Against Eunomius 1 part 5/56

'For he has subjected all things,' it says, 'under his feet'; and it makes mention by name of the things subjected.

But in Scripture there is also another thing signified.

For, ascribing to God himself, the God of all, the cause of the successes achieved in wars, it says, 'He subdued peoples under us, and nations under our feet,' and again, 'He who subdues peoples under me.'

And often one may find this expression in the divine Scriptures signifying mastery over those arrayed in opposition.

As for the saying of the Apostle concerning the subjection that will come to pass in the end of all men to the Only-begotten, and through him to the Father—where, in the depth of wisdom, he says that the Mediator of God and men subjects himself to the Father, hinting at the obedience of all men to the Father through the subjection of the Son who partook of humanity—this, as requiring a fuller and more laborious exposition, I will for the present defer.

But in those plain passages, in which the meaning of subjection admits of no ambiguity whatsoever, in what sense does he declare that the essence of the Spirit is made subject to that of the Son and the Father? Is it as the Son is made subject to the Father, according to the Apostle's understanding? If so, then according to this the Spirit is ranged alongside the Son, not made subject to him — provided that the two persons belong to those who are subjected. Or is it not so? How, then, is it otherwise? Is it as we have learned in the Psalm that the irrational is subjected to the rational nature? In that case it differs from the Son by as great a distance as the brute beasts differ from man.

But perhaps he will set aside this argument as well.

Then it will come down to the one remaining alternative: that, having formerly been set in opposition and resistance, the Spirit was afterwards, by a more violent necessity, compelled to bow beneath the one who prevailed by force. Let him choose from what has been said whichever he pleases.

But I do not see how, choosing any of these, he shall escape the inescapable condemnation of his blasphemy — whether he say that the Spirit is made subject on a level with the irrational creatures, as the fishes and the birds and the sheep are subjected to man; or whether, after the likeness of rebels, he brings it forward as a captive to the one who by his power holds the advantage.

Or will he admit none of these, but say that he uses the word 'subjection' not according to the sense of Scripture, but that the Spirit is made subject to the Father and the Son in some other signification? What, then, is this? Is it that, because it was third in order in the sequence which was handed down by the Lord to the disciples, on this account he legislates that it be 'made subject' rather than 'ranged alongside'? Then, by the same reasoning, let him make the Father subject to the Only-begotten, since in many places the divine Scripture, having set the Lord's name first, makes mention of the God who is over all in the second place.

'I and the Father,' says the Lord, putting himself first.

And, 'The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God' — and countless such passages are available to be gathered up by those who diligently search out the testimonies from the Scriptures; such, for instance, is this one:

So that, according to this reasoning, let the God who is over all be made subject to the Son and the Spirit, since he is mentioned by Paul in the third place.

But even now we have not yet heard this piece of wisdom — the wisdom which thrusts whatever is named second and third, by some sequence, into the rank of subordinates and subjects (which is what this man wishes), thereby making the sequence of the transmission of the persons demonstrate distinctions of dignities and natures, superiorities and inferiorities.

For he lays it down that the sequence of order is indicative of a difference of natures — I know not from what source he conceived such notions, nor by what necessity he fell into this supposition.

For it is not the order according to number that produces a difference of natures; rather, the things numbered, whatever nature they may have, remain in themselves the same whether they are numbered or not.

'Paul and Silvanus and Timothy' — three persons being mentioned here according to the intention of the one making mention: does the number show that Silvanus, ranked second after Paul, is something other than a man? Or has Timothy, ranked third, been supposed on account of the sequence of the one who thus mentioned them to be of some other nature? Not at all.

For each of these is a man, both before the numbering and after it.

But since it was impossible for the discourse to set forth the three at once with a single utterance, it makes mention of each separately according to the order that seemed good, yet joins the names together by means of the intervening conjunctions — in order, I think, that through the linking of the names it might indicate the concord of the three toward the one.

But this does not please the new dogmatist; rather, he legislates against the arrangement of the divine utterance, and having severed what was ranged together by the Lord himself with the Father and the Son from the order and conjunction proper to it and natural to it, he numbered it among the subjects; and he says that each is a work of the other — the Father as having laid down the cause of the making, and the Only-begotten as having himself wrought its subsistence — and he defines this to be the cause of the subjection, though he has not yet uncovered the very meaning of 'subjection.'

There being included also, of course, the energies that follow upon the essences, and the names that are proper to these.

