Against Eunomius 1 part 12/56

For indeed this is much asked by his disciples: How is he who is begotten? And the cause of this, I think, is their unwillingness to depart, even in matters of divine conception, from the human usage of the names.

Let us go forward, then, stating what we know concerning this.

The names signify one thing with us, O Eunomius, and yield another signification when applied to the transcendent Power.

For indeed in all other things as well, the divine nature is walled off from the human by a great interval, and experience shows nothing here of the kind that is there conjectured only by certain guesses and surmises.

In the same manner also with the things signified by the names: even if there be a certain homonymy between human things and the eternal, yet according to the measure of the distance between the natures, the things signified through the names are also kept apart.

For example, in the parable the Lord names God a 'householder,' a man;

yet this name is much used also in ordinary life.

Is, then, the account of the man among us the same as that of that Man, and is our house such as that great House of which the Apostle speaks, in which are the vessels of gold and of silver and all that is reckoned of the remaining material? Or are those things other—things that one could not even easily recognize, being contemplated in incorruption and blessedness—while ours are other, being of earth and dissolving back into earth? And likewise in almost all other things too there is a certain homonymy of our affairs with the divine, which, in the identity of the names, displays the great difference of the things signified.

Wherefore also the names of the members and of the organs of sense may be found ordered in like manner, both, as with us, so too with respect to the divine life—which all men confess to be above sense-perception.

Fingers and arm and hand, eye and eyelids and hearing and heart and feet and sandals and horses and horsemanship and chariots and ten thousand such things drawn from human life have been transferred by Scripture, by way of riddle, to the making-plain of divine things.

Just, then, as each of these names is both spoken in a human way and yet is not signified in a human way, so too the name 'Father,' even if it be spoken alike of both our nature and the divine, yet according to the measure of the difference of the things underlying the names, the things signified through the words also have their variation.

For we conceive of begetting in the case of human beings in one way, and we surmise concerning the divine begetting in another way.

Man is born in time, and some place assuredly receives him into life, without which his nature cannot be constituted.

For this reason, then, the divisions of time are necessarily found to pertain to the life of man—I mean that which is before him, that which is with him, and that which is after this.

For it is true to say of any one of the things that have come to be, that once, not being, it now is, and moreover that once again it will cease to be;

but in the case of the pre-eternal begetting, these temporal notions, having nothing akin to that nature, do not enter in for those who reason soberly.

For the 'once' and the 'later' and the 'earlier,' and whatever else denotes this temporal extension, he who reasons about the divine life, having passed beyond, will contemplate lofty things loftily, and will not suppose that the masterless nature is enslaved to these things, such as he beholds concerning human begetting.

Here, passion precedes the constitution of the human being, and certain bodily beginnings are laid down for the fashioning of the living creature, and, according to the divine will, there is subject to it the nature that works such wonders—gathering from every side that which is proper and suited to the perfecting of the thing coming to be: as much as is sufficient from each of the elements of the world, and the due measure of time's cooperation, and, from those who fashion it, such nourishment for the thing being born as becomes proper to what is being formed; and, to speak briefly, nature passing through all those means by which human life has its constitution, thus brings that which is not into birth. And for this reason we say that what was not comes to be, because that which at one time is not, at another time begins to be.

He will fall in with our meaning—the one who does not tread upon the divine mysteries with fleshly conceptions, but seeks some understanding befitting the majesty of what is signified;

for he will neither conceive of passion in connection with the impassible One, nor will he reckon that the Fashioner of every nature stands in need of any natural cooperation, nor will he admit of temporal extension in the case of the eternal life; but, having discerned the divine begetting to be pure of all these things, he will grant only this: that through the signification of 'Father' the Only-begotten is shown not to be without beginning—so as to have from thence the cause of his being, yet not to be reckoned as having a beginning of his subsistence, because it is impossible to conceive any sign of the thing sought.

For since the 'older' and the 'younger' and all such notions are found within temporal intervals, if in your reasoning you subtract time, all such marks are subtracted along with it and are drawn away together with time.

Since, therefore, He who is before the ages, being with the Father according to the unutterable manner of reasoning, does not admit of the 'once,' He is begotten indeed, yet in no way does He begin to be;

for He has His life neither in time nor in place.

And when both place and time and every such notion have been removed in the case of the subsistence of the Only-begotten, that which is conceived as prior to Him is the Father alone.

