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Gregory of Nyssa's Pneumatology in Context: The Spirit as Anointing
and the History of the Trinitarian Controversies

Andrew Radde-Gallwitz
Journal of Early Christian Studies, Volume 19, Number 2, Summer

2011, pp. 259-285 (Article)
Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: 10.1353/earl.2011.0027
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Gregory of Nyssa’s
Pneumatology in Context:
The Spirit as Anointing
and the History of the
Trinitarian Controversies
ANDREW RADDE-GALLWITZ
The biblical language that associated the Spirit with the “anointing” of Christ
and of believers proved intriguing to early Christian writers. From Irenaeus
in the late second century c.e. until the rise of controversy about the Spirit
around 360 c.e., this language was interpreted primarily for its christological
associations. Beginning with Athanasius’s Letters to Serapion, it was read
by a number of anti-Eunomian, pro-Nicene authors as a way of defending
the Spirit’s divinity. This article shows the dependence of Gregory of Nyssa’s
pneumatology upon this tradition. Gregory’s use of the theme of “anointing”
is particularly extensive: it appears in many of Gregory’s works for a variety
of purposes. Here, it is demonstrated that Gregory interpreted the language of
“anointing” through the “hermeneutical category” of dignity, which he drew
from Basil. By treating the anointing of Christ with the Spirit as an eternal
exchange of glory within the Trinity, a glory that is then given by Christ to
his disciples, Gregory both drew on and departed from the anti-Eunomian
tradition. This article corrects an overemphasis on Gregory’s argument from
the Spirit’s activities, showing that this was just one category Gregory used in
his pneumatological doctrine.
An earlier version of this paper was delivered at the 2010 NAPS Conference. I
thank those present for comments, especially Christopher Beeley and Mark DelCogli-
ano. I also wish to express gratitude to the two anonymous referees for JECS, whose
insightful comments led to thorough revisions of the original, and to Brad Storin for
his expert guidance on editorial matters.
Journal of Early Christian Studies 19:2, 259–285 © 2011 The Johns Hopkins University Press
260 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES
In several New Testament passages, the Spirit is associated with anoint-

ing. Some of these refer to an event in the life of believers.1 Others—most
notably Luke 4.18, in which Jesus applies Isa 61.1 to himself, and Acts
10.38—speak of Christ himself being anointed by God with the Spirit. The
common christological reading of Psalm 44.8 (LXX) led in the same direc-
tion. From Irenaeus’s Against Heresies 3, written around 180 c.e., until
around 360 c.e., those Christians who discussed the Spirit as the unction
of Christ were interested almost exclusively in what this language teaches
us about Christ and about God’s redemption of humans in Christ. In the
latter decades of the fourth century, as debate about the Spirit heated up,
we start to see Christians, in particular pro-Nicene Christians, turning to
the theme for what it teaches about the Spirit, in addition to its traditional
christological and soteriological connotations. Following and expanding
upon these authors, Gregory of Nyssa’s use of the language of the Spirit
as anointing is particularly extensive.
For Gregory, the fact that the Spirit is named “anointing” (χρῖσμα)
shows the Spirit’s “dignity” (ἀξία), and in particular that the Spirit shares
the dignity of the one whom he anoints. Gregory also interpreted the
names “glory” (δόξα) and “kingship” (βασιλεία) as names of the Spirit.
Like “anointing,” these are names of dignity; that is, they fall into the
hermeneutical category of dignity. By “hermeneutical category,” I mean
an ordered class of biblical titles. While this was only one category by
which Gregory approached biblical material on the Spirit—he also dis-
cussed titles of the Spirit’s “nature” (φύσις) and “activities” (ἐνέργειαι)—it
was an important one for him. Against Eunomian and Pneumatomachian
opponents, Gregory claimed that one cannot separate the Spirit from God
and Christ in any of these categories—in nature, activity, or dignity. If the
conclusion is the inseparability of the Spirit from God and Christ, then one
way of getting there was to demonstrate the inseparability of the Spirit in
dignity from God and Christ. This approach to Trinitarian unity—which
in Gregory’s works sits alongside similar arguments from inseparability
in nature and in activity—I call Gregory’s “argument from dignity” or his
“dignity-based pneumatology.”2
1. See 2 Cor 1.21–22; Eph 1.13–14, 4.30; 1 John 2.20, 27. The classic study of
early interpretations of this language is G. W. H. Lampe, The Seal of the Spirit: A
Study in the Doctrine of Baptism and Confirmation in the New Testament and the
Fathers (London: SPCK, 1951).
2. I intend the phrase “‘dignity-based’ argument” to invoke Michel Barnes’s account
of “‘power-based’ arguments” for the Son’s divinity in The Power of God: Δύναμις in
Gregory of Nyssa’s Trinitarian Theology (Washington, DC: The Catholic University
of America Press, 2001), esp. 260–307.
RADDE-GALLWITZ / SPIRIT AS ANOINTING 261
Gregory’s use of the language of “anointing” has been noted by sev-

eral commentators.3 However, it has been misunderstood as an argument
for the Spirit’s divine nature or essence, rather than for the Spirit’s divine
dignity. Gregory’s appeal to “anointing” language has been treated by
many scholars as more or less unique to him among pro-Nicenes of the
later fourth century and as rather aberrant within Gregory’s entire body
of work on the Trinity. Recent commentators have viewed the argument
from the Spirit’s activities as his preferred defense of the Spirit’s divinity.4
3. Werner Jaeger, Gregor von Nyssa’s Lehre vom Heiligen Geist (Leiden: Brill,
1966), 14ff., 29, 35, 40–45, 127–31; Jean Daniélou, “Chrismation prébaptismale
et divinité de l’Espirit chez Grégoire de Nysse,” Recherches de science religieuse 56
(1968): 177–98, though see n. 78 below for criticism. More recently: Lewis Ayres,
“Innovation and Ressourcement in Pro-Nicene Pneumatology,” Augustinian Studies 39
(2008): 187–206, at 202; R. P. C. Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of
God: The Arian Controversy, 318–381 (London and New York: T & T Clark, 1988
[repr. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2005]), 784–85. Christopher Beeley discusses it, but
finds the argument lacking: Gregory of Nazianzus on the Trinity and the Knowledge
of God: In Your Light We Shall See Light (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008),
303–9; also Beeley, “The Holy Spirit in the Cappadocians: Past and Present,” Modern
Theology 26 (2010): 90–119, at 107–8: “As a coda, we may note what is perhaps the
most unique element of Gregory’s pneumatology, a pair of conceptions that bears on
the Spirit’s eternal relation to the Father and the Son. In defense of the Spirit’s divinity,
Gregory borrows an idea from Eusebius to argue that the Holy Spirit anoints Christ,
‘the anointed one,’ not only in the economy, as in his baptism, but eternally. Thus
Gregory imagines the Son’s being eternally begotten by God the Father and anointed
as ‘Christ’ by the Holy Spirit. In one respect, this may seem to be an overly excited
attempt at interpreting a passage whose plain sense is economic. Yet, while that may
be true, there is, at the same time, something pleasing about Gregory’s instinct to see
the eternal life of the Trinity so closely reflected in the economy—an instinct that he
would have done well to honor even more in his other works. A related interpretation
is Gregory’s identification of the Spirit with God’s kingdom that is exercised by Christ,
the King, based on a textual variant of the Lukan version of the Lord’s prayer. The
Spirit’s anointing—both of Christ and of the baptismal candidate before baptism—
thus signifies its nature as kingship, which proves its shared divinity with the Father
and the Son, who are each King, and the inseparability of the oil of anointing from
the body that it anoints, in Jesus’ baptism, signifies the Spirit’s inseparability from
the Son. Aside from such passages, the Holy Spirit in fact does little substantive work
in Gregory of Nyssa’s Trinitarian doctrine and his ascetical theology, where it serves
primarily to fill out an otherwise pre-formed doctrine of divine unity and equality
and to dress up a largely Platonic scheme of divine knowledge.” The theme is not
mentioned in the influential article by Anthony Meredith, “The Pneumatology of the
Cappadocian Fathers and the Creed of Constantinople,” Irish Theological Quarterly
48 (1981): 196–211.
4. See Barnes, Power of God, 297–305; cf. Thierry Ziegler, Les petits traites trini-
taires de Grégoire de Nysse: Temoins d’un itineraire theologique (379–383) (Ph.D.
dissertation, Strassbourg, 1987): although he devotes two pages in his initial summary
of To Eustathius to the argument from dignity and notes the parallel in Against the
This interpretation has helpfully replaced an overemphasis on the language

of consubstantiality as the sine qua non of an orthodox pneumatology.5
But it raises its own problems. For Christopher Beeley, Gregory’s argu-
ments for Trinitarian equality from shared or inseparable operations are
fatally circular.6 A welcome exception to the exclusive emphasis on the
Spirit’s activities is a recent article by Marie-Odile Boulnois.7 Boulnois
focuses on the language of the Spirit as the anointing and glory of Christ,
arguing that that, for Gregory, the Spirit is at the center of “the circle of
mutual glorifications in the Trinity.”8 Whereas the category of activities
in Gregory’s writings includes only God’s actions ad extra, Boulnois has
highlighted an eternal dynamic among the Trinitarian persons, which is
economically manifested in the life of Jesus. Additionally, she underscores
the fundamentally exegetical character of Gregory’s arguments. Yet, Boul-
nois offers little by way of context for his doctrine.
This article seeks, first, to show the background of Gregory’s argument
from dignity by surveying prior uses of the “Spirit as anointing” theme in
Greek Christian literature. In broader perspective, it is not unusual that
Gregory appealed to the theme; given his pro-Nicene, anti-Eunomian com-
mitments, it would have been odd for him not to have used it. Still, he gave
Christ’s anointing a unique construal. A second section examines Basil’s
construction of the “hermeneutical category” of dignity. Having estab-
lished Gregory’s sources and context, I turn in the final section to Gregory
Macedonians (186–87), when he summarizes the “structures” of Gregory’s argument

