Voices and influences
Gregory of Nazianzus
He preached five sermons in a borrowed room to a congregation that fit in a house, and settled how the whole church speaks about the Trinity.
Summary
This site quotes Gregory of Nazianzus 79 times across 21 books, and lists 0 works.
- Lived died 390.
- Quoted here most in Mark: 16 of 79.
Gregory of Nazianzus
- Lived
- died 390
- Tradition
- Patristic
5 of 79 quotations
Own words
Quoted in full, because Gregory of Nazianzus died in 390 and these works are out of copyright. Each citation below names its edition and its year. A citation naming a modernised text means that edition makes its own editorial changes, and that edition's terms are not in this site's record.
What is this that has happened to me, O friends and initiates and fellow lovers of the truth?
THEOLOGICAL ORATION 2:3, 390
The rest of the quotation
I was running to lay hold on God, and thus I went up into the mount and drew aside the curtain of the cloud and entered away from matter and material things. And as far as I could I withdrew within myself. And then when I looked up, I scarce saw the back parts of God, although I was sheltered by the rock, the Word that was made flesh for us.
Exodus 33:22 and when My glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft of the rock and cover you with My hand until I have passed by. BSB
Whether he is eternally begotten or not, I do not yet say, until I have looked into the statement, "Before all the hills he begets me" more accurately. But I cannot see the necessity of their conclusion.
ON THE SON, THEOLOGICAL ORATION 3 (29).13, 390
The rest of the quotation
For if, as they say, everything that is to come to an end had also a beginning, then surely that which has no end had no beginning. What, then, will they decide concerning the soul or the angelic nature?
Proverbs 8:25 Before the mountains were settled, before the hills, I was brought forth, BSB
I have heard sacred Scripture saying, "Who shall find a valiant woman?" and also that she is a gift of God, and that a good marriage is arranged by the Lord.
ON THE DEATH OF HIS FATHER, ORATION 18:7, 390
The rest of the quotation
Those outside, too, have the same thought—if indeed the saying is theirs: "There is no greater boon for a man than a good wife, no worse, than the opposite." It is impossible to mention anyone who was more fortunate than my father in this respect.
Proverbs 31:10 A wife of noble character, who can find? She is far more precious than rubies. BSB
Nor indeed is there any distinction between the state of the people and that of the priesthood: but it seems to me to be a simple fulfillment of the ancient curse, "As with the people, so with the priest."
IN DEFENSE OF HIS FLIGHT, ORATION 2:82, 390
The rest of the quotation
Nor again are the great and eminent men affected otherwise than the majority; no, they are openly at war with the priest, and the piety of the people is an aid to their powers of persuasion.
Isaiah 24:2 people and priest alike, servant and master, maid and mistress, buyer and seller, lender and borrower, creditor and debtor. BSB
The same thing applies to the word Lord, which is also used as a name of God. "I am the Lord your God," he says. "This is my name," and "The Lord is his name."
ON THE SON, THEOLOGICAL ORATION 4(30).18, 390
The rest of the quotation
But we are making deeper enquiries into a nature that has absolute existence, independent of anything else. The actual, personal being of God in its fullness is neither limited nor cut short by any prior or any subsequent reality—so it was, and so it will be.
Isaiah 42:8 I am the LORD; that is My name! I will not yield My glory to another or My praise to idols. BSB
Influence, on the record
This site quotes Gregory of Nazianzus 79 times across 21 books.
This site’s own count of what it does with the voice
The life, in order
The life told as one accountfrom this site's record
Gregory was born about 329 at Arianzus, near the town of Nazianzus in Cappadocia. His father, also Gregory, had belonged to an odd Jewish-pagan sect before his wife Nonna brought him to Christ; he then became bishop of Nazianzus and held the see for forty-five years. The son was the child of a vow — Nonna had promised him to God before he was born, and he knew it his whole life. He was educated at Caesarea in Cappadocia, at Caesarea in Palestine, at Alexandria, and finally at Athens, where he stayed about ten years. There he met Basil, and the friendship became the fixed point of his life. He was, by his own account and everyone else's, the finest Greek stylist of his generation and temperamentally unfit for a fight — a scholar who wanted a quiet room and got dragged out of it again and again. He was ordained priest by his father in 362, against his will, and ran away to Basil's monastic retreat in Pontus for a few months before shame brought him back. He preached his return sermon on it, and never pretended otherwise: he had fled. In 372 Basil, needing loyal bishops to hold his province against the Arian emperor, consecrated him bishop of Sasima — a dusty crossroads waystation with, Gregory said, no water and no grass and nothing but dust and the noise of carts. He never took up residence. It strained the friendship badly, and he was still writing about it years later. He assisted his aged father at Nazianzus instead, and after his father and his mother and his brother and his sister had all died within a few years, he withdrew to Seleucia and expected to be finished. He was about fifty when the summons came, and it was the reason for his life. Constantinople, the capital of the Eastern empire, had been in Arian hands for four decades. Every major church in the city belonged to them. In 379 the small Nicene remnant asked Gregory to come and be their pastor. He arrived with nothing, and set up a chapel in a relative's house. He called it the Anastasia — the Resurrection — because, he said, the true faith would rise again there. In that room, to a congregation that could fit inside a house, he preached the five sermons known ever since as the Theological Orations. They are the clearest statement of the doctrine of the Trinity produced in the ancient church. He argued that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are one God in three, distinguished not by rank or by degree of divinity but only by their relations to one another; that the Spirit is God, worshiped and glorified with the Father and the Son; and — against those who claimed Christ took a human body without a human mind — that whatever the Son did not assume, he did not heal. Since it is the human mind that goes wrong, the Son took a human mind. The line has governed Christian thinking about the incarnation ever since. He paid for the sermons. Mobs pelted the chapel with stones. He was physically attacked during a service at Easter 379. A young man was sent to assassinate him and lost his nerve; Gregory forgave him publicly and the man became a friend. When Theodosius took the Eastern throne in 380 he restored the churches to the Nicene party and installed Gregory in the great church of the Holy Apostles under armed guard, through a hostile crowd. In 381 the emperor convened the Council of Constantinople — the second ecumenical council. Gregory was made its president after the first president died. And then it went the way councils go. His appointment to the capital was challenged on a technicality: he was already bishop of Sasima, and a canon of Nicaea forbade moving from one see to another. The Egyptian bishops arrived and pressed it. Gregory, sick and sick of it, stood up in front of the council and offered himself as Jonah — throw me overboard if the storm is about me. He resigned the see, preached a farewell to the city, and went home. The council finished without him, and the creed it produced — the one recited in churches every Sunday, with its clause on the Holy Spirit — carries his theology and Basil's, though Basil had died two years earlier and Gregory had walked out. He spent his last years at Arianzus writing poetry, including a long autobiographical poem, De Vita Sua, in which he says exactly what he thought of church politics and of himself. He died about 390. The Eastern church gave him a title it has given only two other men: Gregory the Theologian. Sources: Gregory of Nazianzus, Orations 27–31 (the Theological Orations); Gregory of Nazianzus, De Vita Sua and Oration 43 (on Basil); Socrates Scholasticus, Ecclesiastical History; Philip Schaff, ed., Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series II, vol. 7.
