Against Eunomius 1 part 29/56

So let that man too first demonstrate this: that the Church has believed in vain that the Only-begotten is truly Son—not adopted by positive enactment into a falsely-named father, but by nature begotten as being from Him who is, not estranged from the nature of the one who begot Him.

Let him first refute these things as false, and then, in going through what follows, he will be persuasive.

But so long as the first point remains undemonstrated, it is a mark of foolish babbling to dwell upon secondary matters.

And let no one interrupt me with the objection that what is agreed upon on our side ought also to be confirmed by demonstration;

for it suffices as a demonstration of our argument that the tradition has come to us from the Fathers, handed down through succession from the Apostles by way of the saints who followed thereafter, like some inheritance;

and this wins over those who are weighty and steadfast in their understanding.

But so long as their argument is brought forward unestablished and undemonstrated, who is so silly and brutish as to make the teaching of the Evangelists, the Apostles, and those who shone forth in the churches thereafter weaker than their undemonstrated nonsense? But let us also see the most hard-to-detect feature of the word-monger's shrewdness—how, by his abundance of dialectical experience, he cleverly draws the more guileless over to the contrary view.

He has thrown in, alongside the appellation of 'thing-made' and 'creature,' also the term 'offspring,' saying that the essence of the Son receives these names into itself; and, as though haranguing in an assembly of drunken men, he supposes that his malicious dealing with doctrine will be detected by no one.

For by joining 'offspring' to 'creature' and 'thing-made,' he thinks to filch away the difference in the meaning of the names by his coupling together of things that have nothing in common.

Such are these clever contrivances of his dialectic!

But we, the unskilled in speech, do not deny that we are indeed, as regards our voice and tongue, such as the argument declares us to be concerning ourselves; yet we confess that ears too have been fitted to us, as the prophet says, for intelligent hearing.

Wherefore we are in no way led, by the joining together of names that have nothing in common, into a confusion of the things signified;

but even if the great Apostle names together wood, hay, and stubble, and gold, silver, and precious stones, we both reckon up the number of the things mentioned as a total, and are not ignorant of the nature of each of the things named, taken severally.

So also now, when 'offspring' and 'thing-made' are mentioned together, passing from the words to the things signified, we do not perceive the same meaning in each of the names;

for 'creature' signifies one thing, and 'offspring' another, so that even if he mixes together things that are unmixable, the intelligent hearer will hear them distinctly and will show it to be among things impossible that the appellation of 'offspring' and that of 'creature' should receive into itself any one single nature.

For if one of these were true, the other would of necessity be false, so that if it were a creature, it would not be an offspring, and conversely, if it were called an offspring, it would be alien to the designation of 'creature.'

But Eunomius says that the essence of the Son receives into itself the appellations of offspring, thing-made, and creature.

Has he perhaps by means of what follows secured this headless and rootless argument (seeing that no force was laid down through the earlier statements toward what he is trying to establish), or do the remaining parts too partake of the same emptiness, deriving their strength not from any alliance of reasonings, but having the exposition of blasphemy in a rambling and unestablished form, as in the narration of dreams? For he says, appending this to what has been said, that 'it has its begetting without any intermediary, while it preserves indivisibly its relation to Him who begot, made, and created it.'

For if, leaving aside 'without intermediary' and 'indivisibly,' we contemplate in itself the meaning of these words, we shall find that everywhere the frivolity of his teaching, strengthened by no argument, is thrown at the ears of those who are deceived.

'Him who begot,' he says, 'and created, and made.'

These, even though they may seem to be three, contain the signification of two notions, since the two terms are equal in force to one another as regards their meaning;

for 'to make' is the same as 'to create,' while 'begetting' is something other than the things mentioned.

It is impossible for some one single nature to be split apart toward the notion of both 'thing-made' and 'offspring.'

For since each of these, when spoken of by itself, has its own peculiar interpretation, it is altogether necessary that a proper and kindred correlative pairing be conceived along with the names.

For indeed the rest of the things spoken of in relation to something else have their affinity not toward what is alien and incongruous, but even if that to which the term refers is passed over in silence, the correlative is heard automatically together with its prototype;

for example: craftsman, slave, friend, son, and the like.

For all things that are contemplated by reference to something else present, through their appellation, each its own conjoined kinship with the thing indicated, having no admixture in their communion with what is of a different kind.

