Against Eunomius 1 part 23/56

But if, because God is not corrupted, one should say that the essence is incorruptibility, and because He is superior to death, should on that account define the nature itself to be immortality—yet the Son too is incorruptible and immortal—then incorruptibility and immortality would be the essence also of the Only-begotten.

If, then, the Father is incorruptibility and the Son is incorruptibility, and each of them is essence, and no difference is conceived according to the notion of incorruptibility, then in no respect at all will the essence differ from the essence, seeing that in both alike the nature is estranged from corruption.

And even if he again takes up the same arguments and binds us, as he supposes, with the inescapable constraints of dilemmas—saying that if we distinguish the attribute from the being, we establish the divine as composite, but if simplicity is confessed, incorruptibility and unbegottenness will altogether prove to be significative of the essence itself—we shall once more demonstrate him to be an ally of our own arguments.

For if he makes the divine essence altogether composite by saying that something belongs to it, then he will by no means place fatherhood outside the essence either, but will confess the Father to be Father by nature, as incorruptible and immortal; and thus, even against his will, he will admit the Son into the kinship of the nature.

For it will not be possible, if He is Father by nature, to separate the Son from the natural relation to Him.

But if he says that fatherhood belongs to God outside the nature, then he will altogether grant us also, by right, to say that something belongs to the Father, since simplicity is in no way set aside if what pertains to unbegottenness is signified outside the essence.

But if he says that the incorruptible and the unbegotten are significative of the essence itself, and insists that both of the names are of equal force with one another, so that there is no difference between them because the same thing is signified by each, and says that the notion of the incorruptible and of the unbegotten is one, then he who is the one of these is altogether also the other.

But indeed that the Son is incorruptible is not doubted even by these men;

therefore, according to Eunomius's argument, He too is unbegotten, if indeed the incorruptible signifies the same as unbegottenness.

So that one of two things follows: either he will grant that the unbegotten signifies something other than incorruptibility, or, persisting in his tenets, he will in many ways blaspheme against the Only-begotten God—either making Him corruptible so as not to call Him unbegotten, or establishing Him as unbegotten so as not to prove Him corruptible.

But I do not know what it is fitting to do—whether to proceed in order against all that lies before us, or to confine the battle against these vanities to these matters.

For just as in the case of those who sell poisons, a small trial guarantees to the buyers the deadly power of the whole drug, and no one who has learned the corruptive nature of a portion through some trial doubts that the whole thing being sold is a drug of destruction, so also I think that this poisonous concoction of his discourse, having been shown up through what has been examined, is no longer doubtful to those who have understanding: that it is throughout such as it has been proved to be through the foregoing; and for this reason I reckon it preferable not to prolong at length a lingering over vanities.

But since the champions of deceit find plausibility for themselves from many sources, and there is fear lest the overlooking of any of their labored efforts should become a specious occasion for slander against us, as though we had passed over the stronger point—for this reason I have begged those who share in our zeal not to condemn any prolixity, but readily to follow the discourse everywhere, as it necessarily sets itself against the assaults of falsehood.

Since, then, having at last with difficulty ceased fashioning in deep sleep his dream about conception, and having armed himself with those feeble and unthinkable arguments, he transfers his discourse to another dream far more senseless than the preceding fantasy—

having devised a technical treatment concerning privation regarding Him.

But to grapple with all his nonsense would belong to Eunomius himself and to those like him, who have taken up no concern for the more serious matters.

But we shall run over what has been said summarily, by headings, so that neither should anything blameworthy be left out, nor should any of the vanities draw the discourse out to unprofitable length.

For being about to add his technical treatment concerning privative names, he has promised to show the absurdity of our doctrines—as he himself says—as 'incurable,' and a certain 'feigned and reprehensible piety.'

This, then, is the promise;

but what is the proof of the charges? 'When certain people say,' he says, 'that God is unbegotten by privation of begetting, we, in refutation of these, say that neither this expression nor this notion is in any way fitting to God.'

Let the champion of this argument show, if anyone from the time human beings came into being down to the present, whether among barbarians or among Greeks, can be shown to have uttered such a thing amiss, and we too shall keep silent.

But none of the human beings who have existed in all time could be convicted of saying such a thing, unless someone were mad.