But being in this, the Only-begotten also—as that very one himself says—has a nature that cannot admit the surmise of ever not being.

For if at some time the Father also was not, then of necessity, by the non-existence of the Father, the eternity of the Son also would be cut off along with it, upward;

but if the Father always is, how is the Son at any time not—He who cannot be conceived by Himself apart from the Father, but is, according to what is left unspoken, ever named together with the Father? For the calling of 'Father' has within itself, equally, the designation of the two persons, since the notion of the Son enters in of itself along with this word.

When was the Son not? In what was His non-being apprehended? In place? There was no place;

In time? The Lord is before the ages.

If, then, He was before these, when was He not? And if He was in the Father, in what was He not—say, you who behold things unseen!

What did your reasoning fashion in between? What novel thing—whether fact or notion—did you conceive concerning the Only-begotten, which, being stretched out alongside the Father, would demonstrate the Father's life to be more abundant than that of the Only-begotten? And why do I say this? For not even in the case of human beings can it properly be said that one who was not was begotten.

For Levi, many generations before his own begetting according to the flesh, was tithed by Melchizedek;

for thus says the Apostle: that Levi, who receives the tithes, was himself tithed, and he brought forward the proof of what was said—that he was in the loins of his father when Abraham met the priest of the Most High.

If, then, a man in a certain sense already existing is nevertheless begotten — since, according to the apostolic testimony, he pre-exists in the one who begot him through the community of substance — how do they dare to utter this saying with respect to the divine nature, namely that He who is in the Father was begotten as though He were not, when the Lord Himself declares:

'I am in the Father, and the Father in Me.' Clearly each is said to be in the other according to one and another distinct conception: the Son in the Father, as the beauty of an image resides in its archetypal form; and the Father in the Son, as the original beauty resides in its own image.

But whereas in images made by human hands the intervening time altogether separates the copied form from its original, here it is impossible to separate the one from the other — as the Apostle says — neither the express image of the substance from it, nor the radiance of the divine glory, nor the image of the goodness; rather, whoever conceives of any of these has, together with it, received into his understanding also that which is conceived along with it.

For 'being,' he says, 'the radiance of the glory' — being, not having come to be — thereby plainly repelling the impiety on either side of these suppositions: neither imagining the Only-begotten to be unbegotten, by saying 'the radiance of the glory' —

for the radiance proceeds from the glory, and not, conversely, the glory from it —

nor supposing that He ever began to be;

it interprets Him as transcending every temporal signification.

So then, what fitting occasion have our adversaries to bring forward this petty question to the ruin of piety — the question which they thrust upon us as an unanswerable weapon for the establishment of their own <doctrine>, inquiring whether He who is is begotten? To them one may confidently reply that He who is in the Unbegotten was begotten from Him, having the cause of His being from thence (for He says, 'I live because of the Father'), yet it cannot be said that His beginning was ever.

For since there is no intervening command, or thought, or temporal interval by which the being of the Son is distinguished and separated from the Father, no mark whatever can be conceived from which the Only-begotten, being severed from the life of the Father, should appear as arising from some beginning peculiar to Himself.

If, then, there is no other beginning that presides over the Son's life, but the reverent doctrine contemplates the Father alone as prior — without any interval — to the subsistence of the Son, while the Father is without beginning and unbegotten, as even the adversaries' own testimony concedes, how can He who is contemplated within the One without beginning receive a beginning of His being?… And in what way is the doctrine of piety harmed by our assenting to the utterances of our opponents, which they put forward as absurd, saying, 'Was He who is begotten?' For neither do we assert that, according to Nicodemus's coarse perplexity toward the Lord — in which he supposed it impossible for one already in being to come into a second birth — in that manner does He who is receive begetting; rather, we assert that, having His being dependent upon Him who eternally and without beginning is, ascending together with whoever busily searches into things more ancient, and outrunning the mind's meddlesome inquiry into what lies beyond, and being blended with all conceptions concerning the Father, He neither begins to be nor is unbegotten, but both was begotten and was — by the principle of causation confessing His begetting from the Father, yet by the eternity of His life not admitting that He ever was not.

But he who prides himself on his excessive subtleties resists what has been said, and sunders the substance of the Only-begotten from the nature of the Father, on the ground that the one has been begotten while the other is unbegotten.

And though there are so many names reverently contemplated in the divine nature, in which no divergence of the Father from the Son is discerned, but all apply equally to both, he makes mention of none of the others by which their commonality is made known, but clings solely to the name of unbegottenness;

and not even of this does he accept the customary and established sense, but he innovates upon the notion of the Unbegotten, setting aside the common suppositions concerning this word.