later in the work, he only discusses the argument from activities (277–85).
5. Adolf von Harnack, for instance, simply assumed that what the Council of
Constantinople had achieved was to make “the doctrine of the homousia of the
Spirit . . . a part of orthodoxy”: Adolf von Harnack, History of Dogma, trans. Neil
Buchanan (New York: Dover, 1961), 4:118. Also Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tra-
dition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, Volume One: The Emergence of
the Catholic Tradition (100–600) (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago
Press, 1971), 217.
6. Beeley, Gregory of Nazianzus, 305, 309; Beeley, “Holy Spirit in the Cappado-
cians,” 107.
7. Marie-Odile Boulnois, “Le cercle des glorifications mutuelles dans la trinité
selon Grégoire de Nysse: De l’innovation exégétique à la fécondité théologique,” in
Grégoire de Nysse: La bible dans la construction de son discours, ed. Matthieu Cas-
sin and Hélène Grelier, Actes du Colloque de Paris, 9–10 février 2007 (Paris: Institut
d’Études Augustiniennes, 2008), 21–40.
8. For the idea of a “circle of mutual glorifications,” see Gregory’s phrase τὴν
ἐγκύκλιον τῆς δόξης . . . περιφοράν at Against the Macedonians on the Holy Spirit
[Maced.] (ed. Fridericus Mueller, Gregorii Nysseni opera dogmatica minora, Pars I,
GNO 3.1 [Leiden: Brill, 1958], 109.7), cited by Bounois in her title and at “Le cercle
des glorifications mutuelles,” 33.
himself. The theme of the Spirit’s dignity—which includes the ideas of the
Spirit as anointing, as glory, and as kingship—pervades Gregory’s corpus.
By placing Gregory’s use of this theme into context, we can appreciate
Gregory’s indebtedness to the tradition he inherited, especially from his
brother, as well as his originality within this tradition.
THE SPIRIT AS ANOINTING BEFORE GREGORY

Irenaeus of Lyons
Irenaeus speaks of the anointing of Christ in both Against the Heresies
and Demonstration on the Apostolic Preaching. In the former, Irenaeus
states the issue most tersely, in a phrase that Basil practically cites in his
On the Holy Spirit:
For in the name of Christ is implied, He that anoints, He that is anointed,
and the unction itself with which He is anointed. And it is the Father who
anoints, but the Son who is anointed by the Spirit, who is the unction, as
the Word declares by Isaiah, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because
He hath anointed me,”—pointing out both the anointing Father, the
anointed Son, and the unction, which is the Spirit.9
Irenaeus places the anointing of the incarnate Word with the Spirit at his
baptism. As Anthony Briggman has recently shown, the theme is central
to Irenaeus’s understanding of Jesus’ mission.10 In the Demonstration, Ire-
naeus distinguishes between two senses of the term “Christ” and hence
two anointings: “For he is named ‘Christ,’ since through Him the Father
anointed and adorned all things, and [because], <in> His advent as man,
He was anointed by the Spirit of God His Father.”11 Here, the pre-incarnate
anointing is not of Christ, however, but of “all things.” For the other
anointing, which occurs in Jesus’s lifetime, he invokes Isa 61.1/Luke 4.18.12
Irenaeus’s purpose in citing the theme is to say something about Christ,
rather than about the Spirit.13 Indeed, elsewhere, Irenaeus can refer to the
9. Irenaeus, Haer. 3.18.3 (trans. A. Cleveland Coxe, The Apostolic Fathers with
Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, ANF 1 [1885 (repr. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994)],
446).
10. Anthony Briggman, “The Holy Spirit as the Unction of Christ in Irenaeus,”
Journal of Theological Studies 61 (2010): 171–93, at 185 and n. 45
11. Irenaeus, Dem. 53 (trans. John Behr, St Irenaeus of Lyons: On the Apostolic
Preaching [Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1997], 75).
12. See also his comments on Acts 10: Irenaeus, Haer. 3.12.7.
13. My comments here apply only to those passages—chiefly from Haer. 3—in
which the anointing theme appears. Michel R. Barnes helpfully shows that Irenaeus
adopts a higher pneumatology in Haer. 4–5, where he speaks of the Spirit as co-creator:
“Irenaeus’s Trinitarian Theology,” Nova et Vetera 7 (2009): 67–106.
Father’s anointing of the Son without mentioning the Spirit.14 Irenaeus thus
contains some of the same ambiguities we will see in Origen and Eusebius,
yet without their notion of a pre-incarnate anointing of Christ.
Origen
Our theme appears in a number of Origen’s works. He makes explicit
the identification of the Spirit with chrism: “Anointing (χρῖσμα) is the
indwelling of the Holy Spirit in knowledge of truth”15 and uses a phrase
very similar to one Gregory will use in To Eustathius: “Among mortals,
anointing (χρίσις) is a symbol of kingship.”16 In On First Principles, Ori-
gen speaks of Jesus’ anointing. Here it is the pre-incarnate soul of Jesus
that is anointed:
As a reward for its love, therefore, [this soul] is anointed with the oil of
gladness (Ps 44.8), that is the soul with the word of God is made Christ; for
to be anointed with the oil of gladness means nothing else than to be filled
with the Holy Spirit. And when he says, above thy fellows (Ps 44.8), he
indicates that the grace of the Spirit was not given to it as to the prophets,
but that the essential “fullness” of the Word of God himself was within it,
as the apostle said, In him dwelleth all the fullness of the godhead bodily
(Col 2.9).17
He returns shortly to Ps 44: “The very fact that it says, ‘God anointed thee,
thy God with the oil of gladness above thy fellows,’ shows that that soul
is anointed with the ‘oil of gladness,’ that is, with the word of God and
with wisdom.”18 Here, there is no mention of the Spirit; rather, the “oil”
with which Jesus’ soul is anointed is the word and wisdom of God.19 The
peculiarities of Origen’s Christology and his lack of clarity on the Spirit’s
role here distance him from Gregory.
Yet it is possible that Origen exercised influence on Gregory through a
different route. The idea of the Spirit’s anointing the Son appears in Origen’s
Commentary on the Song of Songs. In the first book, Origen contrasts the
oil of gladness of Ps 44.8 with the blended oil of Exod 30.22–25:
14. Irenaeus, Haer. 3.6.1, 3.12.5.

15. Origen, Sel. in Ezech. (PG 13:812A)—commenting on Ezekiel 16.9.
16. Origen, Jo. 1.191 (ed. Cecile Blanc, Origène: Commentaire sur Saint Jean,
Tome I (Livres I–V), SC 120bis [Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1996], 154).
17. Origen, Princ. 2.6.4 (trans. G. W. Butterworth, Origen: On First Principles
[Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1973], 112). The passage is preserved only in Rufi-
nus’s Latin.
18. Origen, Princ. 2.6.6 (trans. Butterworth 113). Cf. Princ. 4.4.4.
19. The same ambiguity is present in the discussion in Origen, Jo. 1.195–97.
[T]he things of a material nature, which had been assumed in Christ, were
through the Holy Spirit reduced to one, and made to be all of a single
kind, namely the Person of the Mediator. That material oil, therefore, could
not possibly be called the oil of gladness. But this oil—that is to say, the
ointment of the Holy Spirit with which Christ was anointed, and at the
fragrance of which the Bride, when she perceives it, marvels, this oil is
fitly called the oil of gladness; because joy is a fruit of the Spirit, and with
it God anointed Him who loved justice and hated iniquity. For therefore,
Scripture says, hath the Lord His God anointed Him with the oil of
gladness above His fellows (Ps 44.8).20
Gregory invokes the Spirit as anointing in his own Homilies on the Song
of Songs, which draw upon Origen in some ways. However, there is no
direct parallel between this passage of Origen’s and the passage we will
examine from Gregory. Moreover, in the other places where Origen invokes
anointing in the Commentary and Homilies on the Song, the Spirit is not
mentioned.21 As with Irenaeus, then, the nature or dignity of the Spirit
seems not to be of great interest when the theme arises for Origen.22
Eusebius of Caesarea
Eusebius of Caesarea mentions the anointing of Christ in his Demonstra-
tion of the Gospel and his Church History. In the latter, Eusebius argues
that the divine Word is the true Christ, that is the true anointed one. Like
Origen, he contrasts the physical chrism with the eternal anointing of Christ
by the Father with the Spirit: “He has received the chrism, not that pre-
pared with physical materials, but the divine chrism with the spirit of God,
by sharing in the unbegotten divinity of the Father.”23 Eusebius then cites
Isa 61.1 and Ps 44.7–8. Though the Spirit is mentioned here, the empha-
sis is on distinguishing Christ’s eternal anointing from physical anointing.
Indeed, he alternates between speaking of the “Spirit” and of the “unbe-
gotten divinity of the Father.” A similar picture emerges in Demonstration
4.15, where Eusebius is again concerned to distinguish physical anoint-
ing, performed with “unguent,” from the kind of anointing mentioned in
Ps 44.7–8 (LXX). In this dense discussion, Eusebius mentions the Spirit a
number of times, but he appears to be simply equating the Spirit with the
simple unbegotten divinity. For example, he says, “It is thus the power of
20. Origen, Cant. 1.3 (trans. R. P. Lawson, Origen: The Song of Songs Commen-
tary and Homilies, ACW 26 [New York: Newman, 1956], 72–73).
21. Origen, Hom. in Cant. 1.2 (trans. Lawson 269); Cant. 2.9 (trans. Lawson 162).
22. For Origen’s discussion of the nature of the Spirit, see Princ. 1.1.3.
23. Eusebius, H. e. 1.3.13 (ed. Eduard Schwartz, Eusebius Werke II, GCS 9 [Leipzig:
Hinrichs, 1903] 34; trans. G. A. Williamson, rev. by Andrew Louth, Eusebius: The
History of the Church from Christ to Constantine [London: Penguin, 1989], 12).
this Being, the all-strong, the all-good, the source of all beauty in the high-
est unbegotten Godhead, the Divine Spirit. . . . It calls the (Oil of God),
and therefore it calls one who partakes of it Christ and Anointed.”24 After
citing the relevant verses of Ps 44, he says, “But the nature of the oil of
olive is one, whereas the nature of the unguent shews a union of many in
one. And so the original and unbegotten power of Almighty God, insofar
as it is conceived of as simple, uncompounded, and unmingled with any
other essence, is metaphorically compared with the simple essence of the
olive oil.”25 Later in the discussion, “Holy Spirit” replaces olive oil as the
item contrasted with unguent, which suggests that it stands here for the
“unbegotten power” of God.26 In both texts, Eusebius’s interest is on the
pre-incarnate Christ rather than on the Spirit per se.
Like Origen, Eusebius spoke of the Son being anointed as Christ before
the incarnation. Unlike Origen, this is not a reward for his love or virtue
and there is no mention of the soul of Jesus in Eusebius. Gregory likewise
spoke of a anointing of Christ “before the ages.”27 It is a notion he did
not share with Basil or his immediate contemporaries. It is possible, then,
that he re-worked Eusebius’s notion of a pre-incarnate anointing, while
clarifying the Spirit’s unique role. Whereas, for Irenaeus, Christ’s anoint-
ing was solely in his incarnate life (though this includes his glorification),
for Origen and Eusebius, it was exclusively before this.
Athanasius of Alexandria
By the late 330s c.e., the “Spirit as anointing” theme had lost its innocence.
Yet, at this point it was still of christological, rather than pneumatologi-
cal, interest. Like Alexander before him, Athanasius records an opponent’s
argument from Ps 44.7–8 (LXX) in his First Oration Against the Arians,
written 339–340.28 According to Athanasius, “Eusebius and Arius” had
produced, in writing, an argument based on the “wherefore” in both Phil
2.9–10 and the Psalm passage to show the mutable nature of the Son of
God.29 If the Son is exalted and anointed as a reward—an idea not unlike
24. Eusebius, D. e. 4.15 (trans. W. J. Ferrar, Eusebius: The Proof of the Gospel
[SPCK, 1920; repr. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2001], 1:193).
25. Eusebius, D. e. 4.15 (trans. Ferrar 194).
26. Eusebius, D. e. 4.15 (trans. Ferrar 197).
27. See p. 283 below.
28. Alexander of Alexandria, “Letter to Alexander of Thessalonica,” 14 (ed. Hans-
Georg Opitz, Athanasius Werke 3.1 [Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1934], Urkunde 14,
pp. 21–22).
29. Athanasius, Ar. 1.37. The reference must be to a lost work by Eusebius of
Nicomedia, with whom Athanasius associates Arius.
what we saw in Origen—then he must be capable of change and not by

