Gregory of Nazianzus — Commentary on Scripture

1 Corinthians 13:7

Bearing all things, enduring all things for our love and hope regarding him, let us give thanks for all things, both favorable and unfavorable alike—I mean the pleasant and the painful—since reason often knows even these as arms of salvation.

ON HIS BROTHER CAESARIUS 24

1 Corinthians 13:12

No one has yet discovered or shall ever discover what God is in his nature and essence. As for a discovery some time in the future, let those who have a mind for it research and speculate. The discovery will take place, so my reason tells me, when this Godlike, divine thing, I mean our mind and reason, mingles with its kin, when the copy returns to the pattern it now longs after. This seems to me to be the meaning of the great dictum that we shall, in time to come, know even as we are known.

THEOLOGICAL ORATION 28.17

1 Corinthians 14:15

Worshiping and praying in the Spirit seem to me to be simply the Spirit presenting prayer and worship to himself.

THEOLOGICAL ORATION 31.12

1 Corinthians 15:25

“He must reign” till such and such a time … and “be received by heaven until the time of restitution” and have the seat at the right hand until the overthrow of his enemies. But after this? Must he cease to be king or be removed from heaven? Why, who shall make him cease, or for what cause? What a bold and very anarchical interpreter you are, and yet you have heard that of his kingdom there shall be no end. Your mistake arises from not understanding that “until” is not always exclusive of what comes after but asserts up to that time, without denying what comes after it. To take a single instance, how else would you understand “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world”? Does it mean that he will no longer be so afterward?

THEOLOGICAL ORATION 30.4

1 Corinthians 15:28

As the Son subjects all to the Father, so does the Father to the Son, the one by his work, the other by his good pleasure.

THEOLOGICAL ORATION 30.5

1 Corinthians 15:28

“God will be all in all” at the time of restoration—“God,” not “the Father.” The Son will not revert to disappear completely in the Father, like a torch temporarily withdrawn from a great flame and then joined up again with it—Sabellians must not wrest this text. No, God will be “all in all” when we are no longer what we are now, a multiplicity of impulses and emotions, with little or nothing of God in us, but are fully like God, with room for God and God alone. This is the “maturity” toward which we speed.

THEOLOGICAL ORATION 30.7

1 Corinthians 15:52

Why am I so earthly in my thoughts? I shall await the voice of the archangel, the last trumpet, the transformation of heaven, the change of earth, the freedom of the elements, the renewal of the universe. Then I shall see my brother Caesarius himself, no longer in exile, no longer being buried, no longer mourned, no longer pitied, but splendid, glorious, sublime, such as you were often seen in a dream, dearest and most loving of brothers, whether my desire or truth itself represented you.

ON HIS BROTHER CAESARIUS 21