The Roots of Christian Mysticism Session 5
Summary of Dr. Marcus Plested's "The Cappadocians" talk, The London Christian Meditation Centre, St Mark's, Clerkenwell, 11 October 2005

Who were the Cappadocians?

They were Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus (otherwise called Gregory the Theologian) and Gregory of Nyssa, Basil’s brother. They were very influenced by Origen and also by the Platonic tradition. They lived at a time when the empire was becoming Christian. (Constantine had become Christian in 312 A.D.)

Basil of Caesarea

Basil, the oldest was born in about 329 A.D Gregory of Nazianzus and Basil studied together in Athens for five years. They were in Athens at the same time as Julian the Apostate who as Emperor from 360-3 A.D. attempted a pagan revival. When Basil returned from Athens he felt very proud on account of his studies. His younger brother Gregory of Nyssa in his Life of Macrina (his saintly sister) says that she took him down a peg or two! As a result Basil was baptised and took a tour around the monasteries in the Middle East and then established a small community on the family estate (across the river from the family house where Macrina was establishing a community). Basil wrote a series of regulations for monks. He became involved in the great doctrinal debates in the fourth century about the person of Christ and the divinity of the Holy Spirit. He was ordained priest in 362 and he became Bishop of Caesarea in 370. He was an effective Church leader though he maintained an interest in the monastic life. His monasteries were close to cities and towns. He was somewhat scathing about life as a hermit in the desert. He emphasized Christian service. His watchword was “Whose feet will you wash?”

Gregory of Nazianzus

More commonly known as Gregory the Theologian he was Gregory of Nazianzus because his father was bishop of Nazianzus. He spent some time in Basil’s monastic retreat but he was not impressed. He was a more sensitive personality than Basil. He was a great poet. A lot of his writing is autobiographical and he is perhaps the closest to Augustine in this. He also became a bishop. He was made one by Basil. But his sensitive nature did not equip him for the job and he was not a good one. He was actually bishop of Constantinople in 381(at the time of the crucial Council) and his sermons on the divinity of the son and the spirit were very effective. Shortly after this he was removed and spent most of the rest of his life in seclusion. Most of his works were dedicated to speaking about the mystery of the Trinity and how we “do theology” (I.e. speak about God.)

For nothing seemed to me so desirable as to close the doors of my senses, and, escaping from the flesh and the world, collected within myself, having no further connection than was absolutely necessary with human affairs, and speaking to myself and to God, to live superior to visible things, ever preserving in myself the divine impressions pure and unmixed with the erring tokens of this lower world, and both being, and constantly growing more and more to be, a real unspotted mirror of God and divine things, as light is added to light, and what was still dark grew clearer, enjoying already by hope the blessings of the world to come, living amongst the angels, even now being above the earth by having forsaken it, and stationed on high by the Spirit. (St. Gregory the Theologian Oration 2)

Gregory of Nyssa

Gregory of Nyssa (332-395) was not an effective bishop either. He was the most philosophical, speculative and daring of the three. He wrote on the Christian faith, the ascetic life, the mystical life (e.g. The Life of Moses) and biblical commentaries.

The connection between mysticism and asceticism

A woman knows she has conceived when she stops losing blood. So it is with the soul, she knows she has conceived the Holy Spirit when the passions stop coming out of her. But as long as one is held back in the passions, how can one dare to believe that one is sinless? Give blood and receive the Spirit (Sayings of the Desert Fathers Longinus 5)

This, a saying from the Desert Fathers, describes in vivid language the amount of effort needed to pursue the inner life. This saying portrays the attitude typical of the monastic tradition as a whole. It encapsulates the conviction held by all early Christians that some kind of ascetic effort was vital for the mystical approach to God. We live in an age when appeal to asceticism is not popular. Passions are seen as good for the body! Asceticism is seen as the preserve of a few and mysticism has been marginalized and seen as the occupation of the deluded!

The root meaning of the word “asceticism” is the Greek word “askesis” which means “training,” “discipline,” “practice,” “effort.”

The root meaning of the word “mysticism” is the Greek word “mueo” meaning “to initiate (into the revelation of the world beyond the world of forms.)” Also “ to close the eye to (in the sense of closing the eye to the material world in order to see with the eye of the spirit.)”

Asceticism and mysticism are therefore no longer seen as part of the mainstream Christian tradition and our task is to re-appropriate the language of the Early Church bearing in mind these root meanings.

