In the past few decades, sophiology, or the study of the Wisdom books of the Bible, has become an important emergent theology. St. Gregory of Nyssa had a particular fondness for the Wisdom Literature, especially the Song of Songs.  During the early Church, the meaning and interpretation of “Word” (Logos) and “Wisdom” (Sophia) became the object of intense controversies, as theological speculation about the role of Christ, Wisdom, and the Holy Spirit evolved.  In an earlier paper submitted to this journal (Vol. 4, # 2), I explored the ways Sophia was linked to the Holy Spirit in the theology of Theophilus of Antioch and Irenaeus. In this paper, I examine the evolution of Holy Spirit theology in the Cappadocians, followed by an exploration of the role of Sophia and the Spirit in the context of Gregory’s apophatic theology.

Gregory’s Life and Cultural Background

Gregory was born in 335 into a family of ten children.  He and two others,  Basil and Macrina, are honored as saints. All were educated and cultured in a Christian household conversant with Hellenistic philosophy; indeed, Gregory was indebted to both Basil and Macrina for the philosophical and theological influence they exerted on their younger brother.  Gregory, Basil and their friend, Gregory of Nazianzus, are together known as the famous Cappadocian Fathers.  Basil is most often remembered as the father of monastic life in community—as opposed to eremitical life, or hermetic monasticism, which was a flourishing movement at the time.

Unlike his brother, Gregory did not become a monk, although his writings give evidence of a deep sympathy for the ascetic life.  He supported Basil’s theoretical justification of his monastic Rules in his own work, called On Virginity.  Here he not only extols the state of the monastic virgin, but also, since he is one of the most allegorical of the early Greek Fathers, the state of the virginal soul; i.e., the interior disposition of purity of heart. In honoring Mary, the Blessed Virgin, he says:

What was achieved in the body of Mary… by the perfect divinity of Christ, which shone forth in that Virgin, the same will happen in the soul of everyone who… in the virginal way, follows Reason [Logos] as a guide. [1]

Before his death in 379, Basil made Gregory bishop over part of his diocese. Gregory was influential in several ecclesiastical initiatives to fortify the church against Christological heresies.  He wrote numerous treatises against Eunomius, who believed that Christ was unlike God by nature and instead was a created energy. [2] His presence at the Council of Antioch in 379 was dynamic, but he had poor administrative skills and his interest in church governing was principally focused on dogmatic questions.  He wrote a treatise in 12 parts, called Against Eunomius, which he read through with Jerome at the Second Ecumenical Council in 381. It was Gregory who composed the additions to the Nicene Creed that were sanctioned by that council. [3] Although he addressed dogmatic questions, his entire method of Biblical commentary was allegorical; his search was for the inner spiritual meaning of the stories in the Old Testament. 

Like Origen, one of his principle teachers, Gregory thought that the Bible contained deliberate contradictions—or difficult passages to interpret—implanted by the Spirit through the biblical authors to spur the Christian philosopher to a higher understanding.  He felt justified in doing this because Christ himself spoke in parables and allegories.

In his interpretation of Jewish scripture, Gregory felt that allegorical interpretation did not obfuscate the text; rather, it demonstrated how salvation-history related to the Christian convert, especially one who was philosophically conscious of the historical milieu from which he or she emerged.  A theologian of great depth and breadth of thought, Gregory was a sensitive yet analytic teacher and a theologian who was unafraid to deal with difficult topics. He had a particular fondness for the Wisdom literature, especially the Song of Songs, which we will explore in a following section.

Gregory was a Neoplatonic philosopher-theologian who freely used Plotinus when he felt interpretation of Scripture warranted it. He was the first Christian philosopher to argue for the infinity of God. Catholic theologian, Anthony Meredith, believes that Gregory has departed from the Platonic notion of God, principally because controversy with Eunomius forced the Church to rethink its inherited understanding of the divine nature of Christ. Meredith explains that:

In making this assertion about the infinity of perfect being, Gregory is departing from the received wisdom both of Origen and Plato. Both these writers, while affirming the difficulty of knowing God, continued to regard absence of limit and form as a defect. For Plato, indeed, the absence of form or shape was something indicative of failure and evil, and matter which awaited the imposition of form from the divine architect.[4]

Plotinus however, believed that God is limitless and without boundaries. Building on the Neoplationic tradition, Gregory argues that if God can be known, he is limited; indeed he must be limited by something greater than himself. In Gregory’s theology, it is unthinkable that one could ever ‘prove’ anything about God, who will always be behind and beyond our concepts and beliefs. If we speculate on the essence of God, Gregory believed that we run the risk of creating idols, since any appellation we imagine about God can never comprehend God’s transcendence and inexpressible divinity. The notion of ‘measures’ and ‘proofs’, so prevalent in Western scholastic theology, is foreign to Gregory. Instead of proofs, Gregory, like Ephrem and the Oriental fathers, insisted on silence. He argued that profane philosophy is “always in labor, but never gives birth.” [5] Gregory also broke with Platonic philosophy which advocated stability and the perfect state—that is, an end to change. Gregory’s concept of epektasis, or perpetual progress, describes perfection as constant progress in virtue and godliness. In Gregory’s understanding, only God has always been perfect and beyond change. Humans, even in the after-death state, will continually be evolving toward a greater awareness of the infinity of God.

