Digital Logos Edition
Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Volume V: Gregory of Nyssa: Dogmatic Treatises, etc. The Early Church Fathers is one of the most important collections of historical, philosophical and theological writings available in English to the student of the Christian Church. These documents provide the most comprehensive witness to the development of Christianity and Christian thought during the period immediately following the Apostolic Era. The Catholic edition of Early Church Fathers does not include the introductions, prolegomenae, and various interpretive comments made by the protestant editors of the Edinburgh edition. However, it retains all of the footnotes found in the printed editions. Contents of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series V Gregory of Nyssa Against Eunomius Answer to Eunomius’ Second Book On the Holy Spirit, against the Followers of Macedonius On the Holy Trinity, and of the Godhead of the Holy Spirit On “Not Three Gods” On the Faith On Virginity On Infants’ Early Deaths On Pilgrimages On the Making of Man On the Soul and the Resurrection The Great Catechism Funeral Oration on Meletius On the Baptism of Christ Letters
“For every created being is distant, by an equal degree of inferiority, from that which is the Highest” (Page 497)
“We, for instance, confess that the Holy Spirit is of the same rank as the Father and the Son, so that there is no difference between them in anything, to be thought or named, that devotion can ascribe to a Divine nature. We confess that, save His being contemplated as with peculiar attributes in regard of Person, the Holy Spirit is indeed from God, and of the Christ, according to Scripture4, but that, while not to be confounded with the Father in being never originated, nor with the Son in being the Only-begotten, and while to be regarded separately in certain distinctive properties, He has in all else, as I have just said, an exact identity5 with them.” (Pages 315–316)
“Now the resurrection promises us nothing else than the restoration of the fallen to their ancient state; for the grace we look for is a certain return to the first life, bringing back again to Paradise him who was cast out from it.” (Page 407)
“But since the human being is a twofold creature, compounded of soul and body, it is necessary that the saved should lay hold of3 the Author of the new life through both their component parts.” (Page 504)
“Rather let us say, that as we indicate to the deaf what we want them to do, by gestures and signs, not because we have no voice of our own, but because a verbal communication would be utterly useless to those who cannot hear, so, inasmuch as human nature is in a sense deaf and insensible to higher truths, we maintain that the grace of God at sundry times and in divers manners spake by the Prophets, ordering their voices conformably to our capacity and the modes of expression with which we are familiar, and that by such means it leads us, as with a guiding hand, to the knowledge of higher truths, not teaching us in terms proportioned to their inherent sublimity, (for how can the great be contained by the little?) but descending to the lower level of our limited comprehension.” (Pages 274–275)