St. Gregory of Nyssa

The sources give different years for several events in Gregory's life, among them his consecration as bishop and his death. Where they differ, the text names who gives which.

For Inquirers

Gregory grew up in a house where nearly everyone became a saint: a grandmother who had suffered for her faith, a mother who taught her children their prayers, two brothers who became bishops, and an older sister who gave her life to prayer and to the care of others. He was trained to teach the art of public speaking before the Church made him the bishop of a small town. His own brother Basil, who loved him, wrote to friends that Gregory was simple and inexperienced in the business of running a church. Gregory's enemies accused him of misusing church money and drove him out of his town, and he went from place to place encouraging his flock until the emperor died. Then he went home to a flock that received him with joy.

What he left behind is the writing of a man who thought patiently about what he loved. When his brother died, Gregory went to see his sister, who was dying herself, and he wrote a dialogue in which she, "the Teacher," answers his grief with an account of what a person is, why death is not the end of one, and what it means to be raised. Some readers take her to be his sister Macrina, whom the Church remembers as a saint. He taught that every human being is made as a portrait of God, that the passions spread over that portrait like an ugly mask, and that the beauty of the portrait will be given back. He taught too that no name can hold God, that the more the mind learns of him the more it learns that he lies beyond what it has grasped, and that the road toward him has no last step, because there is no edge to God that you could one day reach. Heaven, as Gregory pictures it, is a road that keeps opening.

He also said some daring things about whether, at the very end, God's love might heal every last person, and thoughtful Christians have read those words in different ways ever since. The Church's hymns remember him as a shepherd who kept his flock, and a newcomer can meet him first as they do: a bishop whose humility is praised.

Overview

• Who: St. Gregory, bishop of Nyssa in Cappadocia (now central Turkey), the younger brother of Basil the Great, and with Basil and Gregory the Theologian one of the Cappadocians. Neither the OCA nor OrthodoxWiki gives his year of birth; as Basil's younger brother and Peter's elder, he was born somewhere between Basil's birth about 330 and the youngest brother Peter's about 340.^ow-basil
• What he is known for: the dialogue On the Soul and the Resurrection, the treatise On the Making of Man, the twelve books Against Eunomius, the letter To Ablabius (On Not Three Gods), the Great Catechism, the sermon On the Baptism of Christ, and a theology of the unknowable God and of endless growth in him.
• His offices: teacher of rhetoric, then bishop of Nyssa, from 372 by the OCA's and OrthodoxWiki's dating; deposed by his Arian opponents and restored in 378, after the death of the emperor Valens.[^oca-life][^ow-gn] He attended the Second Ecumenical Council (Constantinople I, 381), where the OCA names him among the leaders.[^oca-council][^ow-gn]
• His title: the OCA's life says he "has been called 'the Father of Fathers.'"[^oca-life]
• His day: January 10, the same day the Church keeps his sister Theosebia the Deaconess.[^ow-jan10]
• His hard question: whether his hope that evil will finally be undone amounts to a teaching that all are saved, which the last two sections take up (see Universalism).

Summary

Gregory belonged to one of the most remarkable families in the history of the Church. His mother Emmelia, his sister Macrina, his brothers Basil and Peter, and his sister Theosebia are all counted among the saints, and his grandmother Macrina the Elder is too.[^ow-gn][^ow-emily] He was trained as a rhetorician, made bishop of Nyssa by Basil, thrown out of his see by Arian opponents, and restored when Valens died. After Basil's death in 379 he took up Basil's quarrel with the Anomoean Eunomius and finished Basil's study of the six days of creation.[^oca-life][^eun-1-letter] He also wrote the dialogue On the Soul and the Resurrection, which opens at the deathbed of his sister, "the Teacher," whom two essays in Public Orthodoxy name as Macrina.[^sr-open][^po-love][^po-women] At Constantinople in 381 he was one of the bishops the OCA names as leaders of the Council, and when the Council's work was done the diocese of Pontus was committed to three bishops, of whom he was one.[^oca-council][^soc-5-8]

His thought moves between two poles. One is the conviction that God's nature is infinite and cannot be circumscribed by any name, so that the human mind advances toward him only by learning, again and again, that he lies beyond what it has grasped. The other is the conviction that human nature, made in God's image and spoiled by sin, is to be restored, and that the restoring has no ceiling. The same man who wrote that the Beautiful is a good that "will go on unchecked into infinity" also wrote passages on the burning away of evil that readers have taken to mean that every creature will in the end be healed, and readers have divided over those passages ever since.[^sr-love][^sr-fire]

A House Full of Saints

Gregory's parents were Basil the Elder and Emmelia. OrthodoxWiki speaks of a large family of ten children, and the accounts of the parents name, besides Gregory, the saints Macrina the Younger, Basil, Peter of Sebaste, Naucratius and Theosebia.[^ow-gn][^ow-basil-elder] His mother's life reports that when Naucratius died at twenty-seven it was the eldest daughter, Macrina, who reminded her that a Christian does not "mourn as those who have no hope" and inspired her to hope in the resurrection.[^ow-emily]

Macrina is the sister who steadies the household in these accounts. The OCA life of her says that her mother educated her in the Scriptures and the Psalms, that she was betrothed to a youth who died and afterward refused every suitor, that she helped to rear her younger brothers and sisters, and that after her father's death she persuaded her mother to free their slaves and settle with her in a women's monastery. OrthodoxWiki places that monastery on the family's land in Pontus, on the banks of the Iris, where a number of the freed women joined them.[^oca-macrina][^ow-emily]

The sources describe the schooling that followed only in outline. The OCA and OrthodoxWiki both say that he received an excellent education and at one time taught rhetoric.[^oca-life][^ow-gn] The OCA adds that his birth and upbringing came when the Arian disputes were at their height, and OrthodoxWiki says that he and Basil both spent much effort defending the faith against the Arians.[^oca-life][^ow-gn] His family made the Church his home before the Church made him a bishop.

