Writing in the late 300s, Gregory of Nyssa wrote Life of Moses at the request of an understudy, to demonstrate how to find the deeper meaning of Scripture. He summarizes the life of Moses from the biblical text, then goes through each part of Moses’ life and discovers how it is symbolic of an aspect of the Christian life.

Since we are always changing, and since we are in control of how we chance, we are, in a sense giving birth to ourselves. Like Moses at his birth, we are thrust into the river of passions, but rational thought and “boards” constructed from discipline will keep us safe in an ark (Moses’ basket is an ark), and education will calm the waters and will rock us gently. The tyrant (the sinful nature) rules the land, and his daughter is childless—this is secular philosophy, which produces no fruit. As Moses did, we can learn from secular philosophy while still under the tyrant, although Moses also received his mother’s milk, that is the laws and customs of the Church. Looking to both secular philosophy and the teachings of the Fathers will create conflict in us between worldly wisdom and virtue, and we need to kill that which opposes virtue (the Egyptian, the servant of the tyrant). Eventually we will end up scattering the wicked shepherds from the well—those who use the teachings of wisdom for their service—and live in pleasant solitude (at least regarding the internal solitude of the soul).

In this life will come the light of truth will come, for God is light. The burning bush is the Virgin Mary, which as the bush is was not consumed in the fire, so Mary always remained a virgin. The light of God demands that we remove our sandals, which is the dead skins of our nature that is there after we disobeyed. When we do this we will perceive the truth.

Here Gregory uses an argument similar to Buddhist arguments, although to a very different end. He says that truth is not misunderstanding Being. Everything that changes does not have Being in itself. Being is self-sufficient, and does not change because it cannot get better (being already Good) and is, of course, already removed from Worse. Being needs nothing, alone is desirable, and participates in everything without being diminished. Nothing we perceive with our senses, including ourselves, has Being in itself (because it changes), and thus Moses came to realize that all the perceived was actually non-being. One who has had this apprehension of Being is able to bring others to salvation—destroying the power of the tyrant.

Moses’ rod becoming a snake is a figuration of the incarnation of Christ, for although snakes are sometimes evil, the bronze snake that Moses lifted up was seen by the New Testament writers as a figure of Christ. And the snake was changed back into a rod which chastises sinners. This rod is also faith, for it supports those walking the path of virtue. With this miracle Moses became as a god to Pharaoh, because the Materialist is distracted by the flesh and the world. Now on his way to free his people from the tyrant, Moses’ foreign wife followed him, because there are some things from secular philosophy that we can take with us, such as teachings about virtue. And the angel of death came for Moses because he had not circumcised his son, that is, not cutting off everything which was hurtful and impure. (For instance, [ancient] secular philosophy says that the soul is immortal, which is pious offspring; but it also says that souls are reborn into different bodies, which is fleshly foreskin.)

Gregory only goes into detail with a few of the plagues, for instance, the frogs, “ugly and noisy amphibians, leaping about, not only unpleasant to the sight but having a foul-smelling skin ... The breed of frogs is obviously the destructive offspring of the evil which is brought to life from the sordid heart of men as though from some slimy mire [that is, the mud the frogs live in].” (p. 49-50) The plagues do not affect the Hebrews, for just as the truth is a light to those who believe, it is incomprehensible darkness to those who refuse it. Likewise, there are no frogs where there is no evil nature by which we would live an amphibious life (being like an animal in following our passions, but being like a man in our rational thought). Pharaoh hardened his heart, because although the rod of virtue cured the Hebrews of frog-hearts, it revealed the Egyptians to be full of frogs. We all have free will, but the sinful nature hardens itself because it does not receive the divine word which softens.

The Hebrews ate Passover in haste, not breaking the bones of the lamb; so should initial converts not “break the bones” of Scripture, that is, attempt to discover the deep meanings, but to simply receive the easily understood meaning. When we leave the tyrant, we plunder his house of his wealth, as the Hebrews did by asking for gifts from the Egyptians: this is understood as taking the learnings of the profane world, such as science, rhetoric, etc., and incorporating it into the Church and later beautifying the tabernacle by learning how to see God in those things. When the tyrant tries to recapture his slaves, the cloud appears, being light to those who receive the truth, but because the truth is light, it is darkness to those who refuse the truth. Gregory also notes that at this point new converts are likely to fall away from fear unless there is someone like Moses to encourage them in faith. Then we pass through the Red Sea, that is, the waters of baptism. We can take nothing with us through this water. “If someone should still serve [an uncontrolled passion], even if he should happen to have passed through the water, according to my thinking he has not at all touched the mystical water whose function is to destroy evil tyrants.” (p. 68)

