Robert Edwards: Spiritual Busybodies: The Anti-Anomoean Polemic of the Cappadocians and John Chrysostom

Accusations of meddling, prying, being a ‘busybody’ (periergia, polypragmosynē) are especially prominent in the early Christian literature of the anti-Anomoean polemicists of the late fourth century. Prior to the work of the Cappadocians and John Chrysostom, this was not a common anti-heretical accusation. Indeed, this theme appears to have been introduced by the Neo-Nicene authors of the 380s, in works which were penned within just a few years of one another: Gregory of Nazianzus’ Oration20 (then followed by the Theological Orations), Gregory of Nyssa’s Contra EunomiumII, and John Chrysostom’s De incomprehensibili natura Dei.In these works, Aetius, Eunomius, and their ilk are accused of having a spiritual problem or malady which not only manifests in gossiping publicly about ecclesiastical controversies, but which also makes its way into their theological method: the Anomoeans make themselves busy about God’s being and the Son’s begetting. While the accusation of meddling is not often present in earlier Christian works, it is a classical topos – one in which Gregory of Nazianzus and John Chrysostom, with their impressive rhetorical training, would have been well versed. This short communication thus seeks to elucidate the relationship between pagan rhetorical uses of this topos and the theological purpose to which these Fathers put it. It will be argued that, in the work of these writers, gossip is transformed from a social disorder into a theological one: from prying into human politics to meddling in divine being and begetting.