Theological Orations

Gregory of Nazianzus, Orations 27–31

Gregory of Nazianzus

Five sermons, preached in a borrowed room, by a man who kept trying to go home.

Catch rate: 55 / 255
Base research: 180
Stat total: 278

Base stats

Every stat is a checkable fact about the actual book, not a designer's mood. Bars are drawn against the highest value any book reaches.

Stamina58

Contend82

Defend70

Popularity68

Total278

Why these numbers

The game's own explanation, as a reader sees it in the backpack.

Stamina 58

Modest. Five sermons, and they were enough to settle how the church talks about God.

Contend 82

High. Gregory preached these in a small borrowed room in Constantinople, where every church belonged to the Arians. Within two years the creed was using his words.

Defend 70

A strong Greek tradition, quoted so relentlessly by everyone after him that the text is checkable against a thousand borrowings.

Popularity 68

Quick. The Eastern church has given the title the Theologian to only three people, and these five sermons are why Gregory is one of them. They appear in almost every collection of the fathers, so he usually speaks first.

Cited for this book

He hated the job, said so constantly, and resigned in the middle of the council he had been brought in to win. He also complained that you could not buy bread in Constantinople without the baker explaining the Son’s relation to the Father — which is the best surviving evidence of how far this argument had got into ordinary life.

Development

A book develops as it is read — the fragment becomes the work, the work becomes the corpus.

Theological Orations→
Lv 33

Nazianzen’s Corpus

Moves learned

By levelling up. A book that develops keeps what it knew and learns the rest on its new schedule.

Lv	Move	Type	Cat.	Pwr	Acc	PP
1	What Is Not Assumed	Christology	Argument	84	95%	5
1	Random Verse	Bible	Argument	10	100%	30
9	A Name of God	Theology Proper	Argument	40	100%	15
10	Affirm	—	Status	—	—	1
16	Rule of Faith	Christology	Argument	55	100%	15
20	Chapter…	Bible	Scripture	—	—	12
24	Without Beginning	Theology Proper	Argument	70	100%	10
28	Brighter Than Light	Theology Proper	Argument	68	100%	10
36	Word Made Flesh	Christology	Argument	70	100%	6
50	Speak Greek	History	Status	—	100%	5

The quotes behind its moves

How to read these. In Scholar’s Dream, books argue with each other. Each thing a book can do in a debate is a move, and most moves carry a real quotation — the words the book puts on the table when it uses that move.

Strong against lists the opposing books and arguments a move was written to answer. Used against one of them, it hits much harder than usual: ×2 means twice the normal force, ×4 four times. It is the game’s way of saying: this is the sentence that answers that argument. Open an entry to read why.

“For that which He has not assumed He has not healed; but that which is united to His Godhead is also saved… if the whole of his nature fell, it must be united to the whole nature of Him that was begotten, and so be saved as a whole.”
Gregory of Nazianzus, Epistle 101, To Cledonius Against Apollinarius (trans. Browne & Swallow, NPNF² 7, public domain).public domain

What Is Not Assumed

ChristologyArgument · power 84 · 95% accurate

In the gameWhatever Christ did not take on, he did not heal. Leave any part of a human being out of the incarnation and you have left that part out of the rescue.

Strong against

×2.5Damascene’s Corpusa book · why?

John of Damascus gives this very rule in the Exposition (3.18): what is not assumed is not remedied. He read Gregory the Theologian closely and quotes him by name.

×2.5Exact Expositiona book · why?

John of Damascus gives this very rule in the Exposition (3.18): what is not assumed is not remedied. He read Gregory the Theologian closely and quotes him by name.

“For in him we live, and move, and have our being. As some of your own poets have said.”
Acts 17:28 (WEB) — Paul at the Areopagus, quoting the Athenians’ own poets back to them.

Affirm

Status

In the gamePick the part of the opponent’s case that is true and affirm it. That point can no longer be used against you, and the opponent’s Defend falls sharply. It deals no damage. Affirm something false and you have only agreed with an error.

“The Church, though dispersed … the whole world… has received from the apostles and their disciples this faith… carefully preserves it, as if dwelling in but a single house.”
Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.10.1–2 (trans. Roberts & Rambaut, ANF 1, public domain; condensed).public domain

Rule of Faith

ChristologyArgument · power 55 · 100% accurate

In the gameOne public tradition, handed down openly in all the churches.

Strong against

×4Gos. Judasa book · why?

And this book is BUILT on that error — it has nowhere left to stand once the rule is read out.

×4Gos. Thomasa book · why?

And this book is BUILT on that error — it has nowhere left to stand once the rule is read out.

×2"That’s Three Gods"an argument · why?

Irenaeus points to the one faith held by the churches everywhere: one God the Father, one Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. The church has always named three and counted one God.

×2Hidden Sparkan argument · why?

Irenaeus shows the church has not grown through sharing secrets but by bearing witness (publicly!) to the truth, from Germany to Egypt.

×2Letter to Floraan argument · why?

