Editing Gregory of Nyssa (section)

===Infinitude of God===
[[File:St. Gregory of Nyssa.jpg|thumb|11th-century [[mosaic]] of Gregory of Nyssa. [[Saint Sophia's Cathedral, Kyiv|Saint Sophia Cathedral]] in [[Kyiv]], [[Ukraine]].]]
Gregory was one of the first theologians to argue that God is [[infinity|infinite]]. His main argument for the infinity of God, found in ''Against Eunomius'', is that God's goodness is limitless, and as God's goodness is [[essence|essential]], God is also limitless.<ref name=Brill-424>Maspero & Mateo Seco, p. 424</ref>

An important consequence of Gregory's belief in the infinity of God is his belief that God, as limitless, is essentially incomprehensible to the limited minds of created beings. In ''Life of Moses'', Gregory writes: "...every concept that comes from some comprehensible image, by an approximate understanding and by guessing at the Divine nature, constitutes an idol of God and does not proclaim God."<ref>The life of Moses / Gregory of Nyssa; translation, introd. and notes by Abraham J. Malherbe and Everett Ferguson; pref. by John Meyendorff Page 81</ref> Gregory's theology was thus [[apophatic theology|apophatic]]: he proposed that God should be defined in terms of what we know He is not rather than what we might speculate Him to be.<ref name=Brill-68>Maspero & Mateo Seco, p. 68</ref>

Accordingly, the Nyssen taught that due to God's infinitude, a created being can never reach an understanding of God, and thus for man in both life and the afterlife there is a [[Theosis (Eastern Orthodox theology)|constant progression]] <nowiki>[</nowiki>ἐπέκτασις<nowiki>]</nowiki> towards the unreachable knowledge of God, as the individual continually transcends all which has been reached before.<ref name=Brill-425>Maspero & Mateo Seco, p. 425</ref> In the ''Life of Moses'', Gregory speaks of three stages of this spiritual growth: initial darkness of [[ignorance]], then spiritual [[Light (theology)|illumination]], and finally a darkness of the mind in mystic [[theoria|contemplation]] of the God who cannot be comprehended.<ref name=Brill-522>Maspero & Mateo Seco, p. 522</ref>