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| A remarkable and original reply to these utterances, and a demonstration of the power of the Crucified, and of the fact that this subjection was of the Human Nature, not that which the Only-Begotten has from the Father. Also an explanation of the figure of the Cross, and of the appellation “Christ,” and an account of the good gifts bestowed on the Human Nature by the Godhead which was commingled with it.
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§3. A remarkable and original reply to these utterances,
and a demonstration of the power of the Crucified, and of the fact that
this subjection was of the Human Nature, not that which the
Only-Begotten has from the Father. Also an explanation of the figure of
the Cross, and of the appellation “Christ,” and an account
of the good gifts bestowed on the Human Nature by the Godhead which was
commingled with it.
Well, such is his accusation.
But I think it necessary in the first place to go briefly, by way of
summary, over the points that he urges, and then to proceed to correct
by my argument what he has said, that those who are judging the truth
may find it easy to remember the indictment against us, which we have
to answer, and that we may be able to dispose of each of the charges in
regular order. He says that we are ashamed of the Cross of Christ, and
slander the saints, and say that a man has “emptied
himself” to become man, and suppose that the Lord had the
“form of a servant” before His presence by the Incarnation,
and ascribe our redemption to a man, and speak in our doctrine of two
Christs and two Lords, or, if we do not do this, then we deny that the
Only-begotten was Lord and Christ before the Passion. So that we may
avoid this blasphemy, he will have us confess that the essence of the
Son has been made, on the ground that the Apostle Peter by his own
voice establishes such a doctrine. This is the substance of the
accusation; for all that he has been at the trouble of saying by way of
abuse of ourselves, I will pass by in silence, as being not at all to
the point. It may be that this rhetorical stroke of phrases framed
according to some artificial theory is the ordinary habit
of those who play the rhetorician, an invention to swell the bulk of
their indictment. Let our sophist then use his art to display his
insolence, and vaunt his strength in reproaches against us, showing off
his strokes in the intervals of the contest; let him call us foolish,
call us of all men most reckless, of all men most miserable, full of
confusion and absurdity, and make light of us at his good pleasure in
any way he likes, and we will bear it; for to a reasonable man disgrace
lies, not in hearing one who abuses him, but in making retort to what
he says. There may even be some good in his expenditure of breath
against us; for it may be that while he occupies his railing tongue in
denouncing us he will at all events make some truce in his conflict
against God. So let him take his fill of insolence as he likes: none
will reply to him. For if a man has foul and loathsome breath, by
reason of bodily disorder, or of some pestilential and malignant
disease, he would not rouse any healthy person to emulate his
misfortune so that one should choose, by himself acquiring disease, to
repay, in the same evil kind, the unpleasantness of the man’s ill
odour. Such men our common nature bids us to pity, not to imitate. And
so let us pass by everything of this kind which by mockery,
indignation, provocation, and abuse, he has assiduously mixed up with
his argument, and examine only his arguments as they concern the
doctrinal points at issue. We shall begin again, then, from the
beginning, and meet each of his charges in turn.
The beginning of his accusation
was that we are ashamed of the Cross of Him Who for our sakes underwent
the Passion. Surely he does not intend to charge against us also that
we preach the doctrine of dissimilarity in essence! Why, it is rather
to those who turn aside to this opinion that the reproach belongs of
going about to make the Cross a shameful thing. For if by both parties
alike the dispensation of the Passion is held as part of the faith,
while we hold it necessary to honour, even as the Father is honoured,
the God Who was manifested by the Cross, and they find the
Passion a hindrance to glorifying the Only-begotten God equally with
the Father that begat Him, then our sophist’s charges recoil upon
himself, and in the words with which he imagines himself to be accusing
us, he is publishing his own doctrinal impiety. For it is clear that
the reason why he sets the Father above the Son, and exalts Him with
supreme honour, is this,—that in Him is not seen the shame of the
Cross: and the reason why he asseverates that the nature of the Son
varies in the sense of inferiority is this,—that the reproach of
the Cross is referred to Him alone, and does not touch the Father. And
let no one think that in saying this I am only following the general
drift of his composition, for in going through all the blasphemy of his
speech, which is there laboriously brought together, I found, in a
passage later than that before us, this very blasphemy clearly
expressed in undisguised language; and I propose to set forth, in the
orderly course of my own argument, what they have written, which runs
thus:—“If,” he says, “he can show that the God
Who is over all, Who is the unapproachable Light, was incarnate, or
could be incarnate, came under authority, obeyed commands, came under
the laws of men, bore the Cross, then let him say that the Light is
equal to the Light.” Who then is it who is ashamed of the Cross?
