The Homilies on the Our Father and Gregory of Nyssa’s interpretation of human free will as the divine image in man

Abstract

One of the themes that Gregory of Nyssa occasionally speaks about is the power of freedom of choice in man. Sometimes he equates this ability to the divine image in man, stating that since man is free to choose what he wills, then this is what makes him similar to God. This identification is, however, inconsistent in his career, because there are times where he denies it.

Gregory gives insights on freedom of choice mostly in his homilies, less frequently in his treatises. While both treatises and homilies will be taken into consideration in this study, the main focus will be the oratorical works. The reason for this is because I believe that the role of Gregory as a pastor has been highly underestimated, giving more importance to his role as a theologian, and thus using mainly his treatises as the primary sources for studies. For my doctoral thesis I studied in depth Gregory’s reflection on sin in his homilies, hence keeping the audience in his congregation as the key factor. In this study I follow the same line of thought, discussing, therefore, the Nyssen’s thoughts on free will and the divine image in man as he imparted them to the people in simple and concrete language rather than in more scientific contexts such as his treatment of the similar issues in his treatises.

In short we can say that Gregory sets off with the idea that free will is a neutral force that can choose equally good and evil, but noting that once it slips into evil it becomes very difficult to abandon evil and turn to good. Eventually he presents the opinion that free will constitutes the divine image in man, and that it is by nature good. This is the opinion he keeps in several works, till he eventually denies that freedom of choice is the divine image in man and says that it is either a neutral force or one more inclined to choose evil. The shift in opinion seems to happen in the Homilies on the Our Father. His opinion when preaching in his earliest and latest works (the Homilies on the Beatitudes and the Homilies on the Song of Songs) seems to be identical; the difference is that in his earliest works he does not speak of the divine image, while in the later ones he clearly denies that it is equal to freedom of choice.