Let me get myself spread out here!
Did everybody get one of the handouts? Alright, so I think there might still be a couple at the back if we run out, we can make more.
But I've got handouts with a tomel, and on the other side some vocabulary that comes into it for the discussion of Trinitarian theology developed in the fourth century.
But still valid and useful. Today, Donna, could you bring the water up?
I forgot to bring that.
Say? What?
Oh, I had some. I just forgot to bring it alright.
What I'd like to do then is to start with a little bit of a review about the basic situation.
As far as Trinitarian theology goes, in the middle of the fourth century.
Here Nicaea, which you can see, is the first.
The first line on the timeline that I gave you Nicaea, near the beginning of the fourth century, issues these decisions, saying that the sun is fully, truly divine.
One, and being. That's the language that they choose one in being with the father but as we saw a couple of weeks ago that didn't actually, end the debate, it wasn't kind of the final word on the subject by Christians at that time and it's important to remember that it's not just
not the final word on this question among those people who are opposed to the idea that put forward at Nicaea, that it's not just the people who want to emphasize the difference between father and son and who reject the language of Nicaea who don't treat it as the
nobody really treats it as the final word, and there are 2 reasons that nobody's treating it as some sort of authoritative, final word on the subject.
The first one is that the idea of kind of a universal creed from a universal council, that that gives a final word and establishes some sort of uniform.
That's you know. I'd almost say that's a new idea, except it's not even a new idea yet at the time of Nico, right?
Nobody has this idea when they call for this Council, that that's what it's going to be, or that's what it's going to establish, particularly with regard to establishing a creed that everybody everywhere is supposed to accept it. Just it.
Never entered their minds, and so that's the first reason that that it wasn't able to serve as sort of a final word in 325.
The second reason that it wasn't able to serve as a final word is that the Council of Nicera was designed and called to deal with a a specific issue.
It dealt with some additional ones also, since they had, you know, over 300 bishops gathered in one place, but it was designed to deal with this one Alexandrian controversy between areas, and the Bishop of Alexandria.
Alexander, and and the things that were immediately surrounding that right, it was necessary to call a council of the entire empire.
You know all the churches in the Empire, because these issues in Alexandria, Egypt were kind of spilling out, and they were threatening to affect the Church.
But it wasn't designed to deal with the with everything.
The conflict between areas and Alexander was just one example of those tensions that we talked about and people trying to understand the relationship between father and son.
It was one example of the tension between people emphasizing the similarity between father and son and people who were emphasizing the difference.
So, while nice to some degree dealt with the question of areas themselves, all of the rest of those issues that it was one example of, they were still out there.
You can think of it almost as having been, you know, one battle in a war, and so orthodoxy wins the battle.
But that doesn't mean that the war is over. So that's the second reason, then, that Nica is not a final word on this question, and that the debate continues.
Until I'm dry. I was trying to get away from the mic.
So the debate that then followed and continued, you know, asking a lot of the same kinds of questions that had been asked prior to Nica, and were asked at myself.
The debate that followed I would say that it exposed some of the fault lines on both sides of the question.
People who were allies at Nicaea on either side recognize that we're not in perfect alignment.
And so it did as they continued on for the next 50 or 6 you could start to see some of the cracks and those alliances, but it also, and this is this is the beautiful thing that I think comes by God's constant interceding in what goes on in the church it also drew
together, some of the people who had, you know, at the time of my and I say, people, I really mean perspectives, because a lot of times you're dealing with different people.
40 years later, but it drew together people who were who had represented perspectives that were sort of opposed, or at least suspicious of one another.
As they got to see what the extremes on either end of the spectrum were, and they realized, you know, we're really not that far apart.
You're not comfortable with one subtle language.
I'm not comfortable, with a different set of language, but really we agree, and we just need to hammer out.
You know what we can say together, so to some of that hammering out is what I want to talk about tonight as we continue down the timeline, and as we continue sort of setting up tonight's content, Constantius, who is constant the Emperor Constantine's son manages to to come
into power in the entire empire. Constantine dies. Power is split up among several of his sons, and after a few years Constantius is the one who is successful and is ruling the entire empire.
