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Translated by W. Moore and H. A. Wilson
St Gregory of Nyssa Resources Online and in Print
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This Part: 128 Pages
Page 3
For in this case the nature of the two objects which are alike is not different, and the impress and type imply community of nature. These, or such as these, are our views upon the variety of meanings of "like." Let us see, then, with what intention Eunomius asserts of the Son that "especial likeness" to the Father, when he says that He is "like the Father with an especial likeness, in a peculiar sense, not as Father to Father, for they are not two Fathers." He promises to show us the "especial likeness" of the Son to the Father, and proceeds by his definition to establish the position that we ought not to conceive of Him as being like. For by saying, "He is not like as Father to Father," he makes out that He is not like; and again when he adds, "nor as Ungenerate to Ungenerate," by this phrase, too, he forbids us to conceive a likeness in the Son to the Father; and finally, by subjoining "nor as Son to Son," he introduces a third conception, by which he entirely subverts the meaning of "like." So it is that he follows up his own statements, and conducts his demonstration of likeness by establishing unlikeness. And now let us examine the discernment and frankness which he displays in these distinctions. After saying that the Son is like the Father, he guards the statement by adding that we ought not to think that the Son is like the Father, "as Father to Father." Why, what man on earth is such a fool as, on learning that the Son is like the Father, to be brought by any course of reasoning to think of the likeness of Father to Father? "Nor as Son to Son":--here, again, the acuteness of the distinction is equally conspicuous. When he tells us that the Son is like the Father, he adds the further definition that He must not be understood to be like Him in the same way as He would be like another Son. These are the mysteries of the awful doctrines of Eunomius, by which his disciples are made wiser than the rest of the world, by learning that the Son, by His likeness to the Father, is not like a Son, for the Son is not the Father: nor is He like "as Ungenerate to Ungenerate," for the Son is not ungenerate. But the mystery which we have received, when it speaks of the Father, certainly bids us understand the Father of the Son, and when it names the Son, teaches us to apprehend the Son of the Father. And until the present time we never felt the need of these philosophic refinements, that by the words Father and Son are suggested two Fathers or two Sons, a pair, so to say, of ungenerate beings.
Now the drift of Eunomius' excessive concern about the Ungenerate has been often explained before; and it shall here be briefly discovered yet again. For as the term Father points to no difference of nature from the Son, his impiety, if he had brought his statement to a close here, would have had no support, seeing that the natural sense of the names Father and Son excludes the idea of their being alien in essence.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/nyssa/against-eunomius-2.asp?pg=3
