The style of Gregory is much more elegant than that of Basil: sometimes it may be called eloquent. His occasional digressions did not strike ancient critics as a fault. To them he is "sweet," "bright," "dropping pleasure into the ears." But his love for splendour, combined with the lateness of his Greek, make him one of the more difficult Church writers to interpret accurately.
His similes and illustrations are very numerous, and well chosen. A few exceptions must, perhaps, be made. He compares the mere professing Christian to the ape, dressed like a man and dancing to the flute, who used to amuse the people in the theatre at Alexandria, but once revealed during the performance its bestial nature, at the sight of food. This is hardly worthy of a great writer, as Gregory was [21] . Especially happy are his comparisons in the treatise On the Soul and Resurrection, by which metaphysical truths are expressed; and elsewhere those by which he seeks to reach the due proportions of the truth of the Incarnation. The chapters in his work against Eunomius where he attempts to depict the Infinite, are striking. But what commends him most to modern taste is his power of description when dealing with facts, situations, persons: he touches these always with a colour which is felt to be no exaggeration, but the truth.
[9] Cp. Or. Cat. c. xi.
[10] In verba faciamus hominem,' I. p. 140.
[11] De Perf. Christiani Forma, III. p. 294, he calls the Prince of darkness' the author of sin and death: In Christi Resurrect. III. p. 386, he calls Satan the heart of the earth:' and p. 387 identifies him with sin. And so the real wisdom visits that arrogant heart of the earth, so that the thought great in wickedness should vanish, and the darkness should be lightened, &c.'
[12] As expressed by S. Thomas Aquinas Summ. I. Qu. xix. Art. 9, Deo nec nolente, nec volente, sed permittente....Deus neque vult fieri, neque vult non fieri, sed vult permittere mala fieri.
[13] De Virginit. c. xi.
[14] On Infants' early Deaths, III. p. 336.
[15] Or. Cat. c. viii. D.
[16] On the Making of Man, c. xiv.
[17] Or. Cat. c. xxvi.
[18] Or. Cat. c. iii.
[19] In Sermon On the Baptism of Christ.
[20] A. 1560 fol.; also Antwerp, p. 1562 (Latinè).
[21] His comparison of the hidden meaning of the proverb or parable (III. c. Eunom. p. 236) to the turned up' side of the peacock's feather is beautiful in itself for language (e.g. the varied painting of nature,' the half-circle shining in the midst with its dye of purple,' the golden mist round the circle'): but it rather fails as a simile, when applied to the other or the literal side, which cannot in the case of parables be said to lack beauty and tint'.
Chapter III.--His Origenism.
A true estimate of the position and value of Gregory as a Church teacher cannot be formed until the question of his Origenism,' its causes and its quality, is cleared up. It is well known that this charge began to be brought against his orthodoxy at all events after the time of Justinian: nor could Germanus, the Patriarch of Constantinople in the next century, remove it by the device of supposed interpolations of partizans in the interests of the Eastern as against the Western Church: for such a theory, to be true, would still require some hints at all events in this Father to give a colour to such interpolations. Moreover, as will be seen, the points in which Gregory is most like Origen are portions of the very groundwork of his own theology. The question, then, remains why, and how far, is he a follower of Origen?
I. When we consider the character of his great forerunner, and the kind of task which Gregory himself undertook, the first part of this question is easily answered. When Christian doctrine had to be set forth philosophically, so as to be intelligible to any cultivated mind of that time (to reconcile Greek philosophy with Christian doctrine was a task which Gregory never dreamed of attempting), the example and leader in such an attempt was Origen; he occupied as it were the whole horizon. He was the founder of theology; the very vocabulary of it, which is in use now, is of his devising. So that Gregory's language must have had, necessarily, a close connexion with that of the great interpreter and apologist, who had explained to his century the same truths which Gregory had to explain to his: this must have been the case even if his mind had not been as spiritual and idealizing as Origen's. But in some respects it will be seen Gregory is even more an idealist than Origen himself. Alike, then, from purpose and tradition as from sympathy he would look back to Origen. Though a gulf was between them, and, since the Council of Nicæa, there were some things that could come no more into controversy, Gregory saw, where the Church had not spoken, with the same eyes as Origen: he uses the same keys as he did for the problems which Scripture has not solved; he uses the same great weapon of allegory in making the letter of Scripture give up the spiritual treasures. It could not have been otherwise when the whole Christian religion, which Gregory was called on to defend as a philosophy, had never before been systematically so defended but by Origen; and this task, the same for both, was presented to the same type of mind, in the same intellectual atmosphere. It would have been strange indeed if Gregory had not been a pupil at least (though he was no blind follower) of Origen.
If we take for illustration of this the most vital point in the vast system, if system it can be called, of Origen, we shall see that he had traced fundamental lines of thought, which could not in that age be easily left. He asserts the virtual freedom of the human will, in every stage and condition of human existence. The Greek philosophy of the third century, and the semi-pagan Gnosticism, in their emanational view of the world, denied this freedom. With them the mind of man, as one of the emanations of Deity itself, was, as much as the matter of which the world was made, regulated and governed directly from the Source whence they both flowed. Indeed every system of thought, not excepting Stoicism, was struck with the blight of this fatalism. There was no freedom for man at all but in the system which Origen was drawing from, or rather reading into, the Scriptures. No Christian philosopher who lived amongst the same counter-influences as Origen could overlook this starting-point of his system; he must have adopted it, even if the danger of Pelagianism had been foreseen in it; which could not have been the case.
