Day 273 - Psalms 145-150

And now that we have thus distinguished the various modes of generation, it will be time to observe how the benevolent provision of the Holy Spirit, in delivering to us the divine mysteries, imparts that instruction that transcends reason by such methods as we can receive. For the inspired teaching adopts, in order to set forth the unspeakable power of God, all the forms of generation that human intelligence recognizes, yet without including the bodily senses attaching to the words. For when it speaks of the creative power, it gives to such an energy the name of generation, because its expression must stoop to our level of understanding. It does not, however, convey thereby all that we include in creative generation, as time, place, the furnishing of matter, the fitness of instruments, the design in the things that come into being. It leaves these and asserts of God in lofty and magnificent language the creation of all existent things, when it says, “He spoke the word, and they were made, He commanded, and they were created.” Again when it interprets to us the unspeakable and transcendent existence of the Only-Begotten from the Father, as the poverty of human intellect is incapable of receiving doctrines that surpass all power of speech and thought, there too it borrows our language and terms him “Son,” a name that our usage assigns to those who are born of matter and nature—St Gregory of Nyssa