The Theologian Among the Three

The Orthodox Church bestows the title “the Theologian” (ho Theologos) on only three of its saints: the Apostle John, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Symeon the New Theologian. The title does not mean “expert in theology” in the modern academic sense; it means one who, by purity and grace, speaks of God in Himself — of the inner mystery of the Trinity and the vision of the divine light. This file sets out the meaning of theologia in the Orthodox tradition and the three to whom the Church reserves the name, beginning with John.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Apostle and Evangelist)

The Meaning of “Theologian”

In modern usage “theology” names an academic discipline and a “theologian” is one who studies it. In the Orthodox tradition the word carries a far stricter and higher sense. Theologia, in the patristic vocabulary, is distinguished from oikonomia: oikonomia (the “economy”) is God’s saving work in creation, Incarnation, and redemption — what God does for us; theologia in the proper sense is the contemplation of God as He is in Himself — the mystery of the Holy Trinity, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in their eternal communion (cf. Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, 1957). To be a “Theologian” in this sense is not to have mastered a body of knowledge but to have been granted, in purity of heart, to speak truly of the inner being of God. It is therefore a charism and a holiness, not a degree. Evagrius gave the rule its classic form: “If you are a theologian, you will pray truly; and if you pray truly, you are a theologian” (On Prayer 60; Philokalia 1) — theology is born of prayer and union, not of speculation.

Why John Is “the Theologian”

John received the title above all for the opening of his Gospel, which speaks of God as He is in Himself before and beyond the economy: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1; see The Logos and the Prologue). Where the other Evangelists begin with the human story — the genealogy, the nativity, the Baptist — John alone soars to the eternal generation of the Word within the divine life, speaking of the Son’s eternity, His distinct personhood, and His full divinity. He gave the Church its highest words about the inner relations of the Father and the Son (“I and the Father are one,” John 10:30; “the Father is in me and I am in the Father,” John 10:38), and its inner name of God (“God is love,” 1 John 4:8; see God Is Love). For this reason the iconographic and liturgical tradition calls him ho Theologos, “the Theologian” — the one who, beyond the economy, spoke of God in His eternal being. The eagle, which alone among creatures was thought to gaze directly into the sun, became his symbol among the four living creatures (Revelation 4:7), figuring the soaring height of his vision of the divine Word.

The Three Who Bear the Title

The Church has guarded this title with extraordinary restraint, conferring it on only three of all its saints — a fact itself revealing of how it understands theology.

John the Apostle and Evangelist (1st century) — “the Theologian,” for the Logos-theology of his Gospel and the height of his vision of the eternal Word and the love of God, as set out above.

Gregory of Nazianzus (c. 329–390) — “the Theologian,” the Cappadocian father whose Five Theological Orations (Orations 27–31), delivered at Constantinople, defended and articulated the Nicene faith in the consubstantial Trinity against the Arians and the Pneumatomachi. Gregory received the title for the precision and depth with which he spoke of the Trinity — the eternal generation of the Son and procession of the Spirit, the unity of essence and distinction of Persons — and for grounding all theology in purification: “It is not for everyone… to discourse about God; the subject is not so cheap and low… It is permitted only to those who have been examined, and are passed masters in meditation, and who have been previously purified in soul and body” (Gregory, Oration 27.3; trans. NPNF II/7). His Orations are the charter of the Orthodox understanding that theology is for the purified (see St. Gregory the Theologian).

Symeon the New Theologian (949–1022) — “the New Theologian,” the Byzantine monk and abbot whose Hymns of Divine Love and Catechetical Discourses bore witness, against a formalism that would relegate the vision of God to the apostolic past, that the living experience of the divine light is granted still to those who are purified and who love. He was named “Theologian” because, like John and Gregory, he spoke of God not at second hand but from immediate experience of the uncreated light, and “New” to mark him as the third in the line and the witness that the charism of theology was not closed (see St. Symeon the New Theologian).

The Common Thread

The three are not chosen at random; they form a single line. John gave the Church its highest words about the eternal Word and the God who is love, from the immediacy of one who lay on the Lord’s breast and beheld His glory. Gregory defended and articulated the Trinitarian faith those words imply, insisting that such theology belongs only to the purified. Symeon witnessed, in an age tempted to think the vision of God a thing of the past, that the same purity still opens the same vision of the same light. Together they embody the Orthodox conviction that theology in its true sense is the fruit of holiness and the vision of God — that one becomes a theologian not by study alone but by being purified, by praying truly, and by loving. It is fitting that the first and greatest of the three should be the disciple whom Jesus loved, for in the Orthodox understanding the knowledge of God and the love of God are one, and the Theologian par excellence is the apostle of love.

See Also

References

  • The Gospel according to John 1:1; 10:30, 38 (cited by chapter and verse); the First Epistle of John 4:8; Revelation 4:7.
  • Gregory of Nazianzus. Theological Orations (Orations 27–31), esp. 27.3. Trans. NPNF Series II, Vol. 7.
  • Symeon the New Theologian. Hymns of Divine Love. Trans. George A. Maloney. Denville: Dimension Books, 1976.
  • Evagrius of Pontus. On Prayer 60. Trans. in The Philokalia, Vol. 1. London: Faber, 1979.
  • Lossky, Vladimir. The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church. London: James Clarke, 1957 (on theologia and oikonomia).