Common elements within the writings of Gregory of Nyssa and Dionysius the Areopagite Dr. Elena Ene D-Vasilescu University of Oxford The common elements to be found in the works of Gregory of Nyssa and Dionysius the Areopagite are as follows: 1) the existence of three main stages of spiritual life; 2) the affirmation that, from an ontological point of view, evil does not exist; 3) the belief in the actuality of free will; 4) intimations that the progress of the soul – epektasis – continues in the afterlife, and 5) analogous conceptions regarding the creation of the world. In this text I will only refer to the first two of those similarities. I need to underline that the perspectives of the two authors on the above issues are not identical in every regard; they agree on those in principle, but on some aspects of them each has a specific view. The main stages of spiritual development : 1) Concerning the first commonality to be found in the texts of Nyssen and the Syrian this consists in the belief that the evolution of the human soul undergoes three stages. These are as follows: purification, illumination, and union with the Divine (ἓνωσις/henosis). The most elaborated explanations in the works of the two authors focus on purification and union hence I will also concentrate on those. The same three stages were suggested earlier in Origen’s texts. 1 (As we know Adamantius also have a complex position on the notion of evil and 1 For instance, Origen, The Commentary of Origen on S. John’s Gospel, edited by Alan England Brooke, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011, vol. 1, Book II. 1-3, pp. 56-58; Origen, On first principles [henceforth De Princ. in the body of the text]. See “Peri archon”/De Principiis, Patrologiae Cursus Completus Series Graeca, J.-P. Migne (ed.), Paris: Imprimerie Catholique, 1857, vol. 11, cols. 115A-414A. Of course, this is abbreviated ‘PG’; what we shall use henceforth. The translation I shall use On first principles, translation and notes, George William Butterworth, Introduction to the TORCH edition by Henri de Lubac, London, New York: Harper and Row, 1973; Gloucester, Massachusetts: Peter Smith Publishers, 1973. The Alexandrian has intimations about the three stages in the development of the soul, for instance in Book I, ch. 5, pp. 50-51; Book IV, ch. 1, p. 257, and Book II, ch.9, pp. 130-131. See also Origen, On First Principles, trans. John Behr, Oxford 1