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

Page 13

So also when the Lord by breathing upon His disciples had imparted to them the Holy Spirit, John says, "Of His fulness have all we received [465] ." And that "in Him dwelleth the fulness of the Godhead [466] ," the mighty Paul attests: yea, moreover, through the prophet Isaiah it is attested, as to the manifestation of the Divine appearance vouchsafed to him, when he saw Him that sat "on the throne high and lifted up [467] ;" the older tradition, it is true, says that it was the Father Who appeared to him, but the evangelist John refers the prophecy to our Lord, saying, touching those of the Jews who did not believe the words uttered by the prophet concerning the Lord, "These things said Esaias, when he saw His glory and spoke of Him [468] ." But the mighty Paul attributes the same passage to the Holy Spirit in his speech made to the Jews at Rome, when he says, "Well spoke the Holy Ghost by Esaias the prophet concerning you, saying, Hearing ye shall hear and shall not understand [469] ," showing, in my opinion, by Holy Scripture itself, that every specially divine vision, every theophany, every word uttered in the Person of God, is to be understood to refer to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Hence when David says, "they provoked God in the wilderness, and grieved Him in the desert [470] ," the apostle refers to the Holy Spirit the despite done by the Israelites to God, in these terms: "Wherefore, as the Holy Ghost saith, Harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness; when your fathers tempted me [471] ," and goes on to refer all that the prophecy refers to God, to the Person of the Holy Ghost. Those who keep repeating against us the phrase "three Gods," because we hold these views, have perhaps not yet learnt how to count. For if the Father and the Son are not divided into duality, (for they are, according to the Lord's words, One, and not Two [472] ) and if the Holy Ghost is also one, how can one added to one be divided into the number of three Gods? Is it not rather plain that no one can charge us with believing in the number of three Gods, without himself first maintaining in his own doctrine a pair of Gods? For it is by being added to two that the one completes the triad of Gods. But what room is there for the charge of tritheism against those by whom one God is worshipped, the God expressed by the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost?

[465] S. John xx. 21, and i. 16.

[466] Col. ii. 9.

[467] Is. vi. 1.

[468] S. John xii. 41. The "older tradition" means presumably the ancient interpretation of the Jews.

[469] Cf. Acts xxviii. 25, 26. The quotation is not verbal.

[470] Cf. Ps. lxxviii. 40.

[471] Heb. iii. 7.

[472] S. John x. 30

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