Gregory of Nyssa and the Psychology of Perfection
Gregory of Nyssa (335-395) is better known as one of the three Cappadocian Fathers who hammered out the doctrine of the Trinity out East around the time of the First Council of Constantinople in 381. His own views on the origin of relations within the Trinity are debated down to the present, and under the influence of Origen, he tended toward universalism. But he was one of the first to draw out the necessity of the limitlessness of God, all this in his more polemical work, Against Eunomius.
Because God is infinite, he is therefore incomprehensible. As a further consequence, all sound theology must be apophatic—that is, an understanding of God by what must not be said about him (also called the via negativa). This theology immediate shapes his understanding of the meaning of life and progress of the soul. That brings us to his work The Life of Moses, which gives us this window into his view of the soul.
By psychology of perfection I am going to mean, most basically, the way that the soul moves toward perfection. And by “perfection” the classical thinkers simply meant a thing being all that it was meant to be. Nothing of vanity or elitism was suggested—at least not necessarily so.
Gregory would probably not find this definition objectionable. Whatever else we may find disagreeable in Gregory, we should find his link between spiritual goods and the classically defined operations of the soul to be exceedingly biblical. My review offers praise for his treatment of the intellect and yet a wish that he had said more about the affections. But the link between virtue as an acquired quality of the soul and perfection as the process of that acquisition is most clearly perceived by examining what thinking people used to call the “faculties” of the soul. Even if we reject the compartmentalization of these as “parts” to the soul, they are nevertheless dimensions that we can speak about “in action.”
In order to do this, we should probe what Gregory would mean by a psychology of perfection. This is my own phrase, but one accurate as a summary of his theme. There are four branches to this question: 1. How is perfection related to virtue? 2. How do the mind, desires, and will operate to achieve this perfection? 3. How does the soul relate to the outside world to achieve this perfection? and 4. Whether Gregory’s account of Moses is a sufficient picture of this way.
Summary of the Life of Moses
Before addressing these questions, let me summarize Gregory’s structure, aims, assumptions, and the kinds of arguments that he employs.
Structure. The Life of Moses is divided into four parts: introduction, history (historia), contemplation (theoria), and conclusion. Those two middle sections make up the bulk. The historia is Gregory’s own summation of the biblical account, while the theoria could be described as its spiritual interpretation and application. The clearest statement of the whole point comes at the end, so that one can better appreciate what he is doing throughout by reading that ending first and then going back to the beginning to read the whole.
Aims. This thesis is only worthwhile if the author himself considered this way of perfection in “psychological” terms. His treatment of the soul’s activities is evident throughout, so I will let my interaction speak for his aims.
Assumptions. Contrary to the aversion to all things Platonic in our current “post-evangelical” landscape, Gregory is presupposing quite a bit of common ground between Plato and the biblical authors. To cite two examples: first, his definition of truth and falsehood is entirely a function of apprehending being and non-being (60); and second, to speak of human virtue is to speak of participation in eternal attributes (31). Granted that the language the author uses is more at home with Plato, the same case can be made from Paul’s epistles alone.
The modern false dilemma between Alexandrian speculation and Antiochene exegesis notwithstanding, Gregory of Nyssa still inherited a general burden to make the Scriptures compelling to the Greek. That being the case, there had to be some agreement with Philo’s notion that everything good in Plato was first clearly revealed to Moses.
Kinds of Argument. The method of Gregory was predominantly allegorical. Some of his interpretations seem beyond credulity. Others may fail by our own standards of exegesis, and yet give sound doctrine. Many are applications to the whole people rather than isolations of the mind of Moses: e.g. drowning the Egyptians in the Sea and removing leaven from the bread are both images of “breaking the continuity with evil by a radical change for the better” (84). One analogy will be useful to my own thesis. Moses’ return to his natural mother after his schooling in Egypt sets up a dichotomy between pagan education and the nourishment of the church. Later on Gregory compares what is alien in pagan philosophy to foreskin in need of circumcision and what remains as “pious offspring” (63); and the same application is made of the oft-used “plundering the Egyptians” metaphor (81). So the mind of Moses combined what was conformable in general revelation to what was undefiled in special revelation. The result was all of those cultural background items that we discover went into the form of the Pentateuch.
Gregory’s Own Psychology of Perfection
How is perfection related to virtue? Perfection and virtue are first divine qualities, and only because of that are they proper to human souls. Of physical things, “perfection can be measured by the senses” (5). How does one measure spiritual perfection but by a life — or the progress of a person to become as he was meant to be? That virtue has no limits is implied in two ways: God, who is “absolute virtue” (31), is infinite, and therefore the process of our conformity to him must also be without end. But the more basic point is the one to catch first, that perfection is “the continual development of life to what is better” (133). The value of examining the dimensions of the soul is that we get a better view of what is meant by “better,” which is a value possessing both objective and subjective elements. Because God made the soul to find happiness in him, then it follows that his valuation is the only one that will find that blessed end; but because it is the finite, individual soul which is this happiness-seeking being, then all of the appropriate organs of that search are called to the most intense activity.
