Against Eunomius 1 part 35/56

And indeed, concerning the irrational creatures too, as we have already said before, we are taught the contrary by Scripture: that neither did Adam make the animals nor did God name them, but from God came their generation, while from man came the naming of the things that had been made, as is recorded by Moses.

Then he goes through for us an encomium of words in his own discourse, as though someone were dishonoring the power of speech; and he says—after that inept and bombastic stringing together of phrases—that by the law of providence and in perfect measure God joined the imparting of names to the knowledge and use of necessary things.

And after babbling much of this sort in deep sleep, he passes over in his argument to that irresistible and unopposable necessity.

I will state his argument not according to his words but setting it forth according to its sense alone.

The invention of words, he says, must not be attributed to poets, who have been deceived in their notions concerning God.

What gifts this noble fellow bestows on God, attaching to God the inventions of poetic license, so that thereby God may seem to men more august and more exalted—when those who are discipled to Eunomius come to believe that all those words such as 'obliquely' and 'quiver' and 'sideways' and 'mingle' and 'grew by hand' and 'hiss' and 'thudded' and 'clanged' and 'rang out' and 'crashed terribly' and 'whined' and 'shrieked' and 'pondered' and all such expressions are not things the poets set forth by any license, at their own pleasure, but that, being initiated by God Himself into these very words, they string them into their meters.

Let this too be passed over, along with that clever and unanswerable argument of his—that we cannot point to the holy men of the scriptural narrative as having devised new words.

For if human nature had been incomplete until the appearance of those men, and had not yet been fully endowed with the rational grace, then it would rightly have been necessary that the supplying of what was lacking should be sought from them;

but [since human nature, from the very outset,] took upon itself the faculty of thought as well, how could anyone still readily seek, for the establishment of the doctrine concerning conceptualization, that the holy men were the originators of sounds or words—or, if we cannot demonstrate this, judge it sufficient proof for his position that God has legislated for us such syllables and words? But, he says, since God does not refuse converse with His own servants, it follows that we must suppose Him from the beginning to have imposed the appellations fitting to each thing.

What then have we to say to this? That God accepts converse with man—this we define to be caused by His love for mankind.

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

For just as, according to the divine dispensation, the sun tempers the vehemence and unmixed intensity of its rays through the intervening air, and brings to those who receive it a light and heat proportioned to them—being in itself, by reason of the weakness of our nature, unapproachable—so also the divine power, according to the likeness of the example we have given, though infinitely transcending our nature and being inaccessible for participation, yet like some tender-hearted mother lisping along with the inarticulate cooings of her infants, dispenses to human nature that which it is able to receive; and for this reason, in the manifold theophanies to men, He is fashioned after the manner of man, and speaks in human wise, and puts on wrath and mercy and such passions—so that through all things suited to us our infant life might be led by the hand, laying hold, through the words of providence, of the divine Nature.

For that it is not pious to suppose the Divine to be subject to any of the passions that come about through pleasure or pity or wrath—no one who has even moderately examined the truth concerning existing things would gainsay.

Yet nevertheless the Lord is said both to rejoice over His servants and to be angry in wrath against the people that had transgressed, and again to have mercy on whom He will have mercy and likewise to show compassion—by each of such expressions, I think, the Word instructing us in this: that through our own peculiar traits the providence of God mingles itself with our weakness, so that both those inclining toward sin might, through fear of punishment, restrain themselves from evils, and those already overtaken might not despair of the return through repentance, looking to His mercy, and those who set their life aright through exact conduct might rather exult in the virtues, as gladdening by their own life Him who beholds good things.

And just as one cannot call him dumb who converses with a deaf man through signs, in the way the deaf man is able to perceive, so neither should one suppose there to be human speech in God because He used it toward men according to His dispensation.

For we too are accustomed to direct the irrational beasts by clucking and clicking and whistling; yet this is not the speech by which we reach the hearing of the irrational animals, but toward our own kind we use nature's speech, while for the irrational beasts the appropriate noise and the particular sound made through gesture sufficed for the need.

