Against Eunomius 1 part 3/4

The evangelist Luke, setting forth the genealogy according to the flesh of our God and Savior Jesus Christ, and reckoning back from the last to the first, began from Joseph;

and having said that he was of Heli, and Heli of Matthat, and so leading the account upward by analysis to Adam, then coming to those above, and having said that Seth was of Adam, and Adam of God, here he brought the ascent to an end;

not declaring the essences of those enumerated in the account of each one's birth, but setting forth the immediate origins from which each came to be.

Just as he, therefore, said that Adam was of God,

so let us ask ourselves: and God—of whom? Is it not ready at hand in everyone's mind, that He is of nothing? And to be 'of nothing' is evidently to be beginningless;

and the beginningless is the unbegotten.

As therefore in the case of men 'being from someone' was not their essence, so neither in the case of the God of all is it possible to call the unbegotten an essence;

which is equivalent to 'being from nothing.'

But he who says that the beginningless is an essence does something similar to one who, when asked what is the essence of Adam and what is his nature, should answer that he was formed not from the union of man and woman, but from the divine hand.

'But it is not the manner of his subsistence that I am inquiring after,' someone might say, 'but the very material substratum of the man';

which I am far from learning through such an answer.

And this is what happens to us also: from the word 'unbegotten' we are taught rather the 'how' of God than His nature itself.

And altogether, if anyone wishes to understand the truth of what is said by us, let him search himself;

whenever he wishes to think of any of the things concerning God, whether his mind passes to that which is signified by 'unbegotten.'

For I, for my part, see that, just as when, extending our thought to the ages to come, we call 'endless' the One whose life is bounded by no limit;

so also, ascending by our reasonings up beyond the ages, and as it were peering into the infinity of the life of God as into some boundless sea, being unable to lay hold of any beginning from which He came to be, but ever conceiving the life of God as outstripping and overflowing beyond what is conceived, we have called this beginninglessness of His life 'unbegotten.'

For this is the notion of the Unbegotten: not to have the beginning of His being from another source.

But he, since the unbegotten is contemplated only of the God of all, most maliciously of all seized upon it for blasphemy against the Only-Begotten.

For what does he say as he proceeds? {EUN.} 'Being unbegotten, according to the foregoing demonstration, He would never admit of begetting, so as to impart His own nature to that which is begotten, and He would escape all comparison

and communion with that which is begotten.'

{BAS.} O the shameless and wicked blasphemy!

O the hidden deceit and the cunning knavery!

How precisely he speaks out of the very stratagem of the devil!

For wishing to show the Only-Begotten Son and God to be unlike the God and Father, he keeps silent about the name of the Father and the Son, and discourses simply about unbegotten and begotten;

and concealing the names of the saving faith, he delivers nakedly the doctrines of blasphemy;

so that, the impiety having been stripped bare in the abstractions, then the transition having been made to the Persons, he himself might seem to have said nothing blasphemous, while by the sequence of the argument he keeps the blasphemy ready-made.

'Being unbegotten,' he says, 'He would escape all comparison and communion with that which is begotten.'

He did not say 'Father and Son';

but 'unbegotten and begotten.'

This, then, is one such piece of villainy of his; but observe what the other kind is.

'Being unbegotten,' he says, 'He would never admit of begetting';

and he adds, 'so as to impart His own nature to that which is begotten.'

The phrase 'He would never admit of begetting' signifies two things:

one, that begetting does not fit His own nature (for it is impossible for the unbegotten nature to come under begetting);

and another, that He does not consent to beget.

Now he used the expression according to the second meaning;

but he sweeps along the many by means of the former conception.

Since that this is what is being constructed, what follows clearly shows.

For having said that 'He would never admit of begetting,' he added:

'so as to impart His own nature to that which is begotten.'

For this follows upon the second conception:

that He does not consent to become a Father, lest He impart His own nature to that which is begotten.

What could be more grievous than this impiety? Who ever spoke such injustice against the Most High? For I, for my part, fear lest we too, in taking up the blasphemies of others through our mouth, may defile our own minds, and share in their condemnation.

But I am comforted by that which is in the Gospels: that even the Holy Spirit did not decline to deliver to those who came afterward, in writing, the blasphemy of the Jews against the Lord—pillorying their blasphemy for all time, yet not fastening any blasphemy upon the undefiled glory of the Only-Begotten.

If therefore He would never admit of begetting, so as to impart His own nature to that which is begotten, then God is not a Father, and He is not—

but it is better for us to leave the blasphemy unfinished.