How do the mind, desires, and will operate to achieve this perfection? Right from the start Gregory gives a priority to “the rational faculties [as] … the parents of virtue” (56). The will is inflated in his account of Pharaoh’s heart being hardened (71-74), but that does not seem to bleed into the main thesis in any substantive way. It is worth mentioning, however, because each of us really do choose to focus our minds and our affections upon this thing or that. To set our minds on a thing is to have seen it enough to consider it worthy of further contemplation: indeed worthy of some sort of attainment. Now what did Moses seek and how did he seek it? In one place he simply calls it “preparation for the better” (89) in connection with the Sabbath rest. This symbolizes the life to come. Moses was “empowered by the theophany” (35).
In other words what he beheld increased the capacities of his soul. This was true of his own soul’s capacity for fellowship with God, and it was true about his resources to lead the people. Gregory compares the soul, in this act of beholding, to a mirror of “the hope of good things” (65).
There is that principle of worship here, that we become what we love. We might further ask: How does this work? It is in speaking of Moses’ shining face, after descending from the mountain, that Gregory comes closest to driving home the link between the operations of the soul and its ever-increasing growth in God (114). He speaks of a thirst that always fills and yet is never satisfied. If one is becoming like that love that God himself is, then one must become increasingly impatient with any obstacle.
Now is the mind retired when the “heart” is active? Not to Gregory. When the Godward mind distinguishes between being and non-being, he is prepared to distinguish between self-sufficient being and merely participating being, and, finally, he is then prepared to judge between what is of lasting value and what is passing away (60). This progression shows us how intellectual comprehension of what is ultimate naturally tends toward a virtuous life, and, conversely, how falling short of it leaves our passions stranded in the corruptible world which gives birth to vice.
One affection he does address earlier is fear. There is such a thing as an unrighteous fear of God. Its nature is that it shuns deeper communion and illumination. Moses resisted this material mass: “having been stripped as it were of the people’s fear … he was in company of the Invisible” on Sinai (43). Righteous fear is afraid of losing God, whereas unrighteous fear is weary of the toil in gaining him.
How does the soul relate to the outside world to achieve this perfection? Peer pressure will certainly stunt the soul’s growth. God’s own people constantly found his virtue annoying (57) and resisted him accordingly. The chief antagonist is fading material pleasure, being depicted as a devil versus the angel of rational demonstration (64). If we can ignore our judgment of his allegories of the blood on the doorposts and the Egyptian chariots, we can look to the doctrine of the soul derived (77, 83).
Contemporary Christian scholars resist the classical psychology where the mind was pure and anything emotive bad. Fair enough. But surely the author is at least correct in ascribing to the mind a controlling function over our passions—Isn’t that central to what the Bible means by self-control?
Gregory has much to say about things in the world that spoil virtue, but he does not reduce perfection to its negative function of killing sin. It is primarily an eternal progress. In this life the perfection of the soul has enemies; but in the life to come all will work in concert. Nevertheless, if the life of Moses is his measurement, its backdrop is unavoidably filled with temptations. At the end of the day, the chief means of perfection is the mind intensely choosing to elevate “his life beyond earthly things” (133). This is not Gnostic escapism. This is biblical.
Whether Gregory’s account of Moses is a sufficient picture of this way. If there is an essential text of Scripture by which to measure this theme, it is surely Hebrews 11:23-28, where the mind, affections, and will of Moses are expressly set forth. Moses reasoned that the value of God’s promise far surpassed the pleasures of Egypt. If Gregory falls short in this regard, it is only in the same way that anyone else would. The very nature of our perfection is that it will never end. So there is only so much to glean even from the finest exemplars. The reason that advancing in virtue “fails to satisfy” is because the increased capacity of the soul for God is all the more conscious of that sin and finitude which is not God. However this “dissatisfaction” is no longer marred by sin in the age to come. It is a divine discontentment that ever presses “further up and further in,” to use Narnian language of the same.
Concluding Summary
What Gregory gets right is exactly what modern religion gets wrong in setting mind against emotions, personal happiness against eternal considerations, etc. But there may be one more loose end. If Moses is a clear way to know the perfect life for men, then did the author succeed in leading us to the end of Christ as the fulfillment? For Moses did not fully set his mind on the land of promise, or else he would not have sinned and failed to obtain it. Gregory seems to gloss over the biblical point that Moses did not enter due to his own sin of unbelief, but instead has Moses preferring to go back up via the mountain, having no more taste for earthly food (134). As with Gregory’s advice, so with his own writings: we must chew the spiritual meat and spit out the speculative bones. Ultimately he delivers. Moses was a dying-servant like Jesus. It was necessary that he die outside the land for the joy that was set before him. That is, he set his whole heart on absolute virtue.
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Gregory of Nyssa, Life of Moses (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1978)