But this scrupulous fellow will not have it that God used our means of speech on account of our proneness to evil—not knowing, the dear man, that for our sakes He did not even refrain from becoming a curse and sin.

So abundant is His love for mankind that He willingly came to make trial not of our good things only, but of our evils as well.

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

I consider that to everyone possessed of understanding the argument concerning these matters has no bearing whatever on the point at issue.

But since it is likely that some, without due examination, give their assent to the argument, we will briefly treat of these things.

Divine Scripture knows often to attach such expressions to God, so that they seem in no way to sound discordant from our own—such as 'The Lord was angry in wrath,' and 'He repented of their wickedness,' and 'He was grieved that He had anointed Saul as king,' and 'The Lord awoke as one that sleeps,' and still besides these it speaks of sitting and standing and moving and many such things, which by nature do not pertain to God, but which are not without use for the dispensation toward those being instructed.

For the display of wrath restrains the more slack by fear; and to those who need the medicine of repentance He says that the Lord repents together with them over their wickedness; and to those who in some prosperity are carried off toward insolence He foreshows, through the repenting over Saul, that their good fortune does not abide with them, even if such a thing seem to be from God; and to those who do not plunge deep into the fall of sin, but who rise up as from a sleep of the vain life, He says that God rises up together with them and awakes together with them; but He 'stands' for those who stand unswervingly upon the good, and 'sits' for those established in the good, and again 'moves' and 'walks about' for those who have shifted away from steadfastness in the good.

As the narrative concerning Adam relates, depicting God as walking at eventide in the paradise—by the 'eventide' signifying the inclination of the first-formed man toward things of darkness, and by the 'movement' the man's instability regarding the good and his unsettledness.

But these things will perhaps seem to the many to be remote, as regards the contemplation set before us; yet no one could say that the following is out of tune with our subject: that many suppose what is incomprehensible to themselves to be incomprehensible even to God, and whatever escapes their own understanding they think to be beyond the divine power as well.

Since, then, we have made number the measure of quantity, and number is nothing other than a composition of units—the unit being variously increased into multitude (for the ten also is a unit brought by composition of units to this limit; the hundred again a unit composed of tens; likewise the thousand another unit, and the myriad in like manner analogously, arising from multiplication—the one summed up from thousands, the other from hundreds—all of which, apportioning them to the underlying things, we make into signs of the quantity of the things numbered)—

so that we might be taught by divine Scripture that nothing is unknown to God, it says that the multitude of the stars has been numbered by Him—the numbering not coming about in this manner (for who is so silly as to suppose that God distinguishes existing things by odd and even, and by the composition of units brings the number to the sum of the aggregated quantity?)—

but since in us the exact knowledge of quantity comes from number, in order that we might be taught concerning God as well that all things are comprehended by the knowledge of His wisdom and that nothing escapes His exact understanding, for this cause it declared that God numbers the stars, counseling us to understand by what it says this: that we should not suppose the Divine also to lay hold of existing things according to the measure of our own knowledge, but that all things incomprehensible and inconceivable to us are enclosed within the knowledge of the divine wisdom.

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

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

For how is it likely that He should be ignorant of what He has made? For the Overseer of the universe would not be ignorant of that which is comprehended within the power that encompasses all things.

Knowing all things before their generation, He has no need of a teacher, namely number, for the knowledge of the underlying things.

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

For then the argument, going forward, would end in something absurd and unworthy of the conception concerning God—if it should say that these names which are current in our common usage were imposed by God upon the stars.

For if one were to grant that these are named from God, it would be altogether necessary to suppose that the naming of the Greek idols also was proclaimed thence upon the stars, and to reckon as true whatever of the mythical tales is appended to the astral names, as though God ratified such utterances for them.

Thus the hebdomad of those contained within the whole vault of heaven, being apportioned to the Greek idols, will render blameless those who have gone astray after these things, if indeed this be believed to have been ordained by God.

