Emily Cain: Optical Theory and Mystical Metaphors in Gregory of Nyssa

Gregory of Nyssa, the mystical Cappadocian Father, poetically uses metaphorical language to describe the human ascent to and vision of God, most often through optical metaphors. In this paper, I seek to recover an important overlooked aspect of the Orthodox theological tradition: the ways in which the unspoken assumptions about optics and catoptrics impact Gregory’s use of optical metaphors, particularly his metaphorical interpretation of 1 Corinthians 13:12: for now we see through a mirror darkly.
Until recently, scholars have either divorced Gregory’s spiritual senses from his corporeal, imposing an anachronistic division between the spiritual and the physical or have attempted to bring them together through the lens of a platonic understanding of the relationship between the body and the soul. The former imposes an ill-fitting modern distinction, while the latter offers an incomplete picture.
What scholars have failed to address is Gregory’s own scientific description of visual perception found in In Canticum canticorum that falls firmly in the category of the atomists’ intromissionist theory rather than Plato’s theory of extramission.  I argue that it is only by exploring this scientific background that we can begin to understand the ways in which such optical metaphors shed light on Gregory’s theory of epistemology and his theological anthropology.