatures, light which is inside everything and outside everything, which is all beauty and higher than all beauty, which illumines the intellect’.[6] Gregory developed the theme of light in his Ninth Discourse, which he pronounced immediately after his consecration to the episcopate: here he compares God with the sun and claims that for some God is light, while for others He is fire: the one who is not ready to encounter God will be blinded by His light, like children that are blinded by lightning.[7]
The image of the sun, which derives from Plato,[8] is one of Gregory’s favourite images when he speaks of God.[9] Gregory uses this image in particular when he speaks of the human person’s striving to God as the highest good:
…From many and great things… which we receive and will receive from God, the greatest and the most generous is our inclination and our kinship to Him. In the realm of intelligible things God is the same as the sun in the realm of sensible.[10] The sun illumines the world visible, while God illumines the world invisible; the former makes bodily sights sunlike, while the latter makes intelligible natures godlike. The sun, while giving a seer to see and a seen to be seen, is itself incomparably more beautiful than what is seen; in the same manner God, while giving a thinker to think and an object of thinking to be thought of, is Himself the climax of everything intelligible,[11] so that every desire finds its end in Him and nowhere else reaches forward. For there is nothing higher than Him… He is the supreme limit of everything desirable, and in Him every contemplation finds its rest.[12]
Speaking of God as light, Gregory emphasizes that this light is incomprehensible: it “escapes the speed and the height of the intellect, and always departs to the same degree as is comprehended, and leads higher the one who falls in love with it him by running away from him and, as it were, escaping from his hands’.[13] The theme of pursuit of God, Who always escapes from the human soul, as well as the theme of an endless spiritual progress in search of the incomprehensible God, is characteristic of the entire mystical tradition of the Eastern Church; it is particularly developed by Gregory of Nyssa.[14]
In Gregory Nazianzen’s Thirty-first Discourse, the trinitarian character of the divine light is emphasized. God the Trinity is light, says Gregory, and every Person of the Trinity is light:
There was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world,[15] that is, the Father. There was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world, that is, the Son. There was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world , that is, the Comforter.[16] There are three subjects and three verbs – He was and He was and He was. But a single reality was. There are three predicates – light and light and light. But the light is one, God is one. This is the meaning of David’s prophetic vision: In Thy light we shall see light.[17] We receive the Son’s light from the Father’s light in the light of the Spirit: this is what we ourselves have seen and what we now proclaim – it is the plain and simple explanation of the Trinity.[18]
The most thorough and systematic treatment of the theme of God as light is found in the Fortieth Discourse, where Gregory speaks of the entire hierarchy of lights beginning from the light of the Trinity. This trinitarian Divine light is absolutely transcendent and is beyond everything sensible, yet it penetrates through all the created world. Everything that exists participates in this Divine light an different levels:
God is the light supreme, unapproachable and ineffable, which is incomprehensible for the intellect and unutterable for speech, which enlightens all rational nature… I mean the light which is contemplated in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit… A second light is the angel… A third light is the human person…[19] I know also of another light, by which the primeval darkness was driven away and pierced: this light was the first of the visible creation to be called into existence; and it illumines the whole universe…[20]
Apart from this hierarchy of lights, there are, according to Gregory, other types of light, namely those related to God’s actions in the history of humanity. The entire Bible, the whole life of the Church up to the point when it enters the eschatological Kingdom of heaven are regarded as an unceasing revelation of the Divine light. This revelation is given to some individuals, to an entire people, to all Christians, and – in the future age – to the entire body of those who are saved:
Light was also the firstborn commandment given to the firstborn man…[21] And a light typical and proportionate to those who were its subjects was the written Law, which prefigured the truth and the mystery of the great Light, for Moses’ face was made glorious by it.[22] And, to mention more lights, it was light that appeared out of fire to Moses, when it burned the bush indeed, but did not consume it.[23] And it was light that was in the pillar of fire that led Israel…[24] It was light that carried up Elijah in the chariot of fire and yet did not burn as it carried him.[25] It was light that shone around the shepherds when the eternal Light was mingled with the temporal.[26] It was light that was the beauty of the star that went before to Bethlehem to guide the wise men’s way and to be the escort of the Light that is both above us and with us.[27] Light was that Godhead that was shown upon the mountain to the disciples…[28] Light was that vision which blazed out upon Paul, and by wounding his eyes healed the darkness of his soul.[29] Light is also the brilliancy of heaven to those who have been purified here, when the righteous shall shine forth as the sun,[30] and God shall stand in the midst of them, gods and kings,[31] deciding and distinguishing the ranks of the blessedness of heaven. Light is also in a special sense the illumination of Baptism… for it contains a great and marvelous mystery of our salvation.[32]
We can see that the idea of God as light is the foundation of Gregory’s entire world-outlook and of his vision of history. Gregory is definitely one of the creators of the theology of light, which would later be developed by many great mystics, including Maximus the Confessor, John of Damascus, Symeon the New Theologian, Gregory Palamas. The theologians of Byzantine Hesychasm referred to Gregory Nazianzen as the most authoritative mystical writer who discussed the theme of the divine light. It is significant that the theme of the Divine light was to become central in Eastern Christian mystical tradition after Gregory Nazianzen, whereas the theme of the ‘divine darkness’, so dear to Gregory of Nyssa, remained somehow on the periphery of mystical theology of the Eastern Church.[33]
The theme of God as light was a leitmotif of the entire corpus of writings of St Gregory Nazianzen.[4] The very nature of God in Gregory is most commonly characterized as ‘light’ (fos), and the ‘terminology of light is one of the basic elements of Gregory’s theological language through his entire career as a church writer’.[5] This terminology appears as early as in his Second Discourse, which was delivered after Gregory’s ordination into priesthood: here he says that the angels ‘hardly contain the splendour of God, Who is covered by darkness, for He is light the most pure and inaccessible for most creatures, light which is inside everything and outside everything, which is all beauty and higher than all beauty, which illumines the intellect’.[6] Gregory developed the theme of light in his Ninth Discourse, which he pronounced immediately after his consecration to the episcopate: here he compares God with the sun and claims that for some God is light, while for others He is fire: the one who is not ready to encounter God will be blinded by His light, like children that are blinded by lightning.[7]
The image of the sun, which derives from Plato,[8] is one of Gregory’s favourite images when he speaks of God.[9] Gregory uses this image in particular when he speaks of the human person’s striving to God as the highest good:
…From many and great things… which we receive and will receive from God, the greatest and the most generous is our inclination and our kinship to Him. In the realm of intelligible things God is the same as the sun in the realm of sensible.[10] The sun illumines the world visible, while God illumines the world invisible; the former makes bodily sights sunlike, while the latter makes intelligible natures godlike. The sun, while giving a seer to see and a seen to be seen, is itself incomparably more beautiful than what is seen; in the same manner God, while giving a thinker to think and an object of thinking to be thought of, is Himself the climax of everything intelligible,[11] so that every desire finds its end in Him and nowhere else reaches forward. For there is nothing higher than Him… He is the supreme limit of everything desirable, and in Him every contemplation finds its rest.[12]
Speaking of God as light, Gregory emphasizes that this light is incomprehensible: it “escapes the speed and the height of the intellect, and always departs to the same degree as is comprehended, and leads higher the one who falls in love with it him by running away from him and, as it were, escaping from his hands’.[13] The theme of pursuit of God, Who always escapes from the human soul, as well as the theme of an endless spiritual progress in search of the incomprehensible God, is characteristic of the entire mystical tradition of the Eastern Church; it is particularly developed by Gregory of Nyssa.[14]
In Gregory Nazianzen’s Thirty-first Discourse, the trinitarian character of the divine light is emphasized. God the Trinity is light, says Gregory, and every Person of the Trinity is light:
There was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world,[15] that is, the Father. There was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world, that is, the Son. There was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world , that is, the Comforter.[16] There are three subjects and three verbs – He was and He was and He was. But a single reality was. There are three predicates – light and light and light. But the light is one, God is one. This is the meaning of David’s prophetic vision: In Thy light we shall see light.[17] We receive the Son’s light from the Father’s light in the light of the Spirit: this is what we ourselves have seen and what we now proclaim – it is the plain and simple explanation of the Trinity.[18]
The most thorough and systematic treatment of the theme of God as light is found in the Fortieth Discourse, where Gregory speaks of the entire hierarchy of lights beginning from the light of the Trinity. This trinitarian Divine light is absolutely transcendent and is beyond everything sensible, yet it penetrates through all the created world. Everything that exists participates in this Divine light an different levels:
God is the light supreme, unapproachable and ineffable, which is incomprehensible for the intellect and unutterable for speech, which enlightens all rational nature… I mean the light which is contemplated in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit… A second light is the angel… A third light is the human person…[19] I know also of another light, by which the primeval darkness was driven away and pierced: this light was the first of the visible creation to be called into existence; and it illumines the whole universe…[20]
Apart from this hierarchy of lights, there are, according to Gregory, other types of light, namely those related to God’s actions in the history of humanity. The entire Bible, the whole life of the Church up to the point when it enters the eschatological Kingdom of heaven are regarded as an unceasing revelation of the Divine light. This revelation is given to some individuals, to an entire people, to all Christians, and – in the future age – to the entire body of those who are saved:
Light was also the firstborn commandment given to the firstborn man…[21] And a light typical and proportionate to those who were its subjects was the written Law, which prefigured the truth and the mystery of the great Light, for Moses’ face was made glorious by it.[22] And, to mention more lights, it was light that appeared out of fire to Moses, when it burned the bush indeed, but did not consume it.[23] And it was light that was in the pillar of fire that led Israel…[24] It was light that carried up Elijah in the chariot of fire and yet did not burn as it carried him.[25] It was light that shone around the shepherds when the eternal Light was mingled with the temporal.[26] It was light that was the beauty of the star that went before to Bethlehem to guide the wise men’s way and to be the escort of the Light that is both above us and with us.[27] Light was that Godhead that was shown upon the mountain to the disciples…[28] Light was that vision which blazed out upon Paul, and by wounding his eyes healed the darkness of his soul.[29] Light is also the brilliancy of heaven to those who have been purified here, when the righteous shall shine forth as the sun,[30] and God shall stand in the midst of them, gods and kings,[31] deciding and distinguishing the ranks of the blessedness of heaven. Light is also in a special sense the illumination of Baptism… for it contains a great and marvelous mystery of our salvation.[32]
We can see that the idea of God as light is the foundation of Gregory’s entire world-outlook and of his vision of history. Gregory is definitely one of the creators of the theology of light, which would later be developed by many great mystics, including Maximus the Confessor, John of Damascus, Symeon the New Theologian, Gregory Palamas. The theologians of Byzantine Hesychasm referred to Gregory Nazianzen as the most authoritative mystical writer who discussed the theme of the divine light. It is significant that the theme of the Divine light was to become central in Eastern Christian mystical tradition after Gregory Nazianzen, whereas the theme of the ‘divine darkness’, so dear to Gregory of Nyssa, remained somehow on the periphery of mystical theology of the Eastern Church.[33]
[1] 1 John 1:5.
