Gregory of Nazianzus

Below is Oration 20 and 23, see paragraph 5 in oration 20, and 11 in 23, in particular.

Oration 20 the paradox of fatherhood, unbegottenness, and eternal generation of the Son: a practice in quiet piety.

Hence we worship the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, distinguishing their individual characteristics while maintaining their divine unity; and we neither confound the three into one, thus avoiding the plague of Sabellius, nor adopt the insanity of Arius and divide them into three entities that are unnaturally estranged from one another. Why must we violently swing in the opposite direction, attempting to correct one dis-tortion with another, much as one might try to straighten a plant that leans completely to one side, when we can, by moving directly to the center, stay within piety’s pale?

Oration 20, §5, p. 110 in the Vinson translation.

ORATION 23

Zeal is fervent, the Spirit is gentle, love is something kind, or rather, the very essence of kindness, and hope is something long-suffering. Zeal lights a fire, the Spirit soothes, hope abides, and love binds together the good that is within us and does not permit it to dissolve, even though our nature is subject to dissolution. Love either remains as it is, or, if it is disturbed, steadies itself, or, if it is deflected, it returns, just like plants that have been forcibly bent back with our hands and then released. They quickly revert to their true nature and in so doing show their basic proclivity: they can be made to bend by force but they do not right themselves by force. For vice is by nature something easily accessible, and the road to corruption wide, a torrent tumbling straight down or a bit of brush that is easily kindled by wind and spark and, as it turns to flame, consumes itself along with the product of its own creation. For fire is the product that matter produces, as well as the agent of its destruction, just as vice destroys the vicious and vanishes along with what feeds it. If one has nurtured some good quality that has molded his character, transgression becomes more difficult than becoming good in the first place, for every virtue that is firmly rooted by time and reason becomes second nature, as does the love within us too, with which we worship the true love and which we have folded to our hearts in love and adopted as the guiding principle for all our existence.

Where then are those who keep a close watch on our affairs, successes, and failures alike, not to judge them, but to voice their disapproval; not to share in our happiness but to gloat over us and belittle our accomplishments, and in melodramatic tones to magnify our faults and use the lapses of their neighbors as an excuse for their own miserable conduct? Would theirs were a fair evaluation! For there would be a certain benefit even in bile, as the proverb has it, if fear of the enemy could keep us more secure; as it is, their judgment of us is tainted by hostility and a malevolence that beclouds their minds, so that even their invective lacks credibility. Where then are those who hate the Godhead as much as they hate us? This is the most magnificent thing to happen to us: we are put in the dock together with God. Just where, we ask you, are those judges who are lenient when their own personal affairs are concerned but ruthless in their scrutiny of matters affecting others so that here too they may misrepresent the truth? Just where, we ask you, are those who berate us for our bruises when they bear the marks of wounds themselves? who ridicule us for stumbling when they themselves fall down flat? who take delight in our flecks of dirt while they themselves wallow in the mud? who are blinded by the logs in their own eyes yet point the finger at the specks in ours which neither cause discomfort because they are not deeply embedded nor are difficult to blow away or remove?

Come, partake of our mysteries! We invite you to meet with us, even though we are the objects of your hatred. We submit to the arbitration of our enemies–what arrogance, or should I say confidence!–so that you may go off ashamed and defeated–and what is the greatest paradox of all–having learned our true strength from the signs of our weakness. For it was not about the Godhead that we disagreed. Our conflict instead was in defense of protocol; nor were we arguing over which of two impieties we should choose, the one that contracts God, or the one that severs from the divine essence either the Spirit alone or the Son as well as the Spirit; in other words, a single or a double dose of impiety. These, in short, are the issues that mark our present malaise. In their hearts, they purpose to go up, not to a profession but to a denial of faith, and not to theology but to blasphemy. One man is more lavish than the next with his rich store of impiety, as though out of fear, not of committing impiety, but of showing moderation in the process and more sensitivity than anyone else.

