Against Eunomius 2 part 3/4

But surely it was fitting for one who has come to know piety, having declined whatever is unseemly in the meaning of these words — if indeed any such thing was even present in them — not to set aside the whole utterance all at once, nor, on the pretext of the unseemly, to cast out together with it whatever in it is useful;

but rather, in the doctrines concerning God, to keep pure from the lowly and fleshly conceptions, while conceiving a begetting befitting the holiness and impassibility of God;

leaving aside the manner in which God begot as ineffable and inconceivable, but being guided by the appellation of 'begetting' toward the likeness according to essence.

And yet it is plain to one who considers, that these names — I mean 'the father' and 'the son' — are not by nature apt to produce, properly and primarily, the notion of bodily passions;

but rather, taken in themselves, they indicate only the relation toward one another.

For a father is one who has furnished to another the beginning of being according to a nature like his own;

and a son is one who has obtained the beginning of being from another by begetting.

When, then, we hear that 'a man is a father,' then indeed we take in addition the notion of passion;

but when we hear that 'God is Father,' we run back in our reasonings to the impassible cause.

But he, having become accustomed to this appellation in the case of the passible nature, denies as impossible that which is above the comprehension of his own reasonings.

For it was not fitting, attending to the passion of corruptible things, to disbelieve the impassibility of God, nor, comparing the fluid nature, subject to countless changes, with the immutable and unalterable essence.

Nor, because mortal animals beget through passion, ought one to think of God in this way also;

but rather to be guided from this very thing toward the truth;

that, since the corruptible beget thus, the incorruptible begets in the opposite manner.

And indeed neither could he say this, that these names being properly and primarily assigned to men, we apply them to God by misuse.

For our Lord Jesus Christ, leading us up to the source of all and to the true cause of all that exists, says, 'And call no one your father upon the earth;'

'for one is your Father, the heavenly One.'

How, then, does he deem us worthy to send away these utterances as primarily indicative of fleshly passions — utterances which the Lord, as befitting the impassibility of God, transfers from men to Himself? But even if He is named Father of the creatures too, this does not yet conflict with our argument.

For He who 'begot the drops of dew,' according to the word of Job, did not beget the drops and the Son in like manner.

Or if they will dare to say this, so as to name the essence of the dew 'son' in equal rank, they will rid us of all further argument with them, having advanced their blasphemy into the most conspicuous shamelessness.

For neither, when God is called Father of us all, is He Father of us and of the Only-begotten in the same manner.

But if, because the Lord is called 'firstborn of all creation' and 'firstborn among many brethren,' this trains them toward impiety;

let them be taught from the Gospel that the Lord calls also His own mother and brothers those who are made His kin through the works of virtue.

For 'who,' He says, 'is My mother, and who are My brothers, but those who do the will of My Father who is in heaven?' So that God is named our Father not by misuse nor metaphorically, but properly, and primarily, and truly;

having brought us, through bodily parents, into being from non-being, and making us His own by His provident care.

But if we say that God is truly called Father of us who have been deemed worthy of adoption by grace, what argument shall take away from the Son who is by nature, and who came forth from His essence, that He should not fittingly call Him Father? [EUN.] It is not right, he says, on account of the appellation of Father and Son, to conceive the begetting of the Lord as human.

But what hinders the pious from believing it divine and impassible? But, I think, he uses these words not in order to show that God begot impassibly, but in order to show that He did not beget at all.

How then, O most excellent one, in the foregoing arguments did you declare the essence of the Only-begotten to be an offspring? For if He has not been begotten, whence, according to your argument, did His being an offspring belong to Him? But on account of the opposition of the begotten to the unbegotten, he was contending to show the essence to be an offspring;

but now, seeing again the kinship of essence signified through this word, he takes away from the offspring its having been begotten.

And indeed, if he declines this as indicative of passion, what hinders him from also not accepting His being creator, for the very same reasons? Because to all bodily activities there is joined of necessity either more or less labor, according to the proportion of the maker's power and of the difference in the magnitudes of the things produced.

But to say that the divine and blessed nature is held fast by toil is no less impious than to subject it to the most shameful passions.

But if He creates impassibly, accept also that the begetting is impassible.

That God is properly and fittingly called Father, and that it is a name not of passion but of relationship — either that according to grace, as in the case of men, or that according to nature, as in the case of the Only-begotten — has been said sufficiently;

but let us grant that it is figurative, and is said by metaphor, like countless others, this utterance also.

