I’ve decided that in the interest of more regular posts, I will be uploading relatively short reflections on various texts. I’ll be starting with Gregory of Nyssa’s Homilies on Ecclesiastes, specifically his first homily. For this post, I’ve utilized only one small passage, and I will continue writing reflections on the first homily until I’ve completed it (there’s a lot to cover and I’m working with the Greek text, so it will likely take a while). All the quotations given below are from his first homily.
Gregory opens his examination of Ecclesiastes by attempting to determine the nature of vanity. He distinguishes several layers of meaning, including futility and groundlessness, or unreality. That which is vain may be an action doomed to failure or a reality that is anypostatos, without sure foundation or substantiality (literally “without that which stands under”). He then goes on to seek a clear understanding of the “vanity of vanities” spoken of by Ecclesiastes, ultimately determining that this term refers to the superlative unsubstantiality and transitoriness of the sensory (ta phainomena).
I’ve written about Gregory’s distinction between the sensible and intelligible worlds elsewhere (see here), so suffice it so say here that Gregory, following the tradition of Christian (and pagan) Platonists, sees reality as split into that which is known through the senses and that which is known through the mind. In modern parlance, we might say that these are the “material” and “spiritual” worlds, although this would be a bit of a distortion, as Gregory did not share modern conceptualizations of matter, nor are these worlds quite as distinct as modern thought might make them out to be. Regardless, Gregory sees the sensible as characterized by flux, by ceaseless passing in and out of existence, whereas the intelligible is characterized by permanence. Thus for him, and for much of the patristic tradition, that which is known by the senses is vain to the utmost degree, “as if someone said more dead than the dead or more inanimate than the inanimate” (1.6).
This may sound dismissive, and it raises any number of questions regarding the moral status of the sensory; such a statement easily lends itself to a world-hating asceticism that sees the sensory realm as something inherently debased. Yet Gregory is quick to address these concerns, stating almost immediately that his words must not be taken as a condemnation of either the creation or the creator. His argument is at first glance a strange one, for he says that this would indeed be a just criticism of the creator but for the fact that human nature is double, being both sensory and intelligible. For the human being belongs both to the sensory world by the body and to the spiritual (intelligible) world by the soul, and through the soul one may look to that which is deathless, imperishable. In other words, the creation is not as a whole vain, for there is a realm of everlasting truth to which each person may look, and so one cannot condemn God for having created a vain, perishable world.
Of course, this hardly solves the problem, and Gregory immediately points out that one might still condemn the creator for making the sensory world by which the soul is misled to contemplate vanity. The moral status of the sensory is in question and by extension so is the moral status of its creator. Again, Gregory’s answer appears an odd one, for he once more references the constitution of humanity. As Gregory sees it, human nature is one that is made to become ever more like God, and the sensory is given to this nature to serve a specific purpose. Humanity is in its deepest being made to partake in a process of divinization, and the senses, which are an intrinsic part of this nature, were given to humanity so that it might contemplate the eternal truths of God through the sensory. The sensory realm is thus not inherently corrupting nor inherently corrupt; it is not to blame if humanity has gone astray in failing to properly understand it. For the purpose of the senses is to lead the soul to contemplation of what is higher. The array of phenomena before us is a pathway to the contemplation of eternity, for in the sensory are seen the images of the eternal, passing in and out of being. Time is the moving image of eternity, as Plato said.
Humanity’s failure to see through the appearances is a result of its aboulia, its thoughtlessness (literally the state of being “without counsel”). It is, in short, an act of idolatry bred by ignorance. It is an inversion of the proper order of things. As God intends it, the “lower” are meant to lead the mind into the contemplation of the “higher.” Those who fail to see beyond the appearances of things to the truths which they reflect are, in a very real sense, blind. For “the one who looks towards these things [the sensory] sees nothing” (1.6).
Thus, rather than condemning a portion of the creation and thereby casting a shadow upon God’s goodness, Gregory asserts the value of the sensible so long as it remains within its proper bounds, not becoming an idol obscuring the deeper realities to which it is meant to act as a ladder. Ultimately, all things are created in order to partake of and manifest the glory of God, and the sensory is no exception. Indeed, the created realm of the intelligible is also meant to lead one to the contemplation of the divine. The whole person and the whole of creation, which reflects the human structure, is thus called upwards, to know and possess God to the degree it is capable in an ever-increasing theosis.