3. The Symbol Of Darkness
INTRODUCTION
tered throughout his Scriptural commentaries.84 Here, how ever, I must content myself with indicating merely the gen eral lines of development, emphasizing the more character istic traits of Gregorian spirituality.
3. THE SYMBOL OF DARKNESS
Following an idea already found in Origen, Gregory dis tinguished three broad ways within the spiritual life. In Gregory, however, these three ways are quite different from those we commonly meet with:
Moses' vision of God began with light; afterwards God spoke to him in a cloud. But when Moses rose higher and became more perfect, he saw God in the darkness.85
Thus the spiritual life is represented as moving from light to darkness. Paradoxical as this may at first seem, it is pre cisely Gregory's thought; and thus we may see at once his fundamental originality, and, especially, his advance beyond
Origen's position. Gregory emphasizes the importance of the obscurity of the mystical union as opposed to the clear con templation of the spirit, insisting that it is only through this obscurity that the soul can reach Him Who is beyond all intellectual comprehension.
Thus the first way, the way of light, is for beginners. In contrast with the darkness of sin, the supernatural life is an illumination. This way is marked by the purification of the soul from all foreign elements and by the restoration of the image of God. The first stage consists in a struggle against the passions—and the passions, for Gregory, are not our
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bodily inclinations as such, for these will not be removed until the resurrection, but rather their perversion. The strug gle against the passions involves an intensification of the soul's inner life by the practice of recollection: the soul seeks to unify its faculties by turning away from the multiplicity of external things.86 In this way is the image of God restored.
And for Gregory its characteristic marks are apathia, or de tachment from all worldly distractions, and parrhesia, or a childlike confidence in God which man regains as soon as all fear and shame are banished.87
This process of unification and purification makes the soul more like God, and hence allows it to attain its first knowl edge of Him within itself. And so the second way is char acterized by this knowledge of God "within the mirror of the soul." Gregory compares it to a cloud:
Next comes a closer awareness of hidden things, and by this the soul is guided through sense phe nomena to the world of the invisible. And this awareness is a kind of cloud, which overshadows all appearances, and slowly guides and accustoms the soul to look towards what is hidden.88
Here we enter, properly speaking into the realm of mysti cism. But it should, however, be noted that the three ways are not strictly exclusive of one another. Though each way has its dominant trait, the trait may also be found to some extent in the others. For example, the first way is characterized by purification, but this remains as well in the other two stages; the second way is characterized by knowledge, but this had already begun in the first way and, of course, continues in the third.
INTRODUCTION
What does Gregory mean by the knowledge of God in the mirror of the soul? This is a most important aspect of his mystical doctrine. But there is no question here of any experiential knowledge of the soul's own substance in the Platonic sense, as E. von Ivanka has rightly pointed out. It is an awareness of grace; and this awareness is expressed by Gregory in the doctrine of the spiritual senses which he had inherited from Origen and developed quite extensively. In this awareness, then, there is knowledge of God; but it is not a knowledge of His essence (and this is the important point), which is inaccessible, but rather an experience of His pres ence. Gregory uses the extraordinary expression, "the feeling of presence."89
The basis of this awareness, and that which gives it its special character as an essentially Christian experience, is the inhabitation of the Trinity within the soul. This divinization of the soul is indeed a divine activity, implying the special presence of God within the soul. And this presence Gregory compares with a sachet of myrrh without which clothing can lose its fragrance. Thus grace is like the fragrance which betrays the presence of spikenard, the ray that reflects the sun, the taste that reveals the substance. Thus the knowledge of God in the mirror of the soul is truly knowledge of God and not of the soul; but it is not a direct knowledge, inas much as God's presence is known by and through His ac tivity in the soul; in explaining the meaning of the verse
My spi\enard sent forth the odor of him (Cant. 1.11), Greg ory comments that no matter how perfect a person might become, even then he would not be able to look steadily upon the Word of God, no more than he could the
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sun. But he can look upon this Sun within himself • * Qf) as in a mirror.
In this way the soul can experience the indwelling of God within it. At first this experience is capable of satisfying it.
