Against Eunomius 1 part 48/56

Do you so understand the Apostle, as to suppose that 'Spirit' was set down by him in place of the substance of the Only-begotten? How then will you make it fit according to the sequence [of the text]? For the meaning is not circumscribed within these [words].

For Paul, having said, 'The Lord is the Spirit,' added:

'And where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.'

If then the Lord is the substance, and the Spirit is substance, what in turn is the substance of the substance? For the Spirit, according to your argument, is one substance, which is the Lord.

Again, of the Lord, who is the Spirit, he speaks of another Spirit—that is, according to your interpretation, another substance.

Nothing else, therefore, according to your argument, does the Apostle conceive than a substance of a substance, when he expressly writes 'Lord-Spirit' and 'Spirit of the Lord.'

But let the Scriptures stand for Eunomius as pleases him; what we for our part know concerning these things is as follows.

The God-inspired Scripture, as the divine Apostle names it, is the writing of the Holy Spirit, and its purpose is the benefit of men.

'For all Scripture,' he says, 'is God-inspired and profitable'; and the benefit is varied and manifold, as the Apostle says:

'for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.'

It is possible for readers to take [the benefit] readily at hand; but the divine purpose is hidden away, as it were, by a certain veil, namely the body of the Scripture, some legislation or narrative being set before the things contemplated according to the [spiritual] sense.

For this very reason the Apostle says that those who look to the body of the Scripture have a veil upon their heart and are unable to gaze upon the glory of the spiritual law, being hindered by the veil laid over the face of the lawgiver.

Wherefore he says, 'The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life,' showing that in many places of the written text the readily-taken interpretation, if it be not understood according to the fitting sense, works the opposite of the life indicated through the Spirit—since the one [law] legislates for men the perfection of virtue in complete freedom from passion, while the narrative of the written text in some places contains the exposition even of things unseemly and seems, as it were, to run together with the passions of nature; to which if anyone attend according to the surface meaning, he will make the letter a teaching of death.

Of those, then, who approach the written text in a more bodily manner, he says that the veil is spread over the perceptive faculties of the soul; but of those who turn their contemplation toward the intelligible, [he says] that the glory laid up in the letter is uncovered, as though stripped of a certain mask.

And that which is found by the loftier apprehension he says is the Lord, which is the Spirit.

For whenever one turns to the Lord, he says the veil is taken away;

'and the Lord is the Spirit.'

And he says this, contrasting the lordship of the Spirit with the bondage of the letter.

For as he sets that which gives life over against that which kills, so he contrasts the Lord with bondage.

And lest, in being taught concerning the Holy Spirit, we should suffer some confusion—being led by the word 'Lord' toward the supposition of the Only-begotten—for this reason he safeguards his statement by repetition, both calling the Spirit 'Lord' and addressing him as 'the Spirit of the Lord,' so that by the honor of lordship he may indicate the pre-eminence of [the Spirit's] nature, and yet not confound by his language the distinctness of the hypostasis.

For he who calls him both 'Lord' and 'Spirit of the Lord' teaches [us] to conceive something proper [to the Spirit] as distinct from the Only-begotten;

just as elsewhere too he speaks of the 'Spirit of Christ,' well and mystically delineating this same truth—the piety that follows from the sequence of the doctrine according to the evangelical tradition.

Thus we, the most pitiable of all, being initiated by the Apostle, pass over from the letter that kills to the Spirit that gives life, having learned from him who was initiated in paradise into things unspeakable, that whatsoever the divine Scripture says are utterances of the Holy Spirit.

'For well did the Holy Spirit prophesy'—

having said this to the Jews at Rome, he brings forward the utterances of Isaiah;

if the bodily veil of the word be taken away, that which remains is Lord and Life and Spirit, according both to the great Paul and to the voice of the Gospel.

For Paul said that to him who has turned from the letter to the Spirit there is apprehended no longer the bondage that destroys, but the Lord, who is the life-giving Spirit.

And the sublime Gospel says:

'The words that I speak are spirit and are life,' as being stripped bare of the bodily veil.

But we will leave it to the dreamers to understand [it as] the Spirit of the Only-begotten; or rather, out of great abundance we will make use even of their [premises] and, with the enemy's own weapons, arm the truth.

