The Life
of Moses

Gregory opens with spectators at a horse-race: he cannot make the runner run, but he can shout from the stands. A young friend has asked him, by letter, for a rule of the perfect life, and Gregory — setting his old age against the asker's youth — concedes at once that the request, taken strictly, is impossible. Everything the senses measure is perfect when it reaches its boundary; virtue has no boundary except its opposite, as life is bounded by death and light by darkness. God is himself the good, and God has no limit; so the one who participates in the good has nowhere to stop, and Paul, still straining forward, knew it. Yet the command ‹Become perfect› still binds: not to fail even of a part is great gain. Perhaps, Gregory says, the perfection of human nature is just this — always to will to have more of the good.

• The occasion is a letter: a young friend asks what the perfect life is, and Gregory answers from old age, cheering like the crowd at a race he can no longer run.
• The request is shown impossible before it is answered: whatever sense can measure has limits, but virtue is bounded only by its contrary — life by death, light by darkness.
• Because God is the good without limit, desire for the good has no stopping-place; Paul's unfinished running (Phil 3) is the proof-text.
• Gregory's thesis, stated as his own surmise: the perfection of human nature may be never to stop growing toward the good.
• The command of Mt 5:48 is not voided by the argument: where the whole cannot be attained, not to fail of a part is a great gain.

Book I retells the whole life at speed, as Scripture gives it, after a short defence of examples: one proven life, like a beacon, can show where the harbour is. So: the ark of rushes and Pharaoh's daughter; the foreign breast refused; the killing of the Egyptian and the flight to Midian; the bush at high noon, a light beyond the sun's that reached the hearing as well as the eyes; the signs, the plagues that fell on Egyptians only, the Passover, the sea and the song; Marah's wood, Elim's springs and palms, water from the rock, manna with its daily measure; Amalek falling under raised hands; Sinai, where the clear sky blackens and fire shines out of the darkness while Moses confesses his terror; tabernacle, vestments, calf, and second tablets; the wilderness revolts, Balaam, Phinehas; and the death on the mountain — no grave, the eye undimmed, the beauty unfaded.

• The historia is prefaced by its warrant: since we cannot repeat the circumstances of the saints, one life is retold so its sense can afterwards be transferred (the transfer is Book II's work).
• The bush burns at high noon with a light beyond the sun's, the branches flowering in the flame — and the voice illumines the hearing as the light does the eyes.
• The plagues discriminate: in the same place and hour the Egyptians suffer and the Hebrews feel nothing — a fact Book II will lean on.
• At Sinai the light of the air blackens out of a clear sky, the mountain vanishes inside the darkness, and fire shines out of it; Moses confesses to the people that he is terrified.
• The life ends on the mountain with no grave, no monument, the eye undimmed and the beauty unfaded — an ending Book II will read as the living end.

The theoria opens under its own heading, and Gregory raises the objection himself: the tyrant's decree fell on male births, but no one chooses to be born — how is that to be imitated? The letter must therefore be lifted to a sense that can be lived. Mutable life is always being born, always delivered toward better or worse; the male birth the tyrant hates is virtue's offspring, the female is the carnal, passion-ridden disposition he feeds. And since such birth comes not from another's impulse but from choice, we are, Gregory claims, in a certain manner our own fathers, giving birth to ourselves as we will to be. The ark of rushes is education, planks of many disciplines joined, holding the child above the flood; Pharaoh's barren daughter — always in labour, never bearing anything alive — is the philosophy of those outside; and the child grows on no milk but his own mother's, the Church's.

• Gregory states the method by objecting to his own text: a birth cannot be imitated, so the history must be read for the birth that can — the one performed on ourselves.
• His claim, made in so many words: we are in a certain manner our own fathers, begetting ourselves by choice, male or female, on the principle of virtue or of vice.
• The ark daubed against the water is education — a structure of many disciplines that keeps the child from sinking in the flood of this life.
• Pharaoh's daughter, barren yet called mother, is pagan philosophy: always in labour, Gregory says, and never bringing forth anything alive.
• Moses refuses the foreign breast: in the time of profane instruction, the soul is not to be weaned from the milk of the Church that nursed it.

