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‘Through you, men live endowed with reason’: Gregory Nazianzen's trinitarian thinking as a window to his personal character
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 April 2015
Abstract
It has been recently argued that the doctrine of the Trinity in Gregory Nazianzen's thinking is the driving force of his personal and ecclesiastical life. However, no serious study has so far been done on the relation between Gregory Nazianzen's personal character as reflective of his theological mind and personal rationale. This article suggests that the proper road for reaching an accurate and perceptive understanding of Gregory Nazianzen's character starts from reading the literature of this father in a serious attempt at discovering the man behind the ideas of the texts and to perceive the core of his personality and character as theologian and servant of the church. Gregory's character and Gregory's theology, especially his trinitarian thinking, are windows which open towards each other. They reciprocally depict for us a sincere and puzzling servant of God as well as a unique and challenging theologian. The article starts by shedding analytical light on Gregory Nazianzen's core trinitarian logic, which lies in his understanding of the idea of ‘reciprocity’ and his envisioning of triadic perichoretic trinitarian monarchy, instead of a hierarchical one, in the Godhead. It then explores the presence of this rationale in Gregory's own understanding of his personal and ministerial character as the ‘dwelling place’ of God's triune image. The article concludes with the suggestion that Gregory's writings clearly state his belief that theology is the theologian, and the theologian is someone whose life and personhood mirror her theological mind. For this church father, there is no claimed neutral separation between the theologian and his or her theology.
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- Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 2015
References
1 Beeley, Christopher A., Gregory of Nazianzus on the Trinity and the Knowledge of God: In Your Light We Shall See Light (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 187–233CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
2 Beeley, Gregory of Nazianzus, p. 188. ‘The doctrine of the trinity is the centrepiece of his theological vision and the driving force of his personal and ecclesiastical life.’
3 Daley, Brian E., Gregory Nazianzus (London and New York: Routledge, 2006)Google Scholar.
4 Schaff, Philip and Wace, Henry (eds), Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1995), vol. 7Google Scholar.
5 See my detailed exposition of Gregory's trinitarian logic in Awad, Najeeb G., ‘Between Subordination and Koinonia: Toward a New Reading of the Cappadocian Theology’, Modern Theology, 2/32 (2007), pp. 181–204CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and in ch. 4 of my book, God Without a Face? On the Personal Individuation of the Holy Spirit (Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011)Google Scholar. I briefly borrow some of the following lines on Gregory's trinitarian thinking from this.
6 Nazianzen, Orations, 42.1 (Daley, pp. 139–40).
7 This is something Nazianzen maintained an awareness of, even in other writings, when he said ‘although a man has kept himself pure from sin, even in every high degree; I do not know that even this is sufficient for one who is to instruct others in virtue’: Nazianzen, Orations, 2.12.
8 Nazianzen, Orations, 42.3 (Daley, p. 141).
9 Nazianzen, Orations, 42.15 (Daley, p. 147).
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid.
12 Ibid.
13 Nazianzen, Orations, 42.16 (Daley, pp. 147–8).
14 Nazianzen, Orations, 38.8 (Daley, pp. 120–1).
15 Nazianzen, Orations, 20.6 (Daley, p. 101).
16 Ibid.
17 Thus Beeley, Gregory of Nazianzus, p. 213. See also Beeley, , ‘Divine Causality and the Monarchy of God the Father in Gregory of Nazianzus’, Harvard Theological Review, 2/100 (2007), pp. 199–214, 213–14Google Scholar.
18 Nazianzen, Orations, 20.1 (Daley, p. 98 (pp. 98–105)).
19 Thus Beeley, Gregory of Nazianzus, p. 35.
20 See comments on Ignatius’ literature in Sullivan, Francis A., From Apostles to Bishops: The Development of the Episcopacy in the Early Church (New York and Mahwah, NJ: Newman, 2001), pp. 103–25Google Scholar.
21 Nazianzen, letter 41. Brian Daley alludes to some moments in church history when certain strong church leaders even reflected favouritism towards a monarchical interpretation of the Trinity and used this understanding to theologically legalise their actions: Daley, Brian, ‘“One Thing and Another”, The Persons in God and the Person of Christ in Patristic Theology’, Pro Ecclesia, 1/15 (2006), pp. 17–46, 44Google Scholar.
22 Evans, G. R., ‘The Church in the Early Christian Centuries: Ecclesiastical Consolidation’, in Mannion, Gerard and Mudge, Lewis S. (eds), The Routledge Companion to the Christian Church (New York and London: Routledge, 2008), pp. 28–47, 38 (37–9)Google Scholar. For further readings see: Rapp, Claudia, Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity: The Nature of Christian Leadership in an Age of Transition, (Berkeley-Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sullivan, From Apostles to Bishops; and Kaufman, Peter Iver, Church, Book, and Bishop: Conflict and Authority in Early Latin Christianity (Boulder, CO, and Oxford: Westview and HarperCollins Publishers, 1996)Google Scholar.
23 John McGuckin records very interesting advice the monks in Egypt would hear from their elders about the church's bishops: ‘if you see a bishop approaching, flee from him faster than you would before a woman’: McGuckin, J., St Gregory of Nazianzus, An Intellectual Biography (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir's Press, 2001), p. 89Google Scholar.
