Gregory of Nyssa

In his own words on Psalms

• Psalms 1:1

  The goal of the virtuous life is blessedness.… This is the summation and object of everything conceived in relation to the good. What is truly and properly contemplated and apprehended in this sublime concept, then, would reasonably be called the divine nature. For so the great Paul designated God when he put "blessed" before all the other words about God in one of his letters. He wrote in the following words, "The blessed and only ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality and who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no human being has seen or can see. To him be honor and rule forever." All these sublime concepts about the divine would, then, in my opinion, constitute a definition of blessedness. For if someone were asked what beatitude is, he would give a properly pious answer if he followed Paul's statement and said that the nature that transcends everything is first and properly called blessed. Among humans, however, that beatitude, which is the nature of the one participated in, occurs to a certain extent and is specified by participation in true being. Likeness to God, therefore, is a definition of human blessedness.

  ON THE INSCRIPTIONS OF THE PSALMS 1:1.5-6

• Psalms 2:1-2

  The first psalm lacks an inscription. For the aim of what is said in it is obvious to the readers, namely, that it is an introduction to philosophy in that it advises separation from evil, coming to be in the good and becoming like God so far as possible.… The second psalm, which predicts the mystery of the gospel, is then appended, that we might be without impiety. Consequently, in a sense, the first psalm is an inscription of the second, for the latter speaks of the one who through flesh was begotten today because of us. (Now "today" is a division of time, but because the Son is always from the Father and in the Father, he is also God.) It also speaks of those not ruled by a king, who had been listed among the Gentiles because they did not serve God. These lived under their own laws, or rather without laws, since they did not accept the divine law but cast the yoke from themselves. (Now by "yoke" he means the commandment.) But when the kingdom that excels everything comes on them, those who once were without a master become the inheritance of God through faith in the one who was begotten today. I mean this one who was appointed king over them. And when they themselves have been begotten, they too become kings. When the rod of iron, that is, the unchangeable power, smashed that which was made of earth and clay, it transformed them into the undefiled nature, having taught them that trusting in him alone is blessed. Although this is the meaning that we have expounded of this psalm, one who wishes can test our opinion by means of the divine words themselves to see if what we have said fits with the inspired Scripture.

  ON THE INSCRIPTIONS OF THE PSALMS 2:8.74-75

• Psalms 3:1-2

  When the great David served as interpreter for the Spirit, he related in his song the things that he had previously learned, and if he was taught something additional while he was speaking, he submitted to the Spirit who was making the hearing of his soul resound and stopped the music, and when he was filled with these thoughts he related these matters, again entwining the words with the melody. One who has comprehended the term in a definition might say, then, that diapsalma is a pause that occurs suddenly in the midst of the singing of a psalm in order to receive an additional thought that is being introduced from God. Or, one might rather define it as follows. diapsalma is a teaching from the Spirit that occurs in a mysterious manner in the soul, when the attention given to this new thought impedes the continuity of the song.… In the third psalm he spoke first about the distress and hardship that occurred when his enemies "rose up against" him. Then he separated that part with the diapsalma and put his trust in the one who was causing that sound of salvation to resound mysteriously in him and said, "But you, Lord, are my protector, my glory, and the lifter up of my head." Again, when he has stopped the music, saying, in accordance with that gracious voice that he has made his own, "I cried to the Lord with my voice, and he heard me from his holy mountain," he is taught what the solution is for the hardship that is common to human ills. And after he has been taught the mystery related to the passion of the Lord in the sudden illumination of the Spirit, he assumes the character of the Lord and says, "I lay down and slept, and I was raised, because the Lord will help me."

  ON THE INSCRIPTIONS OF THE PSALMS 2:10.115-16, 121-22

• Psalms 6:5

  For he who has made the inheritance known has also mentioned the octave, which becomes both the boundary of the present time and the beginning of the age to come. Now the characteristic feature of the octave is that it no longer affords those who are in it opportunity to procure things good or bad, but one hands over instead the sheaves from whatever seeds he has sown for himself through his works. For this reason he prescribes here that the one who is exercised in the same victories effect repentance, as such zeal is idle in hades.

