Formal Landscapes in David Albertson and Gregory of Nyssa

David Albertson’s Geometry of Christian Contemplation dances along the boundary between those who frame the divine in terms of the radical absence of form and those who would prefer to speak of absolute form or something like a ‘form of forms.’ In his Contra Eunomium, Gregory of Nyssa states that, where God truly abides, there is no “form, no place, no size, no reckoning of time, or anything else knowable.” And yet Gregory too shares the insight that a correct appreciation of form and figure—even as instantiated in matter, like the bush that burned or the cleft of rock from which Moses peered out—might prove a crucial stepping stone in our ascent to the divine. This paper aims to continue the dialogue about form and formlessness with figures like Gregory initiated by Albertson in his latest book.