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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 80
The Lord God is Holy;' so far there is no relation; but when one adds the Lord Our God, and so appropriates the meaning in a relation towards oneself, then one causes the word to be no longer thought of absolutely. Again; "Abba, Father" is the cry of the Spirit; it is an utterance free from any partial reference. But we are bidden to call the Father in heaven, Our Father;' this is the relative use of the word. A man who makes the Universal Deity his own, does not dim His supreme dignity; and in the same way there is nothing to prevent us, when we point out the Father and Him who comes from Him, the Firstborn before all creation, from signifying by that title of Father at one and the same time the having begotten that Son, and also the not being from any more transcendent Cause. For he who speaks of the First Father means Him who is presupposed before all existence, Whose is the beyond [204] . This is He, Who has nothing previous to Himself to behold, no end in which He shall cease. Whichever way we look, He is equally existing there for ever; He transcends the limit of any end, the idea of any beginning, by the infinitude of His life; whatever be His title, eternity must be implied with it.
But Eunomius, versed as he is in the contemplation of that which eludes thought, rejects this view of unscientific minds; he will not admit a double meaning in the word Father,' the one, that from Him are all things and in the front of all things the Only-begotten Son, the other, that He Himself has no superior Cause. He may scorn the statement; but we will brave his mocking laugh, and repeat what we have said already, that the Father' is the same as that Ungenerate One, and both signifies the having begotten the Son, and represents the being from nothing.
But Eunomius, contending with this statement of ours, says (the very contrary now of what he said before), "If God is Father because He has begotten the Son, and Father' has the same meaning as Ungenerate, God is Ungenerate because He has begotten the Son, but before He begat Him He was not Ungenerate." Observe his method of turning round; how he pulls his first quibble to pieces, and turns it into the very opposite, thinking even so to entrap us in a conclusion from which there is no escape. His first syllogism presented the following absurdity, "If Father' means the coming from nothing, then necessarily it will no longer indicate the having begotten the Son." But this last syllogism, by turning (a premiss) into its contrary, threatens our faith with another absurdity. How, then, does he pull to pieces his former conclusion [205] ? "If He is Father' because He has begotten a Son." His first syllogism gave us nothing like that; on the contrary, its logical inference purported to show that if the Father's not having been generated was meant by the word Father, that word could not mean as well the having begotten a Son [206] . Thus his first syllogism contained no intimation whatever that God was Father because He had begotten a Son. I fail to understand what this argumentative and shrewdly professional reversal means.
[204] enedeixato, hou to epekeina. This is the reading of the Turin Cod., and preferable to that of the Paris edition.
[205] The first syllogism was-- Father' means the coming from nothing;' (Coming from nothing' does not mean begetting a Son') ? Father does not mean begetting a Son. He "pulls to pieces" this conclusion by taking its logical contrary' as the first premiss of his second syllogism; thus-- Father means begetting a Son; (Father means 'Agennetos) ? 'Agennetos means begetting a Son. From which it follows that before that begetting the Almighty was not 'Agennetos The conclusion of the last syllogism also involves the contrary of the 2nd premiss of the first. It is to be noticed that both syllogisms are aimed at Basil's doctrine, Father' means coming from nothing.' Eunomius strives to show that, in both, such a premiss leads to an absurdity. But Gregory ridicules both for contradicting each other.
[206] to men me dunasthai. The negative, absent in Oehler, is recovered from the Turin Cod.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/nyssa/against-eunomius.asp?pg=80
