André Botteman

This article examines Gregory of Nyssa's conception of man, drawing on the fourth-century Cappadocian Father's major treatises, notably the *De hominis opificio* and the *Contra Eunomium*. The study adopts a philosophical-theological approach, articulating anthropology, the metaphysics of participation, and Trinitarian theology. The central idea is that the kinship between God and man rests not on a knowledge of the divine essence — radically transcendent and incomprehensible — but on an ontological participation in divine Being, a participation that grounds human existence without identifying it with its principle. The article makes a twofold contribution: it shows, on the one hand, that the anti-Arian controversy profoundly shapes the Nyssian metaphysics of being, and, on the other hand, that the doctrine of participation implies an infinite ascending dynamism (*epektasis*), making man an indefinitely open capacity toward the Absolute.