Bishop of Nyssa

The OCA life says that in 372 Gregory "was consecrated by Saint Basil the Great as bishop of the city of Nyssa in Cappadocia," and OrthodoxWiki gives the same year with the verb "ordained."[^oca-life][^ow-gn] The year matters less than the circumstances, which Basil's own letters preserve. Basil loved his brother and did not think him suited to the work. Writing to Aburgius, he says that his "God-beloved brother Gregory the bishop has become involved in matters which would be under any circumstances disagreeable, and are quite foreign to his bent of mind." Letters (St. Basil of Caesarea) — Letter 33 0.4[^bas-33]

Other letters are blunter. In one Basil complains of "the simplicity of Gregory of Nyssa," who was calling a synod at Ancyra and leaving nothing undone to counteract him; in another, weighing who might go to Rome, he says that Gregory "is quite inexperienced in ecclesiastical affairs." Letters (St. Basil of Caesarea) — Letter 215 0.7[^bas-100][^bas-215]

The OCA life draws the same man more kindly, as a zealous teacher of his flock, "a kind and compassionate father to his spiritual children, and their intercessor before the courts," and names his "magnanimity, patience and love of peace."[^oca-life]

The OCA life says that Gregory was falsely accused of improper use of church property, deprived of his see and sent to Ancyra; that in the following year a council of Arian bishops deposed him again in his absence; and that he wandered from place to place encouraging his flock until the death of Valens in 378, when he was restored and "joyously received by his flock."[^oca-life] OrthodoxWiki agrees: twice deposed on false accusations made by heretics, restored in 378.[^ow-gn]

The English editors of Theodoret name one of the accusers. Demosthenes of Pontus, they note, became a partisan of the Semi-Arians and "accused Basil's brother, Gregory of Nyssa, of dishonesty," and they point to Basil's letters on the matter (in their numbering, Epistles 264, 385 and 405).[^theod-4-16] Another letter, to Eusebius of Samosata, shows how the expulsion looked from Basil's side. It does not mention Demosthenes. Basil writes in it, bitterly, of the men who now hold the churches: "They have expelled my brother from Nyssa, and into his place have introduced hardly a man." Letters (St. Basil of Caesarea) — Letter 239 1.5[^bas-239]

The OCA's life of Theosebia and OrthodoxWiki add that she, a deaconess, was with Gregory during three years of exile and shared his wandering.[^ow-theosebia][^oca-theosebia]

Basil's Death, Macrina's Death, and the Council

Basil died in 379. The OCA life says that Gregory survived the loss of his brother only with difficulty, delivered a funeral oration for him, and completed Basil's study of the six days of creation, the Hexaemeron.[^oca-life] The same year, by the OCA's account, he took part in a council at Antioch, which it says condemned both those who denied the perpetual virginity of the Mother of God and those at the opposite extreme who worshipped her as God (see Theotokos). He then visited the churches of Arabia and Palestine, and on his return journey, the life says, went to Jerusalem and the holy places.[^oca-life]

Macrina died in 380 according to the OCA, and OrthodoxWiki gives 379/380. Gregory spoke a eulogy over her and, OrthodoxWiki says, wrote The Life of St. Macrina.[^oca-macrina][^ow-macrina] Neither account quotes that Life. The OCA's life of Macrina does report that the sisters of her monastery told Gregory after her death of a girl she had healed of an eye affliction, and it adds that through her prayers the monastery's wheat did not run short in a famine.[^oca-macrina]

In 381 the bishops gathered at Constantinople for what the Church counts as the Second Ecumenical Council. The OCA's article on the Council names Gregory of Nyssa, with Gregory the Theologian and Meletius of Antioch, among its leaders. The OCA's life of Gregory calls him one of its chief figures, adds that on his initiative the Creed was completed, and says that he and the other bishops affirmed the Theologian as archpastor of Constantinople; OrthodoxWiki says only that he attended and that the Council added the final section on the Holy Spirit to the creed.[^oca-council][^oca-life][^ow-gn]

The canons of the Council do not name him. What survives is the church historian Socrates' account of the arrangements made at its close: bishops were to exercise no jurisdiction outside their own dioceses, and Helladius of Caesarea obtained what Socrates calls the patriarchate of the diocese of Pontus "in conjunction with Gregory Basil's brother, bishop of Nyssa" in Cappadocia and with Otreius of Melitina in Armenia.[^soc-5-8]

When Meletius of Antioch died during the Council, it was Gregory who honored him with a eulogy, and the oration still carries the grief of that year: "War, the war of heresy, encompasses us, and our Leader is no more." Funeral Oration on Meletius 0.8[^mel][^oca-meletius]

His public career did not end with the Council. The OCA life lists a council at Constantinople in 383 where he preached on the divinity of the Son and the Spirit, the funeral oration he gave for the empress Placilla in 386, and a council there in 394 called to settle matters in Arabia, and it says that he died soon after that last assembly.[^oca-life] The sources do not agree on the date of his death. OrthodoxWiki's timeline of Church history places it in 385, its life of Gregory says only that he "reposed in the Lord near the end of the fourth century," and the OCA's own account, which has him preaching in 386 and sitting in council in 394, cannot be squared with a death in 385.[^ow-timeline][^ow-gn][^oca-life]

The Dialogue with Macrina

On the Soul and the Resurrection opens as an act of grief. Basil has just died, and the narrator, Gregory, goes to visit his sister: "Basil, great among the saints, had departed from this life to God; and the impulse to mourn for him was shared by all the churches. But his sister the Teacher was still living; and so I journeyed to her." On the Soul and the Resurrection 0.1 On the Soul and the Resurrection 0.2[^sr-open] He finds her dying as well. She lets him weep for a little while and then checks him with the Apostle's words about not grieving as those without hope. The rest of the book is the argument that follows, in which Gregory takes the part of the skeptic at her request and the sister, whom he calls throughout "the Teacher" and also "the Virgin," answers him.[^sr-open] The dialogue itself never gives her name; the Public Orthodoxy essays identify her as Macrina, and that is the name used below.[^po-love][^po-women]

Gregory's objection is the one anyone standing at a deathbed feels: the body dissolves into its elements, and if the soul is not in the elements, where can it be? Macrina answers with reasons. She reminds him that the heavens declare the glory of God and that the harmony of the world points to a wise Maker, and she turns the same inference inward, since the soul makes itself known by what it does in the body, as a physician reads a patient's whole condition from the pulse. Pressed for a definition, she gives one: "The soul is an essence created, and living, and intellectual, transmitting from itself to an organized and sentient body the power of living and of grasping objects of sense, as long as a natural constitution capable of this holds together." On the Soul and the Resurrection 0.80[^sr-def]

In her reasoning the soul, being made in God's likeness, resembles him in being intellectual and immaterial without being identical with him, as a minute particle of glass facing the sun may show the whole disc of the sun in the small measure the glass allows.[^sr-glass] For the soul as such, see The Soul, and for the image, The Image of God.