  ON THE INSCRIPTIONS OF THE PSALMS 2:11.146-47

• Psalms 7:1-17

  That same adversary, Absalom, as if he has been born again from ourselves, prepares the war against us. Our sound judgment concerning the matter, or rather our alliance with God, turns him who is bloodthirsty against us back. For because he attributes the cause of the good things that have been accomplished for him through "the words of Cush" to God, he composes this thanksgiving.… It would be worthwhile to apply the figures of the story to the virtuous life, how the advice that saves us becomes the strangling of the adversary; and this saving advice has been recorded, on the one hand, in the history, and on the other, in the psalm.

  INSCRIPTIONS OF THE PSALMS 2:11.148-49

• Psalms 7:6

  The mass of adversaries cannot otherwise be destroyed, if the Lord has not risen on our behalf, and death must by all means precede the resurrection. He, then, who has revealed the resurrection of the Lord has, at the same time, shown that which is bound up together with the resurrection, I mean, of course, the mystery related to the passion. For this reason, having been inspired by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, he says, "Rise up, O Lord, in your anger; be exalted in the ends of my enemies." By "anger" he indicates the retributive power of the just judge, and by the rest he indicates the destruction of evil. For that which is perceived as contrary to the good, being only hostile by nature, is the evil whose end is destruction and a passing over into nonexistence. He, then, who said, "Be exalted in the ends of my enemies," predicts, through the evil of his enemies "being brought to an end," that the course to evil no longer remains in [his] life.

  ON THE INSCRIPTIONS OF THE PSALMS 2:10.125-26

• Psalms 10:16

  We find that we are drawn round uninterruptedly and evenly, and that we are always following a circumference where there is nothing to grasp; we find the divine life returning upon itself in an unbroken continuity, where no end and no parts can be recognized. Of God's eternity we say that which we have heard from prophecy; namely, that God is a king "of old," and rules for ages, and for ever, and beyond. Therefore we define him to be earlier than any beginning, and exceeding any end. Entertaining, then, this idea of the Almighty, as one that is adequate, we express it by two titles; that is, "Ungenerate" and "Endless" represent this infinitude and continuity and everlastingness of the Deity.

  AGAINST EUNOMIUS 1:42

• Psalms 16:9

  Yea, the prophet David also, according to the interpretation of the great Peter, said with foresight of Him, "Thou wilt not leave My soul in hell, neither wilt Thou suffer Thine Holy One to see corruption," while the Apostle Peter thus expounds the saying, that "His soul was not left in hell, neither His flesh did see corruption." For His Godhead, alike before taking flesh and in the flesh and after His Passion, is immutably the same, being at all times what It was by nature, and so continuing for ever. But in the suffering of His human nature the Godhead fulfilled the dispensation for our benefit by severing the soul for a season from the body, yet without being Itself separated from either of those elements to which it was once for all united, and by joining again the elements which had been thus parted, so as to give to all human nature a beginning and an example which it should follow of the resurrection from the dead, that all the corruptible may put on incorruption, and all the mortal may put on immortality, our first-fruits having been transformed to the Divine nature by its union with God … the Lord, reconciling the world to Himself by the Humanity of Christ, apportioned His work of benevolence to men between His soul and His body, willing through His soul and touching them through His body.

  AGAINST EUNOMIUS 2:13

• Psalms 19:3

  The accord and affinity of all things with one another that is controlled in an orderly and sequential manner is the primal, archetypal, true music. It is this music that the conductor of the universe skillfully strikes up in the unspoken speech of wisdom through these ever-occurring movements.

  ON THE INSCRIPTIONS OF THE PSALMS 1:3.21

• Psalms 19:4

  Yet how can such declaring and showing forth be other than words, and how is it that no voice addresses itself to the ear? Is the prophet contradicting himself, or is he stating an impossibility, when he speaks of words without sound, and declaration without language, and announcement without voice? or, is there not rather the very perfection of truth in his teaching, which tells us, in the words which I have quoted, that the declaration of the heavens, and the word shouted forth by the day, is no articulate voice nor language of the lips, but is a revelation of the power of God to those who are capable of hearing it, even though no voice be heard?… The very heavens, he says, in displaying the wisdom of Him Who made them, all but shout aloud with a voice, and, though without voice, proclaim the wisdom of their Creator. For we can hear as it were words teaching us: "O men, when ye gaze upon us and behold our beauty and magnitude, and this ceaseless revolution, with its well-ordered and harmonious motion, working in the same direction and in the same manner, turn your thoughts to Him Who presides over our system, and, by aid of the beauty which you see, imagine to yourselves the beauty of the invisible Archetype. For in us there is nothing without its Lord, nothing that moves of its own proper motion: but all that appears, or that is conceivable in respect to us, depends on a Power Who is inscrutable and sublime." This is not given in articulate speech, but by the things which are seen, and it instils into our minds the knowledge of Divine power more than if speech proclaimed it with a voice.

