St. Gregory of Nyssa

[Kaviraj]

Tom, you sometimes cite St. Gregory of Nyssa in your support for universalism. However, some Eastern Orthodox theologians have argued that Gregory was not a universalist and that universalists are misinterpreting him. Do you have any thoughts on that?

[Alex_Smith]

Tom has been away looking after some family issues. However, I’ve let him know he has a question in case he has a spare moment. I was asked this question two weeks ago and I asked Robin (Gregory MacDonald).

Well, I am not a Nyssa specialist myself but the specialists that I know are all in agreement that he was a universalist. Morwenna Ludlow wrote an excellent book on universalism in Gregory of Nyssa (OUP) and Steve Harmon’s thesis was about the use of the Bible in the universalism of Clement, Origen, and Gregory (Uni Press of America). The standard text on patristic eschatology (Daly) interprets him as a universalist. The only person I have come across that suggested otherwise was a theologian who was not a patristics scholar and who had a vested interest in not having universalists with theological stature in the early church. So it seems pretty clear to me.

Since then, I’ve also read the chapter in “All Shall Be Well” on Gregory of Nyssa and I’m left with little doubt that he was indeed a universalist (I’ll try to find a quote during my lunch break).

[Alex_Smith]

‘All Shall Be Well’

p54, Steven R. Harmon"]

Catechetical Oration

26 (GNO III/IV, 67), Gregory of Nyssa"]In the same manner, after the evil of the [human] nature which is now mingled and united with it * has been removed through long periods of time, when the restoration of those now lying dead in evil to the original state has come to pass, there will be a harmonious thanksgiving from all creation, even from those who needed no purification in the first place. The great mystery of the divine incarnation grants these and other such things. For through those things which were mingled with human nature - birth, rearing, growth, even to the extent of going through the experience of death - he accomplished all the aforementioned things, both freeing humanity from evil and healing even the originator of evil himself. For the purification of moral disease is the healing of illness, even if it is painful.*

[tomtalbott]

Hi Alex,

Thanks for calling my attention to this issue, and sorry for the delay in replying. I have yet to read anyone who has denied that St. Gregory of Nyssa was a universalist, so I have no idea what the relevant arguments might be. But here is an additional quotation from the Address on Religious Instruction 35:

But those, on the other hand, who have become inured to passion, and to whom nothing has been applied to cleanse the stain–neither the sacramental water nor the invocation of divine power, nor the amendment of repentance–must necessarily find their place. Now just as the appropriate place for debased gold is the furnace, so the evil mingled with these natures must be melted away in order that, after long ages, they may be restored to God in their purity.

Seems pretty clear to me.

-Tom

[tomtalbott]

George W. Sarris has written a nice piece on the universalists among the early church fathers, and he includes some additional quotations of note from St. Gregory of Nyssa. You can find his post on the ChristianPost.com website at the following URL:

blogs.christianpost.com/good-reads/2011/04/hell-it-hasnt-always-been-forever-25/

It’s worth checking out.

-Tom

[pilgrim]

The claim is repeated here with reference to Edward Beecher:
blogs.christianpost.com/good-rea … orever-25/

[JasonPratt]

Someone named “Gregory” (obviously not our Robin Parry) posted an interesting quote from Gregory of Nyssa journalDangerous Idea, involving Gregory’s commentary on the story of Lazarus and the rich man.

The quote is taken (purportedly?) from the sermon “On the soul and resurrection”:

This, in my opinion, is the ‘gulf’; which is not made by the parting of the earth, but by those decisions in this life which result in a separation into opposite characters. The man who has once chosen pleasure in this life, and has not cured his inconsiderateness by repentance, places the land of the good beyond his own reach; for he has dug himself the yawning impassable abyss of a necessity that nothing can break through. This is the reason, I think, that the name of Abraham’s bosom is given to that good situation of the soul which Scripture makes the athlete of endurance repose…Meanwhile the denial of these blessings which they witness becomes in the others a flame, which burns the soul and causes the craving for refinement of one drop out of that ocean of blessings wherein the saints are affluent; which nevertheless they do not get.

Gregory-the-respondent says that for brevity’s sake “I did not finish the entire passage where he describes those who are so wedded to earthly passion that there is no remittance in the age to come.”

Anyone want to work on that? (I’m not a Patristics scholar by any stretch of the imagination, so I have to let other people fiddle with these things. )

[SLJ]

Here’s an online version of On the Soul and the Resurrection.

