Cappadocian Father and Bishop of Nyssa — brother of Basil of Caesarea — who developed the most philosophically sophisticated Christian mystical theology of the patristic era, arguing that the soul's ascent to God is an infinite progression (epektasis) rather than a final static union.
Introduced epektasis — the doctrine that even in heaven the soul continues to grow toward God, and that this infinite progression is the nature of deification rather than a static beatific vision — making Gregory the founder of Christian apophatic (negative) theology and the most philosophically rich patristic mystic.
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