Becoming Like the Devil in Gregory of Nyssa’s Homilies On the Beatitudes and On the Lord’s Prayer

Abstract As scholarly work on Gregory of Nyssa’s vision of the spiritual life has proliferated, commentators have focused on virtue, participation, and how human beings can become like God. In contrast, this essay argues that Gregory’s vision of the spiritual life is also concerned with how human beings can become like the devil. In On the Beatitudes and On the Lord’s Prayer, which comprise his exegetical homilies on New Testament texts, Gregory teaches that human beings can become not only divine but also diabolic, which he communicates through his use of terms such as eikōn, morphē, charaktēr, and prosōpon in conjunction with gignomai. It is commonly recognized that these terms belong to a long tradition in which they signify kinship between an object and its archetype that goes beyond mere resemblance. This essay, then, examines Gregory’s instruction on how human beings become like the devil, along with the implications of such an account.