De deitate adversus Evagrium

Of Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa, on His Own Ordination, to Evagrius, on the Deity. The ministry of the spiritual feast has come even to us, to partake rather of others than to present ourselves as being fit for others. And yet I for my part considered myself wholly unfit for such burdens because of my poverty of speech, according to some sympotic custom; for I hear that those of more refined living, when in turn they prepare the feasts for the common mess, if anyone from the list of guests is poorer, they have him as an exempt fellow-diner by common agreement. So I myself wished to be a guest at the table of the rich. But since this good and rich host does not spare even me, but commands me to serve, I say to him: Friend, lend me your loaves; and by loaves I mean the alliance through prayers. For how is it possible for your ears, which have delighted in these spiritual honeycombs, to welcome a poor and beggarly word? And perhaps it would be well, as in gymnastic contests (for the stadium belongs only to those who are strong in those, while the rest become spectators of the contestants), so also in this spiritual stadium only those who are vigorous in the power of words should strip for the contestants, but if there is anyone such as I, whose hair is gray, whose strength is sluggish from time, and whose speech is trembling and halting, he should be allowed to rejoice in the sweat of the contestants. Therefore let us not prolong the preface for you, brothers, occupying ourselves with wonder at those who have preceded.

You are already sated, already enriched, but the satiety is from sweetmeats; for with these the preceding discourse has nursed you. Perhaps, then, it is useless to heap surfeit upon surfeit, burdening the memory with something like leaden coins on top of golden words—except that often even inferior material, when mixed with the better, contributes to the beauty of the whole. The proof is near: do you see this ceiling above your head, how beautiful it is to behold, how delicately the gold blooms upon the carvings? Though it is entirely golden in appearance, it is underlaid with circles of many angles smeared with cyanus. What, then, does the craftsman intend with the cyanus? So that, I think, the gold may shine more brightly by the contrast of color. If, then, cyanus mixed with gold renders the radiance more beautiful, it is perhaps not untimely for our blackness to be interlined with the splendor of the aforementioned words. We are still lingering in the preludes, but listen. I hear that the great Moses, when he was setting up the tabernacle for the Israelites, and that Bezalel, who by divine inspiration had the wisdom of architecture self-taught, publicly set forth the offering to both rich and poor, the rich selecting gold and purple and precious stones, the poor not rejecting wood and hides and goats' hair. But perhaps the mention of this history is not untimely; for a thought that has run into my heart, I wish to set before the public. By divine inspiration Bezalel became wise from being an ignoramus—for so the history says. Let the Spirit-fighter hear, then.

The one who called the Holy Spirit divine, whose approach imprints upon the soul the grace of wisdom like some trace, does he then insult the dignity of the Spirit by the appellation "divine"? Does he suggest that something small and lowly is thought concerning it, or that something among creation is signified by this name? Does he think that divinity is adventitious to the Spirit? Does he conceive of some duality and composition in that which is simple and incomposite? Perhaps it is not possible to be carried away by such suspicions, but he fully confesses that the Spirit, being divine by nature, is both such and so called. You see how the truth is spontaneously revealed to you: for the proclamation of Christians knows not many divine natures, since of necessity many gods would then be fabricated; for it is not possible for many gods to be conceived unless the natural difference announces the multitude of gods. If, then, the divine nature is believed by all to be one, and the Holy Spirit is divine by nature, why do you sever with your argument what is conjoined by nature? But who will give me the power of that discourse whose end was the salvation of its hearers? Peter uttered one voice to the Jerusalemites, and so many thousands of men were netted by the single cast of the fisherman's word. Yet so many and such discourses are worn thin among us by the teachers, and what addition has there been to those being saved?

What is lacking, lacks," says one of the prophets; "what is dying, dies. What has gone astray does not return. The bond of love has been dissolved; the peace of our treasures has been snatched away. Alas for the evils! For I am moved to groan over the calamity. Love was once our possession; this inheritance was ours from the fathers, which the Lord treasured up for us through his disciples, saying, 'I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.' But this inheritance the successive successors, receiving it from father to son, preserved down to our fathers, but this prodigal generation did not keep it. How has the wealth of love slipped from our hands and been lost? We are impoverished of love, and the enemies exult in our goods. 'I was jealous of the lawless ones,' says the psalmist; but I, having slightly parodied the saying, will read it thus: 'I was jealous of those unlike me; I was jealous, beholding the peace of sinners; they stand by one another, and we are cut off from each other; they shield themselves together, and we dissolve our own unity.' The thief of souls, having stolen our possession, brought and threw it to the enemies of the truth, not to benefit them—let no one think that (for the inventor of evils cannot be a benefactor)—but to make them worse in their conspiracy for evil. But 'Why should I judge those outside?' says the one who spoke; and I say: How can I bear without tears the estrangement of the brethren? How has this young brother gone away, abandoning the paternal substance?

