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(1 )Christus Comprobator, p. 99, sq.
(1 )O twn Paterwn Pathr; o twn Nussaewn fwsthr, Council. Nic. II. Act. VI. Edition of Labbe, p. 477.-Nicephor. Callist H.E. xi.19.
(3 )Epist. III. (Zacagni's collection).
(4 )Notably Bellarmine: Gretser, the Jesuit, against the Calvinist Molino.
(5 )See Note I to the Introductory Letter to the Treatise.
(7 )In verba `faciamus hominem, 0' I. p. 140.
(8 )De Perf. Christiani Forma, III. p. 294, he calls the `Prince of darkness 0' the author of sin and death: In Christi Resurrect. III. p. 386, he calls Satan `the heart of the earth: 0' and p. 387 identifies him with sin. `And so the real wisdom visits that arrogant heart of the earth, so that the thought great in wickedness should vanish, and the darkness should be lightened, &c 0'.
(9 )As expressed by S. Thomas Aquinas Summ. I. Qu. xix. Art. 9, Deo nec nolente, nec volente, sed permittente .... Deus neque vult fieri, neque vult non fieri, sed vult permittere mala fieri.
(11 )On Infants' early Deaths, III. p. 336.
(13 )On the Making of Man, c. xiv.
(16 )In Sermon On the Baptism of Christ.
(17 )A. 1560 fol.; also Antwerp, p. 1562 (Latine).
(18 )His comparison of the hidden meaning of the proverb or parable (III. c. Eunom. p. 236) to the `turned up` side of the peacock's feather is beautiful in itself for language (e.g. `the varied painting of nature 0', `the half-circle shining in the midst with its dye of purple, 0' `the golden mist round the circle 0'): but it rather fails as a simile, when applied to the other or the literal side, which cannot in the case of parables be said to `lack beauty and tint 0'.
(19 )Cf Dallaeus, de panis et satisfactionibus, I. IV. c. 7, p. 368.
(20 )Cf. De An. et Resurr., 227 C.D.
(21 )Collected by Ceillier in his Introduction (Paris, 1860).
(25 )Comment. in Rom. ii. 9, P. 486.
(26 )De Hom. Op. c. viii.; De An. et Resurr. 205.
(28 )He does so De Principus I. praef. 5. C. Cels. II. 77, VIII. 49 sq.
(29 )De Anim. et Ressurectione, p. 198, 199, 213 sq.
(32 )This is an independent division to that mentioned above.
(33 )De la Philosophie D'Origene (Paris, 1884).
(34 )De eo quod immut., p. 30.
(35 )See De iis premature abripiuntur, p. 231, quoted above, p. 4.
(36 )See Dorner, Doctrine of the Person of Christ, Div. I. vol. ii. p. 314 (English Trans.).
(37 )It is to be noted further that the use of the terms ""Persona"" and proswpon by those who avoided the phrase treij upostaseij no doubt assisted in the formation of this suspicion. At the same time the Nicene anathema favoured the sense of upostasij as equivalent to ousia, and so appeared to condemn the Eastern use.
(38 )S. Athanasius, Tom. ad Antioch, 5.
(39 )Ad Afr. Episc. §4. S. Athanasius, however, does not shrink from the phrase treij upostaseij in contradistinction to the mia ousia: see the treatise, In illud, `Omnia mihi tradita sunt. 0'§6.
(40 )S. Bas. Ep. 125 (being the confession of faith drawn up by S. Basil for the subscription of Eustathius)
(41 )It appears on the whole more probable that the treatise is the work of S. Gregory; but it is found, n a slightly different shape, among the Letters of S. Basil. (Ep. 189 in the Benedictine Edition.)
(42 )In what sense this language was charged with "novelty" is not very clear. But the point of the objection appears to lie in a refusal to recognize that terms expressive of the Divine Nature, whether they indicate attributes or operations of that Nature, may be predicated of each upostasij severally, as well as of the ousia, without attaching to the terms themselves that idea of plurality which, so far as they express attributes or operations of the ousia, must be excluded from them.
(44 )The differentia here assigned to the Third Person is not, in S. Basil's own view, a differentia at all: for he would no doubt have been ready to acknowledge that this attribute is common to all Three Persons. S. Gregory, as it will be seen, treats the question as to the differentiation of the Persons somewhat differently, and rests his answer on a basis theologically more scientific.
(45 )S. Bas. Ep. 38 (Benedictine Ed.).
(47 )On S. Basil's language on this subject, see Dorner, Doctrine of the Person of Christ, Div. 1. vol. ii. pp. 309-11. (Eng. Trans.)
(48 )This statement strikes at the root of the theory held by Eunomius, as well as by the earlier Arians, that the agennhsia of the Father constituted His Essence. S. Gregory treats His agennhsia as that by which He is distinguished from the other Persons, as an attribute marking His hypostasis. This subject is treated more fully, with special reference to the Eunomian view, in the Ref. alt. libri Eunomii.
(49 )S. Gregory would apparently extend this argument even to the operations expressed by the names of "Redeemer," or "Comforter;" though he would admit that in regard of the mode by which these operations are applied to man, the names expressive of them are used in a special sense of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, yet he would argue that in neither case does the one Person act without the other two.
(50 )See Dorner, ut sup., pp. 317-18.
(51 )Especially in the treatise, De Anima et Resurrectione, and in that De Conditione Homisis. A notable instance is to be found in the former (p. 242 A.).
(52 )See Dorner, ut sup., p. 315, and p. 319, note 2.
(53 )for the treatise On Virginity. (The Paris Editors used Liveneius' Edition, based on (7) and (8).
(54 )for the treatise On Virginity. (The Paris Editors used Liveneius' Edition, based on (7) and (8).
(55 )for the treatise On Virginity. (The Paris Editors used Liveneius' Edition, based on (7) and (8).
(1 )both pamphlets. The `sheets 0' which Gregory says that he has collected are the 12 Books that follow. They are written in reply to Eunomius' pamphlet, `Apologia Apologiae, 0' itself a reply to Basil's Refutation. The other pamphlet of Eunomius seems to have come out during the composition of Gregory's 12 Books: and was afterwards answered by the latter in a second 12th Book, but not now, because of the shortness of the time in which he had a copy of the `heretical volume 0' in his hands. The two last books of the five which go under the title of Basil's Refutation are considered on good grounds to have been Gregory's, and to have formed that short reply to Eunomius which he read, at the Council of Constantinople, to Gregory of Nazianzen and Jerome (d. vir. illust. c. 128). Then he worked upon this longer reply. Thus there were in all three works of Gregory corresponding to the three attacks of Eunomius upon the Trinity.
to monimon ...epitolmwnta. This is the correction of Oehler for ton monon ...epitolmwn which the text presents. The Venetian ms. has epitolmwnti.
(2 )his refutation of titis heresy. This is Basil's 'Anatreptikoj tou apologhtikou tou duosebouj Eunomiou. `Basil, 0' says Photius, `with difficulty got hold of Eunomius' book, 0' perhaps because it was written originally for a small circle of readers, and wasin a highly scientific form. What happened next may be told in the words of Claudius Morellius (Prolegomena to Paris Edition of 1615): `When Basil's first essay against the foetus of Eunomius had been published, he raised his bruised head like a trodden worm, seized his pen, and began to rave more poisonously still as well against Basil as the orthodox faith. 0' This was Eunomius' `Apologia Apologiae: 0' of it Photius says, `His reply to Bash was composed for many Olympiads while shut up in his cell. This, like another Saturn, he concealed from the eyes of Basil till it had grown up, i.e. he concealed its by devouring its as long as Basil lived. 0' He then goes on to say that after Basil's death, Theodore (of Mopsuestia), Gregory of Nyssa, and Sophronius found it and dealt with it, though even then Eunomius had only ventured to show it to some of his friends. Philostorgius, the ardent admirer of Eunomius, makes the amazing statement that Basil died of despair after reading it.
(4 )`He asks for the intercession of Saint Paul 0' (Paris Edit. in marg.).
(5 )apoklhrwqeisan. This is probably the meaning, after the analogy of apoklhrwsij, in the sense (most frequent in Origen), of `favour, 0' `partiality, 0' passing into that of `caprice, 0' `arbitrariness, 0' cf. below, cap. 9, tij h apoklhrwsij,k.t.l. `How arbitrarily he praises himself. 0'
(6 )Photius reports very much the same as to his style, i.e. he shows a `prodigious ostentation: 0' uses `words difficult to pronounce, and abounding in many consonants, and that in a poetic, or rather a dithyrambic style: 0' he has `periods inordinately long: 0' he is `obscure, 0' and seeks `to hide by this very obscurity whatever is weak in his perceptions and conceptions, which indeed is often. 0' He `attacks others for their logic, and is very fond of using logic himself: 0' but `as he had taken up this science late in life, and had not gone very deeply into it, he is often found making mistakes. 0'
The book of Eunomius which Photius had read is still extant: it is his `Apologeticus 0' in 28 sections, and has been published by Canisius (Lectiones Antiquoe, I. 172 ff.). His ekqeoij thj tistewj, presented to the emperor Theodosius in the year 383, is also extant. This last is found in the Codex Theodosius and in the mss. which Livineius of Ghent used for his Greek and Latin edition of Gregory, 1574: it follows the Books against Eunomius. His `Apologia Apologiae, 0' which he wrote in answer to Basil's 5 (or 3) books against him, is not extant: nor the deuteroj logoj which Gregory answered in his second 12th Book.
Most of the quotations, then, from Eunomius, in these books of Gregory cannot be verified, in the case of a doubtful reading, &c.
(8 )that heretical book, i.e. the first `Apology 0' of Etmomius in 28 parts: a translation of it is given in Whistoh's Eunomianismus Redivivus.
(10 )tacin. We have no context to explain these allusions, the treatise of Eunomins being lost, which Gregory is now answering, i.e. the Apologia Apologiae.
(11 )Reading proj te to peraj.
(12 )This must be the `caricature 0' of the (Greek) Summary above. Eustathius of Sebasteia, the capital of Armenia, and the Galatian Basil, of Ancyra (Angora), are certainly mentioned, e. 6 (end). Twice did these two, once Semi-Arians, oppose Aetius and Eunomius, before Constantius, at Byzantium. On the second occasion, however (Sozomen, H.E. iv. 23, Ursacius and Valens arrived with the proscription of the Homoousion from Ariminum: it was then that "the world groaned to find itself Arian" (Jerome). The `accursed saint 0' `pale with fast, 0' i.e. Eustathius, in his Armenian monastery, gave Basil the Great a model for his own.
(14 )Oltiseris was probably the district, as Corniaspa was the village, in which Eunomius was born. It is a Celtic word: and probably suggests his half-Galatian extraction.
(15 )This can be no other than the district Chammanene, on the east bank of the Halys, where Galatia and Cappadocia join.
(16 )Probably the `Indian 0' Theophilus, who afterwards helped to organize the Anomoean schism in the reign of Jovian.
(17 )Gallus, Caesar 350-354, brother of Julian, not a little influenced by Aetius, executed by Constantius at Flanon in Dalmatia. During his short reign at Antioch, Domitian, who was sent to bring him to Italy, and his questor Montius were dragged to death through the streets by the guards of the young Caesar.
(18 )The same phrase occurs again: Refutation of Eunomius' Second Essay, p. 844: oi th prounikou sofia eggumnasqentej: ec ekeinhj gap dokei moi thj paraskeuhj ta eirhmena proenhnocenai: In the last word there is evidently a pun on prounikou; proferhj, in the secondary sense of `precocious, 0' is used by Iamblichus and Porphyry, and prounikoj; appears to have had the same meaning. We might venture, therefore, to translate `that knowing trick 0' of short-hand: but why Prunicus is personified, if it is personified, as in the Gnostic Prunicos Sophia, does not appear. See Epiphanius Haeres. 253 for the feminine Proper name.
The other possible explanation is that given in the margin of the Paris Edition, and is based on Suidas, i.e. Prunici sunt cursores celeres; hic pro celer scriba. Hesychius also says of the word; oi misqou komizontej ta wnia apo thj agoraj, ouj tinej paidariwnaj kalousin, dromeij, traxeij, oceij, eukinhtoi, gorgoi, misqwtoi. Here such `porter's 0' skill, easy going and superficial, is opposed to the more laborious task of tilling the soil.
(19 )For the baptisms of Eunomius, compare Ephiphanius Haer. 765. Even Arians who were not Anomoeans he rebaptized. The `helps of nature 0' may possibly refer to the `miracles 0' which Philostorgius ascribes both to Aetius and Eunomius.
Sozomen (vi. 26) says, "Eunomius introduced, it is said, a mode of discipline contrary to that of the Church, and endeavoured to disguise the innovation under the cloak of a grave and severe deportment." ...His followers "do not applaud a virtuous course of life ...so much as skill in disputation and the power of triumphing in debates."
(21 )The mh is redundant and owing to ouk.
(22 )Eisfrhsantwn. A word used in Aristophanes of `letting into court, 0' probably a technical word: it is a manifest derivation from eisforein. What the solecism is, is not clear; Gretser thinks that Eunomius meant it for eisphdan.
(24 )sunekrotei. The word has this meaning in Origen. In Philo (de Vita Mosis, p. 476, 1. 48, quoted by Viger.), it has another meaning, sunekrotoun alloj allon, mh apokamnein, i.e. `cheered. 0'
(25 )kaqufhsousin. This is the reading of the Venetian ms. The word hears the same forensic sense as the Latin praevaricari. The common reading is kaqubrisousin.
(27 )pareggrapton: for the vox nihili paragrapton. Oehler again has adopted the reading of the Ven. ms.
(29 )Sozomen (vi. 26): "After his (Eunomius) elevation to the bishopric of Cyzicus he was accused by his own clergy of introducing innovations. Eudoxius obliged him to undergo a public trial and give an account of his doctrines to the people: finding, however, no fault in him, Eudoxius exhorted him to return to Cyzicus. He replied he could not remain with people who regarded him with suspicion, and it is said seized this opportunity to secede from communion."
(30 )upografh; or else `on the subject of Basil's charge. 0'
(31 )tij h apoklhrwsij: this is a favourite word with Origen and Gregory.
(34 )eti tw=| en klhrw twn presbuterwn ierateuwn.
(36 )According to Ruffinus (Hist. Eccl.), his constitution was poisoned with jaundice within and without
(37 )en anwnumw tini Korniaspinhj esxatia. Cf. mega crhma uoj (Herod.) for the use of this genitive. In the next sentence ei anti, though it gives the sense translated in the text, is not so good as h anti (i.e. escatia), which Oehler suggests, but does not adopt.
With regard to Eunomius' birthplace, Sozomen and Philostorgius give Dacora (which the former describes as on the slopes of Mt Argaeus: but that it must have been on the borders of Galatia and Cappadocia is certain from what Gregory says here): `Probably Dacora was his paternal estate: Oltiseris the village to which it belonged 0' (Dict. Christ. Biog.; unless indeed Corniaspa, marked on the maps as a town where Cappadocia, Galatia and Pontus join, was the spot, and Oltiseris the district. Eunomius died at Dacora.
(41 )Afterwards of Antioch, and then 8th Bishop of Constantinople (360-370), one of the most influential of all the Arians. He it was who procured for Eunomius the bishopric of Cyzicus (359). (The latter must indeed have concealed his views on that occasion, for Constantius hated the Anomoens).
(44 )`The metropolitan remained unshaken. The rough threats of Modestus succeeded no better than the fatherly counsel of Enippius. 0' Gwatkins Arians.
(45 )Other words of Basil, before Modestus at Caesarea, are also recorded; "I cannot worship any created thing, being as I am God's creation, and having been bidden to be a God."
(46 )This cook is compared to Nabuzardan by Gregory Naz. also (Orat. xliii. 47). Cf. also Theodoret, iv. 19, where most of these events are recorded. The former says that `Nabuzardan threatened Basil when summoned before him with the maxaira of his trade, but was sent back to his kitchen fire. 0'
(47 )Modestus, the Lord Lieutenant or Count of the East, had sacrificed to the images under Julian, and had been re-baptized as an Arian.
(48 )there is the Supreme and Absolute Being, and another Being existing through the First, but after It. The language of this exposition of Eunomius is Aristotelian: but the contents nevertheless are nothing more nor less than Gnosticism, as Rupp well points out (Gregors v. Nyssa Leben und Meinungen, p. 132 sq.). Arianism, he says, is nothing but the last attempt of Gnosticism to force the doctrine of emanations into Christian theology, clothing that doctrine on this occasion in a Greek dress. It was still an oriental heresy, not a Greek heresy like Pelagianism in the next century.
Rupp gives two reasons why Arianism may be identified with Gnosticism.
1. Arianism holds the Logoj as the highest being after the Godhead, i.e. as the prwtotokoj thj ktisewj, and as merely the mediator between God and Man: just as it was the peculiar aim of Gnosticism to bridge over the gulf between the Creator and the Created by means of intermediate beings (the emanations).
2. Eunomius and his master adopted that very system of Greek philosophy which had always been the natural ally of Gnosticism: i.e. Aristotle is strong in divisions and differences, weak in `identifications: 0' he had marked with a clearness never attained before the various stages upwards of existencies in the physical world: and this is just what Gnosticism, in its wish to exhibit all things according to their relative distances from the 'Agennhtoj, wanted.
Eunomius has in fact in this formula of his translated all the terms of Scripture straight into those of Aristotle: he has changed the ethical-physical of Christianity into the purely physical; pneuma e.g. becomes ousia: and by thus banishing the spiritual and the moral he has made his 'Agennhtoj as completely `single 0' and incommunicable as the to prwton kinoun akinhton (Arist. Metaph. Xll. 7).
(49 )i.e. of the equality of Persons.
(54 )John x. 30; 2 Cor. xiii. 13.
(55 )he declares Him to be a work of both Persons. With regard to Gregory's own belief as to the procession of tile Holy Spirit, it may be said once for all that there is hardly anything (but see.p. 99, note 5) clear about it to be found in his writings. The question, in fact, remained undecided until the 9th century, the time of the schism of the East and West. But here, as in other points, Origen had approached the nearest to the teaching of the West: for he represents the procession as from Father and Son, just as often as from one Person or the other. Athanasius dues certainly say that the Spirit `unites the creation to the Son, and through the Son to the Father, 0' but with him this expression is not followed up: while in the Roman Church it led to doctrine. For why does the Holy Spirit unite the creation with God continuously and perfectly? Because, to use Bossuet's words, "proceeding from the Father and the Son He is their love and eternal union." Neither Basil, nor Gregory Nazianzen, nor Chrysostom, have anything definite about the procession of the Third Person.
(56 )kataghptikhj efodou-h kataghymj. These words are taken from the Stoic logic, and refer to the Stoic view of the standard of truth. To the question, How are true perceptions distinguished from false ones, the Stoics answered, that a true perception is one which represents a real object as it really is. To the further question, How may it be known that a perception faithfully represents a reality, they replied by pointing to a relative nor an absolute test-the degree of strength with which certain perceptions force themselves upon our notice. Some of our perceptions are of such a kind that they at once oblige us to bestow on them assent. Such perceptions produce in us that strength of conviction which the Stoics call a conception. Whenever a perception forces itself upon us in this irresistible form, we are no longer dealing with a fiction of the imagination but with something real. The test of irresistibility (kataghyij) was, in the first place, understood to apply to sensations from without, such sensations, according to the Stoic view, alone supplying the material for knowledge. An equal degree of certainty was, however, attached to terms deduced from originally true data, either by the universal and natural exercise of thought, or by scientific processes of proof. It is katagehyeij obtained in this last way that Gregory refers to, and Eunomius was endeavouring to create in the supra-natural world.
(58 )There is of course reference here to John i. 3: and Eunomius is called just below the `new theologian, 0' with an allusion of S. John, who was called by virtue of this passage essentially o qeologoj.
(59 )this school of the new circumcision. This accusation is somewhat discounted by Gregory's comparison of Eunomius elsewhere to Bardesanes and Marcion, to the Manichees, to Nicholaus, to Philo (see Book XI. 691, 704, VI. 607, and especially VII. 645), and by his putting him down a scholar of Plato. But a momentary advantage, calculated in accordance with the character and capacities of the great mass of Gregory's audience, could not be lost. The lessons of Libanius, the rhetorician, had not been thrown away on Gregory.
(61 )i.e. according as each inclines more or less to the First Good.
(62 )uncreate intelligible nature is far renewed from such distinctions. This was the impregnable position that Athanasius had taken up. To admit that the Son is less than the Father, and the Spirit less than the Son, is to admit the law of emanation such as hitherto conceived, that is, the gradual and successive degradation of God's substance; which had conducted oriental heretics as well as the Neoplatonists to a sort of pantheistic polytheism. Arius had indeed tried to resist this tendency so far as to bring back divinity to the Supreme Being; but it was at the expense of the divinity of the Son, Who was with him just as much a created Intermediate between God and man, as one of the Aeons: and Aetius and Eunomius treated the Holy Ghost also as their master had treated the Son. But Arianism tended at once to Judaism and, in making creatures adorable. to Greek polytheism. There was only one way of cutting short the phantasmagoria of divine emanations, without having recourse to the contradictory hypothesis of Arius: and that was to reject the law of emanation, as hitherto accepted, altogether. Far from admitting that the Supreme Being is always weakening and degrading Himself in that which emanates from Him, Athanasius lays down the principle that He produces within Himself nothing but what is perfect, and first, and divine: and all that is not perfect is a work of the Divine Will, which draws it out of nothing (i.e. creates it), and not out of the Divine Substance. This was the crowning result of the teaching of Alexandria and Origen. See Denys (De la Philosophic d'Origene, p. 432, Paris, 1884).
(63 )But He is not begotten. Athanasian Creed.
(66 )tou pantoj. It is worth while to mention,once for all, the distinction in the names used by the Stoics for the world, which had long since passed from them into the common parlance. Including the Empty, the world is called to pan, without it, olon (to olon, ta ola frequently occurs with the Stoics). The pan, it was said, is neither material nor immaterial, since it consists of both.
(67 )Ti gar baptizontai eij Xriston. This throws some light on the much discussed passage, `Why are these baptized for the dead? 0' Gregory at all events seems here to take it to mean, `Why are they baptized in the name of a dead Christ? 0' as he is adopting partially S. Paul's words, 1 Cor. xv. 29; as well as Heb. xi. 1 above.
(69 )Cf. Gregory's theory of human perfection; De anima et Resurrectione, p. 229, 230. `The All-creating Wisdom fashioned these souls, these receptacles with free wills, as vessels as it were, for this very purpose, that there should be some capacities able to receive His blessings, and become continually larger with the inpouring of the stream. Such are the wonders that the participation in the Divine blessings works; it makes him into whom they come larger and more capacious. ...The fountain of blessings wells up unceasingly, and the partaker's nature, finding nothing superfluous and without a use in that which it receives, makes the whole influx an enlargement of its own proportions. ...It is likely, therefore, that this bulk will mount to a magnitude wherein no limit checks the growth.
(70 )Proverbs viii. 22 (LXX). For another discussion of this passage, see Book II. ch. 10 (beginning) with note.
(72 )in the Canon. (Oehler's stopping is here at fault, i.e. he begins a new paragraph with 'Ekdexetai ton logon touton o Pauloj). We need not speculate whether Gregory was aware that the Epistle to the Colossians (quoted below) is an earlier `Gospel 0' than S. John's.
(75 )taciarxaj kai loxagouj, ekatontarxouj te kai xiliarxouj. The difference between the two pairs seems to be the difference between `non-commissioned 0' and `commissioned 0' officers.
(77 )Isaiah vi. 6, Isaiah vi. 7.
(80 )taj men, i.e. Ousioj. Eunomius' Arianism here degenerates into mere Emanationism: but even in this system the Substances were living; it is beat on the whole to translate ousia `beeing, 0' and this, as a rule, is adhered to throughout.
(81 )kakeinai ai energeiai autai.
(82 )tw parhllacqai, k.t.l. This is Oehler's emendation for the faulty reading to of the editions
(86 )1 Cor. i. 24. "Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God."
(87 )John v. 23. The Gospel enjoins honour and means love: the Law enjoins love and means honour.
(88 )a prelude. See Psalm vii. 1 and Psalm xviii. 1, "fortress," krataiwma; sterewma, LXX.
(89 )The meaning is that, if the Son is later (in time) than the Father, then time must have already existed for this comparison to be made; i.e. the Son is later than time as well as the Father. This involves a contradiction.
(90 )step by step upwards. si analusewj. This does not seem to be used in the Platonic (dialectic) sense, but in the N.T. sense of "return" or "retrogression," cf. Luke xii. 36. Gregory elsewhere Hom. Opif. xxv.), uses analuein in this sense: speaking of the three examples of Christ's power of raising from the dead, he says, `you see ...all these equally at the command of one and the same voice returning ('analuontaj) to life. 0' thus also came to mean "death," as a `return. 0' Cf. Ecclesiast. xi. 7.
(91 )brightness. Heb. i. 3, apaugasma thj dochj.
(92 )Compare Eccles. iii. 1-11; and Eccles. viii. 5, "and a wise man's heart discerneth both time and judgment."
(93 )Acts xvii. 28; Col. i. 17.
(94 )kai ton tou kuriwtatou logon epexei:
(95 )The generation of the Son does not fall within time. On this "eternal generation" Denys (De la Philosophie d'Origéne, p. 452) has the following remarks, illustrating the probable way that Athanasians would have dealt with Eunomius: "If we do not see how God's indivisibility remains in the co-existence of the three Persons, we can throw the blame of this difficulty upon the feebleness of our reason: while it is a manifest contradiction to admit at one and the same time the simplicity of the Uncreated, and some change or inequality within His Being. I know that the defenders of the orthodox belief might be troubled with their adversaries' argument. (Eunom. Apol. 22.) `If we admit that the Son, the energy creative of the world, is equal to the Father, it amounts to admitting that He is the actual energy of the Father in Creation, and that this energy is equal to His essence. But that is to return to the mistake of the Greeks who identified His essence and His energy, and consequently made the world coexist with God. 0' A serious difficulty, certainly, and one that has never yet solved, nor will be; as all the questions likewise which refer to the Uncreated and Created, to eternity and time. It is true we cannot explain how God's eternally active energy does prolong itself eternally. But what is this difficulty compared with those which, with the hypothesis of Eunomius, must be swallowed? We must suppose, so that the 'Agennhtoj, since His energy is not eternal, because in a given place and moment, and that He was at the point the Gennhtoj. We must suppose that this activity communicated to a creature that privilege of the Uncreated which is most incommunicable, viz. the power of creating other creatures. We must suppose that these creatures, unconnected as they are with the 'Agennhtoj (since He has not made them), nevertheless conceive of and see beyond their own creator a Being, who cannot be anything to them. [This direct intuition on our part of the Deity was a special tenet of Eunomius.] Finally we must suppose that these creatures, seeing that Eunomius agrees with orthodox believers that the end of this world will be but a commencement, will enter into new relations with this 'Agennhtoj, when the Son shall have submitted all things to the Father."
(96 )Heb. xi. 1; 2 Cor. iv. 18.
(98 )is presented alive; cwogoneitai. This is the LXX., not the classical use, of the word. Cf. Exod. i. 17; Judges viii. 19, &c. It is reproduced in the speech of S. Stephen, Acts vii. 19: cf. Luke xvii. 33, "shall preserve (his life).'
(99 )apokritikouj, active, so, the Medical writers. The Latin is `in meatus destinato descendit 0' takes it passive (apokritikouj).
(100 )neura. So since Galen's time: not `tendon. 0'
(101 )Punctuating paraskeuazetai, epeidh, epeidh, k.t.l. instead of a full stop, as Oehler.
(102 )Gregory replaces `sameness 0' (in the case of the energies in Eunomius argument) by `likeness 0' since the Father and the Son could not be said to be the same, and their energies, therefore, are not identical but similar.
(106 )Reading autoj; instead of Oehler's autoj.
(107 )only one thing amongst the things which follow, &c. The Latin translation is manifestly wrong here, "si recte a te assertum est, iis etiam quae ad primam substantian sequuntur aliquam operationem inesse." The Greek is eiper h energeia twn parepomenwn tij einai tu powth ousia memaotuohtai.
(108 )kata analuoin. So Plutarch, ii. 76 E. and see above (cap. 25, note 6.).
(111 )'Epinoia is the opposite of ennoia, `the intuitive idea. 0' It means an "alterthought," and, with the notion of unnecessary addition, a `conceit. 0' Here it is applied to conventional, or not purely natural difference. See Introduction to Book XIII. for the fuller meaning of 'Epinoia.
(112 )mh dexoito. This use of the optative, where the subjunctive with ean might have been expected, is one of the few instances in Gregory's Greek of declension from Classic usage; in the latter, when ei with the optative does denote subjective possibility, it is only when the condition is conceived of as of frequent repetition, e.g. 1 Peter iii. 14. The optative often in this Greek of the fourth century invades the province of the subjunctive.
(114 )See Note on 'Agennhtoj, p. 100.
(116 )Reading ousan for ousian of Oehler and Migne.
(118 )presbeuein. So Lucian. Diog. Laert., and Origen passim.
(119 )your own words, i.e. not ours, as you say. The Codex of Turin has toij hmeteroij, and hmin above: but Oehler has wisely followed that of Venice. Eunomius had said of Basil's party (§34) `justice records in your own words a verdict against yourselves. 0' `No, 0' Gregory answers; `your words (interpreting our doctrine) alone lend themselves to that. 0' But to change kaq' hmwn of the Codd. also to kaq' umwn would supply a still better sense.
(121 )osa epiqewreitai th fusei.
(125 )John xvii. 23. "I in them, and thou in Me, that they may be perfected into one." (R.V.)
(126 )upenantiwj, i.e. as logical "contraries" differ from each other. This is not an Aristotelian, but a Neo-Platonic use of the word (i.e. Ammonius, a.d. 390, &c.). It occurs so again in this Book frequently.
(129 )plhn all' epeidh esti kai en qhrioij krioij.
(130 )arbitrary distribution, apoklhrwsewj: kat' apoklhrwsin "at random," is also used by Sextus Empiric. (a.d. 200), Clem. Alex., and Greg Naz.
(131 )One First Cause, monarxiaj. In a notable passage on the Greeks who came up to the Feast (John xii. 20), Cyril (Catena, p. 307), uses the same word. "Such, seeing that some of the Jews' customs did not greatly differ from their own, as far as related to the manner of sacrifice, and the belief in a One first Cause ...came up with them to worship," &c. Philo had already used the word so (De Charit.). Athanasius opposes it to poluqeia (Quoest. ad Antioch. I.).
(133 )enohsamen: aorist of instantaneous action.
(135 )Putting a full stop at sunageiromen. Oehler otherwise.
(136 )Isaiah xxix. 13; Matthew xv. 8.
(137 )the Master's mind. "But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in Me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea." Matth. xviii. 6; Mark ix. 42.
(140 )Transpositions of the terms in his own false premises; twn sofismatwn antistrofaj. The same as "the professional twisting of premisses," and "the hooking backward and forward and twisting of premisses" below. The terms Father and 'Agennhtoj are transposed or twisted into each other's place in this `irrefragable syllogism. 0' It is `a reductio ad absurdum 0' thus:-
Father means 'Agennhtoj (Basil's premiss),
\ 'Agennhtoj means Father.
The fallacy of Eunomius consists in making `Father 0' universal in his own premiss, when it was only particular in Basil's. "'Agennhtoj means the whole contents of the word Father," which therefore cannot mean having generated a son. It is a False Conversion.
This Conversion or antiotrofh is illustrated in Aristotle's Analytics, Prior. I. iii. 3. It is legitimate thus:-
Some B is A
\ Some A is (some) B.
(141 )kata thn twn antikeimeiwn fnsin. If 'Agennhtoj means not having a son, then to affirm `God is always 'Agennhtoj 0' is even to deny (its logical contradictory) `God once had a Son. 0'
(143 )proj tw. Cod. Ven., surely better than the common proj to, which Oehler has in his text.
(144 )eleuqeria; late Greek, for eleuqeriothj.
(145 )"the living whole,' swmatoj: this is the radical meaning of swma, and also the classical. Viger. (Idiom. p. 143 note) distinguishes four meanings under this. 1. Safety. 2. Individuality. 3. Living presence. 4. Life: and adduces instances of each from the Attic orators.
(146 )to kathgkulwmenon thj twn sufismatwn plokhj. See c. 38, note 7. The false premisses in the syllogisms have been-
1. Father (partly) means 'Agennhtoj.
Things which mean the same in part, mean the same in all (false premiss).
\ Father means 'Agennhtoj (false).
2. Father means 'Agennhtoj (false).
Agennhtoj does not mean `having a Son. 0'
\ Father does not mean `having a Son 0' (false).
(147 )enedeicato, ou to epekeina. This is the reading of the Turin Cod., and preferable to that of the Paris edition.
(148 )The first syllogism was-
`Father 0' means the `coming from nothing; 0'
(`Coming from nothing 0' does not mean `begetting a Son 0')
\ Father does not mean begetting a Son.
He "pulls to pieces" this conclusion by taking its logical `contrary 0' as the first premiss of his second syllogism; thus-
Father means begetting a Son;
(Father means 'Agennhtoj)
\ 'Agennhtoj means begetting a Son.
From which it follows that before that begetting the Almighty was not 'Agennhtoj.
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 0' means `coming from nothing. 0' Eunomius strives to show that, in both, such a premiss leads to an absurdity. But Gregory ridicules both for contradicting each other.
(149 )to men mh dunasqai. The negative, absent in Oehler, is recovered from the Turin Cod.
(150 )John xvi. 15. Oehler conjectures these words (!Exei o pathr) are to be repeated; and thus obtains a good sense, which the common reading, o pathr eipon, does not give.
(152 )en th periodw kai anastrofh twn omoiwn rhmatwn.
(153 )auto to peplasmenon thj uponoiaj.
(154 )the parable, i.e. of the Tares. Matthew xiii. 27: cf. v. 52.
(156 )Heb. vii. 9, Heb. vii. 10; Genesis xiv. 18.
(159 )Heb i. 3. (wn, not genomenoj).
(162 )cenizei, intrans. N.T. Polyb. Lucian.
(163 )eqeloqrhskeiaj, "will worship."
(164 )conjunctive particles, sundesmoi. In Aristotle's Poetics (xx. 6), these are reckoned as one of the 8 `parts of speech. 0' The term sundesmoj is illustrated by the examples men, htoi, dh, which leaves no doubt that it includes at all events conjunctions and particles. Its general character is defined in his Rhetoric iii. 12, 4: "It makes many (sentences) one." Harris (Hermes ii. c. 2), thus defines a conjunction, "A part of speech devoid of signification itself, but so formed as to help signification by making two or more significant sentences to be one significant sentence," a definition which manifestly comes from Aristotle.
The comparison here seems to be between these constantly recurring particles, themselves `devoid of significant, 0' in an `elegant 0' discourse, and the perpetually used epithets, "fools," &c., which, though utterly meaningless, serve to connect his dislocated paragraphs. The `assembly 0' (sunacij, always of the synagogue or the Communion. See Suicer) of his words is brought, it is ironically implied, into some sort of harmony by these means.
(165 )A hit at the Anomooeans. `Your subtle distinctions, in the invinsible world of your own mind, between the meanings of "following" are like the unlikenesses which you see between the Three Persons. 0'
(166 )wj einai men ton Qeon kata tauton wj einai pote (infinitive by attraction to preceding) kai einai pepisteutai.
(167 )euariqmhtwn rhmatwn. But it is possible that the true reading may be eurufmwn, alluding to the `rhythm 0' in the form of abuse with which Eunomius connected his arguments (preceding section).
(168 )ouk eij to einai suairountej.
(169 )He gives to it the whole contents of godhead. It was the central point in Eunomius' system that by the 'Agennhsia we can comprehend the Divine Nature; he trusts entirely to the Aristotelian divisions (logical) and sub-divisions. A mere word (gennhtoj) was thus allowed to destroy the equality of the Son. It was almost inevitable, therefore, that his opponent, as a defender of the Homoousion, should occasionally fall back so far upon Plato, as to maintain that opposites are joined and are identical with each other, i.e. that gennhsij and agennhsia are not truly opposes to each other. Another method of combating this excessive insistence on the physical and logical was, to bring forward the ethical realities; and this Gregory does constantly throughout this treatise. We are to know God by Wisdom, and Truth, and Righteousness. Only occasionally (as in the next section) does he speak of the `eternity 0' of God: and here only because Eunomius has obliged him, and in order to show that the idea is made up of two negations, and nothing more.
(170 )from prophecy. Psalm x. 16. Basileusei Kurioj eij ton aiwna, kai eij ton aiwna tou aiwnoj: Psalm xxix. 10. kaqieitai Kurioj Basileuj eij ton aiwna: Psalm lxxiv. 12. 'O de qeoj basileuj hmwn pro aiwnoj.