In the second half of the book Macrina holds that the resurrection is a restoration, and she draws the picture from the harvest: "the Resurrection is no other thing than the re-constitution of our nature in its original form." On the Soul and the Resurrection 0.657[^sr-res] The grain that falls into the ground does not cease to be itself, and the ear that rises from it is more splendid than the seed. "We too, in fact, were once in a fashion a full ear; but the burning heat of sin withered us up," and the earth received us at death. Adam was the first ear, and in the spring of the Resurrection, Macrina says, the earth gives back countless ears in the cornfields where there had been that single one.[^sr-res] The same pages carry the passages on purgation and the end of evil that come up again in the last two sections below. For the resurrection of the body as a doctrine, see Bodily Resurrection.

The Great Catechism

The Great Catechism is a manual for teachers who must explain the faith to inquirers. The English translation prints a chapter-by-chapter analysis, and the account of the plan that follows rests on it. The analysis opens with God and his Word, arguing that belief in God rests on the order of the world and that the mystery of the faith avoids both Jewish monotheism and heathen polytheism by confessing that the Word has life and will and carries all the attributes of the Father whose Word he is. It goes on to the creation of man, made in the image of God from superabounding love, free and therefore able to choose evil, which the analysis describes as a privation of the good; to the Fall, in which a created spirit turned from the good through envy and seduced the first men; and then to the Incarnation, which it presents as the fitting way of raising the fallen, with a long defense of its reasonableness.[^cat]

One image from the Catechism is quoted by John Behr. A clay vessel has been filled with molten lead; its owner, being a potter, breaks it, pours out the lead, and remolds the clay into its first shape. "By a like process the maker of our vessel, now that wickedness has intermingled with our sentient part, I mean that connected with the body, will dissolve the material which has received the evil, and, remolding it again by the resurrection without any admixture of the contrary matter, will recombine the elements into the vessel in its original beauty."[^behr-vessel] Behr sets the passage among a number of Fathers who give death a remedial role in God's economy, so that the traces of sin may be purged from the body before it is refashioned.[^behr-vessel]

The chapters on the sacraments, as the analysis gives them, follow the same plan of healing. Baptism depends on prayer, water and faith, and the threefold immersion is "our earliest mortification," while the rising out of the water is a forecast of the ease with which the pure shall rise in the resurrection.[^cat]

For the Eucharist the analysis is fuller. Our bodies, it says, have received poison and need an antidote, and the antidote is the one Body that is the receptacle of Deity; it explains how that Body can enter each of the faithful whole by the analogy of nourishment. The Savior's own bread and wine became his Body when the Word dwelt in him, and "so now repeatedly the bread and wine, sanctified by the Word (the sacred Benediction), is at the same time changed into the Body of that Word."[^cat-37] See Eucharist and Baptism. What the analysis says of the ransom and of the adversary himself comes up below, under the restoration of all.

The Image of God and the Fall

On the Making of Man began as a gift. Gregory sends it to his brother Peter at Easter and says that he means to add to Basil's account of the creation what that account left unsaid.[^mm-intro] The work is a long reflection on Genesis 1:26-27, which reads in the Brenton text: "And God said, Let us make man according to our image and likeness." Genesis 1.26 The question that drives Gregory is how a being so plainly mortal, passible and short-lived can be called the image of an immortal and impassible God. He begins by refusing the flattering answer of pagan writers, who make man a little copy of the world. Asked where the greatness of man lies according to the doctrine of the Church, he answers: "Not in his likeness to the created world, but in his being in the image of the nature of the Creator."[^mm-16]

The image shows itself above all in freedom. Having named virtue, wisdom and every higher thing as part of the likeness, Gregory picks out the one that stands first: "we are free from necessity, and not in bondage to any natural power, but have decision in our own power as we please; for virtue is a voluntary thing, subject to no dominion."[^mm-11] Because the image is created it is also changeable, and it can turn toward the good or away from it. Gregory takes care to keep the image from being mistaken for a piece of God, for an image without any difference from its original would be the original: it "would no longer be a likeness, but will in that case manifestly be absolutely identical with the Prototype." The difference is that the divine is uncreated and the image is made.[^mm-12]

The fall, in Gregory's account, comes through the passions, which he traces to a kinship with the irrational creation. In the eighteenth chapter he argues that anger, pleasure, cowardice and the love of gain belong to the animal side of human life, and that when a person drags his reason down to serve these impulses the good stamp in him is converted into the irrational image. He draws the result as a picture: "the misery that encompasses us often causes the Divine gift to be forgotten, and spreads the passions of the flesh, like some ugly mask, over the beauty of the image."[^mm-18]

Maximus the Confessor says in the Various Texts that he is following Gregory when he holds that pleasure and distress, desire and fear were not originally part of human nature but were let in by the fall, which replaced the divine image with "a clear and obvious likeness to animals."[^max]

John of Damascus, defending the images of Christ against the iconoclasts, quotes Gregory's fifth chapter on the divine beauty and on the painters who "transfer human forms to canvas through certain colours," and makes the comparison his own argument for icons.[^jd-icons] See Icons.

Gregory does not hold that souls existed before bodies, the teaching that they lived in heaven and fell into flesh for sin. In the twenty-eighth chapter he works out where that teaching leads: if a soul can fall from heaven into a body, nothing in the theory can halt its descent through the animals and the plants toward nothing, and it ends in what he mocks as fit for frogs and jackdaws. He rejects it together with the opposite error that the soul was made after the body: "The doctrine of both, then, is equally to be rejected."[^mm-28] For the teaching he rejects, see The Transmigration of Souls; it bears on the last two sections.

The God No Name Can Hold

When Basil died, Eunomius, a leader of the Anomoeans (the party OrthodoxWiki describes as holding the Son to be of a nature different from the Father's),[^ow-anom] had been abusing him in print, and Gregory took up the controversy as a legacy. In the first of two prefatory letters, addressed to his brother Peter, bishop of Sebasteia, he explains how the book came about. He had only seventeen days with a borrowed copy of Eunomius' work and could not answer both of Eunomius' pamphlets, and he wrote while still raw with bereavement: "When our saintly Basil fell asleep, and I received the legacy of Eunomius' controversy, when my heart was hot within me with bereavement…" Against Eunomius — Book I 0.7[^eun-1-letter]

Peter's reply praises the work and urges him to run his sword through both pamphlets,[^eun-1-letter] and the Answer to Eunomius' Second Book opens by taking up Eunomius' second work.[^eun-ans] The work as the English edition numbers it runs to twelve books. The first is partly a defense of Basil against Eunomius' slanders and partly an exposition of the faith, and the fifth turns on one of those slanders.

