Against Eunomius 1 part 4/56

But to go through all these things one by one would require some great treatise and much time and a work of its own; and besides, since the evils of that time are manifest to all, nothing further would be gained for the present discourse by setting forth those calamities with precision in their particulars.

There is, moreover, another burdensome thing in the narration concerning these matters: namely, that one must of necessity make some mention of ourselves, in recounting the history of these grievous events in due order.

For if anything of such a kind has indeed been done by us on behalf of the contests for piety, of a sort to bring credit to the narrative, wisdom bids us leave it to those who come after;

which is the very thing that this man—who scrutinizes everything—being unaware of, has occupied the greatest part of his composition with high-sounding boasts about himself.

I, then, passing over all such matters, will set forth with precision the deeds of cowardice on the part of our teacher.

The one ranged against him in the opposing line, then, was the emperor himself; the one who served his onsets was the man who, next to him, ruled over the whole empire; and those who co-operated toward such a desire were all who were about him.

Let there be added to these also the occasion, for a more exact testing and demonstration of the noble confidence of the athlete.

What, then, was the occasion? The emperor was setting out from Constantinople toward the East, his spirit but lately exalted by his successes against the barbarians, and deeming that nothing should withstand his onsets;

and before him in his progress went the Prefect, who, in place of any other of the things necessary for the government, made this his first business: that none of those who held to the faith should remain at his own hearth, but that all these should be driven out from everywhere, and that others in their stead—certain self-appointed men—should be brought in, to the outrage of the divine dispensation.

With such a purpose, then—the might of the dominion having been stirred up out of the Propontis against the Churches like some grievous cloud, and Bithynia having been suddenly laid waste, and Galatia having been swept away with great facility, and everything having proceeded for them according to their mind—by the sequence of the evil our own region was now set before them (as the next target).

What, then, did the great Basil do at that time—'the coward,' as this man says, 'and the faint-hearted, cowering before terrors and entrusting his safety to a little hiding-place'? Was he struck with dismay at the assault of the evil? Did he take the misfortune of those already captured as a token pointing to the security of his own affairs? Did he yield to those who counselled him to give way a little to the rush of the evil, and not to cast himself into open peril before men trained up in bloodshed? Or is every excess of speech and every height of thoughts and words convicted of falling somewhere far below the truth? For how could anyone recount in words such great contempt of the things that terrify? How could anyone set before the eyes that novel contest, which one could not fittingly say was waged either by men or against men, but rather that the virtue and free speech of a Christian contended against a murderous dominion? For the Prefect, having anticipated the emperor's presidency, summoned him to himself—the Prefect who, though his office was in any case terrible by reason of its magnitude, had rendered it yet more terrible by the ruthlessness of his punishments; and after those tragedies which he had wrought against the Bithynians—the Galatians, through their customary pliancy, having submitted without a struggle—he supposed that our affair too would fall out for him according to his wish.

The prelude to the ruthlessness of his deeds was speech, mingled at once with threats and with promises: to him if he complied, holding out the honour from the emperor and the primacy of the Church; but to him if he stood firm, all that bitterness of soul, when it has acquired the power to plan at will, devises.

Such, then, were the things on their side.

But our man was so far from coming to any dismay through the things seen or spoken, that, like some physician or good counsellor called in for the correction of faults, he exhorted them to repent of the things they had presumptuously ventured, and henceforth to cease from raging against the servants of the Lord;

for they had, he said, nothing more of their contrivance to bring against those who serve only the kingdom of God and his immortal power.

For those who wished to do harm could not find any such thing, whether said or done, that would grieve the Christian.

'Confiscation,' he said, 'will not touch the man who possesses only the faith;

banishment will not frighten one who treads upon the whole earth with the same conviction, and who looks upon all the earth as belonging to another because of the transitoriness of his sojourn, yet again upon all as his own because of the fellow-servitude of creation.'

'To suffer for the truth,' he said, was open to all; nor did this present a terror even to women, but rather it was for all Christians the highest limit of good fortune, to suffer something of the irremediable on behalf of this hope;

and he said his only grief was that death is one in its nature, and he could find no device by which he might be able to do battle for the truth by many deaths.