  ANSWER TO EUNOMIUS' SECOND BOOK

• Psalms 19:12

  So wicked and hard to cure and strong are those things possessed in the depths of our souls that it is not possible to rub them out and to remove them through human efforts and virtue alone unless through prayer we take the power of the Spirit as an ally and, in this way, conquer the evil that is playing the tyrant within us, as the Spirit teaches us through the voice of David: "Cleanse me from my unknown faults."

  ON THE CHRISTIAN MODE OF LIFE

• Psalms 24:1

  The foolish man thinks his own that which never belongs to him, ignorant seemingly in his greed that "the earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof," for "God is king of all the earth." It is the passion of having which gives men a false title of lordship over that which can never belong to them. "The earth," says the wise Preacher, "abideth for ever," ministering to every generation, first one, then another, that is born upon it; but men, though they are so little even their own masters, that they are brought into life without knowing it by their Maker's will, and before they wish are withdrawn from it, nevertheless in their excessive vanity think that they are her lords; that they, now born, now dying, rule that which remains continually.

  ON VIRGINITY 4

• Psalms 27:1

  Next he says, "Lightening souls with the light of knowledge." This grace also the doctrine of godliness ascribes alike to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost. For He is called a light by David, and from thence the light of knowledge shines in them who are enlightened.

  AGAINST EUNOMIUS 2:15

• Psalms 31:20

  God's abounding goodness aids us in a hidden way, and in the present life it is not clearly evident. For every objection of unbelievers would be removed, could we actually see what we only hope for. But our hopes await the ages to come, so that there may then be revealed what at present our faith alone apprehends.

  ADDRESS ON RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION 17

• Psalms 33:9

  The psalm bids us to exult in the one who has come to earth from heaven, as in one who is set over the entirety, and who has brought the entirety into being from not being and who maintains all things in being, whose command becomes reality. For this is the meaning of the divine words, "He spoke, and they were made; he commanded, and they were created."

  ON THE INSCRIPTIONS OF THE PSALMS 2:8.79

• Psalms 41:1

  The Word defines blessedness for us in another way than at the beginning. For in the first psalms, to depart from evil was blessed, but here to know the good more fully is pronounced blessed. Now the nature of the good … is the "only-begotten God," "who, though he was rich, for our sake became poor." The Word here predicts his "poverty" in the flesh, which is pointed out to us through the Gospel account, pronouncing the one who has recognized that "poverty" with understanding blessed. He was "poor" in relation to the "form of a servant" but blessed in relation to the nature of deity. For in the opening words of the psalm the Word calls him "needy and poor"; at the end of the section he says, "Blessed be the Lord God of Israel from eternity to eternity. So be it. So be it."

  ON THE INSCRIPTIONS OF THE PSALMS 2:12.157-58

• Psalms 42:2

  The person, however, who has once tasted virtue and has come to understand its nature by his own experience of the good is no longer the kind of person who must be dragged away from his passionate attachment to evil by necessity and warning and compelled to look to virtue. On the contrary, he has an excessive thirst for what is superior.… [He] "thirsts" for participation in God more than "the hart" longs for "the fountains of water." And it follows that the person who finds the fountain after this excessive thirst draws in as much water as the abundance of his desire draws off. But he who has received what he desired in himself is full of what he desired. For that which has become full is not again emptied on the model of physical satiety, nor does that which was drunk remain inactive in itself. In whomever the divine fountain has come into existence, it transforms the one who has embraced it to itself and imparts to this person a portion of its own power.

