Between Two Fears
Why Gregory Nazianzen Ran Away from the Priesthood: A Reflection on His Second Oration
by Addison H. Hart
On Easter Day in A.D. 362, in the Cappadocian town of Nazianzus, a young priest stood nervously before a sparse congregation to deliver what would in time be known as his First Oration. The number of those in attendance was low—hardly to be expected on the Church’s Day of Days—for the simple reason that this particular congregation was angry with this particular priest. They were angry with the young Gregory Nazianzen, the son of their own Bishop Gregory the elder, because he had run away months before, abandoning his flock, abandoning his father and bishop, as a reaction to his sudden ordination to the priesthood, something that he had not at all expected or desired. Indeed St. Gregory Nazianzen, still in his early thirties, regarded his ordination at the hands of his father as an act of “noble tyranny,”1 and his response was to pack his bags and skip town. He wanted to live the contemplative life, and so he went to Pontus to join his monastic friend, Basil of Caesarea. But now, after time in Pontus for reflection upon his actions, he had returned to his father’s side in Nazianzus to exercise his priestly ministry.
His people, however, took the opportunity afforded on that Easter Day in 362 to demonstrate their wounded feelings at his behavior in no uncertain terms. Gregory, in turn, was to protest his own hurt at their uncharitable behavior in what would become his Third Oration, remonstrating with his flock even while declaring his love for them. In time, the mutual wounds healed, and Gregory was restored in his people’s affections.
Between his First and Third Orations, though, Gregory composed his lengthy Second Oration, one that in all likelihood he never delivered orally. In this work, he gave an eloquent defense of his actions, explaining the inner turmoil he had undergone in regard to his call to the priesthood, and in so doing provided an enduring and seminal exposition of the character of the pastoral ministry. This oration was destined to be a source of influence for such magisterial works as St. John Chrysostom’s treatise On the Priesthood and St. Gregory the Great’s Pastoral Rule. At its inception, though, it was merely intended to be a heartfelt, personal, and engaging apologia for why he had run away. “I had much toilsome consideration to discover my duty,” he wrote therein, “being set in the midst between two fears.”2 Those two fears, in short, were disobedience to God’s call on the one hand, and rashness or presumption about the holy nature of the priesthood itself on the other. Let me say here that I tend to think, though I’m doubtful of convincing everyone who reads this, that in running away from the priesthood as he did, Gregory Nazianzen showed considerable good sense.
The History of Flight
Gregory was not the only saint destined for greatness and honor in the Church who fled the pastoral office. One might even be tempted to think it something of a conventional response to the call in earlier centuries of Christian history, given the number of cases of such flight. However, in every case where the details are related, we discover that the longing to flee the priesthood, or the actual flight itself, was rooted in each individual’s own, unique conscience before God.
St. Ambrose of Milan, for example, seems to have had well-founded reservations about the desire of the crowds who demanded him for their bishop in 373. Not only was he not a cleric at the time of their importunity, he was not even yet baptized, and he was all too aware that their demand went against both precedent and the canons of the Council of Nicea. He was, to be sure, a strong advocate of the latter. Ambrose also wished for a more ascetical life and knew that he was lacking in sufficient theological preparation. He fled, therefore, to a friend’s house to hide out, but eventually was turned over to the unrelenting crowds, baptized, hurried through the minor orders, diaconate, and priesthood, and made bishop on December 7th that same year. His scruples were utterly ignored.
The most common theme underlying resistance to the pastoral office is that of the felt tension between the contemplative life (retirement and solitude in relationship with God) and the active life of service “in the world.” We see this tension, obviously without any resistance to his active vocation, in the life of Jesus Christ. In Mark 1:35–39, for example, Jesus rises “in the morning, a great while before day,” after a long night of healing the sick and casting out evil spirits, and goes to “a lonely place” to pray. We are told that his disciples “hunted him down” (katedioxen), a word used elsewhere to indicate persecution. Implicit is the tension between the need of the Lord to commune with his Father in solitude and his mission to preach—“for that is why I came out.” We can only guess at the discomfort that existed in the heart of Jesus between his inner life with the Father and the ongoing disturbance resulting from the continual encounter with the outer turmoil, chaos, clamor, and persecution of his earthly ministry. In the case of Christ, of course, we are touching upon the Trinitarian intimacy, which is precisely what Peter and the others intrude upon in this passage. Very rarely are we allowed to glimpse this internal strain in Christ, but occasionally we see it: “O faithless generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you?” (Mark 9:19)
The tension between the contemplative life and the call to ordained ministry was to produce resistance to the latter, coinciding with the Church’s new status in the fourth century. Clerical life became increasingly prestigious, and it potentially presented the soul yearning for sanctification with dangerous temptations to pride, luxury, and wealth. Many of the monks of the desert went to extremes to avoid ordination and thus preserve their asceticism intact. Evagrius of Pontus is said to have fled Egypt for Palestine to avoid Patriarch Theophilus of Alexandria’s intention to make him a bishop. Patriarch Timotheus of Alexandria had made an earlier attempt to consecrate Abba Ammonius, but the latter had cut off his own left ear with a pair of shears, saying that a mutilated man could not be made a priest.3 When Pachomius, the father of cenobitic monasticism, fled from St. Athanasius the Great, one account records that the latter praised Pachomius for his action, telling the monks (and echoing Christ’s words to Martha in Luke 10:42):
Greet your father and say to him, “So, you hid from us, fleeing from that which leads to jealousy, discord, and envy [i.e., ecclesiastical rank], and you chose for yourself that which is better and which will always abide in Christ! Our Lord, therefore, will accede to your wish. So now, since you have fled before vain and temporary grandeur, not only do I wish for you that that may not happen to you, but I will always stretch out my hands toward the Most High that such a thing may never happen to you, and that never, never may you have rank. . . .”4
Addison H. Hart is retired from active ministry as parish priest and university chaplain. He is the author of Knowing Darkness: On Skepticism, Melancholy, Friendship, and God and The Yoke of Jesus: A School for the Soul in Solitude (both from Eerdmans). His forthcoming book is a study of the Sermon on the Mount. He lives and writes in Norheimsund, Norway.
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