Now the bitter waters (the ascetical life) are purified through the wood (the Cross), they rested at an oasis with twelve springs of pure water and seventy palm trees, which are the teachings of the twelve Apostles and the shade of seventy who were also sent out. The rock is Christ, who is dry to unbelievers but full of water to those who receive him. Once the Hebrews had finished the food from Egypt, they were fed with manna: food not from earth but from heaven. This is the Word. Those who gathered had neither too little nor too much, even though each person gathered according to their desire. Those who hoarded their surplus found it eaten by worms the next day; the “next day” is the future life. (“He who hears ‘worm’ certainly perceives the undying worm which is made alive by covetousness.” [p. 73])

Having died and raised in the Sea, experience the bitter waters of self-discipline which are made sweet by the Cross, rested in the apostolic teaching, received the bread, and won victory through the outstretched arms of the Cross (that is, the victory over Amalek by means of Moses outstretched arms), then they come to the mountain of God. All the irrational animals were separated from the mountain, because animals pursue their appetites [which is the sort of thing we put to death in the waters of baptism]. Their garments—the outward pursuits of one’s life—were purified, because we must be pure to approach God. Then Moses ascended the mountain—the mountain to God is very steep and most people only make it to the base—and as he ascended he heard trumpets, which is the preaching of the divine nature. The trumpets at first are the Law and Prophets, which the Jews did not hear because of their hard hearts, and then as the trumpets became louder as he ascended, they preached the Gospels, and finally the loudest, the Apostles and Prophets, who speak in the Spirit’s voice and whose voice “goes out through all the earth, and their message to the ends of the earth” (Ps. 19:4). Gregory notes that “not all are apostles and prophets”, and that if one tries to assault the mountain without proper preparation they are “stoned”, through the heresies that they generate. [Perhaps the stoning is because heretics were excommunicated from the church in those days.]

Although God is at first perceived as light, Moses now perceived God as darkness, because the divine nature is incomprehensible. “Darkness is His dwelling place” (Ps 18:11) and “no one has seen God” (John 1:18, who himself was closest to Christ, and a mystic). The true knowledge of God is seeing but not seeing; seeing but not understanding, because while we can understand a piece of God in relationship to earthly things that we do understand, God in his totality is beyond anything we can understand (thus, we are forbidden from making God in the image of something we do understand from the world, which is idolatry). Here Moses learns that 1) nothing that we can understand can be ascribed to God, and 2) the other side of virtue is what pursuits perfect the virtuous life.

Within the darkness—the unknown and the unseen—Moses came to the heavenly tabernacle, which is Christ. Things here are symbolic, so the many lamps from one lampstand is the varied rays of the Spirit, the pillars of gold and silver are the angels doing the will of God, the altar is the worship by the heavenly creatures, and the cherubim cover the ark of the covenant, which is also called the Face. Hair is representative of death (it grows out of the body but is itself not alive), and red colorings represent blood.

The earthly temple is the Church (Gregory notes that Paul uses “Christ” and the “Church” equivalently in places). The pillars and lights are the Apostles, for the Apostles (and those like them that support the Church) were called pillars by Jesus, and likewise “you are the light of the world” (Matt 5:14). Timothy was a pillar (1 Tim 3:15). The skins dyed red are putting to death the flesh, and the covering of skins for the top and sides is the ascetic life. We should not be troubled that the sanctuary is hidden, which is a physical picture of God invisible and incomprehensible, which we must believe with faith exists.

The first tablets (which Moses broke) were created by God from the earth and inscribed with his finger, and Gregory notes that the Holy Spirit is commonly called “finger” in the Scriptures; this is reminiscent of Adam. Moses recreated the tablets of the Law from earth himself, and then God wrote the Law on them, just has Moses was the “stone-cutter” of his own flesh, upon which the Holy Spirit wrote his Law.

Moses asked God to see his glory, and God says he can only see his back. Here Gregory observes that if we take this literally we will come to the wrong conclusion—since God, as Being, he cannot be have a bodily “back”, because everything in the world that we perceive is non-being, including backs of bodies. Furthermore, God cannot be bounded: if he is Good, then anything beyond his is evil and thus think that God has an actual back (a bound), implies that God is surrounded by evil, which makes God less than evil (because it is larger than he and surrounds him), which clearly is not the case. The hole Moses is in, then, is what happens when a body is pushed downward from a slope: it continues downward, while Moses’ spirit goes up [because the nature of physical bodies is to go down, so the nature of spirit is to go up]. Thus he continues to ascend, that is, growing in knowledge of God, even while he stays still and rests, which is a very advanced level of spirituality. This standing still he does because he is standing on the rock, which is Christ. Despite this attainment, Moses yearns for more, because “this truly is the vision of God: never to be satisfied in the desire to see him” (p. 106) We always desire more because Being transcends life, and whatever we are able to see/perceive/experience is not life in its full. Now God shows him his “back”, because we are called to be followers, and one cannot follow by seeing the front—in that case you would be going the opposite direction, so if you facing Good, you must be following evil).

