Gregory of Nyssa, St (
c.330–
c.395), ‘
Cappadocian Father’. The brother of St
Basil, he entered a monastery. He was consecrated Bp. of Nyssa in Cappadocia
c.371, deposed by the
Arians in 376, but regained his see in 378.
His chief theological works are polemical treatises against
Eunomius,
Apollinarius, and the
Tritheistic teaching of a certain Ablabius. In his ‘Catechetical Orations’ he expounded the doctrines of the Trinity, Incarnation, and Redemption, and the Sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist for those whose duty it was to instruct
catechumens. His exegetical works deal especially with the mystical sense of Scripture. He also wrote ‘On Virginity’, a spiritual guide for monks entitled
De Instituto Christiano (almost certainly influenced by the ‘Great Letter’ of
Macarius/Simeon), and a Life of his sister, St
Macrina. He was an ardent defender of the Nicene doctrine of the Trinity, and he distinguished carefully between the generation of the Son and the procession of the Holy Spirit. In his account of the
Atonement he uses, perhaps for the first time, the simile of the fishhook by which the devil was baited. Feast day, in the E., 10 Jan.; in the W., 9 Mar. (in CW, with Macrina, 19 July.)