(173 )ou peri to aidion qewreisqai.
(174 )Cf. Heb. xi. 1, of faith, elpizomenwn upostasisj pragmatwn.
(176 )kata diametron allhloij antikeimenwn, i.e. Contradictories in Logic.
(177 )As in A or E, both of which have the Particular below them (I or O) as a half-way to the contrary Universal. Thus-
A
All men are mortal.
E
I
Some men are mortal.
O
E
No men are mortal.
A
No men are mortal. Some men are not mortal. All men are mortal. But between A and O, E and I, there is no half-way.
(178 )Beginning (Contraries) Beginningless.
Endless (Contraries) Ending.
(179 )upenantiwj diakeimenwn. The same term has been used to express the opposition between Ungenerate and Generated: so that it means both Oppositions, i.e. Contraries and Contradictories.
(180 )Philip. ii. 9. onoma to uper pan onoma.
(182 )Adopting o logoj from the Venice Cod. (e/i pantwj o logoj sunenexqhsetai). The verb cannot be impersonal: and tij above, the only available nominative, does not suit the sense very well.
Gregory constructs this scheme of Opposition after the analogy of Logical Opposition. Beginning is not so opposed to Beginning-less, as it is to Ending, because with the latter there is no half-way, i.e. no word of definition in common.
(184 )ton thj aitiaj logon. This is much more probably the meaning, because of before above, than "on the score of the different kind of causation" (Non omne quod procedat nascitur, quamvis omne procedat quod nascitur. S. August.). It is a direct testimony to the `Filioque 0' belief. "The Spirit comes forth with the Word, not begotten with Him, but being with and accompanying and proceeding from Him." Theodoret. Serra. II.
(4 )This is perhaps the force of twn olwn: "the Lord of the Old Covenant as well as of the New." But twn olwn may mean simply "the Universe."
(8 )Or, somewhat more literally, "He admits of distinction into belie, in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, being divided," &c.
(10 )That nature which transcends our conceptions (uperkeiment).
(11 )Or "be conjoined with such attribute:" autw probably refers, like peri auton kai en autw just above, to Qeoj or to Qeion, but it may conceivably refer to ei ti makarion, k.t.l.
(12 )hgemonikon. Cf. Ps. li. 12 in [LXX]. (Spiritus principalis in Vulg., "free spirit" in the "Authorised" Version, and in the Prayer-book Version).
(21 )Or, "in which we were held by sin, being sold." The reference is to Rom. vii. 7 and Rom. vii. 14, but with the variation of upo thj amartiaj, for upo thn amartian, and a change in the order of the words.
(22 )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 anastaj th trith hmera, kai odopoihsaj pash sarki thn ek nekrwn anastasin k.t.l.
(26 )Or, possibly, "and the contrast he makes between the one and the many, &c. is irrelevant" (allwj antidiairei): the quotation is from Ps. xcvi. 6 [LXX.].
(27 )Cf. S. John i. 18, reading (as S. Gregory seems to have done) qeoj for uioj.
(28 )kai en proj ton patera ontoj. It may be questioned whether the text is sound: the phrase seems unusual; perhaps en has been inserted in error from the preceding clause kai en tw patri ontoj, 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).
(34 )parallagh (Cf. S. James i. 17).
(35 )Or "I am He that is," Ex. iii. 14.
(36 )The reference seems to be to Gal. iv. 8.
(38 )There is perhaps a reference here to Col. iii. 24.
(41 )Cf. Phil. ii. 10, Phil. ii. 11.
(42 )Cf. Phil. ii. 10, Phil. ii. 11.
(43 )Prov. viii. 5 (Septuagint).
(48 )uyiston, whence the name of the sect.
(49 )Cf. 2 Cor. vi. 15, 2 Cor vi. 16.
(57 )Cf. S. John xix. 23, John xix. 24.
(59 )Cf. 1 Cor. xii. 6 and 1 Cor. xii. 11.
(65 )Ps. cxlviii. 5, or Ps. xxxiii. 9 in [LXX.]
(66 )Cf. Col. i. 16 and Col. i. 17.
(67 )"If this is so:" i.e. if Eunomius means his words in a Christian sense.
(71 )This, or something like this, appears to be the force of olon.
(72 )The quotation does not verbally correspond with Eunomius' words as cited above.
(76 )Ps. cxlviii. 5, or Ps. xxxiii. 9 in [LXX.]
(80 )Reading en atonoush th lecei for enatonoush th lecei (the reading of the Paris edition, which Oehler follows).
(81 )Cf. Heb. i. 3. The quotation is not verbally exact.
(83 )Ps. lxxxi. 10, [LXX.] The words prosfatoj ("new") and allotrioj ("alien") are both represented in the A.V. by "strange," and so in R.V. The Prayer-book version expresses them by "strange" and "any other." Both words are subsequently employed by Gregory in his argument.
(84 )Hereby, i.e. by the use of the term prwtotokoj as applicable to the Divinity of the Son.
(87 )Cf. Heb. viii. 13, whence the phrase is apparently adapted.
(90 )Col. i. 18 (cf. Rev. i. 5).
(95 )Cf. Acts ii. 24. See note 2 p. 104, supra.
(96 )The phrase is not verbally the same as in Tit. iii. 5.
(99 )Cf. S. John xx. 17: the quotation is not verbal.
(102 )The Humanity of Christ being regarded as this "first-fruits:" unless this phrase is to be understood of the Resurrection, rather than of the Incarnation, in which case the first-fruits will be His Body, and analabwn should be rendered by "having resumed."
(103 )Rom. ix. 16. The reference next following may be to S. John xii. 26, or John xiv. 3; or to Col. iii. 3.
(105 )Phil. ii. 10, Phil. ii. 11.
(109 )Reading oikonomei or oikodomei.
(110 )Or "were generated." The reference is to Ps. cxlviii. 5.
(111 )diasthmatikhj seems to include the idea of extension in time as well as in space.
(113 )The reference may be to the Song of Solomon i. 3.
(116 )That is, by using as the terms of his antithesis, not "Son" and "Father," but "Son" and "Ungenerate," he avoids suggesting relationship between the two Persons, and does suggest that the Second Person stands in the same opposition to the First Person in which all created objects stand as contrasted with Him.
(118 )tomh genesqaiti toutwn epishj omologeitai. This may possibly mean "it is acknowledged that each of those alternatives" (viz. that that which comes into being is uncreate, and that that which creates should itself be created) "is equally untrue." But this view would not be confined to those who held the Catholic doctrine: the impossibility of the former alternative, indeed, was insisted upon by the Arians as an argument in their own favour.
(121 )Ps. cxiv. 4, in Septuagint.
(124 )Rom. i. 25, where para ton ktisanta may be better translated "besides the Creator," or "rather than the Creator," than as in the A.V.
(126 )Prov. viii. 22 (LXX.). The versions of Aquila, Theodotion, and Symmachus (to one or more of which perhaps §9 refers), all render the Hebrew by ekthsato ("possessed"), not by ektise ("created"). But Gregory may be referring to mss. of the LXX. version which read ekthsato. It is clear from what follows that Mr. Gwatkin is hardly justified in his remark (Studies of Arianism, p. 69), that "the whole discussion on Prov. viii. 22 (LXX.), Kurioj ektise me k.t.l., might have been avoided by a glance at the original." The point of the controversy might have been changed, but that would have been all. Gregory seems to feel that ekthsato requires an explanation, though he has one ready.
(134 )Prov. viii. 23-25 (not quite verbal, from the LXX.).
(135 )Or "to be brought into harmony with Christian doctrine" (efarmosqhnai tw logw)
(147 )Joel ii. 28: Acts ii. 17.
(151 )Cf. S. Matt. ix. 12, and parallel passages.
(152 )Cf. Is. xl. 12 and Is. xl. 24. The quotation is not verbally from the LXX.
(157 )Reading authj, with Oehler. The general sense is the same, if autw be read; "does yet more strongly attest His existence from all eternity."
(165 )If this phrase is a direct quotation from Eunomius, it is probably from some other context: its grammatical structure does not connect it with what has gone before, nor is it quite clear where the quotation ends, or whether the illustration of the instrument is Eunomius' own, or is Gregory's exposition of the statement of Eunomius.
(170 )Here again the exact connexion of the quotation from Eunomius with the extracts preceding is uncertain.
(176 )This is apparently a quotation from Eunomius in continuation of what has gone before.
(177 )The word employed is energeia; which might be translated by "active force," or "operation," as elsewhere.
(180 )Cf. the use of eggastrimuqoj in LXX. (e.g. Lev. xix. 31, Is. xliv. 25.
(190 )Eph. iv. 6. The application of the words to the Son is remarkable.
(196 )S. Matt. ii. 20. The word yuxhn may be rendered by either "life" or "soul."
(197 )S. John viii. 40. This is the only passage in which our Lord speaks of Himself by this term.
(199 )Cf. S. Luke v. 20, Luke v. 23, and the parallel passages in S. Matt. ix. and S. Mark ii.
(202 )Cf. S. John x. 17, John x. 18. Here again the word yuxhn is rendered in the A. V. by "life."
(203 )Ps. xvi. 8. Acts ii. 27, Acts ii. 31.
(204 )Acts ii. 36. A further exposition of Gregory's views on this passage will be found in Book V.
(209 )Acts vii. 14. Cf. Gen. xlvi. 27, and Deut. x. 22.
(213 )Cf. the response to the words of the Priest at the elevation the Gifts in the Greek Liturgies.
(217 )1 S. John ii. 1. The word is in the A. V. rendered "advocate.")
(218 )From which is derived the name Paraclete, i.e. Comforter or Advocate.
(221 )The text reads, "that God is called righteousness," but the argument seems to require the genitive case. The reference may be to Ps. iv. I.
(223 )With this passage cf. S. John i. 12, S. John iii. 6; Rom. viii. 14; S. 1 John iii. 3.
(224 )S. John xx. 21, and S. John i. 16.
(227 )S. John xii. 41. The "older tradition" means presumably the ancient interpretation of the Jews.
(228 )Cf. Acts xxviii. 25, Acts xxviii. 26. The quotation is not verbal.
(233 )Cf. Col. i. 16; but the enumeration varies considerably.
(234 )The last of these epithets is from Ps. li. 14 (pneuma hgemonikon, the "Spiritus principalis" of the Vulgate, the "free spirit" of the English version); the "right spirit" of ver.12 being also applied by S. Gregory to the Holy Spirit, while the epithet "good" is from Ps cxlii. 10.
(237 )Ps. viii. 7, Ps. viii. 8.
(241 )Cf. Phil. ii. 10, Phil. ii. 11, a passage which is apparently considered as explanatory of 1 Cor. xv. 28.
(243 )See above, §8 of this book.
(244 )Or, "not the first-born of beings of a different race, but of those of his own stock."
(245 )omogenh, "of the same stock": the word being the same which (when coupled with adelfon) has been translated, in the passages preceding, by "begotten with."
(246 )anabebhke: the word apparently is intended by Eunomius to have the force of "transcended"; Gregory, later on, criticizes its employment in this sense.
(250 )If we read kathxhsewj for the kaqhghsewj of Oehler's text we have a clearer sense, "the Apostle plants by his instruction."
(266 )2 Cor. i. 3, 2 Cor. i. 4.
(271 )Ps. lxvi. 10, Ps. lxvi. 11.
(2 )The earlier editions here omit a long passage, which Oehler restores.
(4 )Inserting kai, which does not appear here in Oehler's text, but is found in later quotations of the same passsage: authj is also found in the later citations.
(6 )Oehler's punctuation here seems to admit of alteration.
(7 )Reading th xrhsei twn agiwn for th krisei twn agiwn. the reading of Oehler: the words are apparently a quotation from Eunomius, from whom the phrase xrhsij twn agiwn has already been cited.
(11 )Substituting pasan for the pasin of Oehler's text.
(13 )Prov. viii. 22 (LXX.). On this passage see also Book II. §10.
(17 )The hiatus in the Paris editions ends here.
(22 )Compare with what follows Prov. viii. 12, sqq. (LXX.).
(25 )Prov. viii. 21-22 (LXX.).
(26 )Prov. viii. 22 sqq. (LXX.).
(29 )Cf. Prov. viii. 27-8 (LXX.).
(30 )Or "according to the apparent sense."
(31 )Prov. xxx. 3 (LXX. ch. xxiv.).
(32 )Prov. xxxi. 1 (LXX. ch. xxiv.). The ordinary reading in the LXX. seems to be upo qeou, while Oehler retains in his text of Greg. Nyss. the apo qeou of the Paris editions.
(33 )Prov. ix. 1, which seems to be spoken of as "earlier" in contrast, not with the main passage under examination, but with those just cited.
(34 )If prostiqhsi be the right reading, it would almost seem that Gregory had forgotten the order of the passages, and supposed Prov. viii. 22 to have been written after Prov. ix. 1. To read protiqhsi, ("presents to us") would get rid of this difficulty, but it may be that Gregory only intends to point on that the idea of the union of the two natures, from which the "communicatio idiomatum" results, is distinct from that of the preparation for the Nativity, not to insist upon the order in which, as he conceives, they are set forth in the book of Proverbs.
(37 )perilhpth appears to be used as equivalent to perilhptikh.
(38 )Cf. Prov. viii. 12 (LXX.)
(41 )The quotation is an inexact reproduction of Prov. viii. 22 (LXX.).
(47 )Is. ix. 6 (LXX.). "The Everlasting Father" of the English Version.
(52 )Prov. viii. 32 (not verbally agreeing with the LXX.).
(53 )gennhma. This word, in what follows, is sometimes translated simply by the word "product," where it is not contrasted with poihma (the "product of making"), or where the argument depends especially upon its grammatical form (which indicates that the thing denoted is the result of a process), rather than upon the idea of the particular process.
(55 )If, that is, they speak of the "generated essence" in contra-distinction to "ungenerate essence" they are precluded from saying that the essence of the Son is that He is begotten, and that the essence of the Father is that He is ungenerate: that which constitutes the essence cannot be made an epithet of the essence.
(58 )Oehler's punctuation is here slightly altered.
(63 )gennhma. E. g. S. Matt. xxvi. 29.
(64 )gegennhkota: which, as answering to gennhma, is here translated "produced" rather than "begotten."
(65 )gennhmata exidnwn. E. g. S. Matt. iii. 7.
(75 )Reading kata to nooumenon, for kata ton nooumenon as the words stand in the text of Oehler, who cites no mss. in favour of the change which he has made.
(80 )1 Sam. ii. 12. The phrase is uioi loimoi, or "pestilent sons," as in the LXX. Gregory's argument would seem to require the reading uioi loimou.
(81 )The meaning of this seems to be that the Anomoean party make the same charge of "inconsistency" against the orthodox, which Gregory makes against Eunomius, basing that charge on the fact that the title "Son" is not interpreted in the same figurative way as the other titles recited. Gregory accordingly proceeds to show why the name of "Son" stands on a different level from those titles, and is to be treated in a different way.
(82 )ep autwn: perhaps "with reference to man." the plural being employed here to denote the race of men, spoken of in the preceding clause collectively as to to euergetoumenon.
(83 )Oehler's punctuation here seems faulty, and is accordingly not followed.
(1 )Reading, with the older editions, th qewria. Oehler substitutes thn qewpian (a variation which seems to give no good sense, unless qewria be translated as "subject of contemplation"), but alleges no ms. authority for the change.
(2 )Oehler's punctuation seems less clear than that of the older editions, which is here followed.
(5 )The reference is to S. Basil's treatise against Eunomius (ii. 7-8; p. 242-4 in the Benedictine ed.). Oehler's punctuation is apparently wrong, for Gregory paraphrases not only the rule, but the reason given for it, from S. Basil, from whom the last words of the sentence are a direct quotation.
(9 )1 Tim. iii. 16. Here, as elsewhere in Gregory's writings, it appears that he read qeoj in this passage.
(11 )S. Luke ii. 6, S. Luke ii. 7.
(12 )Cf. Ps. xxxiii. 9, and Ps. cxlviii. 5, in LXX. (reading egennhqhsan).
(13 )The force of logoj here appears to be nearly equivalent to "idea," in the sense of an exact expression of the nature of a thing. Gulonius renders it by "ratio."
(14 )The argument appears to be this:-The Anomoeans assert, on the ground that He is created, that the Son's essence is trepton, liable to change; where there is the possibility of change, the nature must have a capacity of inclining one way or the other, according to the balance of will determining to which side the nature shall incline: and that this is the condition of the angels may be seen from the instance of the fallen angels, whose nature was inclined to evil by their proairesij. It follows that to say the Son is treptoj implies that He is on a level with the angelic nature, and might fall even as the angels fell.
(15 )Cf. Heb. i. 4, and foll. It is to be noted that Gregory connects palin in v. 6, with eisagagh, not treating it, as the A.V. does, as simply introducing another quotation. This appears from his later reference to the text
(16 )Cf. Ps. cii. 25, Ps. cii. 26.
(17 )Oehler's punctuation here seems to be unsatisfactory.
(18 )Cf. Col. i. 15. Prwtotokoj may be, as it is in the Authorized Version, translated either by "first born," or by "first-begotten." Compare with this passage Book II. §8, where the use of the word in Holy Scripture is discussed.
(25 )Oehler's punctuation, which is probably due to a printer's error, is here a good deal altered.
(27 )This interpretation is of course common to many of the Fathers, though S. Augustine, for instance, explains the "ninety and nine" otherwise, and his explanation has been often followed by modern writers and preachers. The present interpretation is assumed in a prayer, no doubt of great antiquity, which is found in the Liturgy of S. James, both in the Greek and the Syriac version, and also in the Greek form of the Coptic Liturgy of S. Basil, where it is said to be "from the Liturgy of S. James."
(29 )See Book II. §§4 and 8, and note on the former passage.
(30 )With this passage may be compared the parallel passage in Bk. II. §8. The interpretation of the "many brethren" of those baptized suggests that Gregory understood the "predestination" spoken of in Rom. viii. 29 to be predestination to baptism.
(31 )Cf. Col. iii. 9, and Eph. iv. 24.
(36 )That is, in the sacramental doctrine with regard to Holy Baptism.
(38 )S. John iii. 3, where anwqen may be interpreted either "from above" or as in A. V.
(39 )Reading ei for eij, according to Oehler's suggestion.
(40 )It is not quite clear whether any of this passage, or, if so, how much of it, is a direct quotation from Eunomius. Probably only the phrase about the imparting and receiving of the essence is taken from him, the rest of the passage being Gregory's expansion of the phrase into a distinction between the essence and the thing of which it is the essence, so that the thing can be viewed apart from its own essence.
(42 )This seems to be the force of akoinwnhton: it is clear from what follows that it is to be understood as denying community of essence between the Father and the Son, not as asserting only the unique character alike of the Son and of His relation to the Father.
(43 )This is the LXX. version of the last part of Ps. xxxv. 15, a rendering with which the Vulgate version practically agrees.
(46 )At a later stage Gregory points out that the idea of creation is involved, if the thing produced is external to the nature of the Maker.
(47 )This phrase seems to be quoted from Eunomius. The reference to the "prophet" may possibly be suggested by Is. vi. 9-10: but it is more probably only concerned with the words wtia and akohn, as applied to convey the idea of mental alertness.
(49 )E.g. "A thing made" suggests to us the thought of a "makers" "a maker" the thought of the thing made; and they suggest also a close connection as existing between the two correlative terms of one of which the name is uttered; but neither suggests in the same way any term which is not correlative, or with which it is not, in some manner, in pari materia.
(52 )It seems necessary for the sense to read ou di eterou tinoj organou, since the force of the comparison consists in the hammer being produced immediately by the smith: otherwise we must understand di eterou tinoj organou to refer to the employment of some tool not properly belonging to the texnh of the smith: but even so the parallel would be destroyed.
(53 )Theognostus, a writer of the third century, is said to have been the head of the Catechetical School at Alexandria, and is quoted by S. Athanasius as an authority against the Arians. An account of his work is to be found in Photius, and this is extracted and printed with the few remaining fragments of his actual writings in the 3rd volume of Routh's Reliquioe Sacroe.
(54 )Oehler's proposal to read "vel invitis libris quod sententia flagitat tw/ di autou kai met' auton" does not seem necessary. authj and authn refer to ousia, the quotation being made (not verbally) from Eunonius, not from Theognostus, and following apparently the phrase about "preserving the relation," etc. If the clause were a continuation of the quotation from Theognostus, we should have to follow Oehler's proposal.
(55 )Reading, acccording to Cotelerius' suggestion, (mentioned with approval by Oehler, though not followed by him,) dwroforousin for doruforousin.
(56 )That is to say, because there is no "common measure" of the distinct natures.
(57 )Altering Oehler's punctuation: it is the fact that the essence is monogenhj which excludes all other things from community with it.
(63 )The whole passage is rather obscure, and Oehler's punctuation renders it perhaps more obscure than that which is here adopted. The argument seems to be something like this:-"The generated essence is not compared with any of the things made by it, or after it, because being only-begotten it leaves no room for a common basis of comparison with anything else, and the operation of its maker is also peculiar to itself (since it is immediate, the operation in the case of other things being mediate). The essence of the Son, then, being so far isolated, it is to it that the appellations of gennhma, poihma, and ktisma are to be assigned; otherwise the terms `Son 0' and `Only-begotten 0' are meaningless. Therefore the Son, being in essence a poihma or ktisma, is alien from the Father Who made or created Him." The word parhllaxqai, used to express the difference of essence between the Father and the Son, is one for which it is hard to find an equivalent which shall suit all the cases of the use of the word afterwards instanced: the idea of "variation," however, seems to attach to all these cases, and the verb has been translated accordingly.
(64 )Following Oehler's suggestion and reading ef' eauthj.
(65 )Cf. Prov. xxx. 15 (LXX.).
(66 )The sense given would perhaps be clearer if we were to read (as Gulonius seems to have done) asunhqh for sunhqh. This might be interpreted, "He could not say, I take it, even if he uses the words in an unwonted sense, that the Son is at variance with Him Who begat Him." The sunhqh would thus be the senses already considered and set aside: and the point would be that such a statement could not be made without manifest absurdity, even if some out-of-the-way sense were attached to the words. As the passage stands, it must mean that even if Eunomius repeats his wonted phrase, that can suggest no other sense of "variance" than those enumerated.
(67 )The reading of Oehler is here followed: but the sense of the clause is not clear either in his text or in that of the Paris editions.
(75 )This whole passage, as it stands in Oehler's text, (which has here been followed without alteration,) is obscure: the connection between the clauses themselves is by no means clear; and the general meaning of the passage, in view of the succeeding sentences, seems doubtful. For it seems here to be alleged that Eunomius considered the kataskeuh to imply the previous existence of some material, so to say, which was moulded by generation-on the ground that no one would say that the essence, or anything else, was constructed without being existent. On the other hand it is immediately urged that this is just what would be said of all created things. If the passage might be emended thus:-in, wsper en upokeimenw tini pragmati pasa kataskeuh qewreitai, (ou gar an tij eipoi kataskeuasqai o mh ufesthken), outwj oion kataskeuasmati th tou monogenouj fusei proteinh tw logw thn poihsin-we should have a comparatively clear sense-"in order that as all construction is observed in some subject matter, (for no one would say that that is constructed which has not existence) so he may extend the process of `making 0' by his argument to the nature of the Only-begotten God, as to some product of construction." The force of this would be, that Eunomius is really employing the idea of "receiving generation," to imply that the essence of the Only-begotten is a kataskeuasma: and this, Gregory says, puts him at once on a level with the physical creation.
(76 )Oehler's punctuation seems faulty here.
(78 )Reading ara tij for ara tij Oehler's text.
(79 )That is, by S. Basil: the reference seems to be to the treatise Adv. Eunomium ii 24 (p. 260 C. in the Benedictine edition), but the quotation is not exact.
(1 )The words referred to are those in Acts ii. 35.
(2 )S. Basil: the passages discussed are afterwards referred to in detail.
(3 )With the following passage may be compared the parallel account in the Book of Wisdom (ch. xiii.).
(4 )Cf. Is. xli. 4, Is. xliv. 6, Is. xlviii. 12 (LXX.). If the whole passage is intended to be a quotation, it is not made exactly from any one of these; the opening words are from the second passage referred to; and perhaps this is the only portion intended to be a quotation, the second clause being explanatory; the words of the second clause are varied in the repetition immediately afterwards.
(6 )proj ouden orizomenoj; i.e. before the name of "God" could be applied, as now, in contradistinction to cretion, it was applied in contradistinction to nothing, and that distinction was in a sense the definition of God. Or the words may be turned, as Gulonius turns them, "nulla re determinatus," "with no limitation"-the contradistinction to creation being regarded as a limitation by way of definition.
(8 )Taking the whole phrase to met' eme on as a loose quotation.
(15 )The quotations are from S. Basil c. Eunomius II. 3. (pp. 239-40 in the Benedictine edition.)
(17 )The latter part of the quotation from S. Basil does not exactly agree with the Benedictine text, but the variations are not material.
(18 )Reading eautou for the eautwn of Oehler's text, for which no authority is alleged by the editor, and which is probably a mere misprint.
(19 )The argument here takes the form of a reductio ad absurdum; assuming that S. Peter's reference is to the "visible man," and bearing in mind S. Basil's words that S. Peter refers to Him Who "emptied Himself," it is said "then it was the `visible man 0' who `emptied himself. 0' But the purpose of that `emptying 0' was the `taking the form of a servant, 0' which again is the coming into being as man: therefore the `visible man 0' `emptied himself, 0' to come into being as man, which is absurd." The wording of S. Basil's statement makes the argument in a certain degree plausible;-if he had said that S. Peter referred to the Son, not in regard to his actual essence, but in regard to the fact that He "emptied Himself" to become man, and as so having "emptied Himself" (which is no doubt what he intended his words to mean), then the reductio ad absurdum would not apply; nor would the later arguments, by which Eunomius proceeds to prove that He Who "emptied Himself" was no mere man, but the Word Who was in the beginning, have any force as against S. Basil's statement.
(22 )Cf. Phil ii. 7. Phil ii. 8.
(25 )Or "resuming." Cf. Book II. §8 (sup. p. 113, where see note 7).
(26 )With S. Gregory's language here may be compared that of S. Athanasius (Or. adv. Arian. iii. 53), "It was not the Wisdom, quâ Wisdom, that `advanced 0'; but the humanity in th advance, gradually ascending above the human nature and being made Divine (qeopoioumenon)."
(27 )1 Tim. iii. 16, where it would appear that Gregory read qeoj; not oj.
(29 )S. John i. 5 (not verbally).
(33 )Reading autou (for which Oehler cites good ms. authority), for eautou (the reading of his text, as well as of the Paris editions).
(34 )Gal. vi. 14 (not verbally).
(38 )It can hardly be supposed that it is intended by S. Gregory that we should understand that, during the years of His life on earth, our Lord's Humanity was not so united with His Divinity that "the visible man" was then both Lord and Christ. He probably refers more especially to the manifestation of His Messiahship afforded by the Resurrection and Ascension; but he also undoubtedly dwells on the exaltation of the Human Nature after the Passion in terms which would perhaps imply more than he intended to convey. His language on this point may be compared with the more guarded and careful statement of Hooker. (Eccl. Pol. V. lv. 8.) The point of his argument is that S. Peter's words apply to the Human Nature, not to the Divine.
(40 )This seems to be the sense of the Greek title. The Latin version of the earlier editions appears to represent a different reading, "contigisse, quando in passione homo Christus passus est."
(41 )This seems to be the force of autw&Eaxute\ auton might give a simpler construction, but the sense would not be changed. Oehler, who here restores some words which were omitted in the earlier editions, makes no mention of any variation of reading.
(46 )This statement would seem to imply that, at some time after the Incarnation, the Humanity of Christ was transformed to the Divine Nature, and made identical with It. From other passages in what has preceded, it would seem that this change in the mutual relation of the two Natures might, according to the words of S. Gregory, be conceived as taking place after the Passion. Thus it might be said that S. Gregory conceived the union of the two Natures to be, since the Passion (or, more strictly, since the "exaltation'), what the Monophysites conceived it to be from the moment of the Incarnation. But other phrases, again, seem to show that he conceived the two Natures still to remain distinct (see note 4 inf.). There is, however, ample justification in S. Gregory's language for the remark of Bp. Hefele, that S. Gregory "cannot entirely free himself from the notion of a transmutation of the Human Nature into the Divine." (Hefele, Hist. of the Councils, Eng. Trans. vol. iii. p. 4.)
(48 )anakraqeisa proj to qeion.
(49 )Here S. Gregory seems to state accurately the differentiation of the two Natures, while he recognizes the possibility of the communicatio idiomatum: but it is not clear that he would acknowledge that the two Natures still remain distinct. Even this, however, seems to be implied in his citation of Phil. ii. 11, at a later point.
(50 )Here is truly stated the ground of the communicatio idiomatum: while the illustrations following seem to show that S. Gregory recognized this communicatio as existing at the time of our Lord's humiliation, and as continuing to exist after His "exaltation"; that he acknowledged, that is, the union of the two Natures before the "exaltation," and the distinction of the two Natures after that event.
(56 )Altering Oehler's punctuation, which would connect en th kata ton qanaton oikonomia, not with sugkaluyaj, but with anhye.
(57 )Here may be observed at once a conformity to the phraseology of the Monophysites (bearing in mind that S. Gregory is not speaking, as they were, of the union of the two Natures in the Incarnation, but of the change wrought by the "exaltation"), and a suggestion that the Natures still remain distinct, as otherwise it would be idle to speak of the Human Nature as participating in the power of the Divine.
(1 )The passage in S. Peter's speech (Acts ii. 36) discussed in the preceding book.
(4 )The sense of this passage is rather obscure. S. Gregory intends, it would seem, to point out that, although an acknowledgment that the suffering Christ was more than man may seem at first sight to support the Elmomian view of the passibility of the Godhead of the Son, this is not its necessary effect. Apparently either ou mhn must be taken as equivalent to ou mhn alla, or a clause such as that expressed in the translation must be supplied before toij men gar k.t.l.
(5 )Altering Oehler's punctuation, which here follows that of the earlier editions.
(17 )Altering Oehler's punctuation.
(19 )Reading, as Gulonius seems to have done, and according to Oehler's suggestion (which he does not himself follow), uioqethqeisi or aqethsasi. In the latter reading the mss. seem to agree, but the sense is doubtful. It may be rendered. perhaps, "Who were begotten and exalted, and who rejected Him." The quotation from S. Paul is from Rom. viii. 32.
(22 )The reference is perhaps to 1 Tim iii. 16, but more probably to 1 Tim. ii. 5.
(27 )Reading oute, in favour of which apparently lies the weight of mss. The reading of the Paris edition gives an easier connection, but has apparently no ms. authority. The distinction S. Gregory draws is this:-"You may not say `God died, 0' for human weakness does not attach to the Divine Nature; you may say `He who died is the Lord of glory, 0' for the Human Nature is actually made partaker of the power and majesty of the Divine."
(29 )Cf. Heb. iii. 1, Heb. iii. 2.
(35 )That is, in a nature created like itself.
(36 )Ps. lxxvii. 10 (LXX.). This application of the passage is also made by Michael Ayguan (the "Doctor Incognitus"), who is the only commentator mentioned by Neale and Littledale as so interpreting the text.
(37 )Cf. S. John xiv. 9, John xiv. 10.
(38 )Oehler's punctuation, while it does not exactly follow that of the earlier editions, still seems to admit of emendation here.
(39 )The word paqoj, like the English word "passion," has a double sense: in one sense it connotes a tendency to evil action or evil habit-and in this sense Christ was not subject to passion. In another sense it has no such connotation, and it is in this sense (a sense, Gregory would say, somewhat inexact), that the term is used to express the sufferings of Christ:-to this case, it may be said, the inexact use of the English word is for the most part restricted.
(44 )That is, "passion" in the sense defined above, as something with evil tendency. If the ginomenon (i. e. the salvation of men) is evil, then Father and Son alike must be "kept clear" from any participation in it. If it is good, and if, therefore, the means (the actual events) are not "passion" as not tending to evil, while, considered in regard to their aim, they are filanqrwpia, then there is no reason why a share in their fulfilment should be denied to the Father. Who, as well as the Son, is filanqrwpoj. and Who by His own Power (that is, by Christ) wrought the salvation of men.
(47 )Reading kaq umaj with the earlier editions. Oehler alleges no authority for his reading kaq' hmaj, which is probably a mere misprint.
(48 )Oehler's punctuation here seems to require correction.
(56 )Altering Oehler's punctuation, which here seems certainly faulty: some lighter alterations have also been made in what precedes, and in what follows.
(57 )Cf. 1 Tim. iv. 7. The quotation is not verbal.
(63 )This passage may be taken as counterbalancing that in which S. Gregory seems to limit the communicatio idiomatum (see above, page 184, n. 6): but he here p obably means no more than that names or titles which properly belong to the Human Nature of our Lord are applied to His Divine Personality.
(3 )It is not quite clear whether palin is to be constructed with egoi or with keisqai, but the difference in sense is slight.
(11 )2 Cor. iii. 16, 2 Cor. iii. 17.
(15 )S. Matt. xxii. 45; Cf. Ps. cx. 1.
(18 )1 Cor. iii. 19; cf. Job v. 13.
(19 )Altering Oehler's punctuation slightly.
(20 )S. Basil adv. Eunomium II. 4 (p. 240 C.). The quotation as here given is not in exact verbal agreement with the Benedictine text.
(21 )Altering Oehler's punctuation.
(22 )Is. lxvi. 2. Not verbally from the LXX.
(24 )That is, in making a rhetorical inversion of a proposition in itself objectionable, he so re-states it as to make it really a different proposition while treating it as equivalent. The original proposition is objectionable as classing the Son with all generated existences: the inversion of it, because the term "God" is substituted illicitly for the term "ungenerate."
(25 )On this point, besides what follows here, see pg the treatise against Tritheism addressed to Ablabius.
(26 )These are names applied to denote existences purely imaginary: the other names belong to classical mythology.
(27 )These are names applied to denote existences purely imaginary: the other names belong to classical mythology.
(28 )That is, in the names more peculiarly appropriate to the Divine Nature.
(34 )What "this" means is not clear: it may be "the Being," but most probably is the distinction which S. Gregory is pointing out between the Being and Its attributes, which he considers has not been sufficiently recognized.
(35 )Reading twn onomatwn ouk ontwn with the Paris editions. Oehler reads nohmatwn, but does not give any authority for the change.
(36 )The metaphor seems slightly confused, being partly taken from a tournament, or gladiatorial contest, partly from a race in armour.
(37 )The word ousia seems to have had in Eunomius' mind something of the same idea of corporeal existence attaching to it which has been made to attach to the Latin "substantia," and to the English "substance."
(38 )Cf. Col. i. 16, and Eph. i. 21.
(3 )Reading proqewroih for prosqewroih.
(5 )See note 4 on Book V. §1, where these words are also treated of.
(6 )Cf. Judges xiii. 18 (LXX.).
(8 )Cf. Deut. xxxii. 17 (LXX.). The quotat on is not exact.
(16 )Oehler's punctuation here seems faulty.
(17 )To make the grammar of the sentence exact thn should here be substituted for ton, the object of the verb being apparently gennhsin not logon. The whole section of the analysis is rather confused, and does not clearly reproduce S. Gregory's division of the subject. A large part of this section, and of that which follows it, is repeated with very slight alteration from Bk. II. §9 (see pp. 113-115 above). The resemblances are much closer in the Greek text than they appear in the present translation, in which different hands have been at work in the two books.
(19 )anwtatw may be "supreme," in the sense of "ultimate" or "most remote," or in the more ordinary sense of "most exalted."
(21 )Or (reading as proposed above, p. 114, oikonomei for oikodomei), "the ordering of nature."
(22 )This passage is clearly corrupt: the general sense as probably intended is given here.
(23 )See note 7 in the last section.
(24 )The reference is probably to Ps. lx. 8, and Ps. cviii. 9.
(32 )Heb. i. 3, and Cant. i. 3, referred to above.
(38 )Or perhaps "or an irrational first cause," (alogon arxhn.)
(39 )The reference is to S. Basil adv. Eunomium II. 12 (p. 247 in Ben. ed.)
(41 )Reading umaj for hmaj. If the reading hmaj, which Oehler follows, is retained, the force would seem to be "that you think we ought not to make any difference," but the construction of the sentence in this case is cumbrous.
(45 )Apparently an inexact quotation of S. Matt. xi. 27.
(47 )That is, he must also acknowledges "middle" and an "end" of the existence which has a "beginning."
(48 )Oehler's emendation, for which he gives weighty ms. authority, is certainly an improvement on the earlier text, but in sense it is a little unsatisfactory. The argument seems to require the hypothesis not of some one acknowledging a person to be a man in all, but in some attributes. The defect, however, may possibly be in S. Gregory's argument, not in the text.
