Against Eunomius 1 part 20/56

The things laid down by the teacher as it were as nourishment—by which he supplied the hearer with a kind of art and method for the contemplation of lofty matters—these Eunomius, applying them baldly to his own discourses about the essence of the God of all things, imagined he was saying something, and was cleverly contriving against the truth? For his asserting that the most fitting cause in God of begetting the Son is His unmastered authority and His insuperable power—which can be said not only of the world and the elements in it, but also of creeping things and beasts—and setting this forth, as though it were a solemn theologian, as befitting the conception one holds of the only-begotten God; or his saying that God is addressed as unbegotten, or Father, or by the rest of the names even before the generation of those who name Him, as though He feared that, if the name were kept silent among those not yet come to be, He might be ignorant of Himself or fall into forgetfulness of Himself through silence about the name of what He is—having become ignorant; and that mocking, scornful attack upon our words—how much of the pungent and the clever it contains!

By these he constructs the absurdity that the Father, who came to be before all ages and times and before all sensible and intelligible nature, somehow waits upon men, in order that He may be named through their conception.

Not being named, as that man says, either by the Son or by the intelligible essences that came to be through Him.

For I think no one is so full of deep drivel as to be ignorant that the only-begotten Son, who is in the Father and beholds the Father in Himself, has no need of name or word for the knowledge of the subject; nor is the Holy Spirit, who searches the deep things of God, led by a naming appellation to the knowledge of what is sought; nor does the incorporeal nature of the supramundane powers name the Divine by voice and tongue.

For in the immaterial and intellectual nature, the activity that is according to mind is itself word, employing no material service of instruments.

For indeed, even in human nature we should have had no need of the use of words and names, if it were possible to display to one another, bare, the movements of the mind.

But as it is, since the thoughts that arise within us cannot be manifested—because our nature is fenced about by the fleshly covering—we necessarily, applying the several placings of names to things as it were signs, through those make public to one another the movements of the mind.

But if it were somehow possible to lay bare the movements of the understanding by another means, we should, bidding farewell to the roundabout service of words, commune with one another more clearly and more purely, unveiling by the impulses of the understanding the very nature of the things about which the mind is occupied.

But as it is, for this reason we have assigned to one of the things that exist the name heaven, and to another earth, and to yet another something else; and being related somehow, or acting, or being acted upon—all these we indicate by their peculiar utterances, so that the movement of the mind within us may not remain incommunicable and unknown.

But that supramundane and immaterial nature, being free and unconstrained by bodily enclosure, has no need of names or words either in respect of itself or in respect of the nature that lies above it; but if anywhere some word set down in writing in the sacred books is recorded on the part of the intellectual nature, such a thing is said for our sake, the hearers, who are unable in any other way to learn what is signified unless it is proclaimed through voices and words.

All the words, then, that he has philosophized against conception, I think it well to pass over, even though he charges with madness those who suppose that the name of Godhead is applied by men, through conception, to indicate the transcendent nature.

His words are available to those who wish to be instructed by them.

But what we hold concerning the use of names we have stated in what precedes: namely, that, things being as their nature is, the rational power that has been implanted in our nature by God devised the utterances that interpret the things that exist.

If someone refers the cause of these to Him who gave the power, neither do we contradict it—just as we also say that moving, seeing, and the other activities exercised through the senses come to be from Him from whom we have received such a power.

So then, in respect of naming the God who exists according to nature that which He is, the cause, according to the common account, has its reference to Him Himself; but the authority of naming all things conceived in this way or otherwise lies in our nature.

And whether one wishes to call this conception or something else, we shall not dispute.

And we make this a proof of our argument: that the Divine is not named alike among all men, but the thing conceived is interpreted according to what seems good to each.

So then, passing over in silence all his rubbish-heap of nonsense concerning conception, we will hold to the doctrines, marking only this much from certain things he has inserted amid his empty verbiage—where he supposes that God, sitting beside the first-formed men like some pedagogue or grammar-teacher, expounded to them instruction in words and names.

In which he says that the very first men fashioned by God, or those next sprung from them, if they had not been taught how each of the things is called and named, would live together with irrationality and speechlessness, and would, he says, have accomplished nothing of what is useful for life, since the thought of each would have been obscure for lack of the things that signify—words, that is to say, and names.

