Against Eunomius 1 part 46/56

so that if He were created, and man too were created, then He was emptied into Himself, according to the utterance of Eunomius; and He passed over, not from the superior toward the lowly, but from like to that which is of equal honour—except for the property of the corporeal and the incorporeal.

Toward whom, then, shall the just verdict of the judges be borne, or who shall be shown liable to those charges? He who says that the created was saved by the uncreated God, or he who ascribes the cause of our salvation to a creature? But the judgment of the godly is not obscure.

For he who accurately understands the difference between the created and the uncreated—whose distinction is characterized by lordship and servitude, the uncreated God bearing rule in His power over the age, according as the prophet says, but all the things in the creation being in servitude according to the utterance of the same prophet, who says, 'All things are Thy servants'—he, then, who has considered these things with diligence, is by no means ignorant of the one who transfers the Only-begotten from servitude into servitude.

For if all the creation is in servitude according to Paul, but the essence of the Only-begotten is created according to Eunomius, then those who hold the contrary opinion altogether contrive by their dogmas that it was not a master who was mingled with servants, but a servant who came to be among servants.

But surely to say that the Lord was in the form of a servant before His presence in the flesh is the same as to slander us as calling the stars black and the sun murky and the heaven low-lying and the water dry, and as asserting all such things.

For as for him who contrives something not out of what he has heard, but who fashions what seems good to him according to his own impulse—?

Let him not spare even such charges against us.

For it is all one, that we be called to account both for these things and for those, since none of them has its origin from anything of ours.

For he who defines the true Son to be in the glory of the Father—how could he insult the eternal glory of the Only-begotten by placing Him in the form of a servant? Since, then, it seems good to the pamphleteer to speak evil, and he takes care to contrive charges of specious appearance, it would be nothing superfluous and useless to contend against the incoherent accusations.

For indeed the accusation which comes next has a like measure of irrationality.

For he charged us with saying two Christs and two Lords, having no way of refuting the charge from our own words, but employing falsehood, according to his license, toward what seems good to him.

Since, then, it lies with him to say whatever he wishes, why does he peddle his falsehood so stingily, contriving that only two Christs are spoken of by us? Let him, according to his license, if it seems good, allege that we champion even ten Christs, and let him stretch out the number tenfold as many, and to a thousand, so that he might take up the calumny more vigorously.

For the blasphemy has the same measure whether over two or over more Christs, and the undemonstrated character of the charges is likewise the same.

Having therefore shown that we speak of two Lords and two Christs, let him cast his vote against us as though he had proved the charge concerning countless such matters.

But he says that he refutes us out of our own words.

Let us once more examine the things said by the teacher, by which this man supposes he can bring his accusations against us.

He says: The one who declares that 'God made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified' does not hand down to us a mode of theology, but rather the terms of the dispensation, resting the demonstrative expression upon his humanity which was visible to all. Such, then, are the things written.

It follows, then, that one ought also to deny that the Lord was exalted by him after the passion, lest we too be charged with speaking of two Most High Ones—if indeed the Word who was in the beginning is God Most High, while it was after the passion that he who rose from the dead was highly exalted, as the Apostle says.

For of the two one must of necessity be chosen: either to say that he was highly exalted after the passion—which amounts to his having become Lord and Christ, and so to flee, in Eunomius' book, the indictment of impiety—or, shirking the accusation, to deny the confession of the exaltation of him who suffered.

But against these charges we must again set forth the words of our accuser as the advocate of our own defense.

We shall therefore quote verbatim the things laid down by him, by which our own argument is established, in this manner.

The blessed John, he says, teaches that the Word who is God, through whom all things came to be, came to be in flesh, saying: 'And the Word became flesh.'

Does he then, understanding what he writes, add these things to his own argument? For my part I do not think that the same man both knows the meaning of these words and yet contends against our argument.

For if anyone examines carefully what is said, he will find in these matters no conflict at all between what is said by us and what is said by him.

For we too view separately the things dispensed through the flesh, and we conceive the divine power in itself; and he likewise says that the Word who was in the beginning was made manifest in flesh, and neither has anyone else nor has he himself ever charged himself with proclaiming two Words—the one who was in the beginning and the one who became flesh—for he surely knows that the Word who appeared in flesh is the very same as the Word who was with God.