[2] John 9:5.
[3] John 1:5,9.
[4] On the vision of the Divine light in Gregory see T. Špidlik, Grégoire de Nazianze. Introduction à l’étude de sa doctrine spirituelle (Rome, 1971), pp. 1-48.
[5] Cf. C. Moreschini in SC 358, 63-64.
[6] Disc.2,76,3-8; SC 247,188.
[7] Disc.9,2,6-3,4 (2,6-9; 3,1-4); SC 405,302-306.
[8] See Republic 508c-509b.
[9] This Platonic image is also used in Disc. 21,1; 28,30; 40,5; 40,37; 44,3.
[10] Cf. Disc.28,30,1-3; SC 250,168.
[11] Plotinus, Enn.6,7,16: ‘The sun, cause of the existence of sense-things and of their being seen, is indirectly the cause of sight, without being either the faculty or the object: similarly this Principle, the Good, cause of Being and Intellectual-Principle,is a light appropriate to what is to be seen There and to their seer; neither the Beings, nor the Intellectual-Principle, it is their source and by the light it sheds upon both makes them object of Intellection’.
[12] Disc.21,1,9-26; SC 270,110-112.
[13] Disc.2,76,8-11; SC 247,188-190. Cf. PG 37,429; PG 37,523.
[14] Cf. his Interpretation of the Song of Songs 8; PG 44,940 Ñ-941 Ñ.
[15] John 1:9.
[16] Cf. John 14:16; 14:26.
[17] Ps.35:10/36:9, according to LXX.
[18] Disc.31,3,11-22; SC 250,280 (Wickham, 280).
[19] I.e. pagans.
[20] Disc.40,5,1-21; SC 358,204-206.
[21] Cf. Gen.2:16-17.
[22] Cf. Ex.34:29-35.
[23] Cf. Ex.3:2.
[24] Cf. Ex.13:21.
[25] Cf. 4 (2) Kings 2:11.
[26] Cf. Luke 2:9.
[27] Cf. Matt.2:9.
[28] Cf. Matt.17:2.
[29] Cf. Acts.9:3-9; 18.
[30] Matt13:43.
[31] Cf. Ps.81/82:1; 6, according to LXX.
[32] Disc.40,6,1-28; 206-208.
[33] These theme attracted much more attention in the West, due to the influence of Denys the Areopagite and a peculiar development of Western mysticism.
Purification, illumination and the vision of light
The theme of illumination by the Divine light was not simply an object of theological interest for Gregory: it was connected with his deep mystical life. Like many other Christian saints, he had an experience of vision of the Divine light. His first vision of light changed the whole course of his inner life:
From the time when for the first time, having detached myself from the earthly things,
I mingled my soul with radiant heavenly thoughts
and the high Intellect brought me, put far from flesh,
took from here, hid in inmost parts of a heavenly palace,
illumined my eyes with the light of our Trinity,
Which is more resplendent than anything I could imagine,
Which from an elevated throne pours out upon all an ineffable radiance… -
From this time I died for the world, and the world for me.[1]
We do not know the exact date of this vision, but we have every reason to believe that a profound mystical life was begun by Gregory when he was still a child. Describing his early years, Gregory mentions ‘night visions’ by means of which God instilled in him a love of the life of chastity.[2] ‘When I was a child’, he writes, ‘…I ascended on high, to the radiant throne’.[3] Speaking of his youth, Gregory says: ‘Instead of earthly possessions… I had before my eyes the radiance of God’.[4] It would be unfair to consider all these references to the Divine light as simply rhetorical devices: the question here is of mystical ‘raptures’ and visions of light.
We should note that visions of light were a ‘family tradition’ for Gregory Nazianzen. His father, Gregory the elder, also had the experience of mystical illumination: when he was baptized and emerged from the pool, he was illumined by the Divine light.[5] In the thought of Gregory the younger, the sacrament of baptism was primarily connected with the idea of illumination (fotismos) by the Divine light.
The theme of illumination is, in turn, inseparable in his thought from the theme of purification (katharsis).[6] Gregory inherited an interest in this theme from his studies of ancient Greek philosophy, where katharsis is one of the key notions.[7] In general, in his treatment of the themes of mystical illumination and purification, vision of light and other phenomena of spiritual life, Gregory widely employs the language of ancient Greek philosophy, in particular the Platonic terminology. This terminology was introduced into Christian theology be Clement and Origen: the great Cappadocians borrowed it from the latter. We shall not enter here the discussion about the parallelism of mystical experience in Christian and Platonic traditions: this would be a subject for a separate study. We should only like to draw the attention of our reader to a distinctive feature of Gregory Nazianzen’s mystical language.
Developing the theme of purification-katharsis, Gregory speaks of it as an important ingredient of what he called ‘philosophy’:[8] ‘First wisdom’, he says, ‘is a praiseworthy life, which has been purified or is being purified for the most pure and luminous God, Who demands from us only one sacrifice, purification’.[9] Purification is more important than theology: ‘To speak of God is a great thing, but to purify oneself for God is a much greater still’.[10] In this aphorism purification-katharsis is not opposed to theology. Rather, purification is a necessary condition for theology: it is that ascent to Mount Sinai which, as we have seen, is impossible without purification.
Purification is the way of intellectual ascent from the fleshly to the spiritual, from earth to God, from material darkness to immaterial light: it is a Platonic way of detachment and liberation from the body. Purification as the highest stage of the life of philosophy:
Whoever has been permitted to escape by reason and contemplation from matter and this fleshly cloud or veil,- no matter how it should be called,- and to hold communion with God, and be associated, as far as human nature can attain, with the most pure Light, blessed is he, both from his ascent from here, and for his deification there, which is conferred by true philosophy, and by rising superior to the duality of matter, through the unity which is perceived in the Trinity.[11]
To understand this text, one should remember that in the Platonic tradition the way to perfection was perceived as one from multiplicity to simplicity, from duality to unity. Plotinus, in particular, claims that in order to come to the knowledge of the Unity we must become one from many.[12] Contemplation of the One is, according to Plotinus, a total unity with the One which excludes all multiplicity or diversity: ‘There were not two; beholder was one with beheld; it was not a vision compassed but a unity apprehended. The man formed by this mingling with the Supreme… is become the Unity, nothing within him or without inducing any diversity; no movement now, no passion, no desire, once this ascent is achieved… It was a going forth from the self, a simplifying, a reunification, a reach towards contact and at the same time a repose’.[13] The highest stage of the mystical ascent is a state of ecstasy, a total mingling with the One and diffusion in Him. The vision of the highest Intellectual-Principle is connected in Plotinus with the experience of the vision of light emanating from it.[14] One can, of course, point to the disparity between the ecstasy of Plotinus as a diffusion in the impersonal One and the mystical contemplation of Gregory as an encounter with the personal Deity, the Trinity. Yet one cannot but see a startling similarity of language, terminology or imagery between the two authors.
According to Gregory, purification of the intellect is necessary for the contemplation of the most pure light:
God is light, and light supreme. Every other light is only its weak emanation (aporroe) and reflection which reaches the earth, however bright it would seem to be. But you see that darkness[15] was under His feet and He made darkness His secret place,[16] having placed it between Himself and us, in the same manner as Moses of old put a veil between himself and the grossness of Israel,[17] in order that it should not be easy for the darkened nature to see the hidden beauty… and in order that only light would come in contact with the Light, which always draws one higher through desire (efeseos),[18] and in order that only purified intellect would approach to the Most Pure, and in order that something should be revealed now and something else later, as a reward for virtue and for inclination here to this (absolute purity), or rather, for assimilation (to it).[19]
It is noteworthy that in the text quoted God is called ‘hidden beauty’ and the contact with Him is described in terms of an encounter of ‘light’ with ‘the Light’. Here we can see again an echo of mysticism of Plotinus. The latter speaks of the absolute Beauty which is a source of all beauty.[20] Everything that exists has its beauty from the light, which is before everything, says Plotinus.[21] Having reached the state of unification, the human person sees both the highest absolute Light and himself as light: ‘Thus we have all the vision that may be of Him and of ourselves; but it is of a self wrought to splendour, brimmed with the Intellectual light, become that very light, pure, buoyant, unburdened, raised to Godhead, or, better, knowing its Godhead…’[22] Thus the human person not only contemplated the light but also is transformed into light.
