St Gregory of Nazianzus (ca. 390-391) is one of the most important theologians of the early Christian Church and was without question one of the most learned men of his generation. This present study is the first critical analysis of the man, his writings and inner life in the English language. It offers definitive insight into the mind of one of the greatest protagonists of Nicene theology, and through his extraordinary personality, opens a window onto the world of late antiquity and the place of the Christian Church in it. Alongside Basil the Great and Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzus is known as one of the Cappadocian Fathers. He worked to bring unity to a church deeply divided by the Arian crisis, and to demonstrate the perennial significance of the Nicene faith. He was the chief architect of the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity of co-equal persons in God and an important Christological writer whose works were definitive for the Council of Chalcedon. The fathers of Chalcedon acclaimed him as "Gregory the Theologian," the title by which he has subsequently been known in the Eastern Church. In his dream of a world-culture renewed by the spirit of the Gospel he stands as the veritable founding father of the Byzantine religious synthesis, and his own conception of he vision of God as light made him and important authority for Byzantine spiritual writers.
V. Revd. Professor John Anthony McGuckin, of Irish extraction, is a priest of the Orthodox Church in the Patriarchate of Romania's Archdiocese in America. He came to the United States from England in 1997 (where he was a Reader in Patristic and Byzantine Theology at the University of Leeds), assuming the Chair in Early Church History at the renowned Union Theological Seminary in New York. He is currently the Nielsen Professor of Late Antique and Byzantine Christian History at Union Theological Seminary; and also the Professor of Byzantine Christianity at Columbia University, New York City. His academic career in theology began in 1969 when he studied Philosophy at Heythrop College, London from 1970-72, and from there went on to read for a Divinity degree at the University of London, graduating with First Class Honours in 1975. For his doctoral researches at Durham University (1980), he studied the politics and theology of the early Constantinian era, with a thesis on the thought of Lucius Caecilius Lactantius, the Emperor Constantine's pacifist Christian tutor and political advisor. While he was a student at Durham he composed his first book, an English edition of the Theological Chapters of St. Symeon the New Theologian, the medieval Byzantine poet and mystic. Since then he has published more than twenty books on religious and historical themes, becoming internationally recognised as a leading interpreter of the Early Christian and Eastern Orthodox traditions. He has taught in many Universities both in America and in Europe, as Visiting Distinguished Professor or as Visiting Scholar; including Kiev, Sibiu, Bucharest, Oslo, Iasi, Cambridge, Belfast, Oxford, Yale, Sydney and Moscow. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 1986, and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 1996. He was selected as the prestigious Luce Fellow in Early Christianity in 2006. He was awarded the Order of St. Stephen the Great, the Cross of Moldavia and Bukovina, by the Romanian Orthodox Church in 2008.
Among his publications are: The Transfiguration of Christ in Scripture and Tradition (1986); St. Cyril of Alexandria: The Christological Controversy (1994); At the Lighting of the Lamps: Hymns from the Ancient Church (1995, and repr. 1997); St. Gregory of Nazianzus: An Intellectual Biography (2000) (Nominated for the 2002 Pollock Biography Prize); Standing in God's Holy Fire: The Spiritual Tradition of Byzantium (Orbis, 2001); The Book of Mystical Chapters (Shambhala, 2002), The Westminster Handbook to Origen of Alexandria (WJK, 2004) and The Westminster Handbook To Patristic Theology ( 2004). His large-scale study of Eastern Christianity, The Orthodox Church: An Introduction to its History, Theology, and Spiritual Culture appeared from Blackwell-Wiley in the summer of 2007. His most recent work is the largest-ever English Language Encyclopedia of the Orthodox Church which he edited, appeared from Blackwell-Wiley in Winter 2010. Hs latest project is a large scale study of the manner in which Christian Byzantium adopted and significantly adapted the sources of Roman Civil Law, appearing from SVS Press, New York in 2011. In addition to his books he has published over 100 research articles, in scholarly journals, ranging in subject matter from New Testament Exegesis to Byzantine Iconography; mainly centred on the thought of Origen of Alexandria, and the later Greek Christian theologians.
Professor McGuckin has appeared many times on American, British, and Italian Television programmes, as well as on Radio in Europe, America, and Canada; commenting on religious issues. In 2011 his film, co-authored with award-winning Director Norris Chumley was released on cable TV and DVD entitled: Mysteries of the Jesus Prayer. In 1994, his first collection of poetry, Byzantium and Other Poems, was published; and a second retrospective collection has recently appeared entitled: Selected Poems. Black Gate Press. (available www.blurb.com). As well as teaching graduate level courses in New York, Fr. John is also the Rector of the Eastern Orthodox chaplaincy of St. Gregory the Theologian, serving the liturgical needs of English-speaking Orthodox Christian students in Manhattan. (see www.sgtt.org)