What, then, is the cause of these things? For it is not without some great reason that he departs in his discourse from the customary sense of the names, and startles us by the alteration of the words' signification.

He knows well that if the usage of the names were kept according to custom, he would find no force at all for the overthrow of the sound doctrine; but that if the words were shifted away from the common and established meanings, then by the malicious perversion of the term he might easily be able to conspire in the corruption of the doctrines.

For example (let us examine the very words that are being wronged): if, according to the common understanding of the doctrines, he had accepted that God is called unbegotten because He has not been begotten, the whole contrivance of the heresy would have collapsed for them, once the sophism concerning unbegottenness had been withdrawn from under it.

For if he had been persuaded, by this line of reasoning, to conceive the God who is over all as unbegotten in the same way as nearly all the attributes that pertain to God — as invisible, impassible, incorporeal, and likewise unbegotten — assenting that by each of these names something not at all present to God is signified: no body, no passion, no colour, no deriving of being from a cause — if he had taken these things to be so, then the argument of unlikeness he uses would have had no force at all, since in all the rest that is contemplated concerning the God of all, the adversaries too concede the likeness of the Only-begotten to the Father.

Of the names applied to God — I mean those indicative of the transcendent Power — he sets forward the name of unbegottenness, and has made this the base of operations for his onslaught against our doctrine, transferring the opposition between 'begotten' and 'unbegotten' in mere utterance onto the persons to which the names have been applied;

and through these he sophistically contrives the diversity of the substances by the difference of the names — not on the ground that, because He has been begotten, He is called begotten, nor because, not having been begotten, He is called unbegotten; rather he says that the one is given substance out of <unbegottenness and the other out of> begetting — by what sort of wisdom, I do not know, being led by the hand to such an understanding.

For if one were to examine the significations of the names in and by themselves, removing from the discussion the persons to which the names seem to be assigned, he will find the vanity of the meaning of the things said by him.

For let no one, because the Father is conceived as prior to the Son according to the true account of the faith, on that account claim that the order of the names too must be arranged to accord with the dignity and order of the persons underlying them; but let him consider the names themselves in and by themselves — which of them is by the reasoning of conception placed prior to the other (I mean the name again, not the reality signified through the name), which of the terms mentioned indicates the positing of some concept, and which indicates the removal of what has been posited.

For example (I think, for the sake of clarity, that I ought to set forth the argument by means of like cases): education and lack of education, anger and freedom from anger, passion and freedom from passion, and whatever is of this kind — which of these has the property of being conceived prior to the others? Those which present the removal of what has been posited, or those which present the positing of the underlying thing? I, for my part, say this:

For education, and anger, and passion are conceived first, and then follows the removal of the things conceived.

So too with begetting and unbegottenness.

And let no one, out of a self-willed piety, slander the argument as though it set the Son before the Father who begot Him.

For we do not establish that the Son is set before the Father and conceived prior to Him, if the argument is treating of the signification of 'begotten' and 'unbegotten.'

Accordingly, begetting signifies the positing of some thing or concept, while unbegottenness signifies, as I said, the removal of what has been posited;

so that in every way the name of begetting is conceived prior to the name of unbegottenness.

Why, then, in these matters do they force upon the Father what is by order second among the names, and suppose that a notion which is removative of something is indicative and comprehensive of the substance of Him who is, and grow indignant and exasperated against those who expose the unsoundness of their arguments? … For behold how he bears a grudge against the one who has detected the unsoundness and weakness of his mischief, and how he takes vengeance on him by whatever means he can;

and he is able to do so only through abuse and insolence, and this stock of such power he possesses in exceeding abundance.

For just as, in the case of those who write elegantly, certain conjunctions fill up what is lacking in the rhythm, contributing of themselves euphony and harmony to the composition of the diction, so too, in most of what he says, he embroiders his treatise with abuse, as though preening himself on the abundance of his power to insult.

For again we are 'vain,' again 'straying from right reasonings,' and 'attempting arguments without preparation sufficient for the need,' and 'falling short of the speaker's meaning.'

For all these things, and yet more than these, our teacher is called by that well-composed mouth.

And perhaps the cause of his anger is not without reason, but the treatise-writer has been justly provoked.

