Reading Gregory of Nyssa: Life of Moses, par. 152-169

Speaker 1 0:00

So now we come to St Gregory of Nyssa. What I'm going to do is refer you to an excerpt from the Life of Moses, the second part, part two of his Life of Moses, paragraphs 152 to 169. It's a wonderful passage and I want to talk to you a little bit about that before we finish. Saint Gregory of Nyssa the life of Moses. There follows in the text the account of an ascent which leads our minds on to the higher ranges of virtue. The man who has been strengthened with nourishment, who has shown his prowess in struggle with his adversaries and has been victorious over his opponents, is now brought to the ineffable knowledge of God. Hereby we are taught the manner and the extent to which a man's life must first be set in order before he may dare to approach the mountain of the knowledge of God, to listen to the sound of the trumpets, to enter the darkness where God is, and to engrave on tablets the writing of God and, should these be broken through any fault, to present to God further tablets cut by hand and engrave on them anew, with the finger of God, the writing that has been spoiled on the first tablets. Interesting the distinction between the tablets that Moses broke, he smashed when he found the people sinning, and then he was given the second set of tablets. But it will be best to follow the order of the historical narrative and to relate the spiritual meaning to it as we proceed.

Cleansing of the mind (nous), the water of Marah (Ex 15.22-25), and the “wood”

Living water - the Rock - heavenly bread - stretching out of Moses’ hands - mystery of the Cross

Speaker 1 2:11

The man who follows Moses and the cloud, which together show the way to those who are progressing in virtue Moses, representing the commandments of the law, and the guiding cloud, its inner meaning, first has his mind cleansed at the crossing of the water, where he puts to death and rids himself of everything foreign. Then he tastes the water of Mara, that is, a life separated from pleasure, something that at first tasting seems bitter and unpleasant but produces a sensation of sweetness in those who accept the wood. Then he enjoys the beauties of the palm trees and springs of the Gospels. He is filled with the living water, namely the rock. He eats the heavenly bread. He acts with bravery against the foreigners, owing his victory to the stretching out of the lawgiver's hands, a foreshowing of the mystery of the cross.

Purification of soul and body required

Washing of clothes: “a respectable habit of life”

Speaker 1 3:28

Then, at length, he approaches the vision of the transcendent nature. His road to this knowledge is purity, not only of the body, which is to be sanctified by sprinkling, but also of the clothes, which are to be washed clean of every stain by water. That means that the man who seeks to approach the vision of intelligible reality needs total purification. He must be pure and without stain, both in soul and body, washed clean of defilement in both alike. He must be pure in the eyes of him who sees in secret, and his outward appearance must match his inward disposition. So before his ascent of the mountain, he washes his clothes in accordance with the divine command. The clothes are a figurative representation of a respectable habit of life. No one would say that the fact of dirty clothes, in a literal sense, was any impediment for those who are mounting up to God. But I think that clothes, quote-unquote, is an appropriate designation for the exterior habits of a man's life.

No animal on the mountain

Speaker 1 5:00

When this has been done and the herd of irrational animals has been driven as far as possible from the mountain, he approaches the ascent to higher thoughts. The fact that no animal is permitted to appear on the mountain indicates, in our judgment, that in the vision of intelligible reality one is passing beyond knowledge derived from sense experience. For the distinctive characteristic of animal nature is that it functions entirely at the level of the senses, to the exclusion of reason. Animals are normally guided by their sight and impelled by their hearing towards some particular objective. All the other things that activate sensation play a similarly large part in animals. The vision of God, however, is not achieved in the realm of sight or of hearing, nor is it acquired by any of the ordinary processes of apprehension, for eye has not seen, ear has not heard, nor is it one of those things that ordinarily enters into the heart of man.

Speaker 1 6:20

The man who sets out to climb the heights of contemplation must first purify his conduct of all irrational influence coming from the senses. He must wash his mind clean from every opinion derived from past experience. He must withdraw from normal intercourse with his own spouse, normal intercourse with his own spouse, that is, from sense experience, which is a kind of spouse and consort to our nature. Thus purified, he may dare to attempt the mountain. This mountain, for such indeed is the knowledge of God, is steep and hard of access, and the majority of people scarcely even reach the foot of it.