We, however, are a different sort. We concur and agree regarding the Godhead in no less a fashion than the Godhead is in internal agreement with itself, if it is not presumptuous to say this; and we have become one lip and one language, but in an opposite way from those who once built the tower. They were unanimous in their pursuit of an evil end, whereas our efforts toward harmony have as their object every highest good, the exalting of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, with one heart and one voice that it may be said of us, and not only said but also believed, that God is really among us, who unites those who unite him and exalts those who exalt him. There are, however, other points on which we have been in disagreement, and regrettably so, here too, I shall not deny it (we ought not give the Devil any opening or opportunity, nor malicious tongues free rein). Still, these differences have not been so great as our detractors imagine. As humans, it was to be expected that we should commit some sin. Our transgression is simply that we have been too loyal to our pastors and that we could not decide, agreeing as we did that both were equally admirable, which of two goods we should prefer. This is our crime. This is the evidence on which anyone who so wishes should condemn or acquit us. It is on this that the heretics base their case; nothing more, however much you may wish it. Flies make the ointment give off an evil odor, says the preacher, when they die and decay in it. Envy aspires to contaminate morals but will not succeed. I range myself with Esdras: Truth is the strongest thing of all.

And so, we have ourselves managed to resolve our own differences in the past, and we will continue to resolve them. It is not possible for children to judge their parents unfairly, especially under the intercession of the common Trinity on whose behalf we are attacked and for whose sake we shall forbear to take up arms. I am the guarantor of peace, inadequate though I am to so great a task, because the Lord gives grace to the humble and brings the lofty to the ground. But how will this help you, our collective mediators? For mediators you are, even though you serve reluctantly. If we show our wickedness in some matter, trivial or important, you do not thereby become pious; if we commit some infraction, of course we do not merit commendation for our behavior; but the fact that it is we who sin does not make you less impious: you may perhaps be even more so insofar as you are more hardened sinners than the rest of us. And so that you may know that we are of one mind on every issue, and may learn that accordingly we shall be of one mind on every occasion in the future as well, not only has the evidence before you already, I think, supplied the proof but let my own words also confirm it: a conscientious father and a dutiful son, sitting side by side complementing one another and helping to kindle that spark of harmony and goodwill that is within you. As for him, you have heard him speak, and your applause is still ringing in my ears; and, I am sure that what lies in your hearts is of greater moment than what is diffused in the air. As for us, you will hear us again, as often as you like. And, if anyone considers our frequent public statements insufficient proof, let the trials and the stonings convince him, both those that we have already suffered and those that we are prepared to suffer, confident that it is not suffering that is the punishment but the lack of it, all the more so since we have tasted danger for Christ’s sake and have come away with its noblest fruit, the increase of this people.

What, then, is your wish? Are you convinced? There is no need for any further effort on my part? You do not require a second discourse on the Deity and so spare my infirmity, thanks to which I can hardly address you even now? Or should the same message reverberate over and over again, as for the hard of hearing, so that the constant din may penetrate your ears and we be heard? Your silence seems to be an invitation to speak. As the saying goes, Silence is assent. So listen to us both: we speak with one heart and one mouth. I am sorry that I cannot climb a high mountain, find a voice equal to the strength of my feeling and declaim before the world and all the wrongheaded people in it as though before a grand theater: O ye sons of men, how long will ye be slow of heart? Wherefore do ye love vanity, and seek falsehood? You posit not a single nor an uncompounded nature of divinity but either three that are alienated and disjoined from one another and, not surprisingly, in conflict by virtue of their being proportionately superior or inferior; or you posit a single nature, but one that is constricted and mean, and which is not in a position to be the source of anything significant precisely because it cannot or will not, and this for two reasons, either envy or fear: envy, because it wishes to avoid the introduction of something that is of equal importance; fear, lest it take on a hostile and belligerent element. In fact, God is the object of proportionately more honor than his creatures are to the degree that it is more in keeping with the greater majesty of the first cause to be the source of divinity rather than of creatures and to reach the creatures through the medium of divinity rather than the reverse, that is, for divinity to acquire substantive existence for their sakes, as our very subtle and high-flown thinkers imagine.

