← LineageFeast Day for · Friday, 10 January 2031
Gregory of Nyssa
c. 335 – c. 395 · Bishop of Nyssa
Feast: 10 January
via Wikipedia
Younger brother of Basil and the third Cappadocian Father. Author of the Life of Moses, Catechetical Oration, and Life of Macrina.
The deepest mystic of the Cappadocians and the one Eastern Orthodoxy turns to when it talks about the soul's ascent to God. Life of Moses uses Moses going up Sinai as a model for every Christian's interior journey: the more you know God, the more you know how unknowable He is. That paradox — known precisely as unknowable — runs through every later Christian mystic, from Pseudo-Dionysius to Bernard to John of the Cross.
Notable works
- ·The Life of Moses · 390
- ·Catechetical Oration · 385
- ·Against Eunomius · 380
- ·On the Soul and Resurrection · 380
Primary sources
- ·Gregory of Nyssa, Vita Macrinae
- ·Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium
- ·Jerome, De Viris Illustribus 128
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