Gregory of Nazianzus

Gregory was the son of the bishop of Nazianzus in Cappadocia and a fellow student of Basil of Caesarea at Athens (Socrates, Church History 4.26). He went to Constantinople to minister to the Nicene believers there, holding his assemblies, Socrates says, in a small oratory later rebuilt as the church of the Anastasia. He was made bishop of the city, met with objections to his appointment, and resigned; Socrates tells this before his account of the council of 381 (Socrates, Church History 5.6–7).

In the fifth of his Theological Orations he says outright that the Holy Spirit is God and of one substance with the Father (Gregory of Nazianzus, Orations 31.10), and in his funeral oration for Basil he explains that his friend had left it to him to say so openly (Gregory of Nazianzus, Orations 43.68–69). Jerome, who calls Gregory his teacher in the Scriptures, says that he retired to the country to live as a monk and died about three years before Jerome wrote in 392–393 (Jerome, On Illustrious Men 117). See the Cappadocians and the Doctrine of the Trinity.