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Leadership in the Post-Constantinian Church According to St. Gregory Nazianzen George Demacopoulos*

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Leadership in the Post-Constantinian Church According to St. Gregory Nazianzen George Demacopoulos* Louvain Studies 30(3), 214-228. doi: 10.2143/LS.30.3.2005021 © 2005 by Louvain Studies. All rights reserved. Leadership in the Post-Constantinian Church According to St. Gregory Nazianzen George Demacopoulos* Abstract. — One of the unexpected consequences of Constantine’s conversion to Christianity was the rapid growth of monastic communities, which provided an outlet for Christians who were unable to find a space for a more rigorous practice of Christianity in a Church no longer threatened with persecution. With time, these communities developed their own ideas about leadership and spiritual formation, which were, in many ways, distinct from the clerical and increasingly institutionalized model that operated in the broader Church. Gregory Nazianzen was one of the first bishops to appreciate the value of ascetic discipline and med- itation. He was also the author of the first book of pastoral literature, a treatise in which he identified several criteria for spiritual authority. In short, Gregory offered a compromise between the monastery and the parish: the Church should be run by well-educated aristocrats (the growing practice of the post-Constan- tinian institutional Church) but only those aristocrats who had achieved purifi- cation through renunciation and contemplation. This article examines Gregory’s orations (especially his Apologia de fuga) and other works to reconstruct his vision for Christian leadership and argues that his model continues to be of value today. In November of 2004, Pope John Paul II returned the relics of St. Gregory Nazianzen and St. John Chrysostom to the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I, in a ceremony at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.1 This joyous event was a moment of great celebration in the Orthodox world and was a welcome development for all those who hope for a reconciliation of the Eastern Orthodox * An earlier version of this paper was presented at the North American Patristic Society in May of 2004. I would like to thank the anonymous readers who offered many helpful suggestions. The errors that remain are my own. 1. The ceremony at St. Peter’s occurred on November 27, 2004. The relics were subsequently installed in the Cathedral of St. George in Constantinople on November 30. Ronald Robertson offers a few of the details in his “Facing East: New Initiatives toward the Orthodox,” America (May 16th, 2005) 7-10. LEADERSHIP IN THE POST-CONSTANTINIAN CHURCH 215 and Roman Catholic traditions. As institutions, the Orthodox and Catholic churches are frequently critiqued (both by insiders and those outside of their communions) for their use of “medieval” models of leadership. With all the attention that the return of the relics has generated, it is appropriate that we reflect upon Gregory Nazianzen’s role in shaping our modern sense of spiritual authority. He was, in fact, the first and perhaps the most important of the Church fathers to articulate a vision for Christian leadership in the age after Con- stantine’s conversion. His model of leadership not only shaped the Byzantine ideal for the episcopate, it was also the cornerstone upon which Pope Gregory I articulated his own pastoral theology (a the- ology that dominated the medieval West and continues to inform the Roman tradition).2 Like all theologians, Nazianzen responded to the challenges of his era. Born in 330, Gregory benefited from living in the generation after Constantine’s conversion. Christians in the post-Constantinian age, however, faced challenges that their predecessors were unlikely to antic- ipate. One such problem was the emerging divide between the ascetic community and its secular counterpart.3 To accommodate the increas- ingly differentiated pastoral needs of the monastery and the parish, spiritual direction had begun to evolve into distinct monastic and lay patterns.4 It was in this environment that Gregory Nazianzen offered his second oration, Apologia de fuga, the first Christian treatise of pastoral literature.5 In short, Gregory offered a compromise: the 2. Gregory Nazianzen is, in fact, the only Church father that Gregory I cites in his famous Liber regulae pastoralis. Over six hundred manuscripts of Pope Gregory’s trea- tise survive (an astonishing number); its ideas about leadership were so pervasive that Alfred the Great of England disseminated it among his bureaucrats as a model of civil governance in the ninth century. 3. In the wake of Constantine’s conversion, thousands of new converts flooded into the Church. Many of these would-be Christians were perceived by their contemporaries to be lacking the depth of faith that had been possessed by the pre-Constantinian com- munity. To this end, most historians of the period believe that the rapid growth of monas- ticism in the later fourth century was an attempt by the more rigorous members to return to the struggle of the earliest Christians. 