For neither is the name of 'craftsman' coupled with 'son,' nor is the term 'slave' referred to 'craftsman,' nor does 'friend' indicate 'slave,' nor 'son' the 'master'; but we recognize the manifest and distinct correlative pairing of each of these with its proper counterpart, understanding by 'friend' another friend, by 'slave' the master, and by 'craftsman' the work, and by 'son' the father.

So also, then, 'offspring' and 'thing-made' have their proper reference relatively to something.

Accordingly, the begetter is coupled with the offspring, and the maker with the thing-made; and it is altogether necessary, if we are not to introduce some confusion of the realities through the interchange of the names, to preserve for each of the things spoken of relatively its proper co-signification.

Since, then, the meaning of these terms is manifest as to what it looks toward, how is it that this man—who advances doctrines by means of logical technicality—did not perceive the proper relative meaning in the case of these names, but thinks that 'offspring' ought to be fitted to the maker and 'thing-made' to the begetter, saying that the essence of the Son receives into itself the appellations of offspring, thing-made, and creature, but preserves indivisibly its relation to Him who begot, made, and created it? For one single thing cannot by nature be parcelled out to different relations, but the Son is made proper to the Father and the begotten to the begetter, while the thing-made has its reference to the maker;

unless indeed someone should hold that a certain abuse of terms, in some indifferent usage, is more authoritative than their natural signification.

By what reasonings, then, and by what kinds of demonstration—according to that invincible dialectic of his—having converted the opinions of the many to the contrary, does he expound these things authoritatively: that, when the God over all is conceived and spoken of as Creator and Father, the Son is suitably related to both appellations, being called equally both creature and offspring? For since the usage and precision of language properly distinguishes such names, and applies the name of 'begetting' to things begotten out of the very essence, but that of 'creation' to things that come into being from outside the nature of the one who fashions them—and since on this account the divine doctrines, in the tradition of the knowledge of God, have handed down 'Father' and 'Son,' not 'Creator' and 'work,' lest any corruption arise toward blasphemy, thrusting the Son away into what is alien and foreign to such an appellation, and lest the godless doctrines that sever the Only-begotten from His proper essential kinship with the Father should gain any inlet—he who says that the appellation of 'thing-made' is fitting to the Son will by all means say, consistently, that the name of 'son' also properly belongs to the thing-made; so that, if the Son is a creature and the heaven is a son, then each individual one of the things that have come into being would properly, according to the word-monger, be named by the appellation of 'son.'

For if that One has His name not by sharing in the nature of the one who begot Him, but is named 'son' in so far as He is created, the same argument will grant that the lamb, the dog, the frog, and all things that have come into subsistence by the will of the Maker are named by the appellation of 'son.'

But it is said that, consistently and by all means, He who is properly Son is Son by reason of being from the very nature of the one who begot Him, and is confessed to be God as well.

But he loathes the notion of begetting and banishes it from the divine doctrines, slandering the name by his fleshly physiology.

But our discussion has sufficiently demonstrated concerning these matters in what preceded, that, according to the prophet, they fear with fear where there is no fear.

For if even in the case of human beings not every begetting has been shown to be constituted by passion, but the material kind is through passion, while the spiritual kind is pure and undefiled (for that which is begotten of the Spirit becomes spirit and not flesh, and no passible disposition is contemplated together with the Spirit)—since through examples drawn from our own nature it seemed necessary to the word-monger to reckon out the divine power, let him persuade himself, from the other mode of begetting, to conceive of the impassibility that pertains to the divine begetting.

But having confounded together these three appellations, of which the two are equal in force, he thinks to snatch away his hearers, through the community in meaning of the two terms, into supposing that the third likewise holds true.

For since the appellation of 'thing-made' and 'creature' indicates that the thing made is outside the nature of the one who made it, he attaches to these the term 'offspring,' so that this too might be interpreted along with the aforesaid.

But such a form of argument is called malice, deceit, and trickery, not a carefully considered and skilful demonstration.

For that alone is called demonstration which makes clear the unknown by means of things agreed upon; but to reason falsely through malice, and to steal away the refutation, and to confound in superficial deceptions the understanding of those who, as the Apostle says, are corrupted in mind—no one of sound sense would call this a skilful demonstration.

But let us pass on to what follows.

He says that the begetting of the essence is 'without any intermediary,' and that it preserves 'indivisibly' its relation to Him who begot, made, and created it.