But the flesh is not the same as the Godhead before it too was transformed toward the Godhead, so that of necessity some things fit God the Word and other things fit the form of the servant.

If, then, he does not accuse himself of a duality of Words through such a confession, how are we slandered as dividing our faith toward two Christs—we who say that he who was highly exalted out of the passion became Lord and Christ through his union with him who is truly Lord and Christ? For we know from what we have been taught that the divine nature is ever one and the same and unchanging, while the flesh, in itself, is what reason and sense perception apprehend concerning it; but when it is commingled with the divine, it no longer remains within its own bounds and properties, but is taken up into that which prevails and is superior; yet the contemplation of the properties both of the flesh and of the Godhead remains unconfused, so long as each of these is contemplated by itself.

The Word existed before the ages, but the flesh came to be in the last times; and no one could invert this and say either that the flesh is pre-eternal or that the Word came to be in the last times.

The flesh is of a passible nature, but the Word of an active one; and neither is the flesh creative of beings, nor does the Godhead have a passible power.

In the beginning the Word was with God; in the experience of death was the man; and neither is the human element from all eternity, nor is the divine mortal.

And all the rest is contemplated in the same manner.

The human nature does not give life to Lazarus, nor does the impassible authority weep over him who lies dead; but the tear is proper to the man, while the life belongs to the true Life.

The human poverty does not feed the thousands, nor does the all-powerful authority run to the fig tree.

Who is he that is wearied from the journey, and who is he that, without toil, upheld the whole world by his word? What is the effulgence of glory, and what is that which was pierced by the nails? What form is struck at the passion, and what form is glorified from all eternity? For these things are plain, even if no one interprets the matter in words: that the stripes are of the servant in whom the Master is, but the honors are of the Master about whom the servant is.

So that, on account of the conjunction and connatural union, the things of each become common to both: the Master taking up into himself the servile weals, and the servant being glorified with the Master's honor.

Every tongue confesses that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

And if we must divide the remaining matters also in the same manner, let us consider what it is that dies and what it is that destroys death, what it is that is renewed and what it is that is emptied.

For the Godhead is emptied, that it may become containable by human nature, while the human element is renewed, becoming divine through its commingling with the divine.

For just as air is not held down in water when, drawn down with some heavier thing, it is caught in the depth of the water, but rushes up to what is akin to it—while the water is often lifted along with the ascent of the air, being arched around in a thin, membrane-like surface by the airy sphere—so also, when the true life that was lodged in the flesh had, after the passion, rushed back to itself, the flesh surrounding it was lifted up along with it, thrust up from corruption to incorruption by the divine immortality.

And just as the fire in wood, often hidden within the surface, escapes the perception of those who look on or even touch it, but when rekindled becomes manifest—so too he who, by his own authority, being in death, separated the soul from the body: he who said to his own Father, 'Into your hands I commend my spirit,' he who, as he says, has authority to lay it down and authority again to take it up.

This is he who despised the shame among men because he was the Lord of glory, who, as it were, having covered over the ember of life with the nature of the body in the dispensation according to death, again kindled and rekindled it by the power of his own Godhead—warming again what had been made dead, and thus, by the boundlessness of the divine power, pouring out that brief firstfruits of our nature: what he himself was, that he made it too, making the servile form Lord, and the man from Mary Christ, and him who was crucified out of weakness life and power and all things—whatever is contemplated in God the Word according to godliness—also in that which was assumed by the Word.

So that these things do not seem to belong distinctly to each according to some division, but rather that the perishable nature, transformed by its commingling with the divine according to what prevails, partakes of the power of the Godhead—as if one were to say that the drop of vinegar mingled with the deep the mingling made into sea, because the natural quality of that liquid no longer subsists in the boundlessness of that which prevails.

This is our teaching, which advocates not a number of Christs, as Eunomius charges, but a union of the man with the divine—naming as a 'making' the transmutation of the mortal into the immortal, of the servant into the Lord, of sin into righteousness, of the curse into the blessing, and of the man into Christ.

