Can anyone be a father without beginning to be one? Yes, one who did not begin his existence. What begins to exist begins to be a father - God the Father did not begin at all. He is Father in the true sense, because He is not a son as well. Just as the Son is son in the true sense, because He is not a father as well. In our case, the word 'father' cannot be truly appropriate, because we must be fathers and sons. (Gregory of Nazianzus)

Can anyone be a father without beginning to be one? Yes, one who did not begin his existence. What begins to exist begins to be a father - God the Father did not begin at all. He is Father in the true sense, because He is not a son as well. Just as the Son is son in the true sense, because He is not a father as well. In our case, the word 'father' cannot be truly appropriate, because we must be fathers and sons.

Gregory of Nazianzus

More Gregory of Nazianzus quotes

Give something, however small, to the one in need. For it is not small to one who has nothing. Neither is it small to God, if we have given what we could.

Gregory of Nazianzus

We are not made for ourselves alone, we are made for the good of all our fellow creatures.

Gregory of Nazianzus

Let us become like Christ, since Christ became like us. He assumed the worse that He might give us the better; He became poor that we through His poverty might be rich.

Gregory of Nazianzus

If anyone does not believe that Holy Mary is the Mother of God, he is severed from the Godhead. If anyone should assert that He passed through the Virgin as through a channel, and was not at once divinely and humanly formed in her (divinely, because without the intervention of a man; humanly, because in accordance with the laws of gestation), he is in like manner godless.

Gregory of Nazianzus

All who have lived according to God still live unto God, though they have departed this life. For this reason, God is called the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, since He is the God, not of the dead, but of the living.

Gregory of Nazianzus