Gabrielle Thomas, "The Problem of the Devil in Cappadocian Thought" (Cambridge UP, 2026)

September 7, 2026

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In a famine that devastated Cappadocia in 368, with rich landowners hoarding grain while the poor starved, Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nazianzus preached sermons about suffering, justice, and divine providence. They did not mention the devil even once. That absence is the starting point for Gabrielle Thomas’s The Problem of the Devil in Cappadocian Thought (Cambridge UP, 2026). It turns out that for the fourth-century theologians who shaped Christian orthodoxy—Basil, his brother Gregory of Nyssa, their sister Macrina, and Basil’s friend Gregory of Nazianzus—the devil was not an explanation for natural evil or a personification of suffering. He was something else: a rational creature, a fallen angel, and an intimate enemy whose activity required a sophisticated theological response.

The devil is not a theodicy

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What you'll learn

1 (01:19) **Introduction and the Devil’s Embarrassment** - Host Mike Montilla frames the episode: the devil is everywhere in movies but feels embarrassing in theology, and scholars often prefer “demons” to “the devil.”
2 (05:15) **How a Book on the Image of God Led to the Devil** - Gabrielle Thomas explains her intellectual journey from studying deification to noticing the devil’s constant presence in Gregory of Nazianzus’s poetry.
3 (10:33) **The Famine of 368: Where the Devil Does NOT Appear** - The book opens with a famine that was more a social/economic crisis than a natural disaster, and the hosts expected the Cappadocians to blame the devil—but they don’t.
4 (18:24) **What the Cappadocians Mean by “Angel”** - Thomas clarifies that angels are creatures, not the creator, and the Cappadocians are deliberately vague about their nature.
5 (22:57) **The Devil as a Parasite Feeding on the Human Heart** - Gregory of Nazianzus portrays the devil as a perpetually diminishing creature that must nourish itself by attacking human beings.
6 (28:55) **Naming the Devil: A Catalogue of 50+ Titles** - Naming is a critical practice for the Cappadocians, rooted in their theological debates about how language works—names are “sparks that light up understanding” about a creature’s essence and relationship to you.
7 (35:03) **The Fishhook Theory of Salvation: Why Modern Theologians Hate It** - Gregory of Nyssa’s famous image of the incarnation as bait on a fishhook that deceives the devil is defended as sophisticated, not embarrassing.

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Show Notes

In The Problem of the Devil in Cappadocian Thought (Cambridge UP, 2026), Gabrielle Thomas questions the popular assumption that the devil served as the primary explanation for evil, sin, and suffering as early Christians grappled with all that is wrong in the world. Interrogating the status of the devil in the teachings of the Cappadocians – Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, and Macrina the Younger – she identifies their points of agreement, that the devil is a fallen angel, and disagreement, notably how Christ defeated him, his continued existence, and his ultimate end. In her investigation, Thomas engages fourth-century Christian thought in conversation with ancient philosophy, ancient history, classics, and biblical studies. She demonstrates how the Cappadocians negotiated myriad philosophical, theological, and spiritual problems with the devil. Thomas argues that the devil is not simply a strategy for explaining the problem of evil. Rather, the devil himself is the problem.

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Gabrielle Thomas, an Anglican priest, is Dean and President of Berkeley Divinity School at Yale and Professor of Early Christian, Anglican, and Theological Studies at Yale Divinity School. She is the author of The Image of God in the Theology of Gregory of Nazianzus and For the Good of the Church: Unity, Theology, and Women and co-editor of Women and Ordination in the Orthodox Church.

Michael Motia teaches in Classics and Religious Studies at Umass Boston

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