The Heart and the Head: Gregory of Nazianzus and the Connection Between Theology and Worship

There is a connection between the heart and the head that is often overlooked today. For some, theology is useless because it has no value for the Christian life[1]. For others, theology is significant for knowing God, but yet it still finds little application in the day to day[2]. Such a modern conception, however, finds no place in the writings of the ancient church father Gregory of Nazianzus, nor indeed in the Bible. Gregory understood well the connection between worship and theology, and his writings clearly demonstrate this. Gregory grounds this connection in two ways throughout his five Theological Orations: (1) By showing that theology itself is worship, and (2) by displaying how the knowledge of one doctrine (that of the Trinity) is essential to worshiping Christianly.

In his first theological oration Gregory begins by stating that the act of theological thinking and discussion is itself an act of worship, and, that being the case, it must not be done trivially. He compares the “philosophizing about God” with Moses’ going up to the Mount, and speaks of those who would be like Aaron the Priest. The comparisons, and the mention of priests and entering the presence of God, echo the expressions of worship in Exodus 24.[3] Worship is at the center of all theological pursuits. Theologian and professor Christopher Hall notes that “from the very outset of his theological orations, Gregory warns his audience that they and he are attempting a high and holy task.”[4] He continues:

Theology, while employing the mind, also involves the heart. A pure heart, one grounded in the worship of the church and a life of prayer, will produce clear and fruitful theological reflection. A murky heart and a dark mind, on the other hand, will produce a sick, thorny theology; it will offer no nourishment, only harm.[5]

This connection between the heart and the head lead Gregory to say, “Not to every one, my friends, does it belong to philosophize about God; not to every one; the subject is not so cheap and low.”[6] Why is it not acceptable for all men to philosophize upon the subject of God? Gregory answers:

Not to all men, because it is permitted only to those who have been examined, and are passed masters in meditation, and who have been previously purified in soul and body, or at the very least are being purified. For the impure to touch the pure is, we may safely say, not safe, just as it is unsafe to fix weak eyes upon the sun’s rays.[7]

Indeed, for Gregory, the theologian who wishes to pursue further the knowledge of God he “ought to be, as far as may be, pure, in order that light may be apprehended by light.”[8] All these comments direct us to think carefully about the matters of theological investigation, to be careful about how one ascertains various doctrines, including the doctrine of the trinity. For Gregory, discovering the nature of God requires that we receive His own special revelation. We cannot achieve a deep knowledge of God without God revealing Himself to us. Reason, he argues, fails to adequately provide us with a knowledge of God. Reason is a gift of God that certainly has its uses and is a great tool when used properly, but reason alone is not a means by which one may come to a full understanding of the divine. So Gregory writes:

With a small instrument we are undertaking a great work, when with merely human wisdom we pursue the knowledge of the Self-existent, and in company with, or not apart from, the senses, by which we are borne hither and thither, and led into error, we apply ourselves to the search after things which are only to be grasped by the mind, and we are unable by meeting bare realities with bare intellect to approximate somewhat more closely to the truth, and to mould the mind by its concepts.[9]

The mind’s natural act of reasoning is both part of what is needed to come to an understanding of God and yet is also part of what may lead us astray. Our reasoning is an important tool, Gregory is saying, yet it is not a flawless one. Yet, man is not without hope.

In his introduction to the Gregory’s theological orations one author comments, “God, out of compassion for our weakness, has been pleased to designate Himself in Holy Scripture by various names taken from material objects, or from moral virtues.”[10] This is where the discussion of a knowledge of God’s nature takes a turn. While it is true that it is “impossible for even the most exalted human reason fully to grasp the Nature of God”[11] God Himself has deemed it good to reveal Himself to us in the Scriptures. As Robert Letham has noted, “God has revealed himself to mankind, to Abraham, Isaiah, and Paul, so an apophatic approach is ruled out. [Gregory teaches that] our knowledge of God is true knowledge, but it is not direct knowledge of God’s essence.”[12] The human mind alone is not sufficient to know God, but thankfully God has revealed Himself in Scripture.

The revelation of God’s Trinitarian nature did not come all at once in Scripture, but it is seen throughout the whole scope of the canon. Gregory gives a splendid articulation to this point when he writes:

The Old Testament proclaimed the Father openly, and the Son more obscurely. The New manifested the Son, and suggested the deity of the Spirit. Now the Spirit himself dwells among us, and supplies us with a clearer demonstration of himself. For it was not safe, when the Godhead of the Father was not yet acknowledged, plainly to proclaim the Son; nor when that of the Son was not yet received to burden us further…with the Holy Spirit…[I]t was necessary that, increasing little by little, and, as David says, by ascensions from glory to glory, the full splendor of the Trinity should gradually shine forth.[13]

It is to the Scriptures that one must turn to do theology, and without the Bible not only do we come to a faulty, or a weak knowledge of God, but we also fail to worship God. In his first Theological Oration Gregory delineates this point thoroughly. His attack against the heretical Eunomian heresy in this first sermon aims at pointing out their faulty hermeneutic. Christopher Hall notes well the error that Gregory aims at undermining in this first oration.