The sense of these words is not very easy to grasp, being wrapped in the deep gloom of obscurity; but, as one might conjecture and surmise, it is somewhat as follows:

By 'energies of essences' he means, as I suppose, the productive powers of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, through which the first essence wrought the second, and the second the third; and he says that the names of the works produced were fittingly framed together with the works.

But the mischief concerning the names we have already, so far as was possible, examined; and when we come to that part of the inquiry, if the argument calls for it, we shall again bring it forward.

But for the present it is now worth considering how the energies follow upon the essences: what are they according to their own nature — something other than the essences upon which they follow, or a part of those essences and of the same nature?

And if they are something other, how, or from whom, do they come to be? But if they are the same, how are they cut off, and, instead of coexisting with them, follow upon them from without?

For neither can one thus simply learn from what has been said whether it is by some natural necessity, apart from choice, that the energy — whatever it may be — is compelled to follow upon the essence, as burning follows upon fire, and vapours and exhalations upon the bodies from which they arise. Yet I do not think he would say this, so as to reckon the essence of God to be some manifold and composite thing, having its energy inseparable and contemplated together with itself, as some accident shown forth in a subject. Rather, he says that the essences, being moved by choice and of their own authority, accomplish what seems good to them of themselves.

And who calls that which is done voluntarily out of forethought a thing that 'follows' as one of the external accompaniments? For not even according to common usage do we know the expression to be worn in such connections, so as to say that the energy of one who labours at something 'follows' the labourer.

For it is not possible, having sundered the one from the other, to apprehend by itself the one that remains; rather, he who has spoken of the energy has by his very statement comprehended along with it that which is moved according to it; and he who has mentioned the one energizing has withal, by what is left unsaid, signified together the energy also.

But what is being said will be clearer through examples.

We say that someone forges metal, or does carpentry, or performs some other such activity.

Accordingly, by the one word the discourse presents both the work and the one who plies the craft at the same time, so that if the one were separated, the other that remains could not subsist.

An energy producing a second essence, mediating somehow through itself between both, and neither coinciding by nature with the first nor being joined to the second? For from the one it is separated by not being a nature, but a movement of nature; while with the one after it it does not coincide, because it did not bring into subsistence through itself a bare energy, but an essence that is active.

Then let us further examine along with these the following point as well.

He names the essence the work of the essence — the second the work of the first, and again the third the work of the second — but by what manner has he first demonstrated the argument? By what proofs did he make use of to reach this? By what method did he compel us to believe that the subsequent must be by the energy of the one that precedes it? For if it were necessary to reason about these matters also from the rest of the things contemplated in creation, even so it would not have been well to conjecture about things above from things below; nevertheless the argument would perhaps have had some excuse, wandering among the incomprehensible by means of things visible.

But as it is, who will undertake to say this — that heaven is a work of God, but the sun a work of heaven, and the moon of the sun, and the stars of it, and something else in creation of those? For all things are works of the One, since 'One is God and Father of all, from whom are all things.'

And if something also comes into being through the medium of another, as the generation of living creatures, not even this comes to be as one thing from another of a different kind, since the nature abides in those that are born.

How then, being unable to say such a thing of any of the things contemplated in creation, does he construct this concerning the transcendent essence — that the second is a work of the first, and this of the one following in order? But if, having considered animal generation, he was thence led to imagine that concerning the incorruptible nature also something of the like manner might be reasoned, so that the subsequent should be thought a work of the one preceding, not even in this does he preserve the consistency of his argument.

For things that come into being from others are altogether of the same kind as those from which they come.

But he attributes to those that have been generated through one another that which is alien and of another race, in order to display the abundance of his falsehood — like some ambidextrous combatant attempting to strike at the truth with a double hand.

For in order to display the inferiority of the Son and the Spirit, and their being diminished in respect of natural dignity, he says that the one comes into being from the other; but lest those who have learned of generation from one another should come thereby to a notion of kinship arising from such a mode of existence, he also fights against the very principle of nature, both saying that one comes to be from another and declaring the begotten to be spurious in relation to the nature of the begetter.

But what I think one might, before these things, with good reason blame, is this.

This is it.

If he were one of the many, unpractised in the inexperience of speaking, untrained and unexercised in such constructions, and then declared whatever occurred to him just as it chanced, he would perhaps be pardonable for not making use of the accepted methods of procedure in these matters for the construction of doctrines.

