Against Eunomius 1 part 42/56

But still our evangelist seems to fear our untrained state, still he is afraid of our childishness and lack of instruction; not yet does he entrust to the ear the appellation of the Father, lest any of the more fleshly-minded, learning of a Father, should by consequence also form in his mind a mother.

But not yet does he even name 'Son' in his proclamation;

for he still suspects our habitual association with the lower nature, lest anyone, hearing 'Son,' should render the divine as human through a passion-laden supposition.

For this reason, taking up the proclamation again, he named 'Word' once more, expounding these things in natural terms for you, the unbeliever.

For as your own word both shines forth from the mind and is not mediated by passion, so there too, hearing 'Word,' you will conceive of its being from something, and you will not conceive of passion.

For this reason, taking up the proclamation again, he says: 'And the Word was with God.'

Oh, how he measures the Word alongside God—or rather, how he extends the infinite alongside the infinite!

'The Word was with God': the whole Word by all means with the whole God.

That is to say, the Word also who is with Him—so that, if God is circumscribed, then the Word too is by all means within a limit; but if the infinity of God transcends all limit, then neither is the Word, who is contemplated together with Him, comprehended by limits and measures.

For no one could say that the Word is not contemplated together with the whole Godhead of the Father, so that part of God should be in the Word, while part should be convicted of being bare of the Word.

Again the spiritual voice of John, again the evangelist nurses the ear of those who are as babes by his proclamation.

Not yet have we grown so much through the first utterances as to remain unslipping, if we should hear 'Son,' by reason of the customary impression.

For this reason the herald, crying aloud again in the third utterance, proclaimed still 'Word,' not 'Son,' saying: 'And the Word was God.'

First he said in whom He was, then with whom He was, now he says what He is, perfecting the aim of the proclamation through the third recapitulation.

'For I proclaim,' he says, 'not some Word of those conceived according to what is ready-to-hand, but God, in the appellation of the Word.'

'For this Word, who was in the beginning and was with God, was not something other than God, but was Himself also God.'

And continuously waxing strong through the recapitulation in his mighty utterances, the herald says that this is the God, the one foreshown in the proclamation—that this is He through whom all things came into being, and that He is life and light of men, and true light shining in darkness and not dimmed by the darkness, sojourning among His own and not received by His own, and having become flesh, and through the flesh dwelling in human nature.

And having first gone through so many and such great things, then he speaks of a Father and names the Only-begotten, when there was no longer any danger that one who had been so purified by these things should slip down to any defiled notion from the signification of 'Father.'

'For we beheld,' he says, 'His glory, glory as of an Only-begotten from the Father.'

Say to these things to the evangelist, Eunomius, say these wise sayings of yours: 'How is it that you call by the name Father, and how Only-begotten, in your discourse, when every bodily generation is effected through passion?' The truth will by all means answer you on his behalf, that the mystery of theology is one thing, and the natural philosophy of fluid bodies another.

By a great interval are these things walled off from one another.

Why do you join by your discourse the things that are unmixed? How do you defile the purity of the divine generation with your defiled discourse? How, through the passions of the body, do you spin fine theories about the bodiless? Do not philosophize about the things above from the things below.

I proclaim the Lord to be Son of God, because the gospel from heaven also proclaimed Him thus through the bright cloud:

'For this,' it says, 'is my beloved Son.'

But not because I was taught 'Son' was I dragged down by the name to the significations of 'son' here below; rather, I know from the Father, and I do not know from passion.

And I will add this too to what has been said, that I know of a certain bodily generation also that is pure of passion, so that in this respect too the natural philosophy of Eunomius concerning bodily generation is refuted as false, if indeed a bodily birth be found that admitted no passion.

For tell me: did the Word become flesh, or not? You could not say that He did not become so.

He became so, then, and there is none who denies it.

How then was God manifested in the flesh? You will say, by all means, through a birth.

Of what kind of birth, then, do you make mention? Is it not clear that it was of the virginity, and that what was begotten in her was of the Holy Spirit, and that the days were fulfilled for her to give birth, and she brought forth, and nonetheless incorruption was preserved together with the birth?

