The Editor/Blackwell Publishers Ltd, Oxford, UK and Boston, USA.

HeyJ XLIII (2002), pp. 344356

ORIGEN AND GREGORY OF NYSSAON THE LORDS PRAYER

ANTHONY MEREDITHHeythrop College

The aim of this article is twofold: first to compare the treatments of theLords Prayer offered by Origen and Gregory of Nyssa,1 and then, on thebasis of this comparison, to discover what influence, if any, Origenstreatment 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 Origenswritings were known to Gregory and his fellow Cappadocians. Shortlyafter the termination of their university careers at Athens some timesubsequent to 356, Basil and Gregory of Nazianzus compiled acollection of passages from Origen in their Philocalia. Furthermore,Basil in ch. 29, section 72 of his On the Holy Spirit refers to Origen andcites a passage from Book 6 of his Commentary on John.

Gregory of Nyssas own explicit references to his distinguishedpredecessor are extremely rare2 and it is often assumed on the basis oftwo passages that he consciously distanced himself from Origensdoctrine of the pre-existence of souls,3 though, as we shall see, severalpassages in his own writings suggest that he probably used such ideashimself. Indeed on two other important issues, the nature of salvationand the place occupied in that process by Christs human soul, Origenand Gregory seem to me to offer widely differing replies.4

When it comes to their respective treatments of the central Christianprayer, a few external differences distinguish them at the outset.Principal among these is the question of genre. Origens account isembedded in a larger treatise On Prayer, perhaps5 to be dated to about236 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 considerableproblems raised by petitionary prayer.

Origen is not addressing a particular congregation, but rather, asemerges from the opening of ch. 2, two persons, Ambrosius, a convertand subsequently a patron of Origen (Eusebius, Eccl. Hist. VI, xviii andxxiii), the addressee of his treatise Against Celsus and The Exhortationto Martyrdom, and Tatiane, apparently an elderly lady. In other words,

Origens On Prayer is essentially a treatise and is not designed forpopular consumption. It is clear, and academic, and totally lacking in thetricks of rhetoric. Origen was no rhetorician, even in writings whichwere designed for a wider audience. Clearly, it is composed for tworeaders of high intelligence who were interested in the problematic ofpetitionary 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 beinginfluenced by the ideas of Plato, Platos magic style, as distinct frommany of his ideas, made little impact on Origen.

Gregory, by contrast, is steeped in rhetoric, and his sermons, above allthe elaborate Prologues with which each opens, are classical in tone andallusion. His five sermons on The Lords Prayer were delivered perhapsshortly before the Council of Constantinople in May 381.6 Clearly theyhave in mind an audience larger than the two addressees of Origen,though they lack the vividness of Chrysostom. This serves to underlinethe fact that Gregory, despite the fact that he apparently lacked theformal training of his brother Basil, was a child of the Second SophisticMovement and is always, despite his theological concerns, therhetorician. The five sermons here considered are evidence above all ofthe 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 Bycontrast, the footnotes to the Berlin edition of Origens On Prayer amuch longer work list only four echoes of Plato, in 22,3; 27,8; 29,15and 31,3 a suggestive difference.

In what follows, I compare the treatments of connected topics by thetwo writers, though I omit discussion of the elaborate openings withwhich Gregory prefaces all but the first of his five sermons.

COMMENTARY AND COMPARISON

Pray alwaysBoth Origen and Gregory are concerned with the problem of how tomake real in life the precept of Jesus in Luke 18:1 and of Paul in 1Thessalonians 5:17, about the need to pray always. Origen discusses thefirst 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 theentire life of the saint, taken as a whole, is a single great prayer, of whichprayer in the normal sense of the word is only a part. He repeats thisinterpretation in 22,5.

Gregorys treatment is quite different. He uses the precept to point thecontrast between the enthusiasm and time we commonly devote to theordinary business of life and the carelessness and lack of s p o u d h withwhich we treat prayer (6/5, 29 and 7/27). The reason for this, hesuggests, is that we mistakenly suppose that there can be no advantage

ORIGEN AND GREGORY OF NYSSA ON THE LORDS PRAYER 345

to be had from the divine s u n e r g a . For Gregory, prayer is seen as thegreat protection against the evils of avarice, as at 8/17ff. The presence ofthe memory of God in the soul renders the assaults of the adversary of noavail. In other words, Gregory stresses the practical advantages of prayerin protecting us from various maladies of the soul. At 8/30 Gregoryoffers a singularly attractive definition of prayer as q o u

3 m i l a ,

familiarity with God, which seems more personal than the more austereidea of Origen as attention to God.

