Against Eunomius 1 part 31/56

It is not, then, the case that, because conception is able plausibly to fashion things false and non-existent, it is therefore unable to search out things that truly are and really subsist; rather, the aptitude for such things becomes, to the fair-minded, a testimony of its power with respect to the former.

For that the man who has set out to contrive some astonishment for beholders, or some delight, does not lack the conception directed toward his object, but forms either creatures many-handed or many-headed or breathing fire or coiled in serpents' folds, or exaggerates their symmetry to something greater, or curtails the measures of nature to something ludicrous, or narrates by way of transformation that men become springs and trees and birds—by which those who take pleasure in such things may find a certain diversion—this, I say, is a most vivid proof that, by the inventive power, one would be able to comprehend the higher branches of learning as well.

For it is not the case that, while our mind is by nature complete—from Him who gave it—for the fashioning of non-existent things, it has yet inherited no productive power of profitable things toward the discovery of what is beneficial to the soul;

but just as the impulsive and deliberative power of our soul was constructed by nature primarily for the desire of things noble and good, though one might also use such a movement for things that ought not to be—and no one would say that its inclining sometimes toward base things is a proof that the will inclines toward nothing good—so also the movement of conception concerning things vain and unprofitable is not an accusation of any incapacity toward the useful, but becomes a proof that it is not inactive with respect to things profitable to the soul and necessary as well.

For as it discovered there that which tends to pleasure or astonishment, so here also it will not fail of the approaches toward the truth.

Now one of the things being inquired into was whether the first cause, which is God, exists without beginning, or has its being dependent on some beginning.

And having apprehended by our understanding that what is conceived as deriving from another cannot be first, we conceived a name expressive of such a supposition, and we say that He who is without any cause lying above Him is without beginning, that is to say, unbegotten.

And Him who thus exists we named unbegotten and without beginning, indicating by the name not what He is, but what He is not.

But that the thought may become as clear as possible, I will try to set it forth by means of a more vivid illustration.

Let it be granted that the inquiry concerns a certain tree, whether it is planted or has come into being spontaneously.

If, then, it should be from planting, we shall by all means call the tree 'planted'; but if spontaneously, 'unplanted.'

Now such a name does not miss the truth;

for the tree will by all means be either so or otherwise, and yet it does not indicate the distinctive nature of the plant.

For we learned, by the term 'unplanted,' that it exists of itself, but whether the thing indicated is a plane-tree or a vine or some other of such plants, we were not taught by such a designation.

If, then, the illustration has been understood, it would be the time to transfer the argument to the reality of which it is the illustration.

We apprehended that the first cause has its being from no cause lying above it.

Bringing, then, this notion into the form of a name for the God who exists unbegottenly, we named Him unbegotten.

That He is, then, not through generation, we made clear from the import of the name; but as to what the essence itself, which exists unbegottenly, is according to its own proper nature, we were guided by no means by this appellation toward the perceiving of it.

It is a method toward comprehension, to include these things within our own knowledge.

But he shakes our teacher and drags his argument about, the argument which that man makes concerning conception, and he tramples upon what has been said, once again in his customary fashion satirizing the words with the clatter of his petty little phrases, and he says:

He appropriates the interpretation of the very things whose testimony he is ashamed to acknowledge.

For having reported a portion of what the teacher had observed concerning conceptual notions—wherein that man affirmed that the use of conception is operative not only in matters of no consequence but also possesses a certain power toward greater things—by means of the observation concerning grain and seed and nourishment he brings in the aforesaid charges, accusing him of following the outward (pagan) philosophy, and he says that he curtails the providential care of God, since he does not confess that the names were imposed upon things by God; and that he makes common cause with the godless and arms himself against divine providence, and admires the opinion of those men above the divine laws, and grants them greater credit for wisdom—not having examined the first of the sayings, namely, that before human beings had been brought forth into existence the designation of fruit and of seed had already been named by Scripture.

These are the accusations he brings against us—the thoughts not written down in his very words, but our phrasing has been altered only so far as to correct the harsh and ill-sounding quality of the arrangement of his statements.

What then do we, what do we reply to this guardian of the divine providence? He says that we do wrong because, while we do not deny that man was made rational by God, we nonetheless trace the invention of words back to the rational faculty implanted by God in the nature of human beings.

