St Gregory the Theologian
Today we commemorate our father among the saints Gregory the Theologian, God-bearing defender of the faith, who presided over the opening of the 2nd Œcumenical Council in Constantinople.
St Gregory was an outstanding champion of orthodoxy in the second half of the fourth century, during the ongoing struggle against the heresy of Arius—that God the Son is not truly God but a sort of creature—a struggle which began with the 1st Œcumenical Council, held at Nicæa in A.D. 325, before Gregory was even born, and which culminated at the 2nd Œcumenical Council in 381.
Gregory was born in the year 329 on the family estate near the village of Arianzus in Cappadocia, Asia Minor. (Arianzus is now the town of Aksaray in central Turkey, about 150 km southwest of Kayseri, the ancient Cæsarea of Cappadocia.) His father, also named Gregory, became bishop of the nearby town of Nazianzus. Gregory’s family is remarkable in that not just Gregory himself, but his father Gregory, his mother Nonna, his brother Cæsarius and his sister Gorgonia have all been recognised as saints by the Church for their exceptional piety.
Gregory received the best education, Christian and secular, available at the time, completing his studies at the university in Athens. There he met two other students from Cappadocia, Basil and his brother, also named Gregory, who would be commemorated by the church as SS. Basil the Great and Gregory of Nyssa. The three remained close friends for as long as they lived and are known to history as the Three Cappadocians, whose profound theologizing cleared away the semantic confusions that had bedevilled trinitarian debate during the Arian controversy, and gave us the orthodox dogma of the Trinity that has prevailed from that day to this. In particular, St Gregory the Theologian combatted the heretical teaching that the Holy Spirit is not a person of the Trinity but a sort of action or function of God.
In 364 Valens, a militant supporter of the Arian party, became Augustus in the East, doing everything in his power to weaken the orthodox. When St Basil, who along with St Athanasius was a prominent leader of the Nicene cause, became bishop of Cæsarea and so metropolitan of Cappadocia in 370, Valens responded by dividing the province of Cappadocia in two to reduce his influence. To ensure that the faithful in the new province of Cappadocia Secunda would have orthodox leadership, Basil campaigned to have his friend Gregory elected bishop of Sasima, a small town in the new province, even though Gregory far preferred the contemplative life of a monastic.
St Athanasius died in 373 and St Basil died at the beginning of 379. St Gregory the Theologian inherited their mantle as champion of the faith of Nicæa. Valens had died a few months before St Basil but the principal churches were still in the hands of the Arians. The orthodox of Constantinople invited Gregory to lead them and he began to teach in the Church of the Anastasis, virtually singlehandedly restoring the city to orthodoxy.
At the same time, Theodosius, a firm supporter of orthodoxy, became Augustus in the East. In 381 he called a council in Constantinople, which would be known as the 2nd Œcumenical Council, to confirm Gregory as patriarch of the city. The council went on to reaffirm the faith of Nicæa and vindicate the divinity of the Holy Spirit, which had been denied by the Arians. It brought the Arian controversy to an end after a tumultuous and sometimes violent half century. However, some of the bishops at the council disputed Gregory’s ordination as bishop of Constantinople because of his prior ordination as bishop of Sasima. Gregory, unwilling to fight over what he considered a trifle, resigned his see, being succeeded by St Nectarius, who presided over the conclusion of the council. Gregory retired to Nazianzus, then to the family estates, where he died in 389.
The following is a passage from St Gregory’s defence of the Holy Spirit in his Fifth Theological Oration:
‘What then, say they, is there lacking to the Spirit which prevents His being a Son? for if there were not something lacking He would be a Son. We assert that there is nothing lacking—for God has no deficiency. But the difference of manifestation, if I may so express myself, or rather of their mutual relations one to another, has caused the difference of their Names. For indeed it is not some deficiency in the Son which prevents His being Father (for Sonship is not a deficiency), and yet He is not Father … For the Father is not Son, and yet this is not due to either deficiency or subjection of Essence; but the very fact of being Unbegotten or Begotten, or Proceeding has given the name of Father to the First, of the Son to the Second, and of the Third, Him of Whom we are speaking, of the Holy Ghost that the distinction of the Three Persons may be preserved in the one nature and dignity of the Godhead … The Three are One in Godhead, and the One Three in properties; so that neither is the Unity a Sabellian one [with no distinction of persons], nor does the Trinity countenance the present evil distinction [of the Arians, in which the Son and the Holy Spirit are not of the same essence as the Father].’
[Oration 31, 9; trans. Charles Gordon Browne and James Edward Swallow, eds. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, Nicene and post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, VII, 1894. From the New Advent website, ed. Kevin Knight.]
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