Against Eunomius 1 part 15/56

For if we have learned any name for the setting forth of the divine apprehension, all such names have a fellowship and analogy with those kinds of names which point out the individual property of some particular man.

For just as those who make known some man not previously known, by certain marks, say that he is (if such be the case) of noble birth and of good family, illustrious in wealth, distinguished in dignity, in the flower of his prime, and of such-and-such stature of body—and in saying such things they have made known not the nature of the one indicated, but certain marks of the things known about him (for neither noble birth, nor great wealth, nor eminence of rank, nor comeliness of prime is humanity itself, but each of these is contemplated as belonging around the particular man);

so also all the utterances devised by Holy Scripture for the glorifying of God signify something of the things that pertain to God, each affording its own particular emphasis—things through which we are taught either His power, or His incapacity of anything worse, or His being without cause, or His not coming to any circumscribing limit, or His having dominion over all things, or in general some one of the things that pertain to Him;

but the essence itself, as being neither containable by any understanding nor expressible by speech, it left unmeddled with, having by law ordained that it be honored in silence, in that it forbids the inquiry into things too deep, and in that it says that one ought not to utter a word before the face of God.

Whence we pass our life in ignorance of all things, we men being ignorant first of our own selves, and then also of all other things.

Is it not the same when we take pleasure, and when we hold within ourselves the motion of all the rest confused and mingled together—yet we recognize their several dominions only in turn, whenever some one of them prevails while the others are at rest? And what, in general, is this composition and disposition, and this manifoldly empty spaciousness within us, whereby to each is assigned its own proper region, hindered as by certain intervening partitions from mingling with its neighbor? And this very question—whether anger, or fear, or the rest of the things mentioned subsist according to essence, or are certain motions without subsistence—what reasoning has ever interpreted it? For if they subsist, there is not one soul, as has been said, but some assemblage of souls is comprehended within us, each of these being marked off into its own individual and circumscribed soul.

But if one must think that these are certain motions without subsistence, how does that which has no existence master and lord it over us, having enslaved us as by a tyranny, whensoever any one of these happens to gain the mastery? And if the soul is something intelligible, how is the manifold and composite contemplated in the intelligible, since such a concept is properly contemplated apart from these bodily qualities? And the soul's power of growth, and its appetitive and nutritive and altering powers, and the fact that all the parts of the body are nourished, yet sensation does not pervade all of them, but that certain things in us, equally with things inanimate, have no share of sensation—bones and cartilage and nails and hair, things nourished yet without sensation—who, tell me, has apprehended this half-completed operation of the soul in these? And why do I speak of the soul? Nay, not even of the flesh itself has that which has received the bodily qualities been hunted down, even to this day, by any clear apprehension.

For if one should by reasoning resolve the visible thing into the elements of which it is composed, and, having stripped it of its qualities, contend to contemplate the underlying subject by itself, I do not see what will be left for contemplation.

For when you take away from the body the color, the shape, the resistance, the weight, the magnitude, the position in place, the motion, the passive and active disposition, the relation to something—each of which is in itself no body, but all of them are contemplated around the body—what will then remain that receives the definition of body, we can neither perceive by ourselves nor have we learned it from Scripture.

And he who is ignorant of himself, how could he come to know any of the things above himself? And he who has been habituated to ignorance concerning himself—is he not plainly taught by this very thing to be astonished at none of the things hidden from without? For this reason too we know the elements of the world by sense only so far as to receive from each what is useful for our life, but the account of their essence we have neither learned, nor do we make our not knowing it a loss.

For what need have I to meddle with the nature of fire—how it is kindled by friction, how it blazes up, how, when it has seized upon adjacent material, it does not withdraw before it has devoured and consumed the underlying substance; how the spark lies hidden lurking within the stone; how iron, cold to the touch, gives birth to flame; how pieces of wood rubbed against one another send forth fire; how water reflecting the sun's rays produces a flame; and the cause of its upward motion, and its ever-moving power, and all such things—leaving all these aside, we have thought only of the usefulness that comes from it for our own life, knowing that he who without troublesome inquiry receives the benefit is in no way worse off than he who meddles with it.

