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The introduction provides an orientation to Gregory's' life and works within his multiple contexts. It covers Gregory's family, childhood, education, training in biblical study and Greek philosophical rhetoric; his pioneering, moderate form of monasticism as a “middle path” between solitude and public service; his strong influence by Origen and complicated relationship with Basil; his theological and ecclesiastical leadership as a priest and bishop; his central role in the consolidation of the Trinitarian faith and the pro‐Nicene movement in Constantinople; and his retirement, literary corpus, and the distinctive character of the Theological Orations. In addition, it offers a summary narrative of the mid‐fourth‐century theological controversies, in which Gregory played a key part—with attention to Marcellus of Ancyra, the Council of Nicaea 325, Eusebius of Caesarea, Athanasius, Basil of Ancyra, George of Laodicea, Melitius of Antioch, Damasus and the Western synods, Eunomius and the Heterousians, the Homoiousians, the Pneumatomachians, the homoian regimes of Constantius and Valens, the synod of Antioch in 372, the religious policy of Theodosius, and other church councils; an account of the negative effects of the Antiochene schism, and a reconstruction of the Council of Constantinople 381.

The previous chapter presented a distinction between two kinds of rhetoric—rhetoric as a specific art or discipline that treats communication in specific, limited contexts, and rhetoric as a more philosophical endeavor that is concerned with logos itself in all of its dimensions and uses. This chapter is primarily concerned with the latter kind, which is more like the deep rhetoric this book is trying to define. It begins by addressing the question of ideology directly, and connecting the project of a deep rhetoric with the history of philosophical rhetoric in the twentieth century, especially after the Second World War. Tracing the historical development of deep rhetoric will help in giving further definition to the idea, explaining the practical significance of deep rhetoric, and clarifying the nature and the value of rhetoric as a discipline—as a field of teaching and research.

This chapter proposes a new rhetoric project that offers an account of reasoned argument as an alternative to violence, a way to undergo and pass through conflicts nonviolently. The purpose of the project is “the justification of the possibility of a human community in the sphere of action when this justification cannot be based on a reality or objective truth.” This project can be clarified and explained more completely by a deep rhetoric—one that is much more considerate to the ethical and communicative dimensions of transcendence and to the theory of argumentation as a theory of justice at the level of transcendence itself. The passage through Heidegger will help to make the break with traditional ways of conceptualizing rhetoric, and the conversation with and critique of Heidegger will provide the context for a philosophical rhetoric.

The third general idea basic to Plato concerns the nature of a philosophical rhetoric. All the ways of maintaining descriptive truth through interventive truth have to do with the presentation of truth or knowledge, including its presentation to oneself. Now, the presentation of truth involves, for example, its orientation to particular audiences or compositional and stylistic choices of sequence, syntax, phrasing, and word type. Plato himself understands rhetoric as part of truth-seeking discussion in the Phaedrus. The ways of maintaining descriptive truth through interventive truth, therefore, have a connection with rhetoric, which in turn is independent with respect to the truth. However, since all these ways of maintaining interventive truth as descriptive truth also have to do with the possibility of truth itself, they are also more than rhetorical.

Chapter 4 is the second of three cases studies on Graeco-Roman “sites of memory” for reading the “Childhood Deeds of Jesus.” The focus is on Jesus’ lethal acts of cursing in several of the stories, which are analyzed in relation to the complex relationship between children, cursing, and competition in antiquity. Examining evidence for the involvement of children in athletic and rhetorical competitions, the chapter reads Jesus’ maledictory speech in the work as a series of “agonistic” encounters. One story in particular, where a boy strikes Jesus in the shoulder and Jesus strikes the boy dead, serves as a particularly fertile context for understanding how Jesus’ language and actions are informed by philosophical and biblical assumptions about the soul's hegemony over the body and the performative power of speech acts.