The Law and the Prophets - trumpets - the Gospel

Speaker 1 7:10

But a real Moses, as he ascends, will hear the sound of the trumpets which the story says, got progressively louder and louder, for the proclamation of the divine nature is a veritable trumpet, filling its hearers with alarm. It was great in its impact on its hearers even in its earliest manifestation, but greater still in its later stages. The law and the prophets trumpeted out the divine mystery of the Incarnation, but those first sounds were too weak to penetrate unresponsive ears. The hardness of Jewish ears failed to take in the sound of the trumpets. But as they continued, the text says, the trumpets got louder. The final utterances came with the preaching of the gospel, and these did reach men's ears. The spirit expressing itself through various instruments made the sound successively more impressive and more forceful, for prophets and apostles were all instruments giving utterance to one spiritual sound. It was of them that the psalmist declares their sound is gone out into all the world and their words to the ends of the earth. The multitude could not hear the voice from above, but left it to Moses to learn for himself the hidden secrets and to teach the people whatever divine truths he might acquire through the teaching coming from above.

Speaker 1 9:01

The same is true in the ordering of the church. It is not for everyone to push themselves forward to try to comprehend the mysteries. To comprehend the mysteries, they should select one of their number who is able to grasp divine truth. Then they should give careful attention to him and accept as trustworthy whatever they learn from the man who has been initiated into divine truth. Here St Gregory is referring to bishops, how they should be chosen, the ordering of the church, it is written. Not all are apostles, not all are prophets, but there are a great many churches nowadays in which this is not observed. Many who still need cleansing from their earlier way of life, some even whose present way of life defiles them like unwashed clothing, dare to attempt the divine ascent with no more help than that of the irrational senses, with no more help than that of the irrational senses. But they are stoned to death by their own arguments, for heretical ideas are like stones which caused the death of the very man who invented their evil teaching.

The divine darkness vs God seen as light

Speaker 1 10:31

And the last part here, what is the significance of the fact that Moses went right into the darkness and saw God there? At first sight? The account of this vision of God seems to contradict the earlier one, for whereas on that occasion the divine was seen in light, this time he is seen in darkness. Was seen in light, this time he is seen in darkness. But we should not regard this as involving any inconsistency at the level of the mystical meaning which concerns us. Through it, the word is teaching us that in the initial stages, religious knowledge comes to men as illumination. So what we recognize as contrary to religion is darkness, and escape from that darkness is achieved by participation in the light.

Knowledge of divine nature inaccessible to every created intelligence

“Moses entered the darkness where God was” (Ex. 20.21)

Speaker 1 11:27

From there the mind moves forward. By its ever-increasing and more perfect attention, it forms an idea of the apprehension of reality. The closer it approaches the vision of God, the more it recognizes the invisible character of the divine nature. The realm of phenomena is left behind entirely, not merely what is apprehended by the senses, but also what is believed to be observed by the eyes of the intellect, the eyes of the nous. So the mind presses on with its journey to the interior, until its persistent search enables it to penetrate to the unseeable and the incomprehensible. There it sees God, for herein lies the true knowledge of the goal of our search, and the seeing of it precisely in not seeing. For the goal of our search is beyond all knowledge. It is surrounded on all sides by a wall of incomprehensibility, like a kind of darkness. And that is why the sublime John, who himself had penetrated this brilliant darkness, john who himself had penetrated this brilliant darkness, writes that no one has seen God at any time. By that negation, he declares knowledge of the divine nature to be inaccessible not only to men but to every created intelligence. So it was when Moses had progressed in the knowledge of God that he claimed to see God in darkness. In other words, he had come to know that, in its nature, the deity is that which surpasses all knowledge and comprehension.

Speaker 1 13:34

Moses, says the text, entered into the darkness where God was what God, he who made darkness his covering around him, according to David, who himself was initiated into hidden mysteries within that darkness. Having arrived there, the teaching which he had received in a preparatory way through the medium of the darkness was repeated through the medium of words. The intention, I believe, was to impress this basic dogma about God more firmly upon us by having it explicitly affirmed by the divine voice. So the very first commandment of God is that the divine is not to be likened to anything within the range of human knowledge. This means that any idea that thought or imagination may frame about the divine nature in a form which the mind can grasp can only provide us with an image of God and not actually disclose God himself.