(49 )i. e. "if the `middle 0' and `end 0' are not admitted, at the `beginning, 0' which is the `beginning 0' of a sequence, is thereby implicitly denied." Oehler's punctuation has been somewhat altered here, and at several points in the remainder of the book, where it appears to require emendation.
(50 )Reading kthqen, with the Paris ed. of 1638. Oehler's reading ktisqe/ hardly seems to give so good a sense, and he does not give his authority for it.
(52 )Reading with Oehler, toij kata gnwmhn prosklinomenh. The reading proskinoumenoij, found in the earlier editions, gives a tolerable sense. but appears to have no ms. authority.
(53 )Or (if pantwj be constructed with antikeimenon), "will end, as it seems, in that state which is absolutely opposed to life."
(56 )i. e. the order of spiritual beings, including angels and human souls. Of these S. Gregory argues that they are capable of an akinhsia proj to agaqon which is death in them, as the absence of motion and sense is bodily death: and that they may therefore be said to have an end, as they had a beginning: so far as they are eternal it is not by their own power, but by their mutable nature being upheld by grace from this state of akinhsia proj to agaqon. On both these grounds therefore-that they have an end, and that such eternity as they possess is not inherent, but given ab extra, and contingent-he says they are not properly eternal, and he therefore rejects the proposed parallel.
(1 )This section of the analysis is so confused that it cannot well be literally translated. In the version given above the general sense rather than the precise grammatical construction has been followed.
(3 )This quotation would appear from what follows not to be a consecutive extract, but one made "omissis omittendis."
(4 )This seems to be the force of the phrase if we are to follow Oehler's mss. and read o gar ecoxwtatoj antou qeou. The autoj qeoj of the earlier editions gives a simpler sense. The phrase as read by Oehler certainly savours more of Philo than of Eunomius: but it is worth noting that S. Gregory does not dwell upon this part of the clause as being borrowed from Philo (though he may intend to include it in the general statement), but upon what follows it: and from his citation from Philo it would seem that the latter spoke (not of o ecoxwtatoj qeou but) of o Qeoj pro twn allwn osa gennhta.
(5 )Cf. S. Basil adv. Eun. II. 12, quoted above, p. 207.
(6 )Reading tauta for tauta, which appears in the text of Oehler as well as in the earlier editions.
(7 )Reading ti twn kata gnwmhn, for ti twn katagnwmwn, which is the reading of the editions, but introduces a word otherwise apparently unknown.
(8 )So in Book I. prwton men thz Prounikou sofiaj ginetai maqhthj, and Book XIII. p. 844 (Paris Edit.). It may be questioned whether the phrase in Books I. and XIII., and that here, refers to a supposed connection of Eunomius with Gnosticism. The Prounikoj Sofia of the Gnostics was a "male-female," and hence the masculine ton paideuthn might properly be applied to it. If this point were cleared up, we might be more certain of the meaning to be attached to the word oktadaj, which is also possibly borrowed from the Gnostic phraseology, being akin to the form ogdoadaj. [On the Gnostic conception of "Prunicus," see the note on the subject in Harvey's Irenoeus (vol. I. p. 225), and Smith and Wace's Dict. Chr. Biogr. s. v. On the Gnostic Ogdoads, see Mansel's Gnostic Heresies, pp. 152 sqq., I70 sqq., and the articles on Basilides and Valentinus in Dict. Chr. Biogr.]
(9 )This quotation from Eunomius presents some difficulties, but it is quite as likely that they are due to the obscurity of his style, as that they are due to corruption of the text.
(10 )i. e. with the subject of discussion, the generation of the Only-begotten.
(11 )The genitive ghcewj is rather awkward; it may be explained, however, as dependent upon arxhn: "He began to be generated: He began to cease being generated."
(15 )The phrase is obscure, anti the text possibly corrupt. To read taj ennoiaj (as Gulonius seems to have done) would simplify matters: but the general sense is clear-that the denial of the existence of time implies eternity.
(16 )Reading twn mh ufestwtwn, as the sense seems to require. unless we connect twn ufestwtwn with ouk estin. In this case the sense will be practically the same, but the sentence will be extremely involved. The point which S. Gregory desires to enforce is that "not being," or "non-existence," is one and the same thing, whether it is regarded as past, present, or future, and that it is, in any of these aspects, an idea which we cannot without impiety attach to the Divine Person of the Son.
(18 )The words are probably those of tile imaginary objector; but they may be a citation from Eunomius.
(19 )The reference is probably to Ps. xxxvi. 9.
(20 )i. e. the "later light" must have arisen from darkness; therefore darkness must have intervened between the "eternal light" and the "later light."
(2 )Reading eipwmen, for which Oehler's text substitutes eipwmen.
(10 )This point has been already discussed by S. Gregory in the second and third books. See above. pp. 119, 149. It is also dealt with in the short treatise "On the Faith," addressed to Simplicius, which will be found in this volume.
(15 )o logoj: the idea of "reason" must be expressed to convey the force required for the argument following.
(17 )The reference is perhaps to 2 Cor. iv. 18.
(19 )If we might read h for h the sense of the passage would be materially simplified:-"His life is temporal, that life which operates only for the present time, whereon those who hope are the objects of the Apostle's pity."
(20 )Altering Oehler's punctuation.
(25 )Presumably the quotation from the unknown author, if completed, would run, "as that of being begotten is associated with the essence of the Son."
(26 )If the property of not being begotten is "associated with" the essence, it clearly cannot be the essence, as Eunomius elsewhere maintains it to be: hence the phrase which he here adopts concedes S. Gregory's position on this point.
(29 )Cf. S. John i. 1, John i. 4.
(35 )Cf. S. Matt. xxiii. 8-10.
(38 )Oehler's punctuation seems here to require alteration.
(45 )en upostasei qewroumenon.
(46 )The ideas of "own" implied in "appropriate," and that of incongruity implied in "alienation."
(1 )That is, of the Son's goodness: for S. Gregory's comment on the awkward use of the pronoun sfeteraj, see p. 233, inf.
(6 )i. e. as man, and not as God.
(7 )Ps. xlv. 7, Ps. xlv. 8. (The Psalm is the 44th in the LXX. numeration, and is so styled by S. Gregory.)
(8 )Cf. Is. xlv. 14, Is. xlv. 15 (LXX.).
(10 )Cf. Tit. ii. 13. The quotation is not verbal; and here the rendering of the A. V. rather obscures the sense which it is necessary for S. Gregory's argument to bring out.
(11 )1 Tim. iii. 16 (reading Qeoj, or, if the citation is to be considered as verbal. o Qeoj).
(12 )Reading tou Qeon einai ton monogenh Qeon for tou Qeou einai k.t.l. The reading of the texts does not give the sense required for the argument.
(13 )Compare with what follows S. Matt. xx. 13, Matt. xx. 15. S. Gregory seems to be quoting from memory; his Greek is not so close to that of S. Matthew as the translation to the A. V.
(14 )Cf. S. Matt. xxv. 25, from which this phrase is borrowed, with a slight variation.
(16 )This seems a sense etymologically possible for kaqistantai with a genitive, a use of which Liddell and Scott give no instances. The statement must of course be taken as that of the adversaries themselves.
(19 )Oehler's punctuation is here apparently erroneous. The position of sumperastikw is peculiar and the general construction of the passage a little obscure: but if the text is to be regarded as sound, the meaning must be something like that here given.
(20 )Cf. Heb. i. 6-12. The passages there cited are Ps. xcvii. 7; Ps. xlv. 6; Ps. cii. 25, sqq.
(21 )S. Matt. xi. 10, quoting Mal. iii. 1. The word translated "messenger" in A. V. is aggeloj, which the argument here seems to require should be rendered by "angel."
(24 )Cf. Heb. i. 14 and Heb. i. 7.
(26 )Cf Exod. xxxii. 34 (LXX.).
(27 )Cf. Exod. xxxiii. 2; the quotation is not verbally from LXX.
(28 )Cf. Exod. xxxiv. 9 (LXX.).
(30 )Cf. Exod. xxxiii. 17 (LXX.).
(35 )The grammar of this section of the analysis is in parts very much confused; the general drift of its intention, rather than its literal meaning, is given in the translation. Grammatically speaking it appears to attribute to S. Gregory some of the opinions of Eunomius. The construction, however, is so ungrammatical that the confusion is probably in the composer's expression rather than in his interpretation of what he is summarizing.
(37 )The passage is a little obscure: if the force of the dative tw kaq eauton aktistw be that assigned to it, the meaning will be that. if no exception is made in the statement that the Son is the Maker of every intelligible being, the Deity will be included among the works of the Son, Who will thus be the Maker of Himself, as of the sensible creation.
(38 )It is not quite clear how much of this is citation, and how much paraphrase of Eunomius' words.
(39 )The reference is to Exod. xxxv. 30.
(40 )Reading terateian f r the otherwise unknown word perateian, which Oehler retains. If perateian is the true reading, it should probably be rendered by "fatalism," or "determination." Gulonius renders it by "determinationem." It may be connected with the name "Peratae," given to one of the Ophite sects, who held fatalist views.
(42 )The word seems to be used, as "octads" in Book IX. seems to be used, of sections of Eunomius' production.
(43 )Cf. S. John iii. 3 and John iii. 6.
(44 )Cf. S. John vi. 51 and John vi. 54.
(45 )Cf. Ps. iv. 2 (LXX.). The alteration made is the substitution of apwleian for mataiothta.
(46 ) 9H afragij. The term is used elsewhere by Gregory in this sense, in the Life of S. Gregory Thaumaturgus, and in the Life of S. Macrina.
(47 )These last words are apparently a verbal quotation, those preceding more probably a paraphrase of Eunomius statement.
(48 )Cf. Hab. ii. 15 (LXX.). It is possible that the reading qoleran for doleran, which appears both in Oehler's text and in the Paris edition, was a various reading of the passage in the LXX., and that S. Gregory intended to quote exactly.
(5 )Cf. Acts xvii. The precise reference is perhaps to verse 27.
(6 )The reference is perhaps to 1 Tim. vi. 16; but the quotation is not verbal. See also S. John i. 18.
(7 )The grammar of the passage is simplified if we read to qeon antwn onomasqhnai, but the sense, retaining Oehler's reading ton qeon, is probably the same.
(9 )There seems here to be an allusion to the supposed derivation of qeoj from qeaomai, which is also the basis of an argument in the treatise "On `Not three Gods, 0'" addressed to Ablabius.
(12 )Cf. Book IV. §3 (p. 158 sup.). With the general statement may be compared the parallel passage in Book II. §8.
(19 )Cf. Heb. ii. 13, quoting Is. viii. 18.
(24 )Reading diakonhsasa for the diakomisasa of the Paris ed. and diakomhsasa of Oehler's text, the latter of which is obviously a misprint, but leaves us uncertain as to the reading which Oehler intended to adopt. The reading diakonhsasa answers to the diakonoj genomenh above, and is to some extent confirmed by diakonhsai occurring again a few lines further on. S. Gregory, when he has once used an unusual word or expression, very frequently repeats it in the next few sentences.
(26 )Cf. 1 Tim. vi. 16. The quotation, as S. Gregory points out, is inexact.
(28 )Cf. S. John i. 4 and John i. 14.
(29 )S. John i. 5 (A. V., following the Vulgate). The word katelabe is perhaps better rendered by "overtook." "As applied to light this sense includes the further notion of overwhelming, eclipsing. The relation of darkness to light is one of essential antagonism. If the darkness is represented as pursuing the light, it can only be to overshadow and not to appropriate it." (Westcott on S. John ad loc.)
(31 )The passage has already been cited by S. Gregory, Book V §3 (p. 176 sup.).
(36 )Cf. S. John v. 37, and John xvi. 32.
(41 )The grammar of this section of the analysis is very much confused.
(42 )The composer of the analysis seems to have been slightly confused by the discussion on the nature of contradictory opposition.
(43 )It is not clear how far the preceding sentences are an exact reproduction of Eunomius: they are probably a summary of his argument.
(44 )Oehler's punctuation seems rather to obscure the sense.
(45 )That is, a new Demosthenes, with a difference. Demosthenes' native place was the Attic deme of Paeania. Eunomius, according to S. Gregory, was born at Oltiseris (see p. 38, note 6, sup.).
(1 )This Book is entitled in the Munich and Venice mss. "an Antirrhetic against Eunomius' second Essay (logon)": in the Paris Editions as "Essay XII. (logoj I B) of our Father among the Saints, Gregory of Nyssa against Eunomius (1615), against Eunomius' second Essay (1638)." The discrepance of number seems to have arisen from the absence of any title to Book VI. in the Munich and Venice mss. But the Book preceding this, i. e. Book XII., is named as such by the Paris Editt. of 1638: and cited elsewhere as such. Photius, after saying that Gregory far excelled, in these books, Theodore (of Mopsuestia), and Sophronius, who also wrote against Eunomius, particularly praises this last book.
(2 )Deut. xxxii. 30; Joshua xxiii. 10.
(6 )eusebeiaj. That this is the predominant idea in the word will be seen from the following definitions: "Piety is a devout life joined with a right faith" (Oecumenius on 1 Tim. iv. p. 754). "Piety is the looking up to the one only God, Who is believed to be and is the true God, and the life in accordance with this" (Eusebius, P. E. i. p. 3). "Piety is the science of adoration" (Suidas).
(7 )Wisdom of Solomon xiii. 5. "For by the greatness and beauty of the creatures proportionately (analogwz) the maker of them is seen." Compare Romans i. 20.
(8 )Essence, substance, ousia. Most of this controversy might have been avoided by agreeing to banish the word ousia entirely from this sort of connection with the Deity. Even Celsus the Neo-platonist had said, "God does not partake of substance" (ousiaj). "Exactly," Origen replies, "God is partaken of, viz., by those who have His spirit, rather than partakes of anything Himself. Indeed, the subject of substance involves questions complicated and difficult to decide; most especially on this point. Supposing, that is, an absolute Substance, motionless, incorporeal, is God beyond this Substance in rank and power. granting a share of it to those to whom according to His Word He chooses to communicate it? Or is He Himself this Substance, though described as invisible in that passage about the Saviour (Coloss. i. 15) `Who is the image of the invisible God, 0' where invisible means incorporeal? Another point is this: is the Only-Begotten and First-Born of all Creatures to be pronounced the Substance of substances, the Original Idea of all ideas, while the Father God Himself is beyond all these?" (c. Cels. vi. 64). (Such a question as this last, however, could not have been asked a century later, when Athanasius had dispelled all traces of Neo-platonic subordination from the Christian Faith. Uncreated Spirit, not Invisible First Substance, is the mark of all in the Triune-God. But the effort of Neo-platonism to rise above every term that might seem to include the Deity had not been thrown away. Even "God is Spirit" is only a conception, not a definition, of the Deity; while "God is substance" ought to be regarded as an actual contradiction in terms.)
(9 )i. e. who hold the Father and the Son to be one and the same Person, i. e. Sabellians. "He here overthrows the heresy of Sabellius, by marking the persons of the Father and the Son: for the Church does not imagine a Son-Fatherhood (uiopatorian), such as the figment of that African" (Ammonius caten. ad Joh. I. i. p. 14).
(11 )Eunomius arrived at the same conclusions as Arius, but by a different path. "The true name of God is 'Agennhtoj, and this name is incommunicable to other essences." He attacked both the Arians and the orthodox. The former he reproached for saying that we can know God only in part: the latter for saying that we know God only through the Universe, and the Son, the Author of the Universe. He maintained, on the contrary, that it was unworthy of a Christian to profess the impossibility of knowing the Divine Nature, and the manner in which the Son is generated. Rather, the mind of the believer rises above every sensible and intelligible essence, and does not stop even at the generation of the Son, but mounts above, aspiring to possess the First Cause. Is this bold assertion, Denys (De la Philosophie a'Origène, p. 446) asks, so contrary as it is to the teaching of the Fathers, a reminiscence of Origen, or a direct borrowing from Plato or the Neoplatonists? The language in which it is expressed certainly belongs to the latter (upokiyaj, epekeina, poqoj, to prwton, glixomenoj): but Origen himself, less wise in this matter than Clement, was not far from believing that there was a Way above Him Whom S. John calls the Way, a Light above the Light that "lighteth every man that cometh into the world," an "Eternal Gospel" above the present Gospel; and that these were not inaccessible at once to human creatures. Only they could not be reached in themselves, and without a Mediator, until Christ, having vanquished His enemies, had given back the kingdom to the Father, and God was "all in all."-This doctrine of the 'Agennhtoj, then, made it necessary for Basil and Gregory to throw their whole weight against Eunomius, rather than against Macedonius, who, as inconsequent through not dealing alike with the Second and Third Person, could not be so dangerous an enemy.
(12 )As being another. Oehler reads wj eteron: the Paris editt. have estin eteron, due to the correction of John the Franciscan, whose ms., however, (the Pithoean) had wste (wj ti?). These words of Eunomius are found in Basil lib. i c. Eunomium, tom. i. p. 711 (Paris 1638), even more fully quoted than here: and wj eteron is found there.
(13 )Gregory here refers to the apparent "retrograde" motion of the planets, i. e. that, while passing through part of their orbits, they appear to us to move in a direction contrary to the order of the Zodiac. In what follows he represents the views of the ancient astronomy, imagining a series of concentric spheres, allotted to the several planets, the planetary motions being accomplished by the rotation of the spheres. Beyond the planetary spheres is the sphere allotted to the fixed stars, within which the others revolve. See Gale, Opusc. Mythol. (1688), p 550; and Introduction to Colet's Lectures on Corinthians, pp. xl-xliii.
(15 )The thought is found in Psalm xxxix, 6.
(16 )1 Tim. i. 7. S. Gregory quotes from memory, viz., peri wn diateinontai for peri tinan diabebaiountai.
(18 )Psalm lxxxiv. 5, "in whose heart are thy ways;" but LXX. anabaseij en th kardia autou dieqeto.
(29 )Ps. xxxix. 5. LXX. upostasij mou (not aiwn, which would be the exact equivalent to the Heb.).
(30 )Oehler notices that the Paris editt. have not these words, aupnon, anoson: but that John the Franciscan is a witness that they were in his codex (the Pithaltzoean): for he says, "after this follows aupnoj anqrwpoj, which have crept in from the oversight of a not aupnoj copyist, and therefore ought to be expurged:" not being aware that very ancient copies write anqrwpoj anoj, so that anoson is the true reading, having been changed, but not introduced, by the error of a copyist.
(33 )Ps. xvi. 2. S. Gregory quotes the LXX. twn agaqwn mou ou xreian exeij, which is closely followed by the Vulgate "bonorum meorum non eges," and the Arab. "Thou needest not my good actions." Heb. "I have no good beyond thee."
(34 )Oehler's reading and stopping are both faulty here, viz., ouk oida peri tinoj legomenon ti koinon exei k. t. l. Manifestly the stop should be at legomenon, and the reading of the editt. para tinoj is right.
(35 )It is not necessary to change the to here to tw as Oehler suggests. The Munich Cod. omits it altogether. But he has done good service to the text, by supplying from his Codices all that follows, down to "the same sort of argument" (except that the first diagwnizesqai is probably a gloss).
(36 )The definition of epinoia, i. e. efodoj euretikh twn agnooumenwn, dia twn prosexwn te kai akolouqwn ...to efechj eceuriskousa.
(37 )Job xxxviii. 36. LXX. Tij de edwke gunaicin ufasmatoj sofian, h poikiltikhn episthmhn.
(38 )Cf Origen c. Celsum, vi. 65. Celsus had said. "God cannot be named." "This requires a distinction to be made. If Celsus means that there is nothing in the signification of words that can express the qualities of God, what he says is true, seeing that there are many other qualities that cannot be named. Who, for instance, can express in words the difference of quality between the sweetness of a date and that of a fig I Peculiar individual qualities cannot be expressed in a word. No wonder, then, that in this absolute sense God cannot be named. But if by `name 0' we only mean the possible expression of some one thing about God, by way of leading on the listener, and producing in him such a notion about God as human faculties can reach to, then there is nothing strange in saying, that God can have a name."
(39 )th ecwqen filosofia. Eunomius, in this accusation, must have been thinking, in the qesei and fusei controversy on the origin of language, of Dem critus, who called words "statues in sound," i. e. ascribed to them a certain amount of artificiality. But it is doubtful whether the opinion of the purely human origin of language can be ascribed to him, when we consider another expression of his, that "words were statues in sound, but statues not made by the hands of men, but by the gods themselves." Language with him was conventional, but it was not arbitrary. Again, Plato defines a word, an imitation in sound of that which it imitates (Cratylus, 423 B), and Aristotle calls words imitations (Rhet. iii. 1). But both of them were very far indeed from tracing language back to mere onamatopoeia, i. e. ascribing it to qesij (agreement), as opposed to fusij in the sense of the earlier Greek philosophy, the "essence" of the thing named, rather than the "nature" of the names. Long before them Pythagoras had said, "the wisest of all things is Number, and next to Number, that which gives names." These oracular words do. not countenance the idea that the origin of language was purely human. Perhaps Epicurns more definitely than any taught that in the first formation of language men acted unconsciously, moved by nature (in the modern sense), and that then as a second stage there was an agreement or understanding to use a certain sound for a certain conception. Against this Heraclitus (b.c. 503) had taught that words exist fusei. "Words are like the shadows of things, like the pictures of trees and mountains reflected in the river, like our own images when we look into a mirror." We know at all events here what he did not mean, viz., that man imposed what names he pleased on the objects round him. Heraclitus' "nature" is a very different thing from the Darwinian Nature; it is the inherent fitness between the object and name. Eunomius, then, was hardly justified in calling the Greek philosophy, as a whole, atheistical in this matter, and "against Providence." This fusij, the impalpable force in the things named, could still be represented as the will of the Deity. Eunomius outdoes Origen even, or any Christian writer, in contending for the sacredness of names. He makes the Deity the name-giver, but with the sole object of deifying his "Ungenerate." Perhaps Basil's teaching of the human faculty of 'Epinoia working under God as the name-giver is the truest statement of all, and harmonizes most with modern thought.
(44 )#H gar. Both Codd. & editt. read so; as Oehler testifies, though he has \H gar.
(45 )Reading apofainwn as referring to Moses, with Oehler, instead of the conjecture of John the Franciscan apofainousa, in the Paris edit. Even the Pithoean has apofainwn.
(46 )Ps. xxx. 10 (LXX.). Gen. viii. 21.
(48 )Or. Cat. c. 1. "For since our nature is liable to corruption, and weak, therefore is our life short, our strength unsubstantial, our word unstable (apaghj);" and see note.
(49 )Nebel is defined by Epiphanius de pond. et mens. c. 24, as follows, Nebel oinon, oper esti metron cestwn rn (150 pints). The word is merely, a transcription of the Hebrew for a skin. i.e. wine-skin, "bottle." Cf. Hosea iii. 2, nebel oinou (LXX.): Symmachus has askoj.
(50 )Here is the answer to Eunomius' contention above (p. 270), that "in the earliest of the sacred records before the creation of man, the naming of fruit and seed are mentioned in Holy Writ." He calls Basil, for not observing this, a pagan and atheist. So below he calls him a follower of Valentinus, "a sower of tares," for making the human faculty (epinoia) the maker of names, even of those of the Only-begotten; apparently, as Valentinus multiplied the names of Christ.
(55 )mhdearxaizein: therefore, if they are not the Divine language, a fortiori this is not. The word cannot possibly mean here "to grow obsolete."
(56 )hastily improvised. But Origen, c. Celsum iii. 6, says-"Celsus has not shewn himself a just critic of the differing accounts of the Egyptians and the Jews. ...He does not see that it was not possible for so large a number of rebellious Egyptians, after starting off in this way, to have changed their language at the very moment of their insurrection, and so become a separate nation, so that those who one day spoke Egyptian suddenly spoke a complete Hebrew dialect. Allow for a moment that when they left Egypt they rejected also their mother tongue; how was it that, thereupon, they did not adopt the Syrian or Phoenician, but the Hebrew which was so different from both these? ...For the Hebrew had been their national language before they went down into Egypt:" And, i. 16-"I wonder how Celsus can admit the Odrysians amongst the most ancient as well as the wisest peoples but will admit the Jews into neithers notwithstanding that there are many hooks in Egypt and Phoenicia and Greece which testify to their antiquity. Any one who likes can read Flavius Josephus' two looks on the antiquity of the Jews, where he makes a large collection of writers who witness to this." And yet, iii. 7, he goes on to say (what Gregory is here alluding to) that while any way the Hebrew language was never Egyptian, "yet if we look deeper, we might find it possible to say in the case of the Exodus that there was a miracle: viz. the whole mass of the Hebrew people receiving a language; that such language was the gift of God, as one of their own prophets has expressed it, `when he came out of Egypt, he heard a strange language. 0'"
(57 )kaitij. This reading (and not the interrogative tij, as Oehler) is required by the context, where Gregory actually favours this theory of the lateness of the Hebrew tongue: and is confirmed by Gretser's Latin, "Et nescio quis Prophetae sermo."
(60 )apodrantej. So also the Paris editt. The Munich ms. has apodrsantej, which form of the aorist is not found at all in classic Greek, and is only used as Oehler notices by Epiphanius (e. g. Panar. liv. 1; lxviii. 4) and a few other writers of a debased style.
(64 )ta parateqenta par ekeinwn anqupoisw. He does this below. "And we will return to his a argument that even thence we may muster reinforcements for the Truth." Gregory there goes on to show that Eunomius, who attacks the doctrine that the names of God are the result of Conception, and makes their Scriptural use a proof that they are God's own direct teaching, himself seeks to overthrow this doctrine by means of the term Ungenerate, which is not in Scripture: hence, by his own showing, this theory about the Scripture names is not true. The above is the reading of the Munich ms.: Oehler has the vox nihili pareqenta.
(71 )Job xiv. 1. brotoj gar gennhtoj gunaikoj, oligobioj kai plhrhj orghj.
(77 )diabeblhtai. The Latin, "vulgo usurpata sunt," misses the force of the Greek. Or "are disliked because of their obvious meaning." Cf. above "even though these words ...seem not above suspicion (diabeblhoqai dokei)." For this use of diaballesqai (to be brought into suspicion or odium), cf. Origen c. Cels. iii. 58, diabeblhmenw proj arethn kai kalokagaqian, i. e. "who has quite broken with virtue and decency?" and vi. 42, where Celsus blasphemously says, that "the Son of God ought to have himself punished the Devil, rather than frighten with his threats that mankind which had been dragged into the quarrel by himself" (toij up' autou diabeblhmenoij anqrwpoij): a passage quite missed in the Latin.
(79 )#H mikroyuxwn k. t. l. Oehler's stopping here (and accent) is better than that of the Codices. i.e. upokinhseien h k. t. l.
(80 )In other words, analogy implies thought (logoj).
(81 )i.e. no other name. See note on 'Agennhtoj, p. 100.
(85 )Oehler has restored gnwstikwn from his Codices, and notices that Cotelerius, Eccl. Gr. Monum. tom. ii. p. 622, had made the same change. Gulonius translates Gnosticorum. But the Editt. have gnwristikwn.
(87 )Ps. xxiii. 1; Ps. lxxx. 1. Cf. S. John xxi. 16, John xxi. 17.
(94 )Gen. xviii. 12; Gen. xxi. 6.
(95 )he, i.e. Basil. "God's nature can be looked at in as many aspects as corn can (i.e. in its growth, fructification, distribution, &c.)."
(96 )He, i.e. Basil. The words o Eunomioj, here are the additions of a copy st who did not understand that eipen referred to Basil, or else fhsin must be read with them. Certainly tauta eipwn below must refer to the same subject as eipen.
(97 )diaforouj dexesqai epinoiaj. Oehler has rightly omitted the words that follow (dia te taj ennoiaj), both because of their irrelevancy, and from the authority of his mss.
(98 )Indestructibility. Such terms ("not-composite," "indivisible," "imperishable") were the inheritance which Christian controversy received from the former struggle with Stoicism. In the hands of Origen, they had been aimed at the Stoic doctrine of the Deity as that of corporeal Spirit, which does not perish, only because there is no cause sufficient. "If one does not see the consequences of such an assertion, one ought to blush" (in Johann. xiii. 21). The consequences of course are that God, the Word, and our souls, made in His image, are all perishable; for all body, in that it is matter, is by the Stoic assumption, liable to change.
(100 )to nohma. There is a lacuna in the Paris Editt., beginning here, and extending to "ungenerate," just below. Oehler's Codices have supplied it.
(104 )Gen. ii. 19, Gen. ii. 20.
(105 )Compare with this view of Eunomius on the sacredness of names, this striking passage from Origen (c. Cels. v. 43). "We hold, then, that the origin of names is not to be found in any formal agreements on the part of those who gave them, as Aristotle thinks. Human language, in fact, did not have its beginning from man. Any one can see this who reflects upon the real nature of the incantations which in the different languages are associated with the patriarchal names of those languages. The names which have their native power in such and such a language cease to have this influence of their peculiar sound when they are changed into another language. This has been often observed in the names given even to living men: one who from his birth has been called so and so in Greek will never, if we change his name into Egyptian or Roman, be made to feel or act as he can when called by the first name given. ...If this is true in the case of names given to men, what are we to think of the names connected in some way or other with the Deity? For instance, there must be some change in translating Abraham's name into Greek: some new expression given to `Isaac, 0' and `Jacob 0': and, while he who repeats the incantation or the oath names the `God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, 0' he produces those particular effects by the mere force and working of those names: because the daemons are mustered by him who utters them: but if on the other hand he says, `God of the chosen Father of the Crowd, 0' `of the Laughter, 0' `of the Supplanter, 0' he can do nothing with the names so expressed, any more than with any other powerless instrument. ...We can say the same of `Sabaoth, 0' which is used in many exorcisms: if we change it to `Lord of Powers, 0' or, `Lord of Hosts, 0' or, `Almighty, 0' we can do nothing ..."-and (46), "This, too, is the reason why we ourselves prefer any degradation to that of owning Zeus to be Deity. We cannot conceive of Zeus as the same as Sabaoth: or as Divine in any of all possible meanings. ...If the Egyptians offer us `Ammon, 0' or death, we shall take the latter, rather than pronounce the divinity of `Ammon. 0' The Scythians may tell us that their Papoeus is the God of the Universe, we shall not listen: we firmly believe in the God of the Universe, but we must not call him Papoeus, making that a name for absolute Deity, as the Being who occupies the desert, the nation, and the language of the Scythians would desire: although, indeed, it cannot be sin for any to rise the appellation of the Deity in his own mother tongue, whether it be the Scythian way or the Egyptian."
(106 )Reading keraire, according to Oehler's conjecture, from Iliad ix. 203. All the Codd. and Editt., read kekaire, however. The Editt., in the Homeric words which follow, show a strange ignorance, which Gulonius has reproduced, viz. Phocheiri, Poudese, Ische! (for fu xeiri, Douphse, !Iaxe.)
(112 )The words here attributed to Isaiah are found in Job ix. 9 (LXX.): and Orion in Isaiah xiii. 10 (LXX.), with "the stars of heaven;" and in Amos v. 8 with "the seven stars."
(113 )For Aseroth perhaps Mazaroth should be read. Cf. Job xxxviii. 32, "Canst thou lead forth the Mazaroth in their season?" (R.V.) and 2 Kings xxiii. 5, "to the planets (toij mazourwq)," i.e. the twelve signs of the Zodiac.
(114 )'Amalqeiaj keraj. So LXX. for the name of Job's third daughter, Keren-happuch, for which Symmachus and Aquila have Karnafouk, i.e. Horn of purple (fucus). The LXX. translator of Job was rather fond of classical allusions, and so brought in the Greek horn (of plenty). Amalthea's goat, that suckled Jupiter, broke its horn.
"Sustulit hoc Nymphe, cinctumque recentibus herbis
Et plenum pomis ad Jovis ora tulit."-
Ovid, Fasti, v. 123.
(115 )Isaiah xiii. 21. kai anapausontai ekei seirhnej, kai daimonia ekei orxhsontai, "and ostriches shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there" (R. V.). The LXX. render the Hebrew (bath-jaana) by seirhnej also in Isaiah xxxiv. 13, Isaiah xliii. 20: and in Micah i. 8: Jeremiah i. 39. Cyril of Alexandria has on the first passage, "Birds that have a sweet note: or, according to the Jewish interpretation, the owl." And this is followed by the majority of commentators. Cf. Gray-
"The moping owl doth to the moon complain."
But Bochart has many and strong arguments to prove that the ostrich, i.e. the strouqo-kamhloj, or "large sparrow with the long neck," is meant by bath-jaana: it has a high sharp unpleasant note. Cf. Job xxx. 29, "I am a companion to ostriches" (R. V.), speaking of his bitter cry.-Jerome also translates "habitabunt ibi struthiones;" and the LXX. elsewhere than above by strouqia. Gregory follows the traditional interpretation, of some pleasant note; and somehow identifies the Greek word with the Hebrew.
(118 )Rom. xvi. 25.-On Eunomius' knowledge of Scripture, see Socrates iv. 7. "He had a very slender knowledge of the letter of Scripture: he was wholly unable to enter into the spirit of it. Yet he abounded in words, and was accustomed to repeat the same thoughts in different terms without ever arriving at a clear explanation of what he had proposed to himself. Of this his seven books on the Apostle's Epistle to the Romans, on which he expended a quantity of vain labour, is a remarkable proof." But see c. Eunom. II. p. 107.
(119 )prosoyin, the reading of Oehler's mss.: also of Pithoeus' ms., which John the Franciscan changed into the vox nihili proshyin (putredinem), which appears in the Paris Editt. of 1638.
(120 )These words are in S. Basil's first Book against Eunomius.
(122 )Cf. Ps. xliv. 4, and Ps. xlviii. 14, with Ps. lxxiv. 12.
(123 )Valentinus "placed in the pleroma (so the Gnostics called the habitation of the Deity) thirty aeons (ages), of which one half were male, and the other female" (Mosheim), i.e. these aeons were co-eternal with the Deity.
(124 )barbaroi here being not opposed to "Greeks" must imply mere inability to speak aright: amongst those who claimed to use Catholic language another "barbarism," or "jargon," had arisen (i.e. that of heresy, whether Platonist or Gnostic), different from that which separated the Greeks from the Jews, Africans, Romans alike. Hesychius; barbaroi oi apaideutoi. So to S. Paul "the people" of Malta (Acts xxviii. 2-4), as to others the Apostles, were barbarian.
(126 )alloktwj autou taj toiautaj otomfwdeij adianohtouj fwnaj ...proj to sumban apoptuontoj.
(127 )ekbalwn tou logou sxeseij tinaj kai paraqeseij. Gulonius' Latin is wrong; "protulit in medium."
(128 )Reading eiper to aploun with the editt., which is manifestly required by the sense.
(129 )sunhqeiaj, lit. usage of language. Cf. Plato, Theaet. 168 B, ek sunhqeiaj rhmatwn te kai onomatwn. It is used absolutely, by the Grammarians, for the "Vulgar dialect."
(130 )thj kata fusin sxetikhj shmasiaj.
(132 )The Latin is wrong here, "secundum rerum intellectarum distinctricem significationem;" for nooumenwn without the article must be the gen. absol. Besides this the mss. read paratasin (not parastasin).
(134 )This may mean "short-hand" i. e. something difficult to decipher. See Book I. vi. note 10.
(135 )eulabeian tina prospoihton kai epilhpton.
(136 )See Book I. vii., ix., xi
(142 )The theology of Gregory and his master Origen rises above the unconscious Stoicism of Tertullian, and even that of Clement, which has an air of materialistic pantheism about it, owing to his attempt, like that of Eunomius, to base our knowledge of God upon abstractions and analogies drawn from nature. The result, indeed, of the "abstraction process" of Clement is only a multiplication of negative terms, "immensity," "simplicity," "eternity," &c. But they will lead to nothing, if there is not already behind them all some positive idea which we have received from a different source. Faith is this source; it is described by Origen as "an ineffable grace of the soul which comes from God in a kind of enthusiasm;" which formula expresses the primary fact of religious consciousness such as Leibnitz demonstrated it: and the positive idea supplied by this faculty is with Origen Goodness (rather than the Good). He would put Will as well as Mind into the Central Idea of Metaphysics, and would have the heart governed as well as the reason. All that he says about the "incomprehensibility" of God does not militate against this: for we must have some idea of that which is incomprehensible to us: and the Goodness of the Deity is the side on which we gain this idea.
