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Translated by Ch. Browne and J. Swallow.
Gregory Theologian Bilingual Anthology, Resources Online and in Print
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15 Pages
Page 9
XIII. Since then these things are so, or rather since This is so; and His Adoration ought not to be rendered only by Beings above, but there ought to be also worshippers on earth, that all things may be filled with the glory of God (forasmuch as they are filled with God Himself); therefore man was created and honored with the hand [3956] and Image of God. But to despise man, when by the envy of the Devil and the bitter taste of sin he was pitiably severed from God his Maker—this was not in the Nature of God. What then was done, and what is the great Mystery that concerns us? An innovation is made upon nature, and God is made Man. "He that rideth upon the Heaven of Heavens in the East" [3957] of His own glory and Majesty, is glorified in the West of our meanness and lowliness. And the Son of God deigns to become and to be called Son of Man; not changing what He was (for It is unchangeable); but assuming what He was not (for He is full of love to man), that the Incomprehensible [3958] might be comprehended, conversing with us through the mediation of the Flesh as through a veil; since it was not possible for that nature which is subject to birth and decay to endure His unveiled Godhead. Therefore the Unmingled is mingled; and not only is God mingled with birth and Spirit [3959] with flesh, and the Eternal with time, and the Uncircumscribed with measure; but also Generation with Virginity, and dishonour with Him who is higher than all honour; He who is impassible with Suffering, [3960] and the Immortal with the corruptible. For since that Deceiver thought that he was unconquerable in his malice, after he had cheated us with the hope of becoming gods, he was himself cheated by God's assumption of our nature; so that in attacking Adam as he thought, he should really meet with God, and thus the new Adam should save the old, and the condemnation of the flesh should be abolished, death being slain by flesh.
[3956] "The rest of the Creation was made by the command of God, but Man was formed by the hand of God." (Wordsworth in Gen. ii. 7.) "There was a peculiar glory in the creation of Man, distinguishing him from the rest of the creatures. The creatures inferior to man were called into being by a simple act of the Divine Will; but in the case of man, bearing as he does the nature and the form which God was about to assume as His own, and which, once assumed, was never again to be laid aside, the process of creation was markedly different. Then for the first time the Most Holy Persons of the Blessed Trinity appear upon the scene. They are manifested as in mutual consultation and common action personally engaged....`Let Us make Man in Our Image after Our Likeness'...Then followed the exercise of creative power as a personal act, the putting forth the Hand of God to fashion the body of Man; `The Lord God formed Man of the dust of the earth.' Afterwards came the yet higher work in the infusion of the immaterial invisible life enshrined in the body, perfecting the work of God; `He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and Man became a living soul.'" (T. T. Carter, The Divine Dispensations, p. 44.)
[3957] Ps. lxviii. 4.
[3958] Ullman comments on this passage as follows: There is in it, as follows especially from what comes after, the double sense that the Infinite Godhead entered in Christ into the limitations of a finite human life; and in consequence of this, since otherwise as an infinite Being it was not fully cognisable by the finite human soul, became in this limitation cognisable in some degree to it, as it was not before this special manifestation in Christ.
[3959] "In this and several places pneuma and nous evidently denote the Divine the Spiritual, taken in the highest and purest sense, in which it is lifted above the sarx, and generally above all that is material; in which sense S. John says, pneuma ho theos." Ullmann.
[3960] "In a double sense;—either that the Godhead is, in union with the Man Jesus, subjected to suffering (cf. Or. XXI. 24), or that the Divine Substance, which is unapproachable by any passion or suffering, combined itself with a Man, whose nature cannot be free from such emotions." Ullmann.
Reference address : https://elpenor.org/gregory-nazianzen/holy-lights.asp?pg=9