The charge was that Basil was ashamed of the Cross. John Behr summarizes Gregory's answer as the claim that it is Eunomius who is ashamed of the Cross, since he treats the Passion as evidence of weakness in the Son when it is evidence of a surpassing act of power.[^behr-eun] Gregory puts the question in the fifth book himself: "Who then is it who is ashamed of the Cross?" Against Eunomius — Book V 0.74 He answers that it is the man who ranks the Son with the creatures.[^eun-5]

On Gregory's reading the Cross shows the power of God by means external to his own nature, as the heralds of the faith proclaim: "God was manifested in the flesh, that the Word was made flesh, that the Light shined in darkness, the Life tasted death." Against Eunomius — Book V 0.78[^eun-5] The Cross, on this account, is no embarrassment to the faith but the place where God's surplus of power shows itself. Behr calls this, in Gregory's reading, "the central mystery of the apostolic proclamation," and he draws from it that the God revealed on the Cross is not less God for being there.[^behr-eun]

Eunomius held that the essence of God can be known and named. The English editors of the Answer to Eunomius' Second Book summarize him as believing that there is a word for the substance of God, which he finds in Agennetos, "unbegotten."[^eun-ans-intro] Palamas, drawing on Gregory's refutation, describes Eunomius as claiming that the essence of God is revealed by created things, and his party as arguing that Father and Son differ in essence because begetting and being begotten differ.[^pal] When Gregory confesses that the divine essence cannot be described, his opponents answer with the saying "You worship you know not what."[^eun-3] Gregory's reply in the third book is that no name reaches the infinite: "For by what name can I describe the incomprehensible? By what speech can I declare the unspeakable? Accordingly, since the Deity is too excellent and lofty to be expressed in words, we have learned to honour in silence what transcends speech and thought." Against Eunomius — Book Iii 0.207 Against Eunomius — Book Iii 0.208 Against Eunomius — Book Iii 0.209[^eun-3]

OrthodoxWiki summarizes the reasoning: if God were limited, he would have to be limited by something greater than himself, so he has no boundaries and cannot be comprehended.[^ow-gn] Gregory's own authority is Paul, for whom God's judgments are unsearchable and his ways past finding out, and from Paul he turns Eunomius' taunt back on him. The Lord told the Samaritan woman that she worshipped what she did not know, because she thought God was circumscribed in place; Gregory says that Christians "really worship what we know," because they know the loftiness of God's glory by the very fact that reason cannot comprehend it.[^eun-3]

The Answer to Eunomius' Second Book draws the same lesson from Abraham, who left his country not knowing where he went, and whose faith became a law for all who would draw near to God: "the belief that He is greater and more sublime than any token by which He may be known." Answer to Eunomius' Second Book 0.232[^eun-ans]

OrthodoxWiki summarizes Gregory's spiritual theology as having three stages: a first darkness of ignorance, then illumination, then a darkness of the mind in contemplation of the God who cannot be comprehended. It draws the stages from his use of Moses, who meets God first in the burning bush as light, then in the cloud, and finally on Sinai in "the divine darkness."[^ow-gn]

Gregory works that reading out at length in his Life of Moses, but the verse it rests on is: "And the people stood afar off, and Moses went into the darkness where God was." Exodus 20.21 OrthodoxWiki prints a few of Gregory's lines from the work, among them the claim that the soul, purified by the crossing of the Sea and fed with the bread of heaven, can go on to the contemplation of transcendent Being.[^ow-gn] For the ground of this way of speaking, see Apophatic and Cataphatic Theology, and for the later distinction between God's essence and energies, Essence Energies, where Gregory's reply to Eunomius is quoted at length.

Gregory Palamas counts him a witness for that distinction. Palamas quotes Gregory's refutation of Eunomius on how the names we give God come from his activity and not from his essence, and for the reader who wants more he writes: "Read through the writings against Eunomios by St Basil the Great and his brother, St Gregory of Nyssa, who fraternally shares his views." There, he says, one will find ample refutations to use against the followers of Barlaam and Akindynos.[^pal]

One God in Three

Gregory's letter To Ablabius, called On Not Three Gods, answers a question Ablabius had put to him. Ablabius had asked why, if Peter, James and John, sharing one human nature, are called three men, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, sharing one divine nature, are not called three Gods. Gregory states the dilemma plainly: the question compels one "either to say there are three Gods, which is unlawful, or not to acknowledge the Godhead of the Son and the Holy Spirit, which is impious and absurd." On "Not Three Gods 0.4[^abl]

His answer begins by denying the premise. To count men as many, he says, is "a customary abuse of language," since the man in Peter, James and John is one nature. He then turns to what the Persons do. Every operation of God toward creation has its origin in the Father, proceeds through the Son and is completed in the Spirit, with no work belonging to one Person alone, so that the unity of operation forbids counting three Gods. What distinguishes the Persons is a difference in the manner of existing, one being the Cause and another of the Cause, and not a difference of nature.[^abl] The argument is set out in full, with the Greek terms, in Ousia and Hypostasis, and the doctrine it serves in The Trinity.

Scripture, Gregory says in the same letter, teaches the divine nature to be "unnameable and unspeakable," and every name we use for it names something about the nature without explaining the nature itself.[^abl]

The treatise On the Holy Spirit, Against the Macedonians, opens with the charge against the Church, that it is guilty of "profanity for entertaining lofty conceptions about the Holy Spirit," when all that the Church confesses, following the Fathers, is that the Spirit is of the same rank as the Father and the Son.[^hs] See The Holy Spirit.