The contest over the Aaron being high priest Aaron illustrates the nature of the priesthood: Aaron’s dead rod produced leaves, flowers, and even almond fruit. The arrogance of his opposition put themselves above others, and thus fell to earth. Here Gregory notes that just because you remove some desires does not preclude arrogance: if you live ascetically seeking the priesthood and thinking of yourself better than others, you are falling to earth just like Aaron’s opponents. Aaron’s rod produced fruit not from moisture, but by God’s power, and it’s fruit is something hard on the outside, but contains something edible hidden inside. The life of someone looking like a plump orange: nice clothes, well-fed, living in luxury is the not fruit of self-control characterizing the true priesthood, but rather it is the fruit of self-indulgence.

In the end we see the result of Moses life: his eye is undimmed because it is constantly in the light and separated from the darkness. “For he who has truly come to be in the image of God and who has in no way turned aside from the divine character bears in himself its distiguishing marks and shows in all things his conformity to the archetype; he beautifies his own soul with what is incorruptible, unchangeable, and shares in no evil at all.” (p. 130) Moses is named a friend of God, and this is our goal. “This is true perfection: not to avoid a wicked life because, like slaves, we servilely fear punishment, nor to do good because we hope for rewards, as if cashing in on the virtuous life by some businesslike and contractual arrangement. On the contrary, ... we consider becoming God’s friend the only thing worthy of honor and desire. This, as I have said, is the perfection of life.” (p. 132)

In Life of Moses, Gregory uses a common method of biblical interpretation among early Christians a Jews. I believe that the scholar Origen and others got it from the rabbis with whom they inquired about Old Testament interpretation. This shows up in the New Testament on at least one occasaion. Paul says that Abraham’s two wives can be considered typological of the two covenants: Hagar of the flesh and Sarah of the Promise. And certainly some aspects of Gergory’s interpretation seem very legitimate. However, the whole thing like overfitting a curve in statistics: if your fit goes through all the points it is guaranteed to be wrong (since the points have noise in them inherent to the measurement process that generated them).

There are some other difficulties, too. There are issues of consistency, where some things change interpretation. Gregory explicitly says this is not a problem, but if the story is supposed to be a coherent narrative, this is an indication that this method might be reading into the text (what I call endogesis, in contrast to exegesis, taking it from the text). There is also no reason why Moses would necessarily be typological of the individual Christian. The Gospel of Luke portrays Jesus as the new Moses, as indeed Moses predicted a successor. To be sure, we are called to be like Christ, but there is a strong argument that Moses is a type of Jesus, and therefore the life of Israel is a better type of the individual Christian.

In fact, there are some reasons to prefer the journey of Israel as the typological interpretation of the Christian journey. The beginning is, obviously, baptism in passing through the Sea, and the beginning few months frequently accompanied by miraculous provision, just as Israel ate of the manna. A long desert wandering is common in the Christian life, described by Critical Journey as “the wall” stage of the Christian journey, and possibly related to St. John of the Cross’ “dark night of the soul”. Jesus was tempted in the desert, before beginning his outward ministry. If we take the Promised Land to be the future life, then crossing the Jordan is death, an interpretation taken by the American slave spiritual of the same name. One could also see the journey from Egypt to the Promised Land as also a component of this life: we have a vision (burning bush) and move from where we are familiar (Egypt), we wander through hardships (the desert), we discover things that we have not put on the altar and surrender them (a metaphorical death in a metaphorical crossing of the Jordan), then we arrive in the Promised Land where we must receive the promise by fighting giants through faith.

Gregory overlooks some aspects of Moses’ life, some of which would seem to contradict things he says. There is no mention of Moses’ father-in-law visiting and telling him that he needs to delegate dispute resolution—an aspect that makes more sense with a literal understanding than a typological one. (But perhaps there is no need, since an obvious typology would be the church hierarchy of passing down teaching and correct theological understanding.) There is also no mention of the elders of Israel eating and drinking with God (surely Moses was among the elders), which given the importance of eating together in the ancient world when making a covenant, seems like it presents a challenge.