But since he has so great an abundance of ability in this, that he even overstretches himself, by means of his apprehensive method, into the things beyond our nature, how did he remain ignorant of the first principle by which, in these logical undertakings, the apprehension of every hidden matter is achieved? For who does not know that every argument, taking its principles from things manifest and known to all, thereby brings conviction to the matters in dispute, and that nothing of the hidden things could be apprehended otherwise, unless the things agreed upon lead us by the hand to the understanding of things unclear? But if the things taken as the principles of arguments for the manifestation of things unknown should conflict with the suppositions of the many, hardly indeed would the unknown be made manifest through these.

Accordingly, the whole contention and dispute of the doctrine, on the part of those of the Church against the Anomoeans, concerns this: whether the Son and the Spirit are to be thought of as created, according to the argument of our opponents, or as of the uncreated nature, as the Church has believed.

He boldly lays down the dogma that it is so — that the essence following in order is a work — I know not from what schooling or wisdom he took the boldness for this.

For if there must precede every construction and demonstration a certain unassailable and indisputable confession, so that the unknown, being fittingly brought to what has been previously grasped by means of the intervening constructions, may be demonstrated — then he who still puts forward the very thing sought as a means for the construction of others, does nothing else than construct ignorance by means of ignorance, and deception by means of deception.

This is to make the blind a guide of the blind, as the Gospel says somewhere.

For truly to the blind and empty-treading argument, which says that the Creator and Maker of all is a creature and a thing made, they yoke another blind argument — that the Son is alien in nature to the Father, unlike in essence, and altogether without share in natural kinship.

But not yet concerning these matters.

For in those places where he more nakedly uncovers by his argument the impiety of his mind, in these it is opportune for us also to defer the refutation of his impiety.

But now we must return to the sequence of the things said by him.

Again, in turn, since each of these essences is and is thought of as purely simple and altogether one according to its own dignity, but the energies are circumscribed together with the works, and the works are measured by the energies of those who wrought them, it is surely of all necessity that the energies following upon each of the essences are also lesser and greater, and that some hold the first, others the second rank.

The intent, throughout all that has been said — even though the argument be brought to its conclusion by him in a multitude of words — is one: to construct the position that there is no conjunction of the Father with the Son, nor again of the Son with the Spirit, but that the essences are sundered from one another, torn apart into a certain estranged nature and a kindred-less alienation; and not this only, but that they differ also in magnitude and in a lowering of dignities, so that some are thought greater, as he himself says, and others smaller, and have their divergence in respect of all the rest as well.

But we — even though it may seem to the many superfluous to linger over things plain and to attempt to refute point by point whatever is reckoned by the many to be self-evidently false, abominable, and possessed of no force — nevertheless, that we may not seem, for lack of refutations, to overlook unexamined any of the things said by him, will, so far as we are able, go over these too.

He says that each of these essences is and is thought of as purely simple and altogether one according to its own dignity.

Here again, putting forward the things in dispute as though they were agreed upon, he supposes he is saying something, reckoning that his own assertion suffices in place of all demonstration.

For this he indicates by saying 'of each of these essences.'

For he would not have spoken thus, if he had thought there was one.

If, then, he speaks thus of the difference of the essences from one another so as not to seem to fall in with the impiety of Sabellius, who fits three appellations to one underlying subject, then we too agree, and no one of the pious contradicts the doctrine — save only in so far as he seems to err in the mere names and in the utterance of the word, naming 'essences' instead of 'hypostases.'

For not all things that have the same definition of essence will likewise be brought together also in the rendering of the definition in respect of hypostasis.

For Peter and James and John were, in the definition of essence, the same as one another (for each of them is a man), but in the individual properties of the hypostasis of each of them they did not coincide with one another.

Accordingly, if he were constructing this — that one must not confound the hypostases and fit the three appellations to one person — his argument would be trustworthy according to the testimony of the Apostle, and worthy of all acceptance.

But since each essence has a certain peculiar alienation toward the others, on this account, I say, his argument is without beginning and without head, constructing the blasphemy consequentially from nothing that is agreed upon.

For his construction is not such as could lead anyone to such a supposition of the doctrine; rather, as in the recounting of a dream, it contains a bare and unconstructed exposition of impiety.

For while the Church teaches as doctrine that faith is not to be split into a multitude of essences, but that in three persons and hypostases one is to believe there is no difference in respect of being, and while our opponents place the divergence and the unlikeness in the very essences themselves, this man boldly declares, as though previously constructed, that which has by no argument been shown nor is able to be shown — having perhaps not even yet, up to now, spoken it into the ears of hearers.

