Against Eunomius 1 part 54/56

For at the same time it teaches both that it is fitting to serve the divine by one's life and not by fine-sounding words, in doing the commandments and purchasing eternal life at the cost of all one's possessions, and that the human element, having come to be in wickedness because of sin, is excluded from the sovereign designation of the Good.

'Why do you call me good?' By saying 'me' He points out in His word the human nature that pertains to Him, but by bearing witness to goodness in the Godhead He plainly declared Himself to be good—Himself the one who is truly proclaimed as God by the Gospel.

For if the Only-begotten Son were cut off from the appellation of God, it would perhaps not be absurd to suppose Him also alien to the appellation of the Good.

But if indeed prophets and evangelists and apostles proclaim aloud the Godhead of the Only-begotten, and if the name of goodness is testified by the Lord Himself to belong to God, how does He who shares in the Godhead not share in the goodness? For that the prophets confess the Lord to be God, and so do the evangelists and disciples and apostles, no one is so uninitiated in divine things as to need to learn about these matters by argument.

For who does not know that in the forty-fourth psalm the prophet openly proclaims in his word that Christ, being God, is anointed by God? And again, who among those who are conversant with prophecy is ignorant that Isaiah cries aloud so plainly the Godhead of the Son, in which passage, among other things, he also says this: 'The Sabeans, men of stature, shall pass over to you, and they shall be your servants, and they shall follow after you bound in fetters, and in you they shall pray, because in you is God, and there is no God besides you'?

For what other God is there who has God in Himself and is Himself God besides the Only-begotten—let those who are deaf to the prophecy tell us.

But the interpretation of 'Emmanuel,' and the confession of Thomas after his recognition, and the mighty utterance of John, I shall pass over in silence, as being plain even to those outside the faith.

But neither do I think it necessary to set forth with precision the utterances of Paul, being as they are almost on everyone's lips—Paul, who names the Lord not only God, but even great God and God over all: saying to the Romans, 'Whose are the fathers, and from whom is the Christ according to the flesh, who is over all, God blessed forever'; and writing to Titus his disciple, 'According to the appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ'; and to Timothy crying aloud expressly that 'God was manifested in the flesh, justified in the Spirit.'

Since, then, it has been demonstrated from every side that the Only-begotten Son is God, how does he who says that goodness belongs to God prove the Godhead of the Son to be alien to this title—and this when the Lord Himself bears witness to goodness in Himself in the parable concerning those hired into the vineyard? For there, when those who had toiled beforehand were indignant at the equal apportionment of wages and judged the good fortune of the last to be their own loss, the righteous judge says to one of those who were vexed, 'Friend, I do you no wrong.'

'Did I not agree with you for a denarius for the day? Behold, take what is yours.'

'But I wish to give also to this last one, just as to you.'

'Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with my own things? Or is your eye evil because I am good?' Assuredly no one will dispute about this, that the apportionment according to desert is the proper work of the judge.

And that the Only-begotten God is the judge, all the disciples of the Gospel agree.

'For the Father,' He says, 'judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son.'

But they do not desist from their appeal to what is written.

For they say that the addition of 'one' properly looks to the Father.

'For no one,' He says, 'is good except one—God.'

Will the truth, then, be too feeble to advocate for itself? Or is it possible from many quarters and with great ease to refute this fallacy of deception as well? For He who said these things concerning the Father also said those things to the Father: 'All that is mine is yours, and yours mine, and I am glorified in them.'

But if He says that all that is the Father's is the Son's, and if goodness is one of the things contemplated in the Father, then either He does not have all things—if indeed He does not have this—and they will say that the Truth lies; or, since it is unlawful to suspect the very Truth of being carried into falsehood, He who says that all that is the Father's is His own has thereby confessed that He is not even outside of goodness.

For He who has the Father in Himself and has embraced all that is the Father's, plainly has goodness too along with all things.

'But no one,' he says, 'is good except one—God.'

This is brought forward by our adversaries.

Neither do I myself reject the saying; yet on that account I by no means deny the Godhead of the Son.

But he who confesses the Lord to be God has by that very confession assuredly borne witness that goodness belongs to Him as well.