Then do you believe the generation from a woman to be pure of passion—if indeed you do believe—yet do not accept the divine and undefiled generation from the Father, lest you should conceive of passion concerning the generation? But I know clearly that it is not passion that he shuns in his doctrine—he who does not even in the first place discern any passion in the divine and undefiled nature;

but rather, in order that the Maker of all creation might be reckoned a part of creation, he constructs these things toward the denial of the Only-begotten God, using as his accomplice the feigned scrupulousness concerning passion.

the substance of the Son from the Father—

not put forth by way of extension, not torn away by way of flux or division from the co-natural being of the begetter, not perfected by way of growth, not shaped by way of alteration, but having obtained its being by the will alone of the begetter.

For who among those whose faculties of soul are not utterly shut fails to recognize [through these words] that the Son is being constructed by what Eunomius has said to be a part of creation? For what prevents saying all these things, just as they stand, word for word, concerning each of the other things contemplated in creation as well? And if it seem good, let us fit the discourse to some one of the things that appear in creation, and even if it should not have the same sequence, let us cast the vote against ourselves, as of men examining the discourse in a captious spirit and not with the care that befits the truth.

Having therefore substituted the name of the Son, let us read the whole passage word for word.

For we say that the substance of the earth was begotten by the Father—not torn away by any extension or division from the connatural being of the one who begot it, nor perfected by growth, nor put forth by alteration, but receiving its being solely by the will of the one who begot it.

Is there anything in what has been said that is unfitting to the coming-into-being of the earth?... I think no one would say so.

For God did not put forth the earth by being extended, nor did He, by flowing out or by cutting Himself off, bring its substance into being out of His own connatural being, nor did He perfect it from small to great by gradual growth, nor, undergoing any turning or alteration, was He shaped into the form of earth; rather, His will sufficed for Him to bring into being the substance of the things that were made.

For 'He Himself spoke, and they came to be,' so that even the name of 'begetting' is not out of tune with the coming-into-being of the earth.

If, then, it is true to say these things of the parts of the world, what doubt still remains concerning the doctrine of our opponents—namely, that while they name the Son merely in words, they in fact make Him out to be one of the things brought into being through creation, distinguished from the rest only by a priority of rank? Just as in the smith's craft one may say that all the things wrought of iron come from it, yet that the tongs and the hammer—the instruments by which the iron is shaped for use—came into being before the fashioning of the rest; yet the fact that these have priority over the others does not thereby introduce any difference of material between the shaping instrument and the iron shaped by that instrument (for both this and that are iron), but only that the one shape is prior to the other.

Such is the heresy's theology concerning the Son: to suppose that the Lord Himself and the things made by Him differ in no way according to substance, except by a difference of rank.

Who, then, among those who are in any way reckoned among Christians, would concede that the parts of the world and the Maker of the world have one and the same account of substance? For my part I shudder at the blasphemy, knowing that where the account is the same, of these things the nature too is assuredly not different.

For just as of Peter and John and the rest of mankind the account of the substance is common and the nature one, in the same way, if the Lord were similarly constituted in nature to the parts of the world, they will of necessity confess that whatever they observe in those parts is predicable of Him also.

But surely the world will not abide forever.

Therefore, according to them, the Lord too will pass away together with heaven and earth, if indeed He is of the same kind as the world.

But if He is confessed to be eternal, then it is altogether necessary to suppose that the world too is not without a share in the divine nature, if indeed it coincides with the Only-begotten in respect of being created.

You see to what their argument is carried by this fine chain of reasoning—like a stone that has broken off from a mountain peak and is driven down the slope by its own weight.

For it must be either that the elements of the world too appear worthy of worship, after the vanity of the pagan Greeks, or else that not even the Son is to be adored.

and all that belongs to the perceptible nature.

These same things they proclaim also concerning the Lord.

We say that all things that have come to be were constituted by the will of God.

These same things they rehearse also concerning the Only-begotten.

We have believed that neither the angelic creation nor the creation within the world is of the substance of the Maker.

And Him likewise they alienate from the substance of the Father.

We confess that all things together are in servitude to the will of their Maker.

They hold this same opinion also concerning the Only-begotten.

Therefore of necessity they will also apply to the Only-begotten all the other things, whatever they conceive concerning the creation; and whatever they believe concerning Him, this they will also suppose concerning the creation.

So that, if they confess the Lord to be God, they will also deify the rest of the creation; but if they determine that these have no share in the divine nature, they will not deny that they hold the same supposition concerning the Only-begotten as well.

But surely no one of sound mind attributes divinity to the creation.