Gregory adopted it, with the other great doctrine which in the mind of Origen accompanied it; i.e., that evil is caused, not by matter, but by the act of this free will of man; in other words, by sin. Again the fatalism of all the emanationists had to be combated as to the nature and necessity of evil. With them evil was some inevitable result of the Divine processes; it abode at all events in matter, and human responsibility was at an end. Greek philosophy from first to last had shewed, even at its best, a tendency to connect evil with the lower phusis. But now, in the light of revelation, a new truth was set forth, and repeated again and again by the very men who were inclined to adopt Plato's rather Dualistic division of the world into the intelligible and sensible. Evil was due to an act of the will of man.' Moreover it could no longer be regarded per se: it was relative, being a default,' or failure,' or turning away from the true good' of the will, which, however, was always free to rectify this failure. It was a steresis,--loss of the good; but it did not stand over against the good as an independent power. Origen contemplated the time when evil would cease to exist; the non-existent cannot exist for ever:' and Gregory did the same.
This brings us to yet another consequence of this enthusiasm for human freedom and responsibility, which possessed Origen, and carried Gregory away. The apokatastasis ton panton has been thought [22] , in certain periods of the Church, to have been the only piece of Origenism with which Gregory can be charged. [This of course shows ignorance of the kind of influence which Gregory allowed Origen to have over him; and which did not require him to select even one isolated doctrine of his master.] It has also brought him into more suspicion than any other portion of his teaching. Yet it is a direct consequence of the view of evil, which he shares with Origen. If evil is the non-existent, as his master says, a steresis, [23] as he says, then it must pass away. It was not made by God; neither is it self-subsisting.
But when it has passed away, what follows? That God will be "all in all." Gregory accepts the whole of Origen's explanation of this great text. Both insist on the impossibility of God being in everything,' if evil still remains. But this is equivalent to the restoration to their primitive state of all created spirits. Still it must be remembered that Origen required many future stages of existence before all could arrive at such a consummation: with him there is to be more than one next world;' and even when the primitive perfection is reached, his peculiar view of the freedom of the will, as an absolute balance between good and evil, would admit the possibility of another fall. All may be saved; and all may fall.' How the final Sabbath shall come in which all wills shall rest at last is but dimly hinted at in his writings. With Gregory, on the other hand, there are to be but two worlds: the present and the next; and in the next the apokatastasis ton panton must be effected. Then, after the Resurrection, the fire akoimetos, aionios, as he continually calls it, will have to do its work. The avenging flame will be the more ardent the more it has to consume' (De Animâ et Resurr., p. 227). But at last the evil will be annihilated, and the bad saved by nearness to the good.' There is to rise a giving of thanks from all nature. Nevertheless [24] passages have been adduced from Gregory's writings in which the language of Scripture as to future punishment is used without any modification, or hint of this universal salvation. In the treatise, De Pauperibus Amandis, II. p. 240, he says of the last judgment that God will give to each his due; repose eternal to those who have exercised pity and a holy life; but the eternal punishment of fire for the harsh and unmerciful: and addressing the rich who have made a bad use of their riches, he says, Who will extinguish the flames ready to devour you and engulf you? Who will stop the gnawings of a worm that never dies?' Cf. also Orat. 3, de Beatitudinibus, I. p. 788: contra Usuarios, II. p. 233: though the hortatory character of these treatises makes them less important as witnesses.
A single doctrine or group of doctrines, however, may be unduly pressed in accounting for the influence of Origen upon a kindred spirit like Gregory. Doubtless fragments of Origen's teaching, mere details very often, were seized upon and appropriated by others; they were erected into dogmas and made to do duty for the whole living fabric; and even those details were sometimes misunderstood. [25] What he had said with a mind full of thought, others took in the very letter.' Hence arose the evil of Origenism,' so prevalent in the century in which Gregory lived. Different ways of following him were found, bad and good. Even the Arians could find in his language now and then something they could claim as their own. But as Rupp well says, Origen is not great by virtue of those particular doctrines, which are usually exhibited to the world as heretical by weak heads who think to take the measure of everything with the mere formulæ of orthodoxy. He is great by virtue of one single thought, i.e. that of bringing philosophy into union with religion, and thereby creating a theology. With Clement of Alexandria this thought was a mere instinct: Origen gave it consciousness: and so Christendom began to have a science of its own.' It was this single purpose, visible in all Origen wrote, that impressed itself so deeply upon Gregory. He, too, would vindicate the Scriptures as a philosophy. Texts, thanks to the labours of Origen as well as to the councils of the Church, had now acquired a fixed meaning and an importance that all could acknowledge. The new spiritual philosophy lay within them; he would make them speak its language. Allegory was with him, just as with Origen, necessary, in order to find the Spirit which inspires them. The letter must not impose itself upon us and stand for more than it is worth; just as the practical experience of evil in the world must not blind us to the fact that it is only a passing dispensation. If only the animus and intention is regarded, we may say that all that Gregory wrote was Origenistic.