And it seems to me that the son of thunder, John—who by the great voice of the doctrines that are his surpassed in sound the preachings that went before—having perceived this, said at the end of the Gospel narrative that there are many things that were done by the Lord, 'which,' he says, 'if they should be written every one, I suppose that not even the world itself could contain the books that should be written'—by no means saying this of the miracles connected with the healings;

for of these the history left none unmentioned, even if it did not make record of all the healed by name;

for when it says that the dead are raised, the blind receive sight, the deaf hear, the lame walk, and again that He healed every disease, it left none of the miracles unrecorded, having comprehended each particular one within these universal notions;

but rather, in the depth of his knowledge, the Evangelist perhaps means this: that the greatness of the Son of God must not be known only from the wonders wrought through the flesh;

for these are but small things when examined in comparison with the rest of His mighty work.

Having contemplated His nature by reasoning, come to know these as the true works of Him who sojourned among you through the flesh, 'which,' he says, 'if they should be written every one'—what and how and whence and how great—the multitude of them will exceed the capacity of the world's teaching concerning the world itself.

For since God made all things in wisdom, and the wisdom of God has no limit ('for of His understanding,' it says, 'there is no number'), the world, bounded by its own measures, will not contain within itself the account of that unbounded wisdom.

If, then, the whole world is too small to contain the teaching of the works of the Lord, how many worlds will contain the exposition concerning the God of all things? For perhaps not even the blasphemous tongue will deny that the Maker of all the things which were brought into being by His will alone is infinitely greater than they.

But nonetheless, setting out from such a nature, they open wide their own mouths against the ineffable Power, and by one single appellation they measure round the boundless Nature, girding fast the essence of God by the name of 'ingeneracy,' that thereby they may pave for themselves the way to their blasphemy against the Only-begotten.

But when the great Basil had corrected their deluded surmise, and had discussed at some length concerning names, showing that they exist not by nature but are laid upon things according to conception, they are so far from resolving toward the truth that, as though held fast by some birdlime, they cling to what they have once said and do not let go of the sophism, nor will they allow 'the ingenerate' to be spoken according to conception, but define it to be indicative of the nature.

Now to go through the whole argument, and to attempt to overturn, expression by expression, that long-winded and tedious nonsense which they have set forth, would require much leisure and much time and much idleness—even as I hear that Eunomius, sitting laboriously and in much quiet over more years than the Trojan War, in much sleep fashioned for himself this long dream, laboring anxiously not to interpret any of the things conceived, but to drag forced meanings against the words, and gathering together the more sonorous phrases from certain writings;

and just as the poor, for want of clothing, stitch together their tunics for themselves out of certain rags, sewing them on all over, so this man too, grazing about for one word here and another there, wove together for himself out of these the patchwork cloak of his discourse, not without toil gluing and fitting together the joining of the phrases—a discourse whose meanness and boyish ambition are as much to be cast off by a man who looks toward truth, as it would be for some hardy athlete past his prime to play the woman by fussy adornment; but it seems to me best, having run over the aim of the whole undertaking in a few words, to bid farewell to his long periods.

It has been said by us, then (for I make my own the word of my teacher), that of the divine Nature we have a dim and very slight apprehension through our reasonings, yet one sufficient to the slightness of our power; and through the names spoken concerning it we reverently gather up our knowledge.

And of these names we say that the signification is not of one single kind in all, but some have the emphasis of the things that belong to God, others of the things that are removed from Him; as, for instance, we call Him just and incorruptible—by 'just' indicating that righteousness belongs to Him, and by 'incorruptible' that corruption does not belong to Him.

But again it is possible, having interchanged the significations, to fit the names to God suitably in the opposite way, so as to present what belongs to Him by the term that seems foreign, and what is foreign by the term that belongs.

This lies in saying that He is just, and that He does not admit corruption.

So also we say that the rest of the names, by a certain transfer of the signification, are suitably adapted to either emphasis—such as 'the good' and 'the immortal' and all that are expressed after the like pattern.

For each of them, taken now in one way and now in another, can indicate both what belongs and what does not belong to the divine Nature, so that, while the form of the names is interchanged, the reverent understanding concerning the underlying subject remains unmoved.

For it is the same thing to say that God is incapable of wickedness and to name Him good, and to confess Him immortal and to say that He is ever-living;

for we conceive no difference in these according to the thing signified, but by both expressions we signify one thing, even though the one may seem to have the positing, and the other the removal, of something.

