Gregory of Nyssa

The shining relics

On his way to Macrina, he dreamed three times in one night that he carried martyrs' relics, too bright to look at. At her deathbed he understood: the relics were his sister. After she died, even in a dark robe, rays seemed to shine from her.

“I seemed to be carrying martyrs' relics in my hands; a light came from them, such as comes from a clear mirror when it is put facing the sun, so that my eyes were blinded by the brilliance of the rays.”

The healed tumour

Years before her death, his sister Macrina had a tumour on her breast. Her mother begged her to see a doctor, since medicine “was sent from God for the saving of men”. Macrina would not let a stranger see her body. She prayed all night, weeping, and asked her mother to make the sign of the cross on the place. After her death, the widow Vestiana showed Gregory the small scar.

“But when the mother put her hand within her bosom, to make the sign of the cross on the part, the sign worked and the tumour disappeared.”

The soldier's daughter

On the road home from his sister's deathbed, a soldier who was a relative told Gregory a story. Macrina had kissed his little girl's diseased eye and promised them a medicine. They forgot to take it. As someone ran back for it, the child's mother saw the eye was healed, and cried out:

“She has indeed given her the true drug which cures disease; it is the healing that comes from prayer.”

The grain that did not run out

In a famine, his sister Macrina gave grain to the hungry all the time, and it never got less. Gregory mentions it only in passing. He also leaves out other healings, demons cast out and true predictions.

“the corn for the relief of need, though constantly distributed, suffered no perceptible diminution”

The storm that held off

On the road home to Nyssa, a great storm gathered all round Gregory and his companions, with thunder and lightning. They reached shelter dry, and only then did the rain pour down. Three or four hours later it stopped, and they went on. Gregory calls it “a manifest token of His loving kindness”.

“and yet we, like the Israelites of old in their miraculous passage of the Red Sea, though surrounded on all sides by rain, arrived unwetted at Vestena.”

He expected doubt

Gregory says he left most of his sister Macrina's wonders out, because people would not believe them.

“For most men judge what is credible in the way of a tale by the measure of their own experience. But what exceeds the capacity of the hearer, men receive with insult and suspicion of falsehood, as remote from truth.”

What he wrote

Gregory says God's fire works like a gold refiner's. It burns the dross away, and the pain heals. In the end evil will be gone. Even the devil, “the introducer of evil himself”, will be healed. Then all creation will give thanks together.

“…when there has been a restoration of those who are now lying in Sin to their primal state, a harmony of thanksgiving will arise from all creation.”

Not his only word

The 1893 English edition of his works notes that elsewhere he speaks of eternal fire for the merciless rich. There, it says, “the language of Scripture as to future punishment is used without any modification”. One example is his second sermon On Loving the Poor. The edition adds that such sermons urge people on, so they weigh less as evidence.

What the critics said

Origen, an earlier teacher from Alexandria whose books Gregory studied, taught that all would be restored. That hope rested on his belief that souls exist before birth. In the sixth century, a set of anathemas condemned both. They do not name Gregory. Whether the council of 553 itself passed them is still argued. Gregory did not share that belief about souls, says the New Catholic Encyclopedia, but he did teach the restoration of all.

“If anyone asserts the fabulous pre-existence of souls, and shall assert the monstrous restoration which follows from it: let him be anathema.”

Never condemned

No council condemned him by name. The emperor's letter read at the council of 553 lists him among the holy Fathers it follows. The Council in Trullo, in 692, took his canons into church law.

“in every way follow the holy Fathers, Athanasius, Hilary, Basil, Gregory the Theologian, Gregory of Nyssa, Ambrose”

Were his books changed?

In the eighth century Germanus, patriarch of Constantinople, argued that followers of Origen had slipped the hope that all will be saved into Gregory's books. Origen was an earlier teacher from Alexandria who held that hope. Germanus's book is lost. The 1893 English edition doubts it: the ideas are “portions of the very groundwork of his own theology”. The Catholic Encyclopedia of 1910 calls the theory “useless and gratuitous”.