He is sympathetic to Eusebius, who's a little bit more.
He signed, he signs to the Creed at Nicaea, but he's definitely on the separating and subordinating side of Central.
So Constantius is sympathetic to come to Eusebius, and he is opposed to Athanasius, partly for theological reasons, partly because he sees Athanaceous as a destabilizing force in the empire, and he he doesn't want, to deal with a
destabilizing force in the church, and a destabilizing force in the Empire.
So he's opposed to Athanasius, and he ends up promoting what scholars have eventually come to call a Hawaiian theology.
So actually, let's no, I'm not flipping over.
I'm going to a different page. You can flip over and look at the vocabulary and I'll go through a little bit of it.
I'll pick up the rest of it as we come to it.
These are these are those funny Greek words that John had been asking me to talk about.
And John can't be here tonight because he has Covid, but he tells me that he's on zone, so highs, John, we're talking about those work.
If you look just at those first 4, those are the Greek terms that we're gonna you know, mix and mingle.
However, we can as we go along. The first one, and I didn't bother giving you the actual Greek letters.
I figure there was enough information on the page. No need to clog it up.
The first one, though, is, and that refers to essence or substance.
So when you hear, when you hear words, if you've if you're familiar with the the nice same constant Onopolitan creed when you hear phrases like having the same essence or of the same substance, or cons substantial that's that's coming out of that
essence, language, the next word on our list is Homos, which means the same.
Next word is home us, which means similar, or like the only spelling difference between them is the yoda, or what looks like an eye right in the middle of it, and then the last one is a prefix.
That's and is how I have it on here. It can also just be the letter A, and that is just a prefix.
That means not like in as an example in English, because we do the same thing.
If something is atypical, it's not typical, and they're plenty of other examples.
I couldn't come up with any really common ones other than that on the drive down, Donna actually came up with it for me, so thank you to donna.
But that'll give you an idea of how that prefix gets used.
So like I say, the first word is the word that is translated.
Same essence, and you can see that it's a combination of the Hamas, which means same, and Osios, which means essence.
The S gets dropped, but so what? And the theology that I was saying that the Emperor favored, and that a lot of people favored was to not say anything about the essence that substance of God to say you know that goes beyond what Scripture actually Talks about Homo
Osios is not a scriptural word. That was one of the objections to it.
At night they eventually went with it because it worked best.
But there's still this lingering thing where it's like, you know, it's just not a script.
And so, and do we really want to say something about the essence of God?
And so there was a fairly large group that said, You know what?
Let's just not. Let's hold off. Let's just use the word.
Here, home us and talk about the fact that the sun is like the father, and not go any further than and as long as we have an orthodox theology, when we say that we're fine, alright, we can say the sun is like the father, and that is definitely true the problem that a lot of people
and Athanicious saw this as a problem in huge ways.
A lot of other people saw it as a problem eventually is that it's very easy to use that language to hide other kinds of things behind.
You can say the sun is like the father in every single kind of way, or you can say, the sun is like the father, but not very.
I mean, he's kind of like the father, but you can have a very subordinationinist, trinity and theology, where the father is up here, and the sun is like him, but not up here this on his way down here and so you had people who were sort of as I would say.
hiding a very subordinationist theology behind this language.
If you, you know you also have other people who go even beyond that I would say this sorry.
The Homoonian theology was probably the dominant theology.
For a while at least in, and I'll say Christendom, because.
Because I don't want to say the church, because I'm not quite sure who I would accept as the church of all of these people.
But within Christendom, within the visible Church, Homo and theology was pretty dominant.
But then you got some people who said, You know what? Hiding my subordination is under this language doesn't even go far enough in what I want to say about the relationship between father and you get people like a guy named Eunomius, who i've mentioned before.
On your timeline. He pops up in 3, and he goes way beyond saying that he is, you could say an on- which is next after the homeios on your list, on your vocabulary list.
He's an who would say that the sun is not like would be a combination of that out that sorry that our prefix and the word which is like you, lose the h because in Greek it's not actually a letter.
It's just a mark on the oath, so you lose the h, and you get on, and he's not like the father.
