What is the theological output of the role of prayer for Gregory of Nazianzus?

This essay aims to present a clear and substantial display of the theological output of the role

of prayer in Gregory of Nazianzus (abbreviated from here as Gregory), through which one

may distinguish the theology that upholds and gives a weight to the role of prayer as

understood by Gregory. Primarily, the essence of Gregory’s prayers, in poetic as well as

liturgical form, provide a tremendous illustration of his theology that situates him

considerably as one of the most influential theologians of his 4th-century context. In this

context, his Eastern origin and Nicene infancy display the emphasis his prayers put on certain

theological absolutes illustrated elsewhere in Gregory’s eschatology and Trinitarianism.

The substance of this essay aims to demonstrate that Gregory’s theological output of prayer is

rooted in the understanding that prayer is an essential function of right living in the life of the

believer. Its construction emphasises, firstly, the role of prayer in the life of the believer

according to Gregory. Secondly, the focus shall turn to the theological foundations and

outflows from such understanding that hold Gregory’s theology of prayer. The aim, from this,

is to locate Gregory’s theology of prayer as a characterisation and accumulation of his

concern for Trinitarian orthodoxy and biblical consideration.

One must also define and illustrate Gregory’s own perspective on what theology is and how

one thinks theologically. Theology, for Gregory, or to think theologically, is to entire in a

dialogue and discourse that begins with God. In his Oration 27, he says that it is not for

everyone to “philosophize about God,”1 which Gregory does participate in with the

Eunomians because, I posit, the Eunomians have a distinct inability to ‘theologise,’ or partake

in Theology, as God has not revealed the truth of himself and his nature to them. Therefore,
1
Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 27, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/310227.htm
he meets them in the discourse of philosophy to portray the God of the Bible in a manner they

might grasp, as the Eunomians have not been gifted with the faith that enables theology.

Additionally, theology for Gregory often requires pressing no further than Scripture allows.

He is often careful with words, and will present this theological ideas through the quoting of

Scripture and less through philosophy, in order to root his assertions in the biblical

theological landscape, and prevent criticism from either heretical or disagreeing people. In

this method, he often seems to be cautious to go beyond scripture even in ways which may be

helpful to assert orthodoxy. However, one should be mindful and aware of his apophaticism

in asserting certain theological absolutes. Rather than positively affirming further than

scripture presents linguistically, he creates an image of orthodoxy and theological beliefs by

asserting what they are not. This essay shall be mindful of Gregory’s presentation’s regarding

prayer in this manner, as it aims to isolate him. Therefore, it will often contrast or be

shallower for the modern theologian in regard to what we are accustomed to in the

theological dialogue in the modern era, but in the nature of the essay, one must isolate

Gregory of Nazianzus.

Importantly, there is a necessity not to impose or interpret a contemporary theology of prayer

into Gregory without it being rooted in Gregory himself. For example, it would be poor

scholarship to extract a particular theological expression of limited atonement, a particularly

Reformed idea and expression found having implications on a theology of prayer, as

Gregory’s language and context remains unfamiliar and without-concern to such a doctrine.

This, of course, is unless one might find the idea located in Gregory himself. This essay

remains considerate of Gregory’s location in the infancy of post-1st-century systematic

theology in the Early Church.

This essay outlines the assertion in Gregory’s prayers that necessitates both the Trinity, and

the activity of the Trinity, in the prayer life of the believer. Then, the effectuality of prayer, as

a true instrument of change, is posited by Gregory, which this essay shall open and conscribe

as an activity exclusively for the Christian. Finally, the combination of prayer as emphasising

God’s self-revelation, and as a factor in the theology of theosis as illustrated and

commentated by Gregory, shall draw this essay to its end in positing that Gregory’s theology

of prayer is an essential function of right Christian living. By isolating the elements of

Gregory’s writings that contain or depict prayer firstly, either in activity or theology, one can

then expand throughout his broader work to connect his theological outputs that come from

or are located in prayer.