Mh ` b a t t a l o g h s h t e !Both Origen and Gregory devote considerable space and acumen to adiscussion of the meaning of the term b a t t a l o g a with reference toJesus words in Matthew 6:7. Like the word pi o u s i o V in Matthew6:11, it seems to occur nowhere previously in Greek literature. Origen(ch. 21) interprets it to mean, in line with the agraphon he cites onseveral occasions (cf. 2,2) in this treatise, the temptation to ask God forearthly, temporal blessings as distinct from spiritual gifts. They have noimpression, he writes, of the great and heavenly requests, and offerevery prayer for bodily and outward things.

Gregorys exegesis agrees in some measure with that of Origen. Tobegin with, he identifies the novel expression with the search for what isfrail and insubstantial, t a ` ma t a i a (11/27; 12/13). The good, by contrast,pray for the disappearance of evil and the being rid of destructiveemotions ( m p a q h ` V d i a q e s i V ).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 whatto pray for (18/5, 14); and (b) Through our failure to achieve thetemporal blessings we misguidedly look for, we may be induced todesire t a ` u ^ y h l o t e r a (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 theword p o u r a n i a , Gregory u ^ y h l o t e r a , but the thought is surelyidentical. The only substantial difference lies in the fact that whereasOrigen has the additional clause taken from the agraphon above referredto (and the little or the earthly things will be added to you), Gregoryseems not to know this. He certainly never employs it. The phrasing withwhich Gregory provides a peroration for his sermon speaks of theimpropriety of asking the eternal God for temporal blessings and ofasking from Him who endures, advantages that last for so short a space.In other words, although Gregory does not use Jesus saying, the ideawhich it contains is clearly in evidence.

346 ANTHONY MEREDITH

Vow and prayer/promise and petitionTowards the beginning of his second sermon (21/2522/15), after theelaborate preface (20/322/14), Gregory draws an important distinctionbetween e u \ c h (vow) and p r o s e u c h (prayer). The former must precedethe latter. We have found this sort of thing before in ch. 4 of Origenstreatise. He uses 1 Samuel 1:911, which appears to distinguish betweenHannahs prayer and her antecedent vow. Gregory, like Origen, appealsto scriptural usage for this distinction, though not to the story ofHannah, but instead at 21/26ff. to Psalm 65:1314. He defines e u \ c h asa promise to give a thanksgiving offering, c a r i s t h r i o V d w r o f o r a V p a g g e l a (22/4). The prayer of petition cannot profitably be madewithout such an antecedent promise on the part of the petitioner.

Father!We now come to one of the most significant passages and differencesbetween the two writers the treatment of the word P a t e r . In OnPrayer 22 Origen makes the following most important comment. Heargues that the use of the word in addressing God is peculiarly Christian.He establishes this point by appealing to those passages in the OldTestament where God is either discussed or addressed. I do not mean,he writes, that God was not called Father and that those who believed inGod were not called sons; but nowhere have I found in a prayer the bold-ness ( p a r r h s a ) proclaimed by the Saviour in calling God Father.

Interestingly, although he insists on the givenness of our own sonshipby citing Romans 8:15 and John 1:12, at 22,3 he suggests that we shouldbe extremely hesitant in calling God Father if we have not becomegenuine ( g n h s i o i ) sons. It is as though metaphysical or sacramentalsonship conferred through baptism did not of themselves suffice, butneeded the supplement of the moral life if they were to be efficacious.