…one honoured by disciples for his wisdom and shrewdness…

Somewhere in his own discourses Eunomius said that unbegottenness follows upon God.

Our teacher fastened upon the phrase, on the ground that what follows belongs to the things contemplated externally, whereas the substance is not indicative of anything external, but signifies the very being itself insofar as it is.

For this reason our 'gentle' and 'peaceable' one grows indignant and is copious and fluent in his reproaches, because, on hearing what was said, he perceived also its meaning.

What wrong, then, has he done, if he attentively followed out the meaning of what was written? For if he did not take hold of what was said according to reason, your words stand well, and we <shall not> be indignant;

but if you blush at the refutation, why do you not erase it from your writings, but instead revile the one who brings it forward? 'Yes,' he says, 'but he did not understand the intent of the statement.'

What wrong, then, do we commit, if, being men, we conjectured the meaning from what was said, having no apprehension whatever of the things hidden in the heart? For to God it belongs both to see the invisible and to scrutinize the marks of things comprehended in no way at all, and to recognize the dissimilarity of things unseen.

But we judge only by the things we hear.

It has been said, then, that unbegottenness accompanies God.

From this statement we supposed him to mean that unbegottenness is among the things externally attendant upon God.

Again it has been said — or rather, that unbegottenness is the very substance itself.

We were no longer able to grasp the consistency of this, perceiving much that is incongruous and monstrous in the things signified.

For if unbegottenness accompanies God, but unbegottenness is a substance, the argument altogether establishes the notion of two substances in one and the same subject;

so that, on the one hand, God is believed to be by the same principle by which He is believed sometime to be and to be <for ever>, but on the other hand He has, attendant upon Him, another substance, which they name unbegottenness, being something other than that of which it is the accompaniment, as the teacher says;

and if he bids us conceive these things thus, let him pardon us laymen, who are unable to keep pace with this subtlety of speculations.

But if he rejects this account and denies that he speaks of a double substance in God — the one recognized from the Godhead, the other from unbegottenness — let him take counsel with himself, being neither rash nor malicious, not to grant so much to abuse in contests on behalf of the truth, but to make clear to us the uninstructed how that which accompanies and that which precedes are not one thing and another, but both become one;

for even in those points where he now champions his own account, the absurdity remains just the same, and, as he himself says, the addition of those few well-counted words in no way corrects the discordance of what has been said.

For what teaching there is to be found in these matters, I have not yet been able to discern.

But let his very words, as written by him, be set down verbatim.

'Or rather, it is itself unbegotten — not contracting into being that which was shown to follow, but rather harmonizing the "follows" with the appellation and the "is" with the substance.'

When these are put together, the whole argument would become something like this: that the name 'unbegotten' follows, since He Himself is unbegotten.

What interpreter, then, shall we bring forward for what has been said? 'Not contracting into being,' he says, 'that which was shown to follow.'

But as for 'contracting,' some of the riddle-mongers might perhaps say that it is to be understood in the sense of 'joining it to Him'; but of the rest, how could anyone recognize the sense and consistency? 'What has appeared,' he says, 'from the consequence is properly related not to the substance but to the appellation.'

And the appellation, O most wise one — what is it? Is it out of tune with the substance, or does it run in concert with it according to its meaning? For if the name is unrelated to the substance, how is the substance characterized by the appellation of the Unbegotten? But if, as you yourself say, the substance is properly comprehended by unbegottenness, how is it here divided up? — the name of the substance following upon one thing, and again the substance itself following upon another.

'The name "unbegotten,"' he says, 'follows upon God, since He Himself is unbegotten.'

Does he say that this name follows upon God as being something other than the unbegotten? Then how does he define the Godhead as consisting in unbegottenness? Or does he say, on the contrary, that unbegottenness follows upon God who is unbegotten?

And who will solve for us the riddle of these enigmas — an unbegotten that precedes and an unbegotten that follows, and an appellation of the substance now fittingly applied, and again attendant as though foreign? And what is this great trepidation of his over the name of unbegottenness, so that to it he assigns the whole nature of the Godhead, and holds that, if He be so named, nothing is lacking to piety, but if not, the whole account of the faith is imperilled? And unless one should think it superfluous and tedious to treat briefly of these matters, we shall discuss the argument in this way.

The eternity of the divine life, as one might sketch it by circumscribing it within some definition, is of this sort:

it is ever apprehended as being, but it does not admit the account of ever having not been or of ever being about not to be.

