Gregory of Nyssa on perfection

Gregory of Nyssa lived from 335-394 A.D. He was one of the "Cappadocian Fathers" of the late fourth century, who helped to work out orthodox teaching around the doctrine of the Trinity. The other Cappadocians were Gregory's brother, Basil of Caesarea, and their friend, Gregory of Nazianzus. They are called "Cappadocians" because they came from the region of modern-day Turkey that was then known as Cappadocia.

The theology of Gregory can be found in a number of different forms: From sermons like his Homilies on the Beatitudes, to partially biographical reflections like the Life of Macrina, to moral treatises such as On Perfection, to more mystical writings such as the Life of Moses.

Two things always strike me when I read Gregory. One is the deeply biblical contours of his theology, which are influenced strongly by philosophy but nevertheless seek consistently to explain the word of God in Scripture.

And the other thing that strikes me about Gregory's writing is its profoundly hopeful character. He is one of the early teachers of a doctrine of Christian perfection, and in that he shares a common theological concern with John Wesley. For Gregory, the idea of perfection - that we can be made progressively complete in Jesus Christ - determines the shape of the Christian life in the present. I am going to offer a brief excerpt from his work, On Perfection, below. I'll preface it with two Scripture passages from the Apostle Paul that he cites in the section I am quoting. Gregory's thoughts are beautiful, and he renders them in beautiful writing as well.


"He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the first-born from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent."

- Colossians 1:17-18 (RSV)

"May the God of peace sanctify you wholly; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful, and he will do it."

- 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24 (RSV)

Now here are two short passages from On Perfection --

"If someone defines the beginning as life, what comes afterwards will also be considered life. And if the beginning is light, what comes after the beginning will also be considered light. But what benefit do we derive from believing that He is the beginning? We become ourselves what we believe our beginning to be. For the beginning of darkness is not called the light, nor do we consider death a continuation of what is referred to as the beginning of life. But, unless a person is of the same nature as what produced him - that is, connected with the beginning through innocence and virtue - the One who is the 'beginning' of being would not be his beginning."

"This, therefore, is perfection in the Christian life in my judgment, namely, the participation of one's soul and speech and activities in all of the names by which Christ is signified, so that the perfect holiness, according to the eulogy of Paul, is taken upon oneself in 'the whole body and soul and spirit,' continuously safeguarded against being mixed with evil ... For this is truly perfection: never to stop growing towards what is better and never placing any limit on perfection."

- Gregory of Nyssa, "On Perfection"

A new blog worth checking out

Rev. Tom Parkinson

My friend Tom Parkinson recently graduated from Duke Divinity School and took his first appointment in the Western Pennsylvania Annual Conference. Tom was the student associate pastor at Duke's Chapel UMC here in Durham during the three years he was in divinity school. During that time, I was fortunate to get to know him. He's an excellent preacher and pastor who is going to be a real gift to his annual conference in the years ahead.

Tom and I were on a short term mission trip to Chincha, Peru, last October. He seemed as struck with the way God is at work among the Methodists in Peru as I was the first time I traveled there in 2001. We hope to join together in another mission with our friends in Peru sometime in the future.

I wanted to highlight Tom's new blog that he started in late July. In addition to serving as the pastor of Faith United Methodist Church in Pittsburgh, Tom is going to be writing online as a way to reflect on his ministry and the Christian life. His first post gives a little background - in addition to offering some great thoughts on the phrase that makes up his blog's title: Credo ut Intelligam - "I believe so that I may understand."

Gratuitous Cat Post #5

Got a new camera today, in preparation for Baby Thompson's arrival in the next few weeks. I tested it out on our cat, Ruthie, this afternoon.

Three things to know about Ruthie: First, she has always wished she were a panther of some type and tries her hardest to look tough. Second, she is really very photogenic, in a feline sort of way. And third, she's got lovely whiskers. Gotta love the whiskers.

Ruthie Thompson, age 7

Ruthie was an avid Facebook user, until the Facebook police famously shut down her account. She's never quite gotten over the experience. She has a "Cause" on Facebook named after her case, called "10,000 Strong in Opposition to Facebook Prejudice Against Cats."