In like manner also, calling God the beginning of all things, and again naming Him without beginning, we in no way contend according to the concepts, since by each of the things said we declare Him to be the originator and cause of the universe;

so that whether we say 'without beginning' or 'the originator of the universe,' by the one we have presented what does not belong to Him, and by the second what does belong—it being possible, as has been said, through the interchange of the things signified, to change over to the contrary the emphases of the names, and by a name that now seems foreign to make known, through a certain transfiguration, what belongs, and by the other the other.

For instead of saying that He has no beginning, it is possible to define Him to be the beginning of the universe; and instead of this, again, to confess that He alone subsists in an ingenerate manner;

so that the words seem, by the alteration of their form, to be diversely related to one another, while the meaning in the things said remains one and the same.

For what is earnestly pursued in the discourses concerning God is not to devise a well-sounding and harmonious euphony of words, but to find out a reverent understanding whereby that which befits our conception concerning God may be preserved.

Since, then, it is a mark of piety to hold that He who is the Cause of all things has no cause set above Himself, so long as this conviction stands firmly fixed in us, what quarrel over words is left for men of understanding, when every expression by which such a thought is declared sets forth one and the same thing? For whether you say that He is the Beginning and Cause of all, or name Him without beginning, or say that He is in an ungenerate manner, or that He subsists from eternity, or is the Cause of all, or alone is from no cause—all such expressions are in a manner equivalent to one another according to the force of their meanings, and the words stand on equal terms of honour; and vain is he who wrangles over such a mere sound of the voice, as though piety lay not in the thought but in the syllables and the utterances.

This conception, then, having been clearly articulated by our teacher—by which those who are not muffled beneath the heretic's veil can plainly discern that the Divine, however it may be in its nature, is untouchable and incomprehensible and higher than all apprehension that comes by reasoning—while the human mind, busying itself and searching by whatever reasonings it can, reaches out toward and touches upon the inaccessible and lofty Nature, being neither so keen-sighted as to see clearly the Invisible, nor altogether shut off from approach so as to be able to gain no likeness at all of the thing it seeks.

But rather, part of the sought-for object it has conjectured through the contact of its reasonings, while the other part it has in some fashion apprehended by the very fact of not being able to behold it—having made this, as it were, a clear kind of knowledge: that the thing sought lies beyond all knowledge.

For it perceived what is unfitting in respect of the divine Nature, and was not ignorant of all that it is proper to surmise concerning it; yet it was not able to behold that very thing which It is, concerning which these things are reckoned. Rather, from the knowledge of what belongs to it and what does not belong to it, it saw the one thing that alone can be seen: that what is set far from all evil, and is conceived in every good, is altogether of such a kind as to be unspeakable by reason and inaccessible to reasonings.

When, therefore, our teacher had thus purged away all unseemly notions in our supposition concerning the divine Nature, and had counselled and taught us to conceive of it whatever is well-sounding and befitting God—that neither anything corruptible nor anything brought into being through generation is the First Cause, but that it is conceived as being outside every such surmise, and that from the denial of what does not belong to it and from the confession of what is piously conceived concerning it, it is apprehended that it exists—this vehement champion against the truth contends with what has been said, and wishes that such a sound of a word, I mean the term 'ungeneracy,' should manifestly display the very essence of God.

For 'ungeneracy,' by means of its privative particle, signifies that none of these things belongs to God—neither corruption nor generation—since many other names likewise expressed indicate the removal of what does not belong, not the positing of what exists: as 'without evil,' 'without grief,' 'without wickedness,' 'without disturbance,' 'without anger,' 'sleepless,' 'without disease,' 'without passion,' 'without reproach,' and all such terms.

For these things are indeed said truly, and are, as it were, a kind of catalogue and enumeration of the things conceived as belonging to the worse, from which the Divine is set apart; yet the discourse does not, through these names, set forth anything concerning that of which it is spoken.

For by what we have heard we have been taught what it is not; but what it is, the force of the things said has not shown forth.

For just as if someone, wishing to say something about the nature of man, were to say that it is neither soulless nor without sense-perception nor winged nor four-footed nor water-dwelling, he would not have displayed what it is, but would have made plain what it is not—and neither does he lie in setting forth these things concerning man, nor does he clearly show the subject in question—in the same manner, when many such things are said concerning the divine Nature, in which we learn wherein we ought to surmise God to be, we are nevertheless not taught by what has been said the very thing that He is according to essence.

