Gregory of Nazianzus

In his own words on Isaiah

• Isaiah 1:3

  Isaiah calls to you to know your owner, like the ox, and to know the manger of your Lord, like the donkey.

  ON THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, ORATION 38:17

• Isaiah 1:22

  And who is sufficient for these things? For we are not as the many, able to corrupt the word of truth and mix the wine, which makes glad the heart of man, with water. [We do not] mix, that is, our doctrine with what is common and cheap, and debased, and stale, and tasteless, in order to turn the adulteration to our profit and accommodate ourselves to those who meet us, and curry favor with everyone. [We do not] become ventriloquists and chatterers, who serve their own pleasures by words uttered from the earth, and sink into the earth, and, to gain the special good will of the multitude, injure in the highest degree, no, ruin ourselves, and shed the innocent blood of simpler souls, which will be required at our hands.

  IN DEFENSE OF HIS FLIGHT, ORATION 2:46

• Isaiah 7:14

  Humanity was blended with God, and he was one. The more powerful predominated in order that I might become god just as he became human. Although he was already begotten, he was born of a woman, who was a virgin. Because his birth was from a woman, it was human. Because she was a virgin, it was divine. He had neither a human father nor a divine mother.

  ON THE SON, THEOLOGICAL ORATION 3(29).19

• Isaiah 9:13

  It is better to turn again when we err than to be free from correction when we stumble. For whom the Lord loves he chastens, and a rebuke is a fatherly action. Every soul that is not chastised is not healed. Is not then freedom from chastisement a hard thing? But to fail to be corrected by the chastisement is still harder.

  ON HIS FATHER'S SILENCE, ORATION 16:15

• Isaiah 9:16-17

  He [Paul] lived not to himself but to Christ and his preaching. He crucified the world to himself, and being crucified to the world and the things which are seen, he thought all things little and too small to be desired. [He thought this] even though from Jerusalem and round about to Illyricum he had fully preached the gospel, even though he had been prematurely caught up to the third heaven, and had had a vision of Paradise, and had heard unspeakable words. Such was Paul, and everyone of similar spirit with him. But we fear that in comparison with them, we may be foolish princes of Zoan, or extortionists who exact the fruits of the ground or falsely bless the people.

  IN DEFENSE OF HIS FLIGHT, ORATION 2:56

• Isaiah 10:3

  "What shall we do in the day of visitation?" One of the prophets terrifies me [with this question], whether that of the righteous sentence of God against us or that upon the mountains and hills, of which we have heard. Whatever and whenever it may be, he will reason with us and oppose us and set before us those bitter accusers, which are our sins, contrasting our wrongdoings with our benefits, striking thought with thought, scrutinizing action with action and calling us to account for the image that has been blurred and spoiled by wickedness. He will finally lead us away self-convicted and self-condemned, no longer able to say that we are being unjustly treated—a thought that is able even here sometimes to console in their condemnation those who are suffering.

  ON HIS FATHER'S SILENCE, ORATION 16:8

• Isaiah 10:23

  Three gathered together in the name of the Lord count for more with God than tens of thousands of those who deny the Godhead. Would you prefer the whole of the Canaanites to Abraham alone? or the men of Sodom to Lot? or the Midianities to Moses, when each of these was a pilgrim and a stranger? How do the three hundred men with Gideon, who bravely lapped, compare with the thousands who were put to flight? Or the servants of Abraham, who scarcely exceeded them in number, with the many kings and the army of tens of thousands whom, few as they were, they overtook and defeated? Or how do you understand the passage that though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, a remnant shall be saved? And again, I have left me seven thousand men, who have not bowed the knee to Baal? … God has not taken pleasure in numbers.

  THE LAST FAREWELL, ORATION 42:7

• Isaiah 11:2-3

  I think Isaiah loves to call the activities of the Spirit "spirits."

  ON PENTECOST, ORATION 41:3

• Isaiah 21:2

  We receive the Son's light from the Father's light in the light of the Spirit: that is what we ourselves have seen and what we now proclaim—it is the plain and simple explanation of the Trinity. Let the treacherous deal treacherously, let the transgressor transgress—we shall preach what we know. We shall climb a lofty mountain and shout it out, if we are not given a hearing below. We shall extol the Spirit; we shall not be afraid. If we do have fear, it will be of silence, not of preaching.

