and a gathering of philosophers who are bound by no earthly tie, who possess bodies only—and not even those entirely; who have nothing for Caesar, but attribute all things to God—hymns, prayers, vigils, tears, wealth that cannot be seized by hands, to die to the world, to live for Christ, to macerate the flesh, to abstract the soul from the body. By sparing these, or rather by restoring entirely to God the servants of the divine name and those conscious of the mysteries, the inspectors of heavenly things—these, I say, the first-fruits of our race, these pillars, these crowns of faith, these precious pearls, these stones of that temple, whose foundation and cornerstone is Christ—the beautiful, I say, fulfillment of the Church: you would counsel both them, and yourself, and all of us most excellently. And I pray that this wealth might fall to you from us, rather than great treasures of gold and silver, which now exist, and after a little while will not. B
XVII. You have the gift of my discourse, if lower than your hope, yet certainly such as we were able to offer. But you, in return for this my dispensation, repay me with what is greater, namely, tractable and obedient minds. Thus, to other benefits let this also be added, that you have less need of my speeches, by truly considering one another unto the stirring up of charity and good works; so that, having attained the kind and humane Scripture from on high, and dancing around the King of all—which alone is the work of those written there—we may offer praise to God, looking upon the one and same glory and splendor of the divinity of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and exalting it with praises, to whom be glory, and honor, and adoration unto the ages of ages. Amen. C
Notice on Oration XX
I. After the death of Gregory’s parents, he himself, according to the more probable opinion, having abdicated the care of the Church of Nazianzus, betook himself to Seleucia in the year 375. There, for three years, he remained almost unknown to men, devoted to solitude, vigils, and the contemplation of heavenly things. But, on account of the fame of his holiness and eloquence, sought by the wishes of very many prelates, and placed by Theodosius the Great in the Constantinopolitan see, around the year 379, he sowed the same seeds of doctrine and piety in the flock entrusted to him. At that time, an incredible, as it were, cohort of errors had invaded Constantinople. Not only heretics, but even the Catholics themselves, were agitating new and dangerous questions concerning divine matters. From the diversity of opinions, quarrels and dissensions arose; and such was the force of minds and the itching of tongues that not only temples, but even the fora and houses, were continually resounding with sacred matters.
II. The Theologian beats back this rashness, and first of all he particularly censures those who, neither instructed in the knowledge of sacred letters, nor commendable for the holiness of their lives, arrogantly ascribed to themselves the name of theologians. By many examples brought forth from Scripture, he shows that it is not permitted for everyone to approach, or to behold, or to touch the Holy of Holies, but only those who have been called by God, and who have offered themselves as a living sacrifice, nay rather, the very [host of God...]
and who have purified their mind and tongue so as to receive the illumination of the Spirit.
ORATION XX. ON DOGMA AND THE CONSTITUTION OF BISHOPS
I. When I look upon the itch for talking that is prevalent at this time, and those "wise men" who have sprung up in the space of a single day, and theologians made by choice and vote, for whom it is enough to have the mere will to be wise, I yearn for the highest philosophy, and I seek, according to Jeremiah, a final refuge, and I desire to be alone with myself. For nothing seems to me as good as this: to silence the senses, to be outside the world and the flesh, touching nothing of human affairs unless under the pressure of absolute necessity, and to converse only with myself and with God, leading a life that is higher than the things that are perceived by sight, and carrying within myself the divine forms and pure images of things, ever free from all earthly and wandering phantoms, B and to become, and always remain, a most pure mirror of God and divine things, receiving light from light, and what is clearer from what is more obscure, until we arrive at the fountain of the rays of this life, having the mirrors dissolved by truth, and attaining the blessed end; so that scarcely anyone, even if he exercise himself long in philosophy and discipline, and seek to free the nobility and splendor of his soul from the contagion of the humble and darksome body, and obtain God, or both these things, and by practicing above all else to look upward, might gain the victory over the material which drags him down. But before one has mastered this as much as possible, and sufficiently cleansed both the ears and the mind...
