Today is the feast of the Christian bishop Gregory of Nyssa. His brother was the renowned Basil of Caesarea & together they are known by the sobriquet “Cappadocian Fathers.” Gregory was an incredibly important theologian, a principal in the Christological debates, particularly against the Arian tradition, contributing to the development of the idea of Trinity as well as being among the first to speak of God as infinite.
He is interesting to me for two reasons.
First was his interest in universalism, or more properly, apokatastasis, which I addressed last year.
And second was his mystical theology, in which he attempts to articulate an insight that for me has strong similarities to Buddhist perspectives and, frankly, to my own experience on the interior way…
Here’s the relevant part of the Wikipedia entry:
Gregory speaks of three stages of spiritual growth: initial darkness of ignorance, then spiritual illumination, and finally a darkness of the mind in contemplation of the God who in being or essence (ousia) cannot be comprehended.
Like earlier authors, including Philo, he uses the story of Moses as an allegory for the spiritual life. Moses first meets God in the burning bush, a theophany of light and illumination, but then he meets him again in the cloud, where he realises that God cannot be seen by the eyes. Ascending Mount Sinai, he finally comes to the “divine darkness”, and realises that God cannot be known by the mind either.
It is only through not-knowing and not-seeing that God can, paradoxically, be known and seen, knowledge that can only be gained through an “ascending life of holiness.” This notion would be extremely influential in both Western and Eastern spirituality, via the mystical writings of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, and later in the anonymous 14th century work, The Cloud of Unknowing. Thus he is a major figure in the history of apophatic theology and spirituality.
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