Like Plotinus, Gregory speaks of one’s transformation into the light: ‘However much is one approaching the King, so much one is a light’.[23] The human person is called to ‘become light’, that is, to be entirely purified in all members of the body and all senses:
Let us become light, as it was said to the disciples by the Great Light, ye are the light of the world…[24] Let us lay hold of the Godhead; let us lay hold of the first and brightest Light. Let us walk towards His radiance… Let us cleanse every member, brothers, let us purify every sense; let nothing in us be imperfect, nothing of our first birth; let us leave nothing unillumined. Let us enlighten our eyes, that we may look straight on… Let us enlighten our ears; let us enlighten our tongue… Let us be healed also in the smell… Let us cleanse our touch, our taste, our throat… It is good to have our head cleansed… It is good also for the shoulder to be sanctified and purified… It is good for the hands to be consecrated, as well as the feet… There is also a cleansing of the belly… I find also the heart and inward parts deemed worthy of honour… And what about the loins, or reins, for we must not pass these over? Let the purification take hold of these also… Let us give to God all our members which are upon the earth… Let us give ourselves entire, that we may receive back ourselves entire; for this is to receive entirely, when we give ourselves to God and offer as a sacrifice our own salvation.[25]
To become light one must be thoroughly purified, sanctified, transformed and transfigured. Here Gregory goes beyond the realm of the Neo-Platonist terminology and uses biblical material to prove his concepts. Instead of the Platonic idea of liberation from the body he advances the concept of purification of the body as a necessary condition for participation in the Divine light.[26] Not only intellectual efforts, but also different ascetical exploits on the level of the body, as well as the fear of God and observance of God’s commandments, all this leads to mystical illumination:
For where fear is there is observance of commandments; and where there is observance of commandments there is purification of the flesh, that cloud which covers the soul and causes it not to see the divine ray. And where there is purification there is illumination; and illumination is the satisfaction of desire of those who long for the greatest things, or the Greatest Thing, Which surpasses all greatness.[27]
The person who has been purified receives access to the illumination by the ‘ray’ of the Divine light. However, as Gregory emphasizes, not every light which appears to a person is necessarily divine. As there are two kinds of fire, there are also two kinds of light. There is light that directs our steps according to the will of God, and there is also a ‘deceitful and meddling’ light which is ‘quite contrary to the true light, though pretending to be that light’: it is ‘thought to be bright light by those who have been ruined by luxury’, but in reality it is darkness. A Christian should beware of this deceitful light and kindle for himself ‘the light of knowledge’.[28] The question here is about a phenomenon which is known to many mystical writers. As early as in St Paul we find a warning about Satan who can be ‘transformed into an angel of light’.[29] The subsequent tradition developed a teaching according to which the Devil can imitate certain actions of God, including the appearance of light.[30]
The theme of the vision of the Divine light is frequently considered by Gregory in an eschatological perspective.[31] He emphasizes that what reaches us in this present life is only ‘a scant emanation’ or ‘a small beam from a great light’.[32] The light of the truth here is ‘moderate’,[33] and we receive here a certain ‘measured’ degree of God’s radiance, while in the future life people are illumined by the Trinity ‘in a more pure and lucid manner’.[34] Developing the theme of St Paul who said that ‘now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face’,[35] Gregory speaks of the encounter with ‘the light from there’ as the goal of Christian life:
…May you be in attendance upon the great King, filled with the light from there. May we also receive from it a small stream, as it can appear in mirrors and enigmas,[36] and may we finally find the very Source of good, gazing with pure mind upon the truth in its purity, and finding a reward for our eager toil here below on behalf of the good, in our more perfect possession and vision of the good on high. This is precisely the end of our initiation (mystagogia) of which our theological books and teachers tell us.[37]
From the time when for the first time, having detached myself from the earthly things,
I mingled my soul with radiant heavenly thoughts
and the high Intellect brought me, put far from flesh,
took from here, hid in inmost parts of a heavenly palace,
illumined my eyes with the light of our Trinity,
Which is more resplendent than anything I could imagine,
Which from an elevated throne pours out upon all an ineffable radiance… -
From this time I died for the world, and the world for me.[1]
We do not know the exact date of this vision, but we have every reason to believe that a profound mystical life was begun by Gregory when he was still a child. Describing his early years, Gregory mentions ‘night visions’ by means of which God instilled in him a love of the life of chastity.[2] ‘When I was a child’, he writes, ‘…I ascended on high, to the radiant throne’.[3] Speaking of his youth, Gregory says: ‘Instead of earthly possessions… I had before my eyes the radiance of God’.[4] It would be unfair to consider all these references to the Divine light as simply rhetorical devices: the question here is of mystical ‘raptures’ and visions of light.
We should note that visions of light were a ‘family tradition’ for Gregory Nazianzen. His father, Gregory the elder, also had the experience of mystical illumination: when he was baptized and emerged from the pool, he was illumined by the Divine light.[5] In the thought of Gregory the younger, the sacrament of baptism was primarily connected with the idea of illumination (fotismos) by the Divine light.
The theme of illumination is, in turn, inseparable in his thought from the theme of purification (katharsis).[6] Gregory inherited an interest in this theme from his studies of ancient Greek philosophy, where katharsis is one of the key notions.[7] In general, in his treatment of the themes of mystical illumination and purification, vision of light and other phenomena of spiritual life, Gregory widely employs the language of ancient Greek philosophy, in particular the Platonic terminology. This terminology was introduced into Christian theology be Clement and Origen: the great Cappadocians borrowed it from the latter. We shall not enter here the discussion about the parallelism of mystical experience in Christian and Platonic traditions: this would be a subject for a separate study. We should only like to draw the attention of our reader to a distinctive feature of Gregory Nazianzen’s mystical language.
Developing the theme of purification-katharsis, Gregory speaks of it as an important ingredient of what he called ‘philosophy’:[8] ‘First wisdom’, he says, ‘is a praiseworthy life, which has been purified or is being purified for the most pure and luminous God, Who demands from us only one sacrifice, purification’.[9] Purification is more important than theology: ‘To speak of God is a great thing, but to purify oneself for God is a much greater still’.[10] In this aphorism purification-katharsis is not opposed to theology. Rather, purification is a necessary condition for theology: it is that ascent to Mount Sinai which, as we have seen, is impossible without purification.
Purification is the way of intellectual ascent from the fleshly to the spiritual, from earth to God, from material darkness to immaterial light: it is a Platonic way of detachment and liberation from the body. Purification as the highest stage of the life of philosophy:
Whoever has been permitted to escape by reason and contemplation from matter and this fleshly cloud or veil,- no matter how it should be called,- and to hold communion with God, and be associated, as far as human nature can attain, with the most pure Light, blessed is he, both from his ascent from here, and for his deification there, which is conferred by true philosophy, and by rising superior to the duality of matter, through the unity which is perceived in the Trinity.[11]
To understand this text, one should remember that in the Platonic tradition the way to perfection was perceived as one from multiplicity to simplicity, from duality to unity. Plotinus, in particular, claims that in order to come to the knowledge of the Unity we must become one from many.[12] Contemplation of the One is, according to Plotinus, a total unity with the One which excludes all multiplicity or diversity: ‘There were not two; beholder was one with beheld; it was not a vision compassed but a unity apprehended. The man formed by this mingling with the Supreme… is become the Unity, nothing within him or without inducing any diversity; no movement now, no passion, no desire, once this ascent is achieved… It was a going forth from the self, a simplifying, a reunification, a reach towards contact and at the same time a repose’.[13] The highest stage of the mystical ascent is a state of ecstasy, a total mingling with the One and diffusion in Him. The vision of the highest Intellectual-Principle is connected in Plotinus with the experience of the vision of light emanating from it.[14] One can, of course, point to the disparity between the ecstasy of Plotinus as a diffusion in the impersonal One and the mystical contemplation of Gregory as an encounter with the personal Deity, the Trinity. Yet one cannot but see a startling similarity of language, terminology or imagery between the two authors.
According to Gregory, purification of the intellect is necessary for the contemplation of the most pure light:
God is light, and light supreme. Every other light is only its weak emanation (aporroe) and reflection which reaches the earth, however bright it would seem to be. But you see that darkness[15] was under His feet and He made darkness His secret place,[16] having placed it between Himself and us, in the same manner as Moses of old put a veil between himself and the grossness of Israel,[17] in order that it should not be easy for the darkened nature to see the hidden beauty… and in order that only light would come in contact with the Light, which always draws one higher through desire (efeseos),[18] and in order that only purified intellect would approach to the Most Pure, and in order that something should be revealed now and something else later, as a reward for virtue and for inclination here to this (absolute purity), or rather, for assimilation (to it).[19]
It is noteworthy that in the text quoted God is called ‘hidden beauty’ and the contact with Him is described in terms of an encounter of ‘light’ with ‘the Light’. Here we can see again an echo of mysticism of Plotinus. The latter speaks of the absolute Beauty which is a source of all beauty.[20] Everything that exists has its beauty from the light, which is before everything, says Plotinus.[21] Having reached the state of unification, the human person sees both the highest absolute Light and himself as light: ‘Thus we have all the vision that may be of Him and of ourselves; but it is of a self wrought to splendour, brimmed with the Intellectual light, become that very light, pure, buoyant, unburdened, raised to Godhead, or, better, knowing its Godhead…’[22] Thus the human person not only contemplated the light but also is transformed into light.