He would also say that if he were done, talk about Lusia language which remember the home insurance have been trying to keep the Essence language out but Eunomius will actually bring it back in and say that he's of a different substance.
He's of a different essence than the father. And so this is, I would say, sort of an extreme example of that language.
And so the the tensions within. What thought it was a group are just to the point of shattering.
So like, I say, that brings us up to about 3, 60, and what happens?
Is that most Christians who have been arguing about Trinitarian theology, even even Athanicious, who's like the Gung Ho, break out the weapons and fight for Nicene theology?
You know, even that guy hasn't really been talking that much about essence language.
It gets used at Nicaea, and then it doesn't serve the purpose very, very well, and so they've been fighting around the margins of other stuff.
But around 3, 60, and a little after there's start to be Christians who realize, you know, all of these different things.
They're the the and the Anomians now, and now you add in some other people who say, Okay, maybe the solution to the basically sorry.
I'm getting ahead of myself. You get a large group of people who start saying, maybe the way to solve this is to talk about essence language.
And one of the first steps in dealing with Eunomius, and some of these things is to say that the sun is of a similar essence to the Father these are the people who were never comfortable with Nicea's language.
They don't want to say that it's the same essence, because they think that sounds too Unitarian, like.
If that's if he's the same essence, then how is he not just the same?
How? How are we not modalists? If we say that and so they say, you know, we're only gonna go as far as to say that he is of a similar essence, a like essence to the file.
And one of the people that we actually are talking about tonight starts out, and that can't.
He's like, Yeah, that's a that's a good solution.
But there are additional as that as that debate and that used goes on.
You start to get a group of people who think you know the only real solution to this, because the language to say that he is of a similar substance is running into all kinds of problems.
Also. And so the only solution to this might be to go back and pick up Nicea's of the same substance language, and start using that.
And essentially explain it by, and some of the most important theologians in that group are group of people that we call the Capper notions.
The amazing thing with the okay. Caffadocia.
It actually pops up a couple of times in Scripture.
Peter and his. I can't remember if it's in first and second, but at least in first, Peter, he's addressing churches in a large part of what we would call Turkey, and one of the regions that he's addressing is Cappadocia Caffadocia
is kind of in central central Eastern Turkey, so you know, far to the well.
No sorry for y'all far to that side of the map, and if you, if you go to, if you look in your Bibles, if you've got maps in the back of your Bibles right where the the coastline comes up and then it kind of dips around, a little bit if you go straight.
up from that. You're getting into the region where these people are from.
So the amazing thing when we talk about the Cappadocians in the early church is that we're basically talking about one family.
And the oldest brother's best friend, you know, and that that's small.
That tight of a group provide a really really important set of theologians for talking about late fourth century Trinitarian theology.
Alright! I will try to accelerate a little bit.
So what I want to do tonight, I wanna talk about all of I could go into great detail about each of them.
But I figure this series of events has to come to some kind of a conclusion.
I can't just keep doing church history, you know, until we get to the year 2020.
So eventually, we've got to wrap this up, maybe at some point in the future we'll come back and revisit some of these, and I'll do a short series, and we'll go more into depth.
But for tonight I just want to talk about these theologians, these Christian and the contributions particularly that they made to the Trinitarian debate.
So the first one is the oldest, and her name is Mikerina.
She doesn't write anything that we get. We only know about her through her, through the rest of them's writings and comments.
But Macrina was named for her grandmother, who is also named him, and like, I say, most of what we know is from our brothers writings, particularly one of her brothers wrote what we call the Life of Macrina, which is sort of a.
It's not the kind of thing that we would call a biography.
It's more like a an idealized Yup biography in some ways but it has a lot of still has a lot of valid information about her in it.
It seems like once she was fairly young, a marriage her parents arranged a marriage for her it's a Christian family, by the way they grow up in a Christian family.
Her grandmother is, or I assume her grandfather was too.
But I don't know I don't remember any details about him, but Grandmother Mark created was a believer.
Her Makrina's parents are believers, and so all of these kids grow up in a Christian home, and the father arranges a marriage for her standard standard practice.
