Life Is a Stage: Neoplatonic Participation and Imitation in Gregory of Nazianzus’s Oration 45

Abstract

Life Is a Stage:Neoplatonic Participation and Imitation in Gregory of Nazianzus’s Oration 45 Athanasius Murphy, O.P. Introduction The character Jacques in Shakespeare’s As You Like It famously said that all the world is but a “stage”: “And all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages.”1 In his Oration 45, on the holy Pascha, Gregory of Nazianzus treats his listeners as if they are on a similar stage, as he encourages them to imitate and participate in the suffering, death, and resurrection of Christ in their daily lives.2 But there is ambiguity as to how the hearers of Gregory’s preaching actually participated and imitated in the Paschal mysteries of Christ’s life. Some have asked for greater precision when discussing Gregory’s use of participation and imitation. In his review of Andrew Hofer’s treatment of Christ’s paradigmatic suffering in Christ in the Life and Teaching of Gregory of Nazianzus, Lewis Ayres seeks such clarity: “Where are we imitating, where are we participating, and precisely what difference does it make that our imitation is ‘framed’ by participation? Hofer is most certainly onto some very important [End Page 1153] themes, but there is still more to be said.”3 In partial answer to Ayres’s questions, this article will attempt to provide context and clarity as to how Gregory speaks of participation and imitation in his preaching on the holy Pascha.4 Participation and Imitation in Late Antiquity Participation in its late-antiquity context has been described as the process by which what is lower is made “real and becomes related to other (peer or higher) realties, by somehow receiving its intrinsic reality from what is higher.”5 Imitation, as understood by classicists and scholars in patristics, has been described as a pattern of thought in which people sought to represent and identify themselves with exemplary figures from the past.6 The patristic use of participation and imitation language has often been categorized under the theology of deification.7 In his work The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition, Normal Russell offers different kinds of patristic models of deification, some of which refer to participation: the nominal, the analogical, and the metaphorical, with the metaphorical being characteristic of the ethical and the realistic. He says that participation (methexis) in God is behind the realistic approach, whereas attaining likeness (homoiosis) is behind the ethical. The ethical approach, which is derived from attaining likeness to Christ, is also spoken of as an imitation of Christ both interiorly and exteriorly in a person’s life. Even with a delineation of [End Page 1154] these different approaches, Russell advocates for a spectrum of participatory language, rather than a wooden separation of categories.8 He concludes his brief introduction by saying that there are four basic approaches: nominal, analogical, ethical, and realistic.9 It is in the realistic approach that we find the participation model, and in the ethical approach that we find the imitation model. According to Russell, in the realistic-participatory sense, complete and total deification occurs only in the humanity of Christ, since it alone is “mingled” with the divinity of the Logos. Human beings, since they are not God, are not deified in the realistic approach, but they are nevertheless called to an imitative ascent of their soul toward God and to a transformation of their lives through the sacraments. For Russell, Christianity is essentially the “imitation of the incarnate life of Christ, who deified the body which he assumed in order to enable us to return to the likeness we have lost.”10 Christ’s humanity fully participates in his divinity so that we human beings can imitate the Godhead, whose likeness we once had. The believer’s imitation is both external and internal, consisting of overcoming the passions, putting on Christ in baptism, and the practice of virtue. But, according to Russell, for Gregory Nazianzen and the other Cappadocians, the Christian’s deification was never more than a figure of speech to express his imitation in the likeness of God...