Gregory of Nyssa: Cosmic Structure

An excerpt from a thesis

The following is a portion of my master’s thesis on the thought of St. Gregory of Nyssa. I will be uploading the more interesting portions of it here in the interest of regular uploads during weeks when I have not found sufficient time to finish anything new.

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In contrast to the vision of existence espoused by polytheism, Gregory of Nyssa, like all Christians, saw creation as dependent on a single principle. Because the whole of creation is made by God, and God alone, it is a unity. All beings are united in their dependence upon God as their originating and sustaining principle, identical in that they are called into being by God from nothingness. “It was the fact of their having been brought from nonbeing to being, through a creation defined as creation out of nothing, that gave to all created things their affinity with one another within this single cosmic system.”[1] Despite this unity, however, Gregory does delineate the different levels of creation into rather sharp divisions. 

The first, and most significant division of Nyssen’s cosmology is that between the intelligible and the sensible world.

Of all existing things there is a twofold manner of apprehension, the consideration of them being divided between what appertains to intellect and what appertains to the senses; and besides these there is nothing to be detected in the nature of existing things, as extending beyond this division.[2]

This division is one traditionally made by Platonists and demarcates the portion of reality that is known by the mind from that portion of reality that is known by the senses. Nyssen argues for the existence of the intelligible along several lines. First, Christians must assert the existence of God as pure spirit, for any notion of sensibility is absurd in the transcendent. By itself, this is sufficient to prove the existence of the non-sensible.[3] It is an additional fact that much of what we know and experience of the world is not known through the senses, but through a process of intellectual inference that begins with sensory information. Thus, Gregory describes the use of observations regarding the cycles of the moon to discover that its light is borrowed from the sun as an example of using reason to infer the existence of the intelligible.[4]

Although Gregory is following the Platonic tradition in making this distinction, he also changes it in significant ways. For the Platonist, the intelligible realm is eternal and unchanging and is, therefore, the realm of the divine. Yet Nyssen goes beyond Platonism in making a further distinction within the intelligible:

But again, the intelligible nature is also divided into two kinds. The first is uncreated and is that which brings intelligible realities into being. It is what it is eternally and is in every respect self-identical. Further, it is beyond any addition to, and incapable of any diminution of, the goods it possesses. The second, however, has been brought into existence by an act of creation.[5]

For Platonism, the line between Being and becoming is placed between the intelligible and the sensible; for Gregory, that line is placed between the created and the uncreated. Since God alone is self-subsistent, he alone is uncreated, while all that exists—sensible and intelligible—is created by him. As can be seen in the quote above, God alone is without change, identical with goodness, Being, and so on, and thus he alone is properly eternal and unchanging. God’s status as intelligible is also unique, for he is not merely one of the intelligible beings (ta noemata) but is totally transcendent even of the intelligible itself as the principle and source of all creation. Thus, in describing the soul’s ascent to God, Nyssen speaks of moving beyond the intelligible:

For leaving behind everything that is observed, not only what sense comprehends but also what the intelligence thinks it sees, it keeps on penetrating deeper until by the intelligence’s yearning for understanding it gains access to the invisible and the incomprehensible, and there it sees God.[6]

Similarly, in Homilies on the Song of Songs, the soul is described as having “passed by everything in creation that is intelligible.”[7] It is for this reason that Gregory so strongly asserts the necessity of negative theology, or apophaticism; since God is beyond the intelligible, no concept can capture what he is.

All created beings may, therefore, be divided into the intelligible and sensible, and each has its proper nature. We have already seen that the intelligible creation, which Gregory often refers to as the “supracosmos” (hypercosmos), is known by the mind. It is, in addition, not bound by “any limits of place.”[8] Thus, in speaking about the human mind, which is itself an intelligible reality, Nyssen can state that it “is equally in contact with each of the parts according to a kind of combination which is indescribable.”[9] This is a point that will be examined in more detail below in the discussion of diastema.