  ON THE INSCRIPTIONS OF THE PSALMS 1:5.40-41

• Psalms 77:10

  Sufficient defence has been offered on these points, and as for that which Eunomius says by way of calumny against our doctrine, that "Christ was emptied to become Himself" there has been sufficient discussion in what has been said above, where he has been shown to be attributing to our doctrine his own blasphemy. For it is not one who confesses that the immutable Nature has put on the created and perishable, who speaks of the transition from like to like, but one who conceives that there is no change from the majesty of Nature to that which is more lowly. For if, as their doctrine asserts, He is created, and man is created also, the wonder of the doctrine disappears, and there is nothing marvellous in what is alleged, since the created nature comes to be in itself. But we who have learnt from prophecy of "the change of the right hand of the Most High,"—and by the "Right Hand" of the Father we understand that Power of God, which made all things, which is the Lord (not in the sense of depending upon Him as a part upon a whole, but as being indeed from Him, and yet contemplated in individual existence),—say thus: that neither does the Right Hand vary from Him Whose Right Hand It is, in regard to the idea of Its Nature, nor can any other change in It be spoken of besides the dispensation of the Flesh. For verily the Right Hand of God was God Himself; manifested in the flesh, seen through that same flesh by those whose sight was clear; as He did the work of the Father, being, both in fact and in thought, the Right Hand of God, yet being changed, in respect of the veil of the flesh by which He was surrounded, as regarded that which was seen, from that which He was by Nature, as a subject of contemplation. Therefore He says to Philip, who was gazing only at that which was changed, "Look through that which is changed to that which is unchangeable, and if thou seest this, thou hast seen that Father Himself, Whom thou seekest to see; for he that hath seen Me—not Him Who appears in a state of change, but My very self, Who am in the Father—will have seen that Father Himself in Whom I am, because the very same character of Godhead is beheld in both." If, then, we believe that the immortal and impassible and uncreated Nature came to be in the passible Nature of the creature, and conceive the "change" to consist in this, on what grounds are we charged with saying that He "was emptied to become Himself," by those who keep prating their own statements about our doctrines? For the participation of the created with the created is no "change of the Right Hand." To say that the Right Hand of the uncreated Nature is created belongs to Eunomius alone, and to those who adopt such opinions as he holds. For the man with an eye that looks on the truth will discern the Right Hand of the Highest to be such as he sees the Highest to be,—Uncreated of Uncreated, Good of Good, Eternal of Eternal without prejudice to Its eternity by Its being in the Father by way of generation. Thus our accuser has unawares been employing against us reproaches that properly fall upon himself.

  AGAINST EUNOMIUS 6:3

• Psalms 91:1

  When the great David heard and understood this, he [David] said to him "who dwells in the shelter of the most High; He will overshadow you with his shoulders," which is the same as being behind God (for the shoulder is on the back of the body). Concerning himself David says, "My soul clings close to you, your right hand supports me." You see how Psalms agree with the history. For as the one says that the right hand is a help to the person who has joined himself close behind God, so the other says that the hand touches the person who waits in the rock on the divine voice and prays that he might follow behind.

  LIFE OF MOSES 250

• Psalms 91:4

  When the great David heard and understood this, he [David] said to him "who dwells in the shelter of the most High; He will overshadow you with his shoulders," which is the same as being behind God (for the shoulder is on the back of the body). Concerning himself David says, "My soul clings close to you, your right hand supports me." You see how Psalms agree with the history. For as the one says that the right hand is a help to the person who has joined himself close behind God, so the other says that the hand touches the person who waits in the rock on the divine voice and prays that he might follow behind.

