St. Gregory Nazianzus (or Nazianzen), also known as St. Gregory the Theologian, is one of the Three Holy Hierarchs of the Orthodox Church, along with St. Basil the Great and St. John Chrysostom; and one of The Cappadocian Fathers, along with St. Gregory of Nyssa and St. Basil the Great (of Caesarea). He has been called The Trinitarian Theologian, and you can read a snippet of such theology below. I was intrigued by his also being called The Minstrel of the Holy Trinity, evidently because of his poetic style, and spiritual poetry. I will be looking more into that.

“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’.”

―St. Gregory of Nazianzus, d. 390, The Five Theological Orations

I’ve been plugging away at reading The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, in which Vladimir Lossky gives a history of Christian understanding of God as He has revealed Himself, in which story St. Gregory’s doctrine plays a major role. It’s a stretch for my untrained mind to follow the thoughts of these venerable fathers of antiquity, who who were not only extraordinary scholars, but holy men: St. Gregory often emphasizes that even to begin to think well about God it is most necessary to have a repentant heart. So I will close with his exhortation to those who might think more highly of their theologizing than they ought (from Oration 20), which I find heartening right now:

“If you trust me, then — and I am no rash theologian! — grasp what you can, and pray to grasp the rest. Love what already abides within you, and let the rest await you in the treasury above. Approach it by the way you live: what is pure can only be acquired through purification… Keep the commandments, make your way forward through observing the precepts: for the practical life is the launching-pad for contemplation. Start with the body, but find joy in working for your soul.

“… the most perfect of all things that exist is the knowledge of God. Let us, then, hold on to what we have and acquire what we can, as long as we live on earth; and let us store our treasure there in heaven, so that we may possess this reward of our labor: the full illumination of the holy Trinity—what it is, its qualities and its greatness, if I may put it this way—shining in Christ himself, our Lord, to whom be glory and power for the ages of ages. Amen.”