John Behr on Gregory's Stunning Vision of Humanity and the Divine

John Behr on Gregory's Stunning Vision of Humanity and the Divine

From Gospel Conversations podcast by Tony Golsby-Smith

January 13, 2026 · 1h 29m

About this episode

John Behr discusses Gregory of Nyssa's vision of humanity and the divine.

Welcome to 2026 and as promised here is John Behr’s talk on Gregory of Nyssa and his view of what it means to be a human being. I gave an extended introduction to this talk at the end of year, and sorry there has been a lapse of time between that and this talk I was introducing…. a thing called ‘Christmas’ intervened. Anyway, to refresh our minds. This is the third talk John gave at our Gospel Conversations conference in 2025. The theme of them all is the Patristic vision of what it means to be a human being (the last talk was on Irenaeus). Both Irenaeus and Gregory thought about humanity not just in terms of salvation from sin, but more broadly in terms of what is the role of humanity in the creation? One of the problems with the sin-based view of redemption is that it begs this question - why did God create humanity in the first place? That is where Gregory’s mind goes, and thankfully Gregory had a profound and godly mind to help us answer that question! When I interviewed David Bentley Hart on Gregory, he claimed that he was the most innovative theologian of the Patristics world (a big prize given the competition!!) and it was around exactly the point of this talk that David…

People in this episode

Guests: John Behr, David Bentley Hart

Topics covered

  • theology
  • humanity
  • Patristics
  • Christianity
  • redemption

Keywords

  • Gregory of Nyssa
  • humanity
  • creation
  • salvation
  • theological innovation

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: Gregory's Stunning Vision of Humanity and the Divine, Ecclesiastes

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