For it is permitted to despoil the Egyptian at the hands of the Israelites, and to make their wealth our own adornment;

if the substance of the Son is called Spirit, and God too is Spirit (for so the Gospel also says), then the substance of the Father also is by all means called Spirit.

But if it is their doctrine alone that things predicated dissimilarly must also be dissimilar in nature, then it follows by all means that things predicated in the same way are not estranged from one another in nature either.

Since therefore, according to their own argument, the substance of the Son and of the Father is called Spirit, it has by these considerations been clearly demonstrated that there is no difference of substance.

For a little after this Eunomius says that of substances which are diverse the appellations indicative of substance are by all means diverse also; but in those cases where there is one and the same word, that which is denoted by the same appellation will by all means be one.

So that in every respect He who takes the wise in their own craftiness has turned the long labors of the word-monger, and his countless sweatings over his toils, round to the establishment of our own doctrine.

For if God is called Spirit in the Gospel, and the substance of the Only-begotten is established by Eunomius as Spirit, there being no difference of the one name from the other, neither by any means will the things signified by the names be distinguished from one another in nature.

And it seems to me well, having refuted this feeble and unavailing shadow-boxing, to pass over unexamined the [discourse] composed by him next in accusation of the words of our teacher.

For a sufficient refutation of the vanity of what has been said is the discourse itself, crying aloud through itself its own weakness.

To grapple in contest with such things is the same as to trample even upon the dead.

For having set forth with great confidence a certain saying of the teacher, and having beforehand slandered it and spat upon it, and having undertaken to show it to be nothing, he suffered the same as infant children, in whom the immaturity and unripeness of understanding and the untrained state of the senses give no accurate apprehension of the things that appear;

on which account they often, thinking the stars to be but a little above their heads, in childish folly pelt them with certain clods that appear [near], and then, when the clod has fallen with a clatter, they boast to their playmates amid laughter, as though the cast had reached to the very stars.

Such is he who hurls at the truth with the weapon of infants, who, having set forth beforehand those surpassingly brilliant words of the teacher like certain stars, has from the ground, out of a trodden and grovelling mind, cast his earthy and unstable words, which, being raised so high only that they have nowhere to fall of their own accord, have been overturned by their own weight.

For the saying of the great Basil runs in its wording as follows:

'And yet who in his right mind would assent to this argument, that of those whose names are diverse the substances too must necessarily differ? For of Peter and Paul, and of men in general, the appellations are diverse, but the substance of all is one.'

'Wherefore in most respects we are the same as one another, but only by the individual properties observed about each do we differ one from another.'

'Whence the appellations are not indicative of the substances, but of the properties which characterize each individual.'

'When therefore we hear "Peter," we do not conceive his substance from the name (and by "substance" I now mean not the material substrate), but we imprint [upon our mind] the notion of the properties observed about him.'... These things the great one says.

But with what marksmanship he who fights against what has been said makes use [of his shots] against us, let anyone who has leisure to spend upon unprofitable things be taught from Eunomius's own composition.

For it is not dear to me to insert amid my own labors the nauseating drivel of the rhetorician, and to pillory his ignorance and senselessness through the midst of my own discourse.

For he goes through a certain encomium of words that manifest the subject they signify, and by his customary manner of expression he pieces together and glues on the tattered scraps of little words cast off at the crossroads; and again the wretched Isocrates is nibbled all round, having phrases and figures plucked from him for the composition of the matter at hand; and there is a point where the Hebrew Philo too suffers the like, being made to contribute little words to him out of his own labors.

And not even so was this much-stitched and many-colored fabric of words wrought out; but every attempt, and every projection of ideas, and every artful preparation collapsed of itself about itself.

And just as commonly happens with bubbles, when droplets, borne down from above by the constitution of the waters, strike against something and raise up frothy swellings, which no sooner form than they at once collapse, leaving in the water no trace of their own existence, of such a kind are the bubbles of this writer's notions, which the moment they are put forward are extinguished, without anyone so much as touching them.

For after those irrefutable constructions and his dreamlike philosophy, by which he claimed that the division of essence is apprehended through the variations of names, just as a frothy mass carried along in a current dashes against something more solid and dissolves, so his argument, borne along of its own accord and unexpectedly brought up against the truth, scattered into nonexistence that insubstantial and bubble-like fabrication of falsehood.

