77 The following passage is anti-Calvinistic. Gregory here, as continually elsewhere, asserts the freedom of the will; and is strongly supported by Justin Martyr, i. 43: "If it has been fixed by fate that one than shall be good, and another bad, the one is not praiseworthy, the other not culpable. And again, if mankind has not power by a free choice to flee the evil and to choose the good, it is not responsible for any results, however shocking."
79 This is an answer to modern "Ethical Determinants."
81 Cf. Rom. ix. 21: furama is used for the human body often in the Greek Fathers, i. e. Athanasius, Chrysostom, John Damascene: by all of whom Christ is called aparxh tou hmeterou furamatoj. Cf. Gen. ii. 7; Job x. 9: Epictetus also calls the human body phlow komywj pefurauenon
82 en men tw qanatw kaqoran to anqrwpinon, en de tw tropw polupragmonein to qeioteron. This is Krabinger's reading (for en tw aqanatw <\=85_en de tw anqrwpw) on the authority of Theodoret's quotation and two Codd. for the first, and of all his Codd. for the second. Hervetus also seems to have read the same, "in morte quidem quod est humanum intueri, in modo autem perscrutari quod est divinius." Glauber, however, translates the common text, "Man muss bei dem Unsterblichen zwar das Menschliche betrachten, aber bei dem Mensehen auch das Göttliche hervorsuchen:" notwithstanding that he hints his preference for another reading, skopw for this last; cf. just above, "but the secret sense represents the Divine," which would then be parallel to this last sentence.
85 keraian. The Fathers were fond of tracing similitudes to the form of the Cross, in nature and art: in the sail-yards of a ship, as here, and in the flight of birds on the wing. This is the reading of Codd. Morell., Reg., and three of Krabinger's: but gaian in the margin of that of J. Vulcobius (Abbot of Belpré) has got into the text of both Paris Editt., though the second asterisks it. Hervetus ("et fastigium") seem to have read kai akran.
86 swmatikwj: with a general reference both to the recipient, the words (the "form"), and the water (the "matter," in the Aristotelian sense). Cf. questions in Private Baptism of Infants: and Hampden's Bampton Lectures, p. 336 n.
87 timiwtaton (timh = "price") zwon. So Plato, Laws, p. 766: "Man, getting right training and a happy organization, is wont to become a most godlike and cultivated creature."
89 poiountai (middle), i. e. by their prayers.
90 h de thj qeothtoj marturia dia twn qaumatwn estin: a noteworthy sentence.
91 twn ginomenwn (cf. above) being understood.
92 ek thj kata didaxhn ufhghsewj. This is what Krabinger finds in three Codd., and Morell and Hervetus have rendered in the Latin. But the editions have diadoxhn. Ufhghsij does not refer to any "preceding" ("praeeunte," Hervetus) teachting; but to "instruction" of any kind, whether "in the way of teaching," or of example, as below.
93 the flesh which He has assumed, and at the same time deified. "Un terme chef aux Pères du IVe siècle, de nous déifier" (Denis, Philosophie d'Origène, p. 458). This qeopoihsij or qewsij is more than a metaphor even from the first, "vere fideles vocantur qeoi, non naturâ quidem, sed th omoiwsei, ait Athanasius;" Casaubon, In Epist. ad Eustath. "We become `gods0' by grasping the Divine power and substance;" Clement, Stromata, iv. That the Platonists had thus used the word of to proj meizona docan anuywqen is clear. Synesius in one of his Hymns says to his soul:-
"Soon cammingled with the Father
Thou shalt dance a `god0' with God."
