Gregory of Nyssa’s Homilies on the Beatitudes as Christian Paideia

In the opening of his homilies on the Beatitudes, Gregory of Nyssa asks his congregation, “Who among those present is a disciple of the Word, and sufficiently so to ascend with Him from the low ground—from the superficial and ignoble thoughts to the spiritual mountain of sublime contemplation?”[1] At first, Gregory’s question appears to be merely a reference to the Jesus’ ascension to the “sublime mountain” from which he would deliver his sermon, but in fact Gregory is signaling to his listeners an important declaration about the Beatitudes themselves.  Building upon the Hellenistic concept of paideia (παιδεία), Gregory is going to interpret the Beatitudes as a ladder on which one might “have communion with the Godhead, to which the Lord raises us by His sayings.”[2]  Greek paideia, or education, derives “its norms of human and social behavior from the divine norms of the universe.”[3]  Depending heavily on a Hellenistic philosophical foundation while creating something distinctly Christian, Gregory of Nyssa uses the Beatitudes as the paideia (training) for the imitatio Christi (imitation of Christ) leading to theosis (deification).

In Hellenistic culture, education was far more than just the system by which children are prepared for adulthood and vocation.  Instead, paideia is the lifelong pursuit “to realize ever more perfectly the human ideal.”[4]  Central to the Greek educational system was the question, “What type of education leads to areté?”[5] The Greek culture was obsessed with the formation of the virtuous person or areté—that is, the highest human flourishing.  In Hellenistic culture this transcends the concern for individual betterment as the trinity of “poet, statesmen, and sage” represents the culture’s standard for excellence in leadership.[6]

The kind of culture imparted by classical education is considered the highest good, even to the point that one’s intellectual attainments were engraved as epitaphs.[7]  On a pragmatic level, Hellenistic education places emphasis on morality especially based on the imitation of the epic heroes.[8]  The template of early Greek paideia was Homer, and as time passed the canon was enlarged to include all the major Greek poets.[9]  In his Republic however, Plato discards Homer and Hesiod not as poetry but as paideia, which for him meant a communication or illustration of truth.[10]  In reaction, the Stoics maintain Homer and Hesiod as foundational texts, but in order to do so they create an allegorical schema of meaning.[11]  With the decline of the Olympic cult, Greek philosophical paideia, in the oftentimes opposed hands of the Stoics and the Epicureans, becomes more dogmatic and begins to fulfill a religious function, “primarily aimed at guiding human life by the teachings of philosophy and giving it an inner security no longer to be found in the outside world.”[12]

Serving as a transition to the Christian context, Origen seeks to do for the Bible—especially the Old Testament—what the Stoics did for the poets.[13] In Origen’s pedagogical model, the study of philosophy serves to build up a foundation for the student whose goal is to study theology and the Bible.[14]  Origen distinguished between three types of readings of scripture: “a literal, a historical, and a spiritual [allegorical] meaning of the texts.”[15]  What apparently justified such a method was the assumption that even some of the authors of books of the Bible, including the Apostle Paul, had used allegorical interpretation.[16]  For instance, in Galatians, Paul interprets the Genesis story of Sarah and Hager saying, “Now this is an allegory: these women are two covenants. One woman, in fact, is Hagar, from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery” (Gal. 4:24 NRSV).

Origen’s pedagogics probably moves to Asia Minor through his Cappadocian student, Gregory Thaumaturgus, who is a bridge between Origen and the Cappadocian fathers: Basil of Caesarea, Gregory Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa.[17]  Though not trained in the academy at Athens like his older brother Basil and namesake Gregory Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa’s early training was that of a rhetor.[18]  His early intellectual interests had been in Hellenistic philosophy and poetry, and his work shows a careful consideration as to how one might square Hellenistic thought with his commitment to Christianity.[19]  Such an amalgamation of thinking represents an innovative effort toward a Christian paideia.  More than just a dogmatic Christian education, this conception would seek to reconcile the “two great traditions: the biblical doctrine of man’s creation and reformation after the image and likeness of God, and the Greek philosophical conception of paideia and askesis[20] as means toward the assimilation of man to God [theosis].”[21]

