HeyJ XLIII (2002), pp.

344356

ORIGEN AND GREGORY OF NYSSA

ON THE LORDS PRAYER
ANTHONY MEREDITH

Heythrop College

The aim of this article is twofold: first to compare the treatments of the
Lords Prayer offered by Origen and Gregory of Nyssa,1 and then, on the
basis of this comparison, to discover what influence, if any, Origens
treatment had upon Gregorys. Did Gregory know it at all, and, if he did,
was he affected by it? It seems fair to assume that some of Origens
writings were known to Gregory and his fellow Cappadocians. Shortly
after the termination of their university careers at Athens some time
subsequent to 356, Basil and Gregory of Nazianzus compiled a
collection of passages from Origen in their Philocalia. Furthermore,
Basil in ch. 29, section 72 of his On the Holy Spirit refers to Origen and
cites a passage from Book 6 of his Commentary on John.
Gregory of Nyssas own explicit references to his distinguished
predecessor are extremely rare2 and it is often assumed on the basis of
two passages that he consciously distanced himself from Origens
doctrine of the pre-existence of souls,3 though, as we shall see, several
passages in his own writings suggest that he probably used such ideas
himself. Indeed on two other important issues, the nature of salvation
and the place occupied in that process by Christs human soul, Origen
and Gregory seem to me to offer widely differing replies.4
When it comes to their respective treatments of the central Christian
prayer, a few external differences distinguish them at the outset.
Principal among these is the question of genre. Origens account is
embedded in a larger treatise On Prayer, perhaps5 to be dated to about
236 because of a reference in 23,4 to the lost Commentary on Genesis.
The discussion of the prayer occupies only chs 22 to 30 of the treatise,
the first twenty chapters of which are concerned with the considerable
problems raised by petitionary prayer.
Origen is not addressing a particular congregation, but rather, as
emerges from the opening of ch. 2, two persons, Ambrosius, a convert
and subsequently a patron of Origen (Eusebius, Eccl. Hist. VI, xviii and
xxiii), the addressee of his treatise Against Celsus and The Exhortation
to Martyrdom, and Tatiane, apparently an elderly lady. In other words,
The Editor/Blackwell Publishers Ltd, Oxford, UK and Boston, USA.

ORIGEN AND GREGORY OF NYSSA ON THE LORDS PRAYER

345

Origens On Prayer is essentially a treatise and is not designed for

popular consumption. It is clear, and academic, and totally lacking in the
tricks of rhetoric. Origen was no rhetorician, even in writings which
were designed for a wider audience. Clearly, it is composed for two
readers of high intelligence who were interested in the problematic of
petitionary prayer and the need in it for a true idea of the divine nature.
Yet, oddly for a writer who is often and correctly credited with being
influenced by the ideas of Plato, Platos magic style, as distinct from
many of his ideas, made little impact on Origen.
Gregory, by contrast, is steeped in rhetoric, and his sermons, above all
the elaborate Prologues with which each opens, are classical in tone and
allusion. His five sermons on The Lords Prayer were delivered perhaps
shortly before the Council of Constantinople in May 381.6 Clearly they
have in mind an audience larger than the two addressees of Origen,
though they lack the vividness of Chrysostom. This serves to underline
the fact that Gregory, despite the fact that he apparently lacked the
formal training of his brother Basil, was a child of the Second Sophistic
Movement and is always, despite his theological concerns, the
rhetorician. The five sermons here considered are evidence above all of
the influence on him of Plato, as a glance at the footnotes on page 14,
23, 28, 30, 31, 37, 44, 48, 50 and 60 of the Leiden text indicates.7 By
contrast, the footnotes to the Berlin edition of Origens On Prayer a
much longer work list only four echoes of Plato, in 22,3; 27,8; 29,15
and 31,3 a suggestive difference.
In what follows, I compare the treatments of connected topics by the
two writers, though I omit discussion of the elaborate openings with
which Gregory prefaces all but the first of his five sermons.
COMMENTARY AND COMPARISON

