12.8.2013 CHURCH FATHERS 15 - gregory of nyssa; b 331?; bishop of nyssa 372; d395?

...the 'star of nyssa', the younger brother of basil,
was born in 331 or perhaps a little later and was educated at home
chiefly by B himself, whom he called his master
and partly by his sister macrina.
yet in spite of his lack of a university education, he was deeply imbued with greek philosophy
with platonism especially; neoplatinism and the work of origen,
of whom he was the natural successor.
there is a story that in his youth he fell asleep during a long service on the festival of the 40 martyrs
and in consequence of a vivid dream, resolved to devote himself to the church,
but that afterwards he drifted back to rhetoric.
finally, however, macrina converted him and he then joined basil in pontus.
when B became bishop, he recognized the great intellectual acquirements of gregory,
but distrusted his practical ability.
he therefore appointed him to the obscure bishopric of nyssa,
saying that he should give lustre to the see,
instead of receiving lustre from it.
on several occasions B curbed his practical efforts:
he checked, for instance, his desire to summon synods,
and restrained him from joining a deputation to damasus of rome.
a synod at antioch, however, entrusted to him an important mission to reform
the churches of arabia and babylon.
on this occasion, passing through jerusalem,
he was struck by the corruption of that city
and consequently wrote his treatise on Pilgrimages,
strongly deprecating them and pointing out not only their uselessness and wast of time,
but also the temptations to which the pilgrims, and especially women, were exposed to on the way.

..before considering the philosophical position of gregory,
it is desirable to see something of that last school of greek thought,
which was at once the climax and the ruin of hellenic philosophy,..NEO PLATONISM.
the chief representative of this school was plotinus,
whose lide extended over most part of the third century.
neo P  was the supreme effort of the greek mind,
because it aimed at forming a religious system,
which was to gather together the best of all other religions under its own aegis.
it exalted the ideal as the only thing worth looking for,
but at the same time so despised the material,
that all science and knowledge were put out of court.
metaphysic was to rule alone and metaphysic was only for trained intellects.
for the masses, therefore, there was nothing left open but a return to barbarism.
the metaphysic of plato was generally adopted,
but the neo platonists went a step further by finding a new principle, the suprarational.
man, in fact, had a spirit as well as a soul.
thought was not the highest thing.
it was only an intermediate stage between the senses
and that higher state of rapture, ecstasy or spiritual intuition
-a sort of communion with the divine-
to which man could under certain conditions, such as trance,
and after long preparation, attain.
plotinus only professed to have reached it on a very few occasions during his life.
but while in that state it was presumed that truth was reveled.
so that they aimed in two ways at arriving at certainty, ie. revelation.
one was by the use of the suprarational principle.
the other by the study of all the old religions

the neo P system was undoubtedly very  beautiful, high minded and spiritual.
the ideas that man could not live by knowledge alone,
that there was a higher principle in him than his intellect,
that his highest good was the rapt contemplation of God as pure Being
(which last idea specially influenced gregory of nyssa)
came very near to Ccristianity.
but the system broke down, as augustine pointed out,
because it lacked a founder,
had no word for the masses,
and failed to show how one could permanently maintain
the mood of blessedness and peace.

..(to gregory) the name Father implies rather a metaphysical rather than an ethical relation.
it is in this respect that gregory of nyssa is not only platonic,
but also accentuates the general attitude of the eastern as opposed to, the western church.
the moral aspect of christianity was subordinated in the east to the metaphysical.
'what he longs for is not more love or justice, but more of the essential and eternal,
as opposed to the ever changing and vanishing (eucken).
'God being unlimited transcends all limits of thought and reason.
so we want wings to soar above the visible and changeable, the phenomena,
to abiding nature, unchangeable, self dependent power'.
the ideal beuty is the victory or the higher over the lower everywhere
and t5he lower must eventually be everywhere subdued and brought back again into the higher.

..we see then in gregory of nyssa the true spirit and mind of the eastern church.
with him the story of the arian controversy is closed.
gregory of nazianzus summed up the catholic faith in five sermons;
gregory of nyssa disposed of arianism in detail in his thirteen books against eunomius;
the second council put an end to it officially.
all the Fathers had taught that the nature of god would not be known;
a;; we could deal with was the way He impressed Himself on the human mind.

..