The Sacred Writings of Gregory Thaumaturgus

Gregory Thaumaturgus, Stewart Dyngwall Fordyce Salmond

• Publisher: Jazzybee Verlag
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9783849621308
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

"The Sacred Writings Of..." provides you with the essential works among the Early Christian writings. The volumes cover the beginning of Christianity until before the promulgation of the Nicene Creed at the First Council of Nicaea.This edition contains the following works: A Declaration of Faith.A Metaphrase of the Book of Ecclesiastes.Canonical Epistle.The Oration and Panegyric Addressed to Origen.A Sectional Confession of Faith.On the Trinity.Twelve Topics on the Faith.On the Subject of the Soul.Four Homilies.On All the Saints.On the Gospel According to Matthew.

The Sacred Writings of Gregory Thaumaturgus

Contents:

Gregory Thaumaturgus – A Biography

The Sacred Writings of Gregory Thaumaturgus

Introductory Note to Gregory Thaumaturgus

Translator's Notice.

Part I.-Acknowledged Writings.

A Declaration of Faith.

Elucidation.

A Metaphrase of the Book of Ecclesiastes.

Chapter I.

Chapter II.

Chapter III.

Chapter IV.

Chapter V.

Chapter VI.

Chapter VII.

Chapter VIII.

Chapter IX.

Chapter X.

Chapter XI.

Chapter XII.

Canonical Epistle.

Canon I.

Canon II.

Canon III.

Canon IV.

Canon V.

Canon VI.

Canon VII.

Canon VIII.

Canon IX.

Canon X.

Canon XI.

Elucidations.

The Oration and Panegyric Addressed to Origen.

Argument I-For Eight Years Gregory Has Given Up the Practice of Oratory, Being Busied with the Study Chiefly of Roman Law and the Latin Language.

Argument II.-He Essays to Speak of the Well-Nigh Divine Endowments of Origen in His Presence, into Whose Hands He Avows Himself to Have Been Led in a Way Beyond All His Expectation.

Argument III.-He is Stimulated to Speak of Him by the Longing of a Grateful Mind. To the Utmost of His Ability He Thinks He Ought to Thank Him. From God are the Beginnings of All Blessings; And to Him Adequate Thanks Cannot Be Returned.

Argument IV.-The Son Alone Knows How to Praise the Father Worthily. In Christ and by Christ Our Thanksgiving Sought to Be Rendered to the Father. Gregory Also Gives Thanks to His Guardian Angel, Because He Was Conducted by Him to Origen.

Argument V.-Here Gregory Interweaves the Narrative of His Former Life. His Birth of Heathen Parents is Stated. In the Fourteenth Year of His Age He Loses His Father. He is Dedicated to the Study of Eloquence and Law. By a Wonderful Leading of Providence, He is Brought to Origen.

Argument VI.-The Arts by Which Origen Studies to Keep Gregory and His Brother Athenodorus with Him, Although It Was Almost Against Their Will; And the Love by Which Both are Taken Captive. Of Philosophy, the Foundation of Piety, with the View of Giving Himself Therefore Wholly to that Study, Gregory is Willing to Give Up Fatherland, Parents, the Pursuit of Law, and Every Other Discipline. Of the Soul as the Free Principle. The Nobler Part Does Not Desire to Be United with the Inferior, But the Inferior with the Nobler.

Argument VII.-The Wonderful Skill with Which Origen Prepares Gregory and Athenodorus for Philosophy. The Intellect of Each is Exercised First in Logic, and the Mere Attention to Words is Contemned.

Argument VIII.-Then in Due Succession He Instructs Them in Physics, Geometry, and Astronomy.

Argument IX.-But He Imbues Their Minds, Above All, with Ethical Science; And He Does Not Confine Himself to Discoursing on the Virtues in Word, But He Rather Confirms His Teaching by His Acts.

Argument X.-Hence the Mere Word-Sages are Confuted, Who Say and Yet Act Not.

