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Translated by Ch. Browne and J. Swallow.
Gregory Theologian Bilingual Anthology, Resources Online and in Print
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9 Pages
Page 9
They will flee from Marcion's [3780] god, compounded of elements and numbers; from Montanus' [3781] evil and feminine spirit; from the matter and darkness of Manes; [3782] from Novatus' [3783] boasting and wordy assumption of purity; from the analysis and confusion of Sabellius, [3784] and if I may use the expression, his absorption, contracting the Three into One, instead of defining the One in Three Personalities; from the difference of natures taught by Arius [3785] and his followers, and their new Judaism, confining the Godhead to the Unbegotten; from Photinus [3786] earthly Christ, who took his beginning from Mary. But they worship the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, One Godhead; God the Father, God the Son and (do not be angry) God the Holy Ghost, One Nature in Three Personalities, intellectual, perfect, Self-existent, numerically separate, but not separate in Godhead.
XVII. These words let everyone who threatens me to-day concede to me; the rest let whoever will claim. The Father will not endure to be deprived of the Son, nor the Son of the Holy Ghost. Yet that must happen if They are confined to time, and are created Beings...for that which is created is not God. Neither will I bear to be deprived of my consecration; One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism. If this be cancelled, from whom shall I get a second? What say you, you who destroy Baptism or repeat it? Can a man be spiritual without the Spirit? Has he a share in the Spirit who does not honour the Spirit? Can he honour Him who is baptized into a creature and a fellow-servant? It is not so; it is not so; for all your talk. I will not play Thee false, O Unoriginate Father, or Thee O Only-begotten Word, or Thee O Holy Ghost. I know Whom I have confessed, and whom I have renounced, and to Whom I have joined myself. I will not allow myself, after having been taught the words of the faithful, to learn also those of the unfaithful; to confess the truth, and then range myself with falsehood; to come down for consecration and to go back even less hallowed; having been baptised that I might live, to be killed by the water, like infants who die in the very birthpangs, and receive death simultaneously with birth. Why make me at once blessed and wretched, newly enlightened and unenlightened, Divine and godless, that I may make shipwreck even of the hope of regeneration? A few words will suffice. Remember your confession. Into what were you baptised? The Father? Good but Jewish still. The Son?...good...but not yet perfect. The Holy Ghost?...Very good...this is perfect. Now was it into these simply, or some common name of Them? The latter. And what was the common Name? Why, God. In this common Name believe, and ride on prosperously and reign, [3787] and pass on from hence into the Bliss of Heaven. And that is, as I think, the more distinct apprehension of These; to which may we all come, in the same Christ our God, to Whom be the glory and the might, with the Unoriginate Father, and the Lifegiving Spirit, now and for ever and to ages of ages. Amen.
[3780] Marcion was a contemporary of Valentinus. He was a native of Sinope in Pontus, of which city his father was Bishop. He supposed Three Principles, the Good God, Who was first revealed by Christ; the Just Creator, Who is the "hot tempered and imperfect" God of the Jews; and the intrinsically evil Hyle or Matter, which is ruled by the Devil. He also distinguished two Messiahs; one a mere warrior prince sent by the Jewish God to restore Israel; the other sent by the Good God for the delivery of the whole human race.
[3781] Montanus, a Phrygian enthusiast of the middle of the Second Century, imagined himself the inspired Organ of the Paraclete. Connected with him were two Prophetesses, Priscilla and Maximilla, who left their husbands to follow him. His heresy, or rather his schism, spread to Rome and Northern Africa, and threw the whole Church into confusion. He was very early anathematized by Bishops and Synods of Asia, but he carried the great African, Tertullian, away by his frenzy.
[3782] Manes or Mani, a Persia philosopher, astronomer, and painter of the Third Century, who introduced into Christianity some elements drawn from the religion of Zoroaster, especially its proton pseudos. Dualism, the co-eternity of two contradictory principles, Light and Darkness, Spirit and Matter, Good and Evil. This heresy flourished till the Sixth Century, S. Augustine himself having been for nine years led away by it. It is believed not to be wholly extinct even now in some parts of Eastern Christendom.
[3783] Novatus was a Carthaginian Priest, who at first rebelled against his Bishop, S. Cyprian, on account of his severity in the treatment of persons who had lapsed in the Decian persecution. At Rome, however, this same Novatus, either out of simple antagonism to constituted authority, or because he had really changed his views, adopted the extremest rigorism, and became one of the most violent partisans of the Priest Novatian, whom his followers contrived to get consecrated as a rival Bishop of Rome, in opposition to Cornelius, the reigning Pope. They set up a new "church," and arrogated to themselves an exclusive claim to the title of Cathari, the Pure.
[3784] Sabellius, a native of the Libyan Pentapolis, rejected the Catholic Faith of the Trinity of Persons in God, and would only allow a Trinity of manifestations.
[3785] It is hardly necessary here to dwell on the Arian tenets; cf. Prolegomena to the Theological Oration.
[3786] Photinus was a n by birth, and flourished in the fourth century, a little earlier than S. Gregory. He seems to have taught that our Lord Jesus Christ was a mere man, and had no existence previous to His Birth of the Virgin Mary. He made Jesus rise on the basis of His human nature, by a course of moral improvement, to the divine dignity, so that the Divine in Him is a thing of growth: cf. Schaff, H. E. Nicene Period, vol. ii. p. 653.
[3787] Ps. xlv. 4.
End of the Oration
Reference address : https://elpenor.org/gregory-nazianzen/against-arians.asp?pg=9
