Book Note: Gregory of Nyssa's The Life of Moses: Part 4 of 4

Image: Michelangelo's depiction of the brazen serpent in the Sistine Chapel (c. 1508-1512)

Gregory continues his mystical interpretation of Moses:

Regarding the spies, the bunch of grapes “suspended from the wood … signifies the saving Passion” (115).

The raising of the brazen serpent also points forward to the cross. “To look to the cross means to render one’s whole life dead and crucified to the world, unmoved by evil” (116).

After asserting that “sin is the real serpent”, he adds, “Man, then, is freed from sin through him who assumed the form of sin and became like us who had been turned into the form of the serpent” (116-117).

Christ “keeps the bites from causing death, but the beasts themselves are not destroyed” (117). “In fact, the gnawings of desire are frequently active even in the faithful” (117).

Those who seek to “punish the passion of desires by living a disciplined life …. thrust themselves into the priesthood” (117).

To purify the passions is to “cross through the foreign life”, as the law leads one “along the royal highway” (120).

Gregory’s discussion of virtue and vice, reflects the influence of Aristotle and his “golden mean.”

According to Gregory, “all evil naturally operates in a deficiency or an excess of virtue. In the case of courage, cowardice is the lack of virtue, and rashness is its excess. What is pure of each of these is seen to lie between these corresponding evils and is a virtue. In the same way all other things which strive for the better also somehow take the middle road between the neighboring evils” (121).

“The person who lacks moderation is a libertine, and he who goes beyond moderation has his conscience branded, as the Apostle says” (121).

In his discussion of the daughters of Moab, Gregory discusses the use of pleasure to entice evil:

“Pleasure is truly like evil’s bait; when it is thrown out lightly, it draws gluttonous souls to the fishhook of destruction” (124).

Of the many passions “which afflict men’s thinking there is none so strong as the disease of pleasure” (125). Pleasure “is an enemy of ours that is hard to fight and difficult to overcome” (125).

The “irrational animal impulse to licentiousness” made the sinful Israelites of old “forget their human nature” (125).

He concludes, “For the evils of the passions, like a plague, when once they have gained possession of the critical parts, stop only at death” (126).

The mature Christian seeks “the end of the virtuous life” (129). For believers, there is “one purpose in life: to be called servants of God by virtue of the lives we live” (130).

He adds: “the goal of the sublime way of life is being called a servant of God” (130-131).

In his concluding words to “Ceasarius, man of God” Gregory notes his attempt to trace “in outline like a pattern of beauty the life of the great Moses, so that each of us might copy the image of the beauty which has been shown to us by imitating his way of life” (131).

Final Thoughts on Gregory of Nyssa’s The Life of Moses:

Gregory of Nyssa, along with his fellow Cappadocians, was a key early articulator and defender of orthodox Trinitarian theology.

In other areas, however, one might challenge some of Gregory’s views. in recent days, for example, David Bentley Hart has appealed to Gregory and other early Christian thinkers (like Origen) to support universalism.

In this work, as noted, Gregory seems significantly to depart from the apostle Paul’s anthropology, hamartiology, and soteriology.

What also do we make of his allegorical and mystical interpretation of Scripture? On one hand, one might point to similar typological and allegorical interpretation of the Old Testament in New Testament Scripture itself (cf. e.g., John 3:14; 1 Cor 10:1-6; Gal 4:22-31). These interpretations, however, come from inspired authors.

What checks do we have on allegorical interpretations when they are made by uninspired men? Is this not what the Reformers were adressing when they revived a literal, grammatical-historical method (see, e.g., the method used by Calvin in his commentaries)?

Nevertheless, Gregory’s emphasis on the end or goal of Scripture study as the spiritual development of the Christian virtues is refreshing.

JTR

Book Note: Gregory of Nyssa on The Life of Moses: Part 3 of 4

More from Gregory of Nyssa's allegorical interpretation in The Life of Moses:

On the tables of stone, Gregory asserts that “the spiritual sense agrees with the literal account” (100). On the restoration of the broken tables, he asserts that God is “the restorer of our broken nature” who has “restored the broken table of our nature to its original beauty” (100).

On God’s meeting Moses face to face, he observes, “If these things are looked at literally, not only will the understanding of those who seek God be dim, but their concept of him will also be inappropriate” (101).

Gregory’s Neoplatonism is seen throughout.

The “ardent lover of beauty” longs “to be filled with the very stamp of the archetype” (104). He longs “to enjoy the Beauty not in mirrors and reflections, but face-to-face” (104).

“True being is true life” (105).

“This truly is the vision of God: never to be satisfied in the desire to see him” (106).

The ascent to God “is both a standing still and a moving”; it “takes place by means of standing. I mean by this that the firmer and more immovable one remains in the Good, the more he progresses in the course of virtue” (107-108).

“He who finds any good finds it in Christ, who contains all good” (109).

In discussing the envy of men against Moses, Gregory observes: “Envy is the passion which causes evil, the father of death, the first entrance of sin, the root of wickedness, the birth of sorrow, the mother of misfortune, the basis of disobedience, the beginning of shame” (111).

He adds: “Envy is the death-dealing sting, the hidden weapon, the sickness of nature, the bitter poison, the self-willed emaciation, the bitter dart, the nail of the soul, the fire in the heart, the flame burning on the inside” (111-112).

“Envy is grieved at the good deeds of men and takes advantage of their misfortunes” (112).

When envied, Moses “did not rush to defend himself against those who caused him sorrow” (113).

To be continued….

