Against Eunomius 1 part 40/56

And in this way let us also consider the things that follow upon these according to this same connection.

For if Wisdom be born in us, then there is prepared by God in each one both the land and the desert—the land being that which receives the sowing and the tillage of the Word, and the desert being the heart separated from wicked inhabitants; and thus our dwelling shall be upon the extremities of the earth.

For since part of the earth is deep and part is on the surface, whenever anyone does not become subterranean or cavernous by minding the things below (such as is the life of those living in sins, who are fixed fast in the insubstantial mire of the deep, for whom life is truly a pit, according to the psalmody that says, 'Neither let the pit shut its mouth upon me'), if then anyone, when wisdom has been born in him, minds the things above, touching the earth only so far as is necessary, this one dwells upon the extremities of the region beneath heaven, not sinking deep into the earthly mind; to him who thus prepares heaven for himself in place of earth, Wisdom is present.

And when he makes the teaching of the clouds above strong for himself, bringing the precepts into action, and, marking off the great and spacious sea of vice by exact conduct as by a shore, restrains the passionate water from advancing out of his mouth; and when he holds it in springs, pouring forth the stream of the word with security by the gift of teaching, so as not to supply to anyone, in place of pure water, a muddy overturning as his drink; and when, being raised above every earthly footing, he becomes airborne in his manner of life, standing upon the spiritual conduct which the discourse named 'winds,' until he is set apart unto a throne for Him who is enthroned in him (such as was Paul, set apart unto the Gospel, that he might become a vessel of election, that he might bear the name of God—who in another sense became a throne, bearing Him who was enthroned upon himself)—when these and such things are set right, so that he who has completed in himself the inhabited world of God already rejoices, rejoicing that he has become the father not of certain beasts and irrational creatures, but of men (and these would be the God-like reasonings that are shaped according to the divine image through faith in Him who was created and born and founded in us; and faith, according to Paul's word, is understood as the foundation, through which Wisdom is born in believers and works all the things that have been spoken)—then blessed indeed becomes the life of him who has set things right, to whom Wisdom is fitted and takes delight at every season, in him who day by day rejoices in her alone.

For the Lord rejoices over His holy ones, and there is joy in heaven over those who are being saved, and the kind Father keeps festival over the son who has been brought back to safety.

Now let the diligent reader, having read the passages of the divine Scripture, fit the enigmas to the contemplations, having tested whether it is not by far better to think that the meaning of the enigmas looks toward this, and not according to what is superficially supposed.

For it is not possible that the theology of John should be reckoned true, which hymned all created things to be the work of the Word, if here the one who created Wisdom is believed to have made all other things also together with her.

For no longer will all things be through her, but she will be numbered together with all the things that have come to be.

And that the enigmatic utterances look toward this is clearly revealed through the discourse that follows, which says, 'Now therefore, son, hear me,' and 'Blessed is he who keeps my ways'—by 'ways' plainly meaning the approaches to virtue, of which the creation becomes a beginning of wisdom.

Who then, looking to the divine Scripture, will not agree that the enemies of the truth are both impious and slanderers together? Impious, because they pull down, so far as in them lies, the ineffable glory of the only-begotten God, and join it to the creation, contending to demonstrate that the Lord—whose is the only-begotten sovereignty over all—is one of the things that have come to be from Him;

and slanderers, because, though the Scripture affords them no starting-point for such suppositions, they arm themselves with testimony against godliness as though adducing it from thence.

Since then they can display from none of the saints any utterance that counsels us to behold the pre-eternal glory of the only-begotten God together with the subordinate creation, it would be well, these things having now been demonstrated by us, that the victory should henceforth be attested to the word of godliness against falsehood; and, having thrust aside all these verbal artifices of theirs by which they join the creature to the Creator and the thing made to the Maker, we should confess, as the Gospel from heaven teaches, a beloved Son—not spurious nor supposititious—and, having received together with the name of 'Son' all the natural kinship, we should call Him true God from the true God, and believe all things concerning Him likewise, as many as are beheld in the Father, because they are one and the one is conceived in the other, neither overpassing nor being diminished, nor altered or changed according to any God-befitting and good character.

