Dragoljub Garic: “Πολυβλέποντες - a Pseudonym in Homily 8 on the Song of Songs of Gregory of Nyssa

Gregory of Nyssa’s Homilies on the Song of Songs have traditionally been taken as a work of mystical reflection, in contrast to his earlier dogmatic writings. This view has changed in the past two decades and nowadays most scholars agree that this work abounds with doctrinal and polemical elements. In other words, researchers of his writings acknowledge the anti-Eunomian character of them. This character is now appreciated without jeopardizing the mystical aspects of Gregory’s oeuvre.What is striking, however, is the fact that Gregory almost never speaks about his theological adversaries in person and does not name them. More precisely, he only names his opponents in a passage of Homily 8 on the Song of Songs. Moreover, he also uses a rather unusual term – πολυβλέποντες. The word, which is a euphemistic expression of blindness, and therefore of the perversity of Gregory’s adversaries, strange as it is rare, provides us with deeper insights into Gregory’s understanding of heresy. In the present paper, I intend to demonstrate that this term, indeed, refers to thinkers of Neo-Arian provenance and reflect on further implications of the pseudonym.