That other one, the one revealed in the Gospel, even if he conceals the youth of the soul under the gray hair of the body, how did he withdraw into a far country, having deserted from the faith? How has he too gone, having halved the Father's substance by dragging the lofty doctrines down to low and swinish thoughts, having squandered the wealth on heretical prostitutes? For heresy is a prostitute, bewitching with deceived pleasures. For if he should ever come to himself like that one, if he should again desire the paternal luxury, if he should run back to the rich table, where there is much of the daily bread that nourishes the Lord's hired servants (and all these are hired servants who work the vineyard of God in hope of the promise), what a running there would be toward him, not of one father, but of so many fathers meeting him, embracing him, greeting him with kisses. There is the first garment of faith, which the three hundred and eighteen souls, weaving well, wove for the Church; there is the ring on the hand, having the seal of faith impressed upon itself; the choirs, the calf, the harmony, and all the other things that are enumerated in the Gospel, except the jealousy of the brother. But why do we vainly fashion dreams for ourselves? The heart of the brothers has hardened and is unyielding; they put forward the common fathers and do not accept the inheritance from them; they lay claim to the common nobility and are alienated from kinship with us; with the enemies

They set themselves against us and are hostile to us, as if they have become a kind of borderland between us and the enemies, and they are both and neither: they neither confess the right doctrine nor deign to be called heretics. O what a novel thing! They are equally at war with both truth and falsehood, like a rootless tree easily swayed this way and that by contrary impulses. I have heard the evangelist John in the apocrypha speaking to such people through a riddle, saying that one must be either thoroughly boiling or thoroughly chilled—boiling, of course, in spirit, chilled in sin: "Would that you were," he says, "cold or hot; but being neither of these while touching both is nauseating and prone to vomiting." What then is the reason that in former times, through the Lord, a great multitude was brought to the church among the disciples, but now the long and beautiful discourses of the teachers pass by ineffectively? Someone will perhaps say that then the miracles from deeds cooperated with the apostles, and the word had credibility through the gifts. I too say that the power from deeds is a great influence toward persuasion. But now, what should we consider the things that happen? Or do you not see the similar miracles of faith?

I claim for myself the achievements of our fellow servants, who, marching in step with the same Spirit, bear witness to the truth of the Word by the power of healings—men coming from a foreign land, citizens of our father Abraham, setting out from Mesopotamia, having also themselves departed from their land and their kindred and the whole world, looking toward heaven, in a way emigrating from human life, standing above the passions of nature, touching this life only as much as necessary, and for the greater part traveling the high air together with the incorporeal powers, aged in appearance, venerable to behold, gleaming with gray hair, their mouths secured by silence, not knowing how to wrangle in words, not having learned to dispute. They have such authority over spirits that by command alone they accomplish what they wish, and the demons withdraw, not by the arts of syllogisms but by the authority of faith, not being led into perplexity by contradiction but being driven into the outer darkness. Thus the Christian knows how to reason; these are the achievements of our faith. Why then do we not persuade, if the grace of healings abounds, if the teaching of the Word is abundant? And all these things the one and the same Spirit works, distributing to each individually as it wills. Why does the increase of those being saved not occur? And let no one suspect that I consider the present grace small: I see the vine flourishing, thriving with its shoots and abounding in fruit; I see the field billowing with the multitude of ears of grain; the crop is deep, the sheaf is full, the seed is plentiful. But what am I to do?

I have an insatiable nature in such matters, possessed as I am by the passion of the avaricious. No limit of wealth stops desire; what is always added inflames appetite for more, becoming fuel for the desire of the greater. What is seen delights me, and what is not seen grieves me; I exult in what is present and am pained by what is absent. A strange passion, a mixture of opposites, encompasses the soul, pleasure blended with pain. If I look to you, I rest my longing upon you; if I consider what is lacking, I cannot but groan at the calamity. For men, abandoning the enjoyment of the Lord and rejoicing in the peace of the church, contrive certain essences and measure magnitudes, comparing son to father and granting the excess of measure to the father. Who would tell them that the unquantified is not measured, the formless is not tested, the incorporeal is not weighed, the indefinite is not compared, and that which is not compared admits no account of more and less? For from the juxtaposition of limits to each other we recognize the more; but where there is no end,

unattainable, and its excess inconceivable. I heard the refrain which we all commonly chant in hymnody: "Great is our Lord, and great is his power, and of his understanding there is no number." What then is this? Count the things said, and you will understand the mystery. "Great is the Lord"—it did not say how great (for it was not possible to say how great), but by the indefiniteness of the meaning it leads the mind to the infinite. Similarly, it says, "Great is his power," and hearing "power," understand it as "might." Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. But also, "of his understanding there is no number." Isaiah interprets "understanding" clearly, saying, "Spirit of wisdom and understanding." I heard in the Beatitudes that those who thirst for the Lord are called blessed. Perhaps, then, the thought is not out of place, and receive my word, even if it seems detached from the present matters.

If someone traveling at midday, with the sun's hotter rays boiling his head and parching all the moisture in his body with its flame—let the example suppose a rough, impassable, and thirsty land—and then such a person should come upon a spring, whose stream is beautiful and clear, pleasantly cooling and abundantly overflowing, would he sit down by the water and philosophize about its nature, inquiring whence, how, and through what, and such things as it is customary for idle talkers to say, that some moisture sown in the depth of the earth, leaping and being compressed, becomes water, or that veins spread out in the hollows below, if opened, pour forth water? Or would he bid farewell to all such things, bend down to the stream, apply his lips, cure his thirst, refresh his tongue, quench his desire, and give thanks to the one who granted the grace? Imitate then the thirsty one, since it is also said [as it is said] that "Blessed are the thirsty," and having learned what and how many good things the Holy Spirit pours forth, do what the prophet does: "Open your mouth and draw in breath, widen your mouth and the one who has authority over the gifts will fill it." Do you wish to learn how many good things are poured forth from the spring of the Spirit? Incorruptibility of soul, eternity of life, kingdom of the heavens, unceasing gladness, joy without end. But looking at the present matters, I make little of the loss of what is lacking.

My house is filled with good things, the treasuries are full of Arabian gold, and soon perhaps envoys will come from Egypt and extend their hand to God, and the kingdoms of the earth will sing with us the victory hymn to the one who calls all into his kingdom, to whom are glory and power for ever and ever, amen.