Getting to Know Gregory of Nazianzus

The history of Christianity is filled with important turning points. One of most far-reaching of these was the Arian controversy, which culminated in the councils of Nicaea (325 AD) and Constantinople (381 AD). In the introduction to his exceptional book on the development of trinitarian theology during and after this period, Khaled Anatolios encourages contemporary Christians to look not only at the specific creedal formulations produced by these councils, but also at “how such formulations were interpreted in the immediate aftermath” of them.¹Khaled Anatolios, Retrieving Nicaea: The Development and Meaning of Trinitarian Doctrine (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2011), 1.

Among the various church fathers involved in the development of Nicene Christianity, many people know about Athanasius, the Alexandrian bishop who went into exile five times and probably did more than anyone else to ensure that orthodox Christian thought successfully resisted the Arian heresy.²John Behr, The Nicene Faith: Formation of Christian Theology, Volume 2 (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2004), 163,167. However, Athanasius was not alone. Fewer people are probably familiar with the group of theologians known collectively as the Cappadocian Fathers (Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of Nazianzus). Nevertheless, they also played an important role in interpreting and defending Nicene orthodoxy.³Bryan M. Litfin, Getting to Know the Church Fathers: An Evangelical Introduction. 2nd Ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2016), 155. Today, we’re going to spend some time getting to know one of them.

Gregory of Nazianzus’s Life and Theology

Gregory was born in 329 or 330 AD to a rather wealthy family in the town of Nazianzus.⁴Christopher A. Hall, Reading Scripture with the Church Fathers (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1998), 65. His father (Gregory the Elder) was also a bishop. Despite having studied in some of the more prestigious centers of learning in the ancient world—places like Alexandria and Athens—he doesn’t seem to have been naturally suited for the demands of public leadership. Christopher Hall describes him like this, “To speak somewhat anachronistically, Gregory appears to have been the perfect introvert, strongly attracted to solitude, prayer, and the contemplative life.”⁵Ibid., 64. Though we know Gregory best for his brilliance as an orator, he was also an exquisite writer and poet. He even composed a poetic autobiography, On His Own Life, which John Behr describes as being “matched, in antiquity, only by Augustine’s Confessions.“⁶Behr, Nicene Faith, 331.

The climactic period of Gregory’s public life arrived with his coming to Constantinople in 379 AD, a city which at this time was “dominated by non-Nicenes.”⁷Ibid., 327. Behr writes:

As all the churches in Constantinople were in the possession of Non-Nicenes, Gregory set up in a villa on the property of his cousin Theodora and dedicated this church as “Anastasia” to signify the resurrection of faith in the city… Gregory’s task was simply to preach the Nicene faith to the population of the capital.⁸Ibid.

The emperor Theodosius was in favor of the Nicenes, and it was with his backing that Gregory was formally installed as the bishop of Constantinople.⁹Ibid., 328. It was likely during the summer of 380 AD, while preaching in the Anastasia, that Gregory delivered his five most influential orations (Ors. 27-31), generally now called The Theological Orations. It’s possible to overstate the importance of these orations, but it’s not easy. According to Hall, they “remain the foundation for trinitarian doctrine and thought in Eastern Orthodoxy and have also influenced trinitarian thinking and formulation in the West.”¹⁰Hall, Reading Scripture, 67.

Behr notes that “as we now have them, the five theological orations have a triadic structure.”¹¹Behr, Nicene Faith, 333. In the first two orations (Ors. 27-28), Gregory lays the groundwork for his subsequent discussion of the Trinity by focusing on the nature of theology, the importance of spiritual maturity for theological study, and the necessity of humbly acknowledging the limits of human reason in regards to understanding the Godhead.¹²Christopher A. Hall, Learning Theology with the Church Fathers (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2002), 56-60.

The third and fourth orations (Ors. 29-30) explore the relationship between the Father and the Son. In doing so, Gregory both articulates the meaning of Nicaea’s affirmation that the Father and Son are homoousios (of the same nature/substance) and responds to the criticisms of the Eunomians, a radical Arian/neo-Arian group opposed to the Nicenes.¹³Hall, Reading Scripture, 69-72. He deals with many of the more difficult New Testament passages brought up by his opponents by employing a general hermeneutical principle also used by Athanasius. In Gregory’s words:

[Y]ou must predicate the more sublime expressions of the Godhead, of the nature which transcends bodily experiences, and the lowlier ones of the compound, of him who because of you was emptied, became incarnate and (to use equally valid language) was “made man.”¹⁴Gregory of Nazianzus, The Third Theological Oration—On the Son (Oration 29). in On God and Christ: The Five Theological Orations and Two Letters to Cledonius, trans. Lionel Wickham and Frederick Williams. (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2002), 29.18.

