Against Eunomius 1 part 44/56

For it is clear that there too the term 'without intermediary' does not look toward piety, but is as though one should say that between the nail and the smith the hammer mediates, yet the fashioning of this hammer is without intermediary—for, the tools not yet having been devised by the craft, the hammer came to be first, by some contrivance, directly from the craftsman and not through any other tool, and so through it the others came to be. The very phrase 'without intermediary' shows that the word-monger thinks these things also concerning the Only-begotten.

And Eunomius is not alone in having gone astray in this, in the absurdity of the doctrine; but it is possible to find the like also in the works composed by Theognostus, who says that God, wishing to fashion this whole universe, first set up the Son beforehand as a kind of rule of the craftsmanship—not perceiving, that man either, the absurdity in his argument: that what comes to be not for its own sake but for the sake of something else is altogether more dishonorable than that for the sake of which it comes to be, just as we practice the farming implement for the sake of life, yet the plough is not honored equally with life.

In this way, then, if the Lord too were for the sake of the world, and all things were not for His sake, then all things would be more to be honored than the Lord—those things for the sake of which they say He came to be.

This very thing they now also establish by their argument, in that they insist that the Son has His relation toward the creator and maker without intermediary.

But he plays the philanthropist with what remains, and says that He is comparable to none of the things that came to be through Him and after Him.

Such are the gifts that the enemies of the truth bring to the Lord, whereby the blasphemy is more conspicuously established.

For tell me, which of the remaining things that belong to creation has a comparison toward either of the two, seeing that in every case the particularity appearing in each does not admit fellowship with things of a different kind? There is no comparison of heaven with earth, none of earth with the stars, none of the stars with the seas, none of water with stone, none of the animals with the trees, none of the land creatures with the birds, none of the four-footed beasts with the swimming things, none of the irrational creatures with the rational.

And why should one waste time speaking about individual cases, showing that it is possible to say of each of the things contemplated in creation the very thing that was flung upon the Only-begotten as something exceptional—namely, that it has no comparison with any of the things that came to be after it and through it? For it is manifest that everything whatsoever you may conceive by itself is incomparable with the whole and with the individuals.

And thus by the enemies of the truth 'glory' is allotted to the Only-begotten God!

And having established such things, again in what remains he glorifies Him with empty honors, calling Him Lord and Only-begotten.

But lest any pious understanding should arise in the hearers through these names, he straightway mingles the blasphemous statements with the more auspicious ones.

'inasmuch,' he says, 'as the begotten essence has left no room to any other for fellowship;'

'nor is the activity of the maker contemplated as common.'

As though haranguing among irrational or senseless creatures, in whom there is no understanding, he leads his argument about at will through contraries; or rather, he suffers the same thing as those deprived of sight, since they too often behave unseemly in the eyes of onlookers, because, not seeing themselves, they suppose that they are not seen either.

For who cannot perceive the contradiction in what has been said? 'On account of its having been begotten,' he says, 'the essence leaves no room for fellowship to others;'

and having said this—as though in truth either not himself seeing, or not thinking that he is seen—he adds, as though consistent with what has been said, things that have no fellowship at all, fitting the activity of the maker to the essence of the Only-begotten.

For the one begotten has his reference, by all consistency, toward the one who begot, and the Only-begotten toward the Father; and he who looks toward the truth contemplates in the co-ordination of the Son not the activity of a maker, but the nature of one who begets.

But he, as though making mention of plants or seeds or some other of the things belonging to creation, sets the activity of the maker alongside the subsistence of the Only-begotten.

For if a stone or a piece of wood or some other such thing lay before the contemplation, it would be consistent to conceive beforehand the activity of the maker;

but if the Only-begotten God is confessed even by the adversaries to be both Son and to have subsisted by way of begetting, how do the same terms fit both Him and the lowest of the portions of creation, and how do they think it pious to say concerning the Lord that very thing which can truly be said concerning the ant or the gnat? For if one should learn the nature of the ant, in what respects it is peculiar in comparison with the rest of the animals, one would not speak outside the truth in saying that the activity of the maker who made it is not contemplated as common with the others.

The very things, then, that are said concerning such creatures, these too they declare concerning the Only-begotten;

and just as hunters are said to trap the passage of wild beasts by certain pits, and to conceal the snare by covering over the mouths of the pits with certain flimsy and unsubstantial things, so that the chasm might appear level with the ground beside it, some such thing does the heresy contrive against men, covering over the pit of impiety with these fair-sounding and pious names as though with some superficial roof, so that the more irrational, thinking the proclamation of these men to be the same as the true faith by reason of the confession of the words, running eagerly toward the bare name of 'Son' and 'Only-begotten,' fall into the void of the pit, since the signification of the appellations does not support their footing, but carries them down into the chasm of the denial of Christ.