(143 )But there are two meanings of aqanatoj,-and of these perhaps Eunomius was thinking,-i. e. 1. Not dead; 2. Immortal. In Plato's Phaedo there is an argument for the immortality of the soul, certainly not the strongest one, drawn from this. It is assumed there that the thing, whose nature is such that so long as it exists it neither is noir can be dead, can never cease to exist i. e. the soul by virtue of not actually dying, though capable of death, is immortal Perhaps this accounts for Eunomius saying (lower down) that "the perishable is not opposed to the imperishable."
(145 )The reasoning, which precedes and follows, amounts to this, Basil had said that the terms ungenerate, imperishable, immortal, are privative, i.e. express the absence of a quality. Eunomius objects that-No term expressive of the absence of a quality can be God's Name: the Ungenerate (which includes the others) is God's Name, therefore It does not express a privation. You mean to say, Gregory replies, that Ungenerate, &c. does not mean not-generated, &c. But what is not not-generated is generated (by your own law of dichotomy); therefore, Ungenerate means generated; and you prove God perishable and mortal. Here, the fallacy arises from Gregory's assuming more than Eunomius' conclusion: i. e. "the Ungenerate means not only the not-generated," changes into "the Ungenerate does not mean," &c
(146 )This cannot have been written earlier than 384. The preceding twelve books, of which an instalment only was read to Gregory the Nazianzene and others during the Council of Constantinople, 381, must have occupied him a considerable time: and there may have been an interval after that before this essay was composed.
(147 )taj stomfwdeij ...chrostomiaj kakosunqetwj diaperainonta. The editt. have diaperainontej, which Gulonius' Latin follows "arrogantes has sicci oris voces mala compositione trajicientes," i. e. his hearers get through them with bad pronunciation.
(150 )ouk hn ousia to ek tinoj. This is Oehler's reading from the mss.
(151 )O flock. This could not have been written earlier than 384, and there is abundant testimony that Eunomius still had his "flock. Long before this, even soon after he had left his see of Cyzicus, and had taken up his abode with Eudoxius, he separated himself from that champion of the Homoean party, and held assemblies apart because he had repeatedly entreated that his preceptor Aetius might be received into communion (Socrates iv. 13). This must have been about 366, before his banishment by Valens for favouring the rebellion of Procopius. Sozomen says (vi. 29), "The heresy of Eunomius was spread from Cilicia and the Mountains of Taurus as far as the Hellespont and Constantinople." In 380 at Bithynia near Constantinople "multitudes resorted to him, some also gathered from other quarters, a few with the design of testing his principles, and others merely from the desire of listening to his discourses. His reputation reached the ears of the Emperor, who would gladly have had a conference with him. But the Empress Flacilla studiously prevented an interview taking place between them; for she was the most faithful guard of the Nicene doctrines" (vii. 17). At the convention, however, of all the sects at Theodosius' palace in 382, Eunomius was present (Socrates v. 10). His ekqesij thj pistewj (to which he added learned notes) was laid before Theodosius in 383. It was not till 392 that the Emperor condemned him to banishment-the sole exception to Theodosius' toleration. "This heretic," says Sozomen again, "had fixed his residence in the suburbs of Constantinople and held frequent assemblies in private houses, where he read his own writings. He induced many to embrace his sentiments, so that the sectarians who were named after him became very numerous. He died not long after his banishment, and was interred at Dacora, his birthplace, a village of Cappadocia."
(153 )to mhden tw panth mh onti tauton.
(154 )Plhn all auk anelpisteon soi kai twn onuxwn ekeinou. Viger (De Idiotismis, p. 474), "Plgn alla interdum repellentis est, interdum concedentis," as here ironically and in Book I. p. 83, plhn alla kai estin en qhrioij krisij, "still there is some distinction between animals."
(1 )shpedonwdhj ...gaggraina: both used by Galen.
(2 )eij asebeian grafein. This is Mai's reading. Cf. asebeiaj grafh. The active (instead of middle) in this sense is found in Aristoph. Av. 1052: the passive is not infrequent in Demosthenes and Aeschines.
(3 )From God, and of the Christ, according to Scripture. This is noticeable. The Greek is ek tou Qeou esti, kai tou Xristou esti, kaqwj gegraptai. Compare the words below "proceeding from the Father, receiving from the Son."
(4 )to aparallkton (but there is something lost before this: perhaps to hnwmenon). This word is used to express substantial identity. Origen uses it in alluding to the "Stoic resurrection," i. e. the time when the "Great Year" shall again begin, and the world's history be literally repeated, i. e. the "identical Socrates shall marry the identical Xantippe, and teach the identical philosophy, &c." This expression was a favourite one also with Chrysostom and Cyril of Alexandria to express the identity of Glory, of Godhead, and of Honour, in the Blessed Trinity.
(5 )Reading morioij (cf. the same word below) for morian.
(6 )proj thn enantian poiothta.
(7 )nimble, koufon; compare Macbeth, I. vi.
"The air
Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself
Unto our senses."
(10 )Reading elattwsewj tinoj h kata fusin parallaghj, k. t. l.
(11 )"The Ancient Greek Fathers, speaking of this procession, mention the Father only, and never, I think, express the Son, as sticking constantly in this to the language of the Scriptures (John xv. 26)"-Pearson. The language of the above simile of Gregory would be an illustration of this. So Greg. Naz., Orat. I. de Filio, "standing on our definitions, we introduce the Ungenerate, the Generated, and that which proceeds from the Father." This last expression was so known and public, that it is recorded even by Lucian in his Philopatris, §12.
(12 )Reading kai thj eusebouj ennoiaj.
(13 )The edition of Cardinal Mai has o ekeino douj th dunamei, sunwmologhse, k. t. l. But the sense requires the comma to be placed after douj.
(17 )i. e. from fellowship with the Spirit. The text is tij o logoj kaf on eulogon krinousin patera anairein, dedwkasi; (for which dedwkosi is a conjecture). But perhaps pneuma anairein, didaskwsi, or didacwsi, would be a more intelligible reading; though the examples of the hortatory subjunctive other than in the first person are, according to Porson (ad Eurip. Hec. 430), to be reckoned among solecisms in classical Greek.
(18 )Is xl. 15. But Mai's text has staqmoj, not stagwn (LXX.).
(20 )Is. xl. 12. Tij emetrhse <\=85_ton ouranon spifamh.
(24 )pro pashj katalhpthj epinoiaj.
(26 )kata to agafon; probably here in its Platonic, rather than its ordinary sense.
(27 )thn alhfh morfwsin thj eusebeiaj.
(28 )entifetai: suntifetai, "concedes to," would perhaps be better.
(29 )2 Cor. xiii. 11. Cf. 1 Cor. xiv. 20.
(30 )Cf. 2 Tim. i. 13 (upotupwsin); Rom. ii. 20 (morfwsin); Rom. vi. 17 (tupon), all referring to truth as contained in a formula. Cf. also Gal. iv. 19.
(31 )Reading kafwj ekeinoj fhsin.
(32 )Eccles. xi. 5 (LXX.). ouk esti ginwskwn tij h odoj tou pneumatoj, wj osta en gastri kuoforoushj.
(34 )2 Cor. iii. 14, 2 Cor. iii. 15.
(35 )ek tou periexontoj. This expression of Anaxagoras is repeated more than once in the Treatise "On the Soul."
(36 )idiwtikhn. On 1 Cor. xiv. 16, O anaplhrwn ton topon tou idiwtou, Theodoret says, idiwthn kalei ton en tw laikw tagmati tetagmenon. Theophylact also renders the word by the sartre equivalent.
(37 )"Whether or not the Macedonians explicitly denied the Divinity of the Holy Ghost is uncertain; but they viewed Him as essentially separate from, and external to, the One Indivisible Godhead. The `Nicene 0' Creed declares that He is the Lord, or Sovereign Spirit because the heretics considered Him to be a minister of God; and the Supreme Giver of Life, because they considered Him a mere instrument by which we receive the gift."-Newman's Arians, note p. 420.
(39 )kata tou nomofetou is Mai's reading. But kata ton nomofethn, i. e. according to S. Mark iii. 29, S. Luke xii. 10, would be preferable. Migne reads para in this sense.
(40 )to has probably dropped out.
(42 )Something has dropped out here.
(43 )epiballoushj. Cf. Ps. xcix. 5; 2 Chron. xxviii. 2.
(46 )It is worth noticing that Gregory maintains (Hom. xv. on Canticles) that Doca in Scripture means the Holy Ghost.
(52 )Deut. vi. 13; Deut. x. 20.
(53 )The LXX. has prosekunhsen epi thn ghn eptakij, Gen. xxxiii. 3.
(54 )prosekunhse tw law thj ghj, toij uioij tou Xet, Gen xxiii. 7.
(55 )tou biou. This is a late use of bioj.
(56 )Still the word proskunein became consecrated to the highest Christian worship while qerapeuein was employed for address to the angels. "Every supplication every prayer, every entreaty, and every giving of thanks must be offered to the Almighty through the High Priest who is over all the angels, the incarnate Word and God. And we shall make supplication and prayer to the Word Himself also, and we shall give Him thanks if we can distinguish prayer in its proper meaning from the wrong use of the word," Origen c. Cels. v. 4 (Cf. viii. 13, where he answers the question whether Gabriel, Michael, and the rest of the archangels should be addressed, qerapeuesqai).
(1 )Reading omologountaj with Oehler. The Paris Edit. reads omologountwn, and so also the Benedictine S. Basil. The Latin translator of 1615, however, renders as if he had read omologountaj.
(2 )Reading eij orqothtoj apodeicin, with Oehler and the Benedictine S. Basil. The Paris Edit. of 1615 reads eij orqothta logou.
(5 )Reading, with Oehler, to qeon einai.
(6 )Reading with Oehler ei de mikroteron ...estin, wste ...kexwrisqai The Paris Edit. and the Benedictine S. Basil read ei de mikroteron ...estin, h wste ...xwrhsai. "If, according to their phrase, He is too small to be capable of community," &c. Oehler's reading seems to fit better in the argument. If the new idea of "capacity" had been introduced at this point, we should expect some other phrase than metexein acion at the end of the sentence.
(11 )Oehler and Migne's edit. of S. Basil here read gnwsin, the Paris Edit. and the Benedictine S. Basil have mnhmnh.
(12 )Cf. S. John xvii. 11 and John xvii.17.
(13 )This sentence and the passage following, down to the words "is wrought by the Father and the Son," are omitted in the editions of S. Basil.
(15 )Reading oti xeirotonhth, h fusij ginetai. The Paris Edit. and Migne's S. Basil read oti xeirotonia h fusij ginetai: Ben. S. Basil and Oehler read oti xeirotonhth fusij ou ginetai. The point of the argument seems to be that "Godhead" is spoken of in Scripture as being given by appointment, which excludes the idea of its being indicative of "nature." Gregory shows that it is so spoken of; but he does not show that Scripture asserts the distinction between nature and appointment, which the reading of the Benedictine text and Oehler would require him to do.
(17 )The treatise, as it appears in S. Basil's works, ends here.
(20 )Reading with Oehler Cristou in place of Qeou (the reading of the Paris edition).
(1 )Ps. cxx. 3; the phrase is rendered in A. V. by "coals of juniper," in the Vulg. by "carbonibus desolatoriis."
(2 )Reading, with Oehler, eupeiqeiaj.
(3 )Reading touj mh dihrhmenouj, as Sifanus seems to have read. The Paris Edit. of 1615 reads rouj dihrhmenouj, which Oehler leaves uncorrected.
(4 )Reading with Oehler metabibazein, for the mh metabibazein of the Paris Edit.
(5 )Sifanus seems to have read h adiaforoj xrhsij, as he translates "promiscuus et indifferens nominum usus."
(6 )Reading with Oehler sunhqeiaj for the ousiaj of the Paris Edit.
(7 )Reading with Oehler twn peri qeian fusin nooumenwn, for twn ti peri thn q. f. nooumenwn in the Paris Edit.
(8 )Reading with Oehler dihkei for proshkei.
(10 )Reading with Oehler ideaj for idean.
(13 )Reading with Oehler par' eautou for di' eautou.
(14 )Reading koinwnouj for koinwniaj, with Oehler.
(19 )Reading with Oehler, h tou agiou Pneumatoj for h dia t. ag. Pn.
(24 )The Paris Edit. omits aitiou.
(1 )Cf. Ps. lxxxi. 9; Ex. xxxiv. 14.
(2 )Cf. Ps. lxxxi. 9; Ex. xxxiv. 14.
(3 )Reading with Oehler, o legwn oti pote ouk hn o uioj; not as the Paris editions, o legwn oti pote ouk hn, outoj.
(6 )Adding to the text of the Paris edit. qeon, with Oehler
(10 )Cf. Rom. viii. 21. This clause is omitted in the Paris editions.
(11 )Reading genesewj with Oehler. The Paris editions read gennhsewj: but Oehler's reading seems to give a better sense.
(13 )Reading with Oehler pote for the te of the Paris Edit.
(16 )Inserting with Oehler the clause, kai o gennhqeij gennhtoj, which is not in the text of the Paris Editt, though a corresponding clause appears in the Latin translation.
(17 )The reference may be to Ps. cxliii. 10.
(1 )perispasmwn. The allusion must be to 1 Cor. vii. 35; but the actual word is not found in the whole of the N. T., though periespato is used of Martha, S. Luke x. 40.
(2 )Basil: rather than Gregory Thaumaturgus, as some have conjectured.
(3 )to afqoron; this is connected just below with the Divine afqarsia. In commenting on the meaning of this latter word at the close of the Epistle to the Ephesians, Bishop Ellicott prefers to take it with agapwntwn, "in a manner and an element that knows neither change, diminution, nor decay" ("in uncorruptness" R.V.): although in the six other passages where it occurs in S. Paul "it refers directly or indirectly to a higher sphere than the present." i.e. of immortality above, and might so, if the construction allowed, be taken with xarij. This illustrates Gregory's use of afqarsia in its human relation.
(4 )Eph. v. 27 (of the church).
(5 )deicasqai. Livineius conjectures decasqai; so also Cod. Reg. Cf. Sedulius:
"Domus pudici pectoris
Templum repente fit Dei."
(8 )epistrefomenw thn alwna. This word is used for "walking over," in Hesiod, Theogon. 753, gaian epistrefetai.
(9 )eterwn, following Cod. Reg., for ekaterwn.
(10 )uper tou allou (a late use of alloj). This was Livineius' conjecture for twn allwn: the interchange of u and n is a common mistake.
(11 )There is a play on the words qalamoj and qanatoj: "the one is changed into the other."
(12 )eti toutwn anaklhseij: "amongst these", i. e. the domestics. Livineius reads toutoij, and renders "Succedunt inutilis revocatio, inanis manuum plausus," i. e. as the last funeral act.
(13 )Reading purwsin, with Galesinius: the Paris Editt. read phrwsin.
(14 )newteron, in a bad sense. So Zosimus, lib. i.p. 658, prgmata #Rwmaioij newtera mhxanhsasqai.
(15 )analush: Philip. i. 23. Tertullian (De Patient. 9) translates, "Cupis recipi (i. e. to flit, depart) jam et esse cum Domino." Peza, however, says that the metaphor is taken from unharnessing after a race. Chrysostom and Jerome seem to take it of loosing off the cable.
(16 )hgaphmenoj paij. Cod. Reg. has o kaqhmenoj, which he renders "nanus" (i. e. of low stature), and cites Pollux Onomast. lib. 3, c. 24 (where apokaqhmenoj = iners); it might also bear the meaning of "stay-at-home," in contrast to the prodigal in the next sentence.
(17 )en toij trolabousin. Galesinius' Latin seems wrong here, "rebus iis quas supra meminimus," though the words often have that force in Gregory.
(18 )Ps. xxiv. 1; Ps. xlvii. 7.
(19 )Ps. xxiv. 1; Ps. xlvii. 7.
(24 )Ps cxx 5 Ps cxx 6 (LXX.).
(26 )toij meta gastera (not, gasteroj), Cod. Reg.; cf. Gregor. Nazian. orat. xvi. p. 250, douloj gastroj, kai twn upo gastera. Euseb. lib. 7, c. 20, taij upo gastera plhsmonaij.
(29 )upbruxion; referring to the floods of the Nile.
(31 )Ps cxxiv. 5, Ps cxxiv. 6, Ps cxxiv. 7: to udwr anupostaton (LXX.), i.e. unsupportable.
(32 )Cf. De Anima et Resurr., p. 225, D. for the metaphor.
(34 )semnothtoj; not as Galesinius renders, "asperitate quadam gravi."
(39 )epi ta parakeimena. Galesinius wrongly renders "in contrarias partes." Cf. Arist. Eth, ii. 5.
(40 )Cf. S. Matt. vii. 18; from which it will he seen that Gregory confirms the Vulgate "malum" for sapron, since he quotes it as kakon here.
(41 )tou proferontoj; not "of their Creator," or "of their father" (Livineius).
(42 )mexri miaj wdinoj. So perhaps Rom. ix. 10: 9Pebekka ec enoj koithn exousa, i.e. ex uno concubitu. Below, c. 9 (p. 139, c. 11), Gregory uses the same expression of one birth.
(44 )thn ek sumfwnou kaqarothta th sxolh twn proseuxwn aforizwn, "durch haufiges Gebet die innige Reinheit festzustellen sucht," J. Rupp. The Latin fails to give the full force, "ex convenientia quadam munditiam animi in orationum studio constituit:" sxolh is abundant time from the business of life.
(45 )kreittwn, k. t. l., "melius" (Livineius), not "validior."
(46 )ilun, a better reading than ulhn. Cf. Ps. lxix. 2, "the mire of depth" (ilun buqou).
(47 )ouden outw th fusei feukton estin, wj k. t. l. Both Livineius and Galesinius have missed the meaning here. Jac. Billius has rightly interpreted, "Nihil natura tam turpe ac fugiendum est, quin, si," &c.
(48 )epi ta anw, Reg. Cod., better than to.
(49 )Reading frontizontaj, with Reg. Cod.
(52 )toij duskolwtatoij; better than to take this as a neuter.
(53 )anaisqhtwj exontwn; Reg. Cod.
(54 )augazein; intrans. in N. T.
(56 )ouxi tw misei thj alhqeiaj alla th asqeneia thj dihghsewj, the reading of Codd. Vatican & Reg.
(57 )oude to arxetupon, k. t. l.
(58 )These are evidently the elements of beauty as then recognized by the eye; it is still the Hellenic standard.
(60 )Cf. Augustine, Tract. 6 in Joann.: "Columba fel non habet. Simon habebat; ideo separatus est a columbae visceribus." Aristotle asserts the contrary; but even Galen denies that it possesses a bladder (lib. de atr. bil. sub fin.).
(61 )diattontaj, corrected by Livineius, the transcriber of the Vatican ms., for diatattontaj. Cf. Arist. Meteor. I. iv: kai omoiwj kata platoj kai baqoj oi dokountej asterej diattein ginontai: and, in the same chapter, diaqeontej asterej. Cf. Seneca. Nat. Quaest. iii. 14: "Videmus ergo `Stellarum longos a tergo albescere tractus. 0' Haec velut stellae exsiliunt et transvolant." This and much else, in the preceding and following notes to this treatise, is taken from those of Fronto Ducaeus, printed in the Paris Edit. The Paris Editors, Fronto Ducaeus and Claude Morell, used Livineius' edition (1574) of this treatise, which is based on the Vatican Cod. and Bricman's (of Cologne); and they corrected from the Cod. of F. Morell, Regius Professor of Theology; and from the Cod. Regius.
(63 )S. John ix. 5; John i. 9.
(64 )ta en tw ouranw thlaugwj kaqoratai. The same word in S. Mark viii. 25 ("clearly") evidently refers to the second stage of recovered sight, the power of seeing the perspective. The mss. reading is en tw agiw, for which aeri and hliw have been conjectured: ouranw is due to Galesinius; there is a similar place in Dio Chrys. (de regno eg tyrann.): "impaired sight," he says, "cannot see even what is quite close, ugiej de ousa mexrij ouranou te kai asterwn ecikneitai, i.e. the distant sky. Just above, aporruyamenw (purged) is a better reading than aporriyamenw, and supported by F. Morell's ms.
(68 )upenantiwj; i.e. even as a sub-contrary.
(73 )Cf. Prov. xx. 6. mega anqrwpoj; and Ambrose (de obitu T eodosii), "Magnum et honorabile est homo misericors;" and the same on Ps. cxix. 73, "Grande homo, et preciosum vir misericors, et vere magnus est, qui divini operis interpres est, et imitator Dei."
(74 )thj politeiaj: used in the same sense in "On Pilgrimages."
(76 )o logoj, i.e. Scripture. So to logion in Gregory passim, and Clement. Alex. (Siromata).
(79 )eneshmhnato <\[_th draxmh.
(87 )upo thn amartian should perhaps be restored from Rom. vii. 14; though the Paris Edit. has upo thj amartiaj.
(91 )dia mesou ou gegonen. So Codd. Reg. Vat.; but the ou is manifestly a corruption arising from mesou.
(92 )emfuomenh; cf. the Homeric en d'ara oi fu xeiri, k. t. l.
(97 )sunteleian. cr. S. Matt. xiii 39; and Heb. ix. 15.
(99 )The text is here due to the Vatican Codex: kai ei di'enoj tinoj molunfeih, k. t. l.
(100 )tw merei. This is the reading of Cod. Morell. and of the fragment used by Livineius; preferable to tw merikw salw sugkumatoumenon, as in Cod. Reg.
(101 )kukloterwj, Plutarch, ii. 892, F.
(102 )meloj (not as Galesinius, meroj), 1 Cor. xii. 26.
(103 )Ps. lvi. 3 (from LXX. according to many mss.: others join apo uyouj hmeraj ou fobhqhsomai, ab altitudine diei non timebo). But Aquila has uyiste, agreeing with the Hebrew; so also Jerome.
(104 )oudeni aresqhsetai. The Vatican Cod. has eraqhsetai, which would require the genitive.
(107 )Eph. v. 27.-Origen (c. Cels. vii. 48, 49), comparing Pagan and Christian virginity, says, "The Athenian hierophant, distrusting his power of self-control for the period of his regular religious duties, uses hemlock, and passes as pure. But you may see among the Christians men who need no hemlock. The Faith drives evil from their minds, and ever fits them to perform the service of prayer. Belonging to some of the gods now in vogue there are certainly virgins here and there-watched or not I care not now to inquire-who seem not to break down in the course of chastity which the honour of their god requires. But amongst Christians, for no repute amongst men, for no stipend, for no mere show, they practise an absolute virginity; and as they `liked to retain God in their knowledge, 0' so God has kept them in that liking mind, and in the performance of fitting works, filling them with righteousness and goodness. I say this without any depreciation of what is beautiful in Greek thought, and of what is wholesome in their teachings. I wish only to show that all they have said, and things more noble, more divine, have been said by those men of God, the prophets and apostles."
(108 )taj hdonaj i.e. the whole class.
(109 )Ps. xix. 6, Ps. xix. 7, Ps xix. 8.
(111 )According to the emendation of Livineius: mhte to kata thn aplothta dokoun epaineton.
(113 )Ps. cxix. 127, LXX. (xrusion kai topazion).
(115 )For the gold, see Prov. xi. 22; for the pearl, S. Matt. vii. 6.
(116 )to mh sunhrmosqai tini dia twn katallhlwn ton bion
(117 )adolesxian tou logou tij kataginwskoi.
(118 )wsper ti anaqhma; so Gregory calls the tongue of S. Meletius the anaqhma of Truth.
(119 )Gregory seems to allude to S. Matt. xi. 12.
(120 )epi mataiw la3oi. Gregory evidently alludes to Ps. xxiv. 4, and agrees with the Vulgate "in vano acceperit."
(124 )S. Matt. xiii. 47, Matt. xiii. 48.
(126 )didaskalian ecomologhsewj ufhgoumenoj.
(128 )Is. lx. 8. The LXX. has peristeran sun neossoij.
(129 )Zech v. 7. "this is a woman that sitteth in the midst of the ephah:" epi meson tou m e t r o u (LXX.). Origen and Jerome as well as Grego y make her sit upon the lead itself. Vatablus explains that the lead was in an amphora.
(130 )1 Cor. x. 11: Rom. xv. 6.
(132 )di' hj oimai kai thn Qeotokon prodiatuqai Marian. These words are absent from the Munich Co. i. e. the German; not from Vat. and Reg. Ambrose, Ep. 25, has "Quid de altera Moysi sorore Maria loquar, quae foeminei dux agminis pede transmisit pelagi freta," when speaking "de gloria virginitatis."
(133 )tou eikotoj ...apesxoinistai.
(135 )S. John viii. 15. "Ye judge after the flesh." It is Gregory's manner to make such passing allusions to Scripture, and especially to S. Paul.
(136 )Gregory here quotes from LXX. Cf. Is. xxvi. 18, and also below, etekomen pneuma swthriaj sou, o epoihsamen epi thj lhj.
(137 )1 Cor. iv. 15: Philemon 10.
(139 )Is. xxvi. 18 (LXX.). See above. But R. V. "We have as it were brought forth wind: we have not wrought any deliverance in the earth."
(141 )pantwj de alhqhj, k. t. l. So Codd. Reg. and Morell., for pantwn. Gregory alludes to 2 Cor. xiii. 3.
(144 )See Eph. iv. 22, Eph.iv. 23.
(145 )See S. Matt. viii. 11; S. Luke xiii. 29. The same expression (eugenhj twn af' hliou anatolwn) is used of Meletius, in Gregory's funeral oration on him.
(146 )ta edna tou gamou, i.e. given by the bridegroom. The Juris-consults called it Donatio propter nuptias, or simply Donatio. The human soul here espouses Wisdom, i. e. Christ, as its Bride. See below, where Prov. iv. 6 is quoted.
(153 )anagkhn empoiusi twn aboulhtwn kakwn, plhsmonhj wj ta polla ektiktoushj, k. t. l., removing the comma from plhsmonhj (Paris Edit.) to kakwn.
(154 )Cf. Cicero, 2 De Fin. Bon.: "Socratem audio dicentem cibi condimentum esse famem; potionis sitim;" so Antiphanes (apud Stobaeum), apanf' o limoj glukea, plhn autou, poiei.
(155 )kata to prohgoumenon, principaliter. Cf. Clem. Alexand. Strom., ta onomata sumbola twn nohmatwn kata to prohgoumenon, i. e. of general concepts.
(156 )toij alogwteroij. Fronto Ducaeus translates "bardis objiciat," i. e. "savages," not "beasts."
(157 )Heb. vi. 8. "The Apostle" here is to be noticed. The same teaching, as to there being no necessity for pleasure, is found in Clement of Alexandria. He says it is not our skopoj, 2 Paed. c. i. and 2 Strom., kaqolou gar ouk anagkaion to thj hdonhj paqoj, epakolouqimon de xreiaij taij fusikaij, k. t. l.
(158 )epimetiaj. Cf. en epimetrw, Polyb., "into the bargain."
(159 )kai peri touj swmatikouj ponouj hsxolhmenon (i. e. "busied,"): Galesinius' translation must here be wrong, "ad corpotis labores prorsus inutilem."
Cold can unite with Wet or Dry which "lie on each side of" it, and are "kindred" to it: and so through one or the other (which are also "kindred" to Hot) can come "in contact with" Hot. (So of all.) A wet thine becomes the medium in which both cold and heat can be manifested.
(161 )elattonhsh (for LXX. Exod. xvi. 18, and also 2 Cor. viii. 15, have elattonhsen), not elattwsh with Livineius.
(162 )Rom.x.8: elluj sou to rhma estin, en tw stomati sou kai en th kaodia sou. Cf. Deut. xxx. 14.
(163 )kata ton erounta logon (Codd. Reg. and Mor. airounta). This alludes to Prov iii. 18, rather than Prov. iv. 6.
(164 )ou gar enargej esti to epithdeuma touto, wste kat' anagkhn, k.t.l The alternative reading is en arxaij. It has been suggested to read, ote gar <\=85_tote (for touto), and understand an aposiopesis in the next sentence; thus-"For when our undertaking is clear and simple, then we must entrust to ourselves the decision of what is best. But when the attempt at the unknown is not unattended with risk-(then we want a guide)." Billius. But this is very awkward.
(165 )Livineius had conjectured that epiofalhj must be supplied, from a quotation of this passage in Antonius Monachus, Sententiae, serm. 20, and in Abbas Maximus, Capita, serm. 41; and this is confirmed by Codd. Reg. and Morell.
(166 )wn kai kata gnwmhn kai wj eterwj dioikoumenwn oligoj toij swfronousin o logoj. The Latin here has "quas quidem res ego sane despicio, exiguamque harum tanquam extrinsecus venientium)" &c.; evidently katagnoihn must have been in the text used.
(167 )anodiaj tinaj kainotomhswsin (anodia, anodiaij, is frequent in Polybius; the word is not found elsewhere in other cases).
(169 )Ecclesiastes iv. 10. Gregory supports the Vulgate, which has "quia cum ceciderit, non habet sublevantem se."
(170 )etrw ptwmati, euphemistically.
(172 )The alternative reading is twn qhriwn; but oneirwn is confirmed by three of the Codd. Cf. Theodoret, lib. 4, Haeretic. fab., of the Messaliani; and lib. 4, Histor. c. 10, upnw de sfaj autouj ekdidontej taj twn oneirwn fantasiaj profheiaj apokalousi.
(174 )See Chrysostom, Lib. Proj touj suneisaktouj exontaj.
(175 )twn ecwqen. Cf. Rom. ii. 24.
(176 )The negative (mh nomoqetein) is found in Codd. Reg. and Morell.
(177 )tnn zwhn. So bioj also is used in Greek after 2nd century. "They (the monks) make little show in history before the reign of Valens (a.d. 364). Paul of Thebes, Hilarion of Gaza, and even the great Antony, are only characters in the novels of the day. Now, however, there was in the East a real movement towards monasticism. All parties favoured it. The Semi-arians were busy inside Mr. Taurus; and though Acacians and Anomoeans held more aloof, they could not escape an influence which even Julian felt. But the Nicene party was the home of the ascetics." Gwatkin's Arians.
(178 )Ps. xviii. 25, Ps. xviii. 26 (LXX.).
(180 )Prov. iii. 18; but said of Wisdom.
(181 )tw phdaliw thj eufrosunhj.
(182 )Rom. xii. 1, Rom. xii. 2; Rom. xi. 4.
(183 )Gregory alludes to Rev. i. 16: epoihsen hmaj basileij kai iereij tw qew kai patri autou.
(1 )This treatise is written for Hierius, in Gregory's old age. It has been thought to be spurious (Oudin, p. 605), because of Fronto Ducaeus' insertion (p. 374) about the Purgatorial Fire. But Tillemont, Semler, and Schroeckh have shown that there are no grounds for this opinion. Anastasius Sinaita mentions it (Quaest. xvi.).
(2 )eiper hbwsin oi kata touj nun toij logoij akmazontej. The Latin translator Laurent. Sifanus, I. U. Doct. (Basle, 1562), must have had a different text to this of the Paris Edit.: "si quidem ita floreret ut qui nunc eloquentia vigent."
(3 )plinqothj, playing upon plinqwn just above; a word seemingly peculiar to Gregory. We cannot help thinking here of Plato's definition of the good man, petragwnoj aneu yogou: though the idea here is that of richness rather than shape.
(4 )i. e. Er the Armenian. See Plato, Repub. x §614. &c.
(5 )An anecdote resembling what follows, but not quite the same, is told of Xerxes in Aelian's Var. Hist. xii. 40. Erasmus also refers to it in his Adagia.
(6 )th aplanei perifora. This is of course the Ptolemaic system which had already been in vogue two centuries. Sun, and moon, and all, were "planets" round the earth as a centre: until the 8th sphere, in which the stars were fixed, was reached; and above this was the crystalline sphere, under the primum mobile. Cf. Milton, Par. Lost, iii. 481: "They pass the planets seven, and pass the fix'd:" and see note p. 257.
(7 )Reading tpufhn. The Paris Edit. has rufn.
(11 )There is introduced at these words in the text of the Paris Edition the following "Explicatio," in Greek. "Here it is manifest that the father means by the `purging fire 0' the torments and agonies suffered by those who having sinned have not completed a worthy and adequate repentance, according to the Gospel parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus. For it is clear that he is thinking of this parable when he says, `either purged in fire 0' (i.e. the Rich Man), `or refreshed with the dew of blessing 0' (i.e. Lazarus). But that sentence of the Judgment, `They shall go, these into everlasting punishment, but the just into life everlasting, 0' has no place as yet in these sufferings." In other words, the commentator sees here the doctrine of Purgatory, as held by the Roman Church. And when we compare the other passages in Gregory about the "cleansing fire," especially that De Anima et Resurrectione, 247 B, we shall see that he contemplates the judgment ("the incorruptible tribunal") as coming not only after the Resurrection, but also after the chastising process. Not till the Judgment will the moral value of each life be revealed; the chastising is a purely natural process. But then the belief in a Judgment coming after everything rather contradicts the Universalism with which he has been charged, for what necessity would there be for it, if the chastising was successful in every instance? With regard to the nature of this "fire," it is spiritual or material with him according to the context. The invisible natures will be punished with the one, the visible (i. e. the World) with the other: although this destruction is not always preserved by him. See E. Moeller (on Gregory's Doctrine on Human Nature), p. 100.
(12 )Rom. xi. 33, Rom. xi. 34.
(16 )twn ginomenwn. The Latin has overlooked this; "Haec autem omnia huc spectant ut," &c. (Sifanus).
(17 )h fusij i. e. the intellectual fusij mentioned above. If this were translated "Nature," it would contradict what has just been said about the body. It is plain that fusij contains a much larger meaning always than our sole equivalent for it; fusij is applied even to the Divine essence.
(19 )twn proj ti pwj exein thn yuxhn.
(20 )peritth. Sifanus must have had peri ti in his Cod.; "sed mentis circa aliquam rem actio."
(22 )For an explanation of such a restriction, see Bingham, vol. viii. p. 109 (ed. 1720).
(26 )para thn prwthn (i. e. wran).
(28 )This mysticism of Gregory is an extension of Origen's view that there are direct affinities or analogies between the visible and invisible world. Gregory here and elsewhere proposes to find in the facts of nature nothing less than analogies with the energies, and so with the essence, of the Deity. The marks stamped upon the Creation translate these energies into language intelligible to us: just as the energies in their turn translate the essence, as he insists on in his treatise against Eunomius. This world, in effect, exists only in order to manifest the Divine Being. But the human soul, of all that is created, is the special field where analogies to the Creator are to be sought, because we feel both by their energies alone; both the soul and God are hid from us, in their essence. "Since," he says (De Hom Opif. c. xi.) "one of the attributes we contemplate in the Divine nature is incomprehensibility of essence, itis clearly necessary that in this point `the image 0' should be able to show its resemblance to the Archetype. For if, while the Archetype transcends comprehension, the essence of `the image 0' were comprehended, the contrary character of the attributes we behold in them would prove the defect of `the image 0'; but since the essence of our Mind eludes our knowledge, it has an exact resemblance to the Supreme essence, figuring as it does by its own unknowableness the incomprehensible Being." Therefore, Gregory goes to the interior facts of our nature for the actual proof of theological doctrine. God is "spirit" because of the spirituality of the soul. The "generation" of the Son is proved by the Will emanating from the Reason. Gregory follows this line even more resolutely than Origen. He was the first Father who sought to explain the Trinity by the triple divisions of the soul which Platonism offered. Cf. his treatise De eo quod sit ad immutabilitatem, &c., p. 26.
(30 )eij apeiron parateinetai. Such passages as these must be set against others in Gregory, such as the concluding part of the De Anima et Resurrectione, in arriving at an exact knowledge of his views about a Universal ' Apokatastasij.
(32 )Read with L. Sifanus, mh katallhlw trofh.
(33 )eij plhqwrikhn ahdian ekpiptwn.
(35 )Reading en tw atelei thj hlikiaj.
(36 )Reading sumptwmatwn (for sumpomatwn. Morell).
(37 )tufou (tou stufou, Paris Edit. i. e. "of their astringency")
(38 )dia thj aisxraj apotisewj ton emeton anekinhsan.
(39 )thn sesofismenhn thj filarguriaj anagkhn.
(42 )ouk exontej pou thn anagkhn thj appwstiaj tauthj epanenegwsi.
(44 )kefalaion; lit. "a sum total:" cf. below, epi kefalaiw sunapteon, "we must summarize."
(45 )The text is in confusion here: but the Latin supplies: "Nothing reasonable fails in reason; nothing wise, in wisdom; neither virtue nor truth could admit of that which is not goods," &c.
(46 )Rom. iii. 3-9; Rom. iv. 1, Rom. vi. 2; Rom. ix. 14-24; Rom. xi. 22-36.
(47 )This sentence is not in the Greek of the Paris Edition, and is not absolutely necessary to the sense.
(49 )epibwnai tinaj twn kakwn: or, "That some have lived on in their sins."
