Gregory of Nyssa

Gregory of Nyssa. By Anthony Meredith, S.J. The Early Church Fathers Series. London and New York: Routledge, 1999. ix + 166 pp. $85.00 (cloth).

This, the fifth volume in the series titled "The Early Church Fathers," supplies an introduction to the life and thought of Gregory of Nyssa, one of the so-called Cappadocian Fathers and a younger brother of Basil the Great. Gregory, who was one of the architects of the trinitarian theology that brought the Arian controversy to its eventual close after the Constantinopolitan council of 381, has become a subject of continuing fascination for students of patristic thought since the publication of von Balthasar's Presence et pensee in 1943, and that of Jean Danielou's Platonisme et theologie mystique in the following year-works which in their different ways called attention to the importance of Gregory's contribution not only to trinitarian thought but also to Christian asceticism and mysticism. Like his brother and Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa was a debtor, though a critical one, to Origen. Unlike them, he seems to have been closely acquainted with the Neoplatonism of his day, on which he drew even as he responded to its attacks on Christianity. With his insistence on the infinity of God against the Neo-Arian Eunomius, and his correlative conviction that human salvation lies in a never-ending process of epektasis ("stretching out," cf. Philippians 3:13-14) towards God, Gregory in effect re-evaluated the mutability of the human creature and made a stab, perhaps not wholly successful, at seeing in it not merely or primarily the source of human evil but also the ground of creaturely participation in the divine life.

With care and a sober exactness, Meredith opens up for the reader Gregory's life and his background, and then, in a series of extended introductions to individual readings from Nyssen's works, explains the sorts of issues and problems that Gregory was treating, and the questions and differences of opinion that have arisen in modern attempts to interpret him. He begins by presenting a set of excerpts dealing with "doctrinal issues"-to begin with, a brief excerpt from Gregory's "mammoth three volume reply" to Eunomius's Apology for the Apology-itself a response to Basil's earlier attack on his original Apology. This is followed by a second contribution of Gregory's to the trinitarian debate, this time a substantive section of his much shorter response to the "Macedonians," the group of teachers that denied the deity of the Spirit even while affirming that of the Son. The section on doctrinal issues closes with a significant portion of Gregory's reply to Apollinarius, which, as Meredith observes, "disappoints." There follows a section titled "Gregory and Philosophy," in which the reader is introduced to Gregory's philosophical treatise Against Fate, a critique of classical determinism, and to a section of his so-called Great Catechetical Oration that replies to philosophical objections to the Christian picture of God. The third collection of excerpts bears the title "Gregory and Spirituality," and contains a section of The Life of Moses as well as a translation of the fifteenth of Gregory's Homilies on the Song of Songs.

The most successful of the sections of the book, at least from the point of view of the excerpts provided, is the last, which deals with spirituality. One might criticize the first section, on doctrinal issues, for the selection made from the books Against Eunomius, where Gregory's interest in theological language is slighted; but criticisms of this sort are all too easy to make, especially in the case of an author like Gregory, whose mind as revealed in his writings was so broadly and variously focused. More successful are Meredith's own contributions, which afford the reader a comprehensible, learned, and thorough introduction to Gregory's thought.

RICHARD A. NORRIS, JR.

New York, New York

Copyright Anglican Theological Review, Inc. Summer 2000
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