a movement toward greater and greater light. Origen knows nothing, or at least says nothing, about a dark night of the soul or of any “knowing through not knowing.” Gregory of Nyssa (ca. 335–395), one of the Cappadocian Fathers, represents a different strain of contemplative understanding. It is found especially in his Life of Moses, which speaks, as Origen had done, of three stages. But the stages are reversed: the movement is from light to darkness. The Life of Moses is built around this movement.