Theopedia

Gregory of Nazianzus

No sooner do I conceive of the One than I am illumined by the Splendour of the Three; no sooner do I distinguish Them than I am carried back to the One. When I think of any One of the Three I think of Him as the Whole… When I contemplate the Three together, I see but one torch, and cannot divide or measure out the Undivided Light.1

Overview

Gregory of Nazianzus (c. 329-390) was a bishop of Constantinople and one of the three Cappadocian Fathers, along with Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nyssa, credited with defining the view of the Trinity that became orthodox doctrine.2 The church came to call him “the Theologian,” a title he shares only with John the Evangelist.3

Life and Ministry

Gregory served as priest of the small church of Anastasia in Constantinople, a position that gave him a leading role in the years before the Council of Constantinople convened in 381.3 He presided at the council, but was forced out amid a dispute over which bishopric he legitimately held.4

The dispute followed a deeper split with his friend Basil of Caesarea over how to defend the Holy Spirit’s deity. Basil avoided the term homoousios (“of the same substance”) for the Spirit in order to keep hesitant bishops in communion with the Nicene party. Gregory criticized him “for trying to keep the unity of the church at the cost of the unity of the Triune God” and insisted that Scripture’s own claims demanded the term.5 The council’s official confession adopted Basil’s more cautious language, but, in one assessment, “Gregory’s theology became the standard for Orthodoxy.”4

Theological Contribution

The Trinity

Gregory’s Five Theological Orations, delivered at Constantinople against the Eunomians (who denied the Son’s full deity) and the Pneumatomachians (who denied the Spirit’s), are credited with completing the work Athanasius had begun a generation earlier: “he provided a grammar that solidified the deity of the Spirit, and therefore the fullest confession of the Trinity.”6 His own formula for holding the unity and distinction of Father, Son, and Spirit together, from his Oration on Holy Baptism, opens this article.1

Before the Council of Constantinople settled the question in 381, the Spirit’s status was contested enough within the Nicene party itself that Gregory could remark that a person might still be considered orthodox even while somewhat mistaken about the Holy Spirit.7 The words about the Spirit that appear in the Nicene Creed as recited today were added at that same council.8

Christology against Apollinarianism

Gregory also defended the full humanity of Christ against Apollinaris, who taught that the divine Logos replaced Christ’s human mind. In his Oration on the Holy Baptism, Gregory restated Origen’s rule that whatever in human nature the Son did not assume in the incarnation, he did not heal:

[Christ] in His own person is entire man and perfect God in one for the sake of the entire sufferer, that the Son may bestow salvation on your whole being, having destroyed the whole condemnation of your sins: impassible in his Godhead, passible in that which he assumed; as much man for your sake as you are made god for his… whatever is not assumed, is not redeemed.9

Because Christ’s mind belongs to the human nature the Son assumed, denying him a human mind, as Apollinaris did, left that part of human nature outside the reach of redemption.9

Historical Significance

Gregory’s influence reached the Latin-speaking West as well as the Greek East. Rufinus’s Latin translation of nine of Gregory’s Orations, completed by 399, made his work available to Western readers within a decade of his death.10 Augustine names Gregory roughly eighteen times in his own writing against Julian the Apostate and directly quotes Gregory’s Oration 2, “Defense for My Flight.”11 One assessment holds that Gregory’s “stature in Greek Christian tradition is comparable only to that of Augustine in the West.”12

Related Doctrines

Gregory’s Trinitarian and Christological work bears directly on the doctrines of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, the deity of Christ, and the hypostatic union, and stands opposed to Arianism and Apollinarianism. The Nicene Creed carries the fruit of the Council of Constantinople he helped lead. See also Athanasius, Basil of Caesarea, and Gregory of Nyssa.

References

  1. Steven Tshombe Godet, “Gill’s Doctrine of the Trinity Applied,” in “The Trinitarian Theology of John Gill (1697-1771): Context, Sources, and Controversy” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2015), 319, quoting Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 40.41. ↩ ↩2

  2. Ronald E. Heine, Classical Christian Doctrine: Introducing the Essentials of the Ancient Faith (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2013), 90. ↩

  3. Keith Wesley Goad, “Introduction,” in “Trinitarian Grammars: A Comparison of Gregory of Nazianzus and Some Contemporary Models” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2010), 11. ↩ ↩2

  4. Goad, “Gregory’s Grammar for the Trinity,” in “Trinitarian Grammars,” 99. ↩ ↩2

  5. Goad, “Gregory’s Grammar for the Trinity,” 99-100. ↩

  6. Goad, “Introduction,” 10-11. ↩

  7. Heine, Classical Christian Doctrine, 91-92. ↩

  8. Heine, Classical Christian Doctrine, 90-92. ↩

  9. Goad, “Gregory the Grammatical Theologian,” in “Trinitarian Grammars,” 30, quoting Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 40.45. ↩ ↩2

  10. Goad, “East and West Compared,” in “Trinitarian Grammars,” 198, citing Joseph T. Leinhard, “Augustine of Hippo, Basil of Caesarea, and Gregory Nazianzen,” in Orthodox Readings of Augustine, ed. George E. Demacopoulos and Aristotle Papanikolaou (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2008), 91. ↩

  11. Goad, “East and West Compared,” 198-99. ↩

  12. Goad, “Introduction,” 11-12, quoting Christopher Beeley. ↩