GREGORY OF NAZIANZUS 12+

📖 This study on the life and thought of St. Gregory of Nazianzus was written by feminist theologian and Patristic scholar, Rosemary Radford Ruether, as her doctoral dissertation and originally published by Oxford University Press in 1969. The focus of the study is the tension and conflict in the life of Gregory of Nazianzus and his contemporary Christian companions, such as Basil the Great and Gregory Nyssa, between rhetoric and philosophy.This is a conflict that has deep roots in Greek culture, going back to the time of Isocrates and Plato. It reflects two major streams of Greek culture, the literary tradition of classical education and public argumentation, with its often specious use of language, and the philosophical search for truth which saw itself as culminating in spiritual communion with the Good, the True and the Beautiful. In the Christian context of the fourth century A.D. this conflict had been translated into a tension between classical literary education, which still shaped the socialization of Christian leaders such as Gregory and informed the patterns of their preaching, and their search for contemplative union with God. Gregory and others spoke of the ascetic life of emerging Christian monasticism as "the philosophical life," thus incorporating this tension between rhetoric and philosophy into their own lives.For Gregory and other Christian leader of his time, Christians should renounce worldly ambition and even Christian positions of power, such as ep...