For the one did not admit begetting;

and the other did not partake of the nature of the begetter.

Then he struggles on against himself, devising a novel consolation for the blasphemy;

not by saying anything tending to repentance, but by contending in his later words to conceal what came before.

For what did he venture to utter? {EUN.} 'And He would escape all comparison and communion with that which is begotten.'

{BAS.} But if there is no comparison of the Son to the Father, nor communion with the Begetter, then the apostles are false, and the Gospels are false;

and Truth itself, our Lord Jesus Christ.

But again, for my part, I shudder at the blasphemy;

for if He has no comparison to the Father, how did He say to Philip:

'Have I been so long time with you, and you have not known Me,

Philip? and, He that beholds Me beholds Him that sent Me'? For He who admits neither comparison nor has any communion with Him—how could the Son have shown Him in Himself? For the unknown is not comprehended through what is unlike and alien;

but it is by what is akin that the akin is naturally recognized.

Thus in the impression the character of the one who stamped it is discerned;

and through the image the knowledge of the archetype comes about, we evidently comparing the identity in each of the two.

So that through this single blasphemy all the utterances delivered by the Holy Spirit unto the glorification of the Only-Begotten are set at naught—the Gospel teaching that 'Him

the Father sealed, even God.'

'Who is the image of the invisible God.'

An image not lifeless, nor made by hand, nor the work of art and contrivance;

but a living image, or rather life itself in its very being, preserving the unvarying likeness not in similarity of shape, but in the very essence.

For I assert that 'to subsist in the form of God' has the same force as 'to subsist in the essence of God.'

For as 'to have taken the form of a servant' signifies that our Lord was born in the essence of humanity;

so too 'to subsist in the form of God' altogether presents the proper character of the divine essence.

'He that has seen Me,' He says, 'has seen the Father.'

But this man, alienating the Only-Begotten from the Father, and utterly severing Him from communion with Him, cuts off, so far as in him lies, the ascent of knowledge that comes about through Him.

'All things that the Father has are Mine,' the Lord says.

But Eunomius says there is no communion of the Father with Him who is from Him.

And, 'Just as the Father has life in Himself, so He gave to the Son also to have life in Himself.'

This we have been taught by the Lord Himself;

but what have we from Eunomius? That there is no comparison of the begotten to the begetter.

And in one word, through this single utterance he does away with the doctrine of the Image, and rejects that He is the radiance and the character of the hypostasis.

For it is not possible to conceive of an image of that which is incomparable, nor of a radiance of that which is incommunicable in nature.

But he persists again in the same kind of artifice, saying that there is no comparison of the unbegotten to the begotten;

not 'of the Father to Him who is from Him'—in order that whatever antithesis exists in these words, he might transfer this to the very essence of the Father and of the Son.

But lest, following all his blasphemies and undertaking to correct each of the things said, we extend our discourse to great length;

whatever has its impiety ready at hand and is manifest of itself to those who read, we shall pass over;

but those things which require some argument for their refutation, these we shall set forth.

For having in various ways constructed the incommunicability of the Father's essence in respect to the Son, and having shown the absurdity from every side, as he supposes, he adds:

{EUN.} 'For surely we would not say this, that the essence is common to both;

but in rank and in priorities of time, the one is first, the other second.

Since the cause of the superiority must be present in things that are superior;

but to the essence of God there is conjoined neither time, nor age, nor rank.

For rank is second to that which arranges it;

but none of the things of God is arranged by another.

And time is a certain motion of the stars;

but the stars came into being later not only than the unbegotten essence and all intelligible things, but even than the first bodies.'

And concerning ages, what need is there even to speak, when Scripture clearly proclaims that God exists before the ages? {BAS.} Having laid down for himself in his argument whatever he wished, and having drawn the consequences that follow from his premises, then thrusting himself into absurd conceptions, he supposes that from this he is demonstrating the necessary acceptance of his own doctrines.

For he says, 'We would not say this, that the essence is common to both;

but in rank and in priorities of time, the one is first, the other second.'

If, then, he said the commonness of the essence understanding it thus—as if to conceive of a certain distribution and partitioning out of a pre-existing matter into the things derived from it—neither would we ourselves accept this notion;

and those who say it, if indeed there are any such, we declare to be no less impious than those who assert unlikeness;

but if anyone should take the commonness of the essence in this way—that the principle of being is one and the same as contemplated in both, so that even if hypothetically the Father were conceived as light in the underlying subject, the essence of the Only-Begotten too would be confessed as light, and whatever principle of being one might assign in the case of the Father, this same one would fit the Son also;

if the commonness of the essence be taken in this way, we accept it;

and we will say that the doctrine is ours.