Since then Eunomius's conflict with himself has become manifest, in which he has been convicted of saying things contrary to himself—now saying that on account of being begotten according to nature He must be named Son, and again on account of being created that He should no longer be called Son but a thing made—it is fitting, I think, that the one who listens sensibly and attentively, since it is not possible, of two arguments that conflict with one another, that the truth should be found equally in each, should cast away from both what is impious and blasphemous, I mean the reckoning of Him as a creature and a thing made, and should assign to the only-begotten God alone that which looks toward godliness—the appellation of 'Son,' which, according to nature, belongs to Him who is confessed to be by nature—so that even through the utterance of the enemies the word of godliness may have its confirmation.

But I will speak again, taking up the argument of his which I set forth from the beginning.

'We do not refuse,' he says, 'to call the Son begotten and an offspring, since both the begotten essence itself and the appellation of Son appropriate to themselves such a relation of the names.'

For the present, then, let the one who hears critically what is said bear this in mind, that by saying the 'begotten essence' in the case of the only-begotten, he has granted, as a consequence, that in the case of the Father one may speak of the 'unbegotten essence'—so that neither unbegottenness nor begottenness is any longer taken in place of essence, but the essence is taken separately, and its having been begotten or not begotten is understood separately, through the properties contemplated in connection with it.

But let us consider the argument concerning this more diligently.

He says that an essence has been begotten, and that 'Son' is the name of the begotten essence.

For he does mischief in saying the begetting of an essence, in order to establish the mutual opposition of the essences, as split apart into diversity of nature by the 'begotten' and the 'unbegotten.'

But the feebleness of his attempt is refuted through the very things by which his mischief is constructed.

For he who said that the essence has been begotten clearly defines the begetting to be something other than the essence, so that the signification of 'begetting' cannot be fitted to the notion of 'essence.'

For he has not here done what he constructed in many places—namely, to say that the begetting itself is essence—but he confesses that the essence has been begotten, so that a distinct conception arises in the hearers upon each expression; for one notion comes to him who hears 'it has been begotten,' and another through the name of 'essence.'

The argument would become clearer to us through examples.

The Lord said in the Gospel that, as the pang draws near, the woman is in sorrow, but after this she rejoices with joy, because a man has been born into the world.

As therefore in this part we learn from the Gospel two distinct notions—one, the birth, which we conceived through the begetting, and the other, the very thing that comes to be from the birth (for the birth is not the man, but through the birth the man)—so also here, when Eunomius has confessed that the essence has been begotten, by the preceding word we were taught the 'from something,' but by what follows we conceived the very subject itself, from which the 'something' derives its subsistence.

If then the signification of 'essence' is one thing, but the word 'begetting' proposes something else to conceive, all at once their clever contrivances have fallen through, like earthen vessels dashed against one another and shattered through one another.

For it will no longer be permitted to them, transferring the distinction of 'begotten' from 'unbegotten' to the essence of the Son and the Father, to transfer along with it onto the realities the mutual conflict of the names.

For, Eunomius having confessed that the essence has been begotten—just as the Gospel example also interprets such a meaning, in which, having learned that the man has been begotten, we did not conceive the man to be the same as the begetting, but received a distinct notion upon each of the names—the heresy will no longer have any room to dogmatize the diversity of the essences through such utterances.

But that the argument concerning these things may be most clearly unveiled to us, let us take up the matter before us once again in this way.

He who framed the universe made human nature in the beginning together with all things, and after Adam had come to be, He then laid down for men as a law the begetting of one another, saying, 'Increase and multiply.'

Since, then, Abel came into being by generation, who among the right-minded would not say that, by the very meaning of human generation, Adam came into being ungenerated? Yet the first man possessed in himself the whole definition of human nature, and he who was begotten of him is likewise comprised under the same account of nature.

But if the nature that was generated were constituted as some other thing distinct from that which was not generated, then the same account of nature would not fit both.

For of those whose nature differs, the account of their nature is also not the same.

Since, therefore, the nature of Adam and that of Abel are characterized by the same properties, it is altogether necessary to grant that there is one nature for both, but that the one shown to be in that same nature is distinct one from the other.

For Adam and Abel, in respect of the account of nature, the two are one; but in the properties observed in each of them they possess an unconfused distinction from one another.

Therefore it is not proper to say that Adam begot a nature other than himself, but rather that out of himself he begot another self, to whom was imparted the whole account of the nature of him who begot.

To take the understanding of divine doctrines as a guide.