nature Son and God. Athanasius responds at length. For him, the Psalm
is written not about a pre-incarnate event, but “on account of us and on
our behalf.” In contrast to the kings of Israel, who were not kings before
their anointing, the Son always rules in his Father’s kingdom. Moreover,
he is the one who provides the Spirit to others, rather than a recipient of
it. Nevertheless, he is said “as a man” to be anointed with the Spirit in the
Psalm so that “he might supply us men with the indwelling and intimacy
of the Spirit, just as with the exaltation and resurrection.”30 The anoint-
ing occurred at Christ’s baptism: “the descent of the Spirit on him in the
Jordan was a descent on us because of his bearing our body . . . when he
received the Spirit, we were the ones who became recipients of the Spirit
through him.”31 Athanasius cites Isa 61.1 and Acts 10.38, which he links
with Christ’s baptism. Careful distinctions must be made: “[I]t is not the
Word regarded as Word and Wisdom who is anointed with the Spirit,
which is given by him, but the flesh received by him. It is the flesh anointed
in him and by him so that the sanctification occurring to the Lord as man
may occur to all men from him.”32 Athanasius is for obvious reasons most
interested in Christ and his role as mediator of salvation, and only obliquely
in the Spirit sent by him as Word and received by him as man.
By the time he wrote his Letters to Serapion, written 358–361 c.e.,
the situation had changed. Athanasius mentions Christ’s baptism and the
anointing of his humanity with the Spirit in ways that accord with his dis-
cussion in the Orations.33 However, in these letters, the issue is the Spirit’s
divinity, and this affects the use of “anointing” language. Athanasius refers
to the Spirit as the “anointing” (χρῖσμα) and “seal” (σφραγίς) proper to
the Word who anoints and seals creatures.34 He draws on 1 John 2.27,
Isa 61.1 (which he does not connect with Christ’s words in Luke 4.18),
Eph 4.30, 2 Cor 2.15, and Gal 4.19. As in the First Oration Against the
Arians, he assumes that only creatures are anointed, which rules out an
eternal anointing of Christ with the Spirit. Athanasius uses the language of
“anointing” and “seal” to distinguish the Spirit firmly from creatures:
30. Athanasius, Ar. 1.46 (trans. William G. Rusch, The Trinitarian Controversy
[Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1980], 110).
31. Athanasius, Ar. 1.47 (trans. Rusch 110).
32. Athanasius, Ar. 1.47 (trans. Rusch 111).
33. Athanasius, Ep. Serap. 1.4 (PG 26:537B–C), 1.6 (PG 26:541B), 2.8 (PG
26:624A).
34. Athanasius, Ep. Serap. 1.23 (PG 26:584C), 3.3 (PG 26:628B). The latter is a
recapitulation of the former.
But if the Spirit is the anointing and the seal by whom and in whom the
Word anoints and seals all things, in what way can the anointer and sealer
be like or proper to those who are anointed and sealed? Thus for this
reason he cannot be one of the all things (John 1.3). The seal cannot be one
of the things sealed, nor can the anointing be one of the things anointed,
but he is proper to the Word who anoints and seals.35
For Athanasius, the language of anointing reveals the divinity of the Spirit.
The development from the First Oration Against the Arians to the Letters
to Serapion thus illustrates the transition from a primarily christological
application of the language to a properly Trinitarian—simultaneously
pneumatological and christological—interpretation of it.
The Broader Anti-Eunomian Tradition

The theme is used for pneumatological purposes in a number of works
attacking Eunomius as well as the radical “homoian” tradition—called
“anhomoian” by its opponents—of which he was part. The Pseudo-
Athanasian work On the Trinity and the Holy Spirit, a Greek original that
survives only in Latin translation, contains an argument for the Spirit’s
divinity on the basis of his role as chrism. Its author drew upon Didymus’s
On the Holy Spirit, written 360–365 c.e., though not for this particular
argument. The work was in turn a source for the Pseudo-Athanasian On
the Incarnation and Against the Arians, a work directed against a theol-
ogy it labels as “anhomoian.”36 While both works could be by Didymus
himself, no attribution is certain.37 In On the Trinity and the Holy Spirit,
the account of the language of anointing is unique, reading Acts 10.38
through the language of “perfume” in Cant 1.2 and Isa 25.6. For this
author, the Spirit is the one “in whom we are anointed.” He does not
speak of Christ’s anointing. Through a complex exegetical chain, he uses
35. Athanasius, Ep. Serap. 1.23 (PG 26:585A; trans. Mark DelCogliano, Andrew
Radde-Gallwitz, and Lewis Ayres, Didymus and Athanasius: Works on the Spirit
[Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, forthcoming]).
36. For the “anhomoian” label, see Pseudo-Athanasius, On the Incarnation and
Against the Arians (PG 26:985A). For the Pseudo-Athanasian works generally, see
Alasdair Heron, “The Pseudo-Athanasian Works De Trinitate et Spirtu Sancto and
De Incarnatione et Contra Arianos: A Comparison,” in Aksum, Thyateira: A Fest-
schrift for Archbishop Methodios of Thyateira and Great Britain (London: Thyateira
House, 1985), 281–98.
37. The section of On the Trinity and the Holy Spirit, which deals with the Spirit
as anointing, is not derived from Didymus’s On the Holy Spirit. “Spirit as anointing”
language does not appear in the latter.
the language of “anointing” to claim that the Spirit subsists “in his own
life and substance.”38
Another work from this anti-Eunomian tradition comes down to us as
Books 4 and 5 of Basil’s Against Eunomius. These books are surely not
by Basil, and, again, Didymus is a likely author.39 In Book 5, Pseudo-Basil
writes:
[The Spirit] is anointing, but is not anointed. The Spirit is anointing upon
us, as John says (cf. 1 John 2.20). Why do I say, “upon us”? After all, he
was already in the Lord himself according to the flesh. It says, Jesus of
Nazareth, how God anointed him with the Holy Spirit and power (Acts
10.38). So then, he is “Christ” because of the Spirit and the anointing
which occurs in the Spirit. And surely it is not through one who is foreign
to divinity that Christ is anointed and named “Christ,” and that those who
belong to him are called “Christians.”40
In Panarion 69, which ostensibly responds to “Arianism,” Epiphanius