Gregorys contribution to the subject is very different. It may be thatin the second part of his treatment (23/23ff.) he follows Origen in hisinsistence on the importance of good choices and a good life on the partof those who address God in prayer, and can write: God who is bynature good cannot be the Father of an evil choice ( p r o a r e s i V ). Again(24/17) he cites 2 Corinthians 6:14, What fellowship is there between lightand darkness? What is of interest is that in Gregory the ethical elementsrather than the ontological predominate. In this respect he goes beyondOrigen, who at least refers to those passages in the New Testament whichinsist on the power we have been given to address God so familiarly. Thisis 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 notby Platonic philosophy. He asks for the wings to be able to fly up and

ORIGEN AND GREGORY OF NYSSA ON THE LORDS PRAYER 347

grasp the mystery language which has both scriptural (Ps 54:7) andPlatonist (Phaedrus 245E) antecedents (oddly not noticed by the editor).He expresses his amazement that the changeless nature and immovablepower of God, which masters and orders whatever exists, and more tothe same effect, should be addressed as Father (cf. 23/11ff.)

This idea of the amazing boldness ( p a r r h s a , 23/12) implied byprayer seems to echo the thought and language of Origen in 22,1, citedabove (Nowhere have I found in a prayer the boldness proclaimed bythe Saviour in calling God Father). Both Origen and Gregory couldpoint to passages in the New Testament which advocate a similar bold-ness in approaching and addressing God, such as Ephesians 3:12.

In heavenIn Origens and Gregorys treatments of the phrase in heaven we finda marked difference of approach. In ch. 23 Origen insists that the wordsin no way imply that God is spatially located. Section 3 of this chapterparticularly criticizes the materialistic idea of God entertained by some,possibly the Stoics. He wishes, he says, to refute the lowly notion aboutGod held by those who suppose that God is in a corporeal place, sinceit would follow that He is Himself corporeal. Origen appears to suggestin section 4 that any apparently corporeal language used about God inGenesis must be interpreted to refer to the moral character of those whoby their lives are either worthy or unworthy of him, and with whom as aresult he can be said to dwell or not to dwell. Dwelling, therefore, isalways to be understood morally, never spatially, and depends not on anydivine locomotion but on human behaviour.

Gregory continues his discussion (26/20) of the meaning of Father inheaven with an unusual non-Origenist and at the same time singularlybeautiful application of the phrase to the parable of the Prodigal in Luke15 certainly not used by Origen either in his On Prayer or in his On FirstPrinciples or in the remains of his Homilies on Luke. Gregorys treat-ment also raises the intriguing possibility that despite his disclaimerselsewhere he may have believed in the pre-existence of souls. (On thispoint, see note 3.)

The words refer, he claims, to the fatherland whence we fell (3V

k p e p t k a m e n ) and from which we were cast down. The implication isthat once we lived in a heavenly paradise Eden is not mentioned andthat we left it for the swinish life of this world. Our true homeland isheaven, to which we hope eventually to return (27/4,10).

Hallowed be thy nameThis petition causes Origen a good deal of perplexity. In 24,1 he asks theobvious question. Does not the force of the prayer imply that Gods

348 ANTHONY MEREDITH

name has not already been hallowed?. Naturally, this is absurd, andleads Origen to explore the meanings both of name and hallowing.The answer given in section 24,4 is entirely in line with his generalapproach. In effect he argues that Gods name is hallowed by and inthose whose lives through Gods grace the power of sin has beenovercome. Once we have attained in this state to a true and loftyknowledge ( g n w

3s i V ) 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 comeOrigens treatment of Thy kingdom come occurs in chapter 25 of histreatise. At once he identifies the kingdom with the inwardnessseemingly implied by Luke 17:20. He offers a highly spiritual accountof what he means by the kingdom of God, as distinct from the kingdomof Christ. The former means the blessed condition of the governingmind 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 beestablished by means of the words that go forth presumably,preaching and the effects of those words in terms of deeds ofrighteousness and other virtues. At the end of section 2 Origen says thatwe should pray constantly (1 Thess 5:17) with a character divinized bythe divine Word ( d i a q s i q o p o i o u m n h ). This is the basic meaningfor Origen of the two petitions Hallowed be thy name and Thykingdom come. This is hardly the eschatological prayer it was meant tobe. Rather, the kingdom of God is to be understood as the righteousnessof the one who prays, in whom there is no shadow of darkness, Forthere can be no fellowship between light and darkness (2 Cor 6:14).

