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Gregory of Nyssa

Nicene & Post-Nicene · AD 325–500

406 passages across 37 books of the Bible · Who was this?

Commentary

20 of 406
  1. Philippians 2:7
    The Godhead is emptied so that the human nature may accommodate it. What is human, on the other hand, is made new, becoming divine through mingling with the divine.

    AGAINST EUNOMIUS 3.3.67

  2. Philippians 2:7
    He says of the Son that he has “come to be in the likeness and form of men.” If he “came to be” in this likeness, this obviously implies that he was not invested with it from the beginning. Before coming to be in that likeness he was not fashioned according to some corporeal pattern. For no embodied form could become the pattern for what is previously not embodied.

    ANTIRRHETICUS AGAINST APOLLINARIUS

  3. Philippians 2:7
    The Word who appeared in the flesh was the same as the Word that was with God. But the earthly flesh he assumed was not the same as the Godhead until this too was changed into Godhead, so that necessarily some attributes belonged to God the Word, others to the form of a slave.

    AGAINST EUNOMIUS 3.3.62

  4. Philippians 2:7
    The one who says that he “took the form of a slave”—and this form is flesh—is saying that, being himself something else according to his divine form, something else in his nature, he assumed the servile form.

    ANTIRRHETICUS AGAINST APOLLINARIUS

  5. Philippians 2:9
    It is obvious that the highest is in need of no exaltation. Only what is lowly can be lifted to the exalted state, becoming now what it was not before. Being united to the Lord the human nature is lifted up to share in his divinity. What is exalted is that which has been lifted up from lowliness.

    ANTIRRHETICUS AGAINST APOLLINARIUS

  6. Philippians 2:9
    God is “above every name.” The only proper way to name God is as above every name. God exceeds every operation of the intellect. God cannot be contained in any nominal definition. This is a sign to us of God’s incommunicable greatness.

    AGAINST EUNOMIUS 2.587

  7. Philippians 2:10
    This name has become superior to every name. His divinity is such that it cannot be adequately manifested merely through verbal signs, no matter how exalted they are. As the exalted One comes to be in the lowly, so the lowly One may receive in return the properties of the exalted.

    ANTIRRHETICUS AGAINST APOLLINARIUS

  8. Philippians 2:10
    The One who once came into the world has now become the Firstborn from the dead, both of brothers in faith and of all creation. He will return to the world as judge of all the world in righteousness, as the prophet declares, when it will become clear. The name of Firstborn, which he assumed first on our behalf, will not be cast away in in those last days. Every knee will bow at the name of Jesus. He is above every name. The whole company of angels worships this One who has been called the Firstborn. They all rejoice in the restoration of humanity, whom he has restored to their original grace by becoming the Firstborn among us.

    AGAINST EUNOMIUS 3.2.48

  9. Proverbs 1:6
    It is universally admitted that the name of “proverb,” in its scriptural use, is not applied with regard to the evident sense but is used with a view to some hidden meaning, as the Gospel thus gives the name of “proverbs” to dark and obscure sayings. So the “proverb,” if one were to set forth the interpretation of the name by a definition, is a form of speech which, by means of one set of ideas immediately presented, points to something else which is hidden. Or [it is] a form of speech which does not point out the aim of the thought directly but gives its instruction by an indirect signification.

    AGAINST EUNOMIUS 3:2

  10. Proverbs 4:6-8
    If anyone is going to obey Solomon and take true wisdom as the companion and sharer of his life, concerning which he says, “Love her, and she will safeguard you,” and “Honor her, in order that she may embrace you,” he will worthily prepare himself for this longing, keeping festival in a pure garment, rejoicing with those in this marriage, in order not to be rejected because of being clothed as a married person.It is clear that the eagerness for this kind of marriage is common to men and women alike, for since, as the apostle says, “There is neither male nor female,” and Christ is all things for all human beings, the true lover of wisdom has as his goal the divine One who is true wisdom, and the soul, clinging to its incorruptible bridegroom, has a love of true wisdom which is God. Now, what spiritual marriage is and toward what goal the pure and divine love looks has been sufficiently revealed in what we have said before.

    ON VIRGINITY 20

  11. Proverbs 4:18
    The person who removes himself from all hatred and fleshly odor and rises above all low and earthbound things, having ascended higher than the whole earth in his aforementioned flight, will find the only thing that is worth longing for. Having come close to beauty, he will become beautiful himself. Through his participation in the true light, he will himself be in a state of brightness and illumination. For just as at night the multitudinous glowing objects of the air which certain people call “shooting stars” … just as this earthly air, when it is forced upwards by the wind, becomes light-like, being changed in the clarity of the ether, so it is with the mind of man. After leaving this muddy and dusty life, it is purified through the power of the Spirit, becomes light-like, and is mixed with the true and lofty purity, and glows and is filled with rays and becomes light in accordance with the promise of the Lord who declared that the just will shine like the sun.