Just as, then, hearing that God is angry, and sleeps, and flies, and presents other such things which to the superficial mind afford unseemly impressions, we neither blot out the utterances of the Spirit, nor hear the things said in a bodily way;

why, after all, do we not also, since this utterance too was so continually employed by the Spirit, search out its God-befitting meanings? Or shall we erase this one alone from the Scripture, slandering it on the basis of human usage? But let us consider it thus.

Since two things are signified by the appellation of 'begetting,' according to usage here — the passion of the one begetting, and the kinship toward the one begotten — when it is said by the Father to the Only-begotten, 'From the womb before the morning star I have begotten You,'

and, 'You are My Son; this day have I begotten You';

which of these two shall we say is presented through the word — the passible character of those who beget, or the proper kinship of nature? For my part, I say it is this latter;

and I think that not even these men, unless they have been carried off into manifest madness, will ever oppose it.

So that, if the utterance is proper to God, why do you dishonor it as alien? But if it has been transferred from human things, then, having selected what is sound in it, flee the worse of the things signified.

For it is surely possible, in a word of many meanings, having been guided through the word to the right notion, to pass over the lowly and shameful element of the impression.

But what is the begetting? And of what kind? And how could it have come to be? For not because the manner is wholly ineffable and inconceivable shall we therefore also cast out the firmness of faith in Father and Son.

For if we are going to measure all things by comprehension, and to suppose that what is incomprehensible to our reasonings does not exist at all, then the reward of faith will be gone, and the reward of hope will be gone.

And how could we still be worthy of the blessings

laid up for the faith in things unseen, we who are persuaded only by what is evident to reasoning? 'Wherefore were the nations made vain, and their senseless heart was darkened?'

Was it not such as these? Passing over, therefore, many things that lie between — all that he contended out in the open concerning the Son's not having been begotten, and all the contrivances by which he framed it that the creature and thing made should be accepted as the Only-begotten — I will turn to the most crucial points of his impiety, noting only this much about what is omitted: that the blasphemy which, having anticipated, he established by his procedure, this he wished to overshadow by his wording and to soften the shamelessness of his argument, saying that he makes the Only-begotten common with the creation, having himself forgotten his own doctrines, which in the arguments that follow he set forth in naked and unveiled speech.

By which he fell again into shameless and most conspicuous self-contradiction.

[EUN.] Let no one, hearing the Son called a 'thing made,' be vexed, as though the essence were made common by the community of names.

[BAS.] How then, O most wise one, if the difference of essence follows of necessity upon the difference of names (for we remember, surely, that you discoursed on these things in the foregoing arguments), will not now the commonness of essence follow upon the community of names? For it appears that he uttered this argument not once, nor in passing.

Since even now, straightway, as though repenting of what he had said — that the community of names will not make common the essences as well — he again adds, a little after, attacking those who set themselves against him:

[EUN.] That they ought, if indeed they had any concern for the truth,

the names being different, to confess the essences also to be different.

[BAS.] How could anyone handle arguments more carelessly? — he who, within a short space turning about to the contrary, now says that the difference of names of necessity intimates the variance of essences;

but now again that the community of names does not make common the essences? But, I think, we are doing something similar to those who judge a murderer on a charge of abuse, or a blow, or some such offenses.

Let us pass on, then, to the chief of his evils.

This man, having observed that the preconception is common alike to all Christians (those, at least, who are truly worthy of this appellation) concerning the Son's being begotten light, having shone forth from the unbegotten Light, and self-life, and self-good, having come forth from the life-giving fountain of the paternal goodness;

then, reflecting that, unless he shook loose these our conceptions, none of his sophisms would profit him — since one who confesses the Father to be light, and the Son also light, the notion of light being one and the same, would be automatically led to the confession of kinship according to essence;

for between light and light, according to the very definition of light, there is no variance, neither in the utterance nor in the very notion;

in order, therefore, to take this away from us, he hedges round the doctrine of faith with the nets of his contrivances, teaching that these are utterly incomparable and incommunicable with one another, and saying that the opposition of the unbegotten to the begotten belongs also to light in relation to light, or, if we flee from this, compelling us to confess God to be composite.

But rather let us hear his very wording.