Gregory begins his third homily with the usual highly wroughtprologue inviting the one who prays to prepare himself for the entry intorelationship with the Holy One. He then discusses the two clausesHallowed be thy name and Thy kingdom come together(33/2339/14) before launching into the most interesting part of thesermon (from 39/15 to the end), which deals with the reading of the texthe has before him a text which apparently is nowhere else to be found,save perhaps in Marcion. Instead of Thy kingdom come, Gregorystext of Luke had, May thy Holy Spirit come upon us and purify us.

Interestingly, Gregory discusses the meaning of the two clausestogether and in both cases he insists on the importance of the divines u m m a c a (34/8,12; 35/2) and s u n e r g a (36/25) in enabling in us thepower to overcome evil and to do good. Both of these expressions revealwhat has been called the synergism of Gregory, which it seems fair todistinguish from the more robust approach to divine aid advocated byAugustine.9 Unless the odd expression of Origen in 24,4 ( p o r r o cq e t h t V ) is taken to mean divine assistance, he is silent here on the

ORIGEN AND GREGORY OF NYSSA ON THE LORDS PRAYER 349

subject of our need of Gods help. Gregory holds that through the divineassistance evil will be eradicated from our lives and so we shall be bythat very fact giving glory and praise to God (Matt 5:16 at 36/23). ForGregory, giving glory to God and total submission to his will arepractically identical.

Thy kingdom come is treated specifically by Gregory in37/839/14. How, he asks, can we pray for that to come which is alreadyhere? Or rather, how can we pray for the extension of a kings powerwho is already unchangeably present? The highest good of all, soGregory argues, is total submission to the life-giving power (37/22).What therefore we above all need to pray for is freedom from thetyranny of sin. That is what the petition is about (38/4). It is a prayer forthe disappearance of the passions that control us ( t a ` p i k r a t o u

3n t a

p a

`q h ) and threaten to warp our freedom. It is a prayer for the

f a n i s m V (38/23) of all passions. All the evils attendant upon humannature will vanish once the kingdom of God is established, by a fruitfulconjunction of our freedom and of divine power (37/16). Gods powerdoes not act in a tyrannical way a truth Gregory reminds us of bothhere (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 anidiosyncratic reading of Luke 11:2 (May thy holy Spirit come), to adefence of the deity of the Holy Ghost against the assaults of the so-called Pneumatomachi. Had the Council of Constantinople (381)already taken place at or before the time of writing, it is hard to believethat Gregory would have been silent about it; nor would he here andelsewhere (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 thirdPerson of the Trinity.

The whole question of the precise role of the Holy Spirit in the Trinitywas never one directly faced by Origen. His discussion of the status ofthe Trinity in the second book of his Commentary on John (X, 7375)rather suggests that he subordinated the Spirit to the Son, though itshould be noted that in Rufinuss Latin translation of On FirstPrinciples, especially at 1, 3, 4, he appears to take a more robust viewof the nature of the third Person of the Trinity.

Thy will be done on earth as it is in heavenThis, Origen argues at 26,1, will only take place when all do the will ofGod. As we have seen, he tends to equate the being in heaven with doingthe will of God. In the so-called place of heaven we find disobedientheavenly spirits (cf. Eph 6:12), while here on earth it is equally possibleto discover those who are truly in heaven because their spirits are at onewith that of the Lord a reference to 1 Corinthians 6:17, a very popularverse with Origen. In effect, as he points out at the end of ch. 26, doing

350 ANTHONY MEREDITH

the will of God is equivalent to being in heaven. Therefore, if the will ofGod is done also on earth as it is in heaven, we shall all be in heavenwhen we do the will of God (26,6). This is a very good example of theway in which Origen interprets what look like metaphysical orontological statements as moral ones.