reports the doctrines of Eudoxius and his associates. He rightly views
Eunomius as originally part of Eudoxius’s circle, though he is aware that
there has been something of a separation between them.41 In responding
38. Pseudo-Athanasius, On the Trinity and the Holy Spirit (ed. Vincentius Bulhart,
Eusebii Vercellensis episcopi quae supersunt, CCSL 9 [Turnhout: Brepols, 1957],
193; PG 26:1210A–B). The critical edition was done by Vincent Bulhart as part of
the works of Eusebius of Vercelli, based on the mistaken attribution of the work to
him by Dom Morin. Bulhart views it as Book 12 of Eusebius’s De trinitate. That this
work was a Greek original and hence not by Eusebius is shown by Heron, “Pseudo-
Athanasian Works.” See also Patrology, Volume IV: The Golden Age of Latin Patris-
tic Literature form the Council of Nicaea to the Council of Chalcedon, ed. Angelo
di Berardino, trans. Placid Solari, O.S.B., with an introduction by Johannes Quasten
(Notre Dame, IN: Christian Classics, 1986), 63–64.
39. For Didymus’s authorship, see Alasdair Heron, “Studies in the Trinitarian Writ-
ings of Didymus the Blind: His Authorship of the Adversus Eunomium IV–V” (Ph.D.
dissertation, Tübingen, 1972).
40. Pseudo-Basil, Against Eunomius 5 (PG 29:725B–C).
41. That Epiphanius is concerned principally with Eudoxius and his companions
is shown by Haer. 69.13.1–3 (ed. Karl Holl, Epiphanius III: Panarion haer. 65–80.
De fide. 2. Aufl. GCS 37 [Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1985], 163). Epiphanius is aware
that Eunomius was originally allied with Eudoxius: see Haer. 76, where he notes that
Eudoxius later separated himself from Eunomius. This separation is of course distinct
from the excommunication of Aetius by Eudoxius and his allies, mentioned at Haer.
76.3.9. At Haer. 73.23.1–8, Epiphanius describes a threefold split at the Council of
Seleucia in 359 among Homoiousians, a party around the Homoian Acacius of Cae-
sarea, and a party of Homoians led by Eudoxius, George of Alexandria, and Euzoius
of Antioch; it is presumably this latter group with which Eunomius was originally
associated, in Epiphanius’s mind. Most importantly for our purposes, in his response
to the pneumatology of Eudoxius’s associates, Epiphanius twice appeals

to the “Spirit as anointing” theme, citing Acts 10.38 in both places.42 For
him, the verse shows that the Spirit is uncreated. The second passage speci-
fies that it is the humanity of Christ that is anointed.43 This anointing—
which presumably occurred at Christ’s baptism—had to happen “so that
the Trinity would be glorified in every way, and in every way perceived to
be <one>.”44 The anointing of Christ is thus the economic manifestation
of the unity of the Trinity, “three perfect ones, one divinity.”45 In all three
of these anti-Eunomian writers—Pseudo-Athanasius, Pseudo-Basil, and
Epiphanius—the anointing which the Spirit is tells us something about
the Spirit’s divinity. For all of them, the anointing is an event within time,
either in the life of Christ, in the life of believers, or both.
The anti-Eunomian tradition tended to emphasize the glorification of
Christ’s humanity at his resurrection, a theme that will influence Gregory.
The following passage from Pseudo-Athanasius, On the Incarnation and
Against the Arians—a work that Gregory likely knew—is clearest.46
And when Peter says, Therefore, let the whole house of Israel know for
certain that God made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you
crucified (Acts 2.36), he is not speaking about his divinity, but about his
humanity, that is, the whole church, which rules and reigns in him after
he was crucified. And it is anointed into the kingdom of heaven, so that
it might reign along with him who emptied himself for its sake and who
assumed it through the form of a slave. For the Word and Son of God was
always Lord and God, and was not made Lord and Christ after he was
crucified. Rather, as I have said, his divinity made his humanity Lord and
Christ.47
to Eudoxian “Arianism,” Epiphanius addresses many of the same prooftexts which

are dealt with in the more overtly anti-heteroousian works Pseudo-Athanasius, On
the Incarnation and Against the Arians and Pseudo-Basil, Against Eunomius.
42. Epiphanius, Haer. 69.18.7.
43. Epiphanius, Haer. 69.56.11.
44. Epiphanius, Haer. 69.56.11 (trans. Frank Williams, The Panarion of Epiphanius
of Salamis: Books II and III (Sects 47–80, De fide), Nag Hammadi and Manichaean
Studies 36 [Leiden: Brill, 1994], 374). The μία is Karl Holl’s conjecture (GCS 37:204).
45. Epiphanius, Haer. 69.56.11 (GCS 37:204): τρία τέλεια, μία θεότης.
46. For Gregory’s use of this work, see Reinhard M. Hübner, Die Einheit des Leibes
Christi bei Gregor von Nyssa, Philosophia Patrum 2 (Leiden: Brill, 1974), 116–25 and
269–324. Hübner followed Martin Tetz’s mistaken attribution of the work to Marcel-
lus: “Zur Theologie des Markell von Ankyra, I: Eine Markellische Schrift ‘De incar-
natione et contra Arianos,’” Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschicte 75 (1964): 217–70.
47. Pseudo-Athanasius, On the Incarnation and Against the Arians (PG
26:1021A–B).
The language of anointing appears, but not the Spirit.48 Anointing is used
to explain how Christ’s flesh, and by extension the Church, is transformed
into what Christ eternally is after his crucifixion.
Cyril of Jerusalem
The anointing of Christ with the Spirit features prominently in the liturgi-
cal tradition of late fourth-century Jerusalem, as represented in the third
Mystagogical Catechesis associated with Cyril.49 The third lecture is an
important witness to the development of a post-baptismal chrismation
ritual particularly associated with the descent of the Spirit upon Jesus after
his own baptism. While it was almost certainly not a source for Gregory,
it highlights potential liturgical resonances of Acts 10.38. Basil, we will
see, followed Irenaeus in placing Christ’s anointing at his baptism. In the
Jerusalem mystagogy, this association led to a separate post-baptismal
anointing which signified the descent of the Spirit upon Jesus after his
baptism. And yet, while it is clear that some anointing occurred during
48. It is likely that Christ’s divinity, and not the Spirit, is one in whom his humanity
is anointed here. Compare Gregory of Nazianzus, Or. 10, which ends with this: “But
whether I am worthy, both of you who anoint me and of him for whose sake and in
whose name I am anointed, this the Father of the real and truly Anointed One, whom
he has anointed with the oil of gladness above his fellows, anointing humanity with
divinity so as to make both one; and our Lord and God himself, Jesus Christ, through
whom we have received our reconciliation; and the Holy Spirit, which has charged us
with this ministry in which we now take our place . . .” (trans. Martha Vinson, St.
Gregory of Nazianzus: Select Orations, FOTC 107 [Washington, DC: The Catholic
University of American Press, 2003], 28–29). Also Gregory of Nazianzus, Or. 30.21.
It is typical of Pseudo-Athanasius and of the anti-Eunomian literature surveyed here
that Christ’s divinity is the agent of the resurrection, which is the moment of anoint-
ing in the passage cited above. For the Word as agent of the resurrection, see also
Gregory of Nyssa, Against Eunomius 3.3.43–44, though Gregory does not discuss
anointing there, but always associates Christ’s anointing with the Spirit.
49. In the earlier Catechetical Lectures, there is only a passing reference at Cat.
16.30. A more extended account appears at Mystagogical Lecture 3.2. After cit-
ing Acts 10.38 and Ps 44.7–8, the lecture connects Christ’s baptism with the ritual:
“Christ was anointed with a mystical oil of gladness; that is, with the Holy Spirit
. . . so you, being anointed with ointment, have become partakers and fellows of
Christ” (trans. Leo P. McCauley and Anthony A. Stephenson, The Works of Saint
Cyril of Jerusalem, FOTC 64 [Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America
Press, 1970], 2:170). A plausible case has been made recently for Cyril’s authorship
of these lectures at some time late in his career (he was bishop of Jerusalem 350–387
c.e.). See Alexis James Doval, Cyril of Jerusalem, Mystagogue: The Authorship of
the Mystagogic Catecheses, NAPS Patristic Monograph Series 17 (Washington, DC:
The Catholic University of America Press, 2001).
the baptism ritual in Cappadocia at this time,50 the evidence is not decisive
as to whether they had instituted a post-baptismal anointing. Nor do we
know whether they would have followed Jerusalem in citing Acts 10.38
in this context.51 Baptism of course is frequently mentioned in the pneu-
matological writings of the Cappadocians. However, on the specific issue
of anointing, the evidence is not strong enough to permit us to identify
a liturgical tradition as the source for Gregory’s account of the Spirit as
anointing. Indeed, Gregory appears not to associate Christ’s anointing
with his baptism.
Basil of Caesarea
The “Spirit as anointing” theme appears in Basil’s Homily on Psalm 44 and
On the Holy Spirit. In the former, his usage is christological and ecclesio-
logical. He speaks of the Spirit as the “oil of gladness” with which Christ
is anointed in his humanity, or, as he also argues, in his body the Church.52
In On the Holy Spirit, Basil twice invokes the idea to prove the insepara-
bility of the Spirit from Christ. In the first instance, Basil uses Irenaeus’s
argument about the meaning of “Christ” to show that the passages in Paul
that speak of baptism into “Christ” alone implicitly invoke the entire Trin-
ity.53 Later, Basil uses the Spirit’s anointing of Christ at his baptism to argue
50. For anointing, see, e.g. Basil, On the Holy Spirit 27.66; Homily 1 on Fasting
(PG 31:165A) and for discussion Everett Ferguson, Baptism in the Early Church: His-
tory, Theology, and Liturgy in the First Five Centuries (Grand Rapids, MI: William
B. Eerdmans, 2009), 584. See also Gregory Nazianzen’s Or. 40, where “anointing”
is another title for baptism itself and his comment in Or. 9 that the chrism had been
administered to him “again” at his episcopal elevation.
51. It would be useful to be able to date more securely the Canons of Laodicea in
Phrygia Pacatiana, generally dated between 343 and 381 c.e. The forty-eighth canon
legislates a postbaptismal anointing; its decrees may or may not reflect contemporary
practice in Cappadocia and Pontus. If Basil witnesses to an anointing ritual separate
from baptism, it is in the context of the question of admitting those baptized under
schismatic bishops or among the Encratites (though his comments on the latter are
ambiguous): see his canonical Ep. 188.1 (cf. the seventh canon of Laodicea). Perhaps
from this practice, a separate anointing ritual emerged, though there is no evidence
of associations with the Spirit’s descent upon Jesus.
52. Basil, Hom. in Ps. 44.5, 8. The homily is datable only within the parameters
of Basil’s ecclesiastical ministry, i.e. anytime between 363 and 378 c.e. See Paul J.
Fedwick, “A Chronology of the Life and Works of Basil of Caesarea,” in Basil of Cae-
sarea: Christian, Humanist, Ascetic, ed. Paul J. Fedwick (Toronto: Pontifical Institute
of Medieval Studies, 1981), 1:9–10. For possible contexts of delivery of the Hom. in
Ps., see Jean Bernardi, La prédication des pères Cappadociens: Le prédicateur et son
auditoire (Université de Montpellier, 1968), 22–41.
53. Basil, Spir. 12.28 (ed. Benoit Pruche, O.P., Basile de Césarée: Sur le Saint Esprit,
SC 17bis [Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 2002], 344). Basil’s argument links together Acts
the inseparability of Christ’s actions from the Spirit: “From the outset, he
was present to the very flesh of the Lord, since he was unction (χρῖσμα),
and his inseparable companion, as it is written, The one upon whom you
see the Spirit descending and remaining upon him, this one is my beloved
Son (John 1.33, Matt 3.17, and parallels). And Jesus of Nazareth, whom
God anointed with the Holy Spirit (Acts 10.38). From that point forward,
all his activities were accomplished with the Spirit accompanying him.”54
Basil does not discuss an eternal anointing of Christ. Nor does he associ-
ate Christ’s anointing with his resurrection and glorification. Basil’s chief
contribution to Gregory was his development of the hermeneutical cat-
egory of dignity, to which we now turn.
DIGNITY AS HERMENEUTICAL CATEGORY IN BASIL
Basil first articulates what we might call his categorical theory in Against
Eunomius. In 1.25, Basil responds to Eunomius’s reading of John 14.28,
where Jesus proclaims, “The Father is greater than I.” Eunomius and
Basil are agreed on one thing: it will do no good to leave it at that. The
sharp disputes among Homoians and Homoiousians in the late 350s and
early 360s meant that one must specify in what sense the Son is like or
unlike the Father. Similarly, when one says “x is greater than y,” one must
specify in what respect x is greater. There is obvious difficulty in specify-
ing the sense in which the immaterial, simple, and hence incomparable
God can be called “greater than” anything. Eunomius specifies that the
Unbegotten cannot be greater than the Only-Begotten in “form or mass
or size.” It remains, he argues, that the Unbegotten is greater in substance.
Basil’s response is instructive, for while he agrees that “form or mass or
size” cannot be what Jesus has in mind in declaring the Father greater, he
claims that there are more remaining options than substance. For Basil,
besides being greater in mass, the Father could be greater than the Son in
any of three ways: (1) in the way a cause is greater than its effect, (2) in
power, or (3) in dignity. He opts for (1), and needs to eliminate the other
two. In his argument regarding (3), he construes “dignity” as a category
of biblical names:
Furthermore, if the “throne of God” (cf. Matt 5.34, 23.22; Heb 12.2) is a
name of dignity (as we ourselves believe it to be), what else does this seat
10.38 with Isa 60.1 and Ps 44.7. See the discussion of Irenaeus, Haer. 3.18.3 at p.
263 above.
54. Basil, Spir. 16.39 (SC 17bis:386).
reserved for the Son at the right hand of the Father signify if not the equal
honor of their rank? The Lord also promised that he would come in the
glory of the Father (Matt 16.27).55
Basil argues that when the Bible says “throne” or “glory,” it is speaking of
the divine under the aspect of “dignity.” Since both titles are used of the
Son, his dignity cannot be lesser than the Father’s. The same strategy is used
to argue that the Son is not inferior in power. Basil invokes the category of
dignity elsewhere. In Letter 236, he says, in reference to Davidic kingship
and specifically Jer 22.28–30, which his friend Amphilochius had asked
him to explain, that “by ‘throne’ is clearly meant the royal dignity.”56
Basil gives us some sense of how his category of dignity relates to other
categories in Against Eunomius 3, the short book on the Spirit. There Basil
argues that difference in dignity does not entail difference in nature: while
the Spirit is third in rank and dignity, he is not of a nature foreign to the
Father and the Son, as Eunomius had argued. Basil offers the example of
angels, which occupy different ranks while nonetheless sharing a single
angelic nature. The argument seems to imply that at this stage in his career
Basil viewed the Spirit as inferior to the Father and Son in dignity (recall
that the argument from 1.25 merely proved the equality of the Father and
Son in dignity). This is one of a few curious elements of Against Euno-
mius 3. In his writings as bishop, Basil adamantly asserts the equality of
honor among the three persons. In Against Eunomius 3, as in 1.25, the
categories are separable both in thought (such that one can discuss them
separately) and in reality (such that two items can be identical with respect
to one category but different with respect to another). This is different from
Gregory’s use of the categories: while his separate analysis of the categories
presupposes the former point, he argues that, in the case of the Trinity at
least, no matter which category one analyzes, one will find equality among
the persons. Gregory’s adaptation of Basil’s categories, then, exemplifies the
theme Lewis Ayres has analyzed, whereby pro-Nicene theologians came to
insist with increasing clarity that “all speech about Father, Son, and Spirit
is governed by the same assumptions about the divine.”57
55. Basil, Eun. 1.25 (trans. Mark DelCogliano and Andrew Radde-Gallwitz, Basil
of Caesarea: Against Eunomius, FOTC 122 [Washington, DC: The Catholic Univer-
sity of America Press, 2011]).
56. Basil, Ep. 236.3 (trans. Roy J. Deferrari, Basil III: Letters 186–248, LCL 242
[Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1930], 397). Cf. Hom. in Ps. 44.7: “‘Thy
Throne,’ he says, ‘O God, is forever and ever,’ that is to say, Thy Kingdom . . .”
(trans. Sr. Agnes Clare Way, Saint Basil: Exegetic Homilies, FOTC 46 [Washington,
DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1963], 288).
57. Lewis Ayres, Nicaea and its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitar-
ian Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 15.
GREGORY OF NYSSA ON THE DIGNITY OF THE SPIRIT
Gregory was drawing on a widespread pro-Nicene and anti-Eunomian

