Youngest of the three great Cappadocian Fathers (c. 335-395), the younger brother of Basil of Caesarea and the most philosophically rigorous of the Cappadocian circle. Born at Caesarea in Cappadocia to the same notably Christian family as Basil; trained more at home than at the great schools (his elder sister Macrina the Younger was his principal spiritual and intellectual influence); married briefly (Basil refers to his wife Theosebia); ordained presbyter; consecrated bishop of Nyssa in Cappadocia (372, on his brother Basil's initiative, partly to provide Basil with theological allies in the Cappadocian episcopal politics). Deposed briefly by the Arian party (376) but restored after the Arian eclipse following Emperor Valens's death (378). Active at the First Council of Constantinople (381) supporting the Trinitarian work of the Cappadocian party. Gregory's theological corpus is the most philosophically substantive of the Cappadocians: the Great Catechetical Oration (a substantive Christian apologetic and dogmatic statement); Against Eunomius (in twelve books, the principal Cappadocian polemical response to the radical-Arian theologian Eunomius); On the Making of Man (a substantial anthropological treatise continuing Basil's Hexaemeron); On the Soul and the Resurrection (a Platonic-style dialogue with his dying sister Macrina); The Life of Moses (a spiritual-allegorical reading of the Mosaic narrative as a model of the Christian's progressive ascent to God). Gregory's substantive theological work, particularly his Trinitarian theology and his Christian anthropology, secured the Cappadocian Trinitarian theology's articulation in the post-Nicene period and prepared for the formal triumph at Constantinople (381). The patriarchal-Reformed reader engages Gregory of Nyssa on his substantive Trinitarian and exegetical work while engaging his more Platonic-philosophical and contemplative-mystical writings with greater discernment.