But as he thus set himself against those threats and looked upon all the weight of that dominion as nothing, then—just as on a stage, in the sudden changes of the actors' masks, one thing is displayed in place of another—in the same way the bitterness of the threats was suddenly transformed into flattery; and he who till then had been heavy and terrifying in his purpose, changing to the mild and submissive among his words, said: 'But do not make it a small thing that the great emperor should be joined to your people; rather accept being called his teacher, and do not set yourself against his will;

and his will is that this should come about with the subtraction of some small thing of what is written in the faith—namely the word homoousion ('of one substance').'

But the teacher answered again that for the emperor to have a share in the Church was among the greatest of goods.

'For it is a great thing,' he said, 'to preserve a soul—not because it is an emperor's, but because it is a human being's at all;

but so far was he from making any subtraction from or addition to the faith, that he would not even alter the order of the things written.'

These things did 'the coward and the unmanly';

he who was 'panic-stricken at the creaking of a door' both spoke by word to one of such great dignity, and confirmed by deeds what he had said;

who at that time stayed within himself and turned back the overthrow of the Churches which was flowing through the powers like some winter torrent, alone sufficing against the assault of the evil—like some great and unshakeable rock in the sea, breaking up upon himself the onset of the terrible things in place of a great and mighty wave.

And the matters of his struggle did not stop at these; but the emperor himself again takes up the trial, indignant that he had not, at the first assault, accomplished the things after his pleasure.

So, while he was throwing everything into confusion, and one of the God-fighters from Illyricum was holding a document in his hands and gathering all who were in office toward this end, and again kindled the wrath of Modestus more fiercely than his former onset, all were stirred up in sympathy with the emperor's wrath, sharing his indignation as he raged, and gratifying the fury of his power; and all were beforehand cast down by the fear of what was expected.

For again there was that Prefect, again risings of terrors more vehement than the former, and additions to the threats, and a wrath at its keenest, and the tragedy about the tribunal—heralds, ushers, lictors, railings, curtains—by which even the resolves of those very well prepared are easily terrified;

and again the athlete of God, in his second round of contests, surpassing even the glory won in the former.

But if you seek the proofs of these things, look to the facts themselves.

What of them all remained in its proper state, unless something had been previously seized by such an evil? But alone out of all, the Cappadocian people did not perceive the common calamity of the Churches, whom our great champion preserved in the midst of the trials.

These are the results of our teacher's 'cowardice';

these are the achievements of him who 'cowered before the harsher of labours'—not of one who wins repute among wretched little old women, nor of one who practises deceiving weak womenfolk that are easily disposed to every deception, nor of one who counts it a great thing to be admired by the condemned and the corrupt; but of one who through his deeds displayed the strength of his soul, and the immovable and manly and noble quality of his purpose.

His achievement was the salvation of the whole fatherland, the peace of our Church, an example of every good thing to those who live according to virtue, the overthrow of the adversaries, the advocacy of the faith, the security of the weaker, the confirmation of the more zealous—all things that are believed to belong to the better portion.

In these narratives alone do hearing and sight coincide with the facts;

for it is the same thing to narrate noble deeds in word, and to show in deed the testimony of the words, and to confirm both by means of each other—the remembrance from the things seen, and the facts through the things said.

But indeed I know not how our discourse has been carried so far outside its proposed theme, turning to each of the things spoken by way of insult by this slanderer.

And yet no small gain accrues to Eunomius from the discourse's lingering over such matters, in the accusation of human wrongs, while it is hindered from advancing to the more important points.

As, then, it is the mark of unprofitable men to reproach one who is being tried for murder on account of his rashness in words (for it suffices, when the murder is proved, to bring in the sentence of death, even though no rashness of words be convicted along with the bloodstained man), so it seems good to me to bring his impiety alone to conviction, and to bid farewell to his revilings against us.

For it is plain that, once wickedness has been detected in the greatest and most fundamental matters, all the rest is by implication convicted along with it, even if we do not go through each point precisely.

The sum, then, of the things constructed by him is blasphemy against the doctrine of piety, both in the preceding treatise and in the one now being examined by us, and his whole zeal is to demolish, to cancel, and utterly to overturn the pious conceptions concerning the only-begotten God and concerning the Holy Spirit.

In order, then, that his construction against the doctrines of the truth may be shown to be especially false and unfounded, I will first set down verbatim his statement concerning these matters, and then again I will go over the things said, examining each of them separately.

'The whole account of our doctrines is filled out from the supreme and most authentic Essence, and from that which exists through the former yet is after it, and holds primacy over all the others, and thirdly from that which is ranked with neither of these, but is subordinated to the one on account of the cause, and to the other on account of the operation according to which it came to be—there being included, of course, for the completion of the whole account, both the operations that attend the essences, and the names congruent with these operations.'

