Gregory of Nyssa

Under “thrones” [Paul] includes the cherubim, giving them this Greek name, as more intelligible than the Hebrew name for them. He knew that “God sits upon the cherubim,” and so he calls these powers the thrones of him who sits on them. In the same way there are included in the list of Isaiah’s seraphim, by whom the mystery of the Trinity was clearly proclaimed, when they uttered that marvelous cry “holy,” being awestruck with the beauty in each person of the Trinity. They are named under the title of “powers” both by the great Paul and by the prophet David—the latter says, “Bless you the Lord all you his powers, you ministers of his that do his pleasure,” and Isaiah instead of saying “Bless you” has written the very words of their blessing, “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory,” and he has revealed by what one of the seraphim did [to him] that these powers are ministers that do God’s pleasure, effecting the “purging of sin” according to the will of him who sent them: for this is the ministry of these spiritual beings, namely, to be sent forth for the salvation of those who are being saved.

But she said, “I think that we should first run briefly through what is set forth in various places by the divine Scripture concerning this doctrine [the resurrection], so that from there we may approach the conclusion of our discourse. I have heard, indeed, what David sings in his divine odes, when he has made the ordering of the universe the subject of his hymn. Near the end of Psalm 103 [LXX] he says, “You will take away their spirit, and they will die and turn to their dust. You will send out your Spirit, and they will be created, and you will renew the face of the earth.” He is saying that the power of the Spirit, accomplishing everything in everything, both gives life to those whom it enters and removes from life those from whom it departs. He says that the death of the living happens by the departure of the Spirit, and by its presence the renewal of the dead takes place. Because the death of those who are being renewed comes first in the order of the words, we can say that the mystery of the resurrection is being proclaimed to the church, as David has foretold this grace by his spirit of prophecy.

Prophetic language affirms that the conversion of those in error is the work of God. For “they went astray in the wilderness in a thirsty land,” the psalmist says, and then he adds, “So he led them forth by the right way, that they might go to the city where they dwelled,” and “when the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion.” In like manner also the comfort of the afflicted is ascribed to God, Paul thus says, “Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who comforts us in all our tribulation.” Again, the psalmist says, speaking in the person of God, “You called on me in trouble, and I delivered you.” And the setting upright of those who stumble is ascribed innumerable times by Scripture to the power of the Lord: “You have held me by the hand that I might fall, but the Lord was my help,” and “Though he fall, he shall not be cast away, for the Lord upholds him with his hand,” and “The Lord helps them that are fallen.” And the recovery of the distressed admittedly belongs to the loving-kindness of God, if Eunomius means the same thing of which we learn in prophecy, as the Scripture says, “You laid burdens on our backs; you allowed people to ride over our heads; we went through fire and water, and you brought us to a place of abundance.”

What lesson, then, results from these remarks? This: that we should wean ourselves from this life in the flesh, which has an inevitable follower, death; and that we should search for a manner of life that does not bring death in its train. Now the life of virginity is such a life. We will add a few other things to show how true this is. Everyone knows that the propagation of mortal bodies is the work of sexual intercourse; whereas for those who are joined to the Spirit, life and immortality instead of children are produced by this latter intercourse; and the words of the apostle beautifully suit their case, for the joyful mother of such children as these “shall be saved in childbearing”; as the psalmist in his divine songs thankfully cries, “He makes the barren woman to keep house and to be a joyful mother of children.” Truly a joyful mother is the virgin mother who by the operation of the Spirit conceives the deathless children and who is called by the prophet barren because of her modesty only. This life, then, which is stronger than the power of death, is, to those who think, the preferable one. The physical bringing of children into the world—I speak without wishing to offend—is as much a starting point of death as of life, because from the moment of birth the process of dying commences. But those who by virginity have desisted from this process have drawn within themselves the boundary line of death and by their own deed have checked his advance; they have made themselves, in fact, a frontier between life and death, and a barrier too, which thwarts him. If, then, death cannot pass beyond virginity but finds his power checked and shattered there, it is demonstrated that virginity is a stronger thing than death; and that body is rightly named undying that does not lend its service to a dying world or allow itself to become the instrument of a succession of dying creatures. In such a body the long unbroken career of decay and death, which has intervened between the first man and the lives of virginity that have been led, is interrupted.

Therefore, if one examines these matters and because of this despises whatever is held in honor among people and longs only for the divine life, knowing that “all flesh is grass and all the glory of people is as the flower of grass,” is he likely to think of grass, which exists today and is gone tomorrow, as something worth striving for? The one who has examined well the divine things knows that not only human affairs have no stability but also that the whole world itself has not remained forever unchanged. Therefore, he despises this life as alien and impermanent, since “heaven and earth will pass away,” according to the word of the Savior, and all things of necessity undergo a transformation. Therefore, as long as he is “in the tent, burdened” by the present life, as the apostle says to illustrate its impermanence, he laments the lengthening of his stay, as the psalmist says in his divine songs. For they truly live in darkness who spend their life in these quarters. Because of this, the prophet groans over the extension of his sojourn here and says: “Alas, my stay is lengthened.” But he attributes the cause of his dejection to darkness, for in Hebrew darkness is equivalent to qedar, as we learn from the scholars. Is it not true that people overcome by some night blindness are thus dim-sighted in recognizing delusions, not knowing that whatever is considered honorable in this life, or even whatever is assumed to be the opposite, is understood thus only on the assumption of the foolish? Of themselves they are never anything at all.