Like Plotinus, Gregory speaks of one’s transformation into the light: ‘However much is one approaching the King, so much one is a light’.[23] The human person is called to ‘become light’, that is, to be entirely purified in all members of the body and all senses:
Let us become light, as it was said to the disciples by the Great Light, ye are the light of the world…[24] Let us lay hold of the Godhead; let us lay hold of the first and brightest Light. Let us walk towards His radiance… Let us cleanse every member, brothers, let us purify every sense; let nothing in us be imperfect, nothing of our first birth; let us leave nothing unillumined. Let us enlighten our eyes, that we may look straight on… Let us enlighten our ears; let us enlighten our tongue… Let us be healed also in the smell… Let us cleanse our touch, our taste, our throat… It is good to have our head cleansed… It is good also for the shoulder to be sanctified and purified… It is good for the hands to be consecrated, as well as the feet… There is also a cleansing of the belly… I find also the heart and inward parts deemed worthy of honour… And what about the loins, or reins, for we must not pass these over? Let the purification take hold of these also… Let us give to God all our members which are upon the earth… Let us give ourselves entire, that we may receive back ourselves entire; for this is to receive entirely, when we give ourselves to God and offer as a sacrifice our own salvation.[25]
To become light one must be thoroughly purified, sanctified, transformed and transfigured. Here Gregory goes beyond the realm of the Neo-Platonist terminology and uses biblical material to prove his concepts. Instead of the Platonic idea of liberation from the body he advances the concept of purification of the body as a necessary condition for participation in the Divine light.[26] Not only intellectual efforts, but also different ascetical exploits on the level of the body, as well as the fear of God and observance of God’s commandments, all this leads to mystical illumination:
For where fear is there is observance of commandments; and where there is observance of commandments there is purification of the flesh, that cloud which covers the soul and causes it not to see the divine ray. And where there is purification there is illumination; and illumination is the satisfaction of desire of those who long for the greatest things, or the Greatest Thing, Which surpasses all greatness.[27]
The person who has been purified receives access to the illumination by the ‘ray’ of the Divine light. However, as Gregory emphasizes, not every light which appears to a person is necessarily divine. As there are two kinds of fire, there are also two kinds of light. There is light that directs our steps according to the will of God, and there is also a ‘deceitful and meddling’ light which is ‘quite contrary to the true light, though pretending to be that light’: it is ‘thought to be bright light by those who have been ruined by luxury’, but in reality it is darkness. A Christian should beware of this deceitful light and kindle for himself ‘the light of knowledge’.[28] The question here is about a phenomenon which is known to many mystical writers. As early as in St Paul we find a warning about Satan who can be ‘transformed into an angel of light’.[29] The subsequent tradition developed a teaching according to which the Devil can imitate certain actions of God, including the appearance of light.[30]
The theme of the vision of the Divine light is frequently considered by Gregory in an eschatological perspective.[31] He emphasizes that what reaches us in this present life is only ‘a scant emanation’ or ‘a small beam from a great light’.[32] The light of the truth here is ‘moderate’,[33] and we receive here a certain ‘measured’ degree of God’s radiance, while in the future life people are illumined by the Trinity ‘in a more pure and lucid manner’.[34] Developing the theme of St Paul who said that ‘now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face’,[35] Gregory speaks of the encounter with ‘the light from there’ as the goal of Christian life:
…May you be in attendance upon the great King, filled with the light from there. May we also receive from it a small stream, as it can appear in mirrors and enigmas,[36] and may we finally find the very Source of good, gazing with pure mind upon the truth in its purity, and finding a reward for our eager toil here below on behalf of the good, in our more perfect possession and vision of the good on high. This is precisely the end of our initiation (mystagogia) of which our theological books and teachers tell us.[37]
[1] PG 37,984-987.
[2] PG 37,1367.
[3] PG 37,1006.
[4] PG 37,992.
[5] Disc.18,13; PG 35,1001.
[6] Cf. C. Moreschini in SC 358,62-70; T. Špidlik, Grégoire, pp. 75-83.
[7] On the idea of katharsis in Plato and Plotinus see A. Louth, The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition, pp. 7-10; 44-47.
[8] Gregory used the term ‘philosophy’ to mean the contemplative life.
[9] Disc.16,2; PG 35,936.
[10] Disc.32,12,13-14; SC 318,110.
[11] Disc.21,2,1-8; SC 270,112-114.
[12] Enn.6,9,3.
[13] Enn.6,9,11. Cf. Gregory Nazianzen, Disc.21,1,25-26; SC 270,112: ‘God is the limit of everything desirable and repose from every contemplation’.
[14] Enn.5,5,7-8.
[15] I.e. body. Cf. scholium of Elijah of Crete in PG 36,854 CD.
[16] Cf. Ps.17:10-12/18:9-11.
[17] Cf. Ex.34:33. Cf. similar interpretation of the veil of Moses in Basil the Great, On the Holy Spirit 21,52.
[18] In Plotinus, this term means the desire of unity with the highest Good.
[19] Disc.32,15,1-13; SC 318,116.
[20] Enn.6,7,32-33.
[21] Enn.6,7,31.
[22] Enn.6,9,9.
[23] PG 37,446 = 2.31.
[24] Matt.5:14.
[25] Disc.40,38,1-40,26; SC 358,284-292.
[26] The idea of purification of the body is also found in Plato, Cratylus 405ab.
[27] Disc.39,8,13-18; SC 358,164.
[28] Disc.40,37,1-17; SC 358,282-284.
[29] 2 Cor.11:14.
[30] Cf. Diadochos of Photiki, On Spiritual Knowledge 40: ‘You should not doubt that the intellect, when it begins to be strongly energized by the divine light, becomes so completely translucent that it sees its own light vividly… But when St Paul says that Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light, he definitely teaches us that everything which appears to the intellect, whether as light or as fire, if it has a shape, is the product of the evil artifice of the enemy’.
[31] See J. Mossay, La mort et l’au-delà dans saint Grégoire de Nazianze (Louvain, 1966), pp. 110ff.
[32] Disc.28,17,9-11; SC 250,136 (Wikham, 233).
[33] Disc.38,11,24-25; SC 358,126.
[34] Disc.39,20,12-15; SC 358,196.
[35] 1 Cor.13:12.
[36] Cf. 1 Cor.13:12.
[37] Disc.7,17,13-21; SC 405,222. Cf. Plotinus, Enn.5,3,17.
Deification in Christ
The rest of our discussion on Gregory Nazianzen will be devoted to what is the true core of his theology and mysticism, the idea of theosis, deification of the human person. This idea is a cantus firmus of the entire corpus of his discourses, from the First, which was pronounced at the threshold of his career as a preacher, to the Forty-fifth, which was written in his old age. This theme also runs through Gregory’s theological poetry.
The terminology of deification which is employed by Eastern Fathers is borrowed from the Platonic tradition, while the doctrine itself has biblical roots. The idea of people as ‘gods’,[1] the notion of image and likeness of God in the human person,[2] the themes of our adoption by God,[3] our participation in the divine nature[4] and divine immortality[5] – all these notions form the basis of patristic teaching on deification.
We find the idea of the deification of the human person the incarnate Word of God as early as in Irenaeus. According to him, the Word ‘became what we are in order to make us what He is’.[6] ‘The Word (became) man’, says Irenaeus, ‘and the Son of God (became) son of man so that man… might become a son of God’.[7] In other words, through the Incarnation of the Word, the human person becomes by adoption what the Son of God is by nature. This theme was developed by Clement and Origen. In the fourth century it found particular attention on the part of Nicene theologians in their polemic with Arianism. St Athanasius made the formula of Irenaeus even more concise: ‘God became man in order that we may become gods’.[8]
However, it was precisely Gregory Nazianzen who made the idea of deification the foundation-stone of his theology, and it is after him that this theme would become a core of the development of the theological and mystical tradition in the Christian East. As D.Winslow rightly points out, ‘no Christian theologian prior to Gregory employed the term theosis (or the idea contained in the term) with as much consistence and frequency as did he; both terminologically and conceptually Gregory went far beyond his predecessors in his sustained application to theosis’.[9] Already in his first public sermon, the themes of the image of God, assimilation to Christ, adoption by God and deification in Christ become fundamental:
…Let us recognize our dignity; let us honour our Archetype; let us know the power of the mystery,[10] and for what Christ died. Let us become like Christ, since Christ became like us. Let us become gods for His sake, since He for ours became man. He assumed the worse that He might give us the better; He became poor that we through His poverty might be rich; He took upon Himself the form of a servant that we might receive back our liberty; He came down that we might be exalted; He was tempted that we might conquer; He was dishonoured that He might glorify us; He died that He might save us; He ascended that He might draw to Himself us, who were lying low in the fall of sin. Let us give all, offer all, to Him Who gave Himself a ransom and a reconciliation for us. But one can give nothing like oneself, understanding the mystery, and becoming for His sake all that He became for ours.[11]
The goal of the Incarnation, says Gregory in his second public sermon, was ‘to make man god and partaker of heavenly bliss’.[12] By His sufferings Christ deified the human person, having mingled human image with heavenly one.[13] The leaven of deification mad human flesh ‘a new mixture’, and the intellect upon receiving this leaven ‘was mingled with God and deified through Divinity’.[14]
Formulae of Irenaeus and Athanasius appear in Gregory’s writings in various modifications:
Being God, You became man and was mingled with mortals: You were God from the beginning, and You became man later in order to make me god, since You became man.[15]
Christ… made me god through the image of a mortal (which He accepted upon Himself).[16]
The Word of the Father was God, but became man, as we are, so that, having mingled with the mortals, He might unite God with is.[17]
…As man, He is interceding for my salvation, until He makes me divine by the power of His incarnate manhood.[18]
Since man did not become god, God Himself became man… in order to reconstruct what was given through what is assumed.[19]
In his Theological Discourses Gregory adds a significant qualification to the formula of Athanasius: God became man ‘in order that I might be made god to the same extent that He was made man’.[20] Thus a direct link is established not only between the Incarnation of God and deification of man, but also between the extent to what God became man and man became god. Gregory adds this qualification in order to oppose the teaching of Apollinarius:[21] if God did not become an entire man, there is no possibility for a man to become entirely god. In one of his poems directed against Apollinarius, Gregory goes even further and places the Incarnation of God in direct dependence on the deification of man: ‘He became man to the same extent that He makes me god’.[22] Recognition of the fullness of the human nature in Christ presupposes the belief in deification of the entire human person, including his intellect, soul and body; and vice versa, the idea of deification presupposes faith in Christ as a human person with intellect, soul and body.