Pray always
Both Origen and Gregory are concerned with the problem of how to
make real in life the precept of Jesus in Luke 18:1 and of Paul in 1
Thessalonians 5:17, about the need to pray always. Origen discusses the
first of these texts on three separate occasions, in 12,2; 22,5; and 25,2.
In the first of these passages he takes the command to mean that the
entire life of the saint, taken as a whole, is a single great prayer, of which
prayer in the normal sense of the word is only a part. He repeats this
interpretation in 22,5.
Gregorys treatment is quite different. He uses the precept to point the
contrast between the enthusiasm and time we commonly devote to the
ordinary business of life and the carelessness and lack of with
which we treat prayer (6/5, 29 and 7/27). The reason for this, he
suggests, is that we mistakenly suppose that there can be no advantage

346

ANTHONY MEREDITH

to be had from the divine . For Gregory, prayer is seen as the

great protection against the evils of avarice, as at 8/17ff. The presence of
the memory of God in the soul renders the assaults of the adversary of no
avail. In other words, Gregory stresses the practical advantages of prayer
in protecting us from various maladies of the soul. At 8/303 Gregory
offers a singularly attractive definition of prayer as ,
familiarity with God, which seems more personal than the more austere
idea of Origen as attention to God.
M` !
Both Origen and Gregory devote considerable space and acumen to a
discussion of the meaning of the term with reference to
Jesus words in Matthew 6:7. Like the word in Matthew
6:11, it seems to occur nowhere previously in Greek literature. Origen
(ch. 21) interprets it to mean, in line with the agraphon he cites on
several occasions (cf. 2,2) in this treatise, the temptation to ask God for
earthly, temporal blessings as distinct from spiritual gifts. They have no
impression, he writes, of the great and heavenly requests, and offer
every prayer for bodily and outward things.
Gregorys exegesis agrees in some measure with that of Origen. To
begin with, he identifies the novel expression with the search for what is
` (11/27; 12/13). The good, by contrast,
frail and insubstantial,
pray for the disappearance of evil and the being rid of destructive
emotions (` ).8
To the question which naturally arises from this austere exegesis,
What then can we pray for?, Gregory offers a two-pronged reply: (a)
God educates us through prayer to look towards him and so learn what
to pray for (18/5, 14); and (b) Through our failure to achieve the
temporal blessings we misguidedly look for, we may be induced to
desire ` ^ (18/17).
Despite the differing ways by which they come at the same subject,
the notions of Origen and Gregory are strikingly similar. Origen uses the
word , Gregory ^ , but the thought is surely
identical. The only substantial difference lies in the fact that whereas
Origen has the additional clause taken from the agraphon above referred
to (and the little or the earthly things will be added to you), Gregory
seems not to know this. He certainly never employs it. The phrasing with
which Gregory provides a peroration for his sermon speaks of the
impropriety of asking the eternal God for temporal blessings and of
asking from Him who endures, advantages that last for so short a space.
In other words, although Gregory does not use Jesus saying, the idea
which it contains is clearly in evidence.