Therefore He is not—and I keep silent about what remains, that I may not smear my tongue with the blasphemy of our enemies.

Let those state the conclusion that follows from the reasoning—they whose mouths are well-trained for blasphemy.

But the argument is clear even when we are silent.

For of necessity one of two things will be the case:

either they will openly vote the Only-begotten God out, so that among them He no longer both is and is called this;

or, if they attribute divinity to Him, they will attribute the same equally to the whole creation;

or, the remaining option: fleeing the impiety that appears on either side, they will take refuge in the godly account and altogether agree that He is not created, so that they may confess Him truly to be God.

Why need one waste time recounting the rest—all the blasphemies that of necessity underlie the argument from this starting point? For anyone who looks to the consequence will understand from what has been said that even the father of falsehood, the artificer of death, the inventor of evil—though created in an intelligent, immortal, and incorporeal nature—was not hindered by his nature from becoming, through change, what he now is.

For the mutability of substance, moving of its own authority in either direction, has the power of its nature following the inclination of its choice, so that it becomes that toward which its own choice leads it.

Therefore they will define the Lord as receptive even of contraries, dragging Him down, through the notion of createdness, to an equality of rank with the angels.

But let them hear the great voice of Paul.

How is it that he says that this One alone is called Son? Because He belongs not to the nature of the angels, but to the superior nature.

For, 'To which of the angels did He ever say, You are My Son? And again, when He brings the Firstborn into the world, He says, And let all the angels of God worship Him.'

And to the angels He says, 'Who makes His angels winds, and His ministers a flame of fire';

but to the Son, 'Your throne, O God, is forever and ever; the scepter of uprightness is the scepter of Your kingdom'—and all the other things which the prophecy, speaking of God, goes on to recount along with these.

And he adds, from another hymn, the fitting words: 'You, Lord, in the beginning founded the earth, and the heavens are the works of Your hands,' and all that follows, down to 'But You are the same, and Your years shall not fail'—by which he sketches the unchangeableness and eternity of His nature.

to be added to the things already examined by us.

For perhaps, from those very apostolic passages which we have mentioned, they will say: How could He be named 'firstborn of creation' unless He were the very thing that the creation is? For every firstborn is firstborn not of things of a different nature, but of things of the same kind—as Reuben, taking precedence in birth over those numbered after him, was a firstborn man among men; and many others are called firstborn of the brethren who are numbered together with them.

They say, then, that whatever substance we conceive of the whole creation, we say that its firstborn is also of that same substance.

If, then, the whole creation is consubstantial with the Father of all, we shall not deny that its firstborn is this too;

but if the God of all differs in substance from the creation, it is altogether necessary to say that its firstborn does not share in substance with God either.

Such, then, is the construction of the objection—set against the argument by us, I think, in no less able a manner than it was likely to have been urged by those who contend against us.

But what one must recognize in reply to these things will now be made clear in our discourse, as best we are able.

Four times in all his writings has the name 'firstborn' been used by the Apostle, and he has made mention of this name in different ways and not in the same manner.

For at one point he says 'firstborn of all creation,' again 'firstborn among many brethren,' then 'firstborn from the dead,' while in the Epistle to the Hebrews the name 'firstborn' stands absolute, mentioned by itself.

'And when He again brings the Firstborn into the world, He says, And let all His angels worship Him.'

Since these are thus distinguished, it would be well to examine each of them separately by itself: how He is firstborn of creation, and how among many brethren, and how from the dead, and how—mentioned by itself apart from each of these—when He is again brought into the world, He is worshiped by all His angels.

Let us then, if it seems good, begin our examination of the matters before us from the last of them.

'When He again brings,' he says, 'the Firstborn into the world.'

The addition of 'again' indicates, by the meaning of this word, that this does not happen for the first time;

for we use this word in the case of the repetition of things that have already happened once.

Therefore by these words he signifies the fearful appearing of the Judge at the end of the ages, when He is no longer seen in the form of a servant, but sits in majesty upon the throne of the kingdom and is worshiped by all the angels who are around Him.

For this reason He who once entered the world—having become firstborn from the dead, and among the brethren, and of all creation—when He again enters the world, He who judges the whole world in righteousness (as the prophecy says), does not cast off the name of 'firstborn' which He once accepted on our behalf; but just as at the name of Jesus every knee bows before Him whose name is above every name, so also the entire fullness of the angels worships Him who has come to be in the name of 'firstborn,' rejoicing at the recalling of mankind—which, by becoming our firstborn, He called back again into the grace it had from the beginning.

