Gregory of Nyssa
c.335-395 · Eastern Christianity · Prominent
Gregory of Nyssa was a Cappadocian theologian and the brother of Basil the Great. The closer you get to God the darker it gets, and you never arrive: he pictured the spiritual life as an endless climb into divine darkness, since an infinite God cannot be exhausted. He taught that all things are restored at the end, and his Trinitarian thought shaped the wording at Constantinople in 381.
Signature
The position Nyssen is most identified with in the Profiler:
- The Divine
- leans Indescribable
- Paradox
- Apophatic Pointer
Positions on the 9 axes the sources answer
- Natural Processes
- strongly leans Purposeful (97 on a 0–100 scale from Mechanistic to Purposeful)
- Mind
- strongly leans Beyond Brain (100 on a 0–100 scale from Brain Only to Beyond Brain)
- The Divine
- leans Indescribable (84 on a 0–100 scale from Describable to Indescribable)
- Identity
- strongly leans Unchanging (10 on a 0–100 scale from Unchanging to Changing)
- Meaning
- strongly leans Inherent (97 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Nature of Reality
- leans Unity (11 on a 0–100 scale from Unity to Multiplicity)
- Ground of Being
- strongly leans Transcendence (91 on a 0–100 scale from Immanence to Transcendence)
- Opposition
- leans Concurrence (86 on a 0–100 scale from Sublation to Concurrence)
- Conviction
- strongly leans Certain (96 on a 0–100 scale from Uncertain to Certain)
11 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Nyssen refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Trinitarian Monotheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Government
- Monarchy
What is your ideal form of government? - Highest Good
- Union with God
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Good Real, Evil Privative
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - End of Things
- Apokatastasis
What is the ultimate end of all things? - Perception
- Eidetic Intuition
What do we directly perceive? - Knowledge
- Grounded in God
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Virtue
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Agency
- Synergism
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Beginning of Things
- Creation ex Nihilo
What is the origin of reality? - Time
- Eschatological
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Economy
- Cooperative Commonwealth
What is the ideal organization of economic life? - Authority
- Sacred Tradition
What is the legitimate source of authority? - Language
- Logos
What is the fundamental nature of language? - Paradox
- Apophatic Pointer
What is the status of paradox? - Law
- Divine Law / Natural Law
What is the ultimate source of legitimate law? - Death
- Ascent of the Soul / Unconditional Salvation
What happens at death? - Role of Emotion
- Path to the Divine
What is the proper role of emotion? - Human Nature
- Imago Dei
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- The Divine
What is your primary bond and loyalty?