ORIGEN AND GREGORY OF NYSSA ON THE LORDS PRAYER

347

Vow and prayer/promise and petition

Towards the beginning of his second sermon (21/2522/15), after the
elaborate preface (20/322/14), Gregory draws an important distinction
between \ (vow) and (prayer). The former must precede
the latter. We have found this sort of thing before in ch. 4 of Origens
treatise. He uses 1 Samuel 1:911, which appears to distinguish between
Hannahs prayer and her antecedent vow. Gregory, like Origen, appeals
to scriptural usage for this distinction, though not to the story of
Hannah, but instead at 21/26ff. to Psalm 65:1314. He defines \ as
a promise to give a thanksgiving offering,
(22/4). The prayer of petition cannot profitably be made
without such an antecedent promise on the part of the petitioner.
Father!
We now come to one of the most significant passages and differences
between the two writers the treatment of the word . In On
Prayer 22 Origen makes the following most important comment. He
argues that the use of the word in addressing God is peculiarly Christian.
He establishes this point by appealing to those passages in the Old
Testament where God is either discussed or addressed. I do not mean,
he writes, that God was not called Father and that those who believed in
God were not called sons; but nowhere have I found in a prayer the boldness () proclaimed by the Saviour in calling God Father.
Interestingly, although he insists on the givenness of our own sonship
by citing Romans 8:15 and John 1:12, at 22,3 he suggests that we should
be extremely hesitant in calling God Father if we have not become
genuine ( ) sons. It is as though metaphysical or sacramental
sonship conferred through baptism did not of themselves suffice, but
needed the supplement of the moral life if they were to be efficacious.
Gregorys contribution to the subject is very different. It may be that
in the second part of his treatment (23/23ff.) he follows Origen in his
insistence on the importance of good choices and a good life on the part
of those who address God in prayer, and can write: God who is by
nature good cannot be the Father of an evil choice (). Again
(24/17) he cites 2 Corinthians 6:14, What fellowship is there between light
and darkness? What is of interest is that in Gregory the ethical elements
rather than the ontological predominate. In this respect he goes beyond
Origen, who at least refers to those passages in the New Testament which
insist on the power we have been given to address God so familiarly. This
is well illustrated by the fact that certain Pauline passages, for example,
Galatians 4:14 and Romans 8:15, appear in the exegesis of Origen (22,2)
but are here and elsewhere in the five sermons neglected by Gregory.
Gregorys treatment is heavily influenced by Platonic language, if not
by Platonic philosophy. He asks for the wings to be able to fly up and

348 ANTHONY MEREDITH

grasp the mystery language which has both scriptural (Ps 54:7) and
Platonist (Phaedrus 245E) antecedents (oddly not noticed by the editor).
He expresses his amazement that the changeless nature and immovable
power of God, which masters and orders whatever exists, and more to
the same effect, should be addressed as Father (cf. 23/11ff.)
This idea of the amazing boldness (, 23/12) implied by
prayer seems to echo the thought and language of Origen in 22,1, cited
above (Nowhere have I found in a prayer the boldness proclaimed by
the Saviour in calling God Father). Both Origen and Gregory could
point to passages in the New Testament which advocate a similar boldness in approaching and addressing God, such as Ephesians 3:12.
In heaven
In Origens and Gregorys treatments of the phrase in heaven we find
a marked difference of approach. In ch. 23 Origen insists that the words
in no way imply that God is spatially located. Section 3 of this chapter
particularly criticizes the materialistic idea of God entertained by some,
possibly the Stoics. He wishes, he says, to refute the lowly notion about
God held by those who suppose that God is in a corporeal place, since
it would follow that He is Himself corporeal. Origen appears to suggest
in section 4 that any apparently corporeal language used about God in
Genesis must be interpreted to refer to the moral character of those who
by their lives are either worthy or unworthy of him, and with whom as a
result he can be said to dwell or not to dwell. Dwelling, therefore, is
always to be understood morally, never spatially, and depends not on any
divine locomotion but on human behaviour.
Gregory continues his discussion (26/20) of the meaning of Father in
heaven with an unusual non-Origenist and at the same time singularly
beautiful application of the phrase to the parable of the Prodigal in Luke
15 certainly not used by Origen either in his On Prayer or in his On First
Principles or in the remains of his Homilies on Luke. Gregorys treatment also raises the intriguing possibility that despite his disclaimers
elsewhere he may have believed in the pre-existence of souls. (On this
3
point, see note 3.)
The words refer, he claims, to the fatherland whence we fell (
) and from which we were cast down. The implication is
that once we lived in a heavenly paradise Eden is not mentioned and
that we left it for the swinish life of this world. Our true homeland is
heaven, to which we hope eventually to return (27/4,10).
Hallowed be thy name
This petition causes Origen a good deal of perplexity. In 24,1 he asks the
obvious question. Does not the force of the prayer imply that Gods

