Gregory of Nyssa: Homilies on the Beatitudes: An English Version with Commentary and Supporting Studies (review)

This fine volume devoted to one of Gregory's major works of mystical theology is a landmark contribution to Cappadocian studies. It contains a new English translation of the eight homilies by Stuart George Hall, with introduction, followed by commentaries, each homily discussed by a different scholar. Then come seven additional essays on the homilies, six other papers on Gregory, and four summaries of recent dissertations about him. Ten of these essays are in English, ten in German, three in French, and two in Italian. A noteworthy inclusion, still of value, is Johannes Rother's 1934 thesis, "Gottesverähnlichung als ein Weg zur Gotteinigung beim hl. Gregor von Nyssa," published here for the first time. These studies are flanked at the beginning by William Harmless's contemporary poetry about the Cappadocians and fifty-five pages of indices at the end. Not surprisingly, considerable attention is devoted to interpreting the classic discussion of knowledge of God and related themes in the Sixth Homily on the Beatitudes.

Hall's translation provides a generally accurate rendering of the texts into clear contemporary English, which is an invaluable service. Reading it offers an excellent overview of the work as a whole. However, to understand key passages in the Sixth Homily, whose meaning is much discussed and disputed by scholars in this book and elsewhere, it would be important to study this translation, or for that matter Hilda Graef's 1954 translation (ACW 18), together with a close reading of the Greek text (GNO 7.2:136-48).

Perhaps especially with this material any translation is inevitably an interpretation. On occasion Hall chooses contemporary English usage over a precise rendering of Gregory's technical terms, losing important nuances of meaning in vague paraphrase. For example, when comparing human knowledge of God through the creation with the knowledge of an artisan attained by seeing artifacts he has made, Gregory observes that Hall's translation of here as "reality" (69, l. 3) misses precisely what it is about the artisan that remains unknown and obscures the parallel with God's hidden transcendence, which Gregory terms in this paragraph and elsewhere.

In the next paragraph, the text contrasts knowing about health with actually being healthy, which is the real aim. Gregory compares this to the difference between the knowledge of God through his handiwork in creation and the pure in heart's perception of God within the self, which entails union with the divine. He says that the blessedness consists not in but in Hall translates the second phrase accurately as "to possess God in oneself," but the rendering of the first phrase as "knowing something about God" (69-70), though literal, misses the point. For the Cappadocians, "the realities around God," is technical language referring to the divine presence, attributes, radiance and activities that surround and manifest the unknowable divine essence. Gregory is saying that to perceive this in creation, however great-the first way of knowing God discussed in the homily-is far less than the indwelling of God in the pure in heart and their correspondingly intimate knowledge of the divine. The rich and varied Cappadocian vocabulary of union with God is important. Later in the homily Gregory again refers to what Hall renders "being united" with God through purity of life (72, l. 7). The Greek word, is borrowed from Stoic physics and means "to be commingled with," strong language that the Cappadocians use to speak of human union with God, as Karl-Heinz Uthemann observes in the volume's commentary on this homily.

Scholars continue to disagree about Gregory's mystical theology and about the authenticity and immediacy of the knowledge of God depicted in the Sixth Homily. The contributors to this book appear to be about evenly divided...