But before the wedding could take place, because I think it was originally arranged when she was like 20.
So long before you got to the point where you could actually have the wedding.
Her fiance dies. Macrina jumps on this opportunity and says, Well, I just think it would be wrong for me to remarry them.
I don't think I should get married so Makrina is, says that she's not going to get married.
Some scholars say that it seems like it starts out, you know, maybe as genuine morning, and then but eventually turns into a religious conviction.
Asceticism, celibacy, all these kinds of issues are very much in the air at this.
People are. People are seeing that. And we can. We can talk about that as we go on.
But people are seeing a celibate single life as allowing for a holier light.
Then they understand married life to allow for.
Hardly taking Paul's statements, that you know, hey? If you don't have a wife, you don't have to worry about all that stuff and saying, Hey, yeah, that's right.
If I don't get married, I don't have to worry about all that married stuff I can devote myself to things of God that.
And she goes down that path.
Let's see. So she commits herself to, you know I would say a manastic, celibate life, and she was at that from then on, for her whole family sort of a an example of detachment from the things of the world, and setting that stuff aside, so that she could focus on the things of
good, and in the course of her life they were a wealthy family in the course of her life she set up at least one of the family estates as a sort of a Christian community.
Christian religious community, where people could come and live in common and devote themselves to to the things of God.
The next one, and in the course of that, because she was the oldest she didn't contribute as much to Basil's education.
Who's the next one? We're gonna talk about, because he's only a couple of years younger than she is.
But the the there were, I think, 8 brothers and sisters, and she played a significant role in the education, especially the religious education of all the rest of her siblings.
So the next in line is her younger brother, Basil. He's, I think, about 2 years younger than her.
Is that how I have her? It looks like you's probably about 2 years younger than her, and he was a you know.
He was a very promising young guy, and when he was old enough, you know he had money in.
So he set out around the Mediterranean world looking for you know, the best schools, the best classical, educational, and he was going to go and study the classics and study rhetoric and go into something like law the differences between a legal career, and a a career and
rhetoric are very, very fuzzy in this time period their father was a lawyer, and so all the kids got at least a little bit of oh, maybe you should go to law school kind of in a so this is what Basel was going to do.
As he's in the course of his journey around the Mediterranean.
First he goes to Caesarea, which is still in still in Cappadocia there are lots of Caesarias, so this is not Caesarea Phillipi. This is a Caesarea that's up.
And so he starts there, but then he ends up in Alexandria, and finally in Athens, and in the course of all this he meets another guy who's also from the same general area of Modern-day Turkey named Grigory.
And they get to be really good friends. They end up in Athens together, at the same time studying.
And while he's, you know, while he's there, he sorry.
Speaking of Basel, you know he goes, and he's getting this education eventually.
Then, as he's completed his education, satisfied with his education, he rets from Athens where he's studied, and, as is fairly common, I don't see anybody quite at the just got back from college age here yet tonight, so I can say that as is common he comes back thinking he knows everything
and guess who puts him in his place. His big sister Macarina.
She's like, you know what? You're not as smart as you think you are.
And you know what would be a really good idea if you would learn some humility.
Maybe you should learn a humble lifestyle, and he's, you know, chasing, but we only hear this story from their little brother.
We don't hear that story from Basil. He's not that chastened, but he does kind of take some of this to heart, and after hey, I think he's there for about a year before he has more of a conversion experience to become a Christian truly not just a kid who grew up
in a Christian home, and he decides like a lot of people do, that.
He wants to, at least investigate more about this sort of aesthetic monastic lifestyle of a Christian, where he can devote himself to scholarship and the Church.
And so he sets off because he's got money, sets off on a tour of the Mediterranean to visit lots of monasteries and see how it's done.
Now that I keep saying that I think I'd like to do something like that, I have no interest in the monastic lifestyle, but I wish that I had the money to just set out on a you know if I had an idea that I wanted to know more about go on tour.
Around the Med for 2 years. Sounds great.
But anyway he comes. He eventually comes back, and after seeing all these different monastic settings, most of which are.