ORIGEN AND GREGORY OF NYSSA ON THE LORDS PRAYER

349

name has not already been hallowed?. Naturally, this is absurd, and
leads Origen to explore the meanings both of name and hallowing.
The answer given in section 24,4 is entirely in line with his general
approach. In effect he argues that Gods name is hallowed by and in
those whose lives through Gods grace the power of sin has been
overcome. Once3 we have attained in this state to a true and lofty
knowledge ( ) of God, then we shall truly exalt Him. In other
words, it is a change in ourselves for which we pray, and not in God.
Thy kingdom come
Origens treatment of Thy kingdom come occurs in chapter 25 of his
treatise. At once he identifies the kingdom with the inwardness
seemingly implied by Luke 17:20. He offers a highly spiritual account
of what he means by the kingdom of God, as distinct from the kingdom
of Christ. The former means the blessed condition of the governing
mind and the right ordering of wise thoughts. The kingdom of Christ,
by contrast, appears to refer to the way the power of God is to be
established by means of the words that go forth presumably,
preaching and the effects of those words in terms of deeds of
righteousness and other virtues. At the end of section 2 Origen says that
we should pray constantly (1 Thess 5:17) with a character divinized by
the divine Word ( ). This is the basic meaning
for Origen of the two petitions Hallowed be thy name and Thy
kingdom come. This is hardly the eschatological prayer it was meant to
be. Rather, the kingdom of God is to be understood as the righteousness
of the one who prays, in whom there is no shadow of darkness, For
there can be no fellowship between light and darkness (2 Cor 6:14).
Gregory begins his third homily with the usual highly wrought
prologue inviting the one who prays to prepare himself for the entry into
relationship with the Holy One. He then discusses the two clauses
Hallowed be thy name and Thy kingdom come together
(33/2339/14) before launching into the most interesting part of the
sermon (from 39/15 to the end), which deals with the reading of the text
he has before him a text which apparently is nowhere else to be found,
save perhaps in Marcion. Instead of Thy kingdom come, Gregorys
text of Luke had, May thy Holy Spirit come upon us and purify us.
Interestingly, Gregory discusses the meaning of the two clauses
together and in both cases he insists on the importance of the divine
(34/8,12; 35/2) and (36/25) in enabling in us the
power to overcome evil and to do good. Both of these expressions reveal
what has been called the synergism of Gregory, which it seems fair to
distinguish from the more robust approach to divine aid advocated by
Augustine.9 Unless the odd expression of Origen in 24,4 (c
) is taken to mean divine assistance, he is silent here on the

350

ANTHONY MEREDITH

subject of our need of Gods help. Gregory holds that through the divine
assistance evil will be eradicated from our lives and so we shall be by
that very fact giving glory and praise to God (Matt 5:16 at 36/23). For
Gregory, giving glory to God and total submission to his will are
practically identical.
Thy kingdom come is treated specifically by Gregory in
37/839/14. How, he asks, can we pray for that to come which is already
here? Or rather, how can we pray for the extension of a kings power
who is already unchangeably present? The highest good of all, so
Gregory argues, is total submission to the life-giving power (37/22).
What therefore we above all need to pray for is freedom from the
tyranny of sin. That is what the petition is about (38/4). It is a prayer
3 for
the disappearance of the passions that control us (`
` ) and threaten to warp our freedom. It is a prayer for the
(38/23) of all passions. All the evils attendant upon human
nature will vanish once the kingdom of God is established, by a fruitful
conjunction of our freedom and of divine power (37/16). Gods power
does not act in a tyrannical way a truth Gregory reminds us of both
here (37/18) and elsewhere, as at Oratio Catechetica 22 (57/10; 58/1).
The remainder of Gregorys homily 3 is devoted, on the basis of an
idiosyncratic reading of Luke 11:2 (May thy holy Spirit come), to a
defence of the deity of the Holy Ghost against the assaults of the socalled Pneumatomachi. Had the Council of Constantinople (381)
already taken place at or before the time of writing, it is hard to believe
that Gregory would have been silent about it; nor would he here and
elsewhere (e.g., in his first Sermon on Saint Stephen [GNO X.1 part 2,
88:23ff.]) have devoted so much time to defending the deity of the third
Person of the Trinity.
The whole question of the precise role of the Holy Spirit in the Trinity
was never one directly faced by Origen. His discussion of the status of
the Trinity in the second book of his Commentary on John (X, 7375)
rather suggests that he subordinated the Spirit to the Son, though it
should be noted that in Rufinuss Latin translation of On First
Principles, especially at 1, 3, 4, he appears to take a more robust view
of the nature of the third Person of the Trinity.
Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven
This, Origen argues at 26,1, will only take place when all do the will of
God. As we have seen, he tends to equate the being in heaven with doing
the will of God. In the so-called place of heaven we find disobedient
heavenly spirits (cf. Eph 6:12), while here on earth it is equally possible
to discover those who are truly in heaven because their spirits are at one
with that of the Lord a reference to 1 Corinthians 6:17, a very popular
verse with Origen. In effect, as he points out at the end of ch. 26, doing

