Nyssan's The Life Of Moses: Summary

Nyssan in The Life of Moses uses typology regularly to make his point known that Christ is personified in the life of Moses. Take Moses’ staff for example. The rod is made into a snake just as Jesus “was made into sin for our sake.” Christ in John 3:14 represents the staff that has to be lifted up for our sins, and by “becoming sin He became also a serpent, which is nothing other than sin.” With this rod of faith, Moses would “prevail against the Egyptian serpents” and triumph over the powers of darkness that were so deeply imbedded in the culture . Just like the staff, Jesus is “invested with our sinful nature” deeply, becoming like sin so that humans may have freedom from the bondage of the powers of the earth. This typological argument shows the clear connection between God’s work in Moses’ staff and the freeing of the Israelite people, which communicates God’s prevalent and steady hand in the lives of His people from the outset of human history.
Nyssan in Against Eunomius uses a creator-creature distinction to signify that Jesus in not a part
of creation, and truly can and should be worshipped as the God of the Universe. Eunomius asserts that the Son should not be worshipped, for He was someone who was begotten by the Father, and is therefor a part of creation. Nyssan counters this argument by stating that the Son derives His “existence from the Supreme,” resulting in the Father eternally begetting Him. Nyssan asks why Christians are “baptized into Christ, if He has no power of goodness on His own?” This asserts that the Son receives his divine essence form the Father eternally, which would set Jesus apart from the rest of creation, and put Him on par with God and the Spirit. The Father is “united to the Son by the bond of uncreatedness,” and in this Nyssan makes a distinction that sets Jesus apart from the rest of the begotten world.
One hermeneutical strategy used by Nyssan in On “Not Three Gods” is to emphasize the economy of the Trinity.
This is not to say that the Father, Son, and Spirit are three separate persons, but rather to emphasize “every operation which extends from God to the creation…has its origin from the Father, and proceeds through the Son, and is perfected in the Holy Spirit.” This is to say that the “constitution of the universe…comes to pass by the action of the Three, yet what does come to pass is not three things.” Nyssan here asserts that the universe could not be spoken into being without the full cooperation of all three persons of the Trinity. Each part of the Trinity has a distinct job in the Economic Trinity, and this strategy is used by Nyssan to emphasize that there truly is one God in three persons, unto which “life is wrought in us by the Father, and prepared by the Son, and depends on the will of the Holy
Spirit.”