Introduction

Summary

The Council of Chalcedon bestowed the title ‘Blessed Gregory, the Theologian’ upon Saint Gregory of Nazianzus in AD 451.¹ Along with Saint John the Evangelist and Saint Symeon the ‘New Theologian’, Gregory is one of only three theologians on whom the title has been conferred in the Eastern Christian tradition. Born circa AD 329 to Gregory the Elder, Bishop of Nazianzus, Gregory’s extensive education equipped him with the philosophical and rhetorical skills to theologise in a vast array of Greek literary forms. This led Gregory to become the most quoted author in Byzantine ecclesiastical literature, after the Bible.² His neologism ‘theosis’ continues to be applied in contemporary theology as the chief term used to describe deification.