ORIGEN AND GREGORY OF NYSSA ON THE LORDS PRAYER

351

the will of God is equivalent to being in heaven. Therefore, if the will of

God is done also on earth as it is in heaven, we shall all be in heaven
when we do the will of God (26,6). This is a very good example of the
way in which Origen interprets what look like metaphysical or
ontological statements as moral ones.
Gregorys treatment of Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven
occurs in his fourth homily and follows upon an elegant prologue
(44/1445/16), which displays something of his well-known interest 3 in
medicine. Healthiness of body results from the
(45/9), and so does health of soul (45/17ff.). From this
Gregory argues that the will of God terminates in the health of soul,
where none of the disparate elements in the tripartite division he inherits
3
from
3 Plato
3 is out of control. So he can write at 46/2: ^
\ ; and, conversely, falling away from it is
disease. The aim of prayer is the correction of the souls maladies
(3 ) and the consequent disappearance of all unwanted
.
After this, Gregory turns in 48/1450/20 to an examination of the meaning to be given to as in heaven so upon earth. He seems to be slightly
more ambiguous than Origen in his attitude3 towards place. He distinguishes between the upper area ( ) and (48/23;
49/1), the former being both pure and the dwelling place of spiritual
beings, whereas the earth is the place to which we are consigned because
of our sins. Our existence here seems to be the result of having fallen
from the divine will (50,1011). The sense of in heaven therefore is a
prayer that we may do the will of God as it is done in the heavenly realm
(50/15,16 with a reference to Colossians 1:15f.). Gregory does not
deal with Ephesians 6:12, which helped Origen to break the connection
between place and state. What is not clear from Gregorys treatment is
whether when we do the will of God before we die we are already, in
virtue of our obedience,
in heaven. This ambiguity is partly a reflection of
3
the language of ,10 which can be either spatial or moral in meaning.
Give us this day our daily bread
To the meaning of this petition Origen devotes the large chapter 27. He
begins by rejecting the thought that daily bread means corporeal
bread as this would call into question the agraphon before referred to
which instructs us to pray for the greater things (27,1). As we shall see,
on this point Gregory does not agree with him. According to Origen, and
in line with John 6:27, we are to ask for spiritual food. So in section 4
the bread is interpreted to mean the nourishing word of God. This
interpretation is also advocated in section 13, where the bread we
3 are to
ask for is to nourish us so that we may be divinized ( ) by
the Word of God.

352 ANTHONY MEREDITH

In section 7 of ch. 27, having, as it were, disposed of a purely physical
sense of bread, Origen turns to a discussion of the word and
argues that its non appearance in Greek suggests that it is an invention
of the evangelists. He derives it from \ and then applies it to the
spiritual bread already referred to and interpreted in section 10 to mean the
bread of angels, referred to in Psalm 78:25. However, with his accustomed
3 the word may be
fairness to other opinions he admits in section 13 that
derived from the verb (to come) rather than (to be). If that
suggestion were correct it would imply the bread for tomorrow. Origen
dismisses this proposal rather abruptly without offering any clear reason,
though it may be that he thought such an account played into the hands
of the Millenarians an interpretation reinforced by a remark at the end
of section 13 where the one thousand years of Psalm 90 is referred to as
the famous millennium.
Sections 3 and 4 of ch. 27 contain an exegesis of the bread of life
discourse in John 6. Bread, however, is given a spiritual meaning. The
idea of spiritual food is ever uppermost in Origens understanding. John
6:5157 is interpreted to refer to the Incarnation with special reference
to John 1:14. So Origen says in section 9 that is there
to nourish the body; the 3 is there for mind and soul, and
is distributed to the mind ( ) and soul (). What he means by
intellectual food is clear from the rest of his writings.
The apparent omission of any reference by Gregory to the Eucharist in
his fourth homily reminds us of Origen even if he is not therein dependent upon him. But that apart, it would be hard to find a greater contrast
in the treatment of this verse. Gregorys exposition consists basically
of a plea to restrict the sense of bread to the necessities of life. We are
bidden to ask for bread because we are truly hungry and not for the
vanities to which our desires incite us (51/25). It must be the basic
for life that leads us on (51/19; 55/14).
Gregory inserts at this point a passionate attack on the power and
danger of pleasure, which he likens to a snake whose scales make it hard
to dislodge it once it has made an entrance.11 The further vivid description of luxurious living and the gradual mastery of the serpentine pleasure
principle leading to at 54/1119 suggests also
that Gregory was aware of luxurious living in Nyssa and round about. A
similar passage in the first homily On the Beatitudes perhaps reinforces
this point (85/22ff.).
Gregory does not restrict the scope of the petition to the urgent request
for the necessities of life. He urges that we also are to ask for the fruit of
our just labours (55/22). If others derive profit from greed, we are to expect
the reward of life. Whoever is eager for justice receives bread from God
(56/7). As to the word with which the petition concludes,
Gregory takes this to mean as before our bodily needs for today, not for
tomorrow, when we pray for the arrival of the kingdom (58/1214).

