This essay considers Gregory of Nazianzus’ allusion to ‘divine deceit’, a motif related to the so-called ‘Christus Victor’ theory of atonement. This allusion is curious when we recall that for Gregory, the devil, not God, is the master of deception. When we treat On the Lights (Or. 39) as a literary unit – which commentators have yet to do – we see that Gregory makes several doctrinal affirmations before alluding to what is known as ‘divine deceit’. In this doctrinal discussion, Gregory draws upon the Platonic distinction between the orders of being and becoming as described in the Timaeus. He then alludes to ‘divine deceit’ with respect to the order of ‘becoming’, which bears the possibility of being misapprehended because it is ‘grasped by opinion’. The devil's ‘opinion’ of himself and of Christ, therefore, is suspect. Death – or rather, Christ's vanquishment of it – is the moment of reckoning. Since God alone can defeat death, Christ's putting death to death is the only certain way for the devil to recognise that the ‘Son of Man’ is, after all, the ‘Son of God’. The ‘devil's delusion’, then – not ‘divine deceit’ – best summarises Gregory's understanding of this moment in the history of salvation.

This article analyses Anth. Pal. 8 as a Hellenistic book of poems, i.e. as a collection artfully arranged by an author-editor and not as a mere gathering of sepulchral epigrams devoid of any reflection or literary aspiration. In common with modern poetry books, Anth. Pal. 8 was conceived for linear sequential reading. A close study of its tripartite structure, of the thoughtful collocation of each piece and of their organizing principles in well-thought-out sequences reveals the ultimate eschatological meaning of the book. Finally, a comparative contextualization with other late antique poets indicates a late antique dating for the elaboration of this collection as such, whereas the strong numerological element and the religious transcendence sought by the distribution of the poems point to Gregory of Nazianzus himself as the author-editor of Anth. Pal. 8.

This paper investigates how Gregory of Nazianzus imitates and responds to the Greek literary tradition in the autobiographical poem ‘On his own affairs’ (2.1.1). Through six case studies, it contributes to the ongoing re-evaluation of Gregory’s literary merit. With learning, wit, subtle humour and faith, Gregory adapts and reinvents earlier poetry to express Christian themes. Imitation is at the heart of his poetic technique, but his imitations are never straight-forward. They include imitating both Homer and other poets’ imitations of Homer, learned word-play and combining references to non-Christian literature and the Septuagint. Gregory’s references add nuance to ‘On his own affairs’ and give pleasure to readers trained to judge poetry by comparing it to earlier poetry, especially the Homeric epics. They also demonstrate the breadth of his scholarship, which extends to Homeric variants, Platonic epigrams and the entirety of the New Testament and Septuagint. Above all, Gregory insists that he is a rightful participant in a living poetic tradition. He writes Greek poetry for the fourth century AD, just as Oppian did in the second century and Apollonius and Callimachus did in the Hellenistic period.

Theologians have long recognised the significance of the imago Dei in Christian theological anthropology, yet the question of how to construe the imago is not straightforward. This essay offers a fresh reading of Gregory Nazianzen's vision of the imago Dei. Hitherto, historical theologians have attributed to Gregory an essentialist interpretation of the imago, in which it is identified only with the rational soul. I argue that Gregory depicts the imago Dei quite literally as a visible icon of God by weaving together christology, pneumatology and beliefs about images and idols. If interpreted properly, Gregory's vision contributes significantly to contemporary interpretations of the imago Dei, which aim to account for christology, pneumatology and the inclusion of each human person in the imago.

Modern conversations between the natural sciences and theology on the human soul have not so far engaged extensively with relevant debates in the early church. Contemporary neuroscience tends to operate within a monistic paradigm, often referred to as ‘physicalism’, that understands human mental activity entirely in naturalistic terms. While there is ongoing scientific debate about the degree to which human consciousness can be reduced entirely to biology, physicalism is often cited as making traditional religious belief in the soul obsolete, or at least modifying it significantly. The Apollinarian question of whether Jesus has a soul therefore reappears. This article considers the contemporary relevance of the Apollinarian controversy, suggesting that fourth-century insights possess key points of contact with the modern non-reductive physicalist position and thus raising important considerations for the science–theology conversation on the soul.