[EUN.] Does 'light,' he says, signify something else in the case of the unbegotten than in the case of the begotten, or is each the same? For if something different and different, it is evident that what is composed of different and different is also composite;

but the composite is not unbegotten;

but if it is the same, then by as much as the begotten differs from the unbegotten, by so much must light differ from light, and life from life, and power from power.

[BAS.] See and understand the dreadfulness of the impiety.

By as much, he says, as the unbegotten differs from the begotten, by so much will light differ from light, and life from life, and power from power.

But by what measure is the unbegotten marked off from the begotten? Is it by some small one, and so much that they could ever come together into identity with one another? Or is this wholly impracticable, and more impossible than for the same person to live and to be dead in the same respect, and to be healthy and sick at once, and to be awake and asleep together? For such are all the things which are set opposite one another according to extreme opposition, so that, when the one is present, the other must necessarily be absent — things which are by nature wholly incapable of coexisting and incompatible.

According, then, to this manner — the opposition of the unbegotten to the begotten being such — he who names the Father light, and the Son also light, yet says that this light is marked off from that light by as much as the begotten is marked off from the unbegotten, is he not plainly, even though in word he pretends to play the philanthropist, naming the Son too 'light' forsooth, yet by the very force of what is said leading the notion off toward the contrary? For consider: what is opposed to the unbegotten — another unbegotten, or the begotten? The begotten, clearly.

And what is opposed to light? Another light, or darkness? Darkness, certainly.

If, therefore, by as much as the begotten differs from the unbegotten, by so much must light differ from light, to whom of all is the impiety unclear — that, under the appellation of light, introducing what is opposed to light, he insinuates that the essence of the Only-begotten is contrary to the nature of light? Or let him show us a light opposed to light, and one having that measure of opposition which the begotten has to the unbegotten.

But if this neither exists, nor could he himself devise it, let not the craft be unrecognized with which, in his depths,

he constructs the blasphemy.

For since he thinks that the begotten is opposed to the unbegotten by way of contrariety, he applies the same opposition to light in relation to light, in order that through all things he may exhibit the essence of the Father as an adversary and enemy to that of the Only-begotten.

On account of these things is this novel legislation of doctrines:

'By as much as the begotten differs from the unbegotten, by so much must light differ from light.'

And yet between the unbegotten and the begotten there is some opposition, according to the positing of the words, even if not according to the nature of the things — which these men construct;

but between light and light it is impossible to conceive any contrariety, neither according to the utterance nor according to the notion.

But indeed he seems to deceive himself with deceptive sophisms.

For he thinks that the things following upon contraries have the same mutual conflict as the things which precede them;

and that, when the contrary belongs to one of the contraries, the contrary will also altogether attend the other.

For instance, if light follows upon sight, darkness follows upon blindness;

if perceiving follows upon living, then the lack of perception follows upon being dead.

But that this observation is weak and falls through is known to everyone who has paid even a little attention.

For it is not the case that, since living follows upon being awake, death altogether follows upon sleeping.

But neither is the begotten in a relation of contrariety to the unbegotten.

For if they were contrary and mutually destructive — which let it be turned upon the head of the blasphemers — yet they are neither hostile in nature, nor will the things following upon these necessarily have the same separation which the antecedents were shown to have.

Either, therefore, erase your words, or do not deny the impiety.

For yours is the blasphemy, of him who said:

'By as much as the unbegotten differs from the begotten, by so much must light differ from light.'

Therefore, just as the begotten will never partake of unbegottenness, so you will never impart light to Him.

And the essence of the Only-begotten will be, according to you, equally distant from being unbegotten and from being conceived and named light.

But John, with the great voice of the Spirit, cries out to you, saying;

but you have no ears to hear, nor heart to understand;

rather, by your sophisms you drive the essence of the Only-begotten toward the adversary nature, incapable of coexisting with light.

For surely you will not say this as a strong point — that in the case of the Only-begotten too you did not take away the appellation of light.

For piety lies not in the noise of air, but in the force of what is signified.

But he did not stop at these, but joins on also life and power to the same measure of removal toward the contrary, saying:

'By as much as the begotten differs from the unbegotten, by so much must light differ from light, and life from life, and power from power.'

Therefore neither life, according to you, nor power is the Only-begotten.