For according to this the Godhead also is one;

the unity being evidently conceived according to the principle of the essence, so that the difference exists in number and in the properties that characterize each;

but in the principle of the Godhead the unity is contemplated.

Since, then, it has been defined how one ought to understand the commonness of the essence, let us examine what follows, what connection it has with what precedes.

'But in rank,' he says, 'and in priorities of time, the one is first, the other second.'

What is the necessity that, in cases where the essence is common, these should also be subjected to rank, and be second in time? For it is not possible that the God of all should not be co-existent from eternity with His own image, timelessly beamed forth from Him, and should not have the conjunction beyond not only time, but beyond all ages as well.

For on this account He is called 'radiance,' that we may understand that which is conjoined; and 'character of the hypostasis,' that we may learn the consubstantiality.

But again, of rank, the one kind is natural, the other according to deliberate arrangement.

Natural, as that of created things ordered according to the creative principles, and as the position of numbers, and as the relation of causes to their effects, that being agreed beforehand which also is the maker of the nature itself;

but the artificial and technical kind, as that in constructed things, and in studies, and in offices of dignity, and in number, and in such things.

Concealing, then, the former of these, this man made mention of the second kind of rank, and says that one ought not to speak of rank in the case of God, since rank is second to that which arranges it.

But that there is a kind of rank not constituted by our positing it, but arising from the very natural sequence of things—as the light derived from fire stands to the fire—this he either did not perceive, or willingly concealed.

For in these we speak of the cause first, and second of that which is from it;

not separating these from one another by an interval, but conceiving the cause as prior in our reasoning concerning that which is caused.

How then is it reasonable to deny rank in cases where there is a first and a second, not according to our positing it, but from the sequence that inheres in them by nature? For what reason, then, does he reject the taking of rank in the case of God? He supposes that, if he could show that the 'prior' is in no other way conceived in the case of God, it would remain for him to demonstrate the superiority in the very essence.

But we, according to the relation of causes to that which is from them, say that the Father is ranked before the Son;

but according to the difference of nature, no longer—nor according to the superiority of time;

or else in that way we shall do away also with the very thing, that God is Father, since alienation according to essence does away with the natural conjunction.

Since, however, this man, wise in all things, has gone on to define for us the nature of time, let us here too observe the firmness and circumspection of his reasoning.

Time, then, he says, is a certain motion of the stars;

evidently of the sun and the moon and the rest, which have within themselves the power of moving.

What, then, will this expert in things on high declare the interval from the genesis of heaven and earth up to the making of the stars to be? For he who, by the power of the Spirit, wrote the account of the world's origin, clearly says that on the fourth day the great luminaries and the rest of the stars came into being.

Time, then, did not exist, as it seems, in the foregoing days;

for the stars were not yet moving.

For how could they, seeing that they had not even come into being in the first place?

And again, when Joshua the son of Nun made war against the Gibeonites, since the sun stood still, fettered by his command, and the moon stayed in its place, was there no time then? What, then, shall we call that interval of the day? What name will you devise? For if the nature of time had failed, evidently eternity came in its stead.

But to call a small part of a day 'eternity'—what extreme of folly does that leave behind? But it seems that out of great shrewdness he holds day and night to come about in the qualitative motion of the stars, and that these are parts of time;

whence he declared time to be a certain qualitative motion of the stars, not even understanding what he himself was saying.

For it would have been more fitting to say not 'qualitative,' but, if anything, 'quantitative.'

But who is so utterly childish in mind as to be ignorant that days and hours and months and years are measures of time, not parts? And time is the interval co-extensive with the constitution of the world;

by which every motion is measured—whether of stars, or of living creatures, or of any whatsoever of the things that move—in respect of which we say that one is faster or slower than another;

the faster being that which traverses a greater interval in less time, and the slower that which moves a lesser interval in more time.

But he, since the stars move in time, declares them to be the makers of time.

Then, according to the reasoning of this most wise man, since beetles too move in time, let us define time to be a certain qualitative motion of beetles;

for what he said differs in nothing from this, except in the dignity of the terms.

And these matters are of such a kind; but consider what follows.

{EUN.} 'But indeed,' he says, 'it is not even possible for anything to inhere in the essence of God—such as form, or bulk, or magnitude—because God is altogether free of composition.