Because of his belief in the unknowability of God, Gregory is often called the father of “apophatic” theology, a “negative” theology that has been characteristic of the Eastern Church since the early patristic age. The apophatic way is also known as the “path of negativa” in the West (for example, in Meister Eckhart and St. John of the Cross), and refers to that aspect of God whose face cannot be seen (Ex. 33: 23) and who is therefore beyond the comprehension of human beings. Gregory spoke frequently about the impossibility of adequately describing God’s essence; we can only know God’s attributes. On his commentary on Ecclesiastes 3:7, (“a time to keep silent and a time to speak”) Gregory suggests that “in speaking of God, when there is a question of his essence, then is the time to keep silent. When, however, it is a question of his operation, a knowledge of which can come down to us, that is the time to speak of his omnipotence by telling of his works and explaining his deeds.” [6]

In juxtaposition to this unknowability of God is the principle of “cataphatic” or positive theology, which is grounded in a search for the immanence of God.  In other words, this is how we ‘tell of his works and explain his deeds.’  In our hymns, icons, liturgical prayers, litanies, and homilies, humankind employs myriad images and terms to honor God, and invariably these words are used in descriptive types: Rock, Flame, Bridge; or emotional metaphors: Love, Savior, Goodness; or philosophical terms: the One, the Logos, Spirit, Being.   Through his allegorical method, Gregory leads us into his mysticism of ascent, moving from images to the Imageless God.  We will explore the ‘catapathic’ experience more in the section on Gregory’s Life of Moses, where he compares the Virgin Mary to the theophany of the Burning Bush.

Neoplatonic philosophy had affirmed the inaccessibility of knowledge of God by the human mind, but postulated a dualism which was also common to Gnosticism: i.e., that separation from God was a result of the fallen nature of the soul, in particular its union with material flesh.   By returning to its original source through divine ascent, the soul would be re-united with God, a philosophy embraced by Origen, but not by his pupil Gregory.  For Gregory and the Greek Fathers after him, God is forever inaccessible in his nature (ousia), and can only be known—even by the angelic hierarchies—by his activity or energies (energeiai).  “The meeting of God’s love and ‘energy’…is what makes an encounter possible, a ‘contemplation greater than knowledge’” which the Fathers will eventually refer to as deification. [7]   But this is never a merging into God’s essence.  The Christian concept of God as Source implies that the creature is but a particle of God .  Although often regarded as Platonic or Neoplatonic, Gregory believed God was, above all, creator. In the Platonic tradition, souls are eternal and so is matter. Gregory’s God is always a conscious being, and is the source of consciousness and being to others.

In his On the Beatitudes, Gregory says that the nature of the ineffable God “as it is in Itself, according to its essence, transcends every act of comprehensive knowledge, and it cannot be approached or attained by our speculation.” [8] As we can see in this example, Gregory often uses non-gendered language in speaking about God.  It has been noted that “…this sort of distinction can be seen in his indifference to the use of the masculine or neuter in his reference to God as ‘He Who Is’ (more biblical) and ‘That Which Is’ (more Platonist).” [9] Rarely, however, Gregory uses the feminine gender when speaking of the Holy Spirit,  similar to the Syrian theologians, and this is generally when he is referring to the allegory of the Dove.  In particular, there are examples of this in the Song of Songs, e.g., “Allow time for the Dove to fly to you, that Dove which Jesus…brought down…from heaven…When she finds a [man] cleansed…she dwells in him and sets his soul on fire after the manner of a bird who broods upon her eggs to hatch them.  The Dove then gives birth to many excellent offspring.” [10]  

Gregory and the Holy Spirit

The challenge for Gregory in forging a new direction for the early Church was to strike a balance between the Old Law and his Greek heritage.  He felt that the truth was located between the two.  For Gregory, “Christianity is philosophy only inasmuch as it is seen in dialogue with ‘external philosophy.’” [11]    All of the Greek Fathers were interested in “purifying” pagan philosophy.  In particular, the Cappadocians stood in opposition to the Hellenic tradition on the basic issues of creation and freedom. [12]

