Gregory of Nyssa and the Absurdity of Political Justice
In his views on human nature Gregory emphasized freedom, and for this reason Nikolai Berdyaev (Orthodox philosopher and critic of state power), held that Gregory came closest to formulating a true Christian anthropology in his time. While political thought did not have a very prominent place in Gregory’s work, he does have some interesting reflections on the issue of justice – reflections that seem to distance him from his almost contemporary, and, in the west, more influential (not least in matters of chuch-state relationship), St. Augustine. It was Augustine who saw secular political rule as a just way of suppressing evil among sinful people (he articulated this the most strongly in his work The City of God).
The absurdity of political justice
In his fourth sermon on the beatitudes, Gregory discusses the prevalent definition of justice:“Take the master of a household, the ruler of a city, or the king of a nation. If any of these men rule his subjects fairly, that is to say, if he does not take advantage of his power to indulge irrational impulses, but judges them squarely, adapting his sentence to their situation, he will come within the definition of those who attribute precisely such conduct to the notion of justice. [...] But as I look up to the sublime laws of God, I come to realize that one must see something higher in this justice [...] The word of salvation is indeed given as a common good for all mankind, but not every man is concerned with the things that have just been mentioned. [...] How then can one accept as true justice what is not meant equally for all?”1Gregory argues that true justice is first of all a question of moral virtue. As was common in antiquity, Gregory viewed virtue as those moral dispositions which lead the virtuous to happiness (eudaimonia). Gregory notes that when the beatitudes says “blessed are they that hunger and thirst for justice, for they shall have their fill” (Matt. 5:6), we should understand that “hunger” is the desire for what one is lacking spirtiually. While worldly, finite, things never really bring lasting satisfaction, devotion to God does, since God is the only true, infinite good. Happiness consists in loving God, and those who “hunger and thirst” after justice, will have their fill, i.e. happiness, precisely because justice is not a question of ruling fairly, but of practising devotion – something which can always be done independently of one’s worldly circumstances.
So far, Gregory’s view is reminiscent of Plato’s in The Republic, where he argues that justice is not only a question of the harmony of the city state, but also of the soul, i.e. moral virtue. But Gregory goes further than this, and argues that “if, according to the words of those outside the fold [i.e., pagan philosophers], the purpose of the just man is equality, but on the other hand pre-eminence presupposes inequality, then this definition of justice cannot be regarded as true”.2 True justice does not admit anything bad, Gregory states. So not only is justice more than a question of politcs, but, by presupposing injustice, political justice becomes impossible. In order to distribute money, one needs to accumulate wealth; in order to punish crimes, one needs to obtain political power, and so on (think of Wilde’s famous line “It is immoral to use private property in order to alleviate the horrible evils that result from the institution of private property”). The only true form of justice is moral virtue. Hence, we should remember that political “leftism” is hardly more just than other orders based on domination.
“Let us make man in our own image”
Though philosophical in nature, Gregory’s political views can be understood as a biblical reflection on what it means for humankind to be created in the image of God. Meditating upon Gen. 1:27, Gregory argues that the soul, having the ability of rationality and free will, is the image of God. The soul is like a mirror reflecting the beauty and goodness of God, while sin is that which prevents the “buried beauty of the soul to shine forth”.3 Despite sin, the image of God is present in all human beings. Our whole nature, Gregory argues, “is, so to say, one image of Him Who is”, which also means that the soul “does not admit the distinction of male and female”. This also suggests the metaphysical unity of humanity, and so every injustice is against humankind as such.These views led Gregory to his famous attack on slavery, in his homilies on Ecclesiastes (notice that Gregory’s polemical questioning is directed towards Solomon):
“‘I got me slave-girls and slaves.’ For what price, tell me? What did you find in existence worth as much as this human nature? [...] God said, Let us make man in our own image and likeness. If he is in the likeness of God, and rules the whole earth, and has been granted authority over everything on earth from God, who is his buyer, tell me? Who is his seller? To God alone belongs this power; or, rather, not even to God himself. For his gracious gifts, it says, are irrevocable. God would not therefore reduce the human race to slavery, since he himself, when we had been enslaved to sin, spontaneously recalled us to freedom. But if God does not enslave what is free, who is he that sets his own power above God’s?”4Every human being has, in a sense, “been granted authority over everything on earth”, and so domination of one person over another is a failure to acknowledge this fact. Because of this, Gregory claimed that human governments experience “quickly-repeated revolutions” for this very reason that it is “impracticable that those to whom nature has given equal rights should be excluded from power” and that “her impulse is instinct in all to make themselves equal with the dominant party, when all are of the same blood”.5 And about magistrates holding high offices, Gregory writes:
“How can a man be master of another’s life, if he is not even master of his own? Hence he ought to be poor in spirit, and look at Him who for our sake became poor of His own will; let him consider that we are all equal by nature, and not exalt himself impertinently against his own race on account of that deceptive show of office[...]”6All this is not to say, that Gregory taught some sort of anarchism as an ethical doctrine – in the above, Gregory does not say explicitly that the magistrate should drop his office, but that he ought to practice humility. On the contrary, in passages he seems to accept political rule, as had become common in fourth century Christianity (post Constantine). However, it is important to continuously assert that the Christian critique of state and political power is something which can be grounded in a broad variety of thought from the early Church and up till the present. And in a profound way, Gregory’s reflections give expression to some of the problems of political rule identified by the early Church.
(also posted on jesusradicals.com)
- Gregory of Nyssa On the Beatitudes, in Ancient Christian Writers, Gregory of Nyssa, The Lord’s Prayer & The Beatitudes, tr. Hilda C. Graef, (The Newman Press, London, 1954), pp. 119-120
- ibid
- Gregory of Nyssa On Virginity, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers Vol. 5, Gregory of Nyssa: Dogmatic Treatises, ed. Philip Schaff & Rev. Henry Wallace, p. 358
- Gregory of Nyssa Homilies on Ecclesiastes, tr. Stuart George Hall & Rachel Moriarty, p. 74
- Gregory of Nyssa Against Eunomius I, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers Vol. 5, Gregory of Nyssa: Dogmatic Treatises, ed. Philip Schaff & Rev. Henry Wallace, p. 84
- Gregory of Nyssa On the Beatitudes, in Ancient Christian Writers, Gregory of Nyssa, The Lord’s Prayer & The Beatitudes, tr. Hilda C. Graef, (The Newman Press, London, 1954), pp. 94-95