So great is the derangement of this speech-writer, that he supposes the power implanted in our nature by God to be insufficient for every method of rational activity; but that, unless they learned things one by one—like those who are taught the Hebrew or the Roman tongue through vocabulary—they would be ignorant of what things are: not recognizing fire, nor water, nor air, nor the rest of existing things, unless through the names imposed upon them they acquired the knowledge of these.

But we say that He who made all things in wisdom, and who fashioned this rational creature as a living being, by the mere act of granting reason to its nature deposited in it the whole rational power.

And just as, possessing in our nature the power in the sense-organs from Him who fashioned the eye and planted the hearing, we of ourselves use each one of the sense-organs for that which it is fitted to do, and have no need of one to name the colors, of which sight has the apprehension (for the eye suffices to become for itself the teacher of such things), nor, for the things we perceive through hearing or through taste or through touch, do we need external teachers for their knowledge, having from within ourselves the criterion of each of the things that come to us by way of sense;

so too we say that the discursive power of the soul, having come to be of such a kind from God, of itself thereafter moves and looks toward things, and, so that knowledge may suffer no confusion, imposes upon each of the things, as it were seals, the significations effected through the utterances.

And the great Moses confirms such a doctrine when he says that the appellations were imposed upon the irrational animals by Adam, writing thus in these words:

'And God formed yet out of the earth all the beasts of the field and all the birds of heaven, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them;'

'and whatever Adam called each living soul, that was its name;'

'and Adam gave names to all the cattle and to all the beasts of the field.'

But it seems that the nonsense he has composed against conception, like some sticky and clinging mud, holds us fast and does not allow us to take hold of more useful matters.

It is a well-pondered philosophy, forsooth, in which he says that not only is the magnificence of the Maker displayed in His works, but the wisdom of God is also shown forth through the names, since He fitted the appellations to each of the things that came to be suitably and congenially. These things, perhaps, having either himself lighted upon the Platonic dialogue Cratylus, or heard them from one of those who had lighted upon it, he stitches—on account, I think, of the great poverty of his thoughts—the drivel found there onto his own nonsense, doing something like those who gather their sustenance for themselves by begging.

For as those men, receiving some little from each of those who hold out to them, collect their nourishment for themselves from various and manifold sources, so too the discourse of Eunomius, on account of its poverty of the true bread, gathers together with its own toil the crumbs of words and names from every quarter; and on this account, being deafened by the fine phrasing of the Platonic diction, he supposes it fitting to make that man's philosophy a doctrine of the Church.

For tell me, by how many utterances, according to the differences of the nations, is the creation of the firmament named? We call it ouranos; the Hebrew, samaïm; the Roman, caelum; and otherwise the Syrian, the Mede, the Cappadocian, the Moor, the Thracian, the Egyptian—it is not even easy to number the differences of names, however many there happen to be, nation by nation, concerning both heaven and the rest of things.

Which then, tell me, of these is the congenial name by which the magnificent wisdom of God is shown forth? If you prefer the Greek to the rest, the Egyptian will perhaps stand against you, putting forward his own;

and if you assign the primacy to the Hebrew, the Syrian will counter with his own tongue;

nor will the Roman yield the primacy to these, and the Mede will not accept that his own should not take precedence; and each of the remaining nations will demand that his own take the first place before the others.

How then will the doctrine not suffer harm, being torn apart amid so many differences of utterances by the disputants? 'But from these,' he says, 'as from laws manifestly laid down, it is shown that God makes the callings fitting and corresponding to the natures.'

Oh, the grandeur of the doctrine!

What sorts of suppositions this theologian bestows upon the divine teachings—suppositions which men do not even grudge to bath-attendants!

For to those too we concede that they coin names for the operations about which they happen to labor, and no one has exalted them with honors equal to God's when they impose names such as foot-basins, hair-scrapers, hand-towels, and many such things upon the things done by them, aptly indicating the subject by the suggestion of the terms.

But I will pass over these things too, and their Epicurean natural philosophy which comes next, which he who says that the void and the atom and the chance origins of things are akin to what is signified through conception will declare to be of equal force with conception.

Oh, how he has understood Epicurus!

