Book by Saint Gregory of Nyssa
The work is a book by Saint Gregory of Nyssa formally titled _The Life of Moses or Concerning Perfection In Virtue_, about Moses from the Bible.
Saint Gregory
Saint Gregory was a speculative theologian of great originality and belonged to the third generation of an illustrious Christian family of Cappadocia. Major influences on his religious development and education included his older sister Macrina and his brother Basil, who later became the bishop of Caesarea and Saint Basil the Great.
Born around 335 and dying around 395, Saint Gregory initially followed his father’s career path as a teacher of rhetoric and married. He reluctantly accepted the appointment secured for him by Basil as bishop of the small town of Nyssa around 371/2.
Following Basil’s death at the beginning of 379, Saint Gregory became one of the foremost champions of the orthodox faith against Arianism. He took a prominent part in the second ecumenical council at Constantinople in 381, which marked the triumph of trinitarian orthodoxy.
In his later years, Saint Gregory focused attention on the spiritual life, and the influence of his saintly sister Macrina ultimately triumphed. _The Life of Moses_ belongs to this later period, having been written in the early 390s.
It was written in response to a request for guidance concerning the perfect life, with Caesarius named as the recipient in some manuscripts. At this time, Saint Gregory was acknowledged by the ascetics of Asia Minor as a master of the spiritual life.
The treatise has the form of a logos, or a formal treatise, and may have been designed for reading aloud in a household of ascetics. The theme of the book is perfection according to virtue.
Structure and Exegetical Tradition
The work is divided into four sections: a Preface (or covering letter of introduction); the History (_historia_), which is a paraphrase of the biblical story; the Contemplation (_theoria_), which presents the spiritual meaning of the Scriptural narrative and is Saint Gregory’s main concern; and the Conclusion.
Saint Gregory is firmly situated within the Alexandrian school of interpretation. _Historia_ designates the literal wording or the actual event in the text. Saint Gregory preferred the term _theoria_ over _allegoria_ or _dianoia_ (the deeper meaning). _Theoria_ signifies the insight into meanings that lie beyond the range of the literal. This word could be used both for the method of reaching the spiritual meaning and for the contemplative sense found within the text.
When applying this method, criteria are used for interpreting the sacred text. If something is unnecessary, superfluous, or out of place in a revealed law (such as instructing on how to eat, since nature is already a sufficient lawgiver), it points toward a hidden meaning.
If something morally wrong is enjoined, an allegorical meaning must be sought, as the loftier meaning is more fitting than the obvious one; this applies, for instance, to the spoiling of the Egyptians.
Anything that in its literal sense would be unworthy of God must point to an inner meaning, such as the description of God having a back and a face, which is incongruous with the divine nature.
The whole treatise traces a basic pattern of the world, which is a map of meanings threaded together. This pattern is a map of the human journey, specifically the Ascent up the ladder of divine Ascent.
The journey joins the personal life to the communal life (the Church) and ultimately leads up to the spiritual and the uncreated.
The Central Theme: Perfection as Perpetual Progress
The foundational theme of the treatise is that perfection is perpetual progress. The life of Moses is used as a parabola of the Christian spiritual ascent.
Perfection, when measured by the senses, is marked off by definite boundaries. However, concerning virtue, Saint Gregory states that its one limit of perfection is the fact that it has no limit.
God is absolute Good and virtue. Since the Divine does not admit of an opposite (evil), the divine nature is unlimited and infinite. Whoever pursues true virtue participates in God, because God is absolute virtue. Since the Good has no limit, the participant’s desire necessarily has no stopping place but stretches out with the limitless.
Attaining perfection is, therefore, impossible because perfection is not marked off by limits. This leads to the fundamental redefinition: the perfection of human nature consists perhaps in its very growth in goodness.
The continual development of life to what is better is the soul’s way to perfection. This progression is an incessant transformation into the likeness of God as man stretches out with the divine infinity.
The Journey of Ascent: Elements and Dualities
The spiritual ascent begins at the bottom of the mountain, often associated with the garments of skin.
The bottom represents the _narthex_, the place where the Church ends and the world begins. This area is what Saint Gregory calls the feet of the soul, where the passionate and repetitive parts of the soul, appetites, and passions are located.
