Clearly, nothing in all this is recognizable as Biblical. Gregory and others like him excelled, however, in developing a rationale for the church, its rites, and its offices, so that the power of the church grew more rapidly than did its understanding. I do very emphatically reject the ungodly reverence for and kow-towing to the authority of idealized church fathers. It is unrealistic and foolish. We cannot combat the errors of our time if we cannot recognize kindred errors in the past.
Ancient modernisms are no more to be accepted than contemporary ones.
In every era, the modernisms of the day have reshaped men's views of the Bible when in fact the Bible requires us to reshape our world, our times, and ourselves in terms of the word of God. Whatever one says about Gregory of Nyssa, Origen, and others like them, our attitude towards those who give priority to them over the word of God must elicit our clearer condemnation. These ancients were often in error, sometimes in the truth, but they did represent sometimes feeble, sometimes very real, steps in the growth of the Faith. This was true even of Origen, whom I particularly dislike.