John of Damascus, in his own defense of the two energies in Christ, calls on the blessed Gregory, bishop of Nyssa, for the principle that "things that have one and the same energy, have also absolutely the same power," and he argues from it that the uncreated and the created natures cannot share one energy.[^jd-exp]

Endless Growth in God

Gregory's teaching on endless growth sits where the two lines of thought above meet: God is infinite, and the human creature is made to grow toward him. OrthodoxWiki calls Gregory the first Christian theologian to argue for the infinity of God, and it states his related idea of epektasis compactly. Where Platonic thought made stability the mark of perfection and change a falling away, Gregory made perfection a "constant progress in virtue and godliness," an idea that OrthodoxWiki says has had a profound influence on the Eastern Orthodox teaching on theosis.[^ow-gn] The Philokalia's introduction to Theophanis the Monk says that he, like Gregory, sees perfection as endless progress in the age to come, "a step that has no limit."[^theoph]

In the eighth book Against Eunomius, arguing that the creature differs from God in that it never holds all that is good, he says that the creation is constantly in a state of beginning to be in excellence, because everything it gains becomes the start of an ascent to something greater, so that it never ceases, "in Paul's phrase, reaching forth to the things that are before, and forgetting the things that are behind." Against Eunomius — Book Viii 0.158[^eun-8] The phrase is Paul's, and in the WEB text it reads: "forgetting the things which are behind and stretching forward to the things which are before." Philippians 3.13

In On the Making of Man Gregory gives the philosophical form of the claim: whatever is in motion toward the good "will never cease moving onwards to what lies before it, by reason of the infinity of the course to be traversed."[^mm-21]

In the dialogue with Macrina the same logic is turned to love. The Apostle, she says, finds no limit for love alone, since when the things hoped for arrive, faith and hope fall quiet and love is left active with nothing to succeed it. God's own life is love of the Beautiful, and the Beautiful has no limit at which that love must stop: "This True Beauty the insolence of satiety cannot touch; and … that good will go on unchecked into infinity." On the Soul and the Resurrection 0.364 On the Soul and the Resurrection 0.366[^sr-love] The theme returns in Theosis, which sets the passage beside Irenaeus and the later tradition.

The OCA quotes his sixth sermon on the Beatitudes: "The Lord does not say that it is blessed to know something about God, but rather to possess God in oneself."[^oca-knowledge] It also reports that in his commentary on the Lord's Prayer Gregory cites another reading of the petition "Thy Kingdom come," namely "Thy Holy Spirit come upon us and cleanse us," and takes the presence of the Spirit in a person to be the presence of Christ and the Kingdom of God.[^oca-lords]

A parish catechesis from St. John Church quotes Gregory's teaching on the pure in heart, who will see the image of the divine nature in their own beauty, as a gloss on the words of Christ: "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." Matthew 5.8[^sjc]

Made God by the Mingling

In the fifth book against Eunomius Gregory speaks of the union of God and man in Christ in the boldest terms. Of the body in which Christ suffered he says: "We on our part assert that even the body in which He underwent His Passion, by being mingled with the Divine Nature, was made by that commixture to be that which the assuming Nature is." Against Eunomius — Book V 0.76[^eun-5]

A few pages on the thought is stated more boldly. In the Lord's mystery, Gregory says, the immutable God came to be in what is mutable, "to the end that altering it for the better, and changing it from the worse, He might abolish the evil which is mingled with our mutable condition, destroying the evil in Himself." Against Eunomius — Book V 0.128[^eun-5-2]

The perishable nature, he says, "by its commixture with the Divine, made anew in conformity with the Nature that overwhelms it, participates in the power of the Godhead." Against Eunomius — Book V 0.179 The humanity of Christ, on this account, is not left standing beside the divinity as it was before the union. Gregory's comparison is a drop of vinegar mingled in the deep, which becomes sea "by reason that the natural quality of this liquid does not continue in the infinity of that which overwhelms it."[^eun-5-3]

Behr, summarizing the same passages, writes that by commixture with the divine the man Christ "becomes God," and he places Gregory among the Fathers who find the transforming power of God in what lies outside his nature: in flesh, in darkness and in death.[^behr-eun] The English edition's summary of the same book adds a balance, that the Divine nature, after mingling with the Human, "preserved the properties of each nature without confusion."[^eun-5-4]

The baptismal sermon speaks of restoration. The festival of the Lights, Gregory tells his people, brings the mysteries that "purge out from soul and body even that sin which is hard to cleanse away, and which bring us back to that fairness of our first estate which God, the best of artificers, impressed upon us." On the Baptism of Christ 0.10[^bapt] See Theosis and The Incarnation.

A Shepherd Among His People

Gregory could also preach to a crowded church. The sermon On the Baptism of Christ, "A Sermon for the Day of the Lights," begins with a pastor's joy at seeing his people gathered: "Now I recognize my own flock: today I behold the wonted figure of the Church." On the Baptism of Christ 0.2[^bapt] He tells them frankly that he had been discouraged the Sunday before, when they were straying in distant wanderings, and that when the church is empty he thinks of fleeing to the Carmel of Elijah or to some rock where no one lives; seeing them thronging in with their families, he says, he feels a shepherd's affections.[^bapt]

The water and the Spirit belong to Baptism, and the Old Testament types of the font to Typology in Scripture; Gregory's account of the threefold immersion is as plain as a catechist's: "by doing this thrice we represent for ourselves that grace of the Resurrection which was wrought in three days." On the Baptism of Christ 0.67[^bapt]

Gregory preaches the baptismal command against those who deny the Spirit. The Lord's words give the rule for the invocation (Matthew 28.19), and Gregory explains the three names: the Father is named because he is the first cause of all things, the Son because he is the Maker of creation, the Holy Spirit because he is the power that perfects all.[^bapt-2]

The sermon ends with a prayer that names, one after another, what God has undone: "You hated, and were reconciled; You cursed, and blessed; You banished us from Paradise, and recalled us." On the Baptism of Christ 0.168[^bapt]

According to a note in Wikipedia's article on limbo, the treatise On Infants' Early Deaths is addressed to Hierius, prefect of Cappadocia. Gregory argues that the enjoyment of the life to come "does indeed belong of right to the human being," and that an infant, having no such "plague of ignorance" before its soul's eyes, needs no purgation and continues in the natural life that is its own. On Infants' Early Deaths 0.90[^inf] He ranks such a child below a person who has lived in virtue, since he does not conceive of their lives as on the same level, and he is clear that early death is no sign of a grievous misfortune. The same treatise will matter again below for another reason.

The letter On Pilgrimages, written in answer to a friend's question, reasons that when the Lord invites the blessed to their inheritance, "He does not include a pilgrimage to Jerusalem among their good deeds." On Pilgrimages 0.4[^pilg] It is a sober word from a bishop who, by the OCA's account, himself went up to Jerusalem and the holy places on a journey home.[^oca-life]

The Restoration of All

One question about Gregory keeps returning: did he teach that every creature will in the end be saved? The doctrine in its strong form is called apokatastasis, a Greek word for "restoration,"[^ow-apoc] and its general treatment is in Universalism and Hell. The case for Gregory and the case against him are made from the same pages, so his texts come first, at full strength.