  ON THE HOLY SPIRIT, THEOLOGICAL ORATION 5 (31).3

• Isaiah 24:2

  Nor indeed is there any distinction between the state of the people and that of the priesthood: but it seems to me to be a simple fulfillment of the ancient curse, "As with the people, so with the priest." Nor again are the great and eminent men affected otherwise than the majority; no, they are openly at war with the priest, and the piety of the people is an aid to their powers of persuasion. And indeed, provided that it is on behalf of the faith and of the highest and most important questions, let the people be thus disposed, and I do not blame them. To say the truth, I go so far as to praise and congratulate the people.

  IN DEFENSE OF HIS FLIGHT, ORATION 2:82

• Isaiah 26:11

  I know the glittering sword, and the blade made drunk in heaven, bidden to slay, to bring to nothing, to make childless and to spare neither flesh nor marrow nor bones. I know him who, though free from passion, meets us like a bear robbed of her cubs, like a leopard in the way of the Assyrians, not only those of that day, but if anyone now is an Assyrian in wickedness. Nor is it possible to escape the might and speed of his wrath when he watches over our impieties, and his jealousy, which knows to devour his adversaries, pursues his enemies to the death. I know the emptying, the making void, the making waste, the melting of the heart and knocking of the knees together;7 such are the punishments of the ungodly.

  ON HIS FATHER'S SILENCE, ORATION 16:7

• Isaiah 26:18

  Let us talk about how "mercy is put in the balance" as holy Isaiah declares, for goodness is not without discernment, as the first laborers in the vineyard fancied, because they could not perceive any distinction between those who were paid alike. And [let us talk about] how anger, which is called "the cup in the hand of the Lord" and "the cup of falling which is drained," is in proportion to transgressions, even though he abates to all somewhat of what is their due and dilutes with compassion the unmixed draught of his wrath. For he inclines from severity to indulgence toward those who accept chastisement with fear and who after a slight affliction conceived and are in pain with conversion and bring forth the perfect spirit of salvation. But nevertheless he reserves the dregs, the last drop of his anger, that he may pour it out entire upon those who, instead of being healed by his kindness, grow obdurate, like the hard-hearted Pharaoh, that bitter taskmaster, who is set forth as an example of the power of God over the ungodly.

  ON HIS FATHER'S SILENCE, ORATION 16:4

• Isaiah 28:11

  They spoke with strange tongues and not those of their native land; and the wonder was great, a language spoken by those who had not learned it. And the sign is to them that do not believe, not to them that believe, that it may be an accusation of the unbelievers, as it is written, "With other tongues and other lips will I speak to this people, and not even so will they listen to me, says the Lord." But they heard. Here stop a little and raise a question. How are you to divide the words? For the expression has an ambiguity, which is to be determined by the punctuation. Did they each hear in their own dialect so that if I may so say, one sound was uttered but many were heard; the air being thus beaten and, so to speak, sounds being produced more clear than the original sound? Or are we to put the stop after "they heard" and then to add "them speaking in their own languages" to what follows, so that it would be speaking in the hearers' own languages, which would be foreign to the speakers? I prefer to put it this latter way; for on the other plan the miracle would be rather of the hearers than of the speakers; whereas in this it would be on the speakers' side. And it was they who were reproached for drunkenness, evidently because they by the Spirit wrought a miracle in the matter of the tongues.

  ON PENTECOST, ORATION 41:15

• Isaiah 28:17

  Discourse awhile on our present heavy blow, about the just judgments of God, whether we grasp their meaning or are ignorant of their great depth. How again "mercy is put in the balance," as holy Isaiah declares. For goodness is not without discernment, as the first laborers in the vineyard fancied, because they could not perceive any distinction between those who were paid alike. [Perceive] how anger, which is called "the cup in the hand of the Lord" and "the cup of falling which is drained," is in proportion to transgressions, even though he shows mercy to every one according to what they are due and dilutes with compassion the unmixed draught of his wrath. For he inclines from severity to indulgence toward those who accept chastisement with fear, and who after a slight affliction conceive and are in pain with conversion, and bring forth the perfect spirit of salvation. But nevertheless he reserves the dregs, the last drop of his anger, that he may pour it out entire upon those who, instead of being healed by his kindness, grow obdurate, like the hard-hearted Pharaoh, that bitter taskmaster, who is set forth as an example of the power of God over the ungodly.