For if, while admitting the dignity of the Son and the Holy Spirit, we implied that they are either without source or from a different source, we should in fact face the terrible risk of dishonoring God or of setting up a rival deity. But if, no matter how highly you exalt the Son or the Spirit, you do not proceed to place them above the Father, or alienate them from him as their cause, but attribute their noble generation and marvelous procession to him, I shall simply ask you, my friend, you who are so fond of the expressions “unbegotten and without source,” who dishonors God more, the one who regards him as the source of the kinds of beings you yourself introduce, or the one who regards him as the Source not of such, but of those which are like him in nature and equal to him in honor, the kind that our doctrine professes? Your own son is to you a great, indeed, a very great, cause for honor, and all the more so if he takes after his father in all respects, and bears the true stamp of his sire, and you would prefer to be the parent of a single child rather than the master of countless slaves. Similarly, is there any greater cause for honor in God’s case than being the Father of his Son? This adds to his glory, not detracts from it, as does the fact that the Holy Spirit also proceeds from him. Or are you unaware that in regarding God as the source of “creatures,” by which I mean the Son and the Holy Spirit, you not only fail to honor the source but you also dishonor whatever issues from it? You dishonor the source by referring it to beings that are inconsequential and unworthy of divinity; you dishonor the issue, by making them inconsequential, and not merely creatures, but of all creatures the least honored. If in fact it was for the sake of these creatures that the Son and the Spirit came into existence at some point in time, like a craftsman’s tools that do not exist before the craftsman has made them, their only reason for being would be that God chose to use them to create something, on the grounds that his will was not enough; for everything that exists for the sake of something else is held in less esteem than the thing for which it was produced.

I, on the other hand, by positing a source of divinity that is independent of time, inseparable, and infinite, honor both the source as well as its issue: the source, because of the nature of the things of which it is the source; the issue, because of their own nature as well as of the nature of the source from which they are derived, because they are disparate neither in time, nor in nature, nor in holiness. They are one in their separation and separate in their conjunction, even if this is a paradoxical statement; revered no less for their mutual relationship than when they are thought of and taken individually; a perfect Trinity of three perfect entities; a monad taking its impetus from its superabundance, a dyad transcended (that is, it goes beyond the form and matter of which bodies consist), a triad defined by its perfection since it is the first to transcend the synthesis of duality in order that the Godhead might not be constricted or diffused without limit, for constriction bespeaks an absence of generosity; diffusion, an absence of order. The one is thoroughly Judaic; the other, Greek and polytheistic.

I also take into consideration the possibility, one that perhaps does not reflect ignorance and naivete on my part so much as careful thought, that you do not assume any risk at all when you posit the Son as begotten. For, you may be sure, the ingenerate does not experience generation in the way that bodies and material substances do since he is not a body. This even the popular conceptions about God concede. So why do we feel fear where there is no fear and why do we engage in vain impiety, as Scripture says? I, on the other hand, believe I do run the risk of compromising the Deity if I admit the creature, for what is created is not God, and what shares the yoke of servitude cannot be defined as master, even if it represents the very best that the world of servitude and creation has to offer and is the only thing in this vile station to display the quality of loving-kindness. For whoever withholds the honor due bestows not honor through what he gives but rather dishonor through what he takes away, even though his act gives the semblance of honor.

And if you start to speculate on passions in connection with generation, I too shall do so in the matter of creation; I am, of course, aware that no created thing is created without passion. But if he was not begotten and if you were not created, admit the rest of your argument since your use of the term “creature” presumes the like for all practical purposes. There is nothing that you hesitate to venture or attempt, perverse judge and critic of the Deity that you are. The only way that you could gain any credibility at all is by relegating God to a position far removed from any real power, just as on earth those of a tyrannical or avaricious bent do to those weaker than they. As for myself, I shall say only one thing, succinctly and in a few words. The Trinity, my brothers, is truly a trinity. Trinity does not mean an itemized collection of disparate elements; if it did, what would prevent us from calling it a decad, or a centad, or a myriad, if the number of components so justified? The arithmetical possibilities are many; indeed, more than these examples. Rather, Trinity is a comprehensive relationship between equals who are held in equal honor; the term unites in one word members that are one by nature and does not allow things that are indivisible to suffer fragmentation when their number is divided.