What his texts say

The fullest statement is in the dialogue with Macrina, where she is answering a worry about judgment. She begins with the pain of a soul that has fastened itself to material things and is drawn away from them, and she compares it to the pain of a body dragged from the ruins of a collapsed house: "Not in hatred or revenge for a wicked life, to my thinking, does God bring upon sinners those painful dispensations; He is only claiming and drawing to Himself whatever, to please Him, came into existence." On the Soul and the Resurrection 0.372[^sr-fire]

The fire, in her account, burns away what has grown into the person, as a refiner melts gold together with its alloy and the gold remains: "while evil is being consumed in the purgatorial fire, the soul that is welded to this evil must inevitably be in the fire too, until the spurious material alloy is consumed and annihilated by this fire." On the Soul and the Resurrection 0.374[^sr-fire]

Macrina carries the argument to the end of things. Liberty is one and draws what is free to itself, virtue is free, and God is the fountain of virtue, so that those who have put evil away will be united with him. From Paul's phrase that God will be all in all she draws a sharp conclusion, and the Scripture she relies on reads in the WEB: "that God may be all in all." 1 Corinthians 15.28 If God is to be in all existing things, she argues, evil cannot be among them, for the exception of evil would spoil the "all." She says in her own words that this appears to her to teach "the complete annihilation of evil." On the Soul and the Resurrection 0.394[^sr-all]

Later she describes the goal in terms that include every human being. God's one end, she says, is that when the whole of our race has been perfected, "some having at once in this life been cleansed from evil, others having afterwards in the necessary periods been healed by the Fire, others having in their life here been unconscious equally of good and of evil," each should be offered a share in the blessings of God. On the Soul and the Resurrection 0.630[^sr-end] The difference between the virtuous and the vicious then lies in how long each must be healed, and she measures it by the depth of the evil: "According to the amount of the ingrained wickedness of each will be computed the duration of his cure." On the Soul and the Resurrection 0.633[^sr-end]

The dialogue pictures the outcome as a feast. When the barriers that sin built have been taken down, she says, "a universal feast will be kept around the Deity … and one and the same banquet will be spread for all, with no differences cutting off any rational creature from an equal participation in it," and she ties it to Paul's word that every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. On the Soul and the Resurrection 0.540[^sr-feast] The Apostle's words read in the WEB: "that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, those on earth, and those under the earth." Philippians 2.10

On the Making of Man reaches the same hope by another road, the nature of evil. Evil is bounded and good is not, so a nature in motion must at last reach the limit of wickedness and turn back, as a traveler who passes beyond the cone of the earth's shadow finds himself in unbroken light. From this Gregory concludes: "Paradise therefore will be restored, that tree will be restored which is in truth the tree of life — there will be restored the grace of the image, and the dignity of rule."[^mm-21b] In the next chapter he speaks of the time when humanity is no longer being produced, and of a restitution of all things at the end.[^mm-22]

The analysis of the Great Catechism says of the ransom paid to the devil that the adversary "must himself at last find that what has been done is just and salutary, when he also shall experience the benefit of the Incarnation. He, as well as humanity, will be purged."[^cat]

In the fifth book against Eunomius the Incarnation is God altering our nature for the better and destroying the evil in himself, for "our God is a consuming fire" (Hebrews 12.29), "by whom all the material of wickedness is done away." Against Eunomius — Book V 0.129[^eun-5-2]

On Infants' Early Deaths holds a counterweight. In it he says that, set beside a person who has lived all his life in sin, even one who never came into the world is blessed, and he points to the sentence on Judas. He adds: "on account of the depth of the ingrained evil, the chastisement in the way of purgation will be extended into infinity." On Infants' Early Deaths 0.111[^inf-2] The English edition has "infinity" here, and the Greek behind it is not before us. Beside Macrina's statement that the duration of each cure is computed by the amount of wickedness, the sentence shows Gregory tying purgation to the depth of the evil, and readers differ over what that implies for the end.

He also rejects the doctrine of pre-existent souls, which in Origen's system stands behind the restoration. In On the Making of Man he calls it a fable and denies it, as shown above, and the wording of the anathemas against Origen ties the two together (see below).[^mm-28][^c553-an] Finally, the lines of the dialogue are spoken by Macrina, while Gregory's own persona in the dialogue is the one who objects.[^sr-open]

How he has been read

The OrthodoxWiki article on Gregory takes the careful line. It says that he "taught that while it cannot be known whether or not all humans will be saved, as Origen speculated, faithful Christians may hope and pray for the salvation of all, even after death," and it presents this as a hopeful alternative to the theology of Augustine.[^ow-gn]

The same site's article on apocatastasis is flatter. It says that Gregory "accepted the idea of apocatastasis from Origen" and that this part of his writings was rejected by the Fathers who came after. Its one witness is a saying attributed to Varsanuphius the Great, who, asked about Gregory's opinion, answered that saints cannot grasp all the depths of God and that such an opinion resulted from the doctrine of Gregory's former teachers. The article itself marks that quotation as lacking a citation.[^ow-apoc]

Mark of Ephesus, in his Second Homily on Purgatorial Fire, is described in Fr. Seraphim Rose's summary as showing "that St. Gregory of Nyssa does not teach about 'purgatory' at all, but holds the much worse error of Origen, that there will be an end to the eternal flames of hell — although it may be that these ideas were placed in his writings later by Origenists." The summary is Rose's, not Mark's own wording. In the part of the homily that Rose gives in full, Mark argues that interpretations of Scripture are to be weighed by their agreement with the dogmas of the Church, and that an interpretation of the fire tending toward a final restoration of souls through that fire was forbidden by the Fifth Council.[^rose]

Georges Florovsky, in an essay on the last things, reads Gregory as holding one particular hypothesis, that at the Last Judgment unbelievers and the unrepentant will be "finally moved by the divine challenge, and are 'freely' converted." He counts it a limit of the Hellenic mind, which took evidence to be enough to move the will, and says that only in Maximus the Confessor, after further centuries of ascetic experience, is there a deeper interpretation of the apokatastasis, in which the order of creation is fully restored but those who have chosen darkness remain unable to enjoy the light.[^flor]

