The Five Theological Orations Quotes

“Attack the silence of Pythagoras, and the Orphic beans, and that preposterous brag, "Himself has spoken." Attack the "Ideas" of Plato, and the transbodiment and circulation of our souls, and the reminiscences, and the unlovely loves of lovely bodies, though directed to the beloved's soul. Attack the atheism of Epicurus, and his atoms, and his doctrine of pleasure, unworthy of a philosopher; or Aristotle's petty Providence, and his artificial system, and his discourses about the mortality of the soul, and the exclusively human focus his teaching. Attack the haughtiness of the Stoa, or the greed and vulgarity of the Cynic. Attack for me the emptiness that is full of absurdities - all that stuff about the gods and the sacrifices and the idols and the demons, whether beneficent or malignant, and all the tricks that people play with divination, the calling up of gods or of souls, and the power of stars.”
― Gregory of Nazianzus, The Five Theological Orations of Gregory of Nazianzus

“The three one God when contemplated together; each God because consubstantial; one God because of the monarchia.”
― Gregory of Nazianzus, The Five Theological Orations

“If you make incomprehensibility a ground for denying the fact, it is high time you ruled out as non-existent a good number of things you do not understand...”
― Gregory of Nazianzus, The Five Theological Orations

“The opinions about deity that hold pride of place are in number: atheism, polytheism and monotheism. With the first two the children of Greece amused themselves. Let the game go on! Atheism with its lack of a governing principle involves disorder. Polytheism with a plurality of such principles, involves faction and hence the absence of a governing principle, and this involves disorder again. Both lead to an identical result-lack of order, which, in turn, leads to disintegration. Monotheism, with its single governing principle, is what we value-not monotheism defined as the sovereignty of a single person (after all, self-discordant unity can become a plurality) but the single rule produced by equality of nature, harmony of will, identity of action and the convergence towards their source of what springs from unity-none of which is possible in the case of created nature. The result is that though there is numerical distinction, there is no division, there is no division of the substance. For this reason, a one eternally changes into a two and stops at three-meaning the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. In a serene, non-temporal, incorporeal way the Father is parent of the 'offspring'.”
― Gregory of Nazianzus, The Five Theological Orations

“We have broken up for ourselves the fallow ground of divinity so as not to sow upon thorns, and have levelled the surface of the ground, being formed and forming others by Holy Scripture...”
― Gregory of Nazianzus, Five Theological Orations