Gregory of Nyssa’s paideia extends far beyond a concern for the propagation of doctrine.  It might be stated that he sought a philosophical and theological conception of human personhood grounded in Christian scriptures, but meeting the benchmarks of Greek philosophy. For the Cappadocian fathers, part of physiology is a mystical practice wherein one seeks union with the divine.  In the same way that Origen elevated the spiritual meaning of a text above the literal, so Gregory of Nyssa promotes the contemplative exercise.  This spiritual process of education however was not spontaneous, but rather a discipline requiring continual attention.  The goal was to develop virtues, “be they moral or intellectual,” which were understood to be, “the fruit of both a man’s nature and his training.”[22]

Unlike the Greek conception of areté, the perfect embodiment of the virtues is seen as much further removed from reality in the Christian insight into the inner life of humans.  Gregory would maintain that Christian virtue is impossible to foster without aid from God.  In a syncretic move, Gregory finds it essential “to stress this ancient idea of divine assistance, which we find expressed so often in Greek poetry from Homer on and later in Greek philosophy.”[23]  He uses this concept as point of intersection with the Christian concept of grace.  The spiritual exercise is conceived of “as the cooperation of the divine Spirit with the effort of man himself.”[24]  This theme is prevalent throughout Gregory’s work, and it is grounded in his understanding of humanity as inherently rational.  Given this understanding, evil must be equated with ignorance because it is the height of irrationality to choose what is harmful for oneself.  For Gregory, as for Plato, paideia does not end in the temporal world, but in the world to come.  Gregory’s theology conceives of a Christian paideia, then, in metaphysical terminology visualizing its continuation out to the cosmic sphere.  Differing from Platonism, Gregory pictures paideia reaching its utmost conclusion in God’s restoration of the goodness of the original creation in the resurrection.[25]

In thinking through the anthropological questions of his paideia, Gregory is left with an important tension between humankind as created in the image of God and the human condition as the occasion of evil and suffering.[26] Gregory understands the image of God in humanity as something interminable that cannot be lost.  He uses the analogy of human nature as a mirror that can “move either toward or away from its archetype in the divine nature.”[27] Therefore, paideia is seen as the will of God by which one moves closer to God and comes to resemble the divine beauty.  This is not simply a discipline taken up by those of a spiritual vocation, but is the call for all Christians to practice the “continuous and lifelong effort to achieve that end and to approach perfection, in so far as that was possible for man.”[28]

It is impossible to understand Gregory of Nyssa’s paideia without first giving attention to the concept of theosis (θέωσις).  In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, theosis, sometimes translated as deification, is the term “for the end point in the process of sanctification, in which the believer is a participant in the communion of the holy trinity.”[29]  Theosis is the eventual goal of becoming like God.[30]  This is a soteriological goal concerning itself not only with saving the human, but restoring the image of God in humanity.  Gregory of Nyssa’s own reflection on this concept is most evident in his On the Soul and the Resurrection.   Gregory envisages the Divine as “the beautiful” that is somehow irresistibly attractive.  He describes the soul’s reflection of the Divine saying,

…if the soul, freed from such [evil] impulses, turns back upon itself and sees itself clearly (that is, what its nature is) and looks towards the archetype because of its own beauty as if looking into a mirror and image.  It is possible to say that in our soul’s imitation of the nature above it, there is complete assimilation to the divine.[31]

It is important to note that for Gregory, theosis happens when the soul is freed from all evil, either due to the development of virtue in this life or because of purgation in the afterlife.  In this way, paideia and theosis are inseparable.