24 Profound here is the systematic link Gregory makes between church service and the work of the Holy Spirit. Christopher Beeley successfully spots this theological link. Beeley points with this regard to Oration 12, where Gregory says: ‘“I opened my mouth and drew in the Spirit” (Ps 119/118.131) and I give myself and my all to the Spirit – in practice and word and non-practice and silence. Only may it hold me and guide my hand and mind and tongue . . . I am a divine instrument, a rational instrument, an instrument tuned and struck by that master musician, the Spirit’: Beeley, Gregory of Nazianzus, pp. 157–9.
25 Nazianzen, Orations, 20.4 (Daley, p. 100). Becoming church theologian and leader means for Gregory, as R. R. Ruether says, ‘freeing the image of God within man from the depressing power of matter and bringing it back to its aboriginal state as a reflection of the divine archetype’: Ruether, Rosemary Radford, Gregory of Nazianzus: Rhetor and Philosopher (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), p. 136 (pp. 136–55)Google Scholar. Gregory expressed this also in Orations, 2.91.
26 E.g. Nazianzen, Orations, 40.32, 39.
27 Nazianzen, Orations, 20.5 (Daley, p. 100).
28 Nazianzen, Orations, 20.12 (Daley, p. 104).
29 Nazianzen, Orations, 26.1 (Daley, p. 106 (pp. 105–17)).
30 Nazianzen, Orations, 26.4 (Daley, p. 108).
31 Nazianzen, Orations, 26.9 (Daley, p. 111).
32 McGuckin, J. C., ‘Autobiography as Apologia in St. Gregory of Nazianzus’, Studia Patristica, 37 (2001), pp. 160–77Google Scholar.
33 McGuckin, ‘Autobiography as Apologia’, p. 165. C. Beeley almost repeats a similar interpretation yet in less polemic words: Beeley, Gregory of Nazianzus, p. 41.
34 McGuckin, ‘Autobiography as Apologia’, pp. 166–7. McGuckin supports this by arguing, for instance, that the Egyptian bishops’ attack against Gregory Nazianzen was because this latter stood with the emperor in his attempt to break down the legacy of Meletius after his death during the procession of the 381 council. Gregory eventually lost his presidency, McGuckin concedes, because he lacked the support not only of the Egyptians but also the Antiochenes, who considered Gregory's conformity to the emperor's plan against Melitius’ legacy an act of treason against them. For an insightful narration of the events which led to the decision of the Antiochenes to abandon Gregory's side, see Beeley, Gregory of Nazianzus, pp. 45ff. Beeley eloquently describes the setting as the surprised, even shocked Egyptian bishops, who worked hard to sack Gregory from his position, hear him in the council reciting his decision of resignation and allegiance to the Trinity instead of to the clerical chair (ibid., p. 51).
35 McGuckin, ‘Autobiography as Apologia’, p. 161.
36 One wonders how McGuckin's appraisal above harmonises with his other judgement of Gregory's character as like a ‘highly introspective, insecure and sensitive child’. McGuckin's interpretation of Gregory's relationship with his father, furthermore, seems to turn Nazianzen into a fourth-century quasi-Oedipus figure, obsessed with stabilising his personal identity by contrasting and opposing himself to his father's: McGuckin, Intellectual Biography, p. 2 (pp. 1–34).
37 Christopher Beeley probably takes the same line of reading of Gregory's character in this story: Gregory of Nazianzus, pp. 40–1.
38 Daley, Gregory of Nazianzus, pp. 10–11.
39 Ibid., p. 12. One can trace similar standpoints in Gregory's other writings, like Orations 9–12, and letters 48–50 and even in his panegyric to Basil, Oration 43.
40 Daley, Gregory of Nazianzus, p. 11, and also McGuckin, Intellectual Biography, pp. 190–1. McGuckin even claims that Gregory's obsession with his familial and educational rank appears, as McGuckin thinks, in his eagerness for socialising with the aristocrats and the people of high rank segments of society: ‘[Gregory's] correspondence demonstrates just how much the intercourse with literate pagan and Christian intellectuals, socialites, and provincial aristocracy, was meat and drink to him through all his life’ (ibid., p. 87).
41 Daley, Gregory of Nazianzus, p. 13. A similar attitude also characterises Gregory's reaction to his ordination, as we read in his second oration. There, Gregory shows that his solitude in Pontus in response to Basil's assignment of him to priesthood at Christmas 361 was not because he was ashamed of the rank and desiring a higher one: Nazianzen, Oration 2, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. 7, sect. 5, pp. 204–27. Rosemary R. Ruether is not far from the truth when she realises that Gregory's exaggerated agitation at Basil's assignment to him of the bishopric of Sasima may just express his ‘over-sensitive’ character, and that the accusation of being proud and engulfed with self-centredness is actually Basil's reaction to Gregory's decision: Ruether, Gregory of Nazianzus, p. 35 (pp. 34–41). See also Nazianzen, letters 45, 46 in The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, P. Schaff and H. Wace (eds) (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974), vol. VII, p. 452.
42 Nazianzen, Orations 2.9.
43 Nazianzen, Orations 39.7 (Daley, pp. 130–1 (pp. 128–38)).
44 Nazianzen, letter 11 (Daley, pp. 173–4).
45 Nazianzen, letter 48 (Daley, pp. 176–7).
46 Nazianzen, letter 58 (Daley, pp. 179–80).
47 Nazianzen, letter 11 (Daley, p. 180).
48 Nazianzen, letter 58 (Daley, p. 180).