If, because we attribute the utterances that signify things to the rational power of our nature, we are on this account convicted of speaking, after the manner of Epicurus, of the partless bodies and the interweavings and collisions and reboundings of atoms and such things?

Let his patron and ally in doctrines, Aristotle, also be silenced—whose opinion he says, in what follows, agrees with the arguments concerning conception.

For he says it is that man's doctrine that providence does not pervade all existing things, nor pass down as far as terrestrial matters—which this fellow stoutly maintains to be in harmony with the things examined concerning conception.

So skilled is he at judging doctrines with precision!

But proceeding, he says that one must either not concede to God the generation of things that exist, or, having granted this, not take away the imposition of names.

The calling, as is recorded by Moses.

Then he sets forth for us, in his own discourse, an encomium of words, as though someone were dishonoring the power of the word, and he says that, after that ill-sounding and bombastic composition of phrases, by a law of providence and by a perfect measure God joined the imparting of names to the knowledge and use of necessary things.

And having babbled many such things in a deep sleep, he crosses over in his argument to the invincible and unconquerable necessity.

I will state that man's argument not in his words, but setting it forth in its bare thought alone.

The invention of words, he says, is not to be attributed to poets, who have been deceived in their suppositions about God.

What things this noble fellow bestows upon God, attaching to God the inventions of poetic license, so that thereby God may seem to men more solemn and more exalted—when those who are discipled to Eunomius come to believe that likriphis and karkaire and eurax and keraire and phy cheiri and size and doupēse and arabēse and kanachize and smerdaleon konabize and lingxe and iache and mermērixe and all such words are not run through by the poets according to some license as seems good to them, but that, being initiated in these very words by God Himself, they thread them into their meters.

Let these things too be dismissed, along with that wise and invincible undertaking of his—namely, showing that we cannot, according to the scriptural record, point to the holy men as having invented new utterances.

For if human nature had been incomplete up until the manifestation of those men, and had not yet been filled full with the rational grace, then it would have been right that the filling up of what was lacking should be sought from them.

But if from the very outset our nature subsisted, from its first constitution, self-sufficient and complete in its rational and intellectual activity, how could anyone still, for the ready establishment of his account of conceptual thought (epinoia), inquire whether the saints were the first to originate sounds or words? Or, if we cannot demonstrate this, does he judge it a sufficient proof for himself that God has legislated for us these particular syllables and words? 'But,' he says, 'since God does not refuse converse with His own servants, it follows that we should suppose Him to have set from the beginning the appellations proper to each thing.'

What, then, do we reply to this? That the cause of God's condescending to converse with man we define to be His love for mankind (philanthropia).

And since it is not possible for that which is by nature small to be lifted above its own measures and to lay hold of the height of the surpassing Nature, for this cause He Himself, bringing down His man-loving power to our weakness, in the measure that we were able to receive it, thus dispenses the grace and benefit that come from Himself.

For just as, by the divine economy, the sun tempers the vehemence and unmixed intensity of its rays by means of the intervening air, and so brings a measured light and warmth to those who receive its radiance, being in itself unapproachable to the weakness of our nature, so also the divine Power, in likeness to the example we have given, infinitely surpassing our nature and being inaccessible to participation, like some tender mother lisping along with the inarticulate babblings of infants, dispenses to human nature that which it is able to receive. And for this reason, in the varied theophanies to men, it is fashioned after the manner of man, and speaks in human fashion, and assumes wrath and pity and such passions, so that through all things suited to us our infant life may be led by the hand, laying hold of the divine Nature through the words of Providence.

For that it is not reverent to suppose the Divine to be subject to any passion of the sort that befalls in pleasure or in pity or in wrath, no one who has even moderately examined the truth concerning realities would gainsay.

For such words as these teach us in Scripture this: that through our own idioms the Providence of God mingles itself with our weakness, so that those inclined toward sin might, through fear of punishment, restrain themselves from evils; and those already caught in sin might not despair of the return that comes through repentance, looking toward His mercy; and those who set their life aright by exact conduct might rather exult in the virtues, as gladdening by their own life the One who becomes overseer of the good.

And just as one does not call a man deaf who converses with a deaf person by signs, according as the latter is able to perceive, so neither should one suppose there to be human speech in God's case, because He employed it toward men by way of economy.