The killing of the Egyptian is piety striking down idolatry — each virtue destroys its opposed vice — and the quarrel between Hebrews that Moses could not settle is the Church's own dogmatic wars: heresy would have no room, Gregory says, were the professors of the truer religion not at war among themselves. Withdrawn to Midian's quiet, Moses sees the light that shines from no heavenly body but from an earthly, thorny bush — teaching, Gregory claims, the mystery of the Virgin, unconsumed by the birth. At the bush he learns what truth is: the sure apprehension of what IS; nothing sense grasps truly subsists, only the essence above all, from which everything hangs. The dead skins come off his feet. The rod become a serpent is the Incarnation — the Lord ‹made sin› for us; the foreign wife is pagan learning, kept once circumcised of what is foreign; the brother sent to meet him, the guardian angel.

• The unresolvable quarrel of brothers is read as the Church's dogmatic strife — Gregory's own arena — and retreat to Midian as the philosophic quiet that must precede the vision.
• The light comes from a thorny bush of earth, not from a star, so that the radiance cannot be credited to the underlying matter; from this Gregory draws the mystery of the Virgin, unconsumed by the birth.
• His definition of truth, given at the bush: the sure apprehension of what IS — and only the essence standing above all, cause of the all, truly subsists.
• The sandals are dead skins: the coverings taken from the fall come off before the approach.
• The rod turned serpent is the Incarnation — the Lord became for us the ‹likeness› the serpent names, sin — and the foreign wife is pagan learning, kept only after circumcision; he cautions, here as elsewhere, against pressing every historical detail.

Back in Egypt, the first lesson is about teachers: Moses, who once could not reconcile two men, is received by thousands after the long retreat — no one should leap to instruct a multitude before that authority is earned. The preaching of freedom then provokes the tyrant to heavier labour, and Gregory points at his own day: hearers of the gospel word are pressed hardest after they hear it; some are steeled by it, some break and wish they had never heard. The brick-mould, filled and always empty again, is desire itself; the straw is fuel for the fire. The plagues fall where they are chosen: the frogs — vice's fetid births — breed only in Egyptian lives, and the darkness is self-inflicted, for the sun shone on all alike. Pharaoh, Gregory says flatly, is not hardened by divine will: God no more pushes him than the sun pushes into the pit the man who shuts his eyes to it.

• Do not leap to teach: the man who failed to reconcile two quarrellers is received by thousands only after the years of retreat and vision.
• The word of freedom intensifies the oppression — stated of Pharaoh and applied by Gregory to gospel hearers in his own day, some hardened into steel, some broken.
• The brick-mould is his figure for desire: whatever is poured in, it stands empty again; the appetite receives and never keeps.
• The hardening is denied as a divine act — ‹neither is Pharaoh hardened by divine will› — with Romans 1's handing-over read as withdrawal, not compulsion; choice holds the power over every life.
• Light and darkness fell in the same place at once: the causes of both, Gregory concludes, are in us, not in a compelling force from above.

Gregory raises the hard question himself and arms it with Scripture: how is the death of Egyptian infants just, when Ezekiel cries that the soul that sins shall die and the son shall not bear the father's guilt? The letter, he answers, must yield to the teaching: destroy the first beginnings of evil and what follows dies with it — anger before it births murder, desire before adultery, as striking the serpent's head deadens the whole trailing coil. The blood goes on the lintel first, then the doorposts: the soul's three parts guarded in their right order, reason above — a division he takes openly from the philosophy of those outside. The meal is eaten in haste: girded, hard-shod against the thorns, staff in hand, the lamb roasted in fire; the bones, the things beyond understanding, are left uncracked for the Spirit. And Egypt's borrowed treasure is pagan learning brought into the Church, as Basil brought it.

• The objection is his own, with Ezekiel 18 quoted against the letter: where is justice, if infants pay for their fathers?
• His answer: the firstborn to be destroyed are the first movements of evil — kill desire and anger, and adultery and murder are never born.
• Lintel before doorposts: the tripartite soul (reason, spirit, appetite) guarded in order, the division credited to the philosophy of those outside; faith in Christ profits nothing, he says, where that order is inverted.
• The meal's dress is the journey's: belt, hard sandals against the thorns, the staff of hope against the dogs; roasted in fire, for the faith must have nothing sodden in it.
• The uncracked bones are the questions beyond us — the divine essence, what was before creation — left to the Spirit (‹do not seek what is too hard for you›); the spoiled treasure is pagan learning consecrated, with Basil named as the proof.