  LIFE OF MOSES 250

• Psalms 103:8

  God is not an expression, and he does not have his essence in voice or utterance. God is of himself what also he is believed to be. He is named by those who call on him, not what he is essentially (for the nature of him who alone is unspeakable), but he receives his names from what are believed to be his works in regard to our life. To take an instance ready at hand, when we speak of him as God, we so name him from his overlooking and surveying all things and seeing through the things that are hidden. But if his essence is prior to his works, and if we understand his works by our senses and express them in words as we are best able, why should we be afraid of calling things by words of later origin than themselves? For if we stop interpreting any of the attributes of God until we understand them, and if we understand them only by what his works teach us, and if his power precedes its exercise and depends on the will of God, while his will resides in the spontaneity of the divine nature, are we not clearly taught that the words that represent things are of later origin than the things themselves and that the words that are framed to express the operations of things are reflections of the things themselves? And that this is so, we are clearly taught by holy Scripture, by the mouth of great David, when, as by certain peculiar and appropriate names, derived from his contemplation of the works of God, he thus speaks of the divine nature: "The Lord is full of compassion and mercy, long-suffering, and of great goodness." Now what do these words tell us? Do they indicate his operations or his nature? No one will say that they indicate anything but his operations. At what time, then, after showing mercy and pity, did God acquire his name from the display of his works? Was it before a person's life began? But who was there to be the object of pity? Was it, then, after sin entered into the world? But sin entered after humankind. The exercise, therefore, of pity, and the name itself, came after humanity. What then? Will our adversary [Eunomius], wise as he is above the prophets, convict David of error in applying names to God derived from his opportunities of knowing him? Or, in contending with him, will he use against him the pretense in his stately passage as out of a tragedy, saying that "he glories in the most blessed life of God with names drawn from human imagination, whereas it gloried in itself alone, long before people were born to imagine them"? The psalmist's advocate will readily admit that the divine nature gloried in itself alone even before the existence of human imagination but will contend that the human mind can speak only so much in respect of God as its capacity, instructed by his works, will allow. "For," as says the Wisdom of Solomon, "by the greatness and beauty of the creatures proportionably the Maker of them is seen."

  ANSWER TO EUNOMIUS'S SECOND BOOK

• Psalms 103:20-21

  Under "thrones" he includes the Cherubim, giving them this Greek name, as more intelligible than the Hebrew name for them. He knew that "God sits upon the Cherubim:" and so he calls these Powers the thrones of Him who sits thereon. In the same way there are included in the list Isaiah's Seraphim, by whom the mystery of the Trinity was luminously proclaimed, when they uttered that marvellous cry "Holy," being awestruck with the beauty in each Person of the Trinity. They are named under the title of "powers" both by the mighty Paul, and by the prophet David. The latter says, "Bless ye the Lord all ye His powers, ye ministers of His that do His pleasure:" and Isaiah instead of saying "Bless ye" has written the very words of their blessing, "Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of hosts: the whole earth is full of His glory" and he has revealed by what one of the Seraphim did (to him) that these powers are ministers that do God's pleasure, effecting the `purging of sin' according to the will of Him Who sent them: for this is the ministry of these spiritual beings, viz., to be sent forth for the salvation of those who are being saved.

  AGAINST EUNOMIUS 1:23

• Psalms 104:29-30

  She, however, replied, First, I think, we must briefly run over the scattered proclamations of this doctrine in Holy Scripture; they shall give the finishing touch to our discourse. Observe, then, that I can hear David, in the midst of his praises in the Divine Songs, saying at the end of the hymnody of the hundred and third (104th) Psalm, where he has taken for his theme God's administration of the world, "Thou shalt take away their breath, and they shall die, and return to their dust: Thou shalt send forth Thy Spirit, and they shall be created: and Thou shalt renew the face of the earth." He says that a power of the Spirit which works in all vivifies the beings into whom it enters, and deprives those whom He abandons of their life. Seeing, then, that the dying is declared to occur at the Spirit's departure, and the renewal of these dead ones at His appearance, and seeing moreover that in the order of the statement the death of those who are to be thus renewed comes first, we hold that in these words that mystery of the Resurrection is proclaimed to the Church, and that David in the spirit of prophecy expressed this very gift which you are asking about.

  ON THE SOUL AND THE RESURRECTION 10

• Psalms 107:4-7

  Again, prophetic language attests that the conversion of those in error is the work of God. For "they went astray in the wilderness in a thirsty land," says the Psalmist, and he adds, "So He led them forth by the right way, that they might go to the city where they dwelt:" and, "when the Lord turned again the captivity of Sion." In like manner also the comfort of the afflicted is ascribed to God, Paul thus speaking, "Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who comforteth us in all our tribulation." Again, the Psalmist says, speaking in the person of God "Thou calledst upon Me in trouble and I delivered thee." And the setting upright of those who stumble is innumerable times ascribed by Scripture to the power of the Lord: "Thou hast thrust sore at me that I might fall, but the Lord was my help," and "Though he fall, he shall not be cast away, for the Lord upholdeth him with His hand," and "The Lord helpeth them that are fallen." And to the loving-kindness of God confessedly belongs the recovery of the distressed, if Eunomius means the same thing of which we learn in prophecy, as the Scripture says, "Thou laidest trouble upon our loins; Thou sufferedst men to ride over our heads; we went through fire and water, and Thou broughtest us out into a wealthy place."

