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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 48
Our very souls, then, being disposed so naturally and in proportion to their capacity, and yet so miraculously, to recognize so many and great wonders in Christ, what further excess of honour is left us to pay exclusively to the Father, as inappropriate to the Son? Human reverence of the Deity, looked at in its plainest meaning, is nothing else but an attitude of love towards Him, and a confession of the perfections in Him: and I think that the precept so ought the Son to be honoured as the Father [144] ,' is enjoined by the Word in place of love. For the Law commands that we pay to God this fitting honour by loving Him with all our heart and strength and here is the equivalent of that love, in that the Word as Lawgiver thus says, that the Son ought to be honoured as the Father.
It was this kind of honour that the great David fully paid, when he confessed to the Lord in a prelude [145] of his psalmody that he loved the Lord, and told all the reasons for his love, calling Him his "rock" and "fortress," and "refuge," and "deliverer," and "God-helper," and "hope," and "buckler," and "horn of salvation," and "protector." If the Only-begotten Son is not all these to mankind, let the excess of honour be reduced to this extent as this heresy dictates: but if we have always believed Him to be, and to be entitled to, all this and even more, and to be equal in every operation and conception of the good to the majesty of the Father's goodness, how can it be pronounced consistent, either not to love such a character, or to slight it while we love it? No one can say that we ought to love Him with all our heart and strength, but to honour Him only with half. If, then, the Son is to be honoured with the whole heart in rendering to Him all our love, by what device can anything superior to His honour be discovered, when such a measure of honour is paid Him in the coin of love as our whole heart is capable of? Vainly, therefore, in the case of Beings essentially honourable, will any one dogmatize about a superior honour, and by comparison suggest an inferior honour.
Again; only in the case of the creation is it true to speak of priority.' The sequence of works was there displayed in the order of the days; and the heavens may be said to have preceded by so much the making of man, and that interval may be measured by the interval of days. But in the divine nature, which transcends all idea of time and surpasses all reach of thought, to talk of a "prior" and a "later" in the honours of time is a privilege only of this new-fangled philosophy. In short he who declares the Father to be prior' to the subsistence of the Son declares nothing short of this, viz., that the Son is later than the things made by the Son [146] (if at least it is true to say that all the ages, and all duration of time was created after the Son, and by the Son).
[144] John v. 23. The Gospel enjoins honour and means love: the Law enjoins love and means honour.
[145] a prelude. See Psalm vii. 1 and Psalm xviii. 1, "fortress," krataioma; stereoma, LXX.
[146] 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.
Reference address : https://elpenor.org/nyssa/against-eunomius.asp?pg=48
