One of the central issues to which the Cappadocian fathers frequently returned was the possibility of Christian paideia. It has been pointed out that the idea of morphosis, a never-ending process of giving shape to one’s life in imitation of Christ, is at the heart of Gregory of Nyssa’s educational thinking. What has been overlooked is the way Gregory’s awareness of paideia as an engagement of the subject with an object raises the methodological problem of how this relationship can be established. This chapter illuminates Gregory’s concept of self-formation by investigating the ways in which he theorises the acquisition and ordering of knowledge suited to the life of faith. A reading of his Life of Moses demonstrates that, drawing on the rhetoric of an opposition between Christianity and classical culture, Gregory re-evaluates this tension from a pedagogical perspective. His novel idea is that the negotiation of foreignness and kinship can be a catalyst for Christian self-perfection.

Introduction

The fourth century witnessed tremendous changes and upheavals in the fields of religion, politics and society. The most striking of these changes was the astonishing advance of Christianity from a persecuted minority to the official state religion, destined in turn to suppress other kinds of religious worship. Supported by political and social developments such as the Christianization of the imperial aristocracy, the penetration of Christianity into the heart of the Roman Empire was bound to have a profound impact on both individual and collective identities. For political and other reasons, individuals and groups shifted their religious allegiances and sought to shape their self-image by distancing themselves from and marginalizing competing belief systems. Stable, or seemingly stable, identities became blurred or even contested. Individuals and communities were forced to rethink their position towards religious or social issues, which gave rise to an intense discourse on identities. As part of this discourse, many traditional aspects of their lives such as ethnicity, culture, ethics and religious adherence intermingled in a new fashion and gained new relevance.

Of particular interest in these controversial debates is one type of identity which underwent a significant change in meaning and evaluation. Hellenism, the condition of being Greek, once more came to the fore as a result of religious struggles since the Fathers of the Church had taken up the term for labelling non-believers. Once the adherents of the pagan gods had adopted this policy for their self-definition, Hellenism developed into an ambivalent expression with either positive or negative overtones, depending on who made use of it and for what purposes. The issue became even more complex as Christians who were brought up in the classical tradition refused to break with the values of Greek culture, advocating instead a harmony of Christian belief and Hellenic tradition.