Gregory Nazianzos and Negative Theology in Oration 38 (On the Nativity)

Today, there is a continued need for new scholarship on Gregory the Theologian (ca. 329 - 390 AD), in particular as a mystical author - who in his festal orations combines biblical, Neo-Hellenic and patristic elements in a creative, rhetorical synthesis. By bridging these cultural (and regional) gaps within a liturgical context, Gregory serves as an intermediate figure at the historical fountainhead of Byzantine religious sensibility, drawing equally and at turns from the Hebrew scriptures, early Christian theology, contemporary 4th-century trends in Greek rhetoric, and neo-Platonic ontology. I proceed by arguing: (1) Gregory has been overlooked in general studies on Christian mysticism; (2) apophaticism as religious discourse patently remains a wide-spread, developing phenomenon in the ancient world; (3) Gregory's thirty-eighth oration typifies late-antique, early Byzantine 'negative theology'; (4) the Platonic elements of which are striking, yet not fully explanatory. This form of discourse, I argue, is itself a form of cross-cultural exchange.