Because the two Gregories brought to completion the doctrine of the Holy Spirit that had been undertaken by Basil, the Cappadocian Fathers have been called, in the Orthodox tradition, ‘the trinity that hymns to the Trinity.’  After the dogmatic expression of Christ’s divinity at Nicaea, the problem of defining the Holy Spirit remained.  Although Basil, one of the first to argue the essential unity of the Trinity, never used the word “God” to describe the Holy Spirit [13]   he had made it clear that “he who does not believe [in] the Spirit, does not believe the Son, for none can say that Jesus is the Lord but by the Holy Spirit.” [14]   The earlier creedal formula of Gregory the Wonderworker with its Trinitarian stress was no doubt bequeathed to Basil and Gregory, implanted as a seed by their grandmother, Macrina the Elder, who was a disciple of the earlier St. Gregory. 

 However, in the era of the early councils, there was much confusion concerning just what a Trinitarian formula meant.  Basil compared the very complex situation which prevailed in the Church at that time to a disordered battlefield. [15]   In their effort to purify Hellenic philosophy, the Cappadocians attempted to stress the conviction that Christianity was not simply a religion of an undifferentiated monad; but that God is somehow three.  The doctrine of the Trinity was upsetting, both to Jewish monotheism and to the Greek philosophical tradition.  Since Parmenides in the 6^th century before Christ, it was believed that in all circumstances singleness and simplicity were preferable to multiplicity in defining deity. [16]   Building on Basil, Gregory taught that the Three Persons are hypostatic, i.e., essentially equal and the same. In fact, the only way to tell them apart is by their mutual relations.          

Basil had explained the important role of the Spirit in the Trinity in chapter nine of his On the Holy Spirit, where he says:

And he [the Paraclete], like a sun joining itself to a purified eye, will show you in himself the image of the invisible.  And in the blessed vision of the Image [i.e., the Son] you will see the ineffable beauty of the Archetype [ie., the Father.] [17]

Gregory echoes him when he writes:

[The one who] makes an Orthodox confession of the spirit sees in the Spirit the glory of the Only-Begotten and beholding the Son sees the image of the Infinite One.  In this way, through the Image, the Archetype is impressed upon the mind. [18]

In his On the Holy Spirit, Against the Macedonians, Gregory explains that the Spirit is:

everywhere and present to each thing, filling the earth and remaining in the heavens, poured out among the super terrestrial powers, filling all things according to the worth of each, and yet losing nothing of its own fullness. [19]

 As God, the Holy Spirit is “that which graciously bestows life.” [20]   In doing so:

what brings near to God, divinizes us; what offers us the kingdom, makes us like Christ…It raises the corpse to life, lifts up the fallen, leads back the wanderer to the straight path, gives stability to him that stands, and brings him that has died to resurrection. [21]

 It searches the depths of God, and although it “is itself glorified, yet itself bestows glory.” [22]   Gregory, in clarifying that the Trinity is not to be understood as separate personifications (e.g., Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier), used, as an example, the creation story:

For neither did the Universal God make the universe ‘through the Son’, as needing any help, nor does the Only-begotten God work all things ‘by the Holy Spirit,’ as having a power that comes short of His design, but the fountain of power is the Father, and the Power of the Father is the Son, and the Spirit of that Power is the Holy Spirit; and Creation entirely, in all of its visible and spiritual extent, is the finished work of that Divine power. [23]  

Gregory develops this doctrine of the essential unity of the Trinity in the treatise, Not On Three Gods. As Hans von Balthasar has noted, after the Cappadocians, “it is no longer possible to infer Divine Persons on the basis of different regions of the world…[for] there is a ‘common operation’ which links their divine essence.” [24]    Likewise, the energy or activity of grace which acts upon us is common to all three divine Persons, which proceeds from the Father, acts through the Son, and is completed in the Holy Spirit. Von Balthasar sees in this movement the most conspicuous victory of Christian thought over Greek philosophy. [25]   His understanding is that, in Gregory, “Plotinus’s realm of nous finds itself excluded from the domain of reality. Personalized by Origen, who identified it with the Logos, nous had retained an intermediary place between the Father and the soul in Christian metaphysics. But once the absolute transcendence of the divine essence was recognized, this place became untenable.  (italics mine) Augustine will try to maintain it, but not without skirting the edges of contradiction. Gregory, who is more categorical, abandons it.” [26]

