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“Gregory of Nyssa on the Self-Emptying of the Godhead”
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 Relevant books available at Amazon Many Gregory of Nyssa 
    studies -------------- A selection below STUDIES Presence and Thought -------- Re-thinking Gregory of Nyssa -------- Gregory of Nyssa, Ancient and (Post)modern -------- TRANSLATIONS Gregory of Nyssa -------- Ascetical Works -------- | 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".