Argument XI.-Origen is the First and the Only One that Exhorts Gregory to Add to His Acquirements the Study of Philosophy, and Offers Him in a Certain Manner an Example in Himself. Of Justice, Prudence, Temperance, and Fortitude. The Maxim, Know Thyself.

Argument XII.-Gregory Disallows Any Attainment of the Virtues on His Part. Piety is Both the Beginning and the End, and Thus It is the Parent of All the Virtues.

Argument XIII.-The Method Which Origen Used in His Theological and Metaphysical Instructions. He Commends the Study of All Writers, the Atheistic Alone Excepted. The Marvellous Power of Persuasion in Speech. The Facility of the Mind in Giving Its Assent.

Argument XIV.-Whence the Contentions of Philosophers Have Sprung. Against Those Who Catch at Everything that Meets Them, and Give It Credence, and Cling to It. Origen Was in the Habit of Carefully Reading and Explaining the Books of the Heathen to His Disciples.

Argument XV.-File Case of Divine Matters. Only God and His Prophets are to Be Heard in These. The Prophets and Their Auditors are Acted on by the Same Afflatus. Origen's Excellence in the Interpretation of Scripture.

Argument XVI.-Gregory Laments His Departure Under a Threefold Comparison; Likening It to Adam's Departure Out of Paradise. To the Prodigal Son's Abandonment of His Father's House, and to the Deportation of the Jews into Babylon.

Argument XVII.-Gregory Consoles Himself.

Argument XVIII.-Peroration, and Apology for the Oration.

Argument XIX.-Apostrophe to Origen, and Therewith the Leave-Taking, and the Urgent Utterance of Prayer.

Elucidations.

Part II.-Dubious or Spurious Writings.

A Sectional Confession of Faith.

A Fragment of the Same Declaration of Faith, Accompanied by Glosses.-From Gregory Thaumaturgus, as They Say, in His Sectional Confession of Faith.

Elucidations.

On the Trinity.

Fragment from the Discourse.

Elucidation.

Twelve Topics on the Faith.

Topic I.

Explication.

Topic II.

Explication.

Topic III.

Explication.

Topic IV.

Explication.

Topic V.

Explication.

Topic VI.

Explication.

Topic VII.

Explication.

Topic VIII.

Explication.

Topic IX.

Explication.

Topic X.

Explication.

Topic XI.

Explication.

Topic XII.

Explication.

Elucidations.

On the Subject of the Soul.

I. Wherein is the Criterion for the Apprehension of the Soul.

II. Whether the Soul Exists.

III. Whether the Soul is a Substance.

IV. Whether the Soul is Incorporeal.

V. Whether the Soul is Simple or Compound.

VI. Whether Our Soul is Immortal.

VII. Whether Our Soul is Rational.

Elucidations.

Four Homilies.

The First Homily on the Annunciation to the Holy Virgin Mary.

The Second Homily On the Annunciation to the Holy Virgin Mary.

Discourse Second.

The Third Homily On the Annunciation to the Holy Virgin Mary.

The Fourth Homily On the Holy Theophany, or on Christ's Baptism

Elucidations.

On All the Saints.

Elucidations.

On the Gospel According to Matthew.

The Sacred Writings of Gregory Thaumaturgus

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Gregory Thaumaturgus – A Biography

Gregory Of Nyssa , a saint and father of the church, born in Cappadocia about 331, died about 400. He was a younger brother of Basil the Great, studied with him at Athens and Constantinople, was married, then embraced the ecclesiastical profession, and was ordained lector. Yielding to his passion for literature, he opened a school of eloquence, but was induced by Gregory Nazianzen to dedicate his talents to the ministry. In 370 he became assistant to his brother at Caesarea, and in 372 was chosen bishop of Nyssa. He was exiled under Valens by the Arians. was deputed in October, 379, by the council of Antioch, to visit the churches of Palestine and Arabia, was present at the council of Constantinople in 381, and again in 382 and 383. Gregory of Nyssa's works contain the most complete philosophical exposition of Christian dogma given before St. Augustine. He follows Origen in his scientific methods, combats expressly his heterodox theorems, and has been accused of leaning toward his theory of the final salvation of all beings.