For once we have shaken off every fleshly and material conception of the divine and lofty doctrines, we shall possess, through the thought that remains—when it has been purified of such things—a most secure leading of the hand toward what is lofty and inaccessible.

For it is admitted even by our opponents that the God who is over all both is and is called Father of the Only-begotten; and moreover they name the Only-begotten God, who is from the Father, as generated on account of his having been begotten.

Since, then, among men the name of father carries with it certain connotations from which the undefiled nature is alien, it is fitting that, leaving aside all the material notions that come in along with the fleshly signification of 'father,' we should imprint upon God and Father a certain God-befitting conception, expressive of genuineness alone.

Since, then, not only whatever the flesh suggests to us to conceive is included in the notion of a human father, but also a certain notion of interval is altogether co-conceived with human fatherhood, it would be well, along with the bodily defilement, to cast off also the notion of interval in the case of the divine generation; so that, the material peculiarity being washed away on every side, the transcendent generation may be pure of every notion not only passible but also intervallic.

Therefore he who calls God 'Father' will, together with the notion of God's being, also comprehend the 'what he is.'

For that which has its being from some beginning has also its 'what it is' altogether beginning from something.

But in the case of that whose being did not begin, neither does anything else contemplated concerning it have its beginning from anything.

Therefore he is from eternity that which he is.

For he did not come to be, but he is Father.

For in the case of God, that which was, both is and shall be.

But if there were ever anything that was not, it neither is nor shall be.

For he is not believed to be Father of any such thing, apart from which it would be pious ever to say that God existed by himself.

For the Father is Father of life, and of truth, and of wisdom, and of light, and of sanctification, and of power, and of all such things as the Only-begotten both is and is named.

When, therefore, it is contrived by our enemies that light once was not, I do not know whose the greater loss is: whether that of the light itself, when the light is not, or that of him who possesses it, when he does not possess the light.

So too concerning life, and truth, and power, and all the other things that fill the Father's bosom—the Only-begotten God being all things in his own fullness.

For the absurdity is equal in either case, and the impiety against the Father is a counterweight balancing the blasphemy against the Son.

For in saying that the Lord once was not, you will not simply grant that Power was not, but you will be saying that God's Power was not—the Power of the Father.

Therefore the establishment, by means of your argument, that the Son once was not, contrives nothing other than a bereavement of every good with respect to the Father.

See to what end the shrewdness of the wise brings them down!

How the Lord's voice is proved true even by these things, which says that 'he who rejects me rejects him who sent me'; for through the things by which they reject the being-at-some-time of the Only-begotten, by these very things they dishonor the Father, having stripped away by their argument every good name and conception from the Father's glory.

Therefore, through what has been said, the feebleness of this pamphleteer's malignity has been clearly detected; for undertaking to establish the opposition of the Only-begotten's nature to that of the Father by naming the one unbegotten and the other begotten, he was refuted as trifling with things that will not hold together.

For it was shown, through his own arguments, first that the name of nature and the name of generation are each different from the other; and then that no new and altered nature, distinct from the Father's nature, subsisted in the Son, but that what the Father is in the account of nature, this too is he who is from him—the nature not having been changed into otherness in the hypostasis of the Son—according to the truth of the argument previously demonstrated by us in the case of the consideration of Abel and Adam.

he produced no variation; so also in the case of the undefiled doctrines, the Only-begotten God, having come forth from the Father and being in the Father—as the Gospel says—altered in himself nothing of the nature of the Unbegotten through his own generation; but he is, according to the simple and unlearned account of our faith, Light of Light, true God of true God, being all things whatsoever that One is, except being that One himself.

As for the aim for the sake of which he goes on treating these matters with technical subtlety, I think there is no need to speak of it at present—whether it is rash and perilous, or permissible and without peril, to transform the terms significant of the divine nature from one thing into another, and to call the begotten a 'product of generation.'

I pass these things by, lest our discourse, by dwelling more than is necessary on the fight over lesser matters, should neglect the greater.

But that, I say, must be accurately considered: whether the relation according to nature introduces the use of these names.

For that is exactly what he says: that by the propriety of the appellations, the propriety according to nature is also co-introduced.

For he would not say that names, bare in themselves and severed from the manifestation of the things signified, have any relation and propriety toward one another.

But in the significations made clear by the terms we distinguish the propriety and the alienness of the appellations.