Gregory of Nazianzus and Theodore Prodromos are two of the most influential poets of Byzantium. And yet, no study has examined the various intertextual correspondences between their poetic works. This article is the first to demonstrate the extensive appropriation of Gregory's work by Prodromos. It is divided into three parts:1 the first discusses poems composed by Prodromos in praise of Gregory; the second part attempts to show which of Gregory's poems Prodromos read and his technique of ‘plundering’ words from Gregory's corpus; the third part concentrates on Prodromos’ creative imitation of Nazianzus’ poetry in terms of wording, genre and sentiments, which eventually enabled him to craft part of his authorial self-portrait.

Gregory Nazianzen spoke of a suffering Christ ‘who became weak for us’ in the context of an oration, On Love of the Poor, which dealt at length with the extreme suffering the lepers had endured. The outcasts of the ancient world, lepers figured prominently in Jesus’ ministry as recorded in the Gospels. By juxtaposing their human suffering with divine weakness, Gregory implied that Christ had suffered with the lepers. The comparison not only gave meaning to the human experience of suffering, it also explored the extent of Christ's suffering in the divine economy. There was no affliction too grotesque for Christ to have assumed.

Throughout his life, Gregory developed a notion of collective suffering which is relevant to understanding the magnitude of the suffering of Christ. It made the limitless suffering of humanity seem manageable and contained. It normalised the overwhelming sense of misery by expanding individual suffering into the suffering of the group, the suffering of the group into the suffering of neighbours and finally the suffering of neighbours into the collective suffering of the body of Christ. Christ then experienced the fullness of the human condition as the head of this body.

The lepers served a purpose in this vision of collective suffering. By making the lepers a synecdoche for all human suffering, Gregory allowed Christ to assume their misery without his listeners having to imagine Christ suffering every aspect of their physical and emotional distress. This transference of collective suffering to the body of Christ worked in the following way: the individual suffering of the leper flowed into the collective suffering of the group, which connected with, and was incorporated into, the collective suffering of the Christian body. The result was a relationship of mutual imitation between Christ and humanity. It implied that human beings suffered with Christ, and that Christ suffered with human beings.

By integrating literary techniques and contexts into theological analysis, this article examines the various ways in which Gregory construed the suffering of Christ.

Professor Beeley has contributed a new chapter to the history of the doctrine of communicatio idiomatum. He has written a provocative book, whose argument is both revisionist and orthodox. Beeley proposes to revise the accepted christological narrative by questioning the significance and theological genius of Athanasius of Alexandria. In Beeley's judgement, Athanasius' contribution pales in comparison with such giants as Origen, Eusebius of Caesarea, Gregory Nazianzen and Maximus the Confessor. Beeley finds especially in Nazianzen's Christology the most profound and consistent rendering of the unity of Christ, a golden standard for expressing communicatio idiomatum. According to Beeley, Gregory's achievement was only partially matched by the Christologies of Cyril of Alexandria and Leo of Rome. Gregory's Christology is the apex of the Origenist tradition, its most complete and compelling expression. A permanent contribution of Beeley's work is the restoration of Gregory the Theologian to the diptychs of contemporary Western patristic scholarship, in which Nazianzen has been overshadowed by another Cappadocian, Gregory of Nyssa.

The later Neoplatonic commentaries attributed to David and Elias are considered by many scholars to be the work of Christians who dominated the Alexandrian school in the latter half of the sixth century. Christian Wildberg has challenged this prevailing view: he argues that the commentaries are more likely the work of pagan philosophers. Scholars who support Christian authorship have appealed to the strict prohibition against suicide expressed in the parts of the commentaries that discuss Socrates’ characterization in the Phaedo of philosophy as the practice of death. But the proscription of suicide that the commentators read into the Phaedo is consistent with the teachings of pagan Neoplatonists and thus provides no basis for a rejection of Wildberg’s thesis. I discuss the literary and historical exempla that the commentators use and propose that these are drawn in part from Gregory of Nazianzus’ Invective against Julian. The connection between the discourses and Gregory’s text suggests that the commentators may have been deliberately responding to his accusations of pagan hypocrisy.