The idea of participation of the body in deification is one of the main points of difference between Christian concept of deification and ins Platonic counterpart, the idea of ‘becoming god’, which we find in Plotinus.[23] In the latter’s philosophical system, the matter always remains evil and opposed to everything divine.[24] Gregory, on the contrary, asserts that in the person of Christ the flesh is deified by the Spirit: the incarnate God is ‘one from two opposites, flesh and spirit, of which the latter deifies and the former is deified’.[25] In the same manner the body of every person who attained to deification in Christ becomes transfigured and deified:
By narrow and difficult way, through narrow gates,
which are not passable for many, with a solemn escort,
Christ leads to God me, a god made of dust,
who was not born god, but was made immortal from mortal.
Together with the great image of God[26] He draws also my body, which is my assistant,
in the same manner as a magnet-stone attracts black iron.[27]
The terminology of deification which is employed by Eastern Fathers is borrowed from the Platonic tradition, while the doctrine itself has biblical roots. The idea of people as ‘gods’,[1] the notion of image and likeness of God in the human person,[2] the themes of our adoption by God,[3] our participation in the divine nature[4] and divine immortality[5] – all these notions form the basis of patristic teaching on deification.
We find the idea of the deification of the human person the incarnate Word of God as early as in Irenaeus. According to him, the Word ‘became what we are in order to make us what He is’.[6] ‘The Word (became) man’, says Irenaeus, ‘and the Son of God (became) son of man so that man… might become a son of God’.[7] In other words, through the Incarnation of the Word, the human person becomes by adoption what the Son of God is by nature. This theme was developed by Clement and Origen. In the fourth century it found particular attention on the part of Nicene theologians in their polemic with Arianism. St Athanasius made the formula of Irenaeus even more concise: ‘God became man in order that we may become gods’.[8]
However, it was precisely Gregory Nazianzen who made the idea of deification the foundation-stone of his theology, and it is after him that this theme would become a core of the development of the theological and mystical tradition in the Christian East. As D.Winslow rightly points out, ‘no Christian theologian prior to Gregory employed the term theosis (or the idea contained in the term) with as much consistence and frequency as did he; both terminologically and conceptually Gregory went far beyond his predecessors in his sustained application to theosis’.[9] Already in his first public sermon, the themes of the image of God, assimilation to Christ, adoption by God and deification in Christ become fundamental:
…Let us recognize our dignity; let us honour our Archetype; let us know the power of the mystery,[10] and for what Christ died. Let us become like Christ, since Christ became like us. Let us become gods for His sake, since He for ours became man. He assumed the worse that He might give us the better; He became poor that we through His poverty might be rich; He took upon Himself the form of a servant that we might receive back our liberty; He came down that we might be exalted; He was tempted that we might conquer; He was dishonoured that He might glorify us; He died that He might save us; He ascended that He might draw to Himself us, who were lying low in the fall of sin. Let us give all, offer all, to Him Who gave Himself a ransom and a reconciliation for us. But one can give nothing like oneself, understanding the mystery, and becoming for His sake all that He became for ours.[11]
The goal of the Incarnation, says Gregory in his second public sermon, was ‘to make man god and partaker of heavenly bliss’.[12] By His sufferings Christ deified the human person, having mingled human image with heavenly one.[13] The leaven of deification mad human flesh ‘a new mixture’, and the intellect upon receiving this leaven ‘was mingled with God and deified through Divinity’.[14]
Formulae of Irenaeus and Athanasius appear in Gregory’s writings in various modifications:
Being God, You became man and was mingled with mortals: You were God from the beginning, and You became man later in order to make me god, since You became man.[15]
Christ… made me god through the image of a mortal (which He accepted upon Himself).[16]
The Word of the Father was God, but became man, as we are, so that, having mingled with the mortals, He might unite God with is.[17]
…As man, He is interceding for my salvation, until He makes me divine by the power of His incarnate manhood.[18]
Since man did not become god, God Himself became man… in order to reconstruct what was given through what is assumed.[19]
In his Theological Discourses Gregory adds a significant qualification to the formula of Athanasius: God became man ‘in order that I might be made god to the same extent that He was made man’.[20] Thus a direct link is established not only between the Incarnation of God and deification of man, but also between the extent to what God became man and man became god. Gregory adds this qualification in order to oppose the teaching of Apollinarius:[21] if God did not become an entire man, there is no possibility for a man to become entirely god. In one of his poems directed against Apollinarius, Gregory goes even further and places the Incarnation of God in direct dependence on the deification of man: ‘He became man to the same extent that He makes me god’.[22] Recognition of the fullness of the human nature in Christ presupposes the belief in deification of the entire human person, including his intellect, soul and body; and vice versa, the idea of deification presupposes faith in Christ as a human person with intellect, soul and body.
The idea of participation of the body in deification is one of the main points of difference between Christian concept of deification and ins Platonic counterpart, the idea of ‘becoming god’, which we find in Plotinus.[23] In the latter’s philosophical system, the matter always remains evil and opposed to everything divine.[24] Gregory, on the contrary, asserts that in the person of Christ the flesh is deified by the Spirit: the incarnate God is ‘one from two opposites, flesh and spirit, of which the latter deifies and the former is deified’.[25] In the same manner the body of every person who attained to deification in Christ becomes transfigured and deified:
By narrow and difficult way, through narrow gates,
which are not passable for many, with a solemn escort,
Christ leads to God me, a god made of dust,
who was not born god, but was made immortal from mortal.
Together with the great image of God[26] He draws also my body, which is my assistant,
in the same manner as a magnet-stone attracts black iron.[27]
[1] Cf. Ps.81/82:6; John 10:34.
[2] Cf. Gen.1:26-27; Rom.8:29; 1 Cor.15:49; 2 Cor.3:18 et al.
[3] Cf. John.1:12; Gal.3:26; 4:5 et al.
[4] Cf. 2 Pet.1:4.
[5] Cf. 1 Cor.15:53.
[6] Against the heresies 5, introduction.
[7] Against the heresies 3,19,1; 4,33,4.
[8] On the Incarnation 54.
[9] Dynamics, 179.
[10] The term ‘mystery’ (mysterion) here refers to Easter.
[11] Disc.1,4,9-5,12; SC 247,76-78.
[12] Ñë.2,22,14-15; SC 247,120.
[13] PG 37,1313 = 2.94.
[14] Letter 101 (First letter to Kledonios); SC 208,56.
[15] PG 37,971.
[16] PG 37,762.
[17] PG 37,471.
[18] Ñë.30,14,8-11; SC 250,256 (Wickham, 272).
[19] PG 37,465.
[20] Disc.29,19,9-10; SC 250,218 (Wickham, 257).
[21] Apollinarius taught that God in His Incarnation assumed only human flesh, whereas human intellect and soul were replaced in Him by the divine Word (Logos).
[22] PG 37,471.
[23] Enn.1,2,6: ‘Our concern is not merely to be sinless, but to be god’.
[24] Cf. Deck, Nature, 79.
[25] Disc.45,9; PG 36,633.
[26] I.e. soul.
[27] PG 37,1004-1005.
The way towards deification
We see that Gregory regards the Incarnation of God as a pledge of the deification of the entire humanity and every human person. But how is this ideal of deification worked out in practice? What is the way towards deification for each particular person?