tradition in using the language of anointing to defend the Spirit’s insepa-
rability from Christ. It remains to examine his particular uses of this tra-
dition. Probably Gregory’s earliest account of the Spirit’s dignity occurs
in his letter To Eustathius on the Holy Trinity.58 In To Eustathius, as in
other works, Gregory provides multiple, complementary arguments for the
Spirit’s divinity. To Eustathius is particularly valuable for reconstructing
the logic of these arguments since Gregory labels them clearly. The dispute
is over whether the Spirit, like the Father and the Son, shares in the “idea
of deity” (τῇ τῆς θεότητος ἐννοίᾳ).59 But before answering that, one must
explain what kind of term or concept “deity” is. Gregory entertains two
possibilities: “deity” is a name either of the divine nature or of the divine
dignity.60 But the discussion of the divine nature is subdivided into two
parts. First, he discusses the “God-fitting names and concepts” (θεοπρεπῆ
ὀνόματά τε καὶ νοήματα), that is those “names understood in reference to
the divine nature” (τῶν περὶ τὴν θείαν φύσιν ἐπινοουμένων ὀνομάτων) and
“attributed to the divine nature” (τὰ ὀνόματα τὰ τῇ θείᾳ φύσει ἐπιλεγόμενα).61
He then deals with biblical texts that describe divine actions. Only then
does he turn to the other major hermeneutical category of dignity.
58. In fact, the argument from dignity only appears in the longer recension of
the text: see Anna Silvas, Gregory of Nyssa: The Letters: Introduction, Translation,
and Commentary, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 83 (Leiden and Boston: Brill,
2007), 232–34. For the date of the work, see Gerhard May, “Die Chronologie des
Lebens und der Werke des Gregor von Nyssa,” in Écriture et culture philosophique
dans la pensée de Grégoire de Nysse, ed. Marguerite Harl (Leiden: Brill, 1971),
51–67, at 57–58; Andrew Radde-Gallwitz, “Ad Eustathium de sancta trinitate,” in
Gregory of Nyssa: The Minor Treatises on Trinitarian Theology and Apollinarism,
ed. V. H. Drecoll and M. Berghaus, Proceedings of the 11th International Colloquium
on Gregory of Nyssa, Tübingen, 17–20 September 2008 (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming).
It is likely, though not certain, that Trin. was written by Gregory during his detain-
ment in Sebasteia in early 380.
59. Greg. Nyss. Trin. (GNO 3.1:7.12).
60. In the summary of the argument, Gregory suggests that it might also be a “name
of an activity” (Trin. [GNO 3.1:15.1]). However, in the discussion of activities (Trin.
[GNO 3.1:10.14–15.7]), Gregory only briefly (Trin. [GNO 3.1:14.5–7 and 15.1–3])
entertains the possibility that “deity” itself is a name of activity, as he does in other
works, such as To Ablabius, That we do not say three Gods (GNO 3.1:44–45), on
which see Ayres, Nicaea and its Legacy, 355. He is more fundamentally interested in
the shared activities of Father, Son, and Spirit in general. Moreover, it is clear that
the purpose of the discussion of activities is to make claims about the divine nature,
and in particular whether the Spirit is divine in nature: Trin. (GNO 3.1:14.20–15.1):
“The commonality of the nature is clearly demonstrated, since it is confirmed through
the identity of the activities.”
61. Greg. Nyss. Trin. (GNO 3.1:8.8, 15–16).
Gregory provides several examples of names that fall into the first cat-
egory: life-giving power,62 goodness, holiness, eternity, wisdom, righteous-
ness, guidance, and might.63 Gregory notes it is the opinion of “the many”
that “deity,” like these names, denotes the divine nature.64 His own doc-
trine is that the divine nature “remains in its essence inexpressible under
all the names conceived for it.”65 But this does not mean that no word can
be attributed to it, merely that no name properly defines it. The words he
lists are carefully chosen. With the exception of “eternity,” they are biblical
descriptions of the Spirit.66 Gregory draws these from a similar, but fuller
list of names of the Spirit in the pneumatological section of Basil’s Against
Eunomius.67 And yet each of these is also a name of the divine nature as
such and not simply of the Spirit. In characteristic fashion, Gregory argues
that there can be no “more or less” among such names (and consequently,
no proper plural application of them), since each equally refers to the sim-
62. On power and nature, see Barnes, Power of God, passim; on “life-giving power”
as a name of the divine nature, see Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy, 352.
63. Greg. Nyss. Trin. (GNO 3.1:7.21–26).
64. Greg. Nyss. Trin. (GNO 3.1:15.3).
65. Greg. Nyss. Trin. (GNO 3.1:14.7–8): ἡ δὲ θεία φύσις ἐν πᾶσι τοῖς ἐπινοουμένοις
ὀνόμασι, καθό ἐστι, μένει ἀσήμαντος, ὡς ὁ ἡμέτερος λόγος. For καθό ἐστι as “in its essence,”
see Gregory of Nyssa, Apologia in Hexaemeron 31 (ed. Hubertus R. Drobner, Gre-
gorii Nysseni in Hexaemeron, Opera exegetica in Genesim, Pars I, GNO 4.1 [Leiden
and Boston: Brill, 2009], 44.15; PG 44:92C); Contra Eunomium 1.182, 234, 655
(ed. Werner Jaeger, Contra Eunomium libri, Pars prior, GNO 1 [Leiden: Brill, 1960],
80.15–16, 95.14, 214.25); Refutatio confessionis Eunomii 7 (ed. Werner Jaeger, Con-
tra Eunomium libri, Pars altera, GNO 2 [Leiden: Brill, 1960], 315.10). For discussion
of similar phrases as locutions for the divine essence, see Andrew Radde-Gallwitz,
Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and the Transformation of Divine Simplicity
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 198, 203–7.
66. Volker Drecoll, “Le substrat biblique des attributs divins,” in Grégoire de
Nysse, ed. Cassin et Grelier, 133–46, esp. 139.
67. Basil, Eun. 3.6 (ed. Bernard Sesboüé, Georges-Matthieu de Durand, and Louis
Doutreleau, Basile de Césarée: Contre Eunome, suivi de Eunome: Apologie, Tome
II, SC 305 [Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1983], 168–70; trans. DelCogliano and Radde-
Gallwitz, 2011): “So, then, what should we call him? Holy Spirit, Spirit of God,
Spirit of truth sent from God and bestowed through the Son, not a servant, but a
holy, good, and guiding Spirit that gives life, Spirit of adopted sonship, the one who
knows all that is God’s.” The list of epithets is quoted, with some modifications,
by Pseudo-Basil, Against Eunomius 5.3 (PG 29:753B–C) and again by Gregory of
Nyssa at Maced. (GNO 3.1:97.8–13, 108.21–24) and Ref. 11 (GNO 2:317). In the
last passage, Gregory invokes the following verses as pneumatologically significant:
Ps 50.12, 14 (LXX); 2 Cor 3.6; 1 Cor 12.6; Acts 10.38; 1 Cor 1.24; Eph 1.17; John
14.6, 16.13; Wis 5.23, 11.20; and perhaps Luke 11.2, read through a variant men-
tioned below at p. 280.
ple divine nature.68 Since the referent of all of the titles is the same, what
goes for any one of them goes for each of the others. Now, the Spirit is
denoted by the other titles like “good” and “holy.” So, if “deity” is to be
included along with these names as a title of the divine nature, it must,
like them, also be applied to the Spirit. In this way, Gregory attempts to
undermine the premise of his opponents that “deity” or the name “God”
is uniquely the title of God in contradistinction from all the other names
of the divine. From the premise that “God” is properly the name of God,
and from the fact that the Scriptures never call the Spirit “God,” the
Pneumatomachians reasoned that the Spirit is not divine. Gregory argues
that “deity” is not in fact the only “God-fitting” name or concept, to the
exclusion of “good,” “holy,” “wise,” and so forth.
Gregory then turns to his argument from the Spirit’s activities. He makes
clear that he is still speaking about the divine nature and whether the
Spirit shares in it. But now he is doing so on the basis of God’s activities,
which is necessary since knowing what is proper and what is foreign to
the divine nature “on its own” is impossible for us: “But because this is
too sublime for the grasp of enquirers . . . , it is wholly necessary that we
are guided in our investigation of the divine nature by its operations.”69
By “activities,” Gregory means God’s works ad extra. The argument here
is largely negative, seeking to demonstrate that there are no grounds for
restricting the Spirit’s activities to sanctification. Such a difference would
indeed demonstrate a difference of nature.
He then turns to taking “deity” as a title of dignity:
Now if someone wishes to define this title [i.e. “deity” (θεότης)] as
indicative of dignity (ἀξίας ἐνδεικτικήν), I do not know by what reasoning
he holds the name to this significance (σημασίαν). But alas, one hears many
saying this kind of thing. Therefore, that the zeal of opponents may find no
ground for attacking the truth, we will accommodate such a supposition
and say to those who are of this opinion that even if the name does signify
dignity, in this case too the title will be properly applied to the Holy Spirit.
For consider: the name of kingship (τῆς βασιλείας τὸ ὄνομα) denotes
all dignity, and our God, it says, is King from everlasting (Ps 73.12). But
the Son, who possesses all that the Father has (John 16.15), is himself
proclaimed king by the Holy Scripture (cf. John 18.36). Now the divine
Scripture says that the Holy Spirit is the anointing (χρῖσμα) of the Only-
Begotten (cf. Acts 10.38, Luke 4.18), intimating the dignity (τὴν ἀξίαν)
68. For passages in which this argument appears, see Radde-Gallwitz, Basil of
Caesarea, 212–15.
69. Greg. Nyss. Trin. (GNO 3.1:10–11; trans. Silvas 241).
of the Spirit by a metaphor from the terms commonly used here below.
For in ancient times, the symbol of this dignity for those who were being
advanced to kingship was the anointing bestowed on them. Once this took
place there was a change thereafter from a private humble estate to the
pre-eminence of rule, and he who was deemed worthy of this grace received
after his anointing another name, being called, instead of an ordinary man,
the Lord’s Anointed (cf. 1 Sam 16.6, Ps 2.2, etc.). For this reason, in order
that the dignity of the Holy Spirit might be more clearly manifest to human
beings, he was named by the Scripture as the symbol of kingship, that is
anointing, from which we are taught that the Holy Spirit shares in the glory
and kingship (δόξης καὶ βασιλείας κοινωνεῖ) of the Only-Begotten Son of
God.70
Clearly, the last phrase about the Spirit’s sharing the Son’s “glory and
kingship” conveys the overall purpose of the passage. Gregory does not
draw conclusions here about the Spirit’s nature or activity ad extra. The
language of “anointing” shows something about the Spirit’s “glory and
kingship,” and hence about its “dignity.” The latter functions as the name
of a hermeneutical category, a class of biblical names that cohere around
some common idea. Gregory’s initial qualms are over the specific issue of
taking “deity” as a name in this category, not over the category itself. In
fact, his worries over “deity” clearly imply that there are standards or cri-
teria regulating the category that he thinks “many” have misunderstood.
Properly, the titles that fall under it have to do with glory and kingship.71
Anointing is a “symbol of kingship,”72 and consequently the Spirit is
considered under the aspect of dignity because of his role of anointing,
which involves reading Acts 10.38 metaphorically. In his account of the
metaphor, Gregory makes no mention of when Christ was anointed; nor
70. Greg. Nyss. Trin. (GNO 3.1:15–16; trans. Silvas 244–45).