Symbols in this journey are neither necessarily good nor bad in themselves, but possess a light and a dark side. The elements of the periphery, such as the feminine, the Foreigner, animality, and chaos, are interpreted in their dual aspect.
The Feminine and Education:
The material and passionate disposition, to which human nature falls, is the female form of life favoured by the Tyrant.
The austerity and intensity of virtue is the male birth, which is hostile to the Tyrant. Moses had two mothers. His adoptive mother, the daughter of the king, is profane philosophy. She is childless and barren, and her education is a womb of barren wisdom.
Profane education refers to knowledge of the world, including science and technology, which Saint Gregory warns can sometimes impede the spiritual journey. In contrast, Moses’ birth mother, who continued to care for him, is the Church and its teaching (the fruitful womb).
The foreign wife Moses married symbolises that certain things derived from profane education should not be rejected when striving to give birth to virtue. Moral and natural philosophy, geometry, astronomy, and dialectic will be useful when the divine sanctuary of mystery must be beautified with the riches of reason.
The Masculine and the Tyrant:
Moses, the virtuous individual, represents the true masculine aspect. The dark side of the masculine is represented by the Tyrant Pharaoh. Moses killing the Egyptian who abused an Israelite teaches taking a stand with virtue and killing its adversary, the destruction of idolatry and profane philosophy.
The Brother/Angel and the Demon:
After human nature fell into sin, God appointed a good angel with an incorporeal nature to help in the life of each person, and also appointed a corruptor, a malevolent demon, to afflict and contrive against man’s nature.
The brother (Aaron) is analogous to the counsellor, that little voice in the head or conscience. This counsellor can become a vehicle for either the angel or the demon, depending on the person’s choice of movement. The true assistance God provides comes to assist the soul that has made the first moves toward virtue.
The Garments of Skin and Chaos:
The basic image of the base of the mountain is the garments of skin. These garments, given to Adam and Eve after the fall, are dead and earthly animal skins added to human nature, representing animality.
The bottom of the mountain comes to its limit in complete chaos. The Demon intends that his subjects stoop to Earth and make bricks within themselves out of the clay.
This clay is related to the ambiguous, half-formed creature, represented by the frogs during the plagues, which is both on land and in water. This ambiguity and confusion occur when order no longer holds.
Purification, Baptism, and the Burning Bush
The journey begins with purification, symbolised by the removal of the foreign mark (circumcision) by the foreign wife. One must go through the waters, which represent death.
The crossing of the Red Sea symbolises baptism. After drowning the whole Egyptian person, which is every form of evil (the passions of the soul, such as covetousness, arrogance, and anger), one emerges alone, dragging along nothing foreign. The mystical water brings death to the enemy and life to the friend of God.
The removal of the garments of skin is symbolised most strongly when Moses ascends to encounter the burning bush and is commanded to remove his sandals. The removal of sandals is the removal of the dead and earthly covering of skins from the feet of the soul.
The Burning Bush presents the truth shining to human nature through the thorny flesh, signifying Christ, the true light. The fact that the flame did not consume the bush teaches the mystery of the Virgin: the light of divinity shone from her into human life without consuming the flower of her virginity.
The Ascent: Light, Darkness, and the Unknowable God
The ascent up the mountain is a movement from the quantity of people at the bottom toward the one, as Moses is alone when he reaches the top to encounter God and receive the law. This ascent is a divesting, a purification from attachment to peripheral things.
The mass of people stay at the bottom, while only those 70 go up with Moses, but by the time Moses reaches the highest point, he is alone.
Religious knowledge first comes as light. What is contrary to religion is darkness, and escape comes through participating in the light. As the mind progresses toward contemplation through diligence, it sees more clearly what of the divine nature is uncontemplated. This leads to the encounter with God in the higher Divine Darkness.
The seeing of God consists in not seeing. By leaving behind what sense comprehends and what the intelligence thinks it sees, the mind, through yearning, gains access to the invisible and incomprehensible, and there sees God.
Moses declared he saw God in the darkness, meaning he came to know that the divine is beyond all knowledge and comprehension, transcending all cognitive thought and representation.
The Divine Tabernacle and Resolution of Dualities
Beyond the Divine Darkness, Moses encounters the pattern of the Tabernacle. The Divine Tabernacle is Christ Himself, the universal origin and container of all things. This is the archetypal sanctuary shown to Moses.