The Song of Songs and the Burning Bush

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The Life Of Moses, which together with the Song of Songs was probably written during the latter part of Gregory’s life,  is a discussion of the life of Moses centered around three important events: the theophany of the Burning Bush, the experience at Mt. Sinai, where God spoke to Moses in a cloud (Ex. 19:16-19; Ex 20:21) and God’s encounter with Moses in the cave (Ex. 33:20-23). Gregory first approaches the story historically (the literal interpretation) and then he undertakes his allegorical interpretation.  He explains that Moses’ vision of God began with the light of the Burning Bush, signifying the soul’s epiphany of God as Light;  next, the soul moves from appearances to God’s hidden nature, which is symbolized by the cloud. Finally “as the soul makes progress, [and] by greater and more perfect concentration, comes to appreciate what the knowledge of truth is…so much the more does it see that the divine nature is invisible.” [27]    In other words, in keeping with Gregory’s theme of the apophatic, the soul is guided through sense perception to the invisible world. The appearance of God in a cloud, the second stage of Moses’ encounter with God, overshadows all appearances, as the soul is conditioned  “to penetrate the invisible and incomprehensible.” [28]   Finally, Moses is told by God that he can see God’s “beauty”, but “my face you cannot see.” (Ex. 33: 19-20)

Gregory asks:

What does it mean that Moses entered the darkness and then saw God in it?  What is now recounted seems somehow to be contradictory to the first theophany, [the burning bush] for then the Divine was beheld in light…Let us not think that this is at variance with the sequence of things we have contemplated spiritually…[for] this is a seeing that consists in not seeing, because that which is sought transcends all knowledge, being separated on all sides by incomprehensibility as by a kind of darkness. [29]

Sr. Verna Harrison has outlined the stages of the soul’s growth in the Life of Moses in this way:

The lawgiver’s three stages are 1, awareness of God as the true being in which all else participates, 2, awareness of divine incomprehensibility and 3, a breakthrough from incomprehensibility to eternal growth. [30]

In the first theophany at the Burning Bush Gregory develops the theme of God as Being, for this is where God is named the I AM. The fire which burns the bush without being consumed is symbolic of a Being which does not feed on any fuel that is extraneous to itself. Unaided it continues to exist. This part of Gregory’s philosophy is not about the unknowability of God, but rather about the source of being in which all created things participate. The whole creation becomes God’s Burning Bush, who is sustaining all things in existence. It means that “something created, whether it is one’s own soul or the whole cosmos, forms the locus within which the divine is apprehended.” [31]    This is an example of Gregory’s theology of energies. In On the Beatitudes, Gregory says:

He who is invisible in his nature has become visible in his energies or activities, being seen in the things that surround him. [32]  

Harrison goes on to explain that even though Gregory is apophatic:

the imagery Gregory uses to describe human participation in the divine is particularly telling. The images of quasi-material, fluid substances like perfume, light, and water express the dynamism of the divine life and also the continuity between God and those who participate in [him.] [33]

One of the Wisdom texts which Gregory was most captivated by was the Song of Songs. These ‘cataphatic’ images are especially prevalent in the Song, which is also replete with titles, e.g.: Lily of the Valley, Heavenly Tabernacle, Fruit of the Apple Tree, Mirror, Odor of Sweetness, Enclosed Garden, Dove, and especially ‘chosen Dove.’  Michael Perrott and others have demonstrated that most of these descriptive phrases which occur in the Song anticipate titles later given to Mary. [34] (34.)  Numerous commentaries have seen, in this text, metaphors of  the soul, the bride, the Church, and Mary. Because the Song is about a wedding, as Gregory’s allegorical analysis always goes, a wedding is not what it is obviously about. 

 The Song tells the story of the soul which stands in the interval between God and the creation, as a symbol of the nuptial mystery of Christ’s love for the world and the world’s longing for the Logos.  Longing for his eternal embrace, she arrays herself in comeliness and loveliness to prepare for his anticipated coming; her songs manifest her insatiable yearning, which, in Gregory’s philosophy, indicates the eternal growth of the soul.  She represents perhaps, that eschatological horizon which every soul glimpses as it strives toward its Beloved.  She is the active longing of creation for God’s eternal Wisdom, which, for Gregory, is Christ. Gregory advises the reader thus:

Wisdom is [here] changed into the role of a bridegroom (italics mine)…Since it is Wisdom speaking, love as much as you can with your whole heart and strength (Dt. 6:5); desire as much as you can.  I boldly add these words: Be passionate about it.  This affection for incorporeal things is beyond reproach and dispassionate, as Wisdom states in Proverbs when she prescribes passionate love for divine Beauty. [35]  

Gregory sees all of the Wisdom texts, in particular Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song, as contributing to the training of the soul’s longing for God. Unlike his teacher Origen (who also wrote a commentary on the Song of Songs) the pedagogy of the Song focuses on exposing desire to the apophatic, for the Beloved always remains beyond the bride’s grasp: “I opened to my beloved, but my beloved had turned and gone…I called to him, but he gave no answer…I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if you find my beloved…tell him I am sick with love.” (Song of Songs 5:6,8; Oxford)