For since there is joy among the angels over those who are being saved from sin—because until now that creation groans together and travails together with the vanity that is ours, judging our ruin to be its own loss—when the revelation of the sons of God takes place, which they ever await and eagerly expect on our behalf, and when the sheep is restored to the hundred above (and we, human nature, are assuredly that sheep, which the good Shepherd rescued by becoming firstborn), then in a special way, with intensified thanksgiving on our behalf, they will offer worship to God—to Him who through His primogeniture called back the one who had departed from the paternal hearth.

no one would be in doubt for what reason He becomes firstborn—whether from the dead, or of creation, or among many brethren.

For all these look to the same aim, even though in each there appears some meaning peculiar to it.

For He becomes firstborn from the dead as the first who through Himself loosed the pangs of death, that He might also open the way for all to the birth that comes from resurrection.

And again He becomes firstborn among brethren, He who was first born of the new birth of regeneration in the water—whose pangs the descent of the dove brought to birth—through which He makes those who share with Him in the like birth His own brethren, and becomes firstborn of those born after Him from water and the Spirit.

And to put it briefly: since there are in us three births by which human nature is given life—one from the body, one according to the mystery of regeneration, and one through the hoped-for resurrection again from the dead—He becomes firstborn in all three; being Himself the author of the twofold regeneration effected through both baptism and resurrection, in each respect.

And in the flesh He becomes firstborn, being the first and only one who inaugurated in Himself, through virginity, a birth unknown to nature—a birth to which no one, in so many generations of mankind, had led the way.

If, then, these things have been rightly understood, neither will the meaning of the 'creation,' of which He is firstborn, be unknown.

For we have recognized a twofold creation of our nature: the first, according to which we were fashioned, and the second, according to which we were refashioned. But there would have been no need of our second creation had we not made the first useless through disobedience.

When that first creation, then, had grown old and vanished away, there needed to be a new creation in Christ, as the Apostle says—he who deems it right that nothing of the old things should any longer be seen in the second creation, saying, 'Having put off the old man with his deeds and desires';

'Put on the new man, created according to God'; and, 'If anyone is in Christ,' he says, 'he is a new creation; the old things have passed away, behold, all things have become new.'

For one and the same is the Maker of human nature, both in the beginning and thereafter.

Then, taking dust from the earth, He formed man; and again, taking the dust that came from virginity, He did not simply form man, but molded him unto Himself.

Then He created; afterward He was created.

Then the Word made flesh; afterward the Word became flesh, that He might transform our flesh into spirit by sharing with us in flesh and blood.

Of this new creation in Christ, then, of which He Himself was the leader, He was named the firstborn, becoming the firstfruits both of those born unto life and of the dead who are made alive through the resurrection, that He might be Lord both of the dead and of the living, and might, through the firstfruits within Himself, sanctify the whole lump.

For that the title 'firstborn' is not applied to the Son according to His pre-eternal existence, the appellation 'only-begotten' bears witness.

For He who is truly only-begotten has no brothers.

For how could anyone be only-begotten who is numbered among brothers? But just as He is called God and man, Son of God and son of man, form of God and form of a servant—being the one according to His transcendent nature, and becoming the other according to His loving dispensation—so also, being only-begotten God, He becomes firstborn of all creation: only-begotten as He who is in the bosom of the Father, but firstborn both becoming and being called among those saved through the new creation.

But if, as the heresy would have it, He is called firstborn because He was fashioned before the rest of creation, the name does not agree with what they themselves construct concerning the only-begotten God.

For they do not say this—that the Son and all things came to be from the Father in like manner—but they call the only-begotten God a work of the Father, and all other things a work of Him.

Yet in saying that all things were fashioned by the only-begotten God, they will name Him not the firstborn of the things made through Him, but their father, in a stricter sense—since the same relation on both sides toward the creatures produces, in consequence, the same appellation.

For if the God who is over all is properly named not the firstborn but the father of His own creature, then by the same reasoning the only-begotten God too will surely be named the father, not properly the firstborn, of His own creatures—so that the appellation 'firstborn' is in every respect void and superfluous, having no place in the heretical notion.

But we must return to those who link suffering to the divine begetting, and on this account deny that the Lord was truly begotten, lest they conceive of suffering.

