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Translated by W. Moore and H. A. Wilson
St Gregory of Nyssa Resources Online and in Print
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This Part: 128 Pages
Page 44
ยง23. These doctrines of our Faith witnessed to and confirmed by Scripture passages.
It is therefore clear that these are metaphors, which contain a deeper meaning than the obvious one: so that there is no reason from them that any suspicion that our Lord was created should be entertained by reverent inquirers, who have been trained according to the grand words of the evangelist, that "all things that have been made were made by Him" and "consist in Him." "Without Him was not anything made that was made." The evangelist would not have so defined it if he had believed that our Lord was one among the things made. How could all things be made by Him and in Him consist, unless their Maker possessed a nature different from theirs, and so produced, not Himself, but them? If the creation was by Him, but He was not by Himself, plainly He is something outside the creation. And after the evangelist has by these words so plainly declared that the things that were made were made by the Son, and did not pass into existence by any other channel, Paul [129] follows and, to leave no ground at all for this profane talk which numbers even the Spirit amongst the things that were made, he mentions one after another all the existencies which the evangelist's words imply: just as David in fact, after having said that "all things" were put in subjection to man, adds each species which that "all" comprehends, that is, the creatures on land, in water, and in air, so does Paul the Apostle, expounder of the divine doctrines, after saying that all things were made by Him, define by numbering them the meaning of "all." He speaks of "the things that are seen [130] " and "the things that are not seen:" by the first he gives a general name to all things cognizable by the senses, as we have seen: by the latter he shadows forth the intelligible world.
Now about the first there is no necessity of going into minute detail. No one is so carnal, so brutelike, as to imagine that the Spirit resides in the sensible world. But after Paul has mentioned "the things that are not seen" he proceeds (in order that none may surmise that the Spirit, because He is of the intelligible and immaterial world, on account of this connexion subsists therein) to another most distinct division into the things that have been made in the way of creation, and the existence that is above creation. He mentions the several classes of these created intelligibles: " [131] thrones," "dominions," "principalities," "powers," conveying his doctrine about these unseen influences in broadly comprehensive terms: but by his very silence he separates from his list of things created that which is above them. It is just as if any one was required to name the sectional and inferior officers in some army, and after he had gone through them all, the commanders of tens, the commanders of hundreds, the captains and the colonels [132] , and all the other names given to the authorities over divisions, omitted after all to speak of the supreme command which extended over all the others: not from deliberate neglect, or from forgetfulness, but because when required or intending to name only the several ranks which served under it, it would have been an insult to include this supreme command in the list of the inferior.
[129] in the Canon. (Oehler's stopping is here at fault, i.e. he begins a new paragraph with 'Ekdechetai ton logon touton ho Paulos). We need not speculate whether Gregory was aware that the Epistle to the Colossians (quoted below) is an earlier Gospel' than S. John's.
[130] Coloss. i. 16.
[131] Coloss. i. 16.
[132] taxiarchas kai lochagous, hekatontarchous te kai chiliarchous. The difference between the two pairs seems to be the difference between non-commissioned' and commissioned' officers.
Reference address : https://elpenor.org/nyssa/against-eunomius.asp?pg=44