The kinds of the kinds of monks or monastics that they have are closer to what we would call hermits.
They're not quite hermits. It's not like one guy in a cave who never sees anybody there are lots of caves in close proximity, but for the most part they steer clear of each other.
It's, you know, each of these guys doing his own sometimes yelling at each other.
If they think they get out of line. But that's about as communal as they get.
He gets back, and he says, You know, that's not really for me.
I like the idea of a religious community living all together and following, you know.
Some processes together. I wonder where he'd gotten the idea for something like that, you know, he he scholarship for a long time gave him credit when he set up a community like that gave him quite for setting it up.
But recently, as we've compared the dates, I think it was Macrina's community that he kind of got his name put on.
So he does that he invites his friend Gregory to to come stay with them.
So Gregory comes and stays with them for a while.
And and they do really some pretty high level theological work.
Yeah, donna, so far, so far, the Gregory that's his friend.
Sorry. I guess you've got all the names on there, and I forget that the Gregory that I've been talking about is Gregory of Nasanzas, who's a couple of years older than him, and from a different town, and becomes his best friend and is not his brother.
Thank you. Donna. I'm sorry that I I'm trying to find myself here, but I'm sorry that I had not made that clear.
I forgot that everybody had both Gregory's on the page in front of them, not just the Gregory that I'd mentioned so far.
There are. Well, there are more than 2, because Basil and Gregory's father no Basil and Gregory's father was named Basil Gregory of Nazianz's father was named Gregory, and he was the Bishop of Nazi Angels just to keep things
really confusing.
So, Basil, you know, is pursuing communal aesthetical life.
He's pursuing theological studies with his friend.
He ends up working with the churches in Antioch, which isn't too far away, and in Caesarea, which is even closer.
Eventually he he is elected Bishop of Cesareia.
After the Bishop there dies. Yeah, he's chosen as the bishop and while he's the Bishop there, he sets up just out the city walls.
He sets up a complex. That's kind of a monastery it incorporates a poorhouse, and it has something like a hospital involved.
Also and according to Gregory of Nazanz, his friend, not Gregory, Haven'tissa, his brother.
It was kind of a wonder to behold. It was just amazing to see all of this going on, and all set up to to glorify guys.
And he's also throughout all of this he's involved in the theological struggles going on against the Eunomians, over the question of how the sun, how we talk about the sun being like the floor.
He starts out what we've called a homogeneous position, but as he comes to realize that this is a really good place for subordinationists to hide, and that it is that the whole that even the homo position is really inadequate for making arguments against you
know Meius, and against the Hawaiians, that if you really want to do this effectively, the only way to use the home arguments effectively, the only way to I'll try it in English.
The only way to use the arguments that the sun is of a similar substance to the effectively is to define similar so closely that you might as well just say it's the same.
So he says, you know, let's just bail on this language.
I'm not gonna get mad at anybody who sticks with it.
But the homo Lucian, the same substance.
Language is the only language that really gets you there. So he switches over to that.
I say, switches, it's not like it happens. One afternoon he gradually moves over to arguing from that perspective, and at the same time he's also continuing to be involved in sort of church and imperial politics that are going on the Emperor.
I think I mentioned is still, and Basil is, you know, on the other side of the debate, and the Church had set up.
It's its structure to reflect the Roman political provinces and regions.
So, Basil, because he was Bishop of Caesaria, which was the capital of the territory of Cappadocia.
He had authority to, you know, not total authority, but he had a lot of influence, at least over all the other bishops in Cappadocia.
Yeah, the Emperor doesn't like that very much.
So the Emperor says, Cappadocia, to provinces.
Now there's I can't remember. I think it's East and West Cappadocia.
We'll just split them that way. He has half as many bishops that owe him any kind of cooperation.
So Basil responds. He says, Okay, that's fine.
I see a tiny little church right there that has a priest serving it right now.
I'll make that a bishopric.
It needs a bishop, and so he does that with several churches in the region that he still has authority over, including a a church in Nissa, where he sons his younger brother Gregory, who were about to come to and another church in Sassima, which according to Gregory of
Nazanzas was a smelly little hole in the wall, but a town in town called Sassima, where he sends his good friend Gregory, who's from Nazis to be bishop.
