Who was Gregory of Nyssa?

Basil, bishop of Caesarea, is constantly associated with the two Gregories. Gregory of Nyssa was his brother, the other his chief friend. Cappadocia gave birth to the three Fathers. Basil was faithful to the Athanasian creed during its days of depression and adversity, but did not live to behold its final triumph. He died about 379. He was a great admirer and a true example of monastic Christianity. He embraced the ascetic faith, abandoned his property and practised such severe austerities as to injure his health. He fled into the desert, his fame collected, as it were, a city around him, he built a monastery, and monasteries sprang up on every side

357 Jerome, reasoning against Pelagius (who said that in the day of judgment the wicked and sinners are not to be spared, but to be burned), answers, You interdict mercy to God. When He says, sinners shall cease out of the earth, He does not say they shall be burned in eternal fire — sin and iniquity (not impiety, which is not knowing God) according to the quality of the vices, after the wound of sin and iniquity receives health. It is one thing to lose the glory of the resurrection — another to perish everlastingly. This, too, was the Jewish notion. The resurrection is for Moses, the saints, and the righteous. In all this we see, no doubt, what suits nature, and how thoroughly the Fathers have followed the crude imaginations of Jews and heathens; and then Rome has made a new system out of it, whose first definite traces are to be found in Gregory the Great, at the end of the sixth century. Only some went farther, as Origen, who held, as Bellarmine himself tells us, that there was no punishment but purifying punishment: he thought that souls had existed before, and were then born into this world, and that they would go on purifying gradually till they purely enjoyed God. It is hard to say what place he gave to Christ in this. Gregory of Nyssa held the same views, and speaks of Judas being purified, of whom Peter says, "he went to his own place," and the Lord, "it had been good for him not to have been born." And throughout his works this doctrine is taught. Some looked shy at him with good reason; but the great Romanist champion, Bellarmine, eulogises him as admirable, and he was one of ten whom the Council of Ephesus said they were to decide all by, and one of those sent on a kind of visitation round the churches to see there was no Arian heresy.*

In the same spirit wrote the author of a discourse on the ascension, falsely imputed to Chrysostom, who really censures such thoughts as old wives' fables in his Homily on Matthew 11:3, as Augustine classed the dream among heresies — the 79th in his list. I say nothing of the question raised by Gregory of Nazianzus (whether Christ saves in hades all without exception or only such as believe, Orat. xli.); or of such romance-writers as Anastasius, who introduces Plato appearing to one asleep who used to abuse his doctrine, and pretending that he was one of the first to believe on Christ when He preached in hades. Even a Roman Synod condemned one, a man of mark, who taught thus in the year 745. Tertullian among the early Latins and Gregory of Nyssa are far enough from Romish doctrine either as to limbus patrum or as to purgatory; for they, like many others of the ancients, held all the saints before and after Christ to be waiting in Abraham's bosom, a region not heavenly yet higher than hell or hades, till the resurrection at Christ's coming. Let this suffice just now.

By a "Theologian" in the narrower and strict sense of the term is meant one who is scientifically, as distinct from ecclesiastically, "dogmatic." Origen led the way among Christians; with him may be classed Maimonides amongst Jews. Origen has been followed by Athanasius, the Cappadocian "Fathers" (Basil and the brothers Gregory) and Augustine; by Calvin, Hooker, Jonathan Edwards, Newman, Martineau, Dorner, Dale, etc.

Plato teaches the pre-existence of the soul (Phaedo, 923) and transmigration. Only true saints, who had kept alone from every snare of corporate existence, went, it is suggested, to God: so did Pythagoras. Philo, the Jew, held the pre-existence of the soul, as Plato, and that the air is full of demons up to the moon; and the lower, or inferior class, were disposed to be earthly, and came into bodies. This came from Indian or Egyptian heathenism. Why do I speak of these things? Because the great early doctors of the church, Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, were educated in Platonism. Origen, too, embraced the whole system — transmigration, and the renewal of the whole series of the soul's history in another earth. Jerome and Ruffinus (Latins), and even, in part, Ambrose followed Origen in a great deal, as did Gregory of Nyssa, and many others in the East.

Hippolytus (225 A.D.) was the first commentator of Solomon's Song and he states that the primary application is to Israel and next to the Church. Origen developed this application to the Church and her union with Christ more fully. After him the identification of the bridegroom and the bride with Christ and the Church became the predominant one. Athanasius, Gregory of Nyssa and Jerome followed more or less the interpretation and application made by Origen. Jerome's view was that the bride and the bridegroom were Christ and the Church, or Christ and the soul. Augustine agreed with him also, but restricted the meaning to the union of Christ and the Church.