A few sentences later, Gregory also utters the famous Patristic motto, “He remained what he was; what he was not, he assumed,” meaning that in the Incarnation, Christ did not cease to be God but remained divine while also becoming fully human.¹⁵Ibid., 29.19. Gregory uses this juxtaposition of the union of divine and human in Christ to great rhetorical effect:

As man he was baptized, but he absolved sins as God… He hungered—yet he fed thousands. He is indeed “living, heavenly bread.” He thirsted—yet he exclaimed: “Whosoever thirsts, let him come to me and drink.”… He surrenders his life, yet he has power to take it again… He dies, but he vivifies and by death destroys death. He is buried, yet he rises again.¹⁶Ibid., 29.20.

In his final theological oration (Or. 31), Gregory addresses the issue of the deity of the Holy Spirit. Gregory’s opponents—probably the Pneumatomachians who affirmed Christ’s divinity but refrained from accepting the divinity of the Spirit—accused him of introducing a “strange, unscriptural God” not spoken of by the authors of the New Testament.¹⁷Behr, Nicene Faith, 360. Many of the arguments put forth by Gregory and others in support of the full divinity of the Son are again employed here to affirm the divinity of the Spirit:

If there was a “when” when the Father did not exist, there was a “when” when the Son did not exist. If there was a “when” when the Son did not exist, there was a “when” when the Holy Spirit did not exist. If one existed from the beginning, so did all three. If you cast one down, I make bold to tell you not to exalt the other two.¹⁸Gregory of Nazianzus, The Fifth Theological Oration—On the Holy Spirit (Oration 31). in On God and Christ: The Five Theological Orations and Two Letters to Cledonius, trans. Lionel Wickham and Frederick Williams. (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2002), 31.4.

All human analogies for the Trinity are imperfect and doomed to failure if taken too far, hence the primacy of God’s self-revelation in Christ and by the Spirit. After spending some time exploring various models for the Trinity, things like the relationship between the sun and its rays or that of a river to the streams within it and the source from which it flows, Gregory confesses that, “I have failed to find anything in this world with which I might compare the divine nature.”¹⁹Ibid., 31.31. He brings his fifth theological oration to a close by once more affirming the mysterious nature of the Christian faith:

[I]n the end, I resolved that it was best to say “goodbye” to images and shadows, deceptive and utterly inadequate as they are to express the reality… To the best of my powers I will persuade all men to worship Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as the single Godhead and power, because to him belong all glory, honor, and might for ever and ever. Amen.²⁰Ibid., 31.33.

Despite his eloquence, Gregory never was skilled at navigating the politics of ecclesial life. He stepped down as bishop of Constantinople in the aftermath of controversy regarding the canonical legitimacy of his appointment there.²¹Lionel Wickham, introduction to On God and Christ: The Five Theological Orations and Two Letters to Cledonius,by Gregory of Nazianzus, trans. Lionel Wickham and Frederick Williams. (Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2002), 12. In Wickham’s estimation, the controversy regarding Gregory’s appointment was a pretext for removing him from office.²²Ibid. He adds that Gregory’s “temperament was against him, to be sure. I daresay he never wanted the position anyway, and that he lost it is only another form of his habit of flight in the face of difficulty.”²³Ibid.,12-13.

After leaving Constantinople, Gregory returned home to his family’s estate, where he edited his writings and tended to the church community there. It was during these final years of his life that Gregory got involved in the Apollinarian controversy, composing two important letters (Epp. 101,102) to the priest Cledonius about the matter, which give a “concise but powerful critique of the theology advanced by Apollinarius.”²⁴Behr, Nicene Faith, 401. In his final years, Hall comments that Gregory “finally attained his lifelong wish” for a life of solitude and prayer.²⁵Hall, Reading Scripture, 68. He died in Nazianzus in 390 AD.

Final Thoughts

Looking back on Gregory’s life as a whole, we can admire his literary and theological prowess while still acknowledging his sometimes troublesome personality. I find Gregory to be a deeply relatable figure given his seeming introverted nature, love of books, and desire for solitude. He possessed both significant flaws and striking flashes of brilliance. In his description of Gregory, Wickham points out both the flaws and the brilliance:

There is no doubt that he was a touchy, rather vain, and sometimes downright tiresome personality. He was waspish and given to self-justification… Yet there is also no doubt that he had a deep sense of the presence of God, a wonderful grasp of essentials… and great persuasive power.²⁶Wickham, introduction to On God and Christ,13.

There is much else that we could dive into if space permitted, but I hope that this brief exploration of Gregory of Nazianzus’s life and work has been enough to familiarize us with him as a person and increase our awareness of his historical importance for Christian theology. Despite being all too human, Gregory was used by God to explore the heart of the Christian faith and to help shepherd the Church through a time of real turmoil, leaving in his wake a theological legacy that continues to shape how Christians think and speak about the Trinity we worship.