Because God alone is most desirable, the more the soul enjoys the beauty of her Bridegroom, the more desire for him increases.  Gregory assures the wounded soul that it is the “divine rod or Spirit” which causes the “beautiful wound” which has pierced the bride’s heart; for it is the Holy Spirit which inflames the soul’s desire. [36] . Von Balthasar has commented on this part of Gregory’s text:

If the eyes of the Bride are wholly pure and if they contemplate God, it is because ‘the image of the dove’ is in them; that is to say, the Holy Spirit who gives them purity. The bridal gown the soul puts on is none other than Christ himself. [37]

The influence of Gregory Nyssa and the Cappadocians on the West, especially in the theology of von Balthasar, Yves Congar, and John Henry Newman, is noteworthy. Newman sees, in the wedding story, a metaphor for Mary, whose collaborative work in the redemption serves to inaugurate a new creation and a new espousal relationship between the soul and Christ, and is therefore designed from all eternity to lead the Church, as the Bride of Christ, toward the wedding Feast of the Lamb. [38]    For von Balthasar, the bride of the Song of Songs is revealed, at the end of the commentary, to be a unity of all these individual souls (“O my garden dweller, my friends are listening for your Voice!”, Song 8: 13, NAB).  Therefore, “since Nature is transformed by the Incarnation into the Mystical body of Christ, the place of this individual assimilation can be none other than the Church.” (italics not mine) [39]    Congar likewise explains that, through Mary, “the whole Church was betrothed to the Word and united to God by an eternal alliance.” [40]

It is not difficult to see the analogy between the soul, or bride of Christ, and Mary (as the foremost image of the Church as bride), but how does the Burning Bush relate to Mary?  The transition of these metaphors is a bit more complicated and before we answer this question, let us briefly review the relationship of Mary to the Old Testament Shekinah-Spirit. 

The Intermediary Figure: Shekinah-Sophia-Mary

The Shekinah is the Hebrew word used to describe the ineffable God with humans, the root of which means ‘to dwell or inhabit.’  As the immanent dimension of God, the word ‘shekinah’ was probably first used in the Targums, which were translations or paraphrases of the Torah from about the first century CE. The root ‘shakan’ is the verbal form used to describe the ‘dwelling or habitation’ of the physical manifestations of God described in many of the Exodus texts. It refers to the presence of God that can be felt in the world. Yves Congar has explained that, in the Jewish parts of the Bible, “the Breath-Spirit of God is the action of God…animating and giving life at the level of what we call nature.” [41]

 In Jewish Targums and midrash, it was the Shekinah-Spirit that manifested the Glory or Presence of God through the pillar of cloud (Ex. 13: 21-22); or pillar of fire (Ex. 13:22) or cloudy pillar (Ex. 33: 9-10) or cloud of the Lord (Num. 10:34); or cloud in the wilderness (Ex. 16: 10); or the cloud overshadowing the tabernacle (Num. 16: 42; Num. 9:15; Ex. 40: 35).  God’s Presence was visible through the Shekinah on Mt. Sinai (Ex. 24:16) and it became the Voice of God (Ps. 99:7).  It is associated with the Spirit of prophecy (Num. 11:25; Ex 19:9).  The Shekinah regulated the movements of Israel and became its guide (Ex. 13: 21-22;  Ex. 40: 36-37;  Neh. 9:19).  The Shekinah-cloud hovered over the mercy-seat (Lev. 16:2; and the temple of Solomon (1 Kings 8:10-11; 2 Chron 5:13; Ez. 10:4). [42]    After the destruction of the temple, the midrash tells us that when Yahweh had withdrawn to heaven, “the shekinah remained on earth, directly accessible to her people.” [43]   Gregory himself reminds us that the cloud served as a guide to the Israelites, and “those before us interpreted the cloud as the grace of the Holy Spirit.” [44]  

In his study of the origins of Johannine pneumatology, John Breck notes that after the exile, the emergence of a pure monotheism among the Israelites “was accompanied by a heightened awareness and consequent personification of intermediary figures—particularly angels and Wisdom [Sophia]—which served to bridge the gulf between the created world and the transcendent God.” [45]     In the Septuagint and Hellenistic Jewish interpretation, the burning bush was an epiphany of an angel, not God. This is apparently how Philo, the Jewish exegete who lived in the 1^st century, read the “angel of the Lord” in his own Life of Moses. [46]

Numerous midrash stories, for example, recorded by Louis Ginzberg in his classic Legends of the Jews tells the story of the Shekinah at the Burning Bush. [47]    The Shekinah-Spirit appears numerous times in rabbinic writings and by the Middle Ages, this feminine dimension of God was appearing to Jewish mystics of the Kabbalah, much like Marian apparitions through the centuries.   [48]