'Again, since each of these essences is purely simple and altogether one, both in being and in being conceived according to its own proper dignity, while the operations are circumscribed together with their works, and the works are measured out by the operations of those who wrought them, it is surely of all necessity that the operations which attend each of the essences should be lesser and greater—some holding the first, others the second rank—and, to speak comprehensively, that they should extend to just so great a difference as the works extend to.'

One who reasons piously would say that the one activity ascends above the other, seeing that identical activities produce the sameness of their works, while differing works display differing activities.

Since matters stand thus and preserve their inviolable connection through their mutual relation, it is surely fitting that those who conduct the inquiry according to the order that is natural to things—and do not force everything to be jumbled together and confounded—should, if some dispute is raised concerning the essences, establish the proof of what is being demonstrated and the resolution of what is disputed from the primary activities that are proximate to the essences; and should resolve the ambiguity concerning the activities from the essences; and should regard the descent from what is primary to what is secondary as the more suitable path and the one more effective for all.

Such, then, is the artful contrivance of his blasphemy; but may our God, the true God, the Son of the true God, through the guidance of the Holy Spirit, direct our discourse toward the truth.

Let us once more take up in order what has been said.

He said that the account of his own doctrines is completed out of the highest and most sovereign essence, and out of that which exists because of the former but, after it, holds first place over all the rest; and he speaks of a third, which is ranked with neither of these, but is subordinated to the one on account of causation and to the other on account of activity.

The first of the mischiefs perpetrated in his account is this: having promised to set forth for us the mystical doctrine, as though he were correcting the words of the Gospel, he does not use those names by which the Lord delivered the mystery in the perfecting of the faith; but, passing over in silence the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, in place of the Father he speaks of a certain highest and most sovereign essence, in place of the Son the one that exists because of the former but after it holds first place over the rest, and in place of the Holy Spirit the one ranked with neither of these but subordinated to both.

And yet, if it were more fitting to speak thus, the truth would by no means have lacked the discovery of these very words; nor would those who in succession received the proclamation of the mystery—both those who from the beginning became eyewitnesses and ministers of the Word, and those after them who filled the whole inhabited world with the Gospel doctrines, and again those who thereafter, at certain seasons, took up in common council the ambiguities raised concerning the doctrine, whose traditions are ever preserved in writing for the churches—if these things had to be said, they would not have made mention of Father and Son and Holy Spirit, if indeed it were at all pious or free from danger to alter the words of the faith for the sake of this novelty.

Or were all those men ignorant and uncatechized in the mysteries, and, as this fellow says, deaf to the fitting names—men who neither knew nor were willing to prefer their own private notions to the names delivered to us by the divine voice? But I think it is plain to everyone that the cause of this novel coinage of names is that all men, upon hearing the appellation of 'Father' and 'Son,' immediately recognize from the very names their proper and natural relation to one another.

For the kinship of nature is spontaneously interpreted from these appellations.

Therefore, lest these things be understood concerning the true Father and the only-begotten Son, for this reason he steals away from his hearers the impression of intimacy that enters in together with the names; and, abandoning the God-inspired words, he sets forth his doctrine through terms devised for the ruin of the truth.

Well does he say that his discourse is completed in these matters—not out of the universal doctrines of the Church, but out of the doctrines peculiar to their own party.

The perception of the impiety of what has been said is ready at hand for everyone who has any understanding.

In his desire to attribute the 'highest' and 'most sovereign' to the essence of the Father alone, he concedes that neither the Son's nor the Holy Spirit's essence is highest and sovereign.

For my part I consider this to be a rehearsal for the utter denial, in respect of essence, of both the Only-begotten and the Spirit; and that this is being surreptitiously contrived through such artifice—namely, that these should seem to exist only as far as a name, while the true confession of their subsistence is set aside through such a construction.

And that these things are of such a character, one might perceive without difficulty by lingering a little over the argument.

It does not belong to one who truly believes that the Only-begotten and the Holy Spirit exist according to their own subsistence to be scrupulous about the confession of the names by which he supposes he must exalt the God who is over all.

For it would be the height of silliness, while conceding the reality, to be petty about mere words.

But as it is, by attesting the 'highest' and 'most sovereign' to the essence of the Father alone, he has, through his silence concerning the rest, given occasion to conjecture that they do not properly subsist.