(50 )i. e. as letting them live, and mitigating the evil of their lives.
(1 )The modern history of this Letter is curious. Its genuineness though suspected by Bellarmine, is admitted by Tillemont, and even by Caesar Baronius. After having been edited by Morel in Greek and Latin, 1551, it was omitted from his son's edition of the works of Gregory by the advice of Fronto Ducaeus, lest it should seem to reflect upon the practice of pilgrimages. But in 1607 it was again edited (Hannov.) by Du Moulin, with a defence of it, and a translation into French by R. Stephen: this is the only instance of a vernacular version of Gregory at this time, and shows the importance attached to this Letter. It appears in the second Paris Edition, but with the vehement protests, printed in the notes, of the Jesuit Gretser, against Du Moulin's interpretation of its scope, and even against its genuineness. He makes much of its absence from the Bavarian (Munich) Cod., and of the fact that even "heretical printers" had omitted it from the Basle Edition of 1562: and he is very angry with Du Moulin for not having approached the Royal Library while in Paris, and while he had leisure from his "Calvinistic evening communions." But why should he, when the Librarian, no less a person than I. Casaubon (appointed 1598), had assured him that the Letter was in the Codex Regius? It is in Migne iii. col. 1009. See Letter to Eustathia, &c.
(2 )politeian, "vivendi rationem." Cf. Basil, Homil. xiii.
(4 )parakratoumenh; cf. Epict. (cited by Diosc.) taj trixaj reousaj parakratein, "to stop the hair from falling off."
(5 )qusiasthria, the sanctuaries (with the Altar), into which at this time no layman except the Emperor might enter (Balsamon's note to decrees of Council of Laodicaea).
(6 )Cyril's Catecheses in the year 348 had combated the practical immorality of the Holy City.
(1 )Prov. xvii. 6 (LXX.). The clause is not found in the English version.
(2 )Reading (with Forbes' marginal note), upobolhj
(3 )A Bodleian ms. of the Latin version, cited by Forbes, which gives independent titles, has here:-"Of the perfection and beauty of the world and of the harmonious discord of the four elements."
(5 )uperbolh apparently means "intensity" or "a high degree of force," not "excess of force," since, though the force in each is augmented, it does not exceed that in the other, which is augmented also pari passu.
(8 )The title in the Bodleian Latin ms. is:-" That it was reasonable that man should be created last of the creatures."
(9 )The title in the Bodleian Latin ms. is:-"That God created man with great deliberation."
(10 )Gen. i. 26, not exactly from the LXX.
(11 )The title in the Bodleian Latin ms. is:-Of the kingly dignity of the human form."
(12 )It is not clear whether the reference here is to painting or to sculpture, of which the product was afterwards painted. The combination of anamassontai and sumparagrafousi suggests the latter.
(13 )In the Bodleian Latin ms. The title us:-"How the human soul is made in the image of God"
(14 )lamprothj The old Latin version translates this by "purpurissus"
(16 )Cf. 1 Cor. ii. 16; and 2 Cor. xiii. 3.
(17 )1 S. John iv. 7, John iv. 8.
(18 )S. John xiii. 35. (not verbally).
(19 )The Bodleian Latin ms. gives:-"That God has not human limbs, and that the image of the Father and of the Son is one, against the Eunomians."
(22 )The Bodleian Latin ms. gives:-"Why man was not created with horns and other defences like certain other animals."
The argument of this and the following chapter seems to be derived to a great extent from Origen (Contra Celsum, iv. 75 et sqq.).
(23 )The Latin version divides the chapters somewhat differently at this point. The Bodleian ms. gives this section the title, "Of the dignity of the human form, and why man was created after the other creatures."
(24 )"Vegetative":-reading (with several mss. of both classes of those cited by Forbes) futikh for fusikh (the reading which Forbes follows in his text). A similar reading has been adopted in some later passages, where the mss. show similar variations. It seems not unlikely that the less common futikoj should have been altered by copyists to fusikoj. But Gregory seems in this treatise to use the word fusij for the corporeal nature: and he may have employed the adjectival form in a corresponding sense.
(25 )Earlier, i.e. earlier than the animal life, or "sensitive" soul.
(26 )The reference is really to 1 Thess. v. 23. Apparently all Forbes' mss. read proj touj 'Efesiouj: but the Latin version of Dionysius Exiguus corrects the error, giving the quotation at greater length.
(28 )yuxikhn: "psychic" or "animal:"-the Authorised Version translates the word by "natural."
(30 )Cf. 1 Cor. ii. 14, 1 Cor. ii. 15.
(31 )The Latin versions make ch. ix. begin at this point. The Bodleian ms. gives as its title:-"That the form of the human body agrees with the rationality of the mind."
(32 )It is not absolutely clear whether logoj in the following passage means speech or reason-and whether logikoj means "capable of speech," or "rational." But as logikoj in §7 clearly has the force of "rational," it would seem too abrupt a transition to make it mean "capable of speech" in the first line of §8, and this may determine the meaning of logoj.
(33 )Reading twn for ton, with some of Forbes' mss.
(34 )This and part of the next chapter, according to the division of the Greek, are included in the ninth chapter of the Latin Version.
(35 )Here the Latin version begins chapter x. The itle in the Bodleian ms. is:-"Of the five bodily senses."
(36 )That is, of the mind, in connection with reason.
(37 )Cf. Eccles. i. 8. The quotation is not from the LXX.: it is perhaps not intended to be verbal.
(38 )The Bodleian ms. of the Latin version gives as the title:-"The definition of the human mind."
(41 )In the Latin version chap. xii. includes only §§1-8 (incl.), to which the Bodleian ms. gives the title:-"That the principle of man does not all reside in the brain, but in the whole body."
(42 )This view of the position of the heart is perhaps shared by Gregory himself: see e.g. ch. xxx. §15.
(43 )dia twn kata thn basin porwn. The meaning of this is obscure. If we might read twn kata thn oyin porwn, we should have a parallel to tou kata to stoma porou below. But there seems to be no variation in the mss.;.
(45 )The inflammation causing swelling in the neighbouring parts, and so leaving no room for the mind.
(46 )The Latin version (as well as several of the Greek mss.) makes this the beginning of chap. xiii. The Bodleian ms. gives as the title:-"That as the mind is governed by God, so is the material life of the body by the mind."
(47 )kalon and to kalon seem in the following passage to be used of goodness, alike moral and aesthetic: once or twice kalon seems to be used as equivalent to agaqon or as opposed to kakon, in a sense capable of being rendered simply by "good"; it also seems to carry with it in other phrases the distinct idea of aesthetic goodness, or "beauty," and the use of kalloj and kallwpizein, in other phrases still, makes it necessary to preserve this idea in translation. The phrases "beautiful and good," or "beauty and goodness," have therefore been here adopted to express the single adjective kalon.
(48 )Omitting tou, which Forbes inserts before katakosmeisqai: it appears to be found in all the mss., but its insertion reduces the grammar of the passage to hopeless confusion. Perhaps the true reading is tou prwtotupou kallistou.
(49 )Reading w, with several of Forbes' mss., for the h of the Paris ed., and the o of Forbes' text.
(50 )The Latin version (and with it several of the Greek mss.) makes this the fourteenth chapter. The Bodleian ms. gives as its title:-"That our body is always in motion."
(51 )Life is represented as a succession of opposite states (twn enantiwn diadoxh), which yet recur again and again in the same sequence (dia twn omoiwn). This is illustrated in the following section.
(52 )Reading mhxanhj with the earlier editions and (apparently) a large number of Forbes' mss. in place of mhxanikhj. But molubdinhj may be for molubdainhj.
(53 )Reading deiknusin, as Forbes does (apparently from all the mss. and agreeing with the earlier editt.). The Latin translation points to the reading deiknutai.
(54 )Reading epidistazousa with several of Forbes' mss.
(55 )"The holy men," Joseph and Daniel, who were enabled, by the authority they obtained through their interpretation of dreams, to benefit the state.
(56 )This is chapter xv. in the Latin version and some Greek mss. The Bodleian ms. of the Latin gives the title:-"That the mind is sometimes in servitude to the body, and of its three differences, vital, spiritual, and rational."
(57 )Otherwise chap. xvi. The Bodleian ms. of the Latin version gives the title:-"That the vital energy of the irrational creatures is not truly but equivocally called `soul 0', and of the unspeakable communion of body and soul."
(58 )<\th thj yuxhj klhsei sugkekrimenh. The meaning is apparently something like that given; but if we might read sugkexrhmenh the sense of the passage would be much plainer.
(59 )Reading futikhj for fusikhj as before, ch. 8, §4 (where see note).
(60 )Cf. Gen. ix. 3. The quotation, except the last few words, is not verbally from the LXX.
(61 )It does not seem of much consequence whether we read perilambanetai with Forbes and the mss., and treat it as of the middle voice, or perilambanei ti with the Paris Editt. The reading perilambanetai, taken passively, obscures the sense of the passage.
(62 )Otherwise chap. xvii. The title in the Bodleian ms. of the Latin Version is:-"That the excellence of man does not consist in the fact that, according to philosophers, he is made after the image of the world, but in the fact that he is made in the image of God, and how he is made in the image of God."
(70 )Cf. S. Matt. xxii. 20, Matt. xxii. 21.
(72 )The punctuation followed by Forbes here does not seem to give a good sense, and also places S. Gregory in the position of formally stating that one passage of Genesis contradicts another. By substituting an interrogation after h istoria fhsin, the sense given is this:-we know from a later statement in Genesis that the name Adam was given "in the day that they were created" (Gen. v. 2), but here the name given is general, not particular. There must be a reason for this, and the reason is, that the race of man, and not the individual, is that spoken of as "created in the image of God." With this view that all humanity is included in the first creation may be compared a passage near the end of the De Anima, where the first man is compared to a full ear of corn, afterwards "divided into a multitude of bare grain."
(73 )With this passage, again, may be compared the teaching of the De Anima on the subject of the Resurrection.
(74 )The explanation of the reason, however, is deferred; see xvii 4.
(75 )Otherwise Chap. xviii. The Bodleian ms. of the Latin version has the title:-"Against those who say that sin was a nseful introduction for the propagation of the human race; and that by sin it deserved animal generation."
(76 )S. Luke xx. 35, Luke xx. 36.
(79 )Otherwise Chap. xix. The Bodleian ms. of the Latin version has the title:-"That our other passions also are common to us and to the irrational animals, and that by the restraint of them we are said to be like to God."
(80 )Reading with Forbes diaglufouj. The reading diglufouj of the earlier editt. gives a better sense, but is not supported by any of Forbes' mss.
(84 )Otherwise Chap. xx. The Bodleian ms. of the Latin version has the title:-"How the food ought to be understood with which man was fed in Paradise and from which he was prohibited."
(90 )Otherwise Chap. xxi. The Bodleian ms. of the Latin version gives as the title:-"Why Scripture calls the tree, `the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. 0'"
(91 )The reference is to Gen. ii. 9 (in LXX.), where the tree is called, to culon tou eidenai gnwston kalou kai ponhrou. S. Gregory proceeds to ascertain the exact meaning of the word gnwston in the text; the eating is the "knowing," but what is "knowing"? He answers, "desiring."
(99 )Gen. iii. 5, Gen. iii. 6 (LXX.).
(101 )Otherwise Chap. xxii. The Bodleian ms. of the Latin version gives as the title:-"That the Divine counsel is immutable."
(102 )Otherwise Chap. xxiii. The title in the Bodleian ms. of the Latin version is:-"That when the generation of man is finished, time also will come to an end." Some mss., of the Latin version make the first few words part of the preceding chapter.
(104 )This Realism is expressed even more strongly in the De Anima et Resurrectione.
(109 )1 Cor. xv. 51, 1 Cor. xv. 52.
(119 )Otherwise Chap. xxiv. The Bodleian ms. of the Latin version has a title corresponding to that of the following chapter in the other mss.:-"Against those who say that matter is co-eternal with God."
(120 )Cf. Heb. xi. 3. The mss. give somewhat the same variations which are observable in the N. T. Codices. The reading which Forbes adopts coincides with the Textus Receptus.
(121 )Reading, with some of Forbes' mss., aposoj, which seems on the whole the better reading so far as sense is concerned. apoioj may be the result of a sense of the awkwardness of employing both aposoj and amegeqhj: but further on in the section we find aposoj where the mss. seem to agree. Further, the connecting particles seem to show a closer connection of sense between aposoj and amegeqhj than between amegeqhj and asunqetoj.
(122 )Otherwise Chap. xxv. The Bodleian ms. of the Latin version has the title:-"That all matter exists in certain quantities."
(123 )With this passage may be compared the idealistic doctrine of the De Anim. et Resurr.
(124 )Otherwise Chap. xxvi. The title in the Bodleian ms. of the Latin version is:-"Of faith in the resurrection, and of the three dead persons whom the Lord Jesus raised."
(126 )Cf. S. Luke xxiii. 27-29.
(130 )Omitting, as several of Forbes' mss. do, and as the ms. employed by Dionysius seems to have done, the words apodidonai palin tw zhn. If these words are retained, biazomenhj must be taken passively, and the pragma feukton understood not of the condition of the corpse, but of the resurrection of Lazarus.
(136 )Ps. civ. 29, Ps. civ. 30 (LXX.). Cf. also with what follows vv. 31-35.
(137 )Otherwise Chap. xxvii. The Bodleian ms. of the Latin version has the title:-"That however much the human body may have been consumed, the Divine power can easily bring it together."
(138 )analusewj, in S. Gregory, seems to be frequently used in the sense of "return." Cf. Phil. i. 23, eij to analusai, kai oun Coistw einai, where Tertullian translates "cupio recipi", (De Patientia).
(139 )Otherwise Chap. xxviii. The title in the Bodleian ms. of the Latin version is:-"That although bodies rise together they will yet receive their own souls."
(141 )The word, that is of the Prophet, or of the Saviour, as in the cases cited.
(142 )The "form" seems to be regarded as a seal, which, while taking its pattern from the combination of elements, yet marks those elements which have been grouped together under it; and which at the same time leaves an impression of itself upon the soul. The soul is thus enabled to recognize the elemental particles which make up that body which belonged to it, by the tupoj imprinted on them as well as on itself.
(143 )Otherwise Chap. xxix. The title in the Bodleian ms. of the Latin version is:-"Of different views of the origin of the soul."
(146 )That is, the life of the spirit before its incorporation.
(147 )In the discourse that is contained in the next chapter. The point has been mentioned, but the conclusions were not drawn from it in the opening section of this chapter.
(148 )Otherwise Chap. xxx. But in the Latin translation of Dionysius, the new chapter does not begin till the end of the first sentence of the Greek text. As Forbes remarks, either place is awkward: a better beginning would be found at §8 of the preceding chapter. The Bodleian ms. of the Latin version gives as the title:-"That God equally made the soul and the body of man."
(150 )The reading authj meqistamenhj, "itself being transformed," seems to give a better sense, but the weight of ms. authority seems to be against it.
(151 )Altering Forbes' punctuation.
(153 )Reading futikon for fusikon, see note 6 on ch. 8, §4.
(154 )Otherwise Chap. xxxi. The Bodleian ms. of the Latin version gives the title:-"Of the threefold nature of the body."
(156 )Reading (with Forbes' j marginal suggestion) ekpnohn.
(157 )Or perhaps "fresher," the heart seeking as it were for freshet and cooler air, and the breath being thus accelerated in the effort to obtain it.
(159 )Col. iii. 9, Col. iii.9.
(1 )Gregory himself tells us, in his life of S. Macrina, that he went to see her after the Council of Antioch. (This and Basil's death occurred in the year 379: so that this Dialogue was probably composed in 380.) "The interval during which the circumstances of our times of trials prevented any visits had been long." He goes on to say (p. 189 B.); "And that she might cause me no depression of spirits, she somehow subdued the noise and concealed the difficulty of her breathing, and assumed perfect cheerfulness: she not only started pleasant topics herself, but suggested them as well by the questions which she asked. The conversation led naturally to the mention of our great Basil. While my very soul sank and my countenance was saddened and fell, she herself was so far from going with me into the depths of mourning, that she made the mention of that saintly name all opportunity for the most sublime philosophy. Examining human nature in a scientific way, disclosing the divine plan that underlies all afflictions, and dealing, as if inspired by the Holy Spirit, with all the questions relating to a future life, she maintained such a discourse that my soul seemed to be lifted along with her words almost beyond the compass of humanity, and, as I followed her argument, to be placed within the sanctuary of heaven." Again (p. 190 B): "And if my tract would not thereby be extended to an endless length, I would have reported everything in its order; i.e. how her argument lifted her as she went into the philosophy both of the soul, and of the causes of our life in the flesh, and of the final cause of Man and his mortality, and of death and the return thence into life again. In all of it her reasoning continued clear and consecutive: it flowed on so easily and naturally that it was like the water from some spring falling unimpeded downwards."
(2 )Two grounds are here given why this practice of grief for the departed is difficult to give up. One lies in the natural abhorrence of death, showing itself in two ways, viz. in our grief over others dying, and in recoiling from our own death, expressed by two evenly balanced sentences, oute twn orwntwn <\=85_oij te an <\=85_; in the latter a second oute might have been expected; but such an anacoluthon is frequent in dialogue. Oehler is wrong in giving to the second te an intensive force, i.e. "much more." The other ground lies in the attitude of the law towards death.
(3 )Reading periexonti: the same word is used below, "as long as the breath within was held in by the enveloping substance"(see p. 432, note 8). Here it means "the air": as in Marcus Antoninus, Lib. iv. 39.
(4 )Reading kataseisasa th xeiri, instead of the vox nihili metaseisasa of the two Paris Editions, which can be accounted for by meta being repeated in error from metacu. The question which this gesture accompanied is one to which it would be very appropriate. The reading adopted is that of the Codex Uffenbach, and this phrase, kataseiein th xeiri, is unimpeachable for "commanding silence," being used by Polybius, and Xenophon (without xeiri). Wolf and Krabinger prefer this reading to that of most of the Codd., katasighsasa: and doubtless Sifanus read it ("manu silentio imperato").
(5 )isaj <\=85_adhlia. This is Krabinger's reading (for iswj <\=85_h deilia in the Parisian Editions) with abundant ms. authority.
(6 )antipiptontwn proj ton skopon upoklhqentwn: he reading of the Parisian Editions. But the preponderance of ms. authority is in favour of upekluqentwn, "si quae ad hoc propositum opponuntur soluta fuerint," Krabinger. The force of upo will then be "by way of rejoinder." The idea in skopon seems to be that of a butt set up to be shot at. All the mss. but not the Paris Editions, have the article before antipipontwn: but it is not absolutely necessary, for Gregory not unfrequently omits it before participles, when his meaning is general, i.e. "Everything that," &c.
(7 )wj tuxaia, k.t.l. It is better to connect this directly with Epicurus himself, than to refer it, by bracketing the preceding sentence (with Oehler), to his followers. Macrina infers from the opinions known to her of Epicurus, what he must have said about the human soul: i.e. that it was a bubble; and then what his followers probably said. There is no evidence that Epicurus usedthis actual figure: still Gregory may be recording his very words.- Lucian (Charon, 68) enlarges on such a simile: and his wkumoron fnshma, as a description of man, is reproduced by Gregory himself in Orat. de Beatitud. p. 768 D.
(8 )tw periexonti. Sifanus takes this of the surrounding atmo-sphere. So also Krabinger, "aere circumfuso," just as above (182 A.) it does certainly mean the air, and Wolf quotes a passage to that effect from Marcus Antoninus and the present instance also. Still there is no reason that it should not here mean the body of the man, which is as it were a case retentive of the vital breath within; and the sense seems to require it. As to the construction. although pomofluc is sometimes masculine in later Greek, yet it is much more likely that peritaqentoj (not periteqentoj of the Paris Editt.) is the genitive absolute with tou swmatoj: tw periexonti would then very naturally refer to this.
(9 )But Dr. Hermann Schmidt sees even more than this in this bold figure. The Creation preaches, as it were, and its tones are first heard in our hearts (enhxountoj th kardia): and these tones are then reflected back from the heart to the contemplating eye, which thus becomes not a seeing only, but a hearing (akroathj ginetai) organ, in its external activity.
(10 )Enarmoniouj apostaseij, i.e. to which the music of the pheres was due: see Macrobius, Somnium Scipionis, c. 4: for the "retrograde" motion of the planets above, see Joannes de Sacro Bosco, Sphaera (1564), p. 47, sqq.
(11 )See On the Making of Man, c. viii. 5.
(12 )ikanh. This is the reading of Codd. A and B (of Krabinger, but the common reading is ei kan h '
(13 )It may be noticed that besides the physician several others were present. Cf. 242 D, toij pollo<\=xd_j polloij parakaqhmenoij.
(14 )Krabinger's Latin "in intentione," though a literal translation, hardly represents the full force of this passage, which is interesting because, the terms being used specially, if not only, of fevers or inflammation, it is evident that the speaker has her own illness in mind, and her words are thus more natural than if she spoke of patients generally. If en epitasei is translated "at its height," this will very awkwardly anticipate what follows, epi tosonde <\=85_h epitasij. The doctor is supposed simply to class the complaint as belonging to the order of those which manifest themselves di= epitasewj, as opposed to those which do so di anesewj: he then descends to particulars, i.e. epi tosonde. The demonstrative in twnde twn splagxnwn has the same force as in to en twde qermon, 214 C, "such and such;" the nobler organs (viscera thoracis) of course are here meant. Gregory himself gives a list of them, 250 C.
(15 )A trochaic line to this effect from the comedian Epicharmus is quoted by Theodoret, De Fide, p. 15.
(16 )oper dh pantelhj tou stoixeiou meiwsij legetai, "perfecta elementi diminutio;" oper referring to the dark "new" moon just described, which certainly is the consummation of the waning of the moon: though it is not itself a meiwsij.-This last consideration, and the use of dh, and the introduction of tou stoixeiou, favour another meaning which might be given, i.e. by joining pantelhj with tou stoixiou, and making oper refer to the whole passage of the moon from full to new, "which indeed is commonly (but erroneously) spoken of as a substantial diminution of the elementary body itself," as if it were a true and real decrease of bulk.
(17 )ei tina toutwn kata ton sunousiwmenhn tij ei/ai legoi dunamin, k.t.l. The difficulty here is in toutwn, which Krabinger takes as a partitive genitive after einai, and refers to the "elements ", and this is perhaps the best way of taking it. But still, as Schmidt points out, it is rather the human body than the elements themselves that ought here to be spoken of as the efficient cause of thought: and so he would either refer tontwn to ton auton ("in the same way as these instances just given"), and compares Eurip Helen., onomadetautonthsemhsexousatisdamartosallh (Matt. Gr. p. 706); or else would join to<\=f8_twn with the preceding diaforoj (with Codd. Mon. D, E).
(18 )Cod. Mon. D, apoteloushj. This seems a better reading than that preferred by Krabinger, apotelesma einai: for apotelesma must be pressed to mean, in order to preserve the sense, "mere result," i.e. something secondary, and not itself a principle or cause: the following h besides, cannot without awkwardness be referred to energeian.
(19 )Reading ousian ouk an apodeiknuoito h to mhd= olwj einai;
(20 )According to an author quoted by Athenaeus (iv. 75), the first organist (udraulhj), or rather organ-builder, was Ctesibius of Alexandria, about b.c. 200.
(21 )Remove comma after zhtoumenou. in Paris Editt.
(22 )or vice versa, i.e. the idea of badness by the negation of goodness. Krabinger appositely quotes a passage from Plotinus: "Who could picture to himself evil as a specific thing, appearing as it does only in the absence of each good? ...it will be necessary for all who are to know what evil is to have a clear conception about good: since even in dealing with real species the better take precedence of the worse; and evil is not even a species, but rather a negation." Cf. Origen, In Johan. p. 66 A, pasa h kakia ouden estin, epei kai ouk on tugxanei. See also Gregorys Great Cathechism, cap. v. and vii.
(23 )supposing, that is. This only repeats what was said above: "granted that the inquirer has had his doubts set at rest as to the existence of the thing." It is the reading of Krabinger (ei dh ti), and the best. Sifanus follows the loss supported reading oiden oti, which is open to the further objection that it would be absurd to say, "when a man learns that A is not B he knows that it is something else." The reading of the Paris. Editt. idh is unintelligible.
(24 )(kaq=) oson te ...qigganomen.
(25 )weight (ogkou). This is a Platonic word it means the weight, and then (morally) the burden, of the body: not necessarily connected with the idea of swelling, even in Empedocles, v. 220; its Latin equivalent is "onus" in both meanings. Cf. Heb. xii. 1; ogkon apoqemenoi panta, "every weight," or "all cumbrance."
(26 )Reading diasthmatikhn. Cf. 239 A.
(27 )all= en oij ...ekeino ...touto.
(28 )pure (akhratw). perishable (epikhron). The first word is a favourite one with the Platonists; such as Plotinus, and Synesius. Gregory uses it in his funeral speech over Flacilla, "she passes with a soul unstained to the pure and perfect life"; and both in his treatise De Mortuis, "that man's grief is real, who becomes conscious of the blessings he has lost; and contrasts this perishing and soiled existence with the perfect blessedness above."
(29 )logw tini kreittoni thj anqrwpinhj katanohsewj. So just below arrhtw tini logw. The mode of the union of soul and body is beyond our comprehension. To refer these words to the Deity Himself ("incomprehensible cause"), as Oehler, would make of them, as Schmidt well remarks, a "mere showy phrase."
(30 )analuqentwn. Krabinger reads analusantwn, i.e. "returning"; as frequently in this treatise, and in N. T. usage.
(31 )i.e. as we have already seen (p. 433). The fact of the continuity of the soul was there deduced from its being incomposite. So that the gar here does not give the ground for the statement immediately preceding.
Gregory (p. 431) had suggested two alternatives:-1. That the soul dissolves with the body. This is answered by the soul's "incompositeness." 2. That the union of the immaterial soul with the still material atoms after death cannot be maintained. This is answered by the analogy given in the present section, of God's presence in an uncongenial universe, and that of the soul in the still living body. The gar therefore refers to the answer to 1, without which the question of the soul continuing in the atoms could not have been discussed at all.
(32 )her vessel. Of course this is not the "vehicle" of the soul (after death) which the later Platonists speak of, but the body itself. The word oxhma is used in connection with a ship, Soph. Trach. 656; and though in Plato (Timaeus, p. 69), whose use of this word for the body was afterwards followed, it is not clear whether a car or a ship is most thought of, yet that the latter is Gregory's meaning appears from his next words.
(33 )at once. Reading (with Codd. A, B, C, and Uff.) kata tauton.
(34 )oute diaxeitai. Oehler translates wrongly "noch dehnt es sich aus"; because the faculty of extension is ascribed to the intelligence (cf. ekteinesqai, diateinomenon, parekteinomenh, below), but diffusion is denied of it, both here, and in the words diasxizetai (above and below), diakrisij, and diaspatai, i. e. separation in space.
(36 )endedeixqai. Gregory constantly uses endeiknusqai (middle) transitively, e. g. 202 C, 203 A, C, 208 B, and above, 189 A, so that it is possible that we have here, in the passive form, a deponent (transitive) perfect; moreover the sense seems to require it. Gregory objects that in what has been said all the powers which analysis finds in the soul have not been set forth with sufficient fulness: an exhaustive account of them has not been given; and he immediately proceeds to name other dunameij and energeiai which have not been taken into consideration. That this view of the passage is correct is further shown by 202 C, where, the present objection having been treated at length, it is concluded that there is no real ground for quarrelling with the definition of soul wj elleipwj endeicamenw thn fusin. Krahinger therefore is right in dropping ennooumenw, which two of his mss. exhibit, and which Sifanus translates as governing taj <\=85_dunameij, as if the sense were, "When I consider all the powers of the soul, I do not think that your definition bas been made good."
(37 )The syllogism implied in the following words is this:-
The emotions are something intellectual (because incorporeal).
Therefore the emotions are soul (or souls).
This conclusion is obviously false; logically, by reason of the fallacy of "the undistributed middle"; ontologically, because it requires a false premise additional (i. e. "everything intellectual is soul") to make it true. Macrina directly after this piece of bad logic deprecates the use of the syllogism. Is this accidental? It looks almost like an excuse for not going into technicalities and exposing this fallacy, which she has detected in her opponent's statement. Macrina actually answers as if Gregory had urged his objection thus. "The emotions are not purely intellectual, but are conditioned by the bodily organism: but they do belong to the expression and the substance of the soul: the soul therefore is dependent on the organism and will perish along with it."
(38 )para thn prwthn (i.e. wran understood). This is the reading of all the Codd. for the faulty para thn authn of the Editions.
(39 )prostiqenai. Sifanus translates "illorum commentationi de anima adjicere sermonem," which Krabinger wonders at. The Greek could certainly bear this meaning: but perhaps the other reading is better, i. e. protiqenai, "to propose for consideration."
(41 )that the soul was mortal. Aristotle, guided only by probabilities as discoverable by the syllogism, does indeed define the soul, "the first entelechy of a physical, potentially living, and organic body." Entelechy is more than mere potentiality: it is "developed force" ("dormant activity;" see W. Archer Butler's Lectures, ii. p. 393), capable of manifestation. The human soul, uniting in itself all the faculties of the other orders of animate existence; is a Microcosm. The other parts of the soul are inseparable from the body, and are hence perishable (De Anima, ii. 2); but the nouj exists before the body, into which it enters from without as something divine and immortal (De Gen. Animal. ii. 3). But he makes a distinction between the form-receiving, and the form-giving nouj: substantial eternal existence belongs only to the latter (De Anima, iii. 5). The secret of the difference between him and Plato, with whom "all the soul is immortal" (Phaedrus, p. 245 C), lies in this; that Plato regarded the soul as always in motion, while Aristotle denied it, in itself, any motion at all. "It is one of the things that are impossible that motion should exist in it" (De Anima, i. 4). It cannot be moved at all; therefore it cannot move itself. Plotinus and Porphyry, as well as Nemesius the Platonizing Bishop of Emesa (whose treatise De Anima is wrongly attributed to Gregory), attacked this teaching of an "entelechy." Cf. also Justin Martyr (ad Graec. cohort, c. 6, p. 12); "Plato declares that all the soul is immortal; Aristotle calls her an `entelechy, 0' and not immortal. The one says she is ever-moving, the other that she is never-moving, but prior to all motion." Also Gregory Naz., Orat. xxvii, "Away with Aristotle's calculating Providence, and his art of logic, and his dead reasonings about the soul, and purely human doctrine!"
(42 )for the overthrow of the truth. So c. Eunom. iii. (ii. 500).
(44 )most surely, h. This is the common reading: but the Codd. have mostly kai.
(45 )Aristotle, Ethic. i. 13, dwells upon these principles. Of the last he says, i. e. the common vegetative, the principle of nutrition and growth: "One would assume such a power of the soul in everything that grows, even in the embryo, and just this very same power in the perfect creatures; for this is more likely than that it should be a different one." Sleep, in which this power almost alone is active, levels all.
(47 )It is best to keep ara: ara is Krabinger's correction from four Codd.: and he reads o for ei above: but only one class of Codd. support these alterations.
(48 )I mean the sensation of pleasure. This (nohma) is Krabinger's reading: but Oehler reads from his Codd. noshma: and H. Schmidt suggests kinhma, comparing (205 A) below, "any other such-like emotion of the soul."
(49 )have some relation to the soul, and yet they are not the soul. Macrina does not mean that the Passions are altogether severed from the soul, as the following shows: and so Oehler cannot be right in reading and translating "Das Alles hat nichts mir der Seele zu schaffen." The Greek peri thn yuxhn is to be parallelled by oi peri ton Periklea, "Pericles' belongings," or "party"; passing, in later Greek, almost into "Pericles himself."
(50 )Reading kata fusin authn, kai thj qeoeidouj xaritoj, k. t. l. with Sifanus.
(51 )osa de thj yuxhj en meqoriw keitai. Moller (Gregorii Nysseni doctrina de hominis natura) remarks rightly that Krabinger's translation is here incorrect: "quaecunque autem in animae confinio posita sunt"; and that thj yuxhj should on the contrary be joined closely to osa. The opposition is not between elements which lie in, and on the confines of the soul, but between the divine and adventitious elements within the soul: meqoriw refers therefore to "good and bad," below.
(52 )This is no contradiction of the passage above about Moses: there it was stated that the Passions did not belong to the essence (ousia) of man.
(53 )ode dh. The Teacher introduces this logoj with some reserve. "We do not lay it down ex cathedra, we put it forward as open to challenge and discussion as we might do in the schools (wj en gumnasiw)." It is best then to take diafugoi as a pure optative. Gregory appears in his answer to congratulate her on the success of this "exercise." "To any one that reflects ...your exposition ...bears sufficiently upon it the stamp of correctness, and hits the truth." But he immediately asks for Scripture authority. So that this logoj, though it refers to Genesis, is not yet based upon Scripture. It is a "consecutive" and consistent account of human nature: but it is virtually identical with that advanced at the end of Book I. of Aristotle's Ethics. It is a piece of secular theorizing. The sneers of cavillers may well be deprecated. Consistent, however, with this view of the logoj here offered by Macrina, there is another possible meaning in wj en gumnasiw, k. t. l., i.e. "Let us put forward the following account with all possible care and circumspection, as if we were disputing in the schools; so that cavillers may have nothing to find fault with": wj an expressing purpose, not a wish. The cavillers will thus refer to sticklers for Greek method and metaphysics: and Gregory's congratulation of his sister's lucidity and grasp of the truth will be all the more significant.
(54 )Following the order and stopping of Krabinger, amikton esti kai idiazon epi tauthj thj fusewj, ef eautou, k. t. l.
(55 )Reading dia tou enoj kai proj ta sunhmmena toutw (for toutwn), with Sifanus.
(56 )Cf. De Hom. Opif. c. xviii. 5. "So, on the contrary, if reason instead assumes sway over such emotions, each of them is transmuted to a form of virtue: for anger produces courage; terror, caution; fear, obedience; hatred, aversion from vice; the power of love, the desire for what is truly beautiful, &c." Just below, the allusion is to Plato's charioteer, Phaedrus, p. 253 C, and the old custom of having the reins round the driver's waist is to be noticed.
(57 )are implanted. All the Codd. have egkeimenhj here, instead of the egkwmiazomenhj of the Paris Edition, which must be meant for egkwmazomenhj (itself a vox nihili), "run riot in them."
(58 )we were agreed. wmologeito: cf. 201 D, "If on the other hand any one will accept a disussion which is in a naked unsyl-logistic form, we will speak upon these points by making our study of them as far as we can follow the chain of Scriptural tradition."
(59 )There is a variety of readings from the Codd. here; sunegkataleih, sunektalh, sunektaleih, snektalaih, sugkataluh: in two (and on the margins of two others), sunektilh, which Krabinger has adopted. The Paris Editt. have ounektinei.
(60 )parenesparh, the idea of badness being contained in para, which in such cases is always the first compound. One Cod. has the curious inversion enparesparh.
(61 )ecandrapodisqeih; this is adopted by Krabinger from the Haselman Cod. for the common ec wn drapodisqeih.
(64 )kakeinon en autw, H. Schmidt's reading, on the authority of 3 Codd. The reading of Krabinger is en eautw te kakeinon. But the underworld is the only habitation in question.-outw legesqai, above, must mean, "is rightly so named."
(65 )ei gar alhqhj o logoj o kata se, kai to sunexh te proj, k. t. l., Krabinger's reading, following the majority of Codd.; o kata oe being thus opposed to the next words, which others say. But Schmidt points out that the conclusion introduced below by anagkh pasa does not follow at all from the first, but only from the second of these suppositions, and he would await the evidence of fresh Codd. Sifanus and Augentius would read ei kai <\=85_kata se. Tw gar, k. t. l., which would certainly express the sense required.
(66 )pantwn twn kukloforoumenwn, i. e. the heavenly bodies moving as one (according to the ancient astronomy) round the central earth.
(67 )proballoito. This is the proper meaning of the middle: "should object," as Oehler translates (einwerfen wollte), would require the active.
(69 )lapsed from he nobler view (upolhewj). This is the common reading: but Krabinger prefers lhcewj, which is used by Gregory (De Hom. Opif c. 17, "the sublime angelic lot"). and is a Platonic word. The other word, "lapsed," is also Platonic.
(70 )from those evil spirits. So Great Catechism, c. 26 (fin.). Here too Gregory follows Origen (c. Cels. vi. 44), who declares that the Powers of evil are for a purpose (in answer to Celsus' objection that the Devil himself, instead of humanity, ought to have been punished). "Now it is a thing which can in no way cause surprise, that the Almighty, Who knows how to use wicked apostates for His own purposes, should assign to such a certain place in the universe, and should thus open an arena, as it were, of virtue, for those to Contend in who wish to "strive lawfully" for her prize: those wicked ones were to try them, as the fire tries the gold, that, having done their utmost to prevent the admission of any alloy into their spiritual nature, and having proved themselves worthy to mount to heaven, they might be drawn by the bands of the Word to the highest blessedness and the summit of all Good." These Powers, as reasoning beings, shall then themselves be "mastered by the word." See c. Cels. viii. 72.
