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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 102
But as it is, by saying nothing concerning the Divine Essence, He showed that the knowledge thereof is beyond our power, while when we have learnt that of which we are capable, we stand in no need of the knowledge beyond our capacity, as we have in the profession of faith in the doctrine delivered to us what suffices for our salvation. For to learn that He is the absolutely existent, together with Whom, by the relative force of the term, there is also declared the majesty of the Son, is the fullest teaching of godliness; the Son, as has been said, implying in close union with Himself the Spirit of Life and Truth, inasmuch as He is Himself Life and Truth.
These distinctions being thus established, while we anathematize all heretical fancies in the sphere of divine doctrines, we believe, even as we were taught by the voice of the Lord, in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, acknowledging together with this faith also the dispensation that has been set on foot on behalf of men by the Lord of the creation. For He "being in the form of God thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant [261] ," and being incarnate in the Holy Virgin redeemed us from death "in which we were held," "sold under sin [262] ," giving as the ransom for the deliverance of our souls His precious blood which He poured out by His Cross, and having through Himself made clear for us the path of the resurrection [263] from the dead, shall come in His own time in the glory of the Father to judge every soul in righteousness, when "all that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth, they that have done good unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation [264] ." But that the pernicious heresy that is now being sown broadcast by Eunomius may not, by falling upon the mind of some of the simpler sort and being left without investigation, do harm to guileless faith, we are constrained to set forth the profession which they circulate and to strive to expose the mischief of their teaching.
[261] Phil. ii. 6.
[262] Or, "in which we were held by sin, being sold." The reference is to Rom. vii. 7 and 14, but with the variation of hupo tes hamartias, for hupo ten hamartian, and a change in the order of the words.
[263] A similar phrase is to be found in Book V. With both may be compared the language of the Eucharistic Prayer in the Liturgy of S. Basil (where the context corresponds to some extent with that of either passage in S. Gregory):--kai anastas te trite hemera, kai hodopoiesas pase sarki ten ek nekron anastasin, k.t.l.
[264] S. John v. 29
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/nyssa/against-eunomius.asp?pg=102