But, avoiding by every means being carried away into any of those absurd notions in our opinions concerning God, we have made use of many and various appellations concerning Him, fitting the titles according to the difference of our conceptions.

For since no single name has been found that is comprehensive of the divine Nature and aptly assigned to the subject itself, for this reason we address the Divine by many names—each one, according to its various applications, forming some distinctive conception concerning Him—hunting, out of the manifold and varied signification concerning Him, certain sparks toward the comprehension of the thing sought.

For when we question ourselves and inquire what the Divine is, we declare it in various ways: for instance, that which is set above the constitution and governance of existing things, which does not have its existence from a cause, but has come to be the cause of being for all the rest; concerning which there is no generation nor beginning nor corruption nor end, neither a turning toward the contrary nor a diminution of what is better, so that evil can have no place in it, nor is the good absent.

If, then, someone should wish to distinguish such conceptions by names, it is altogether necessary to name that which does not admit the turning toward the worse 'unturning' and 'unalterable'; to call the First Cause of all 'ungenerate'; the incapable of corruption 'incorruptible'; that which comes to rest in no limit 'immortal' and 'endless'; and Him who guides the universe 'Almighty'; and thus, coining names for all the rest according to our pious suppositions, we address Him in one way and another according to the differences of our conceptions, signifying through the names either power, or might, or goodness, or that He is from no cause, or that He remains forever.

I say, therefore, that men are masters of such name-coining, aptly fitting the appellations to the subject according to what appears to each; and that there is nothing absurd—which the speech-writer holds out as though it were something dreadful and fearful, playing the bogeyman—in confessing that the imposition of names is of a later date, in the case of every very thing that is named, and even in the case of God Himself.

For God is not a word, nor does He have His being in voice and utterance.

But God is in Himself whatsoever He is also believed to be, while He is named by those who call upon Him—not that very thing which He is (for the nature of Him who is, is unutterable), but He has His appellations from those things whereby He is believed to work something concerning our life; as, for example, this very thing that is said off-hand:

For when we call Him 'God' (theos), we invoke Him as the overseer and beholder and one who sees through the hidden things.

'For the Lord is compassionate and merciful,' it says, 'long-suffering and full of mercy.'

The signification of what—of a nature? One could not say anything other than of an activity.

When, then, did God, having exercised compassion or mercy, obtain the name from the activity? Was it before human life? And who was there in need of mercy? No—rather, altogether after sin; and sin is after man.

Therefore, after man came both the activity of showing mercy and the name of mercy.

For 'from the greatness and beauty of created things,' Wisdom says, 'the Author of them all is beheld by analogy.'

And to the divine Essence, which surpasses all understanding, we attach such appellations—not glorifying that Essence by the names we use, but guiding ourselves through the things said toward the comprehension of hidden things.

'I said to the Lord,' says the prophet, 'You are my God, for You have no need of my good things.'

How, then, do we thus 'exalt' the most blessed life of God, as this man says—that life which the prophet declares to be in need of none of the goods of men? Or did he take 'to exalt' in place of 'to name'? And yet we hear from those who use the word correctly and are trained through precision in the use of terms, that the word 'to exalt' is not appointed for mere indication; rather, that sort of thing is called 'to make known' or 'to declare' or 'to signify' or something else of the kind, while 'to exalt' is equivalent to 'to boast over' and 'to rejoice in,' and whatever partakes of such a sense.

But he says that we, by the names of conception, 'exalt' the blessed life.

But as for us, we hold that to add any honour to the divine Nature—which is above all honour—is something greater than accords with human weakness; yet we do not deny that we undertake to make known something concerning it through words and names piously conceived.

And on this account, tracing out piety as far as is possible for us, we apprehend that the First Cause has its subsistence not from any cause set above it.

And if anyone should accept this as true, it would be praiseworthy on account of the truth alone.

But if he should judge such a thing to be greater than the other things conceived concerning the divine Nature, and on this account should say that God, in this supposition alone, exults and rejoices, as taking delight in one of His superior attributes—this would belong only to the Muse of Eunomius, who says that ungeneracy itself exults in itself, which indeed he calls both an essence and names a blessed and divine life.