Book Note: Gregory of Nyssa's The Life of Moses: Part 2 of 4

More from Gregory of Nyssa’s The Life of Moses:

Gregory sees the death of the firstborn in Egypt as teaching “when through virtue one comes to grips with any evil, he must completely destroy the first beginnings of evil” (57).

Here he draws on Christ’s teaching in Matthew 5 on anger/murder and lust/adultery, noting Christ here commands us “to abolish lust and anger and to have no more fear of the stain of adultery or the guilt of murder” (57). He adds: “Take for an example a snake: when one crushes his head, he kills the rest of the body at the same time” (57).

He sees the soul as divided into “the rational, the appetitive, and the spirited” (58; cf. 66).

Gregory’s allegorical style is on full display in his description of the departure from Egypt:

The thorns of this life are sins; the shoes “the self-controlled and austere life”; the tunic “the full enjoyment and pursuits of this life”; the belt “reason” and “prudence”; the staff “the message of hope”; the food “warm and fervent faith”; etc.

Gregory’s method: “The loftier meaning is therefore more fitting than the obvious one” (63).

On the crossing of the Red Sea: The army of Egypt represents “the passions of the soul”; the stone from the sling, “reviling”; the spear point, “the spirited impulse”; the horses, “the passion for pleasures”; etc.

The meaning: “Since the passions naturally pursue our nature, we must put to death in the water both the base movements of the mind and the acts which issue from them” (67).

In baptism one drowns “the whole Egyptian person” and emerges alone “dragging nothing foreign in our subsequent life” (67). Those who receive baptism in ignorance, “bring along the Egyptian army, which still lives with them in their doings” (68).

“For uncontrolled passion is a fierce and raging master to the servile reasoning” (68).

If there are negative allegories in Gregory, there are also positive. The wood placed in the bitter water to make it sweet represents the cross. To throw the wood in the water is to receive “the mystery of the resurrection” which begins with the wood. Gregory adds as an aside: “(you of course understand ‘the cross’ when you hear ‘wood’)” (69).

The springs in the wilderness are the twelve disciples and the seventy date palms, the other appointed apostles. The campsite are the virtues.

Before taking the manna, one has to empty “the sack of his soul of all evil nourishment prepared by the Egyptians” (71).

When Moses held his hands aloft, it signified “the contemplation of the law with lofty insights” but when he let his hands hang to earth it meant “the lowly literal exposition and observance of the Law” (75).

“He who would approach the knowledge of things sublime must first purify his manner of life from all sensual and irrational emotion” (78).

The tabernacle is Christ. The skin dyed red used to decorate the tabernacle represent the mortification of sinful flesh and “the ascetic way of life” (89). “This teaches that grace, which flourishes through the Spirit, is not found in men unless they first make themselves dead to sin” (89).

The priestly vestments represent the virtuous adornments of the soul. The golden bells are “the brilliance of good works” (91).

The “philosophical life” may be “outwardly austere and unpleasant”, yet it is “full of good hopes when it ripens” (92).

“The head adorned with the diadem signifies the crown reserved for those who have lived well” (94).

To be continued…

Book Note: Gregory of Nyssa's The Life of Moses: Part 1 of 4

Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Moses, trans. by Abraham J. Malherbe and Everett Ferguson (HarperCollins, 1978, 2006).

I finished reading Gregory of Nyssa’s The Life of Moses last week.

Here are a few notes:

Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335-c. 394) was one of the three Cappadocian Fathers, along with his older brother Basil of Caesarea and their friend Gregory of Nazianzus. He was bishop of Nyssa from 372-376, until deposed under the charge of maladministration, but was later reinstated to resume his office from 378 to his death.

Gregory was a Neoplatonist, a Trinitarian theologian, and an allegorical interpreter of Scripture (in the tradition of Origen).

The Life of Moses is a devotional work based on the Biblical account of Moses. It consists of two parts:

Book one is a brief historical sketch of the life of Moses.

Book two is a mystical contemplation of the life of Moses. Gregory takes the life of Moses as a model of how one attains to the virtuous life.

Gregory’s approach is evident from the opening reflection in book two on Moses’s birth and childhood. He seeks the “real intention” of the narrative, which is the “austerity and intensity of virtue” as represented in “the male birth” (32). We “give birth to ourselves” by “molding ourselves to the teaching of virtue or vice” (32). Thus, the “rational faculties” are the “parents of virtue” (33). The ark in which Moses was placed represents education in virtue. The king’s daughter who discovers Moses represents “profane philosophy”, while the “natural mother” offers “the nourishment of the Church’s milk.” The conflict between the Egyptians and Hebrews is that between idolatry and “true religion” (35). Thus, “The victory of true religion is the death and destruction of idolatry” (36).

It is not always easy to anticipate the allegories Gregory will draw.

According to Gregory, the burning bush represents the Virgin Mary whose “virginity was not withered by giving birth” (37).

The transformation of Moses’s hand and his rod changing into a snake represent the incarnation (39).

For Gregory the “literal account” must give way to an “elevated understanding” (45).

Moses’s public ministry teaches that one who has “not equipped himself” by “spiritual training” should not “presume to speak among the people” (46).

Making bricks without straw reflects the insatiable “appetitive part of the soul” (47).

Man’s free will is stressed by Gregory, often contrary to Paul’s anthropology. Of the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart, he writes: “It lies within each person’s power to make this choice” (51).

He later adds, “we men have in ourselves, in our own nature and by our own choice, the causes of light or of darkness, since we place ourselves in whichever sphere we wish to be” (53).

Gregory offers a form of a “free will” defense of the existence of evil when he writes, “it is evident that nothing evil can come into existence apart from our free choice” (56).

To be continued….