Eusebius of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, Jerome and the historian Socrates all attest the celebrity of Gregory the miracle-working bishop of Neocaesarea, later to be the see of Basil the Great. It is far from clear, however, that they are independent witnesses, and such testimony as they can give rather exacerbates than resolves the debates surrounding every work that tradition associates with his name. Eusebius seems, for example, to have known the Panegyric on Origen as the work of a Theodore whom he identifies with Gregory; Nautin thinks it impossible that the letter in which Origen advises a certain Gregory on the right use of philosophy could have been addressed to the author of the Panegyric either before or after its composition. The confession of faith ascribed to him contains phrases which are redolent of the dispute between the Cappadocian Fathers and Eunomius a hundred years after his death; the letters to Philagrus and Gelianus, on the other hand, betray a strong tendency to monarchianism which would be explicable only if he had consciously parted company with Origen in his understanding of the Trinity. The aim of this book – the first extensive monograph on Gregory and his work to appear in English – is first to ascertain which of the writings attached to his name by tradition can be used in the reconstruction of his life, and then to pursue a literary analysis of the five texts to which he owes his reputation as a doctor of the Church.

In discussing the facts to be gleaned from the corpus of works ascribed to Gregory, Celia threads his way through subtle arguments, and his reasoning sometimes shows more subtlety than I can discover in the texts. I do not see why, for example, a passage whose plain sense, as Crouzel observed (p. 32), is that Beirut is not far from the place where the author is writing (‘tôn entautha’) should be taken instead to mean that it was not far from his place of origin. Again it seems to me, with Nautin (p. 45), that the claim to have listened to no discourse for eight years but that of the most divine and admirable preceptors can hardly signify anything but that Gregory has just completed eight years at the school (or seven by inclusive counting). If this is irreconcilable with the five years' schooling reported by Eusebius, we may add the discrepancy (as Celia does) to the list of elements in his narrative which cannot have been derived from the Panegyrical oration. These include the assertions that he was made bishop at an early age and that at his consecration he changed his name from Theodore to Gregory (p. 68). The fact that these statements are of unknown provenance does not prove that they are true, and it would be interesting to hear of another bishop in this era who gave up a name that was already perfectly apt for a saint. Origen's letter on spoiling the Egyptians certainly indicates, by addressing Gregory as his son (p. 51), that the latter has studied under him; I do not know exactly what is intended by Celia's hint that he was not a student (p. 55), but his argument that the text preserved in the Philokalia may be only an extract certainly merits consideration (p. 51). Celia's conclusion that we may reasonably suppose the author of the Panegyric to be the recipient of the letter is cogent chiefly for want of any decisive evidence against than because of any strong evidence in its favour.

Few could quarrel with Celia's conclusion, in his analysis of the Panegyric on Origen, that its purpose is to put into effect the master's advice by presenting a model for the deployment of Greek arts in the propagation of the Gospel. (The natural deduction is that Origen's letter antedates the composition of the Panegyric.) Celia turns next to the metaphrasis of Ecclesiastes, attributed to Gregory on the authority of Jerome. He accepts Jarick's demonstration that Gregory makes no use of the Hebrew, and his analysis substantiates the contention of Noakes that the aim of the metaphrasis is to transform a labyrinthine meditation into an unambiguous celebration of wisdom (pp. 183–4). Scholarly doubts regarding the authenticity of the dialogue with Theopompus are based primarily on its monarchian tendencies and the absence of any theology of the Logos, which is thrown into relief by the appearance of the Logos in a derivative treatise, questionably attributed to Methodius. Celia maintains none the less that its debt to Origen (and hence the likelihood of its being by Gregory) is evidenced both by its competent handling of Greek theories of mixture and by its argument that in choosing to be impassible without sacrificing the mastery of his passions, God is manifesting his freedom to act independently of the attributes which our logic ascribes to his nature (p. 251). The Confession of faith which Gregory of Nyssa ascribes to the Thaumaturge is free of the monarchianism which ancient and modern readers detect in the Ad Gelianum. Basil's complaint that Gregory's words had been co-opted by followers of Marcellus gives further reason to suspect that Nyssen has edited the Confession to make it testify more clearly to the distinctness of the three persons (p. 306). Celia argues for the authenticity of the third clause, which asserts the life-giving character of the Spirit, on the grounds that it finds a parallel in Origen at Commentary on John 13.23.140. For my part, I see little more similarity here than Celia himself admits in the texts produced by other scholars to show that, like Gregory, Origen held the Spirit to be an image of the Son (pp. 295–8). Nevertheless, all students of early Christian thought will be grateful for this comprehensive review of both the ancient and the modern literature concerning an author whose importance can be measured by the frequency, the intensity and the intractability of the disputes that have gathered around his name.