Gregory of Nyssa, younger brother of Basil the Great and the third of the Cappadocian Fathers, developed a richly Platonic Christian theology centered on the soul’s endless ascent toward God — a process he called epektasis, perpetual stretching forward into the divine. His treatise On Infants’ Early Deaths confronts the problem of innocent suffering in its starkest form: why do children die before they have developed virtue or faith? His answer is careful and unusual, drawing on Platonic categories while remaining distinctively Christian. Gregory is venerated in both East and West, and his vision of transformation as the goal of human existence has been particularly influential in mystical theology.