Christopher Beeley boldly champions his subject, affirming at the start of this full and informative book: Gregory of Nazianzus is ‘the greatest theologian of the Christian fourth century’, yet one whose work, ‘paradoxically modern interpreters have often neglected to study to any great extent’. The first claim is too crude: what constitutes a theologian; how are the grades of merit amongst theologians of the fourth or any century distinguished and who is competent to do the distinguishing? The second is more refined and, though one might reasonably ask for some names of these alleged negligent modern interpreters, more plausible. For what Beeley goes on to say by way of justifying the claim is undoubtedly true: Gregory ‘approaches his craft as a man of letters’, a virtuoso, I think you might style him, in prose and verse (with the hint that virtuosity is not an unqualified excellence).The nearest he comes to a convenient summary statement of his doctrine of God and the knowledge of God is in the Five Theological Orations which, as Beeley rightly says, ought not to be read in isolation from the rest of his work. Moreover, the ‘virtuosity’ and the refinement of language just in those passages where he is speaking most feelingly about the divine mystery, makes his prose peculiarly hard to render adequately in translation (I speak from experience); there is often an inexpressible distance between Greek original and English version. Where in his verse he reinvents the old epic and lyric styles and vocabulary he is untranslatable. I am not confident that his work as a theologian has been underestimated in modern times but if so, that may be because the brilliance which made his sermons models of oratory to be conned by seminarists of old, is now a barrier which the students of ancient literature, who might have been useful here, have so far been unwilling to breach. An introduction gives Gregory's curriculum vitae and effectively sketches the church-doctrinal background. It is a pity that Beeley is too much in awe of Gregory to allow even a few modest notes of critical appraisal about an author who spoke so often, so openly and so uncritically about himself: how admired he had been as a budding orator, how inconsiderate Basil had been to him, how tiresome his colleagues were in committee and how badly they treated him. Beeley is a shade bland about a touchy and petulant genius. The account that follows in the first four chapters of Gregory's understanding of God and the knowledge of God through Christ in the power of the Spirit is balanced and reliable. If the opinion expressed on p. 154 and repeated elsewhere irritates (‘Patristic scholars generally agree that the driving force of the major fourth-century doctrinal developments was a concern to speak adequately of Christian salvation’) it is because this half-truth has been peddled for far too long: first by Liberal-Protestant theologians in the tradition of Ritschl (who interpreted theology as expressive of human value-judgements) and Harnack (who thought that the doctrinal developments were in any case aberrations) and then by others (including the lamented Maurice Wiles) who never pause to explain what they mean by ‘salvation’ or ‘soteriological considerations’. No, what unites Arius and Eunomius, Athanasius and the Cappadocians, is the desire to speak as truly as they can about God, Christ and the World. The question ‘What good has God done for the Christian believer?’ was secondary to the foundational question ‘Who is God?’ Yet, of course, Beeley is entirely right in emphasising Gregory's special understanding of Trinitarian religion. His analysis of Gregory's version of the internal dynamics, so to say, of the Trinity shows Gregory to be a shade old-fashioned and unadventurous. Wisely, he would not commit himself to any explanation of the mystery which depended on an illustration or image and in this way would dissolve the essential paradox of the One united in inseparable division. The argumentation in terms of ‘common’ and ‘particular’ which Basil and Gregory of Nyssa favoured did not appeal to him. The priority of the Father as source and origin of an unfolding Godhead he propounded in a way that takes no account of the obvious objections. On the other hand, he boldly repudiated the rigid Nicene fundamentalism which inhibited Basil from verbal acknowledgement of the Spirit's Godhead: God always seems to come into Gregory's mind as Father, Son and Holy Spirit and conversely Father, Son and Holy Spirit as God. The sermons are full of this intuition but, as it were spontaneously, it appears almost at the end in the subtle and beautiful poem ‘On human nature’ (c.1.2,14). Beeley reveals but comments little on the moments where Gregory's thought is loose or inconsequential. Gregory, for example, thinks that the defining characteristic of Godhead is unknown for as ‘simple’ it must be either wholly known (so Eunomius) or unknown (Or.38,7) but wobbles on the possibility and ultimate extent of the human and experiential knowledge of God hindered and obfuscated as it is by the entombing prison of the body. Gregory's Christology is characterised justly and accurately as more ‘unitive’ than ‘dualist’: though he calls Christ ‘two-fold’ (precisely what Cyril was to deny!) he did not follow the anti-Apollinarian critique associated with Antioch. Beeley reviews Gregory's writing on pastoral care: so inspiring, I would have thought, in the abstract, so lacking in practical guidance. A valuable conclusion lists and describes the distinctive features in Gregory's thought in relation to real and alleged influences; there is a useful conspectus of themes in Gregory and guidance to locate them. Nothing that anybody writes about Gregory, nor even this sensible book, can be as interesting as what Gregory himself wrote. I hope it will win Gregory the readers Beeley feels he now lacks.