            The link between paideia and theosis is also evident in Gregory’s On Perfection that is also titled, “On What It is Necessary for a Christian to be.” Here Gregory compares Christ to a stream.  As the water of the stream represents Christ’s nature, he wants to maintain that when Christ’s nature is taken into the life of a Christian, it remains the same “water” that was in Christ himself.  Concluding his thoughts, Gregory writes,

For the purity in Christ and the purity seen in the person who has a share in Him are the same, the One being the stream and the other drawn from it…This, therefore, is perfection in the Christian life in my judgment, namely, the participation of one’s soul and speech and activities in all of the names by which Christ is signified, so that the perfect holiness, according to the eulogy of Paul, is taken upon oneself in ‘the whole body and soul and spirit,’ continuously safeguarded against being mixed with evil...For this is truly perfection: never to stop growing towards what is better and never placing any limit on perfection.[32]

This image of drawing from the stream is a metaphor for theosis, wherein one becomes like God because one is filled with God.  Gregory grounds this in the practical part of a person’s life, referencing the sanctification that occurs through “soul and speech and activities.”

            Having laid the philosophical and theological foundation, the attention of this paper will now shift to Gregory of Nyssa’s homilies on the Beatitudes, specifically the first and fourth sermons.  Gregory’s meditations reflect his understanding of the purpose of the Beatitudes in the Christian life, namely that each of the beatitudes leads the Christian to the virtues that each build upon one another, ascending toward perfection.   Through carefully examining Gregory’s argument in his first and fourth sermons, it will be clear that Gregory intends for the Beatitudes to be paideia for the life of the Christian.

            The first sermon is on, “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of God” (Matt. 5:3). Gregory opens the oration by interpreting Jesus’ ascent up the mountain as symbolic for the rise out of “the low ground—from superficial and ignoble thoughts to the spiritual mountain of sublime contemplation.”[33]  Before even considering the beatitudinal qualities, Gregory pictures that from the heights of contemplation one might be able to see the end results of virtue.  Imagining a blessed landscape Gregory imagines Jesus pointing out, “here the Kingdom of Heaven, there the inheritance of the earth that is above, then mercy, justice, consolation, kinship with the God of all creation, and the fruit of persecution, that is, to become a friend of God.”[34]  Remembering that these were sermons to be delivered orally, Gregory pricks his listeners’ attention.  He draws them in first by emphasizing the desirable before explaining the path.

            In a notable contrast to the first beatitude’s commitment to poverty, Gregory envisions the goal as being “treasure” and “pure gold.”[35]  Distinct from earthly gold however, “the distribution of virtue is such that it is shared out to all who seek after it, and yet it is wholly present to each, without being diminished by those who share in it.”[36]  While the contemplative life is often imagined as one of solitude, Gregory emphasizes its egalitarian nature.  The sufficiency of virtue for all who seek it is critical for Gregory’s exhortation toward poverty, but before moving on to explain the meaning of “poor in spirit,” Gregory first must define “Beatitude.”

            He does so by comparing beatitude with its opposite, which he supposes to be misery, or “being afflicted unwillingly with painful sufferings.”[37]  He explains that it is natural for a man to savor the things that are enjoyable and distress over those things that make him unhappy.  In a possible nod toward aesthetic philosophy, Gregory describes beatitude as the indescribable beauty of the Divine.  Because humans are created in the image of God, they are able to reflect the divine beauty inasmuch as they reflected God’s attributes.  The role of Christ in this beatification is necessary because “the filth of sin has disfigured the beauty of the image” and Jesus has come to “wash us with His own water, the living water that springs up unto eternal life.”[38]

            For Gregory, this is the vital starting point of the life of virtue. Christ’s soteriological significance is, firstly, his removing impediments from sanctification.  Surely Gregory has baptism in mind in his description and it is important to note that the “water gushing up to eternal life” (John 4:14b) is a beginning.  Gregory always speaks of theosis as an eschatological reality, but an assured one, indeed.  The perfection of humanity “is an absolute futurity, rising up from nothingness to the infinite, forever.”[39] 