What argument, then, is still left to the slanderers—that we proclaim two Christs in our doctrine—if we do not say that he who is from the beginning uncreatedly from the Father, Lord and Christ and Word and God, was made, but rather define that the blessed Peter, briefly and in passing indicating the mystery according to the flesh, speaks in accordance with the sense already demonstrated: namely, that what was crucified out of weakness itself became, on account of the prevailing power of him who indwelt it, that which the indweller is and is called—and he is called Christ and Lord, as we have said? But I perceive that I have dwelt on this place beyond what is needful, the necessity of the concepts leading us out to this contemplation.

But we must resume the sequence of the accusations, so that we may not pass over unanswered any of the charges brought against us.

And first, if it seems good, let us examine this: how he accuses us of saying that a mere man effected the salvation of the universe.

For although this has already been moderately demonstrated through the matters examined, yet, that the suspicion arising from calumny may be cleared away by every means from those who judge us, we shall briefly take it up once again.

...and to trace the cause up beyond words to grace, so that even if anyone should ascribe such a benefaction to Peter and Paul, or to a heavenly angel, we call such a one anathema, according to Paul's rule.

For neither was Paul crucified for us, nor were we baptized into a human name.

Nor indeed, because we confess that the saving power of Christ is greater than human nature, is the doctrine of our adversaries against the truth thereby confirmed.

For their aim is by every means to establish the alienation of the Son's essence from that of the Father, and they are eager to demonstrate the unlikeness in essence not only by the distinction of the begotten from the unbegotten, but also by the antithesis of the passible to the impassible.

And although this is established more nakedly in the latter parts of his discourse, it is nonetheless manifest also through the things now being said.

For if he accuses those who attribute the passion to human nature, he certainly wishes to subject the Godhead itself to passion.

For since the supposition is twofold and ambiguous—whether it was the divine or the human that came to be in passion—the accusation of the one becomes altogether the establishment of the other that remains.

If, then, they accuse those who see the passion in relation to the man, they certainly commend those who call the Son's Godhead passible; but what is established through this becomes an advocate for the absurdity of their own doctrine.

For if, according to their argument, the Godhead of the Son suffers, while that of the Father is preserved in all impassibility, then the impassible nature is, in respect of essence, alien to that which admits of passion.

Since, then, what is said, so far as it lies in the compass of the words, is but brief, yet furnishes the beginnings and premises of all the evil concerning the doctrine, it would be just for readers to demand not the brevity of the answer, but its security.

We, then, neither attribute our salvation to a man, nor do we accept that the undefiled and divine nature is passible and perishable; but since one must by all means believe the divine oracles, which proclaim that the Word who was in the beginning is God, and thereafter that the Word, having become flesh, was seen upon the earth and conversed among men, we receive by faith the notions befitting the divine oracle.

For when we hear that he is light and power and righteousness and life and truth, and that all things came to be through him, we hold all these and such things as believable, referring them to the Word who is God; but when we hear of grief and sleep and want and trouble and bonds and nails and spear and blood and wounds and burial and tomb, and whatever else of the like—even if it be contrary to what was set forth before—we no less receive these as believable and true, looking to the flesh, which together with the Word we received by faith.

For just as the properties of the flesh cannot be contemplated in the Word who was in the beginning, so again neither can the properties of the Godhead be discerned in the nature of the flesh.

Wherefore, since the evangelical teaching concerning the Lord is mixed—through both the lofty and God-befitting sayings and through the lowly and human ones—we fittingly assign each of the notions to each of the things conceived in the mystery: the human to the human, and the lofty to the Godhead; and we say that, insofar as the Son is God, he is altogether impassible and undefiled; but if any passion be spoken of concerning him in the Gospel, he wrought such a thing altogether through the human element which admits of the passion.

For the Godhead truly works the salvation of the universe through the body that is about it, so that the passion belongs to the flesh, but the working belongs to God.

...having made the mystery clear to us.

For everywhere he testifies that the dispensation of the passion belongs to the human part of Christ, saying: 'For since by man came death, by man also came the resurrection of the dead'; and: 'God, having sent his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, condemned sin in the flesh.'

'In the flesh,' he says, not 'in the Godhead.'

And: 'He was crucified out of weakness' (signifying the flesh through the weakness), 'but he lives out of power' (indicating the divine through the power); and: 'He died to sin' (that is, to the body), 'but he lives to God' (that is, to the Godhead).

