It was thus an advantage to share with
one’s opponents and acceptance of the same biblical authority. (Gr. Nyss. Or.
catech. 4.1 [Méridier 20]) Nevertheless, the realities of theological polemics
made it clear that such an acceptance of authority was not sufficient of itself
to guarantee agreement on doctrine. At the Synod of Seleucia in 359, Gregory of
Nazianzus reported, “the ancient and pious doctrine that defended the Trinity
was abolished, by setting up a palisade and battering down the homoousion,”
on the grounds that this Nicene term did not appear in Scripture (any more, he
might have added, than “Trinity [trias]” itself did). Yet this argument from
Scripture he charged, was a pretext for “really introducing unscriptural Arianism.”
(Gr. Naz. Or. 21.21 [SC 270:156] Gr. Naz. Or. 28.28 [SC
250:164]) That heresy in turn was, according to Nazianzen, the result of
refusing to let “faith rather than reason lead us.” In opposition to it, he
joined Bazil and Nyssen in trying to argue dialectically, but then he turned to
biblical authority. “Now that we know just how invincible you are in logical
twists,” he asserted sarcastically to Eunomius, “let us see what strength you
can muster from Holy Scripture!” The reason for citing Scripture as the ultimate
authority, he declared, was this: “We, after all, understand and preach the
divinity of the Son on the basis of his grand and sublime language.” (Gr. Naz. Or.
29.16-17 [SC 250:212]) At the same time, the biblical case for orthodox
doctrine did not imply that there was any uniformity in that “grand and sublime
language”; for among the evangelists, there were “some more occupied with the human
side of Christ, and others paying attention to his deity.” The reason for this
was: “Some [the Synoptic Gospels] commenced their history with what is within
our experience, others [the Gospel of John] with what is above us.” (Gr. Naz. Or.
43.69 [PG 36:359]) But if heretics, too, could quote Scripture, the
standard of orthodoxy, in order to be faithful to Scripture, had to involve
something more than Scripture, namely, the traditions of the church. For the
Cappadocians said that it was characteristic of the truth of revelation, as
they knew it had also been of Classical paganism, that “the virtuous deeds of
the men of old were preserved for us, either through an unbroken oral tradition
or through being preserved in the words of poets or writers of prose.” (Bas. Leg.
lib. gent. 7 [Wison 27])
The most critical example of this
problem of Scripture and tradition in the Cappadocian theology was the doctrine
of the Holy Spirit, because of the ambiguity of scriptural usage and the
undeveloped state of biblical and ecclesiastical doctrine. To deal with the
paucity in the Scriptures of the explicit instances of the identification of
the Spirit as “God,” Basil invoked the authority of nonbiblical traditions: “Of
the beliefs and practices, whether generally accepted or publicly enjoined, which
are preserved in the church, some we possess derived from written teaching [tōn
en tēi ekklēsiai pephylagmenōn dogmatōn kai kērygmatōn ta men ek tēs eggraphou
didaskalias]; others we have received delivered to us ‘in a mystery’ by the tradition
of the apostles [ek tēs tōn apostolōn paradoseōs]; and both of these in relation
to the true religion have the same force. And these no one will gainsay—no one,
at all events, who is even moderately versed in the institutions of the church.
For were we to attempt to reject such customs as have no written authority [ta agrapha
tōn ethōn], on the ground that the importance they possess is small, we should
unintentionally injure the gospel in its very vitals; or, rather, we should
make our public definition a mere phrase and nothing more.” (Bas. Spir.
27.66 [SC 17:478-80]) This passage continued to be quoted for many
centuries in the Latin West, being incorporated into Gratian’s collection of
canon law and then figuring in the controversies of the Reformation. But the most
intriguing aspect of it here is its relation to the metamorphosis of
natural theology; for as has been suggested earlier, in the thought of the
Cappadocians natural theology and religious tradition were not seen as
antithetical—as they were in the Classical period, and would be again during
the Enlightenment—but as complementary and mutually supportive.
Basil took one of his arguments for
nonwritten traditions as an authority from a deft combination of Mosaic
precedent and natural law, posting the question: “What was the meaning of the
mighty Moses in not making all the parts of the Tabernacle open to everyone?”
The answer was: “Moses was wise enough to know that contempt attaches to the
trite and the obvious, while a keen interest is naturally associated with the
unusual and the unfamiliar.” (Bas. Spir. 27.66 [SC 17:482]) For
the Cappadocians, Moses was the supreme example in Scripture of how “pagan
learning” and wisdom could be exploited to impart sophia to the
believer. It was, Basil seems to have been arguing, from that knowledge and sophia
that Moses became “wise enough” to keep the inner sanctum of the tabernacle
secret. Again, one of the Christian practices that Basil cited as possessing
traditionary authority without being set down in Scripture was orientation,
prayer facing the rising sun in the East; orientation was shared by Christians
and pagans. “What writing has taught us,” he demanded, “to turn to the East at
prayer [to pros anatolas tetraphthai]?” (Gr. Nyss. Or. dom. 5 [PG
44:1184] Mac. Ap. Gr. Nyss. V. Macr. [Jaeger 8-I:396]) Orientation was a
practice explicitly endorsed also by his brother Gregory of Nyssa, in his
words, and by their sister, Macrina, in her religious actions. Natural
theology, therefore, had the function not of undermining unwritten tradition but
of supporting it, and of doing so in conjunction with the authority of
Scripture. Similarly, Gregory of Nazianzus could invoke the natural process of
growth and development as a key metaphor for the gradual “additions, advances,
and progressions” (Gr. Naz. Or. 31.25-26 [SC 250:324-26]) of
Christian history to the divine revelation of what the New Testament had
described as “that faith which God entrusted to his people once for all.”
In their celebration of the uniqueness
of faith, therefore, the Cappadocians could emphasize that no amount of
philological learning was sufficient for the correct understanding of Scripture,
which was accessible only “through spiritual contemplations [dia tēs pneumatikēs
theōrias]” (Gr. Nyss. Cant. 15 [Jaeger 6:436]) and true faith. Yet that
did not keep them from exploiting a natural knowledge of philology to the
fullest; for there was no opposition between that exclusionary emphasis on
faith and their celebration of reason’s worship of a God who was “a worthy
object of love for all beings endowed with reason, the kalon most to be
desired, the arche of all existing things, the source of life, intellectual
light.” (Bas. Hex. 1.2 [SC 26:96]) For other ways of knowing,
including the way of reason, were simultaneously refuted and yet fulfilled by
following the way of faith. (Gr. Naz. Or. 29.21 [SC 250:224]) and
nowhere did that paradox manifest itself more dramatically for them than in the
“chief dogma” of revealed religion, the doctrine of God as Trinity. (Bas. Eun.
2.22 [SC 305:88]) (Jaroslav Pelikan, Christianity and Classical
Culture: The Metamorphosis of Natural Theology in the Christian Encounter with
Hellenism [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993], 227-30; Note: Pelikan was still a Lutheran at the time; he converted to Eastern Orthodoxy in 1998)