Gregory’s attention appeared to focus on a radical Arian group known as the Eunomians. This group exalted their supposed ability to plumb rationally the depths of the divine being itself. The Eunomians believed they could clearly comprehend the divine essence and distinguish the relationships between Father, Son and Holy Spirit through the use of reason alone.[14]

It has already been mentioned why Gregory believed that reason alone was incapable of producing a knowledge of the divine essence[15], but if not reason what, then, may give man a knowledge of the holy? Hall continues:

In his first Theological Oration Gregory concentrates his attention on how the Eunomians read Scripture and do theology, rather than on their specific errors. It does not surprise him that they are making crucial errors, because their attitude from the beginning is faulty.[16]
The supposition that reason alone is adequate to form a conception of the essence of God is faulty, Gregory argues, because “in their study of God…they have forgotten who they are dealing with and have reduced God’s wonders and mysteries to the boundaries of their own rational capabilities.”[17]

At the heart of their heresy is a bad heart, Gregory says. The Eunomians come to wrong conclusions in their theology because they do not seek to worship God in their theology; rather they seek to exalt their abilities. Gregory is arguing here not simply for an admission of the inadequacy of reason, but for an honesty about the need for God’s self-revelation in Scripture. Hall points out the lack of a worshipful spirit in how the Eunomians pursued theology. “The Eunomians were a cocky, self-assured bunch, ready to use rational syllogisms to poke holes in the ideas of their opponents, but all the while blind to the drastic implications of their own theological methodology.”[18] Their hearts were in the wrong place, and their pride mutated their theology.

The first Theological Oration is the most in depth of Gregory’s writings on the connection between theology and worship. It strongly emphasizes that without a proper heart, without a devout spiritual life, one cannot and should not do theology. Many had, in fact, turned theology into a type of sport. Quoting from Jarslov Pelikan, Christopher Hall describes Gregory’s complaint against these individuals:

Pelikan notes Gregory’s complaint that “some devotees of theology” were “like the promoters of wrestling-bouts, in the theatres,” people whose “idle chatter about the dogmas of the faith,” in Gregory’s words, made “every square in the city buzz with their arguments.” The only remedy was a pure mind and heart and good, old fashioned study.[19]

This is what happens when one separates worship from theology; you end up with mere prattle and useless philosophizing. To maintain a biblical focus on discourse about God one must have a pure heart, one must love God, and one must seek to worship Him. Theology is affected by worship.

On the reverse side, however, we find the same connection. Not only is theology affected by worship, but worship is affected by theology, as well. Robert Letham is right when he writes, “Today most Western Christians are practical modalists. The usual way of referring to God is ‘God’ or, particularly at the popular level, ‘the Lord.’” Where is the Trinity in our Christianity? Do many of our worship songs reflect the God of the Bible, or could Jews, Muslims, and deists sing them as well? “It is worth contrasting this [absence of the Trinity from Western worship] with Gregory Nazianzen, the great Cappadocian of the fourth Century, who spoke of ‘my Trinity,’ saying, ‘When I say, ‘God,’ I mean Father, Son and Holy Spirit.’”[20] The true worship of God must acknowledge that He is Triune, and worship the full Godhead.

Gregory could hardly think of God without thinking of each of the three Persons of the one Godhead, and, likewise, could hardly think of one Person without thinking of the whole unity. So he says:

When we look at the Godhead…that which we conceive is One; but when we look at the persons in whom the Godhead dwells, and at those who tirelessly and with equal glory have their being from the first cause—there are three whom we worship.[21]

The theologian has a specific way of describing how this Trinitarian worship works. He knew that many of his opponents, even if they conceded that the Bible presents God as Triune, would still question whether or not all three Persons should be worshiped, he answers their doubts as follows:

But, [the doubter] says, who in ancient or modern times ever worshipped the Spirit? Who ever prayed to Him? Where is it written that we ought to worship Him, or to pray to Him, and whence have you derived this tenet of yours? …For the present it will suffice to say that it is the Spirit in Whom we worship, and in Whom we pray. For Scripture says, God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in Spirit and in truth.[22]

It is by the Holy Spirit, through Christ the Son, and to the Father that the Christian worships. In the act of worship the Spirit is the one who generates this desire to worship God, and it is because of the Son’s death and resurrection and through His righteousness credited to us that we may approach God in worship. Thus all three Persons of the Godhead must be acknowledged in worship, or we do not have a distinctly Christian worship.

God has revealed Himself as Triune within scripture[23] and, according to him, to fail to affirm this in our worship is to fail to worship. Gregory is not shy in asserting his belief in the trinity:
This then is my position, with regard to these things, and I hope it may be always my position, and that of whosoever is dear to me; to worship God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, Three Persons, One Godhead, undivided in honour and glory and substance and kingdom.[24]

Theology and worship, despite what many may say, cannot be separated. Gregory declares that only a worshipful spirit produces true theology, and only a true theology produces Biblical worship. Thus it may rightly be asserted, as Gregory would assert, that the heart and the head are connected.








[1] Donald Miller suggests this very plainly in his work Blue Like Jazz.
[2] Unfortunately this is how many academicians behave. This model also finds examples among Protestants who owned slaves.
[3] Gregory’s Second Theological Oration. ed. Philip Schaff, The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers. 289.
[4] Christopher Hall, Learning Theology with the Church Fathers. Downers Grove: IVP, 2002. 56.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Schaff, 285.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid. 288.
[9] Ibid. 296.
[10] Ibid. 282.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Robert Letham, The Holy Trinity: In Scripture, History, Theology, and Worship. (Philipsburg: P&R, 2004). 158-159.
[13] Quoted in Letham, 33.
[14] Christopher Hall, Reading Scripture with the Church Fathers. Downers Grove: IVP, 1998. 69.
[15] Much of my thought on the place of logic in Gregory’s writing is owing to helpful articulation from both Christopher Hall, Reading Scripture with the Church Fathers and Frederick Norris, “Of Thorns and Roses: The Logic of Belief in Gregory Nazianzen.” Church History. 53. 455-464.
[16] Ibid.
[17] Ibid.
[18] Ibid.
[19] Ibid.70.
[20] Letham, 5-6.
[21] Quoted from Letham, 412.
[22] Schaff, 321.
[23] Gregory makes his case for this point in both the Theological Orations on the Son and his final one on the Holy Spirit.
[24] Ibid. 326-7.