After an obscure time at Seleucia in Isauria he was dragged out into the glare of day by being appointed to the charge of the one orthodox Church at Constantinople, when the Arian tyranny was at its height. There he preached his famous Five Theological Orations, which placed him in the foremost rank of Christian preachers; they are not unworthy of comparison with the utterances of the classic Greek orators. His sermons are his greatest works; after them his letters and his poems claim our interest.
On the accession of Theodosius, Gregory was rewarded for his fidelity in holding the fort during the Arian period by being made patriarch of Constantinople. In virtue of this fact he presided at some of the sessions of the council that assembled in that city in the year 381, till, feeling unequal to the distasteful task of maintaining order amid the wrangling of the bishops, he retired to his home at Nazianzus, although according to Socrates[1] he had "surpassed all his contemporaries in eloquence and piety."
Gregory defended the Nicene position, as held by himself and Basil, by elaborating the mysterious connection of unity and threefoldness in the Trinity. He explained that the unity of the "monarchy"[2] consisted in "common dignity[3] of the essence," "harmony of sentiment,"[4] "identity of motion,"[5] and "inclination"[6] of the Son and the Spirit towards the Father. How striking, even startling, are these various expressions, one and all indicating the distinctions of individuality in the Trinity even when toiling to find means to express the idea of the unity—so characteristic of the later development of the Nicene theology, so different from the attitude of the Western Church! Only the underlying Platonism can save such language from a charge of tritheism. But the unity is really found in the idea of derivation. The Son and Spirit are twin rays from one light and that by an eternally continuous process.
The third of the great Cappadocians was Basil's