For who is so deranged by drunkenness, who so out of his mind through madness or delirium, as to make this statement: that to the unbegotten God begetting belongs by nature, but that, deprived of what is according to nature, He came afterward, from being begotten, to be unbegotten? But these are the artifices of rhetoric—to escape the shame arising from refutations by imputing them to the assumed persons of certain individuals, among whom they are refuted.

In the same way too he has made his defense concerning that apology, ascribing the cause of the indictment to judges and accusers, though he is unable to point to any accusers, any trial, any tribunal.

And now, as though correcting another's folly, he says that he came under necessity to speak thus.

This is the proof of 'our incurable absurdity' and of our 'feigned and reprehensible piety.'

But he says that we, being at a loss, do not know what to do with the matters at hand, and, concealing our perplexity, on the one hand slander him out of his words as though into the wisdom of the world, while on the other hand we appropriate to ourselves the teaching of the Holy Spirit.

This is another dream—to suppose that so much of the outward wisdom belongs to himself that on this account he seems formidable to Basil.

In the same way some have often imagined themselves to be enthroned alongside kings and to be of the higher dignity, the deceived vision of dreams implanting from their waking desire the fancy about this.

He says that Basil, having nothing that he could make use of against what was said, slanders him on account of the wisdom of the world.

Yet he would have prized such slander highly—to be thought formidable by reason of an abundance of arguments, even to any chance person, let alone to Basil and to any of his sort, if indeed there is or ever was anyone of his sort at all.

But the intervening discourse—if indeed his servile abuse and tasteless jeers, by which he thinks to run down our positions, can be called discourse—I shall pass over entirely, deeming it abominable and unpleasant to foul our own discourse with so many defilements, like those who loathe the mounded and stinking sores and cannot bear the sight of surfaces altered by warts and calluses arising from some plethoric heaviness of humors.

But having set forth his meaning in a few words, I shall pass by the great stench of what he has said.

For the present my discourse shall be conducted freely, in no way turning aside to tear insultingly at any of the things said.

Every word—that is, every word that is truly a word—is a sound significative of the movements of the mind according to thought.

And every activity and movement of the sound mind looks, as far as is possible, toward the knowledge and contemplation of the things that are.

And the nature of things that are is divided in two, being separated into the intelligible and the sensible;

of comprehension, the knowledge lies common to all, the sensible discernment producing no ambiguity concerning the subject.

For the differences of colors and of the other qualities—all that we discern through hearing or smell or the sense of touch or taste—all of us who share in the same nature recognize and name in like manner; and likewise all those things among the rest whose apprehension seems more superficial, of matters engaged in throughout life, which have to do with the political and ethical aim of life.

But in the contemplation of the intelligible nature, because it lies above sensible apprehension, while the mind reaches out conjecturally after the things that escape sense, we are moved—each differently—concerning the object of inquiry, and according to the understanding that arises in each concerning the subject, we declare, as far as is possible, what has been conceived, drawing as near as we can by the power of what has been conceived through the expressiveness of words.

And in these matters it is often possible for the aim to be achieved through both together—the mind not failing of what is sought, and the voice, straight to the mark, declaring what has been conceived through fitting interpretation;

but it may happen that both, or at least one of the two, fail—either the apprehending mind or the interpretive faculty being carried aside from what is fitting.

Since, then, there are two things by which every discourse is set right—the security in the mind and the utterance in words—the excellence achieved through both would be the better; yet no less a good is it not to fail of the fitting conception, even if the word falls short of the thought.

When, then, the mind has its zeal set upon the lofty and unseen things which sense does not attain (I speak of the divine and ineffable nature, concerning which it is bold even to grasp anything readily with the mind, and bolder still to entrust to chance words the interpretation of the conception arising in us), then, bidding farewell to the sound in words—uttered in one way or another according to the power of the speakers—we examine the thought alone that is manifested in the words, whether it be sound or otherwise, having yielded these verbal or nominal minute distinctions to the arts of grammarians.

Since, then, we signify by nominal designation only the things that are known, whereas it is not possible to comprehend by signifying appellations the things that are beyond knowledge (for how could one signify what is unknown?)—on this account, no fitting appellation being found for them that would sufficiently present the subject, we are constrained, by many and various names, as far as is possible, to lay bare the surmise that has arisen in us concerning the divine.