But if any of these and such things neither exists nor could it ever be reverent to conceive as intertwined with the essence of God, what argument will yet permit likening the begotten to the unbegotten? Since likeness, or comparison, or communion according to essence leaves no superiority or difference at all, but plainly produces equality, and along with equality declares the one likened or compared to be unbegotten.'

{BAS.} 'But no one is so senseless and so daring toward impiety as to say that the Son is equal to the Father, the Lord Himself having expressly said:

The Father who sent Me is greater than I.'

'But that the God of all is unbegotten and incomparable—though there are more things omitted—I think that what has been said suffices for demonstration.'

{BAS.} Whenever he is about to lay hold of some wicked argument, he first takes up certain things conceded by all, so that, through his fairness in these, he may not be disbelieved concerning the rest either.

Nothing, he says, can inhere in the essence of God—neither form, nor bulk, nor magnitude—because God is altogether free of composition.

Up to this point he is fair-minded;

but in what follows he reverted to himself.

For observe how he attaches the blasphemy as following necessarily upon what was set forth before, saying: 'But if any of these and such things neither exists nor could it ever be reverent to conceive as intertwined with the essence, what argument will permit likening the begotten to the unbegotten?' What sequence do these things have with one another—that, if God is uncompounded, the Son is incapable of likeness to Him? For tell me:

will you not likewise say that the Son too has neither form, nor bulk, nor magnitude in Himself, and is altogether free of composition? For I think that not even in madness would you ever dare to call the Son anything other than incorporeal and formless and figureless, and all the things whatsoever you would say of the Father.

How then is it not pious to compare Him who has no form with Him who has no form? and Him who has no magnitude with Him who has not this? and the wholly uncompounded with the uncompounded? But he sets likeness in form, and equality in bulk;

and as for 'magnitude,' whatever he supposes it to be over and above bulk, he himself might more fittingly explain.

{EUN.} 'On this account,' he says, 'He is neither equal nor like, since He is both without quantity and without form.'

{BAS.} But I, on this very account, posit the likeness.

Since, just as the Father is free of all composition, so the Son too is altogether simple and uncompounded, and the likeness is contemplated not according to the identity of form, but according to the very essence.

For in the case of all things to which shape and figure attach, the likeness is according to the identity of form;

but the formless and figureless nature is left to have its likeness in the very essence;

and its equality not in the measuring out of bulk, but in the identity of power.

'Christ,' he says, 'is the power of God and the wisdom of God';

the power evidently residing in Him.

Whence, 'whatever He sees the Father doing, these the Son also does likewise.'

{EUN.} 'But likeness, or comparison, or communion according to essence,' he says, 'leaving no superiority or difference, plainly produces equality.'

{BAS.} How then does it leave no difference—not even that which inheres in causes in relation to that which is from them? Then he adds:

{EUN.} 'But who is so senseless, or so daring toward impiety, as to say that the Son is equal to the Father?' {BAS.} Let us say to him in reply the words of the prophet:

that, 'You had a harlot's countenance;

you were shameless toward all.'

For indeed those women fasten their own reproaches upon those who have lived honorably;

and this man calls those who desire to magnify the glory of the Only-Begotten 'senseless' and 'daring toward impiety,' being angry at the very same things at which the Jews too were then provoked, saying that 'He makes Himself equal to God.'

And yet (and let what is said seem strange to no one), those men somehow seemed rather to be looking at the logical consequence.

For they were indignant because He called God His own Father;

reasoning out for themselves what followed, that through this He makes Himself equal to God;

as it necessarily follows from having God as Father that one is equal to Him.

But he, while seemingly conceding the first point, balks at the second, and brings forward to us the saying of the Lord, who said:

'The Father, who sent Me, is greater than I';

yet he does not hear the Apostle saying that 'He counted it not robbery to be equal with God.'

And yet, if according to your argument unbegottenness were essence, and He wished to show the superiority according to essence, He would have said:

'The unbegotten is greater than I.'

But yours is the argument that the appellation 'Father' is significative of operation and not of essence.

Saying, then, that the Father is greater than the Son, you say that the operation is greater than the work.

But surely every operation corresponds in measure to the things produced by it;

and great is the operation of great works, but small of smaller ones.

To confess, then, according to this argument, that the Father is greater than the Son is nothing other than to set down the operation as incommensurate with the work, and vainly to assert that God was moved toward the magnitude of the operation, yet was unable by the operation to make the result equal to it.