Since, then, it is absurd to suppose God the inventor of such names, lest the names of the idols also should seem to have had their origin thence, it would be well not to receive without examination what is said, but, according to the likeness of the things we have considered regarding number, to understand also the sense contained in this.

For since among us it is a proof of exact knowledge to call one's acquaintance by name, He teaches us through these words that He who contains the universe not only comprehends by His knowledge the fullness of the quantity aggregated as a sum of things incomprehensible to us, but also knows each individual thing with exactness.

For this reason the Word says that He has not only numbered the multitudes of the stars but also calls each by name, which signifies that His exactness reaches even to the more minute things, and that He thus knows the individual things so precisely as a man knows one made familiar to him by name.

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

So too we have heard of the 'horn of Amaltheia' in Job, and of 'Sirens' in Isaiah—the former thus naming the all-bearing abundance of good things out of the Greek supposition, and Isaiah indicating by the name of the 'Sirens' the pleasure that comes through hearing.

Just as, then, in these places the God-inspired Word employed the names drawn from the mythical narratives, looking to the profit of the hearers, so also there it named without shame the sounds attached to the stars from human conception, teaching that every thing whatsoever that is named among men has its existence from God—the thing, that is, not the name.

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

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

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

for in the evangelic feasts that took place in the wilderness neither the infants nor the women were reckoned worthy of number, and in the exodus of the Israelite people there were counted in the number only those already able to bear arms against the enemies and to prove themselves valiant.

For neither are the names of all such as to be borne through the divine mouth, but there is numbered whatever is pure and heavenly, which by reason of the height of its conduct, remaining unmixed with any commingling with the darkness, is called a 'star'; and there is named whatever, by the same principle, becomes worthy of being inscribed on the divine tablets.

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

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

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

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

As for what he adds to what has been said—the first things of the world's genesis, as testimony that the sounds were imposed by God upon existing things (matters which, having been sufficiently examined in what preceded, I judge it superfluous to take up again)—and the utterance of Adam, which the Apostle says came to be prophetically concerning Christ and the Church, let this man interpret it by his own authority as he pleases.

For no one is so foolish, when Paul reveals to us in the power of the Spirit the hidden things of the mysteries, as to make Eunomius a more trustworthy interpreter of divine things—Eunomius, who openly fights against the utterances of the God-inspired testimony, and who by his forced misinterpretation of this saying strains to establish that the kinds of the irrational creatures were not named by Adam.

Let there be passed over also his words of insolence, and that graceless want of taste, and his filthy and dung-bespattered utterance which goes through, with his customary eloquence, these things against our teacher;

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

But we must carry over the discourse to the sequence of what has been said.

For again he sets forth a certain statement of the teacher, which runs as follows:

We call the God of all things incorruptible and unbegotten, employing these names according to different modes of conception.

For when we look back to the ages that lie behind, finding the life of God to transcend every boundary, we call Him unbegotten.

But when we direct our mind to the ages that are to come, we have named that which is boundless and infinite and comprehended by no end 'incorruptible.'

So then, just as the endlessness of that life is called incorruptibility, so its beginninglessness is named unbegottenness, we contemplating these things by our conception. Now the abuse which he has made the preface to the consideration of what has been said, we shall again pass over — his talk of some 'alteration of seed' and 'a promoter of sowing,' and the 'inconsequence of his blame,' and all the other things which, treading on emptiness, he pours forth with his insatiable tongue.

He undertakes to convict us of not saying that the Divine is by nature incorruptible.

But we alienate from the nature only those things which come to some as acquired and are capable of being lost.

But as for those things without which the subject cannot be conceived as having a nature at all, how could anyone be blamed as though he were separating the nature from itself? Now if our doctrine had maintained that incorruptibility was something supervening upon God, as though at some time it were not present with Him, or as though it would at some time cease to be, there would have been occasion to say these things by way of accusation against us.