But you cancel the Lord Himself, who says;

and you cancel Paul, who said;

For the things that were shown in what went before, these he will fit also to the present points.

For no one would say that life is opposed to life, nor power to power;

but rather that death and powerlessness fulfill the most complete opposition.

These things this man, having hidden the guile of his words in cunning, deeply and in veiled fashion constructs the dreadfulness of his impiety, and by the contrivances of his words, having set off the nature of the Only-begotten as contrary to the Father, leaves remaining only the fair-sounding of the names.

What, then, do we say? How, while confessing the Father unbegotten and the Son begotten, may we escape the opposition in being itself? By saying what? That of a good Father the Son is good;

and of the unbegotten Light the everlasting Light shone forth, and from the truly existing Life the life-giving fountain came forth, and from Self-power the power of God was manifested;

but darkness, and death, and weakness are ranged with the ruler of this world, and with the world-rulers of the darkness, and with the spiritual hosts of wickedness, and with all the power hostile to the divine

nature — these too not having obtained their opposition to the good according to the very essence (for thus the blame would fall back upon the Creator), but having, out of their own choice, in the privation of the good, slid away into wickedness.

But nevertheless into this rank the God-fighting tongue attempted to drag round the nature of the Only-begotten.

For surely he cannot say this — that, while positing the essence of the Father to be light surpassing in glory and splendor, he supposed the essence of the Only-begotten to be light also, but somehow dimmer and as it were clouded.

For not even these things are of a pious mind, to take away the likeness of the image in its dimness.

Nevertheless, it would have been a thing to be prayed for, to have these to charge him with.

For we would not need much of a struggle for the correction.

But as it is, the difference of the unbegotten in relation to the begotten is not according to more and less, as of a lesser light to a greater, but as great as the separation of things wholly incapable of coexisting with one another.

For it is impracticable that that with which the one coexists should ever, by change, pass over into the opposite — so that either the begotten should come to be from unbegotten, or, conversely, the unbegotten should change from the begotten.

To him, then, who has once declared that by as much as the begotten differs from the unbegotten, by so much must light differ from light, not even this argument is left for an escape.

For pure light differs from light that is as it were faded and dimmer only by intensity, being identical in kind;

but the unbegotten is not an intensification of the begotten;

nor again is the begotten a diminution of the unbegotten;

but as it were diametrically is their separation.

To those, then, who posit the begotten and the unbegotten as essence, these and yet more absurdities than these will follow.

For the contrary will have been begotten from the contrary;

and instead of the natural kinship, some necessary discord even according to the very essence will appear in them.

But this has in it more ignorance than impiety — to say that the essence of any whatsoever of all things is contrary to essence, when it has long been agreed even among the outside sages (whom these men, when they do not find them fighting alongside their blasphemies, dismiss as worthless), that it is impracticable for contrariety to exist in essence.

But if — which is the truth — one accepts the begotten and the unbegotten to be certain distinguishing properties contemplated in connection with the essence, guiding us toward a clear and unconfused notion of Father and Son, he will both escape the danger of impiety and preserve consistency in his reasonings.

For the properties, like certain characters and forms contemplated in connection with the essence, divide indeed the common by the individuating characters,

but do not cut through the common nature of the essence.

For instance, the Godhead is common, but certain properties — fatherhood and sonship — are individual;

and from the combination of each — both the common and the individual — the apprehension of the truth comes to us;

so that, hearing 'unbegotten light,' we conceive the Father, and 'begotten light,' we take the notion of the Son;

insofar as they are light and light, no contrariety existing in them; but insofar as they are begotten and unbegotten, the opposition being contemplated.

For this is the nature of the properties — to show otherness in the identity of essence;

and the properties themselves, though often set in mutual division against one another, and standing apart toward the contrary, yet do not tear asunder the unity of the essence;

as the winged and the footed, and the aquatic and the land-dwelling, and the rational and the irrational.

For, one essence underlying them all, these properties do not alienate the essence, nor persuade it, as it were, to be at faction with itself;

but by the operation of the distinguishing marks, putting into our souls as it were a kind of light, they guide us toward the understanding attainable by our minds.

But this man, having transferred the opposition of the properties over to the essence, draws from this the occasion of his impiety, scaring us like children with his sophisms;

saying that, if indeed the light were something other than

the unbegotten, God will of necessity be demonstrated to us as composite.