For this reason he makes mention of a begotten essence that has left room to none for fellowship, and names Him Only-begotten;

these are the coverings of the pit.

But when someone, standing by before he is caught in the chasm, brings to the argument, as it were a hand, the testing that comes through reason, he sees the ruin of idolatry undermined beneath the doctrine.

For as though approaching God and the Son of God, he finds a creature of God set before him for worship.

For this reason they carry about the name of the Only-begotten up and down, so that the ruin may become easily acceptable to those who are being deceived, just as if someone, having mixed a poison into bread, should welcome with death those who are in need of nourishment—men who would not, had they received it, have taken the deadly poison bare, not being enticed toward the visible appearance.

Wisely, then, at least according to his own mind, he looks toward what he is bent upon.

For if he had altogether cast out from his own doctrine the term 'Son,' the deceit would have become unacceptable to men, since the denial would be openly proclaimed in a manifest declaration;

but as it is, having left only the name, yet having transferred its signification toward the notion of creation, he both sets up idolatry aright and steals away the refutation.

But since we were commanded not to honor God with lips, nor is piety judged by a sound of voice, but it is necessary first to believe with the heart on the Son unto righteousness, and then to confess with the mouth unto salvation; and since those who say in the heart that there is no God, even though they confess the Lord with the mouth, have been corrupted and become abominable, as the prophecy says—for this reason I say that one must look toward the mind of those who put forward, forsooth, the words of faith, and not be enticed toward mere sounds.

If, then, in saying 'Son' he does not look toward a creature through the expression, he is ours and not of the adversaries;

but if anyone assigns the name of 'Son' to the creation, he shall be ranked among the idolaters.

For the wood and the bronze and the beast are not God.

But why should we, conjecturing at his meaning, uncover by argument the hidden deceit and perhaps furnish occasions to our hearers, as though we were not truly bringing these charges against our enemies? For behold, he sets forth for us the blasphemy stripped bare, concealing his guile by no covering, but speaking his monstrosities openly with a free voice.

Now this is how the written words stand:

'We, then,' he says, 'finding nothing besides the essence of the Son that receives the begetting, think it necessary to arrange the appellations upon the essence itself; otherwise we speak of 'Son' and 'begotten' vainly and with bare words, if we should separate these from the essence.

Starting from these things, we also give assurance that the essences differ from one another.'

I think there is no need for the absurdity in what has been said to be refuted by our own arguments;

for the very reading of the written words is sufficient to pillory the blasphemy.

He says that the essences of the Son and of the Father differ from one another.

What, then, is signified by 'differing'? First let us examine the very import of the expression in itself, so that the blasphemy may the more be uncovered through the interpretation of the word.

The word 'difference' is used, then, in the abuse of common usage, in the case of bodies, when through paralysis or some other affliction some member is turned aside from its natural harmony;

for from the contrast of the affected part with the healthy, we name the turning of that which has received the affliction toward the worse a 'difference.'

But in the case of things that differ in character according to virtue and vice, whenever the licentious life is set over against the pure and temperate, or the unjust man against the just, or against the gentle, peaceable, and quiet man the man who is passionate, contentious, and unrestrained in wrath, and in short everything that, by comparison with the better, is condemned as belonging to vice, this is said to be 'divergent,' inasmuch as the marks proper to each of the two do not agree with one another, I mean the marks of the good and of the worse.

Further, we also call 'divergent' those qualities observed in the elements which, being contrary, are ranged opposite one another, having a power to destroy one another—such as the hot and the cold, or the dry and the moist, or, in general, anything that stands against another as its contrary; and the incompatibility in these things we interpret by the word 'divergence.' Indeed, everything that is discordant with another in the marks that are observed in them belongs to the class of divergent things—as health to sickness, life to death, war to peace, virtue to vice, and all things of like kind.

Now that these matters have thus been carefully distinguished by us, let us consider also, in the case of the writer, in what sense he says that the essences of the Father and of the Son diverge from one another.

