Gregory Nazianzus mocked the Arians for being head counters. They boasted that their churches were more numerous, populous, and magnificent than the small gatherings of the orthodox in the royal city of Constantinople. Gregory had come to Constantinople from Nazianzus to preach and teach the Arian populace the truth faith and lead them into an orthodox confession of the holy Trinity and the divinity of the three persons of the Godhead. Gregory had some handicaps when he arrived. He was forced to ensconce himself and his retinue in a private home in which he established a small chapel where the services of the orthodox were carried out. The Arians were so overwhelmingly powerful in the capital that they were able to attack this residence, disturb the services, and even to kill one of Gregory's colleagues, mingling his blood with the cup of the Lord at the foot of the altar. The Arians mocked Gregory that he was such a country bumpkin that he could not anticipate this attack or defend himself from it. As far as the Arians were concerned this was just politics as usual in the big city, and Gregory was a pitiable small-town boy, unable to manage in the big city.

The Arians argued that their cause must be right because they had the support of the populace of the imperial city, Constantinople, and the patronage of the Arian emperors. They simply counted the heads and concluded that their view that Christ was merely a creature had to be right. "We outnumber the orthodox, therefore we must be right." Uh-huh. Does this sound familiar? Yes, of course, it is the argument often used in our culture that numbers make right. We see it in the church growth movement, in which growing churches must be doing and teaching the right things. Why? Because they have the numbers. Gregory mocks this by comparing the number of grains of sand to the number of stars in the heavens. His point is that the heavenly beings are far superior to the numbers of earthly beings. Yes, we can count heads, but this is not superior to the will of our heavenly Father. God's message about His Son cannot be ignored just because the majority of men choose to ignore it. The pearls of divine wisdom are far more valuable than the pebbles of human opinion. Truth is one. Opinion is multiple.

Littleness and weakness are no way to judge against the truth, otherwise the tyrants of the twentieth century would have been right. Might does not make right. Gregory knew that he was right, not because he was particularly magnificent, but because he was forced to share the divine truth of the divinity of the persons within the Godhead, because God had so revealed Himself this way. A man born in back water Bethlehem and who was crucified on a craggy outcropping in a no account Roman province is Himself the living truth. He came to the weak in His own weakness that He might save those who were weak. For Him, numbers don't count. People do. They count so much for Him that He offered His one solitary life into death for them; the One substituting for the all. You count to Him.