he who, even after the Passion, worships the Son equally with the
Father, or he who even before the Passion insults Him, not only by
ranking Him with the creation, but by maintaining that He is of
passible nature, on the ground that He could not have come to
experience His sufferings had He not had a nature capable of such
sufferings? We on our part assert that even the body in which He
underwent His Passion, by being mingled with the Divine Nature, was
made by that commixture to be that which the assuming712
| 712 Or
“resuming.” Cf. Book II. §8 (sup. p. 113, where
see note 7). |
Nature is. So far are we from entertaining any low idea concerning the
Only-begotten God, that if anything belonging to our lowly nature was
assumed in His dispensation of love for man, we believe that even this
was transformed to what is Divine and incorruptible713
| 713 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’; but the humanity in the
Wisdom that did advance, gradually ascending above the human nature and
being made Divine (θεοποιούμενον).” | ;
but Eunomius makes the suffering of the Cross to be a sign of
divergence in essence, in the sense of inferiority, considering, I know
not how, the surpassing act of power, by which He was able to perform
this, to be an evidence of weakness; failing to perceive the fact that,
while nothing which moves according to its own nature is looked upon as
surprisingly wonderful, all things that overpass the limitations of
their own nature become especially the objects of admiration, and to
them every ear is turned, every mind is attentive, in wonder at the
marvel. And hence it is that all who preach the word point out the
wonderful character of the mystery in this respect,—that
“God was manifested in the flesh714
| 714 1 Tim. iii.
16,
where it would appear that Gregory read θεός; not
ὅς. | ,” that “the Word was made flesh715
,” that “the Light shined in
darkness716
,” “the Life tasted
death,” and all such declarations which the heralds of the faith
are wont to make, whereby is increased the marvellous character
of Him Who
manifested the superabundance of His power by means external to his own
nature. But though they think fit to make this a subject for their
insolence, though they make the dispensation of the Cross a reason for
partitioning off the Son from equality of glory with the Father, we
believe, as those “who from the beginning were eye-witnesses and
ministers of the word717
” delivered to
us by the Holy Scriptures, that the God who was in the beginning,
“afterwards”, as Baruch says, “was seen upon the
earth, and conversed with men718
,” and, becoming
a ransom for our death, loosed by His own resurrection the bonds of
death, and by Himself made the resurrection a way for all flesh719
| 719 See
Note 2, p. 104, sup. | , and being on the same throne and in the same
glory with His own Father, will in the day of judgment give sentence
upon those who are judged, according to the desert of the lives they
have led. These are the things which we believe concerning Him Who was
crucified, and for this cause we cease not to extol Him exceedingly,
according to the measure of our powers, that He Who by reason of His
unspeakable and unapproachable greatness is not comprehensible by any,
save by Himself and the Father and the Holy Spirit, He, I say, was able
even to descend to community with our weakness. But they adduce this
proof of the Son’s alienation in nature from the Father, that the
Lord was manifested by the flesh and by the Cross, arguing on the
ground that the Father’s nature remained pure in impassibility,
and could not in any way admit of a community which tended to passion,
while the Son, by reason of the divergence of His nature by way of
humiliation, was not incapable of being brought to experience the flesh
and death, seeing that the change of condition was not great, but one
which took place in a certain sense from one like state to another
state kindred and homogeneous, because the nature of man is created,
and the nature of the Only-begotten is created also. Who then is fairly
charged with being ashamed of the Cross? he who speaks basely of it720
| 720 Reading αὐτοῦ (for
which Oehler cites good ms. authority),
for ἑαυτοῦ (the
reading of his text, as well as of the Paris editions). | , or he who contends for its more exalted
aspect? I know not whether our accuser, who thus abases the God Who was
made known upon the Cross, has heard the lofty speech of Paul, in what
terms and at what length he discourses with his exalted lips concerning
that Cross. For he, who was able to make himself known by miracles so
many and so great, says, “God forbid that I should glory in
anything else, than in the Cross of Christ721
.” And to the Corinthians he says that
the word of the Cross is “the power of God to them that are in a
state of salvation722
.” To the
Ephesians, moreover, he describes by the figure of the Cross the power
that controls and holds together the universe, when he expresses a
desire that they may be exalted to know the exceeding glory of this
power, calling it height, and depth, and breadth, and length723
, speaking of the several projections we
behold in the figure of the Cross by their proper names, so that he
calls the upper part “height,” and that which is below, on
the opposite side of the junction, “depth,” while by the
name “length and breadth” he indicates the cross-beam
projecting to either side, that hereby might be manifested this great
mystery, that both things in heaven, and things under the earth, and
all the furthest bounds of the things that are, are ruled and sustained
by Him Who gave an example of this unspeakable and mighty power in the
figure of the Cross. But I think there is no need to contend further
with such objections, as I judge it superfluous to be anxious about
urging arguments against calumny when even a few words suffice to show
the truth. Let us therefore pass on to another charge.