So that one of the two will necessarily collapse:

either that 'Father' does not signify operation, but essence—and thus their sophistical argument from likeness will be cancelled, since they posit the Son as like the Father, that is, in operation;

for 'such as the Father willed,' he says, 'such did He make,' according to which they also name Him an image of the will;

or, maintaining this, that they ought not to say the Father is greater.

Since every operation, with nothing external opposing, is commensurate with its proper results.

Let these things, then, be said for the refutation of the inconsistency in their doctrines.

But this is unclear to whom of all men—that 'greater' is said either according to the principle of cause, or according to surplus of power, or according to superiority of dignity, or according to abundance of bulk? Now that 'greater' is not taken according to bulk, this man himself has previously stated, and the probability is so;

since 'greater' among magnitudes is as great as 'less,' and still more.

But things uncircumscribed in magnitude—or rather, altogether without magnitude and without quantity—who could measure against one another? And of things whose juxtaposition is impossible, in what manner could the surpassing among them be recognized? But to say that Christ falls short in power of the power of God belongs to mere infants who do not even attend to the voice of the Lord, who says:

'I and the Father are one';

and He uses 'one' in place of 'equal according to power,' as we shall show from the very words of the Gospel.

For having said concerning those who believed that 'No one shall snatch them out of My hand';

and that 'My Father, who gave them to Me, is greater than all';

and, 'No one is able to snatch them out of My Father's hand,' He added:

'I and the Father are one,' plainly

using 'one' in place of 'equal and identical according to power.'

But indeed, if the throne of God too, just as we have believed, is a name of dignity, what else does the seat set apart for the Son at the right hand of the Father signify, but the equality of honor in dignity? Moreover, the Lord also promises that He will come in the glory of the Father.

It remains, therefore, that 'greater' is here spoken of according to the principle of cause.

For since the beginning is to the Son from the Father, on this account the Father is greater, as cause and beginning.

Wherefore the Lord also said thus:

'My Father is greater than I'—as Father, evidently.

And what else does 'Father' signify but being the cause and beginning of Him who is begotten of Him? And altogether, essence is not said to be greater or less than essence, even according to your wisdom.

So that, both according to these men and according to the truth itself, in no manner would the argument before us concerning 'greater' indicate a superiority according to essence.

But indeed, neither would this very man say that God the Father is greater according to bulk;

he who declared that one ought not to suppose magnitude in regard to God.

There remains, then, the manner of 'greater' stated by us—the manner, I say, of the beginning and the cause.

Such, then, is his attempt at blasphemy concerning 'greater.'

But that is worthy of wonder, that being so quickly turned about into the most contrary arguments, as though smitten in the eyes of his soul with a certain blindness, he was unable to perceive the conflict in what was said;

so that he is manifested to be so great a stranger to the peace of God, which our Lord left to those who have believed in Him genuinely and without guile, when He said:

'Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you';

so that he is at war not only with others, but even with himself.

For having said that the God and Father is greater than the Only-Begotten Son, and having charged with madness those who say He is equal, as though he himself held irrefutable demonstrations of this, going on a little, observe what he writes.

{EUN.} 'But that the God of all is one, unbegotten and incomparable—though there are more things omitted—I think that what has been said suffices for demonstration.'

{BAS.} Let it then be asked: if God is incomparable, whence was His superiority apprehended? For 'greater' is contemplated from juxtaposition with those that are surpassed.

How then is the same One both greater and incomparable? But in order to show the essence of God as differing from that of the Only-Begotten, he took 'greater,' spoken comparatively, as referring to the difference of essence;

but in order again to drag the Only-Begotten down to equal honor with the creation, he lays down as law that the Father is incomparable;

devising a certain new and truly incomparable way of blasphemy;

under the pretense, indeed, of exalting and lifting up the God and Father, belittling the glory of the Only-Begotten Son and God;

while the Lord solemnly testifies and says:

'He that honors not the Son honors not the Father';

'He that rejects Me rejects not Me'—

But the enemy of the truth, who works to make them say and write such things, saw this: that if he should blind them to the understanding of the glory of the Only-Begotten, he would along with it take away also the knowledge of God and the Father Himself;

so that, even if they seem to assign certain pre-eminences to the God and Father, it is of no benefit to them, since they have been deprived of the knowledge of the way that leads to Him.

Since both the Jews think they glorify God, and one will hear even some of the Greeks wishing to say something great about God;

but nevertheless no one would say that they magnify God apart from faith in Christ, through whom is the bringing in of knowledge.