Does he mean that the Father exists according to nature, while the Son is divergent from nature? Or does he by this word interpret a turning-aside from virtue, using the term 'divergence' to separate the evil from the better, so that he beholds essence in the one case as good, and in the contrary case as other? Or does he maintain, after the manner of the opposition of the elements, that the divine essence too, the one from the other, is divergent? Or does he discern in the essences—as war stands to peace and life to death—a warfare of this sort toward all such things, so that they cannot combine with one another, since the mixture of contraries has a power to consume the things mixed, even as the proverbial wisdom says concerning such a doctrine, that 'Water and fire will never say, It is enough,' interpreting through the riddle the equally-matched and equally-poised nature of the contraries and their mutual destruction? Or does he say that the divergence to be beheld in those essences answers to none of these? Then let him state what is understood apart from these.

But he could not say, even were he to use the customary expressions, that the Son diverges from Him who begot Him;

for by this the absurdity of his statements is all the more exposed.

For what else is so naturally and fittingly implanted in and joined to another as the relational signification of the Son toward the Father? And the proof of this is that, even if these two names be not both uttered, in the one the omitted one too is co-signified;

so intimately is the one contained in and fitted to the other, and both are beheld in the one, that neither of them can be conceived by itself apart from the other.

But that which is divergent is in every way both conceived and spoken of as the contrary of that which fits together—just as the cord fits well to the straight edge, whereas the crooked, when set beside the straight, does not fit; and it is customary for musicians to call the concord of tones 'harmony,' but the deviant and dissonant note they call 'inharmonious.'

It is therefore the same thing to say 'divergent' and 'inharmonious.'

If, then, according to the argument of the heresy, the nature of the Only-begotten God diverges from the essence of the Father, it in no way fits together with it either;

and that which is inharmonious could not exist in that with which it is unable to be fitted together.

For just as when there is one and the same form upon the wax and upon the engraving in the signet-ring, whenever the wax that was stamped by it is set again into the signet, it fits its own character to the containing mold, taking up its own impressions in the incision, sinking into the hollows and receiving the projections of the engraving with its own corresponding forms; but if some strange and alien stamp be set into the engraving of the signet, it roughens and confounds its proper form, carving the shape all over with unsuitable impressions—

yet surely He who subsists in the form of God has not been formed by any other character than the Father, being the express image of the Father's hypostasis;

and the form of God is in every way the same as the essence.

For as He who came to be in the form of a servant was formed into the essence of a servant, not taking upon Himself a bare form nor one severed from the essence, but the essence is co-signified with the form, so surely also he who said that He is in the form of God indicated the essence through the form.

If, then, He is in the form of God, and, being in the Father, has been sealed with the Father's glory—as the voice of the Gospel says, which declares, 'Him hath the Father sealed, even God,' wherefore also he that hath seen the Son seeth the Father—being the image of the goodness and the effulgence of the glory, and all such titles bear witness that the essence of the Son is not inharmonious toward the Father; then plainly the incoherence of the blasphemy of our opponents is refuted by what has been said.

For if divergent things do not fit together, but He who was sealed by the Father, and shows the Father in Himself, and is in the Father, and has Him in Himself, through all things displays the kinship and the well-fittedness, then by these things the absurdity of our opponents is refuted with full force.

just as the divergent is inharmonious, so, conversely, it is confessed beyond all contradiction that the well-fitted is in every way without divergence.

For as that which is divergent does not fit together, so that which fits together is not divergent;

but he who says that the nature of the Only-begotten diverges from the good essence of the Father assuredly beholds the divergence in the very good itself.

And what the thing divergent from the good is, the proverb tells us: 'Understand craftiness, ye that are guileless,' says the proverb.

But these things, as having a manifest absurdity, I shall pass over in my discourse, and let us examine what comes before them.

He says that nothing other than the essence of the Son is found to be that which receives the begetting.

What has he in mind when he says these things? For having distinguished two names from one another, and having also separated in his discourse the things signified through them, he sets forth each one separately by itself.

One name is 'begetting,' and another name is 'essence.'

The essence, he says, receives the begetting, being clearly something other than the begetting.

For if the begetting were essence—which indeed he continually asserts, so that the two appellations are equivalent to one another in meaning—he would not have said that the essence receives the begetting;

for it would be the same as to say that the essence receives the essence, or that the begetting receives the begetting, if indeed the begetting were the same as the essence.

It is therefore one thing that he conceives as the begetting, and another as the essence, which receives the begetting.

For that which is received would not be the same as that which receives it.

This, then, is what the wise craft of argument of the writer says.

But if there is any sense lying in what has been said, let him who has undertaken to judge examine the argument.

