Foundations: St. Gregory the Theologian
The life and formation of St. Gregory of Nazianzus (c. 329–390), the second of the three Cappadocian Fathers and the only Eastern Father after John the Evangelist to bear the title “the Theologian.” This section traces his origins in a family of saints, his education and the friendship with Basil forged at Athens, and the pattern of reluctant ordination and flight that shaped his whole life.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Church Father)
Gregory of Nazianzus is, by the consent of the Orthodox Church, the Theologian — a title he shares only with St. John the Evangelist and St. Symeon the New Theologian. He earned it not by the volume of his writing but by the precision of his teaching on the Holy Trinity, above all in the Five Theological Orations of 380. Yet the man behind that title was no systematic professor secure in his chair: Gregory was a contemplative drawn unwillingly into office, a rhetorician of incomparable gifts who longed for solitude, a friend wounded by friendship, and a bishop who fled his own ordination. The tension between vocation and reluctance runs through his whole biography and is itself a theological datum: for Gregory, the one who would speak of God must first be purified, and the purified soul does not grasp at office but trembles before it.
Files in This Section
| File | Subject |
|---|---|
| Family and Formation | The Nazianzus family of saints; birth c. 329–330; education at Caesarea, Alexandria, and Athens; the storm at sea and the baptismal vow; the friendship with Basil |
| The Reluctant Priest | The 361 forced ordination and flight to Pontus; Oration 2 as the founding text of pastoral theology; the pattern of flight and return; the 372 Sasima consecration and the wound to the Basil friendship |
See Also
- Orations 27–28 — the fruit of Gregory’s formation, delivered at Constantinople in 380
- The Friendship with Basil — the relationship begun at Athens, developed in this section
- St. Basil: Athens and Conversion — the same student years from Basil’s side
- The Church Fathers — Gregory among the Cappadocians
References
- McGuckin, John A. St. Gregory of Nazianzus: An Intellectual Biography. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001.
- Beeley, Christopher A. Gregory of Nazianzus on the Trinity and the Knowledge of God: In Your Light We Shall See Light. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
- Gregory of Nazianzus. Select Orations. Translated by C. G. Browne and J. E. Swallow, NPNF II/7.