            Gregory moves to a discussion of how it is that poverty can be called blessed.  He distinguishes between two types of riches: the wealth of virtue to be desired and material wealth to be rejected.[40]  It is striking that, though he is apparently working with the gospel of Matthew, Gregory interprets this blessedness of the poor to be, at least in part, a material poverty.  Considering the spiritual nature of Gregory’s writings it comes as somewhat of a shock that the poor is not interpreted purely as those who have some sort of spiritual poverty. Gregory also expounds upon “a twofold poverty” calling blessed the person who “is voluntarily poor in all that has to do with wickedness” in addition to the one who abandons material wealth.[41]  The idea that one would be poor to vice, but rich in virtue seems similar to the Pauline notion of being “dead to sin and alive to God” (Rom. 6:11). 

            Gregory does not stop at encouraging his hearers to take up the “twofold poverty,” he explains why it is beneficial. Being “poor in spirit,” as he has interpreted it, is practical toward acquiring humility.  Christians are to follow the example of Jesus who was rich, but became poor (2 Cor. 8:9).  Gregory expounds upon the magnitude of Christ’s kenosis whereby, “Life tastes death; the Judge is brought to judgment; the Lord of life of all creatures is sentenced by the judge; the King of all heavenly powers does not push aside the hands of the executioners.  Take this…as an example by which to measure your humility.”[42]  This exultation of humility is clearly in contrast with Hellenistic philosophy.  Far from a self-induced servitude, Aristotle describes the “great-souled man” (megalopsuchia) who, “looks down on others with justification, because he has the right opinion of himself.”[43] Meekness is not simply absent from the Aristotelian virtues, it is outright denounced.

            Far from lifting up a prideful “great-souled man,” Gregory turns to explicating pride’s emptiness.  In an allusion to humanity being made from the dust (Gen. 2:7) Gregory humorously denounces any human arrogance writing, “But even if one would flatter our condition and greatly vaunt the human nobility, he will have to trace the pedigree of our nature to clay, and so the high dignity of the proud is related to bricks.”[44]  Gregory accuses youth of being the most prideful, but he also critiques those whose profession would cause them to think more highly of themselves than they ought (Rom. 12:3).  Those who would consider themselves above anyone else are asked, “How then can a man be master of another’s life, if he is not even the master of his own?”[45]  It is clear in this context that Gregory is comparing the mastery of servants with the mastery of the virtues. 

            Gregory’s prescription for combatting pride is to consider, “Him who for our sake became poor of His own will,” and also to not, “disregard the other interpretation of poverty which begets the riches of Heaven.”[46] Gregory then makes specific references to Jesus’ words to the rich young ruler (Matt. 19:21) to sell his possessions, and to Peter’s wondering what the disciples’ reward will be for leaving everything for Christ’s sake (Matt. 19:27).  Gregory sees voluntarily destitution as shaking “off earthly riches like a burden so that he may be lightly lifted into the air and be borne upwards.”[47]  The poor in spirit are blessed with the Kingdom of Heaven because material wealth is onerous, but virtue is light.  Using the ascent metaphor again Gregory pictures virtue raising one upwards toward likeness with God.[48]  This is significantly different than Clement of Alexandria’s examination of the Beatitudes where he remarked, “For God dispenses to all according to desert, His distribution being righteous.  Despising, therefore, the possessions which God apportions to thee in thy magnificence, comply with what is spoken by me; haste to the ascent of the Spirit.”[49]  Clement clearly sees spiritual concerns to be primary, but he does not see it necessary to abandon one’s possessions.

            Gregory ends the sermon by encouraging his listeners with an eschatological promise.  Gregory transitions from advocating the imitatio Christi as the model of Christian life to advocating the vocation of Christ.  He promises, “if you become poor because He became poor, you will also reign because He is reigning.”[50]  In his first sermon, Gregory sets two premises for the whole of his sermons on the Beatitudes.  First, the Beatitudes are the Christian paideia: one builds upon another in the ascent toward theosis.  Second, the Beatitudes embrace an emulation of Jesus who is the perfect embodiment of each.

