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Translated by Ch. Browne and J. Swallow.
Gregory Theologian Bilingual Anthology, Resources Online and in Print
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14 Pages
Page 10
XIV. Ninthly, they allege, seeing He ever liveth to make intercession for us. [3669] O, how beautiful and mystical and kind. For to intercede does not imply to seek for vengeance, as is most men's way (for in that there would be something of humiliation), but it is to plead for us by reason of His Mediatorship, just as the Spirit also is said to make intercession for us. [3670] For there is One God, and One Mediator between God and Man, the Man Christ Jesus. [3671] For He still pleads even now as Man for my salvation; for He continues to wear the Body which He assumed, until He make me God by the power of His Incarnation; although He is no longer known after the flesh [3672] —I mean, the passions of the flesh, the same, except sin, as ours. Thus too, we have an Advocate, [3673] Jesus Christ, not indeed prostrating Himself for us before the Father, and falling down before Him in slavish fashion...Away with a suspicion so truly slavish and unworthy of the Spirit! For neither is it seemly for the Father to require this, nor for the Son to submit to it; nor is it just to think it of God. But by what He suffered as Man, He as the Word and the Counsellor persuades Him to be patient. I think this is the meaning of His Advocacy.
XV. Their tenth objection is the ignorance, and the statement that Of the last day and hour knoweth no man, not even the Son Himself, but the Father. [3674] And yet how can Wisdom be ignorant of anything—that is, Wisdom Who made the worlds, Who perfects them, Who remodels them, Who is the Limit of all things that were made, Who knoweth the things of God as the spirit of a man knows the things that are in him? [3675] For what can be more perfect than this knowledge? How then can you say that all things before that hour He knows accurately, and all things that are to happen about the time of the end, but of the hour itself He is ignorant? For such a thing would be like a riddle; as if one were to say that he knew accurately all that was in front of the wall, but did not know the wall itself; or that, knowing the end of the day, he did not know the beginning of the night—where knowledge of the one necessarily brings in the other. Thus everyone must see that He knows as God, and knows not as Man;—if one may separate the visible from that which is discerned by thought alone. For the absolute and unconditioned use of the Name "The Son" in this passage, without the addition of whose Son, gives us this thought, that we are to understand the ignorance in the most reverent sense, by attributing it to the Manhood, and not to the Godhead.
[3669] Heb. vii. 25.
[3670] Rom. viii. 26.
[3671] 1 Tim. ii. 5.
[3672] 2 Cor. v. 16.
[3673] 1 John ii. 1.
[3674] Mark xiii. 32.
[3675] 1 Cor. ii. 11.
Reference address : https://elpenor.org/gregory-nazianzen/fourth-theological.asp?pg=10