  ON HIS FATHER'S SILENCE, ORATION 16:4

• Isaiah 28:19

  Every time is suitable for your ablution, since any time may be your death. With Paul I shout to you with that loud voice, "Behold now is the accepted time; behold now is the day of salvation";56 and that now does not point to any one time but is every present moment. And again "Awake, you that sleep, and Christ shall give you light," dispelling the darkness of sin. For as Isaiah says, "In the night hope is evil," and it is more profitable to be received in the morning.

  ON HOLY BAPTISM, ORATION 40:13

• Isaiah 29:9

  What are we to do now, my brothers, when crushed, cast down and drunk but not with strong drink or with wine, which excites and obfuscates but for a while, but with the blow which the Lord has inflicted upon us? He says, "And you, O heart, be stirred and shaken, and gives to the despisers the spirit of sorrow and deep sleep to drink." To [them] he also says, "See, you despisers, behold, and wonder and perish." How shall we bear his convictions; or what reply shall we make, when he reproaches us not only with the multitude of the benefits for which we have continued ungrateful, but also with his chastisements, and reckons up the remedies with which we have refused to be healed?

  ON HIS FATHER'S SILENCE, ORATION 16:10

• Isaiah 32:20

  Only let us not be condemned for frivolity by asking for little, and for what is unworthy of the giver. Blessed is he from whom Jesus asks drink, as he did from that Samaritan woman, and gives a well of water springing up unto eternal life. Blessed is he that sows beside all waters, and upon every soul, tomorrow to be ploughed and watered, which today the ox and the donkey tread, while it is dry and without water, and oppressed with lack of rationality. And blessed is he who, though he be a "valley of rushes," is watered out of the house of the Lord; for he is made fruit-bearing instead of rush-bearing and produces that which is for the food of man, not that which is rough and unprofitable. And for the sake of this we must be very careful not to miss the grace.

  ON HOLY BAPTISM, ORATION 40:27

• Isaiah 40:2

  How is it that some receive at the Lord's hand double for their sins and the measure of their wickedness is doubly filled up, as in the correction of Israel, while the sins of others are removed by a sevenfold compensation? What is the measure of the Amorites that is not yet full? And how is the sinner either acquitted or chastised again, acquitted perhaps, because reserved for the other world, chastised because healed thereby in this?

  ON HIS FATHER'S SILENCE, ORATION 16:5

• Isaiah 41:4

  [Where] do you get those fortresses of yours, "ingenerate" and "unoriginate," from—or where the term "immortal"? Show us the express words, or we cross them out as unscriptural, and you will be dead as a result of your own principles, since the words, the wall of defense you trusted in, will have been destroyed. Is it not plain that these terms derived from passages that imply, without actually mentioning them? Which passages? What about "I am the first, and I am hereafter," and "Before me there is no other God and after me there shall be none," "for everything that exists" [God is saying] "is mine, without beginning or ending"? You have taken the truths that there is nothing before God and that he has no prior case, and you have given him the titles "unoriginate" and "ingenerate." The fact that there is no halt to his ongoing existence means he is "immortal" and "indestructible."

  ON THE HOLY SPIRIT, THEOLOGICAL ORATION 5(31).23

• Isaiah 42:1

  Next is the fact of his being called Servant and serving many well, and that it is a great thing for him to be called the Child of God. For in truth he was in servitude to flesh and to birth and to the conditions of our life with a view to our liberation, and to that of all those whom he has saved, who were in bondage under sin. What greater destiny can befall humanity's humble state than that it should be intermingled with God and by this intermingling should be deified, and that we should be so visited by the Dayspring from on high, that even that holy thing that should be born should be called the Son of the Highest, and that there should be bestowed on him a name that is above every name? And what else can this be than God?—and that every knee should bow to him that was made of no reputation for us, and that mingled the form of God with the form of a servant, and that "all the house of Israel should know that God has made him both Lord and Christ"? For all this was done by the action of the Begotten and by the good pleasure of him that begat him.