ORIGEN AND GREGORY OF NYSSA ON THE LORDS PRAYER

353

Forgive us our debts (sins) as we forgive those who sin against us

This petition is dealt with by Origen in a direct and practical fashion.
The first five sections of ch. 28 discuss the obvious fact that we are
ourselves in debt to others, largely based on an exegesis of Romans
13.78, Pay everyone their debts Section 6 begins as follows: If we
are in debt to so many people, it is inevitable that there are people in
debt to us. The final sections, 9 and 10, appear to reject the suggestion
that the priest has the power to forgive all sins; only God can do that.
Section 10 begins with an attack upon those priests who arrogate the
power to forgive adultery, fornication and idolatry. No one has the power
to release from sins unto death ( e a clear
reference to 1 John 5:16).
Gregorys fifth homily even in its treatment of our varied debts from
62/17 onwards, a treatment which makes no overt reference at all to
Romans 13:7f., differs quite widely from Origen in at least two other
respects. Having begun with a description of the desired if not actually
realized, godlike character of the true prayer (cf. especially 59/5, 20)
and of the that this confers (59/12; 60/23), he then makes the
quite novel suggestion that if we are as we ought to be we have the
power to impose a moral obligation upon God to rid us of our sins
(61/2021). We should be able to say to God, What I have done, You
must do also (n g d ) (61/23).
The second striking feature of Gregorys treatment occurs in his
analysis of the parable of the Pharisee and the publican in Luke
18:1014. No one, he argues,
can claim to be free of sin, because there
3
are always the a (64,23) which we all
share in since the fall and the coats of skin we thereafter put on. He then
speaks of the paradise, our first homeland, whence we all fell (65/18),
language which echoes that of his second homily. A little later he
suggests (66/1112) that we all shared in the nature and the fall of
Adam, For, as the apostle says, We all die in Adam (1 Cor 15:22).
This seems to teach a doctrine of original sin.
To this explanation of the clause Gregory adds a lengthy addition
which he describes as both more profound and truer (66/19). The first
part of this excursus deals with the plea for mercy for sins of the
body, especially for those committed through the five senses
(66/2868/8), while the second and longer portion (68/972/10) deals
with spiritual sins. These are sins which owe their existence to the
malice or the defilement of the spirit, incapable of controlling the
baser passions and the senses. The conclusion of this section (69/26
72/10) is devoted to an application of the parable of the debtor in
Matthew 18:23ff. The enormous debt we owe to God for his generosity
is compared with the trivial debts others owe us. The crowning sin in
this passage consists in our woeful lack of gratitude to the God to whom
we owe so much.