And this is the gravest of the charges, by which the teacher of true religion is accused of deserting to the opinion of the godless, and is called heir and advocate of a lawless custom, and is styled with every most dreadful name.

Let the corrector of our errors, then, tell us: did God impose the appellations upon existing things? For this is what the new expositor of mystical doctrines asserts—that God named sprout and plant and grass and seed and tree and such things before the fashioning of man, when by his command he was bringing the created things into being.

If then he clings to the bare letter and in this respect judaizes in his opinion, and has not yet been taught that the Christian is a disciple not of the letter but of the Spirit (for the letter, it says, kills, but the Spirit gives life), and yet he sets before us the reading of what is written in a merely literal sense of the word, as though God had recounted these things—if he has believed this, he will establish nothing other than that God too, after the likeness of men, used discursive speech and formed his thoughts by voice and articulate sound.

If then he understands it thus, he will surely not deny what follows from these things.

For our speech is uttered by means of the vocal organs—the windpipe, the tongue, the teeth, the mouth—while the drawing of air and the breath from within also cooperate toward the utterance.

For the windpipe sounds forth for us from below, fitted to the throat like some kind of pipe;

and the palate, by means of the cavity lying above that passes through the nostrils, like a bridge from above, broadens out the sound into articulate tone.

But the cheeks too cooperate with speech, being hollowed and broadened according to the various shapings of the articulations, and again driving the sound forth through a narrow passage, in accordance with the manifold turnings of the tongue, which it makes now at one part of itself, now at another, roughening or compressing in some way against the teeth or the palate the breath that passes through it.

The service of the lips also contributes something, touching upon the sound in varied ways by different modes of movement and completing the pattern of the words.

In naming, there is every necessity that he utter each of these things in no other way than as it is spoken—that is, according to the combinations of the syllables, of which some are formed by the lips, some by the tongue, and some by both.

If then the name could not be uttered otherwise, unless the vocal organs by their particular movement generate the syllables and the speech, then surely he attributes these things also to God, and will fashion the Divine into a shape for the sake of the use of speech.

For the particular conformation of the organs that produce the voice is altogether within the domain of shape;

and no body has escaped being composite.

But where composition is observed, there the dissolution of the composite is also surely to be apprehended;

and dissolution is, in respect of its meaning, the same as corruption.

This, then, is the conclusion of the wordsmith's victory over us: to have shown his own God—whom he fashioned by means of the name of ingeneracy—as one who speaks so that he may not be deprived of the invention of names, who is shaped with vocal members so that he may utter names, who is not without a share of bodily nature because of the necessity of shapes (for no shape could be contemplated by itself, unless it were altogether formed in a body), and who, advancing little by little toward the passions inherent in the body, comes to an end by way of the composite in dissolution, and by way of this in corruption.

Such is the nature of the newly-minted God that has been made manifest, by the logical sequence of what has been said by this new maker of gods.

But he lays hold of what is written and says that Moses expressly proclaims these things, namely, that God said—and he adds the words: 'Let there be light,' and 'Let there be a firmament,' and 'Let the waters be gathered together,' and 'Let the dry land appear,' and 'Let the earth put forth,' and 'Let the waters bring forth,' and all that is written thereafter in order.

Let us then examine the sense of what has been said.

Who, even among the merest infants, does not know that hearing and speech have a natural relation to one another, and that just as it is not possible for hearing to be active when no one is speaking, so neither is speech operative unless it is directed toward hearing?

If then he says that God spoke, let him also point out to us the hearing to which he spoke.

Or will he say that God said these things to himself? Then he commands these things to himself, giving orders to himself.

And who will accept this—that God sits and prescribes to himself what must be done, and uses himself as the minister and servant of his own commands? But even if one should grant that this is a devout thing to say, who ever had need of words and speech in dealing with himself, even if he be a man? For to each the movement of his own mind suffices to produce the impulse of his purpose.

But he will surely say that God was conversing with the Son.

And what need was there of a voice for this? For it is proper to the embodied nature to announce the thoughts of the heart by means of words;

whence also, equivalent in power to the use of the voice, there was devised the disclosure by means of the conceived invention of letters;

for equally by speaking and by writing we announce what has been thought; but in the case of those not too far off we reach the hearing by voice, while to those at a distance we make our mind known by letters; and in the case of those present, according to the measure of the distance, we either raise or lower the pitch of the voice; and there are times when merely by nodding we have made clear to those nearby what must be done, and the eye disposed in a certain way has shown the purpose in the soul, and a particular movement of the hand has either forbidden or accepted something of what is being done.

