Brian Dunkle S.J. - Poems on Scripture: Saint Gregory of Nazianzus (Popular Patristics Series Book 46)

Gregory of Nazianzus (c. 326389), preacher, poet, bishop, and saint, was born and spent much of his life on the country estate of Karbala, near the center of the Roman province of Cappadocia, in modern-day Turkey. His preaching, a model of rhetorical skill and theological subtlety, treats themes central to the articulation of pro-Nicene orthodoxy in the late fourth century; in particular, his Five Theological Orations, which he delivered while Bishop of Constantinople, clarified Christian thought on the divinity of the Holy Spirit and the relations within the Triune Godhead. His letters, which detail the political and ecclesiastical background to the theological disputes of his time, have likewise drawn steady interest from scholars looking to understand the eras social dynamics.

His poems, by contrast, are less widely known, although they have recently become the subject of closer study. Gregorys poetic corpus also includes the few instances where Gregory explicitly presents a reading of the biblical narrative. These seventeen scriptural poems, numbered I.1.12 to I.1.28 in Mignes Patrologia Graeca, form the heart of the translation that follows. After a brief overview of Gregorys family background and formation in pagan and Christian culture, I introduce the poems, focusing on their major themes, their catechetical motives, and their literary and theological merit. In addition to the translating these poems, I also include a number of Gregorys poems that reveal his attitude toward Scripture and his techniques for applying the biblical text to his own situation.

Some familiarity with Gregorys family background is needed before examining his theological project, both because Gregory frequently wrote about his upbringing, including paeans to his parents and siblings, and because family affairs otherwise dominated much of his career.

Gregorys father was instrumental in most of the major decisions of his life, including his ordination as a priest and then as a bishop (of Sasima in Asia Minor, a seat in which he was never formally installed), and his appointment to the see of Constantinople in 380. Moreover, familiarity with Gregorys background helps one understand the particularly personal nature of his theological project. Because of the many autobiographical references in his writings, Gregorys work is frequently the subject of psychological readings, which find him a sensitive, even self-obsessive, case. At the same time, he often offers his life as a model for his readers to imitate.

By all accounts, Gregory received a thorough classical formation, first during his childhood near Nazianzus and then during his stays at Palestinian Caesarea, Alexandria, and, most extensively, Athens. He was intimately familiar with Homer and the ancient poets, including Pindar, Aeschylus, and Sophocles.

He also knew the classical orators, especially Demosthenes, enough to imitate and adapt their language and rhetorical periods in his own speeches. At Athens Gregorys passion for composing literature also matured. In the autobiographical poem On his own life (II.1.11), he records his initial infatuation with writing: While my cheek was still beardless, a passionate love of letters possessed me. Indeed I sought to make bastard letters serve as assistants to the genuine ones. Words, both written and spoken, became Gregorys main preoccupation. More importantly, the quest to employ classical learning in order to articulate Christian thought would occupy the rest of his career.

In his letters, poems, and speeches, Gregory sought to put his classical training at the service of Christian revelation. During his studies, Gregory not only mastered the content of classical learning, but he also acquired classical ways of reading. Gregory learned to engage literature by interpreting it through close attention to the language of the author within the unity of his corpus. A well-trained student deciphered any problematic word, phrase, or passage by locating parallels in the text. Once the student could establish what the author meant in a broader context, he would be better equipped to resolve the ambiguity in the puzzling portion. Gregorys fastidious attention to words emerges from this early training.

Gregorys particular reception of Hellenistic, especially Alexandrian, philological techniques has been the subject of recent study. Even as he appropriated the classical Greek tradition into his writings, Gregory the Christian drew from the Bible as the ultimate source for his rhetoric. He was among the first generation to be formed in a Christian culture that was beginning to supplant the dominant pagan worldview. As Frances Young has documented, despite real ambivalence toward classical authors, Christians did not simply reject Greek paideia, but rather transformed it in order to promote learning based on the Bible. Christian readers applied the same techniques to reading Scripture that they had employed when reading Homer or Demosthenes; the Bible was seen as a unity, which could furnish the attentive reader with all the tools necessary for its own interpretation. Thus, even as he was alluding to Callimachus, Gregory could communicate Christian content in his writings.

It is surprising, then, that despite his thorough engagement with the Bible Gregory has left us virtually no extended scriptural exegesis or commentary. Such a study must engage Gregorys poems on Scripture. Although these verses lack any sustained, penetrating exegesis, they do reveal some of Gregorys basic assumptions in his approach to the sacred text. For their part, these attitudes are informed by Gregorys broader account of his reasons for composing verse in order to do theology. Thus, some background on Gregory the poet will help us understand the motives and techniques that guide his particular contribution to early Christian biblical theology.