Firstly, the task is to exegete Gregory’s references directly to prayer in displaying that his

emphasis is on prayer being effectual in nature, the notion being that the effectual nature of

prayer in Gregory is the essential piece that both immediately illustrates the necessity of it in

the life of the Christian, it being transformative, but also that it undergirds the string of

theology he ultimately constructs to demonstrate the point to a more refined and concrete

conclusion. Situated in the autobiographical work of Gregory, he defines his very existence

as the product of participatory prayer by his mother, who “spoke to God and prayed to obtain

her wish,”2 Gregory asserting that he was “born to them, if indeed I am worthy of the prayer,

the gift of God who granted it.”3 Gregory’s poetic imagery directs the reader firstly to focus

on the act of prayer moving the Father to act; in this example the act is creation itself,

Gregory’s place as a creature being granted, or acquired, born, due to prayer. This responsive

action of the Father to the action of the Christian gives light to Gregory’s deeply effectual

understanding of prayer; prayer itself brings about the will of the Father. There is the
2
Gregory of Nazianzus, ‘Concerning His Own Life’ in Gregory of Nazianzus: Autobiographical Poems, ed. by
Carolinne White, Cambridge Medieval Classics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p.
3
Gregory, Autobiographical Poems, p.
question as to whether one could read a more synergistic or monergistic interpretation of

divine and human will into Gregory, however, whether a deeply synergistic or monergistic

understand of the will of the Father4, to use contemporary terms, one may assert Gregory’s

own absolute that prayer’s undoubted necessity in the life of the believer is given such

substance because of its effectual nature in the bringing about of certain things (godly things).

Hence, Gregory’s conditional prayer in his autobiographical poems presents us with this

certainty, when, amidst a storm while at sea, he prays asserting two possibilities: ‘if’, ‘then’,

‘but if’, ‘then’. For example, he asserts “for you will I live if I escape the double danger,” as

well as the reverse “but if you abandon me you will lose a servant.”5 In the presentation of

such a prayer to God, we are confronted with both the contents, and the nature, of prayer in

Gregory. Both of these occurrences are very real possibilities, perhaps equally, and potential

actualisations of the will of God in his view of the divine will. This is portrayed similarly by

John McGuckin in St Gregory of Nazianzus - An Intellectual Biography, highlighting

Gregory’s assertion that “he would have recovered too if Valens had not preferred the prayers

of Arian bishops.”6 This further illustrates the activity of prayer being an exclusively

Christian pursuit, as the Arian (whom Gregory regarded as outside of the salvation of Christ

due to theological heresy) prayers seemed to have been echoed into a void without God’s

listening resulting in the absence of healing. Additionally, as known that God does not always

heal, Gregory asserts that it was in fact God’s will to heal, but needed the prayers of a

Christian, as a partial recovery to the boy occurs “as soon as Basil (of Caesarea, a Christian)

prayers for him.”7 Gregory’s perspective of the entire scenario is situated in the notion that

prayer is effectual for the Christian, here in Basil’s prayer, and completely void and

4
A synergistic reading of Gregory would make immediate sense of the reactionary nature of God to human
prayer, however a monergistic interpretation may understand Gregory deeper in relation to prayer and bringing
about God’s desire for the deification, or theosis, of the Christian.
5
Gregory, Autobiographical Poems, p.
6
John McGuckin, St Gregory of Nazianzus – An Intellectual Biography (New York: St Vladimir’s Seminary
Press, 2001), p.12
7
McGuckin, St Gregory, p.184
ineffective when acted by those outside of true Christian faith, and thus those outside of

Christ, without illumination8 or true baptism. It is prayer that provides the determining factor

of the outcome, or desire, of the future that God reveals and creates. For Gregory, to ask is

the only way to receive, and to the very actualisation of the will of God is to integrate prayer

as the essential and constant practice of the Christian for right living.9

The theological output of prayer in this manner is precisely this, that it is essential for right

Christian living, and not as a participation for any other; being a distinctly Christian practice

is Gregory’s assumption. His prayer in Oration 7 aids the illustration of his theology of prayer

in this way. Gregory’s understanding of prayer as the “entering within the Cloud, and hold

converse with God,” is not to be approached at all by the non-Christian, “but let him stand yet

afar off and withdraw from the Mount… and shall perish miserably in his wickedness.”10 This

holy discourse is not to be entered into by those who are impure. To the degree Gregory

understands his own deification as part God part human in essence, though all of mankind

possesses in the deepest possible sense the Imago Dei, there is a transformation that occurs in

the receiving of the Holy Spirit; the illumination of the individual as the “carriage to God, the

dying with Christ,” and in “baptism, because sin is buried with it in the water.”11 This burying

of sin, and the illumination of the Christian, for Gregory, is the key to enabling the

‘conversation’, with God, where he becomes receptive and attentive to such prayers.