71. That Gregory is thinking in terms of a rather technical semantic theory can
be seen from a few other passages on the logic of the title “Christ”: Prof. chr. (ed.
Werner Jaeger, Gregorii Nysseni opera ascetica, GNO 8.1 [Leiden: Brill, 1952], 134):
“The name ‘Christ,’ if one were to exchange it for a clearer and more familiar word,
means ‘the king’, although the Holy Scripture indicates royal dignity (βασιλικὴν ἀξίαν)
with such a term by way of a rather peculiar usage”; Perf. (GNO 8.1:76–77): “So
then, since the dignity of kingship surpasses every other dignity, authority, or power,
the royal rule is signified properly and primarily by the title ‘Christ.’ For, as we learn
in the historical books, anointing precedes kingship. And the meaning of all the other
names is included in ‘kingship.’ For this reason, the one who understands the names
that are included under it also understands the meaning that encompasses them indi-
vidually. And this meaning is kingship, of which the expression ‘Christ’ is an indica-
tive name”; cf. Eun. 3.4.59, 61 and 3.5.63–64.
72. The phrase (which reflects a rather commonplace idea) appears in Origen, Jo.
1.191. Gregory cites it again in Maced. (GNO 3.1:102.19).
does he invoke the liturgical resonances this had in late fourth-century