as it were, and who have not first presented themselves to God as a living sacrifice, nay rather, who have not become a holy temple. B
II. And that you may not think me over-timid, but rather commend my prudence and judgment, I shall explain the source of this fear. First, I hear Moses himself, at the time when God spoke His oracles to him, saying that although many were summoned to the mountain, of whom one was Aaron with his two sons—those priests—yet all the others were commanded to worship from afar, while Moses alone was to approach closer, and the people were not even to ascend together with him. And, as he narrates a little earlier, the lightnings, the thunders, the sound of the trumpets, the whole mountain smoking, the fearful threats, and similar terrors held them below; so much so that they thought it a great thing merely to hear the voice of God, and that, too, only after having purified themselves with the utmost diligence. But Moses ascends, enters into the cloud, holds communion with God, and receives the Law—for the many, the law of the letter, but for those who rise above the many, the law of the Spirit. C
III. Furthermore, I know well what happened to Eli the priest, and shortly after to Uzzah. The former paid the penalty for the transgression which his sons committed against the sacrifices, and this despite the fact that he had not only not approved of their impiety, but had also rebuked them for it many times and in many ways. The latter, because he dared merely to touch the ark when it was jolted by the oxen, preserved it indeed unharmed, but perished himself, God clearly guarding the reverence due to His ark. And I know also that it was not permitted for the masses even to touch the walls of the temple, and that for this reason there had to be other walls to enclose them; nor were the sacrifices themselves to be consumed by whomsoever, whenever, or wherever it was not fitting; much less was it permitted for anyone to approach, look upon, or touch the Holy of Holies, the veil, the mercy-seat, or the ark itself. D
IV. Knowing these things, and that no one is worthy of the great God, and the sacrifice, and the high priest, who says that it is our Jesus Christ, but not the Father at this moment—we note this against those who restrict the term "Great" to the Father alone, and assign the secondary portions to the Son; for [he speaks of him] as a sacrifice and high priest, in the one sense as having been slain and having been offered for our salvation, and in the other as not having been [offered] by another, but as having sacrificed himself by his own power and having set himself forth for a voluntary slaughter.
A And if he has not first presented himself to God as a living sacrifice, or rather, if he has not become a holy and living temple of the living God, how could I readily venture upon discourses about God, or approve of one who does so with rashness? The desire is not commendable; the undertaking is fearful. Therefore, we must first be purified, and only then approach Him who is pure, and hold communion with Him; lest the same fate befall us as befell Manue, and our eyes being bedazzled by the vision of God, we say, "We shall perish, woman, for we have seen God"; or, like Peter, we bid Jesus depart from our boat, as if unworthy of such a visitation; or, like that centurion, we ask for healing, but do not receive the Healer. Let one of us say, as long as he is a centurion, and holds the command of vice over many passions, and still serves under Caesar, the ruler of this world and of those who crawl upon the earth: "I am not worthy that thou shouldst enter under my roof." But when I behold Jesus—though I be small in spiritual stature, like that Zacchaeus, and have raised myself above the sycamore tree, having mortified the members that are upon the earth, and withered the body of lowliness—then will I also receive Jesus, and I shall hear: "Today salvation has come to this house"; and I shall attain salvation, and I shall philosophize upon the more perfect things, dispersing B well what I had gathered ill, whether it be wealth or doctrines.
V. Since we have purified the Theologian by our discourse, come, let us now speak briefly about God, relying and leaning for support upon the Father Himself, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, concerning whom we are about to speak. I wish that what happened to Solomon might befall me, that I may neither conceive nor utter anything of God that is mine or my own. For when he uses these words: "I am the most foolish of all men, and the wisdom of man is not in me," he does not mean to condemn himself for lack of understanding. For how could he, who had even asked for this from God before all else, and had received wisdom, and vision, and largeness of heart, more abundant and overflowing than the sand of the sea? And he who is so wise, and has attained such a gift, how does he call himself the most foolish of all men? C It is because he had, so to speak, no wisdom of his own, but was moved by the divine and more perfect wisdom. For Paul also, when he said, "I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me," did not speak of himself as if dead, but as one living a life superior to most, in that he had partaken of the true Life, and was surpassed by no death. D
We worship, therefore, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, distinguishing their properties, yet uniting the Godhead; and we do not fuse the three into one, lest we suffer the disease of Sabellius; nor do we divide them into three alien and foreign substances, lest we rage with the madness of Arius. For why, like a plant bending in one direction, must we forcibly bend it to the other side, correcting a distortion by a distortion, instead of straightening it towards the middle, and standing within the bounds of piety and orthodox faith? B
