“Gregory of Nyssa on the Self-Emptying of the Godhead”
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The Godhead “empties” Itself that It may come within
the capacity of the Human Nature, and the Human Nature is renewed by becoming
Divine through its commixture with the Divine. For as air is not retained in
water when it is dragged down by some weighty body and left in the depth of the
water, but rises quickly to its kindred element, while the water is often raised
up together with the air in its upward rush, being moulded by the circle of air
into a convex shape with a slight and membrane-like surface, so too, when the
true Life that underlay the flesh sped up, after the Passion, to Itself, the
flesh also was raised up with It, being forced upwards from corruption to
incorruptibility by the Divine immortality. And as fire that lies in wood hidden
below the surface is often unobserved by the senses of those who see, or even
touch it, but is manifest when it blazes up, so too, at His death (which He
brought about at His will, Who separated His soul from His Body, Who said to His
own Father “Into Thy hands I commend My Spirit ,” Who, as He says, “had power to
lay it down and had power to take it again”), He Who, because He is the Lord of
glory, despised that which is shame among men, having concealed, as it were, the
flame of His life in His bodily Nature, by the dispensation of His death,
kindled and inflamed it once more by the power of His own Godhead, fostering
into life that which had been brought to death, having infused with the infinity
of His Divine power that humble first-fruits of our nature, made it also to be
that which He Himself was—making the servile form to be Lord, and the Man born
of Mary to be Christ, and Him Who was crucified through weakness to be Life and
power, and making all that is piously conceived to be in God the Word to be also
in that which the Word assumed, so that these attributes no longer seem to be in
either Nature by way of division, but that the perishable Nature being, by its
commixture with the Divine, made anew in conformity with the Nature that
overwhelms it, participates in the power of the Godhead, as if one were to say
that mixture makes a drop of vinegar mingled in the deep to be sea, by reason
that the natural quality of this liquid does not continue in the infinity of
that which overwhelms it. This is our doctrine, which does not, as Eunomius
charges against it, preach a plurality of Christs, but the union of the Man with
the Divinity, and which calls by the name of “making” the transmutation of the
Mortal to the Immortal, of the Servant to the Lord, of Sin to Righteousness, of
the Curse to the Blessing, of the Man to Christ. What further have our
slanderers left to say, to show that we preach “two Christs” in our doctrine, if
we refuse to say that He Who was in the beginning from the Father uncreatedly
Lord, and Christ, and the Word, and God, was “made,” and declare that the
blessed Peter was pointing briefly and incidentally to the mystery of the
Incarnation, according to the meaning now explained, that the Nature which was
crucified through weakness has Itself also, as we have said, become, by the
overwhelming power of Him Who dwells in It, that which the Indweller Himself is
in fact and in name, even Christ and Lord? |
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original Greek text
Contra Eunomium V
Against Enuomius
Patristic understanding of God
Gregory of Nyssa in Greek with English Translation
Migne Greek Text
Patrologiae Graecae Cursus Completus
Patrologia Graeca
Gregory reflects on the relation of the human and the divine in Christ. "The Godhead “empties” Itself that It may come within the capacity of the Human Nature, and the Human Nature is renewed by becoming Divine through its commixture with the Divine." An image of "a drop of vinegar" is used. Just as a drop of vinegar mingled with the ocean "does not continue in the infinity of that which overwhelms it", so the the perishable nature of Christ is "made anew in conformity with the Nature that overwhelms it".