Douleur et transfiguration.

Une lecture du cheminement spirituel de saint Grgoire de

Nazianze [Sorrow and Transfiguration. A Reading of Saint Gregory of Nazianzus
spiritual way], Philippe Molac, Les ditions du Cerf, 2006 (ISBN 2-204-08085-3), 467pp.,
pb. 47.00
This is the pre-peer reviewed version of the following article: Fulford, B. (2009), Douleur et
transfiguration. Une lecture du cheminement spirituel de saint Grgoire de Nazianze [Pain and
Transfiguration. A Reading of Saint Gregory of Nazianzus' Spiritual Way] By Philippe Molac. Reviews in
Religion & Theology, 16: 307310. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9418.2008.00424_6.x, which has been published in
final form at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9418.2008.00424_6.x/abstract. This article
may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for SelfArchiving."

Philippe Molac asks whether the story of Christs Transfiguration functions as the major
referent of Gregorys thought. He answers that Gregorys anthropology is structured by a
central creative tension of transfiguration and suffering, sourced in Scripture, configured by
Tabor and Golgotha, and unified in Gregorys experience. The thesis is as appealing as it is
bold, promising to discover in Gregory a theo-dramatic and vividly christocentric account of
being human as the icon of Christ. The substance is no less impressive in the extensity of
Molacs engagement with Gregorys works, which opens with the thematic lines of force
traced by key terms in Gregorys anthropology.
Attention to illumines the connection in Gregory between Christ as the Image of God
and archetype for human beings made in Gods image; the disfiguring of the image through
sin; the rescue of the image by the descent of the archetype in Incarnation; and our
participation in his recreated humanity through baptism, through which we are called to a life
of purification through ascesis. Molac thus establishes a christocentric pattern of analysis,
showing how in Gregory the ascetic life is grounded in Christ. On analysis, (nature)
points up distinctions between God and creatures and within creation as a differentiated
ordered whole in equilibrium, and the saving purpose of the union of natures in Christ, which,
Molac claims, lies at the centre of Gregorys anthropological cosmology. Examining
(intellect) shows the intellect to be the seat of communication between God and human
beings for Gregory, and this explains the significance of Gregorys claim that Christ assumed
a human intellect in order to heal it, making possible the purification and illumination of the
saints and their contemplative ascent toward divine truth.
Purification involves the tension between spirit () and flesh (). Molac proposes
we see Gregory distinguishing between intellect as our capacity of reflection and spirit as
what energises our ascent in the Spirit. Gregorys theology of baptism as illumination, he
claims, brings us back to the Transfiguration: here man is, we may say, a being becoming
transfigured (p. 89). We also hope for a final illumination after death, and so the episode of
the Transfiguration, Molac argues, certainly functions as the mystagogic locus of
[Gregorys] anthropological dynamic. This claim seems to rest on a tenuous thread of
inference from baptismal illumination via Molacs redescription of it as a transfiguration to
the Transfiguration itself as the underlying referent of his anthropology.