Therefore, to be able to participate in prayer itself, when prayer is understood as that

pleading, requesting or interceding to God which God is listening, or attentive, to, one must

8
Gregory understands ‘illumination’ as “the satisfying of desire to those who long for the greatest things, or the
Greatest Thing, or That Which surpasses all greatness” in Oration 39. This presented state seems to be the
human experience of an increased divination or deification where one’s will becomes more closely aligned to
God, and their very essence becomes decreasingly sinful: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/310239.htm
9
There could be an interpretation of prayer as a sacrament for Gregory, which would potentially give light to an
ex opera operato efficacy of prayer in relation to deification elsewhere in his writings.
10
Gregory of Nazianzus, Second Theological Oration (Oration 28),
https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/310228.htm
11
Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 40, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/310240.htm
have access to this carriage to God which occurs only when one is able to call themselves a

Christian. A non-Christian, without illumination, without baptism, without the Spirit, may be

part God to a certain degree due to the human nature being, for Gregory, a combination of

earth and the breath of God (perhaps, to be called the existere), but their access to God is

removed in the Fall, and the sinful nature of their ‘esse’ without the conditions Gregory posits

located soteriologically in Christ. Therefore, Gregory’s theology of prayer, as well as his own

prayers, presuppose the location of one in Christ as a Christian, participating actively in

prayer through dying with Christ and the illumination (deification) of oneself. This asserts

prayer as being an essential part of right Christian living for Gregory of Nazianzus; it is the

Christian’s exclusive gift to participate in the effectual and truly necessary practice of prayer

to the Godhead.

The task of the essay progresses to identifying the reality of the Godhead as triune in the act

of prayer. I posit that Gregory not only sees the Trinity as an eternally and perfectly true

reality, with prayer being loosely linked to the Godhead, or even just the Father, as the

recipient and ultimate but external mover in relation to prayer, but as active in the desire,

perfection and transmission. Simply, prayer for Gregory is an exclusively Trinitarian

possibility. Assessing the nature of prayer in Gregory’s work confronts us with a clear

presentation of the Trinity he worked to establish as orthodoxy. Firstly, Gregory identifies the

recipient of prayer as the Father, and in his Orations also stresses the sonship of the Logos

and divinity of the Spirit, not just as theological or epistemological absolutes, but as

influential in prayer, as an outflowing theology from prayer, as mediator. This is found

clearly in 1 Timothy 2:5, and presented by Gregory in his Oration on the Son.
There is not just imagery of the Trinity as an ontological concept for Gregory, but an absolute

necessity as an economic, active Godhead. Prayer, for Gregory, requires, and fulfils, purpose

and participation of each of the individual, perfectly united persons of the Trinity. Thus,

prayer must an exclusively Trinitarian possibility; without it, there can be no right prayer.

Verna E. F. Harrison illustrates how Gregory perceives the activity of the three divine

persons, as “he finds himself in the centre of their common self-revelatory activity, in which

each of them participates in a unique way.”12

Gregory asserts this is three assertions. That the Father “may be well pleased,” that the “Son

may help us,” and “the Holy Ghost may inspire us.”13 This excerpt from Oration 28 outlines

the process of illumination for the Christian, defined previously, however the roles of the

triune God remain a necessary presentation of prayer, considering also that prayer seems to

be the product of illumination: these roles, I conclude, are not isolated to illumination but

draw themselves broadly across the living of Christian faith for individuals. The Father has

the role of being glorified, being “well pleased” presenting us with the imagery of the end, or

the object, of prayer. Although it is also common for Gregory to pray to God as a whole,

“Thou art one”14 being an example of him addressing the Godhead as united, he still often

addresses the Father as the object, with Christ often being the subject: “you are the God and

Father,” who gives us “that everlasting and blessed life which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”15

Affirming that the Father is the ultimate end of prayer, firstly because it both Christ and our

roles as Sons to “revere Him… and obey a Father,”16 the object, but also because of his

12
Verna E.F. Harrison, ‘Trinitarian Theology’ in Re-Reading Gregory of Nazianzus, ed. by Christopher A.
Beeley (Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2012), p.21.
13
Gregory, Oration 28, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/310228.htm
14
Gregory of Nazianzus, ‘A Hymn’ in Earliest Christian Hymns, ed. by F. Forrester Church & Terrence J.
Mulry (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1988), p.4.
15
Gregory, ‘Oration 7’
16
Gregory, Oration 40.
ultimate “greater than”17 nature over the Son, and as creator from which all things, including

the Son and Spirit, find their origin.

