For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.
All Commentaries on Isaiah 9:6 Go To Isaiah 9
Gregory of Nyssa
AD 394
For we too say plainly that the prophet, wishing to make manifest the mystery concerning Christ, called the self-existent “Angel,” that the meaning of the words might not be referred to the Father, as it would have been if the title of “Existent” alone had been found throughout the discourse. But just as our word is the revealer and messenger (or “angel”) of the movements of the mind, even so we affirm that the true Word that was in the beginning, when he announces the will of his Father, is styled “angel” (or “messenger”), a title given to him on account of the operation of conveying the message. And as the sublime John, having previously called him “Word,” so introduces the further truth that the Word was God, that our thoughts might not at once turn to the Father, as they would have done if the title of God had been put first. So too does the mighty Moses, after first calling him “Angel,” teach us in the words that follow that he is none other than the self-existent himself, that the mystery concerning the Christ might be foreshown, by the Scripture assuring us by the name Angel that the Word is the interpreter of the Father’s will, and, by the title of the “self-existent,” of the closeness of relation subsisting between the Son and the Father. And if Eunomius should bring forward Isaiah also as calling him “the ‘angel’ of mighty counsel,” not even so will he overthrow our argument. For there, in clear and incontrovertible terms, there is indicated by the prophecy the dispensation of his humanity; for “unto us,” he says, “a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name is called the angel of mighty counsel.” … For as the “angel” (or “messenger”) gives information from someone, even so the Word reveals the thought within, the seal shows by its own stamp the original mold, and the image by itself interprets the beauty of that whereof it is the image, so that in their signification all these terms are equivalent to one another. For this reason the title angel is placed before that of the “self-existent,” the son being termed “angel” as the exponent of his Father’s will, and the “existent” as having no name that could possibly give a knowledge of his essence, but transcending all the power of names to express.