Ruthie would like you to think she just got done eating a bird or a mouse. It was a bowl of Cat Chow. Nice try, Ruthie.

The preacher's dilemma

Now here is an opinion piece truly worth reading: G. Jeffrey MacDonald's article, "Congregations Gone Wild," in this morning's New York Times.

MacDonald (a minister in the United Church of Christ) suggests that one of the greatest pressures on clergy in the church today is found in "congregational pressure to forsake one's highest calling."

He's talking about preaching.

And what he means is that congregations want to be entertained rather than edified. They want a 'feel good' gospel rather than the gospel of Jesus Christ. He relates an experience from his own ministry, where an oversight committee of laity once instructed him to keep his sermons to 10 minutes, with a heavy dose of funny stories and an eye to sending the congregation home feeling better about themselves at the end.

MacDonald says that religion has become a "consumer experience." And that like all choices we make about what to consume, our choices about worship are increasingly aimed at obtaining a product that makes us feel better -- like we got our money's worth, so to speak.

MacDonald offers a pointed critique about this attitude, including speaking a prophetic word about what the preaching office is supposed to be about in the first place. He makes some theological statements I would disagree with - specifically, that the church exists "to save souls by elevating people's values and desires" - but over all I'm impressed by the clarity of the critique he's offering. In fact, I'm not sure what impresses me more: that MacDonald is so willing to make it, or that the Times is willing to run an op/ed so confessional in nature.

There is, however, some question-begging in the article that needs to be looked at more closely. MacDonald says that church members "increasingly want pastors to soothe and entertain them." But do they? He doesn't offer much evidence for support other than anecdotal observations about changing worship styles and the well-publicized Pew Forum survey from a couple of years ago that measured the frequency of Christians leaving the denominational tradition of their youth for other options. I'm sympathetic with what MacDonald is pointing toward in the culture, but I'm also not convinced that it indicates a desire on the part of churchgoers to receive feel-good messages affirming their every choice and whim in lifestyle and belief.

For example, it's possible that feel-good preaching is not a result of such shifts, but rather a cause of them. Even more likely, in my mind, is that the attitudes and habits of both preachers and worshippers are being influenced by larger cultural forces that are exerting a great deal of pressure on all aspects of our lives today. And for the record, I do think MacDonald is right when he points to the effects of a market society as one of the chief culprits. I would only add that the kind of rabid individualism and rampant consumerism that comes along with the capitalist ethos is, itself, only one symptom (albeit a very large one) of a liberal democratic society that place the highest value on the liberty of the individual citizen (and the notion that the highest good in society is found in that individual's choices for himself).

One other place I'd push back against MacDonald: His overarching thesis that preaching that aims at entertainment is really what Christians want. He may be right in a certain way, in that people generally want to be entertained the same way I want to always have that extra piece of chocolate cake and the way I want to live in a mansion, have a bank account with millions of dollars in it, and read novels out by the pool for the rest of my life. All of us have souls that are curved in upon themselves, which cause us to mistake sinful desire for true happiness.

But my experience of preaching is different than MacDonald's. I don't preach to entertain, and I rarely tell funny stories. I approach the preaching task with the assumption that the Word of God has something infiinitely better to say to the congregation than anything I could come up with, and hence that my charge is to present that Word to the best of my ability and help God's people see how it is a Word for us. The gospel doesn't want to bless the worldly lives and lifestyles we live apart from the redemption and reconciliation we receive in Christ, and that means preaching must always contain real judgment for the whole community of faith (though judgment that points toward repentance, forgiveness, and healing).

I've even found that the more I preach in this way, the more the congregation that is present seems to respond in such a way that it seems as if the Holy Spirit is really doing something with all of us. I think Christians generally want to hear the unabashed Word of God proclaimed, because they know that it is a life giving Word that offers them something no amount of shallow self-help message could ever match. If anything, the root problem with much preaching today is that it allows itself to get carried along by cultural expectations. For a preacher willing to preach "costly grace" (to use Bonhoeffer's phrase), the result is often a congregation quickened by the activity of the Spirit.

Of course, I might be wrong. Both about my preaching and the earnest desires of churchgoing Christians. If you've got opinions, I'd love to hear them.