For he speaks in these words:

'Who is so foolish and so far removed from the human condition that, when discoursing about men, he would call one a man and, in comparing, name the other a horse?' To him I would reply:

Rightly do you call foolish the man who so errs concerning words, and I will indeed make use of you as a witness in defence of the truth.

For if it is the height of folly to call one a horse and the other a man, when in truth both are men, it is surely an equal madness—given that both the Father is believed to be God and the Son is believed to be God—to call the one created and the other uncreated; for just as there the humanity does not admit the diversion of the name to another kind, so also here the Godhead does not admit it.

For what the irrational is to man, that also is the creation to the Godhead, being equally unable to admit the same definition as that which precedes it.

And just as one cannot fit the same definition to the rational being and to the four-footed animal (for each is naturally distinguished from the other by its proper character), so neither will you interpret the created and the uncreated essence by the same terms, since what is said of this essence is not found in the other.

For as the rational is not found in the horse, nor the single-hoofed in man, so neither is the Godhead contemplated in the creation, nor the being-through-creation in the Godhead.

But if He is God, He is altogether also uncreated; and if created, He is not God—unless indeed someone, by some abuse and customary usage of words, should apply the bare name of Godhead to the creation, just as certain human names have been bestowed upon horses by their keepers.

But neither is the horse a man, even if it be named with a human appellation, nor is the creature God, even though some may attest to it the utterance of Godhead, bestowing an empty sound in a pair of syllables.

Since, then, the argument of the heresy has been brought of its own accord to the truth, let it counsel itself to abide by its own words and in no way to disown its own utterances, but truly to reckon foolish and deranged the man who names the subject not as it is, but who says horse instead of man, sea instead of heaven, and creature instead of God.

And let no one suppose it unreasonable that the creation is set in antithesis to God; rather let him look to the prophets and to the apostles.

For the prophet speaks, and the apostle says that all things are from the Father and all things are through the Son.

And the prophetic Spirit somehow agrees with the apostolic teaching, which itself also came to be through the Spirit.

For there, when the prophet says that all things are the works of the hand of Him who is over all, he distinguishes the nature of the things made from their Maker; and the Maker, who through His own hand made all things, is the God who is over all—having the hand, and working all things through it.

And here again the apostle makes the same division of existing things, deriving all things from the creative cause, yet not numbering the causative agent among the 'all things,' so that through these words the difference of nature between the created and the uncreated is clearly taught, and the maker is shown to be one thing according to its own nature, and that which comes to be another.

Since, then, all things are from God, and God is the Son, the creation is rightly set in contrast to the Godhead; and since the Only-begotten is something other than the nature of all things—and not even those who fight against the truth take a stand against this—it is wholly necessary that the creation be set in antithesis to the Son as well, if indeed the utterances of the saints do not lie when they testify that all things came to be through Him.

Since therefore the Only-begotten is proclaimed as God in the divine Scriptures, let Eunomius consider his own argument and condemn all the folly of one who apportions the divine to the created and the uncreated, after the likeness of one who divides the man into horse and man.

For he himself, a little further on after his intervening drivel, says that the natural relation of names to things is unalterable.

And by this statement he himself votes in favour of the firmness of the true kinship of appellations to their subject.

If, then, the name of Godhead is applied to the Only-begotten God as a natural attribute—and he will certainly agree, even if he wishes to fight against us, that Scripture does not lie, nor lay upon the Only-begotten the appellation of Godhead in a manner discordant with His nature—let him persuade himself by his own words that, if the natural relation of names to things is unalterable, and the Lord is called God, he cannot conceive any difference in the concept of Godhead as between the Son and the Father, since this name is common to both.

Rather, not this only, but there is a long catalogue of names by which the Only-begotten is named together with the Father without variation: good, incorruptible, just, judge, long-suffering, merciful, everlasting, unending—all such things as indicate the significance of the majesty of His nature and power, with no diminution occurring in Him in respect of the loftiness of the concept in any of the names.

But passing by so great a number of the divine appellations as if with closed eye, he peers toward one thing alone—the begotten and the unbegotten—having entrusted to a slender and feeble cable his doctrine, which is tossed about and carried round by the winds of error.

For he says that no one who has any care for the truth calls any of the begotten things unbegotten, nor calls the God who is over all Son or begotten.

But this no longer needs our arguments for its refutation.

