This handsomely produced volume completes the work of the colloquia of 1986 and 2004 on the long and often turgid refutation by Gregory of Eunomius' Apology and its sequel. Heavy on the wrist, it contains a wonderful amount of learning, testimony to the research evoked by the colloquia and their membership into an author (or authors, for Eunomius has come under scrutiny too) whose work for various reasons had yet to receive full critical attention. Testimony too to the genius of Werner Jaeger whose edition of the Greek text made everybody else's work possible. A constant presence in the whole enterprise of the colloquia has been the indefatigable Stuart Hall, faithful translator of an author he manages to make as readable as is ever likely to be the case.

An excellent introduction by Matthieu Cassin followed by translation and detailed commentary on the text precede seventeen shorter supplementary papers, all of which were, in varying degrees, worth including. For convenience's sake I mention these here first. I will not attempt to summarise them individually and with apologies to the rest pick out three from the bunch which caught my attention: Maspero plus others prove yet again, and now I hope conclusively, by quantitative analysis, that Gregory wrote Basil's ep. xxxviii; Lara Sels reports (‘Gregory of Nyssa's Contra Eunomium and onomatodoxy in Russian theology’) on a Russian controversy in the early twentieth century about names originating in Contra Eunomium II – irrelevant to this colloquium, you would have thought, but instructive and the only example I know of that book's use in a controversy; Joseph O'Leary (‘Incarnational ontology and paschal Transformation: Acts 2,36 in Contra Eunomium III 3’) writes on Gregory's interpretation of Acts ii.36 and supplements the commentaries by Andrew Radde-Gallwitz on iii.3 and Johannes Zachuber on iii.4, that long and important Christological passage to my mind the most interesting in the book. This division into ten books is useful but crude. Cassin, instructively placing the work in context, seems to think that it is not by Gregory. (That it is crude does not mean he did not authorise it, of course.) From helpful points he makes about the author's manner I repeat his advice that Gregory writes for victory and equal seriousness should not be attached to his every word; nor should it be assumed that in rebutting Eunomius he has quoted him in full or even fairly. Gregory too is apt to relieve the critique with extended jabs of satire and to indulge in episodes only indirectly related to Eunomius' text. In other words, watch out. I will not comment on a commentary or attempt to evaluate it, but the reader will see the advantage of the balancing interpretations possible in a conference if a look is taken at the approaches of the commentators on the passage that I have mentioned above, the one more historical, the other more philosophically critical and the last more kerygmatic. I have not read all the commentaries with equal care but I think I may truthfully say that, so far as I can see, on the whole the writers stick to the point and record what is necessary to understand the text.

What do we make as a whole of the controversy in which Gregory's work places itself? It was, of course, in a sense, a continuation of the Arian and I think that to call them ‘neo-Arians’ probably does no harm provided it is recognised that they would not have so styled themselves. The Cappadocians' doctrine of God (to speak generally of Basil and the two Gregories) and Aetius' and Eunomius' are reverse images of each other. I express it crudely and incompletely. ‘God is first substance: God is second substance’; ‘God's substance can be known’: ‘God's substance is unknowable’; ‘language and concepts are divinely given’: ‘they are human constructs' (Gregory's particular contribution to the dialectic in book ii). From the last it follows that (as I would put it) for Eunomius God and humankind share a common rationality and are, as it were, on an epistemological par. The practice of religion, ‘Christian piety’’, is in this sense if not identical with knowledge of religious truth the large and predominant part. The charge against Eunomius and Aetius of logic-chopping and undue concern for dialectic arises from this. Christian faith is for them a Christian philosophy of life not residing in the evocation of solemn names (Eunomius' words) or sacramental rites, but in deeper penetration of the revelation conveyed in Scripture which leads to awe in the face of the Ultimate and Absolute Reality of the Sole true God: so I guess, because nothing of Eunomius' exegesis survives and only reports on liturgy. I used to think that Eunomius represented a different attitude, so different that you would think his a different religion with distant regard for the divine replacing the rapport and warmth of personal prayer, sacramental life and commitment to Jesus. I now think that is wrong or at least a gross overstatement. He was, I think, a churchman. The, I would think, evident warmth with which Eunomius upbraids Basil in the passage, mentioned above, which Gregory deals with, shows that he cared that the truth of the Cross was being, as he thought, challenged by Basil's unloading of its pain on a human figure distinct from the Only-begotten God, supreme and sublime creature of the Sole True God. I think it was a feature of ‘subordinationist’ theology that it was able to speak and feel more intensely about Christ's passion because it was quite clear that it was tremendous and that ultimate deity did not bear it. You can see it in Eusebius being more realistic about Christ's sufferings than Athanasius. There is too deep feeling in Eunomius' assertion of the absoluteness of God, real whether we name him or not, the perduring, transcendent actuality: ‘la raison a son coeur que le coeur ne connait pas’.

What of Gregory's place in the rebuttal? How widely were the books Contra Eunomium read? Quotable quotes from the present book iii make their appearance in conciliar texts; some of the chatty bits of teasing were evidently appreciated: Severus thought the passage about the ant at the beginning of iii.8 ‘brilliant’. But the burden of refutation was borne not by these works but by more accessible pieces by Gregory and by the other Gregory, of Nazianzus. Certainly Contra Eunomium III is spoiled by loquacity. It is difficult to be patient with an author who takes so long at the beginning to prove the obvious truth that it does not follow that because the Son was begotten you can apply the title ‘offspring’ without qualification to him. That said and granted the displeasingly abundant phlyaria there are also, and more importantly, valuable insights. Making them known with the help of this fine translation and commentary is important and worth the effort.