So, considering the perfect unity of the Trinity, one may pray to God Himself, but ultimately

it is the Father who receives and answers prayer, as the author and sovereign over creation;

the ‘creator’. Therefore, Gregory asserts that the Son and Spirit serve fundamental aspects of

prayer. Therefore, the Son’s role as ‘helper’ in prayer is made sense in Oration 38 when

Gregory posits Christ’s “mediating between the Deity and the corporeity of the flesh.”18 If

this is applied to the larger picture of Christ’s mediation between God and sinful man, not

only does it bring light to the incarnation in relation to prayer, but secures it as a significant

purpose of the Word’s assumption of flesh in Gregory’s thinking. This fractured and

incomprehensibly reparable relationship between Deity (God) and fallen flesh (mankind) is

found reconciled in the person of Christ, for Gregory. His systematic understanding of

Christ’s ‘assuming’ flesh and his immovable certainty on this point highlights Gregory’s

position that Christ’s perfect mediation is the result of the incarnation. Therefore, Christ’s

role as helper is located in his role as mediator, which in the activity of prayer, places Christ

as the advocate of the Christian. This also enhances our prior assertion that the activity of

prayer is an exclusive exercise enabled for the Christian after the incarnation and ascension of

Christ.

The Spirit, therefore, remains the ‘inspiration’ for our prayer and desire for holy living.; that

which motivates us, and stirs us to pray. In Oration 31, Gregory says that he will pray “with

the Spirit,” and makes the Spirit a necessity in the practice and formulation of ones prayers,

without whom prayer because an empty task; he emphasises the call to pray “in Spirit and in

17
John 14:28
18
Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 38, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/310238.htm
truth…in the mind and in the Spirit.”19 The proposition supposes that, without the Spirit’s

inspiration, and drive towards our ultimate deification in uniting us with God, one would not

even possess the knowledge of what to prayer, how to pray in accordance with God’s will.

This is the action of the Spirit in prayer; the inspiration, in a sense to be contextualised

alongside illumination, of the human nature to be stirred to call upon the name of God,

through Christ as our mediator. Incidentally, this does not take away from the Spirit as the

recipient of right worship. As Gregory declares, to the Spirit, “that the Holy Spirit is of the

same rank as the Father and the Son…known only in a perfect Trinity,”20 thus it is regarded

by Gregory to not distinguish the Spirit apart from the Son and Father to a role only of

service of the other two in some submissive mystery, even if the ‘ousia’ remains identical. It

is purely the participation of the Trinitarian life that the Spirit enables us to partake in through

the inspiration toward us, to pray, to illuminate, to seek Christ. Therefore, Gregory’s

illustration of prayer as an essential part of right Christian living is because through and in

prayer, the Christian accesses the “self-revelatory activity” of the Trinity, and thus partakes in

this activity of the Godhead, as each person of the Trinity has a unique and essential role in

prayer. Prayer is not simply asking or requesting ‘upwards’ in a Greco-philosophical manner,

but the very entrance into dialogue with the Godhead that drives mankind to pure living,

illumination and eventually deification for the Cappadocian Father.

The theological essence of prayer being the participation in and with the Trinitarian Godhead

is thus, that the activity of prayer by the Christian is a declaration and presentation of the

Trinity itself, as it must be a Trinitarian activity, outside of which, or without which, prayer

does not work. Thus, the theological output is the necessity of Gregory’s most famous and

19
Gregory of Nazianzus, Fifth Theological Oration (Oration 31), On the Holy Spirit,
https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/310231.htm
20
Gregory of Nazianzus, On the Holy Spirit, Against the Macedonians,
https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/2903.htm
significant contribution to systematic theology, the Trinity, within which are three perfectly

united persons of the singular Godhead whose ‘ousia’ are identical. Though there is much

work done by Gregory on asserting and defending the Trinity as orthodoxy, I shall present the

agreement of Lewis Ayres, who alongside John McGuckin, notes that Gregory “anticipates

the idea of Trinitarian perichoresis.”21 The location of Gregory’s Trinitarian crescendo is in

the relational activity between the Godhead in perfect unity. Without the perfect divinity and

‘όμοουσιος’ of each of the persons located, as well as the true assumption of human flesh by

the Son, the Christian reality ceases to exist, and the potential for human participation in any

‘Christian life’ in God is removed. According to Ayres, in this identicality, the Godhead

performs, relates to, and exists “with one another through a dynamic movement towards unity

and each other.”22 Gregory speaks of both a “convergence towards the source”23 in Oration

29, and a “έηεαθαι” or “cleaving together”24 in Oration 42. This continuous activity of the

persons in the Trinity illustrates the divinity of each of them with and from the Father. Ayres

presents it as the “unity… of the Father, from whom the other two are brought forward and to

whom they are brought back,”25 drawing each person of the Trinity into the God-ness of the

Father from whom they find their origin. In this revelation of the Trinity, the aspect of right

Christian living is motivated.