First of all, the way is through the Church and the sacraments. According to Gregory, the Church is one body, which ‘receives cohesion and consistence by the harmony of the Spirit’ and which is destined to become ‘worthy of Christ Himself, Who is our head’.[1] It is within the Church that the human person can ‘bury himself with Christ, be risen with Christ, inherit Christ, become son of God and be himself named god’.[2] The true Church may not necessarily be numerous, it may be persecuted by heretics, deprived of its buildings and external grandeur, but if Christian faith is preserved in it undamaged, it remains a place of God’s presence, of the deification of the human person, a place where the Gospel is preached and where people ascend to heaven: ‘They have houses, but we the Dweller in the house; they have temples, we have God;[3] and besides it is ours to be living temples of the living God,[4] living sacrifices, reasonable burnt-offerings, perfect sacrifices, gods through the adoration of the Trinity’.[5]
The salvation of the human person takes place in the Church through his participation in the sacraments of Baptism and Eucharist. In Baptism, he is reborn and recreated by the deifying energy of the Holy Spirit: ‘…The Spirit… deifies me through Baptism… From the Spirit comes our rebirth, from rebirth comes a new creating… He makes us His temple, He deifies, He makes us complete, He initiates us in such a way that He both precedes Baptism and is wanted after it’.[6] As to the Eucharist, here we ‘partake of Christ, partake of His sufferings and His godhead’.[7] While Baptism purifies one from original sin, the Eucharist makes one a participant in the redemption worked out by Christ.[8]
Deification occurs because of one’s love for God. According to Gregory, ‘love for God is a way of deification’.[9] The end of this way is mingling with God, which is deification: ‘I am Christ’s possession: I have become a temple and a sacrifice, and I shall become god, when my soul is mingled with the Godhead’.[10]
The way towards deification also consists of good deeds towards other people: ‘Show your zeal not in evil-doing, but in doing something good, if you want to be god’.[11] Philanthropic activity is assimilation to God: through being generous and merciful a governor can be a god to his subjects, a rich person to the poor, a healthy person to the sick.[12] Deification is not only an intellectual ascent. The entire life of a Christian should become the way towards deification through observing God’s commandments: ‘Be elevated in your life rather than in your thought. The former deifies, while the latter can lead to a great fall. Measure your life not according to a scale of insignificant things, for even if you ascend high, you will always be lower than (what is demanded) by the commandment’.[13]
The ascetical life also contributes to the deification of the human person. Gregory speaks of the virgins as those who ascend to the heights of deification through their bodily and spiritual purity: ‘Around the light-bearing King, there stands a blameless and heavenly choir: those who haste from earth in order to become god, those who are bearers of Christ, ministers of the Cross, despisers of the world, who are dead for earthly things, who are anxious about heavenly realities, who are lanterns for the world, clear mirrors of light’.[14] The ascetical life, however, is necessary not only for virgins and monks: every Christian should be an ascetic, at least to a certain degree, if he wants to reach deification. In his Eleventh Discourse, which was dedicated to the feat of the Maccabees, Gregory admonishes his flock as follows:
If we find enjoyment in the pleasures of the belly, if we take pleasure from transient things.., if we consider this a place for parties and not for temperance, if we hope to find here time for commerce and affairs and not for ascent and, may I dare say, deification, to which the martyrs are mediators,[15] then, firstly, I do not think that this is an appropriate moment… Secondly, I would want to say something more sharp, but will abstain from reproach out of respect to the feast. In any case, this is not what the martyrs are waiting from us, to say the least.[16]
Finally, the way towards deification consists of prayer, mystical experience, ascent of the intellect to God, contemplation of God. ‘What do you want to become?’ asks Gregory of his soul. ‘Do you want to become god, standing in light before the great God, rejoicing with the angels. Then go further, spread your wings and ascend upwards’.[17] Through prayer and purification of mind the human person receives the experience of the knowledge of God; this experience becomes fuller as he comes closer to the goal of deification:
…(God) enlightens our governing faculty,[18] if it is purified, in the same manner as the speed of lightning enlightens our sight. I think that this is in order to attract us to God by something that is attainable, since what is totally unattainable cannot be an object of hope and attention, and in order to precipitate an admiration by what is unattainable, and to cause greater desire by being admired, and to purify by the desire, and to make divine by purification; and, when we have already become deified, to speak with us as God Who is united with gods and comprehended by them and known by them as also He knows those whom He knows.[19]
As we can see, deification, in Gregory’s understanding, is the highest stage of the knowledge of God, when the incomprehensible God becomes comprehensible, so far as this is possible for the human nature. Deification is also the goal of Christian ‘initiation’ through the sacraments. It is the completion of all ethical and ascetical efforts of a Christian. It is the peak of a person’s prayer and mystical life: it is here that unity between him and God takes place. Deification is salvation of the entire person, transfiguration of the intellect, soul and body. Becoming godlike, the human person brings profit not only to himself: he also reveals the Word of God to others.[20] Thus every Christian may contribute towards the attainment of the goal of existence of everything, which is salvation of the humanity, transformation of the universe, entering of all who are saved in the Kingdom of heaven, eschatological deification of all creation.
First of all, the way is through the Church and the sacraments. According to Gregory, the Church is one body, which ‘receives cohesion and consistence by the harmony of the Spirit’ and which is destined to become ‘worthy of Christ Himself, Who is our head’.[1] It is within the Church that the human person can ‘bury himself with Christ, be risen with Christ, inherit Christ, become son of God and be himself named god’.[2] The true Church may not necessarily be numerous, it may be persecuted by heretics, deprived of its buildings and external grandeur, but if Christian faith is preserved in it undamaged, it remains a place of God’s presence, of the deification of the human person, a place where the Gospel is preached and where people ascend to heaven: ‘They have houses, but we the Dweller in the house; they have temples, we have God;[3] and besides it is ours to be living temples of the living God,[4] living sacrifices, reasonable burnt-offerings, perfect sacrifices, gods through the adoration of the Trinity’.[5]
The salvation of the human person takes place in the Church through his participation in the sacraments of Baptism and Eucharist. In Baptism, he is reborn and recreated by the deifying energy of the Holy Spirit: ‘…The Spirit… deifies me through Baptism… From the Spirit comes our rebirth, from rebirth comes a new creating… He makes us His temple, He deifies, He makes us complete, He initiates us in such a way that He both precedes Baptism and is wanted after it’.[6] As to the Eucharist, here we ‘partake of Christ, partake of His sufferings and His godhead’.[7] While Baptism purifies one from original sin, the Eucharist makes one a participant in the redemption worked out by Christ.[8]
Deification occurs because of one’s love for God. According to Gregory, ‘love for God is a way of deification’.[9] The end of this way is mingling with God, which is deification: ‘I am Christ’s possession: I have become a temple and a sacrifice, and I shall become god, when my soul is mingled with the Godhead’.[10]
The way towards deification also consists of good deeds towards other people: ‘Show your zeal not in evil-doing, but in doing something good, if you want to be god’.[11] Philanthropic activity is assimilation to God: through being generous and merciful a governor can be a god to his subjects, a rich person to the poor, a healthy person to the sick.[12] Deification is not only an intellectual ascent. The entire life of a Christian should become the way towards deification through observing God’s commandments: ‘Be elevated in your life rather than in your thought. The former deifies, while the latter can lead to a great fall. Measure your life not according to a scale of insignificant things, for even if you ascend high, you will always be lower than (what is demanded) by the commandment’.[13]
The ascetical life also contributes to the deification of the human person. Gregory speaks of the virgins as those who ascend to the heights of deification through their bodily and spiritual purity: ‘Around the light-bearing King, there stands a blameless and heavenly choir: those who haste from earth in order to become god, those who are bearers of Christ, ministers of the Cross, despisers of the world, who are dead for earthly things, who are anxious about heavenly realities, who are lanterns for the world, clear mirrors of light’.[14] The ascetical life, however, is necessary not only for virgins and monks: every Christian should be an ascetic, at least to a certain degree, if he wants to reach deification. In his Eleventh Discourse, which was dedicated to the feat of the Maccabees, Gregory admonishes his flock as follows:
If we find enjoyment in the pleasures of the belly, if we take pleasure from transient things.., if we consider this a place for parties and not for temperance, if we hope to find here time for commerce and affairs and not for ascent and, may I dare say, deification, to which the martyrs are mediators,[15] then, firstly, I do not think that this is an appropriate moment… Secondly, I would want to say something more sharp, but will abstain from reproach out of respect to the feast. In any case, this is not what the martyrs are waiting from us, to say the least.[16]
Finally, the way towards deification consists of prayer, mystical experience, ascent of the intellect to God, contemplation of God. ‘What do you want to become?’ asks Gregory of his soul. ‘Do you want to become god, standing in light before the great God, rejoicing with the angels. Then go further, spread your wings and ascend upwards’.[17] Through prayer and purification of mind the human person receives the experience of the knowledge of God; this experience becomes fuller as he comes closer to the goal of deification:
…(God) enlightens our governing faculty,[18] if it is purified, in the same manner as the speed of lightning enlightens our sight. I think that this is in order to attract us to God by something that is attainable, since what is totally unattainable cannot be an object of hope and attention, and in order to precipitate an admiration by what is unattainable, and to cause greater desire by being admired, and to purify by the desire, and to make divine by purification; and, when we have already become deified, to speak with us as God Who is united with gods and comprehended by them and known by them as also He knows those whom He knows.[19]
As we can see, deification, in Gregory’s understanding, is the highest stage of the knowledge of God, when the incomprehensible God becomes comprehensible, so far as this is possible for the human nature. Deification is also the goal of Christian ‘initiation’ through the sacraments. It is the completion of all ethical and ascetical efforts of a Christian. It is the peak of a person’s prayer and mystical life: it is here that unity between him and God takes place. Deification is salvation of the entire person, transfiguration of the intellect, soul and body. Becoming godlike, the human person brings profit not only to himself: he also reveals the Word of God to others.[20] Thus every Christian may contribute towards the attainment of the goal of existence of everything, which is salvation of the humanity, transformation of the universe, entering of all who are saved in the Kingdom of heaven, eschatological deification of all creation.