But the more the soul makes progress, the more it discovers that God infinitely transcends all that it can ever know of Him. At this point we are introduced to the third way, which is the knowledge of God in the darkness. This knowl edge consists in being aware that the true knowledge of God is to know that our goal transcends all knowledge and is every where cut off from us by the darkness of incompre hensibility.91
At first this awareness makes the soul despair, until, as Gregory tells us, it discovers that to find God is to seek Him without end,92 and that the true satisfaction of her desire consists in constantly going on with her quest and never ceas ing in her ascent93 towards God. Here we are at the very heart of Gregory's spiritual doctrine.
However, Gregory is not the first writer in whom we find this theme of darkness. It appears on occasion in Clement of Alexandria and Origen. But its true meaning is to be sought on a theological level. It means that to man's natural powers the knowledge of the divine essence is impossible.
INTRODUCTION
Such knowledge only becomes possible by the grace of Christ, which elevates man's mind above itself; by it the invisible becomes visible. And this illumination of the human spirit is the grace of contemplation.
But in Gregory of Nyssa, and especially in his later works, as the Life of Moses, and the Commentary on the Canticle of Canticles, the term "darkness" takes on a new meaning and an essentially mystical connotation. It expresses the fact that the divine essence remains inaccesible even to the mind that has been enlightened by grace, and that the awareness of this inaccessibility constitutes the highest form of con templation. Gregory's originality consists in the fact that he was the first to express this characteristic of the highest stages of mystical experience.
We find the theme of darkness employed by Gregory in three different ways. In one passage, which is not too rele vant here, the darkness refers to the inability of the Jews to comprehend the glory of God.94 In its second meaning, the darkness is used of the knowledge of those divine truths which we could not have known without revelation. This knowledge or gnosis is indeed an illumination, but it is a kind of darkness for those who have not been granted it. We find this usage, for example, in the Commentary on the Six
Days of Creation, where Gregory, in speaking of Moses, says that, elevated in spirit above the rest, he enjoyed the con templation of heavenly things "within the darkness of his vision."95 But the text here is concerned with Moses receiving the revelation about the creation of the world. In a similar way Gregory speaks of the divine secrets being revealed to the saints of the Christian dispensation. Thus of Gregory
Thaumaturgus, he says:
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His darkness was a vision not vouchsafed to others.
. . . Thus he received (and all those who were initiated by him) a revelation of the mysteries.96
In a similar vein he speaks of his brother Basil:
Often we saw him enter into the darkness where God was. By the mystical guidance of the Spirit he understood what was invisible to others, so that he seemed to be enveloped in that darkness in which the Word of God is concealed.97
It will be noted, however, that in all these passages it is a question of knowledge that is communicated only to a privi leged person and is concealed from the rest. This is really the Pauline concept of mystery: it is God's hidden design, which cannot be known without revelation, but can be un derstood once it is revealed. Thus there is no question here of the essential incomprehensibility of the divine nature.
It is the third use of the term "darkness" in which we are primarily interested here, and it occurs in a most important group of texts. We first see it in the Commentary on the Psalms, where Gregory speaks of Moses, whose eyes sharply penetrated the divine darkness, and therein contemplated the invisible.98
In itself the passage might have been taken another way, as referring to the fact that Moses saw what had in itself been invisible. But it would seem that Gregory is already using the term (to borrow the terminology of Pere Marechal) to refer not merely to the relative incapacity of our minds to
INTRODUCTION
know God, but also to the impenetrable depths of the divine essence." It is this sense which will become clear from the decisive quotations from the Life of Moses and the Com mentary on the Canticle of Canticles.
Our most important text on this problem comes from the Life of Moses and should be quoted in full:
What now is the meaning of Moses' entry into the darkness and of the vision of God that he enjoyed in it? ... The sacred text is here teaching us that ... as the soul makes progress, and by a greater and more perfect concentration comes to appreciate what the knowledge of truth is, the more it ap proaches this vision, and so much the more does it see that the divine nature is invisible. It thus leaves all surface appearances, not only those that can be grasped by the senses but also those which the mind itself seems to see, and it keeps on going deeper until by the operation of the spirit it penetrates the invisible and incomprehensible, and it is there that it sees God. The true vision and the true knowledge of what we seek consists precisely in not seeing, in an awareness that our goal transcends all knowl edge and is everywhere cut off from us by the dark ness of incomprehensibility. Thus that profound evangelist, John, who penetrated into this luminous darkness, tells us that no man hath seen God at any time, teaching us by this negation that no man— indeed, no created intellect—can attain a knowl edge of God.100
Now it is clear that the point here is not that supernatural truths are relatively obscure for the natural man; for Gregory
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presupposes that the soul has already been enlightened by grace, and is discussing its further progress in contemplation.