The tent “not made with hands”

Speaker 1 14:54

Religion can be divided into two halves, one part being concerned directly with God, the other with the establishment of good conduct, for purity of conduct is also a part of religion. First, a man must learn what he needs to know about God, and that knowledge consists in knowing nothing about him in the realm of the knowledge that is based on ordinary human apprehension. Then the second part is taught and he learns the kind of practices which go to make up the good life. After that, he reaches the tent not made with hands, who will follow him as he leads the way on such a journey and elevates his mind to such great heights, moving from one peak to another and always, in his ascent of the heights, ending up higher than he was before. First he has to leave the foot of the mountain, being separated out from all the others who were not fit enough to attempt the ascent. Then, as he mounts higher, with the progress of the ascent, he hears the sound of the trumpets. Further on still, he penetrates the impenetrable, the invisible sanctuary of the knowledge of God. Even that is not his resting place, for he goes on to the tent not made with hands. That, indeed, is the final goal of the man who is mounted by such a series of ascents.

Natural contemplation (cf. Maximus the Confessor)

Speaker 1 16:41

But I think there is also another sense in which the heavenly trumpet can be regarded as an instructor of the man who climbs the path leading to the realm not made with hands, leading to the realm not made with hands. The marvelous fabric of the heavens proclaims the wisdom of God to be found there Through the visible order. It declares His great glory. As the sun has it, the heavens declare the glory of God. All this is a loud-sounding trumpet of clear and harmonious teaching. As one of the prophets puts it, heaven has trumpeted from on high. The man whose inward ears are purified and alert will hear this sound, by which I mean the sound heard through the contemplation of the universe leading to knowledge of the universe, leading to knowledge of the divine power, and it will lead him on to penetrate in mind to the very place where God is, and this place is called by scripture darkness. That, as we have already said, signifies its unknowable and invisible character, and the man who reaches it sees there the tent not made with hands, which he can only show to those below through the medium of a material imitation.

Gregory of Nyssa: presuppositions Biblical not philosophical

Burning Bush (Ex. 3.2), Cloud & Pillar of Fire (Ex. 13.21), Dark Cloud (Ex. 20.21)

“Back parts of God” (Ex. 33.23)

Progress from light to darkness, into “unknowing”

Spiritual life: dynamic and unending

“Darkness” is luminous - Knowing is unknowing

Speaker 1 18:15

Well there, I wanted to read that passage because it gives you not only the content some aspects of the translation could be improved, but at least it gives you a feel not only of what St Gregory of Nyssa says, but how he says it. And isn't it interesting. St Gregory is regarded as one of, if not the most philosophical of the Fathers, and yet I find, when you compare him even to St Augustine, he doesn't seem that philosophical, because all of his presuppositions are biblical and not philosophical. Anyway, so three primary encounters with God the vision of God in the burning bush, in light. The burning bush in Exodus 3.2, where the angel of the Lord appeared unto Moses in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. And he looked and behold, the bush burned with fire and the bush was not consumed. Secondly, we have the vision of God in the cloud. Secondly, we have the vision of God in the cloud, where we have light mingled with darkness Exodus 13, 21. And the Lord went before them by day, in a pillar of a cloud to lead them the way, and by night, in a pillar of fire to give them light to go. By day and night. Vision of God in the cloud and the pillar of fire, then, and then in darkness Exodus 20, 21, where the people stood afar off and Moses drew near unto the thick darkness where God was. There's also an extension of this, exodus 33, verse 23, where Moses experiences the back parts of God and St Gregory is thinking of progress from light to darkness, not into gnosis, not into knowledge, actually, but into agnosia, agnosia into unknowing. His understanding of the spiritual life is one of a dynamic, unending, linear progression towards God and his fundamental presupposition is creation ex nihilo, no similarity between the created and the uncreated. And we find a key passage in the one that we just read in the life of Moses where, among other things, we noticed that the divine was beheld in light, but now it's beheld in darkness. There's no knowledge, no knowledge is possible of the divine essence. Darkness denotes the imperceptibility of God. We have to transcend even our own. But darkness, the gnofos, the thick dark cloud, is in fact luminous. It's described as lambros brilliant. It is a brilliant darkness, a brilliant darkness. So it's not an absence, Contemplation is non-contemplation.