In every case some intervening medium between the one speaking and the one to whom the speech is addressed must be posited as well.

For if there were no intervening medium, how would the voice make its way from the speaker to the hearer? What then will they call that medium by which they distinguish the Son from the Father? For in the case of bodies the region of the air becomes the medium, being something else according to its own nature, distinct from the substance of human bodies.

But God, who is intangible and formless and pure of all composition—sharing his own counsels immaterially and incorporeally, in like manner to the Only-begotten God, or rather in the very same way—if indeed he effected this sharing by means of a voice, what intervening medium did he have, through which the word, flowing and being transferred, might lodge in the hearing of the Only-begotten? If indeed we must also pass over this without close scrutiny, namely, that the Divine is not divided among perceptive faculties, as with us each of the sense organs severally lays hold of what is akin to it—sight of the visible, and the sense of hearing of the audible—and neither does touch taste nor hearing have the apprehension of vapors or of flavors, but each remains fixed in the one operation to which it was appointed by nature, in a certain manner insensible to that for which it was not fitted, and without a taste of the enjoyment which the neighboring sense reaps.

But there it is not so; rather, the whole Divine is, throughout its whole, sight and hearing and knowledge.

For surely it is not lawful to fit even the more animal-like of the senses to the undefiled nature.

But if one must posit something even lowly and bring the Divine down to grovelling suppositions, so as to imagine that the Father speaks words by mouth and that the hearing of the Son is active—what medium do we posit as conveying the Father's voice into the hearing of the Son? Must this be created or uncreated? But it cannot be said to be created;

for before the constitution of creation the Word came to be;

and there is nothing uncreated except the divine nature.

If then there was no creation, and the Word mentioned in the cosmogony was more ancient than creation, then he who says that words and the sound of a voice are signified by means of the Word—what will he posit as the intermediary between the Son and the Father, by which the voice was shaped into words? For if there is a medium, it is altogether in a nature peculiar to itself, so as neither to be identical with the Father nor to coincide in nature with the Son, but, being altogether something else, separates the Father and the Son from one another, being inserted between the two.

What then is this? It is not created;

for creation is younger than the Word.

We were taught that the Only-begotten is begotten, and there is nothing unbegotten except the Father.

Necessarily, therefore, the word of truth compels us to conceive that there is nothing intermediate between the Father and the Son.

And where no interval is conceived, there conjunction is altogether confessed; and that which is throughout conjoined is not mediated by voice and speech.

And by 'conjoined' I mean that which in all respects is inseparable.

For the name of conjunction does not indicate, in the case of the intellectual nature, any bodily coalescence, but rather the union and commingling of the intelligible with the intelligible through the identity of wills.

And just as if someone should behold himself in a mirror (for nothing forbids setting forth the thought by bodily illustrations), the image will be conformed in every respect to the prototype, so that the cause of the shape in the mirror is the form that looks into it, and the image neither moves nor inclines of itself, unless the prototype initiate the inclination or the movement, but if that which leads should be moved, that which is shown in the mirror is altogether moved along with it—so we say that the Image of the invisible God, the Lord, is disposed in every movement of will immediately and without interval together with the Father.

The Father willed something, and the Son, who is in the Father, possessed the will of the Father—or rather, he himself became the will of the Father.

For he who has all that belongs to the Father in himself, there is nothing of the Father's that he does not have.

Having the things of the Father—or rather having the Father himself—he altogether has in himself, together with the Father and the things of the Father, the whole paternal will.

He does not, therefore, need to learn the will of the Father by speech, being himself the Word of the Father according to the loftier signification of 'Word.'

What then is that word which comes to be addressed to the true Word? And how does the true Word again require another word for instruction? But someone will say that the utterance of the Father comes to be addressed to the Holy Spirit.

Neither does the Spirit require instruction by means of words, seeing that it is in God, as the Apostle says, and searches all things, even the depths of God.

If, then, God utters words, and every word is realized in relation to hearing, let those who declare that God harangues in discursive discourses make known to us also the auditorium of the divine words.