But indeed the things that come under our apprehension are such that of necessity the things that are are either contemplated in some dimensional extension, or afford the notion of a spatial location in which each thing is apprehended to be, or fall within our purview by a circumscription according to beginning and end, being equally circumscribed at either limit by non-being (for everything that has a beginning and an end of its being begins from non-being and ends in non-being), or—the last of all—we apprehend the phenomenal by the corporeal composition of qualities, with which corruption and passion and change and alteration and such like are yoked together.

For this reason, so that the transcendent nature might seem to have no kinship with things below, we employ concerning the divine nature notions and words that separate off such things—calling that which is above the ages 'pre-eternal,' and that which is beyond beginning 'without beginning,' and that which is not brought to completion 'without end,' and that which has its subsistence apart from body 'incorporeal,' and that which is not corrupted 'incorruptible,' and that which is not receptive of change or passion or alteration 'impassible' and 'unchangeable' and 'unalterable.'

Others, adapting them to these names, may call them 'privative' or 'ablative' or whatever is dear to them; but we, having yielded the teaching or learning of such things to those who love such distinctions, will examine only the meaning, whether it lies within the pious and God-befitting conception or is separated from it.

If, then, either God once was not, or will at some time not be, He could not properly be called either 'without end' or 'without beginning';

and likewise neither 'unalterable' nor 'incorporeal' nor 'incorruptible,' if body or corruption or alteration or anything of the sort were to be surmised concerning Him.

But if it is impious to conceive any of these concerning Him, it would be altogether pious to employ concerning Him words that separate off things unbefitting, and to say those things which we have already often said—'incorruptible' and 'without end' and 'unbegotten' and whatever is of such a kind—since the significance inherent in each of these names teaches only the separation from things readily at hand for our comprehension, and does not interpret the nature itself as separated from things unbefitting.

For while the signification of these names indicates what the divine is not, what that thing is according to nature—which these are not—remains in obscurity.

But also the remaining names, whose signification is indicative of some position and of existence, have their indication not of the divine nature itself, but of the things piously contemplated concerning it.

For having understood that none of the things that are—both the things that appear and the things that are conceived—has any spontaneous and chance constitution, but that everything whatsoever that is apprehended among things that are depends upon the nature that transcends all things that are, and thence has the cause of its existence; and having considered the beauty and the greatness of the wonders in the creation—from all these and such like, taking other conceptions concerning the divine, we interpret each of the conceptions arising in us by its own names, following the counsel of wisdom, which says that from the greatness and beauty of created things the Author of all should be contemplated by analogy.

We call the Maker of mortal things 'Creator,' and we call him 'powerful' who has gained mastery over so vast a creation, for whom his power sufficed to make his will into substance.

And when we reflect upon the good that belongs to our life, we consequently name the Author of it by the appellation of 'the Good'; and having been taught by the divine Scripture the incorruptibility of the judgment to come, we thereby call him 'Judge' and 'just.'

And, to put it all in a word, the concepts that arise in us concerning the divine nature we translate into the form of names, so that no appellation is uttered concerning the divine nature apart from some particular notion.

But we have also apprehended that even the word 'God' (theos) has taken its force from the activity of beholding (epoptikē).

For believing that the Divine is present to all things, beholds all things, and pervades all things, we signify such a conception by this name, being guided to this by the holy word.

For he who said, 'O my God, attend unto me,' and 'Behold, O God,' and 'God knoweth the secrets of the heart,' clearly interprets the sense that lies within this word: that from 'beholding' (theasthai) he is named 'God.'

For it makes no difference to say 'Attend,' or 'Behold,' or 'Look upon.'

Since, therefore, the beholder sees that which is beheld, the beholder is fittingly called 'God' (theos) of that which is seen.

So that even through this name, though we have been taught of some partial activity of the divine nature, we have not thereby come to a comprehension of its very essence by means of this word.

Nevertheless, though we are at a loss for a name properly suited to it, we do not suppose that the Divine is thereby in any way diminished in respect of its glory.

For the incapacity to express the inexpressible, while it convicts the poverty of our nature, affords a greater demonstration of God's glory, teaching us, as the Apostle says, that the only name properly suited to God is to believe him to be above every name.

...is established for men as a mark of majesty.

Concerning, then, the names applied to God, uttered according to whatsoever form, this is what we know.

The exposition of these matters, unadorned and simple, we have set before the more fair-minded of our hearers, judging it at once shameful and unseemly for us to array ourselves vehemently against the feeble contentions of Eunomius on these points.

