Description
St Gregory Nazianzen is honored alongside St Basil the Great and St John Chrysostom as one of the Church's Three Holy Hierarchs and Great Ecumenical Teachers. Surnamed 'the Theologian,' Gregory was one of the chief architects of the Church's Trinitarian theology in the fourth century, contributing in a special way to the Christian confession of the divinity of the Holy Spirit. In this course, we explore the seminal contributions of St Gregory the Theologian through a close reading of his monumental Orations, offering students the opportunity to encounter the rhetorical masterpieces, festal homilies, and polemic that shaped the hymnography of the Byzantine church and the later dogmatic formulations of the Church Fathers.
Prerequisites: none (Patrology I and Dogmatics I strongly recommended)
Required texts: [1] Brian E. Daley, Gregory of Nazianzus, The Early Church Fathers (Routledge, 2006); [2] Frederick Williams and Lionel Wickham, St Gregory of Nazianzus on God and Christ: The F