For he does not, as is his custom, cover his guile with certain veils, but conducts his absurdity with an even hand in saying that neither is any of the begotten things called unbegotten, nor is the God over all named Son or begotten—separating off nothing peculiar to the Only-begotten Godhead of the Son as distinct from the rest of begotten things, but making the distinction of all things that have come to be from God on an equal footing, without exempting the Son from the 'all things.'

And through this supposed refutation of absurdities, he plainly removes the Son from the divine nature, saying that neither is any of the begotten things unbegotten, nor is God called Son or begotten—by this antithesis clearly uncovering the horror of the blasphemy.

...is not God, and that the Only-begotten God is as far removed, by reason of His being begotten, from being God, as the unbegotten is from being or being called begotten.

For it is not through ignorance of the logical sequence of the argument that he makes the arrangement of his propositions discordant and inharmonious, but, maliciously handling the doctrine of piety, he sets the Godhead in antithesis to the begotten, establishing by what he says that what is not unbegotten is not God.

For what was the true sequence of the argument? Having said that none of the begotten things is unbegotten, he ought to have added that neither can anything that is by nature unbegotten be begotten.

For such a statement both has truth and is free from blasphemy.

But as it is, by proposing that none of the begotten things is unbegotten, and then adding that neither is God begotten, he plainly cuts off the Only-begotten God from being God, establishing, through His not being unbegotten, that neither is He God.

Do we then still need other refutations to demonstrate this outlandish blasphemy, and is it not enough that this alone should serve as a pillory for the enemy of Christ, who by what he has said establishes that the Word who was God in the beginning is not God? Why then must we still grapple with such men? For we do not engage even with those occupied about idols and the gore upon the altar—not because we consent to the destruction of the idol-maddened, but because their disease is too grievous for any treatment from us.

Just as, then, the very deed proclaims idolatry and forestalls the reproof of accusers, the evil being dared openly, so also here I think the advocate of piety ought to keep silent toward one who cries out impiety conspicuously against himself, just as, in the case of those overpowered by the cancerous affliction, the physician's art remains ineffectual because the disease overmasters the skill.

But since after what has been said he professes to say something even more forceful, lest we should seem to slacken our rebuttal out of fear of stronger arguments, let us examine that too alongside what has been said.

'But if it were necessary,' he says, 'to leave all else aside and proceed to the stronger argument, I would say this: that even if the names he has put forward for refutation be granted, none the less will the argument from our side be shown to be true.'

'If indeed the variation of the names signifying properties displays the variation of the things, then surely it must be conceded that with the variation of the names signifying essences the variation of the essences is likewise displayed.'

'And one would find this to hold thus in all cases—I mean of essences, of activities, of colours, of shapes, and of the other qualities.'

'For fire and water, being different essences, we signify by varied appellations, and likewise air and earth, again cold and hot, white and black, or triangular and round.'

'For why need one speak of the intelligible essences, which the apostle, when he enumerated them, displayed the variation of the essences by the difference of the names?' Who would not be dumbfounded at this irresistible force of his argumentation? The saying is beyond its promise; the trial is more terrible than the threat.

'I shall come,' he says, 'to the stronger of the arguments.'

What is this? That, since the difference of properties is known through the names that signify the properties, it must surely, he says, be conceded that the differences of the essences too are interpreted in the variations of the names.

What then are the appellations of the essences, through which the variation of nature in the case of Father and Son has been taught? He says fire and water and air and earth, cold and hot, white and black, triangular and round.

He has conquered by his examples; he has prevailed mightily by his argument.

For I myself do not gainsay that names which are wholly incommunicable throughout indicate along with them the difference of the natures.

...is said of the Son, so that if the variation of the appellations signifies the difference of the natures, the commonality of the names will surely indicate the commonality of the essence.

And if one must agree that the divine essence is indicated through names, it would be fitting to apply these lofty and God-befitting utterances to the nature rather than the appellation of 'begotten' and 'unbegotten,' because 'good' and 'incorruptible,' 'just' and 'wise' and all such terms are fittingly applied to that nature alone which surpasses all understanding, whereas 'begotten' shares its name even with the mean things of the creation below.

For we call both dog and frog begotten, and everything that has its coming-forth through generation.

But moreover the name 'unbegotten' too is said not only of that which subsists without a cause, but also has its kinship with the nonexistent.