It would help to see asceticism as a means to an end rather than an end in itself. The end being union with God. Mysticism is a much misunderstood term. Various meanings have been attached to it but it is best thought of as the quest for union with the divine. With these definitions in mind it is possible for it to embrace a much more rounded vision of the Christian life rather than being regarded as the pursuit of an elite. The Cappadocians are particularly revealing about how asceticism and mysticism go together. As an example we can look at Gregory of Nyssa’s Life of Moses. Following on from Origen’s allegorical way of reading scripture Gregory interprets the life of Moses as a paradigm of the soul’s ascent to God. Virtually every incident in his life has a parallel with the soul’s journey (e.g. the crossing of the Red Sea is paralleled with baptism). Note that this does not take place at the beginning of the journey but some way into it. The passions are linked with the Egyptians pursuing the Israelites and are put to death (the Egyptians and the passions).

Those who pass through the mystical water in baptism must put to death in the water the whole phalanx of evil such as covetousness, unbridled desire, rapacious thinking, the passion of conceit and arrogance, wild impulse, wrath, anger, malice, envy, and all such things. Since the passions naturally pursue our nature, we must put to death in the water both the base movements of the mind and the acts which issue from them (Life of Moses II.125)

The theme of the need to put the passions to death is one that returns again and again. The passions must be put to death even before reaching the foothills of the mountain! Note that this is all bound up with the sacraments of the Church. All Christians are called to seek out an encounter with God. It is important to avoid the idea of a two tier Christianity with the “perfect” and the ordinary Christian and this will help to keep mysticism within the mainstream Church.

The bitter ascetic waters ultimately become sweet for life becomes better than it was before with the ascetic life. The ascetic life is a sine qua non of the knowledge of God.

But if the wood be thrown into the water, that is, if one receives the mystery of the resurrection which had its beginning with the wood (you of course understand the cross when you hear the wood), then the virtuous life, being sweetened by the hope of things to come, becomes sweeter and more pleasant than all the sweetness that tickles the sense with pleasure (Life of Moses II. 132)

Gregory of Nazianzus was married but he is well known for his treatise on virginity. In this treatise it is mainly inner purity that he is emphasising. It is important to notice the very holistic vision of the human person. Body and soul must both be cleansed. Purification opens our faculty of perception to the spiritual senses (an idea that goes back to Origen and even to the Gospels with “those who have ears to hear let them hear”) so that the soul can see its own nature and God. So purification by ascetic endeavour allows us to see beyond physical sight and hear beyond our physical hearing. A lot of the teaching of the Cappadocians is about this preparatory stage of purification. Gregory makes it clear that you cannot go straight to mystical experience without preparation.

The person who would approach the contemplation of Being (i.e. God-the source of all being) must be pure in all things so as to be pure in soul and body, washed stainless of every spot in both parts, in order that he might appear pure to the One who sees what is hidden and that visible respectability might correspond to the inward condition of the soul (Life of Moses II.154)

The theme of the spiritual senses is enlarged in the following passage:

The contemplation of God is not effected by sight and hearing, nor is it comprehended by any of the customary perceptions of the mind. For “no eye has seen, and no ear has heard”, nor does it belong to those things which usually enter “into the heart of man” (1 Cor. 2:9). He who would approach the knowledge of things sublime must first purify his manner of life from all sensual and irrational emotion. He must wash from his understanding every opinion derived from some preconception and withdraw himself from his customary intercourse with his own companion, that is, with his sense perceptions which are, as it were, wedded to our nature as its companion. When he is so purified then he assaults the mountain (Life of Moses II.157)

Gregory of Nazianzus also has the image of ascending Mount Sinai. He speaks about drawing aside the curtain of cloud and entering away from matter and material things. He speaks of a vision of the back parts of God. It is a vision not of the nature of God but of what God chooses to reveal of himself so what Moses saw was the manifestation of God’s glory (the Jewish “Shekinah”). They are tokens of himself. Gregory was keenly aware of the unfathomable mystery of God. We can learn something on our ascent but we will never exhaust the mystery of God. He takes the rock behind which Moses hides as Christ. This is a common understanding of the rock. We will never see more of God than he has revealed in Christ.

The inseparability of theology and mysticism

Theology for the Early Church was not an academic discipline but a vision of God. The Cappadocians were closely involved in the doctrinal controversies of their day regarding the divinity of the son and the divinity of the Holy Spirit. Gregory of Nazianzus was the most talented of the three Cappadocians when it came to articulating the mystery of the Trinity, both in poetry and prose. He used language which today would not be regarded as appropriate.

