25 - Gregory of Nyssa

Summary

LIFE AND WORKS

Gregory came from a large, prosperous and Christian family in the Roman province of Cappadocia in modern Turkey. About the exact year of his birth it is hard to be precise, but it was probably between 335 and 340. His father, Basil the Elder, taught rhetoric in Pontic Neocaesarea and his mother Emmelia herself came from a Christian family and was herself the daughter of the elder Macrina, who had received her faith from Gregory the Wonder Worker (c. 213–c. 270 ce), the so-called Apostle of Cappadocia, who had been a pupil of Origen in Palestine. Gregory himself had eight siblings, two of whom, Macrina and Basil, had a great influence upon him. Of the former he wrote The Life of Macrina (GNO VII/2: 370–414) and of the latter a panegyric, On his Brother Basil (GNO x/1: 109–134). The influence of both is discernible in Gregory’s more theological writings. In the case of his sister in On the Soul and Resurrection which takes the form of a deathbed dialogue with his sister with distinct echoes of Plato’s Phaedo with its account of the death of Socrates. In the case of Basil in his treatise On the Six Days of Creation, at the beginning of which (PG 44.61b) he explicitly acknowledges his debt to ‘the great Basil’. Basil had composed for the Easter of 375 nine sermons bearing the same title. Gregory’s treatment is more positive to philosophy than is that of his elder brother.