But what do I say? That, if the light were not something other than the unbegotten, it would no longer be possible for it to be predicated of the Son, just as neither could the unbegotten itself.

And one might learn from this too the difference of the things signified by the words.

God is said to dwell in light, and to clothe Himself with light — surely not that He dwells in His own unbegottenness, nor has it lying about Himself from without, as the saying goes (or these things are ridiculous);

but the begotten and the unbegotten are certain distinguishing properties.

For if there were nothing characterizing the essence, in no way could it reach through to our understanding.

For, the Godhead being one, it is impracticable to take an individual notion of Father or of Son, unless the understanding be articulated by the addition of the properties.

But indeed, as to God's being shown to be composite if light be not taken as identical with the unbegotten, we have this to say: that if we were taking the unbegotten as a part of the essence, his argument would have place, saying that what is composed of different things is composite;

but if we posit light, or life, or the good, as the essence of God — being wholly, whatever it is, life, and wholly light, and wholly good — while life has the unbegotten as accompanying it;

how is He not uncomposite who is simple according to essence? For surely the modes indicative of His property will not damage the principle of simplicity;

or in that way everything that is said about God would show God to us as composite.

And, it seems, if we are going to preserve the notion of the simple and indivisible, we must either say nothing about God except 'the unbegotten,' and refuse to name Him invisible, incorruptible, unalterable, creator, judge, and all the things which we now take up for the giving of glory;

or, accepting these names, what shall we do? Shall we refer and assign them all to the essence? Then we shall demonstrate Him to be not only composite, but even composed of unlike parts, because something different and different is signified by each of these names;

or shall we take them as outside the essence? Whatever account, then, they may devise for each of those, let them point out this same also for the appellation of the unbegotten.

Having filled his discourse with empty nonsense, and having exalted himself over all who have ever busied themselves about the knowledge of God, as though he himself had cut some new and fresh road leading to God, which none of those before him discovered, at last he brings in, as though instructed by the very essence of God, his blasphemy against the Son.

[EUN.] That the essence which is above kingship and altogether incapable of generation, instructing thereby the mind that approaches it with goodwill, enjoins that the comparison with another be pushed away as far as possible, by the law of nature.

[BAS.] Does he not plainly indicate that he himself was deemed worthy of the revelation of the unspeakable things, having brought his mind to God with goodwill? And on this account he pushes the Only-begotten away as far as possible from communion with the Father, not deeming Him worthy to be admitted even to comparison;

but says that even by the law of nature the essence of the Only-begotten is marked off from that of the Father.

Saying what by this? That the God of all could not, even if willing, admit the Only-begotten to kinship of essence, being shut out by the law of nature from union with Him, not being, as it seems, lord of Himself, but subjected to the bounds of necessity.

For such are the things gripped by the law of nature, brought without choice under what seems good to nature.

For just as to fire it belongs by nature, not by choice, to heat, and it is of necessity incapable of receiving cold, being deprived by the law of nature of fellowship with it;

so he wishes God the Father also, by the law of nature, to have His essence estranged in relation to the Son.

And yet the laws of nature make not a separation of Son from Father from one another, but a necessary and unbreakable communion.

For if he were saying by will that

the God of all had constructed Himself to be incommunicable toward Himself, not even thus indeed would the principle of the goodness of God allow it to be persuasive that the Father is incommunicable, of the things belonging to Him, toward the one from Him;

yet what was said would nonetheless have had consistency.

But to say that the estrangement exists by the law of nature belongs to one who has not even examined the nature in perceptible things;

according to which it is the nature of each not to beget what is alien, nor what is contrary, but rather what is proper and akin.

Again, then, here too he did not perceive the contrariety of his statements with themselves.

For in the foregoing, being indignant at those who say the Only-begotten is like in essence to the Father, he wrote thus:

[EUN.] At the outset, those seem to me who have dared to compare the unmastered essence — superior to every cause, and free of all laws — with the begotten essence that is enslaved to paternal laws, either not to have considered at all the nature of the universe, or not to make their judgments concerning these things with a pure mind.

[BAS.] How then did the unmastered and free-of-all-laws essence now appear as having its incomparability not voluntarily, but as preoccupied by the law of nature, and involuntarily driving away the begotten from communion with itself, so that on this account it is even unapproachable to the Only-begotten Himself? So great, then, is the discordance in the things said by him;