The Orations Quotes

“For nothing is so pleasant to men as talking of other people's business, especially under the influence of affection or hatred, which often almost entirely blinds us to the truth.”
― Gregory of Nazianzus, The Orations

“For what gave order to things heavenly and earthly and to all that pass through air and live under water, and mode than that to what came before them-I mean heaven, earth, air, and the element of water themselves? Who combines these elements and divided them out? What a wonderful communion they have with each other, and also harmony and arrangement! I praise the man, non-Christian though he was, who asked: 'What set these elements in motion and leads their ceaseless, unimpeded flow?' It was surely their designer, who implants in all things reason whereby the universe is conducted and carried along. And who is their designer? Surely he who has made them and brought them into existence. Great power like this cannot be ascribed to chance. Supposing chance brought them into existence, what gave them order? Granting this possibility too, if you like, to chance, what of their first constitution? Chance again, or something else? Clearly something beyond chance. What can this 'something' be if not God? Thus God-derived reason, bound up, connected, with the whole of nature, man's most ancient law, has led us up from things of sight to God.”
― Gregory of Nazianzus, The Orations

“For it is one thing to be persuaded of the existence of a thing, and quite another to know what it is. Now our very eyes and the law of nature teach us that God exists and that He is the efficient and maintaining Cause of all things: our eyes, because they fall on visible objects, and see them in beautiful stability and progress, immovably moving and revolving if I may so say; the law of nature, because through these visible things and their order, it reasons back to their Author. For how could this universe have come into being or been put together, unless God had called it into existence, and held it together? For every one who sees a beautifully made cithara, and considers the skill with which it has been fitted together and arranged, or who hears its melody, would think of none but the maker of this cithara, or the player of it, and would recur to him in mind, though he might not know him by sight. And thus to us also is manifested the One who made and moves and preserves all created things, even though He is not comprehended by the mind. And very wanting in sense is he who will not willingly go thus for in following natural proofs.”
― Gregory of Nazianzus, The Orations

“Triad is the name which unites things united by nature, and never allows those which are inseparable to be scattered by a number which separates.”
― Gregory of Nazianzus, The Orations

“The monad is set in motion in virtue of its richness; the dyad is surpassed (for the deity is above matter and form); the triad contains itself in perfection, for it is the first which surpasses the composition of the dyad. Thus, the Godhead does not dwell within bounds, nor does it spread itself indefinitely. The one would be without honour, the other would be contrary to order. The God in Trinity one would be wholly Judaic, the other Hellenistic and polytheistic.”
― Gregory of Nazianzus, The Orations