For truly he would have been taught by those who listen with understanding that every argument, so long as it is borne along undemonstrated by mere assertion of authority, is, as the saying goes, old wives' babble, having no force to show through itself the thing sought, whenever no advocacy — neither from the divine utterances nor from human reasonings — is brought to bear upon the things said.

And let this suffice on these matters.

But let us examine the things that have been said.

He says that each of these essences, which he has fashioned in his argument, is simple and altogether one.

But that the divine and blessed nature, which transcends every mind, is simple — this we suppose not even those who are exceedingly brutish and lowly in understanding would contradict.

For that which is formless and shapeless, and separated from all magnitude and from quantity in respect of greatness — how could anyone suppose it to be multiform and composite? But that it does not accord with the doctrine constructed by them to think the transcendent essence to be simple — even though they may make a pretty show of it in argument — will be manifest to anyone who has given it even a little attention.

For who does not know that, according to its own proper meaning, simplicity in the case of the Holy Trinity does not admit of the more and the less? For where it is not possible to conceive any mixture or concurrence of qualities, but where the mind apprehends a certain partless and uncompounded power, how and by what reasoning could anyone learn the difference of more and less? For it is of all necessity that he who defines these things to differ conceives certain incursions of qualities about the subject.

For either he conceives the difference in these things by way of excess and diminution, and through this introduces the notion of magnitude into the matter in question; or he constructs that, in respect of the good and the powerful and the wise, and whatever else is piously conceived concerning the Divine, it abounds more or has fallen short.

And thus he will not escape the charge of composition.

For it possesses nothing deficiently, whether in wisdom or power or in any other of the good things, such that the good in it should be something acquired; rather, it is by its very nature such as it is.

So that whoever says that he apprehends lesser and greater essences within the divine nature has, without realizing it, constructed the divine as composite out of unlike elements, so that he conceives the underlying subject to be one thing, and again the thing participated in to be another, by participation in which that which is not [good] comes to be in the good.

But if he truly conceived the essence to be simple and altogether one, being that very good which it is, not becoming good by acquisition, he would not have reckoned greater and lesser to belong to it.

For it was said also in what precedes, that good things are diminished only by the presence of evil.

But in those whose nature is incapable of receiving the worse, no limit of goodness can be conceived.

And the unlimited is such not by any relation to something else, but, considered in itself, it eludes limit.

But how one who has reasoned things through could agree to call one infinite more and another less infinite, I do not know.

So that, if he confesses the transcendent essence to be simple and to stand in fitting relation to itself, let him grant that it is joined together by the fellowship of that which is simple and infinite.

And when he speaks of the lesser in their regard, let it not escape notice that, while in appearance he grants them simplicity, in truth he is constructing composition.

But let us take up again in order the statement made by him.

'Since,' he says, 'the essence is purely simple and altogether one, both being and being conceived according to its own proper dignity.'

What does he intend by 'according to its own proper dignity'? For if he contemplates the essences within a common dignity, then even so the addition to his statement was superfluous and otiose, dwelling on things already agreed; yet perhaps the untimeliness of the expression had some excuse, since the more pious sense did not render the vain and superfluous part of the discourse worthy of rejection.

But as it is, the danger does not lie merely in his verbal slip (for then the ailment would be easily curable), but he still clings to his wicked contrivances.

For he calls each of the three essences simple according to its own proper dignity, so that, together with the distinctions he laid down from the start concerning the first, second, and third essence, the doctrine of simplicity too may be perverted along with them.

For just as he addressed only the essence of the Father as highest and alone sovereign, granting none of these titles to the Son and the Spirit—neither the supreme name nor the most sovereign—so, by the same reasoning, having called the essences simple according to the measure of the dignity contemplated in each, he thinks he must also fit the notion of simplicity to them accordingly: as though the most sovereign and first is contemplated in the highest and perfect simplicity, while the second, proportionately according to the measure of its falling short of the first rank, curtails also the account of simplicity; and likewise in the case of the last, it descends below perfect simplicity by just so much as the proportion of dignity is diminished in the lowest.

So that it follows from this that the essence of the Father is supposed to be purely simple, but that of the Son not exactly simple, having something of composite nature mixed into it, while in the Holy Spirit the composite nature abounds still more, the account of simplicity being little by little diminished in the last ones.