But if our doctrine defines that the Divine is ever the same, and that what it now is it always is, and that nothing accrues to it by any increase or addition of what was not present, but that in all that is conceived and spoken of as pertaining to the good it always is — then how are we slandered as not attributing incorruptibility to Him by nature? But he pretends to have taken the occasions of such a slander of the argument from the statement that was read out from the teacher, as though we furnished God with incorruptibility from a comparison of the ages.

Now if our own statement had been brought forward by us, perhaps our argument would be suspected in its defence, on the ground that we were now correcting ourselves and shifting the culpable utterances toward blamelessness.

But since our own words are cited by an enemy, what stronger demonstration of the truth could there be than the very testimony of those who dispute against us? How then does our own statement stand, which Eunomius brings forward as an accusation against us? He says: 'When we direct our mind to the ages that are to come, we have named that which is boundless and infinite and comprehended by no end incorruptible.' Does Eunomius suppose that 'to name' is the same as 'to furnish'? And who is so far removed from his senses as to be ignorant of the peculiar meanings of these words? For he 'furnishes' who acquires what was not previously present with him, whereas he 'names' who significantly designates that which exists.

How then, in these matters, is this guardian of the truth not ashamed to consummate his slander with manifest calumny? And just as those who from some affliction cannot see behave unseemly before the eyes of those who do see, supposing that what is not seen by themselves is also unknown to the sound of sight, some such thing this sharp-sighted man and quick of wit has suffered, imagining that his own blindness toward the truth exists also in his hearers.

And who is so foolish as not to set the words that are slandered beside the slander, and from a reading of the two to detect the malice of the pamphleteer? Our statement names the incorruptible; that man accuses the one who 'furnishes' incorruptibility.

What has 'to furnish' in common with 'to say'? It is just that each should be called to account for his own words, not that he should undergo blame for those of another.

But as it is, his bitterness both accuses us and looks toward us, yet, according at least to the true reckoning, it condemns no one but himself.

For if to 'furnish' God with incorruptibility is culpable, and this is said by no one else save only by himself, then the calumniator becomes his own accuser, slandering what is his own and not what is ours.

And concerning the name that pertains to unbegottenness, we say that just as the endlessness of the life is called incorruptible, so its beginninglessness is named unbegotten.

But this man says that from the ages we procure for Him precedence over all begotten things.

I pass over the blasphemy — that he makes the Only-begotten God common with everything begotten, by a comprehensive expression dragging down the Son of God to a rank equal in estimation with everything that has come into being through generation.

But I shall set forth for the more intelligent of his hearers, in my discourse, his unintelligible malice.

'From the ages,' says Eunomius, 'Basil procures for God precedence over all begotten things.'

Does he mean to signify, concerning Him who, as the Apostle said, has 'neither beginning of days nor end of life,' that by different words the difference of conception is signified — and that on this account that which is higher than all beginning is called beginningless and unbegotten, while that which is bounded by no end is named immortal and incorruptible? These things he is not ashamed to write down as 'procurement' and 'obtaining' and the like.

But he even says that the ages are cut in two by us, as though he had not read what he himself set down, or as if disposing his own argument among people forgetful of what has been said.

What does the teacher say? 'If we contemplate the things before creation, and, passing over the ages by our reasoning, consider the uncircumscribed character of the eternal life, we signify such a notion by the appellation of the unbegotten; and if we turn our thought to what lies ahead, and apprehend the life of God as extending beyond the ages, we interpret this thought by the expression endless and incorruptible.'

Where in what has been said does the argument cut the ages, if we proclaim, by words and names according to our ability, the eternity of God as appearing equally in every mode of approach, as being everywhere alike, and as measured by no interval? For since human life, moving in intervals and proceeding from some beginning toward some end, runs its course and is divided, as regards the life here, into the past and the awaited — so that the one is hoped for and the other remembered — for this cause, conceiving of the past and the awaited of the interval-bound extension as relative to our own condition, we speak thus also of the transcendent Nature by a certain misuse of terms; not as though God, through His own life, left behind Himself some interval and again journeyed forward in living toward what lies before Him, but as our own comprehension, thinking of matters in relation to our own nature, measures out the eternal in the past and the future, when it neither cuts off the notion proceeding backward into the infinity of the boundless, nor announces any composition or limit of the infinite life in front.