By contrast the flesh () is the place of the rupture of divine communication (pp. 96-7).
Sin confers the condition of the flesh on the otherwise neutral principle of materiality, the
body, endowing upon it a dramatic dimension. Similarly, the passions which constitute the
flesh are distinct from the senses they disturb. This same flesh Christ bore and cleansed, and
assumed for us as a kenotic act of a veiled unveiling and thus another point of contact with
the theological perspective of the Transfiguration, Molac claims (pp. 110-12). Building on
these analyses, Molac shows that Gregorys pairing of -, is not oppositional but
shorthand for human nature as a composite reality. Indeed, he elicits from Gregory a rich and
positive theological aesthetic of the body as the place of revelation of the restored interior
image: an iconic anthropophany (150) exemplified by the saints and especially the martyrs.
Molacs analysis is full of insights, plausible readings of Gregorys ambigua. It brings a
corrective to lazy characterisations of Gregory as platonic and to attempts to capture his
spiritual anthropology in a central theme. Yet Molacs concentration on key words leads him
away from analysing as wholes passages where Nazianzen sets out his spiritual theology, and
so tends to obscure important features and themes (like that of deification) and connections
(like that between illumination, obscurity, desire and purification in divine pedagogy), and
the narrative shape of his account. Molac rarely contextualises the many quotations he uses,
nor devotes much space to justifying exegetically the (not always obvious) conclusions he
draws from them. At times (p. 29), he seems to treat Gregorys anthropology as though the
incarnate Christ were determinative of its created character, whereas passages like Or. 38.13
imply that the divine Logos as such is the archetypal Image of human beings. Above all,
Molac fails to demonstrate the significance of the Transfiguration as the major referent for
Gregorys anthropology.
These same strengths and weaknesses also recur in the second part of the study, where Molac
analyses the uses of Scripture that inform this anthropology. Again he fails to demonstrate the
claim that the story of the Transfiguration of the Lord occupies a privileged place amongst
the biblical loci to which Gregory returns (p. 447). Not only are clear references to the story
rare, as Molac concedes (pp. 447-8), but biblical images like those of illumination and ascent
to which he appeals are capable of other, better founded explanations; the latter refer
primarily to Moses ascent of Sinai; the former to a range of biblical scenes and images, like
those recalled, for example, in Oration 40.5-6, of which the Transfiguration is only one. Nor
is the Transfiguration obviously central to the logic of the great Christological tapestry of
Or. 29.17-20 (p. 265) as the hermeneutical locus of the mystery of the communication of
idioms (although the case that it should is suggestive and attractive). The conclusion that in
light of this kind of analysis the Transfiguration holds an essential place in Gregorys
anthropological designs seems therefore unsustained. More significant is the attention given
to Gregorys use of passages in Wisdom literature to develop and communicate his aretology
and the central theme of measure, though the claim that Gregory treats Aaron, for example,
as a figure of Wisdom (p. 211) is not compelling.
Molac contends that [i]t is in the thickness of [Gregorys] experience of life that he unites
that of which he has an intellectual intuition and of which he had plumbed the foundations in
Scripture (p. 14), and to this experience, as related in Gregorys autobiographical poems and

in his letters, that he turns in the final part of the study. They reveal an anxious, goalorientated, vulnerable personality of weak constitution, inclined to solitude, yet capable of
courage, and torn between what he sought and the difficulties of achieving his desires. An
emotional individual, slow but sustained in reactions and ruminating over the past, he could
nevertheless show surprising vitality in confronting his responsibilities with determination.
Molac strives effectively to take seriously Gregorys own reasons for his docility to the
demands of his father or Basil, his flights and his moments of resilience, making sense of
them in terms of Naziazens wider character and spiritual theology, both formed deeply by
his experience of near-shipwreck in a storm in his youth, and the example of his mother.
There Gregory learnt the fear of God that grounded a life of progressive self-dispossession
that lay at the heart of an existential struggle: Gregorys lived experience of the spirit-flesh
tension and the transformation that comes through suffering, whose ground is in Christs
kenosis. This tension took form in Gregorys life from his advocacy of the Truth of the
Trinity. Gregory put his own rhetorical gifts in the service of this truth against pagans,
heretics and divisive, ambitious bishops. Through this experience, Gregorys concept of
philosophia matured from stressing the training of the will to an emphasis on deprivation: it
is this search for wisdom that finally makes sense of Gregorys life (pp. 437-8). Hence it
seems questionable to speak of Gregorys vocation as a contemplative being thwarted, or to
stress the tension between contemplation and practice in his life. For Gregory saw such
philosophia as a response to divine pedagogy. Here Molac brings a helpful corrective to
many readings of Gregorys life and thought and demonstrates to a degree the potential
Gregorys theology has to help us make sense of his decisions, and not merely as post-hoc
rationalisations of them. Yet at the same time there is the real risk of hermeneutical naivety,
which Molac does not address sufficiently.
Beyond these questions, Molac appears not to appreciate the dangers of his valorisation of
suffering as a path of transformation (perhaps echoing von Balthasar, who appears several
times in passing here): an emphasis well in excess of what Gregorys texts seem to warrant.
Nor does he ever demonstrate convincingly the significance of the Transfiguration, which
must raise questions as to the value of translating the work into English. Nor again does
Molac engage significant English-language scholarship on Gregorys anthropology, spiritual
theology or biography. Yet many good observations and helpful correctives emerge in the
detail of this lengthy rumination on the unity of life and thought in a figure whose
contribution to the Christian tradition is gradually being recognised again.

Ben Fulford,
St Johns College, Nottingham.