certainty

I recently picked up Gregory of Nazianzus’ famous Five Theological Orations (which are actually Orations 28-32) in which the Nazianzen tackles the relationship of God and Christ. My purpose is to understand how Gregory uses metaphors, so I can then better understand his use of both masculine and feminine metaphors in describing his own priesthood. In these Orations, the orator of Nazianzus beautifully undermines our rather modern assumptions about the possibility of objective knowledge and the certainty of our concepts and the language with which we express them. I must admit, I am a bit struck to read a pre-modern thinker who sounds a bit like a post-modern theorist. So, the first part of what could be a short or long series on Gregory of Nazianzus.

I made it to presanctified liturgy this week, an evening which ended with a very interesting conversation over dinner. We started with a conversation about Natural Law theology (something I think quite a bit about as a student in an ethics department dominated by Catholic natural law ethicists), moved to Orthodox theology, and what we can know and not know about God and humanity. I was asked what I can say for sure about God, who does not change. Expressing hesitancy about whether God does change or not, I replied that in the end, all I can say is that God is love, whatever that means.