So that through these things it is established that the man tasted of death, but the immortal nature did not admit the passion according to death; and: 'Him who knew no sin,' he says, 'he made to be sin for us,' again naming the flesh 'sin.'

And though I say this in passing, the digression seems perhaps not less useful than the matter at hand.

For since, when the holy Peter said, 'He made him both Lord and Christ,' and again when the apostle Paul, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, said that 'he made him a priest,' Eunomius seizes upon the word 'made' as indicative of the pre-eternal subsistence, and through this supposes he must establish that the Lord is a thing made.

Let him then hear Paul saying: 'Him who knew no sin he made to be sin for us.'

If the word 'he made,' in the case of the Lord, refers—both from the Epistle to the Hebrews and from Peter's saying—to a pre-eternal meaning, then it would be quite fitting also for the saying here, which declares that 'God made him sin,' to be referred to the primal subsistence of his essence; and on this account he ought, consistently with himself, to try to demonstrate that he was made in likeness to the other testimonies, so that he might refer the expression 'he made' to the essence, and so, acting consistently with himself, he would behold sin in the essence.

But if, on account of the conspicuousness of the absurdity, he is ashamed of this, and says that the apostle, by saying 'he made him sin,' indicates the dispensation in the last times, let him persuade himself, by the same consistency, that there too 'he made' looks to the dispensation.

But let us return again to the point from which we digressed.

For besides these, it is possible to gather countless other passages from the same Scripture toward our purpose.

And let no one suppose that the divine apostle is divided against himself toward contrary positions, and that he furnishes, through his own words, equal material to those who battle over the doctrines for their attempt at either side.

For anyone examining accurately would find that his discourse, in its precision, looks to one thing.

And it does not waver among the conceptions.

For everywhere, while proclaiming the commingling of the human with the divine, he nonetheless discerns in each what is proper to it—since the human weakness is changed for the better through its communion with the undefiled, while the divine power does not sink down together with its conjunction with the lowly nature.

When, therefore, he says, 'He did not spare his own Son,' he sets the true Son in contrast to the other sons who were begotten and exalted and set at nought—I mean those brought into being through a command—signifying, by the addition of 'own,' the kinship according to nature.

And lest anyone should rub off upon the undefiled nature the passion according to the cross, he corrects such an error more distinctly through other words, naming him a mediator between God and men, and both man and God, so that from the two things being said concerning the one, what is fitting might be conceived concerning each: impassibility concerning the divine, but the dispensation according to the passion concerning the human.

Since, then, the conception distinguishes what is united in respect of love for mankind but discerned in respect of reason: when it proclaims that which is transcendent and surpasses all understanding, it uses the loftier of the names, calling him God over all and great God and power of God and wisdom and the like.

...but so that in each the reverent truth might be preserved: the human being glorified through the assumption, and the divine not being defiled through the condescension, but rather granting the passions to the human part, while working the resurrection of him who suffered through the divine power.

And thus neither is the experience of death referred to him who shared in the passible nature—on account of the union of the man with him—and the lofty and God-befitting names descend upon the man, so that even he who appeared upon the cross is named Lord of glory, since by the commingling of his nature with the lowly, the grace of the names also passed over from the divine to the human.

For this reason Scripture hands him down to us in varied and diverse ways: now as the One who came down from heaven, now as the One born of a woman; both God before the ages, and, in the last days, man.

So too the Only-begotten God is believed to be impassible, and Christ to be passible; and by means of these opposites the account does not fall into falsehood, since it fits to each of the names, in the thoughts conveyed, that which is appropriate to it.

If, then, we have learned to think these things from the God-inspired teaching, how do we ascribe the cause of our salvation to a common man? But if we determine that the utterance of blessed Peter, 'He made him,' looks not to the pre-eternal existence of the hypostasis, but to the recent event of the dispensation, what has this in common with the charge? For this great apostle says that what is seen in the form of the servant was brought about through the assumption, whereas He who assumed it was, according to His own nature, that which He was.

For in the Epistle to the Hebrews too one may learn the same thing from Paul, who says that Jesus was made an apostle and high priest by God, being faithful to Him who made Him.

For there too, when he names as high priest the One who priest-like made propitiation for our sins by His own blood, he is not, by the word 'He made,' declaring the primary hypostasis of the Only-begotten; rather, wishing to set forth the grace customarily so named in the ordination of priests, he says 'He made.'

