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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 68
Is it, or is it not, expressive of the substance (being) of the Deity? To answer this question, it was found necessary to ascertain how such a name for the Supreme has been acquired. "By a conception," says Basil. "No," says Eunomius: "it would be dangerous to trust the naming of the Deity to a common operation of the mind. The faculty of Conception may and does play us false; it can create monstrosities. Besides, if the names of the Father are conceptions, the names of the Son are too; for instance, the Door, the Shepherd, the Axe, the Vine. But as our Lord Himself applied these to Himself, He would, according to you, be employing the faculty of conception; and it is blasphemous to think that He employed names which we too might have arrived at by conceiving of Him in these particular ways. Therefore, Conception is not the Source of the Divine Names; but rather they come from a perception or intention implanted in us directly from on High. Ungenerate is such a name; and it reveals to us the very substance of the Deity." But Gregory defends Basil's position. He shows the entire relativity of our knowledge of the Deity. Ungenerate and every other name of God is due to a conception; in each case we perceive either an operation of the Deity, or an element of evil, and then we conceive of Him as operating in the one, or as free from the other; and so name Him. But there is no conception, because there is no perception, of the substance of the Deity. Scripture, which has revealed His operations, has not revealed that. "The human mind...feels after the unutterable Being in divers and many-sided ways; and never chases the mystery in the light of one idea alone. Our grasping of Him would indeed be easy, if there lay before us one single assigned path to the knowledge of God; but, as it is, from the skill apparent in the Universe, we get the idea of skill in the Ruler of the Universe;...and again, when we see the execrable character of evil, we grasp His own unalterable pureness as regards this,...not that we split up the subject of such attributes along with them, but, believing that this Being, whatever it be in substance, is one, we still conceive that it has something in common with all these ideas."
To sum up, it had suited Eunomius to try to disparage 'Epinoia so far as to make it appear morally impossible that any name of God, but especially 'Agennetos, should be derived from such a source. He scoffs at the orthodox party for treating the privative terms for the Deity as merely privative, embodying only a "notion," and for adhering to the truth that God's name is "above every name." He "does not see how God can be above His works simply by virtue of such things as do not belong to Him;" this is only "giving to words the prerogative over realities." He wants, and believes in the existence of, a word for the substance of God, and he finds it in 'Agennetos, which according to him is not privative at all; it is the single name for the single Deity, and all the others are bound up in it. "The universal Guardian thought it right to engraft these names in our minds by a law of His creation." "These utterances are from above." The importance of this word to the Anomoeans is obvious. Gregory, as spokesman of the Nicene party, defends the efficacy of the mental operation of conception to supply terms for the Deity, which, however, can none of them be final. God is incomprehensible. At the same time there is a spiritual insight of God (an ennoia in fact) which far surpasses Eunomius' intellectual certainty.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/nyssa/against-eunomius-3.asp?pg=68
