Saint Gregory of Nazianzus (c. 329 – 389 or 390)

“The Theologian”

In the whole history of the Church, only three saints bear, as a proper name, the title of “the Theologian” (ho Theologos): the apostle Saint John, the eagle of Patmos, Gregory of Nazianzus — and, much later, Saint Symeon the New Theologian (949-1022)^[6][7]. This is no accident. For the Greeks, theology in the strict sense is not discourse on the economy of salvation, but discourse on God in Himself, on the mystery of the Trinity. And no one, before Gregory, had spoken of the Trinity with such depth joined to such beauty.

This title comes to him above all from the five Theological Orations delivered at Constantinople in 380, in which he defends, against the radical Arians and against those who denied the divinity of the Holy Spirit, the full divinity of the three Persons^[8]. But it also says something deeper: for Gregory, theology is not a cold science, it is an act of purified prayer. One speaks well of God only after having been purified by God.

“Not to every one, my friends, does it belong to philosophize about God; not to every one; the Subject is not so cheap and low […]. [It is reserved] for those who have been examined, and are passed masters in meditation, and who have been previously purified in soul and body, or at the very least are being purified.” — Gregory of Nazianzus, First Theological Oration (Oration 27), 3^[9]

One of the three Cappadocian Fathers

Gregory belongs to the great triad of the Cappadocian Fathers, who dominate the second half of the 4th century: Basil of Caesarea, his brother Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of Nazianzus^[10]. Together they complete the work begun by Saint Athanasius of Alexandria: they forge the definitive Trinitarian vocabulary — one single substance (ousia), three Persons (hypostases) — which makes it possible to say both the unity of God and the real distinction of the Father, the Son and the Spirit.

In this trio, each has his own genius. Basil is the organizer, the builder-bishop, the man of the monastic rule and of charity. Gregory of Nyssa is the metaphysician, the most speculative. Gregory of Nazianzus is the orator and the poet: the theologian of beauty, whose chiselled phrases would be learned by heart and sung in the Byzantine liturgy.

The sources of his life

A rare thing for a 4th-century Father, Gregory is largely his own biographer. Besides his 45 Orations and his some 245 Letters, he left an immense poetic work — nearly seventeen thousand lines — including a long autobiographical poem, the De vita sua (“On his own life”), in which he recounts with striking frankness his joys, his angers, his disappointments and his struggles^[11][12].

To these personal writings are added the funeral orations he composed for his own: for his father the bishop (Oration 18), for his brother Caesarius (Oration 7), for his sister Gorgonia (Oration 8), and above all the great panegyric of Basil (Oration 43), one of the masterpieces of Christian Greek prose^[13]. No other Father has given us so intimate a portrait of himself and his circle: with Gregory, one enters a family, follows a friendship, witnesses an inner tearing.

Arianzus, Nazianzus and the family home

Gregory was born around 329-330 at the family estate of Arianzus, near the small town of Nazianzus, in Cappadocia — that rugged province of the centre of present-day Turkey, made of high plateaus and volcanic rocks^[14][15]. His family is rich, cultivated and deeply Christian. Remarkably, almost all of its members would be venerated as saints.

His father, Gregory the Elder, a former adherent of a Judeo-pagan sect (the Hypsistarians), converted to Christianity under his wife's influence and became bishop of Nazianzus, an office he would exercise for more than forty years. His mother, Saint Nonna, is the dominant figure of the household: a woman of intense prayer, it is she who obtains her husband's conversion and who consecrates her son to God even before his birth^[16]. Of this couple were born three children, all honoured as saints: Saint Caesarius, a brilliant physician who would serve at the imperial court of Constantinople; Saint Gorgonia, a model of Christian motherhood; and Gregory, the spiritual eldest.

The consecration by his mother

Like Hannah consecrating Samuel, Nonna had promised her son to God. Gregory would often return to this maternal consecration, which weighs on his whole life like a debt of love. Raised in piety, nourished on the Scriptures, the child grows up with the conviction that he belongs to God — a conviction which partly explains his future torments, when the Church would want him as bishop and administrator while he dreams only of solitude and contemplation.

A revealing detail of this early piety: although dedicated to God from his mother's womb, Gregory, according to the custom of the time, would be baptized only as an adult, around the age of thirty. Late baptism, frequent in the 4th century, took nothing away from Christian upbringing; but Gregory would keep from it a keen sense of baptismal grace, which he would sing in his Oration on Baptism (Oration 40)^[17].