But just as, in the case of the circular figure, those who measure plane figures say that the beginning of the figure is indeterminate — since, from the center, the line is coiled back upon itself at an equal distance, and is broken off neither at an agreed end nor at a manifest beginning, but, being united to itself on all sides from the center by equal distances, escapes the possibility of admitting any beginning or end — so also let no one calumniate our argument as though we were likening the indeterminate nature to a circumscribed figure.

For it is not by looking to the circumscription of the circle, but by regarding the likeness of the life that is on every side ungraspable, that we say the conception of the eternal is of this kind.

For from the present now, as from a center and a point, extending and carrying our understanding round on every side toward the infinity of the life, equally and alike, we are drawn round in a circle by its incomprehensibility, apprehending the divine life on every side as continuous with itself and without interval, and unable to recognize any limit at any part.

This we say concerning the eternity of God, which we have heard from the prophecy: that God is King before the ages, and reigns unto the age, and unto the age and beyond; and therefore we determine Him to be higher than every beginning and more abundant than every end.

Holding, therefore, this conception concerning the God of all as befitting Him, we declare what has been conceived by means of two appellations, presenting by 'unbegotten' and 'endless' the infinite and perpetual and eternal character of the life of God.

For if only one of these two should be taken up into this conception, while the remaining one is passed over in silence, the thing signified will altogether be lame in respect of what is lacking.

For it is not possible, by any one of these alone, to present soundly the signification contained in each.

For he who speaks of the 'endless' has shown only its estrangement from an end, but has said nothing whatever about the beginning;

and he who names the 'unoriginate' has shown that what is signified is that which is above any beginning, yet has left the account concerning the end in doubt.

Since, then, these names, as I have said, equally set forth the eternity of the divine life, it would be timely to examine closely how these men, dividing the meaning of 'eternal,' assert that the notion which excludes a beginning is essence [and is not contemplated with respect to the eternal], while the incapacity for an end they reckon among the things outside the essence. I do not know by what reasoning they thus apportion the matter, so as to lay down that having no beginning belongs to the essence, while having no end they make out to be as it were outside the essence.

For it were fitting, since the two are contemplated concerning the same thing, either to admit both into the account of the essence, or, if they judged the one to be rejectable, to cast out together with it the one that remains as well.

(being unable to fly aloft, like birds that have moulted their feathers), I for my part would counsel them to exchange their doctrines for the opposite, so as to reckon the 'endless' within the essence, and rather to overlook the 'unoriginate' in favour of the 'endless,' assigning the primacy to the future and to that which is a matter of hope rather than to the past and to what is stale.

For since (and I say these things because of those small in soul, willingly lowering my discourse to the notions of babes) — since, then, the past portion of life counts as nothing for the one who has lived it, and all the earnestness of the living is directed toward the future and the expected, the 'endless' would be more honourable than the 'unoriginate,' because it bears upon the future and expected immortality.

So that either let the notions concerning the divine nature be lofty and befitting God, or, if they judge such matters by human reasonings, let the future be more honourable to them than the past, and by this let them circumscribe the essence of God, since all the time that is past already vanishes with the passing, while what is expected has its subsistence through hope.

But these things I put forward as ridiculous and childish, as to children sitting in the marketplace and playing;

for it is not possible, when one considers the grovelling and earthbound character of the doctrines of this heresy, not to be carried down altogether into some boyish play.

But I say it is well to add this to the discourse: that since the signification of 'eternal' is filled out, according to the aforesaid account, by both — by the estrangement from beginning and from end — if they should circumscribe the essence of God in the one alone, the account of the essence will appear to them half-finished and cut in half, being understood in the 'unoriginate' alone, while not possessing the 'endless' in itself according to essence.

But if, combining both, they complete the account of the essence through each of them, let us again consider the absurdity that is brought to light along with this argument;

for it will be found that in their view he is estranged no longer only from the Only-begotten, but even from himself.

And the argument is clear and does not need much attention.

For the account of the beginning and that of the end each stand contrary to the other, and the signification in both is different, just as in the case of the other things that are set diametrically opposite one another, between which there is no mean.

For he who is asked the account of the beginning will not render the same as the definition concerning the end, but will advance the defined account of the beginning to the opposite of that.

Therefore the things opposed to each of these will also, by an equal measure of opposition, differ from one another; and 'unoriginate' will be confessed to be one thing — that which is opposed to what is signified by 'beginning' — and 'endless' another thing, which is destructive of the end.