01 — Foundations
The historical and biographical ground of St. Gregory the Wonderworker (c. 213 – c. 270): the land of Pontus and the city of Neocaesarea on the river Lycus, the pre-Nicene Church into which he was born to a wealthy pagan family, and the providential journey that brought the young law student — then named Theodore — to Origen at Caesarea Maritima, where five years of study made him a Christian and a theologian. These files establish what is securely known of his origins from his own Address of Thanksgiving to Origen and the notices of Eusebius, before the wonder-tradition begins.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Ante-Nicene Father; Wonderworker)
Gregory belongs to the generation of the third-century Church — after the Apostolic Fathers and the apologists, in the age of Origen and Cyprian, before the Peace of the Church under Constantine and the Council of Nicaea. He is among the very few figures of that century whose conversion and education we can follow in a first-person account, because he left one: the Address of Thanksgiving to Origen, delivered as he departed his teacher’s school. This section sets the context of Pontus and Neocaesarea — a Hellenized but largely pagan province on the southern shore of the Black Sea — and follows the genuine, datable record of his early life: his pagan birth, his legal studies, the journey south that brought him to Caesarea, and the encounter with Origen that he himself describes as the turning of his whole life.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| Pontus in the Third Century | The land of Pontus and the city of Neocaesarea on the Lycus; the Roman province, its Hellenized paganism, and the small, scattered Christian presence; the pre-Nicene Church of the third century — its persecutions, its theology, and its missionary frontier — into which Gregory was born. |
| The Student of Origen | Gregory’s pagan upbringing and legal education; the providential journey that brought him and his brother Athenodore to Origen at Caesarea Maritima; the five years of study under Origen’s philosophical and scriptural curriculum; and the Address of Thanksgiving to Origen, his own first-person testimony to that conversion and that teacher. |
See Also
- The Apostolic Missionary — the convert returns to Pontus as its missionary bishop
- The Trinitarian Creed — the doctrine the student carried out of Origen’s school
- The Genuine Works — the Address among the authentic writings
- The Church Fathers — Gregory among the ante-Nicene Fathers
- The Pre-Schism Church — the third-century Church of his world
References
- Gregory Thaumaturgus. Address of Thanksgiving to Origen. Trans. S. D. F. Salmond, in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 6. Buffalo: Christian Literature Company, 1886.
- Slusser, Michael, trans. St. Gregory Thaumaturgus: Life and Works. Fathers of the Church 98. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1998.
- Eusebius of Caesarea. The Ecclesiastical History. Trans. Arthur C. McGiffert, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series II, Vol. 1. 1890.
- Van Dam, Raymond. Becoming Christian: The Conversion of Roman Cappadocia. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003.
- Crouzel, Henri. Grégoire le Thaumaturge: Remerciement à Origène. Sources chrétiennes 148. Paris: Cerf, 1969.