From Caesarea to Athens

The gifted child receives the best education that a fading Antiquity could offer. He studies first at Caesarea in Cappadocia, then at Caesarea in Palestine (famous for its library of Origen), at Alexandria, and finally, around 346, in prestigious Athens, the intellectual capital of Hellenism, where students came from all over the Empire to learn rhetoric and philosophy under masters such as Himerius and Proaeresius^[18][19].

Gregory stays there for ten years, until his departure in 356. He acquires a mastery of classical Greek and of the art of oratory that will make him the greatest stylist of Greek patristics. But Athens offers him above all two decisive encounters.

Basil, “one single soul in two bodies”

At Athens, Gregory meets again a fellow student once crossed at Caesarea: Basil, the future bishop of Caesarea. Between the two young men is born a friendship of celebrated intensity, which Gregory would later describe, in his funeral eulogy for Basil, as an almost mystical fusion of two souls:

“We seemed to be two bodies with a single spirit […]. We became everything to each other: we shared the same lodging, the same table, the same desires, the same goal. Our love for each other grew daily warmer and deeper.” — Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 43 (eulogy of Basil), 20^[20]

He adds that, in the great dissipated city, they knew only two streets: the one leading to the church and the one leading to the school^[21]. This friendship would be the great affective matter of Gregory's life — and later his great wound, when Basil, become metropolitan, would impose on him the bishopric of Sasima.

Julian, the future Apostate

The other fellow student at Athens would become sadly famous: Julian, nephew of Constantine, future emperor, who would apostatize from Christianity to attempt the restoration of paganism — hence his nickname of Julian the Apostate^[22]. Gregory recounts having sensed already at that time, in certain disquieting traits of Julian's character, the misfortune he would one day cause the Church. After Julian's death (363), Gregory would compose against him two discourses of redoubtable virulence (Orations 4 and 5).

Baptism and monastic retreat in Pontus

Back from Athens in 356, Gregory finally receives baptism and longs with all his soul for the monastic life. He joins Basil in his retreat in Pontus, on the banks of the Iris, for a life of prayer, asceticism and common study. The two friends compose together the Philocalia, an anthology of the works of Origen, and work on Basil's monastic rules^[23]. Those months of solitude would remain for Gregory the image of lost happiness: all his life, he would dream of returning there.

Forced ordination and the “flight”

But his family has other plans. At Christmas 361 (or 362), his aged father, overwhelmed by the administration of the diocese of Nazianzus, ordains him priest by force, almost by surprise, under pressure from the community^[24]. Gregory, feeling violated in his contemplative vocation, flees to Pontus to rejoin Basil. Then, seized with remorse, he returns — and justifies his flight and his return in a founding text of all Christian pastoral care, Oration 2 on the priesthood, in which he describes the priestly ministry as the “art of arts and science of sciences”, too formidable to be seized lightly^[25]. This treatise would later inspire Saint John Chrysostom and Saint Gregory the Great.

The phantom bishopric of Sasima

In 372, the Arian emperor Valens divides Cappadocia into two provinces, which threatens the authority of Basil, become metropolitan of Caesarea, to the profit of a rival bishop, Anthimus of Tyana. To multiply loyal sees and strengthen his jurisdiction, Basil creates new bishoprics — and consecrates Gregory bishop of Sasima, a miserable dusty posting station, without charm or importance^[26][27].

Gregory feels a deep bitterness at this: he has the sense of having been used as a pawn in a quarrel over ecclesiastical frontiers. He would never take possession of Sasima: though consecrated bishop for that see, he never resides there nor administers it^[28]. The episode lastingly clouds the two friends, without destroying their affection: on Basil's death (379), Gregory would dedicate to him his finest discourse. He prefers to assist his ageing father at Nazianzus, then, after the latter's death (374), withdraws for several years into solitude at Seleucia in Isauria.

The chapel of the Anastasis (379)

In 379, the situation of the Church has changed: the Arian emperor Valens is dead, and the small Nicene community of Constantinople — reduced to almost nothing after decades of Arian domination — calls to its rescue a pastor capable of raising it up. The choice falls on Gregory, whose reputation for holiness and eloquence has crossed the mountains^[29].

Gregory arrives in a capital where the Arians hold all the churches. He has for himself only a private house, turned into a chapel, which he names the Anastasis, “the Resurrection” — a prophetic name, for it is from this humble place that the orthodox faith will “rise again” in the imperial city^[30]. There, by his word alone, he gradually draws the faithful, the hesitant, and even heretics won over by his doctrine and his holiness.

The five Theological Orations (380)

It is in this chapel, in spring 380, that Gregory delivers the works that will make him immortal: the five Theological Orations (Orations 27 to 31)^[31]. Directed against the Eunomians (radical Arians, persuaded they knew the very essence of God) and against the Pneumatomachians or Macedonians (who denied the divinity of the Holy Spirit), they constitute the most complete and most balanced exposition of Trinitarian doctrine ever produced by the Christian East.

The first (27) lays down the spiritual conditions of all theology: only a purified heart can speak of God. The second (28) teaches the incomprehensibility of the divine essence, against the rationalist pride of Eunomius. The third and fourth (29-30) defend the divinity of the Son, consubstantial with the Father. The fifth (31), the most original, demonstrates the divinity of the Holy Spirit — the point on which Scripture is more discreet, and which Gregory establishes with new theological boldness.

From this contemplative summit comes one of his most famous phrases, in which the Trinity is grasped not as a problem but as a light:

“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 […].” — Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 40 (On Baptism), 41^[32]

The Easter night and the persecutions

This success attracts hatred. At Easter 379, a band of Arians and fanaticized monks bursts into the Anastasis, stones the faithful and wounds Gregory himself^[33]. Later, an adventurer named Maximus the Cynic tries to wrest the see from him through an intrigue supported from Alexandria. Gregory, sickened, thinks again of fleeing — but the faithful crowd holds him back. When Emperor Theodosius, a fervent Nicene, enters Constantinople at the end of 380, he solemnly installs Gregory in the great basilica of the Holy Apostles: the faith of Nicaea has triumphed in the capital.

President of the council after the death of Meletius

In 381, Theodosius convenes at Constantinople the second ecumenical council, which will complete the Nicene Creed by clearly proclaiming the divinity of the Holy Spirit^[34]. The council is first presided over by Meletius of Antioch; but he dies during the sessions, and it is Gregory, now recognized as archbishop of the city, who is called to succeed him in the presidency^[35].

For this peace-loving man, the experience turns into a nightmare. The validity of his transfer from Sasima is contested by Egyptian and Macedonian bishops; the debates degenerate into quarrels of interests and ambitions which sicken him deeply. He who dreamed of uniting the Churches finds himself caught in a knot of episcopal rivalries.

The Farewell Oration and the renunciation

Rather than be a bone of contention, Gregory chooses to withdraw. Before the fathers of the council and the emperor, he delivers his famous Farewell Oration (Oration 42), in which he proclaims one last time the divinity of the Son, then asks — and obtains — permission to leave the see of Constantinople^[36][37]. The gesture is heroic: he sacrifices the highest dignity of the Christian East to restore peace to the Church.

In his peroration (§ 26-27), he bids farewell to his Anastasis which raised up a despised doctrine, to the great church restored to the Word, to the Christ-loving imperial city, and entrusts one last time to his children to keep the deposit received^[38].

He returns to Cappadocia, administers the diocese of Nazianzus for some time more, then withdraws definitively, fulfilled in his oldest wish, into the solitude of his estate at Arianzus.

The divinity of the Holy Spirit

Gregory's great contribution to doctrine is his vigorous defence of the divinity of the Holy Spirit. Many in his time — even among the defenders of Nicaea — hesitated to call the Spirit openly “God”, for lack of scriptural texts as explicit as for the Son. Gregory takes the step with decisive clarity, explaining that the revelation of the Trinity is progressive: the Old Testament manifested the Father, the New manifested the Son, and the age of the Church fully manifests the Spirit^[39]. The council of 381 would consecrate this doctrine by adding to the Creed the articles on the Holy Spirit “who is Lord and giver of life”.

“What has not been assumed has not been healed”

Against the heresy of Apollinarius, who claimed that the Word, in becoming incarnate, had replaced the human soul of Christ with His divinity, Gregory formulates, in his Letter 101 to Cledonius, one of the most powerful axioms of all Christian theology:

“For that which He has not assumed He has not healed; but that which is united to His Godhead is also saved.” — Gregory of Nazianzus, Letter 101 to Cledonius^[40]

The argument is limpid and soteriological: if Christ did not take a complete humanity — body, soul and mind — then that part of man not assumed by God is not redeemed. To save us wholly, the Word had to assume man wholly. This formula would become one of the pillars of the Church's Christology, up to the Council of Chalcedon (451).

Deification and contemplation of the Trinity

Like Athanasius, Gregory is a theologian of deification (theosis): God becomes man so that man may become god by grace. His great Oration on the Theophany (Oration 38), delivered for Christmas 380, opens with an acclamation that has remained famous throughout the Byzantine liturgy:

“Christ is born, glorify Him! Christ comes from heaven, go to meet Him! Christ is on earth, be lifted up!” — Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 38 (On the Theophany), 1^[41]

For Gregory, theology does not end in a system, but in adoration. To know God is to let oneself be seized by Him; and the last word of divine science is the silence of the one who contemplates. In this he is, more than any other, “the Theologian”: not the most learned, but the one who made the thought of God a prayer.

The poet

Withdrawn at Arianzus, Gregory devotes his last years to poetry. He leaves nearly seventeen thousand lines: dogmatic, moral and autobiographical poems, hymns, epigrams^[42]. The most important is the De vita sua, a long verse account of his existence, of heartrending sincerity — in which he confesses his failures, his angers, his weariness with churchmen, but also his unquenchable thirst for God. This work makes him one of the first great autobiographers of Christian literature, well before the Confessions of Saint Augustine.

The last years and death

In the recovered peace of solitude, Gregory prays, writes, guides souls by letter, and bears the weight of years and sickness. He dies at Arianzus, around 25 January 389 or 390, in the retreat he had so long desired^[43][44]. His remains would become the object of an immense cult in the East.

Doctor of the Church and relics

The Church has crowned his glory with every title. Honoured as Father of the Church and one of the four great Doctors of the Greek Church — with Athanasius, Basil and John Chrysostom —, he is proclaimed Doctor of the Church for the whole Church by Pope Pius V in 1568^[45]. His relics, carried to Constantinople then to Rome, where they rested in Saint Peter's, were solemnly returned to the Orthodox Church by Pope John Paul II in 2004, an ecumenical gesture of great scope, together with those of Saint John Chrysostom.

Liturgical feast

The reformed Roman calendar celebrates Saint Gregory on 2 January, jointly with his friend Saint Basil the Great — a liturgical reunion which seals, beyond the quarrel of Sasima, the friendship of the two Cappadocians^[46]. In the East, he is celebrated on 25 January, and again on 30 January, the day of the great feast of the Three Holy Hierarchs, when the Byzantine Church honours together Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian and John Chrysostom, the three pillars of Christian preaching.

Sixteen centuries later, Saint Gregory remains strikingly timely. He reminds us first that theology is not a game of the intellect, but a spiritual act: one speaks well of God only on one's knees, with a purified heart. In an age that readily reduces faith to opinions or feelings, his rigour joined to his prayer offers a rare model of believing intelligence.

He reminds us then that holiness is not the absence of wounds. Gregory was a sensitive man, sometimes discouraged, often at war with himself and with the ambitions of churchmen; he knew friendship and its tearing, power and its disgust. His greatness lies not in having succeeded at everything, but in having, through it all, sought God alone — to the point of renouncing the most coveted see of the East for the peace of the Church.

“No sooner do I conceive of the One than I am illumined by the Splendour of the Three.” — This phrase says enough why the Church has never ceased to read Gregory: he is the doctor who made the Trinity not a formula, but a light in which the soul loses itself in adoration.

• Saint Basil the Great — the friend from Athens, the other great Cappadocian, celebrated with him on 2 January.
• Saint Gregory of Nyssa — Basil's brother, third Cappadocian Father, the most speculative of the three.
• Saint Athanasius of Alexandria — the forerunner whose struggle for Nicaea the Cappadocians completed.
• The Council of Nicaea (325) — the council whose faith Gregory defended at Constantinople.
• The Council of Constantinople (381) — the second ecumenical council over which he presided and which proclaimed the divinity of the Holy Spirit.
• Arianism — the heresy fought together by the three Cappadocians.
• Saint John Chrysostom — celebrated with Basil and Gregory on 30 January as one of the Three Holy Hierarchs.
• The Doctors of the Church through history — the category of the great Greek Doctors to which Gregory belongs.