|
HOME | GREEK LANGUAGE |
LIBRARIES |
BLOG | HELP | SEARCH | BOOKSTORE | FREEWARE |
|
|
Translated by W. Moore and H. A. Wilson
St Gregory of Nyssa Resources Online and in Print
|
This Part: 128 Pages
Page 46
For it is not as if he had but let fall something of the kind just once under some headlong and inconsiderate impulse, and in what followed had striven to retrieve his error: no, he dallies lingeringly with the malignity, striving in his later statements to surpass what had gone before. For as he proceeds, he says that the Son is the same distance below the Divine Nature as the nature of angels is subjected below His own, not indeed saying this in so many words, but endeavouring by what he does say to produce such an impression. The reader may judge for himself the meaning of his words: they run as follows,--"Who, by being called Angel,' clearly showed by Whom He published His words, and Who is the Existent, while by being addressed also as God, He showed His superiority over all things. For He Who is the God of all things that were made by Him, is the Angel of the God over all." Indignation rushes into my heart and interrupts my discourse, and under this emotion arguments are lost in a turmoil of anger roused by words like these. And perhaps I may be pardoned for feeling such emotion. For whose resentment would not be stirred within him at such profanity, when he remembers how the Apostle proclaims that every angelic nature is subject to the Lord, and in witness of his doctrine invokes the sublime utterances of the prophets:--"When He bringeth the first-begotten into the world, He saith, And let all the angels of God worship Him," and, "Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever," and, "Thou art the same, and Thy years shall not fail [991] "? When the Apostle has gone through all this argument to demonstrate the unapproachable majesty of the Only-begotten God, what must I feel when I hear from the adversary of Christ that the Lord of Angels is Himself only an Angel,--and when he does not let such a statement fall by chance, but puts forth his strength to maintain this monstrous invention, so that it may be established that his Lord has no superiority over John and Moses? For the word says concerning them, "This is he of whom it is written, Behold I send my angel before thy face [992] .'" John therefore is an angel. But the enemy of the Lord, even though he grants his Lord the name of God, yet makes Him out to be on a level with the deity of Moses, since he too was a servant of the God over all, and was constituted a god to the Egyptians [993] . And yet this phrase, "over all," as has been previously observed, is common to the Son with the Father, the Apostle having expressly ascribed such a title to Him, when he says, "Of whom, as concerning the flesh, Christ came, Who is God over all [994] ." But this man degrades the Lord of angels to the rank of an angel, as though he had not heard that the angels are "ministering spirits," and "a flame of fire [995] ." For by the use of these distinctive terms does the Apostle make the difference between the several subjects clear and unmistakable, defining the subordinate nature to be "spirits" and "fire," and distinguishing the supreme power by the name of Godhead. And yet, though there are so many that proclaim the glory of the Only-begotten God, against them all Eunomius lifts up his single voice, calling the Christ "an angel of the God over all," defining Him, by thus contrasting Him with the "God over all," to be one of the "all things," and, by giving Him the same name as the angels, trying to establish that He no wise differs from them in nature: for he has often previously said that all those things which share the same name cannot be different in nature. Does the argument, then, still lack its censors, as it concerns a man who proclaims in so many words that the "Angel" does not publish His own word, but that of the Existent? For it is by this means that he tries to show that the Word Who was in the beginning, the Word Who was God, is not Himself the Word, but is the Word of some other Word, being its minister and "angel." And who knows not that the only opposite to the "Existent" is the nonexistent? so that he who contrasts the Son with the Existent, is clearly playing the Jew, robbing the Christian doctrine of the Person of the Only-begotten. For in saying that He is excluded from the title of the "Existent," he is assuredly trying to establish also that He is outside the pale of existence: for surely if he grants Him existence, he will not quarrel about the sound of the word.
[991] Cf. Heb. i. 6-12. The passages there cited are Ps. xcvii. 7; Ps. xlv. 6; Ps. cii. 25, sqq.
[992] S. Matt. xi. 10, quoting Mal. iii. 1. The word translated "messenger" in A.V. is angelos, which the argument here seems to require should be rendered by "angel."
[993] Cf. Exod. vii. 1
[994] Rom. ix. 5.
[995] Cf. Heb. i. 14 and 7.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/nyssa/against-eunomius-3.asp?pg=46