Pharaoh's army overtakes the people at the water, and Moses — outwardly encouraging them, inwardly silent — is answered, ‹Why do you cry to me?› The cry God hears as a shout, Gregory says, is the pure heart's meditation, not a strained voice. The angel-brother's help is now too small; God himself delivers. The pillar of cloud that leads into the water is the grace of the Holy Spirit — a reading he notes that many before him gave — and the crossing is the mystical water of baptism. Into it the whole Egyptian army follows: greed, unbridled desire, the rapacious thought, conceit and pride, temper, anger, wrath, malignity, envy — the passions in their ranks, the three-manned chariots the soul's three powers depraved. Out of it the Israelite must come alone: whoever drags his tyrant up alive out of the water, Gregory warns, is still a slave after it.

• The loudest prayer is wordless: God hears the pure heart's meditation as a shout — ‹Why do you cry to me?› is said to a silent man.
• The pillar of cloud is the Spirit's grace — Gregory acknowledges he inherits this reading — and the sea is the sacramental water.
• The pursuing army is itemised as the passions, down to the three-manned chariots: the soul's three powers, depraved.
• The whole camp of vice must be made dead in the water; the vice-list is named member by member, greed to envy.
• The warning that closes it: if the enemy comes up out of the water alive with you, the slavery continues after the baptism.

The life of virtue is Marah's water: bitter to those leaving the sweetness of the passions, until the wood — the resurrection's mystery, begun from the cross — makes it drinkable. Elim's twelve springs and seventy palms are the apostles and the seventy after them; the desert stations are virtues; the dry rock flows for whoever brings the rod of faith. The manna is bread from earth left untilled — not bodiless, for how could the bodiless feed a body? — pre-teaching, Gregory claims, the mystery of the Virgin: the unfarmed bread is the Word, turning its power to each eater's need, solid food or vegetable or milk. Its measure is the day's; what is hoarded rots into worms for the day after this life, and the sixth day's double portion names this life a preparation for the rest. Then Amalek falls under Moses' held-up arms: the law raised to its high sense, tracing the figure of the cross.

• Marah's wood is the cross: the hard life of virtue becomes drinkable when the hope of the resurrection is dropped into it.
• Twelve springs and seventy palms are read as the Twelve and the seventy; the stations of the march are virtues where the cloud lets the soul camp.
• The manna argument is bodily on purpose: the bread from heaven is not incorporeal, and the untilled earth full of food fore-teaches the Virgin birth — the unfarmed bread is the Word, varied to the eater.
• One day's measure, and no hoarding: what is stored against the command turns to worms in the morning that Gregory reads as the age to come; the sabbath's double portion makes this life the parasceve, the preparation.
• Moses' raised hands are the law lifted to its high sense — lowered, the law grovels in literal observance — and the outstretched figure is the cross; the people conquer while they see it held up.

The approach is purification, even to the garments — the pursuits of a life, worn like clothing, must be clean — and no beast may touch the mountain: knowledge that comes by sense alone, which is how brutes live, is dismissed before the steep ascent of theology begins. The crowd stays below; the trumpets grow louder as one climbs, the preaching swelling from law and prophets into gospel. Then Gregory states the contradiction himself: God appeared then in light, now in darkness. His resolution is the claim this shelf keeps returning to: the knowledge of piety is light at its beginning; but the mind, advancing, sees more and more that the divine nature cannot be contemplated, and the true seeing of what is sought is the seeing that consists in not seeing. John's ‹God no one has ever seen› bars every intelligible nature from that essence; and Moses, grown greater in knowledge, enters the darkness where God is.

• Purification reaches the garments: the pursuits a life wears must be washed before the mountain, and the sense-bound knowledge of the brutes is left at its foot.
• The trumpets grow louder with the ascent, because the preaching of God swells from law and prophets to gospel as one draws near.
• The reversal is posed by Gregory as his own problem: then in light, now in darkness — and answered: first knowledge is light, and the further the mind advances, the more it sees that the divine nature cannot be seen.
• The seeing that consists in not seeing is stated as the true knowing of what is sought; ‹God no one has ever seen›, the negation of the lofty John, covers men and every intelligible nature alike.
• The first thing learned inside the darkness is the command against likenesses, read against mental idols: God is not any of the things the mind conceives him to be.