            It is important to now consider Gregory of Nyssa’s fourth sermon on, “Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after justice, for they shall have their fill.”[51]  The term that the New Revised Standard Version translates as “righteousness”—dikaiosune (δικαιοσυνη)—is clearly used in Gregory’s text to mean “justice.”  This is an important distinction because, as will be seen later, Gregory links the terms “justice” and “virtue” very closely together.

            Gregory begins his fourth sermon not with a definition of justice, but with a discussion of appetite.  He appeals to medical science to discuss the behaviors of healthy and unhealthy appetites.  As Jesus has declared blessed those who have a craving, Gregory finds it necessary to analyze physical hunger.  He observes that, “It is a sign of health that the patients take food no longer because they are forced to do so, but with desire and relish.”[52]  He explains his seemingly odd introduction by asserting that hunger is related to the “steps of the ladder of the Beatitudes.”[53]  As Christians ascend and remove sinful habits—presumably through the previous beatitudes of poverty of spirit, gentleness, and sorrow over sin—they will desire to be filled with good things of God.  However, if a person is afflicted with some sort of disease, “it often happens that person’s taste is not for the things that are good for him.”[54]

            Obviously, there are many appetites that need to be sated, but the Beatitude aims the Christian’s desire toward justice.  Gregory now moves to discuss his understanding of justice.  He first examines the common understanding of justice as “the disposition to distribute equally to each, according to his worth.”[55]  While not necessarily denigrating this conception, Gregory claims that justice cannot be merely distributive “for only a few are called to reign or govern.”[56]  Furthermore, this previous definition of justice would exclude those who are poor, which obviously cannot be since voluntary poverty has already been espoused as blessed.[57]

            Gregory’s argument takes a foray into a discussion of the wrong sorts of hunger that he sees in Jesus’ temptation by Satan to “command these stones to become loaves of bread” (Matt. 4:3).  Gregory interprets Satan’s words as transgressive of God’s natural laws.  Such abuse occurs when human “desire goes beyond the limits of lawful need…to things beyond the limits of nature.”[58] In Gregory’s mind this abuse of God’s parameters is most evident in overindulgence.  In a seemingly ascetic manner, Gregory limits hunger to “the desire for the food one needs.”[59]  Desire for more than one requires leads people to desire things that cannot sustain them.   Gregory offers that Jesus, “does not eliminate hunger, since it is needed to preserve our life; but He does sift out and cast away the superfluous things that have become mixed up with this need,” and, “He says that He knows a bread that nourishes indeed [the Word of God].”[60]

            In a roundabout way, Gregory finds it necessary to discern what it is that we should be hungry for; this should be reveal the true meaning of justice.  Gregory understands that Jesus declares his food is “to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work” (John 4:34).  In addition, God’s will is for “everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim 2:4).  Therefore, in imitating Jesus, Christians should hunger “for the Divine Will, which is precisely that we should be saved.”[61]  Gregory is thereby interpreting the justice of God as being humanity’s salvation.

            Gregory counsels that it is not only blessed to desire justice, but rather justice—being one of the virtues—is used by Jesus to imply all the virtues.[62]  Gregory notes that in the same way that scripture uses one name of God to represent the whole Divine Nature, in the case of the fourth beatitude justice is meant to represent “temperance or wisdom, prudence or any other kind of virtue.”[63]  Gregory teaches that, “we learn from the Lord this sublime doctrine that the only truly and solidly existing thing is our zeal for virtue.”[64]  One could imagine that Gregory is drawing very close to Paul’s teaching that Christians are “to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that really is life” (1 Tim. 6:18-19 [emphasis added]).  There is an ontological substantiality in Gregory’s depiction of virtue; it is satisfying and every other desire is found wanting.   