If, then, having said that the begetting of the essence is 'indivisible' and 'without intermediary,' he had halted his argument at this point, he would not have swerved from the pious supposition, since by us too the conjunction of the Son with the Father, and its being without intermediary, is confessed—so that there is nothing interposed between them, nothing found in the midst of the conjunction of the Son with the Father, no intervallic notion, not even that indivisible and atomic instant which, when time is cut in two into the past and the future, is conceived in itself indivisibly according to the present, being unable to become a part either of the past or of the future because it is altogether without extension and indivisible and imperceptible to whatever it may be added.

The purely immediate, then, we say is mediated by no such thing.

For that which is separated by some intervening thing could no longer be without a mediator.

If, then, he too, having said that the Son's begetting is without any intermediary, had brought forward none of the things mentioned, he would have been teaching the union of the Son with the Father as it is piously understood.

But since, as if repenting of what he had said, he immediately added that it preserves the relation to Him who begat and made and created it, he defiled the former statements by the latter, staining the pure argument with the blasphemous utterance he set in their midst.

For it is plain that there too the term 'without an intermediary' has no regard to piety; but it is as if one were to say that between the nail and the smith the hammer serves as an intermediary, yet that the making of this hammer is itself without an intermediary — for since the tools had not yet been devised by the craft, the hammer came into being first from the craftsman by some contrivance, and not through any other tool, and thus through it the rest were made. This is what the phrase 'without an intermediary' shows the writer to hold concerning the Only-begotten as well.

Nor did he perceive the absurdity in his argument, that what comes into being not for its own sake but for the sake of something else is in every way less honourable than that for the sake of which it comes to be — just as we practise the farming tool for the sake of life, yet the plough is not honoured equally with life.

In this way, then, if the Lord is for the sake of the world, and not all things for His sake, then all things — for the sake of which they say He came to be — would be more honourable than the Lord.

This is precisely what they now establish by their argument, when they insist that the Son has, without any intermediary, the relation to Him who created and made Him.

But he shows a show of kindness in what remains, and says that He is compared with none of the things that came into being through her and after her.

Such are the gifts which the enemies of the truth bring to the Lord — by which the blasphemy is only rendered more conspicuous.

For tell me: which of the remaining things, all that belong to the creation, admits of comparison with either? Since in general the distinctive character appearing in each does not admit of any community with things of another kind. There is no comparison of heaven with earth, nor of earth with the stars, nor of the stars with the seas, nor of the stone with the water, nor of the trees with the animals, nor of the birds with the land creatures, nor of the swimming things with the four-footed, nor of the rational with the irrational.

And why should one spend time speaking of things one by one, showing that concerning each of the things contemplated in the creation the very same thing can be said which has been flung at the Only-begotten as if it were something exceptional — namely, that it has no comparison with any of the things made after it and through it? For it is evident that everything, whatever you conceive by itself, is incomparable both with the whole and with the individual things.

And what may truly be said of any chance created thing — that it is sufficient — this too is apportioned by the enemies of the truth as enough for the honour and glory of the Only-begotten God.

And having established such things, again in what remains he exalts Him with empty honours, addressing Him as Lord and Only-begotten.

But lest any pious thought should arise in his hearers through these names, he immediately mingles with the more auspicious terms his blasphemies.

For inasmuch, he says, as the begotten essence has left no room for community with any other,

nor is the activity of Him who made it seen to be common,

As though haranguing among irrational or senseless beings, in whom there is no understanding, he carries his argument about at will through contradictions; or rather he suffers the same thing as those bereft of sight, since they too often behave unseemly before the eyes of those who see, because in not seeing themselves they suppose that they too are not seen.

For whose eye cannot discern the contradiction in what has been said? He says that because it was begotten, the essence leaves no room for community with others;

and having said this, then — as though in truth either not seeing himself, or thinking he is not seen — he adds, as if they belonged together with what has been said, things that have no community whatever, fitting the activity of Him who made to the essence of the Only-begotten.

For the begotten in every way has, by logical consequence, its reference to the one who begat, and the Only-begotten to the Father; and he who looks to the truth beholds in the co-ordination of the Son not the activity of one who made, but the nature of one who begat.

But he, as if making mention of plants or seeds or something else belonging to the creation, sets the activity of Him who made alongside the subsistence of the Only-begotten.

For if a stone or wood or some other such thing were set before contemplation, it would be consistent to conceive beforehand the activity of Him who made it;

the things, then, which are said concerning such things, these they declare also concerning the Only-begotten.