Gregorys treatment of Thy will be done on earth as it is in heavenoccurs in his fourth homily and follows upon an elegant prologue(44/1445/16), which displays something of his well-known interest inmedicine. Healthiness of body results from the s o n o m a t w

3n

s t o i c e w n (45/9), and so does health of soul (45/17ff.). From thisGregory argues that the will of God terminates in the health of soul,where none of the disparate elements in the tripartite division he inheritsfrom Plato is out of control. So he can write at 46/2: u ^ g e i a y u c h

3V

t o u

3q e o u

3q e l h

m a t o V e u

\od a ; and, conversely, falling away from it is

disease. The aim of prayer is the correction of the souls maladies( r r w s t ) and the consequent disappearance of all unwanted k n h s i Vt h

3V p r o i r s w V .After this, Gregory turns in 48/1450/20 to an examination of the mean-

ing to be given to as in heaven so upon earth. He seems to be slightlymore ambiguous than Origen in his attitude towards place. He dis-tinguishes between the upper area ( n w l h

3x i V ) and k a t w (48/23;

49/1), the former being both pure and the dwelling place of spiritualbeings, whereas the earth is the place to which we are consigned becauseof our sins. Our existence here seems to be the result of having fallenfrom the divine will (50,1011). The sense of in heaven therefore is aprayer 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 notdeal with Ephesians 6:12, which helped Origen to break the connectionbetween place and state. What is not clear from Gregorys treatment iswhether when we do the will of God before we die we are already, invirtue of our obedience, in heaven. This ambiguity is partly a reflection ofthe language of l h

3x i V ,

10 which can be either spatial or moral in meaning.

Give us this day our daily breadTo the meaning of this petition Origen devotes the large chapter 27. Hebegins by rejecting the thought that daily bread means corporealbread as this would call into question the agraphon before referred towhich 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, andin line with John 6:27, we are to ask for spiritual food. So in section 4the bread is interpreted to mean the nourishing word of God. Thisinterpretation is also advocated in section 13, where the bread we are toask for is to nourish us so that we may be divinized (q e o p o i h q w

3m e n ) by

the Word of God.

ORIGEN AND GREGORY OF NYSSA ON THE LORDS PRAYER 351

In section 7 of ch. 27, having, as it were, disposed of a purely physicalsense of bread, Origen turns to a discussion of the word p i o u s i o n andargues that its non appearance in Greek suggests that it is an inventionof the evangelists. He derives it from o u \ s a and then applies it to thespiritual bread already referred to and interpreted in section 10 to mean thebread of angels, referred to in Psalm 78:25. However, with his accustomedfairness to other opinions he admits in section 13 that the word may bederived from the verb e n a i (to come) rather than e

3nai (to be). If that

suggestion were correct it would imply the bread for tomorrow. Origendismisses this proposal rather abruptly without offering any clear reason,though it may be that he thought such an account played into the handsof the Millenarians an interpretation reinforced by a remark at the endof section 13 where the one thousand years of Psalm 90 is referred to asthe famous millennium.

Sections 3 and 4 of ch. 27 contain an exegesis of the bread of lifediscourse in John 6. Bread, however, is given a spiritual meaning. Theidea of spiritual food is ever uppermost in Origens understanding. John6:5157 is interpreted to refer to the Incarnation with special referenceto John 1:14. So Origen says in section 9 that r t o V s w m t i k o V is thereto nourish the body; the r t o V n o h t o V is there for mind and soul, andis distributed to the mind ( n o u

3V ) and soul ( y u c h ). 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 depend-ent upon him. But that apart, it would be hard to find a greater contrastin the treatment of this verse. Gregorys exposition consists basically of a plea to restrict the sense of bread to the necessities of life. We arebidden to ask for bread because we are truly hungry and not for thevanities to which our desires incite us (51/25). It must be the basicc r e a for life that leads us on (51/19; 55/14).

Gregory inserts at this point a passionate attack on the power anddanger of pleasure, which he likens to a snake whose scales make it hardto dislodge it once it has made an entrance.11 The further vivid descrip-tion of luxurious living and the gradual mastery of the serpentine pleasureprinciple leading to p i q u m a p l o n x a V at 54/1119 suggests alsothat Gregory was aware of luxurious living in Nyssa and round about. Asimilar passage in the first homily On the Beatitudes perhaps reinforcesthis point (85/22ff.).

Gregory does not restrict the scope of the petition to the urgent requestfor the necessities of life. He urges that we also are to ask for the fruit ofour just labours (55/22). If others derive profit from greed, we are to expectthe reward of life. Whoever is eager for justice receives bread from God(56/7). As to the word s h m e r o n with which the petition concludes,Gregory takes this to mean as before our bodily needs for today, not fortomorrow, when we pray for the arrival of the kingdom (58/1214).

