Against Eunomius 1 part 30/56

This, then, is the wise technical reasoning of our speech-writer, so he says.

But if there is any sense contained in what has been said, let the one who has undertaken to judge examine the argument.

Let me take up once more what has been said.

He says that he finds that which receives the generation to be nothing other than the essence of the Son.

But that no meaning at all is contained in what he has said is plain to everyone who has any ear whatever for arguments.

It remains, then, to bring into the open the blasphemy which he constructs by means of these unintelligible expressions.

For he wishes—even though, through his feebleness of expression, he is unable—to instil this notion in his hearers: that the essence of the Son is something manufactured.

And he names the manufacture 'generation,' cloaking the horror of his blasphemy in the most respectable-sounding word, so that the admission that the Lord was created might become the more easy to accept, since by the term 'generation' the manufacture is what is meant.

He says, then, that the essence receives the generation, in order that—just as every manufactured thing is contemplated as existing in some underlying subject (for no one could say that a thing which does not subsist has been manufactured)—so, holding up the nature of the Only-begotten God to his argument as a kind of manufactured product, he might allege its being made.

If, therefore, it receives this generation, he says, wishing to signify something of this kind—that it would not have existed unless it had been manufactured.

But what else among the things contemplated in creation is there that has not come into being? Heaven, air, earth, sea—everything whatever that exists—is altogether something that has come to be;

of which none would have existed, had it not been something that came into being.

(generation?) Therefore it is admitted, through what has been written, that the essence of the Only-begotten is placed by them on a common footing even with the most minute portions of creation; and every argument by which the estrangement of the Son from the Father is constructed has equal force also in the case of each individual creature.

What need, then, has he of this intricate hair-splitting to construct an estrangement in nature, when he ought rather to have taken the short road of outright denial—by openly declaring that the name of the Son ought not to be confessed, nor the Only-begotten God proclaimed in the churches; that the Jewish worship should be judged more authoritative than the confession of Christians; that, while confessing the Father alone as Creator and Maker, all the rest should be brought under the name and concept of creation; and that among these things the work set before the others should be called a product brought into being through some manufacturing activity, so that they hail him as 'first-created' instead of Only-begotten God and true Son? For once these positions prevail, there is great ease in bringing their doctrines through to the goal they aim at, since all things are, in the nature of the case, led on from such a beginning to what follows—namely, that one who was neither begotten nor is a Son, but came to subsist through some activity, cannot possibly share in the essence with God.

But so long as the voices of the Gospels hold sway—through which he is proclaimed Son, Only-begotten, from the Father, from God, and the like—he will babble in vain, deceiving both himself and those of his own party through such nonsense.

For while the appellation 'Son' cries aloud his true relation to the Father, who is so foolish that—when John and Paul and the whole remaining chorus of the saints proclaim these genuine utterances that indicate his intimate kinship—he does not look to those men, but thinks it truer to trust the hollow rattles of Eunomius's sophisms for teaching concerning those who speak mysteries through the Spirit and bear Christ within themselves—to trust Eunomius rather than them? What Eunomius is this? The one who has been exalted, from who knows where, to lead Christians? But let these things pass, and let our zeal concerning the matters before us, so far as it can, wear down our heart, which swells with jealousy for the faith against the blasphemers.

For how is it possible not to be stirred to anger and hatred, when our God and Master and Life-giver and Saviour is treated with contempt by these petty men? If someone were reviling my father according to the flesh, or bore ill will toward my benefactor, would it be possible to bear without feeling the wrath directed against those we love? But if the Lord of my soul—who gave it substance when it did not exist, and redeemed it when it had been enslaved; who gave me a taste of the present life and prepared the life to come; who calls me to the Kingdom and enjoins upon me how I may flee the condemnation of Gehenna (small things these that I mention, and not yet worthy of the majesty of the common Master); who is worshipped by all creation, heavenly, earthly, and under the earth, before whom stand the countless myriads of the ministering hosts of heaven, toward whom is turned everything that is here ordered and that has any longing for the good—if this One is set out for reviling by men, for whom it is not enough only to have joined themselves to the portion of the apostate, but who count it a loss not to drag others down with themselves into the same pit through their writing, so that there might not be lacking for those who come after a guide toward destruction—does anyone find fault with the anger directed against such things? But let us run back to the sequence of the argument.