Jerusalem; he merely speaks of a transfer of terms from Israelite tradition
to the kingship of the Only-Begotten. Unlike Athanasius’s account of the
metaphor, it appears that Gregory is not talking about the incarnate Son
at all, but about the Son’s eternal status as king.73
In the work Against the Macedonians on the Holy Spirit, which is gen-
erally dated later than To Eustathius,74 Gregory offers a more nuanced
description of his opponents’ view:
Now our opponents claim that [the Spirit] is estranged from any natural
communion with the Father and the Son, and that because of the difference
in nature, he is inferior to and less than they in every respect—in power,
glory, dignity (δυνάμει καὶ δόξῃ καὶ ἀξιώματι)—indeed, in every name and
concept fittingly ascribed to God. And consequently, they say that he does
not share in the glory (δόξης . . . ἀμέτεχον), is unworthy of equal honor
(ἀνάξιον . . . ὁμοτιμίας) with the Father and Son, and that he shares only
enough of the power as he needs for the limited activities assigned to him,
being entirely removed from the creative power.75
For the “Macedonians,” the two points (inequality of honor and of power)
were linked:
Yes, [our opponent] says. But we have been taught by Scripture that the
Father is Creator. And in the same way we have learned that all things came
into being through the Son (John 1.3). But the word has taught us no such
thing about the Spirit. So then, how can it be right to bring the Holy Spirit
into equal honor (ὁμοτιμίαν) with one who has displayed such great power
by creating?76
As in To Eustathius, in Against the Macedonians, Gregory’s response is

not a simple counter-assertion of the inseparable activities of the Trinity.
He takes several approaches, including the “dignity-based” argument:
For how can one confess the Anointed One who does not think of the
anointing (χρῖσμα) along with him who is anointed? It says, This one God
anointed with the Holy Spirit (Acts 10.38). And so those who destroy the
glory (δόξαν) of the Spirit and relegate him to a subordinate nature must tell
us what anointing symbolizes. Is it not a symbol of kingship? Well? Do they
not believe that the Only-Begotten is king by nature?77
73. See Boulnois, “Le cercle des glorifications mutuelles,” 36 n. 55. Contrast Atha-
nasius, Ar. 1.46.
74. May, “Die Chronologie,” 59; Jaeger, Gregor von Nyssa’s Lehre, 9.
75. Greg. Nyss. Maced. (GNO 3.1:90.5–14).
76. Greg. Nyss. Maced. (GNO 3.1:97.30–98.4).
77. Greg. Nyss. Maced. (GNO 3.1:102.14–20).
Gregory likens the conjunction of the Spirit and the Son to anointed
flesh: “neither reason nor perception can discern any interval separating
the body’s surface and the anointing oil.”78 As in To Eustathius, when
he invokes Acts 10.38 here, he does not connect it with any event in the
incarnate Son’s life, but is apparently thinking of an eternal anointing of
the one who is “king by nature.” The argument is not, however, that the
anointing oil itself is of the same nature as the anointed king. Rather, it
is that the anointing oil is a symbol of kingship, and that kingship is the
rank or dignity that makes the king to be king. When, as in the case of
Christ, the king is so “by nature,” it follows, according to Gregory, that
he is by nature inseparable from kingship, and hence from the Spirit.79 We
will return to this treatise in a moment.
Gregory also uses the idea of the Spirit as anointing to argue the Spirit’s
inseparability from the Son in the Refutation of Eunomius’s Confession,
a text whose ostensible target is Eunomius, but which also engages the
Pneumatomachians who were still in 383 c.e. accusing Gregory of trithe-
ism.80 Gregory’s pneumatological argument in that work is addressed to
both opponents. Here Gregory argues against separating the “anointing”
(χρῖσμα) from the “anointed” (Χριστοῦ) the “kingdom” (βασιλείαν) from
the “king” (βασιλέως).81
The identification of the Spirit as the kingdom appears most famously in
Gregory’s third homily on the Lord’s Prayer, which deals with the clause,
“Hallowed be your name, your kingdom come.” Here, Gregory exploits a
textual variant in Luke, which says “may your Holy Spirit come,” to argue
that the Spirit is the “kingdom.” He argues that this should be sufficient to
refute the “enemies of God” who “drag Him down into a subject creature,
placing Him with the ruled, instead of with the ruling Nature.”82 Gregory
then moves to the activities of the Spirit. This shows how the categories
of polemical treatises could seep into homiletic contexts.
In four of his works, Gregory expands his account of the Spirit’s dig-
78. Greg. Nyss. Maced. (GNO 3.1:103.2–3). Ferguson, Baptism in the Early Church,
504, rightly corrects the interpretation of this verse by Daniélou, “Chrismation pré-
baptismale,” showing that it does not imply a practice of prebaptismal anointing.
79. The language of “by nature” here does not mean that Gregory is thinking of
an argument about the nature of Christ and the Spirit. Rather, Christ and the Spirit
share dignity, and do so “by nature,” that is, in virtue of who each is eternally.
80. See Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy, 346.
81. Greg. Nyss. Ref. 11 (GNO 2:317).
82. Greg. Nyss. Or. dom. 3 (ed. Johannes F. Callahan, Gregorii Nysseni De ora-
tione dominica, De beatitudinibus, GNO 7.2 [Leiden: Brill, 1992], 39–40; trans.
Hilda C. Graef, St. Gregory of Nyssa, The Lord’s Prayer; The Beatitudes, ACW 18
[New York: Paulist, 1954], 53).
nity to argue that the Spirit is the glory of Christ, that is, the one in whom
Christ is said to be glorified.83 In Against the Macedonians, Gregory offers a
counter-interpretation of the language of Christ’s being glorified from John
17.3–5, an important Eunomian prooftext.84 He cites 1 Kgs 2.30 together
with a string of passages from the Gospel of John (17.4–5, 12.28, and
16.14) in order to portray a “circle of mutual glorification” in the Trinity:
“the Son is glorified by the Spirit, the Father is glorified by the Son; again,
the Son has the glory from the Father and the Only-Begotten becomes the
glory of the Spirit.”85 The Spirit would not be able to give what he himself
is not. The Spirit possesses glory and is glory through an exchange of giv-
ing and receiving of glory within the Trinity. This is matched in the realm
of language by a corresponding Trinitarian grammar, which “comes full
circle, glorifying the Son through the Spirit and the Father through the
Son.”86 What this doxological language reflects is an eternal glorification
of the Son by the Spirit within the Trinity, and not merely an economic
manifestation of this glory, as in Epiphanius.
This account appears in works where the divinity of the Spirit is not
immediately in question. In Gregory’s treatise on another favorite Euno-
mian verse, 1 Cor 15.28, the theme appears.87 In this work, which can
reasonably be dated to 381 c.e.,88 Gregory labels the identification of the
Spirit as glory as his own view:
The glory that you have given me, I have given to them (John 17.22). In
my view (οἶμαι), here he calls the Holy Spirit the glory that gives to the
83. Reinhard Hübner, Die Einheit des Leibes Christi, 122 n. 99, was wrong to
see Gregory’s identification of the Spirit as the glory in Marcellus’s fragments and in
Pseudo-Athanasius, On the Incarnation and Against the Arians. The point is origi-
nal to Gregory.
84. See Eunomius, Apol. 17.2–3, 21.11, 25.20, 26.2–3; Eunomius, Exp. fid. 2.1,
2.10, 3.12, 3.14, 4.4. It was discussed in the anti-Eunomian literature: Pseudo-
Athanasius, On the Incarnation and Against the Arians (PG 26:992B, 1024A–B);
Pseudo-Basil, Eun. 4 (PG 29:701A–B, 705C–708C); Epiphanius, Haer. 69.28.4–30.5,
69.31.1–32.6.
85. Greg. Nyss. Maced. (GNO 3.1:108.28–109.15).
86. Here, Gregory adapts Basil’s argument in Spir. 18.46. For comment, see Boul-
nois, “Le cercle des glorifications mutuelles,” 33–34 n. 52.
87. For the Eunomian exegesis of 1 Cor 15.24–28, see Eunomius, Apol. 27.14–15.
For anti-Eunomian responses, see Pseudo-Athanasius, On the Incarnation and Against
the Arians (PG 26 1020A–1021A); Epiphanius, Haer. 69.74.2–77.8.
88. See Zachhuber, Human Nature in Gregory of Nyssa, 204–7. Contra Ilaria
Ramelli, Gregorio di Nissa: Sull’Animae la Resurrezione (Milano: Bompiani, 2007),
655, who dates the work late in Gregory’s life (“probably between the years 385 and
393”) due to its apparent development of themes in On the Soul and Resurrection, a
text likely written between 381 and 385 in her view (Gregorio di Nissa, 9).
disciples by breathing upon them (cf. John 20.22). After all, those who are
divided from each other cannot be united unless they are joined together
in the unity of the Spirit. If someone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he
does not belong to him (Rom 8.9). Now the Spirit is the glory, as the Lord
says in another place to the Father: Glorify me with the glory that I had
from the beginning from you before the world began (John 17.5). God the
Word had the glory of the Father before the world, and then in the last
days became flesh. But it was necessary that the flesh too become, through
mingling with the Word, what the Word is. It becomes this by receiving
what the Word had before the world, which is the Holy Spirit. For nothing
exists before this age besides Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is why here
too he says The glory that you have given to me, I have given to them, so
that through this glory they might be united with me and, through me, with
you (John 17.22–23).89
The main issue in the treatise is reconciling the full divinity of Christ
with his eschatological “subjection” in 1 Cor 15.28. Drawing on Pseudo-
Athanasius’s On the Incarnation and Against the Arians, Gregory argues
that this will be a subjection only for Christ’s body, the church, and not
for his divinity. The Spirit is integral to Gregory’s account of Christ’s eter-
nal glory. Gregory responds to the Eunomian reading of John 17—that
Christ’s receiving shows his inferiority—by asserting the eternal indivis-
ibility of the Spirit from Christ. The Spirit is similarly inseparable from
Christ’s economic, mediatorial work, which is summed up in his gift of
the Spirit’s glory to his disciples.
In Gregory’s Against Apollinarius, likely from 382/3 c.e., the Johannine
language of glory is interpreted through the language of anointing.90 Greg-
ory is defending himself against the charge that he teaches two Christs:
The Word was Christ and Lord, and this is what the one who was mixed
with and assumed into the Godhead becomes. For the one who is Lord is
89. Greg. Nyss. On the Passage: “Then the Son too will be subjected” (In illud:
Tunc et ipse filius) (ed. J. Kenneth Downing, Jacobus A. McDonough, S.J., and Had-
wiga Hörner, Gregorii Nysseni opera dogmatica minora, Pars II, GNO 3.2 [Leiden:
Brill, 1987], 21–22).
90. Jean Daniélou argued for the winter of 382/3 from the mention of a long
journey (at GNO 3.1:135), which Daniélou presumes must have been recently com-
pleted and must have been his mission to Arabia and Jerusalem after the Council
of Constantinople, 381. See his introduction to From Glory to Glory: Texts from
Gregory of Nyssa’s Mystical Writings, trans. Herbert Musurillo, S.J. (Crestwood,
NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001), 7. May, “Die Chronologie,” 61, argued for
387 on the grounds that this is likely the earliest Gregory would have known Apol-
linarius’s Demonstration. A convincing response, which confirms Daniélou’s dating
on independent grounds, has been made by Zachhuber (Human Nature, 206), who
draws on the chronology proposed by in 1963 by Lebourlier.
not re-fashioned as Lord; rather, the form of the slave becomes Lord. Also,
for this reason, Christ, who is clothed before the ages with the glory of
the Spirit (for this is what anointing symbolizes), is called One Lord Jesus
Christ, through whom all things exist (1 Cor 8.6). And after the passion,
by adorning the man whom he united with himself with the same chrism,
he makes him Christ. For he says, Glorify me, that is to say, “anoint me”
with the glory, which I had from you before the world began (John 17.5).
And the glory that is understood to be before the world, before the entire
creation, and before all ages, by which the Only-Begotten God is glorified,
is in our view (κατὰ τὸν ἡμέτερον λόγον) nothing other than the glory of the
Spirit.91
Here again Gregory labels the view that the Spirit is the glory of Christ as
“our view.” In this passage, “anointing” symbolizes “glory” rather than
“kingship.” Once we note that the two concepts are the prominent exam-
ples of the hermeneutical category of “dignity,” this appears not to be an
inconsistency. Whatever the precise term used for the purposes immedi-
ately at hand, anointing symbolizes dignity. This passage is the only time
Gregory specifies a moment for the anointing of “the man” united to the
eternal Christ, and it is “after the passion.” This echoes his account of the
paschal transformation of Christ’s humanity into divinity in another work
from this period in which he defends Basil—and, by extension, himself—
against the accusation of teaching two Christs: Against Eunomius 3, from
381/2 c.e.92 After the passage just cited, Gregory proceeds to cite Ps 54.20,
Heb 1.2, and Acts 10.38, in order to justify his identification of the Spirit
with the eternal glory. He sums up the christological implications: “that
which belongs to Christ who is with the Father before the world began
comes at the end of the ages to belong to the one united to Christ.”93 The
one whom Christ assumes is made into what Christ eternally is; the union
of humanity with divinity accordingly makes one Christ, not two. Gregory
had offered essentially the same response to Eunomius in Against Eunomius
3. The difference is that, in Against Apollinarius, he brings in the Spirit’s
role in glorifying Christ—both eternally and in the paschal economy.
In his final (fifteenth) homily On the Song of Songs, which is often
thought of as among his last works and perhaps the very last, Gregory
again invokes dignity to speak about the Spirit.94 Here it is the church,
including those members who are less than perfect, which comes to share
91. Greg. Nyss. Apoll. (GNO 3.1:222.1–14).