For to say that suffering is altogether bound up with begetting, and that on this account one ought to think the Son estranged from the supposition of a begetting—so that the Divine may remain purely free from suffering—might perhaps seem to have some reason among those easily deceived; but to those instructed in the divine mysteries the refutation is ready at hand from what is agreed upon.

For who does not know that the begetting which raises us to the true and blessed life is not the same as that which is constituted from bloods and the will of the flesh, in which there is also flux and change and gradual growth toward completion, and all the other things observed concerning this begetting;

whereas the other, which is from God and heavenly, and, as the Gospel somewhere says, is believed to be from above, does not admit the passions of flesh and blood? Let the adversaries then dare to declare one of the two: either that the birth from above does not exist, or that it comes about through suffering.

But in fact they agree both that it exists and that they find no suffering in it.

Therefore not every begetting is bound up with suffering; rather, the material begetting is subject to passion, but the immaterial is pure of suffering.

What necessity, then, is there to rub off the properties of the flesh upon the undefiled begetting of the Son, and, by making a comedy of the lower begetting through an unseemly account of nature, to shut the Son out from His kinship with the Father? For if even in our case a begetting leads the way to each life—the one through flesh, with passion, the other spiritual, in purity—and no one who is in any way numbered among Christians would gainsay this account, how is it that, when we conceive of a begetting in the undefiled nature, one should reckon suffering into the account? And let us examine this too in addition to what has been said.

If, on account of the suffering connected with the flesh, they disbelieve in the impassibility of the divine begetting, then by the same examples—those in us, I mean—let them not believe that God even creates without suffering.

For if they judge the Divine by our things, they will confess that God neither begets nor creates;

for neither of these is wrought in us without suffering.

Either, then, let them separate both from the divine nature—both creation and begetting—so that through each they may guard God's impassibility, and let them altogether cast out from their doctrine faith in the only-begotten, that the Father may be kept free from suffering, neither laboring in creating nor defiled in begetting;

or, if they concede that the one is wrought without suffering by the divine power, let them not wrangle about the other either;

for if He creates without toil and matter, He surely also begets without toil and flux.

But I have Eunomius himself again as an advocate for me even against this argument.

I will state his nonsense concisely in few words, running through the whole of his meaning briefly: that men do not fashion the matter for us, but only contrive the form upon the matter;

this is the meaning, amid much nonsense, of the things said by him.

If, then, conceiving of conception and formation in the lower begetting, he on this account forbids the pure notion of begetting, let him, consistently with his own reasoning—since the creation here labors over the form but is unable to supply matter together with the form—on this account also forbid us to think the Father a creator;

let him slander the divine begetting from human things.

But that his precision and circumspection in what he says may be made more manifest, I will take up again a little of what was said by him.

For he says that the things acting and being acted upon share with one another in nature, and, after the begetting from bodies, he sets forth the artful workings upon materials.

Let the sharp-witted hearer, then, consider through these things how he falls away from his own aim, ever wandering off after whatever chances to present itself.

The agent and the patient, in things that come about through the flesh, he sees as of the same substance, the one imparting the substance, the other partaking of it.

In this way he knows how to behold the truth with precision in the nature of beings—so as to separate from the substance the one who imparts and the one who partakes, and to say that each of these exists on its own apart from the substance!

For he who receives or imparts is altogether other than that which is partaken of and given, so that one must first be conceived on his own, seen according to his own hypostasis, and only then be spoken of as either giving what he has or receiving what he does not have.

And having thus laughably spat out this argument, the wise man does not perceive that in what follows he again overturns himself.

For he who shapes the underlying matter by his art into what seems good to him surely does something through his activity, and the matter, in being acted upon, receives the shaping from the one who plies the art;

for the matter does not receive the form given by the art while remaining impassible and resistant.

If, therefore, even in things wrought by art nothing could come to be unless passion and activity had run together with one another toward what is produced, how is it possible, through these things, to suppose that the treatise-writer stands by what is said by himself—he who, declaring the communion of substance to be in passion and activity, runs the risk not only of somehow attesting, in the one begotten, a common substance with the one who begot, but also of making the whole creation consubstantial with the Maker, if indeed the agent and the patient are defined as being of the same kind with one another according to nature?

Therefore, by the very means through which he constructs what he wishes, he overturns what he is zealous for, making, by his own conflict, the opinion of consubstantiality stronger.