After learning all that can be known of God, the soul dis covers the limits of this knowledge; and this discovery is an advance, because now there is an awareness of the divine transcendence and incomprehensibility. We have then ar rived at a negative, "apophatic" theology. For we have now an authentic experience, a true vision. And the darkness is a positive reality that helps us to know God—that is why it is called luminous. For it implies an awareness of God that transcends all determination, and thus it is far truer than any determined categorical knowledge. For here in this obscurity the soul experiences the transcendence of the divine nature, that infinite distance by which God surpasses all creation.
Thus the soul finds itself as it were elevated above all created things and at the same time lost in an infinite darkness wherein it loses its contact with things, though it is aware of God despite the total incapacity of its knowledge.
The mystical character of this experience is more clearly developed in the Commentary on the Canticle of Canticles.
In commenting on the verse, In my bed by night I sought him . . . and found him not (Cant. 3.1), Gregory explains that the word "bed" suggests that the soul has become the spouse of the Word, and being united to Him by love, she has received a share in His goods.101 With regard to the "night," he says:
By the night she refers to the contemplation of the invisible, just as Moses, who entered into the dark ness to the place where God was; and God, as the Prophet says, made the darkness his covert round
INTRODUCTION 31
about him. . . . Now, she says, that I have been deemed worthy of the nuptial rites, I rest as it were upon the bed of all that I have hitherto understood.
But I am suddenly introduced into the realm of the invisible, surrounded by the divine darkness, searching for Him Who is hidden in the dar\ cloud. Then it was that I felt that love for Him
Whom I desired—though the Beloved Himself re sists the grasp of our thoughts. . .. Then at last she gives up all she has found; for she realizes that what she seeks can be understood only in the very inability to comprehend His essence, and that every intelligible attribute becomes merely a hindrance to those who seek to find Him. This is why she says: When I had a little passed by them, I aban doned all creatures and passed by all that is intel ligible in creation; and when I gave up every finite mode of comprehension, then it was that I found my Beloved by faith. And I will never let Him go, now that I have found Him, from the grasp of faith, until He comes within my chamber. For the heart is indeed a chamber to be filled by the divine indwelling—that is, when it is restored to the state that it had in the beginning.102
This text provides an important clarification. For it is clear now that Gregory is speaking of a soul that has already ar rived at a high degree of union with God by divine love.
We are thus at the very summit of the spiritual life. One would have thought that such a union would involve a vision of the divine essence. But this is not so: God escapes the grasp of the intellect; and the soul then realizes that the true knowledge of God is not where it had looked for it. "Any
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representation," says Gregory, "is nothing but an obstacle."103
For God is beyond every representation. This does not, how ever, mean that there is no contact with God, but merely that this contact is not by way of the understanding but by faith. It is only in the obscurity of faith that the soul can grasp the transcendent Godhead. And thus we are directly on the way that leads to St. John of the Cross. God, as He is in Himself, is Darkness for the intellect, but can be grasped by faith. In this way it is clear that the knowledge of God in the darkness is not merely negative. It is truly an experi ence of the presence of God as He is in Himself, in such wise that this awareness is completely blinding for the mind, and all the more so, the closer it is to Him. In fact, one might almost say that the darkness expresses the divine presence, and that the closer He comes to the soul, the more intense is the darkness. The image of darkness is merely a way of expressing the fact that the awesomeness of the divine essence is more than human nature can endure.
Hence the fullness of the divine existence—for that is really what the darkness means—does not draw close to the soul save by slow stages. At first it does not experience the dark ness itself, but rather those drops of night (Cant. 5.2)—for as yet it could not endure more. And this Gregory explains in a final pasage:
The reward for receiving Me [says the Beloved] and taking Me into your house will be the dew of My head, with which I am filled, and the drops of the night which flow down from My loc\s. . . .
When a man enters into the precinct of the hidden and invisible, it is impossible that he should en-