The
Fathers of the Church spread the gospel of
Jesus Christ, defended the Church in apologetic writing and fought the many
heresies of the first six centuries of Christianity. These men, also called
Apostolic Fathers, gave special witness to the faith, some dying the death of a
martyr. Like Jesus who referred to Abraham as a spiritual father (Luke 16: 24)
and St. Paul, who referred to himself in the same terms (1 Corinthians 4: 15), the
Fathers were zealous for the word of God. Their writings are a testimony to the
faith of the early Church, yet many Christians are unfamiliar with the work of
Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp of Smyrna, Justin the Martyr,
Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen, Cyprian of Carthage, Athanasius, Ephraim, Cyril of
Jerusalem, Hilary of Poitiers or Gregory the Great to name of few of the early
Fathers. Periodically we will provide biographical information and examples of
the writing of these great men of faith. This page will focus on the St. Gregory
of Nyssa.
St.
Gregory of Nyssa (about 330-395 A.D.)
He was born in Cappadocia, Asia Minor, a
member of remarkable family that included St. Macrina the Younger and St. Basil
the Great, his older sister and brother. He started his career as a teacher of
rhetoric and married, but was subsequently persuaded by his brother Basil and
his friend, St. Gregory of Nazianzen to become a priest (married clergy were
allowed at that time). He was selected Bishop of Nyssa in 372 A.D. through
Basil's influence in an effort to develop allies in the struggle against the
Arian heresy, which denied that Christ was God. After St. Basil's death in 379
A.D., Gregory became the leading theologian in the East. Elected Bishop of
Sebaste the year before, he played a leading role at the ecumenical Council of
Constantinople in 381, which condemned the Arian, Eunomian (Anomean), Sabellian,
Marcellian and Pneumatomachian heresies (which generally tried to deny the
divinity of Jesus and/or the Holy Spirit), reaffirming the Nicene Creed of the
first ecumenical Council which had been held at Nicaea in 325 A.D. Like St.
Augustine, he is both a philosopher and theologian as well as a mystic. Perhaps
his most well known treatise was entitled "Virginity" which, like St. Paul,
extols the virtue of this way of life. His "Great Catechism," quoted below,
shows his view of the Eucharist, which like other early Church Fathers, confirms
the Real Presence of Christ in what was formerly mere bread and mere wine.
Gregory writes that man becomes what he eats. Using metonymy, the body is the
bread and wine it consumes. This was the case with Jesus, the incarnate Word as
He assimilated bread and wine in his days on earth, so too He now assimilates
the Eucharistic offering [the thanks offering at the Mass] and gives what has
become Himself through assimilation [by action of the Holy Spirit]. In this
manner he passes on to us the immortality that is proper to his risen, glorified
Body. Gregory uses the word "transelements" which in the Greek means a
restructuring of the elements [of bread and wine, in this case, into the Body
and Blood of Christ]. Later, western theologians used the word
"transubstantiation" to describe this mystery, meaning "to change the substance"
[of what had been bread and wine].
The
Great Catechism [383 A.D.]
1030 [8] "Since both the soul and body have a common bond of fellowship in their
sharing in the misfortunes which derive from sin, so too is there a certain
analogy of corporeal [bodily] death to that death which is of the soul. Just as
in reference to the flesh we pronounce that death which is a cessation of
sentient life, so to in regard to the soul we term that death which is
separation from true life [God]."
1031 [11] "If you inquire how divinity is conjoined to humanity, you will have
first to inquire as to what the coalescence is of the soul with the flesh. If
you do not know the manner by which your soul is united to your body, do not
imagine that that other question needs to be understood by you either. . . . Yet
the miracles recorded do not permit us to doubt that God was born in the nature
of a man."
1034 [31] "Some are saying that God, if He wanted to, could by force bring even
the disinclined to accept the kerygmatic message [the Good News of Christ].
But then where would their free choice be? Where their virtue? Where their
praise for their having succeeded? To be brought around to the purpose of
another's will belongs only to creatures without a soul or irrational."
1035 [37] "But since human nature is twofold, composed of body and soul, it is
necessary that both of these make contact with the Author of life
. . . What then is the remedy [for the body tainted by sin]? it is none other
than that Body that has been shown to be stronger than death [Christ's], and has
become [the source] of life for us. Just as a little yeast, as the Apostle says
[1 Cor 5:6] --assimilates the whole batch of dough to itself, so that body
raised by God to immortality, when it enters our bodies, changes [Gr.,
metapoiei]
and transforms them [Gr, metatithesin]
into itself. . . . Since only the body in which the Divinity became incarnate
has received the grace [of immortality] and since it has been demonstrated that
it is not possible for our body to become immortal, unless it share in
incorruptibility through communion with the Immortal Body, it is necessary to
consider how it is possible for that one Body, although it is distributed
continually to so many thousands of the faithful throughout the world, to remain
whole when it is allotted to each individual, through a portion while still
remaining whole in itself . . . .(8)... Since each body gets its existence from
nourishment, from eating and drinking . . . . (9) so, if a person sees bread, he
sees, in a certain sense, the human body, because the bread that enters the body
becomes the body itself. So too, the Body into which God entered, by being
nourished with bread, was in like manner identical with the bread. . . . This
Body, by the indwelling of God the Word, has been changed [Gr.,metapoiethe]
to divine dignity. Rightly then do we believe that the bread consecrated by the
word of God has been changed [Gr.,
metapoieisthai] into the Body of God
the Word. For that Body was bread in power, but it has been sanctified by the
dwelling there of the Word, who pitched his tent in the flesh. The change that
elevated to divine power the bread that had been transformed into that Body
causes something similar now. In that case, the grace of the Word sanctified
that Body whose material being came from bread and was, in a certain sense,
bread itself. In this case, the bread "is sanctified by God's word and by
prayer" [1 Tim 4:5], as the Apostle says, not becoming the Body of the Word
through our eating but by being transformed [Gr., metapoiumenos] immediately
into the body by means of the word, as the Word himself said, 'This is my Body'
. . . . (12). . . He shares himself with every believer through the Flesh whose
material being [Gr., sustais]
comes from bread and wine . . . in order to bring it about that, by communion
with the Immortal, man may share in incorruption. He gives these things through
the power of the blessing by which he transelements [Gr.,
metastoikeiosas] the nature of the
visible things [to that of the Immortal]."
Sermon on the Day of Lights or on The Baptism of Christ [383 A.D.]
1062 [Jaeger: vol 9, pp. 225-226] "The bread again is at first common bread; but
when the mystery sanctifies it, it is called and actually becomes the Body of
Christ. So too the mystical oil [used in the sacraments of baptism,
confirmation, and for the sick], so too the wine; if they are things of little
worth before the blessing, after their sanctification by the Spirit each of them
has its own superior operation. The same power of the word also makes the
priest venerable and honorable, separated from the generality of men by the
blessing bestowed upon him [holy orders--laying on of hands]. Yesterday he was
but one of the multitude, one of the people; suddenly he is made a guide, a
president, a teacher of piety, an instructor in hidden mysteries."
Sermon on the Interval of Three Days
Between the Death and Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ or Sermon on the
Resurrection of Christ [381 A.D.]
[Jaeger, vol. 9, p.287] "He offered Himself for us, Victim and Sacrifice, and
Priest as well, and 'Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.' When
did He do this? When He made His own Body food and His own Blood drink for His
disciples; for this much is clear enough to anyone, that a sheep cannot be eaten
by a man unless its being eaten be preceded by its being slaughtered. This
giving of His Body to His disciples for eating clearly indicates that the
sacrifice of the Lamb has now been completed."
Other Early Church Fathers and their Testimony