St Gregory of Nyssa AGAINST EUNOMIUS, Second Part, Complete

Translated by W. Moore and H. A. Wilson

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This Part: 128 Pages

§12. He thus proceeds to a magnificent discourse of the interpretation of "Mediator," "Like," "Ungenerate," and "generate," and of "The likeness and seal of the energy of the Almighty and of His Works."

Again, what is the manifold mediation which with wearying iteration he assigns to God, calling Him "Mediator in doctrines, Mediator in the Law [411] "? It is not thus that we are taught by the lofty utterance of the Apostle, who says that having made void the law of commandments by His own doctrines, He is the mediator between God and man, declaring it by this saying, "There is one God, and one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus [412] ;" where by the distinction implied in the word "mediator" he reveals to us the whole aim of the mystery of godliness. Now the aim is this. Humanity once revolted through the malice of the enemy, and, brought into bondage to sin, was also alienated from the true Life. After this the Lord of the creature calls back to Him His own creature, and becomes Man while still remaining God, being both God and Man in the entirety of the two several natures, and thus humanity was indissolubly united to God, the Man that is in Christ conducting the work of mediation, to Whom, by the first-fruits assumed for us, all the lump is potentially united [413] . Since, then, a mediator is not a mediator of one [414] , and God is one, not divided among the Persons in Whom we have been taught to believe (for the Godhead in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost is one), the Lord, therefore, becomes a mediator once for all betwixt God and men, binding man to the Deity by Himself. But even by the idea of a mediator we are taught the godly doctrine enshrined in the Creed. For the Mediator between God and man entered as it were into fellowship with human nature, not by being merely deemed a man, but having truly become so: in like manner also, being very God, He has not, as Eunomius will have us consider, been honoured by the bare title of Godhead.

[411] Here again the exact connexion of the quotation from Eunomius with the extracts preceding is uncertain.

[412] Cf. 1 Tim. ii. 5

[413] Cf. Rom. xi. 16

[414] Gal. iii. 20.

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