For how is it possible to say that anything truly exists to which existing 'in the proper sense' is not attested? For in those cases where sovereignty is not confessed, one must necessarily assent to the names that stand in opposition.

For what is not sovereign is altogether without sovereignty (invalid).

So that the construction of not existing 'in the proper sense' becomes a proof of utter nonexistence.

It is with a view to this, it seems, that Eunomius innovates upon the names in his own doctrine.

For surely no one will say that through inexperience he has fallen into so foolish a supposition as to distinguish 'above' from 'lower down' in a spatial sense, and, marking off the Son for the Father as though some earthen mound or lookout-point, to enthrone the Son in the more hollow places.

For no one is so childish in mind as to conceive of a spatial difference in the case of the intellectual and incorporeal nature.

For local position in space is proper to bodies, whereas that which is by nature intellectual and immaterial is confessedly far removed from any notion of place.

What, then, is the reason for saying that the essence of the Father alone is 'highest'? For that he is being led astray into these fancies through some ignorance one could not easily suspect, seeing that he pretends to be wise in many of the matters he sets forth, and, as the divine Scripture forbids, is over-clever in superfluous things.

But neither, indeed, will he say that the 'above' indicates a superiority of the essence in power, or in goodness, or in any other such thing.

For this too is known to everyone—not merely to those reputed to excel in wisdom—that the subsistence both of the Only-begotten and of the Holy Spirit is lacking in nothing with respect to perfect goodness and power and all such things.

For all good things, so long as they remain unsusceptible of their contrary, have no limit to their goodness, since they are of their nature bounded by their contraries alone, as may be seen in each of the several examples.

Power ceases when weakness lays hold of it; life is bounded by death; darkness becomes the limit of light; and, to say all in a word, each of the several good things ends where its contraries begin.

If, then, he supposes the nature of the Only-begotten and of the Spirit to be mutable toward the worse, he reasonably diminishes in them the notion of goodness, as being capable of being carried also toward their contraries.

But if the divine and unalterable nature is incapable of the worse—and this is confessed even by the enemies themselves—then it is beheld as altogether unbounded in goodness; and the unbounded is identical with the infinite.

But to conceive of increase and diminution in what is infinite and unbounded is the height of irrationality.

For how could the notion of infinity be preserved, if the 'more' and 'less' were to be dogmatized within it? For it is from the comparison of limits with one another that we recognize the 'more.'

He measured out the life of the Only-begotten as being more than that of the Father—though no temporal interval is conceived as preceding the subsistence of the Only-begotten.

And yet, even if this were so (let it be granted for the sake of argument for the moment), how does the essence that is prior in time possess 'being' any more—I mean in respect of the very principle of being—than the one that comes later, so as to call the one 'highest and sovereign' and the other not so? For the earlier has, in relation to the later, a greater span of time in its life; but the essence, on this account, has neither more nor less.

And this will become clearer by means of examples as well.

For no one would say that the one is more a man because he is prior in time, and that the other partakes less of the nature because he came into life after others—as though the nature had been used up beforehand in those who went before, or as though time had spent its power in advance upon those who have passed away.

For it is not possible to allot to each the measures of nature on the basis of time; but nature itself abides in itself, preserving itself through those who come to be in succession.

But time is borne along after its own fashion, whether encompassing or flowing past the nature, which remains fixed and unmoved, abiding within its own bounds.

Therefore, not even if the 'more' were granted to time, as the argument supposed, will they attest in the proper sense the 'highest' of essence to the Father alone.

But since there is no difference in respect of temporal seniority (for how could anyone conceive of such a thing in the case of the pre-eternal nature, when every measuring interval is found to be below the divine nature?), what argument is left to those who attempt to sunder the pre-temporal and incomprehensible essence by a difference of 'above' and 'below'? Yet the argument admits of no ambiguity: that what is dogmatized by these men is an advocacy of the Jewish doctrine, since they declare that the essence of the Father alone subsists—which alone they insist properly exists—while they reckon the essence of the Son and of the Spirit among things that are not.

For everything that does not exist in the proper sense is said to be so only by a word and by an abuse of common usage—just as, too, 'man' is the name not of what is displayed by imitation in an image, but of what is called so in the proper sense.

This latter is not a likeness of the man, but is the archetype of the likeness.

But the image is 'man' only as far as the name, and on this account it does not possess the property of being called in the proper sense what it is called, because it is not by nature that which it is named.