There. So we have to catch up on these 2. Gregory's.
Now we have to do it quickly, Gregory of Nissa was the youngest of the Cappadocian fathers, but and he had really intended to to pursue more of a secular career.
Also he was educated. He didn't do the whole grand tour of the Mediterranean for his education.
There are some stories that say he did, but we don't have any real reason to think he did.
It's probably more they're just, you know. He must have followed, in his brother's footsteps.
Kind of thing, but it looks like he was just educated in, says Ria.
He goes into a sort of a legal career. He's a much more quiet.
Basil is. You know, this strong personality. Who's bullheaded and will fight you if you cross them.
Gregory of NASA is much more. You know meek and mild and quiet, and prefers that kind of lifestyle so he goes into a career in law.
He gets married, and he, even once he does become a bishop.
The responsibilities of a bishop seem like they're kind of too much for him.
He's not a very good administrator.
He's a peacemaker, but even in that he sometimes gets bold up.
Some of his distinctive theological contributions. Like I mentioned, he wrote the Life of Macrina, which, whereas Basil also is very interested in the monastic life, and Basil writes a lot.
Basil writes almost like rules for living in monastic community.
They're not setup quite like. If if you're familiar with the Benedictine rule for Benedictine monks and nuns in the Western Church.
But it's not quite set up like that, but it serves a similar purpose.
Basel sets out sort of the nuts and bolts mechanics of it.
Gregory gives you more of the philosophy like why and how people would pursue this kind of life and and want to devote themselves to prayer and to to the things of God, instead of any of the things of the he also makes at this point, we finally get some serious discussion about the
Holy Spirit, and Gregory, along with Basel Basel, does something similar, but Gregory makes some serious contributions to understanding the Holy Spirit as a fully co-equal member of the Trinity that you can't diminish any more than you can diminish the sun
Andy argues that this is necessary. If you're going to defeat theologies like the Eunomians and.
And I'm gonna skip that for the moment. So then the last of the cafeterocian fathers that we're talking about is Gregory of Nasianzas.
Think I mentioned already his dad's name was also Gregory, and his father was the Bishop of Nazianza.
I'm just gonna say this, and maybe we'll come back to it.
Maybe we won't, even at this time, in almost all of the church clergy they didn't always get married I don't think it's even fair to say they usually got married, but they certainly couldn't get married.
This continues to be true in Eastern Orthodox churches today their bishops can't be married, but their priests can be married in Eastern orthodoxy, so it's not unusual at this time that somebody's father would have been the bishop of
Nazanzas. So anyway, his father was the Bishop of Nazis, and so Grigory was raised in a Christian home.
He, like Basil, traveled for his education, and that's where he met Basil and got roped into Basil scheme.
But he was. He was not crazy about some of this.
Basil got him elected, or chosen, or nominated.
Whatever you want to say, as the Bishop of Sassima, around the year 3 72.
But it turns out Gregory didn't like being a bishop.
Gregory didn't like Sassima. Gregory didn't like anything about this.
He had been back in Nassians, working with his dad in the church.
There helping his dad deal with some local heresies that were flaring up and deal with other things going on in the church.
And so, after a very short time in Sesima, Gregory says, I'm done with this, and he heads back to Nazeanzas because of that.
LED to a falling out between Basil and Gregory.
Basel felt like he needed him there in that role, and Gregory said, You know I'm not gonna be a puppet for you.
You're my friend. I agree with you. I will write with you.
I will do anything, I can like that. But I'm not gonna be opp in your political.
So he goes back to Nazi Angus, and continues to serve, or goes back to serving with his father.
There his father's not doing well in health, and after a couple of years his father actually dies.
They try to make him bishop at that point, and he refuses.
Eventually he allows them to make Himbishop of Nazanzas.
I'm not clear on when exactly, but at least at the beginning of this time he refuses.
He's not interested in that, so we fast forward them to or slow forward, as the case may be, to the year 3 79, when Basil dies at the time they're like, I said.
There's a risk between them, but it's not. It's not like.