For Jesus, as Zechariah says, the great high priest, who offered His own lamb—that is, His own body—as a priestly sacrifice for the sin of the world; who, on account of the children who share in flesh and blood, Himself likewise partook of blood—not insofar as He was in the beginning, being Word and God and existing in the form of God and being equal to God, but insofar as He emptied Himself in the form of the servant and brought an offering and sacrifice on our behalf—thus became a priest, many generations later, after the order of Melchizedek.

But the mystery concerning this is surely known to the one who has not carelessly conversed with the word addressed to the Hebrews.

In like manner, then, here He is said to have been made priest and apostle, and there Lord and Christ—the one with reference to the dispensation on our behalf, the other on account of the change and transformation of the human toward the divine.

For by 'making' the apostle means the transformation.

Manifest, therefore, is the slander of our adversaries, who spitefully snatch the words belonging to the dispensation and drag them over to the pre-eternal hypostasis.

For we have not learned from the apostle to know Christ in the same way now as before, since Paul spoke thus: 'Even though we once knew Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him so no longer'—the former knowledge making clear the temporal dispensation, and the latter His eternal being.

Our discourse, then, has moderately defended itself against the charges: that we neither suppose two Christs or Lords, nor are ashamed of the cross, nor glorify that a common man suffered on behalf of the world, nor indeed think that 'He made' bears upon the constitution of the essence.

And for such a supposition of ours our discourse has no small alliance from the accuser himself, in that, while in passing he drives his tongue vehemently against us, he also brings forward this, saying:

'Basil is also clearly shown neither to have submitted himself to the intention of the apostles, nor to have kept the consistency of his own words';

'from which, either, having perceived the inconsistency, he will concede that the Word who was in the beginning and who was God became Lord, or else he joins together things at war with things at war.'

For this is indeed also our own account, which Eunomius too states—that the Word who was in the beginning and who was God became Lord.

For being what He was—both God and Word and Life and Light and Grace and Truth and Lord and Christ, and every exalted and divine name—He, in the man He assumed, who was none of these things, became also the other things that the Word was, and, along with the others, also Christ and Lord, according both to the teaching of Peter and to the confession of Eunomius; the Godhead not receiving anything by way of advancement, but every exalted dignity being contemplated as belonging to the divine nature.

Thus He becomes both Lord and Christ, not coming, in His Godhead, to an addition of grace (for the nature of the Godhead is confessed to lack no good thing whatsoever), but bringing the human up into participation in the Godhead, which is signified by 'Christ' and 'Lord.'

And concerning these matters this suffices.

But that which is said by Eunomius, to the slander of our doctrine, namely that Christ was emptied into Himself, has already been sufficiently examined through what has been said, whereby it has been demonstrated that he is rubbing off his own blasphemy onto our teaching.

For it is not the one who confesses the unchangeable nature to have entered into the created and perishable that speaks of a passing over from like to like; rather it is he who conceives of no removal at all from the majesty of the nature to what is lowlier.

For if, according to their account, that One was created, and man too is created, then the wonder of the Word has been utterly stolen away, and there is nothing marvelous in what is said, the creation having come to be within itself.

But we, having learned from prophecy of the change of the right hand of the Most High—and by the right hand of the Father we mean the power of God that made all things, which is the Lord, not as a part attached to the whole, but as being from that One, yet contemplated by itself in its own hypostasis—we say this: that neither is the right hand, according to the account of the nature, altered from that One whose right hand it is, nor can any other change of it be spoken of than the dispensation of the flesh.

For in truth the right hand of God was Himself, the God who was manifested in the flesh, beheld by those with clear sight through the flesh itself: insofar as He did the works of the Father, being and being understood as the right hand of God; but insofar as He was encompassed by the covering of the flesh in respect of what is seen, appearing other than what by nature He was contemplated to be.

For this reason He says to Philip, who was gazing only at that which had been altered: Look, through that which was altered, at the unalterable; and if you see this, you will have seen the Father Himself, whom you seek to see.

For he who has seen Me—not the One appearing in the alteration, but the One who is truly Me, who is in the Father—that very One he will have seen, the One in whom I am, because the same character of the Godhead is beheld in both.