Our minds and our human condition are such that a knowledge of the relationship and disposition of these members with regard to one another is reserved for the Holy Trinity itself alone and those purified souls to whom the Trinity may make revelation either now or in the future. We, on the other hand, may know that the nature of divinity is one and the same, characterized by lack of source, generation, and procession (these correspond to mind, word, and spirit in humans, at least insofar as one can compare things spiritual with things perceptible and things that are very great with those that are small, for no comparison ever represents the true picture exactly); a nature that is in internal agreement with itself, is ever the same, ever perfect, without quality or quantity, independent of time, uncreated, incomprehensible, never self-deficient, nor ever so to be, lives and life, lights and light, goods and good, glories and glory, true and the truth, and Spirit of truth, holies and holiness itself; each one God, if contemplated separately, because the mind can divide the indivisible; the three God, if contemplated collectively, because their activity and nature are the same; which neither rejected anything in the past as superfluous to itself nor asserted superiority over any other thing for there has been none; nor shall leave anything to survive it or will assert superiority over anything in the future, for there will be none such; nor admits to its presence anything of equal honor since no created or servile thing, nothing which participates or is circumscribed can attain to its nature, which is both uncreated and sovereign, participated in and infinite. For some things are remote from it in every respect; others come close to it with varying success and will continue to do so, and this not by nature, but as a result of participation, and precisely when, by serving the Trinity properly, they rise above servitude, unless in fact freedom and dominion consist of this very thing, attaining a proper knowledge of sovereignty and refusing to confound things that are distinct because of a poverty of intellect. If to serve is so great an office, how great must be the sovereignty of those whom one serves? And if knowledge is blessedness, how great must be that which is known?

This is the meaning of our great mystery, this, our faith and rebirth in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and in our common name, our rejection of godlessness and our confession of the Godhead. This is the meaning of our common name. And so, to dishonor or separate any one of the three is to dishonor our confession of faith, that is, our rebirth, our Godhead, our deification, our hope. You see how gracious the Holy Spirit is to us when we confess him as God and how he punishes us when we deny him. I will not speak of the fear and the wrath that threatens, not those who do him honor, but those who dishonor him. This brief discussion has been offered in the interests of doctrine, not of controversy; as a fisherman would, not some precious Aristotelian; with spiritual, not mischievous intent; in a manner suited to the Church, not the marketplace; as a benefit to others, not as a rhetorical show. Our object is to inform those of you who agree only on the desirability of making pompous and defamatory speeches against us that we are united in our views and are of one inspiration and breathe one spirit; and to keep you from pecking like starvelings at our tiny scraps, call them faults or follies, and broadcasting them indiscriminately. It is the nadir of depravity to base one’s security not on one’s own sources of strength but on the weaknesses of others.

Look! We are joining right hands with one another before your very eyes. Behold the handiwork of the Trinity, which we glorify and worship alike! This is what will make you more charitable, as well as more orthodox. How I wish that our words may be heard and that it come to pass that this day become a day of convocation, holy, a day not of controversy, but of room for all, not a monument to tribulation but a festival of victory, so that you too may find a source of salvation and renewal in the mutual concord that exists among us and in virtually the entire world, which has remained sound in some areas, and has recently been restored in others and is beginning to be so in the portions that remain! O Trinity, holy and adored and long-suffering–long-suffering you are indeed to have endured for so long those who divide you! O Trinity, whose worshipper and undisguised herald I have long been privileged to be! O Trinity, who will in time come to be known by all, some through illumination and others through punishment! Be pleased to receive as your worshippers even these who now treat you with disdain and let us suffer no one to be lost, not even of the least, even if I myself should have to lose some measure of grace (I stop short of the sweeping declaration made by the Apostle).

What? My words are not to your liking? Your tongue is convulsed and labors to produce a retort? This, too, we shall witness one day, or those who have more leisure than we. We shall come to know also your delightful offspring, or rather, their aborted remains, when we hatch adders’ eggs or crush them with our reason, stern and unyielding, show them to be addled and full of air, and expose the viper of impiety that lurks in them, a viper, to be sure, but one that is dead and undeveloped, motionless, stillborn, with no existence prior to generation, to pay you a slight compliment by using one of your own expressions, one as abominated for its conception as pitied for its abortion. This, I know, will be granted to us by him who has given us to tread on the adder and viper and to tread upon serpents and scorpions and who will soon crush Satan under our feet whether he falls like lightning from heaven because of his former brilliance or is slithering away like a snake as a result of his later deviousness and his transformation into a creature that crawls on the ground, so that we may enjoy a brief respite from our troubles, our pain completely gone, and our grief and anguish, both now and in the future, in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be the glory and the power forever and ever. Amen.

Oration 23, see §11, p. 136-137 in the Vinson translation.

Gregory of Nazianzus. Select Orations. Translated by Martha Vinson. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2003.

A lot of my work in relational ontology, in the Principle of Relationality or ‘the Primitive,’ is an attempt to resolve Gregory of Nazianzus’s ‘paradox’ he mentions above, and i do that by nesting it within a framework that is also systematic and philosophically rigorous. In other words, my approach is to treat monarchy and paradox as explicitly nested inside the same relational act.