4. By spiritual direction, I mean the ways in which persons in authority (e.g. a cleric or a monastic elder) diagnosed and treated the spiritual flaws of those persons in their care. In the monastic setting, this was often governed by a close relationship between a “spiritual father” and his disciples. The novice monk would confess his sins to the elder and the elder would prescribe a specific routine of pious observance to remedy the situ- ation. Before Gregory, there is little evidence for a similar scenario in the lay church of the fourth century. 5. Though offered as a defense of his actions (he had initially fled after his ordination for fear of his new responsibilities), this oration was the first to identify problems and offer solutions to the many sides of pastoral ministry. For example, it 216 GEORGE DEMACOPOULOS Church should be run by well-educated aristocrats (the growing prac- tice of the post-Constantinian institutional Church) but only those aristocrats who had achieved purification through renunciation and contemplation.6 Gregory was, himself, a late ancient aristocrat in most ways. His father was a wealthy landowner in Nazianzus, a prosperous but rural sec- tion of Cappadocia. Gregory’s education was as reputable as any of his generation, capped by ten years of study at the Academy in Athens.7 Despite his wealth and training, however, Gregory, like many men of similar position in his era, forsook a secular career to pursue what he called the “true philosophy” (i.e. religious meditation performed in the stillness of retreat). In theological circles, Gregory is best known for his Five Theo- logical Orations, which he delivered in Constantinople between 380 and 381 at the height of the conflict between Nicenes and Eunomi- ans.8 In the first of these orations, Gregory declares “not everyone is suited to discuss theology, no not everyone; the subject is not so cheap or so common.”9 In many ways this brief line summarizes Gregory’s understanding of Christian leadership – he felt that few were qualified. Of course, he was not alone in this belief. Everyone in Christian antiq- uity who wrote about the priesthood and its responsibilities noted the scarcity of acceptable candidates.10 What makes Gregory’s critique details the many responsibilities of priestly ministry and explains who should and who should be ordained. Many subsequent authors imitated both the style and ideas of this text, including John Chrysostom and Pope Gregory I. Concerning Gregory’s influence on Chrysostom, see Manfred Lochbrunner, Über das Priestertum: Historische und systematische Untersuchung zum Priesterbild des Johannes Chrysostomus (Bonn: Borengässer, 1993) 39-66. Throughout, I have relied on the Sources Chrétiennes edi- tions for Gregory’s orations. 6. For a detailed account of the number of aristocrats (both of curial and senato- rial rank) who entered the clergy following Constantine’s conversion, see Claudia Rapp, “The Elite Status of Bishops in Late Antiquity in Ecclesiastical, Spiritual and Social Contexts,” Arethusa 33 (2000) 379-399. 7. After a customary local education that would accompany his station, Gregory traveled first to Caesarea Maritima to study at the school founded by the great Chris- tian intellectual Origen. From Caesarea Maritima, Gregory went on to Alexandria before finally settling into Athens and Plato’s academy in 348. Gregory Naz., De vita sua vv. 51-121. 8. The Eunomians were extreme subordinationists (neo-Arians) who completely denied that the Father and Son shared a common essence. For more on the context of the Five Theological Orations, see Frederick Norris and Lionel Wickham, Faith Gives Full- ness to Reason (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1991) 53-71. 9. Gregory, Or. 27.3. The same theme dominates Or. 20 and Or. 32. 10. See, for example, John Chrysostom, De Sacerdotis 3.13-15 and Augustine, Ep. 22*. LEADERSHIP IN THE POST-CONSTANTINIAN CHURCH 217 in the oration so interesting is that he condemns his opponents on two grounds that we might otherwise have considered mutually exclu- sive: that they are insufficiently refined (i.e. of common stock) and that they have not achieved an adequate level of detachment from the material world. We might simply explain his ability to level contra- dictory charges as a demonstration of his skill as an orator. But there is more to Gregory’s styling of spiritual authority than rhetorical finery. Gregory is, in effect, limiting authority to an aristocratic and ascetic elite. When Gregory retired his position as archbishop of Constantino- ple in 381 after a brief and controversial tenure, he authored a series of poems against the men who had forced his departure.11 These poems offer a critical assessment of a younger generation of bishops, who, in Gregory’s eyes, were unprepared for the demands of leadership. In one of the poems, De se ipso et de episcopis, he sneers: Some of them are the off-spring of tribute-mongers, whose only con- cern is falsification of accounts.
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