For just as that which is not perfectly good is admitted to partake in some part of the contrary condition, so that which is not altogether simple does not escape seeming to be not un-composite.

And that it is with this in mind that he has employed these words is shown more clearly in what follows, in which he more openly drags down the conception concerning the Son and the Spirit into certain groveling and lowly suppositions.

'Since,' he says, 'the energies are circumscribed together with the works, and the works are measured by the energies of those who wrought them, it is surely quite necessary that the energies attending each of the essences should also be lesser and greater, and that some should hold the first and others the second rank.'

For even though he laboriously wrapped these things in the fog of his language and contrived to make their meaning hard for the many to hunt out, still, from the sequence of what has been examined it will easily be made clear.

'The energies,' he says, 'being circumscribed together with the works.'

He names the Son and the Spirit 'works,' and calls 'energies' the effective powers through which they were produced—the very ones which a little before he says attend the essences.

And the term 'being circumscribed together' indicates the equal correspondence of the essence produced to the power that gave it subsistence—or rather not a power, but, as he himself names it, the energy of a power—so that the result should not be the work of the whole power of the one operating, but of a certain partial energy, only so much having been set in motion out of the whole power as was going to prove commensurate with the fashioning of what came to be.

And again, turning the same thing about, he says:

'And the works being measured by the energies of those who wrought them.'

The sense of these things may become clearer to us by means of an illustration.

For let us suppose that the discourse is about some cobbler's tool, thus:

That which is cut by it is circumscribed by the shape of the iron, and the circle shown in the cut will be just as great as that in the tool.

And again, by whatever compass the tool has been rounded, it will by the same measure trace out the circle through the cut.

Such is the theologian's conception concerning the divine hypostasis of the Only-begotten.

He says that a certain energy, attending the first essence like a tool, has made the Lord as a work commensurate with itself.

Thus does he know how to glorify the Son of God!

Him who is now glorified in the glory of the Father and will be revealed at the time of the judgment—this one he says, being a work, is measured by the energy that wrought him.

What then is this energy which attends God, the God of all things, but which is conceived as prior to the Only-begotten and circumscribes his essence? A certain substantial power, subsisting in itself, and working what seems good to it by a self-determined motion.

This, then, is the father of the Lord!

And why is the appellation 'Father' still noised abroad concerning the God who is over all, if it was not He, but some energy of the things externally attending Him, that produced the Son? And how is the Son a Son, whom he says came to subsist through some other, and, like one of the supposititious (may the Lord be gracious to the argument!), thus slips into the intimacy of the Father, honored with the mere title of Son? And how, according to this sequence, can he who numbers the Son as third from the Father, place him after the God of all things and after the Lord in rank, seeing that mediating energy is numbered in second rank after the God who is over all? And by this sequence the Holy Spirit too will surely no longer be apprehended in the third, but in the fifth rank, since the energy attending the Only-begotten—according to which, as Eunomius' argument goes, the Holy Spirit came to subsist—is by all means counted in between.

But that the statement 'all things came to be through the Son' is also inconsistent will be shown by these considerations, since another hypostasis, older than the Only-begotten, has been fabricated beforehand by this novel theologian, to which the cause of the creation of all things will reasonably be referred back, seeing that the very production of the Only-begotten depends, according to his account, upon that energy.

But if, fleeing these absurdities, he should say that the energy of which he defines the Son to be the result is something without subsistence, let him say again how the non-existent follows upon that which is, and how the non-subsistent produces the subsisting.

For it will be found by these considerations that non-existent things attend upon God, and that things that are not become the causes of things that are, and that they circumscribe the nature of subsisting things—things which by their own nature do not subsist—and that the power which produces and creates all creation is, according to his own account, comprehended by that which has no existence.

Such are the dogmas of this theologian, who says that the Lord and Maker of heaven and earth and of all creation, the Word of God who was in the beginning, through whom are all things, came to subsist by some non-existent and non-subsistent thing or notion—or however one ought to name that energy now fabricated by him—and is circumscribed within it, hemmed in on every side by non-existence as by some fence.

And he who sees the unseen does not perceive to what an end the sequence of his argument overturns things.

For if the energy of God is without subsistence, and within it is circumscribed the work produced out of non-existence, then surely the result will by nature be conceived as some such thing as was also the nature of that which gave subsistence to the work, as fashioned by his argument.