352 ANTHONY MEREDITH

Forgive us our debts (sins) as we forgive those who sin against usThis 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 areourselves in debt to others, largely based on an exegesis of Romans13.78, Pay everyone their debts Section 6 begins as follows: If weare in debt to so many people, it is inevitable that there are people indebt to us. The final sections, 9 and 10, appear to reject the suggestionthat 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 thepower to forgive adultery, fornication and idolatry. No one has the powerto release from sins unto death ( m r t p r e V q n t n a clearreference to 1 John 5:16).

Gregorys fifth homily even in its treatment of our varied debts from62/17 onwards, a treatment which makes no overt reference at all toRomans 13:7f., differs quite widely from Origen in at least two otherrespects. Having begun with a description of the desired if not actuallyrealized, godlike character of the true prayer (cf. especially 59/5, 20)and of the p a r r h s a that this confers (59/12; 60/23), he then makes thequite novel suggestion that if we are as we ought to be we have thepower 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, Youmust do also (n g g p o h s a k a d s u p o h s o n ) (61/23).

The second striking feature of Gregorys treatment occurs in hisanalysis of the parable of the Pharisee and the publican in Luke18:1014. No one, he argues, can claim to be free of sin, because thereare always the k o i n a t h

3V fi u s w V fi l m t (64,23) which we all

share in since the fall and the coats of skin we thereafter put on. He thenspeaks of the paradise, our first homeland, whence we all fell (65/18),language which echoes that of his second homily. A little later hesuggests (66/1112) that we all shared in the nature and the fall ofAdam, 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 additionwhich he describes as both more profound and truer (66/19). The firstpart of this excursus deals with the plea for mercy for sins of thebody, especially for those committed through the five senses(66/2868/8), while the second and longer portion (68/972/10) dealswith spiritual sins. These are sins which owe their existence to themalice or the defilement of the spirit, incapable of controlling thebaser passions and the senses. The conclusion of this section (69/2672/10) is devoted to an application of the parable of the debtor inMatthew 18:23ff. The enormous debt we owe to God for his generosityis compared with the trivial debts others owe us. The crowning sin inthis passage consists in our woeful lack of gratitude to the God to whomwe owe so much.

ORIGEN AND GREGORY OF NYSSA ON THE LORDS PRAYER 353

Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evilThe final petition of the prayer is not, so Origen urges, a plea to beexempt altogether from temptation, that being an impossibility for ourpresent condition. Rather, it is a prayer that we be not encompassed bytemptation (29,11). The crucial thought with which Origen supports allhis reflections in this prayer occurs in section 15: God does not wishthat good should belong to anyone by necessity but willingly. Humanfreedom therefore is the key with which to understand Origensapproach to the problem of temptation and ultimate deliverance.

Gregorys treatment of the clause is, by contrast, both brief andjejune. It forms the coda to his fifth sermon and stretches over lessthan two pages of the Greek text from 72/11 to 74/5. For Gregory,p e i r a s m o

V seems to mean much the same as evil and the petition asksto be exempt from both. There seems to be no suggestion that temptationis a necessity of the human condition and that to be without it is to bedeprived of the possibility of growth in virtue a logical conclusion,granted the insistence we find in the mature ascetical writings ofGregory that even where there is no possibility of fall, upward spiritualmobility is the lot of all rational beings.

CONCLUSION

The above outline of the reflections of Origen and Gregory respectivelyon the Lords Prayer suggests some obvious similarities as well asdifferences. To begin with, there is the obvious difference of genre andstyle, to which reference has already been made. A treatise is quitedifferent from a sermon. The difference in genre might explain certainpeculiarities in the respective accounts. For example, the exhortations tofrugality which we find in Gregorys first and fourth sermons aredoubtless appropriate in popular addresses, but unnecessary in a treatisedesigned for the instruction of two highly intellectual readers. Further,the rhetorical stress in Gregory may have allowed him to use thelanguage of falling from another state without really meaning it tooseriously.

