The purpose of this chapter is to suggest a reconsideration of the so-called ‘doctrine of the spiritual senses’ in Gregory of Nyssa, and that at two levels.

The first level, with which I shall frame the discussion in my opening section, is that of the modern history of the reception of Nyssen on the spiritual senses; for it is hard to get at the distinctiveness of what Gregory was about in his treatment of this theme without peeling back the particular concerns of modern theological re-interpretation. Here I shall briefly investigate the context, both historical and theological, in which the great French patristic scholar Jean Daniélou drew fresh and important attention to this facet of Gregory's thought in his famous wartime monograph on Nyssen, Platonisme et théologie mystique. I shall argue that we must be cautious about a false modern separation between ‘spirituality’ and epistemology that seemingly infects Daniélou's treatment, for all its richness and importance, and also about an over-concentration here on Gregory's late work The Commentary on the Song of Songs.