Therefore, if he admits that the Son has a natural relation toward the Father, let us leave aside the appellations and consider the force that lies in the things signified: whether what is alien to the nature is contemplated in propriety, or what is akin and proper.

But to speak of what is alien is a sign of manifest madness.

For how could anyone, by means of things foreign and incommunicable, preserve a conjoined and proper order in the names, since the very nature that was begotten (as he says) and the appellation of the Son appropriate to themselves such a relation of the names? But if he should say that what is proper is signified through these appellations, he will of necessity appear as an advocate of the community of nature through the propriety of the names; and while establishing that the connection of the underlying subjects is signified, and doing this in many places of his pamphlet, he does not perceive it.

For by the very things through which he attempts to demolish the truth, he is often unwillingly dragged down to advocacy of the very doctrines he wars against.

Even as we have heard something of this sort concerning Saul from the history: that being once moved with anger against those who prophesied, he was overcome by grace and became one of those borne along by God—the prophetic Spirit, as I think, willing through this very means to chasten the apostate.

Whence the paradox of the encounter became a proverb for the life that came after, the history relating such a thing with wonder:

'Is Saul also among the prophets?' In what things, then, does Eunomius stand together with the truth? In those in which he says that the Lord himself, being the Son of the living God, not being ashamed of his birth from the Virgin, has often in his own words named himself Son of man.

For this argument we too bring forward as a demonstration of the community of nature: that the name 'Son' indicates in both respects an equal fellowship of nature.

For as he is called 'Son of man' on account of the kinship of his flesh with that from which he was begotten, so also is he altogether understood as 'Son of God' on account of the conjunction of his essence with that from which he subsisted.

And this argument is the greatest weapon of the truth.

For nothing so shows the 'mediator between God and men'—as the great Apostle named him—as the name of 'Son,' which is fitted equally to each nature, the divine and the human.

For the same one both is Son of God and became Son of man according to the economy, so that by fellowship with each he might through himself join together the things that are separated in nature.

If, then, having become Son of man, he were without share in human nature, it would be consistent, since he is Son of God, to say that he does not partake of the divine essence either.

to believe that the property of the transcendent essence is in him, since the voice of the Son testifies alike to each in him: in the man, the human; in the God, the divine.

If, then, the appellations, as Eunomius says, indicate what is proper, and this propriety is contemplated in the realities, not in the bare sounds of the names (and by 'realities' I mean the things conceived in themselves—if it be not too rash so to speak of the Son and the Father), who could gainsay that even the very champion of blasphemy is spontaneously dragged down to advocacy of piety, overturning through himself his own arguments and proclaiming the community of essence in the divine doctrines? For the argument, though cast forth unwillingly by him on behalf of the truth, does not lie concerning these matters: that he would not have been called Son unless the natural notion of the names verified the naming.

For as a bench is not called the son of the craftsman, nor would any sound-minded person say that the builder begot the house, nor do we name the vineyard the offspring of the vinedresser, but rather the artifact is the work of the man, while the son of a man is he who is begotten of him—so that, I think, what is appropriate might be signified through the names in the underlying subjects—so also, having been taught that the Only-begotten is Son of God, we did not, through this appellation, conceive of him as a creature of God, but as that which the voice 'Son' truly indicates by its signification.

And if wine too is named by the Scripture the 'offspring of the vine,' not even so will the argument be injured, on account of this homonymy, in the doctrines of piety.

For we do not say that wine is the offspring of the oak, nor the acorn of the vine; but rather, if there is any fellowship according to nature of the offspring with that from which it comes—

For the moisture in the vine, drawn up by the pith through the base of the root, is in potentiality water; but proceeding by a certain sequence through the channels of nature, and flowing over from the lower parts toward that which lies above, it is changed into the quality of wine, the sun's ray also cooperating somewhat, which by its heat draws up the moisture from the depth to the shoot and, through its own and corresponding concoction, makes the sap into wine.

so that, according to nature, the moisture lying within the vine has no alienness at all toward the wine that is begotten from it.

For from that liquid comes this liquid, and no one could name any other cause of the wine's liquidity than the moisture that lies naturally within the branches.

But the differences of qualities produce no alteration according to the liquid, but rather it is a certain peculiarity that distinguishes the liquid in the wine from the astringency, or sweetness, or moisture in the branch, accompanying one or the other of these—so that in respect of the underlying subject it is the same, but by the differences of qualities it varies.