There are other significant contrasts. The basic structure of Origensthought owes more to Plato than does Gregorys. Origen is morethoroughly consistent in his use of language and imagery (though thereis very little of the latter). Then, in some respects (above all in histreatment of the word Father, of the phrase in heaven and of theclause Give us this day ), Origen is more profound than Gregory. Heshows himself more of a scholar than Gregory, who does not discusseither the peculiarity of the address Father or the meaning of the word p i o u s i o V . Yet Gregory is not devoid of originality, above all in hisaccount of the meaning of the clause Forgive us, which is quite novel

354 ANTHONY MEREDITH

and owes nothing to Origen; and the same may be said of his discussionof the deity of the Holy Spirit at the close of his third homily.

Both Origen and Gregory wrestle with the attempt to square theirconviction of the divine ubiquity with the prayer for God to come, andboth solve the problem in similar ways, that is, by reducing the sense ofcoming to the awareness we have of God, and of the consequent changein our lives as we become, in Platos phrase (Theaetetus 176B), morelike God. But even here Origen is clearer in his insistence on the non-spatial nature of God, whereas Gregory, with his use of the word l h

3x i V ,

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 betweenthe two writers. Even if Gregory knew Origens treatment of The LordsPrayer, he made very little use of it; and the probability is that he wasignorant of it. If this is true, it is another indication of the doubtful-ness of the facile suggestion that Gregory is to be thought of as adisciple of Origen (albeit at several removes, through his grandmotherMacrina and Gregory the Wonder-worker). The evidence of these fivesermons hardly supports such a claim.

Notes1 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 sermonsare to the page and line numbers in volume VII/1 of the GNO 1992 edition. There is also atranslation 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 Gregoryswritings, 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 silencemay 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 Philocaliaof 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 DeHominis 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 OrigensDe Principiis insert the passage from De Hominis Opificio 28 and from De Anima et Resurrectioneat 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 hisCommentary on the Song of Songs (GNO VI, 241/46). Yet, despite Gregorys distancing himselffrom an Origenistic position, there are several passages both here and in other writings whereGregory continues to employ the language, if not the full meaning, of pre-existence. In both thesecond (26/26) and fifth homilies (65/15) and also in the first (298ff.) and second (305) Homilieson Ecclesiastes. In the first case, this is in connection with the exegesis of the Prodigal Son of Luke15, and in the last two with that of the lost sheep, also of Luke 15. The real question is howseriously we ought to take the language of k p t w s i V used by Gregory. In homily 5 the sameverb/noun is used at 65/15 and 66/12 to describe our exile from paradise, though here too paradiseis 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 alwaysfavourable, largely for its apparent incoherence (cf. especially Anthony Meredith, Gregory of Nyssa

ORIGEN AND GREGORY OF NYSSA ON THE LORDS PRAYER 355

[London, 1999], p. 47), it does seem clear that Origens Christology and his soteriology rest moreon the thought of the activity of the created human spirit willingly uniting itself to the Word, aboveall with the use of 1 Corinthians 6:17 (at, for example, De Principiis 2,6,3) than does the thoughtof 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). Forhim Origen was not influenced by the resurgence of interest in the great classical writers, above allDemosthenes and Plato, a resurgence described both by Philostratus in his Lives of the Sophists andby Eunapius in his Lives of the Philosophers. In Nordens view, the first ecclesiastical writer toshow influence was Eustathius bishop of Antioch, the strong supporter of the creed of Nicaea.

8 The phrase m p a q c V d i a q e s i V 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 (GNOVIII.289/2) and in Hom. in Eccl. 3 (GNO V.315/7). What is not clear is whether the resultant stateof p q i means the eradication of all drives or only of some. For a useful discussion, seeMorwenna Ludlows Universal Salvation (Oxford, 2000), pp. 56ff.

9 The question of the precise sense of s u n e r g a and s u m m a c a in Gregory is discussed by E. Muehlenberg in Synergism in Gregory of Nyssa, ZNW 68 (1977), pp. 93122. The openingpages of Gregorys treatise De Instituto Christiano are illuminating, and appear to justify the con-clusion that Gregory regarded grace as an aid rather than a necessary condition of the moral life.

10 The word l h3x i V 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 noteto 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 (GNOV 349/10ff.), while at Or. Cat. 30 (GNO III,IV. 74/8) the writhing body of the snake after its headhas been crushed provides Gregory with an illustration of the effects of sin once the work of Christis over and sin has in principle been vanquished.

356 ANTHONY MEREDITH