Christ is the Only Begotten God, who existed before the ages and came into being at the end of the ages, encompassing everything in Himself.
The Tabernacle resolves the dualities encountered during the Ascent. For instance, the outer cover is made of animal skins dyed red. These dead skins, which symbolise mortality and were removed at the beginning of the ascent, are transformed here, with the redness pointing to blood and the hair (which has no feeling) pointing to death, signifying the saving Passion of Christ predetermined there.
The interior of the Tabernacle includes the candlestick (_Menorah_), which is equivalent to the rays of light of the spirit. The pillars of the Church, who are apostles, teachers, and prophets, are lights through their own works.
The throne of mercy is Christ, whom God has appointed to be a throne of mercy for souls. The outer courts of the Tabernacle below symbolise the harmony, love, and peace of believers.
The pattern of priesthood is encountered in the Heavenly Tabernacle. The life required of the priesthood is symbolised by Aaron’s rod, which budded and produced fruit (the nut). This life must be austere and tough in appearance on the outside, but contain hidden, sweet, edible contents inside, representing self-control and good hopes.
The Tabernacle is also analogous to the ecclesiastical hierarchy. The inner Holy of Holies is incomprehensible and inaccessible to the multitude, signifying that the apprehension of realities above comprehension should not be meddled with.
The Dark Side of the Ascent
The concept of duality extends even to the ascent. There is a true Ascent towards Divinity and the priesthood, and a false Ascent which is the fruit of Pride. The false Ascent can lead men to gain the priesthood to bolster their own passion. The passion of idolatry, wallowing in the mire at the bottom, finds its pair in this mock Ascent accomplished in Pride.
The Tower of Babel, which involved making bricks out of clay to build a false Ascent up to reach to God, resulted in the creation of foreigners and mirrors this pattern.
The Climax: Eternal Progress and Following God
Moses, even after attaining great glory and lofty experiences, is still unsatisfied in his desire for more, asking God to appear to him according to God’s true being.
The Divine voice granted what was requested in what was denied, showing an immeasurable depth of thought. True sight of God consists in the beholder never ceasing in that desire. God is inaccessible to knowledge.
God instructs Moses that there is a place beside Him, a rock with a hole in it, where Moses was commanded to enter. God placed His hand over the mouth and, as He passed by, Moses saw His back.
This signifies that Moses is taught how to behold God, which is to follow God wherever He might lead. He who follows sees the back. To turn and face the guide is to assume an opposite direction. The good does not look good in the face but follows it; what looks virtue in the face is evil.
The progress towards perfection is unlimited and constitutes eternal progress. The place with God is so great that the one running in it is never able to cease from his progress.
The more firm and immovable one remains in the Good, the more he progresses in the course of virtue. This stable progress is unlike the exertions of those in error, whose motion results in no progress, like a man trying to climb a sand dune.
Free Will and Universal Salvation
The freedom of human choice (_proairesis_) is fundamental. Human beings are, in a manner, their own parents, giving birth to themselves by their own free choice according to whatever they wish.
Man is placed between the good angel and the corrupting demon, and he chooses which to follow, making the one with whom he sides the victor. The initial movement away from God is man's. Divine activity is seen as a cooperation, assisting the soul that has made the first moves toward virtue.
The doctrine of _apokatastasis_, the return of all things to God, is clearly taught. The return of light after the three days of darkness over Egypt is interpreted as the final restoration which is expected to take place later in the kingdom of heaven of those who have suffered condemnation in Gehenna. The punishment of fire is real for those who imitate the Egyptians, but it will not be eternal.
Moses' End and Conformity to the Archetype
The goal of the sublime way of life is being called a servant of God. Moses died as Yahweh decreed, and no one has ever found his grave. It is characteristic of this service to God that the eye is not dimmed nor does the person age.
He who has truly come to be in the image of God and has in no way turned aside from the divine character bears in himself its distinguishing marks and shows in all things his conformity to the archetype. He beautifies his own soul with what is incorruptible, unchangeable, and shares in no evil at all.
True perfection lies not in avoiding a wicked life out of fear of punishment, nor in doing good for hope of rewards, but in disregarding all promised rewards, regarding falling from God’s friendship as the only dreadful thing, and considering becoming God’s friend the only thing worthy of honour and desire.