Gregory of Nyssa continues to be perhaps the Greek Father, in terms of capturing the imagination and the negotium of modern scholars. The steady progress of the Gregorii Nysseni Opera project, published by Brill, bears witness to this, as does a constant stream (constant in comparison to those on other early Christian theologians) of monographs on his theology, exegesis and spirituality. In this volume the self-effacing Matthieu Cassin, who can be read in English and in shorter compass in his ‘Text and context: the importance of scholarly reading: Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium’, in S. Douglass and M. Ludlow (eds), Reading the Church Fathers (London 2011), 109–31, 161–5, helps shed light on at least parts of that most impenetrable of texts, the Contra Eunomium.

The introduction sets out briefly the background and chronology of the debate between Basil, then Gregory and Eunomius, offers notes of secondary literature, and gives confirmation that books i, ii and iii of the Contra Eunomium and the Refutation of the profession of faith each circulated separately. The afterlife of the Contra Eunomium in Severus of Antioch and Peter of Callinicos is given some discussion, as is the clarification that Nyssa was not the only respondent to Eunomius after Basil's death. Reconstructing the fragments of Eunomius' Apology for the Apology (directed against Basil) cannot be a precise science, although he appreciates Richard Vaggione's efforts. The unravelling of order and purpose in the Contra Eunomium makes the introduction useful but technical. The author feels that more attention is required concerning ‘les modalities d’écriture et de composition du texte nysséen’. This means that he is happy to leave the theological reclaiming of Nyssa to, for example, DelCogliano, Zachhuber and Radde-Gallwitz. He mentions the Paris colloquium of 2007 of whose proceedings he was co-editor, as part of the recovery of Gregory of Nyssa as an exegete: ‘En effet, la Bible constitue dans ce débat l'instance de reference par excellence’ (p. 47). In these exegetical entreaties Gregory had Eusebius, Marcellus and Athanasius as dialogue partners. J. Zachhuber had mentioned that Apollinarius' ‘derived substance’ doctrine was also attacked in the Contra Eunomium. Indeed, a wide range of targets in Contra Eunomium is related to the fact that Nyssa was aware of continuing what his elder brother had started almost a generation before – in taking on all-comers.

Nyssa offers a more creative re-use of Athanasian theology than Nazianzen did, in no small part because he preferred to work with other Scriptures to those of those other two. He wrote in order to win back the partisans of Eunomius, or, obviously, given the sophistication of the anti-Eunomian work, at least the sophisticated ones, although the Refutation would have had wider appeal. He did not disdain to associate Eunomius with pagan philosophers and heretics, in savagely polemical fashion. One should not ignore these ‘rougher’ elements in the work through trying to tidy up the Contra Eunomium and present Nyssa as a systematic theologian. The style of writing is supremely a synthesis of profane and sacred in a provincial setting (unlike the other metropolitan-trained Cappadocians), with some idiosyncratic language in places. Cassin distances himself from Kevin Corrigan's comparative study of Nyssa and Evagrius, but feels that there is more such comparative work to be done. We are informed that it took Gregory the best part of a month to work through each work of Eunomius before responding. It seems that Nyssa did not always follow the exegesis that he had worked out in Contra Eunomium in his later works, such was his creative and evolving mind. The first substantive part of the book recounts how Nyssa used his knowledge of pagan classics to show Eunomius up (‘the new Circe’), and highlights both his rhetorical artifices, including a love for and use of Demosthenes, and his polemical skill.

The second and major part is about exegesis in controversies, making the book's title a double entendre: in the first part we have Gregory's literary composition, and in the second part, his exegesis of the Bible. The author takes three cases of key scriptural texts in Nyssa's struggle with Eunomius, In each case he sets out Nyssa's position through his works before accounting for influences on Gregory and any later authors influenced by him. The first example is Proverbs viii.22. He would not make the move to identify ‘wisdom’ with flesh or humanity as such. The exegetical principle of akolouthia guided him, but there was also a significant place for Athanasius (p. 271) despite the prejudices of Anglo-Saxon scholarship, not least in Nyssa's most mature treatment in the Contra Eunomium iii.1. Here one can detect Gregory's dedication to reading large sweeps of biblical narrative and simultaneously describing the stages of the Christian life, not unlike Origen. Nyssa took note of Eusebius' scolding of Marcellus for getting the genre of Proverbs wrong: Proverbs is not prophecy as such; perhaps, yet Wisdom includes prophecy, he responds, and it is the created reality of ‘wisdom’ among us that is foretold. The LXX variant allows an inner Trinitarian reading where the Greek verb means something like ‘acquire’, not ‘create’. The second case involves a dossier of Pauline verses about Christ as ‘first-born’. With Marcellus, ‘first-born’ can mean the New Creation that took place in the Incarnation. In the Refutation Gregory linked this to new creation in the believer. The third key text is the Johannine prologue. Nicene orthodoxy is no more or less than the plain sense of John i.1, which shines forth with all clarity (p. 355), but there is also a hidden sense, according to which the Logos of that verse is just more elevated in being – far above all human words. Cyril of Alexandria did not follow Nyssa's moves here: Cassin takes issue with B. Pottier and D. Pazzini. There is pleasing evidence of an up-to-date bibliography, and that includes awareness of literature in a number of languages and awareness of scholarship as involving international teamwork. Throughout the text of the monograph there are good-sized chunks of text and fine translations.