The Salvation of Man Through Contemplation and Deification in the De Vita Moysis of St. Gregory of Nyssa

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the way in which St. Gregory of Nyssa conceived of the salvation of man as reaching its fulfilment. The desire of salvation is one which was common to all the religious systems of the ancient world, and these serve both as a background for the doctrines of Gregory and also to a certain extent as the foundation on which some of his theology is based. For this reason, I have given a brief summary of the systems which went before the work of Gregory of Nyssa and of the influences which made themselves felt on him. Such influence came mainly from Greek philosophy and from the work of the Jewish philosopher Philo.

Moreover, the doctrine of the Trinity and the relationship of the three hypostaseis to one another is fundamental in the way of salvation as Gregory saw it, as is the doctrine of man created in the image of God. Both these points have required a certain amount of examination before passing to the actual way of man's salvation.

This way of salvation, consists in three stages or ways, each way being in itself a complete plan of salvation and also a stepping stone to what is above it, while the two higher stages of salvation are dependent on the first. Thus, there is, as it were, a ladder by which man mounts up to God, attaining each time a higher degree of knowledge of the divine, and culminating in a state which is ceaseless and eternal motion upwards toward God, a state in which the soul is drawn continually nearer to the divine through desire for what is above it, always being filled with the divine and yet always thirsting for more, and through the fulfilment of this desire becoming ever more and more transformed into the image of that eternal and unknowable nature which is God.