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Body and DesireGregory of Nyssa's Ascetical Theology$
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Body and Desire: Gregory of Nyssa's Ascetical Theology

Raphael A. Cadenhead

Print publication date: 2018

Print ISBN-13: 9780520297968

Published to California Scholarship Online: May 2019

DOI: 10.1525/california/9780520297968.001.0001

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PRINTED FROM CALIFORNIA SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.california.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright University of California Press, 2021. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in CALSO for personal use.date: 27 July 2021

Spiritual Maturation

Spiritual Maturation

Virginity and the Narrative of Progress

Chapter:
(p.123) 7 Spiritual Maturation
Source:
Body and Desire
Author(s):

Raphael A. Cadenhead

Publisher:
University of California Press
DOI:10.1525/california/9780520297968.003.0009

Chapter 7 is the first chapter in part C of the book, “Erotic Intimacy with Christ and the Maturation of Desire,” which sees the aging bishop, in the late phase of his literary career, retreat from ecclesiastical affairs and focus more intensely than ever before on the implications of diachronic progress in the spiritual life. Chapter 7 examines the expanded meaning of virginity: it now denotes purity of heart in a general moral sense and can therefore be applied to Christians who are married—as long as their desires are chastened and transformed through the practices of prayer and virtue. Gregory, at this point in his literary career, regards any form of sin (hamartia) as an act of spiritual infidelity against Christ, the incorruptible Bridegroom. The parthenia/porneia disjunction is therefore used to contrast the life of virtue and the life of vice (more generally understood), not simply sexual abstinence and sexual vice. Gregory also applies the theme of maturation to the conjugal life—a point so far overlooked in the secondary literature—which provides new insights into his understanding of the order (taxis) of love in the life of virtue. The chapter ends with a detailed elucidation of Gregory’s diachronically theorized account of spiritual maturation (which highlights the essential incorporation of erotic desire in the practice of contemplation) and examines his on bodily development (especially enfeeblement in old age).

Keywords:   virginity, porneia, old age, contemplation, life of virtue, spiritual ascent

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