92. See esp. Greg. Nyss. Eun. 3.3.
93. Greg. Nyss. Apoll. (GNO 3.1:222.19–21).
94. See May, “Die Chronologie,” 63.
the Spirit’s dignity.95 In terms similar to what we have seen in the treatise
on 1 Cor 15.28 and in Against Apollinarius, Gregory uses the language of
the anti-Eunomian tradition to describe the glorification of Christ’s flesh
with the Spirit. Citing John 17 and 20.22, he says, “The one who put on
human nature received the same glory which he always had before the
world existed. Once this nature was glorified through the Spirit, the glory
of the Spirit is distributed to all who share it, starting with the disciples.”96
Here again, the “glory” Christ gives the disciples, which enables their
unity, is the Spirit: “Glory is the bond of this unity.”97 Clearly, Gregory is
not principally arguing, over against opponents, for the Spirit’s divinity
here. Yet, the dignity-based argument he uses in polemical treatises is not
far below the surface of this account of human incorporation into Christ’s
royal dignity in the church.
CONCLUSION
The venerable notion of the Spirit as anointing inevitably received new
connotations as the Spirit became the subject of controversy around 360
c.e., beginning with Athanasius’s Letters to Serapion. After this point, the
theme is frequently mentioned by authors in the context of responding to
radical homoian or Eunomian theology. Gregory learned this theme from
the anti-Eunomian tradition, which of course included Basil. It is striking
how often the theme arises in Gregory’s works as he is rehabilitating a
biblical verse that had been widely used in the Eunomian tradition. Yet,
he sharpened the focus of “anointing” language by reading it through the
prism of Basil’s “hermeneutical category” of dignity. Furthermore, unlike
this tradition, and perhaps developing a theme from Eusebius, Gregory
read the anointing of Christ as eternal exchange of glory within the Trin-
ity. At the same time, he draws on the anti-Eunomian tradition’s empha-
sis on the transformation of Christ’s flesh at his resurrection and glorifi-
cation, positing another anointing of Christ with the Spirit at this point.
The language of Christ being anointed and glorified with the Spirit had
proved useful for anti-Nicene theologies. For Gregory, even more exten-
sively than for his anti-Eunomian predecessors, it supported a pro-Nicene
agenda. It also informed his homiletic imagination. In fact, the theme was
no doubt attractive to him precisely because of its “portability” across
these contexts.
95. Greg. Nyss. Hom. in Cant. (GNO 6:467.19–468.1): “[T]hough born of a slave
and concubine, [the Spirit’s “illegitimate son”] shares in the dignity of kingship and
receives the glory of the Spirit through his freedom from passion and purity.”
96. Greg. Nyss. Hom. in Cant. (GNO 6:467.10–14).
97. Greg. Nyss. Hom. in Cant. (GNO 6:467.5–6).
Gregory’s dignity-based pneumatology also shows how theological cat-

egories were constructed and used in the later Trinitarian controversies.
The use of nature, activity, and dignity by Basil and Gregory is not with-
out precedent in prior theology—the terms appear in Origen’s On First
Principles. From around 360 c.e. onward, however, these labels took on
a new urgency. When Basil invoked these categories, he was responding
to his opponents’ use of them—in Against Eunomius to Eunomius, and in
On the Holy Spirit to a more diverse group of “Spirit-fighters.” Gregory
too recorded opponents’ arguments that appealed to these categories.
What Gregory got from Basil was a systematic way of correlating biblical
names with the categories—in particular, the interpretation of “anoint-
ing,” “glory,” and “kingship” as names of dignity. It is noteworthy that, in
Basil and Gregory, explicit references to the categories of nature, activity,
and dignity occur most commonly in contexts where they are discussing
biblical passages on the Spirit.
It is often claimed that Greek theologians of the later fourth century
were “embarrassed” by a lack of biblical material about the Spirit.98 This
seems unlikely in light of the extensive collections of passages in works
by Athanasius, Didymus, Basil, Gregory, and the broader anti-Eunomian
tradition. The idea that the Spirit’s divinity has to be shown, if at all, on
non-biblical grounds is such a commonplace in modern theology that it
becomes easy to assume that fourth-century Christians were anxious over
the absence of an explicit text “proving” the Spirit’s divinity.99 But, for
them, the much more pressing task was trying to understand what exactly
the richly diverse biblical material on the Spirit was meant to teach the
attentive reader. For Gregory, the category of dignity, alongside the cat-
egories of nature and activity, served this necessary function.
Andrew Radde-Gallwitz is Assistant Professor of Theology at

Loyola University in Chicago, Illinois
98. Maurice Wiles, The Making of Christian Doctrine: A Study in the Principles
of Early Doctrinal Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 78;
Pelikan, Christian Tradition, 212.
99. In response to Wiles’s claim that pro-Nicene pneumatological exegesis was
arbitrary, Sarah Coakley identifies “five ‘types’ of influential modern trinitarianism,”
each of which either simply assumes the distinct existence and divinity of the Spirit or
holds that a fully Trinitarian theology must go beyond exegesis: “Why Three? Some
Further Reflections on the Origins of the Doctrine of the Trinity,” in The Making and
Remaking of Christian Doctrine: Essays in Honour of Maurice Wiles, ed. Sarah Coak-
ley and David A. Pailin (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 29–56. Coakley’s preferred
“experiential” approach, while not based in a foundational sense upon exegesis, is
itself deeply informed by Rom 8 as well as by patristic interpretation of the verse.

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Gregory of Nyssa's Pneumatology in Context: The Spirit as Anointing

and the History of the Trinitarian Controversies

Journal of Early Christian Studies, Volume 19, Number 2, Summer

Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press

For additional information about this article

Access provided by Loyola University @ Chicago (9 Apr 2014 15:10 GMT)

In several New Testament passages, the Spirit is associated with anoint-

Gregory’s use of the language of “anointing” has been noted by sev-

This interpretation has helpfully replaced an overemphasis on the language

Macedonians (186–87), when he summarizes the “structures” of Gregory’s argument

THE SPIRIT AS ANOINTING BEFORE GREGORY

14. Irenaeus, Haer. 3.6.1, 3.12.5.

what we saw in Origen—then he must be capable of change and not by

The Broader Anti-Eunomian Tradition

In Panarion 69, which ostensibly responds to “Arianism,” Epiphanius

to the pneumatology of Eudoxius’s associates, Epiphanius twice appeals

to Eudoxian “Arianism,” Epiphanius addresses many of the same prooftexts which

DIGNITY AS HERMENEUTICAL CATEGORY IN BASIL

GREGORY OF NYSSA ON THE DIGNITY OF THE SPIRIT

Gregory was drawing on a widespread pro-Nicene and anti-Eunomian

70. Greg. Nyss. Trin. (GNO 3.1:15–16; trans. Silvas 244–45).

does he invoke the liturgical resonances this had in late fourth-century

As in To Eustathius, in Against the Macedonians, Gregory’s response is

91. Greg. Nyss. Apoll. (GNO 3.1:222.1–14).

Gregory’s dignity-based pneumatology also shows how theological cat-

Andrew Radde-Gallwitz is Assistant Professor of Theology at

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