Church Fathers - Gregory Nazianzus

The Trinitarian Theologian

Gregory of Nazianzus  (c. 329–390) Gregory the Theologian, Bishop of Constantinople, Cappodocian Father, Orator and Poet. Son of the Gregory, bishop of Nazianzus. He received a good education, studying first in Caesarea in Cappadocia where he became acquainted with Basil. He then studied in Caesarea in Palestine and at Alexandria. At the University of Athens he again studied with Basil who became a life-long friend. In 358 he finished his studies and returned to Nazianzus where he at first worked as a rhetorician, helped his father and then spent time with Basil in monastic retreat. When Gregory was baptized by his father in 358 his desire was to engage in a monastic way of life, but circumstances prevented him from doing so. Much against his own will he was ordained a priest in 362 and shortly thereafter preached his On the Flight (Oration 2). This oration speaks of the duties and responsibilities of the pastor. It greatly influenced John Chrysostom’s On the Priesthood and Gregory the Great’s Pastoral Care. [1]

From the Orations

I am alarmed by the reproaches of the Pharisees, the conviction of the Scribes. For it is disgraceful for us, who ought greatly surpass them, as we are bidden, if we desire the kingdom of heaven, to be found more deeply sunk in vice: so that we deserve to be called serpents, a generation of vipers, and blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel, or sepulchres foul within, in spite of our external comeliness, or platters outwardly clean, and everything else, which they are, or which is laid to their charge.

With these thoughts I am occupied night and day: they waste my marrow, and feed upon my flesh, and will not allow me to be confident or to look up. They depress my soul, and abase my mind, and fetter my tongue, and make me consider, not the position of a prelate, or the guidance and direction of others, which is far beyond my powers; but how I myself am to escape the wrath to come, and to scrape off from myself somewhat of the rust of vice.  

A man must himself be cleansed, before cleansing others: himself become wise, that he may make others wise; become light, and then give light: draw near to God, and so bring others near; be hallowed, then hallow them; be possessed of hands to lead others by the hand, of wisdom to give advice. [2]

On the “Theological” Orations

“It has been said with truth,” says the writer of the Article on Gregory of Nazianzus in the Dictionary of Christian Biography, “that these discourses would lose their chief charm in a translation.”  Critics have rivaled each other in the praises they have heaped upon them, but no praise is so high as that of the many Theologians who have found in them their own best thoughts. A Critic who cannot be accused of partiality towards Gregory has given in a few words perhaps the truest estimate of them: ‘A solidity of thought, the concentration of all that is spread through the writings of Hilary, Basil, and Athanasius, a flow of softened eloquence which does not halt or lose itself for a moment, an argument nervotis without dryness on the one hand, and without useless ornament on the other, give these five Discourses a place to themselves among the monuments of this fine Genius, who was not always in the same degree free from grandiloquence and affectation. In a few pages, and in a few hours, Gregory has summed up and closed the controversy of a whole Century.’ They were preached in the Church called Anastasia, at Constantinople, between 379 and 381, and have gained for their author the title of The Theologian, which he shares with S. John the Evangelist alone. It should perhaps, however, be noted that the word is not here used in the wide and general sense in which we employ it, but in a narrower and more specific way, denoting emphatically the Defender of the Deity of the Logos. [3]

Sources.
1.  Oden, Thomas C., Classical Pastoral Care, Volume 4: Crisis Ministries, Copyright 1987
2.  Translated by Charles Gordon Browne and James Edward Swallow. From Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 7. Edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1894.)
3.  Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers Second Series, Volume VII, Public domain