In George Montague’s study of the Holy Spirit, Sophia follows the emergence of the Shekinah, who had found a home with the people of Israel through her indwelling at the temple and the tabernacle. His reasoning is that after the prophets, Israel still needed nurturing, and unlike prophecy, Sophia-Wisdom comes as an invitation. She does not preach, but teaches, suggesting a more incarnational approach. [49]   If, in fact, at an earlier era, Israel found that a secular wisdom needed to be redeemed by prophecy, “prophecy, in turn, needed to be tamed by Wisdom.” [50]   John Breck explains how this happens:

As Spirit and consequently the prophetic Word withdrew from Israel, Wisdom became personified as the divine presence within history (not my italics).  Wisdom thus replaced Spirit and Word as the bearer of Truth or divine revelation; and the sages became successors to the prophets. [51]

In Congar’s understanding, this intermediary figure of Sophia is “brought so close to the Spirit, that the two realities are almost identical; at least if they are viewed in their action…” [52] . In the Wisdom of Solomon, she possesses a spirit (7:22,) or she acts in the form of a spirit (7:7) or she is herself a spirit (1:6). Eventually she “even has a cosmic function [as in Wis. 1:7 and 8: 1], similar to the part played in Stoicism in holding the universe together.” [53]

The Talmud, and later the Zohar, records the legend that the Shekinah-Spirit descended to earth 10 times, including during the theophany of the Burning Bush. “The Shekinah appeared also in the burning bush….[and] wheresoever the Israelites went in exile, the Shekinah accompanied them.” [54]   In rabbinical literature, it was believed that, since the thorn-bush is used for a hedge, it is the symbol of protection. The fire which engulfed it was a ‘heavenly fire’: a theophany signaling that God would protect and deliver the Israelites from bondage.  Fire, which is normally destructive, is here rendered harmless. It is also a symbol of the purity or holiness of God and the need for the Israelites to maintain their own purity in order to continue in their covenant with Yahweh. [55]

Here then, we begin to see the ideas linking Shekinah-Sophia-Spirit to Mary. Gregory used the allegory of the Burning Bush in reference to Mary when he said:

From this we learn also the mystery of the Virgin: The light in divinity which through birth shone from her into human life did not consume the burning bush…That light teaches us what we must do to stand within the rays of the true light.” [56]   The radiance at the burning bush “did not come from a material substance, this light did not shine from some luminary among the stars but came from an earthly bush and surpassed the heavenly luminaries in brilliance. [57]

Gregory applied many of the Old Testament metaphors to Mary, already common in homilies of the earlier Fathers. But he was the first to call her the Burning Bush, or the Unburnt Bush.  He held that at the Annunciation, Mary, in her virginity, was filled with the Holy Spirit and became the tabernacle of Wisdom, [Christ] because the work of the Spirit at the moment of the Incarnation created the matter of Christ’s body from the flesh and blood of his mother: “where Wisdom built a house…the tabernacle formed by such an impulse was not clothed with anything of human corruption.” [58]

Mary, as the undefiled Virgin, is able to contain this theophany of God and not be consumed by it.  She is “the honor of our nature, the gate of our life, the one who won salvation for us.” [59]    Gregory gave Mary the title Theotokos before it was officially made a doctrine at the Council of Ephesus in 431. He recorded the first known apparition of Mary in his Life of Gregory the Wonder-Worker, to whom she appeared accompanied by John the Evangelist.  He sees Miriam, Moses’ sister, as a prototype of Mary [60]   and also calls her “the prophetess” announced in Isa. 8:3 . [61]   In his Annunciation sermon, Gregory praises her:

You are adorned beyond every creature, beautiful above the heavens, you shine more than the sun, are exalted above the angels; you were not taken away to the heavens, but remaining on earth you drew to yourself the Lord of heaven and the King of the universe. [62]

This is precisely the role of the Shekinah-Spirit in her relationship with the children of Israel.

Gregory also seems to be the first Father who believed that Mary had made a vow of virginity early in her life, implying that, from her childhood, Mary intuited that she had a part in some mysterious plan of God.  At a time when Jewish girls would never have vowed to remain unmarried, Mary “because she…was consecrated to God, untouched like a sacred offering,” tells the Angel Gabriel that it was impossible for her to know man. [63]   In his On Virginity, in pointing to Mary as a model, Gregory asks, “what greater praise of virginity can there be than thus to be shown in a manner deifying those who share in her pure mysteries, so that they become partakers of His glory…?”(italics not mine). [64]    For “what happened in the stainless Mary when the fullness of the Godhead which was in Christ shone out through her, that happens in every soul that leads by rule the virgin life.” [65]    This theme would become a favorite metaphor in the development of liturgical praises of the Theotokos:

