RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Gregory Nazianzen
cese of Nazianzus, then troubled by the Apollinarians, induced him to give some measure of attention to its needs; but after he had succeeded (probably in 383) in procuring the appointment of his kinsman Eulalius as bishop, he lived in seclusion, apparently at Arianzus. When Jerome wrote his Catalogus in 392, he had been dead nearly three years, and so must have passed away in 389 or at latest 390.
The works of Gregory fall into three groups — 45 orations, 243 letters, and a considerable number of poems. The orations seem all to have been actually delivered except the two invectives against Julian, and the second oration, at least in its present form. The most famous are the five "Theological Orations" (xxvii. — xxxi.) delivered in Constantinople. Of historical interest are several of the memorial orations, especially those on Basil (xliii.) and on his father (xviii.). Among
3. Works, those written for festivals, the most
noteworthy are the Easter sermon of 363 (commonly assigned to 362), and three (xxxviii,xl.) preached in Constantinople on Dec. 25, 379. and Jan. 6 and 7, 380; the first of these three is the earliest Christmas sermon known to have been preached in Constantinople, or, for that matter, in the East. Only one (xxxvii.) has the nature of a homily; in fact, the exposition of Scripture, or in general what is usually meant by preaching, is entirely subordinate to rhetorical declamation. The letters, most of which belong to the last six or seven years of Gregory's life, are as a rule short and not to be compared for interest or historical importance to those of Basil. Of dogmatic value are the two anti-Apollinarian epistles to the presbyter Cledonius (ci., cii.) and the last of those addressed to Gregory's successor at Constantinople, Nectarius (ccii.). The concluding letter, or rather treatise, "To the Monk Evagrius on Divinity," which is ascribed by the manuscript variously to Gregory Nazianzen, to the other Gregories, Thaumaturgus and of Nyssa, and to Basil, can scarcely belong to Gregory Nazianzen. The poems are good examples of the artificial poetry of the rhetorical school, but to a modern mind most of them have very little that is poetical. The autobiographical poems (book ii., section 1) comprise about a third of the whole. The drama known as "The Suffering Christ" has long been known to be not Gregory's, but a Byzantine production of the eleventh or twelfth century.
Though Gregory Nazianzen is called "the Theologian" by the Greek writers, he has given no systematic exposition of the Christian faith; and an examination of the doctrinal positions
4. Theo- taken by him in his orations would be logical profitable only if it were connected
Attitude, with an investigation, here impossible, of the question how far he displays the result of the process of giving an ecclesiastical form to the thoughts of Origen; though the Origenistic tradition has certainly not in him come down to the level of the popular Catholicism of his day, as is clearly evidenced by his views on sin, the fall of man, Paradise, inequality on earth as a result of the fall, the doctrine of angels, and escha-
tology. His general doctrine of God is Platonic metaphysics rather than Christian teaching. It is noteworthy what a contrast there is between the way in which, against Eunomius, he maintains the unknowableness of God and the certainty with which he develops the details of the doctrine of the Trinity. In this latter field he is not, indeed, the founder of the school known as sub-Nicene, for before he took any prominent part in the discussion, during the reign of Julian, the transition from the homoiusios to the homoousios had taken place in the Meletian group at Antioch (see Meletius of Antioch); and the analogous development in many homoiousians of Asia Minor, at least in regard to the consubstantiality of the Son, was certainly in the main independent of Gregory's influence. Still, Gregory was the oldest of the theologically important representatives of that school, and its special teaching comes out clearly in him at a time when Basil was yet on friendly terms with Eustathius and when Gregory of Nyssa was a layman. This is true even of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit; although Gregory was all his life a little cautious about defining the consubstantiality, from a feeling that the consequences would lead beyond what was contained in Scripture, even though he never excluded the necessity of these consequences. To state his doctrine in its technical terms, it is based upon the distinction between the One Godhead, Substance, or Nature (mia theotes, ousia, or physis) and the Three Persons (treis hypostaseis or idiotetes). The term ousia means more than the generic essence of several individuals; but none the less the treis hypostaseis are numerically three, and the One God is one because the mia theotes is common to the three, because the Son and the Spirit have their origin in the Father outside of time, and because the will of the three is the same. The things which distinguish the three — "that the Father is unbegotten, that the Son is begotten, that the Holy Ghost is sent forth" (oration xxv.) — are not, therefore, differences of substance, but expressions of the mutual relation of the hypostaseis. That the reproach of tritheism might be brought against this teaching with more justice than that of Sabellianism against Athanasius is obvious. Gregory was fully conscious of the divergence between the older and later Nicene theology, but he considered it purely one of terminology.
That Gregory should have been able to coin standard formulas in Christology also (the Council of Ephesus and that of Chalcedon cite his first epistle to Cledonius, and under Justinian he was
one of the principal witnesses to the
5. Christo- orthodox view on this question) was
logical due to the process through which he
Attitude, passed in his last years. The casual
expressions of his orations are the obscure utterances of a curtailed Origenistic tradition. His terminology did not become clear and precise until after he had taken his stand in opposition to Apollinarianism, and felt the need of rejecting the Antiochene tradition (opposed also by Apollinaris) of the existence of two subjects in the historic Christ. He is now clear on the point of the completeness of the human nature in Christ,
Greg-ory Nazianzen Gregory Thaumaturg-us