There's no friendship. It's just that there's tension, and they can't work closely together.
When basel dies. Gregory of Nazianz writes to his family directly to Gregory of NASA, but writes a letter to his family, you know of sympathy, and also writes a series of something like 12 poems in memory of Basil Gregory of
Nazianzus was a poet at the time. Among many, many other things, it was a poet, and he was a great speaker, recognized as a great speaker.
So around the same time that Basel dies, or, yeah, that Basel dies.
Gregory is asked to come to Constantinople, which is the capital of the empire, and the the church and city have been dominated by you know what we would call air theology, and also a new thing called a Polinarianism, but we don't have time to get into the it's
been dominated by these various ish groups for quite a long time, and so Gregory's invited there, in order to try to win over the populace to a pro nicerine theology to a theology that favors the idea that father and son are of the same substance.
So he gets there he delivers, I believe, 5 theological orations in Constantinople they're very persuasive, very successful in the sense of convincing a lot of people that this is the truth this is the side that we wanna be on it's like a Billy
Graham Crusade for orthodox Trinitarianism.
The problem is that the the bad guys, the the non Nicene theologians send in people.
And there's violence, they're attacking the the State where Gregory is is.
And so it gets a little bit wild, he sort of withdraws from that for a little while, but eventually, and we won't get into the complexities of it, because there are.
Maybe if we come back to Gregory of Nasianz's at another point in time we'll get into it.
But we'll just say he does become Bishop of Constantinople. And he accepts that one.
He says, Okay, fine. I don't really want to, but I will.
And also there's a another council like Nicaea that's been called at this point.
They have a pro Nicene, Emperor who is calling for the council in Constantinople in order to deal with these issues, and Gregory of Nazanzas is set to to preside over it so like I said it was complex.
Him becoming Bishop of Constantinople, and for that reason, and for a couple of other reasons, there was a lot of controversy at the at the Council.
It was generally going well, but there was a lot of controversy, and Gregory felt like most of this controversy has to do with me.
The controversy, like the the real, the problems that are going on that might shipwreck what we're trying to do here they don't have to do with the theological questions we're fighting over.
We're like that close to agreeing on an orthodox.
Theology here at Constantinople, and it might get wrecked because there are people upset about me.
So he comes out and shocks everybody by saying I'll just resign.
I didn't really want this job when I took it, and I will happily step down for it, which you know everybody was completely shocked by they.
Except the Emperor accepted his resignation.
They accepted that he would step down as Bishop of Constantinople.
They urged him, invited him, and convinced him to give one final oration to the council before he departed, and went back to Nazanzas, which he did, and then he went back to Nazi, and the council settled on something like that close to what we know as the Nicene
Constantinopolitan affirmation of the true full divinity of the sun.
Affirmation of the true and full divinity of the Holy Spirit.
Condemnation of anybody that would deny either one of those also condemnation of a pollinarianism.
Gregory goes back to Nazianz's works.
There for a couple of years, as their bishop, writing against heresies, you know, fighting against problems that were going on in the area.
After a couple of years has health is not great, so he retires back to one of the family estates for 5 or 6 years of his life, continues writing, continues writing poetry, and then in.
3 90, he dies 5 years later Nissa, who has, you know, a further career of his own.
Nesa also didies in 3 95.
And.
Yeah. The only other. The only thing that I left out that I do want to mention is that because I felt like I didn't give this enough content tonight.
So Gregory of Nissa, the other thing that he really contributes is for the eastern half of the of Christianity, for sort of Greek speaking Christianity, Augustine serves this role for Western Latin speaking Christianity, but he really are articulates the idea, that we call
inseparable operations, that in every act one, it's an emphasis on divine unity and divine unity is such that anything that God does each and every person of the Godhead does.
There's nothing that just the sun does. There's nothing that just the Holy Spirit does.
And he points out, you know, we talk about. We talk about the sun as Redeemer, and we talk about him that way, and we talk about the fact that the sun redeems.
And we talk about him that way because it's easier for us to kind of hold in our head.