Therefore, just as, having heard from the Scripture that the Only-begotten God is 'Son of man,' we have learned, through the relation of the name, his propriety toward the true man, so also, even if the Son be called 'offspring' according to the argument of our adversaries, none the less do we learn through this too his propriety according to essence toward him who begot; because the wine also, though called the offspring of the vine, is found to be not alien, in respect of the account of liquidity, to the power that lies naturally within the vine.

But if anyone should soundly examine the things said by our adversaries, they look toward our own doctrine, while their meaning contradicts their own constructions, since everywhere they are contentious to establish what is alien according to essence.

And yet it is altogether beyond finding out to conjecture whence they were led on to such suppositions.

The appellation 'Son' and 'offspring' could not have its propriety toward what is of another kind.

But if indeed, according to the argument of our adversaries, he is both called 'offspring' and, according to nature (as they confess), is the appellation of the Son, then he is altogether Son of the essence of him who begot, and not of anything else contemplated outside the nature.

But if he is truly from thence, he is altogether not estranged from that whence he is—as was also shown in the other cases—that everything which by generation subsists from something is altogether of the same kind as that from which it came to be.

But if anyone should demand some interpretation, description, and exposition of the divine essence, we shall not deny that we are unlearned in such wisdom, confessing only this much: that what is by nature undefinable cannot be comprehended by any contrivance of words.

For that the divine majesty has no boundary, prophecy cries aloud, expressly proclaiming that of the magnificence of his glory, of his holiness, there is no end.

But if the things concerning him are boundless, much more is he himself, in respect of essence—whatever indeed he even is—circumscribed by no boundary in any part.

If, then, the interpretation through names and terms in some way circumscribes by its signification the underlying subject, but the undefinable cannot be comprehended, no one would reasonably blame our ignorance, since we do not presume boldly against things that ought not to be dared.

For by what name shall I circumscribe the incomprehensible? Through what voice shall I declare the ineffable? Since, then, the Divine is better and higher than the significance of names, we have learned to honor with silence the things that are above word and thought.

And even if he who thinks more highly than he ought to think should trample upon this reverence of our discourse, making a mockery of our ignorance concerning the incomprehensibles, and should recognize, in the case of the shapeless and undefinable and unmeasured and unquantified—I mean of Father and Son and Holy Spirit—the variation according to dissimilarity, and should bring forward, for the refutation of our ignorance, that which is continually put forward by the disciples of deceit, namely 'You worship what you do not know'; if we do not know the essence of the one worshiped, we shall not, according to the counsel of the prophet, fear the reproach of the foolish, nor, on account of their disparagement, shall we be bold-mouthed against the unutterable; making Paul, unskilled in speech, our teacher of the mysteries that are beyond knowledge—he who is so far from thinking the divine nature to be within the compass of human understanding, that he even says the judgments of God are unsearchable and his ways past tracing out, and affirms that the things promised to those who love him, in return for what has been rightly done in this present life, are beyond comprehension, so that it is possible neither to grasp them with the eye, nor to receive them with the ear, nor for the heart to contain them.

Having learned these things, therefore, from Paul, we boldly declare that not only are the judgments of God higher than the power of those who attempt to search them out, but that the ways of knowledge remain to this present day untrodden and inaccessible.

For we hold that this is what the Apostle wished to signify when he called unsearchable those ways which lead to what is incomprehensible, showing by his words that that knowledge is inaccessible to human reasonings, and that as yet no one has set his mind upon such a journey of thought, nor has any trace or sign of a comprehending approach been marked out toward things that cannot be grasped.

Having therefore learned these things from the apostolic proclamation, we reason from what has been said that, if the judgments cannot be searched out, and the ways are untraceable, and the promise of good things transcends every conjectural surmise, how much more, by an incalculable measure, is the Divine itself higher and more exalted—in what is unutterable and unapproachable—than the things thought concerning it, of which Paul, taught of God, declares there is no knowledge at all.

And on this account we establish in ourselves the very doctrine that is derided, confessing that we are inferior in knowledge to the things that transcend knowledge; and we say that we truly worship that which we know.

reasoning, by the very fact that we cannot grasp it with our reasonings, upon the incomparable nature of its greatness.

And that which was said by the Lord to the Samaritan woman, but which is brought forward against us by our enemies, would rather be spoken more properly against them.