            Gregory continues to a “bolder interpretation,” namely that “through the ideas of virtue and justice the Lord proposes Himself to the desire of His hearers.”[65]  Here again is evidence of Gregory’s theosis.  Gregory’s logic follows that justice is equivalent with human salvation, justice is also representative of all the virtues, and finally true fulfillment of the desire for virtue and justice is Jesus himself.  To Gregory, these conceptions all are complementary. The final image in this sermon is the practice of only taking in what is nourishing for the body such that the body would grow.  In the same way, “If, what is eaten in the way of spiritual food be not ejected, it will by constant additions continually increase the stature of those partaking of it.”[66]  Beatitude builds upon beatitude and virtue upon virtue as the Christian moves toward perfection.

             As evidenced in these two sermons, Gregory plainly understands the Beatitudes to be educational for the Christian life.  His analysis contains elements of Hellenistic philosophy, but as it is centered on the imitatio Christi, it represents a distinctly Christian effort.  For Gregory, contemplation of God is the crux of the Christian life.  Virtue is accessible through Christ’s work and example.  Gregory’s paideia is not the effort to create some new proto-human, but rather it “is the return of the soul to God and to man’s original nature.”[67]  Gregory blurs the line between justice, virtue, and Christ himself declaring that, “He became for us wisdom from God.”[68]  As one moves up the ladder of the Beatitudes sin is purged in such a manner that people desire godliness.  In his On the Soul and the Resurrection, Gregory speaks of the future goal saying,

However, once such souls have been purified by fire and sanctified, the other qualities will enter into them in place of the evil ones, namely, incorruptibility, life, honor, grace, glory, power, and whatever else we conjecture to be discerned in God and that image of Him which is human nature.[69]

            Such a consideration of Gregory’s work is important for two major reasons.  First, in contemporary theology and philosophy, “virtue theory” is enjoying resurgence in the work of Stanley Hauerwas, Alasdair MacIntyre, and N.T. Wright.[70]  Gregory serves as a rich resource to examine the interplay between the Greek philosophy of virtue ethics and Christian theology in his work.  Along these same lines, Gregory’s thought—especially his Beatitudes—would be helpful for anyone considering ancient conceptions of spiritual formation.  21^st-century Christianity has often had a difficult time explaining what the Christian is supposed to do “After You Believe.”[71]  The Christian paideia that emerges from Gregory’s work is far from ambiguous on this subject.

Secondly, Gregory offers a rich resource in a positive Christian syncretism.  Oftentimes, syncretism is treated pejoratively as it is seen as threatening orthodoxy.  In his Early Christianity and Greek Paideia—which has been more than pivotal for this paper—Werner Jaeger makes the bold claim that if it were not for the “postclassical evolution of Greek culture [that propagated paideia] the rise of a Christian world-religion would have been impossible.”[72]  Jaeger is far from overstating the point that Christianity’s strongest asset has been its ability to be relevant to whatever context it has entered.  Jaeger holds Gregory to be one of the finest embodiments of this sort of Christian syncretism.[73]  For these reasons Gregory’s writings should and will continue to be a resource for philosophy, theology, and spirituality even 1600 years after his death.

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[1] Hilda C. Graef trans., Gregory of Nyssa: The Lord’s Prayer; The Beatitudes (Mahwah, NJ: Newman Press, 1954), 85.

[2] Ibid., 130.

[3] Werner Jaeger, Early Christianity and Greek Paideia (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1961), 18.

[4] H.I. Marrou, A History of Education in Antiquity (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1956), 98.

[5] Werner Jaeger, Paideia: the ideals of Greek culture (New York: University of Oxford Press, 1944), 1:286.

[6] Werner Jaeger, Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1960), 1:xxvi

[7] Marrou, Education, 100.

