Gregory of Nyssa: Finding God in the Unknown
In today’s world, our thinking has been conditioned by the ideals of the Age of Enlightenment to believe that progress is measured by intellectual clarity. We operate under the assumption that the further we travel towards understanding, the more the shadows of dogma should retreat, replaced by the sterile light of objective reasoning. However, for Gregory of Nyssa, the desire for total clarity becomes a spiritual barrier. To Gregory, the journey toward the Divine ends not in blinding sunlight, but in ‘thick darkness,’ paradoxically revealing more than light ever could.
By reframing Moses’ ascent of Mount Sinai as a journey from light into ‘luminous darkness,’ Gregory of Nyssa establishes a foundational apophatic framework that identifies the true knowledge of God with the humble recognition of His absolute incomprehensibility.
A Life Forged in the Shadows
Gregory of Nyssa was not born an ecclesiastical giant. He was a rhetorician by trade, and contemplative and philosophical by temperament. He initially sought to avoid the political world of the fourth-century Church. However, the ‘unknown’ was forced upon him when he was exiled for his Neo-Nicene views by the Emperor Valens. This period of displacement became the bedrock of his mystical insights. He realized that if we strive towards a truly infinite God, our experience of him must eventually transcend the capacity of our comprehension.
The Life of Moses: An Ascent into Mystery
In his work, The Life of Moses, Gregory uses the evolution of Moses, experience with God throughout the Exodus as a map for the soul. He argues that the spiritual life is a paradoxical ascent where the higher one climbs, the less one ‘sees’ in a traditional sense. As we move towards understanding him, we realize more and more that our limitations preclude us ever comprehending a limitless God.
For Gregory, the Exodus journey of Moses begins at the Burning Bush—the stage of Light. This is that period of faith where truth seems visible and bright. Moses knows of God, but does not fully comprehend God’s power and majesty. To Moses at this stage, the Lord is the light of an unquenchable flame, bright but not unknowable. As Moses leads the people out of Egypt, he encounters the lord again on Mt. Sinai. By now, he has developed a relationship with the Lord and is beginning to have an understanding of how powerful the Lord is. As he approaches Sinai, the lord does not appear as a burning bush, but as a fire that has enveloped the entire mountain in cloud. Moses enters the Cloud and climbs the mountain—the stage of contemplation. Here, light faded into a mist, and God appeared in that mist to make his covenant with the people(Exo. 19:18-20). Moses’ spiritual development had reached the point where his mind subconsciously realized that the ‘light’ of reason could contain the Creator. Finally, Moses once again climbed Sinai to receive the law. This time, he asked to see the Lord’s glory, and was told that he could not gaze upon the face of the lord and live. The radiance of the Lord was so bright that simply by being in the Lord’s presence, Moses was glowing when he walked off the mountain (Exo.33-34). Gregory taught that when one attains true knowledge, seeing God exists in not seeing him. God can not be comprehended because he transcends knowledge.
This ‘Luminous Darkness’ is not caused by the absence of God, but by the intensity of his glory exceeding our ability to see. Just as the eye is blinded by the sun, the intellect is blinded by the sheer intensity of the Divine Essence.
Apophaticism: The Power of the Divine “No”
Gregory’s framework established apophatic theology, or the via negativa. Criticizing the claim of Eunomius of Cyzicus that human language could define God’s essence, Gregory classified this as intellectual idolatry. If we can define God, we make Him smaller than our own minds. Instead, we must define God’s essence by what He is not: infinite rather than finite, immortal rather than mortal, and incomprehensible rather than being able to be comprehended through our limited understanding.
At the same time that Scripture teaches that God is unknowable, Gregory recognized that it also teaches that one can know God. Gregory answered this dichotomy by explaining that while man in his limited capacity cannot comprehend the divine essence of God, that essence is manifested through God’s energy and activities in the world. We cannot know God directly, but we are able to comprehend him mirrored in the world around us.
Conclusion: The Eternal Stretching
In the book of Exodus, Moses found that as he climbed towards God, as he physically neared the Creator, his perception faded. Brightness gave way to shadow, then to blindness. But his was a blindness that did not arise from darkness, but instead from the overwhelming brilliance of the light emanating from God. Gregory of Nyssa termed this the “Luminous Darkness.” He recognized that this darkness sprang from our inability to define a God who lives outside of our limited comprehension. God is present, but is invisible to our overwhelmed senses. We cannot “see” God, but we can “know” God.
Jesus taught that no one has seen the Father except the son (John 6:46, 17:3, LSB), but those who have seen Jesus have seen the Father (John 14:9). We are incapable of knowing the essence and being of God, but we are able to know him through the Son of Man, the Holy Spirit, and all that God has made manifest on earth and in the Church. We climb the mountain not to find God sitting at the top, but to know God in the endless mystery that is the Luminous Darkness.
Bibliography
Gregory. The Life of Moses. Trans. Malherbe and Ferguson. New York: Paulist Press, 1978.
Griffith, Bruce D. “Yearning: Gregory of Nyssa and the Vision of God.” Sewanee Theological Review 43, no. 3 (2000): 271–85.
King, Derek S. The Church and the Problem of Divine Hiddenness. Abingdon: Routledge, 2024.
Radde-Gallwitz, Andrew, ‘Eunomius’ Creeds’, Gregory of Nyssa’s Doctrinal Works: A Literary Study, Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford, 2018; online edn, Oxford Academic, 19 July 2018),
Silvas, Anna M.. Gregory of Nyssa: the Letters : Introduction, Translation and Commentary. Boston: BRILL, 2006.
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