Gregory of Nyssa: Reading Animality and Desire

Chapter 2 takes up Gregory of Nyssa’s homiletic Commentary on the Song of Songs with special attention to Gregory’s exegetical strategies for dealing with extensive animal imagery in the context of erotic poetry. Gregory’s interpretation utilizes the strangeness of the animal imagery to cover the naked indiscretion of the Song’s sexual content for his listeners; attention to animal metaphors allows Gregory to produce contemplative wisdom from an erotic text. Simultaneously, however, Gregory disparages a straightforwardly sexual reading of the Song as a capitulation to base and beastly desires. In the end, Gregory’s reading is structured around a dynamic tension as it is desire rather than rationality that ultimately draws a human being into endless pursuit of union with God. Although this holy desire is a function of the animal portion of human life, Gregory can never acknowledge it as such without undermining his fundamental commitment to anthropological exceptionalism.