79 quotations across 21 books
Where this voice is quoted
People went out to him from all of Jerusalem and the countryside of Judea. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River.
“Let us here treat briefly of the different kinds of baptism. Moses baptized, but in water, in the cloud and in the sea; but this he did figuratively.”
In those days Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.
“As man he was baptized, but he absolved sins as God. He needed no purifying rites himself—his purpose was to hallow water.”
When the scribes who were Pharisees saw Jesus eating with these people, they asked His disciples, “Why does He eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
“When Jesus is attacked for mixing with sinners, and taking as his disciple a despised tax collector, one might ask: What could he possibly gain by doing so? Only the salvation of sinners.”
Jesus replied, “How can the guests of the bridegroom fast while He is with them? As long as He is with them, they cannot fast.
“Can the children of the bridechamber fast while the bridegroom is present? Why should they keep a bodily fast who are effectively cleansed by the Word, who came in bodily form as visible Word?”
Truly I tell you, the sons of men will be forgiven all sins and blasphemies, as many as they utter.
“He is the subject, not the object, of hallowing, apportioning, participating, filling, sustaining. We share in him; he shares in nothing. He is our inheritance, he is glorified, counted together with Father and Son. He is a dire warning to us, the "finger of God."”
But Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on the cushion. So they woke Him and said, “Teacher, don’t You care that we are perishing?”
“He was wearied, but He is the Rest of them that are weary and heavy laden. He was heavy with sleep, but He walked lightly over the sea. He rebuked the winds, He made Peter light as he began to sink.”
So He could not perform any miracles there, except to lay His hands on a few of the sick and heal them.
“One meaning of "could not" is simply the limits of some human will. Take, for example, the point that Christ "could not" fulfill any signs in Nazareth was due to disbelief on their part.”
But Jesus told them, “You give them something to eat.” They asked Him, “Should we go out and spend two hundred denarii to give all of them bread to eat?”
“As man he was put to the test, but as God he came through victorious—yes, he bids us be of good cheer, because he has conquered the world. He hungered—yet he fed thousands. He is indeed "living, heavenly bread."”
“Why do you call Me good?” Jesus replied. “No one is good except God alone.
“The words, "None is good" are a reply to the young ruler who was testing him and had borne witness to his goodness as a human being.”
David himself calls Him ‘Lord.’ So how can He be David’s son?” And the large crowd listened to Him with delight.
“What is lofty you are to apply to the Godhead, and to that nature in him which is superior to sufferings and incorporeal; but all that is lowly to the composite condition of him who for your sakes made himself of no reputation and was…”
They were delighted to hear this, and they promised to give him money. So Judas began to look for an opportunity to betray Jesus.
“He is sold, and cheap was the price—thirty pieces of silver; yet he buys back the world at the mighty cost of his own blood. A sheep, he is led to the slaughter—yet he shepherds Israel and now the whole world as well.”
Then Pilate questioned Him again, “Have You no answer? Look how many charges they are bringing against You!”
“A lamb, he is silent—yet he is "word," proclaimed by "the voice of one crying in the wilderness." He is weakened, wounded—yet he cures every disease and every weakness.”
There they offered Him wine mixed with myrrh, but He did not take it.
“He is lifted up and nailed to the Tree, but by the Tree of Life He restoreth us; yea, He saveth even the Robber crucified with Him; yea, He wrapped the visible world in darkness. He is given vinegar to drink mingled with gall. Who?”
And the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.
“He surrenders his life, yet he has power to take it again. Yes, the veil is torn, for things of heaven are being revealed, rocks split, and dead men have an earlier awakening.”
When the centurion standing there in front of Jesus saw how He had breathed His last, he said, “Truly this man was the Son of God!”
“Many indeed are the wondrous happenings of that time: God hanging from a cross, the sun made dark and again flaming out; for it was fitting that creation should mourn with its creator.”
Now it was already evening. Since it was Preparation Day (that is, the day before the Sabbath),
“Yesterday the lamb was slain, and the door posts sprinkled with his blood, while Egypt mourned for her firstborn. But the destroying angel and his sacrificial knife, fearful and terrifying, passed over us, for we were protected by the precious blood.”