  ON THE SON, THEOLOGICAL ORATION 4(30).3

• Isaiah 42:8

  The same thing applies to the word Lord, which is also used as a name of God. "I am the Lord your God," he says. "This is my name," and "The Lord is his name." But we are making deeper enquiries into a nature that has absolute existence, independent of anything else. The actual, personal being of God in its fullness is neither limited nor cut short by any prior or any subsequent reality—so it was, and so it will be.

  ON THE SON, THEOLOGICAL ORATION 4(30).18

• Isaiah 45:3

  Who is the person whose heart has never been made to burn, as the Scriptures have been opened, with the pure words of God that have been tried in a furnace;16 who has not, by a triple inscription of them on the breadth of his heart, attained the mind of Christ, or been admitted to the treasures that to most people remain hidden, secret and dark, to gaze on the riches therein and become able to enrich others, comparing spiritual things with spiritual.

  IN DEFENSE OF HIS FLIGHT TO PONTUS, ORATION 2:96

• Isaiah 47:15

  For I know a cleansing fire that Christ came to send on the earth, and he himself is anagogically called a fire. This Fire takes away whatever is material and of evil habit. This [Christ] desires to kindle with all speed, for he longs for speed in doing us good, since he gives us even coals of fire to help us.

  ON HOLY BAPTISM, ORATION 40:36

• Isaiah 48:4

  Perchance he will say to me, who am not reformed even by blows, "I know that you are obstinate and your neck is an iron sinew, the heedless is heedless, and the lawless person acts lawlessly, and for nothing comes correction from heaven and the scourges." The bellows are burned, the lead is consumed, as I once reprimanded you by the mouth of Jeremiah: "The founder melted the silver in vain; your wickednesses are not melted away." … May it not be that I should ever, among other chastisements, be thus approached by him who is good, and yet by my own contrariness continue to walk against his goodness. This causes God to walk against me in fury.

  ON HIS FATHER'S SILENCE, ORATION 16:11-12

• Isaiah 49:6

  He is called Servant and serves many well. And his being given the grand title "Child of God" agrees with this. For in truth he was subject as a servant to flesh and to birth and to the conditions of our life with a view toward our liberation. He was subject to all that he saved, held captive as we were in sin.

  ON THE SON, THEOLOGICAL ORATION 4(30).3

• Isaiah 50:11

  One light alone let us shun: that which is the offspring of the terrible fire. Let us not walk in the light of our own fire and in the very flame we have kindled. For I know of a cleansing fire that Christ came to send on the earth, and that he himself is anagogically called a fire. This Fire takes away whatever is material and of evil habit. This he desires to kindle with all speed, for he longs for speed in doing us good, since he gives us even coals of fire to help us. I know also a fire that is not cleansing but avenging; either that fire of Sodom, which he pours down on all sinners, mingled with brimstone and storms, or that which is prepared for the devil and his angels.

  ON HOLY BAPTISM, ORATION 40:36

• Isaiah 51:17

  Anger, which is called "the cup in the hand of the Lord" and "the cup of falling that is drained," is in proportion to transgressions, even though he abates to all some of what is their due and dilutes with compassion the unmixed draught of his wrath. For he inclines from severity to indulgence toward those who accept chastisement with fear, and who after a slight affliction conceive and are in pain with conversion and bring forth the perfect spirit of salvation. But he nevertheless reserves the dregs, the last drop of his anger, that he may pour it out entire on those who, instead of being healed by his kindness, grow obdurate, like the hardhearted Pharaoh.

  ON HIS FATHER'S SILENCE, ORATION 16:4

• Isaiah 53:2

  For he whom you now treat with contempt was once above you. He who is now man was once the uncompounded. What he was he continued to be; what he was not he took to himself. In the beginning he was uncaused; for what is the cause of God? But afterwards for a cause he was born. And that cause was that you might be saved, who insult him and despise his godhead, because of this, that he took on him your denser nature, having converse with flesh by means of mind. While his inferior nature, the humanity, became God, because it was united to God and became one person because the higher nature prevailed, [this happened] in order that I too might be made God so far as he is made man. He was born—but he had been begotten. He was born of a woman—but she was a virgin. The first is human, the second divine. In his human nature he had no father, but also in his divine nature [he had] no mother. Both these belong to godhead. He dwelled in the womb—but he was recognized by the prophet [John the Baptist], himself still in the womb, leaping before the Word, for whose sake he came into being. He was wrapped in swaddling clothes—but he took off the swathing bands of the grave by his rising again. He was laid in a manger—but he was glorified by angels, and proclaimed by a star and worshiped by the magi. Why are you offended by what is presented to your sight, because you will not look at what is presented to your mind? He was driven into exile into Egypt—but he drove away the Egyptian idols. He had no form or comeliness in the eyes of the Jews—but to David he is fairer than the children of humankind. And on the mountain he was bright as the lightning and became more luminous than the sun, initiating us into the mystery of the future.

