Everlasting Eros. Gregory of Nyssa and longing for God

 Moses said, "I pray thee, show me thy glory."And he said, "I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you my name 'The LORD'; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. But," he said, "you cannot see my face; for man shall not see me and live." And the LORD said, "Behold, there is a place by me where you shall stand upon the rock; and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by; then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back; but my face shall not be seen." (Ex 33, 18-23)

When Gregory of Nyssa (d.395) explains this passage in his Life of Moses, his point in question is the endless eros, interminable longing for God that can never attain its fulfillment or rest in a complete satisfaction. 

"This truly is the vision of God: never to be satisfied in the desire to see him. But one must always, by looking at what he can see, rekindle his desire to see more. Thus, no limit would interrupt growth in the ascent to God, since no limit to the Good can be found nor is the increasing of desire for the Good brought to an end because it is satisfied."

Gregory notices that Moses' request seems out of place, taken that he had had a long encounter with God. Moses had seen and experienced such great miracles that someone might blame Moses for being arrogant: Is nothing enough? However, in Gregory's view, Moses' desire to see God is completely natural and obvious. The nature of the human soul is to strive higher and higher, with a necessity akin to physical objects that fall down.         

"If nothing comes from above to hinder its upward thrust (for the nature of the Good attracts to           itself those who look to it), the soul rises ever higher and will always make its flight yet higher - by its desire of the heavenly things 'straining ahead for what is still to come', as the Apostle says."

A pivotal concept in the theology of Gregory of Nyssa is epektasis. It is derived from Phil 3,13: "forgetting what lies behind and straining forward (epekteinomai) to what lies ahead." The eternal life is epektasis, constant increase in knowing God. The popular idea of eternal life as heavenly harp playing is remote to Gregory's vision. He would have agreed with Walter Kaufmann who wrote: "Who could bear such music, sights, monotony, and inactivity for one whole month without discovering that it was nothing but hell?"As a matter of fact, Origen had previously discovered tedium as the source of the Fall. Origen's De principiis states that the perfect primordial reasonable beings turned to humans or demons because of the monotony of their eternal bliss. Sin was introduced just for the sake of change, so to speak. 

In Gregory's view, resurrection means re-establishing our original condition. The difference between the original and final status of the humankind is that the latter is inextinguishable: No boundary interrupts the progress of rising to God, the beautiful has no limit, and the desire for the beautiful is never quenched by satisfaction or dullness.  In On the Soul and the Resurrection, Gregory writes:

"In the Beautiful no limit is to be found so that love should have to cease with any limit of the Beautiful. This last can be ended only by its opposite; but when you have a good, as here, which is in its essence incapable of a change for the worse, then that good will go on unchecked into infinity."

It is interesting to compare Gregory's epektasis with the ideas of a major 20th century philosopher of religion. Charles Hartshorne viewed God as the one who fully appreciates the beauty of the universe. However, his aesthetic theology concluded that life could not be endless - precisely on aesthetic grounds. Hartshorne wrote:"Should a book have a last chapter? A poem, a last verse? Without beginning and end a work of art has no definite form or meaning. I personally regard a life as, with normal luck and good management, having something of the qualities of a work of art, and I see no reason why it should be endless; rather the contrary, it ought not be endless." Gregory would perhaps have replied to Hartshorne that this does not apply to God. God is the one who is forever new. Hence our participation in God is ceaseless renewal. 

Back to Moses. God showed Moses a place upon the rock where he can look at God. That cleft of the rock is, according to the Christian tradition, Christ himself. Without Christ, our understanding of God is void and useless. Standing on Christ the rock may seem like the end point. That notwithstanding, Gregory interprets the cleft of the rock with the help of other images of the Scripture, such as "way", "house", or "water of refreshment." The place near God is not a definite "place" where one should remain seated, but rather a point of departure. Actually, God says: "The place with me is so great that the one running in it is never able to cease from his progress."

What does it mean that Moses sees God from behind? Ultimately, there is no other way to see God but to follow him. To remember that is good also for human relationships. We do not own God - but he owns us! We follow him and strive to know him better, but we must not stand in between God and our neighbors. We only see God from behind. To follow God wherever he might lead is to behold God.

It is also worth asking why "man can not see God and live"? Gregory attests that the Bible does not indicate that seeing God is lethal in itself. After all, the Divine is by its nature life-giving. The problem of seeing God's face resides in the human knowledge, that inevitably holds its perceptions as certain. Yet the characteristic of divine nature is to transcend all characteristics. Seeing God as "something" means to set limits to God and apprehend God as a finite object - eventually losing God from one's sight.

"He would not have shown himself to his servant if the sight were such as to bring the desire of the beholder to an end, since the true sight of God consists in this, that the one that looks up to God never ceases in that desire."

The radicality of Gregory's vision of God's grace means that he does not believe in the eternal damnation - hell. In accordance with Origen's apokatastasis, he maintains that there can not be an eternal boundary for divine goodness. If Evil would be a boundary for the Good, Evil would be greater than Good in the end. The Good cannot be encompassed neither by evil nor by human understanding. Another name for God is "the Beautiful". Everything beautiful we perceive in this world has thus an immense value as a gift of God, a divine caress to enkindle our love. Simultaneously, the perishing beauty does not satisfy our deepest desire.

"Such an experience seems to me to belong to the soul which loves what is beautiful. Hope always draws the soul from the beauty which is seen to what is beyond, always kindles the desire for the hidden through what is constantly perceived. Therefore, the ardent lover of beauty, although receiving what is always visible as an image of what he desires, yet longs to be filled with the very stamp of the archetype."