Inside the darkness Moses is shown the tabernacle not made with hands and told to copy it below. Gregory offers his reading with an open hand — he says he will neither protest if readers reject it nor exult if they accept it — and takes his lead from Paul: the tabernacle that encompasses the all is Christ, the power and wisdom of God, uncreated in its own nature yet accepting construction when the tent must be pitched among us — the same tabernacle unmade and made. He pauses over the name itself: no word is worthy of that nature, and tabernacle joins physician, shepherd, bread, way, door, fountain in the list of names borne for our sake. Read upward, the pillars, rings, and cherubim are the heavenly powers and the veil is the Lord's flesh; read downward, the lower tabernacle is the Church — its pillars apostles and teachers, its lavers the baptizers, its courts the concord of believers.

• The reading is submitted, not imposed: Gregory leaves it wholly to the judgment of his readers, protesting nothing if rejected.
• Following Paul, the tabernacle is named Christ — ‹the power of God and the wisdom of God› — uncreated in nature, accepting to be pitched among us: unmade and made at once, his stated paradox.
• A rule about names is laid down in passing: nothing humans say is worthy of the divine nature; tabernacle takes its place beside physician, shepherd, bread, way, door.
• The upper furniture is the heavenly powers — pillars, rings, the cherubim whose wings shade the ark — and the veil, on Paul's word, is the flesh.
• The lower tabernacle is the Church: apostles and teachers its pillars (Peter, James, John; Timothy a pillar fashioned), the baptizers its lavers, the concord of believers its courts, the red skins and hair-cloth its mortification and continence.

The holy of holies teaches that the mystery's truth is believed, not pried into. The vestments are the soul's dress: a tunic woven whole, light as spider-thread; gold bells alternating with pomegranates — faith sounding clearly, a life austere in its rind with the sweetness inside; the patriarchs' names on the shoulder-stones, the fathers' examples worn over the heart; the foursquare breastpiece, stability; the chains, contemplation bound to action; no shoes: dead skins are rejected. Then the descent: the calf is ground into the water its worshippers drink — idolatry abolished, Gregory says, by the very mouths that served it, as in his own day — and the Levites' swords fall on brother, friend, and neighbour: the kindred counsels that, like the serpent in paradise, advised as friends. The tablets shattered by the voice of sin are recut: the true Lawgiver quarries our nature's tablets from our own earth, stone-cutter of his own flesh, engraved by the Spirit's finger.

• The inner sanctuary is a boundary for the mind: what is holiest in the mystery is to be believed as the Church preaches it, not inspected.
• Bell and pomegranate make one pair: the preached faith heard clearly, and the life whose austere rind hides its food — the figure returns for the priest's walnut rod later.
• The ground-up calf drunk by its worshippers is read as idolatry destroyed by its own confessors' mouths — with Gregory pointing to the temples being dismantled in his own century.
• The Levites' indiscriminate swords are turned inward: brother, friend, and neighbour are the intimate counsels of sin, first met in the serpent who advised as a friend.
• The second tablets are his figure of the Incarnation: our nature's God-hewn tablets, shattered by the voice of sin, are recut from our own earth — no marriage made the divine flesh; the true Lawgiver is stone-cutter of his own flesh, and the engraving finger is the Spirit.

After every vision, Moses still burns and asks to see God face to face. Gregory first clears the letter: figure implies body, body composition, composition dissolution — read literally, the ‹back parts› end in a corruptible God. Then the claim: God is without limit, for a bounded good would border on its contrary. So the desire has no satiety, and ‹you cannot see my face and live› is a definition, not a threat: whoever takes God to be among things known has turned from what IS to what seems, and has no life. Truly to see God, Gregory says, is never to find satiety of the desire. The place, rock, and cleft offered the runner are Christ; and — the most paradoxical thing of all — standing and moving are here the same: fixed on the rock, the runner ascends. The face is refused because the follower sees the back: to follow God wherever he leads is to see God.

• The literal ‹back parts› are refused first, by argument: figure entails body, body composition, composition dissolution — the letter would make God corruptible.
• The infinity argument is laid out in full: if the good were bounded, it would be bounded by its contrary, and the container would master the contained — absurd; therefore the divine nature is without limit.
• His definition, twice over: truly to see God is never to find satiety of the desire — the vision is granted precisely by not ending.
• The paradox is flagged by Gregory himself as the most paradoxical thing of all: standing and moving are the same thing here — the ascent happens through standing firm on the rock, which is Christ.
• The refusal of the face is read as guidance, not death: the follower sees the guide's back, and to follow God wherever he leads — this is to see God.

