A.D. 381 heretics, pagans, and the dawn of the monotheistic state ( PDFDrive )

McGluckin suggests that Gregory may, in the final oration at least, have been
answering interventions from opponents in the audience. If so, here was the
ancient tradition of open and free debate at its best. Gregory was not alone in
preaching freely. Eunomius himself was now resident in Chalcedon, just across
the Bosporus, where he was reported to be reading his works aloud to admiring
crowds. 6
The first of the orations (Oration 27 in the accepted enumeration of Gregory’s
works) was entitled ‘Against the Eunomians’. 7 Gregory was rather disingenuous
here. The Eunomians, with their central belief that the Father and the Son were
‘unlike’ each other, were opposed to the Homoians, who argued that they were
‘like’ each other. Yet Gregory tended to merge the two groups, something he
must have known would infuriate Demophilus, especially when Eunomius was
preaching so close by. He started the sermon with his usual theme: that only
those who have purified their body and soul and undergone disciplined study are
capable of discussing theology. Even then the theologian has to choose his time,
his audience and the themes it is appropriate to discuss. In a challenge to the
loquacious inhabitants of Constantinople, Gregory derides those for whom
theological discussion is a social pastime, like ‘wrestling bouts ... stage-managed
to give the uncritical spectators visual sensations and compel their applause’. He
seems to be intimating that he is of good birth, while his opponents are upstarts
playing to the populace. (It was indeed true that Eunomius and Aetius came from
relatively humble backgrounds.)
There is much knockabout rhetoric in this oration. One could hardly accuse
Aetius and Eunomius of lack of thoughtful analysis or learning, but Gregory’s
point that theology requires reflection and study is a perfectly valid one. In the
second oration (Oration 28), he goes on to examine what it is possible for the
trained theologian to say about the nature of God. He challenges Eunomius’ view
that through the application of rational thought to the scriptures it is possible to
know God. Using the analogy of the reflection of the sun shining on water,
Gregory argues that it is impossible to look at the sun (for which read God)
directly but that we gain some understanding of it by seeing the way its light is
reflected off the water. It is a particularly apt analogy for Constantinople, where
water surrounds the city on three sides and the sun on the sea must often have
dazzled onlookers. But anyone who had read Plato’s parable of the cave would
also recognise the approach. Those who live in the darkness of Plato’s cave,
where the only light is the reflection of fire on the walls, are dazzled by the