[8] Jason St. John Oliver Campbell, “Eros, Paideia, and Arete: The Lesson of Plato’s symposium” (MA thesis, University of South Florida, 2005), 9.

[9] Jaeger, Early Christianity, 91.

[10] Jaeger, Paideia, 2:213.

[11] Jaeger, Early Christianity, 48.

[12] Ibid., 41.

[13] Frances M. Young, “Towards a Christian paideia,” in The Cambridge History of

Christianity: Origins to Constantine, edited by Margaret M. Mitchell et al. (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 2006), 500.

[14] Ibid., 490.

[15] Jaeger, Early Christianity, 48.

[16] Ibid., 52.

[17] Ibid., 52.

[18] Graef, 3.

[19] Harold Fredrik Cherniss, The Platonism of Gregory of Nyssa (New York: Burt Franklin, 1971), 4.

[20] Askesis is exercise or discipline.  This is the Greek word from which ascetic is derived. The scope of this paper does not permit a more thorough examination of askesis in Gregory’s work.  For a helpful introduction to the theme consult: Teresa M. Shaw, “Askesis and the Appearance of Holiness,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 6:3 (1998): 485-499.

[21] Gerhart B. Ladner, “The Philosophical Anthropology of Saint Gregory of Nyssa,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 12 (1958): 61.

[22] Jaeger, Early Christianity, 87.

[23] Jaeger, Early Christianity, 88.

[24] Ibid.

[25] Ibid, 89.

[26] Ladner, 62.

[27] Robin D. Young, “Gregory of Nyssa’s Use of Theology and Science in Constructive Theological Anthropology,” Pro Ecclesia 2:3 (1993): 351.

[28] Jaeger, Early Christianity, 90.

[29] Rosemary Goring, ed., Dictionary of Beliefs and Religions, s.v. “Theosis” (Herefordshire: Wordsworth Editions Ltd., 1995), 526.

[30] Karl-Heinz Uthemann ,"Theosis,"  The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, 1991,

http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t174.e5458 (21 April 2012).

[31] Virginia Woods Callahan, trans., Saint Gregory of Nyssa: Ascetical Works, The Fathers of the Church 58 (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1967), 237-38.

[32] Callahan, 121-22.

[33] Graef, 85.

[34] Ibid.

[35] Graef, 86.

[36] Graef, 86-87.

[37] Ibid., 87.

[38] Ibid., 88.

[39] David Bentley Hart, “The Mirror of the Infinite,” in Re-Thinking Gregory of Nyssa, ed. Sarah Coakley (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2003), 126.

[40] Graef, 89.

[41] Ibid.

[42] Graef, 91.

[43] Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Roger Crisp (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 70.

[44] Graef, 92.

[45] Ibid., 94-95.

[46] Ibid., 95.

[47] Graef, 95.

[48] Ibid.

[49] William Wilson trans., The Writings of Clement of Alexandria (Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, 2010), 152.

[50] Graef,  96.

[51] Graef, 117.

[52] Ibid., 117.

[53] Ibid.

[54] Ibid., 118.

[55] Graef, 119.

[56] Ibid.

[57] Ibid., 120.

[58] Ibid., 121.

[59] Ibid., 122.

[60] Ibid., 123.

[61] Graef, 124.

[62] Ibid., 125.

[63] Ibid.

[64] Ibid., 126.

[65] Ibid., 128.

[66] Graef, 129.

[67] Jaeger, Early Christianity, 99.

[68] Graef, 128.

[69] Callahan, 272.

[70] Some helpful resources by these authors are: Stanley Hauerwas, Christians Among the Virtues: Theological Conversations in Modern Ethics (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997.  Alasdair MacIntyre, Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues (Chicago: Open Court, 2001).  N.T. Wright, After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters (New York: HarperOne, 2010).

[71] This is the impetus for N.T. Wright’s book by this name.

[72] Jaeger, Early Christianity, 5.

[73] Jaeger, Early Christianity, 82.