Here are two revised dissertations both worthy of publication. Alexander Abecina offers a reliable summary, and constructive interpretation, of Gregory of Nyssa's theology of time as it was developed in the controversy with Eunomius the Anomoean which he inherited from his brother Basil. Three chapters headed ‘Time and ontology’, ‘Time, language and thought’ and ‘Time and Christology’ explore a theme which touches the principal elements in Gregory's thought. The concluding suggestion is that Gregory presents time as ‘fundamentally sacramental in character’. Gregory's starting point was Basil's definition of time not (as Eunomius would have it) as ‘an attribute of the motion of the stars’ but as ‘the interval (diastema) coextensive with the constitution of the cosmos whereby all motion, be it of stars, living beings, of whatever moves, each at its individual speed’ (Adversus Eunomium 1.21). ‘Interval’ is the significant word. Diastema applies to all created realities sensible and intelligible; minds are subject to diastema both in relation to the Godhead and to themselves as they press forward towards perfection in an infinite progress both of increasing knowledge and that deepening ignorance which accompanies deepening faith. Gregory's Christology relates closely to this understanding of diastema: Christ has two natures, a human and a divine; the human progressively merges with or is deified in the former. Abecina rightly notes that Gregory studiously avoids talk of Christ's human nature as ‘participating’ in the Godhead: not rejecting ‘participation’ but preferring to use ‘merger’ and ‘mixture’ (language later orthodoxy repudiated) to affirm, against Eunomius, the unique character of the relation to the Father. Abecina is, of course, entirely right in speaking of time's sacramentality in Gregory's thought, but for Gregory, I would think, all and each created reality is in principle sacramental.

Andrew Hofer's book deals with the other Gregory, ‘The Theologian’, giving a new twist to the interpretation of an author in whose writings so much self-interpretation is on display. Gregory was rhetorician and poet, churchman and normative expositor of the doctrine of God in Trinity and of the person and work of Christ. These roles and themes all appear in the book but now in a different perspective. Gregory's self-reference is presented as integral to them all (‘Christ in the life and teaching’) and the six chapters detail its scope and function. Gregory's theology (or perhaps ‘Christology’) of the preached Word, his ‘Christomorphic autobiography’, ‘autobiographical Christology’ (explored in three chapters) and finally his ‘Christomorphic ministry’. Hofer has a warm regard for his author, has mastered his extensive œuvres, quoting liberally and expounding with detailed commentary several of the Orations and the important letter on Christ. He writes lucidly and un-technically. Beginners and the advanced will learn much.

In the list of secondary literature I miss mention of Bernhard Wyss's article, ‘Gregor Von Nazianz: ein griechisch-christlicher Denker des vierten Jahrhunderts’ (Museum Helveticum vi [1949], 177–210): a corrective to Hofer's approach and for its period a judicious ‘placing’ of Gregory as orator and poet. Otherwise one must admire Hofer's wide reading. His book has, however, something of that inverted logic found in Lucian the pagan essayist or Swift whereby the cruelty of Phalaris is humorously justified and ‘a modest proposal’ to eat Irish children commended. Yet Hofer is in earnest, performing here a feat of literary leger de main worthy of his author, who could bamboozle (so he himself said) the congregation in Constantinople into believing any nonsense that he chose to deliver: a virtue is made of the very vice for which Gregory is usually censured. Gregory speaks, indeed moans, so much about himself, his soul, his troubles, his enemies and his ill-health, asking the reader to share his understanding of God, experience Christ in his sufferings and in his life. Gregory can and does write objectively enough, but Hofer brings out clearly (rubs the reader's nose in it, you might say) that he puts himself somewhere into every picture that he draws. The chapter headings will have indicated the method and course of the trick: or, if Hofer convinces, as he does not convince me, of the angle of Hofer's perspective. Admittedly and importantly Gregory's attention to himself frees his interpretation of incarnate Godhead from the pressure of impersonal similitudes. Learned debate about whether Gregory had Aristotle or Chrysippus in view when using the language of ‘blending’ is largely irrelevant and, as he does not specify, undecidable. Hofer brings this out very well: Christ may be a mixture but so is the mingling of divinely conscious mind and body in Gregory himself. For Gregory the human soul mediates Godhead and acknowledgement of this raises talk of ‘incarnation’ above the trivial pseudo-scientific to the level of the discussible. Hofer has written a good and, it may prove, stimulating book. I find its approach perverse and by its very clarity inadvertently harmful to Gregory's reputation. He was a genius who left deeply influential sermons and letters besides a handful of beautiful and moving poems. It is worth learning Greek to read him; and you could not say that of any other patristic writer except Synesius. I have myself profited from his company for a good many years. What I read is the work of a man who had enough money to be able to refuse to do anything that he did not really want to do, whose life was a series of flights from disagreeable duties. He had the temperament of a young cleric whom I once knew whose eloquent sermons alternated between ‘Love me, love me’ and ‘I hate the Church’. Gregory asks us insistently if indirectly to love him for his true religion and admire his Christ-like condescension in addressing us; he craves our sympathy when hateful colleagues are horrid to him and with Christ he bears unjust pain. Well, best, I suggest, ignore or relativise that silliness and cherish, as, of course, Hofer does, the genius.