  AGAINST EUNOMIUS 2:15

• Psalms 113:9

  What lesson, then, results from these remarks? This: that we should wean ourselves from this life in the flesh, which has an inevitable follower, death; and that we should search for a manner of life which does not bring death in its train. Now the life of Virginity is such a life. We will add a few other things to show how true this is. Every one knows that the propagation of mortal frames is the work which the intercourse of the sexes has to do; whereas for those who are joined to the Spirit, life and immortality instead of children are produced by this latter intercourse; and the words of the Apostle beautifully suit their case, for the joyful mother of such children as these "shall be saved in child-bearing;" as the Psalmist in his divine songs thankfully cries, "He maketh the barren woman to keep house, and to be a joyful mother of children." Truly a joyful mother is the virgin mother who by the operation of the Spirit conceives the deathless children, and who is called by the Prophet barren because of her modesty only. This life, then, which is stronger than the power of death, is, to those who think, the preferable one. The physical bringing of children into the world—I speak without wishing to offend—is as much a starting-point of death as of life; because from the moment of birth the process of dying commences. But those who by virginity have desisted from this process have drawn within themselves the boundary line of death, and by their own deed have checked his advance; they have made themselves, in fact, a frontier between life and death, and a barrier too, which thwarts him. If, then, death cannot pass beyond virginity, but finds his power checked and shattered there, it is demonstrated that virginity is a stronger thing than death; and that body is rightly named undying which does not lend its service to a dying world, nor brook to become the instrument of a succession of dying creatures. In such a body the long unbroken career of decay and death, which has intervened between the first man and the lives of virginity which have been led, is interrupted.

  ON VIRGINITY 13

• Psalms 118:4-5

  Therefore, if one examines these matters and because of this despises whatever is held in honor among people and longs only for the divine life, knowing that "all flesh is grass and all the glory of people is as the flower of grass," is he likely to think of grass, which exists today and is gone tomorrow, as something worth striving for? The one who has examined well the divine things knows that not only human affairs have no stability but also that the whole world itself has not remained forever unchanged. Therefore, he despises this life as alien and impermanent, since "heaven and earth will pass away," according to the word of the Savior, and all things of necessity undergo a transformation. Therefore, as long as he is "in the tent, burdened" by the present life, as the apostle says to illustrate its impermanence, he laments the lengthening of his stay, as the psalmist says in his divine songs. For they truly live in darkness who spend their life in these quarters. Because of this, the prophet groans over the extension of his sojourn here and says: "Alas, my stay is lengthened." But he attributes the cause of his dejection to darkness, for in Hebrew darkness is equivalent to qedar, as we learn from the scholars. Is it not true that people overcome by some night blindness are thus dim-sighted in recognizing delusions, not knowing that whatever is considered honorable in this life, or even whatever is assumed to be the opposite, is understood thus only on the assumption of the foolish? Of themselves they are never anything at all.

  ON VIRIGINITY 4

• Psalms 145:3

  Now if any one should ask for some interpretation, and description, and explanation of the Divine essence, we are not going to deny that this kind of wisdom we are unlearned, acknowledging only so much as this, that it is not possible that which is by nature infinite should be comprehended in any conception expressed by words. The fact that the Divine greatness has no limit is proclaimed by prophecy, which declares expressly that of His splendour, His glory, His holiness, "there is no end:" and if His surroundings have no limit, much more is He Himself in His essence, whatever it may be, comprehended by no limitation in any way. If then interpretation by way of words and names implies by its meaning some sort of comprehension of the subject, and if, on the other hand, that which is unlimited cannot be comprehended, no one could reasonably blame us for ignorance, if we are not bold in respect of what none should venture upon. For by what name can I describe the incomprehensible? by what speech can I declare the unspeakable? Accordingly, since the Deity is too excellent and lofty to be expressed in words, we have learnt to honour in silence what transcends speech and thought: and if he who "thinketh more highly than he ought to think," tramples upon this cautious speech of ours making a jest of our ignorance of things incomprehensible, and recognizes a difference of unlikeness in that which is without figure, or limit, or size, or quantity (I mean in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit), and brings forward to reproach our ignorance that phrase which is continually alleged by the disciples of deceit, "'Ye worship ye know not what,' if ye know not the essence of that which ye worship," we shall follow the advice of the prophet, and not fear the reproach of fools, nor be led by their reviling to talk boldly of things unspeakable, making that unpractised speaker Paul our teacher in the mysteries that transcend knowledge, who is so far from thinking that the Divine nature is within the reach of human perception, that he calls even the judgments of God "unsearchable," and His ways "past finding out," and affirms that the things promised to them that love Him, for their good deeds done in this life, are above comprehension so that it is not possible to behold them with the eye, nor to receive them by hearing, nor to contain them in the heart.

