Gregory of Nyssa Quotes on Knowledge
Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335 – c. 395), the youngest of the three Cappadocian Fathers and the most philosophically ambitious of them, gave fourth-century Christian Platonism its most influential synthesis in works such as On the Making of Man, the Catechetical Oration, and the late Life of Moses. The framework treats the knowledge of God as a perpetual progress (epektasis) — the soul moves from glory to glory through an unending ascent into a divine essence whose infinity guarantees that the contemplative motion never reaches a terminal grasp — and the corresponding theology of the divine darkness on Sinai supplies one of the earliest extended Christian apophatic itineraries.
Quotes
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Attributed to Gregory of Nyssa:
“Concepts create idols of God; only wonder grasps anything.”
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Attributed to Gregory of Nyssa:
“What we cannot reach by knowledge, we may reach by love.”
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Attributed to Gregory of Nyssa:
“Every concept formed by the understanding becomes an obstacle to those who seek God.”
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“A Treatise on 1 Corinthians 15.28”
Evil will come to nought and will be completely destroyed. The divine, pure goodness will contain in itself every nature endowed with reason; nothing made by God is excluded from his kingdom once everything mixed with some elements of base material has been consumed by refinement in fire. -
“Indeed, it was for this that intelligent beings came into existence; namely, that the riches of the Divine blessings should not lie idle. The All-creating Wisdom fashioned these souls, these receptacles with free wills, as vessels as it were, for this very purpose, that there should be some capacities able to receive His blessings and become continually larger with the inpouring of the stream.”
Dialogue on the Soul and the Resurrection -
“Homilies on the Beautitudes VI: 1, tr. S. Hall, in H. R. Drobner and A. Viciano (edd.), Gregory of Nyssa: Homilies on the Beatitudes: An English Version and Supporting Studies (Brill, Leiden, 2000).”
People who look down from some high peak on a vast sea below, probably feel what my mind has felt, looking out from the sublime words of the Lord as from a mountain-top at the inexhaustible depth of their meaning. -
“Homilies on Ecclesiastes ; Hall and Moriarty, trs., de Gruyter (New York, 1993) p. 74 .”
I got me slaves and slave-girls.' For what price, tell me? What did you find in existence worth as much as this human nature? What price did you put on rationality? How many obols did you reckon the equivalent of the likeness of God? How many staters did you get for selling that being shaped by God? God said, Let us make man in our own image and likeness. If he is in the likeness of God, and rules -
“Variant translation: Nothing reasonable fails in reason; nothing wise, in wisdom; neither virtue nor truth could admit of that which is not good.”
On Infants' Early Deaths -
“God's name is not known; it is wondered at.”
Commentary on the Song of Songs, quoted in Ware 1995:14. As quoted in Inter-Christian Philosophical Dialogues , Volume 4, Taylor & Francis, 2017. ISBN 9781351617833 , OCLC 1004354917