just as elsewhere (in Diane, p. 50) he says, "it is not sufficient not to be bad; each must be even a `god.0'" Cf. also Gregory Thaum. Panegyr Origenis, §142 When we come to the Fathers of the 4th century and later, these words are used more especially of the work of the Holy Spirit upon man. Cf. Cyrill. Alex.: "If to be able to `deify0' is a greater thing than a creature can do, and if the Spirit does `deify,0' how can he be created or anything but God, seeing that he `deifies0'?" "If the Spirit is not God," says Gregory Naz., "let him first be deified, and then let him deify me his equal;" where two things are implied, 1. that the recognized work of the Holy Spirit is to `deify,0' 2. that this "deification" is not Godhead. It is "the comparative god-making" of Dionysius Areopag. whereby we are "partakers of the Divine nature" (2 Pet. i. 4). On the word as applied to the human nature of our Saviour Himself. Huet (Origeniana, ii. 3, c. 17), in discussing the statement of Origen, in his Commentary on S. Matthew (Tract 27), that "Christ after His resurrection `deified0' the human nature which He had taken," remarks, "If we take this word so as to make Origen mean that the Word was changed into the human nature, and that the flesh itself was changed into God and made of the same substance as the Word, he will clearly be guilty of that deadly error which Apollinaris brought into the Church (i. e. that the Saviour's soul is not `reasonable,0' nor His flesh human); or rather of the heresy perpetrated by some sects of the Eutychians, who asserted that the human nature was changed into the Divine after the Resurrection. But if we take him to mean that Christ's human nature, after being divested of weakness after death, assumed a certain Divine quality, we shall be doing Him no wrong." He then quotes a line from Gregory's Iambics:-
"The thing `deifying,0' and the thing `deified,0' are one God:"and this is said even of Christ's Incarnation; how ranch more then can it be said of His Resurrection state, as in this passage of the Great Catechism? Huet adds one of Origen's answers to Celsus: "His mortal body and the human soul in Him, by virtue of their junction or rather union aud blending with that (deity), assumed, we assert, qualities of the very greatest kind. ...What incredibility is there in the quality of mortality in the body of Jesus changing, when God so planned and willed it, into an ethereal and Divine" (i. e. the matter, as the receptacle of these qualities, remaining the same)? It is in this sense that Chrysostom can say that "Christ came to us, and took upon Him our nature and deified it;" and Augustine, "your humanity received the name of that deity" (contr. Arian.).
95 adiecodon <\=85_frouran. Krabingers excellent reading. Cf. Plato, Phaed. p. 62 B, "We men are in a sort of prison."
96 S. John iii. 31: 1 Cor. xv. 47 (anwqen = ec ouranou).
97 epixeomenoj. This may be pressed to imply that immersion was not absolutely necessary. So below to udwr trij epixeamenoi.
98 efapac. So Rom. vi. 10, "He died unto sin once" (A. V.); i. e. once for all.
99 analuein. Cf. Philip. i. 23 (analusai)
100 oij de prosepwrwqh ta paqh.
102 efaptesai. Krabinger prefers this to efepesqai (Paris Edit.),as more suitable to what follows.
103 Gregory seems here to refer to Eve's eating the apple, which introdnced a moral and physical poison into our nature. General Gordon's thoughts ("in Palestine") took the same direction as the whole of this passage; which Fronto Ducaeus (as quoted by Krabinger) would even regard as a proof of transubstantiation.
107 by the process of eating, dia brwsewj. There is very little authority for kai posewj which follows in some Codd. If Krabinger's text is here correct, Gregory distinctly teaches a transmutation of the elements very like the later transubstantiation: he also distinctly teaches that the words of consecration effect the change. There seems no reason to doubt that the text is correct. The three Latin interpretations, "a verbo transmutatus," "statim a verbo transmutatus," "per verbum mutatus," of Hervetus, Morell, and Zinus, all point to their having found proj to swma dia tou logou metapoioumenoj in the text: and this is the reading of Cod. Reg. (the other reading is proj to swma tou logou). A passage from Justin Mart.,Apol.ii. p. 77, also supports Krabinger's text. Justin says, "so we are taught that that food which has been blessed by the pronouncing of the word that came from Him, which food by changing nouriishes our blood and flesh, is the flesh and blood of that Incarnate Jesus." As to the nature of the change (proj to swma metapoioumenoj), another passage in Gregory (In Baptism. Christi, 370A) should be compared: "The bread again, was for a while common bread, but when the mystic word shall have consecrated it (ierourghoh), it is called, and moreover is,the body of Chist." He says also at the end of this chapter, "He gives these gifts by virtue of the benediction through which He translements (metastoixeiwsaj) the natural quality (fusin) of these visible things to that immortal thing." Harnack does not attempt to weaken the force of these and other passages, but only points out that the idea of this change does not exactly correspond (how could it?) with the mediaeval scholastically-philosophical "transubstantiation." Gregory's belief iis that, just as the Word, when Christ was here in the flesh, rendered holy His body that assimilated bread, which still in a manner remained bread, so now the bread is sanctified by the Word of God and by prayer. "The idea," says Neander, "of the repetition of the consecration of the Logoj had taken hold of his mind." The construction is proiwn (wste) genesqai eij to swma tou logou, "eo progrediens, ut verbi corpus evadat."
108 metastoixeiwsaj. Suicer labours, without success, to show that the word is not equivalent to transelementare or metousiun, but only to substantiam convertere, i.e. to change by an addition of grace into another mode or use. In the passages from Eppiphanius which Suicer adduces for "figure," "mode," as a meaning of stoixeion itself, that word means a sign of the zodiac (as in our Gregory's De Anima et Resurr., it means the moon), only because the heavenly bodies are the elements or first principles as it were of the celestial alphabet. The other meaning of metastoixeioun which he gives, i.e. to unteach, with a view to obscure the literal meaning here, is quite inapplicable. Gregory defines more clearly than Chrysostomom (metarruqmizesqai), Theophylact (metapoieisqai), and John Damascene (metaballesqai), the change that takes place: but all go beyond Theodoret's (Dial. ii), "not changing nature, but adding grace to the nature," which Suicer endeavours to read into this word of Gregory's. It is to be noticed, too, that in Philo the word is used of Xerxes changing in his march one element into another, i.e. earth into water, not the mere use of the one into the use of the other.