Others read Gregory as an ally. David Bentley Hart, in an essay on Public Orthodoxy about his book That All Shall Be Saved, writes that the book moves "toward something like Origen's or Gregory of Nyssa's understanding of eschatology as involving a twofold judgment," and he credits Gregory with seeing that the very idea of a saved person makes no sense within the logic of limited election.[^hart]

What the Church has done with him

The OCA's page on the Fathers lists Gregory of Nyssa among the fathers who "have received the universal approval and praise of the Church through the ages." It says nothing there of the restoration.[^oca-fathers] The Council in Trullo, in its second canon, sets its seal upon the canons of the great hierarchs, among them those of Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa.[^trullo] Vincent of Lérins says that when the Council of Ephesus recited the Fathers, the lights of Cappadocia were read with the others, and he names "St. Gregory of Nyssa, for his faith, his conversation, his integrity, and his wisdom, most worthy to be the brother of Basil."[^vincent]

An imperial letter dated in the twenty-seventh year of Justinian's reign, laid before the Second Council of Constantinople in the dispute over the Three Chapters, declares: "we hold fast to the decrees of the four Councils, and in every way follow the holy Fathers, Athanasius, Hilary, Basil, Gregory the Theologian, Gregory of Nyssa" and others.[^c553]

The anathemas against Origen condemn the doctrine of restoration in the form Origen gave it. OrthodoxWiki says they come from a local council of Constantinople (its text gives the year as 453, apparently a slip for 543), which most commentators understand to have been confirmed by the Fifth Ecumenical Council in 553, so their exact status is itself a matter of dispute.[^ow-apoc] The first of them reads: "If anyone asserts the fabulous pre-existence of souls, and shall assert the monstrous restoration which follows from it: let him be anathema." A later anathema condemns the claim that in this pretended apocatastasis only spirits will continue to exist.[^c553-an] Their wording is aimed at Origen's system. Gregory is not named in them, and, as shown above, he rejects the pre-existence on which the first of them rests. Whether the words reach these passages is a question to which Mark of Ephesus, as Rose gives him, answers yes; the anathemas themselves do not name Gregory.

The weight the Church gives a Father's writings is the subject of Sacred Tradition; the category for opinions held by saints that the Church has neither condemned nor defined is treated in Theologoumena; and the larger argument over judgment, mercy and human freedom is in Universalism, Hell and Constantinople II.

A Teacher of Teachers

John of Damascus, as shown above, calls on Gregory as a witness for the two energies in Christ and quotes him in defense of the holy images.[^jd-exp][^jd-icons] Maximus follows him on the passions, and Palamas points his readers to his books against Eunomius.[^max][^pal] Peter of Damaskos lists his writings among the books he read through for the root of man's destruction and salvation, and says that the man who learns to meditate on providence "begins to see things as they are in their true nature, as St Gregory of Nyssa and St John of Damaskos say."[^peter]

The Church keeps his memory on January 10, the day it also keeps his sister Theosebia, and the troparion addresses him in the voice of the flock he served: "In truth you were revealed to your flock as a rule of faith, / an image of humility and a teacher of abstinence; / your humility exalted you; / your poverty enriched you."[^trop] The kontakion calls him a watchful pastor who drove heretics away like wolves.[^trop]

The man whom Basil, in his letters, called simple and inexperienced is remembered in the Church's hymns as a shepherd who kept his flock. OrthodoxWiki says that his ideal of constant progress has had a profound influence on the Eastern teaching on Theosis, and his refusal to let any name hold God is taken up under the unknowability of God. His words on the end of evil have been read, as the sections above show, as a hope, as an error, and as an open hypothesis.

