Theological Oration 2: On the Doctrine of God

Contents

Translation in progress.

Reading pages: 1–18 · 19–31

1. 1After describing the true theologian, Gregory begins his treatment of God by invoking the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
2. 2Using Moses’ ascent of Sinai, Gregory ranks his hearers by their purity and warns the hostile to keep away from the mountain of theology.
3. 3Like Moses in the cleft of the rock, Gregory sees only God’s “back parts,” his majesty in creation, not the divine nature itself.
4. 4Correcting Plato, Gregory says that God can neither be expressed nor, still less, fully conceived by any created mind.
5. 5The divine nature is incomprehensible: we can know that God is, but not what he is.
6. 6Creation shows that God exists, as a lyre points to its maker, but no one has grasped what God is.
7. 7God cannot be a body, for bodies are limited, composite, and subject to dissolution.
8. 8God cannot be a body of any kind, not even Aristotle’s fifth element, since he fills all things and moves all things.
9. 9Calling God incorporeal or unbegotten says only what God is not; it does not state his substance.
10. 10Asking whether the incorporeal God is somewhere or nowhere shows how human reason falters before him.
11. 11Gregory explains that God is incomprehensible not out of divine envy or self-glory.
12. 12God may have hidden himself so that knowledge of him is prized, pride is avoided, and a reward is kept for the pure; bodily life always clouds our vision.
13. 13The names given to God are drawn from created things; the mind, unable to grasp God, either idolizes creation or rises through it to God.
14. 14Gregory traces idolatry to worship of the heavens, the elements, images of the dead, and deified rulers.
15. 15Pagans deified their passions and even animals, a deception of the devil who misdirected their longing for God.
16. 16Reason, starting from creation’s order and preservation, leads us to God as its maker and sustainer.
17. 17No one has found what God is in his substance; that knowledge awaits the life to come, when we shall know as we are known.
18. 18Gregory surveys the patriarchs from Enosh to Jacob: each knew something of God, but none grasped his nature.
19. 19Elijah, Manoah, Peter, Isaiah, and Ezekiel saw appearances of God but not his nature.
20. 20Paul confessed that he knew only in part; the full knowledge of God is among the things that cannot yet be borne.
21. 21Knowledge of God is the hardest of all: Solomon, Paul, and David all confessed that his ways surpass understanding.
22. 22The mysteries of human nature, soul and body, senses, memory and sleep, show how little we understand even ourselves.
23. 23The endless variety of animal life is another mystery beyond our full understanding.
24. 24Fish, songbirds, the cicada, the swan, and the peacock testify to a wisdom we cannot fathom.
25. 25The instinctive skill of birds, bees, spiders, cranes, and ants surpasses the greatest human geometers and artists.
26. 26Plants, springs, hot baths, and the shape of the earth show God’s bounty and power, and the earth rests on nothing but his will.
27. 27The sea kept within its bounds, the sailor’s crossing, springs, and rivers all proclaim God’s command over the waters.
28. 28The air, winds, snow, rain, and thunder surpass the natural philosophers’ explanations and call for faith beyond reason.
29. 29Astronomy observes the motions of the stars but cannot explain their cause; the sun above all shows the Creator’s power.
30. 30The sun, the seasons, the moon, and the stars remain mysteries; astrologers who read human destinies in them turn creation against its Creator.
31. 31Even the angels, pure intelligible beings who serve and praise God, surpass human understanding, how much more the Trinity itself.