I think Gregory the Commenter stopped reading way too soon. His quote is found at the end of pg 106, but Gregory of Nyssa wasn’t nearly done yet. The quote below begins around pg 110.

In fact what belongs to God must by all means and at any cost be preserved for Him. If, then, on the one hand, the soul is unencumbered with superfluities and no trouble connected with the body presses it down, its advance towards Him Who draws it to Himself is sweet and congenial.** But suppose, on the other hand, that it has been transfixed with the nails of propension so as to be held down to a habit connected with material things**,—a case like that of those in the ruins caused by earthquakes, whose bodies are crushed by the mounds of rubbish; and let us imagine by way of illustration that these are not only pressed down by the weight of the ruins, but have been pierced as well with some spikes and splinters discovered with them in the rubbish.What then, would naturally be the plight of those bodies, when they were being dragged by relatives from the ruins to receive the holy rites of burial, mangled and torn entirely, disfigured in the most direful manner conceivable, with the nails beneath the heap harrowing them by the very violence necessary to pull them out?—Such I think is the plight of the soul as well when the Divine force, for God’s very love of man, drags that which belongs to Him from the ruins of the irrational and material. Not in hatred or revenge for a wicked life, to my thinking, does God bring upon sinners those painful dispensations; He is only claiming and drawing to Himself whatever, to please Him, came into existence. But while He for a noble end is attracting the soul to Himself, the Fountain of all Blessedness, it is the occasion necessarily to the being so attracted of a state of torture. Just as those who refine gold from the dross which it contains not only get this base alloy to melt in the fire, but are obliged to melt the pure gold along with the alloy, and then while this last is being consumed the gold remains, so, while evil is being consumed in the purgatorial fire, the soul that is welded to this evil must inevitably be in the fire too, until the spurious material alloy is consumed and annihilated by this fire. If a clay of the more tenacious kind is deeply plastered round a rope, and then the end of the rope is put through a narrow hole, and then some one on the further side violently pulls it by that end, the result must be that, while the rope itself obeys the force exerted, the clay that has been plastered upon it is scraped off it with this violent pulling and is left outside the hole, and, moreover, is the cause why the rope does not run easily through the passage, but has to undergo a violent tension at the hands of the puller. In such a manner, I think, we may figure to ourselves the agonized struggle of that soul which has wrapped itself up in earthy material passions, when God is drawing it, His own one, to Himself, and the foreign matter, which has somehow grown into its substance, has to be scraped from it by main force, and so occasions it that keen intolerable anguish.

Interesting stuff…
Sonia

[TGB]

A book club (online or otherwise) reading through Gregory’s stuff would be VERY cool.

Tom

[SLJ]

A book club (online or otherwise) reading through Gregory’s stuff would be VERY cool.

Tom

I’d like that too.
Sonia

[JasonPratt]

I think the “Gregory” of the thread would answer by denying that this further quote from “On the Soul and Resurrection” over-rules the observation made (apparently?) earlier that some souls shall not get the refinement of the blessings wherein the saints are affluent.

(On the other hand, he has recently admitted that St. Gregory might have been a proponent of universal reconciliation in his youth but “matured” out of it. My reply to him on this was that in theory the maturation might have been either way, and that we would need a solid chronology of authorship to chart any movements from him on this part.)

[roofus]

I think the “Gregory” of the thread would answer by denying that this further quote from “On the Soul and Resurrection” over-rules the observation made (apparently?) earlier that some souls shall not get the refinement of the blessings wherein the saints are affluent.

(On the other hand, he has recently admitted that St. Gregory might have been a proponent of universal reconciliation in his youth but “matured” out of it. My reply to him on this was that in theory the maturation might have been either way, and that we would need a solid chronology of authorship to chart any movements from him on this part.)

There are so many claims on both sides of these issues that simply demand that we bow to the claimers authority, as there are quite often no sources given, or the sources simply chain to other sources. Another way to argue in this light is to simply cut to the chase: "accept my claims by my authority.

There seems to be so much work to be done!

[SLJ]

I think the “Gregory” of the thread would answer by denying that this further quote from “On the Soul and Resurrection” over-rules the observation made (apparently?) earlier that some souls shall not get the refinement of the blessings wherein the saints are affluent.

