43 This is the LXX. version of the last part of Ps. xxxv. 15, a rendering with which the Vulgate version practically agrees.
46 At a later stage Gregory points out that the idea of creation is involved, if the thing produced is external to the nature of the Maker.
47 This phrase seems to be quoted from Eunomius. The reference to the "prophet" may possibly be suggested by Is. vi. 9-10: but it is more probably only concerned with the words wtia and akohn, as applied to convey the idea of mental alertness.
49 E.g. "A thing made" suggests to us the thought of a "makers" "a maker" the thought of the thing made; and they suggest also a close connection as existing between the two correlative terms of one of which the name is uttered; but neither suggests in the same way any term which is not correlative, or with which it is not, in some manner, in pari materia.
52 It seems necessary for the sense to read ou di eterou tinoj organou, since the force of the comparison consists in the hammer being produced immediately by the smith: otherwise we must understand di eterou tinoj organou to refer to the employment of some tool not properly belonging to the texnh of the smith: but even so the parallel would be destroyed.
53 Theognostus, a writer of the third century, is said to have been the head of the Catechetical School at Alexandria, and is quoted by S. Athanasius as an authority against the Arians. An account of his work is to be found in Photius, and this is extracted and printed with the few remaining fragments of his actual writings in the 3rd volume of Routh's Reliquioe Sacroe.
54 Oehler's proposal to read "vel invitis libris quod sententia flagitat tw/ di autou kai met' auton" does not seem necessary. authj and authn refer to ousia, the quotation being made (not verbally) from Eunonius, not from Theognostus, and following apparently the phrase about "preserving the relation," etc. If the clause were a continuation of the quotation from Theognostus, we should have to follow Oehler's proposal.
55 Reading, acccording to Cotelerius' suggestion, (mentioned with approval by Oehler, though not followed by him,) dwroforousin for doruforousin.
56 That is to say, because there is no "common measure" of the distinct natures.
57 Altering Oehler's punctuation: it is the fact that the essence is monogenhj which excludes all other things from community with it.
63 The whole passage is rather obscure, and Oehler's punctuation renders it perhaps more obscure than that which is here adopted. The argument seems to be something like this:-"The generated essence is not compared with any of the things made by it, or after it, because being only-begotten it leaves no room for a common basis of comparison with anything else, and the operation of its maker is also peculiar to itself (since it is immediate, the operation in the case of other things being mediate). The essence of the Son, then, being so far isolated, it is to it that the appellations of gennhma, poihma, and ktisma are to be assigned; otherwise the terms `Son0' and `Only-begotten0' are meaningless. Therefore the Son, being in essence a poihma or ktisma, is alien from the Father Who made or created Him." The word parhllaxqai, used to express the difference of essence between the Father and the Son, is one for which it is hard to find an equivalent which shall suit all the cases of the use of the word afterwards instanced: the idea of "variation," however, seems to attach to all these cases, and the verb has been translated accordingly.
64 Following Oehler's suggestion and reading ef' eauthj.
66 The sense given would perhaps be clearer if we were to read (as Gulonius seems to have done) asunhqh for sunhqh. This might be interpreted, "He could not say, I take it, even if he uses the words in an unwonted sense, that the Son is at variance with Him Who begat Him." The sunhqh would thus be the senses already considered and set aside: and the point would be that such a statement could not be made without manifest absurdity, even if some out-of-the-way sense were attached to the words. As the passage stands, it must mean that even if Eunomius repeats his wonted phrase, that can suggest no other sense of "variance" than those enumerated.
67 The reading of Oehler is here followed: but the sense of the clause is not clear either in his text or in that of the Paris editions.
75 This whole passage, as it stands in Oehler's text, (which has here been followed without alteration,) is obscure: the connection between the clauses themselves is by no means clear; and the general meaning of the passage, in view of the succeeding sentences, seems doubtful. For it seems here to be alleged that Eunomius considered the kataskeuh to imply the previous existence of some material, so to say, which was moulded by generation-on the ground that no one would say that the essence, or anything else, was constructed without being existent. On the other hand it is immediately urged that this is just what would be said of all created things. If the passage might be emended thus:-in, wsper en upokeimenw tini pragmati pasa kataskeuh qewreitai, (ou gar an tij eipoi kataskeuasqai o mh ufesthken), outwj oion kataskeuasmati th tou monogenouj fusei proteinh tw logw thn poihsin-we should have a comparatively clear sense-"in order that as all construction is observed in some subject matter, (for no one would say that that is constructed which has not existence) so he may extend the process of `making0' by his argument to the nature of the Only-begotten God, as to some product of construction." The force of this would be, that Eunomius is really employing the idea of "receiving generation," to imply that the essence of the Only-begotten is a kataskeuasma: and this, Gregory says, puts him at once on a level with the physical creation.
76 Oehler's punctuation seems faulty here.
78 Reading ara tij for ara tij Oehler's text.
79 That is, by S. Basil: the reference seems to be to the treatise Adv. Eunomium ii 24 (p. 260 C. in the Benedictine edition), but the quotation is not exact.
1 The words referred to are those in Acts ii. 35.
2 S. Basil: the passages discussed are afterwards referred to in detail.
3 With the following passage may be compared the parallel account in the Book of Wisdom (ch. xiii.).
4 Cf. Is. xli. 4, Is. xliv. 6, Is. xlviii. 12 (LXX.). If the whole passage is intended to be a quotation, it is not made exactly from any one of these; the opening words are from the second passage referred to; and perhaps this is the only portion intended to be a quotation, the second clause being explanatory; the words of the second clause are varied in the repetition immediately afterwards.
6 proj ouden orizomenoj; i.e. before the name of "God" could be applied, as now, in contradistinction to cretion, it was applied in contradistinction to nothing, and that distinction was in a sense the definition of God. Or the words may be turned, as Gulonius turns them, "nulla re determinatus," "with no limitation"-the contradistinction to creation being regarded as a limitation by way of definition.
8 Taking the whole phrase to met' eme on as a loose quotation.
15 The quotations are from S. Basil c. Eunomius II. 3. (pp. 239-40 in the Benedictine edition.)
17 The latter part of the quotation from S. Basil does not exactly agree with the Benedictine text, but the variations are not material.
18 Reading eautou for the eautwn of Oehler's text, for which no authority is alleged by the editor, and which is probably a mere misprint.