354 ANTHONY MEREDITH

Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil
The final petition of the prayer is not, so Origen urges, a plea to be
exempt altogether from temptation, that being an impossibility for our
present condition. Rather, it is a prayer that we be not encompassed by
temptation (29,11). The crucial thought with which Origen supports all
his reflections in this prayer occurs in section 15: God does not wish
that good should belong to anyone by necessity but willingly. Human
freedom therefore is the key with which to understand Origens
approach to the problem of temptation and ultimate deliverance.
Gregorys treatment of the clause is, by contrast, both brief and
jejune. It forms the coda to his fifth sermon and stretches over less
than two pages of the Greek text from 72/11 to 74/5. For Gregory,
seems to mean much the same as evil and the petition asks
to be exempt from both. There seems to be no suggestion that temptation
is a necessity of the human condition and that to be without it is to be
deprived of the possibility of growth in virtue a logical conclusion,
granted the insistence we find in the mature ascetical writings of
Gregory that even where there is no possibility of fall, upward spiritual
mobility is the lot of all rational beings.
CONCLUSION

The above outline of the reflections of Origen and Gregory respectively

on the Lords Prayer suggests some obvious similarities as well as
differences. To begin with, there is the obvious difference of genre and
style, to which reference has already been made. A treatise is quite
different from a sermon. The difference in genre might explain certain
peculiarities in the respective accounts. For example, the exhortations to
frugality which we find in Gregorys first and fourth sermons are
doubtless appropriate in popular addresses, but unnecessary in a treatise
designed for the instruction of two highly intellectual readers. Further,
the rhetorical stress in Gregory may have allowed him to use the
language of falling from another state without really meaning it too
seriously.
There are other significant contrasts. The basic structure of Origens
thought owes more to Plato than does Gregorys. Origen is more
thoroughly consistent in his use of language and imagery (though there
is very little of the latter). Then, in some respects (above all in his
treatment of the word Father, of the phrase in heaven and of the
clause Give us this day ), Origen is more profound than Gregory. He
shows himself more of a scholar than Gregory, who does not discuss
either the peculiarity of the address Father or the meaning of the word
. Yet Gregory is not devoid of originality, above all in his
account of the meaning of the clause Forgive us, which is quite novel

ORIGEN AND GREGORY OF NYSSA ON THE LORDS PRAYER

355

and owes nothing to Origen; and the same may be said of his discussion
of the deity of the Holy Spirit at the close of his third homily.
Both Origen and Gregory wrestle with the attempt to square their
conviction of the divine ubiquity with the prayer for God to come, and
both solve the problem in similar ways, that is, by reducing the sense of
coming to the awareness we have of God, and of the consequent change
in our lives as we become, in Platos phrase (Theaetetus 176B), more
like God. But even here Origen is clearer in his insistence on the 3 nonspatial nature of God, whereas Gregory, with his use of the word ,
leaves open the possibility of a heaven in space.
The conclusion of this investigation is that neither in thought nor in
vocabulary or use of Scripture is there very much in common between
the two writers. Even if Gregory knew Origens treatment of The Lords
Prayer, he made very little use of it; and the probability is that he was
ignorant of it. If this is true, it is another indication of the doubtfulness of the facile suggestion that Gregory is to be thought of as a
disciple of Origen (albeit at several removes, through his grandmother
Macrina and Gregory the Wonder-worker). The evidence of these five
sermons hardly supports such a claim.
Notes
1 The chapter numberings of Origens On Prayer are standard and agree with those given both
in the GCS Volume 2, pp. 297ff. and in the ET of the CWS translation by Rowan Greer (London,
1979). There is also translation of the treatise by J. E. L. Oulton in the Library of Christian Classics
(Philadelphia, 1954) and by J. J. OMeara in the Ancient Christian Writers series (Westminster,
Maryland, 1954). (For a further translation, see note 5 below.) The references to Gregorys sermons
are to the page and line numbers in volume VII/1 of the GNO 1992 edition. There is also a
translation in the Ancient Christian Writer series, 18, by Hilda Graef.
2 There appear to be only two explicit references to Origen in the whole corpus of Gregorys
writings, one in the prologue to the Commentary on the Song of Songs at GNO VI, 13/3. Doubtless,
as Herman Langerbeck notes in his preface (p. xxxvi) to his 1960 edition of the Commentary, this silence
may owe something to a growing distrust in Origens use and defence of the allegorical method,
which we find in De Principiis IV, the Greek version of which is preserved for us in the Philocalia
of Basil and Gregory of Nazianzus. The other reference occurs in the panegyric of Origens pupil,
Gregory Thaumaturgos at GNO X, 1, 13/10.
3 On at least two occasions, De Anima et Resurrectione, MPG 46/108BC and 112B, and in De
Hominis Opificio 28, MPG 44 229B, he attacks the ideas both of pre-existence and transmigration,
though without naming Origen. Goergemanns and Karpp on p. 280 of their 1992 edition of Origens
De Principiis insert the passage from De Hominis Opificio 28 and from De Anima et Resurrectione
at the end of De Principiis 1,8. A further example of Gregorys assertion of the creationist idea,
that is, of the simultaneous creation of body and soul, occurs in the seventh homily of his
Commentary on the Song of Songs (GNO VI, 241/46). Yet, despite Gregorys distancing himself
from an Origenistic position, there are several passages both here and in other writings where
Gregory continues to employ the language, if not the full meaning, of pre-existence. In both the
second (26/26) and fifth homilies (65/15) and also in the first (298ff.) and second (305) Homilies
on Ecclesiastes. In the first case, this is in connection with the exegesis of the Prodigal Son of Luke
15, and in the last two with that of the lost sheep, also of Luke 15. The real question is how
seriously we ought to take the language of used by Gregory. In homily 5 the same
verb/noun is used at 65/15 and 66/12 to describe our exile from paradise, though here too paradise
is delineated in heavenly language, the lightsome and eastern places of blessedness (65/17).
4 Although Gregorys Christology has been the subject of much criticism, not always
favourable, largely for its apparent incoherence (cf. especially Anthony Meredith, Gregory of Nyssa

