PREFACE.

The fact that none of the treatises of Saint Gregory of Nyssa have been translated into English until now—or even into French, with one exception long ago—may be partly due to the imperfections, both in number and quality, of the manuscripts and, consequently, of the editions of the great majority of them. The state of the manuscripts may, in turn, be due to a suspicion—diligently fostered by the zealous defenders of this Father’s reputation in ages when manuscripts could and should have been copied and preserved—that his writings had been heavily altered by the Origenists Followers of Origen of Alexandria, whose theological views were sometimes considered controversial.. A very short study of Gregory, whose thought is always moving in the direction of Origen, proves this claim false.

This suspicion, while resulting in doubts regarding the genuineness of the entire text, has deprived modern Church literature of a great treasure. There are two qualities in Gregory’s writings not found to the same degree in any other Greek teacher: a far-reaching use of philosophical speculation (quite apart from allegory) in bringing out the full meaning of Church doctrines and Biblical truths, and an excellence of style. Regarding the latter, he himself bitterly lamented the time he had wasted studying rhetoric, but we need not share that regret; his writings demonstrate that patristic Greek could rise to the level of the best of its time. It is not necessarily as "degraded" as it is too easily assumed to be. Granted the prolonged decline of the language, yet perfects are not aorists Greek verb tenses., the middle voice is still a middle voice, and there are classical constructions of the participle. Particles of transition and prepositions have their full force in Athanasius, and even more so in Basil and Gregory. It obscures the facts to claim that there was good Greek only in the age of Thucydides. There was good and bad Greek of its kind in every era as long as the language was living. As for the adequacy of the language, the far wider range of his subject matter puts Gregory of Nyssa to a more severe test, but he does not fail. What could be more dignified than his letter to Flavian, more refined than his description of spring, more richly illustrated than his praises of Contemplation, or more pathetic than his pleading for the poor? It would have been strange indeed if the Greek language had not possessed a Jerome of its own to make it speak the new monastic devotion.

The labors of J. A. Krabinger, F. Oehler, and G. H. Forbes on the text, though all abruptly ended, have helped to repair the neglect of the past. They, in this century, like the scholars of Paris, Ghent, and Basel in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—though each working with imperfect manuscripts—have been better friends to Gregory than those who wrote books in the sixth century to defend his orthodoxy while depreciating his writings. In this century, too, Cardinal Mai has rescued still more from oblivion in the Vatican—a small compensation for the materials collected for a Benedictine edition of Gregory that were dispersed during the French Revolution.

The longest treatise translated here is Against Eunomius, in thirteen books. Reproducing so much ineffectual logical fencing over a question that can no longer trouble the Church might be criticized. But should men like Gregory and Basil, pleading for the spirit, faith, and mystery against the conclusions of a hard logician, be an indifferent spectacle to us? The interest in the contest deepens when we know that their opponent not only proclaimed himself, but was accepted as, a martyr to the Anomoean The Anomoeans held that the Son was "unlike" the Father in essence. cause, and that he had large congregations to the very end. The moral force of Arianism was stronger than ever as its end drew near in the East, because the Homoeans Those who held that the Son was "similar" to the Father. were broken up and there was no more complicity with the court and politics. It was represented by a man who had suffered and made no compromises; and so the life-long work of Valens the bishop at last bore fruit in conversions, and the Anomoean teaching came to a head in the easily...