Instead of speaking of him [God the Father] as “ungenerated,” it is permissible to call him the “First Cause” or “Father of the Only-Begotten,” or to speak of him as “existing without cause,” and many such expressions that lead to the same thought. In that case Eunomius confirms our doctrines by the very arguments in which he brings charges that we do not know any name indicative of the divine nature. We are taught the fact of its existence, while we assert that a name of such breath as to include the unspeakable and infinite nature either does not exist at all or at any rate is unknown to us. Let him then abandon his usual fictive language, and show us the names that signify the real meanings and then proceed further to divide the subject by the divergence of their names. But as long as the statement of the Scripture is correct that Abraham and Moses were not capable of the knowledge of the name, and that “no one has seen God at any time,” and that “no one has seen him, nor can see,” and that the light around him is unapproachable and “there is no end of his greatness,” so long can we say and believe these things. This is similar to an argument that promises any comprehension and expression of the infinite nature by means of the meaning of names to one who thinks that he can enclose the whole sea in his own hand! Just as the hollow of one’s hand is comparable to the entire depth of the sea, so is all the power of language comparable to that nature that is unspeakable and incomprehensible.

Now if any one should ask for some interpretation, description and explanation of the divine essence, we are not going to deny that we are unlearned in this kind of wisdom, acknowledging only so much as this, that it is not possible that which is by nature infinite should be comprehended in any conception expressed by words. The fact that the divine greatness has no limit is proclaimed by prophecy, which declares expressly that of his splendor, his glory and his holiness, “there is no end.” If his surroundings have no limit, much more is he himself in his essence, whatever it may be, comprehended by no limitation in any way. If then interpretation by way of words and names implies by its meaning some sort of comprehension of the subject, and if, on the other hand, that which is unlimited cannot be comprehended, no one could reasonably blame us for ignorance, if we are not bold in respect of what none should venture on. For by what name can I describe the incomprehensible? By what speech can I declare the unspeakable? Accordingly, since the Deity is too excellent and lofty to be expressed in words, we have learned to honor in silence what transcends speech and thought. If he who “thinks more highly than he ought to think” tramples on this cautious speech of ours making a jest of our ignorance of things incomprehensible, and recognizes a difference of unlikeness in that which is without figure, or limit, or size or quantity (I mean in the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit) and brings forward to reproach our ignorance that phrase that is continually alleged by the disciples of deceit, “ ‘You worship you know not what,’ if you know not the essence of that which you worship,” we shall follow the advice of the prophet. We shall not fear the reproach of fools or be led by their reviling to talk boldly of things unspeakable. That unpracticed speaker Paul we make our teacher in the mysteries that transcend knowledge. He is so far from thinking that the divine nature is within the reach of human perception that he calls even the judgments of God “unsearchable” and his ways “past finding out.” He affirms that the things promised to them that love him, for their good deeds done in this life, are above comprehension so that it is not possible to behold them with the eye, or to receive them by hearing or to contain them in the heart.

A person, then, who remains the same and yet babbles to himself about the change for the better he has undergone in baptism should attend to what Paul says: “If anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself.” For you are not what you have not become; whereas the gospel says of the regenerate that “he gave all those who received him the power to become God’s children.” Now the child born of someone certainly shares his parent’s nature. If, then, you have received God and become his child, let your way of life testify to the God within you; make it clear who your Father is! The marks by which we recognize God are the very ones by which a son of his must show his relation to him: “he opens his hand and fills everything living with joy”; “he overlooks iniquity”; “he relents of his evil purpose”;29 “the Lord is kind to all and is not angry with us every day”; “God is straightforward, and there is no unrighteousness in him”31—and the similar sayings scattered through Scripture for our instruction. If you are like this, you have genuinely become a child of God. But if you persist in displaying the marks of evil, it is useless to babble to yourself about the birth from above. Prophecy will tell you, “You are a son of humankind, not a son of the most High. You love vanity and seek lies. You fail to realize that the only way one is magnified is by becoming holy.”

And now that we have thus distinguished the various modes of generation, it will be time to observe how the benevolent provision of the Holy Spirit, in delivering to us the divine mysteries, imparts that instruction that transcends reason by such methods as we can receive. For the inspired teaching adopts, in order to set forth the unspeakable power of God, all the forms of generation that human intelligence recognizes, yet without including the bodily senses attaching to the words. For when it speaks of the creative power, it gives to such an energy the name of generation, because its expression must stoop to our level of understanding. It does not, however, convey thereby all that we include in creative generation, as time, place, the furnishing of matter, the fitness of instruments, the design in the things that come into being. It leaves these and asserts of God in lofty and magnificent language the creation of all existent things, when it says, “He spoke the word, and they were made, He commanded, and they were created.” Again when it interprets to us the unspeakable and transcendent existence of the Only-Begotten from the Father, as the poverty of human intellect is incapable of receiving doctrines that surpass all power of speech and thought, there too it borrows our language and terms him “Son,” a name that our usage assigns to those who are born of matter and nature.