For again in what follows he slanders us as dishonouring the generation of the Son by human likenesses; and indeed he calls to mind what was written by our father concerning these matters, in which he says that, since two things are signified by the term 'Son'—both a composition through passion and a genuineness of relation to the one who begot—the unseemly and fleshly meaning is not to be admitted in divine discourse, whereas whatever pertains to a testimony of the Only-begotten's glory, this alone is to be received in the lofty doctrines.

Who, then, dishonours the generation of the Son by human suppositions—he who banishes from the divine generation what is passible and human, and without passion joins the Son to the one who begot him, or he who places on a common footing with the creation below the One who brought all things into being? But this, it seems, is what this novel wisdom reckons to look toward dishonour: to make the Son intimately one with the majesty of the Father; while it thinks it great and lofty to drag him down into equal honour with the creation that is our fellow-servant.

Basil is slandered as one who dishonours the Son—he who honours him just as the Father is honoured; while Eunomius champions the honour of the Only-begotten—he who cuts him off from the good nature of the Father.

Paul, too, once incurred an accusation among the Athenians, being charged by those very men as a proclaimer of strange divinities, when he was refuting the error of the idol-mad concerning the demons and was leading them by the hand toward the truth, proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection.

These very charges the new Stoics and Epicureans now bring against the imitator of Paul—men who, as the history says concerning the Athenians, have leisure for nothing else than to tell or to hear some newer thing.

For what could be found newer than these things?

A Son of an activity, and a Father of a creature, and a recent God springing up out of non-being, and a good differing from the good? These are they who, by saying that he is not what the nature of the one who begot him is, make a pretence of honouring him with the honours that are fitting.

Does Eunomius feel shame at the form of such an honour, if one should say that he is made intimately one in nature not with the Father, but has his fellowship with something of a different kind? For if the one who places the Lord of creation on a common footing with the creation thereby defines himself as honouring him, then let this man too be honoured by being placed on a common footing, according to his nature, with the irrational or the insensate;

but if for this man fellowship with what is worse is grievous and insulting, how is it an honour to the One who rules in his dominion over the age, as the prophet says, to be ranked together with the subordinate and servile nature? But let this suffice on these points.

But concerning the utterance of Peter the apostle, it would be a fitting time to examine more diligently the things that have been said about it both by Eunomius himself and by our father.

But if the exact investigation should extend the discussion to great length, the fair-minded hearer will surely pardon it, not blaming us for prating idly, but referring the cause back to the one who furnished the occasion.

And let me be permitted to go through a few matters beforehand, prior to the examination of the subjects at hand—things which perhaps are not out of tune with the aim of what we are earnestly pursuing.

The divine word has ordained that nothing among the things that have come to be through creation should be an object of reverence for men, as it is possible to learn this from nearly all of the God-inspired Scripture.

Moses, the tablets, the Law, the prophets in succession, the Gospels, the doctrines of the apostles—all alike forbid looking toward the creation.

And it would be a long task to set forth in order each of the passages that bear upon this;

but even if we set down only a few testimonies of the God-inspired Scripture out of many, the argument nonetheless has full trustworthiness, because each of the divine sayings has equal worth for the manifestation of the truth, even if it be a very small one.

For since the supposition concerning existent things is divided in two—into the creation and into the uncreated nature—if what is now being urged by our opponents should prevail, namely to say that the Son of God is created, then it is altogether necessary either that the evangelical proclamation be set aside and that the Word who was in the beginning not be worshipped as God, because worship ought not to be offered to a creature; or, if the wonders in the Gospels put us to shame—through which we are led on to reverence and worship the One indicated in them—then to bring the created and the uncreated into equal honour, if indeed, according to the doctrine of our adversaries, the created God is also worshipped, having in his nature no preferment over the rest of creation;

and if this should prevail, the doctrines of piety will be transferred into a kind of utter anarchy and democratic self-governance.

