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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: 32 Pages
Page 10
For, proceeding with his discourse, he asks us what we mean by the ages. And yet we ourselves might more reasonably put such questions to him. For it is he who professes to know the essence of God, defining on his own authority what is unapproachable and incomprehensible by man. Let him, then, give us a scientific lecture on the nature of the ages, boasting as he does of his familiarity with transcendental things, and let him not so fiercely brandish over us, poor ignorant individuals, the double danger of the dilemma involved in our reply, telling us that, whether we hold this or that view of the ages, the result must be in either case an absurdity. For if (says he) you say that they are eternal, you will be Greeks, and Valentinians [1189] , and uninstructed [1190] : and if you say that they are generate, you will no longer be able to ascribe ungeneracy to God. What a terribly unanswerable attack! If, O Eunomius, something is held to be generate, we no longer hold the doctrine of the Divine ungeneracy! And pray what has become of your subtle distinctions between generacy and ungeneracy, by which you sought to establish the dissimilarity of the essence of the Son from that of the Father? For it seems from what we are now being taught that the Father is not dissimilar in essence when contemplated in respect of generacy, but that, in fact, if we hold His ungeneracy, we reduce Him to non-existence; since "if we speak of the ages as generate, we are driven to relinquish the Ungenerate." But let us examine the force of the argument, by which he would compel us to allow this absurdity. When, says he, those things by comparison with which God is without beginning are non-existent, He Who is compared with them must be non-existent also. What a sturdy and overpowering grip is this! How tightly has this wrestler got us by the waist in his inextricable grasp! He says that God's ungeneracy is added to Him through comparison with the ages. By whom is it so added? Who is there that says that to Him Who hath no beginning ungeneracy is added as an acquisition through comparison with something else? Neither such a word nor such a sense will be found in any writings of ours. Our words indeed carry their own justification, and contain nothing like what is alleged against us; and of the meaning of what is said, who can be a more trustworthy interpreter than he who said it? Have not we, then, the better title to say what we mean when we speak of the life of God as extending beyond the ages? And what we say is what we have said already in our previous writings. But, says he, comparison with the ages being impossible, it is impossible that any addition should accrue from it to God, meaning of course that ungeneracy is an addition. Let him tell us by whom such an addition has been made. If by himself, he becomes simply ridiculous in laying his own folly to our charge: if by us, let him quote our words, and then we will admit the force of his accusation.
[1189] Valentinus "placed in the pleroma (so the Gnostics called the habitation of the Deity) thirty aeons (ages), of which one half were male, and the other female" (Mosheim), i.e. these aeons were co-eternal with the Deity.
[1190] barbaroi here being not opposed to "Greeks" must imply mere inability to speak aright: amongst those who claimed to use Catholic language another "barbarism," or "jargon," had arisen (i.e. that of heresy, whether Platonist or Gnostic), different from that which separated the Greeks from the Jews, Africans, Romans alike. Hesychius; barbaroi hoi apaideutoi. So to S. Paul "the people" of Malta (Acts xxviii. 2-4), as to others the Apostles, were barbarian.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/nyssa/against-eunomius-4.asp?pg=10
