Persona, esclavitud y libertad en Gregorio de Nisa

Abstract

Gregory of Nisa was one of the most cultivated men of the fourth century. He reflects the advances that had been made concerning the concept of the person and his/her relatioship with nature. In Gregory’s view, the dignity of the human person is grounded on the fact that the person is the image and likeness of God. This is equivalent to stating that the human being has attributes which no one may deprive him/her of; prominent among these is freedom, which is the crowning glory of his/her personal being, as he/she was made in the image of God, who is a-déspotos, that is, has no master. Rejection of slavery, together with firm defense of parrhesia (freedom of speech), is one of the most suitable perspectives for evaluating Gregory’s concept of human nature and the dignity of the person. Gregory discusses this subject in several places. Here we shall confine our survey to the most important ones: Homily IV On Ecclesiastes, the treatise On the origin of man, and the Great catechetical discourse. According to Gregory, freedom was given to human beings so that they could participate in the divine good. Gregory supported his arguments on the thinking insipired by Plato in which virtue is essentially free and voluntary, and so freedom is an attribute of the dignity of the person that cannot be relinquished.