It is significant for Gregory’s system that the intelligible realm is not merely the world of ideas as abstractly known, but rather the spiritual world as such, in which dwell both the angels and the human soul as well as the demons, although they have fallen away from the good because of sin. This, too, is in keeping with the Platonist tradition, the later development of which saw the intelligible as a place “in which what-one-is and what-one-knows move toward coincidence.”[10] Gregory understands the intelligible world as lacking the sharp contrast between subject and object, which is characteristic of the sensible. The noemata are living beings, conscious of themselves and of others. The intelligible realm is the domain of the angels—both good and evil—who govern over the various domains of reality. To each angel “a certain operation was assigned, for the organization of the whole, by the authority that presides over all things.”[11] Nyssen does not give precise information as regards how these beings support the whole except to describe the dependence of the sensible upon the intelligible (which will be discussed below) and to state that the angels assist human beings in the acquisition of virtue.[12] Because of this angelic authority over much of creation, the demons are capable of exerting negative influence upon the cosmos and are called “the princes and authorities and world rulers of darkness and spirits of recklessness” who “ravage” God’s creation.[13]

Gregory does not believe intelligible beings to be static, moreover, as many are constantly changing in a perpetual growth towards the good. The intelligible realm is in this sense “limitless” and “boundless,” for intelligible beings are always outstripping their limits.[14] God is infinite and totally transcendent of all boundaries, while the intelligible world is “always being created as it is changed for the better by being enhanced in goodness. For this reason, no end point (pera) can be conceived for it either, and its growth toward the better is not confined by any limit (horos).”[15] As a result, even the created noemata are beyond the full grasp of the intellect, as they are always surpassing their bounds in growth towards the good. This progress in the good is not applicable to all intelligible beings, however, as the demons have fallen away from the good and thus undergo change for the worse.[16]

In contrast to the limitlessness of the intelligible world, the sensible is “entirely contained by particular limits (pera). For since matter in its totality is grasped in terms of quantity and quality, which determine its bulk and form and surface and shape, what one sees of it constitutes, in its case, a limit to what is known about it.”[17] Indeed, it is the very nature of the sensible to be made up of “certain qualities” consisting of figure, color, weight, extension, quantity, and so on, combined with a “substratum.”[18] The substratum is, presumably, matter as pure potentiality, which receives these qualities and forms the principle of material change and instability, although the precise status of matter in Gregory’s thought is debated.[19] Besides qualities such as weight and color, the sensible contains those qualities that make up the four elements of fire, air, water, and earth. Each element is formed via a combination hot/cold and wet/dry.

Perhaps the most foundational characteristic of the sensible realm, however, is the constant interplay of rest and motion that characterizes all that is seen. Gregory even seems to think that the four elements (and thus the qualities that inhere within them) are ultimately derived from this more primary dyad, as each element may be described in terms of rest and motion. Nyssen speaks of the “perpetual motion and subtlety of the fiery substance,” and “the heavy and downward tendency” of earth.[20] Rest and motion further characterize the sensible in that all the elements are constantly changing into one another through the interchange of hot/cold, wet/dry. This perpetual “modification of qualities” creates the cyclic change that makes up the material world.[21] Heat added to water produces steam, earth becomes fire in the burning of trees and other material, and the other elements are similarly transformed into each other.[22] Rest is seen in the subsistence of each element as itself, while motion is seen in the process of change. This interplay of rest and motion is at the foundation of the sensible world, which is always undergoing transformation and change. As Daniélou phrases it, “the combination of qualities constitutes a cyclical movement of which the elements are a manifestation.”[23] The whole sensible world constantly “suffers change in the continuity of its succession of opposites by way of motion and flux, so that it never can desist from change.”[24]

In describing the nature of the sensible realm, Gregory encounters a problem regarding its metaphysical status. As a Christian, Nyssen necessarily sees the sensible as created by God, who is purely intelligible, and yet he also holds to the prevailing philosophical understanding of causation according to which there must be some similarity between cause and effect.[25] Indeed, it is difficult, if not impossible, to imagine how a cause could produce or act upon a being with which it shares absolutely nothing in common. In the case of the sensible, then, it would seem that there is no way by which a purely intelligible God could produce a dimension of being completely opposite to the intelligible.

If God is in His nature simple and immaterial, without quantity, or size, or combination, and removed from the idea of circumscription by way of figure, while all matter is apprehended in extension measured by intervals, and does not escape the apprehension of our senses, but becomes known to us in colour, and figure, and bulk, and size, and resistance, and the other attributes belonging to it, none of which it is possible to conceive in the divine nature,—what method is there for the production of matter from the immaterial, or of the nature that has dimensions for that which is unextended?[26]

Gregory’s answer is to assert that the qualities that matter comprises are themselves intelligible and only become sensible by combination.

