Ascetical Works

Description

PDF p. 13:

at the Ecumenical Council of 787, St. Gregory of Nyssa was given the title ‘Father of the Fathers.’ Modern writers agree that ‘he surpassed the other Cappadocians as a philosopher and theologian,’1 that he was ‘more learned and profound’2 than the others, that he was ‘possibly the most versatile theologian of the century,’3 and that ‘as a speculative theologian and mystic he is certainly the most gifted of the three [St. Gregory of Nazianzus & St. Basil the Great].’4

On Virginity (De Virginitate), PDF pp. 34-103 (cf. Moore & Wilson's translation, which, besides being Protestant, isn't as good as Callahan's here; cf. my comments on Cadenhead, The Body and Desire: Gregory of Nyssa's Ascetical Theology.)

p. 63 (PDF p. 90), De virginitate § "(20) That it is impossible to serve the bodily pleasures and, at the same time, to reap the enjoyment of God.", ¶2, is a good explanation of why a married man 1 Cor. 7:33's divisus est, "is divided" between God and world (remniscent of Dom Marmion's / Benedictines' single-minded focus on seeking God alone; cf. Christ: The Ideal of the Monk p. 35, PDF p. 44, which cites 1 Cor. 7:33):

For just as it is not possible for the same person to pursue two crafts, that is, he cannot be a farmer and a sailor at the same time, or a smith and a carpenter, but if he is going to take up the one occupation successfully, he has to let the other go; so, also, for us, although two kinds of marriages are possible, the one accomplished through the flesh and the other through the spirit, a desire for the one necessitates the exclusion of the other. For the eye cannot look at two things at one time, unless it is directed to each of them in turn, nor can the tongue utter two different sounds at the same time, for example, Hebrew and Greek. Also the same person cannot listen to a story and an instruction at the same time, for the meaning of what is heard depends on the sound, and if one hears a mixture of sounds, there will be an unintelligible confusion.

p. 166 (PDF p. 194), from the Life of St. Macrina , on her close companionship with her mother: St. Macrina's "mother often used to say to her that the rest of her children she had carried in her womb for a fixed time, but this daughter she always bore, encompassing her in her womb at all times and under all circumstances."

Arthur Rosh, [19/10/25 17:40]:

Gregory of Nyssa - De Virginitate [On Virginity]

A few words are necessary to explain the scope and aim of this remarkable treatise. Gregory deals with virginity in a different way from other writers on this theme. Athanasius and Basil both saw in it the means of exhibiting to the world the Christian life and their aims were entirely ecclesiastical. But Gregory deals with the entire human development in things spiritual. He has given the history of the struggle for moral and intellectual perfection, and the conditions of its success. He had his own inner Christian experience, the result of a recluse youth on the one hand and the systems of pagan and Christian philosophy on the other.

The spirit must be freed, so as to be drawn to the Divine Spirit; and to be so freed a virginity of the soul is necessary. He comes in this way to blame marriage, because in most of the marriages that he has known, this virginity of the soul is conspicuously absent.

But he does not blame the married state in itself; as he himself distinctly tells us.

The virginity he seeks may exist even there; and it is not by any means the same thing as celibacy.

It is disengagedness of heart; and is, as many passages in this treatise indicate, identical with philosophy, whose higher manifestations had long ago been defined as Love, called forth by the sight of the immaterial Beauty.

Where this sight is not interrupted, or not treated with indifference, there virginity exists. With Gregory philosophy had become life, and it is virginity that keeps it so, and therein keeps it from being lost. Terms with which Gregory identified virginity: incorruptibility, impassibility, the pure disengagement of soul. Virginity then, is a metaphor, identified with piety. He uses the one word for the other.