Gregory of Nyssa: The Life of Moses (Classics of Western Spirituality)

The spiritual journey is the oldest and longest journey known to humankind. It has fascinated and intrigued cultures down through the centuries. Inner spiritual experiences are found in all religious traditions around the world. In Judaism, we find reflections on the life of Moses and others, offering examples of personal spiritual growth (I discuss this in my review of Martini's, Through Moses to Jesus: The Way of the Paschal Mystery). With the coming of the incarnate Christ, the Christian spiritual journey as we know it was born.As a result, this spiritual journey underwent an evolution during the early Christian era. Gradually, the spiritual masters defined and developed various stages of spiritual growth. It was Saint Gregory of Nyssa, a Father of the Eastern Church, who introduced the idea of progression along this journey. Accordingly, in the fourth century, he was hailed as a major spiritual thinker, one who developed his ideas by reading scripture from the context of his life experience. He introduced the idea of stages and viewed the spiritual life as a continual growth process. He based this concept on Paul's theme of moving forward. "Forgetting the past, I strain ahead for what is still to come" (Phil 3:13).In this work, The Life of Moses, by Saint Gregory of Nyssa, we read in the "Introduction" that "the theme that holds the whole work together [is] the idea of eternal progress." This progress is at the heart of Saint Gregory's spiritual doctrine. Many, including Saint Augustine, a Father of the Western Church, have examined his treatise and have found that his theological framework resembles "that progress" that people strive for, in what has come to be known as "The Spiritual Life." This includes the general points that must be recognized and accepted if one is to make progress spiritually in this world. First of all, we (humankind & individually) were made in the image [the mirror] of God. Secondly, by our fall into sin, this image was tarnished. Thirdly, Christ took upon himself our nature in order to restore us to our original nature. Lastly, through Christ, conversion restores our capacity to reflect the divine nature. The "Introduction" tells us that Saint Gregory sees that, in The Spiritual Life, "There is an incessant transformation into the likeness of God as man stretches out with the divine infinity; there is an ever-greater participation in God." Saint Gregory saw this as evident in the life of Moses. He had already been exposed to similar thoughts about this from the writings of Philo and Origen, who had "described the spiritual life as a succession of steps." In his work, Saint Gregory expresses the idea of infinite progress in the never-completed journey to God towards perfection.Following in Saint Gregory's footsteps, Saint Augustine developed this idea further by giving these steps/stages names and descriptions. The first stage was the "purgative way." During this stage a person's chief concern is his or her awareness of sin, sorrow for sin, and desire to make amends because God has been offended. The second stage was the "illuminative way." Its main feature is the enlightenment of a person's mind regarding the ways of God, and a clearer understanding of God's will in a person's life style, The third, and final stage, was the "unitive way." Here, there is a continual awareness of being in God's presence. The individual also, in a loving way; strives to conform his or her will to the will of God.Saint Augustine's analysis of the Spiritual Life and his classification of it into three stages were widely accepted and are still very popular today as a way of identifying and measuring individual progress along the journey. It has further been treated by many, especially people like Garrigou-LaGrange (in the Thomistic/Dominican tradition), and Saint John of the Cross, and Saint Teresa of Avila (in the Mystical/Carmelite tradition).Besides a better understanding of the Life of Moses, this book provides some early and unique insights into the Spiritual Life that we, like others, can benefit from.

An absolutely fantastic book. It really opens you up to a different way to read Exodus and the scriptures in general. I would highly recommend it for casual readers, but also for people looking to do dep dives on Exodus or Bible Study generally.

Gregory of Nyssa's response to a faithful pupil is a treasure. If you are looking for deeper centering of your pursuit in being perfect and what that really means this is the book for you!

Purchased this to add to my Classics of Western Spirituality collection. When I get around to reading it, probably years from now, I'll probably review it then.

Having read a few excerpts and short works by Basil and Nazianzus, I looked forward to reading this classic by St. Basil's brother. The work itself was only about 110 pages and the type was readable, and the translation was clear modern English. But the 52 pages of notes were all at the end requiring two bookmarks and a lot of paging back and forth to discover IF the footnote was significant or not. I would have been much happier if these had been incorporated into the text via parentheses for the simple references, or as footnotes for the brief but occasionally enlightening discussions. I may reread the work to get a better feel for its flow and argument as a whole. I had been told that Nyssa's work owed much to Philo's biography of Moses, but having read Philo's work in preparation for the present reading, I saw little dependence apart from the subject matter sourced from the Torah (Exodus through Deuteronomy), and the allegorical method. Notes from this edition bore this out as Clement, Origin, and other earlier church fathers are noted for parallels much more than Philo.Gregory wrote the work as response to a request for guidance in the spiritual life. Moses is taken up as an example of the spiritual journey rather than as the subject per se. His life and work serve as illustrations of the deeper realities that constitute the spiritual life and which lay behind life as we perceive it. What we perceive has limits, but reality, the deepest reality which is God, is limitless. Thus the spiritual journey, the quest for perfection has no end. Thus, death appears to be the end for our perception, but this is an illusion in that (as Augustine explains) we experience unending dying, drifting farther from the source of life, which is experienced by the soul as the "worm that never dies and the fire that never goes out," in the words of Isaiah 66.There are some who may balk at the "reality behind perception" idea, but this is precisely what modern science exults in. You may perceive the table as solid, yet the physicist will explain that it is mostly space with particles held in tension by electrical charges and other force(s). Humans have learned to transmit stories, sounds and images through radio waves which flow through us 24 hours a day which can be transformed into the perceptible (and entertaining) by the right technology. Is it unbelievable that a greater Mind should have encoded meanings and messages in the passing effluvia of everyday life? As Gregory attempts to sound the deeper meanings to be found in the life of Moses, he illustrates for us an approach to life foreign to westerners whose religion is often shallow and disconnected, and frequently abandoned or rejected for that reason.Since God is limitless, the spiritual journey, the life with God, is endless, a "world without end," or "unto ages of ages," as the western and eastern translations of the doxologies put it. The concept of heaven (as of hell) is so often taken as static, a place where you go to rest/cease, when in fact, the sabbath precedes the New Day of Paradise. It is an eternal limitless state of growing, becoming, rejoicing in God. We live in a world of death, the hereafter is the World of Life to the full. C. S. Lewis brings this out in some of his writings, and it lays behind his space fiction, "The Dark Planet," growing out of his deep acquaintance with medieval and renaissance thought and especially the ancient and patristic thought that lay behind these.The Life of Moses illustrates this as the deepest Truth, the Incarnation of God in Christ, is encountered in 6 figures: the burning bush, the rod that became a serpent, the leprous hand, the manna, the tabernacle, and the tablets of stone on which were inscribed the Law. At least three of these have direct New Testament precedents, and the Finger of God (the Holy Spirit) is said to have inscribed the Divine nature on Human flesh in the Incarnation, and again on our hearts giving us the presence of God in our lives. Thus, the doctrine is not detached intellectualism, but immediate and capable of being experienced. But this is a different experience than the emotionalism of charismatic experience, more akin to the mystical experience of those attuned to the "small, still voice" of I Kings 19.

This book was recommended by a talk by David B. Hart; I'm glad I got it. Learning from the Greek fathers is enlightening.

Great book

Thanks