75 taciarxaj kai loxagouj, ekatontarxouj te kai xiliarxouj. The difference between the two pairs seems to be the difference between `non-commissioned0' and `commissioned0' officers.
77 Isaiah vi. 6, Isaiah vi. 7.
80 taj men, i.e. Ousioj. Eunomius' Arianism here degenerates into mere Emanationism: but even in this system the Substances were living; it is beat on the whole to translate ousia `beeing,0' and this, as a rule, is adhered to throughout.
81 kakeinai ai energeiai autai.
82 tw parhllacqai, k.t.l. This is Oehler's emendation for the faulty reading to of the editions
86 1 Cor. i. 24. "Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God."
87 John v. 23. The Gospel enjoins honour and means love: the Law enjoins love and means honour.
88 a prelude. See Psalm vii. 1 and Psalm xviii. 1, "fortress," krataiwma; sterewma, LXX.
89 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.
90 step by step upwards. si analusewj. This does not seem to be used in the Platonic (dialectic) sense, but in the N.T. sense of "return" or "retrogression," cf. Luke xii. 36. Gregory elsewhere Hom. Opif. xxv.), uses analuein in this sense: speaking of the three examples of Christ's power of raising from the dead, he says, `you see ...all these equally at the command of one and the same voice returning ('analuontaj) to life.0' thus also came to mean "death," as a `return.0' Cf. Ecclesiast. xi. 7.
91 brightness. Heb. i. 3, apaugasma thj dochj.
92 Compare Eccles. iii. 1-11; and Eccles. viii. 5, "and a wise man's heart discerneth both time and judgment."
94 kai ton tou kuriwtatou logon epexei:
95 The generation of the Son does not fall within time. On this "eternal generation" Denys (De la Philosophie d'Origéne, p. 452) has the following remarks, illustrating the probable way that Athanasians would have dealt with Eunomius: "If we do not see how God's indivisibility remains in the co-existence of the three Persons, we can throw the blame of this difficulty upon the feebleness of our reason: while it is a manifest contradiction to admit at one and the same time the simplicity of the Uncreated, and some change or inequality within His Being. I know that the defenders of the orthodox belief might be troubled with their adversaries' argument. (Eunom. Apol. 22.) `If we admit that the Son, the energy creative of the world, is equal to the Father, it amounts to admitting that He is the actual energy of the Father in Creation, and that this energy is equal to His essence. But that is to return to the mistake of the Greeks who identified His essence and His energy, and consequently made the world coexist with God.0' A serious difficulty, certainly, and one that has never yet solved, nor will be; as all the questions likewise which refer to the Uncreated and Created, to eternity and time. It is true we cannot explain how God's eternally active energy does prolong itself eternally. But what is this difficulty compared with those which, with the hypothesis of Eunomius, must be swallowed? We must suppose, so that the 'Agennhtoj, since His energy is not eternal, because in a given place and moment, and that He was at the point the Gennhtoj. We must suppose that this activity communicated to a creature that privilege of the Uncreated which is most incommunicable, viz. the power of creating other creatures. We must suppose that these creatures, unconnected as they are with the 'Agennhtoj (since He has not made them), nevertheless conceive of and see beyond their own creator a Being, who cannot be anything to them. [This direct intuition on our part of the Deity was a special tenet of Eunomius.] Finally we must suppose that these creatures, seeing that Eunomius agrees with orthodox believers that the end of this world will be but a commencement, will enter into new relations with this 'Agennhtoj, when the Son shall have submitted all things to the Father."
98 is presented alive; cwogoneitai. This is the LXX., not the classical use, of the word. Cf. Exod. i. 17; Judges viii. 19, &c. It is reproduced in the speech of S. Stephen, Acts vii. 19: cf. Luke xvii. 33, "shall preserve (his life).'
99 apokritikouj, active, so, the Medical writers. The Latin is `in meatus destinato descendit0' takes it passive (apokritikouj).
100 neura. So since Galen's time: not `tendon.0'
101 Punctuating paraskeuazetai, epeidh, epeidh, k.t.l. instead of a full stop, as Oehler.
102 Gregory replaces `sameness0' (in the case of the energies in Eunomius argument) by `likeness0' since the Father and the Son could not be said to be the same, and their energies, therefore, are not identical but similar.
106 Reading autoj; instead of Oehler's autoj.
107 only one thing amongst the things which follow, &c. The Latin translation is manifestly wrong here, "si recte a te assertum est, iis etiam quae ad primam substantian sequuntur aliquam operationem inesse." The Greek is eiper h energeia twn parepomenwn tij einai tu powth ousia memaotuohtai.
108 kata analuoin. So Plutarch, ii. 76 E. and see above (cap. 25, note 6.).
111 'Epinoia is the opposite of ennoia, `the intuitive idea.0' It means an "alterthought," and, with the notion of unnecessary addition, a `conceit.0' Here it is applied to conventional, or not purely natural difference. See Introduction to Book XIII. for the fuller meaning of 'Epinoia.
112 mh dexoito. This use of the optative, where the subjunctive with ean might have been expected, is one of the few instances in Gregory's Greek of declension from Classic usage; in the latter, when ei with the optative does denote subjective possibility, it is only when the condition is conceived of as of frequent repetition, e.g. 1 Peter iii. 14. The optative often in this Greek of the fourth century invades the province of the subjunctive.