Lent is over, the six weeks of spiritual work are done, and I wish all my Christian friends a Happy Easter.

The usual notion about Lent is that you give something up, but I don't usually find much improvement in my life even if I do give something up. Rather, I take something on for Lent, something good that I would not otherwise do. This Lent, I read writings of the fourth century AD Christian theologian, Gregory of Nazianzus.

Gregory of Nazianzus (c. 329-390 AD or CE) is not well known in the West, but Eastern Orthodox Christianity holds him in high honor. He was one of a group of Eastern Christian theologians and writers around the end of the fourth century whose learned culture was very much influenced by Greek philosophy. He lived in what is now southeastern Turkey. Reading Gregory's writing is a look back into an era when Christianity was still a fairly new religion and was still working out its doctrines using the intellectual tools of the time: Stoic and especially Neo-Platonic philosophy.

The text I read was a series of eight theological and philosophical poems on Christian teachings and doctrines, known as the "Poemata Arcana." They are "arcane" not in the sense of occult or weird, but in the Greek sense of "mystery," trying to make sense of what is ultimately ineffable. The poems are written in the same hexameter (six-measure) meter as Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, in a resounding and Byzantinely baroque style. My book has both Greek text and English translation, plus plenty of notes.

I first encountered this text when I was in my senior year at Brandeis and was working on Late Roman Christian Latin poetry. One reference pointed to Gregory as a source that the Latin poets copied, especially with his treatment of light and radiance-related images and themes. Returning to these poems I see again how impressive his light-metaphors are, especially since he had to mix literary poetry with heavy-duty theology. Gregory was intimately involved in the forging of the Nicene Creed and other Christian doctrinal formulas, and these poems reflect some of the bitter conflicts which characterized the doctrine forming process. This can lead to long passages of polemics and dry logic-twisting, but it can also lead to shining lines of bright metaphor:

"For, just as in former times teaching brought to light the full Godhead of the sovereign Father, while enlightening only a few wise mortals… so later, when revealing more clearly the Godhead of the Son, it manifested only half-hidden gleams of the shining Spirit's Godhead.…" Poem number 3, "On the Spirit," lines 24-27, translation by D.A. Sykes.

In Greek I think this sounds wonderful even to those who don't know the language:

"… pauroisin pinutoisi phaeinomenon meropessin
hos kai Paidos epeita phainoteren anaphainon… (poem 3, lines 26-27)

Which means, "to a few wise mortals, so later when revealing more clearly the Godhead of the Son…"; note how the root-word phaino is repeated in three different forms in just two lines. It's where our word "phenomenon" comes from and means "bring to light" or "appear."

The most important philosophy of Gregory's day was Neo-Platonism, which believed (as did the original Platonism) that our world was not the only world, and that there was a higher world above (or in another "dimension" of) ours in which the perfect archetypes and "blueprints" of everything existed. This higher world especially contained ideas of mathematics, music, art, beauty, and science. This was a "world of Light," and to the mystical Neo-Platonists, you could access that world directly with your "Nous" or intellect, if you lived a disciplined, educated, and virtuous life.

Here's Gregory again, this time talking about the "rational natures" of beings both human and angelic:

"Even as a sunbeam, traveling through rain-heavy, calm air, encountering clouds in its refracted, revolving movements, produces the many-coloured rainbow curve, everywhere around, the upper air gleams brightly with many circles dissolving towards the edges; such is the nature of lights also, the highest light always shining brightly upon minds which are lesser beams. There is one who is the source of lights, a light inexpressible, eluding capture, fleeing the speed of a pursuing mind whenever it approaches, for ever outstripping the minds of all, that we may be drawn by desires to a height which is ever new.…" (Poem 6, lines 1-11)

The poet is using the metaphors not only of philosophy but of the science of his day to (literally) illuminate his reasoning. Gregory's description of the rainbow and the atmospheric effects of light refraction, awkwardly translated by Sykes, are almost "scientific" even by our standards. Indeed, in a previous poem in the series, Gregory takes apart astrology with a logical attack worthy of any modern Skeptic. Of course, since Gregory uses all of his philosophical and poetic resources to support a supernaturalist Christianity, he will never be acceptable to a modern scientific atheist; nevertheless, his brilliance and invention are stirring. I am filled with admiration and nostalgia for a rare Christian intellectual and philosophical life which has long since disappeared.

I can't help being reminded of the modern quest to solve cosmological and quantum problems when I read Gregory's lines about "the source of lights… eluding capture, fleeing the speed of a pursuing mind whenever it approaches." This is a nouetic passion of the mind, which some people even now will recognize. The yearning of both the theologian and the scientist is beautifully described by the quintessentially Neo-Platonic spirit of the last lines I quote here: "That we may be drawn by desires to a height which is ever new."

Again, Happy Easter, and may all your worlds be renewed!

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