(71 )The conclusion of which was drawn, 199 C. "Therefore the soul exists in the actual atoms which she has once animated, and there is no force to tear her away from her cohesion with them." It is to the line of reasoning (akolouqia) leading up to this conclusion that Gregory would revert, in order to question this conclusion. What both sides are agreed on is, the existence merely of the soul after death. All between this conclusion and the present break in the discussion has been a digression on the Passions and on Hades. Now Gregory asks, how can the soul possibly recognize the atoms that once belonged to her? Oehler therefore does not translate aright, "ich bitte nut den gef_hrten Beweis ...in derselben Folge zu wiederholen:" but Krabinger expresses the true sense, "ut rursus mihi ad eandem consequentiam reducatur oratio," i. e. the discussion (not the proof), which is here again, almost in Platonic fashion, personified.
(72 )has assumed, analabontwn. The construction is accommodated to the sense, not the words; thj twn stoixeiwn enwsewj having preceded.
(73 )tint, morfhj. Certainly in earlier Greek morfh is strictly used of "form," "shape" (or the beauty of it) only, and colours cannot be said to be mixed in imitation of form. It seems we have here a late use of morfh as = "outward appearance"; so that we may even speak of the morfh of a colour, or combinations of colours. So (214 A) the painter "works up (on his palette) a particular tint of colour" (morfhn.) Here it is the particular hue, in person or picture, which it is desired to imitate. Akin to this question is that of the proper translation of proj thn omoiothta tou prokeimenou, which Sifanus and Krabinger translate "ad similitudinem argumenti," and which may either mean (1) "to make the analogy to the subject matter of our question as perfect as possible," i. e. as a parenthesis. or (2) "in imitation of the thing or colour (lying before the painter) to be copied." The last seems preferable ("to form the given tint").
(75 )amigej tou suggenouj apokrifhnai. Krabinger's and Oehler's reading. But Krabinger, more correctly than Oehler, opposes en to de to en tw kaf olou (quod est hic calidum, si fuerit in universo): though neither he, nor Oehler, nor Schmidt himself appears to have any suspicion that twde may mean "so and so:" and yet it is quite in accordance with Gregory's usage, and makes better sense, as contrasting the particular and universal heat more completely. =Amigej is proleptic: the genitive may depend either on it or on the verb. Just below anaplassomenon is read by 5 of Krabinger's Codd. (including the Hasselmann). This is better than Migne's apallassomenon, which is hardly supported by 1 Cor. xv. 51.
(76 )same moment. kata tauton: on the authority of 2 Codd. Mon.
(77 )Reading oti to men to ek tou pifou, poion de to ek tou pothriou, k. t. l.
(78 )proj to akatergaston thj twn stoixeiwn ulhj.. There is the same sort of distinction above, 215 A, i. e. between the kindred dust first, and then the universe (to pan) into which the atoms may stream back.
(80 )ek kataxrhsewj tinoj: not as usually "by a misuse of words."
(81 )There is an anacoluthon here, for tw agaqw kolpw follows w above; designed no doubt to bring the things compared more closely together. Oehler, however, would join agaqw with the relative, and translates as if tw = kai.
(82 )ton dikaion. Most of Krabinger's Codd. read ton plousion.
(83 )is occupied with his present blessings (asxoloj toij parousin); surely not, with Oehler, "is not occupied with the present world"!
(84 )kollhj. The metaphor is Platonic. "The soul ...absolutely bound and glued to the body" (Phaedo, p. 82 E).
(85 )her soaring. Plato first spoke (Phaedrus, p. 248 c) of "that growth of wing, by which the soul is lifted." Once these natural wings can get expanded, her flight upwards is a matter of course. This image is reproduced by Plotinus p. 769 A (end of Enneads); Libanius, Pro Socrate, p. 258; Synesius, De Providentia, p. 90 D, and Hymn i. III, where he speaks of the alma konfon of the soul, and Hymm iii. 42. But there is mixed here with the idea of a flight upwards (i. e. anadromh), that of the running-gronnd as well (cf. Greg. De scopo Christian. III. p. 299, toij thj arethj dromoij), which, as sanctioned in the New Testament Chrysostom so often uses.
(86 )outwj answers to kaqaper, not to wj above.
(87 )shadowy phantoms of the departed are often seen. Cf. Origen c. Cels. ii. 60 (in answer to Celsus' "Epicurean" opinion that ghosts are pure illusion): "He who does believe this (i. e. in ghosts) necessarily believes in the immortality, or at all events the long continuance of the soul: as Plato does in his treatise on the soul (i. e. the Phaedo) when he says that the shadowy apparitions of the dead hover round their tombs. These apparitions, then, have some substance: it is the so-called `radiant 0' frame in which the soul exists. But Celsus, not liking this, would have us believe that people have waking dreams and `imagine as true, in accordance with their wishes, a wild piece of unreality. 0' In sleep we may well believe that this is the case: not so in waking hours, unless some one is quite out of his senses, or is melancholy mad." But Origen here quotes Plato in connection with the reality of the Resurrection body of Christ: Gregory refers to ghosts only, with regard to the filoswmatoi, whose whole condition after death he represents very much in Plato's words. See Phaedo, p. 81 B.
(88 )prolabwn; on the authority of five Codd., for proslabwn.
(90 )any particular good, not as Oehler, "jenseits alles Guten." The Divine Being is the complement, not the negation, of each single good.
(91 )en eauth blepousa. But Augentius and Sifanus seem to have read eauthn: and this is supported by three Codd.
(92 )to monon tw onti agaphton kai erasmion.
(93 )katastolhn. Cf. 1 Cor. xiii. 8-13.
(94 )Schmidt well remarks that there lies in legwn here not a causal but only a concessive force: and he puts a stop before eikotwj. Oehler has not seen that agaph is governed by the preposition sun in the verb "by the side of love," and quite mistranslates the passage.
(97 )reduced to quiescence, atremountwn. This is the reading adopted by Krabinger, from four Codd., instead of the vex nihili of the editions, euthremontwn. The contrast must be between "remaining in activity (energeia)," and "becoming idle," and he quotes a passage from Plotinus to show that atremein has exactly this latter sense. Cf. 1 Cor. xiii. 8, 1 Cor. xiii. 10, katarghfhsontai, katarghfhsetai.
(98 )whereby alone, kaf o dokei monon pwj authj, k. t. l, the reading of Sifanus.
(99 )the insolence of satiety cannot touch. Krabinger quotes from two of his Codd. a scholium to this effect: "Then this proves to be nonsense what Origen has imagined about the satiety of minds, and their consequent fall and recall, on which he bases his notorious teaching about the pre-existence and restoration of souls that are always revolving in endless motion, determined as he is, like a retailer of evil, to mingle the Grecian myths with the Church's truth." Gregory, more sober in his idealism, certainly does not follow on this point his great Master. The phrase ubristhj koroj is used by Gregory Naz. also in his Poems (p. 32 A), and may have been suggested to both by some poet, now lost. "Familiarity breeds contempt" is the modern equivalent.
(100 )But suppose, &c. Moller (Gregorii doctrina de hom. natur., p. 99) shows that the following view of Purgatory is not that taught by the Roman Church.
(101 )by the nails of propension. This metaphor is frequently used by Gregory. Cf. De Virginit. c 5: "How can the soul which is riveted (proshlwfeisa) to the pleasures of the flesh, and busied with merely human longings, turn a disengaged eye upon its kindred intellectual light ?" So De Beatitud. Or. viii. (I. p. 833), &c.
(102 )purgatorial, kafarsiw. Five of Krabinger's Codd. and the versions of Augentius and Sifanus approve this reading. That of the Editions is akoimhtw. [This last epithet is applied to God's justice () by Isidore of Pelusium, Ep. 90: and to the "worm," and, on the other hand, the Devil, by Cyril Alexand. Act. Ephes., p. 252. Cf. S. S. Math. iii. 12; S. Mark ix. 48.] It is the same with aiwniw before puri just below. The Editions have it; the Codd. and Latin versions have not: Krabinger therefore has not hesitated to expunge it.
(103 )h tou puroj dapanh These words can have no other meaning to suit the sense. Krabinger's reproduction of Sifanus' Latin, "ignis ille consumens," makes the sentence a tautology.
(104 )proj olon aiwna. But cf. Plato, Timaeus, 37, 39 D.
(105 )Macrina's answer must begin here, though the Paris Editt. take no notice of a break. Krabinger on the authority of one of his Codd. has inserted fhsin h didaskaloj after pronohteon.
(106 )distuinguishes between. The word here is oiden, which is used of "teaching," "telling," after the fashion of the later Greek writers, in making a quotation.
(107 )of a farthing. No mention is made of this in the Parable (S. Matt. xviii. 23; S. Luke vii. 41). The "uttermost farthing" of S. Matt. v. 26does not apply here.
(108 )dia thj basanou.. Of course dia cannot go with ofeilhn, though Krabinger translates "per tormenta debita." He has however, with Oehler, pointed the Greek right, so as to take oflhma as in opposition to ofeilhn.
(109 )a state which owns no master and is self-regulating, &c. He repeats this, De Hom. Opif. c. 4: "For the soul immediately shows its royal and exalted character, far removed from the lowliness of private station, in that it owns no master, and is self-governed, swayed autocratically by its own will,-for to whom else does this belong than to a king?" and c. 16: "Thus, there is in us the principle of all excellence, all virtue, and every higher thing that we conceive: but pre-eminent among all is the fact that we are free from necessity, and not in bondage to any natural force, but have decision in our power as we please: for virtue is a voluntary thing, subject to no dominion:" and Orat. Catech. c. 5: "Was it not, then, most right that that which is in every detail made like the Divine should possess in its nature a self-ruling and independent principle, such as to enable the participation of the good to be the reward of its virtue?" It would be possible to quote similar language from the Neoplatonists (e.g. Plotinus vi. 83-6): but Gregory learnt the whole bearing and meaning of moral liberty from none but Origen, whose so-called "heresies" all flowed from his constant insistence on its reality.
(110 )This (1 Cor. xv. 28) is a text much handled by the earlier Greek Fathers. Origen especially has made it one of the Scripture foundations upon which he has built up theology. This passage in Gregory should be compared with the following in Origen, c. Cels. iv. 69, where he has been speaking of evil anti its origin, and its disappearance: "God checks the wider spread of evil, and banishes it altogether in a way that is conducive to the good of the whole. Whether or not there is reason to believe that after the banishment of evil it will again appear is a separate question. By later corrections, then. God does put right some defects: for although in the creation of the whole all the work was fair and strong, nevertheless a certain healing process is needed for those whom evil has infected, and for the world itself which it has as it were tainted; and God is never negligent in interfering on certain occasions in a way suitable to a changeful and alterable world," &c. "He is like a husbandman performing different work at different times upon the land, for a final harvest." Also viii. 72: "This subject requires much study and demonstration: still a few things must and shall be said at once tending to show that it is not only possible, but an actual truth, that every being that reasons 'shall agree in one law (quoting Celsus' words) Now while the Stoics hold that when the strongest of the elements has by its nature prevailed over the rest, there shall be the Conflagration, when all things will fall into the fire, we hold that the Word shall some day master the whole of `reasoning nature, 0' and shall transfigure it to its own perfection, when each with pure spontaneity shall will what it wishes, and act what it wills. We hold that there is no analogy to be drawn from the case of bodily diseases, and wounds, where some things are beyond the power of any art of healing. We do not hold that there are any of the results of sin which the universal Word, and the universal God, cannot heal. The healing power of the Word is greater than any of the maladies of the soul, and, according go the will, He does draw it to Himself: and so the aim of things is that evil should be annihilated: whether with no possibility whatever of the soul ever turning to it again, is foreign to the present discussion. It is sufficient now to quote Zephaniah" (iii. 7-13, LXX.).
(111 )But, when A. Jahn, as quoted by Krabinger asserts that Gregory and Origen derived their denial of the eternity of punishment from a source "merely extraneous," i. e. the Platonists, we must not forget that Plato himself in the Phaedo, 113 F (cf. also Gorgias, 525 C, and Republic, x. 615), expressly teaches the eternity of punishment hereafter, for he uses there not the word aiwn or aiwnioj, but oupote.. They were influenced rather by the late Platonists.
(112 )Reading sumforaij,, i. e. death especially.
(113 )Such are the wonders. There is here, Denys (De la Philosophie d'Origene, p. 484) remarks, a great difference between Gregory and Origen. Both speak of an "eternal sabbath," which will end the circle of our destinies. But Origen, after all the progress and peregrinations of the soul, which he loves to describe, establishes "the reasoning nature" at last in an unchangeable quiet and repose; while Gregory sets before the soul an endless career of perfections and ever ncreasing happiness. This is owing to their different conceptions of the Deity. Origen cannot understand how He can know Himself or be accessible to our thonght, if He is Infinite: Gregory on the contrary conceives Him as Infinite, as beyond all real or imaginable boundaries, pashj perigrafhz ektoj (Orat. Cat. viii. 65); this is the modern, rather than the Greek view. In the following description of the life eternal Gregory hardly merits the censure of Ritter that he "introduces absurdity" into it.
(114 )such a magnitude as. Reading, ef o, with Schmidt. The "limit" is the present body, which must be laid aside in order to cease to be a hindrance to such a growth. Krabinger reads ef wn on the authority of six Codd., and translates "ii in quibus nullus terminus interrumpit incrementum." But tosouton can answer to nothing before, and manifestly refers to the relative clause.
(115 )Macrina may be here alluding to Gregory's brotherly affection for her.
But on high
A record lives of thine identity!
Thou shalt not lose one charm of lip or eye;
The hues and liquid lights shall wait for thee,
And the fair tissues, whereso'er they be!
Daughter of heaven ! our grieving hearts repose
On the dear thought that we once more shall see
Thy beauty-like Himselfour Master rose.
C. Tennyson Turner.-Anastasis.
(117 )idein ...ina mh amfiballh. This is the reading of the Paris Editt.: idein seems to go closely with alhfej: so that Krabinger's dein is not absolutely necessary.
(118 )some extend this absurdity even to trees: Empedocles for instance. Cf. Philosophumena (of Hippolytus, falsely attributed to Origen), p. 50, where two lines of his are quoted. Chrysostom's words (I. iv. p. 196), "There are those amongst them who carry souls into plants, into shrubs, and into dogs," are taken by Matthaeus to refer to Empedocles. Cf. Celsus also (quoted in Origen, c. Cels. viii. 53), "Seeing then men are born bound to a body-no matter whether the economy of the world required this, or that they are paying the penalty for some sin, or that the soul is weighted with certain emotions till it is purified from them at the end of its destined cycle, three myriad hours, according to Empedocles, being the necessary period of its wanderings far away from the Blessed Ones, during which it passes successively into every perishable shape-we must believe any way that there exist certain guardians of this prison-house." See De Hom. Opif. c. 28. Empedocles can be no other, then, than "the philosopher who asserts that the same thing may be born in anything:" below (p. 232 D). Anaxagoras, however, seems to have indulged in the same dictum (pan en panti), but with a difference; as Nicetas explains in his commentary on Gregory Naz., Orations: "That everything is contained in everything Empedocles asserted, and Anaxagoras asserted also: but not with the same meaning. Empedocles said it of the four elements, namely, that they are not only divided and self-centred, but are also mingled with each other. This is clear from the fact that every animal is engendered by all four. But Anaxagoras, finding an old proverb that nothing can be produced out of nothing, did away with creation, and introduced `differentiation 0' instead, &c." See also Greg. Naz., Poems, p. 170.
(120 )eirmw, i. e. as links in a chain which cannot be altered. Sifanus' "carcere et claustro" is due to eirgmw against all the mss. Krabinger's six have diateixizomena for diastoixizomena of the Editt.
(121 )oude <\=85_ton botrun. The intensitive need not surprise us, though a grape-bunch does seem a more fitting body for a human soul than a stalk of hemlock: it is explained by the sentence in apposition, "produced ...for the purpose of sustaining life," i. e. it is eaten, and so a soul might be eaten; which increases the horror.
(122 )kai gar kai autoj twn fuomenwn estin, i. e. the fruit and not the tree only. belongs to the kingdom of plants: futain the next sentence is exactly equivalent to ta fuomena, i.e. plants. The probability that this is the meaning is strengthened by Krabinger's reading outoj, from five of his Codd. But still if autoj be retained, it might have been taken to refer to the man who must needs look suspiciously at a bunch of grapes; "for what, according to this theory, is he himself, but a vegetable!" since all things are mixed, panta omou.
(123 )Two Codd. Mon. (D, E) omit futon h zwon, which is repeated below.
(124 )i. e. Pythagoreans and later Platonists. Cf. Origen, c. Cels. iii. 80. For the losing of the wings, cf. c. Cels iii. 40: "The coats of skins also, which God made for those sinners, the man and the woman cast forth from the garden, have a mystical meaning far deeper than Plato's fancy about the soul shedding its wings, and moving downward till it meets some spot upon the solid earth."
(126 )thj fusikhj tauthj. This is the common reading: but fusij and fusikoj have a rather higher meaning than our equivalent for them: cf. just below, "that inherently (th fusei) fine and buoyant thing": and Krabinger is probably right in reading futikhj from four Codd.
(127 )With the gar here (unlike the three preceding) begins the second "incoherency" of this view. The first is,-"It confuses the ideas of good and evil." The second,-"it is inconsistent with a view already adopted by these teachers." The third (beginning with kai ou mexri toutwn, k.t.l.),-it contradicts the truth which it assumes, i. e. that there is no change in heaven."
(128 )See just above: "For I have heard persons who hold these opinions saying that whole nations of souls are hidden away somewhere in a realm of their own," &c., and see next note.
(129 )that undeviating revolution along with the stars, thn aplanh periforan. Cf. Origen, De Princip. ii 3-6 (Rufinus' translation), "Sed et ipsum supereminentem, quem dicunt aplanh, globum proprie nihilominus mundum appellari volunt:" Cicero. De Repub. vi. 17: "Novem tibi orbibus ver potius globis connexa sunt omnia: quorum unus est choelestis, extimus. qui reliquos omnes complectitur; in quo infixi sunt illi, qui volvuntur, stellarum cursus sempiterni," i. e. they roll, not on their axes, but only as turning round with the general revolution. They are literally fixed in that heaven (cf. Virg.: "tacito volvuntur sidera lapsu"): and the spiritual beings in it are as fixed and changeless: in fact, with Plato it is the abode only of Divine intelligences, not of the daimonej: but the theorists, whom Gregory is refuting, confuse this distinction which their own master drew.
(131 )Such theories are developed in the Phaedo of Plato; and constitute o etepoj twn logwn, criticized more fully below.
(132 )Reading dokei, h to empalin, instead of the corrupt dokeih to empalin.
(133 )o protepoj (logoj). The second is mentioned below. "The same absurdity exists in the other of the two theories as well." Obviously these two theories are those alluded to at the beginning of this last speech of Macrina, where, speaking of the heathen transmigration, she says, "While some of them extend this absurdity even to trees and shrubs, so that they consider their wooden life as corresponding and akin to humanity (i.e. o protepuj logoj), others of them opine only thus much, that the soul exchanges one man for another man." &c. (i.e. o etepoj). In either case the soul is supposed to return from the dead body to heaven, and then by a fresh fall into sin there, to sink down again. The absurdity and the godlessness is just as glaring, Macrina says, in the last case (the Platonic soul-rotation) as in the first (Transmigration pure and simple). But the one point in both in contact with the Christian Resurrection is this, that the soul of the departed does assume another body.
(134 )h kat auton (i. e. bion) diecodoj. The Editions have kat autwn. Krabinger well translates by "percursatio." Cf. Phoedrus, p. 247 A.
(136 )alla mhn introduces a fact into the argument (cf. kai mhn); Lat. "verum enimvero."
(137 )ton ofqalmon blaptomenhn.
(140 )that it is an object of his faith, &c. In the Greek the men contrasts the Apostle's declaration on this point with his silence as to the "how."
(141 )militates against, &c. 'All' oux omologeitai (reading then oti to eterogenej exei proj ekeinhn ta onta). Cf. Plato, Tim. 29 C, autoi autoij oux omologoumenoi logoi, "theories that contradict each other." This world cannot come out of the Supreme Being: its alien nature contradicts that. Krabinger's translation is therefore wrong, "sed non constat:" and Oehler's, "Aber das ist nicht angemacht."
(145 )The long Greek sentence, which begins here with a genitive absolute (thj de swmatikhj ktisewj, k.t.l.), leading up to nothing but the anacoluthon peri wn tosouton k.t.l., has been broken up in translating. Doubtless this anacoluthon can be explained by the sentences linked on to the last words (tw logw) of the genitive clause, which are so long as to throw that clause quite into the background. There is no need therefore to take the words where this anacoluthon begins, down to swma ginetai, as a parenthesis, with Krabinger and Oehler; especially as the words that follow ginetai are a direct recapitulation of what immediately precedes.
(146 )Reading, as Dr. H. Schmidt conjectures, kai toutou palin, cf. 205 C.
(147 )Origen, Gregory's master in most of his theology, did teach this very thing, the pre-existence of the soul: nor did he attempt to deny that some degree of transmigration was a necessary accompaniment of such teaching; only he would adjust the moral meaning of it. Cf. c. Celsum, Lib. iii. 75. "And even if we should treat (i. e. medically) those who have caught the folly of the transmigration of souls from doctors who push down a reasoning nature into any of the unreasoning natures, or even into that which is insensate, how can any say that we shall not work improvement in their souls by teaching them that the bad do not have allotted to them by way of punishment that insensate or unreasoning state, but that what is inflicted by God upon the bad, be it pain or affliction, is only in the way of a very efficacious cure for them? This is the teaching of the wise Christian: he attempts to teach the simpler of his flock as fathers do the merest infants." Not the theory itself, but the exaggeration of it, is here combated.
(148 )ek trefomenou trefouenon.
(150 )This seems like a prelude to the Realism of the Middle Ages.
(151 )Each individual soul represents, to Gregory's view, a "thought" of God, which becomes visible by the soul being born. There will come a time when all these "thoughts," which complete, and do not destroy, each other, will have completed the plhrwma (Humanity) which the Deity contemplates. This immediate apparition of a soul, as a "thought" of God, is very unlike the teaching of his master Origen: and yet more sober, and more scriptural.
(152 )The situation here is, as Dr. H. Schmidt points out, just like that in the Phaedo of Plato, where all are satisfied with Socrates' discourse, except Kebes and Simmias, who seize the precious moments still left, to bring forward an objection which none but their great Teacher could remove.
(153 )periodikhn: a better reading than parodikhn, which most Codd, have.
(154 )receiving the same term (sunonomazomenhj) as the raising up of that which is actually prostate on the ground (tou gewdouj), i. e. the term anastasij is extended by analogy to embrace the entire movement of the atoms; Though there is here of course an allusion to the elevation of the nature from the "earthly" to the "heavenly," and perhaps to the raising of the body from the tomb, yet the primary meaning is that the term anastasij is derived from its special use of raising from the ground one who lies prostrate (as a suppliant). Some of the elements of the body are supposed to be gewdh, i. e. mingled with their kindred earth. But though strictly the word anastasij should apply to them alone, it does not do so, but denotes more generally the movement of all the atoms to reform the body.
(155 )Gregory quotes as usual the LXX. for this Psalm (cxviii. 27): Qeoj kurioj, kai epefanen hmin susthsasqe thn eorthn en toij pukazousin ewj twn keratwn tou qusiasthriou. [Krabinger has replaced suathsasqe from one of his Codd. for the common susthsasqai; but if this is retained wste must be understood. Cf. Matt., Gr. Gr. §532.] The LXX. is rendered by the Psalterium Romanum "constitute diem in confrequentatianibus." So also Eusebius, Theodoret, and Chrysostom interpret. But the Psalterium Gallicanum reproduces the LXX. otherwise, i.e. in condensis, as Apollinaris and Jerome (in frondosis) also understand it. "Adorn the feast with green boughs, even to the horns of the altar": Luther. "It is true that during the time of the second temple the altar of burnt offering was planted round about at the Feast of Tabernacles with large branches of osiers, which leaned over the edge of that altar": Delitzsch (who however says that this is, linguistically, untenable). Gregory's rendering differs from this only in making pukazousin masculine.
(156 )Reading toij ezwfen peribolhj.
(159 )Gregory, as often, seems to quote from memory (upameifqhsesqai, but 1 Cor. xv. 52 allaghsomeqa; and St. Paul says hmeij de, i.e. "we shall be changed," in distinction from the dead generally, who "shall be raised incorruptible"). But the doctrine of a general resurrection, with or without change, is quite in harmony with the end of this treatise. Cf. p. 468.
(160 )the incorruptible tribunal. The Judgment comes after the Resurrection (cf. 250 A, 254 A, 258 D), and after the purifying and chastising detailed above. The latter is represented by Gregory as a necessary process of nature: but not till the Judgment will the moral value of each life be revealed. There is no contradiction, such as Moller tries to find, between this Dialogue and Gregory's Oratio Catechetica. There too he is speaking of chastisement after the Resurrection and before the Judgment. "For not everything that is granted in the resurrection a return to existence will return to the same kind of life. There is a wide interval between those who have been purified (i. e. by baptism) and those who still need purification." ..."But as for those whose weaknesses have become inveterate, and to whom no purgation of their defilement has been applied, no mystic water, no invocation of the Divine power, no amendment by repentance, it is absolutely necessary that they should be submitted to something proper to their case," i.e. to compensate for Baptism, which they have never received (c. 35).
(161 )fhsin should probably be struck out (as the insertion of a copyist encouraged by eipon below): five of Krabinger's Codd. omit it.
(162 )eipon. Cf. 243 C: kai ama legein epexeiroun osa proj anatrophn thj anastasewj para twn eristikwn efeurisketai. So that this is not the first occasion on which objections to the Resurrection have been started by Gregory, and there is no occasion to adopt the conjecture of Augentius and Sifanus, an eipoimi, "dixerim", especially as eipon is found in all Codd. without exception.
(163 )Reading katarriknwqenta.
(164 )eira nosw. That these words can mean leprosy, as well as epilepsy, seems clear from Eusebius.
(165 )to touch twice the very same flame. Albert Jahn (quoted by Krabinger) here remarks that Gregory's comparison rivals that of Heraclitus: and that there is a deliberate intention of improving on the expression of the latter, "you cannot step twice into the same stream." Above (p. 459), Gregory has used directly Heraclitus' image, "so that Nature's stream may not flow on for ever, pouring forward in her successive births," &c. See also De Hom. Opif. c. 13 (beginning).
(166 )not the same even as he was yesterday. Cf. Gregory's Oratio de Mortuis, t. III. p. 633 A. "It is not exaggeration to say that death is woven into our life. Practically such an idea will be found by any one to be based on a reality: for experiment would confirm this belief that the man of yesterday is not the same as the man of today in material substance, but that something of him must be alway becoming dead, or be growing, or being destroyed, or ejected: ...Wherefore, according to the expression of the mighty Paul, `we die daily 0': we are not always the same people remaining in the same homes of the body, but each moment we change from what we were by reception and ejectment, altering continually into a fresh body."
(167 )A fresh objection is here started. It is answered (254 A, B).
(168 )Which succeeds (and is bound up with) the Resurrection. The argument is, "the flesh has behaved differently in different persons here; how then can it be treated alike in all by being allowed to rise again? Even before the judgment an injustice has been done by all rising in the same way to a new life."-In what follows, n tou autou nun men, k.t.l., the difficulty of different dispositions in the same person is considered.
(169 )parektikhj kai metabatikhj energeiaj. To the latter expression, which simply means walking, belong the words below, kai proj ton dromon oi podej (p. 464) Schmidt well remarks that a simpler form than metabatikoj does not exist, because in all walking the notion of putting one foot in the place of the other (meta) is implied; and shows that Krabinger's translation "transeundi officium" makes too much of the word.
(170 )Reading wj an anagkhn einai, ei mh eih peri to swma ta proj ouden, k.t.l. The an seems required by the protasis ei mh eih, and two Codd. supply it. The interrogative sentence ends with estai.-Below (wste paqein an), an is found with the same force with the infinitive; "so that those...might possibly be affected."
(171 )Reading en alloij ar h zwn, as Schmidt suggests, and as the sense seems to require, although there is no ms. authority except for gar.
(172 )saved to the last. The word here is diaswzein; lit. to "preserve through danger," but it is used by later writers mostly of dialectic battles, and Plato himself rises it so (e.g. Timaeus, p. 56, 68, Polit. p. 395) always of "probability." It is used by Gregory, literally, in his letter to Flavian, "we at last arrived alive in our own district," and, with a slight difference, On Pilgrimages, "it is impossible for a woman to accomplish so long a journey without a conductor, on account of her natural weakness." Hence the late word diaswsthj, dux itineris.
(173 )The actual language of this definition is Platonic (cf. Sympos. p. 193 D), but it is Gregory's constant formula for the Christian Resurrection; see De Hom. Opif. c. 17; In Ecclesiast. I. p. 385 A; Funeral Oration for Pulcheria, III. p. 523 C; Orat. de Mortuis, III. p. 632 C; De Virginitate, c. xii. p. 358.
(174 )egennhqh. S. John xvi. 21.
(175 )ton gar tou zhn arcamenon, zhsai xrh pantwj. The present infinitive here expresses only a new state of existence, the aorist a continued act. The aorist may have this force, if (as a whole) it is viewed as a single event in past time. Cf. Appian. Bell. Civ. ii. 91, hlqon, eiqon, enikhsa.
(176 )Reading with Krabinger, en tw nun kairw instead of en tw meta tauta, which cannot possibly refer to what immediately precedes, i. e. the union with God, by means of the Resurrection. If meta tauta is retained, it must = meta touton ton bion. Gregory here implies that the Resurrection is not a single contemporaneous act, but differs in time, as individuals differ; carrying out the Scriptural distinction of a first and second Resurrection.
(177 )Dr. H. Schmidt has an admirable note here, pointing out the great and important difference between S. Paul's use of this analogy of the grain of wheat, and that of our Saviour in S. John xii. 23, whence S. Paul took it. In the words, "The hour is come that the Son of man should be glorified. Verily, verily I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit" (A. V.), the fact and the similitude exactly correspond. To the corn with its life-engendering shoot, answers the man with his vivifying soul. The shoot, when the necessary conditions are fulfilled, breaks through the corn, and mounts up into an ear, exquisitely developed: so the soul, when the due time is come, bursts from the body into a nobler form. Again, through the death of the integument a number of new corns are produced: so through the death of the body that encases a perfect soul (i. e. that of Jesus), an abundance of blessings is produced for mankind. Everything here exactly corresponds; the principle of life, on the one hand in the corn, on the other hand in the human body, breaks, by dying, into a more beautiful existence. But this comparison in S. Paul becomes a similitude rather than an analogy. With him the lifeless body is set over against the life-containing corn; he does not compare the lifeless body with the lifeless corn: because out of the latter no stalk and ear would ever grow. The comparison, therefore, is not exact: it is not pretended that the rising to life of the dead human body is not a process transcendently above the natural process of the rising of the ear of wheat. But the similitude serves to illustrate the form and the quality of the risen body, which has been in question since v. 35 (1 Cor. xv.), "with what body do they come?" and the salient point is that the risen body will be as little like the buried body, as the ear of wheat is like its corn. The possibility of the Resurrection has been already proved by S. Paul in this chapter by Christ's own Resurrection, which he states from the very commencement as a fact: it is not proved by this similitude.
(178 )The Resurrection being the second. The epeidh here does not give the reason for what precedes: that is given in the words, fhsi dh touto o apostoloj, to which the leading gar therefore belongs: the colon should be replaced (after anedramen) by a comma.
(179 )Reading ou monon de touto, k.t.l. The de is not found in two Codd.
(180 )i. e. of grain, adopted by the Apostle.
(181 )staxuj here might be the nom. plur. Any way it is a "nominativus pendens."
(182 )This "naked grain" is suggested by the words of S. Paul, not so much 1 Cor. xv. 37, as 2 Cor. v. 4: "For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened: not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon." Tertullian's words (de resurr. carnis c. 52) deserve to be quoted, "Seritur granum sine folliculi veste, sine fundamento spicae, sine munimento aristae, sine superbiâ culmi. Exsurgit copiâ feneratum, compagine aedificatum, ordine structum, cultu munitum, et usquequaque vestitum." In allusion to this passage (2 Cor. v. 4), Origen says, "Our theory of the Resurrection teaches that the relations of a seed attach to that which the Scriptures call the `tabernacle of the soul, 0' in which the righteous `do groan being burdened, 0' not wishing to put it off, but `to be clothed upon 0' (with something else). We do not, as Celsus thinks, mean by the resurrection anything like the transmigration of souls. The soul, in its essence unbodied and invisible, when it comes into material space, requires a body fitted to the conditions of that particular space: which body it wears, having either put off a former body, or else having put it on over its former body ...For instance, when it comes to the actual birth into this world it lays aside the environment (xwrion) which was needed as long as it is in the womb of her that is with child: and it clothes itself with that which is necessary for one destined to pass through life. Then there is a `tabernacle, 0' and `an earthly house, 0' as well: and the Scriptures tell us that this `earthly house 0' of the tabernacle is to be dissolved, but that the tabernacle itself is to surround itself with another house not made with hands. The men of God declare that the corruptible must put on incorruption (which is a different thing from the incorruptible), and the mortal must put on immortality (which is different from the immortal: just as the relative quality of wisdom is different from that which is absolutely wise). Observe, then, where this system leads us. It says that the souls put on incorruption and immortality like garments which keep their wearer from corruption, and their inmate (ton perikeimenon auta) from death" (c. Cels. vii. 32). We see at once this is another explanation of the Resurrection, by the spermatikoj logoj of the soul, and not Gregory's; with him the soul recollects its scattered atoms, and he thus saves the true scriptural view.
(183 )This connection of "evil" and "multitude" is essentially Platonic. Cf. also Plotinus, vi. 6. 1: "Multitude, then, is a revolt from unity, and infinity a more complete revolt by being infinite multitude: and so infinity is bad, and we are bad, when we are a multitude" (cf. "Legion" in the parable).
(184 )as happens to the grain, i. e. to become bare, as compared with the beautiful envelopments of the entire ear.
(185 )"hornstruck" seeds, i. e. those which have been struck by, or have struck, the horns of the oxen, in the process of sowing: according to the rustic superstition, which Gregory Nazianz. in some very excellent hexameters alludes to (Opp. t. II. pp. 66-163): "There is," he says. "a dry unsoakable seed, which never sinks into the ground, or fattens with the rain; it is harder than horn; its horn has struck the horn of the ox, what time the ploughman's hand is scattering the grain over his land." Ruhnken (ad Timoeum, p. 155) has collected the ancient authorities on this point. The word is used by Plato of a "hard," "intractable" person. The "bare grain" of the wicked is here compared to these hard seeds, which even though they may sink into the earth and rise again, yet have a poor and stunted blade, which may never grow.
(186 )Reading epi thj ghj, instead of thn ghn: for a fall "on to the earth," instead of "on the earth," agrees neither with what Gregory (speaking by Macrina) has urged against the heathen doctrine of Transmigration, nor with the words of Scripture which he follows. The "earthly fall" is compared with the heavenly rising: kataptwsij, in the sense of a "moral fall," is used in 3 Maccab. ii. 14 (quoted by Schmidt).
(187 )Between the Resurrection and the Apokatastasij.
(3 )Marcion, a disciple of Cerdo, added a third Principle to the two which his master taught. The first is an unnamed, invisible, and good God, but no creator; the second is a visible and creative God, i. e. the Demiurge; the third intermediate between the invisible and visible God, i. e. the Devil. The Demiurge is the God and Judge of the Jews. Marcion affirmed the Resurrection of the soul alone. He rejected the Law and the Prophets as proceeding from the Demiurge; only Christ came down from the unnamed and invisible Father to save the soul, and to confute this God of the Jews. The only Gospel he acknowledged was S. Luke's, omitting the beginning which details our Lord's Conception and Incarnation. Other portions also both in the middle and the end he curtailed. Besides this broken Gospel of S. Luke he retained ten of the Apostolic letters, but garbled even them. Gregory says elsewhere that the followers of Eunomius got their "duality of Gods" from Marcion, but went beyond him in denying essential goodness to the Only-begotten, the "God of the Gospel."