And again I shall take up what was said.

He says that he finds nothing other than the essence of the Son to be that which receives the begetting.

But that no meaning at all lies in what has been said is plain to everyone who has even the slightest understanding of words;

and it would remain to bring into the open the blasphemy which he constructs by means of these unintelligible words.

For he wishes—even if, through his feebleness of expression, he cannot—to instill this notion in his hearers, that the essence of the Son is something manufactured;

and he calls the manufacture 'begetting,' cloaking the horror of the blasphemy with a most well-omened word, so that the assent to the Lord's having been created might become acceptable, the notion of manufacture being disclosed under the term 'begetting.'

He says, then, that the essence receives the begetting, in order that—just as every manufacture is beheld as in some underlying subject (for no one could say that a thing which does not subsist has been manufactured)—so, having set forth in his discourse the nature of the Only-begotten God as a kind of manufactured thing, he might propose its making.

If, then, it receives this begetting, he says—wishing to signify something of this sort—that it would not have existed, had it not been manufactured.

But what else of the things beheld in creation is there that did not come to be? Heaven, air, earth, sea—everything whatsoever that exists—is in every way something that came to be;

and none of these would have existed, had it not come to be.

How, then, did he regard as something exceptional in the nature of the Only-begotten this, that it receives the begetting into the very essence (for so he names the manufacture)—since even the gnat and the wasp receive their begetting not into themselves, but into something other than themselves? It is therefore confessed, by what he has written, that the essence of the Only-begotten is made common by them even with the smallest portions of creation, and that every attempt by which the alienation of the Son from the Father is constructed has equal force also in the case of each individual thing.

—[calling Him] one that came into being by an activity, and 'first-created' instead of Only-begotten God and true Son? For once these positions have prevailed, there is great ease for their doctrines to be brought to the conclusion of their aim, since all things are, according to what is probable, led on from such a beginning to the consequence, namely that He who neither was begotten nor is a Son, but came to subsist through some activity, cannot share in the essence with God.

But so long as the utterances of the Gospels prevail, through which He is proclaimed Son and Only-begotten and 'from the Father' and 'from God' and the like, he will babble in vain, deceiving both himself and those of his party by such empty prattle.

For while the appellation of Son cries aloud the true relation toward the Father, who is so foolish that, when John and Paul and the rest of the choir of the saints proclaim these genuine utterances that indicate the intimate relationship, he would not look to them, but would suppose that Eunomius, with the hollow rattles of his sophistries, teaches more truly than they who by the Spirit speak mysteries and bear Christ within themselves? Who is this Eunomius? The man raised up—from where?—to lead Christians? But let these things be left aside, and let our zeal about the matters before us, so far as is possible, smooth down our heart, which is swelling with jealousy for the faith against the blasphemers.

For how is it possible not to be stirred to wrath and hatred when our God and Master and Life-giver and Saviour is reviled by these petty men? For if someone were to abuse my father according to the flesh, or were ill-disposed toward my benefactor, would it be possible to bear without feeling the wrath against those I love? But if the Lord of my soul—He who brought it into being when it was not, and redeemed it when it had been enslaved; He who gave it a taste of the present life and prepared the life to come; He who calls to the kingdom and enjoins how we may flee the condemnation of Gehenna (small things I speak, and not yet worthy of the majesty of the common Master); He who is worshipped by all creation, of things heavenly, earthly, and under the earth; before whom stand the numberless myriads of the ministers in heaven; toward whom is turned all that is here governed and has a longing for the good—if He is exposed to the reviling of men, for whom it is not enough merely to have attached themselves to the portion of the apostate, but who count it a loss not to drag others also into the same pit with themselves through their writing, so that there may not be lacking to those who come after a guiding hand toward destruction—does anyone then blame the wrath aroused over these things? But let us run back to the sequence of the argument.

For in what follows he again slanders us as dishonoring the begetting of the Son by human likenesses, and indeed he makes mention of what was written by our father concerning these things, in which he says that, two things being signified by the term 'Son'—both the coming-to-be through passion and the genuineness toward Him who begot—the unseemly and fleshly is not to be admitted into divine reasonings, but only that which serves as a testimony to the glory of the Only-begotten is to be taken up into the sublime doctrines.