And just as hunters are said to catch the passage of wild beasts by certain pits, and to conceal their snare by covering over the mouths of the pits with brittle and unsubstantial things, so that the chasm may appear level with the ground beside it, so heresy contrives some such thing against men, covering the pit of impiety with these fair-sounding and pious names as with a superficial roof; so that the more irrational, thinking through the confession of the words that the proclamation of these men is the same as the true faith, and rushing toward the bare name of 'Son' and 'Only-begotten', fall empty into the pit — since the meaning of the appellations does not support their footing, but carries them down into the abyss of the denial of Christ.

For this reason he makes mention of a begotten essence that has left no room for community with any, and names Him Only-begotten;

these are the coverings of the pit.

But when someone standing by, before he is caught in the chasm, applies to the argument, as it were a hand, the testing that comes through reasoning, he sees the ruin of idolatry undermined beneath the doctrine.

For as he draws near to a God and Son of God, he finds a creature of God set before him for worship.

For this reason they bandy about the name of the Only-begotten up and down, that the ruin may become easily acceptable to those who are deceived — as if someone, having mixed poison into bread, should welcome to death those in need of food, who would not have taken the deadly poison bare, had they not been enticed by the appearance.

Wisely, then — according at least to his own mind — does he look to what he is bent upon.

For if he had utterly cast the confession of the Son out of his own doctrine, the deceit would have become unacceptable to men, since the denial would be openly proclaimed in a manifest declaration;

but now, leaving only the name while transferring the thing signified to the notion of the creature, he both accomplishes idolatry and steals away the refutation.

But since we have been commanded not to honour God with the lips, nor is piety judged by the sound of a voice, but the Son must first be believed in the heart unto righteousness and then confessed with the mouth unto salvation, and those who say in their heart that there is no God, even though with the mouth they confess Him Lord, have become corrupt and abominable, as the prophecy says — for this reason I say that one must look to the mind of those who put forward, forsooth, the words of the faith, and not be enticed by the utterances.

If, then, in saying 'Son' he does not, through the word, look to a creature, he is ours and not of the adversaries;

but if anyone assigns the name of Son to the creation, he will be ranked among the idolaters.

For neither the wood, nor the bronze, nor the wild beast is God.

But why need we, by conjecturing at his meaning, uncover with argument the hidden deceit, and perhaps furnish occasions to our hearers, as though we were not truly charging these things against our enemies? For behold, he sets forth the blasphemy to us bare, concealing his guile behind no covering, but boldly speaking his absurdities with a free voice.

For thus stand the things that have been written.

'We, then,' he says, 'finding nothing besides the essence of the Son that receives the begetting, think we must assign the appellations to the essence itself; or else it is in vain and with bare words that we call Him Son and begotten, if we should separate these from the essence.

Setting out from these considerations, we also give assurance that the essences differ from one another.'

I think there is no need for the absurdity in what has been said to be refuted by our own arguments;

for the mere reading of what has been written is sufficient to pillory the blasphemy.

He says that the essences of the Son and of the Father differ from one another.

Let us examine in itself the very force of the expression, so that through the interpretation of the word the blasphemy may be the more uncovered.

The word 'divergence' (paralla­gē), then, is used in the loose usage of common speech in the case of bodies, when through paralysis or some other affliction a member is turned aside from its natural harmony;

for from the comparison of the affected part with the healthy, we name the turning of the diseased member for the worse a 'divergence'.

In the case of those who differ in character according to virtue and vice, when the licentious life is set beside the pure and temperate, or the unjust beside the just, or against the gentle and peaceable and quiet man the passionate and warlike man, ungoverned in his anger — and in general everything that is charged with vice by comparison with the better is said to 'diverge', in that the marks belonging to each do not agree with one another, I mean the marks of the good and of the worse.

Further, we say that the qualities contemplated in the elements also 'diverge' — all those that stand opposed to one another in contrariety, having a power destructive of each other, such as the hot and the cold, or the dry and the wet, or in general whatever is set over against another in contrariety; and the incompatibility in these we interpret by the word 'divergence'. And in general everything that is discordant with another in the marks observed in it belongs to the class of things that diverge — as health to disease, and life to death, and war to peace, and virtue to vice, and all things of a like kind.

Now that these things have been thus clearly distinguished by us, let us also consider, in the case of this writer, in what sense he says that the essences of the Father and of the Son diverge from one another.