For we shall find all matter to be composed of certain qualities, of which if it is divested it can, in itself, be by no means grasped by idea….Yet if the perception of these properties is a matter of intellect, and the Divinity is also intellectual in nature, there is no incongruity in supposing that these intellectual occasions for the genesis of bodies have their existence from the incorporeal nature, the intellectual nature on the one hand giving being to the intellectual potentialities, and the mutual concurrence of these bringing to its genesis the material nature.[27]

Nyssen is asserting that each of the qualities that make up the sensible world are themselves intelligible categories. Weight, color, form, and so on, are known by the mind, and only become perceptible bodies when they are combined. The sensible is derived entirely from the intelligible. This leaves some ambiguity about the so-called substratum, and we are left to conjecture that Gregory sees it as a largely negative concept, either consisting of pure potentiality or being entirely non-existent. Yet even the substratum, if it does exist, must be derived from the intelligible lest we fall into a kind of Platonic Manichaeism.[28]

This, then, is the structure of reality as Gregory understands it. God is the ultimate, pure intelligence from which all creation comes. Creation is itself divided into the intelligible and the sensible, the latter of which is derivative and entirely dependent on the former, both as being created by God and as subsisting as a combination of intelligible qualities. The intelligible world is inhabited by angelic beings who govern the sensible order in accordance with God’s will or else have fallen away and rule by their own wickedness. Such a vision opens at once the intricacies, harmonies, and dissonances of a world unified in principle but at odds with itself and with its creator.

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[1] Pelikan, Christianity and Classical Culture, 106.

[2] Gregory of Nyssa, Catechetical Oration VI, NPNF V: 48.

[3] Gregory of Nyssa, On the Soul and Resurrection, NPNF V: 432

[4] Ibid., NPNF V: 434

[5] Gregory of Nyssa, Homilies on the Song of Songs VI, trans. Richard A. Norris Jr. (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2013), 185.

[6] Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Moses II.163, trans. Ferguson and Malherbe, 95.

[7] Gregory of Nyssa, Homilies on the Song of Songs VI, trans. Norris, 195.

[8] Gregory of Nyssa, On the Making of Humanity XII, NPNF V: 398.

[9] Ibid., NPNF V: 398.

[10] Richard A. Norris Jr., introduction to Homilies on the Song of Songs, by Gregory of Nyssa, trans. Richard A. Norris Jr. (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2013), xxvi.

[11] Gregory of Nyssa, Catechetical Oration VI, NPNF V: 480.

[12] Gregory of Nyssa, Homilies on the Song of Songs VII, trans. Norris, 247.

[13] Ibid. V, 179

[14] Ibid. VI, 185

[15] Gregory of Nyssa. Homilies on the Song of Songs VI, trans. Norris, 187.

[16] Daniélou, L’être et Le Temps Chez Grégoire de Nysse, 115.

[17] Gregory of Nyssa, Homilies on the Song of Songs IV, trans. Norris, 187

[18] Gregory of Nyssa, On the Making of Humanity XXIV, NPNF V: 414

[19] Matter as pure potentiality would be in keeping with Neoplatonic metaphysics and is supported by Darren Hibbs, “Was Gregory of Nyssa a Berkeleyan Idealist?” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 13, no. 3 (August 2005): 431. See footnote 28 below, as well.

[20] Gregory of Nyssa, On the Making of Humanity I, NPNF V: 389

[21] Daniélou, L’être et Le Temps Chez Grégoire de Nysse, 79.

[22] Ibid.

[23] Ibid., 81.

[24] Gregory of Nyssa, On the Making of Humanity XIII, NPNF V: 400

[25] Hibbs, “Was Gregory of Nyssa a Berkeleyan Idealist?” 429.

[26] Gregory of Nyssa, On the Making of Humanity XXIII, NPNF V: 413

[27] Ibid.XXIV, NPNF V: 414

[28] The difficulties arising from the concept of a “substratum” in Gregory’s work are beyond the scope of this paper. We might harmonize the existence of said substratum by considering potentiality itself as a kind of intelligible quality, as merely a negative concept without any concrete existence at all apart from the combination of qualities which it supports, or as having no existence whatever. David Bentley Hart asserts the latter case, although he admits that Gregory does occasionally speak of matter (here meaning pure potentiality) in more concrete terms. Cf. David Bentley Hart, “The Mirror of the Infinite: Gregory of Nyssa on the Vestigia Trinitatis,” in Re-Thinking Gregory of Nyssa, ed. Sarah Coackley (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), 118. Regardless, Gregory is not entirely clear on this point, and we are forced to conjecture, or else extrapolate from the Neoplatonic metaphysics on which he seems to draw. For a fuller discussion of Gregory’s idealism, see Hibbs.