Who, then, dishonors the begetting of the Son by human suppositions—he who banishes from the divine begetting whatever is passible and human, and impassibly joins the Son to Him who begot Him, or he who makes common toward the lower creation Him who brought all things into being? But such a thing, as it seems, this newfangled wisdom supposes to be a matter of dishonor—namely, to associate the Son with the majesty of the Father; while it counts it something great and lofty to bring Him down into equal rank with the creation that is our fellow-servant.

Basil is slandered as dishonoring the Son—he who honors Him even as the Father is honored; and Eunomius champions the honor of the Only-begotten—he who cuts Him off from the good nature of the Father.

He refuted the error of those maddened after idols and led them by the hand toward the truth, proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection.

These very things the new Stoics and Epicureans now bring forward against the imitator of Paul—men who have leisure for nothing else, as the history says concerning the Athenians, than to tell or to hear some newer thing.

For what could be found newer than these things:

a Son of activity, and a Father of a creature, and a recent God springing up out of the non-existent, and a good divergent from the good? These are they who, by saying that He is not that which the nature of Him who begot is, pretend to honor Him with the fitting honors.

Is Eunomius ashamed of the form of such honor, if one should say that He is associated with the Father in nature, but claims instead that He has fellowship with something of a different kind? For if he who makes the Lord of creation common with the creation thereby defines himself as honoring Him, then let this one too be honored by being made common in nature with the irrational or the insensate;

but if to him fellowship with the inferior is grievous and insulting, how is it an honor to Him who lords it in the dominion of the age—as the prophet says—to be ranked together with a nature that is subject and enslaved? But let these things suffice thus far.

But concerning the utterance of Peter the apostle, it would now be timely to examine more diligently the things said about it both by Eunomius himself and by our father.

And if the exact investigation should extend the discourse to great length, the fair-minded hearer will surely grant pardon, blaming not us for prating, but referring the cause back to him who gave the occasion.

And let it be conceded to me to set forth beforehand a few brief matters, prior to the examination of the subjects before us—things not, perhaps, out of tune with the aim of what we are earnestly pursuing.

The divine word laid down that nothing which has come into being through creation is to be an object of reverence to men, as one may learn such a thing from well-nigh the whole of the God-inspired Scripture.

Moses, the tablets, the law, the prophets who followed, the Gospels, the doctrines of the apostles—all alike forbid looking toward the creation.

And it would be a long task to set forth in order each one of the passages that bear upon this;

but even if we set out a few testimonies of the God-inspired Scripture out of many, the argument will in every way possess its full credibility, because each of the divine sayings has equal power for the manifestation of the truth, even if it be the very least.

For since our conception concerning things that exist is divided into two—into the creation and into the uncreated nature—if that which is now earnestly maintained by our opponents should prevail, so as to say that the Son of God is created, then it is altogether necessary either that the evangelic proclamation be set aside and that the Word who was in the beginning, being God, be not worshipped, because worship must not be offered to the creation; or else, if the marvels in the Gospels put us to shame, through which we are led on to reverence and worship Him who is made manifest in them, that we bring the created and the uncreated into equal honor, if indeed, according to the doctrine of our adversaries, the created God too be worshipped, who has in His nature no precedence over the rest of the creation;

and if this should prevail, the doctrines of true religion will be transformed into a kind of utter anarchy and democratic self-governance.

For when men believe that the nature which is worshipped is not one, but are carried off in their conceptions to different divinities, there is nothing that will halt the supposition concerning the Divine as it advances through the creation; rather, that which is reckoned divine in the creation will become an occasion for an equal supposition regarding that which is beheld after it, and that in turn regarding what comes next, and through all things, by this sequence, the error will be carried along, the first deception passing on through the things that lie beside it even to the uttermost.

And that I aim at nothing outside of probability, I shall bring forward as a trustworthy witness of my argument the error that prevails among the Greeks even until now.

having failed to employ [these things] toward the apprehension of the transcendent beauty, but having halted their understanding at the things apprehended, and having marveled at each part of the creation on its own, for this reason they did not fix their supposition concerning the Divine in some one only of the phenomena, but reckoned as divine everything beheld in the creation.

And thus, among the Egyptians, since the error was worked out more elaborately concerning things intellectual, the countless forms of demons were reckoned into natures of gods; while among the Babylonians the unerring revolution of the celestial vault was thought to be a god, whom they also named Bel.

And in like manner Greek folly, having in its own peculiar way made gods of the seven planets that follow, bowed down to them, to one in one fashion and to another in another, according to some private principle of its delusion.

For having observed all these orbits revolving one within another, since they went astray concerning the highest, they consequently preserved the same error even down to the lowest.