Source: The Essential Writngs of Christian Mysticism edited by Bernard Mc Ginn, 2006.

From “The Life of Moses” by Gregory of Nyssa (circa 335 – 395) Christian Mystic.

From The Third Theophany: Face to Face Vision (Ex 33:7-23)

For, he declares, ‘My face you shall not see, for no one shall see my face and live’ (Ex 33:20)

Scripture makes it plain that it is not the vision {of God} that is the cause of death.  For how should the face of life be the cause of death to those who draw near to it?  But since the Divine is naturally life giving and, further, that it is the special character of the divine nature to lie above all definitions, whoever supposes that God is one of the things he knows, is himself without life, having turned aside from The Really Real to what is supposed to be grasped by a concept.  For The Really Real is the true life and is inaccessible to our understanding.  If, then, the life giving lies beyond our knowledge, what we have grasped cannot be the life.  And what is itself not life is powerless of itself to communicate it.  Moses’ desire, therefore, is satisfied precisely in so far as his desire remains unsatisfied.

Moses is instructed through what has been said that the Divine is of itself infinite, circumscribed by no limit.  For if the Divine could be thought of as in some way limited, it would be absolutely necessary to consider what comes after it along with it.  Whatever has limit has a boundary…

Source: The Essential Writngs of Christian Mysticism edited by Bernard Mc Ginn, 2006.

From “The Life of Moses” by Gregory of Nyssa (circa 335 – 395) Christian Mystic. 

From Chapter II The Second theophany: the ascent of Mount Sinai (EX 20: 18-21)

[Note: The emphasis added to a passage was not denoted in the original text.]

However, the further the mind advances and the greater and more perfect its attention to, and knowledge of, the realm of reality becomes, the nearer, in fact, that it draws close to contemplation, so much the more is it aware of the unavailability of the divine nature to human knowledge.

The mind leaves behind all that appears, not only what the sense grasp, but also what the intelligence seems to behold and ever seeks to move further inward, until it penetrates by reason of the activity of the intelligence to what is unseen and incomprehensible and there sees God.  For it is precisely in this that true knowledge of what is sought consists, and precisely in this seeing consists, that is not seeing, because we seek what lies beyond knowledge, shrouded by incomprehensibility in all directions, as it were by some cloud.  Hence the mystical John, the same who penetrated into the shining cloud, says that ‘No one has ever seen God’ (John 1:18)  By this denial he insists that the knowledge of the divine nature is unavailable not only to men, but also to all rational creatures.

It is only when Moses has increased in knowledge confesses that he beholds God in the cloud, that is, that he knows that the divine is by nature something above all knowledge and comprehension.  For Scripture says, ‘Moses entered the darkness where God was’ (Ex 20:21).  Who is God? ‘He who,’ as David says, ‘made the darkness his hiding place’ (Ps 18:12.  for David also had been initiated into the secret mysteries in that very same shrine.

Once arrived there he is once again taught by reason what he had already learned through the cloud.  The reason for this is, I think, that our conviction on this matter might be more firmly grounded once it had been assured by the divine voice.  What the divine word above all inhibits is human assimilation of the divine to anything that we know.  Every thought and every defining conception which aims to encompass and grasp the divine nature is only forming an idol of God, without declaring him as he truly is.  Religious virtue may be distinguished in the following way.  Part deals with the divine, part deals with moral behavior, for part of religion is purity of life.  To begin with we must know how we are to think of God, that knowledge entails entertaining none of the ideas which are derived from human understanding.  The second part of virtue is taught by learning by what practices the life of virtue is realized.’