In the bush unburnt that Moses saw, we recognize thy praiseworthy virginity preserved. O Mother of God, intercede for us. [66]

Although his letter On Virginity appears to be addressed to virgins, Gregory himself was not a monk; he was married. So, in keeping with his allegorical interpretation of the virginal soul, Gregory seems to be telling us that this transformation is available to everyone whose intention is aligned with the Logos. [67]    We are co-workers with Christ, with Mary as our model.  Mary provides us with an example of collaboration, what is commonly called, in the Orthodox tradition, synergy with God; that is, an active participation with God in the economy of salvation (1 Cor. 3:9).  In Gregory’s theology, then, Mary and Moses are both models for the virginal soul, that is, those who are pure of heart:

In the same way that Moses…attained to this knowledge, so now does everyone who, like him, divests himself of the earthly covering and looks to the light shining from the bramble bush, that is, to the Radiance which shines upon us through this thorny flesh…A person like this becomes able to help others to salvation. [68]

 Congar, in his theology of the Holy Spirit, (which includes the historical development in both the East and the West), takes note of the famous Orthodox lay theologian, Paul Evdokimov, who sees the Holy Spirit intimately linked both to Mary and to women as well, for, in the theology of Evdokimov, the “woman is linked ontically to the Holy Spirit.” [69]     In Elizabeth Behr-Sigel’s classic study of Mary and the role of women in Orthodoxy, she too undertakes a study of Evdokimov:

According to Evdokimov, the key to the mystery of women is to be found in the Person of the Holy Spirit, whose hypostatic maternity extends to the virginal maternity of the Theotokos and prefigures, for all eternity, the vocation of every woman to spiritual maternity. [70]

The Development of the Icon of the Burning Bush

Gregory’s view of the soul’s development is one of perpetual straining foreward toward the inexhaustible splendor of God, the fullness of which is not available to us while clothed with human flesh.  However, the theophany of the Burning Bush is a sign that the transcendent and ineffable God is still with us, for what was prefigured in the image of the flame and the bush was revealed in “the mystery of the Virgin.” [71]

There is a level of interpretation in Gregory which clearly seems to imply that the miracle of the Burning Bush—or indeed, theophanies of the Virgin, or of any miraculous sort, as long as they are apprehended through the senses—do not reveal to the soul the ultimate nature of God.  Although the noetic ascent of Moses’ sojourn begins in light, discursive knowledge gives way to the cloud and the darkness where God is.

Gregory’s mysticism was indeed lofty; its apophatic character is seen in the West in the darkness of St. John of the Cross.  It teaches that knowing God must inevitably plunge the soul into the negative, into the darkness of that place where understanding does not reach.  The image of darkness is the capstone of Gregory’s spiritual theology, always hinting, through his many homiletics, that in the spiritual realm the senses must become blind, for blindness is the beginning of true sight.

Yet, often in the Bible, those who experience a vision of God describe it as light: Paul at Damascus, the three apostles at the Transfiguration, and the theophany of the Burning Bush, reveal to us the mystery of the eternal Light which burns without burning up and whose light is an ever-alluring and mysterious thing of beauty.  At the cataphatic level of interpretation, these images seem to imply that to unite ourselves with the Blessed Virgin is to be united with a Body that is living and burning with the fire of the Holy Spirit.  The Burning Bush is a metaphor of a completely sanctified soul, on fire with a burning light which unites her to the Word of God in the Person of her Son.  The Unburnt Bush foreshadows the iconography, in the West, of the Hearts of Jesus and Mary aflame, abiding throughout the history of our race, continually glowing with their flames of love.

In the beautiful prose of one of the great teachers in the modern Orthodox Church, (once a Roman Catholic) the monk, Lev Gillet:

This fire does not destroy the wood of the bush…It makes what is a briar or thorn in the bush disappear.  But it is not deforming for it respects the original structure, even while the superfluous growths are vanishing.  It renews without killing.  The wood itself becomes fire, and this fire endures… [72]  

And he goes on to place these words on the lips of Christ:

Oh, dost thou now see the great vision? Dost thou see the flame, lit by no one, blazing forth from my very Heart, the flame which I am?  Dost thou see the divine fire spreading over the world?  The whole universe is the Burning Bush. [73]

In the East, the icon of the Burning Bush is one of the most famous and beautiful examples of Marian symbolism that incorporates Old Testament metaphors.

The icon called Mother of God, Burning Bush is particularly popular in Russia, and some of the more famous icons of this type are from icon “schools” that tend to paint icons rich in symbolism. It is not known how long ago the first icon of this type emerged.

