Gregory of Nazianzus

What aspects of theology should be investigated, and to what limit? Only aspects within our grasp, and only to the limit of the experience and capacity of our audience. Just as excess of sound or food injures the hearing or general health, or, if you prefer, as loads that are too heavy injure those who carry them, or as excessive rain harms the soil, we too must guard against the danger that the toughness, so to speak, of our discourses may so oppress and overtax our hearers as actually to impair the powers they had before.Yet I am not maintaining that we ought not to be mindful of God at all times. My adversaries, ever ready and quick to attack, need not pounce on me again. It is more important that we should remember God than that we should breathe: indeed, if one may say so, we should do nothing else besides. I am one of those who approve the precept that commands us to “meditate day and night,” to tell of the Lord “evening, and morning, and at noon,” and to “bless the Lord at all times,” or in the words of Moses, “when we lie down, when we rise up, when we walk by the way,” or when we do anything else whatever, and by this mindfulness be molded to purity. So it is not continual remembrance of God I seek to discourage, but continual discussion of theology. I am not opposed either to theology, as if it were a breach of piety, but only to its untimely practice, nor to instruction in theology, except when this goes to excess. Fullness and surfeit even of honey, for all its goodness, produces vomiting; and “to everything there is a season,” as Solomon said I think, and “what’s well is not well if the hour be ill.” A flower is completely out of season in winter, a man’s clothing is out of place on a woman, a woman’s on a man. Immoderate laughter is unseemly during mourning, as are tears at a drinking party. Are we then to neglect “the due season” only in the discussion of theology, where observing the proper time is of such supreme importance?

In the early days of the church, all was well. The present elaborate, far-fetched and artificial treatment of theology had not made its way into the schools of divinity, but playing with pebbles that deceive the eye by the quickness of their changes or dancing before an audience with varied and effeminate contortions were looked on as all one with speaking or hearing of God in a way unusual or frivolous. But since the Sextuses and Pyrrhos, and the antithetic style, like a dire and malignant disease, have infected our churches, and babbling is reputed culture, and, as the book of the Acts says of the Athenians, we spend our time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing. O, what Jeremiah will bewail our confusion and blind madness; he alone could utter lamentations befitting our misfortunes.The beginning of this madness was Arius (whose name is derived from frenzy). He paid the penalty of his unbridled tongue by his death in a profane spot, brought about by prayer not by disease, when he like Judas burst asunder for his similar treachery to the Word. Then others, catching the infection, organized an art of impiety and, confining Deity to the Unbegotten, expelled from Deity not only the Begotten but also the proceeding one, and honored the Trinity with communion in name alone or even refused to retain this for it. Not so that blessed one who was indeed a man of God and a mighty trumpet of truth: but being aware that to contract the three persons to a numerical unity is heretical and the innovation of Sabellius, who first devised a contraction of Deity; and that to sever the three persons by a distinction of nature is an unnatural mutilation of Deity; he both happily preserved the unity, which belongs to the Godhead, and religiously taught the Trinity, which refers to personality, neither confounding the three persons in the unity nor dividing the substance among the three persons but abiding within the bounds of piety by avoiding excessive inclination or opposition to either side.

Take my advice, my friend, and be slow to do evil but swift to your salvation; for readiness to evil and tardiness to good are equally bad. If you are invited to a revel, be not swift to go; if to apostasy, leap away; if a company of evildoers say to you, “Come with us, share our blood guiltiness, let us hide in the earth a righteous person unjustly,” do not lend them even your ears. Thus you will make two very great gains; you will make known to the other his sin, and you will deliver yourself from evil company. But if David the Great says to you, Come and let us rejoice in the Lord, or another prophet, Come and let us ascend into the mountain of the Lord, or our Savior himself, Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest, or, Arise, let us go hence, shining brightly, glittering above snow, whiter than milk, shining above the sapphire stone, let us not resist or delay. Let us be like Peter and John, and let us hasten, as they did to the sepulcher and the resurrection, so we to the font; running together, racing against each other, striving to be first to obtain this blessing.

(Orat. 39.) We must therefore consider who He was who was baptized, and by whom and when: seeing He was pure, baptized by John, and at a time when His miracles had begun, that we might thence derive the lesson of purifying ourselves beforehand, and of embracing humility, and of not beginning to preach until the maturity of our spiritual and natural life. The first of these was said for their sakes who are receiving baptism; for although the gift of baptism brings remission, yet we must fear lest we return again to our vomit. The second is pointed at those who exalt themselves against the stewards of the mysteries, whom they may excel in rank. The third was uttered for those who trust in their youth, and imagine that any age is fit for promotion and teaching. Jesus is cleansed, and dost thou despise purification? By John, and dost thou say ought against thy teacher. At thirty years old, but dost thou in teaching precede thy elders? But the example of Daniel and the like are ready in thy mouth, for every guilty person is ready with an answer. But that is not the law of the Church which seldom happens, as neither does a single swallow make the spring.

(Orat. 40.) Still must a child be baptized if necessity demands it. For it is better to be insensibly sanctified, than to pass from this life unsealed. But you will say, Christ is baptized at thirty years old, and He was God, but thou biddest us to hasten our baptism. In that thou saidst God, the objection was done away: He needed no cleansing, nor was any danger hanging over Him while He put off His baptism. But with thee it extends to no slight calamity, if thou passest from this life born in corruption, but not if thou hast put on the robe of incorruption. And truly it is a blessed thing to keep unsullied the clean robe of baptism, but it is better at times to be slightly stained, than to be altogether devoid of grace.

(Carm. 18.) But some say that there is one succession from David to Joseph, which each Evangelist relates under different names. But this is absurd, since at the beginning of this genealogy, two brothers come in Nathan and Salomon, from whom the lines are carried in different ways.

(ubi sup.) From David upwards according to each Evangelist there is an unbroken line of descent; as it follows, Who was the son of Jesse.