Additionally, Harrison notes that Gregory sees the “believing congregation’s way of life” as

“an imitation the way the three persons conduct their life together.”26 In recognising this in

Gregory, one can determine the extent to which the Trinitarian reality, as expressed and acted

in Christian prayer, is fundamental to right Christian living, as the Christian increasingly

21
Harrison, ‘Trinitarian Theology’, p.23.
22
Lewis Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2004), p.246.
23
Gregory, Oration 29, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/310229.htm
24
Gregory, Oration 42, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/310242.htm
25
Ayres, Nicaea, p.246.
26
Harrison, Trinitarian Theology’, p.25.
mirrors and replicates the unity located in the perichoretic Trinity. The Trinity no longer

seems to exclusively be a reality external to humanity, but in inviting humanity to Himself,

shapes the very relationality people experience in the present. Hence, prayer for Gregory is

not only participation within the Trinity, but a transformative gain that is modelled

continuously in the Christian life.

Incidentally, John Calvin placed the ‘helper’ nature of Christ within the perichoretic activity

of the Trinity in the Christian’s adoption into the person of Christ to enable right prayer,

essentialising the ‘gift’ nature of the possibility of prayer.27 The ability to pray rightly, for

Calvin, is found not just in Christ, but the necessity of Christ’s position in perichoretic

activity. Through this, the Christian’s prayer life is situated in Trinitarian activity and

relationship; rather than praying to the Father into the Godhead, one prays to the Father

within the Godhead . The Reformed doctrine of prayer can be held alongside Gregory of

Nazianzus’ own understanding of the Trinity in prayer. Therefore, the Trinity as “outgoing

and return of the divine being” resulting in “three who are distinct and yet one”28 remains an

essential doctrine for Gregory, making prayer possible, and the reality of prayer making it

necessary. The Trinitarian theology of Gregory means that the Christian participation in

prayer defines right Christian living.

The final theological output this essay shall focus on is situated in prayer as God’s own self-

disclosure and self-revelation. Prayer is the foundation of right Christian living because, in

Gregory’s theological construction, God had first revealed the truth of Himself and His nature

to the Christian. Building upon the exclusivity of prayer as an authentically Christian

27
John Calvin, ‘Institutes of the Christian Religion, Vol. 2’ in Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion (Books
III.XX to IV.XX), translated by F.L. Battles, ed. by John T. McNeill (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press,
1960), p.850.
28
Ayres, Nicaea, p.246.
practice, as effectual, and as an exclusively Trinitarian possibility, prayer recognises the ‘gift’

nature of God’s revelation as Trinity. This distinguishing between calling oneself a

‘Christian’ and being a ‘Trinitarian’ or even ‘true’ Christian is evident in the debate regarding

prayer in Arianism versus Gregory’s Trinitarianism. As previously stated, Gregory views the

prayers of the Arians as ineffective, void of the power of God because they do not know God

as he truly is. It is God’s revelation of himself, as Father, Son, and Spirit, that brings power

into prayer, into the Christian life, for the effectual nature of prayer requires right faith.

Assertion one in Gregory’s thought is that “if Valens had not preferred the prayers of Arian

bishops,”29 then prayer for healing would have been effectual. From this, we determine that

the difference in effectual prayer is between right faith, or faith in the true and whole unity of

Trinitarian theology, and not, as the Arian belief that Christ was begotten at a point in time is

the false belief that Gregory extracts as the difference. Thus, right prayer comes not from a

simple faith in ‘a’ Jesus, which the Arians did possess, or in knowing that God is one, but in

the right expression of the Trinity that can only be revealed by God himself. For Gregory,

there is something regarding the simple knowledge of the Trinity, in his self-revelation, that

one cannot reach alone with God having first revealed it. This is where we turn to the notion

of light, or illumination, in Gregory. In Oration 39, Gregory observes that Christ, the “light of

the world”30 encounters humanity, through which one “may draw near to the light, and may

then become perfect light.”31 Christ as the source of light, in Gregory’s theology, brings light

to the darkness, in which one may draw near to it. Admitting that it does not hold such

propositions and theological ends that occur in the reformation, Gregory does instead suppose

that one may draw near to the light in their own strength. However, the source of light

remains, to bring light into the darkness, revealing himself by his own decision. It precedes

the nature of true faith in the light. Hence, illumination, this ‘drawing near’ to the light that
29
McGuckin, St Gregory, p.184.
30
John 8:12.
31
Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 39, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/310239.htm.
gives us the “following of the Spirit, fellowship of the word”32 (as two definers of right faith

and practice), is described by Gregory as the “greatest and most magnificent of the Gifts of