For whenever men no longer believe that the nature which is worshipped is one, but are carried off in their conceptions into differing deities, there is nothing that will halt the supposition concerning the divine as it advances through the creation; but the thing reckoned divine in the creation will become an occasion for an equal supposition toward that which is contemplated after it, and that in turn toward what follows next; and through all things, by this sequence, the error will be carried along, the first deception passing through the things that lie next in order down to the last.

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

We apply such appellations to the essence, not glorifying that essence by the names we give, but guiding ourselves through the things we say toward the understanding of things hidden.

'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—as this man says—'exalt' the most blessed life of God, which the prophet says is in need of nothing among human goods? Or did he understand 'to exalt' in place of 'to name'? And yet we hear from those who use the term correctly and have been trained through precision in the exact use of words, that the verb 'to exalt' is not assigned to mere signification, but that such a thing is expressed as 'to make known' or 'to indicate' or 'to signify' or something else of the sort, whereas 'to exalt' is equivalent to 'to boast in' and 'to rejoice over' and whatever partakes of such a sense;

but he says that we exalt the blessed life by means of the names of conception.

But we think that to add any honour to the divine nature, which is beyond all honour, is greater than accords with human weakness; yet we do not deny that we attempt, through words and names devised in a pious manner, to make known something of the things pertaining to it.

And on this account, tracking out piety so far as is possible for us, we apprehend that the first cause has its subsistence not from any superior cause.

And if someone should accept this as true, it would be praiseworthy for the sake of the truth alone;

but if he should judge such a thing to be greater than the rest of the attributes conceived concerning the divine nature, and on this account should say that God, priding himself and rejoicing in this supposition alone, exults as in something surpassing, then it would belong to the Muse of Eunomius alone—who says that ungeneratedness exults in itself over itself, which indeed he calls essence and names blessed and divine life.

But let us hear how, according to the manner that befits his need and the pattern he set out beforehand (for thus he again preens himself before us with names of like pattern), how through these things he says that he both dissolves the suspicion that has arisen concerning it, and covers over the ignorance of those who have been deceived.

For I will use the very rhyming phrases of the dithyramb-maker himself.

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

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

Let us, then, learn what a conception of words or an imposition of names has in common with the very things themselves, which we mark out through this particular utterance of names and words—so that, if God exists ungeneratedly prior to the human constitution, we should judge invalid the utterance that expresses such a supposition, as being dissipated together with the sound, if it happens to have been named according to human conception.

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

Rather, God is by nature that which he is, but he is spoken of by us as far as it is possible to declare, because of the poverty of our nature, which keeps the dispositions in the soul unmanifest unless they are unveiled through voice and speech.

Therefore, having conceived that he is not from a cause, we declare this thought by a certain conception through the utterance 'ungenerate.'

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

But this the subtle-minded fellow did not perceive, nor did he clearly understand the very things he himself laid down.

For otherwise he would have ceased reviling those who make the name of ungeneratedness by way of conception.

'Things spoken by conception are dissolved together with the utterances, but God, both when things have come to be and before they came to be, was and is ungenerate.'

If, therefore, the creation is later than its Maker, and man is the last of all creation, and reason is proper to man, and parts of reason are verbs and nouns, and 'ungeneratedness' is a noun—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 indicative of existent things were devised for existent things through human conception; and he too admits that those who employ speech were shown forth as later than the divine life, and that the divine nature is—as it now is and always was—ungeneratedly.

If, therefore, he too admits that the blessed life pre-exists men (for again I will turn back and use the same argument), and we do not dispute that men came into being later in time, but say that they have used verbs and nouns from the time we were constituted and received from our Maker the being rational, and 'ungeneratedness' is a noun expressive of its particular concept, and every noun is a part of human speech—then he who admits that the divine nature pre-subsists men agrees that the designation devised for that nature is of later origin.

For it was not likely that the use of speech should be exercised before the constitution of those who use it—just as neither farming before farmers, nor navigation before navigators, nor any other of the things practised in life before human life was established.

Why, then, does he contend against 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 everything whatsoever that is conceived concerning God, this was before the constitution of the world.

But we say that this One is named only after the one who names Him has come into being.

For if we make use of names for this purpose, namely, that instruction

concerning things may come to us from that source, and only that which is ignorant stands in need of a teacher, while the divine nature, because it has comprehended all knowledge within itself, is superior to all teaching, then it is shown by these considerations that names have been devised not for God's sake but for our own, for the indication of that which is.