  AGAINST EUNOMIUS 3:5

• Psalms 145:3

  For it is allowable instead of speaking of Him as "Ungenerate," to call Him the "First Cause" or "Father of the Only-begotten," or to speak of Him as "existing without cause," and many such appellations which lead to the same thought; so that Eunomius confirms our doctrines by the very arguments in which he makes complaint against us, because we know no name significant of the Divine Nature. We are taught the fact of Its existence, while we assert that an appellation of such force as to include the unspeakable and infinite Nature, either does not exist at all, or at any rate is unknown to us. Let him then leave his accustomed language of fable, and show us the names which signify the essences, and then proceed further to divide the subject by the divergence of their names. But so long as the saying of the Scripture is true that Abraham and Moses were not capable of the knowledge of the Name, and that "no man hath seen God at any time," and that "no man hath seen Him, nor can see," and that the light around Him is unapproachable, and "there is no end of His greatness";—so long as we say and believe these things, how like is an argument that promises any comprehension and expression of the infinite Nature, by means of the significance of names; to one who thinks that he can enclose the whole sea in his own hand! for as the hollow of one's hand is to the whole deep, so is all the power of language in comparison with that Nature which is unspeakable and incomprehensible.

  AGAINST EUNOMIUS 7:4

• Psalms 145:16

  A person, then, who remains the same and yet babbles to himself about the change for the better he has undergone in baptism should attend to what Paul says: "If anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself." For you are not what you have not become; whereas the gospel says of the regenerate that "he gave all those who received him the power to become God's children." Now the child born of someone certainly shares his parent's nature. If, then, you have received God and become his child, let your way of life testify to the God within you; make it clear who your Father is! The marks by which we recognize God are the very ones by which a son of his must show his relation to him: "he opens his hand and fills everything living with joy"; "he overlooks iniquity"; "he relents of his evil purpose";29 "the Lord is kind to all and is not angry with us every day"; "God is straightforward, and there is no unrighteousness in him"31—and the similar sayings scattered through Scripture for our instruction. If you are like this, you have genuinely become a child of God. But if you persist in displaying the marks of evil, it is useless to babble to yourself about the birth from above. Prophecy will tell you, "You are a son of humankind, not a son of the most High. You love vanity and seek lies. You fail to realize that the only way one is magnified is by becoming holy."

  ADDRESS ON RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION 40

• Psalms 148:5

  And now that we have thus distinguished the various modes of generation, it will be time to remark how the benevolent dispensation of the Holy Spirit, in delivering to us the Divine mysteries, imparts that instruction which transcends reason by such methods as we can receive. For the inspired teaching adopts, in order to set forth the unspeakable power of God, all the forms of generation that human intelligence recognizes, yet without including the corporeal senses attaching to the words. For when it speaks of the creative power, it gives to such an energy the name of generation, because its expression must stoop to our low capacity; it does not, however, convey thereby all that we include in creative generation, as time, place, the furnishing of matter, the fitness of instruments, the design in the things that come into being, but it leaves these, and asserts of God in lofty and magnificent language the creation of all existent things, when it says, "He spake the word and they were made, He commanded and they were created." Again when it interprets to us the unspeakable and transcendent existence of the Only-begotten from the Father, as the poverty of human intellect is incapable of receiving doctrines which surpass all power of speech and thought, there too it borrows our language and terms Him "Son,"—a name which our usage assigns to those who are born of matter and nature.

  AGAINST EUNOMIUS 2:9