VI. Furthermore, when I say "the middle," I mean the truth, which we rightly keep alone before our eyes. We reject, therefore, both the evil contraction and this more absurd division; for fear of a multitude of gods, the discourse being contracted into one person, lest it leave us with nothing but naked and empty names, if we imagine that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are the same, and if we settle that these things are not so much one, as that each is nothing (for they would cease to be what they are, as they pass into and migrate into one another); or, on the other hand, for fear of falling into three strange, disparate, and disjointed natures, separated according to the rightly named madness of Arius, or into [natures] devoid of principium and inordinate, and, if I may so speak, contrary to the Godhead; so that, on the one hand, it is enclosed within a certain Jewish parsimony—if we limit the Godhead to the Unbegotten alone—and, on the other hand, it falls into the opposite, but no less pernicious, evil—if we constitute three principles and three Gods, which is even more absurd than the former error. For truly, it is not fitting that some should be such lovers of the Father that they take away from him his being Father; for of whom could he be the Father, if the Son were said to be different in nature from him, and alienated along with the rest of the creation? Nor, again, that they should be such lovers of Christ that they do not even preserve for him the name of Son; for whose Son, I ask, could he be, if he is not referred to the Father as to his source? Nor, finally, should they diminish the dignity of principium which the Father has as Father and begetter; for it would be a principium of small and unworthy things, were he not the cause of the Godhead which is contemplated in the Son and the Spirit. Since we must both preserve the one God and confess the three hypostases—or, if you will, the three persons—each with its own property. D
A
VII. Thus, in my opinion, the one God will be preserved if we refer the Son and the Holy Spirit to one cause, without compounding them or commingling them; and if we understand one and the same—if I may use the term—movement and volition of the Divinity, and the identity of its essence. We shall hold to the three persons, provided that no commingling, or dissolution, or confusion is thought of, lest otherwise the whole should be overturned by those who extol the unity more than is right. Finally, the account of the properties will be established for us if we consider the Father both as without beginning and as a beginning—a beginning, I say, as the cause, and as the fountain, and as the eternal light; but the Son, though by no means without beginning, yet as the beginning of all things. When I say "beginning," do not introduce time, nor set any interval between the Begetter and the Begotten, nor divide the nature by anything wrongly inserted into things that are co-eternal and conjoined. For if time were older than the Son, then the Father would of necessity have been his cause first. And how could he who is subject to time be the Creator of times? And how could he be the Lord of all, if he were preceded and dominated by time? The Father, therefore, is without beginning, for he does not have his being from another, nor from himself. B The Son, however, if you take the Father as his cause, is not without beginning, for the Father is the beginning of the Son as his cause; but if you understand beginning in terms of time, he is indeed without beginning, for the Master of times is not subject to time.
VIII. But if, because bodies are subject to time, you therefore demand that the Son also be subject to time, you will then be attributing a body to the incorporeal; and if, because things that are begotten among us, being once non-existent, later come into being, you therefore insist that the Son also necessarily came into the nature of things out of nothing, you are comparing things that defy all comparison: God and man, body and that which is devoid of body. Therefore, he will also suffer and dissolve and pass away, just as our bodies do. You, then, consider that for this reason God must be begotten in such a manner, because bodies are; I, however, for this reason do not—
affirm that he is begotten in such a manner, because that is the way of begetting bodies (for those whose nature is distinct, their mode of begetting is also distinct); unless you would contend that God must also in all other things serve the material laws—that is, that He must suffer, and dwell in sorrow, and labor with hunger and thirst, and experience all those affections to which the nature of the body, or of both parts combined, is subject. Yet your mind does not admit these things; for it is God of whom we speak. Do not, therefore, admit this generation in any other way than as divine.
IX. But if he is begotten, you ask, how is he begotten? Reply to me, O acute and invincible sophist. If he is created, how is he created? And afterwards, inquire of me how he is begotten. Is there passion, you might say, in generation? I say, there is also passion in creation. For does not the formation and the care, and the extension—which, having been thought of at once and suddenly, is then carried out in parts—involve the notion of passion? Is there time in generation? Those things that are created are also in time. Is there a place there? There is also a place here. Is there a frustration of hope in generation? Creation also sometimes frustrates hope. These things I have heard from you in your dissertations; for what the mind has sketched out, the hand B has often failed to execute. You will say: "He created all things by word and will; for He spoke, and they were made; He commanded, and they were created." But when you say that all things were created by the word of God, you do not introduce human creation; for none of us accomplishes what we do by word. There would be nothing higher or more excellent for us, nor less laborious, if we could accomplish something by speech alone. Wherefore, even if God creates those things which are created by His word, His method of creating is not human. C Either show me a human being who accomplishes something by speech, or grant me that God does not create in a human manner. But if you think otherwise, come, sketch a city by your will, and let the city at once stand present. Wish for a son to be born to you, and let a boy immediately stand before you. Wish for any other thing that is made by hands, and let your will immediately pass into a work. But if none of these things follows our will, while for God His will is action, it is clear that man creates in one way, and God, the Creator of all things, in another. What, then, is this logic, that while God procreates in a way other than human, He should be compelled to beget in a human D manner? You, indeed, since you were not before, were then brought into being, and then you beget; for this reason you bring what is not into existence. Or—to say something deeper—perhaps you do not even bring that into existence from what is not; for even Levi, as it is said, was still in the loins of his father before he passed into existence. And let no one take offense at the word. For I do not say the Son exists from the Father in such a way as though He were previously within the Father and afterwards passed into existence; nor as if He were first imperfect and then perfect, as is the law of our own generation.
