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5 The Most Potent Pharmakon Gregory the Elder and Nazianzus To comprehend all that [pertains to the Trinity] and to present it in a manner appropriate to the height of the subject requires an exposé well beyond the present circumstances; it indeed requires an entire life. Most important, . . . it requires the intervention of the Spirit. . . . Therefore, we have now addressed the subject in a few words only to demonstrate the difficulty of finding the word that has the power to put everybody on the right track and to illuminate them with the light of knowledge, especially because we are addressing a crowd composed of different people, . . . like an instrument of many chords, each of which must be struck in a different way. —Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 2.39 In 362 and 363, as Gregory was writing his first three orations, the philosopher’s principal duty as physician of the soul—to comprehend the Logos as fully as humanly possible, to imprint its healing words on the souls in his care, and to strengthen his own and their kinship (oikeiōsis) with God—had assumed particular urgency. The koinōnia of those affiliated with God was in deep crisis, indeed engaged in a veritable civil war (Or. 2.85). Incapable and insufficiently trained persons had assumed leading positions out of base motives: selfishness, vanity, hunger for money and power. Their words, rather than heal, had poisoned and weakened the body of the church so that it was open to great threat, the “war from the outside ” waged by Julian (Or. 2.87). In Gregory’s view, the only pharmakon that could remedy the dire situation was the correct understanding of “everything one must profess about the Trinity, which rules and is blessed.” But because sham philosophers who had shunned the “great effort” required to comprehend the Trinity (Or. 2.91) mixed and dispensed thispharmakon incorrectly, they destroyed souls and annihilated all hope of salvation (Or. 2.36). Hence, it was incumbent on Gregory as true philosopher to provide the touchstones for identifying true and false philosophers and tainted mixtures of the Trinity , and “to give to each at the right moment the right ration of the Word, and to 182 dispense judiciously the truth of our doctrines.”1 As for the true philosopher, Gregory wrote himself as the paradigm. His refusal of office demonstrated his purity and affiliation with the divine, which predestined him to lead others toward God, healing them with the well-chosen words he now pronounced: in his hands (and only his) the mixture of the Trinity would protect, heal, and save. Though Gregory diagnosed “three theological maladies”—three false mixtures of the Trinity threatening the health of the politeia, “atheism and Judaism and polytheism ” (Or. 2.37)—the false philosophers and other persons he targeted are not easy to identify.Followingrhetoricalconvention,Gregorynevernamednames;thuswemust deduce the identity of his opponents from his allusive remarks—much as had been thecasewithThemistiusandhisdetractors,discussedinChapter3.Gregory’sremarks indicateandthehistoricalcircumstancesintheyears362and363suggestheengaged homoiousians and homoians active in Nazianzus and in the empire at large (that is, as far as Gregory was concerned, in Antioch and Constantinople). Two men, Aetius and Eunomius, were already then prominent homoians; the most important person in this chapter, however, will be a prominent homoian (or Arian) at Nazianzus: Gregory the Elder. I turn now to him and to Gregory the Younger’s shaping of him, as father and bishop, and of his relation to those at Nazianzus in the second oration. Though Gregory’s understanding of the Trinity—as he formulates and defends it against detractors in Oration 2—indicates his intention to enter the tumultuous debates that preoccupied Christian leaders in the East during the early 360s, his first three orations leave no doubt that for him in 363 the situation at Nazianzus was paramount. After all, Gregory had left his father, the bishop, in 362 at a moment of high tension, enmeshed in a full-fledged schism that had not been resolved when he returned at Easter 363. Gregory’s Apology for His Flight and the presentation of his model of Christian leadership directly concerned Gregory the Elder, and the audience at Nazianzus was, presumably, very interested to hear how Gregory the Younger framed Gregory the Elder’s role as father and as bishop. THE OTHER HIGH-WIRE ACT: FATHERS AND SONS This is what this venerableAbraham here present shows you, the patriarch, this precious and respectable man, this abode of all that is good, this [living] code [kanōn...

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