[1] Disc.2,3,13-17; SC 250,90.
[2] Disc.7,23,10-12; SC 405,240.
[3] This discourse was pronounced in 380 in Constantinople, where all churches were still in the hands of the Arians.
[4] Cf. 2 Cor.6:16.
[5] Disc.33,15,3-13; SC 318,188.
[6] Disc.31,28,9-29,33 (28,9-15; 29,31-33); SC 250,332-334 (Wickham, 295-296).
[7] Disc.4,52,14-16; SC 309,156.
[8] PG 37,462-463 (transl. by P.Gilbert).
[9] PG 37,957.
[10] PG 37,1399.
[11] PG 37,944.
[12] See Disc.17,9; PG 35,976: ‘Imitate… God’s philanthropy. The most divine in the human person is that he can do good. You can become god with no special effort: do not lose your chance of deification’ (these words are addressed to the governor of Nazianzus). See also Disc.14,26; PG 35,892: ‘Be god to someone who is in misfortune, imitating God’s mercy’ (the words pronounced in order to encourage rich people of Caesarea to give alms). We should note that the expression ‘to be god’ in this context is metaphorical, whereas in other places Gregory speaks of real deification.
[13] PG 37,934.
[14] PG 37,538.
[15] The idea that martyrs (saints) are mediators in deification will become very important in iconoclastic epoch and will be further developed by such writers as John of Damascus.
[16] Disc.11,5,17-30; SC 405,340.
[17] PG 37,1437-1438.
[18] I.e. the intellect.
[19] Disc.38,7,12-22; SC 358,116. Cf. 1 Cor.13:12.
[20] Disc.39,10,21-24; SC 358,168-170.
Eschatological insights
According to the teaching of Eastern Fathers, deification of the human person begins in the present life but is fully realized in the future age.[1] As Gregory says, ‘here’ one prepares for deification but only ‘there’, after transition to the other world, can reach it: this is ‘the completion of the mystery’ of Christian faith.[2]
Unlike Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory Nazianzen usually avoided discussions on questions of eschatology. There are only a few passages in the entire corpus of his writings dealing with eschatological matters. The life of the age to come is a mystery which is revealed only to those who have already crossed the border between the two worlds; therefore any discussion on this is necessarily limited to conjectures and hypotheses. Yet there is a traditional eschatology of the Christian Church, upon which the insights of the Church Fathers into the mystery of the last things are based. Gregory Nazianzen, in particular, follows these traditional lines when he writes on eschatological matters. However, he does not limit himself to scriptural and traditional sources; he also borrows something from ancient Greek philosophy. Echoes of Plato[3] are discernible in the following text:
I believe the words of the wise, that every fair and God-beloved soul, when, set free from the bonds of the body,[4] it departs from here, at once enjoys perception and contemplation of the blessings which await it… and goes rejoicing to meet its Lord… Then, a little later, it receives its kindred flesh… in some way known to God, who knit them together and dissolved them, enters with it upon the inheritance of the glory there. And, as it shared, through their close union, in its hardships, so also it bestows upon it a portion of its joys, gathering it up entirely into itself, and becoming with it one spirit, one intellect and one god… Why am I faint-hearted in my hopes? Why behave like a mere creature of a day? I await the voice of the archangel, the last trumpet, the transformation of the heavens, the transfiguration of the earth, the liberation of the elements, the renovation of the universe.[5]
As we see, Gregory believes in the reconciliation of the body and soul at the moment of resurrection, when both elements of the human person are deified and become ‘one god’. The question here is not about the material body, which has long since disintegrated and decomposed, but about a new body of another kind, which is somehow related to the material body the person had in his earthly life. Gregory does not speculate about the nature of this new body:[6] he only points to the moment of bodily resurrection as the final stage of the process of deification of the human person.
When speaking of the last things, Gregory sounds enthusiastic and optimistic: in this he is similar to St Paul.[7] How does this mood correspond to Christian dogmas of the Last Judgment, of retribution, of Hell, of the eternal fire reserved for sinners? Gregory mentions the Last Judgment many times in his writings, but he understands it also in the context of the doctrine of deification, as a moment when God ‘rises up in judgment of the earth,[8] dividing the saved and the lost’, after which ‘God stands in the midst of the gods,[9] meaning “the saved”, appointing to each the particular honour, the special mansion, of which he is worthy’.[10] Gregory speaks also of the fire of Hell, but allows for the possibility that it may be a sort of last baptism for sinners: ‘May be they will be baptized by fire, the last baptism, the most painful and the longest, which consumes matter, like straw, and destroys the lightness of every evil’.[11] In other place Gregory refers to the fire of Hell as ‘avenging’ and calls it ‘eternal’, while consenting to the possibility of a ‘more merciful’ understanding:
I know also a fire which is not cleansing, but avenging; either that fire of Sodom which He pours down on all sinners, mingled with brimstone and storms, or that which is prepared for the Devil and his angels[12] or that which proceeds from the face of the Lord, and shall burn up His enemies round about;[13] and one even more fearful still than these, the unquenchable fire which is ranged with the worm that dieth not[14] but is eternal for the wicked. For all these belong to the destroying power; though some may prefer even in this place to take a more merciful view of this fire, worthily of Him Who chastises.[15]
Under ‘some’ who prefer to ‘take a more merciful view’ of the fire of Hell, Gregory may mean someone like his friend Gregory of Nyssa. The latter was in fact the main defender in the Christian East of the teaching about the purifying nature of the fire of Hell.[16] According to Gregory of Nyssa, the torments of Hell exist in order that the soul of the sinner may be purified in their fire from the dust of sin: having passed through the ‘baptism of fire’, the souls of sinners become able to take part in the restoration of all (apokatastasis ton panton), when not only all people, but also demons and the Devil will return to their primordial sinless and blessed state. This idea, which was dear to Gregory of Nyssa,[17] is based on the teaching of St Paul that, after the resurrection of all and the final victory of Christ over death, everything will be subjected to God and He will be ‘all in all’.[18] As to the term apokatastasis panton (restoration, or restitution of all), it is borrowed from the Book of Acts.[19]
In his Theological Discourses Gregory Nazianzen speaks directly of the final ‘restoration’, when people will reach the state of deification and assimilation to God:
God will be all in all[20] at the time of restoration (apokatastaseos)…[21] God will be all in all when we are no longer what we are now, a multiplicity of impulses and emotions, with little or nothing of God in us, but are fully like God, with room for God and God alone. This is the maturity towards which we speed. Paul himself is a special witness here… I quote: Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free, but Christ is all in all.[22]
It seems that Gregory Nazianzen is in agreement with Gregory of Nyssa that there will be a final restoration of all. However, unlike the Bishop of Nyssa, he never brings eschatological insights to their ultimate outcome: for him, eschatology is a realm of questions rather than answers, conjectures rather than definitions. ‘Restoration of all’ is an object of hope rather than a dogma of faith. He rejects neither the idea of eternal Hell, nor the idea of universal salvation: both concepts remain for him with a big question mark. Speaking of the resurrection of the dead, Gregory asks: ‘Is it that all will later encounter God?’,[23] and leaves this question unanswered. Eschatological deification of humanity is one of the many mysteries of the Christian faith which are beyond the limits of rational comprehension.
The heavenly Kingdom is perceived by Gregory primarily as a realm of light, where people, liberated from the turmoils of earthly life, will rejoice, ‘like small lights around the great Light’.[24] It is that Kingdom, ‘where there is an abode of all who rejoice and sing an incessant hymn, where there is a sound of those who celebrate and the voice of joy, where there is most perfect and most pure illumination by the Godhead, which we now taste in enigmas and shadows’.[25] It is in this Kingdom that final reconciliation of the human person with God takes place, participation in the Divine light, restoration and deification of the entire human nature.
Unlike Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory Nazianzen usually avoided discussions on questions of eschatology. There are only a few passages in the entire corpus of his writings dealing with eschatological matters. The life of the age to come is a mystery which is revealed only to those who have already crossed the border between the two worlds; therefore any discussion on this is necessarily limited to conjectures and hypotheses. Yet there is a traditional eschatology of the Christian Church, upon which the insights of the Church Fathers into the mystery of the last things are based. Gregory Nazianzen, in particular, follows these traditional lines when he writes on eschatological matters. However, he does not limit himself to scriptural and traditional sources; he also borrows something from ancient Greek philosophy. Echoes of Plato[3] are discernible in the following text:
I believe the words of the wise, that every fair and God-beloved soul, when, set free from the bonds of the body,[4] it departs from here, at once enjoys perception and contemplation of the blessings which await it… and goes rejoicing to meet its Lord… Then, a little later, it receives its kindred flesh… in some way known to God, who knit them together and dissolved them, enters with it upon the inheritance of the glory there. And, as it shared, through their close union, in its hardships, so also it bestows upon it a portion of its joys, gathering it up entirely into itself, and becoming with it one spirit, one intellect and one god… Why am I faint-hearted in my hopes? Why behave like a mere creature of a day? I await the voice of the archangel, the last trumpet, the transformation of the heavens, the transfiguration of the earth, the liberation of the elements, the renovation of the universe.[5]
As we see, Gregory believes in the reconciliation of the body and soul at the moment of resurrection, when both elements of the human person are deified and become ‘one god’. The question here is not about the material body, which has long since disintegrated and decomposed, but about a new body of another kind, which is somehow related to the material body the person had in his earthly life. Gregory does not speculate about the nature of this new body:[6] he only points to the moment of bodily resurrection as the final stage of the process of deification of the human person.