(4 )Of the Gnostics Valentinus and Basilides the truest and best account is given in H. L. Mansel's Gnostics, and in the articles upon them in the Dictionary of Christian Biography. It is there shown how all their visions of celestial Hierarchies, and the romances connected with them, were born of the attempt to solve the insoluble problem, i. e. how that which in modern philosophy would be called the Infinite is to pass into the Finite. They fell into the fatalism of the Emanationist view of the Deity, but still the attempt was an honest one.
(5 )Sabellius. The Sabellian heresy was rife in the century preceding: i. e. that Personality is attributed to the Deity only from the exigency of human language, that consequently He is sometimes characterized as the Father, when operations and works more appropriate to the paternal relation are spoken of; and so in like manner of the Son, and the Holy Ghost; as when Redemption is the subject, or Sanctification. In making the Son the Father, it is the opposite pole to Arianism.
(6 )"We see also the rise (i.e. a.d. 350) of a new and more defiant Arian school, more in earnest than the older generation, impatient of their shuffling diplomacy, and less pliant to court influences. Aetius.... came to rest in a clear and simple form of Arianism. Christianity without mystery seems to have been his aim. The Anomoean leaders took their stand on the doctrine of Arius himself and dwelt with emphasis on its most offensive aspects. Arius had long ago laid down the absolute unlikeness of the Son to the Father, but for years past the Arianizers had prudently softened it down. Now, however, `unlike 0' became the watchword of Aetius and Eunomius": Gwatkin's Arians. For the way in which this school treated the Trinity see Against Eunomius, p. 50.
(7 )I. e. an argument against Dualism would only confirm the Jew in his stern monotheism. Manes had taught also that "those souls who believe Jesus Christ to be the Son of God renounce the worship of the God of the Jews, who is the Prince of Darkness," and that "the Old Testament was the work of this Prince, who was substituted by the Jews in the place of the true God."
(8 )the Deity ...without Logos. In another treatise (De Fide, p. 40) Gregory bases the argument for the eternity of the Logoj on John i. 1, where it is not said, "after the beginning," but "in the beginning." The beginning, therefore, never was without the Logoj.
(9 )unstable: apaghj (the reading arpagij is manifestly wrong). So afterwards human speech is called epikhroj. Cf. Athanasius (Contr. Arian. 3): "Since man came from the non-existent, therefore his `word 0' also has a pause, and does not last. From man we get, day after day, many different words, because the first abide not, but are forgotten."
(10 )upostasin. About this oft repeated word the question arises whether we are indebted to Christians or to Platonists for the first skilful use of it in expressing that which is neither substance nor quality. Abraham Tucker (Light of Nature, ii. p. 191) hazards the following remark with regard to the Platonic Triad, i. e. Goodness, Intelligence, Activity, viz. that quality would not do as a general name for these principles, because the ideas and abstract essences existed in the Intelligence, &c., and qualities cannot exist in one another, e. g. yellowness cannot be soft: nor could substance be the term, for then they must have been component parts of the Existent, which would have destroyed the unity of the Godhead: "therefore, he (Plato) styled them Hypostases or Subsistencies, which is something between substance and quality, inexisting in the one, and serving as a receptacle for the other's inexistency within it." But he adds, "I do not recommend this explanation to anybody"; nor does he state the authority for this Platonic use, so lucidly explained, of the word. Indeed, if the word had ever been applied to the principles of the Platonic triad, to express in the case of each of them "the distinct subsistence in a common ousia," it would have falsified the very conception of the first, i. e. Goodness, which was never relative. So that this very word seems to emphasize, so far, the antagonism between Christianity and Platonism. Socrates (E. H. iii. 7) bears witness to the absence of the word from the ancient Greek philosophy: "it appears to us that the Greek philosophers have given us various definitions of ousia, but have not taken the slightest notice of upostasij. ...it is not found in any of the ancients except occasionally in a sense quite different from that which is attached to it at the present day (i.e. fifth century). Thus Sophocles in his tragedy entitled Phoenix uses it to signify `treachery 0'; in Menander it implies `sauces 0' (i. e. sediment). But although the ancient philosophical writers scarcely noticed the word, the more modern ones have frequently used it instead of ousia." But it was, as far as can be traced, the unerring genius of Origen that first threw around the Logoj that atmosphere of a new term, i. e. upostasij, as well as omoousioj, autoqeoj, which afterward made it possible to present the Second Person to the Greek-speaking world as the member of an equal and indivisible Trinity. It was he who first selected such words and saw what they were capable of; though he did not insist on that fuller meaning which was put upon them when all danger within the Church of Sabellianism had disappeared, and error passed in the guise of Arianism to the opposite extreme.
(11 )lives. This doctrine is far removed from that of Philo, i. e. from the Alexandrine philosophy. The very first statement of S. John represents the Logoj as having a backward movement towards the Deity, as well as a forward movement from Him; as held there, and yet sent thence by a force which he calls Love, so that the primal movement towards the world does not come from the Logoj, but from the Father Himself. The Logoj here is the Word, and not the Reason; He is the living effect of a living cause, not a theory or hypothesis standing at the gateway of an insoluble mystery. The Logoj speaks because the Father speaks, not because the Supreme cannot and will not speak; and their relations are often the reverse of those they hold in Philo; for the Father becomes at times the meditator between the Logoj and the world drawing men towards Him and subduing portions of the Creation before His path. Psychology seems to pour a light straight into the Council-chamber of the Eternal; while Metaphysics had turned away from it, with her finger on her lips. Philo may have used, as Tholuck thinks, those very texts of the Old Testament which support the Christian doctrine of the Word, and in the translation of which the LXX. supplied him with the Greek word. But, however derived, his theology eventually ranged itself with those pantheistic views of the universe which subdued all thinking minds not Christianized, for more than three centuries after him. The majority of recent critics certainly favour the supposition that the Logoj of Philo is a being numerically distinct from the Supreme; but when the relation of the Supreme is attentively traced in each, the actual antagonism of the Christian system and his begins to be apparent. The Supreme of Philo is not and can never be related to the world. The Logoj is a logical necessity as a mediator between the two; a spiritual being certainly, but only the head of a long series of such beings, who succeed at last in filling the passage between the finite and the infinite. In this system there is no mission of love and of free will; such beings are but as the milestones to mark the distance between man and the Great Unknown. It is significant that Vacherot, the leading historian of the Alexandrine school of philosophy, doubts whether John the Evangelist ever even heard of the Jewish philosopher of Alexandria. It is pretty much the same with the members of the Neoplatonic Triad as with the Logoj of Philo. The God of Plotinus and Proclus is not a God in three hypostases: he is simply one, Intelligence and Soul being his necessary emanations; they are in God, but they are not God: Soul is but a hypostasis of a hypostasis. The One is not a hypostasis, but above it. This "Trinity" depends on the distinction and succession of the necessary movements of the Deity; it consists of three distinct and separate principles of things. The Trinity is really peculiar to Christianity. Three inseparable Hypostases make equally a part of the Divine nature, so that to take away one would be to destroy the whole. The Word and Spirit are Divine, not intermediaries disposed in a hierarchy on the route of the world to God. As Plotinus reproached the Gnostics, the Christian mysticism despises the world, and suppressing the intermediaries who in other doctrines serve to elevate the soul gradually to God, it transports it by one impulse as it were into the Divine nature. The Christian goes straight to God by Faith. The Imagination, Reason, and Contemplation of the Neoplatonists, i. e. the three movements of the soul which correspond to their lower "trinity" of Nature, Soul, Intelligence, are no 1onger necessary. There is an antipathy profound between the two systems; How then could the one be said to influence the other? Neoplatonism may have tinged Christianity, while it was still seeking for language in which to express its inner self: but it never influenced the intrinsically moral character of the Christian Creeds. The Alexandrine philosophy is all metaphysics, and its rock was pantheism; all, even matter, proceeds from God necessarily and eternally. The Church never hesitated: she saw the abyss that opens upon that path; and by severe decrees she has closed the way to pantheism.
(12 )will not fail to perform; mh anenerghton einai. This is a favourite word with Gregory, and the Platonist Synesius.
(13 )goodness. "God is love;" but how is this love above or equal to the Power? "Infinite Goodness, according to our apprehensign, requires that it should exhaust omnipotence: that it should give capacities of enjoyment and confer blessings until there were no more to be conferred: but our idea of omnipotence requires that it should be inexhaustible; that nothing should limit its operation, so that it should do no more than it has done. Therefore, it is much easier to conceive an imperfect creature completely good, than a perfect Being who is so. ...Since, then, we find our understanding incapable of comprehending infinite goodness joined with infinite power, we need not be surprised at finding our thoughts perplexed concerning them ...we may presume that the obscurity rises from something wrong in our ideas, not from any inconsistencies in the subjects themselves." Abraham Tucker, L. of N., i. 355.
(14 )by the higher mystical ascent, anagwgikwj. The common reading was analogikwj, which Hervetus and Morell have translated. But Krabinger, from all his Codd. but one, has rightly restored anagwgikwj. It is not "analogy," but rather "induction," that is here meant; i. e. the arguing from the known to the unknown, from the facts of human nature (ta kaq' hmaj) to those of the Godhead, or from history to spiritual events. 'Anagwgh is the chief instrument in Origen's interpretation of the Bible; it is more important than allegory. It alone gives the "heavenly" meaning, as opposed to the moral and practical though still mystical (cf. Guericke, Hist. Schol. Catech. ii. p. 60) meaning. Speaking of the Tower of Babel, he says that there is a "riddle" in the account. "A competent exposition will have a more convenient season for dealing with this, when there is a direct necessity to explain the passage in its higher mystical meaning" (c. Cels. iv. p. 173). Gregory imitates his master in constantly thus dealing with the Old Testament, i. e. making inductions about the highest spiritual truths from the "history." So Basil would treat the prophecies (in Isai. v. p. 948). Chrysostom, on the Songs of "Degrees" in the Psalms, says that they are so called because they speak of the going up from Babylon, according to history; but, according to their high mysticism, because they lift us into the way of excellence. Here Gregory uses the facts of human nature neither in the way of mere analogy nor of allegory: he argues straight from them, as one reality, to another reality almost of the same class, as it were, as the first, man being "in the image of God"; and so anagwgh here comes nearer induction than anything else.
(15 )kaq' upostasin. Ueberweg (Hist. of Philosophy, vol. i. 329) remarks: "That the same argumentation, which in the last analysis reposes only on the double sense of upostasij (viz. : (a) real subsistence; (b) individually independent, not attributive subsistence), could be used with reference to each of the Divine attributes, and so for the complete restoration of polytheism, Gregory leaves unnoticed." Yet Gregory doubtless was well aware of this, for he says, just below, that even a severe study of the mystery can only result in a moderate amount of apprehension of it.
(16 )it is separate as to personality yet is not divided as to subject matter. The words are respectively upostasij and upokeimenon. The last word is with Gregory, whose clearness in philosophical distinctions makes his use of words very observable, always equivalent to ousia, and ousia generally to fusij. The following note of Casaubon (Epist. ad Eustath.) is valuable: In the Holy. Trinity there is neither "confusion," nor "composition," nor "coalescing"; neither the Sabellian "contraction," any more than the Arian "division," neither on the other hand "estrangement," or "difference." There is "distinction" or "distribution" without division. This word "distribution" is used by Tertullian and others to express the effect of the "persons" (idiothtej, upostaseij, proswpa) upon the Godhead which forms the definition of the substance (o thj ousiaj logoj).
(18 )Ps. xxxiii. 4, Septuagint version.
(19 )innate ideas (koinwn ennoiwn). There is a Treatise of Gregory introducing Christianity to the Greeks "from innate ideas." This title has been, wrongly, attributed by some to a later hand.
(20 )Cf. Cato's Speech in Addison's Cato:-
It must be so; Plato, thou reasonest well!-
Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire
This longing after immortality?
'Tis the divinity that stirs within us;
'Tis heaven itself that points out an hereafter,
And intimates eternity to man.
(22 )S. James i. 15: h epiqumia tiktei ...amartian.
(23 )to kalon. The Greek word for moral perfection, according to one view of its derivation (kaiein), refers to "brightness"; according to another (cf. kekadmenoj), to "finish" or perfection.
(24 )1 Tim. iv. 4; "rejected" (R.V.), better than "refused" (A.V.).
(25 )This is not making the Devil the Demiurge, but only the "angel of the Earth." And as the celestial regions and atmosphere of the earth were assigned to "angelic powers," so the Earth itself and her nations were assigned to subordinate angels. Origen had already developed, or rather christianized, this doctrine. Speaking of the Confusion of Tongues, he says, "And so each (nation) had to be handed over to the keeping of angels more or less severe, and or this character or of that, according as each had moved a greater or less distance from the East, and had prepared more or less bricks for stone, and more or less slime for mortar; and had built up more or less. This was that they might be punished for their boldness. These angels who had already created for each nation its peculiar tongue, were to lead their charges into various parts according to their deserts: one for instance to some burning clime, another to one which would chastise the dwellers in it with its freezing: ...those who retained the original speech through not having moved from the East are the only ones that became `the portion of the Lord. 0' ...They, too, alone are to be considered as having been under a ruler who did not take them in hand to be punished as the others were' (c. Cels. v. 30-1).
(26 )"We affirm that it is not easy, or perhaps possible, even for a philosopher to know the origin of evil without its being made known to him by an inspiration of God, whence it comes, and how it shall vanish. Ignorance of God is itself in the list of evils; ignorance of His way of healing and of serving Him aright is itself the greatest evil: we affirm that no one whatever can possibly know the origin of evil, who does not see that the standard of piety recognized by the average of established laws is itself an evil. No one, either can know it who has not grasped the truth about the Being who is called the Devil; what he was at the first, and how he became such as he is."-Origen (c. Cels. iv. 65).
(28 )istorikwteron kai di' ainigmatwn.
(29 )"Here," says Semler, "our Author reveals himself as a scholar of Origen, and other doctors, wh,, had imbibed the heathen thoughts of Plato, and wished to rest their system upon a future (purely) moral improvement." There is certainly too little room left here for the application to the soul and body in this life of Christ's atonement.
(30 )skuqrwpwn epanorqwsij, lit. "a correction consisting in terrible (processes)" (subjective genitive). The following passage will illustrate this: "Now this requires a deeper investigation, before it can be decided whether some evil powers have had assigned them ...certain duties, like the State-executioners, who hold a melancholy (tetagmenoi epi twn skuqrwpwn <\=85_pragmatwn) but necessary office in the Constitution." Origen, c. Cels. vii. 70.
(31 )in the day of the judgment. The reading ktisewj, which Hervetus has followed, must be wrong here.
(34 )of a wart; murmhkiaj. Gregory uses the same simile in his treatise On the Soul (iii. p. 204). The following "scholium" in Greek is found in the margin of two mss. of that treatise, and in that of one ms. of this treatise: "There is an affection of the skin which is called a wart. A small fleshy excrescence projects from the skin, which seems a part of it, and a natural growth upon it: but this is not really so; and therefore it requires removal for its cure. This illustration made use of by Gregory is exceedingly appropriate to the matter in hand."
(35 )Ps. xxxix. Ps. (xxxviii.) 11: "When thou with rebukes dost correct man for iniquity, thou makest his beauty to consume away" (A. V).
(36 )i. e. Chapter 1., throughout.
(37 )tw atomw: here, the individual body of man: "individno corpusculo," Zinus translates. Theodoret in his second ("Unconfused") Dialogue quotes this very passage about the "infiniteness of the Deity," and a "vessel," to prove the two natures of Christ.
(40 )There is a touch of Eutychianism in this illustration of the union of the Two Natures; as also in Gregory's answer (c. Eunom. iii. 265; v. 589) to Eunomius' charge of Two Persons against the Nicene party, viz. that "the flesh with all its peculiar marks and properties is taken up and transformed into the Divine nature"; whence arose that antimeqistasij twn onomatwn, i.e. reciprocal interchange of the properties human and Divine, which afterwards occasioned the Monophysite controversy. But Origen had used language still more incautious; "with regard to his mortal body and his human soul, we believe that owing to something rare than communion with Him to actual union and intermingling it has acquired the highest qualities, and partakes of His Divinity, and so has changed into God" (c. Cels. iii. 41).
(41 )fastening on the material. The word (aptqsqai) could mean either "fastening on," or "depending on," or "kindled from" (it has been used in this last sense just above). Krabinger selects the second, "quae a subjecto depender."
(42 )dia twn istoroumenwn qaumatwn ouk amfiballomen.
(44 )Origin answering the same objections says "I know not what sort of alteration of mankind it is that Celsus wants, when he doubts whether it were not possible to improve man by a display of Divine power, without any one being sent in the course of nature (fusei) for that purpose. Does he want this to take place among mankind by a sudden appearance of God destroying evil in their hearts at a blow, and causing virtue to spring up there? One might well inquire if it were fitting or possible that such a thing should happen. But we will suppose that it is so. What then? How will our assent to the truth be (in that case) praiseworthy? You yourself process to recognize a special Providence: therefore you ought just as much to have told us, as we you, why it is that God, knowing the affairs of men, does not correct them, and by a single stroke of His power rid Himself of the whole family of evil. But we confidently assert that He does send messengers for this very purpose: for His words appealing to men's noblest emotions are amongst them. But whereas there had been already great differences between the various ministers of the Word, the reformation of Jesus went beyond them all in greatness; for He did not mean to heal the men of one little corner only of the world, but He came to save all;" c. Cels. iv. 3, 4.
(48 )So Origen (c. Cels. iv. 15) illustrates the kenwsij and sugkatabasij of Christ: "Nor was this change one from the heights of excellence to the depths of baseness (to ponhrotaton), for how can goodness and love be baseness? If they were, it would be high time to declare that the surgeon who inspects or touches grievous and unsightly cases in order to heal them undergoes such a change from good to bad."
(49 )There is no one word in English which would represent the full meaning of pafoj. "Sufferance" sometimes comes nearest to it, but not here, where Gregory is attempting to express that which in no way whatever attached to the Saylout, i. e. moral weakness, as opposed to physical infirmity.
(50 )upon a more general scale as it were. The Greek here is somewhat obscure; the best reading is Krabinger's; genikwtwrw tini logw thn noeran ousian th aisfhth sugkatemicen. Hervetus' translation is manifestly wrong; "Is generosiorem quondam intelligentem essentiam commiscuit sensili principio."-Soul and body have been reunited by the Resurrection, on a larger scale and to a wider extent (logw), than in the former instance of a single Person (in the Incarnation), the new principle of life progressing to the extremities of humanity by natural consequence: genikwterw will thus refer by comparison to "the first framing of these component elements." Or else it contrasts the amount of life with that of death: and is to be explained by Rom. v. 15, "But not as the offence, so also is the free gift. For if through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many." Krabinger's translation, "generaliori quâdam ratione," therefore seems correct. The mode of the union of soul and body is described in Gregory's Treatise on the Soul as kreittwn logoj, and in his Making of Man as afrastoj logoj, but in neither is there any comparison but with other less perfect modes of union; i. e. the reference is to quality, not to quantity, as here.
(51 )the Prophet, i. e. David; Ps. xxxi. 19: wj polu to plhfoj thj xrhstothtoj sou, k.t.l. Hervetus translates Gregory here "divitiae benignitatis," as if he had found ploutoj in the text, which does not appear. Jerome twice translates the xrhstothj of LXX. by "bonitas"; Aquila and Symmachus have ti polu to agaqon sou. This is the later sense of xrhstothj, which originally meant "serviceableness" and then "uprightness" (Psalm xiii. 2, Psalm xiii. 4, Psalm xxxvi. 3, Psalm cxix. 66), rather than "kindness."
(52 )appearance, parousian. Casaubon in his notes to Gregory's Ep. to Eustathia, gives a list of the various terms applied by the Greek Fathers to the Incarnation, viz. (besides parousia),-h tou Xristou epifaneia\ h despotikh epidhmia\ h dia sarkoj omilia\ h tou logou ensarkwsij\ h enanqrwphsij\ h eleusij\ h kenwsij\ h sugkatabasij\ h oikonomia (none more frequent than this); and others.
(53 )Tit. ii. 11. This is the preferable rendering; not as in the A.V., "appeared to all men."
(54 )unbloody Priesthood, anaimakton ierwsunhn, i. e. "sacerdotium," not "sacrificium." This, not qusian, is supported by the Codd. The Eucharist is often called by the Fathers "the unbloody sacrifice" (e. g. Chrysost. in Ps. xcv., citing Malachi), and the Priesthood which offers it can be called "unbloody" too. Cf. Greg. Naz. in Poem. xi. 1-
\W qusiaj pempontej anaimaktouj ierhej.
While these terms assert the sacrificial nature of the Eucharist, might they not at the same time supply an argument against the Roman view of Transubstantiation, which teaches that the actual blood of Christ is received, and makes it still a bloody sacrifice?
(55 )of the presence among them, &c. Cf. a striking passage in Origen; "One amongst the convincing proofs that Jesus was something Divine and holy is this; that the Jews after what they did to Him have suffered so many terrible afflictions for so long. And we shall be bold to say that they never will be restored again. They have committed the most impious of crimes. They plotted against the Saviour of mankind in that city where the ceremonies they continually performed for God enshrined great mysteries. It was right that that city where Jesus suffered should be utterly destroyed, and the Jewish nation expelled, and that God's call to blessedness should be made to others, I mean the Christians, to whom have passed the doctrines of a religion of stainless purity, and who have received new laws fitted for any form of government that exists" (c. Celsum, iv. 22). The Jews, he says, will even "suffer more than others in the judgment which they anticipate, in addition to what they have suffered already," ii. 8. But he says, v. 43, "Would that they had not committed the error of having broken their own law; first killing their prophets, and at last taking Jesus by stealth; for then we should still have amongst us the model of that heavenly city which Plato attempted to sketch, though I cannot say that his powers came up to those of Moses and his successors"
(56 )they took it (i. e. the religion, which for the future, &c.) in a wrong sense: kakwj eklabontej (Hasius, ad Leon. Diacon., shows how lambanin and metalambanein also have this meaning "interpret," "accipere"). This is a better reading than ekbalontej, and is supported by two mss.
(57 )then even. The apodosis begins here, and wste must be understood after upoleleiptai, to govern meinai, "were left standing, &c. ...so that there remains."
(58 )The Greek Fathers and the English divines for the most part confine themselves to showing this moral fitness and consonance with God's nature in the Incarnation, and do not attempt to prove its absolute necessity. Cf. Athanasius, De Incarn. Verb. c. 6; Hooker, Eccles. Pol. V. li. 3; Butler's Analogy, pt. ii. c. 5.
(59 )to men ti (for toi). There is the same variety of reading in c. i. and xxi., where Krabinger has preserved the ti: he well quotes Synesius, de Prov. ii. 2; 9O men tij apoqnhskei plhgeij, o de k.t.l. (and refers to his note there).
(60 )Ps. cvi. 4, Ps. cvi. 5; Ps. (cv.) 4, Ps. (cv.) 5; Ps. cxix. (cxviii) 65, Ps. cxix. 66, Ps. cxix. 68. In the first passage the LXX. has tou idein en th xrhstothti twn eklektwn sou (Heb. "the felicity of Thy chosen"): evidently referring to God's eudokia in them; He, good Himself (xrhstoj, v. 1), will save them. "in order to approve their goodness." The second passage mentions four times this xrhstothj (bonitas).
(61 )of the course to be traversed: tou diecodeuomenou. Glauber remarks that the Latin translation here, "ejus qui transit," gives no sense. and rightly takes the word as a passive. Krabinger also translates, "ejus quod evolvitur." Here again there is unconscious Platonism: auto to kalon is eternal.
(62 )Compare a passage in Dionysius Areop. (De eccles. hierarch. c. iii. p. 207). "The boundless love of the Supreme Goodness did not refuse a personal providing for us, but perfectly participating in all that belongs to us, and united to our lowliness, along with an undiluted and unimpaired possession of its own qualities, has gifted us for ever with a communion of kinship with itself, and exhibited us as partners in Its glories: undoing the adverse power of the Rebel throng, as the secret Tradition says, "not by might, as if it was domineering, but, according to the oracle secretly delivered to us, by right and justice" (quoted by Krabinger). To the word "not by might," S. Maximus has added the note, "This is what Gregory of Nyssa says in the Catechetic." See next note.
(63 )one consonant with justice. This view of Redemption, as a coming to terms with Satan and making him a party or defender in the case, is rather remarkable. The Prologue to the Book of Job furnishes a basis for it, where Satan enters into terms with God. It appears to be the Miltonic view: as also that Envy was the first sin of Satan.
(64 )the absolution of the damned. These words, wanting in all others, Krabinger has restored from the Codex B. Morell translates "damnatorum absolutio." The Greek is thn twn katadikwn anarrusin. "Haec Orignem sapiunt, qui damnatorum poenis finem statuit:" Krabinger. But here at all events it is not necessary to accuse Gregory of this, since he is clearly speaking only of Christ's forgiveness of sins during His earthly ministry.
(66 )he chooses Him as a ransom. This peculiar teaching of Gregory of Nyssa, that it was to the Devil, not God the Father, that the ransom, i. e. Christ's blood, was paid, is shared by Origen, Ambrose, and Augustine. The latter says, "Sanguine Christi diabolus non ditatus est, sed ligatus," i. e. bound by compact. On the other hand Gregory Naz. (tom. I. Orat. 42) and John Damascene (De Fid. Orthod. iii. c. 27) give the ransom to the Father.
(67 )as with ravenous fish. The same simile is found in John of Damascus (De Fid. iii. 27), speaking of Death. "Therefore Death will advance, and, gulping down the bait of the Body, be transfixed with the hook of the Divinity: tasting that sinless and life-giving Body. he is undone, and disgorges all whom he has ever engulphed: for as darkness vanishes at the letting in of light so corruption is chased away by the onset of life, and while there is life given to all else, there is corruption only for the Corrupter."
(69 )th men dikaiosunh. The dative is not governed by antididonta but corresponds to th de agaqothti (a dative of reference), which has no such verb after it. Krabinger therefore hardly translates correctly "justitiae quod datur, pro meritis tribuendo."
(70 )oi qerapeutai tou xrusiou On the margin of one of Krabinger's Codd. is written here in Latin, "This must be read with caution: it seems to savour of Origen's opinions" i. e. the curing of Satan.
(71 )Mal. iii. 2, Mal. iii. 3.
(72 )th kaqarsei. This is the reading of three of Krabinger's Codd. and that of Hervetus and Zinus; "purgatione," "purgationis": the context too of the whole chapter seems to require it. But Morell's Cod. had th afqarsia, and Ducaeus approved of retaining it. For this kaqarsij see especially Origen, c. Cels. vi. 44.
(73 )"Fax otherwise was it with the great thinkers of the early Church. ...They realized that redemption was a means to an end, and that end the reconsecration of the whole universe to God. And so the very completeness of their grasp upon the Atonement led them to dwell upon the cosmical significance of the Incarnation, its purpose to `gather together all things in one. 0' For it was an age in which the problems of the universe were keenly felt."-Lux Mundi, p. 134.
(74 )"In order that the sacrifice might be representative, He took upon Him the whole of our human nature and became flesh conditioned though that fleshly nature was throughout by sin. It was not only in His death that we contemplate Him as the sin-bearer: but throughout His life He was as it were conditioned by the sinfulness of those with whom His human nature brought Him into close and manifold relations."-Lux Mundi, p. 217 (Augustine, de Musicâ, vi. 4, quoted in note, "Hominem sine peccato, non sine peccatoris conditione, suscepit").
(76 )qeomaxia, word often applied by the Greek Fathers to the conduct of the Egyptians, in reference. of course, to Pharaoh.
(77 )The following passage is anti-Calvinistic. Gregory here, as continually elsewhere, asserts the freedom of the will; and is strongly supported by Justin Martyr, i. 43: "If it has been fixed by fate that one than shall be good, and another bad, the one is not praiseworthy, the other not culpable. And again, if mankind has not power by a free choice to flee the evil and to choose the good, it is not responsible for any results, however shocking."
(79 )This is an answer to modern "Ethical Determinants."
(81 )Cf. Rom. ix. 21: furama is used for the human body often in the Greek Fathers, i. e. Athanasius, Chrysostom, John Damascene: by all of whom Christ is called aparxh tou hmeterou furamatoj. Cf. Gen. ii. 7; Job x. 9: Epictetus also calls the human body phlow komywj pefurauenon
(82 )en men tw qanatw kaqoran to anqrwpinon, en de tw tropw polupragmonein to qeioteron. This is Krabinger's reading (for en tw aqanatw <\=85_en de tw anqrwpw) on the authority of Theodoret's quotation and two Codd. for the first, and of all his Codd. for the second. Hervetus also seems to have read the same, "in morte quidem quod est humanum intueri, in modo autem perscrutari quod est divinius." Glauber, however, translates the common text, "Man muss bei dem Unsterblichen zwar das Menschliche betrachten, aber bei dem Mensehen auch das Göttliche hervorsuchen:" notwithstanding that he hints his preference for another reading, skopw for this last; cf. just above, "but the secret sense represents the Divine," which would then be parallel to this last sentence.
(85 )keraian. The Fathers were fond of tracing similitudes to the form of the Cross, in nature and art: in the sail-yards of a ship, as here, and in the flight of birds on the wing. This is the reading of Codd. Morell., Reg., and three of Krabinger's: but gaian in the margin of that of J. Vulcobius (Abbot of Belpré) has got into the text of both Paris Editt., though the second asterisks it. Hervetus ("et fastigium") seem to have read kai akran.
(86 )swmatikwj: with a general reference both to the recipient, the words (the "form"), and the water (the "matter," in the Aristotelian sense). Cf. questions in Private Baptism of Infants: and Hampden's Bampton Lectures, p. 336 n.
(87 )timiwtaton (timh = "price") zwon. So Plato, Laws, p. 766: "Man, getting right training and a happy organization, is wont to become a most godlike and cultivated creature."
(89 )poiountai (middle), i. e. by their prayers.
(90 )h de thj qeothtoj marturia dia twn qaumatwn estin: a noteworthy sentence.
(91 )twn ginomenwn (cf. above) being understood.
(92 )ek thj kata didaxhn ufhghsewj. This is what Krabinger finds in three Codd., and Morell and Hervetus have rendered in the Latin. But the editions have diadoxhn. Ufhghsij does not refer to any "preceding" ("praeeunte," Hervetus) teachting; but to "instruction" of any kind, whether "in the way of teaching," or of example, as below.
(93 )the flesh which He has assumed, and at the same time deified. "Un terme chef aux Pères du IV(e) siècle, de nous déifier" (Denis, Philosophie d'Origène, p. 458). This qeopoihsij or qewsij is more than a metaphor even from the first, "vere fideles vocantur qeoi, non naturâ quidem, sed th omoiwsei, ait Athanasius;" Casaubon, In Epist. ad Eustath. "We become `gods 0' by grasping the Divine power and substance;" Clement, Stromata, iv. That the Platonists had thus used the word of to proj meizona docan anuywqen is clear. Synesius in one of his Hymns says to his soul:-
"Soon cammingled with the Father
Thou shalt dance a `god 0' with God."
just as elsewhere (in Diane, p. 50) he says, "it is not sufficient not to be bad; each must be even a `god. 0'" Cf. also Gregory Thaum. Panegyr Origenis, §142 When we come to the Fathers of the 4th century and later, these words are used more especially of the work of the Holy Spirit upon man. Cf. Cyrill. Alex.: "If to be able to `deify 0' is a greater thing than a creature can do, and if the Spirit does `deify, 0' how can he be created or anything but God, seeing that he `deifies 0'?" "If the Spirit is not God," says Gregory Naz., "let him first be deified, and then let him deify me his equal;" where two things are implied, 1. that the recognized work of the Holy Spirit is to `deify, 0' 2. that this "deification" is not Godhead. It is "the comparative god-making" of Dionysius Areopag. whereby we are "partakers of the Divine nature" (2 Pet. i. 4). On the word as applied to the human nature of our Saviour Himself. Huet (Origeniana, ii. 3, c. 17), in discussing the statement of Origen, in his Commentary on S. Matthew (Tract 27), that "Christ after His resurrection `deified 0' the human nature which He had taken," remarks, "If we take this word so as to make Origen mean that the Word was changed into the human nature, and that the flesh itself was changed into God and made of the same substance as the Word, he will clearly be guilty of that deadly error which Apollinaris brought into the Church (i. e. that the Saviour's soul is not `reasonable, 0' nor His flesh human); or rather of the heresy perpetrated by some sects of the Eutychians, who asserted that the human nature was changed into the Divine after the Resurrection. But if we take him to mean that Christ's human nature, after being divested of weakness after death, assumed a certain Divine quality, we shall be doing Him no wrong." He then quotes a line from Gregory's Iambics:-
"The thing `deifying, 0' and the thing `deified, 0' are one God:"and this is said even of Christ's Incarnation; how ranch more then can it be said of His Resurrection state, as in this passage of the Great Catechism? Huet adds one of Origen's answers to Celsus: "His mortal body and the human soul in Him, by virtue of their junction or rather union aud blending with that (deity), assumed, we assert, qualities of the very greatest kind. ...What incredibility is there in the quality of mortality in the body of Jesus changing, when God so planned and willed it, into an ethereal and Divine" (i. e. the matter, as the receptacle of these qualities, remaining the same)? It is in this sense that Chrysostom can say that "Christ came to us, and took upon Him our nature and deified it;" and Augustine, "your humanity received the name of that deity" (contr. Arian.).
(94 )Heb. ii. 10; Heb. xii. 2.
(95 )adiecodon <\=85_frouran. Krabingers excellent reading. Cf. Plato, Phaed. p. 62 B, "We men are in a sort of prison."
(96 )S. John iii. 31: 1 Cor. xv. 47 (anwqen = ec ouranou).
(97 )epixeomenoj. This may be pressed to imply that immersion was not absolutely necessary. So below to udwr trij epixeamenoi.
(98 )efapac. So Rom. vi. 10, "He died unto sin once" (A. V.); i. e. once for all.
(99 )analuein. Cf. Philip. i. 23 (analusai)
(100 )oij de prosepwrwqh ta paqh.
(102 )efaptesai. Krabinger prefers this to efepesqai (Paris Edit.),as more suitable to what follows.
(103 )Gregory seems here to refer to Eve's eating the apple, which introdnced a moral and physical poison into our nature. General Gordon's thoughts ("in Palestine") took the same direction as the whole of this passage; which Fronto Ducaeus (as quoted by Krabinger) would even regard as a proof of transubstantiation.
(107 )by the process of eating, dia brwsewj. There is very little authority for kai posewj which follows in some Codd. If Krabinger's text is here correct, Gregory distinctly teaches a transmutation of the elements very like the later transubstantiation: he also distinctly teaches that the words of consecration effect the change. There seems no reason to doubt that the text is correct. The three Latin interpretations, "a verbo transmutatus," "statim a verbo transmutatus," "per verbum mutatus," of Hervetus, Morell, and Zinus, all point to their having found proj to swma dia tou logou metapoioumenoj in the text: and this is the reading of Cod. Reg. (the other reading is proj to swma tou logou). A passage from Justin Mart.,Apol.ii. p. 77, also supports Krabinger's text. Justin says, "so we are taught that that food which has been blessed by the pronouncing of the word that came from Him, which food by changing nouriishes our blood and flesh, is the flesh and blood of that Incarnate Jesus." As to the nature of the change (proj to swma metapoioumenoj), another passage in Gregory (In Baptism. Christi, 370A) should be compared: "The bread again, was for a while common bread, but when the mystic word shall have consecrated it (ierourghoh), it is called, and moreover is,the body of Chist." He says also at the end of this chapter, "He gives these gifts by virtue of the benediction through which He translements (metastoixeiwsaj) the natural quality (fusin) of these visible things to that immortal thing." Harnack does not attempt to weaken the force of these and other passages, but only points out that the idea of this change does not exactly correspond (how could it?) with the mediaeval scholastically-philosophical "transubstantiation." Gregory's belief iis that, just as the Word, when Christ was here in the flesh, rendered holy His body that assimilated bread, which still in a manner remained bread, so now the bread is sanctified by the Word of God and by prayer. "The idea," says Neander, "of the repetition of the consecration of the Logoj had taken hold of his mind." The construction is proiwn (wste) genesqai eij to swma tou logou, "eo progrediens, ut verbi corpus evadat."
(108 )metastoixeiwsaj. Suicer labours, without success, to show that the word is not equivalent to transelementare or metousiun, but only to substantiam convertere, i.e. to change by an addition of grace into another mode or use. In the passages from Eppiphanius which Suicer adduces for "figure," "mode," as a meaning of stoixeion itself, that word means a sign of the zodiac (as in our Gregory's De Anima et Resurr., it means the moon), only because the heavenly bodies are the elements or first principles as it were of the celestial alphabet. The other meaning of metastoixeioun which he gives, i.e. to unteach, with a view to obscure the literal meaning here, is quite inapplicable. Gregory defines more clearly than Chrysostomom (metarruqmizesqai), Theophylact (metapoieisqai), and John Damascene (metaballesqai), the change that takes place: but all go beyond Theodoret's (Dial. ii), "not changing nature, but adding grace to the nature," which Suicer endeavours to read into this word of Gregory's. It is to be noticed, too, that in Philo the word is used of Xerxes changing in his march one element into another, i.e. earth into water, not the mere use of the one into the use of the other.