No sooner do I conceive of the One than I am illumined by the Splendour of the Three; no sooner do I distinguish Them than I am carried back to the One. When I think of any One of the Three I think of Him as the Whole, and my eyes are filled, and the greater part of what I am thinking of escapes me. I cannot grasp the greatness of That One so as to attribute a greater greatness to the Rest. When I contemplate the Three together, I see one great flame, and cannot divide or measure out the Undivided Light (Oration 49).

Gregory’s thinking on the Trinity which is very experiential is never separated from devotion to the person of Christ.

He bears all me and mine in Himself, that in Himself He may exhaust the bad, as fire does wax, or as the sun does the mists of earth; and so that I may partake of His nature by union with him (…) (At the last day) we shall be no longer divided (as we now are by movements and passions), containing nothing at all of God, or very little, but shall be entirely godlike (..) (Oration 30)

The Cappadocians speak of theosis or deification. This does not mean becoming God by nature but by sharing in God’s life.

How do the Cappadocians understand the process of ascent to union with God?
Gregory of Nyssa’s description of mystical experience is founded on the radical unknowability of God. This is sometimes called the apophatic approach (the approach of Philo and Clement of Alexandria), the via negativa and is founded on God‘s otherness. We can only say what God is not. Gregory of Nyssa is even more apophatic than Gregory of Nazianzus. When Gregory of Nyssa speaks of Moses’ ascent of Mount Sinai he uses a lot of apophatic imagery e.g darkness, a union beyond human knowledge. For Gregory the darkness is beyond the light. This imagery of darkness is not the darkness of sin but is a superabundance of light, the luminous or dazzling darkness of presence.

For leaving behind everything that is observed, not only what sense comprehends but also what the intelligence thinks it sees, the mind keeps on penetrating deeper until by its yearning for understanding it gains access to the invisible and incomprehensible, and there it sees God. This is the true knowledge of what is sought; this is the seeing that consists in not seeing, because that which is sought transcends all knowledge, being separated on all sides as by a kind of darkness (Life of Moses II.163).

Gregory of Nazianzus’ ultimate image is one of light. He talks about the light which we cannot bear so in a sense the images of dazzling darkness and superabundant light amount to the same thing. God is radically unlike us and yet draws us into fellowship. He is unknowable and yet immanent. Gregory of Nyssa speaks of the vision opened up by the tensions.

Imagine a sheer, steep crag, of reddish appearance below, extending into eternity; on top there is a ridge which looks down over a projecting rim into a bottomless chasm. Now imagine what a person would probably experience if he put his foot on the edge of this ridge which overlooks the chasm and found no solid footing nor anything to hold onto. This is what I think the soul experiences when it goes beyond its footing in material things in its quest for that which has no dimension and which exists from all eternity. For here there is nothing it can take hold of, neither place nor time, neither measure nor anything else; it does not allow our minds to approach. And thus the soul, slipping at every point from what cannot be grasped, becomes dizzy and perplexed and returns once again to what is connatural to it, content now to know merely this about the Transcendent, that it is completely different from the nature of things that the soul knows (Gregory of Nyssa Commentary on Ecclesiastes 7)

Eternal Progress

The Greek word is “Epektasis” and means “straining forward” as found in Philippians 3:3. This is the key text for Gregory of Nyssa’s idea of infinite progress. With this idea he turns Plato on his head. The idea of God as infinite doesn’t fit into the Platonic scheme. For Plato the absence of boundaries means chaos, disintegration. The circularity of Plato’s thought means that our end is our beginning so that we return to what we once were, beings united in contemplation of God. The doctrine of eternal progress involves linear progression and the mystical ascent is not something that is ever achieved.

This truly is the vision of God: never to be satisfied in the desire to see him. But one must always, by looking at what he can see, rekindle his desire to see more. Thus no limit can interrupt growth in the ascent to God, since no limit to the Good can be found nor is the increasing of desire for the Good brought to an end because it is satisfied. (Life of Moses 239)

Rest in Gregory’s vision of heaven is dynamic rather than static and the life of virtue is unlimited.

Let us change in such a way that we may constantly evolve towards what is better, being “transformed from glory to glory” (II Cor. 3:18), and thus always improving and ever becoming more perfect by daily growth, and never arriving at any limit of perfection. For that perfection consists in our never stopping in our growth in good, never circumscribing our perfection by any limitation (Gregory of Nyssa On Perfection)