356

ANTHONY MEREDITH

[London, 1999], p. 47), it does seem clear that Origens Christology and his soteriology rest more
on the thought of the activity of the created human spirit willingly uniting itself to the Word, above
all with the use of 1 Corinthians 6:17 (at, for example, De Principiis 2,6,3) than does the thought
of Gregory.
5 Eric George Jay, Origens Treatise on Prayer (London: SPCK, 1954).
6 This dating is somewhat imprecise and rests on a remark in the third homily (41/16) which
clearly refers to Nicaea and suggests that Constantinople had yet to occur.
7 The increasing influence of classical rhetoric upon Christian writers of the third and fourth
centuries has been studied above all by Edouard Norden in Antike Kunstprose (Leipzig, 1915). For
him Origen was not influenced by the resurgence of interest in the great classical writers, above all
Demosthenes and Plato, a resurgence described both by Philostratus in his Lives of the Sophists and
by Eunapius in his Lives of the Philosophers. In Nordens view, the first ecclesiastical writer to
show influence was Eustathius bishop of Antioch, the strong supporter of the creed of Nicaea.
8 The phrase c recurs on at least three occasions in these homilies, 16/18;
21/10 and 49/22 and also at De Anima et Resurrectione MPG 46/156A, De Virginitate 10 (GNO
VIII.289/2) and in Hom. in Eccl. 3 (GNO V.315/7). What is not clear is whether the resultant state
of means the eradication of all drives or only of some. For a useful discussion, see
Morwenna Ludlows Universal Salvation (Oxford, 2000), pp. 56ff.
9 The question of the precise sense of and in Gregory is discussed by
E. Muehlenberg in Synergism in Gregory of Nyssa, ZNW 68 (1977), pp. 93122. The opening
pages of Gregorys treatise De Instituto Christiano are illuminating, and appear to justify the conclusion that Gregory
3 regarded grace as an aid rather than a necessary condition of the moral life.
10 The word is often used by Gregory, as at Or. Cat. 6 (GNO III.IV.22/5) and at Contra
Eunomium 2,273; 3,3,7, though the meaning fluctuates between place and lot. Srawley in his note
to his edition, p. 30, cites Moeller to the effect that it can refer either to locus or sors.
11 Snakes also figure in a similar connection and with similar wording in In Eccl. Hom. 4 (GNO
V 349/10ff.), while at Or. Cat. 30 (GNO III,IV. 74/8) the writhing body of the snake after its head
has been crushed provides Gregory with an illustration of the effects of sin once the work of Christ
is over and sin has in principle been vanquished.