  ON THE SON, THEOLOGICAL ORATION 3(29).19

• Isaiah 53:4

  "He was made flesh" seems to be equivalent to that in which it is said that he was made sin or a curse for us, not that the Lord was transmuted into either of these—for how could he? But because by taking them on him he "took away our iniquities and bore our infirmities."

  LETTER 51(101)

• Isaiah 53:7

  He prays, but he hears prayer. He weeps, but he causes tears to cease. He asks where Lazarus was laid, for he was man; but he raises Lazarus, for he was God. He is sold, and very cheap, for it is only for thirty pieces of silver, but he redeems the world, and that at a great price, for the price was his own blood. As a sheep he is led to the slaughter, but he is the shepherd of Israel, and now of the whole world also. As a lamb he is silent, yet he is the Word and is proclaimed by the voice of one crying in the wilderness. He is bruised and wounded, but he heals every disease and every infirmity. He is lifted up and nailed to the tree, but by the tree of life he restores us, yes, he saves even the robber crucified with him. … He dies, but he gives life, and by his death, he destroys death. He is buried, but he rises again; he goes down into hell, but he brings up the souls; he ascends to heaven and shall come again to judge the living and the dead.

  ON THE SON, THEOLOGICAL ORATION 3(29).20

• Isaiah 53:12

  If you are a Simon of Cyrene, take up the cross and follow. If you are crucified with him as a robber, acknowledge God as a penitent robber. If even he was numbered among the transgressors for you and your sin, do you become law-abiding for his sake. Worship him who was hanged for you, even if you yourself are hanging; make some gain even from your wickedness; purchase salvation by your death; enter with Jesus into paradise, so that you may learn from what you have fallen.

  ON HOLY EASTER, ORATION 45:24

• Isaiah 54:7-8

  I seem, indeed, to hear that voice from him who gathers together those who are broken and welcomes the oppressed.… The measure of his kindness exceeds the measure of his discipline. The former things were owing to our wickedness, the present things to the adorable Trinity, the former for our cleansing, the present for my Glory.

  THE LAST FAREWELL, ORATION 42:7

• Isaiah 58:10

  [My father] actually treated his own property as if it were another's, of which he was but the steward, relieving poverty as far as he could and expending not only his superfluities but his necessities—a manifest proof of love for the poor, giving a portion not only to seven, according to the injunction of Solomon, but if an eighth came forward, not even in his case being stingy but more pleased to dispose of his wealth than we know others are to acquire it.… This is what most people do: they give indeed, but without that readiness that is a greater and more perfect thing than the mere offering. For he thought it much better to be generous even to the undeserving for the sake of the deserving than from fear of the undeserving to deprive those who were deserving. And this seems to be the duty of casting our bread on the waters, since it will not be swept away or perish in the eyes of the just Investigator but will arrive yonder where all that is ours is laid up and will meet with us in due time, even though we think it not. But what is best and greatest of all, [my father's] magnanimity was accompanied by freedom from ambition.

  ON THE DEATH OF HIS FATHER, ORATION 18:20-21

• Isaiah 63:3

  And, if they marvel and say, as in Isaiah's drama, "Who is this that comes from Edom and from the things of the earth?" or "How are the garments red when he is without blood or body, as of one that treads in the full winepress?"—if they say this, then set forth the beauty of the array of the body that suffered, adorned by the passion and made splendid by the Godhead. Nothing can be lovelier or more beautiful than that.… Will you think little of him because he humbled himself for your sake?… Do you conceive of him as less because he girds himself with a towel and washes his disciples and shows that humiliation is the best road to exaltation?

  ON HOLY EASTER, ORATION 45:25-26