Finally, it is impossible to come up with this interpretation unless you have a deep experience in following Christ, and probably only with a perspective on the Christian life compatible with Gregory’s perspective. For example, modern Protestants see no value in asceticism, and so would not interpret the bitter waters as the ascetical life. In fact, Israel’s minimal stay at the bitter waters (made sweet by the wood) is both short in duration and short in textual length. This is quite in contrast with the early Christian emphasis on this, and one would expect that if the life of Moses is typological of a Christian life characterized by asceticism, you would think that that piece would not be so understated. Other things like interpreting the darkness would seem to require one to have already encountered this, because usually the first experience of God is more characterized by light, jubilation, and understanding. It is only after significant maturity that God begins to be comprehensible yet completely incomprehensible. Everywhere else in Scripture God is characterized by light, so this certainly is not an obvious interpretation. Now, it is possible that this is a hidden meaning of the text, divinely placed there by God, but it seems more likely that it is reading into the text (albeit reading in a very insightful aspect).

While high-level typological readings seem reasonable (Israel’s journey or Moses’ mountain ascent being typological at a high level, for instance), I think the best way of viewing Gregory’s interpretation is that of an elder bishop explaining the Christian life by means of the life of Moses. That is, his interpretation is not inherent in the text, but that he uses the text as a means of presenting his wisdom. To be clear, this does not seem to be how Gregory views what he is doing, but I think it permits a reader, skeptical of his interpretation, with a framework to nonetheless receive from his wisdom.

And there is a lot of wisdom. Gregory demonstrates (philosophically, even) that pursuing God must be a never-ending process, and likewise, although experiencing God satisfies, yet it demonstratively also must make us hunger even more. He touches on basic necessities of the faith, like disciplines, but also comments on what makes one able to lead others to salvation (recognizing the non-being of the things of the world and the Being of God) and how one’s faith can defeat the Balaamic manipulation attempting to undermine us and our community. He finishes with the clearest statement I have read (indeed, the only such assertion outside of Charismatic hints) that the goal of the Christian life is to be a friend of God.

There are also some things that perhaps are more a function of ancient thinking rather than Christian thinking. Gregory places emphasis on knowing God by our rational facilities, which he identifies as male (not surprisingly, as males have a tendency toward rationalism). However, he says nothing about knowing God in whatever he thinks the feminine impulse might be. One gets the feeling that he might have a similar attitude on the inferiority of women as the ancient secular philosophers, yet God created humanity male and female. Similarly, there seems to be nothing about loving God or experiencing him, just understanding him.

On occasion there are interesting and unexpected tidbits. On p. 43 he references a “doctrine from the fathers” about guardian angels, one showing the benefits of virtue, the other the material pleasures, so that each person can choose the good. (He assigns this to Aaron, the good brother, although Gregory notes that the bad brother is also a brother.) The argument about non-being is also interesting, being essentially the same as the Buddhist argument, but for different ends. Gregory and Buddhism agree that we are non-being (in Buddhism, “we are nothing”, because all composed things are impermanent), but with the difference that Buddhism concludes that since everything is composed, nothing is permanent and therefore we need to accept that, while Gregory says that God is permanent, and we find our being in participating in God’s Being, through Christ.

Another interesting tidbit is that in one part Gregory says that it need not bother the reader if these things did not happen, because the typological interpretation is the important one. It is not clear if he was referring to just the section under discussion, or perhaps some of the embellishments that he occasionally adds, or the life of Moses as a whole, although I tend to think it was probably that specific section. However, modern scholarship makes a credible case that the historical events of Israel differs from the story of Israel as we have it, after editing during the Babylonian Exile. That poses a challenge to the literal understanding, but no challenge at all to Gregory’s understanding. While reading into the text is basically the same thing as the classic “I think God is telling me X because Y event happened”, if we can avoid Gregory’s overfitting, there are merits to a typological understanding. Luke, for instance, does take Moses as a type of Christ, so there is even biblical precedent for it.

I really like Gregory’s conclusion, and it caused me to go back and re-read the book to see if he talked about friendship with God. As far as I could tell, he did not. However, this is a book that is worth several reads. This is partly because the allegorizing gets in the way of the wisdom scattered about, so it takes several readings to get past the allegorizing and focus on the ideas he presents. It may even be that Gregory has some mystic leanings, despite his focus on understanding; there seems to be a certain mystic element about the whole. So it will certainly be an intriguing book, one that offers an ancient focus on rationalism, asceticism, but also with friendship with God as the end goal.