The Ethics of Divine Speech: Gregory of Nyssa's Apologetics for Modernity
I’ve not always been fond of “apologetics”. It has become a bit of a buzzword in the past few years. It can strike me as a term that betrays a personality that is very “online”. When dealing with abused concepts and terms it is soothing to reframe them in a different context. Such a reframing came for me through Catechetical Discourse by St. Gregory of Nyssa (335-394AD). Nyssa is instructing his flock in understanding and defending the faith. How can they answer both the Greek philosophers and the Jews in their day? The primary defense centers around the doctrine of God. Nyssa leaned heavily on analogy between humans as icons of God and reasoning up to the nature of God as a more excellent, perfect nature than that of man. What struck me, however, was how Gregory was able to presume that his antagonists shared some similar metaphysical categories. There was a common understanding of God as perfection, God must be wise, just, powerful, and good. This caused me to question how much of this can be presumed if we were to engage our contemporary antagonists? It seems that even the notion that God is to be addressed with masculine pronouns is dubious to our naysayers. But if we take the wisdom of Gregory and adapt it to our setting, what might we see? One of the modern metaphysical issues is a detachment of ethics and authority. Ethics are seen in the ether as a detached body of ideals that humans either inherently know or as a society agree upon for evolutionary benefit. There is a great hesitancy to ascribe any authority to some higher conscience person that can know and act in the world. If our apologetic is to imitate Gregory of Nyssa’s, then we must wield the metaphysical questions of our day and use those longings to bring the lost to Christ. We must unite God’s ethic with his personal reality.
Our first task is to reveal the need for God. We must find a meaningful point of hunger that would help the unbeliever see the lack they inherently feel. There is an increasing awareness that language is efficacious. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will devastate me. This has revealed itself in the rising concerns over “hate speech”, “affirming language”, and the like. However, modernists don’t have a metaphysical answer for why language is so weighty. Nyssa can help us reorient their desire for righteous language, so it accords with the person of Christ, not their fleshly impulses, while also revealing the metaphysical explanation for language being so meaningful.
“For he who admits that God is not wordless will by all means grant him who is not wordless to have a word. But indeed, the human word is also called by the same name. If therefore he should claim to conjecture that the Word of God is similar to the words used by us, he will thus be led to a loftier suppositional. For it is altogether necessary to believe the word corresponds with the nature, like all other things as well. For a certain power and life and wisdom is seen regarding the human; but one would not conjecture from the sameness of the names that in which the case of God, “life” or “power” or “wisdom” are such as this, but the meanings of such names are lowered to the measure of our nature…therefore, thought the Word of God is spoken of, it will not be deemed to have substance in the rush of utterance, like ours passing into nonexistence; but just as out nature, being perishable, also has a perishable word, so the incorruptible and ever existing nature also has the eternal and subsisting Word.” (pg. 64-65)
The hunger for “right” speech is a good desire. This desire can only be met and satisfied by divine speech. Speech that is everlasting, that is “un-cancelable”. We need a speaker that is not subject to corruption as we are. We need a speaker who sets the canon for what righteous speech is. Speech that reveals the perfect, the incorruptible nature of God. This God if He is to have speech that norms and creates our speech must have ultimate authority to determine such ethics. If this creator God is good, then why do we have wicked speech?
“For vice would be without blame if God was claimed to be its maker and father – but the evil is somehow implanted within, being composed by decision then, when there is any withdrawal of the soul from the good. For just as sight is an activity of nature, and blindness is a privation of a natural activity, so too virtue is opposed to vice.” (pg. 76)
The claim of wicked speech reveals that we inherently understand virtue and vice exist as categories. We can maneuver the claims of our unbelieving neighbors toward the truly good, wise, and loving God who is the perfection of what we long for. This perfection and deliverance came to us when the Word was made flesh and ransomed us from death; revealing the perfection humanity when united to divinity.
“Investigate with me in the same way all the things that are fitting for suppositions about the divine: the good, the wise, the just, the powerful, the incorruptible, and anything else that signifies the superior. Therefore, as good he takes pity on him who has fallen as wise, he is not ignorant of the manner of recall. And further, the judgement of what is just belongs to wisdom; for no one would associate true justice with foolishness.” (pg. 110)
In Christ we find our union of ethics and personified authority. Wisdom, justice, goodness, and power would be meaningless if not embodied, and useless if not all embodied equally. In Christ He is all in all, the icon of the Father, the revelation of the blessed Trinity. In the incarnation our ability to know God is restored. Our ability to find meaning on earth is resorted. Our standard of right knowledge and righteousness is restored and enabled by the abiding witness of the Holy Ghost. The wants and needs of the lost are hungers that Christ came to satisfy. Let us wisely wield the wisdom of Nyssa to lovingly bring light to the blind.
Source:
Green, Ignatius. Catechetical Discourse. Saint Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2019.