So that from both we are taught that every notion bound to interval is comprehended within the Divine Nature, being on every side hemmed about by the infinity of Him who contains the whole.

For Moses, looking to what lies ahead, says that He reigns 'for the age, and unto the age, and beyond' (Exod. 15:18).

But the wise Eunomius, having bidden farewell to such great instructors, says that we speak of one beginningless life and of another endless one, and of certain differences and diversities of ages that also, by their own diversity, divide the conception concerning God.

But that our contest with what has been said may not become lengthy, we shall set it forth just as it is, untried and unexamined — Eunomius' laborious effort in these matters being sufficient, by the very means with which he strives after falsehood, to make the truth more manifest to the intelligent.

For, proceeding in his argument, he asks us what in the world we suppose the ages to be.

And yet it would have been more just for such questions to be put to him by us.

'We shall suppose them to be' — but with this absurdity meeting us, and, if the one, then also of the other.

'For if you should call them eternal,' he says, 'you will be Greeks and Valentinians and barbarians.'

'But if begotten,' he says, 'you will no longer confess the unbegotten of God.'

O this irresistible and unopposable line of attack!

If anything be confessed as begotten, O Eunomius, the confession of the unbegotten will be annulled!

And where then have those technical arguments of yours, of the begotten in relation to the unbegotten, leaked away — those by which the dissimilarity of the Son's essence in relation to the Begetter was being constructed? For it seems, from what we are now taught, that the Father, considered in relation to the begotten, is not dissimilar as regards essence, but that altogether, by the confession of the unbegotten, He is dissolved into non-being — if indeed, should we call the ages begotten, we are driven no longer to confess the unbegotten.

But let us look at the necessity by which he compels us to assent to this absurdity.

'For those things,' he says, 'by whose comparison beginninglessness accrues to God — these not existing, that which is added will not exist.'

O this mighty and inescapable grip!

How, as from the very midst, he has bound us fast, athlete-like, with indissoluble knots!

He says that by the comparison of the ages the unbegotten accrues to God.

From whom does it accrue? Who says this — that to Him who is beginninglessly, the unbegotten accrues by acquisition, through the comparison of certain things? Neither the wording nor the sense of this absurdity is convicted in our arguments.

For the wording is its own advocate, having nothing of the sort that has been brought forward against us.

And of the meaning of what has been said, who could be thought a more trustworthy exppositor than the very fathers of the argument? Therefore we are the more justified in saying what we mean, when we define the life of God to be beyond the ages.

And we say these very things which have been stated in what precedes.

But he says that, the comparison of the ages not existing, that which accrues to God from it is impossible; and he says that it is unbegottenness that has been added.

Let him say also from whom such a thing has been added to God.

Now if from himself, he would be ridiculous, imputing his own folly to our arguments.

But if from us, let him read out the wording, and we shall accept the accusation.

But I think it right to pass over these things too, and whatever follows upon them in sequence.

For they are plainly the playthings of children who erect certain sorts of buildings in the sand.

For having composed a certain period of clauses, and having with difficulty made his way through to the end, he demonstrates that same life to be both beginningless and endless, thus fulfilling our own prayer by such earnest labour.

For nothing else is said by us than that the Divine life is one and continuous with itself, infinite and eternal, and in no way hindered by any limit toward the boundless.

Up to this point the pamphleteer bestows his own toils and sweat upon the truth, showing that same life to be bounded in neither part — neither if one should examine what is before the ages, nor if one should reckon what comes after this.

But in what follows he again returns to his own confusion.

For having said that the same life is both beginningless and endless, he abandons the argument about the life, and, having arranged all the conceptions contemplated in relation to the Divine life into a single notion, he made all things one.