For we too are wont to guide irrational animals by clucking, by whistling, and by hissing; yet this is not the speech (logos) by which we reach the hearing of the irrational creatures, but toward one another we use our natural speech, while for the irrational animals the appropriate noise and the sound of a certain quality made by gesture suffices for the need.

But this pious fellow will not have God make use of our idioms on account of our inclination toward evil, this dear man being ignorant that for our sakes He did not even refrain from becoming a curse and sin.

So abundant is His love for mankind, that He willingly came to experience not only our good things, but even our evils.

'He who numbers the multitudes of the stars, and calls them all by names.'

But I consider it evident to everyone who has understanding that the argument concerning these matters has no relation to the point at issue.

Yet since it is likely that some, without examination, attach themselves to the argument, we shall treat briefly of these things.

The divine Scripture knows how often to attribute to God utterances of such a kind that they seem to differ in no way from our own, such as: 'The Lord was angered in His wrath,' and 'He repented of their wickedness,' and 'He regretted having anointed Saul as king,' and 'The Lord awoke as one that sleepeth,' and besides these it recounts sitting and standing and motion and many such things, which are by nature not in God, but are not without use for the economy of those being instructed.

For the display of wrath restrains the more dissolute by fear; and to those who need the medicine of repentance it says that the Lord repents together with them over the wickedness; and again, to those who in certain prosperities are carried away toward insolence, it foreshows, through the repentance concerning Saul, that their prosperity will not abide with them, even if such should seem to be from God; and to those who do not sink deep into the fall of sin, but, as if rising from some sleep of a vain life, arise, it says that God rises together with them and awakens together with them; while it says that He stands with those who have set themselves unswervingly upon the good, and sits with those who are firmly settled in the good, and again moves and walks in the case of those who have shifted away from firmness in the good.

As in the case of Adam the narrative recounts, depicting God as walking in the garden in the evening (deilinon), by the 'evening' signifying the first-formed man's inclination toward the things of darkness, and by the 'motion' the man's instability and unsteadiness concerning the good.

But these things may perhaps seem to most people far removed from the inquiry set before us; yet no one could say that the following is out of tune with our subject: that many suppose what is incomprehensible to themselves to be also incomprehensible to God, and whatever escapes their own understanding they think to be beyond even the divine Power.

(proportionately, by multiplication, one reckoning being summed up out of thousands, another out of hundreds toward this end, all of which we, distributing to the underlying objects, make into signs of the quantity of the things numbered).

In order, then, that we might be instructed by the divine Scripture that nothing is unknown to God, it says that the multitude of the stars has been numbered by Him — not that the numbering comes about in this manner (for who is so simple as to suppose that God distinguishes existing things by odd and even, and by the composition of units arrives at the sum-total of the aggregate quantity as the conclusion of number?) —

but since among us accurate knowledge of quantity comes from number, in order that we might also be taught concerning God that all things are comprehended by the knowledge of His wisdom and nothing escapes His exact understanding, for this cause it declared that God numbers the stars, counselling us to understand this by what it says: not to suppose that the Divine also lays hold of realities according to the measure of our knowledge, but that all things unattainable and inconceivable to us are enclosed within the knowledge of the divine Wisdom.

For since the stars, on account of their multitude, escape number as regards human conception, the Scripture, teaching the whole from a part, by saying that these have been numbered by God, testifies that nothing of the things unknown to us escapes the knowledge of God.

For this reason it says, 'He who numbers the multitudes of the stars,' clearly not being ignorant of the quantity of the stars before He numbered them.

For how is it likely that He should be ignorant of what He made? For the Master of the universe would not be ignorant of that which is comprehended within the all-embracing power of the whole.

Why, then, does He number what He knows? For it belongs to those who are ignorant to measure out quantity by number; but He who knows all things before their coming-to-be has no need of number as a teacher for the knowledge of the objects.

Just as, then, He is said to number, though needing nothing of the arithmetical process for the knowledge of existing things, so also the prophecy says that He 'calls them all by names,' not signifying, I think, this calling that is by voice.

For the argument, going forward, would end in something absurd and unworthy of our conception concerning God, if indeed it meant that these names were assigned by God to the stars — the names current in our usage.