    ON VIRGINITY 11

  12. Proverbs 8:22
    The phrase “created me” refers not to the divine and the uncompounded but, as has been said, to that which had been assumed, in accordance with the divine plan, from our created nature.

    AGAINST EUNOMIUS 3:1.50

  13. Proverbs 9:1
    We say, therefore, that when he said in his previous discourse that wisdom built a house for itself, he is speaking enigmatically about the formation of the Lord’s flesh. For true wisdom did not live in someone else’s building but built a home for itself from the Virgin’s body.

    AGAINST EUNOMIUS 3:1.44

  14. Proverbs 11:22
    Let eagerness for virginity be put down as the foundation for the life of virtue, but let there be built upon this foundation all the products of virtue. If this is believed to be precious and befitting to God, as it is, but one’s whole life does not conform to it and is stained by the rest of the soul’s disorder, then this is “the golden ring in the swine’s snout” or the pearl trampled under the feet of the swine.

    ON VIRGINITY 18

  15. Proverbs 15:19
    There are those who are called the slothful in the book of Wisdom, who strew their path with thorns, who consider harmful to the soul a zeal for deeds in keeping with the commandments of God, the demurrers against the apostolic injunctions, who do not eat their own bread with dignity, but, fawning on others, make idleness the art of life. Then, there are the dreamers who consider the deceits of dreams more trustworthy than the teachings of the Gospels, calling fantasies revelations. Apart from these, there are those who stay in their own houses, and still others who consider being unsociable and brutish a virtue without recognizing the command to love and without knowing the fruit of long-suffering and humility.

    ON VIRGINITY 23

  16. Proverbs 20:9
    Whose soul, then, is pure from stain? How has anyone not been struck by vanity or been trodden down by the foot of pride? Whose hand has never been touched by sin? Whose feet have never run toward evil? Who has not been polluted by a roving eye or been defiled by an undisciplined ear? Whose taste has never been preoccupied by its enjoyment, whose heart has remained unmoved by vain emotions?

    ON THE LORD’S PRAYER 5

  17. Proverbs 27:2
    If we did anything in those struggles for our religion that redounds to our honor in the telling, wisdom commands us to leave it to others to tell. “Let another man praise you, and not your own mouth.” And it is this very thing that our omniscient friend has not been conscious of in devoting the larger half of his book to self-glorification.

    AGAINST EUNOMIUS 1:12

  18. Proverbs 30:3-4
    It is not mere human wisdom that is claimed for himself by Solomon, who says, “God has taught me wisdom,” and who, where he says, “all my words are spoken from God,” refers to God all that is spoken by himself.

    AGAINST EUNOMIUS 3:2

  19. Proverbs 31:6
    Console each other with the following words. It is a good medicine that [Solomon] has for sorrow; for he bids wine be given to the sorrowful. He says this to us, the laborers in the vineyard, “Give,” therefore, “your wine to those that are in sorrow,” not that wine which produces drunkenness, plots against the senses and destroys the body, but such as gladdens the heart, the wine which the prophet recommends when he says, “Wine makes glad the heart of man.” Pledge each other in that liquor undiluted and with the unstinted goblets of the word, that thus our grief may be turned to joy and gladness, by the grace of the only-begotten Son of God, through whom be glory to God, even the Father, for ever and ever. Amen.

    FUNERAL ORATION ON MELETIUS

  20. Psalms 1:1
    The goal of the virtuous life is blessedness.… This is the summation and object of everything conceived in relation to the good. What is truly and properly contemplated and apprehended in this sublime concept, then, would reasonably be called the divine nature. For so the great Paul designated God when he put “blessed” before all the other words about God in one of his letters. He wrote in the following words, “The blessed and only ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality and who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no human being has seen or can see. To him be honor and rule forever.” All these sublime concepts about the divine would, then, in my opinion, constitute a definition of blessedness. For if someone were asked what beatitude is, he would give a properly pious answer if he followed Paul’s statement and said that the nature that transcends everything is first and properly called blessed. Among humans, however, that beatitude, which is the nature of the one participated in, occurs to a certain extent and is specified by participation in true being…
    The goal of the virtuous life is blessedness.… This is the summation and object of everything conceived in relation to the good. What is truly and properly contemplated and apprehended in this sublime concept, then, would reasonably be called the divine nature. For so the great Paul designated God when he put “blessed” before all the other words about God in one of his letters. He wrote in the following words, “The blessed and only ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality and who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no human being has seen or can see. To him be honor and rule forever.” All these sublime concepts about the divine would, then, in my opinion, constitute a definition of blessedness. For if someone were asked what beatitude is, he would give a properly pious answer if he followed Paul’s statement and said that the nature that transcends everything is first and properly called blessed. Among humans, however, that beatitude, which is the nature of the one participated in, occurs to a certain extent and is specified by participation in true being. Likeness to God, therefore, is a definition of human blessedness.

    ON THE INSCRIPTIONS OF THE PSALMS 1:1.5-6

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