He had no need to speak to himself, the Son had no need of instruction by words, the Holy Spirit—it says—searches all things, even the depths of God, and creation as yet was not;

to whom then did the speech come to be addressed? But—he says—the Scripture of Moses does not lie, through which it is declared that God said something.

'Day unto day pours forth speech, and night unto night proclaims knowledge.'

And having said that the heavens and the firmament recount, and that knowledge and words are announced by the day and the night, he again subjoins to what has been said that these are not speeches, nor words, nor are their voices heard.

How then are recountings and announcements and words not speeches, nor a voice arising through the sense of hearing? Does the prophet then contradict himself? Does he set forth something among the impossibilities, teaching a voiceless word and a speechless recounting and an announcement apart from voice? Or is the prophecy true above all else, which teaches this through what has been said—that the heavenly recounting and the word proclaimed by the day is not an articulate voice, nor speech by mouth, but becomes a teaching of the divine power to those who know how to hear, its voice being silent? What, then, have we supposed concerning these things? For perhaps, if we understand this, we shall also have understood what comes from Moses.

None of the things that exist has its subsistence from some spontaneous chance, as certain persons have supposed—that random and irrational interweavings of the primary elements wrought for us the whole cosmos and the things in it, no providence at all pervading the things that are; but there is a certain cause of the constitution and administration of the universe, upon which all the nature of intelligible things depends, and from which it has its principles and causes, and toward which it inclines and turns and in which it abides.

And since, as the Apostle says, his eternal power and Godhead, being understood from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, on this account all creation—and before all things, as the Word says, the ordered array in the heavens—by means of the art displayed in the things that have come to be, sets forth the wisdom of him who made them.

And this it seems to me the prophet wishes to present—the testimony, drawn from the things that appear, that the things that are have been fashioned wisely and skillfully and abide forever in the power of him who steers the whole.

He says that the heavens themselves, by which they display the wisdom of him who made them, all but send forth a voice to cry aloud and proclaim the wisdom of the Creator without a voice.

Consider the prototypical and invisible beauty;

for nothing in us is masterless or self-moved or self-caused, but everything that appears about us and is conceived depends upon the lofty and ineffable power.

These things are not articulate speech, yet through the things that appear they implant in souls the knowledge of the divine power more than if the word were proclaimed by a voice.

For in order that we might not suppose creation to be masterless and self-originated, he both says that it has come to be from the divine nature and asserts that it was constituted by a certain order and sequence.

And it would be a long matter to philosophize concerning the order of the things spoken dogmatically by Moses in the form of a narrative in the account of the making of the world.

For thereby, through each of the things written, the erroneous and vain quality of the opinion of our adversaries would be all the more plainly refuted.

Whoever wishes may, by consulting the labors we have devoted to Genesis, judge which argument is the more consistent—ours or that of our opponents.

But we must bring our discourse back to the task set before us: namely, that the expression 'He said' does not necessarily indicate, in the case of God, a voice or spoken word; rather, by declaring a power that runs together with the will of God, it points us, through more perceptible imagery, toward the intelligible contemplation.

For since all things came into being by the will of God, and since it is customary among men first to signify their intention by word and then to add the deed in accord with the intention; and since the Scripture of the world's creation is a kind of introduction into the knowledge of God for beginners, presenting the might of the divine nature through what is more readily grasped; and since apprehension through sense-perception affords a more accessible knowledge of intelligible things—for this reason Moses, by the words 'God said that this should come to be,' sets before us the impelling authority of the divine will, while by adding 'And it was so,' he indicates that in the divine nature there is no difference at all between willing and acting.

Rather, he teaches that in God the conception leads the way before the operation, yet the thing done does not lag behind after the thing conceived; but the two are beheld together and at the same instant—both the movement of the mind and the power that brings the matter to completion.

For the text gives us to understand no interval between the purpose and the act; but just as, when a flame is kindled, its radiance shines forth together with it—coming from the flame and blazing out along with it—in the very same way the subsistence of created things is the work of the divine will, yet does not come second in order after the will.

For it is not as with other things, in which some active power is present by nature, where one aspect is beheld as potentiality and another as the fulfillment of the operation—as, for example, we say that one who possesses the shipwright's art is always a shipwright in potentiality, but is actually at work only when he displays his skill in the works themselves. It is not thus with the blessed Life.

