INTRODUCTION.

He deals with the various questions of a more or less captious nature raised by the Eunomians, prior to the study of the Scriptural evidence, such as the following: Did the Father beget the Son by an act of will, or not? Did the Son exist before He was begotten, or not? If the Son is begotten and the Father unbegotten, how can They be said to be of the same nature? If the Father is acknowledged to be greater than the Son, inasmuch as He is the cause of His being, and if it is His very nature to be the cause, how is He not greater by nature than the Son? Gregory then falls back upon the authority of Scripture and shows that the Godhead of the Son is clearly implied, even where not explicitly stated, and that the passages which speak of Him in less exalted terms must be interpreted with reference to His assumption of our created nature in the Incarnation. The way of faith is a better way than that of argument.

4th Proof

In his next Oration, Gregory deals seriatim (point by point) with the stock texts which Arians adduced against the Godhead of the Son, applying to them the canon of interpretation which he had laid down in the fourth. He then discusses the names by which God is spoken of in Scripture, and especially those of the Son, both as God and as Man.

5

The fifth Oration is on the subject of the Holy Spirit; and here Gregory is confronted not only by his Eunomian opponents, but by many also of those who shrank from the language of extreme Arianism concerning the Son. They were the party known as Macedonians, from a former Bishop of Constantinople who had espoused their views.