For it was not in order that He might come to know Himself that He applied the name of 'unbegottenness' to His nature.

For He who knows all things, and Himself before all things, has no need of syllables and words in order to learn how He stands with respect to nature and dignity;

rather, in order that we might attain some apprehension of the things reverently conceived concerning Him, we have impressed the distinctions of our thoughts by means of certain words and syllables, inscribing upon the movements of our intellect, as it were, certain seals and characters—namely, the impressions formed through speech—so that we might make a clear and unconfused indication of the movements arising in the soul by means of the sounds fitted to our thoughts.

What, then, refutes our argument—by which we say that the name of 'unbegottenness' was devised for the demonstration that God subsists without beginning—when he says that God, whether men speak or are silent or reflect, and prior to any conception of created beings, both was and is unbegotten? For if there were someone maintaining that He was not unbegotten before the name was discovered by us, that man would be pardonable for writing such absurdities.

But if it is confessed by all that He pre-exists both word and thought, while the imposition of the name, by which the mind is expressed, is said to have been discovered by us through conception, and the aim of his contention against us is to show that the name was not devised by men but existed even before our own constitution—then I do not know of what this is said, nor what the assertion that God subsists unbegottenly before all beings has in common with his professed endeavor, nor with maintaining that the conception of God is of later origin and must be contended for.

For does anyone declare God to be a conception, so that one should contend against Him with such arguments and say what he has said—that it is the mark of madmen to hold the conception to be older than those who conceive it—and, besides this, all that he goes on to expound further below?

As, then, it is likewise the mark of those not in their right mind to hold that men, though they are the last of God's creatures, are prior to their own conception. For truly the argument would have great force, if indeed someone out of madness or derangement were declaring God to be a conception.

But if this statement neither exists nor has ever been made—for who would drive himself to such a pitch of insanity as to say that He who truly is, and who brought all other existing things into being, does not exist according to His own proper subsistence, but to declare Him a conception of a name?—why do you vainly fight with shadows, contending against things that were never asserted? Or is the cause of this senseless contentiousness plain: that, being ashamed on account of those who were deceived by the sophism concerning unbegottenness, since it was thoroughly proven that the name is far removed from any signification of the essence, he willingly creates confusion in what is said, transferring the battle from the name to the realities, so that the uninstructed may easily be misled by such confusion, supposing either that we call God a conception, or that He is posterior to the discovery of human names, and on this account, leaving our position unrefuted, he shifts the battle to other matters? For our claim was, as has been said, that the name of 'unbegottenness' does not indicate the nature, but is fitted to the nature by conception, by which it is signified that He subsists without cause.

But what was maintained by them was that this utterance is indicative of the essence itself.

Where, then, was it established that the power of the name is such? But these matters, no doubt, are entirely reserved for other discussions, whereas all his labor is occupied with the point that God subsists unbegottenly.

It is as if someone were to ask him plainly about these things—what understanding he holds concerning the name of unbegottenness, whether as conceived for the demonstration that the first cause is without beginning, or as indicative of the essence itself—and he, very solemnly and magisterially, were to answer that he does not doubt God to be the maker of heaven and earth.

As, then, this reply is out of tune with what was proposed and is unconnected with it, in the same way you would find, in the case of the battle he has elaborately composed against us, that it is incoherent with respect to its aim.

They say that God is unbegotten.

To this we too give our assent.

But they also say that unbegottenness is the essence.

Against this there is a rejoinder on our part.

For we say that this is a name indicative of the fact that God subsists unbegottenly, not that unbegottenness is God.

He professes to refute our argument.

What, then, is the refutation? That He existed unbegottenly, he says, before the constitution of men.

What is this to the point in question? He undertakes to show that the name is identical with the underlying reality.

For he defines unbegottenness to be the essence.

What, then, is the demonstration? That God is shown to pre-exist those who employ the utterance? O what an irrefutable and marvelous demonstration!

This is that logical subtlety derived from the dialectical art, which of the uninitiated in that ineffable instruction could ever look it in the face? But solemnly, in his distinctions concerning conception, he makes a mockery of the very name of conception itself.