Spiritual progress “from glory to glory” (2 Cor. 3.18)

Smashing of idols: reality of God transcends our thoughts of God

Ecstasy: we transcend even ourselves

Speaker 1 22:47

In his commentary on the Song of Songs, st Gregory tells us that one has an esthetis. This goes back a long way, of course. We mentioned it before, this sense of presence, the presence of God. Take a look at Patrologia Graeca, volume 44, column 1001, section B, esthesis dis disparusias, a certain sense of the presence of God. So the presence of God is certain, even though comprehension of him is impossible. And just to sum it up, the spiritual progress of which St Gregory speaks is from glory to glory. Secondly, he refers to the smashing of idols. In contrast to what we find in the Anselmian tradition of the West, the idea of God that you have in your mind, if you're not careful, st Gregory is saying, you can become an idol, because the reality of God is far above anything we could possibly conceive of. And the spiritual life for St Gregory demands of us that we transcend even ourself. There is a self-transcendence. We must go out of ourselves in striving to meet God and be united with him.

“Reaching forth” (Phil. 3.13)

Though we can never grasp the essence of God, to seek God is to find Him

Speaker 1 24:30

Now, the spiritual progress from glory to glory refers to the fact that our progress towards God is unending, refers to the fact that our progress towards God is unending. St Paul in Philippians 3.13 says, not as though I had already attained either, were already perfect, but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that, for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus. Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended, but this one thing I do forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forth unto those things which are before I press toward the mark of the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. So, since we never grasp the essence of God yet, to seek God unendingly is to find him. So infinite progress does not imply imperfection. Here we have a dynamic view of eternity, growth as a basic feature of our humanity, and this growth continues in eternity.

Growth as basic feature of humanity - perfection means growing

The notion of tension (tonos)

Continual creation - every end is a new beginning (Comm. Song of Songs)

Speaker 1 25:48

And again, here St Gregory, I think very consciously, is turning Platonism on its head. In Platonism, that which is perfect is unchanging, while Nyssa is saying the perfection is changing. And for Platonism and Greek thought, in philosophical thought in general, that which has no limit has no rationalism. For Saint Gregory, that which is unending has rationalism. And we have here also the emphasis on the idea of tension. Donos, in the fallen world, every effort is followed by a slackening, but the opposite is the case in eternity, where we find the idea of continual creation.

Vision of the back parts of God (Exod. 33)

The smashing of idols - symbolic interpretation to Second Commandment (Ex. 20:4)

Speaker 1 26:48

Looking again sideways to his commentary on the Song of Songs, it's also true, even in the age to come, that every ending is a new beginning. Now, if, in reference to Exodus 33, if Moses sees God's back parts, this means that he is following God. By this, I think we are taught that he who wishes to see God will see his beloved only by constantly following after him, and the contemplation of his face is really the unending journey towards him. This is from his commentary on the Song of Songs, sermon 12. Commentary on the Song of Songs, sermon 12. So to see God's back is to see his face. To follow him is to possess him, and to follow him is to be united with him. So the smashing of idols briefly Entering into divine darkness puts aside every image. He gives a symbolic interpretation to the second commandment Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image. And this is understood in two ways Intellectually, that we are to apply the apophatic method when we pray. Secondly, we are to empty our minds of words and images, and they should not be linked to specific imaginations. Pictures in that sense of the word.

Speaker 1 28:32

Self-transcendence let's say that St Gregory does use the term ilingos. This is a spiritual vertigo or dizziness. And he has, in his commentary on Ecclesiastes, the image of man standing at the edge of a precipice. There is a sober drunkenness, as we find in Philo, to which Nisa refers, a watchful sleep, and all these do suggest a sense of rapture. But the key to self-transcendence in in Nisa is in fact eros, passionate love, which means being drawn out of oneself in intense loving for God.

Union with God in love - knowledge becomes love (PG 46.96C)

Speaker 1 29:27

Sometimes we tend to think of asceticism as this kind of arduous effort that's made, which has a heavy dose of misery attached to it. But what we forget is that asceticism, in the examples of the saints, is what they do out of love for Christ. What they do, they do because they love God and they seek to be united with him. It's because of love, united with him. It's because of love. Asceticism is a positive force, it's a positive power. They're drawn to God and nothing else will do. Nothing else can satisfy Asceticism. Is not this kind of effort that is miserable and sometimes even morbid. This intense loving for God gives positive content to the notion of divine darkness that a union with God is a union with God in love. And equally, when all concepts are laid aside, that which remains is love. I ther gnosis agape hinede, so knowledge of God becomes love.

Appeal

Speaker 1 30:46

Patrologia Graeca, volume 46, column 96, section C. Please subscribe to our channel and share with your friends. Click on the notification bell and click on the join button below our video and become a friend or reader of the Mount Tabor Academy. Support our drive to introduce the theology and spiritual life of the Orthodox Church to the wider community.