Gregory Thaumaturgus ('wonder-worker'), a celebrated disciple of Origen, and the apostle of the Christian church in Pontus. He was born about 210, of wealthy heathen parents at Neocæsarea, in Pontus, and was originally named Theodorus. His early education was for the practice of law, but, coming under the influence of Origen at Cæsarea in Palestine, he was his disciple for about eight years, with an interruption caused by the persecution under Maximin the Thracian, during which he probably studied at Alexandria. Origen, in a letter to him, expressed the wish that he would 'spoil the Egyptians' by placing the intellectual treasures he gathered from the Greeks in the holy service of Christian philosophy. After this he produced his Panegyrius on Origen, and, returning to his native country, was consecrated Bishop of Neocæsarea by Phædimus, Bishop of Amasea. The influence of Gregory in Asia Minor continued from the middle of the 3d century to far down into the 4th, and its extent may be inferred from the numerous legends of his miracles, and the tradition that at his death (about 270) there were only as many pagans in Neocæsarea as there had been Christians in it at his consecration—viz. seventeen. His celebrated Ekthesis, or Confession of Faith, said to have been derived by revelation from the Virgin Mary and the apostle John, is a summary of the theology of Origen, and was used as the basis of the instruction given to catechumens at Neocæsarea. It is of the greatest value as a record of the state of the theology at the middle of the 3d century. 'There is scarcely a sentence in it,' says Harnack, 'that recalls to us the Bible; it is a compendium of the sublimest speculation, only in the words "Father," "Son," and "Spirit" reminding us of the gospel.' Its genuineness is disputed, but is ably defended by Caspari. Gregory is said to have contended against Sabellianism, yet in his lost Argument with Ælian Basil tells us there stood this sentence: 'the Father and the Son are two in idea, but one in essence.' But as Basil also testifies that he spoke of the Son as a 'creature' and a 'work,' the above sentence is probably no more than an Origenistic assertion of the substantial unity of the Deity in opposition to tritheistic views. The genuineness of two other treatises attributed to him, one addressed to Philagrius, on the co-essentiality of the persons in the Godhead, and the other, a dialogue with Theopompus, on the question whether the Deity is capable or incapable of suffering, is undecided. Gregory's works are printed in vol. iii. of Galland's Bibliotheca Patrum, and in Migne's collection, vol. x. His Panegyrius (which contains an autobiography of its writer) is printed among the works of Origen. A special edition was published by J. A. Bengel in 1722.
See Ryssel, Gregorius Thaumaturgus: sein Leben und seine Schriften (Leip. 1880); and Harnack, Dogmengeschichte, vol. i. (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1888).