|
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 103
ยง4. He next skilfully confutes the partial, empty and blasphemous statement of Eunomius on the subject of the absolutely existent.
Now the wording of their doctrine is as follows: "We believe in the one and only true God, according to the teaching of the Lord Himself, not honouring Him with a lying title (for He cannot lie), but really existent, one God in nature and in glory, who is without beginning, eternally, without end, alone." Let not him who professes to believe in accordance with the teaching of the Lord pervert the exposition of the faith that was made concerning the Lord of all to suit his own fancy, but himself follow the utterance of the truth. Since then, the expression of the Faith comprehends the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, what agreement has this construction of theirs to show with the utterances of the Lord, so as to refer such a doctrine to the teaching of those utterances? They cannot manage to show where in the Gospels the Lord said that we should believe on "the one and only true God:" unless they have some new Gospel. For the Gospels which are read in the churches continuously from ancient times to the present day, do not contain this saying which tells us that we should believe in or baptize into "the one and only true God," as these people say, but "in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost." But as we were taught by the voice of the Lord, this we say, that the word "one" does not indicate the Father alone, but comprehends in its significance the Son with the Father, inasmuch as the Lord said, "I and My Father are one [265] ." In like manner also the name "God" belongs equally to the Beginning in which the Word was, and to the Word Who was in the Beginning. For the Evangelist tells us that "the Word was with God, and the Word was God [266] ." So that when Deity is expressed the Son is included no less than the Father. Moreover, the true cannot be conceived as something alien from and unconnected with the truth. But that the Lord is the Truth no one at all will dispute, unless he be one estranged from the truth. If, then, the Word is in the One, and is God and Truth, as is proclaimed in the Gospels, on what teaching of the Lord does he base his doctrine who makes use of these distinctive terms? For the antithesis is between "only" and "not only," between "God" and "no God," between "true" and "untrue." If it is with respect to idols that they make their distinction of phrases, we too agree. For the name of "deity" is given, in an equivocal sense, to the idols of the heathen, seeing that "all the gods of the heathen are demons," and in another sense marks the contrast of the one with the many, of the true with the false, of those who are not Gods with Him who is God [267] . But if the contrast is one with the Only-begotten God [268] , let our sages learn that truth has its opposite only in falsehood, and God in one who is not God. But inasmuch as the Lord Who is the Truth is God, and is in the Father and is one relatively to the Father [269] , there is no room in the true doctrine for these distinctions of phrases. For he who truly believes in the One sees in the One Him Who is completely united with Him in truth, and deity, and essence, and life, and wisdom, and in all attributes whatsoever: or, if he does not see in the One Him Who is all these it is in nothing that he believes. For without the Son the Father has neither existence nor name, any more than the Powerful without Power, or the Wise without Wisdom. For Christ is "the Power of God and the Wisdom of God [270] ;" so that he who imagines he sees the One God apart from power, truth, wisdom, life, or the true light, either sees nothing at all or else assuredly that which is evil. For the withdrawal of the good attributes becomes a positing and origination of evil.
[265] S. John x. 30
[266] S. John i. 1
[267] Or, possibly, "and the contrast he makes between the one and the many, &c. is irrelevant" (allos antidiairei): the quotation is from Ps. xcvi. 6 (LXX.).
[268] Cf. S. John i. 18, reading (as S. Gregory seems to have done) theos for hui& 231;s.
[269] kai hen pros ton patera ontos. It may be questioned whether the text is sound: the phrase seems unusual; perhaps hen has been inserted in error from the preceding clause kai en to patri ontos, and we should read "is in the Father and is with the Father" (cf. the 2nd verse of the 1st Epistle, and verses 1 and 2 of the Gospel of S. John).
[270] 1 Cor. i. 24.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/nyssa/against-eunomius.asp?pg=103