Ptolemy wrote it privately, to one woman. Irenaeus’ test is a faith said aloud in every church, for anyone to compare.

×2The Traitor’s Handsan argument · why?

Irenaeus points to the one faith held by all the churches together. The Donatists kept a pure church in one province, but the true church is spread through the whole world.

×2Thirty Aeonsan argument · why?

Irenaeus’ complaint was that no two Valentinian teachers described the aeons the same way. He compared their disagreements against the shared and consistent testimony of the church — the Rule of Faith.

“The Father is without beginning and is unbegotten, and he has always been regarded as the Father.”
Gregory of Nyssa, Against Eunomius 1.33 (trans. Gerald Bray) — quoted under fair use.in copyright · fair use

Without Beginning

Theology ProperArgument · power 70 · 100% accurate

In the gameThere was never a Father who was not already Father. Unbegotten, without beginning — and therefore never without a Son.

“He who thinks that he knows the magnitude of God, is diminishing it; he who desires not to lessen it, knows it not.”
Minucius Felix, Octavius 18 (trans. R. E. Wallis, ANF 4, public domain). The move takes its name from the same chapter: “He can neither be seen — He is brighter than light.”public domain

Brighter Than Light

Theology ProperArgument · power 68 · 100% accurate

In the gameGod cannot be seen — he is brighter than sight; nor grasped — he is purer than touch. The confident measurer loses the thread.

“the renewal of creation has been the work of the self-same Word that made it at the beginning. For it will appear not inconsonant for the Father to have wrought its salvation in Him by Whose means He made it.”
Athanasius, On the Incarnation 1.4 (trans. Archibald Robertson, NPNF² 4, public domain).public domain

Word Made Flesh

ChristologyArgument · power 70 · 100% accurate

In the gameFrom Athanasius: only the Creator can recreate.

Strong against

×4One Nature After the Unionan argument · why?

It holds the flesh in place — which is the one thing his union cannot do.

×4The Ugly Broad Ditchan argument · why?

Lessing’s ditch says history can never carry necessary truth. The claim on the table is that it did, once, on purpose — the Word made flesh, a fact about a Tuesday.

×3The Many Faiths, One Realan argument · why?

Hick says the faiths are level roads to one summit. Athanasius answers with a fact and not a view: God himself became a man. That cannot be one road among several, because it is not a road at all. It is an arrival.

×2Changeable by Naturean argument · why?

The Word who became flesh is the Word who made the world. He was truly tempted, but he was never a creature who might have gone the other way.

×2Devout Man Onlyan argument · why?

A devout man can teach, but he cannot remake the world. The Word who made creation became flesh to renew it, and that is why he is worshipped.

×2Exalted Creaturean argument · why?

Athanasius’ answer: only the one who made the world can remake it. A creature, however high, cannot save creation, because it is part of creation.

×2God by Gracean argument · why?

Athanasius says the Word who renews creation is the same Word who made it. That is who the Son is, not a title he was lent.

×2The Thaliaan argument · why?

The Word who became flesh is the Word through whom everything was made, time included. The one who made time did not begin within it.

×2The True Word: On the Godsan argument · why?

The Word who came down is the Word who made the world. Coming into his own creation does not change the Creator.

×2Thirty Aeonsan argument · why?

The thirty levels exist to keep God away from matter. John 1 answers that he came down all of them himself — the Word, made flesh.

Read it: The Back Parts of God

The passages the Scriptorium holds on screen, word for word from a public-domain translation. Written in Koine Greek.

“It is difficult to conceive God but to define Him in words is an impossibility.”
Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 28.4, the Second Theological Oration (trans. Browne & Swallow, NPNF² 7, public domain, lightly modernized).

“But in my opinion it is impossible to express Him, and yet more impossible to conceive Him.”
Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 28.4 — the sentence immediately after the one above (trans. Browne & Swallow, NPNF² 7, public domain).

“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.”
Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 28.3 (trans. Browne & Swallow, NPNF² 7, public domain, lightly modernized); cf. Exodus 33:23.

“If He is to be worshipped, surely He is an Object of adoration, and if an Object of adoration He must be God; the one is linked to the other, a truly golden and saving chain.”
Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 31.28, the Fifth Theological Oration, on the Holy Spirit (trans. Browne & Swallow, NPNF² 7, public domain).

“For that which He has not assumed He has not healed; but that which is united to His Godhead is also saved.”
Gregory of Nazianzus, Epistle 101, to Cledonius (trans. Browne & Swallow, NPNF² 7, public domain).

Notes

Five sermons, preached in Constantinople in 380 in a private house, because the Nicene party in that city was small enough to fit in one.

Watch the two sentences from 28.4 in order. The first is the concession every philosopher would grant. The second takes it back the other way and makes it worse: the trouble is not that God is hard to say, it is that He is harder still to think.

Which is not scepticism. Gregory spends the next four orations saying a great deal — he is fencing the ground before he walks on it.

Epistle 101 travelled with the Orations in the manuscripts, so it is not a separate book; it is the last page of this one. And it is the sentence the whole Christological argument runs on.