Gregory of Nyssa

The goal of the virtuous life is blessedness.… This is the summation and object of everything conceived in relation to the good. What is truly and properly contemplated and apprehended in this sublime concept, then, would reasonably be called the divine nature. For so the great Paul designated God when he put "blessed" before all the other words about God in one of his letters. He wrote in the following words, "The blessed and only ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality and who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no human being has seen or can see. To him be honor and rule forever." All these sublime concepts about the divine would, then, in my opinion, constitute a definition of blessedness. For if someone were asked what beatitude is, he would give a properly pious answer if he followed Paul's statement and said that the nature that transcends everything is first and properly called blessed. Among humans, however, that beatitude, which is the nature of the one participated in, occurs to a certain extent and is specified by participation in true being. Likeness to God, therefore, is a definition of human blessedness.