For if one should grant that these were named from God, there is every necessity to suppose that the naming of the Greek idols too was proclaimed upon the stars from thence, and to consider true all that is added from mythical tradition to the star-names, as though God ratified for them such utterances.

Thus the hebdomad (the seven planets) of those contained within the whole vault, being apportioned to the Greek idols, will make those who have gone astray toward these blameless, if indeed it should be believed that this was ordained from God.

Since, then, it is absurd to suppose God to be the inventor of such names, so that the names of the idols too might not seem to have taken their origin from thence, it would be well not to receive what is said without examination, but, in likeness to what we have conceived concerning number, to understand the meaning contained in this also.

For this cause the argument says that He has not only numbered the multitudes of the stars, but also calls each one by name; which signifies that His exactness reaches even to the minutest things, and that He so precisely recognizes each individual thing as a man recognizes one made known to him by name.

For if there were other names for the stars, the divine Scripture would not have made mention of these names which belong to the customary usage of Greek convention — Isaiah saying, 'He who makes the Pleiades and Hesperus and Arcturus and the chambers of the South,' and Job naming Orion and Aseroth — so that from this it is clear that the divine Scripture has employed the names worn familiar in life for our instruction.

Thus also we have heard of the 'horn of Amaltheia' in Job, and of 'Sirens' in Isaiah — the one naming the all-bearing abundance of good things thus from the Greek notion, and Isaiah indicating by the name of the Sirens the pleasure that comes from hearing.

Just as, then, here the God-inspired word made use of names drawn from mythical narratives, looking to what is useful for the hearers, so there too the word unashamedly spoke of the appellations assigned to the stars by human conception, teaching that every thing in any way named among men has its existence from God — the thing, that is, not the name.

For it is not He who names, but He who makes, it says, the Pleiades and Hesperus and Arcturus.

But if it is necessary to set forth also the meaning held by the many concerning these words of the psalmody, all the more will the vanity of Eunomius's opinion concerning these matters be refuted.

For those who have more carefully examined the meaning of the God-inspired Scripture say that not all existing things are worthy of the divine numbering.

For in the evangelical feastings that took place in the wilderness, neither the infants nor the women were reckoned worthy of number; and in the exodus of the Israelite people, only those already able to bear arms against the enemies and to prove themselves valiant were enrolled by number.

For neither are the names of all such as to be borne through the divine mouth, but that is numbered which is pure and heavenly, which, on account of the height of its manner of life remaining unmixed with commingling with the darkness, is called a 'star'; and that is named which in like manner becomes worthy of being inscribed in the divine tablets.

For concerning the adversaries He says, 'I will not make mention of their names through my lips.'

And what sort of names the Lord imposes upon such stars, we have clearly learned from the prophecy of Isaiah, which says, 'I have called you by your name; you are mine.'

So that if anyone makes himself a possession of God, his deed becomes a name for him.

But let these things stand as they may seem to those who encounter them.

As for what he adds to what has been said — the first things of the world's genesis, as testimony that the utterances were laid upon existing things by God, matters which, having been sufficiently examined in what precedes, I judge it superfluous to take up again — and the utterance of Adam, which the Apostle says came about prophetically with reference to Christ and the Church, let this fellow interpret it at his own discretion, as he wishes.

being forced to establish the kinds of irrational animals through the misinterpretation of this saying.

Let his words of insolence also be passed over, and that graceless want of culture, and that filthy, dung-bespattered speech of his, which, with its accustomed eloquence, pours out these things against our teacher.

The sower of the tares, and the † appearance of the fruit, and the corruption of Valentinus, and the fruit from him which he says has been heaped up in the soul of our teacher, and the remaining unpleasantness of what has been said — let it be covered over with silence, just as we bury in the earth bodies that have rotted, so that the stench may not become a nuisance to many.

But we must transfer the argument to the sequence of what has been said.

For again he sets forth a certain saying of our teacher, which runs thus:

'For we call the God of all things incorruptible and unbegotten, using these names according to differing approaches (epibolai).'

'For whenever we look back toward the ages that are behind, finding the life of God to fall outside all circumscription, we call Him unbegotten;'

'and whenever we cast our mind upon the ages to come, we have named that which is boundless and infinite and apprehensible by no end — incorruptible.'