Rather, whatever is conceived to exist in that Life is at once operation and act, since the will passes immediately over to the end intended, without any interval.

Just, then, as the ordered array in heaven bears witness to the glory of the Creator and confesses its Maker without needing a voice, so, on the contrary, might one reason from the Scripture of Moses: that even here God calls the world His own creature—He who by His command gave being to the universe and needs no words to declare this His intention.

(as the world, in the things that come to be, bids farewell to any declaration through words); so too, even if one hears Moses saying that God, by name, ordains and commands concerning each of the parts of the world, let him neither suspect the prophet of falsehood, nor by petty and grovelling notions belittle the contemplation of lofty things—as though by such things he were making the Divine into something human, and supposing that God rehearses His commands aloud after our manner. Rather, let the command signify the will, and let the names of created things indicate the very subsistence of the things that have come to be.

So that from what has been said two things may be learned: both that God, having willed it, has accomplished all things, and that the divine will became nature without toil or trouble.

But if anyone should interpret 'God said' too carnally, so as to establish thereby that articulate speech was produced by Him, that same person will also, quite necessarily, take 'God saw' according to our own faculty of apprehension, through the operation of the eyes; and 'The Lord heard and had mercy on me,' and 'He smelled a sweet savour,' and whatever the Scripture recounts too corporeally concerning a divine head or foot or hand or nostril or eyelids or fingers or sandal—taking all according to the surface meaning, he will portray the Divine for us as manlike, after the likeness of the things that appear in us.

But if, on hearing that the heavens are the works of God's fingers, and of a mighty hand and a lofty arm, and an eye and eyelids and a foot and sandals, one takes from each of these expressions conceptions befitting God, and does not defile the account of the pure Nature by staining it with corporeal suppositions, then it would be consistent also to regard the uttering of words as indicative of the divine will, yet not to suppose them to be articulate voices; but to reckon this: that the Creator of the rational nature has bestowed upon us speech in proportion to the measure of our nature, that we might be able through it to declare the movements of the soul.

But by however great a distance one nature stands apart from the other—I mean the divine from ours—by that same measure of remoteness do all the things pertaining to that Nature differ, in their being greater and more befitting God, from what is beheld in us.

And just as our power, judged against the power of God, is as nothing, and our life against His life, and all our other attributes, when judged against those in Him, are as nothing before Him—as the prophecy says—so too our word, judged against the truly existent Word, is nothing.

For this word of ours was not in the beginning, but was fashioned together with our nature; nor is it beheld as a substance in its own right, but—as the teacher somewhere says—vanishes away together with the sound of the tongue; nor can any work of this word be conceived, but it has its subsistence in voice and letter alone.

But the Word that is from God is God—a Word that was in the beginning and abides forever, through whom all things exist and hold together, who presides over the universe and has all authority over things in heaven and things on earth, being life and truth and righteousness and light and every good, and upholding all things in their being.

Since, then, the Word conceived to pertain to God is of such a kind and so great, this man, as though bestowing some great gift upon God, ascribes to Him the word that is composed of nouns and verbs and conjunctions—not knowing that, just as He who bestowed upon our nature the practical power is not said to fashion each of our individual works, but He gave the power to nature while by us are wrought house and bench and sword and plough and whatever life may happen to require (of which the individual products are indeed our works, but their reference goes back to our own Author, who fashioned our nature receptive of every skill), so also the power of speech is the work of Him who made our nature such, but the invention of the individual words, to meet the need of signifying the subjects, was devised by ourselves.

some of the things spoken are reckoned utterly shameful and unseemly, of which no one possessing sense would suppose God to be the inventor.

So that even if certain of our customary words be spoken in the person of God by divine Scripture, it must be recognized that the Holy Spirit is conversing with us out of what is ours; just as also in the history of the Acts we learned that each one received the teaching in his own tongue in which he was born, apprehending the power of the words through the expressions familiar to him.

And that these things are true, one might learn all the more by examining the Levitical legislation more diligently.

For there Scripture makes mention of a griddle and a wafer and fine flour and such names, in the mystical sacred rites, symbolically and by way of enigma introducing certain soul-profiting doctrines; and it names certain measures according to the custom of that time, saying 'hophi' and 'nebel' and 'hin' and many such things.