His works were published in part by Sifanus (Basel, 1562-'71); by the Jesuit Fronton du Due (2 vols., Paris, 1615; vol. iii. edited by Claude Morel in 1838); and by Migne (Patrologie grecque, vols. xliv.-xlvi., Paris, 1857-'66). A selection of his works is found in Ohler's Bibliothek der Kirchenvater, vols. i.-iv. (Leipzig, 1858).

The Sacred Writings of Gregory Thaumaturgus

Introductory Note to Gregory Thaumaturgus

[A.D. 205-240-265.] Alexandria continues to be the head of Christian learning. It is delightful to trace the hand of God from generation to generation, as from father to son, interposing for the perpetuity of the faith. We have already observed the continuity of the great Alexandrian school: how it arose, and how Pantaenus begat Clement, and Clement begat Origen. So Origen begat Gregory, and so the Lord has provided for the spiritual generation of the Church's teachers, age after age, from the beginning. Truly, the Lord gave to Origen a holy seed, better than natural sons and daughters; as if, for his comfort, Isaiah had written, forbidding him to say, "I am a dry tree."

Our Gregory has given us not a little of his personal adventures in his panegyric upon his master, and for his further history the reader need only be referred to what follows. But I am anxious to supply the dates, which are too loosely left to conjecture. As he was ordained a bishop "very young," according to Eusebius, I suppose he must have been far enough under fifty, the age prescribed by the "Apostolic Canons" (so called), though probably not younger than thirty, the earliest canonical limit for the ordination of a presbyter. If we decide upon five and thirty, as a mean reckoning, we may with some confidence set his birth at A.D. 205, dating back from his episcopate, which began A.D. 240. He was a native of Neo-Caesarea, the chief city of Pontus,-a fact that should modify what we have learned about Pontus from Tertullian. He was born of heathen parentage, and lived like other Gentile boys until his fourteenth year (circa A.D. 218), with the disadvantage of being more than ordinarily imbued by a mistaken father in the polytheism of Greece. At this period his father died; but his mother, carrying out the wishes of her husband, seems to have been not less zealous in furthering his education according to her pagan ideas. He was, evidently, the inheritor of moderate wealth; and, with his brother Athenodorus, he was placed under an accomplished teacher of grammar and rhetoric, from whom also he acquired a considerable knowledge of the Latin tongue. He was persuaded by the same master to use this accomplishment in acquiring some knowledge of the Roman laws. This is a very important point in his biography, and it brings us to an epoch in Christian history too little noted by any writer. I shall return to it very soon. We find him next going to Alexandria to study the New Platonism. He speaks of himself as already prepossessed with Christian ideas, which came to him even in his boyhood, about the time when his father died. But it was not at Alexandria that he began his acquaintance with Christian learning. Next he seems to have travelled into Greece, and to have studied at Athens. But the great interest of his autobiography begins with the providential incidents, devoutly narrated by himself, which engaged him in a journey to Berytus just as Origen reached Caesarea, A.D. 233, making it for a time his home and the seat of his school. His own good angel, as Gregory supposes, led him away from Berytus, where he purposed to prosecute his legal studies, and brought him to the feet of Origen, his Gamaliel; and "from the very first day of his receiving us," he says, "the true Sun began to rise upon me." This he accounts the beginning of his true life; and, if we are right as to our dates, he was now about twenty-seven years of age.

If he tarried even a little while in Berytus, as seems probable, his knowledge of law was, doubtless, somewhat advanced. It was the seat of that school in which Roman law began its existence in the forms long afterward digested into the Pandects of Justinian. That emperor speaks of Berytus as "the mother and nurse" of the civil law. Caius, whose Institutes were discovered in 1820 by the sagacity of Niebuhr, seems to have been a Syrian. So were Papinian and Ulpian: and, heathen as they were, they lived under the illumination reflected from Antioch; and, not less than the Antonines, the...

Table of contents

• Contents:
• Elucidations.