St. Gregory of Nazianzus: Poemata Arcana (review)

In the last decade of his life Gregory wrote eight theological poems called Poemata Arcana. This volume brings together the excellent work of two scholars of the work of the great Cappadocian. C. Moreschini is the editor of the Greek poems and provides a textual introduction. D. A. Sykes contributes a prose translation of the poetic texts, and a very extensive commentary of more than 200 pages on their literary and theological dimensions.

The eight hexameter Poemata Arcana, whose title may or may not go back to Gregory himself, form a pattern even while being singly independent. They are titled: On First Principles, On the Son, On the Spirit, On the Universe, On Providence, On Rational Natures, On the Soul, and On the Testaments and the Coming of Christ. The eclectic vocabulary varies from Homeric, Septuagint and New Testament, to new coinages. Familiar with classical conventions Gregory sets out to extend them to include Christian material. Writing in his retirement Gregory has been criticized for antiquarianism, but Sykes rather sees him as writing contemporary verse in a carefully stylized form for a restricted number of readers. By his inclusion of Christian themes he would be original, not antiquarian. The translations, wisely, are in prose form.

For the cultured Christian intellectual standing in the line of classical Greek authors, biblical revelation offers a new way of knowing. God the revealer accommodates himself to our limited level of understanding. In the Eunomian atmosphere of his period Gregory had to rescue human ability to attain genuine knowledge of God while criticizing those who saw this knowledge as complete and adequate. So he searches out analogies of the Trinity in the world, such as the practice of threefold baptism. His treatment of the Son is of course to be related to Theological Orations 3 and 4 as well as to the anti-Apollinarian letters. In short compass he contrasts human and divine qualities, as in Theological Oration 3, and spells out what Sykes calls the “equipoise of natures.” Both natures had to be complete to bring about the world’s salvation. Nor should there be any hesitation in proclaiming the divinity of the Holy Spirit, “who is God in heaven, who to me is God, by whom I came to know God, and who in this world makes me God.” Once again the soteriological argument is used: if the Holy Spirit is not God, how can he make me God.

When he comes to write of the cosmos, Gregory engages in anti-Manichean polemic, as both Basil and Gregory of Nyssa had done. Evil is no eternal principle but traceable to an opposition to God’s will. To answer Platonists Gregory states that the Forms were established by God; they are in his mind. He insists on the Christian principle that ex nihilo creation comes from God’s will, with no compulsion involved. A poem on Providence had to evaluate the thinking of the philosophers on the subject. Gregory is knowledgeable of the many discussions on Providence and finds them erroneous or inadequate. Astrology was a contemporary topic, as Julian the Apostate had promoted it, and the Christian poet had to refute it because it denied human freedom.

In the same way Gregory considers the various opinions of the philosophers on the subject of the soul. This he himself defines biblically as God’s breath mingled with the earthly. This biblical view confronts the various forms of belief in reincarnation that were a mark of Greek schools of thought. The cycle of birth signifies futility for Gregory. In his commentary Sykes refers to the philosophers and their wide acceptance of the idea, as well as the negative reaction of Christian authors. God’s breath mingled with earth, Adam was in an intermediate position with limited freedom subject to abuse.

The final poem (or is it 2?) treats of the relationship of the old and...