The Glory of Kings: A Festschrift for James B. Jordan

Fyodor Dostoevsky
(Christian Encounters Series)

Athanasius
(Foundations of Theological Exegesis and Christian Spirituality)

The Four: A Survey of the Gospels

Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom

From Behind the Veil: The Epistles of John

Deep Exegesis:The Mystery of Reading Scripture

Jane Austen
(A Biography)

Solomon Among the Postmoderns

The Baptized Body

1 & 2 Kings
Brazos Theological Commentary

The Promise Of His Appearing: An Exposition Of Second Peter

A Great Mystery: Fourteen Wedding Sermons

Deep Comedy: Trinity, Tragedy, And Hope In Western Literature

Miniatures & Morals: The Christian Novels of Jane Austen

The Priesthood of the Plebs: A Theology of Baptism

A Son To Me: An Exposition of 1 & 2 Samuel

Against Christianity

From Silence to Song: The Davidic Liturgical Revolution

Ascent to Love: A Guide to Dante's Divine Comedy

Blessed Are the Hungry: Meditations on the Lord's Supper

A House For My Name: A Survey of the Old Testament

Heroes of the City of Man: A Christian Guide to Select Ancient Literature

Brightest Heaven of Invention: A Christian Guide To Six Shakespeare Plays

Wise Words: Family Stories That Bring the Proverbs to Life

The Kingdom and the Power: Rediscovering the Centrality of the Church

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Theology: Grasping knowledge

In his book on Gregory of Nyssa (Presence and Thought: Essay on the Religious Philosophy of Gregory of Nyssa (A Communio Book)), von Balthasar contrasts Nyssa’s epistemology with that of Zeno and the Stoics.  Zeno described a progression of thought under the image of the hand: an open hand is sensation, a half-closed hand is assent, and when the hand grips something tightly, it has comprehended.  In sum, “Intelligence is . . . above all a possession, and, for the Stoics, the degrees of thought are identical to the degrees of force and energy used in grasping the object.”

Gregory will have none of this.  The whole point of his treatise against Eumonius is to show that “our concepts are only remote analogies, approaches to the infinitely rich reality of God, symbolic signs, which point out a direction without ever reaching their object.”  For Gregory, knowledge of the creation is of the same sort.  We never conceptually possess the creation: “The ‘logos of creation,’ the essence of things, always escapes us.  God alone knows it.”  Human beings strive for mastery, but this striving must be given up to attain knowledge: “Human knowledge is therefore true only to the degree it renounces by a perpetual effort its own nature, which is to ‘seize’ its prey.”

Yet Gregory develops all this without a hint of skepticism: “The great, eloquent passages in which Gregory demonstrates to Eunomius that we do not know the smallest essence of any thing, of any element, not even the smallest little shoot of a plant, have no agnostic flavor to them.”  Rather, “they are atremble with the great mystery of the world and end in silent adoration . . . before the incomprehensible beauty of God.”  In place of the grasping epistemology of Zeno, Gregory offers an epistemology of wonder, a doxological epistemology, in which faith is “the only knowledge that conforms to our condition.”