The one who follows behind God cannot be wounded — and is attacked at once from his own kin. Envy, in Gregory's invective, is the passion that began evil: father of death, first entrance of sin, root of vice; it evicted us from paradise, armed Cain, sold Joseph; the envious, like vultures said to be killed by ointment, sicken at their neighbour's good. Against Moses it shatters like a clay pot dashed on rock, and Moses takes no revenge, praying God propitious toward the enviers. The grape cluster carried on its pole is the One who bled on the wood; the bronze serpent — the ‹likeness› of sin, not sin — stops death for those who look to the cross, though the bites of desire survive; Korah teaches that pride's elevation is a descent to the depths; and Aaron's walnut-bearing rod shapes the priest's life: austere rind, nourishment hidden inside.

• The invective names envy the arch-evil: father of death, first entrance of sin, root of vice, mother of misfortunes — paradise, Cain, and Joseph are its record.
• Envy breaks against the man who walks behind God like a clay pot on rock; Moses, untouched, asks mercy for the envious rather than punishment.
• The cluster hanging on its pole is the passion foreshown — the grape whose blood is drunk — and the bronze serpent is only the likeness of sin: looking to the cross annuls death, but the beasts themselves, the desires, are not yet destroyed.
• Korah's grab at the priesthood yields Gregory's definition of pride: an elevation whose end is a descent underground.
• The budded rod bears a walnut, and the priest's life is read off its fruit — austere rind, hidden food — with a plain glance at priests who smell instead of unguents and vintage wine: ‹I see the fruit; I do not recognise the tree of the priesthood.›

The law leads by the royal road, narrow between paired ditches: every vice, Gregory holds, is virtue's excess or its defect — rashness and cowardice flanking courage — and the traveller declines neither to the left nor to what passes for the right. On that road no sorcery avails: Balaam, hired to curse, blesses — ‹How shall I curse whom the Lord does not curse?› — as the demons of the Gospel cried out the truth against their will; the guarded life gives the enemy no handle. So the enemy changes weapons: the men no army could defeat fall to the daughters of Midian, beauty deployed instead of blades, the shame done openly, until Phinehas' single stroke turns the plague. The counsel drawn: of all the soul's diseases, the appetite for pleasure has the most force, and it is to be fled farthest — the coal not walked on, the fire not carried in the breast.

• The narrow way is glossed as doctrine: the virtues are seen in a mean, every vice a falling short of virtue or a falling beyond it.
• Balaam's hired curse turns to blessing in his mouth; Gregory pairs him with the Gospel's Legion — evil made to speak the truth unwillingly.
• No spell touches those God shields: the blameless life leaves the accuser, in Paul's phrase, nothing bad to say.
• When cursing fails, the weaponry changes: pleasure conquers the unconquered, and the shamelessness is public — men made swine by their own choosing.
• Phinehas' zeal stays the plague, and the proportionate lesson is drawn: lust is the disease of the soul to be fled farthest, the coal underfoot and the fire in the breast.

The ending returns to the prologue's definition to show it sure: the perfect life is one whose advance no boundary stops, and Moses' life, rerun as a single climb, is the proof — an eagle's life above the clouds, circling the ether of the intelligible ascent. The rerun turns to the second person — when you have crossed the water, eaten the heavenly bread, entered the darkness, ground down the idol, passed Balaam's sorceries, this life's Circe-cup; when your rod has budded — to the mountain of rest and the death that is a living end: no grave, no dimmed eye, the name servant of God. God testifies, ‹I have known you above all›, and calls Moses friend. The last word redefines perfection: not leaving vice from fear of punishment like a slave, nor working the good for wages like a merchant, but counting one thing fearful — falling from God's friendship — and one thing precious: becoming God's friend.

• The close is a proof, not a coda: the definition delivered in the prologue — perfection with no circumscription — is shown sure at the end of the life it was tested on.
• The whole ascent is compressed into the eagle figure: a life seen above the clouds, wheeling in the ether of the intelligible ascent, always becoming higher than itself.
• The rerun turns to the second person, and Balaam's arts become this life's sorceries — a Circe-cup that turns men into beasts unless passed by.
• The death is a living end: no grave, no monument, the eye undimmed — the finish that Gregory reads as the crown of a life that never stopped moving.
• The final definition is stated as his own judgment: perfection is neither the slave's fear nor the merchant's wage, but to fear only falling from God's friendship and to prize only becoming God's friend.