He says that by us the saints
are slandered. Well, if he has heard it himself, let him tell us the
words of our defamation: if he thinks we have uttered it to others, let
him show the truth of his charge by witnesses: if he demonstrates it
from what we have written, let him read the words, and we will bear the
blame. But he cannot bring forward anything of the kind: our writings
are open for examination to any one who desires it. If it was not said
to himself, and he has not heard it from others, and has no proof to
offer from our writings, I think he who has to make answer on this
point may well hold his peace: silence is surely the fitting answer to
an unfounded charge.
The Apostle Peter says,
“God made this Jesus, Whom ye crucified, Lord and Christ724
.” We, learning this from him, say that
the whole context of the passage tends one way,—the Cross itself,
the human name, the indicative turn of the phrase. For the word of the
Scripture says that in regard to one person two things were
wrought,—by the Jews, the Passion, and by God, honour; not as
though one person had suffered and another had been honoured by
exaltation: and he further explains this yet more clearly by his words
in what follows, “being exalted by the right hand of God.”
Who then was “exalted”? He that was lowly, or He that was
the Highest? and what else is the lowly, but the Humanity? what else is
the Highest, but the Divinity? Surely, God needs not to be exalted,
seeing that He is the Highest. It follows, then, that the
Apostle’s meaning is that the Humanity was exalted:
and its exaltation was effected by its becoming Lord and Christ. And
this took place after the Passion.725
| 725 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. | It is not
therefore the pre-temporal existence of the Lord which the Apostle
indicates by the word “made,” but that change of the lowly
to the lofty which was effected “by the right hand of God.”
Even by this phrase is declared the mystery of godliness; for he who
says “exalted by the right hand of God” manifestly reveals
the unspeakable dispensation of this mystery, that the Right Hand of
God, that made all things that are, (which is the Lord, by Whom all
things were made, and without Whom nothing that is subsists,) Itself
raised to Its own height the Man united with It, making Him also to be
what It is by nature. Now It is Lord and King: Christ is the
King’s name: these things It made Him too. For as He was highly
exalted by being in the Highest, so too He became all
else,—Immortal in the Immortal, Light in the Light, Incorruptible
in the Incorruptible, Invisible in the Invisible, Christ in the Christ,
Lord in the Lord. For even in physical combinations. when one of the
combined parts exceeds the other in a great degree, the inferior is
wont to change completely to that which is more potent. And this we are
plainly taught by the voice of the Apostle Peter in his mystic
discourse, that the lowly nature of Him Who was crucified through
weakness, (and weakness, as we have heard from the Lord, marks the
flesh726
,) that lowly nature, I say, by virtue of its
combination with the infinite and boundless element of good, remained
no longer in its own measures and properties, but was by the Right Hand
of God raised up together with Itself, and became Lord instead of
servant, Christ a King instead of a subject, Highest instead of Lowly,
God instead of man. What handle then against the saints did he who
pretends to give warning against us in defence of the Apostles find in
the material of our writings? Let us pass over this charge also in
silence; for I think it a mean and unworthy thing to stand up against
charges that are false and unfounded. Let us pass on to the more
pressing part of his accusation.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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