Recently, I read Gregory of Nyssa’s book, Catechetical Discourse: A Handbook for Catechists. This is an incredible resource. My love for Gregory of Nyssa increases with every sentence I read from him (even the ones I disagree with).

I wanted to share some reflections on this book. This is not a “review,” and these thoughts are in no particular order. I simply had to organize some of my reflections and thought they might be of some use to the one curious on how a Protestant, Reformed Baptist pastor might engage with this Greek Father from the fourth century.

First, Gregory demonstrates well the importance of apologetic sensitivity. This is a handbook of sorts for theological teachers and preachers. He is instructing the instructors of catechesis, and therefore has to offer instructions on how to instruct people from different backgrounds. His instruction includes the refutation of many objections throughout. As if to say, “Now, when you say this, a skeptic might retort, ‘But what about X?’ if he does, you simply reply with ‘Y.'” As such, he anticipates different objections from different points of view. He opens the book with laying out two very different strategies for arguing for theology proper: one for the Greek, and one for the Jew. I think this offers a lot of insight for apologetics today. There is not a one-size fits all “method” and we shouldn’t try to look for one. Another point to make about Gregory’s apologetic sensitivity is that he considers “the defense of the faith” against the skeptic and non-believer on the one hand, and the heretic on the other, as fundamentally the same thing. He weaves in and out responses to heretics, Jews, and skeptical Greeks all in the same context. That is instructive, I think.

Second, and relatedly, Gregory clearly and unambiguously affirms natural theology. He assumes it. He doesn’t defend it because it wasn’t a controversial concept, and it shouldn’t be.

Third, on the saving work of Christ. Gregory’s reflections on the saving import of the resurrection are some of the most profound and moving sections of literature I have read in a long time. Gregory considers the resurrection a restorative and healing aspect of Christ’s soteriological work. Here’s a sample:

And this is the mystery of God’s economy regarding death and the resurrection from the dead: he did not prevent the soul from being loosed by the death of the body in the necessary order of nature, but led [them] back to each other again by the resurrection, so that he himself might become the meeting point of both, of both death and life, in himself establishing the nature that had been divided by death, and himself becoming the principle of the union of what had been divided. (16.9)

Fourth, continuing on Gregory’s reflections on the saving work of Christ, Gregory does not offer an exhaustive description of any doctrine in this handbook, and that includes his thoughts on the atonement. This is an important point to emphasize for Protestants who may feel uncomfortable when Gregory says very little about the satisfaction of guilt and quite about about the atonement as a sort of “ransom.” It’s also important to point that throughout this section, Gregory is pretty ambiguous about in what sense Christ was a “ransom.” Ransom for whom? Ransom to whom? Often it seems like the party Christ is “paid to” is not the devil, but rather Death personified. And when the devil is in view, Christ’s death as a gift or payment to him is described fundamentally as a deception: that is, Christ wasn’t given to the devil as a ransom—the devil thought he was trading authority over all of us creatures for authority over Christ, but Christ tricked the devil into bringing Christ into the land of the dead so that he could harrow death. The whole thing was an elaborate deception of Satan. As Ignatius Green says in the introduction,

Gregory does not, in fact, teach the ‘ransom theory’ in the Catechetical Discourse, though it has long been read this way… In reality, the Catechetical Discourse is a handbook for catechists, a rhetorical text with multiple layers of meaning. The ransom is merely the illusory surface appearance that deceived the devil. The ransom itself is a deception, but neither the ransom nor the deception saves us. They serve as a Trojan horse, that Christ might gain entry to the realm of the dead. There he saves us by harrowing hades. (pg. 36).

Fifth, speaking of “the devil,” what’s really striking is that Gregory doesn’t identify pride as Satan’s downfall vice. It was rather envy. And it wasn’t envy of God, but rather envy of man. According to Gregory, Satan envied the authority and dignity ascribed and promised to man, and since he wanted what man had (and resented man for having it), he tempted man to fall from grace. (Lewis seems to paint a very similar picture, especially in Perelandra).

Sixth, modern day Baptists may get uncomfortable at Gregory’s use of “regeneration” language of baptism, but they shouldn’t get that uncomfortable. Taken strictly linguistically, it does seem like Gregory endorses a kind of “baptismal regeneration.” With that said, however, it’s not simple. It’s not entirely clear what Gregory means by it, and Gregory by no means articulates what many modern proponents of baptismal regeneration espouse. For one thing, he ties the baptismal rite inextricably to faith—faith of the baptizand, specifically! He seems to assume that the one who is baptized is doing so as an act of faith in Christ. And I don’t think that a Lutheran conception of faith following baptism works here, because Gregory argues explicitly that the person being baptized must have an at least somewhat clear conception of faith in the Trinity before they are baptized. Gregory can’t be snagged by a Roman Catholics as endorsing their conception of ex opere operato either, because he goes on to say explicitly that those who are baptized but then fail to demonstrate a life of increasing godliness has not actually experienced the grace of baptism. Don’t take it from me, here’s Gregory himself:

Now if the washing is applied to the body, and the soul has expunged the stains of the passions, but life after initiation should be on par with uninitiated life, though it may be daring to say, I will say it and not be deterred, that in these cases the water is water, since the gift of the Holy Spirit is nowhere manifest in what takes place, when not only the shame of anger mutilates the divine form, or the passion of greed, and unbridled and unseemly thought, and vanity, and envy, and arrogance, but also things gained by injustice remain with him, and the woman he acquired for himself through adultery serves his pleasures even after this. If these things and the like should similarly surround the life of him who is baptized both before and after, I am unable to see what has been remade, since I see him the same as before. (40.3-4).

In sum, Gregory seems to be saying more about baptism than most Baptists, and less than most modern proponents of baptismal regeneration: in baptism, and not a moment before it, the work of conversion is complete. (Or, to use an analogy Gregory offers, the adoption is complete). He is, in some sense, “regenerated.” He is remade, renewed, mysteriously and supernaturally, into a new person. (And honestly, I’m closer to Gregory here than most baptists. I wouldn’t use the language “regeneration,” but I can’t shake the feeling that it’s more of a semantic difference between he and I.) But in whatever sense he is “regenerated,” this only happens in tandem with faith–a faith that manifests itself in subsequent fruit of obedience. Baptism without a knowledgable faith in the Trinity, and subsequent obedient living to which the baptized can be held accountable, seems to be a foreign concept to Gregory. Which is all to say, there are great benefits to be gained by the Protestant (and even the Baptist!) who reads Gregory.