For of the things so spoken of according to conception, he says that some have their existence only in the utterance, as those signifying nothing, while others exist according to their own proper thought;

and of these, some exist by way of enlargement, as in the case of colossal statues, others by way of diminution, as in the case of pygmies, others by way of addition, as in the case of many-headed creatures, or by way of composition, as in the case of hybrid monsters.

You see to what point our sage, having chopped up conception into pieces for us, did not deign to allow its power to proceed any further.

He says that conception is meaningless and unintelligible, contriving things contrary to nature, either curtailing or stretching beyond the fixed measures of nature, or compounding things of diverse kinds, or producing monstrosities by grotesque additions.

By these means, having derided the name of conception, he demonstrates that, according to him, it is useless and of no benefit to life.

The higher branches of learning—whence comes geometry, and arithmetical philosophy, and the teaching of logical and physical theorems, and the inventions of machines and the marvels wrought through bronze and water in water-clocks; and philosophy itself concerning that which is, and the contemplation of intelligible things, and, in a word, all the soul's occupation with things great and lofty? And what of agriculture, what of navigation, and what of the rest of the management of our life? Whence has the sea become passable for man? How has the airy realm been made subject to the land-dweller? How is the untamed tamed, how is the more fearsome subdued, how does the stronger not throw off the yoke? Were not all these things discovered for human life through conception? For, according at least to my reasoning, conception is a method for discovering the unknown, finding out what follows by means of the notions proximate to and consequent upon the first idea concerning the object of study.

For having conceived something concerning the object of inquiry, we fit what follows to the beginning of what was grasped by means of the notions we discover, and so bring the undertaking to the completion of the things we are pursuing.

And why should I enumerate the greater and loftier achievements of conception? For anyone who is not contentiously disposed toward the truth may perceive that all the other things too—whatever things beneficial and useful to the life of men that time has discovered—have been found out in no other way than through conception.

And it seems to me that whoever judges conception to be more honorable than all the goods effected in us during this life—those inherent in our souls from divine providence—would not err from the fitting judgment.

I say these things having been instructed by Job, in the passage where God is represented as answering His servant in speech through the whirlwind and the clouds, saying, among the other things that it was fitting for God to say, that it was He who set man over the arts, and bestowed upon women the knowledge of weaving and embroidery.

For that He did not teach us such arts by any active operation, Himself presiding over the work, as one may see in the case of those things taught by bodily demonstration—no one would gainsay this at all, unless he were someone carnal and brutish.

But nevertheless it has been said by Him that the guidance to such arts came into being for us.

Therefore He who gave to nature the power of conceiving and discovering the objects of inquiry, He it was who led us on to the arts; and by the principle of causation everything discovered and successfully accomplished is referred back to the author of this power.

Thus life discovered medicine also, yet nonetheless one who calls medicine a gift of God will not be in error.

And everything whatsoever that has been discovered in human life, in peace and in war, that is aptly suited for something useful, has by no means come to us from any other source, but by the mind understanding and discovering each thing in a manner corresponding to us;

therefore all things that have been provided to us through the mind are from God.

But that the mythical fabrications and false prodigies are, as our opponents say, invented and fashioned by conception, neither do I myself deny;

for their argument too contributes to our own aim.

For we too say that the knowledge of contraries is one and the same—both of things beneficial and of things otherwise disposed—such as medicine and navigation and anything else of the sort;

for he who knows how to help the sick by means of a drug would also know, if he should use his art for evil, how to work poison into the healthy;

and he who directs the vessel toward the harbor with the rudder would also be able to steer it onto reefs or crags, if it should be his pleasure to destroy the passengers by treachery;

and the painter by the same art both displayed the most beautiful form upon the tablet and again vividly imitated the most hideous;

so the trainer, by his skill in anointing, both set the dislocated limb in place and, if he wished, by the same art dislocated the sound one.

Therefore, as in the cases mentioned no one would deny that he who has learned an art for operating toward the better could also use that same art for things that ought not to be, so we too say that the power of conception was implanted by God in human nature for good, but that, some having abused the inventive power, it often becomes a servant and coadjutor of unprofitable inventions.