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  • Gregory of Nazianzus on the Trinity and the Knowledge of God: In Your Light We Shall See Light
  • Lucian Turcescu
Christopher A. Beeley Gregory of Nazianzus on the Trinity and the Knowledge of God: In Your Light We Shall See Light Oxford Studies in Historical Theology Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2008 Pp. xviii + 396. $49.95.

This book deals with the Holy Trinity, a subject that was so dear to one of the most important fourth-century Greek theologians, Gregory of Nazianzus. Beeley, who teaches Anglican Studies and Patristics at Yale, in acknowledging the highly rhetorical and contextualized literary form in Gregory's work, takes them into account, beginning with an overview of Nazianzen's life, context, and theological endeavors. The Introduction presents Gregory's life and work. Chapter 1, "God and the Theologian," deals with what Beeley calls Gregory's "repeated insistence that the knowledge of God is inseparably related to the condition of the human knower," that is, the purification and illumination constituting the spiritual framework in which the knowledge of God takes place. Beeley concedes that the Platonic theme of purification of the knower is present, but insists that the Bible itself contains similar ideas and that Gregory is aware of both traditions. By correcting some existing English translations to reflect more properly the original Greek language of Gregory's works, Beeley also argues against those who cast Gregory as a deeply apophatic theologian: "although he does not 'comprehend' God, Gregory tells us that he does 'see' God; [that is,] he attains a real knowledge of God, even if it is less than full comprehension" (101).

The main chapters expose Gregory's doctrine of the Trinity, in some cases proposing rather revisionist interpretations in reaction to what Beeley considers to be "points of misinterpretation in current scholarship" on Nazianzen. One point he takes issue with is the dichotomy of theology/economy in regard to the Trinity: according to conventional opinion in the East and West, "theology concerns God in himself, God's being and intra-Trinitarian relations, whereas economy refers to God's works in creation" (198). This distinction, according to Beeley, has had a "devastating" effect on the study of Gregory's doctrine of the Trinity, as it makes the Cappadocians sound Origenistic. Beeley attributes the origin of this mistake to German church historian Karl Holl, who seems to have cast the Cappadocians in the Romantic categories of religious experience, while noticing that Aristotle too—but not many of the church fathers—seems to have espoused a distinction between theology and economy. The theology/ economy dichotomy is not present in Nazianzen who thinks of theology as the knowledge of the Trinity as it is revealed within the divine economy and here Beeley makes a convincing case.

Another topic that is treated in a revisionist fashion in this book is the notion of monarchy of God the Father. Since 1973, patristic scholars as diverse as E. P. Meijering, J. Meyendorff, F. Norris, R. P. C. Hanson, J. Egan, R. Cross, J. McGuckin, L. Ayres, and J. Behr, but also systematic theologians such as T. Torrance and J. Zizioulas, have argued about how to understand the real meaning of one of Gregory of Nazianzus's most controversial passages, Oration [End Page 147] 31.14. In a 2007 article in the Harvard Theological Review, Beeley argued that "Gregory's doctrine of divine causality . . . represents the very heart of what he takes to be the catholic faith" and that the unique causality and monarchy of the Father is not contradictory with the unity, co-equality, and shared divinity of the Trinity (212). In that article, as in the current book, the author brings additional texts to support his contention, in particular Oration 25.15–18, for which he provides a fresh translation. To use Beeley's words, these texts talk about the fact that "the divine unity is not to be located in the common Divinity . . . but in the monarchy of the Father, by which the Father fully shares his being with the Son and the Spirit" (207). Despite these attempts to show that Gregory is consistently stating the monarchy of God the Father, Beeley has...

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