This book is the first instalment in the new Oxford University Press series, Library of Early Christian Philosophy. In this inaugural volume, readers will encounter a facing-page combination of the Greek critical edition (from Hubertus Drobner’s Gregorii Nysseni Opera 4/1 [April 2015]) and a new English translation of Gregory of Nyssa’s In hexaemeron (or Apologia in hexaemeron) by Andrew Radde-Gallwitz. The text and translation are preceded by Johannes Zachhuber’s concise introduction and followed by seven scholarly essays on topics pertaining to this understudied treatise. Students of early Christian literature will know that Gregory’s On the hexaemeron (c. 379–80; p. 1 n. 2) builds upon the hexaemeral homilies of Nyssen’s older brother, Basil of Caesarea. While another translation of this treatise has recently come to print, not only does this translation include the critical edition on which it is based, but Radde-Gallwitz’s work on the Cappadocians and on their use of ancient philosophy gives him a particularly keen eye for adducing the technical concepts with which Gregory is working in his reading of the hexaemeron as a cosmogony.
In the introduction, Zachhuber contends that the In hexaemeron is itself a cosmology that borrows from those within and without the Christian tradition and details some of the treatise’s main concepts to identify it as a fitting instance of early Christian philosophy.
The essays collected in this volume contribute substantive additions to the study of the philosophical structure of Gregory’s thought, especially his physics and metaphysics. While In hexaemeron is the common text for each of the contributors, it is not the only one of Gregory’s writings in view, for contributors interpret it in light of his broader corpus, not to mention other sources focused upon related topics and questions. In the first essay, Benjamin Gleede provides an insightful contextualisation and analysis of Nyssa’s particular account of simultaneous creation, his way of dealing with the inherited problematic of a perfectly transcendent God and a temporally extended creation account in Genesis i–ii. Following his brother Basil’s hexaemeral homilies, Gregory would argue that whereas ‘day one’ in Genesis i pertains to the simultaneous creative act of God, the remaining days of the creation narrative spell out the orderly differentiation of creation. Gleede frames this as a peculiarly Christian cosmogony that goes on in the same way as Basil and diverges from Origenist allegoresis.
Gretchen Reydams-Schils, in her essay, eschews the notion of philosophical eclecticism among late antique Christians and presses into areas of alignment between Stoic and Christian sources, such as, for example, belief in a good cosmos. Reydams-Schils effectively problematises the notion that Gregory affirms an intelligible cosmos of Platonic Forms, clarifying that for Gregory intelligible reality is not within the purview of the Genesis creation account. Three interesting points of agreement she identifies between the cosmogonies of Gregory and certain Stoics are: (1) the relationship of identity between the transcendent First Principle and the seminal principles in creation; (2) the identification between God’s commands in Scripture and the Wisdom or Logos in creation; and (3) the lack of mediation between the First Principle and the sensible world (p. 125). Andrew Radde-Gallwitz complements his translation with an essay exploring the significance of Gregory’s variation on the ‘Diakrisis Cosmology’ found in Empedocles and Anaxagoras according to which the generation of matter occurs by virtue of the combination (rather than the separation) of particles. Radde-Gallwitz concludes that Gregory uniquely combines ancient particle theory with a power aetiology to account for how God embedded causal powers within the elements to realise the unfolding of God’s simultaneous creative act.
Jonathan Greig’s contribution focuses upon Gregory’s ‘Bundle theory’ of matter according to which matter is simply the mixture or combination of intelligible properties and qualities (for example, heavy, dry, cold, shape). Greig makes the case that Gregory’s proposed theory is best understood in relation to the Aristotelian notion of ‘proximate matter’, though as a point of contrast, Gregory’s substratum, rather than being merely logical also possesses some measure of ontological being to the extent that God produced it with the powers or logoi of the elements. In her previous scholarship, Anna Marmodoro has explored how the Nyssen resolves the tension between the metaphysical principle that ‘like causes like’ and God’s creation of the world by contending that matter is reducible to immaterial properties and thus the incorporeal God creates immaterial properties which combine with divine power to form matter, but are not themselves matter. Here, Marmodoro probes the potential for the instantiation of properties to be what is needed to support the Nyssen’s attempt to differentiate between a substance and a combination of properties by virtue of a rational principle. The question Marmodoro leaves open to further consideration is the metaphysics or ontology of the instantiation of properties and how it might fit with Gregory’s rational principle.
The next chapter, by Isidore Katsos, builds upon his recent monograph on metaphysical light in hexaemeral literature by describing Gregory’s work on the hexaemeron as a performance of scriptural philosophy. What Katsos means by this contention is that Gregory operates as though Scripture is full of meaning but also presents difficulties to its readers, so that a Socratic question-and-answer approach helps one to extract the meaning of the text. Katsos gives his attention to five aporias related to light. Beyond extending Katsos’s larger project on light, this essay stands out in its commendation of the In hexaemeron as exemplary of the early Christian philosophical project. In the final chapter, Zachhuber analyses Gregory’s use of the term Logos and its place in his cosmology; locates Gregory in relation to the development of Logos cosmology in the third century and the transformation of this tradition in the fourth century; and examines key passages from within On the hexaemeron as they fit within his cosmology. Zachhuber concludes that Gregory offers a theory unique to his peculiar Christian philosophy according to which the Logos is ‘the immanent principle underlying the evolution of the cosmos following God’s simultaneous creation “in the beginning”’ (p. 217). In a brief epilogue, the editors offer readers a translation of two key passages on the origin of matter from elsewhere in Gregory’s corpus: (1) De anima et resurrectione 92.9–94.16; and (2) De hominis opificio 23–4.
This volume offers an excellent opportunity for readers to enjoy the benefits of a facing-page text and translation. Radde-Gallwitz not only provides consistent and technically sound translation decisions, but he also includes the biblical references from Drobner and adds references to other works within ancient philosophy, early Christian literature and Gregory’s own literary corpus. Radde-Gallwitz also narrates scholarly discussions pertaining to each of these areas as they are germane to the translation and interpretation of Gregory’s text. This is a considerable service to those engaging the Nyssen’s addition to Basil’s hexaemeral homilies. It is noteworthy that this volume presents not only a translation of this important late antique Christian text, but also essays analysing its contents mostly along philosophical lines. Although this collection of essays is authored by several different scholars, its cumulative effect is to convey a coherent account of the Nyssen’s scriptural philosophy of creation and his understanding of God’s presence and activity within it. This is a major accomplishment since there are, of course, also among the authors minor variations and points of divergence. The target audience of this book is clearly scholars of Gregory of Nyssa and those interested more generally in the late antique history of philosophy and theology. At times, this means that contributors take for granted familiarity with existing concepts, traditions and scholarship in ancient philosophy. It is also worth noting for prospective readers that the collected essays are what they purport to be: treatments of Christian philosophy. To the extent that this quality is representative of the aim of this new Library of Early Christian Philosophy series, it is a most welcome foretaste of forthcoming contributions to the study of early Christian thought.