As I read it, Gregory did not say they would never get the blessing, but that while they remained tied to the fleshly desires of this world they cannot receive them. The later quote I gave detailed the torment they would experience as they were dragged free of that bondage by God.

But I don’t know that this particular instance can be considered generally universalist, because he’s speaking particularly of

that soul which has wrapped itself up in earthy material passions

… which does not necessarily encompass all levels of sinners and sin.

Since this one chapter is all I’ve read of Gregory, I may not know how to understand him properly.

Sonia

[JasonPratt]

There are so many claims on both sides of these issues that simply demand that we bow to the claimers authority, as there are quite often no sources given, or the sources simply chain to other sources. Another way to argue in this light is to simply cut to the chase: "accept my claims by my authority.

There seems to be so much work to be done!

I certainly give him credit for at least quoting St. Gregory! Though he seems fuzzy about dealing with other quotes from St. Gregory (aside from allowing that, uh, maybe he was after all in his immaturity before he grew up as a Christian teacher. But I can hardly fault him for that move in principle.)

[JasonPratt]

Tom has himself now brought up some further quotes from the same text to discuss with “Gregory” in the thread. I’d say Tom is doing very well so far! – but of course opinions might vary. (Such as “Gregory”'s opinion. )

[Kaviraj]

[deleted. I found the link ]

[Sobornost]

Regarding Gregory – a piece of very sloppy scholarship here be a non-expert – I’m going to quote Wikipedia -
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_of_Nyssa

It is generally agreed that Gregory believed in universal salvation or resurrection. In the Life of Moses, he writes that just as the darkness left the Egyptians after three days, perhaps redemption ἀποκατάστασις] will be extended to those suffering in hell γέεννα].This salvation may not only extend to humans; following Origen, there are passages where he seems to suggest (albeit through the voice of Macrina) that even the demons will have a place in Christ’s “world of goodness”.Gregory’s interpretations of 1 Corinthians 15:28 (“And when all things shall be subdued unto him …”) and Philippians 2:10 (“That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth”) support this understanding of his theology.

However, in the Great Catechism, Gregory suggests that while every human will be resurrected, salvation will only be accorded to the baptised.While he believes that there will be no more evil in the hereafter, it is arguable that this does not preclude a belief that God might justly damn sinners for eternity.Thus, the main difference between Gregory’s conception of ἀποκατάστασις and that of Origen would be that Gregory believes that mankind will be collectively returned to sinlessness, whereas Origen believes that personal salvation will be universal.

OK – I have seen this discrepancy between Gregory’s earlier writings and his Great Catechism referred to before by Orthodox scholars who want him for the ECT camp (they make a distinction between the heterodox youthful Gregory and the orthodox ‘mature ‘Gregory’ of the Great Catechism). My two pence worth in this debate – and its just a suggestion – is that Gregory in the Great Catechism is presumably writing for new/immature Christians. And if his teaching about universalism is less certain here than in his other writings one reason could be that like Origen he held to a notion of ‘double truth’ – namely, that universalism should only be fully disclosed to mature Christians already schooled in Christian virtue. Perhaps I’m talking rubbish

[akimel]

I came across this article yesterday which is germane to the discussion of this thread: “The Fire of Purgation in Gregory of Nyssa’s De anima et resurrectione.”

[Holy-Fool-P-Zombie]

There is an academic paper you can read entitled Reconsidering Apokatastasis in St Gregory of Nyssa’s On the Soul and Resurrection and the Catechetical Oration. One point mentioned is

This claim, that the unrepentant will be separated from the “land of the good,” precludes any notion of universalism transposed onto St Gregory by modern …

[Light_of_the_East]

I guess this is as good a place as any to put up my first post. I am coming in here to act as devil’s advocate for the Hellfire & Brimstone Club. The reason I am doing so is because I am really catching hell (pun intended) for my interest in Patristic Universalism. Therefore, it is necessary for me to throw up all those doubts that are being shoved in my face and get my responses in order.

My first question is this: I understand that up to the fourth century and the time and writings of Augustine, the teaching of apocatastasis was pretty widespread in the Church. So where and when did the Hellfire Club begin? Is that to be laid primarily at the feet of Augustine? In your opinion, why didn’t the writings of St. Gregory of Nyssa and others carry the day?

As a bonus question, to the best of your knowledge, when did the grave (Gehenna) become Hell?

Thanks for your answers and insights.

Ed