"It may be worth while, however, once more to point out to less educated readers, that aion, aionios, and their Hebrew equivalents in all combinations, are repeatedly used of things which have come and shall come to an end. Even Augustine admits (what indeed no one can deny) that in Scripture aion, aionios must in many instances mean 'having an end,' and St. Gregory of Nyssa, who at least knew Greek, uses aionios as the epithet of an interval."

In his excursus upon the word, at the end of the book, he tells us that - "it is not worth while once more to discuss its meaning, when it has been so ably proved by so many writers that there is no authority whatever for rendering it ‘everlasting,' and when even those who like Dr. Pusey are such earnest defenders of the doctrine of an endless hell, yet admit that the word only means ‘endless within the sphere of its own existence,' so that on their own showing the word does not prove their point." And he adds "It may be worth while, however, once more to point out to less educated readers, that aion , aionios and their Hebrew equivalents in all combinations, are repeatedly used of things which have come and shall come to an end. Even Augustine admits (what indeed no one can deny) that in Scripture aion, aionios must in many instances mean ‘having an end,' and St. Gregory of Nyssa, who at least knew Greek, uses aionios as the epithet of an interval"

If any words were needed to make the nature of the wonder plain and precise, it might have been supposed that these could not fail. But men of this world's science and learning, though bearing the name of Christian, manifest no less incredulity now than the Jews did of old, who foolishly sought to treat it as mere excitement. Some have tried to find in the account the same sort of senseless jargon, or (as Meyer) an entirely new language as its favourers allege,2 which was revived [more than] a half-century ago among the Irvingites; others (as Bleek, et al.) contend for a highly excited or ecstatic style of speech suitable to the communication of the marvels of grace, or (Olshausen) for so low a thought as a magnetic relation between speakers and hearers, or (Wieseler, et al.) for mere inarticulate ejaculations of praise! The older rationalists, as Paulus, et al., supposed no other than their native tongue; others, from Gregory of Nyssa and Cyprian to Erasmus and men of our own day, had grafted on this the strange idea that the multitude of foreigners was caused by the Spirit to hear each his own tongue! But Gregory of Nazianzus rejects the notion as making the marvel lie with the hearers rather than the speakers, contrary to the clear statement of scripture, as indeed are all these vain hypotheses. {2 There can be but little doubt that the interpolation of the word unknown in the Authorized Version of 1 Cor. 14:2, 4, 13, 19, 27, gave occasion to, and helped to consecrate, the delusion of the enemy. It is no small proof of the evils of these unwarranted additions, but I find another has anticipated me in remarking what occurred independently to my mind.}

I add a few passages as to the exclusive authority of scripture. Athanasius against the heathen says, "For the holy and inspired scriptures are sufficient for the promulgation of all truth." (Oratio contra Gentes, Ben. 1.) So Ambrose, "How can we adopt these things which we do not find in the holy scriptures?" So Gregory of Nyssa, quoted by Euthymius, "As that is not supported by scripture, we reject it as false." So Jerome, "As those things which are written we do not deny, so those which are not written we refuse." (Contra Helvid. 19, 2, 226, Veron. ed.) So Augustine, "In those things which are specially laid down in scripture, all those things are found which contain faith and the morals of life." (De Doctr. Chris. 2, 9.) And again, "I owe my consent without any refusal to the canonical scriptures alone." (De Nat. et Grat.) And similar quotations might be multiplied. So even as to councils, "Neither ought I to object the Council of Nice to you, nor you that of Ariminum (an Arian council of some eight hundred bishops) to me; by the authority of scripture let us weigh matter with matter, cause with cause, reason with reason." (Contra Maxim. 3, 14.) So in contrast with the doctors of the church (that is, the Fathers), "For we should not consent to Catholic bishops if they by chance are deceived, and have opinions contrary to the canonical scriptures of God." (De Unit. Eccl. 11, Ben. 9, 355.) And so in his Epistles and other writings he says, over and over again, he has liberty to differ from them, and is bound only by the scriptures. Now either I am to receive these passages as right, and then, if the Fathers are consistent, consider this to be their doctrine; or if you can quote passages from them contradictory of these, then you make their authority to be simply and totally void.