Here too, then, if the essence of the Father alone is said to exist in the proper sense, but that of the Son and of the Spirit no longer so, what is this but a manifest denial of the saving proclamation? Therefore let them run back from the Church to the synagogues of the Jews, since by not granting that the Son exists in the proper sense they are constructing the position that he does not exist at all.

For that which is without sovereignty is identical with that which is nonexistent.

And since he wishes to be wise in such matters and scorns those who undertake to write without dialectical dexterity, let him tell us, whom he despises, out of what wisdom he came to know the 'more' and the 'less' of essence.

What is the argument that has established such a difference—namely, that one essence 'is' more than another essence? I mean in respect of the very thing signified by 'essence.'

For let him not bring forward the differences of qualities or of properties—all such as are apprehended around the essence by way of conceptual thought, being something other than the underlying subject.

For it is not differences of vapors, or colors, or weight, or power, or dignity, or of manners and character, or whatever else is beheld about body and soul, that we are now setting out to examine; but I mean the underlying subject itself, to which the name of 'essence' is properly applied, and whether it has any difference from another essence in respect of 'being more.'

We have heard that of two things confessed to exist, so long as both exist, the one is 'more' and the other 'less.'

For each exists in like manner, so long as it exists, in so far as it exists—the consideration of what is 'more valuable' or 'more enduring' being set aside, as was said before.

If, then, he does not grant at all that the Only-begotten is to be beheld in essence (for it seems that his argument surreptitiously slips down toward this), let the one who does not grant him 'being in the proper sense' not concede the 'less' either in his case.

But if he confesses the Son to be an essential power that has somehow subsisted (for we are not yet contending about this point), why does he again take away what he grants—by constructing, concerning the one confessed to exist, that he does not exist in the proper sense, which is equivalent, as has been said, to not existing at all? For just as it is not possible for that to be a man to which the definition answering to the name has not been perfectly fitted, but for one lacking the properties the whole definition of the essence is co-delineated for him as failing, so also in the case of everything to which 'being' is attested neither perfectly nor in the proper sense, the partial concession of 'being' furnishes no proof of subsistence, but the construction concerning its 'not existing perfectly' establishes the utter abolition of the underlying subject.

So that, if he is of sound mind, let him change over to the pious understanding, withdrawing from his doctrine the 'less' and the 'without sovereignty' with respect to the essence of the Only-begotten and of the Holy Spirit.

But if he has quite resolved to be impious, for my part I do not know for what reason he even wishes to requite his own Creator and God and Benefactor with blasphemy.

At all events, let him suffer the loss of the reputation of seeming to be someone in respect of learning, seeing that he ignorantly ranks essence above essence, and declares the one 'above' and the other 'below' according to an argument that cannot be found, attesting sovereignty to the one and the lack of it to the other.

For neither have we known any of those who have philosophized outside the faith to have trifled thus, nor does such a thing accord either with the God-inspired oracles or with the common notions of mankind.

The aim, then, of the devising of these names has, I think, been sufficiently made manifest from what has been said—namely, that he lays down these words beforehand as a base of operations or a foundation for the whole of his mischief concerning the doctrine, in order that, having established the belief that the one essence alone is highest and most sovereign, he may readily run down the others as beheld among things below and not existing in the proper sense.

He shows this especially through what follows, in which, discoursing on his opinions concerning the Son and the Holy Spirit, he does not come to these names, in order that (as I said before) he may not, even against his own will, set forth by the appellations that which is proper to their nature; but he who dogmatizes makes his mention of them nameless—he who says that the minds of the hearers must be led on from the fitting names and words.

And yet, what name is more fitting than that which has been named by the Truth itself? But he dogmatizes contrary to the Gospels, naming him not 'Son,' but 'the one that exists because of that former, and after it holds first place over all that exist.' That this is said for the overthrow of the pious conception concerning the Only-begotten will be made more manifest from the rest of his construction.

But since what has been said seems to hold a middle position—such that even one who says nothing impious concerning Christ might on occasion make use of these very words—for this reason I too will for the present pass over the discourse concerning the Lord, reserving my refutation for his more manifest blasphemies against him.

But concerning the Holy Spirit, since he employs open and undisguised blasphemy, saying that he is not ranked with the Father and the Son but is subordinated to both, I will now, so far as I am able, examine the argument.

Let us first consider, then, what is the thing signified by 'subordination,' and in what cases the divine Scripture makes use of such a word.