When speaking of the last things, Gregory sounds enthusiastic and optimistic: in this he is similar to St Paul.[7] How does this mood correspond to Christian dogmas of the Last Judgment, of retribution, of Hell, of the eternal fire reserved for sinners? Gregory mentions the Last Judgment many times in his writings, but he understands it also in the context of the doctrine of deification, as a moment when God ‘rises up in judgment of the earth,[8] dividing the saved and the lost’, after which ‘God stands in the midst of the gods,[9] meaning “the saved”, appointing to each the particular honour, the special mansion, of which he is worthy’.[10] Gregory speaks also of the fire of Hell, but allows for the possibility that it may be a sort of last baptism for sinners: ‘May be they will be baptized by fire, the last baptism, the most painful and the longest, which consumes matter, like straw, and destroys the lightness of every evil’.[11] In other place Gregory refers to the fire of Hell as ‘avenging’ and calls it ‘eternal’, while consenting to the possibility of a ‘more merciful’ understanding:
I know also a fire which is not cleansing, but avenging; either that fire of Sodom which He pours down on all sinners, mingled with brimstone and storms, or that which is prepared for the Devil and his angels[12] or that which proceeds from the face of the Lord, and shall burn up His enemies round about;[13] and one even more fearful still than these, the unquenchable fire which is ranged with the worm that dieth not[14] but is eternal for the wicked. For all these belong to the destroying power; though some may prefer even in this place to take a more merciful view of this fire, worthily of Him Who chastises.[15]
Under ‘some’ who prefer to ‘take a more merciful view’ of the fire of Hell, Gregory may mean someone like his friend Gregory of Nyssa. The latter was in fact the main defender in the Christian East of the teaching about the purifying nature of the fire of Hell.[16] According to Gregory of Nyssa, the torments of Hell exist in order that the soul of the sinner may be purified in their fire from the dust of sin: having passed through the ‘baptism of fire’, the souls of sinners become able to take part in the restoration of all (apokatastasis ton panton), when not only all people, but also demons and the Devil will return to their primordial sinless and blessed state. This idea, which was dear to Gregory of Nyssa,[17] is based on the teaching of St Paul that, after the resurrection of all and the final victory of Christ over death, everything will be subjected to God and He will be ‘all in all’.[18] As to the term apokatastasis panton (restoration, or restitution of all), it is borrowed from the Book of Acts.[19]
In his Theological Discourses Gregory Nazianzen speaks directly of the final ‘restoration’, when people will reach the state of deification and assimilation to God:
God will be all in all[20] at the time of restoration (apokatastaseos)…[21] God will be all in all when we are no longer what we are now, a multiplicity of impulses and emotions, with little or nothing of God in us, but are fully like God, with room for God and God alone. This is the maturity towards which we speed. Paul himself is a special witness here… I quote: Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free, but Christ is all in all.[22]
It seems that Gregory Nazianzen is in agreement with Gregory of Nyssa that there will be a final restoration of all. However, unlike the Bishop of Nyssa, he never brings eschatological insights to their ultimate outcome: for him, eschatology is a realm of questions rather than answers, conjectures rather than definitions. ‘Restoration of all’ is an object of hope rather than a dogma of faith. He rejects neither the idea of eternal Hell, nor the idea of universal salvation: both concepts remain for him with a big question mark. Speaking of the resurrection of the dead, Gregory asks: ‘Is it that all will later encounter God?’,[23] and leaves this question unanswered. Eschatological deification of humanity is one of the many mysteries of the Christian faith which are beyond the limits of rational comprehension.
The heavenly Kingdom is perceived by Gregory primarily as a realm of light, where people, liberated from the turmoils of earthly life, will rejoice, ‘like small lights around the great Light’.[24] It is that Kingdom, ‘where there is an abode of all who rejoice and sing an incessant hymn, where there is a sound of those who celebrate and the voice of joy, where there is most perfect and most pure illumination by the Godhead, which we now taste in enigmas and shadows’.[25] It is in this Kingdom that final reconciliation of the human person with God takes place, participation in the Divine light, restoration and deification of the entire human nature.
[1] Cf. M. Lot-Borodine, La déification de l’homme selon la doctrine des Pères grecs (Paris, 1970), p. 21.
[2] Disc.38,11,22-24; SC 358,126.
[3] Cf. Phaedrus 246a-256a.
[4] Cf. the Platonic image of the body as a prison for the soul: Plato, Phaedo, 62b; Kratylus 400c.
[5] Disc.7,21,2-33; SC 405,232-236.
[6] A long discussion on this is found in Gregory of Nyssa’s On the Soul and Resurrection.
[7] Cf. 1 Cor.15:35-58.
[8] Cf. Ps.93/94:2.
[9] Cf. Ps.81/82:1.
[10] Disc.30,4,22-26; SC 250,232 (Wickham, 264).
[11] Disc.39,19,18-23; 194.
[12] Cf. Matt.25:41.
[13] Cf. Ps.96/97:3.
[14] Cf. Mk.9:44.
[15] Disc.40,36,23-32; SC 358,282.
[16] Cf. On the Soul and Resurrection (PG 46,89 B, 100 A, 105 D, 152 A); Great Catechetical Oration 8,9; 8,12; 26,8 (PG 45,36-37; 69), et al.
[17] This teaching of Gregory of Nyssa must be distinguished from the Origenist understanding of apokatastasis which was condemned in the sixth century. Gregory of Nyssa did not share Origen’s idea of the preexistence of the soul; unlike Origen, Gregory also taught that the body will take part in the final restoration. The teaching of Gregory was therefore never formally condemned, though it never became a dogma. See J. Pelikan, The Christian Tradition I: The Emergence of the Catholic Thought (100-600) (Chicago-London, 1971) , p. 151.
[18] 1 Cor.15:22-28.
[19] Cf. Acts 3:21.
[20] 1 Cor.15:28.
[21] Acts 3:21.
[22] Disc.30,6,31-44; SC 250,238 (Wickham, 266). Cf. Col.3:11.
[23] PG 37,1010.
[24] Disc.18,42; PG 37,1041.
[25] Disc.24,19,9-13; SC 284,82.
The influence of St. Gregory on other mystical writers
As has been already said, Gregory Nazianzen was extremely influential throughout the whole of the Byzantine era. Speaking of his influence, one must first of all mention St Maximus the Confessor, a great monastic writer of the seventh century.[1] Maximus regarded St Gregory’s writings as authoritative as Holy Scripture: in fact, one of his major works, Quaestiones et Dubia, is nothing but a collection of commentaries on the passages from either the Bible or the writings by St Gregory.
A direct link between the two authors is clearly seen in Maximus’ major theological work, Ambigua (The Difficulties),[2] where certain passages from Gregory Nazianzen are not only thoroughly analyzed from the theological point of view, but also become starting points for Maximus’s own theological and mystical insights. Thus, Maximus comments on a passage from Gregory’s 21st Discourse, whose theme is the liberation from matter through mystical ascent to God, deification and the union with the divine light.[3] Maximus’s commentary develops into a protracted theological treatise (100 columns in Migne’s edition).[4]
Gregory Nazianzen exerted a great influence on St John Damascene, who was once upon a time referred to as ‘the last father of the Church’. Gregory’s writings were the main source for John Damascene’s Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, a monumental work that sums up the whole of early Byzantine theology.
Gregory was the only author who influenced St Symeon the New Theologian, one of the greatest mystics of all times. His mystical theology will be a subject of our discussion in the future.
A direct link between the two authors is clearly seen in Maximus’ major theological work, Ambigua (The Difficulties),[2] where certain passages from Gregory Nazianzen are not only thoroughly analyzed from the theological point of view, but also become starting points for Maximus’s own theological and mystical insights. Thus, Maximus comments on a passage from Gregory’s 21st Discourse, whose theme is the liberation from matter through mystical ascent to God, deification and the union with the divine light.[3] Maximus’s commentary develops into a protracted theological treatise (100 columns in Migne’s edition).[4]
Gregory Nazianzen exerted a great influence on St John Damascene, who was once upon a time referred to as ‘the last father of the Church’. Gregory’s writings were the main source for John Damascene’s Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, a monumental work that sums up the whole of early Byzantine theology.
Gregory was the only author who influenced St Symeon the New Theologian, one of the greatest mystics of all times. His mystical theology will be a subject of our discussion in the future.
[1] See A. Louth, ‘St Gregory the Theologian and St Maximus the Confessor’ in The Shaping of Tradition.- The Making and Remaking of Christian Doctrine. Essays in honour of Moris Wiles, ed. S. Coakley, D. A. Pailin (Oxford, 1993) , pp.117-130.
[2] See A. Louth, Maximus the Confessor (London – New York, 1996), p. 24.
[3] Disc.21,2,1-8; SC 270,112-114.
[4] PG 91,1105 C-1205 C.
[2] See A. Louth, Maximus the Confessor (London – New York, 1996), p. 24.
[3] Disc.21,2,1-8; SC 270,112-114.
[4] PG 91,1105 C-1205 C.
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