But let us hear how, according to the manner suited to the need and the type set forth beforehand (for thus again he preens himself before us with his balanced-sounding names), how through these he says that he both dissolves the surmise that has arisen concerning it, and cloaks the ignorance of those who have been deceived.

For I shall make use of the very rhyming, like-ending phrases of this dithyramb-composer.

'Having said,' he declares, 'that the things spoken according to conception are by nature dissolved together with the utterances, we added to these:

'But God, whether men are silent or speaking, whether things have come to be or before they came to be, both was and is ungenerate over the things that exist.'

Let us learn, then, what a conception of words or an imposition of names has in common with the very things themselves, which we mark by the particular sound of the names and words—so that, if God exists in an ungenerate manner before the human constitution, we should judge the sound expressive of such a supposition to be void, as being dissolved together with the utterance, if it happens to have been named according to human conception.

For to be is not the same as to be spoken of.

But God is by nature what He is, while He is spoken of by us as it is possible to declare Him, on account of the poverty of our nature, which keeps the dispositions in the soul obscure unless they are uncovered through voice and speech.

Therefore, having conceived by some conception that He does not exist from a cause, we declare this thought through the utterance 'ungenerate.'

What harm, then, is there to Him who truly is, in being named by us according to what He is? For it is not from being called 'ungenerate' that He also exists in an ungenerate manner; rather, from His being, the being-so-called also accrues to Him.

But this the man of subtle understanding did not perceive, nor did he clearly grasp the things laid down by himself.

For otherwise he would have ceased reviling those who coin the name of ungeneracy by conception.

'The things spoken according to conception,' he says, 'are dissolved together with the utterances; but God, both when things have come to be and before they came to be, both was and is ungenerate over the things that exist.'

Do you see that He has the being-what-He-is before the existence of all things, and, whether men are silent or speaking, being what He is neither more nor less; while the use of words and names came to be known after the fashioning of men—of those honoured by God with the rational faculty?

If, then, the creation is later than its Maker, and of all creation man is the last, and speech is proper to man, and parts of speech are words and names, and 'ungeneracy' is a name—how does he not perceive that he is fighting against the very things by which he constructs his argument? For we say that the names that make known existing things have been devised for those things through human thought; and he too confesses that those who make use of speech were shown forth as later than the divine life, and that the divine Nature is—as it now is and always was—in an ungenerate manner.

If, then, he too confesses that the blessed life pre-exists men (for turning back again I shall use the same argument), and we too do not gainsay that men came into being later in time, but say that they have used words and names from the time we were constituted and received from our Maker the property of being rational—and 'ungeneracy' is a name expressive of a particular thought, and every name is a part of human speech—then he who confesses that the divine Nature pre-subsists men agrees that the appellation devised for that Nature is of later origin.

For neither was it likely that the use of speech should be operative before the fashioning of those who use it—just as neither farming before farmers, nor sailing before sailors, nor any other of the things practised in life before human life was constituted.

Why, then, does he contend with us—he who does not know how to follow his own arguments? 'God was,' he says, 'what He is, before man came to be.'

This we too do not deny.

For whatsoever is conceived concerning God, this was before the constitution of the world.

But we say that this One is named after the namer has come into being.

For if we use names for this reason—that teaching

may come to us thereby from the things, and only that which is ignorant stands in need of the teacher, while the divine Nature, because it has comprehended all knowledge, is superior to all teaching—then it is shown by these considerations that the names have been devised, not for God's sake, but for our sake, toward the making plain of Him who is.

For it was not in order that He might learn Himself that He fitted the name of ungeneracy to His nature.

But in order that we might attain some apprehension of the things piously conceived concerning Him, we have stamped the differences of our thoughts by means of certain words and syllables—inscribing, as it were, certain seals and characters, the impressions made through speech, upon the movements of the understanding—so that we might make clear and unconfused the manifestation of the movements arising in the soul, by means of the utterances fitted to the thoughts.

What, then, refutes our argument—in which we say that the name of ungeneracy was devised toward the indication that God subsists without beginning—when he says that God, whether men speak or are silent, whether they reason or before the conception of things that have come to be, both was and is ungenerate? For if there were someone constructing the argument that He was not ungenerate before the name was devised by us, that man would be pardonable for writing those things against such an absurdity.