For what could one say to the man who declares that we make the form of names more authoritative than the worth of the things named, bestowing upon words the precedence over realities, and granting equality of honour to things unequal? These things have been said thus by his own mouth.

But let him who has taken it upon himself to judge decide whether the vehement accusation of this false accuser has anything pertinent against us, worthy that we should even defend ourselves—namely, that we bestow upon names the precedence over things—when it is plain to all that no name has of itself an essential subsistence, but every name becomes a token and sign of some essence and conception, itself in itself neither subsisting nor being conceived.

But how it is possible to distribute gifts to that which has no subsistence, let him teach his disciples of deceit—he who claims to use names and words in a fitting manner.

Of these things I would not have made any mention at all, had it not been necessary through them to furnish the demonstration of this writer's feebleness both in thought and in expression.

And whatever passages of the God-inspired Scripture he drags in incongruously and beside the mark—expounding a difference of immortality between angels and men, though I know not to what he is looking or what he is establishing thereby—these too I will pass over. (For that which is immortal, so long as it is immortal, does not admit the comparative 'more' and 'less.'

For if the one of the two parts he has set side by side should, in the account of immortality, admit any diminution by way of comparison, then it is altogether necessary that such a thing should not even be named immortal at all.

For how could that still properly be called immortal, of which the antithesis by way of comparison has predicated mortality?) And that subtle precision of his—the ruling that the notion of privation must not be indifferent and neutral, but that the removal of better things is to be called 'privation,' while the departure of worse things ought not to be signified by this name—so that, if this should prevail, according to him the apostolic word would no longer speak truly, which says that he alone has immortality and grants it to the others...

For what the passage he has adduced has in common with the argument he was advancing, it is impossible either for us or for any others of sound mind to conceive.

And because we were not able to discern these wise and subtle matters, he calls us ignorant both of the judgment of things and of the use of names, writing thus in these words:

And all such things, as having no force against the truth, I will pass over without examination—both his slandering of the account we set forth concerning the incorruptible and the incorporeal (as though of these two appellations the one signifies the dimensionlessness in which the threefold extension of bodies is not contemplated, and the other signifies incapacity for corruption), and his saying in these very words that 'we do not permit the form of names to fall into incongruous notions,' and that each of these is to be supposed indicative not of not-being or of not-being-present, but of being itself—these things too, having judged them worthy of silence and deep oblivion, I will leave for the readers to detect for themselves the impiety mingled with the folly.

He who claims that the corruptible ought not to be set in contradistinction to the incorruptible, and that the privative signification does not signify the departure of the worse, but that being itself is signified through the subject.

If, then, the signification of 'incorruptible' is not held by this empty theorizer to be a taking-away of corruption, then wholly and of every necessity such a form of the name will indicate the very contrary.

For if incorruptibility is not an alienation from corruption, it is altogether an assent to that which is discordant;

for this is the nature of opposites, that upon the removal of the one there enters in the position of its contrary.

But that harsh construction of his also—that God is by nature incapable of admitting death, as though there were one holding the contrary opinion on these matters—let us bid farewell to;

for we, in the case of opposites, consider it to make no difference whether one says that a thing is, or that its contrary is not;

as indeed also in the present argument, when we say that God is life, we in effect by this confession forbid the conceiving of death concerning him, even though we do not declare it in so many words;

and when we confess him incapable of admitting death, by the same account we have established that he is life.

'But I do not see,' he says, 'how God could excel his own works by things that do not belong to him.'

And upon this wise piece of reasoning, together with impiety he calls the great Basil foolish, who dared to utter such words;

to whom I would say: do not use insults so unsparingly against those who say these things, lest unawares you insult yourself as well with the same reproaches.

For perhaps not even he himself would gainsay that the greatness of the divine nature is recognized precisely in this: in its having no fellowship with those things in which the lower nature is shown to partake.

For if it were in any of these things, it would not even have the superiority, but would be altogether identical with each of those that share in the property.

But if it is above these things, then clearly by not having these things it is exalted above those that have them—just as we say that the sinless is better than those who are in sins;

for being separated from evil becomes a demonstration of being rich in the best things.

But let the reviler make what use he will of his nature;

and we, having briefly noted some of the things said in this part, will transfer our discourse to the matters before us.

