Gregory Nazianzen

What greater destiny can befall humanity’s humility than it should be intermingled with God, and by this intermingling should be deified?

A Patristic Treasury: Early Church Wisdom for Today, edited by James R. Payton, Jr

The Trinity

In the beginning He was uncaused; for what is the cause of God?  But afterward for a cause He was born – and that so you might be saved.

To us there is one God, for the Godhead is one, and all that proceeds from Him is referred to One, though we believe in three persons.

The Deity cannot be expressed in words.

Its [the divine being’s] every quality is incomprehensible and beyond the power of our intellect.

I could write the following a dozen times throughout this post and based on Gregory’s words, but I will try to restrain my passions and only do it this one time, here: why have Christians since then divided over words about a Deity that “cannot be expressed in words”?  Why have we divided over that which is “incomprehensible and beyond the power of our intellect”?

Gregory played a key role in the Council of Constantinople.  In this Council, among other things, the Nicene Creed was expanded, to the creed we know today (plus or minus the filioque; not a debate I am qualified to comment upon).  From what I can tell, his advice was not heeded by the time we come to Chalcedon.

Now, I may succumb to the temptation to repeat this a few times; if I cannot overcome this temptation, I will try to find a new way to say it.

The Father

He thought, and things came to be, in-formed….

All things are immediate to God, as much things future as things past, as well as things now present.  Time for me is fractured in this way, with some things earlier, others later: but for God it all comes in one, and the great Godhead engulfs it in his arms.

All things are immediate to God.  This is such a difficult concept to grasp, as we experience time in a linear fashion.  The best way I can understand it is to consider that God is outside of time.  But I think even this is insufficient.  In any case, He is able to insert Himself in time at any time of His choosing.

It is difficult to conceive God, but to define Him in words is an impossibility… it is impossible to express Him, and yet more impossible to conceive Him. …to comprehend the whole of so great a subject is utterly impossible and unattainable, not just for the utterly careless and ignorant, but even for those who are highly exalted, and who love God.

For it is one thing to be persuaded of the existence of a thing, and quite another to know what it is.

I won’t repeat myself.

How do you describe the essence of God?  Not by declaring what it is, but by rejecting what it is not.

This is how much of doctrine was formulated, by dealing with that which appeared clearly false.  This then drove the early Church to try to put into words why such things were false.

Yet, I know, many will say that the line between describing in words what is false and then developing words to describe what is true can be a thin one.  Perhaps, but I am not so sure.  I need not know what is true about nine eleven, JFK, Pearl Harbor, etc., to know what is false about any of these official narratives.

The Son

To make clear the point at which my argument has aimed from the first: the divine nature cannot be apprehended by human reason, and we cannot even represent to ourselves all its greatness.

The begetting of God must be honored by silence.  It is a great thing for you to learn that He was begotten.  But the manner of His generation we will not admit that even angels can conceive, much less you.  Shall I tell you how it was?  It was in a manner known to the Father who begot, and to the Son who was begotten.  Anything more than this is hidden by a cloud, and escapes your dim sight.

The divine nature is boundless and hard to understand, and all that we can comprehend of Him is His boundlessness.

See what I mean?  Gregory returns to this theme often, at least in the selections presented by Payton.

He lost nothing of the Godhead… He was mortal, yet God…

Is there any way to put this in words that man can comprehend?

The Word of the Father, made man for us, is God – compounded of the union of God and mortal things – one God in both, mortal so that he might offer us divinity in exchange for our mortality.

This idea has really struck me since I first came across a similar comment from Athanasius some time ago.  It really opened my eyes about what it meant to be saved, by what is meant by salvation.  It has to be something more than a get out of jail free card – a ticket to avoid hell and arrive in heaven.

Yes, it is that, but then what?  I have written before about justification and sanctification, and made a reasonable (but not complete) distinction between these two concepts.  The more I come to understand, the blurrier the line that divides these two for me. 

I am not sure that there is one without the other.  Yet, like for many other doctrinal food fights, I am not sure the answer to this makes any difference to me.  The answer changes nothing about how I am called to live.

We needed an incarnate God, a God put to death, that we might live.

That which He has not assumed [in the Incarnation] He has not healed; but that which is united to His Godhead is saved.

Believe it or not, the first time I ever heard this idea was in a Protestant church – a low church Protestant church.  I have noticed that more and more of early Church Fathers’ teachings (beyond Augustine, who is always present) are creeping into such settings.

He offered blood to God to cleanse the entire world.

Man

We have fallen in consequence of original sin.

In human matter, no good exists without its mix of evil….

I think the idea captured in these two quotes was wonderfully well captured by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn:

“The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts.”

Returning to Gregory:

Therefore I wage an unending battle of war, with flesh and soul opposed to one another.  I am the image of God, and am drawn to wickedness.

For there is, in me, there is a double law: on the one hand there is good, which follows what is good; but what is worse follows evil things; for while the mind is ready to follow Christ, and will approach the light, the other, of flesh and blood, is eager to entertain Belial, and be dragged headlong to darkness.

From the Apostle Paul:

Romans 7: 15 For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do.

Returning again to Gregory:

Reason…leads us up to God through visible things.

You have a job to do, soul, and a great one, if you like: examine yourself, what it is you are and how you act… You have a job to do, soul: by these things cleanse your life.  Make me to know God and God’s mysteries. … You have a job to do, soul: look to God alone. 

We ought to think of God more often than we draw our breath.

Let us not remain what we are, but let us become what we once were.

Let us become like Christ, since Christ became like us.

Growing ever more like Christ – call it theosis – is not optional to the Christian.

Other

The worse attacks its better with irreverence.

I would hate to be held in good esteem by wicked people.

From the Apostle Paul:

Galatians 1: 10 For do I now persuade men, or God? Or do I seek to please men? For if I still pleased men, I would not be a bondservant of Christ.

Returning to Gregory:

This is the way he fights: the robber is skilled in Scripture.

Virtue, that it may remain virtue, is without reward, its eyes fixed alone on that which is good.

As Jesus said, in the Sermon on the Mount:

Matthew 6: 3 But when you do a charitable deed, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 that your charitable deed may be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will Himself reward you openly.

Returning to Gregory:

I have never honored and never can honor anything above the Nicene faith, that of the Holy Fathers who met there to destroy the Arian heresy….

Again, it is often easier to describe what is in error than it is to describe what is correct and true.

Nothing is or ever has been more valuable in our eyes than peace.

True peace, in Christ.  After this, yes, peace among men.

On doubtful points, I am disposed to think we ought to incline to the charitable side, and acquit rather than condemn the accused.

Just to end where I began….

Biographies / Sources

Gregory Nazianzen (330 – 390) was one of the Cappadocian Fathers.  Among other works, he composed nearly four hundred poems, many of which became hymns used by the Church.  He played a leading role in the Council of Constantinople in 381, and, among the Eastern Orthodox, is also known as Gregory the Theologian, an epithet accorded to only two others in the history of the Church.