A X. These are the ways of those who delight in detraction and calumny; these are the ways of those who readily leap upon everything that is said. But we do not think in this way, nor do we so judge; but we profess that just as the Father was in an unbegotten manner (and He always was, for the mind cannot contemplate Him as having ever not been, however much it may exalt itself), so too the Son was by generation; so that the being of the Father coincides with the generation of the Only-Begotten, who is indeed from Him, but not after Him, except perhaps by the sole thought of a principle. I use the word "principle" here to mean "cause." For I repeat the same words over and over, fearing the thickness and materiality of your understanding. If, B then, you do not curiously pry into the Son—whether one ought to call it generation, or subsistence, or some other term more appropriate than these (for what is understood and said surpasses my tongue)—do not curiously pry into the procession of the Spirit either. It is enough for me to hear that He is the Son, and that He is from the Father; and that the one is the Father, and the other the Son; and I do not curiously pry into anything beyond this, lest I suffer the same fate as voices which completely fail through being shouted too loudly, or as the eye strained C toward a sunbeam. For the more and the more accurately anyone wishes to see, the more his sense is injured, and he is deprived of the ability to see altogether, because the object of sight overcomes the vision if one desires to see the whole, and not just as much as it is safe to see.
XI. Do you hear of generation? Do not curiously inquire into the manner of it. Do you hear that the Spirit proceeds from the Father? Do not curiously investigate how this happens. But if you are curious in investigating the generation of the Son and the procession of the Spirit, I, too, with equal curiosity, will investigate the union and temperament of your soul D and body. How are you dust, and yet the image of God? What is that which moves you, or what is that which is moved? How does the same thing both move and is moved? How does the sense remain in the same, while it draws in what is external? How does the mind remain in you, and generate a word in another mind? How is a thought imparted through a word? And I do not yet speak of greater things: What is the revolution of the heaven? What is the motion of the stars, or their order, or measures, or conjunction, or distance? What are the boundaries of the sea? Whence come the currents of winds, or the turnings of the seasons, or the downpours of rain? If you have understood none of these, O man (for...
perhaps you will perceive them eventually, when you have attained perfection: "For I will see," he says, "the heavens, the work of Thy fingers" [Ps. VIII, 4]; so that we may conjecture that the things we now see are not the truth itself, but merely certain images of the truth); if you do not know yourself, whoever you are, you who dispute about these matters, if you have not yet comprehended in your intellect things of which your own senses are witnesses, how, pray, do you presume that you surely hold and know what God is, and how great He is? This is indeed a sign of great folly. A And you will realize this, perhaps, at some time, when you attain the perfect state.
XII. Therefore, if you will obey me at all—me, who am a theologian of no audacity, yet have already perceived some things—ask that you may also perceive those things that remain. Be content with that part which abides in you; let the other remain stored up in the heavenly treasuries. Ascend through the probity of your life; through purification, attain to Him who is pure. Do you wish to become a theologian at some time, and worthy of the Godhead? Keep the commandments; advance through the precepts of God; for action is the stepping-stone to contemplation; B exert yourself in the soul from the body. Is there any mortal who can be exalted to such a height as to reach the measure of Paul? Yet he says that he sees through a glass and in an enigma [I Cor. XIII, 12], and that there is a time when he shall see face to face. Are you, then, perhaps more sublime than others in disputation? Yet you are undoubtedly inferior to God. Are you, perhaps, more acute and perceptive than others? Yet you are certainly as far behind the truth as the essence of God surpasses your own essence. We have the promise that we shall one day know as we have been known [I Cor. XIII, 12]. If it is not possible to achieve perfect knowledge of all things in this life, what is left for me? What is set in hope? You will undoubtedly say, the Kingdom of Heaven. But I consider that to be nothing else than the attainment of that which is most pure C and most perfect. Furthermore, the most perfect of all things is the knowledge of God. Let us therefore hold part of it now, and part of it we should strive to perceive as long as we dwell on earth, and part of it we should reserve for the future age, so that we may possess this as the fruit of our labor and industry, even the whole illumination of the holy Trinity, which is—and what sort it is, and how great it is, if it is permitted to say this—in Christ Himself, our Lord, to whom be glory and power D for ever and ever. Amen.