A New Conception of Humanity: Introducing Gregory of Nyssa

This is an introduction that became a stand alone little talk. Why? Because John’s talk on Gregory at our conference was mind- bending - but hard to follow. No fault of John’s - he was trying to condense two profound thinkers (Plato and Gregory) into a one hour talk! So I worked hard to crystallise the main themes in ‘simple Plain English’ terms - so that it can provide a runway for you into John’s actual talk which we will publish shortly.

First up I explain simply just why Gregory used Plato as a platform to communicate the ‘imago dei’ gospel - and what we can learn from that. He and his colleagues had very open minds and were able to recognise the ‘eternity’ in the hearts of ‘pagan’ philosophers like Plato, much like Paul did on Mars Hill in Acts 17. I think that is a big lesson for the church today.

Then I dive into the major theme of Gregory’s work according to John. Gregory’s question is the profound Psalm 8 question - ‘What is a human being?’ His answer takes up the whole of his majestic work, ‘On the Making of Man’, and John’s talk unpacks that answer. It is an answer, according to both John and David Hart, that is ‘mind-blowing’ and that offered the world a new conception of humanity ‘in the image of God’. I try to give you the big picture of that answer in this talk.

I finish off with a summary of the flow of John’s talk - how he has arranged the talk and the sequence he follows. John is an old finished ‘literature’ teacher so he uses the text (which he translated) a lot - and when we publish John’s actual talk in coming days we will also upload a copy of his handouts for everybody to download.

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