109 Faith. Cf. Church Catechism; "Faith whereby they steadfastly believe the promises of God made to them in that Sacrament (of Baptism)."
110 suneplakhmen, i. e. against Eunomius, in defence of the equality of the Trinity in the Baptismal symbol Often as Gregory in that treatise opposes Eunomius for placing the essence of Christianity in mere gnwsij and dogmatwn akribeia, as against God's incomprehensibility, and knowledge only by the heart, he had yet spent his whole life in showing the supreme importance of accuracy in the formulas upon which the Faith rested. This helps to give a date for the Great Catechism.
113 imperfect nature: i.e. of a creature (ktistoj); for instance, of a merely human Christ, which himself needs, and therefore cannot give, perfection.
114 removing his faith: i. e. as he would do, if he placed it on beings whom he knew were not of that higher, uncreated, world
115 and the Only-begotten God. One Cod. reads here uion (not qeon), as it is in S John i. 18, though even there "many very ancient authorities" (R.V.) read qeon. The Latin of Hervetus implies an ouk here; "et unigenitum Deum non esse existimant;" and Glauber would retain it, making ktiston = qeon ouk einai. But Krabinger found no ouk in any of his Codd.
116 proj eauton analuwn, as explained above, i. e. eij to omogenej eauton eisagagh.
118 We need not consider this passage about Regeneration as an interpolation, with Aubertin, De Sacram. Eucharist. lib. ii. p. 487, because Gregory has already dealt with Baptism in ch. xxxv.-xxxvi.; and then with the Eucharist: his view of the relation between the two Sacraments, that the Eucharist unites the body, as Baptism the soul to God, quite explains this return to the preliminaries of this double union.
119 upameifqeih. A word almost peculiar to this Gregory.
121 to kata ton qumon aisxoj. Quite wrongly the Latin translators, "animi turpitudo," i. e. baseness of mind, which is mentioned just below.
125 These quotations are from the LXX. of Ps. cxlv. 16; Ps. ciii 12 (Is. xliii. 25); Joel ii. 13; Ps. vii. 11 (Heb. "God is angry every day "); Ps. xcii. 15.
126 Ps. iv. 2, Ps. iv. 3. In the last verse the LXX. has eqaumastwse; which the Vulgate follows, i. e. "He hath made his Saint wonderful" (the Hebrew implies, "hath wonderfully separated"). That qaumastoutai (three of Krabinger's Codd., and Morell's) is the reading here (omitted in Editt.), is clear from the whole quotation from the LXX. of this Psalm.
127 Is. lxiv. 4; 1 Cor. ii. 9.
128 The section beginning here, which one Cod. (Vulcobius'), used by Hervetus, exhibits, is "evidently the addition of some blundering copyist." P. Morell considers it the portion of a preface to a treatise against Severus, bead of the heretics called Acephali. But Severus was condemned under Justinian, a.d. 536: and the Acephali themselves were no recognized party till after the Council of Ephesus (those who would follow neither S. Cyril, nor John of Damascus, in one meaning of the term, i. e. "headless"), or after the Council of Chalcedon (those who rejected the Henoticon of the Emperor Zeno, addressed to the orthodox and the Monophysites, in the other meaning). It is quoted by Krabinger, none of whose Codd. recognize it.
1 This all refers to the very recent installation of Gregory of Nazianzum in the episcopal chair of Constantinople: on which occasion also Gregory of Nyssa seems to have preached.
2 Casaubon very strongly condemns the sentiment here expressed, as savouring more of heathenism than Christianity. He gives other instances, in which the loss from the death of friends and good men is attributed by Christian writers to the envy of a Higher Power. That the disturbed state of the Church should be attributed by Gregory Nazianzen to "Envy" is well enough, but he in the same strain as his namesake speaks thus in connection with the death of his darling brother Caesarius, and of Basil. Our Gregory uses the word also in lamenting Pulcheria and Flacilla. It only proves, however, how strong the habit still was of using heathen expressions.
3 The text is toij dedwkosin epanaswcetai. The people of Antioch must here be referred to, if the text is to stand.
4 Meletius was president of the Council.
6 According to Gen. l. 3, the Egyptian mourning was seventy days, but there is no precise mention of the length of the Israelites' mourning, except that at Atad, beyond the Jordan, they appear to have rested, on their way up, and mourned for seven days.