He says in like manner that God excels the mortal as being immortal, the corruptible as being incorruptible, and the generate as being ingenerate.

Now is the construction of this fighter-against-God's impiety plain to all, or does it befit reason to lay bare his wickedness? Who does not know that things which are surpassed by the same measure are altogether equal to one another? If, then, the corruptible and the generate are alike surpassed by God, and the Lord too is generate, let Eunomius draw the conclusion of the impiety that emerges from the premises he has laid down.

For it is plain that he regards generation as the same as corruption and death, just as in the arguments preceding this he declared the ingenerate to be the same as the incorruptible.

If, then, he sees corruption and generation as equal, and says that God is alike removed from both, and the Lord is generate, let no one demand of us that we add the consequence following from the argument, but let him reason out the conclusion for himself—if indeed the nature of God is equally and by the same account removed from both the generate and the corruptible.

'But it is not possible,' he says, 'to call him incorruptible and immortal by reason of the absence of death and corruption.'

Let those who are led by the nose and dragged about to whatever seems good to each, be persuaded by what has been said, and let them say that corruption and death are present to God, in order that he may be called immortal and incorruptible.

For if the privative appellations of these do not signify the absence of death and of corruption, as Eunomius says, then it is altogether established, by this theorizing of his, that the contrary and alien things are present to him.

For each of the things conceived is either altogether absent from something or not absent—for example, light, darkness, life, death, health, sickness, and all such things;

and in these cases, if one should say that one of the things conceived is absent, he will altogether establish the presence of the other.

If, then, he says that God is not called immortal by reason of the absence of death, he would clearly be establishing the presence of death to him, and thereby denying immortality in the God of all.

For how could he still be truly immortal and incorruptible, of whom he says that corruption and death are not absent? But perhaps someone will say that we fasten upon his argument too captiously;

for surely no one would be so mad as to establish that God is not immortal.

A conjecture of the hidden things arises in us.

Let us, then, take up again what was said.

'It is not by the absence of death,' he says, 'that God is called immortal.'

How shall we understand what is said—that death is not absent from God, even though he be called immortal? If, then, this is what he bids us conceive, the God of Eunomius will altogether be mortal and subject to corruption.

For that from which death is not absent has not by nature to be immortal.

But surely, if the appellations signify the absence neither of death nor of corruption, then either they are applied in vain to the God who is over all, or they contain within themselves some other sense.

What, then, is this? Let the theorizer interpret it.

But we, who—as Eunomius says—are ignorant both of the judgment of things and of the use of names, have learned to call 'healthy' not that in which strength resides, but that from which sickness has departed; and 'unmaimed' not the man who is outside the banquets, but the one who has no maiming in himself;

and all other things likewise we name either from what is present or from what is not present—'brave' and 'unmanly,' 'drowsy' and 'sleepless,' and all that pertains to this usage.

But I know not what profit there is in deeming these trifles worthy of examination.

For to a man living in grey hairs and looking toward the truth, it is no small cause of condemnation to bear about on his lips the ridiculous and frivolous matters of his adversary's love of strife.

Wherefore I will pass over both those things and what is appended next to them:

'when truth,' he says, 'attests neither any innate kinship in God'...

For if this had not been said, who was it that declared God to be of double nature, save you—who make every notion of a name grow together with the essence of the Father, and say that nothing is present from without, but graft each of the names concerning the Divine into the essence of God? Then he says: 'nor yet attests such a notion as fashioned from without and by us, inscribing it upon the laws of piety.'

But again I will make my apology concerning what has been said—that it was not to make a laughing-stock for the readers that I set forth these laughable utterances, but that I might persuade the hearer from what sort of equipment of arguments this man sets out—he who washes off our rusticity of speech and then afterward waxes bold against the truth.

What manner of man he is in his reasoning, and what sort of things he utters—he who revels and struts before the thick-skinned among his hearers, who proclaim him, as he clumsily rattles off these bombastic and arid mouthings, to have prevailed over all by the power of his arguments—yet he says that the essence itself is immortality.

But the essence of the Only-begotten—what do you say of it, I would say to him—is it immortality or not? Since in its case too the simplicity, as you say, admits no innate kinship.

If, then, he denies that immortality is the essence of the Son, it is plain what he is looking toward.

For that which stands in opposition to the immortal is not something requiring a very subtle mind to perceive.