The 'skindapsos' is called unbegotten, and 'blityri' too is unbegotten, unbegotten is the Minotaur, the Cyclops, Scylla, the Chimaera—not because they exist in an unbegotten manner, but because they have not come into being at all.

If, then, the more divine of the names are common to the Son with the Father, while those which have their shared name either with the nonexistent or with lowly things are the ones that vary—let 'begotten' and 'unbegotten' be such—the mighty assault of Eunomius against us itself confirms the doctrine of the truth, testifying that there is no difference according to nature, since not even in the names is any variation to be discerned.

But if he places the difference of essence in the begotten and unbegotten, and thus supposes that the names stand disposed after the likeness of those spoken of in the examples—as fire and water to one another—then here again the horror of the blasphemy will be made manifest even though we keep silence.

For fire and water have natures destructive of one another, and probably each, when it comes to be in the other, is destroyed by the prevailing of that which is in excess.

If, then, he decrees that the nature of the unbegotten stands thus apart from that of the Only-begotten, he assuredly grants, as a consequence, that this destructive contrariety too inheres in the variation of the essences, so that thereby their nature is incompatible and incommunicable, and the one is consumed by the other, if the two should come to be in one another or together.

How then is the Son in the Father and is not destroyed, and how does the Father, being in the Son, hold out perpetually without being consumed, if indeed the property of fire toward water is preserved also in the relation of the begotten to the unbegotten, as Eunomius says? But the argument sees no fellowship even of earth toward air.

For the one is stable and weighty and resistant and downward-tending and heavy, while the nature of air is from the opposite qualities.

Likewise white and black are found in the contrariety of colours, and the round is conceded not to be the same as the triangular.

For each is, in the definition of its shape, precisely that which the other is not.

But in the case of God the Father and God the Only-begotten Son, I do not find in what respect he sees the contrariety.

Goodness is one, and wisdom, righteousness, prudence, power, incorruptibility, and all the rest that belong to the lofty signification, are said in the same way of each, and in a certain manner the one has its strength in the other.

For the Father makes all things through the Son, and the Only-begotten, being the power of the Father, accomplishes the whole in Himself.

What need, then, do fire and water fill toward the demonstration of an alienation in essence between Son and Father? And what is that strong and ineffable argument that is demonstrated through these things? But he calls us presumptuous for having set forth both the unity of nature and the difference of hypostases of Peter and Paul, and he says that dreadful things are dared by us, in that we bring the argument concerning the contemplation of intelligible things over to material examples.

Nobly does the corrector of our stumblings, nobly does he charge us with presumption—us who interpret the divine through material things!

...air by sense-perception? So has your understanding been marshalled toward your aim, so keen-sighted are you on every side, conducting your argument beyond the grasp of your opponents, that you do not see in yourself the charges brought against those you accuse? Or shall we allow you, who through matter establish the alienation in essence, while we, who through examples within our reach demonstrate the kinship of nature, are to be cast out?—'But Peter,' he says, 'and Paul were named by men, and for this reason it has been possible even to transfer the appellations in their case.'

But what of existing things has not been named by men? I bring you forward as a witness of the argument.

For if you make the transference of names a sign that things have been named by men, you will thereby altogether agree that every name has been imposed by us upon things, from the fact that the same appellations of the subjects have not prevailed among all peoples.

For just as Paul was formerly Saul, and Peter from Simon, so earth and heaven and air and sea and all the parts of the creation are not named alike among all, but are called by one set of names among the Hebrews, and by another among us, and among each of the nations by differing appellations.

If, then, the argument avails for Eunomius, who establishes that Peter and Paul were renamed for this reason—that their appellations were imposed by men—our argument too will surely avail, starting from like premises, which says that all things have been named by us, because the appellations of all things have been interchanged according to the differences of the nations.

And if all things are thus, then neither are 'begotten' and 'unbegotten' at all otherwise.

For these too belong to the class of things that are renamed.

For taking the conception that arises in us concerning the underlying subject and casting it into the form of a name, we declare what we have conceived, now by these words, now by others; we do not thereby create the thing, but signify it by means of the names we use.

For things, according to whatever nature they have, remain in themselves; but the understanding, laying hold of the things that are, uncovers the conception by means of whatever words it can.

And just as the essence of Peter was not itself altered by the change of his name, so neither is any other of the things contemplated altered by the interchange of names.