How would Gregory of Nyssa have understood evolutionism?

The three famous Cappadocians who formed a ‘school’ in the fourth century AD complement one another in the way they envisaged the evolution of creation. St. Basil of Caesarea explains in his writings how this ‘mechanism’ operates in nature and his view is the closest to those of contemporary evolutionists. Gregory of Nyssa completes his ‘system’ with details concerning human evolution and proposes the doctrine of apokatastasis (restoration) of humankind after the Fall. St. Gregory Nazianzus subscribes to the latter, but he does not do it overtly – the respective notion is implied in his work in a “cautious, undogmatic” way, in Hanson’s qualification. All three Fathers of the Church believe that God will bring all creation into harmony with the Kingdom of Heaven. This paper attempts to detect a conception of human evolution within the writings of Gregory of Nyssa; in order to do that, Basil’s thoughts are used as an introduction. The universal restoration which Gregory of Nyssa believes shall take place would mean for humanity both the fulfillment of its goal of a perfect moral development and its biological end (i.e. the ceasing of the human race’s progression); therefore it is difficult to treat the two ultimate ‘scenarios’ in separation. It seems that this Cappadocian father believes the number of the souls/humans to be limited in God’s mind where they originate. As is known, he thinks that creation is in the process of becoming fulfilled and this state of affairs will cease when the Restoration has been accomplished.