In the Burning Bush, the Virgin and her Son are pictured within a star with eight flames or points (symbolizing the bush) and enclosed in a cloud.  This multi-rayed star is refracted into a multicolored hierarchy of angels gathered around the Mother and Child.  The implication is that the angels rule the earthy elements through her, the Queen of Angels.  Minor angels, who are the dispensers of the natural elements, are sometimes named with their inscriptions (eg, Angel of thunder and lightening; Angel of rainbows and clouds; Angels of dew and hoarfrost, etc.)  On the edges of the flames are the Archangels, the Cherubim and the Seraphim. In every Byzantine Liturgy the hymn is sung: “More honorable than the Cheribum, more glorious beyond compare than the Seraphim, thee, who without corruption gave birth to God the Word, the very Theotokos, thee do we magnify.”   In the aura of the Theotokos, every spirit has its own distinct color, but the single ray associated with the Mother of God, the flame that shines through her, unites in her the entire spiritual range of the heavenly spectrum. In her the Bush is the symbol of an embrace of the heavenly and earthly worlds, burning in a fire without being consumed.

At four points of the eight-pointed star or flame are images of an eagle, a lion, a bull and a winged human. All four characters have wings and they are not only the symbols that appear in Ezekiel’s vision (Ez.1:10) and in the Revelation of John (Rev.4:7); but they are most commonly associated with the four Evangelists.  In some icons of the Enthroned King, these same figures flank the throne of Christ.  Finally, at the four corners of the icon, but not embedded in the majestic star itself, are four scenes from the Old Testament: Moses gazing at the burning bush, Ezekiel standing before the closed door of the sanctuary; Jacob dreaming of his ladder to heaven; and Isaiah encountering the angel who came to purify his lips with a burning coal.

For Gregory, the Cherubim, which are first seen engraved as an image on the Ark of the Covenant, are symbolic of the utmost praise:

For the cherubim, we know, is the name given to those powers who surround the Godhead in the vision seen by Isaias and Ezechiel.  Nor would we be surprised at the fact that they cover the ark with their wings.  We find the same symbol of wings in Isaias: only in Isaias, it is the Lord’s face that is covered (Is. 6.2-3)…You would be quite correct in understanding these as the many different types of brilliant rays which the spirit causes to shine in our Tabernacle…By the altar…of incense I understand the perpetual adoration which all the heavenly creatures offer…This is the sacrifice that is agreeable to God, the fruit of lips (Heb. 13:15), as the Apostle tells us, and the fragrance of prayer. (Italics not mine) [74]

Sergius Bulgakov, whose major treatise on the Theotokos, called “The Burning Bush,” develops a Mariology clearly rooted in patristics, liturgical development and Old Testament prefigurations.  He explains that the vision of glory in the Burning Bush “ is not a vision of the Lord’s face; doxophany is not theophany.” (italics not mine) [75]   He refers us to the confirmation of John who, echoing Moses, says: “No one has ever seen God.” [76]    (John 1:18; 1 John 4:12; Ex. 33:23)  Rather, “the appearance of Glory is here divine Motherhood and divine Incarnation.” [77] . Furthermore, when Moses came down from the mountain, he had to wear a veil over his face because human eyes could not endure the reflection of glory which he now radiated. (Ex. 34:35)  But, in the New Covenant, the veil has been removed for the whole people of God:

[F]or Christians, this veil is removed, and it is clear how overflowing Moses the God-seer was with the vision of the Mother of God (italics not mine) who is prefigured and prepared by the whole of Old Testament piety. …[T]he new epoch…is revealed through the vision of the Mother of God in the bush but is brought to an end and exhausted by her appearance in the world and the divine incarnation accomplished through this. [78]

In other words, it is Mary (and no longer the Shekinah or the Sophia) who brings to completion the Christian Dispensation, through the initiation of the redemptive process begun when she uttered her Fiat, and through her continued mediation between the divine and human realms.

To sum up our journey:

After the Cappadocians, the role of the Holy Spirit is clarified and the Trinitarian formula becomes a characteristic doctrine of the Church: the Son and the Spirit are one in essence with the Father.  For Gregory, Mary was the tabernacle “where Wisdom built her house”; however, unlike the Syrian theologians, for whom Wisdom-Sophia was united to the Holy Spirit, Gregory identified Wisdom with the Logos.  Therefore, Spirit was gradually detached from its old association with Sophia in the Wisdom texts, and was superseded, in what became an orthodox Christology, by the Logos-Son.  “For the same glorification of Jesus as pre-existent Wisdom emptied the notion of Spirit of a significant role in creation or redemption.” [79]    However, the more the Holy Spirit moves into apophatic transcendence, the more the role of Mary as mediator, immanent Mother, and intercessor becomes apparent in the historical development of the Church.

“Rejoice, O pillar of fire, leading humankind to a higher life!” Akathist, Ode 5.

Notes: