Life of St. Gregory of Nazianzus – January 1

In the name of God the Father, Christ Jesus His Son and the Holy Spirit, One True God. Amen

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus

The Indian Orthodox Church welcomes a new year by remembering two of the saints of the Orthodox Church – St. Basil the Great and St. Gregory of Nazianzus. This week, I posted on the life of St. Basil the Great and you may read the same here – Life of St. Basil. Along with St. Basil, St. Gregory of Nazianzus played a very key role in maintaining and defending the faith of the Orthodox Church in the face of many temptations and trials of the Arian heresy in the 4th century. In the following post, let us learn about the life of St. Gregory of Nazianzus, also known as St Gregory the Theologian. He is known as one among the Cappadocian fathers along with St. Basil the Great and St. Gregory of Nyssa and he is numbered among the Three Holy Hierarchs, along with St. Basil and St. John Chrysostom.

Introduction

St. Gregory of Nazianzus (AD 329 to 25 Jan 390) was a 4th-century Archbishop of Constantinople, and theologian. He is widely considered the most accomplished rhetorical stylist of the patristic age. He was Archbishop of Constantinople, a great Father and teacher of the Church. Gregory of Nazianzus was the patron saint of medieval Bosnia before the Catholic conquest when he was replaced by Gregory the Great – the bishop of Rome from September 590 to March 604.

Gregory made a significant impact on the shape of Trinitarian theology among both Greek- and Latin-speaking theologians, and he is remembered as the “Trinitarian Theologian”. Much of his theological work continues to influence modern theologians, especially in regard to the relationship among the three Persons of the Trinity.

He is also one of only three men in the life of the Orthodox Church who have been officially designated “Theologian” by epithet, the other two being John the Theologian (the Evangelist), and Symeon the New Theologian.

Early Life

Gregory was born into a Christian family with eminent lineage in the year AD 329 in Arianzus, a village of the second district of Cappadocia, not far from Nazianzus. His father, who later became Bishop of Nazianzus, was named Gregory, and his mother was named Nonna; both are among the saints, and so are his brother Caesarius and his sister Gorgonia. Gregory was the fruit of prayers of his pious mother, who prayer for a son, vowing to dedicate him to the Lord.

When the child learned to read, his mother presented him with the Holy Scripture. Saint Gregory received a complete and extensive education: after working at home with his uncle Saint Amphilochius (November 23), an experienced teacher of rhetoric, he then studied in the schools of Nazianzos, Caesarea in Cappadocia, and Alexandria. Then the saint decided to go to Athens to complete his education.

As he was sailing from Alexandria to Athens, a violent sea storm put in peril not only his life but also his salvation, since he had not yet been baptized. With tears and fervour he besought God to spare him, vowing to dedicate his whole self to Him, and the tempest gave way to calm. Saint Gregory spent six years in Athens studying rhetoric, poetry, geometry, and astronomy. His teachers were the renowned pagan rhetoricians Gymorias and Proeresias. 

At Athens St. Gregory was later joined by St. Basil the Great, whom he already knew, but now their acquaintanceship grew into a lifelong brotherly love. They were such close friends that they seemed to be one soul in two bodies. Another fellow student of theirs in Athens was the young Prince Julian, who later as emperor was called the Apostate because he denied Christ and did all in his power to restore paganism. 

Upon completing his education, Saint Gregory remained for a certain while at Athens as a teacher of rhetoric. He was also familiar with pagan philosophy and literature.

In 358 Saint Gregory quietly left Athens and returned to his parents at Nazianzus. At thirty-three years of age, he received Baptism from his father, who had been appointed Bishop of Nazianzus. Against his will, Saint Gregory was ordained to the holy priesthood by his father, who wanted him to assist with caring for local Christians. However, when the elder Gregory wished to make him a bishop, he fled to join his friend Basil in Pontus. Saint Basil had organized a monastery in Pontus and had written to Gregory inviting him to come.

Life in Ministry

Gregory, who resented his father’s decision in forcing him to choose between priestly services and a solitary existence, calling it an “act of tyranny”, left his home after a few days and joined St. Basil at Annesoi, where they lived as ascetics for 10 weeks.  However, Basil urged him to return home to assist his father, which he did for the next year.

When his brother St. Caesarius died, he returned home to help his father administer his diocese. . He returned to his new duties and wrote an apologia, titled “Defence of the Flight to Pontos”, saying that no one can undertake to shepherd the spiritual flock without becoming a temple of the living God, “a habitation of Christ in the Spirit”. He also said,

It is necessary first to be purified, then to purify; to be made wise, then to make wise; to become light, then to enlighten; to approach God, then to bring others to Him; to be sanctified, then to sanctify”

This treatise became a classic on the nature and duties of the priesthood.

Arriving at Nazianzus, Gregory found the local Christian community split by theological differences because of the Arian heresy and his father accused of heresy by local monks  for signing an ambiguous interpretation of the dogmas of the faith. Gregory helped to heal the division through a combination of personal diplomacy and oratory.

Saint Gregory convinced his father of the pernicious nature of Arianism, and strengthened him in the Orthodox faith. At this time, Bishop Anthimus, who pretended to be Orthodox but was really a heretic, became Metropolitan of Tyana. Saint Basil had been consecrated as the Archbishop of Caesarea, Cappadocia. Anthimus wished to separate from Saint Basil and to divide the province of Cappadocia.

Saint Basil the Great made Saint Gregory bishop of the city of Sasima, a small town between Caesarea and Tyana. However, Saint Gregory remained at Nazianzus in order to assist his dying father, and he guided the flock of this city for a while after the death of his father in 374. This consecration was a source of great sorrow to Gregory and a cause of misunderstanding between him and Basil, but his love for Basil remained unchanged, as can be plainly seen from his Funeral Oration on Saint Basil (Orat. XLIII).

Following the death of his father in 374 AD, St Gregory lived a solitary life in Seleucia until about 380 AD. 

About the year 379, St. Gregory came to the assistance of the Church of Constantinople, which had already been troubled for forty years by the Arians; by his supremely wise words and many labours he freed it from the corruption of heresy. He was elected archbishop of that city by the Second Ecumenical Council, which assembled there in 381, and condemned Macedonius, Archbishop of Constantinople, as an enemy of the Holy Spirit.

When St. Gregory came to Constantinople, the Arians had taken all the churches, and he was forced to serve in a house chapel named “Anastasis” (meaning Resurrection). Apart from the heretics of Arianism, there were also Macedonians and Appolinarians in the city. From the house chapel he began to preach his famous five sermons on the Trinity, called the Triadica. When he left Constantinople two years later, the Arians did not have one church left to them in the city. St. Meletius of Antioch, who was presiding over the Second Ecumenical Council, died in the course of it, and St. Gregory was chosen in his stead; there he distinguished himself in his expositions of dogmatic theology.

Having governed the Church until 382, he delivered his farewell speech-the Syntacterion, in which he demonstrated the Divinity of the Son—before 150 bishops and the Emperor Theodosius the Great. Also in this speech he requested, and received from all, permission to retire from the See of Constantinople.

He then retired to his estate in Nazianzus, where he lived to the end of his life. Saint Gregory turned his attention to the incursion of Appolinarian heretics into the flock of Nazianzus, and he established the pious Eulalius there as bishop, while he himself withdrew into the solitude of Arianzos so dear to his heart. He spent his time reading and writing. His writing included religious poetry (later to become Orthodox hymns), his autobiography, epistles, essays and sermons. His literary works show that he had a literary gift, and the saint always sought to offer his talent to God the Word:

His extant writings, both prose and poems in every type of meter, demonstrate his lofty eloquence and his wondrous breadth of learning. In the beauty of his writings, he is considered to have surpassed the Greek writers of antiquity, and because of his God-inspired theological thought, he received the surname “Theologian.” Although he is sometimes called Gregory of Nazianzus, this title belongs properly to his father; he himself is known by the Church only as Gregory the Theologian. He is especially called “Trinitarian Theologian,” since in virtually every homily he refers to the Trinity and the one essence and nature of the Godhead.

Writings of the Saint

In five sermons, or “Theological Orations,” Saint Gregory first of all defines the characteristics of a theologian, and who may theologize. Only those who are experienced can properly reason about God, those who are successful at contemplation and, most importantly, who are pure in soul and body, and utterly selfless. To reason about God properly is possible only for one who enters into it with fervor and reverence.

Explaining that God has concealed His Essence from mankind, Saint Gregory demonstrates that it is impossible for those in the flesh to view mental objects without a mixture of the corporeal. Talking about God in a positive sense is possible only when we become free from the external impressions of things and from their effects, when our guide, the mind, does not adhere to impure transitory images. Answering the Eunomians, who would presume to grasp God’s Essence through logical speculation, the saint declared that man perceives God when the mind and reason become godlike and divine, i.e. when the image ascends to its Archetype. (Or. 28:17). Furthermore, the example of the Old Testament patriarchs and prophets and also the Apostles has demonstrated, that the Essence of God is incomprehensible for mortal man. Saint Gregory cited the futile sophistry of Eunomios:

God begat the Son either through His will, or contrary to will. If He begat contrary to will, then He underwent constraint. If by His will, then the Son is the Son of His intent.”

Confuting such reasoning, Saint Gregory points out the harm it does to man: “You yourself, who speak so thoughtlessly, were you begotten voluntarily or involuntarily by your father? If involuntarily, then your father was under the sway of some tyrant. Who? You can hardly say it was nature, for nature is tolerant of chastity. If it was voluntarily, then by a few syllables you deprive yourself of your father, for thus you are shown to be the son of Will, and not of your father” (Or. 29:6).

Saint Gregory then turns to Holy Scripture, with particular attention examining a place where it points out the Divine Nature of the Son of God. Saint Gregory’s interpretations of Holy Scripture are devoted to revealing that the divine power of the Savior was actualized even when He assumed an impaired human nature for the salvation of mankind.

He emphasized that Jesus did not cease to be God when he became a man, nor did he lose any of his divine attributes when he took on human nature. Furthermore, Gregory asserted that Christ was fully human, including a full human soul. He also proclaimed the eternality of the Holy Spirit, saying that the Holy Spirit’s actions were somewhat hidden in the Old Testament but much clearer since the ascension of Jesus into Heaven and the descent of the Holy Spirit at the feast of Pentecost.

The first of Saint Gregory’s Five Theological Orations is devoted to arguments against the Eunomians for their blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. Closely examining everything that is said in the Gospel about the Third Person of the Most Holy Trinity, the saint refutes the heresy of Eunomios, which rejected the divinity of the Holy Spirit.

He comes to two fundamental conclusions. First, in reading Holy Scripture, it is necessary to reject blind literalism and to try and understand its spiritual sense. Second, in the Old Testament the Holy Spirit operated in a hidden way. “Now the Spirit Himself dwells among us and makes the manifestation of Himself more certain. It was not safe, as long as they did not acknowledge the divinity of the Father, to proclaim openly that of the Son; and as long as the divinity of the Son was not accepted, they could not, to express it somewhat boldly, impose on us the burden of the Holy Spirit” (Or. 31:26).

The divinity of the Holy Spirit is a sublime subject.

Look at these facts: Christ is born, the Holy Spirit is His Forerunner. Christ is baptized, the Spirit bears witness to this… Christ works miracles, the Spirit accompanies them. Christ ascends, the Spirit takes His place. What great things are there in the idea of God which are not in His power? What titles appertaining to God do not apply also to Him, except for Unbegotten and Begotten? I tremble when I think of such an abundance of titles, and how many Names they blaspheme, those who revolt against the Spirit!”

Or. 31:29

In contrast to the Neo-Arian belief that the Son is anomoios, or “unlike” the Father, and with the Semi-Arian assertion that the Son is homoiousios, or “like” the Father, Gregory and his fellow Cappadocians maintained the Nicaean doctrine of homoousia, or consubstantiality of the Son with the Father. The Cappadocian Fathers asserted that God’s nature is unknowable to man; helped to develop the framework of hypostases, or three persons united in a single Godhead; illustrated how Jesus is the eikon (icon) of the Father; and explained the concept of theosis, the belief that all Christians can be assimilated with God in “imitation of the incarnate Son as the divine model.”

The Orations of Saint Gregory are not limited only to this topic. He also wrote Panegyrics on Saints, Festal Orations, two invectives against Julian the Apostate, “two pillars, on which the impiety of Julian is indelibly written for posterity,” and various orations on other topics. In all, forty-five of Saint Gregory’s orations have been preserved.

The letters of the saint compare favourably with his best theological works. All of them are clear, yet concise. In his poems as in all things, Saint Gregory focused on Christ. “If the lengthy tracts of the heretics are new Psalters at variance with David, and the pretty verses they honour are like a third testament, then we also shall sing Psalms, and begin to write much and compose poetic meters,” said the saint. Of his poetic gift the saint wrote:

The fame of the Orthodox preacher spread through East and West. But the saint lived in the capital as though he still lived in the wilderness: “his food was food of the wilderness; his clothing was whatever necessary. He made visitations without pretense, and though in proximity of the court, he sought nothing from the court.”

Passing into Eternal Memory

He reposed in the Lord in 391, having lived some sixty-two years. Saint Gregory was buried at Nazianzus. In the year 950, his holy relics were transferred to Constantinople into the church of the Holy Apostles. Later on, a portion of his relics was transferred to Rome.

In appearance, the saint was of medium height and somewhat pale. He had thick eyebrows, and a short beard. His contemporaries already called the arch-pastor a saint. The Orthodox Church, honours Saint Gregory as a second Theologian and insightful writer on the Holy Trinity.

As we begin this year, may His fervour and knowledge of the Triune God be an example for our lives and may his life be an example for all of us. May the intercessions of St. Gergory be a stronghold to us all.

Your brother in Christ Jesus

Jobin George

Sources:

• Saint Gregory the Theologian, Archbishop of Constantinople – Orthodox Church in America (oca.org)
• Gregory the Theologian – OrthodoxWiki
• Gregory the Theologian – Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Australia
• Gregory of Nazianzus – Wikipedia
• Børtnes, Jostein; Hägg, Tomas (2006), Gregory of Nazianzus: Images and Reflections, Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, ISBN 978-87-635-0386-0
• Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). “St. Gregory of Nazianzus” . Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
• McGuckin, John A. St. Gregory of Nazianzus: An Intellectual Biography. Crestwood, NY: 2001, St. Vladimir’s Seminar Press. ISBN 0-88141-222-8
• Migne, J.P. (General Editor). Cursus Completus Patrologiae Graecae. Volumes 35–38. Paris: 1857–66.
• The Orthodox Church of America website article on St. Gregory the Theologian. Retrieved 2 May 2007.
• Ruether, Rosemary Radford. Gregory of Nazianzus. Oxford: 1969, Oxford University Press.
• Turner, H.E.W. and Francis Young, “Procession(s)” in The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Theology, ed. A. Richardson & J. Bowden. Philadelphia: 1983, Westminster Press, 1983.
• Gregory of Nazianzus, translated by Martha Vinson, Select Orations, Catholic University of America Press, 2003. Link.