Sources

[^oca-life]: Orthodox Church in America, "Saint Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa" (Lives of the Saints, January 10). [^ow-gn]: OrthodoxWiki, "Gregory of Nyssa." [^ow-jan10]: OrthodoxWiki, "January 10." [^ow-emily]: OrthodoxWiki, "Emily." [^ow-basil-elder]: OrthodoxWiki, "Basil the Elder." [^oca-macrina]: Orthodox Church in America, "Venerable Macrina, Sister of Saint Basil the Great" (Lives of the Saints, July 19). [^ow-macrina]: OrthodoxWiki, "Macrina the Younger." [^ow-theosebia]: OrthodoxWiki, "Theosebia the Deaconess." [^oca-theosebia]: Orthodox Church in America, "Blessed Theosebia the Deaconess, Sister of Saint Basil the Great" (Lives of the Saints, January 10). [^oca-council]: Orthodox Church in America, "The Second Ecumenical Council." [^soc-5-8]: Socrates Scholasticus, Ecclesiastical History 5.8. [^bas-33]: Basil of Caesarea, Letter 33. [^bas-100]: Basil of Caesarea, Letter 100. [^bas-215]: Basil of Caesarea, Letter 215. [^bas-239]: Basil of Caesarea, Letter 239. [^theod-4-16]: Theodoret, Ecclesiastical History 4.16, editors' note 726 (NPNF 2nd ser, vol. 3). [^mel]: Gregory of Nyssa, Funeral Oration on Meletius (NPNF 2nd ser, vol. 5). [^oca-meletius]: Orthodox Church in America, "Saint Meletius, Archbishop of Antioch" (Lives of the Saints, February 12). [^ow-timeline]: OrthodoxWiki, "Timeline of Church History (Nicene Era, 325–451)." [^sr-open]: Gregory of Nyssa, On the Soul and the Resurrection, opening of the dialogue (NPNF 2nd ser, vol. 5, trans. W. Moore and H. A. Wilson). [^sr-def]: Gregory of Nyssa, On the Soul and the Resurrection (NPNF 2nd ser, vol. 5), Macrina's definition of the soul. [^sr-glass]: Gregory of Nyssa, On the Soul and the Resurrection (NPNF 2nd ser, vol. 5), on the soul as image. [^sr-res]: Gregory of Nyssa, On the Soul and the Resurrection (NPNF 2nd ser, vol. 5), on the resurrection and the grain of wheat. [^sr-love]: Gregory of Nyssa, On the Soul and the Resurrection (NPNF 2nd ser, vol. 5), on love and the Beautiful. [^sr-fire]: Gregory of Nyssa, On the Soul and the Resurrection (NPNF 2nd ser, vol. 5), on the soul's purification. [^sr-all]: Gregory of Nyssa, On the Soul and the Resurrection (NPNF 2nd ser, vol. 5), on liberty, virtue and "God all in all." [^sr-end]: Gregory of Nyssa, On the Soul and the Resurrection (NPNF 2nd ser, vol. 5), on the end of God's purpose for the race. [^sr-feast]: Gregory of Nyssa, On the Soul and the Resurrection (NPNF 2nd ser, vol. 5), on the tabernacle and the universal feast. [^cat]: Gregory of Nyssa, Great Catechism, analysis of chapters 1–6, 7–8, 26 and 33–36 (NPNF 2nd ser, vol. 5). [^cat-37]: Gregory of Nyssa, Great Catechism 37, analysis (NPNF 2nd ser, vol. 5). [^behr-vessel]: John Behr, The Mystery of Christ: Life in Death (2006), quoting Gregory of Nyssa, Great Catechism 8. [^behr-eun]: John Behr, The Mystery of Christ: Life in Death (2006), discussing Gregory of Nyssa, Against Eunomius (Book V in the NPNF numbering). [^mm-intro]: Gregory of Nyssa, On the Making of Man, prefatory letter to Peter (NPNF 2nd ser, vol. 5). [^mm-16]: Gregory of Nyssa, On the Making of Man 16.2 (NPNF 2nd ser, vol. 5). [^mm-11]: Gregory of Nyssa, On the Making of Man 16.11 (NPNF 2nd ser, vol. 5). [^mm-12]: Gregory of Nyssa, On the Making of Man 16.12 (NPNF 2nd ser, vol. 5). [^mm-18]: Gregory of Nyssa, On the Making of Man 18.1–6 (NPNF 2nd ser, vol. 5). [^mm-28]: Gregory of Nyssa, On the Making of Man 28.1–8 (NPNF 2nd ser, vol. 5). [^mm-21]: Gregory of Nyssa, On the Making of Man 21.2 (NPNF 2nd ser, vol. 5). [^mm-21b]: Gregory of Nyssa, On the Making of Man 21.2–4 (NPNF 2nd ser, vol. 5). [^mm-22]: Gregory of Nyssa, On the Making of Man 22.5 (NPNF 2nd ser, vol. 5). [^max]: Maximus the Confessor, Various Texts on Theology, the Divine Economy, and Virtue and Vice 1.65 (in the Philokalia). [^jd-icons]: John of Damascus, Apologia Against Those Who Decry Holy Icons, Part 1. [^jd-exp]: John of Damascus, Exposition of the Orthodox Faith 3.15. [^eun-1-letter]: Gregory of Nyssa, Against Eunomius, Book I, first and second prefatory letters (NPNF 2nd ser, vol. 5). [^eun-5]: Gregory of Nyssa, Against Eunomius, Book V, section 3 (NPNF 2nd ser, vol. 5). [^eun-5-2]: Gregory of Nyssa, Against Eunomius, Book V, section 3 (NPNF 2nd ser, vol. 5). [^eun-5-3]: Gregory of Nyssa, Against Eunomius, Book V, section 3 (NPNF 2nd ser, vol. 5). [^eun-3]: Gregory of Nyssa, Against Eunomius, Book III, section 5 (NPNF 2nd ser, vol. 5). [^eun-8]: Gregory of Nyssa, Against Eunomius, Book VIII, section 5 (NPNF 2nd ser, vol. 5). [^eun-ans]: Gregory of Nyssa, Answer to Eunomius' Second Book (NPNF 2nd ser, vol. 5). [^pal]: Gregory Palamas, One Hundred and Fifty Texts 82–84 and 124–125 (in the Philokalia). [^ow-anom]: OrthodoxWiki, "Anomoeanism." [^eun-ans-intro]: Gregory of Nyssa, Answer to Eunomius' Second Book, editors' introduction (NPNF 2nd ser, vol. 5). [^po-love]: Public Orthodoxy, "On Love and Beauty in a Time of Pandemic" (2021). [^po-women]: Public Orthodoxy, "Celebrating Early Christian Women at Prayer" (2022). [^eun-5-4]: Gregory of Nyssa, Against Eunomius, Book V, editors' summary of section 5 (NPNF 2nd ser, vol. 5). [^abl]: Gregory of Nyssa, To Ablabius: On "Not Three Gods" (NPNF 2nd ser, vol. 5). [^hs]: Gregory of Nyssa, On the Holy Spirit, Against the Macedonians (NPNF 2nd ser, vol. 5). [^theoph]: Introductory note to Theophanis the Monk, "The Ladder of Divine Graces," in the Philokalia. [^oca-knowledge]: Orthodox Church in America, "Knowledge," quoting Gregory of Nyssa, On the Beatitudes, Sermon 6. [^oca-lords]: Orthodox Church in America, "The Lord's Prayer," citing Gregory of Nyssa's commentary on the Lord's Prayer. [^sjc]: Saint John Church, "Blessed Are the Pure in Heart." [^bapt]: Gregory of Nyssa, On the Baptism of Christ (NPNF 2nd ser, vol. 5). [^bapt-2]: Gregory of Nyssa, On the Baptism of Christ (NPNF 2nd ser, vol. 5), on the baptismal invocation. [^inf]: Gregory of Nyssa, On Infants' Early Deaths (NPNF 2nd ser, vol. 5); Wikipedia, "Limbo." [^inf-2]: Gregory of Nyssa, On Infants' Early Deaths (NPNF 2nd ser, vol. 5). [^pilg]: Gregory of Nyssa, On Pilgrimages (NPNF 2nd ser, vol. 5). [^ow-apoc]: OrthodoxWiki, "Apocatastasis." [^rose]: Mark of Ephesus, Second Homily on Purgatorial Fire, in Seraphim Rose, The Soul After Death, Appendix I (the bracketed summary of chapters 7–12 is Rose's). [^flor]: Georges Florovsky, "The Last Things and the Last Events." [^hart]: Public Orthodoxy, "Can Persons Be Saved? Part Three of an Interim Report on That All Shall Be Saved" (2020); OrthodoxWiki, "David Bentley Hart." [^oca-fathers]: Orthodox Church in America, "The Fathers." [^trullo]: Council in Trullo, canon 2. [^vincent]: Vincent of Lérins, Commonitory 30. [^c553]: Second Council of Constantinople (553), letter of the emperor Justinian to the council. [^c553-an]: Second Council of Constantinople (553), Anathemas against Origen, 1 and 14; see also OrthodoxWiki, "Apocatastasis." [^peter]: Peter of Damaskos, A Treasury of Divine Knowledge, Book I (in the Philokalia). [^trop]: Orthodox Church in America, troparion and kontakion for January 10.