(109 )Faith. Cf. Church Catechism; "Faith whereby they steadfastly believe the promises of God made to them in that Sacrament (of Baptism)."
(110 )suneplakhmen, i. e. against Eunomius, in defence of the equality of the Trinity in the Baptismal symbol Often as Gregory in that treatise opposes Eunomius for placing the essence of Christianity in mere gnwsij and dogmatwn akribeia, as against God's incomprehensibility, and knowledge only by the heart, he had yet spent his whole life in showing the supreme importance of accuracy in the formulas upon which the Faith rested. This helps to give a date for the Great Catechism.
(113 )imperfect nature: i.e. of a creature (ktistoj); for instance, of a merely human Christ, which himself needs, and therefore cannot give, perfection.
(114 )removing his faith: i. e. as he would do, if he placed it on beings whom he knew were not of that higher, uncreated, world
(115 )and the Only-begotten God. One Cod. reads here uion (not qeon), as it is in S John i. 18, though even there "many very ancient authorities" (R.V.) read qeon. The Latin of Hervetus implies an ouk here; "et unigenitum Deum non esse existimant;" and Glauber would retain it, making ktiston = qeon ouk einai. But Krabinger found no ouk in any of his Codd.
(116 )proj eauton analuwn, as explained above, i. e. eij to omogenej eauton eisagagh.
(118 )We need not consider this passage about Regeneration as an interpolation, with Aubertin, De Sacram. Eucharist. lib. ii. p. 487, because Gregory has already dealt with Baptism in ch. xxxv.-xxxvi.; and then with the Eucharist: his view of the relation between the two Sacraments, that the Eucharist unites the body, as Baptism the soul to God, quite explains this return to the preliminaries of this double union.
(119 )upameifqeih. A word almost peculiar to this Gregory.
(121 )to kata ton qumon aisxoj. Quite wrongly the Latin translators, "animi turpitudo," i. e. baseness of mind, which is mentioned just below.
(125 )These quotations are from the LXX. of Ps. cxlv. 16; Ps. ciii 12 (Is. xliii. 25); Joel ii. 13; Ps. vii. 11 (Heb. "God is angry every day "); Ps. xcii. 15.
(126 )Ps. iv. 2, Ps. iv. 3. In the last verse the LXX. has eqaumastwse; which the Vulgate follows, i. e. "He hath made his Saint wonderful" (the Hebrew implies, "hath wonderfully separated"). That qaumastoutai (three of Krabinger's Codd., and Morell's) is the reading here (omitted in Editt.), is clear from the whole quotation from the LXX. of this Psalm.
(127 )Is. lxiv. 4; 1 Cor. ii. 9.
(128 )The section beginning here, which one Cod. (Vulcobius'), used by Hervetus, exhibits, is "evidently the addition of some blundering copyist." P. Morell considers it the portion of a preface to a treatise against Severus, bead of the heretics called Acephali. But Severus was condemned under Justinian, a.d. 536: and the Acephali themselves were no recognized party till after the Council of Ephesus (those who would follow neither S. Cyril, nor John of Damascus, in one meaning of the term, i. e. "headless"), or after the Council of Chalcedon (those who rejected the Henoticon of the Emperor Zeno, addressed to the orthodox and the Monophysites, in the other meaning). It is quoted by Krabinger, none of whose Codd. recognize it.
(1 )This all refers to the very recent installation of Gregory of Nazianzum in the episcopal chair of Constantinople: on which occasion also Gregory of Nyssa seems to have preached.
(2 )Casaubon very strongly condemns the sentiment here expressed, as savouring more of heathenism than Christianity. He gives other instances, in which the loss from the death of friends and good men is attributed by Christian writers to the envy of a Higher Power. That the disturbed state of the Church should be attributed by Gregory Nazianzen to "Envy" is well enough, but he in the same strain as his namesake speaks thus in connection with the death of his darling brother Caesarius, and of Basil. Our Gregory uses the word also in lamenting Pulcheria and Flacilla. It only proves, however, how strong the habit still was of using heathen expressions.
(3 )The text is toij dedwkosin epanaswcetai. The people of Antioch must here be referred to, if the text is to stand.
(4 )Meletius was president of the Council.
(6 )According to Gen. l. 3, the Egyptian mourning was seventy days, but there is no precise mention of the length of the Israelites' mourning, except that at Atad, beyond the Jordan, they appear to have rested, on their way up, and mourned for seven days.
(8 )i. e. the spiritual father of Basil, the "father" (brother really) of Gregory.
(9 )i. e. preachers (perhaps of the Egyptian Church) who had preceded Gregory, spiritual sons of Basil, and so of Meletius, in the direct line of blessing. See Gen. xlviii. 5.
(11 )to agnon anaqhma thj alhqeiaj.
(14 )Ps. lxxviii. 25; Wisd. xvi. 20: but trufhj, not trofhj, must have been the reading in the ms. which Sifanus used, "plena coelestium deliciarum."
(15 )Jer. xxxi. 33; Heb. x. 16.
(16 )The above description enumerates the whole furniture of the Tabernacle. According to Heb. ix. 4, all that was actually in the Ark was, the pot of manna, Aaron's rod that budded, and the Tables of the Covenant. See also Exod. xvi. 33; Exod. xxv. 37-40.
(17 )Flacilla, the wife of the Emperor Theodosius.
(18 )S. Matt. xxvi. 13: S. Mark xiv. 9.
(20 )This is from the LXX. of Is. xxii 4, mh katisxushte parakalein me epi to suntrimma, k.t.l.: "Nolite contendere ut me consolemini super contritione:" S. Jerome. Ducaeus has rightly restored this, for katisxushtai.
(21 )proswpon alhqwj memorfwmenon. This is the reading of the best mss. Morell has aliewj.
(22 )kata ton uyhlon 0Iwannhn en th afqoria tou swmatoj. Sifanus translates "integritate corporis ornatum." Rupp rejects the idea that the John who "should not die" is here meant: and thinks that the epithet, and afqoria (= the more technical afqarsia) point to the monasticism of John the Baptist.
(23 )He alludes here to Paulinus and Demophilus, two Arians mentioned by Socrates and Sozomen.
(24 )In 379 the Council of Antioch settled the schism of Antioch, which seemed as if it would disturb the whole East, and even the West. Even the Catholics of Antioch had been divided, between Meletius and Paulinus, since the days of Julian. It was settled that, at the death of either, the other should succeed to his "diocese." Gregory himself was present, the ninth month after his brother Basil's death.
(26 )Gregory is here addressing men of Antioch, though he said before that that city was too distant yet to have heard the news. They must have been the bishops of the neighbourhood of Antioch and other Christians from the diocese of Meletius, then present in the capital.
(29 )Lam i. 4. "The ways of Zion do mourn." The best of the three readings here is hkousate, adopted by Krabinger.
(31 )Ps cxxvii. The title of this Psalm in LXX., Tw Dauid (dia) Ieremiou (which the Vulgate follows), implies that it is "a Davidic song springing from Jeremiah's heart." But "beginning with perfects, this Psalm is evidently not written during the time of the Exile, but in recollection of it:" Delitzsch. Some see resemblances to Ezekiel in it. The poplar is meant, not the weeping-willow, which is not met with wild in anterior Asia.
(33 )en iteaij. The best mss. support this reading, so that Krabinger has not dared to alter it to itea, as Morell's ms. Sifanus has "plane enim in salicibus vita consistit;" but Rupp, "Unser Leben ist in der That ein Weidengebusche." In Bellarmine's mystical interpretation the willows are the citizens of Babylon, who resemble willows "in being unfruitful, bitter in themselves, and dwelling by choice in the midst of Babylon," to whom the instruments of worldly mirth are left.
(35 )Doubtless an allusion to Rom. xi. 2; "how he (Elias) maketh intercession to God against Israel;" but here Meletius departed intercedes for the people, and the Intercession of Saints is clearly intimated.
(37 )Ps. cxvi. 15, Ps. cxvi. 16.
(38 )Gen. xliii. 23: S. Luke ii. 30.
(40 )Morell reads here, "Moses has left," "Moses has crossed;" but Krabinger has no doubt that this word is due to a gloss upon the text. The Scholiast Nicetas (on Gregory Naz., Orat. 38) well explains this use of "Egypt": "Egypt is sometimes taken for this present world, sometimes for the flesh, sometimes for sin, sometimes for ignorance, sometimes for mischief."
(42 )kaloj. "Atticae urbanitatis proprium," Krabinger. But David is described as "of a fair countenance."
(43 )2 Sam. vi. 14. "That ark," very probably refers to the remains of Meletius, not to the coffin or bier. The human body is called by this very term (skhnoj, tabernacle), 2 Cor. v. 1 and 2 Cor. v. 4, nor was the word in this sense unknown to Plato. The body of Meletius has been already called a kibwtoj.
(44 )eteroglwssoij: kai en xeilesin eteroij is added (cf. 1 Cor. xiv. 21: Is. xxviii. 11), in the text of Morell, but none of Krabinger's mss. recognize these words.
(45 )twn apostolwn thn suskhnian (eipate): "Thirteenth Apostle!" was in these times a usual expression of the highest praise. It was even heard in the applause given to living preachers. But if eipate cannot bear so extended a meaning, some funeral banquet of the "apostles" assembled at the Council is alluded to: or else (remembering the use of skhnoj just above) "the lying in state in an Apostle's Church," in the capital: cf. above, "his joining the Apostolic band and his departure to Christ."
(47 )It is only the Rabbis that make Lemuel, the author of the last chapter of Proverbs, the same as Solomon: Grotius identifies him with Hezekiah. Some Gerinan commentators regard him as the chief of an Arab tribe, on the borders of Palestine, and brother of Agur, author of ch. xxx. But the suggestion of Eichhorn and Ewald is the more probable, that Lemuel is an ideal name signifying "for God," the true King who leads a life consecrated to Jehovah.
(48 )Prov. xxxi. 6. Just above proj hmaj is the reading of Krabinger's mss. and of the Paris Editt.: Sifanus and Ducaeus have rendered umaj.
(49 )S. Gregory has misapplied both this passage from Ps. civ. 15 and the previous one from Prov. xxxi. 6. An attentive consideration of them shows that they do not lend themselves to the use he has made of them.
(50 )Zwroterw. For the comparative see Lobeck, Ad Phrynich. p. 146: meizoterw is the common faulty reading. These words are joined closely to what precedes in the mss. Then, in what follows, "the unstinted goblets of the word," pneumatikou is rightly omitted before logou: "and gladness" (kai agalliasij) is rightly added, as it is joined with eufrosunh in Ps. xlv. 15; and by Gregory himself, In Diem Nat. Christ. (pp. 340 and 352), and In Bapt. Christi (p. 377).
(1 )That is, for the Festival of the Epiphany or Theophany, when the Eastern Church commemorates especially the Baptism of our Lord.
(4 )The language of this passage, if strictly taken, seems to imply a denial of original sin; but it is perhaps not intended to be so understood.
(7 )Or "up to a certain point of time."
(8 )That is, "these functions he fulfils."
(9 )i. e. from the Old Testament Scriptures.
(10 )The reference appears to be not to the Cross as the instrument of that Death which was of saving efficacy, but to miraculous cures, real or reputed, effected by means of the actual wood of the Cross. The argument seems to require that we should understand the Cross itself, and not only the sacrifice offered upon it, to be the means of producing wondrous effects: and the grammatical construction favours this view. S. Cyril of Jerusalem mentions the extensive distribution of fragments of the Cross (Cat. x. 19), but this is probably one of the earliest references to miracles worked by their means.
(11 )i. e. regeneration perceived by the mind (nohthn) as distinct from any regeneration of which the senses could take cognizance.
(12 )Ps. civ. 24. The Psalm is the prefatory Psalm at Vespers in the present service of the Eastern Church. S. Gregory seems to indicate some such daily use in his own time.
(14 )The meaning of this clause may be, either that Gregory does not propose to follow this point out, as the subject of his discourse is Baptism, not the doctrine of the Trinity; or, that the example he has given is not to be so pressed as to imply tritheism, being merely an illustration of moral obligation, not a parallel from which anything is to be inferred as to the exact relation between the Three Persons.
(15 )Cf. Gal. iv. 22, &c. See Gen. xxi.
(19 )Is. xxviii. 16 (not exactly from LXX.).
(24 )Cf. 1 Cor. x. 1, 1 Cor. x. 2; and see Ex. xiv.
(31 )Ez. xxxvi. 25-27 (not exactly as LXX.).
(32 )Cf. Zech. iii. 3. It is to be remembered, of course, that the form of the name in the Septuagint is not Joshua but Jesus.
(33 )If "the Baptism of Jesus" here means (as seems most likely) the Baptism of our Lord by S. John, not the Baptism instituted by our Lord, then we are apparently intended to understand that our Lord, summing up humanity in Himself, represented by His Baptism that of all who should thereafter be baptized.
(34 )Is. xxxv. 1, Is. xxxv. 2 (LXX.).
(36 )Ps. xlii. 2 (not as LXX.).
(38 )S John iv. 13, John iv. 14.
(41 )Ps. xxix. 3, Ps. xxix. 4 (LXX.).
(44 )Num. xxv. 7, Num. xxv. 8.
(46 )Is. lxi. 10 (not exactly from LXX.).
(47 )Is. lxi. 10 (not exactly from LXX.).
(1 )Sent as an Easter present to Eusebius, bishop of Chalcis, in Coele-Syria, a staunch Catholic, who attended the Council of Constantinople. For this custom amongst the Eastern Christians of exchanging presents at the great festivals, cf. On the Making of Man (p. 387), which Gregory sent to his brother Peter: Gregory Naz. Letter 54 to Helladius, and Letter 87 to Theodore of Tyana.
(3 )Evidently an allusion to the myth in Plato.
(4 )The xusij thj kakiaj is a frequent expression in Origen.
(5 )A corrupt passage. Probably some lines have been lost. A double opposition seems intended; (1) between the night of evil and our Saviour's coming like the Sun to disperse it; and (2) between walking in darkness and walking in light on the part of the individual (H. C. O.).
(6 )en tw merei, or "on her part" or "at that particular season." To support this last, Col. ii. 16, en merei eorthj,, may be compared, as Origen interprets it, "in a particular feast," c. Cels. viii. 23: "Paul alludes to this, when he names the feast selected in preference to others only `part of a feast, 0' hinting that the life everlasting with the Word of God is not `in the part of a feast, but in a complete and continuous one. 0' Modern commentators on that passage, it is true, interpret en merei "with regard to," "on the score of." But has Origen's meaning been sufficiently considered?
(1 )Marcellus of Ancyra had been deposed in the Council of Constantinople in 336, for teaching the doctrine of Paul of Samosata. Basil and Athanasius successively separated from their communion all who were united to Marcellus; and these, knowing that Valens the Emperor had exiled several bishops of Egypt to Diocaesarea, went to find them (375) and were admitted to their communion. Armed with letters from them, they demanded to be received into that of the other bishops of the East, and at length Basil and others, having examined the matter closely, admitted them. Gregory followed Basil's example, being assured of their Catholicity: and to justify himself wrote this letter to the Catholics of Sebasteia.
(2 )idiwj, i.e. as a distinct matter from the previous apologia; or perhaps "privately."
(3 )peplhroforhmeqa; a deponent, the same use as in Rom. iv. 21, of Abraham, plhroforhqeij oti o ephggeltai k.t.l.: cf. plhroforia pistewj, Heb. x. 22: plhroforia thj elpidoj, Heb. vi. 11. The other N. T. use of this word, as an active and passive, is found 2 Tim. iv. 5, "fulfil thy ministry;" 2 Tim. iv. 17; S. Luke i. 1, peplhroforhmenwn, "most surely believed" (A. V.): in all which the R.V. follows the Vulgate interpretation. In the latin translation of this passage in Gregory, "(professionem) qua sacris nos Scripturis ac Patrum traditioni penitus inhaerere persuasum omnibus foret," the meaning put upon plhroforeisqai by A. V. in the last text is adopted, "we are fully believed to follow," with a very harsh construction.
(4 )There is some repetition and omission here. Gregory ought to have said in one of the clauses, "Nor is Baptism in the name of the Son and Holy Ghost sufficient, without the name of the Father" (H. C. O.).
(5 )gnwrizomenhn looks as if it ought to be gnwrizomenaij, and the Latin translator renders accordingly (H. C. O.).
(6 )The same preposition eij is used after baptisma, pistij, and doca.
(7 )monapxia, i.e. the One First Cause or Principle. See p. 84, note 7.
(1 )This Letter must have been written, either (i) After the first journey of Gregory to Constantinople, i.e. after the Council, 381; or (2) On his return from exile at the death of Valens, 378. The words at the end, "rejoiced and wept with my people," are against the first view.
(2 )0Earsou. The distance prevents us conjecturing "Tarsus" here, though, Gregory was probably coming from the sea (and the Holy Land). But "Garsaura" is marked on the maps as about 40 miles south of Nyssa with the "Morimene" mountains (Erjash Dagh) intervening. (Nyssa lay on a southern tributary of the Halys, N.W. of Nazianzum.) The Medicean ms. is said by Migue to read eautwn here-"we left behind us." Nothing is known of Vestena below.
(3 )Adopting the conjecture of the Latin translator bareia for braxeia. His translation, however, though ingenious, would require something different in the Greek. It runs "jamque nubes, quae nostro impendebat capiti, postquam acri vehementique vento abrepta alio delata fuit, hiemem peperit." As the text stands upolhfqeisa cannot bear this translation (H. C. O.)
(1 )Cynegius was "prefect of the praetorium," from 384 to 390. Cod. Medic. has on the title, 9Ieriw 9Hgemoni: but this must be wrong. It was this Cynegius, not then Prefect of the East, whom Libanius was to lead however unwilling, to the study of eloquence (see end of Letter xi.). The four Praetorian Prefects remained, after Diocletian's institution of the four Princes, trader whom they served, hail been abolished by Constantine. The Prefect of the East stretched his jurisdiction "from the cataracts of the Nile to the banks of the Phasis, and from the mountains of Thrace to the frontiers of Persia." From all inferior jurisdictions an appeal in every matter of importance, either civil or criminal, might be brought before the tribunal of the Prefect; but his sentence was final: the emperors themselves refused to dispute it. Hence Gregory says, that, "next to God, Cynegins had the power to remove his young relative from danger." How intimate Gregory was, not only with the highest officers but at the Court itself, is shown in his orations on Pulcheria and Flacilla. He must have been over sixty when this letter was written.
(1 )dihghmasin. "He believed in fidelity, and was capable of the sublimest, most intimate friendships. He loved Hephaestion so fervently, that . ...he remained inconsolable for his loss."-F. Schlegel. Achilles was his hero: for he too knew the delight of a constant friendship.
(1 )qau,atpoiountaj ...qaumatopoiiaj; something more than ordinary mime playing, or than the optical illusion of tableaux-vivants, but less than what we should call conjuring seems to be meant (H. C. O.).
(2 )ta katallhla twn istoroumenwn.
(2 )diaforountaj. This letter is probably written during his exile, (375-8) and to Otreius, the bishop of Melitene. See Letter 14, note.
(1 )Perhaps to Lupatrius (Cod. Medic.).
(2 )The text here seems hopelessly corrupt. Or the meaning may be, "Our main text shall be his exultation at the generous rivalry between Ulysses and Telemachus, though his mention of his exploits against the Cephallenians shall also contribute to illustrate our discussion;" but this can hardly be got out of the Greek. The reference is to Odyssey, xxiv. 514. Gregory was evidently fond of Homer: the comparison of Diomede to a winter torrent (Iliad, v. 87) is used De Virginit. c. 4: and Menelaus' words about the young and old (Iliad, iii. 108), c. 23: and in Letter II. of the seven edited by Caraccioli (Letter XV.) describing the gardens of Vanota, Od. vii. 115, xiii. 589. For other quotations from the classics see Letters XI. and XII. of this Series (H. C. O.).
(3 )ballontj, with allusion to the darts hurled by Ulysses and Telemachus (H. C. O.).
(4 )Reading mnhsthrej, for the unmeaning krathrej; "they are suitors not so much for the hand of Penelope as for her money" (H. C. O.). The Medicean has brwsthrej, "devourers." Just below the allusion is to Melantho's rudely threatening Ulysses, and getting hanged for it.
(5 )upo thj ghrwj aponoiaj, an irrelevant phrase, and, as not necessary to the sense, here omitted in translation (H. C. O.).
(1 )For the climate, cf. Sozoomen, H. E. vi. 34: "I suppose that Galatia, Cappadocia, and the neighbouring provinces contained many other ecclesiastical philosophers at that time (i. e. reign of Valens). These monks, for the most part; dwelt in communities in cities and villages, for they did not habituate themselves to the tradition of their predecessors. The severity of the winter, which is always a natural feature of that country, would probably make hermit life impracticable."
(2 )For such invitations, cf. Greg. Naz. Epist. 99, 100, 102.
(1 )This and the following letter appear to have been written when Gregory still publicly professed belles lettres. They are addressed to one of the masters whom Basil had had at Athens. For these see socrates, H. E. iv. 26: it was probably Libanius; rather than Prohaeresius, who did not live in Asia Minor, or Himaerius who (according to Eunapius, Philosoph. Vit. p. 126) had become a Christian before the reign of Julian, and it is clear that this Letter is written to a pagan. The Cod. Medic. has Libanius' name as a title to both Letters. No Letter to Gregory certainly is to be found amongst Libanius' unpublished Letters in the Vatican Library. as Zacagni himself testifies: but no conclusion can be drawn from this.
(2 )This passage as it stands is unmanageable. The Latin translator appears to give the sense required, but it is hard to see how it can be got out of the words (H. C. O.).
(3 )isqi me mhden exonta liparon (ms. lupron) en toij twn didaskalwn dihghmasin: but tou didaskalou perhaps should be read instead of twn didaskalwn (H. C. O.).
(1 )The custom of New Year's gifts (strenarum commercium) had been discontinued by Tiberius, because of the trouble it involved to himself, and abolished by Claudius: but in these times it had been revived. We find mention of it in the reigns of Theodosius, and of Arcadius; Auson. Ep. xviii. 4; Symmach. Ep. x. 28.
(2 )Or, not improbably, "they contrive lucky meetings, festivities, and contributions."
(3 )Pindar, Ol. i. 1: o de xrusoj, aiqomenon pur ate diaprepei nuktoj, megalanoroj ecoxa ploutou.
(1 )The Cod. Medic. has "to John and Maximinian." In this letter but one person seems to be addressed. Gregory here speaks, without doubt, of his books against Eunomius: not of his Antirrhetic against Apollinaris, which could have been transcribed in a very short time. Therefore we can place the date about 383, some months after Gregory's twelve Books against Eunomius, according to Hermantius, were published.
(3 )See Against Eunamius, I. 1-9.
(4 )i. e. the game of faininda: called also efetinda by Hesychius.
(6 )It is difficult to reproduce the play upon words in deciaj, and skaiothti, which refer to the kata to decion h euwnumon in the description of the game of ball: the words having both a local meaning, "right," and "left," and a metaphorical one, "favourable," and "sinister" (H. C. O.).
(1 )Euphrasius, mentioned in this Letter, had subscribed to the first Council of Constantinople, as Bishop of Nicomedia. On his death, clergy and laity proceeded to a joint election of a successor. The date of this is uncertain; Zacagni and Page think that the dispute here mentioned is to be identified with that which Sozomen records, and which is placed by Baronius and Basnage in 400, 401. But we have no evidence that Gregory's life was prolonged so far.
(2 )oudemia gegone twn efestwtwn epistrofh, literally, "no return from existing (or besetting) evils." The words might possibly mean something very different; "no concern shown on the part of those set over you" (H. C. O.).
(3 )The shadow may be considered as an accidental appendage to the body, inasmuch as it does not always appear, but only when there is some light, e. g. of the sun, to cast it (H. C. O.).
(4 )1 Cor. i. 26, 1 Cor. i. 27.
(5 )swmatoj dusgeneian, might possibly mean "bodily deformity;" but Jess probably (H. C. O.).
(6 )Reading efolkon: if efolkion, "a boat taken in tow," perhaps still regarding S. Peter as the master of a ship: or "an appendage;" Gregory so uses it in his De Animâ. Some suggest efodion, meaning "resource," but efolkon is simpler.
(7 )i. e. Nicaea. "The whirligig of time has brought about its revenge," and Nicomedia (Ismid) is now more important than Nicaea (Isnik). Nicomedia had, in fact, been the residence of the Kings of Bithynia; and Diocletian had intended to make it the rival of Rome (cf. Lactantius, De Mort. Persec. c. 7). But it had been destroyed by an earthquake in the year 368: Socrates, ii. 39.
(10 )S. Luke vi. 40. Cf. Gregory's Treatises On Perfection, What is the Christian name and profession, Sketch of the aim of True Asceticism.
(11 )h twn kionwn epallhloj qesij.
(14 )For humility and spirituality required in prelates, cf. Origen, c. Cels. viii. 75. "We summon to the magistracies of these churches men of ability and good life: but instead of selecting the ambitious amongst these we put compulsion upon those whose deep humility makes them backward in accepting this general charge of the Church. Our best rulers then, are like consuls compelled to rule by a mighty Emperor: no other, we are persuaded, than the Son of God, Who is the Word of God. If, then, these magistrates in the assembly of God's nation rule well, or at all events strictly in accordance with the Divine enactment, they are not because of that to meddle with the secular law-making. It is not that the Christians wish to escape all public responsibility, that they keep themselves away from such things; but their wish to reserve themselves for the higher and more urgent responsibilities (anagkaiotera leitourgia) of God's Church."
(1 )To Otreius, Bishop of Melitene (in eastern Cappadocia, on or near the tipper Euphrates), to whose successor Letoius Gregory addressed his Canonical Epistle about Penitents (Cod. Medic.). Written when Gregory was in exile under Valens. Zacagni thinks that the "war," and the carping criticisms here complained of, refer to the followers of Eustathius of Sebasteia or of Macedonius, who had plenty to find fault with, even in the gestures and dress of the Catholics (of. Basil, De Spirit. S., end).
(3 )This passage is very corrupt, and I have put the best sense 1 could on the fragmentary words preserved to us (H. C. O.).
(4 )prologizontaj. But proloxizontaj would suit the context better; i. e. "they lay an ambush wherever their interests are concerned" (H. C. O.).
(5 )Or "accompanies their power:" th dunamei may go with omartei, or with akatagwniotoj (H. C. O.).
(6 )kat andraj, kai dhmouj, kai esxatiaj. But the Latin, having "solitudines," shows that erhmouj was read for dhmouj. We seem to get here a glimpse of Gregory's activity during his exile (376-78). Rupp thinks that Macrina's words to her brother also refer to this period: "Thee the Churches call to help them and correct them." He moved from place to place to strengthen the Catholic cause; "we," he says in the longer Antirrhetic, "who have sojourned in many spots, and have had serious conversation upon the points in dispute both with those who hold and those who reject the Faith." Gregory of Nazianzum consoles him during these journeys, so exhausting and discouraging to one of his spirit, by comparing him to the comet which is ruled while it seems to wander, and of seeing in the seeming advance of heresy only the last hiss of the dying snake. His travels probably ended in a visit to Palestine: for his Letter On Pilgrimages certainly presupposes former visits in which he had learnt the manners of Jerusalem. His love of Origen, too, makes it likely that he made a private pilgrimage (distinct from the visit of 379) to the land where Origen had chiefly studied.
(1 )sxolastikoj, or possibly "student," but the title of logisthj, afterwards employed of the person to whom the letter is addressed, rather suggests the profession of an "advocate," than the occupation of a scholar.
(3 )The text is clearly erroneous, and perhaps otefanousi is the true reading: it seems clearer in construction than stefanousai suggested by Caraccioli.
(5 )The word seems otherwise unknown. It may he a Graecizing of the Latin "duracinus," for which cf. Plin. XV. xii. 11.
(3 )That is, on an inner line; the upper row having their supports at the angles of the inscribed octagon, and therefore at a point further removed from the centre of the circle than those of the lower tier, which correspond to the sides of the octagon. Or, simply, "those inside the building," the upper tier showing in the outside view of the structure, while the lower row would only be visible from the interior. There is apparently a corresponding row of windows above the upper row of arches, carrying the central tower four cubits higher. This at least seems the sense of the clause immediately following.
(4 )Reading eilhsewj, of which this seems to be the meaning.
(5 )i. e. of the side of the octagon.
(8 )The speira is a moulding at the base of the column, equivalent to the Latin torus.
(1 )This Letter was published, Paris 1606, by R. Stephens (not the great lexicographer), who also translated On Pilgrimages into French for Du Moulin (see p. 382): and this edition was reprinted a year after at Hanover, with notes by Isaac Casaubon, "viro docto, sed quod dolendum, in castris Calvinianis militanti" (Gretser). Heyns places it in 382, and Rupp also.
(2 )swthria sumbola. Casaubon remarks "hoc est tou swthroj, Salvatoris, non autem swthriaj poihtika." This is itself doubtful; and he also makes the astounding statement that both Jerome, Augustine, and the whole primitive Church felt that visits to the Sacred Places contributed nothing to the alteration of character. But see especially Jerome, De Peregrinat., and Epistle to Marcella. Fronto Ducaeus adds, "At, velis nolis, swthria sunt illa loca: turn quia aspectu sui corda ad poenitentiam et salutares lacrymas non taro commovent, ut patet de Mariâ Aegyptiacâ; tum quia ..."
(3 )epouranion politeian. Even Casaubon (against Du Moulin here) allows this to mean the ascetic or monastic Life; "sublimius propositum." Cf. Macarius. Hom. v. p. 85. enaretoj politeia: Isidore of Pelusium, lib. 1, c. xiv, pneumatikh politeia.
(5 )yilhj: this word expresses the absence of something, without implying any contempt: cf. yiloj anqrwpoj, yiloj logoj (prose).
(7 )toij twn folidwn stigmasin. For stigma with this meaning and connexion, see Hesiod, Scutum. 166
(10 )Compare Gregory against Apollinaris (Ad Theophil. iii. 265): "The first-fruits of humanity assumed by omnipotent Deity were, like a drop of vinegar merged in a boundless ocean, found still in that Deity, but not in their own distinctive properties: otherwise we should be obliged to think of a duality of Sons." In Orat. Cat. c. 10, he says that the Divine nature is to be conceived as having been so united with the human, as flame is with its fuel, the former extending beyond the latter, as our souls also overstep the limits of our bodies. The first of these passages appeared to Hooker (V. liii. 2) to be "so plain and direct for Eutyches," that he doubted whether the words were Gregory's. But at the Council of Ephesus, S. Cyril (of Alexandria), in his contest with the Nestorians, had showed that these expressions were capable of a Catholic interpretation, and pardonable in discussing the difficult and mysterious question of the union of the Two Natures.
(11 )S Matt. xxviii. 6. "Come see the place where the Lord lay." Cf. S. John xx. 2, John xx. 13.
(12 )"Here is the trite vicariousness of the Atonement, which consisted not in the substitution of His punishment for ours, but in His offering the sacrifice which man had neither the purity nor the power to offer. From out of the very heart or centre of human nature ...there is raised the sinless sacrifice of perfect humanity by the God Man. ...It is a representative sacrifice, for it consists of no unheard-of experience, of no merely symbolic ceremony, but of just those universal incidents of suffering, which, though he must have felt them with a bitterness unknown to us, are intensely human." Lux Mundi, p. 218.
(14 )As early as 250, Dionysius of Alexandria, in his letter to Paul of Samosata, frequently speaks of h qeotokoj Maria. Later, in the Council of Ephesus (430), it was decreed that "the immaculate and ever-Virgin mother of our Lord should be called properly (kuriwj) and really qeotokoj," against the Nestorian title xristotokoj. Cf. Theodoret. Anath. I. tom. iv. p. 709, "We call Mary not Mother of Man, but Mother of God;" and Greg. Naz. Or. li. p. 738. "If any one call not Mary Mother of God he is outside `divinity. 0'"
(15 )mh treij anastaseij muqopoioumen; For the first Resurrection (of the Soul in Baptism) and the second (of the Body), see Rev. xx. 5, with Bishop Wordsworth's note.
(16 )i.e. Caersarea in Cappadocia.
(17 )Basil, probably: who after Cyril's exile had been called in to heal the heresy of Apollinaris, which was spreading in the convents at Jerusalem. The factious purism, however, which Gregory deplores here, and which led to rival altars, seems to have evinced itself amongst the orthodox themselves. "quo majorem apud omnes opinionem de suâ praestantiâ belli isti cathari excitarent" (Casaubon). Cyril, it is true, had returned this year, 382; and spent the last years of his life in his see; but with more than twenty years interval of Arian rule (Herennius, Heraclius, and Hilarius, according to Sozomen) the communities of the Catholics must have suffered from want of a constant control: and unity was always difficult to maintain in a city frequented by all the ecclesiastics of the world. Gregory must have "succeeded" to this charge in his visit to Jerusalem after the `Council of Antioch in 379, to which he refers in his letter On Pilgrimages: but it is possible that he had paid even an earlier visit: see Letter XIV. p. 539, note 5.
(1 )The date of this letter is probably as late as 393. Flavian's authority at Antioch was now undisputed, by his reconciliation, after the deaths of Paulinus and Evagrius, with the Bishops of Alexandria and Rome, and, through them, with all his people. Gregory writes to him not only as his dear friend, but one who had known how to appease wrath, and to check opposition from the Emperor downward. He died in 404. The litigiousness of Helladins is described by Greg. Naz., Letter ccxv. He it was who a few years later, against Ambrose's authority, and for mere private interest, consecrated the physician Gerontius (Sozomen, viii. 6).
(2 )Sebasteia (Sivâs) was in Pontus on the tipper Halys: and the "mountain district" between this and Helladius' "metropolis" (Caesarea, ad Argaeum) must have been some offshoots of the Anti-Taurus.
(3 )His brother, who had urged him to write the books against Eunomius, and to whom he sent On the Making of Man.
(4 )marturiw, i. e. dedicated in this case to Peter; but the word is used even of a chapel dedicated to Christ.
(5 )hkhdiasen. Ps. cxliii. 4 (LXX.).
(6 )xalepwteron thj para twn exqrwn moi genomenhj ubrewj. The Latin does not express this, "quam si ab hostibus profecta fuisset."
(7 )twn kathmaceumenwn (so Paris Editt. and Migne, but it must be kaqhmaceumenwn, from amaca) toutwn thn suntuxian afosioumenwn.
(8 )plhn all' emoi, k. t. l. See note, p. 313.
(9 )en omotimw th fusei. Cf. oi omotimoi, the peers of the Persian kingdom.
(10 )Cf. Dies Dominica (by Thomas Young, tutor of Milton the poet): 'It's without controversie that the Oriental Christians, and others, did at that time hold assemblies on the Sabbath day. ...Yet did they not hold the Sabbath day holy," p. 35. Again, "Socrates doth not record that they of Alexandria and Rome did celebrate those mysteries on the Sabbath. While Chrysostom requireth it of the rich Lords of Villages, that they build Churches in them (Hom. 18 in Act.), he distinguisheth those congregations that were on other days from those that were held upon the Lord's day. `Upon those congregations (sunaceij) Prayers and hymns were had in these an oblation was made on every Lord's day, 0' and for that" cause the Lord's day is in Chrysostom called, `dies panis`. Athanasius purgeth himself of a calumny imputed to him, for breaking the cup, because it was not the time of administering the holy mysteries; `for it is not, 0' saith he, `the Lord's day. 0' 0' A law of Constantine had enacted that the first day of the week, "the Lord's day," should be observed with greater solemnity than formerly; which shows that the seventh day, the Sabbath, still held its place; and it does not follow that in remoter places, as here, both were kept. The hour of service was generally "in the evening after sunset; or in the morning before the dawn," Mosheim.
(12 )ton baqmon i. e. "a grade of honour": cf. 1 Tim. iii. 13. baqmon eautoij kalon peripoiounrai. So in the Canons often.
(13 )The Council of Constantinople.
(14 )the oversight of Catholic correction. "On July 30, 381, the Bishop of Nyssa received the supreme honour of being named by Theodosius as one of the acknowledged authorities in all matters of theological orthodoxy: and he was appointed to regulate the affairs of the Church in Asia Minor, conjointly with Helladius of Caesarea, and Otreius of Melitene:" Farrar's Lives of the Fathers, 1889.