17 November 270 A.D. Remembering
Gregory Thaumaturgus (c. 213-c/270 A.D.)
Editors. “Saint Gregory, Thaumaturgus.” Encyclopedia Britannica. N.d. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/245722/Saint-Gregory-Thaumaturgus. Accessed Apr 22, 2014.
Saint Gregory Thaumaturgus, (born c. 213, Neocaesarea, Pontus Polemoniacus [now Niksar, Turkey]—died c. 270, Neocaesarea; feast day November 17), Greek Christian
apostle of Roman Asia and champion of orthodoxy in the 3rd-century Trinitarian
(nature of God) controversy. His Greek surname, meaning “wonder worker,” was
derived from the phenomenal miracles, including the moving of a mountain, that
he reputedly performed to assist in propagating Christianity.
A law student,
Gregory was introduced to Christianity through studies with the leading
Christian intellectual of his time, Origen, at Caesarea (near modern Haifa, Israel). On his return to Neocaesarea,
Gregory was made a bishop and committed his life to Christianizing that largely pagan region. The
Roman emperor Decius’ persecution (250–251) compelled Gregory and his community
to withdraw into the mountains, and with the return of normal conditions he
instituted liturgical celebrations honouring the Decian martyrs.
Manifesting an
ecclesiastical role more of a practical, pastoral nature than of a speculative
theologian, Gregory mostly catechized and administered the church. His Canonical
Epistle (c. 256) contains valuable data on church discipline in the 3rd-century East,
resolving moral questions incident to the Gothic invasion of Pontus (modern
northwest Turkey), with the rape, pillage, and apostasy that attended it. With
his brother, a fellow bishop, Gregory assisted at the first Synod of Antioch (c. 264), which rejected the heresy of Paul of Samosata. The Exposition of Faith,
Gregory’s principal work, was a theological apology for Trinitarian belief. The
Exposition incorporated his
doctrinal instructions to Christian initiates, expressed his arguments against
heretical groups, and was the forerunner of the Nicene Creed that was to appear
in the early 4th century. An Eastern tradition records that the Exposition was given to him in a vision of St. John the Evangelist with the
intercession of the Virgin Mary, the first instance noted of a Marian
apparition. A letter “To Theopompus, on the Passible and Impassible in God,”
which responds to the Hellenistic theory of God’s incapacity for feeling and
suffering, and Panegyric to Origen, a florid eulogy, constitute the remainder of Gregory’s significant
writings. Several other moral works, sermons, and letters bearing Gregory’s
name are not authentic.
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