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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 95
Seeing, therefore, that the dictum before us, though, so far as it is limited by number of words, it is a short one, yet affords principles and hypotheses for every kind of doctrinal pravity, it would seem right that our readers should require in our reply not so much brevity as soundness. We, then, neither attribute our own salvation to a man, nor admit that the incorruptible and Divine Nature is capable of suffering and mortality: but since we must assuredly believe the Divine utterances which declare to us that the Word that was in the beginning was God [752] , and that afterward the Word made flesh was seen upon the earth and conversed with men [753] , we admit in our creed those conceptions which are consonant with the Divine utterance. For when we hear that He is Light, and Power, and Righteousness, and Life, and Truth, and that by Him all things were made, we account all these and such-like statements as things to be believed, referring them to God the Word: but when we hear of pain, of slumber, of need, of trouble, of bonds, of nails, of the spear, of blood, of wounds, of burial, of the sepulchre, and all else of this kind, even if they are somewhat opposed to what has previously been stated, we none the less admit them to be things to be believed, and true, having regard to the flesh; which we receive by faith as conjoined with the Word. For as it is not possible to contemplate the peculiar attributes of the flesh as existing in the Word that was in the beginning, so also on the other hand we may not conceive those which are proper to the Godhead as existing in the nature of the flesh. As, therefore, the teaching of the Gospel concerning our Lord is mingled, partly of lofty and Divine ideas, partly of those which are lowly and human, we assign every particular phrase accordingly to one or other of these Natures which we conceive in the mystery, that which is human to the Humanity, that which is lofty to the Godhead, and say that, as God, the Son is certainly impassible and incapable of corruption: and whatever suffering is asserted concerning Him in the Gospel, He assuredly wrought by means of His Human Nature which admitted of such suffering. For verily the Godhead works the salvation of the world by means of that body which encompassed It, in such wise that the suffering was of the body, but the operation was of God; and even if some wrest to the support of the opposite doctrine the words of the Apostle, "God spared not His own Son, [754] " and, "God sent His own Son [755] ," and other similar phrases which seem to refer, in the matter of the Passion, to the Divine Nature, and not to the Humanity, we shall none the less refuse to abandon sound doctrine, seeing that Paul himself declares to us more clearly the mystery of this subject. For he everywhere attributes to the Human element in Christ the dispensation of the Passion, when he says, "for since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead [756] ," and, "God, sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, condemned sin in the flesh [757] " (for he says, "in the flesh," not "in the Godhead"); and "He was crucified through weakness" (where by "weakness" he means "the flesh"), "yet liveth by power [758] " (while he indicates by "power" the Divine Nature); and, "He died unto sin" (that is, with regard to the body), "but liveth unto God [759] " (that is, with regard to the Godhead, so that by these words it is established that, while the Man tasted death, the immortal Nature did not admit the suffering of death); and again; "He made Him to be sin for us, Who knew no sin [760] ," giving once more the name of "sin" to the flesh.
[752] Cf. S. John i. 1
[753] Cf. Bar. iii. 37
[754] Rom. viii. 32.
[755] Cf. Rom. viii. 3
[756] 1 Cor. xv. 21.
[757] Cf. Rom. viii. 3
[758] 2 Cor. xiii. 4.
[759] Rom. vi. 10.
[760] 2 Cor. v. 21.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/nyssa/against-eunomius-2.asp?pg=95
