younger brother Gregory of Nyssa, who was born about a.d. 335 or 336. Owing to the delicacy of his health he enjoyed none of the university advantages that fell to the lot of Basil and Gregory Nazianzen. He was privately educated by his brother Basil, and he became a great reader on his own account. After this it is significant that he proved to be a much more original thinker than either of the two highly-tutored senior members of the famous trio. Basil appointed him bishop of the little town of Nyssa, (now Nirse) in the west of Cappadocia. During the Arian persecution under Valens he was driven from his church on a charge of irregularity of appointment by a too subservient synod held at Nyssa, and then banished by the emperor, to be restored after the death of Valens and "the crash of Hadrianople." On the death of Basil he became one of the two leading defenders of the faith.
Gregory of Nyssa is chiefly interesting to us on account of the profound arguments and daring speculations with which he justified the orthodox view against the Arians. These are elaborated in his great work Against Eunomius, as well as in some of his shorter writings. The Nicene fathers had simply thundered out a great affirmation—strong, definite, conclusive—still only an affirmation, a bare assertion voted by authority. Even Athanasius was content for the most part to defend it by rebutting false conceptions while tearing the rival theory to shreds. Gregory of Nyssa goes further. He digs into the roots of the mighty affirmation; he seeks to justify it metaphysically; he carries orthodox theology into the free atmosphere of philosophy and there attempts to argue for its truth on principles of abstract reason—a daring, a perilous effort, but still one that some minds not satisfied with authoritative dogma might welcome with a sense of liberty and enlargement. In particular, Gregory helped to develop a new line of thought that opened up fruitful sources of discussion among subsequent writers. Hitherto the nature of Christ had been almost exclusively considered on its Divine side. The one question had been,