God”33 in Oration 40; gift implies the source offers itself freely, and in the first instance, to

the person who then believes. The origin of such faith is rooted in Christ, and the self-

revelation of God in direction to the individual, rather than direction being from the

individual to Godhead. Therefore, Gregory’s theological output from prayer in that one prays

within Trinitarian participation presents us with the notion of unidirectionality in revelation,

with the Godhead revealing, and enlightening or illuminating, the individual to know Him.

In conclusion, this essay has presented both the role of prayer in the life of the believer, and

the theological outputs that these assertions by Gregory of Nazianzus posit. The overall

hypothesis of the essay, whereby prayer is an essential function of right Christian living, is

achieved by firstly understand prayer as effectual, which primarily brings about to

actualisation of the will of God. As such, if truly believes in God, one will pray to Him, in the

knowledge that they are stirring the will of God to act. Here, it is necessary that one prays in

the practice of right Christian living as it instigates the will, and the love of the will, that God

has.

Then, as a theological consequence of this understanding, one may affirm that prayer is

exclusively a Christian practice, or can only be participated in truly when one is a Christian,

because Gregory posits that God only hears, or listens, and acts upon the prayers of the

Christian who prays to Him as he truly is, being truly located in Christ and his hypostasis.

32
Gregory, Oration 40.
33
Gregory, Oration 40.
Furthermore, prayer, as participated in by those in Christ, becomes an exclusively Trinitarian

possibility, with prayer being impossible without the foundational truth of Trinitarian action.

Each person of the Trinity participates in the activity of prayer by the Christian. The reason

only Christian prayer is possible is because, for Gregory, the Christian who is located in God

is supported by the Spirit and advocated for by Christ in praying and interceding to the

Father. In all aspects of prayer, a person of the Trinity assists, and without any of them as

homoousios with the Father, and without any of them completely, prayer becomes

impossible, as by nature, prayer is participating in the Trinitarian life. Hence, it is

fundamental to right Christian living, as Gregory posits that prayer also moulds the

relationality between Christians to model and mirror that which is expressed in the Trinity

between themselves in perichoretic relationship.

Additionally, the theological output of the Trinitarian nature of prayer is simply that Prayer

necessitates and presents the Trinitarian revelation of God as true. The divinity and co-equal

status, along with identical substance of the persons is absolutely necessary in Gregory’s

theology for prayer. The Trinitarian theology of Gregory means that the Christian

participation in prayer is the foundation to right Christian living through prayer, which

evidences itself in the wider Christian community as a whole.

The final theological output this essay unpacks is the unidirectionality of the revelation of

God, portrayed in language of light and illumination in Gregory. By defining illumination as

gift, and Christ being known as light, and thus the source, I have constructed the idea that

Gregory necessitates the self-revealing and self-disclosing of God by God, moving towards

humanity, rather than knowledge and logic being sufficient to know God in nature as triune.

This means that prayer is participated in, by the Christian, because God first revealed

Himself. Thus, prayer becomes the active recognition of the revelation of the Trinitarian
Godhead, and is fundamental as an application of the knowledge of God. This knowledge

motivates prayer, which the Trinity also participates in, in order for effectual and right

Christian prayer to be engaged with. Gregory, in positing and presenting these points, asserts

in his theology that prayer is essential for right Christian living, as it is both the participation

within, and recognition of, the Triune God, driving the Christian further towards him, to

illumination, and eventual theosis, situated in Christ.

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Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 39, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/310239.htm

Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 40, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/310240.htm

Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 42, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/310242.htm

Harrison, Verna E.F., ‘Trinitarian Theology’ in Re-Reading Gregory of Nazianzus, ed. by

Christopher A. Beeley (Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2012)

Holy Bible, ESV

McGuckin, John, St Gregory of Nazianzus – An Intellectual Biography (New York: St

Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001)