By The Rev. Dr. John Behr, Regius Professor of Humanity at the University of Aberdeen

St. Gregory of Nyssa is, I would argue, the most profound theological thinker of the fourth century; he was referred to by the Seventh Ecumenical Council (787 A.D.) as “the Father of the Fathers.” He was the younger brother of St. Basil the Great, and together with their friend, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, “the Theologian,” they are often referred to as “The Cappadocians” (although that is really a nineteenth-century designation of German scholarship). Gregory was much more productive than the other two: he wrote various works of systematic theology (especially important are his works against Eunomius and against Apollinarius, treating as they do important matters of Trinitarian theology and Christology), on books of Scripture (such as his magnificent homilies on the Song of Songs, another on the Inscriptions given to the Psalms, and in a slightly different mode, the Life of Moses), a Life of St. Macrina, his sister, and a Dialogue on the Soul (written in the form of a deathbed dialogue with his sister, consciously harkening back to Plato’s Phaedo), Letters, some of which are thereafter of central importance for the canonical regulation of the Church (and others berating the practice of making pilgrimages!), and so much more. 

One in particular has fascinated me for several decades, and for which I am currently preparing a new critical edition and translation, and which we will be studying in the summer course at Nashotah House, is known as De hominis opificio, or in the nineteenth-century English translation, On the Making of Man. I think that title, rendered that way, is somewhat misleading: it gives the impression that the book will be discussing how the human being was created at the beginning, a commentary on the first couple of chapters of Genesis, as it were. Indeed, in the letter that precedes the treatise, Gregory notes that his brother Basil, in his Hexameron, a treatise on the six days of creation, never got as far as discussing the human being; and so he, Gregory, was going to complete that task. However, that is not actually what he does in the work, nor is it the problem he addresses. A clue to a different understanding of the work is given in another title, which is found in many of the manuscripts of this work, and, in fact, the title used by John Scotus Eriugena for his translation of it into Latin, is Sermo de imagine, that is, a treatise On the Image or, in other manuscripts, On the Human Image. Moreover, the manuscripts which use the alternative title in fact use a different word than “making” (opificio was first used in a printed edition of 1567); they use the word κατασκευή, a word best rendered in English as “formation,” meaning both the process of being formed and also the structure, the form of that which is formed. So, the title I will use for my edition and translation is On the Human Image: A Treatise on the Human Formation. 

When we then turn to the work itself, many more things now become apparent. The first fifteen chapters are given over to praising the human being as the high-point of creation: every aspect of the human being has been fashioned appropriate for a rational animal, even down to the fact that our hands have fingers. If we didn’t, Gregory points out, our mouths would have had to be formed more like the other animals, suitable for gnawing meat of a carcass or grazing upon the grass and, therefore, unable to form words! As long as the human being looks towards God (as befits an upright animal, on two legs, rather than four with the head pointing downwards), our minds are beautified by God, and in turn our bodies are also beautified; but if we turn in the other direction, toward the shapelessness of matter (because matter, in itself, has no form), then our minds become likewise shapeless, and we too become dissipated, Then, in chapter sixteen, having praised the beauty of the creature made in the image of God, we take  up the text again and ask where, in fact, do we see this? If we look around us, what we see are human beings subject to vice, misery, suffering, and death. Yet, he points out, Scripture does not lie. So how can we reconcile the evidence of our eyes with the evidence of Scripture? It is here that Gregory suggests that being male/female is a departure from the prototype, for in Christ (who is the image of the invisible God, Col. 1:15) there is neither male nor female (Gal. 3:28). This then leads Gregory into fascinating discussions about how we are still in the process of being formed in the image—recall the point made about “formation” above—and so the realization of God’s project from the beginning is in fact an eschatological reality, when the entire pleroma of the human being comes to fulfilment. 

This is indeed a fascinating treatise from Gregory, touching upon so many issues that are of direct importance to us today: What is it to be human? What is being male/female all about? How are we in the image when the evidence of our eyes is otherwise? How do we learn to see God’s intention in what we see before us? And many more such questions. We will begin our class at Nashotah House with this text of Gregory, and then build upon it by turning to a select few others. I can’t wait; it should be fun!

The Very Rev. Dr. John Behr is the Regius Professor of Humanity at the University of Aberdeen, since the summer of 2020, having taught at St. Vladimir’s Seminary since 1995, serving there as Dean from 2007–17. Fr. John has published numerous monographs with Oxford University Press and SVS Press, most recently a new critical edition and translation of Origen’s On First Principles, together with an extensive introduction, for OUP (2017), and a study of the Gospel of John (OUP 2019); he has also published various works aimed for a more general audience, such as his more poetic and meditative work titled Becoming Human: Theological Anthropology in Word and Image (SVS Press, 2013). He is currently working on a new edition and translation of On the Making of the Human Being by Gregory of Nyssa and a new edition and translation of the works of Irenaeus. Fr. Behr will be teaching the summer course on St. Gregory of Nyssa at Nashotah House this Summer (2021). Visiting students and auditors welcome. To learn more about this class and Nashotah House’s other summer offerings, please click here.