These three books are all in various ways about Gregory of Nyssa and deal with aspects of his thought. I start with the most basic: the new edition and French rendering of the first 146 sections (according to the division in Werner Jaeger's edition) of Gregory's first book in his lengthy, tri-partite rebuttal of the subtle Eunomius who occupied for a brief period the see of Cyzicus. It was brief because a cabal of his clergy got rid of him for innovation and doctrinal unsoundness: not so much because his sermons were aggressively ‘anomean’ (which, apparently, they were not) but for denying the perpetual virginity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Eunomius defended his doctrines of God and of Christ in an Apology (350/360) to which Basil of Caesarea responded (366). This provoked a much delayed reply from Eunomius to which Basil would have responded had not death (379) prevented it. The legacy fell to his brother Gregory. Three books (380, 381 and 383) by him in rebuttal of Eunomius' answer to Basil and a separate piece from 383 refuting an exposition of faith by Eunomius and much of it repeating earlier work, were the result. The Greek text is that established by Jaeger and here transcribed without apparatus according to the new policy of the series. I suppose that is no great loss though it means that nobody has checked the sources. When the appropriate places are reached Winling promises to use the contributions from the Syriac versions published by Parmentier and those in the Against Damian of Peter of Callinicus. There will therefore be some fresh textual contribution. The opposing doctrinal theses are clearly set out in the introduction which therefore ranges much beyond the sections published here. These opening pages, replete with crude and snobbish abuse, present Gregory at his least acceptable. Gregory was faced with a tricky task to defend his brother's ipsissima verba and sibling affection demanded the support which cooler language was inadequate to supply. Winling's translation is reliable and the notes sufficient. It will be good to have the rest of the work in due course.

Andrew Radde-Gallwitz has set himself a more complicated task: to expound and in some measure to justify (in the sense of explaining away the inconsistency in) Gregory's interpretation of divine simplicity as he had inherited it from Basil in controversy with Eunomius. The adroit and learned author has done his best, but the result is messy and the achieved success only partial. A difficulty with the problem of divine simplicity, as I perceive it, is that it is insoluble even to the Godhead; for the Godhead in knowing itself will be a complex of known and knower. Let us leave that objection out of account, A difficulty of this book is that the problem of divine simplicity is posed indirectly by consideration of Christopher Stead's statement of it which sets it out as an alleged underlying inconsistency between the changing actions of the Divine towards the World in providence and grace, and the divine nature. The problem, I would suggest, lies further back in the inconsistency of affirming a substantial or natural relation between the metaphysically simple God and Creation: an inconsistency between the God of religion who loves, punishes, is adored and feared, is in rapport with his Creation, and the God of the philosophers who is pure Being: whatever that is and assuming it is not pure nonsense; for Eunomius it was ‘ingeneracy’. These difficulties aside, there are excellent things in Radde-Gallwitz's interpretation: good accounts of the points at issue between Gregory and Eunomius with a discerning evaluation of Eunomius' responses to Basil. Good too is the recognition of the problematic left by Gregory in respect of the propria of the Godhead which are allegedly outside the divine nature but permanently attached to it; they will turn up later in Damian of Alexandria and in Aquinas as ‘substantial relations’. Nobody should write a further word on the Cappadocian doctrine of God without coming to terms with that area of controversy. I am not convinced that Gregory's ‘theological epistemology’ changed general perception in the way that he seems to suggest but more nearly convinced than I was that Gregory represented something of long lasting philosophical interest.

Kevin Corrigan compares and contrasts the metaphysical anthropologies of two theologians unusually coupled but illuminatingly yoked here. If Gregory's speculations escaped official condemnation the same could not be said of Evagrius'. Modern research has justified the condemnation (if justification is possible or requisite) by demonstrating that he did think and say what he was convicted of. But Corrigan is right to say that Evagrius' ideas were not by the standards of his time as out of touch with the traditional wisdom as they were to become when the tradition hardened. His work as teacher of spirituality lived on, notably in the classification of the seven deadly sins which derives from his teaching on the eight logismoi. More important and more interesting is the account of human nature and of the human consciousness that he gives, allowing as it does for real relationship between brain and mind. Gregory is in agreement: at the General Resurrection the soul will rejoin the dispersed corporal elements which ‘remember’ (rather like the medicaments in solution of modern homoeopathy) where they properly belong. John Philoponus thought that Gregory's views on the subject ridiculous. These and other aspects of the two writers' thought are considered in a book where the exegesis is often too dense and the relevance to contemporary thought overplayed. But these criticisms aside, this book is a valuable contribution to the subject.