What does he mean by this? Is it that the Father is according to nature, but the Son has diverged from nature? Or does he interpret by this word a turning aside of virtue, separating by the name of 'divergence' the evil from the better, so as to behold this essence in the good, and the other in its contrary? Or according to the account of the contrariety of the elements does he maintain that the divine essence too diverges, the one from the other? Or as war stands to peace and life to death, does he in such a manner discern in the essences a strife toward all such things, so that they cannot combine with one another, since the mixture of contraries has a power consumptive of the things mixed — even as the proverbial wisdom says concerning such a doctrine: 'Water and fire will never say, It is enough,' interpreting through the riddle the evenly-matched and equally-balanced nature of contraries and their mutual destruction? Or does he say that the divergence to be discerned in those essences is according to none of these? Then let him state what is conceived apart from these.

But he could not say — even if he should allege the customary meanings — that the Son has diverged from Him who begat Him;

for by this the absurdity of what is said by him is all the more refuted.

For what else is so aptly and harmoniously ingrained and fitted to another as the relative signification of the Son to the Father? And the proof of this is that even if these two names are not both uttered, by the one the omitted one too is co-signified;

so ingrained and fitted is the one to the other, and both are beheld in the one, that neither of them can be conceived by itself apart from the other.

But that which diverges is, from the opposite side, in every way both conceived and spoken of as contrary to that which fits — as the cord fits aptly to the straight line, but the crooked, when set beside the straight, does not fit; and it is customary among musicians to call the consonance of tones 'harmony', but that which is aberrant and out of tune 'inharmonious'.

It is therefore the same thing to say 'divergent' and 'inharmonious'.

If, then, according to the heretical account, the nature of the Only-begotten God has diverged from the essence of the Father, it in no way fits with it either;

but that which is inharmonious could not come to be in that with which it cannot be fitted together.

The wax, coming from a seal, fits to that which contains it the impression it bears about itself, taking its own stamps in the engraving, penetrating into the hollows and receiving the projections of the carving with its own impressions; but if some foreign and alien impression were set into the engraving of the signet, it roughens and confounds its own shape, carving over the form with the incongruous stamps.

But surely He who subsists in the form of God has been shaped by no other stamp than the Father, being the impress of the Father's subsistence;

and the form of God is in every way the same as the essence.

For as, coming to be in the form of the servant, He was formed into the essence of the servant, not taking upon Himself a bare form nor one severed from the essence, but the essence is co-signified with the form, so in every way also he who said that He is in the form of God indicated the essence through the form.

If, then, He is in the form of God, and being in the Father has been sealed with the paternal glory, as the voice of the Gospel says which declares, 'Him hath the Father sealed, even God,' wherefore also he who has seen the Son sees the Father — the image of the goodness and the effulgence of the glory and all things of such a kind bear witness that the essence of the Son is not inharmonious toward the Father — then plainly the incoherence of the blasphemy of the adversaries is refuted by what has been said.

For if things that diverge are not fitted together, but He who was sealed by the Father, and shows in Himself the Father, and is in the Father, and has Him within Himself, in all things displays what is congenital and well-fitted, then through these the absurdity of the adversaries is refuted with full force.

For as it was shown that the divergent is inharmonious, so, conversely, it is undeniably confessed that the well-fitted is in every way undivergent.

For as the divergent is not fitted, so that which is fitted has not diverged;

but he who says that the nature of the Only-begotten diverges from the good essence of the Father in every way beholds the divergence in the good itself.

And what the 'divergent from the good' is — 'Understand cunning, O ye simple,' says the proverb.

But these things, as having their absurdity manifest, I shall pass over in my argument, and let us examine what precedes them.

He says that nothing else is found besides the essence of the Son which receives the begetting.

With what meaning in mind does he say these things? For having distinguished two names one from another, and separated in his account the things signified by them, he sets forth each one by itself, as though it stood on its own.

One name is 'generation,' and another name is 'essence.'

The essence, he says, receives the generation, being evidently something other than the generation.

For if the generation were essence—which is precisely what he continually asserts, so that the two appellations are equivalent to one another in their sense—he would not have said that the essence receives the generation.

For it would be the same as to say that the essence receives the essence, or that the generation receives the generation, if indeed the generation were identical with the essence.

Therefore he conceives the generation to be one thing, and the essence—which receives the generation—to be another.

For that which is received would not be the same as that which receives it.