But we have to remember that. Yes, the sun redeems, but the Holy Spirit ode, the Father redeems all of the Godhead jointly and in unity work together, work inseparably to to redeem to sanctify, to do any, to create to do anything, that God.
does they each do? And Nissa is the one who really unpacks this for Greek, and really establishes this as an important way of thinking about God.
So those are the things that I wanted to say about the Capadocian fathers and the I don't know Cappadocian mother. There!
The Cappadocian big sister in Macrina.
So, if we, if we do ever return to this, and a little more atomistic way, maybe we'll talk about one or more of these in greater detail.
We can talk about mysticism, all kinds of fun, stuff.
But those are their contributions to Trinityarian theology, and we can thank them for those and thank God for what they did, and that they won any questions before we have a special song.
Good. Nobody wants to ask a question and put delay. The music oh, Jeff, Jeff wants a question.
Yeah.
So trying to remember specifically what what Nisso says.
But the idea is that in the Incarnation they talk about it more in terms of the the sending of the sign right.
So the father sends the Son in the Incarnation.
The sun obeys and comes, and isn't, or wait.
Did you mean? Well, let me finish that, and then I'll backup the sun actually comes and is incarnate, and the Holy Spirit overshadows Mary, and and so the sun is incarnate.
But now I'm realizing that may not be what you are asking.
You may be asking about in the 30 to 35 years that Jesus was walking the earth.
How did that work and what he was doing?
Right.
Right. So then it's what I was saying a moment ago.
Is that they all, while they did not each become incarnate.
They each worked in the Incarnation to bring about the Incarnation, and to effect the Incarnation.
They had different roles. Yeah, they had different roles, all working toward.
But Gregory, and even more so. Augustine would say that that their roles are not really as important as the ultimate work that they were doing and the ultimate work they each had a role in bringing about that work.
Something along those lines. Yeah.
Yes.
How much?
Influence, the.
So the question is, how much did the rise of the monastic movement either influence the Bishop of Rome, or how much did he influence the monastic movement?
Okay. I'm only repeating it so that Zoom hears it also.
Wow! That's huge.
I I just wanna say, when I was at market I took 2 semesters on.
Now part of it was cause one of my professors was really nuts for this stuff, but I took 2 semesters that we're geared toward a satisfaction and monasticism.
So I'm trying to boil all of that down into an answer.
Fortunately you said, how much did it impact the Bishop of Rome?
I think that.
The Bishop of Rome. I don't think really influenced it very much.
It was fairly well established by the time the Bishop of Rome gets to a point where he can really influence anything other than Rome.
What I would say is that the monastic movement, the and particularly the way it manifests, and the worst, which is much, more, much more completely monasticism gets basically a complete monopoly on church offices, in the at least above deacon in the West, and and so from that point
on they're in lockstep, I mean the Bishop of Rome is going to be technically monastic.
He's not necessarily a member of a monastic order, but and I guess this is because I'm influenced by my Russian orthodox professor, whose view was that all of the Roman Catholic priests technically, were monks, since none of them were married the
monk monocause means alone. So a guy without a wife is monoc costs.
So that's why he would say that they were all monastic.
And then.
They use that to?
Okay, but I. So I've only gotten up to the fourth century.
And I think that what you're describing with with the Pope really using the monopoly now that I'm thinking more broadly, historically, I think you're talking about things that are taking place more and like the tenth and the twelfth, and not even I
don't remember now when the Jesuits come into existence, but I think sort of those monastic groups, those monastic orders are, I think, the ones that you're thinking of, and that comes later.
So at this point. That's not. That's not much of an issue yet.
Oh, I think I think even more than 5 centuries.
Yeah.
I'll just say that. Yes. Eventually the monastic, the monastic orders do become a source of organizational power at the very least, for the church at Rome. Yeah.
But you know, let's give credit where credits to the those same monastic orders are the ones that come through the church at Roman to upheaval, because Martin Luther was an Augustinian monk.
His teacher, who taught him everything he knew except how to start a revolution which Luther came up with on his own, was also a an Augustinian monk. So those same monastic quarters came back to bite the Pope in the rear end.
Alright!
If there are no further questions, then I will stop aside, and it's time for music.