For if goodness is proper to God, and the Lord is God, then by what has been laid down the Son is manifestly shown to be good.

'But,' he says, 'the word "one" cuts off the Son from the fellowship of the Good.'

But it is easy to show that this 'one' does not separate the Father from the Son.

For in the case of all other things 'one' has an uncombined signification, but in the case of the Father and the Son 'one' is not perceived in singleness.

'For I,' He says, 'and the Father are one.'

One is the Good, but a certain unity is contemplated in the Son and the Father; therefore the Lord, in bearing witness to goodness in the 'one,' also bore witness to this title in Himself through the 'one'—being one with the Father and not sundered from the natural unity.

But that the love of learning and the fine education of this august writer may become evident through all, let us also consider the very construction of what is written, word by word.

'The Son,' he says, 'does not appropriate to Himself the dignity of Him who is,' calling the very act of being a 'dignity.'

How well he knows how to fit words properly to things!

And since He exists on account of the Father, he says that He is estranged from Himself, as though the sovereign essence of the Father drew to itself the notion of Him who is.

And this is of such a sort as if someone were to say that the purchased slave, in respect of what he is, according to his own subsistence, is not that one, but the one who bought him—his subsistence according to essence having been taken up into the nature of the one who became his master.

Such are the lofty conceptions of this theologian! But what sort is the demonstration of what he has said before? 'The Only-begotten Himself,' he says, 'renders to the Father the title owed by right to Him alone.'

And having said this, he adds that the Father alone is good.

Where, then, in these words does the Son deny the title of Him who is—which is what Eunomius is trying to establish, adding these very words:

'For He who has taught that the appellation of the Good belongs to Him alone—to that One who is the cause both of His own and of all goodness, and who refers everything, both that which is and that which comes to be good, to that One—would scarcely appropriate to Himself the authority over the things that have ever come to be, and the title of Him who is.'

What does 'authority' have in common with the things that have been said? And how, along with this, has the Son been estranged also from the title of Him who is? But I do not know what more one ought to do in these matters—whether to laugh at the ignorance or to pity the perdition.

For the phrasing of his own composition, taken not as it naturally is and is customarily used among those who know how to use language, bears him much witness of the science of pronominal technicality—which even little children run through effortlessly under their grammar teachers; and his ridiculous straying from the matter at hand toward things that have nothing in common with the argument; and his fitting of the phrase 'the Son does not share in the title of Him who is' by a supposedly conclusive figure onto these outlandish constructions; and all such things are, as it were, deliberately composed for laughter, so that perhaps the more careless might even be affected and laugh at the incoherence of his words.

But to say that God the Word does not exist, or that He is by no means good (for these are the things he establishes by asserting that neither the appellation of 'the One who is' nor that of 'the Good' properly belongs to Him), and to argue that authority over the things that come to be does not belong to Him—these are things worthy of tears and of a chorus of lamentation.

For it is not as though, by some rash and unconsidered impulse, he uttered such a thing once and then corrected the error in what follows; rather, he lingers lovingly in his wickedness, striving in his later statements to outdo what came before.

For as he proceeds he says that the Lord is as far beneath the divine nature as the nature of the angels has descended to a lower rank beneath Him—not writing this in these very words, but establishing such a notion by what he says.

It is open to the readers to judge the argument for themselves.

For what he has written runs thus:

'He who by being named an angel taught clearly, through the one to whom He announced the words, who it was that spoke; while by being also called God He showed His own supremacy over all things.'

'For the God of the things that came to be through Him is the angel of the God who is over all.'

Anger, falling upon my heart, cuts short my discourse in the midst of it, and my reasoning is thrown into confusion by passion, stirred up to wrath by the things being said.

And perhaps such a passion of the soul is not, in my case, unpardonable.

...such a lofty proclamation? For 'when,' he says, 'He brings the firstborn into the world, He says: And let all His angels worship Him,' and the words 'Your throne, O God, is unto the age of the age,' and 'But You are the same, and Your years shall not fail.'

When the Apostle sets forth all these things to demonstrate the only-begotten God, what am I to suffer, hearing from this enemy of Christ that the Lord of angels is an angel—one who did not cast off such a statement as it happened to occur to him, but who contends within the absurdity, so that it is established that the Lord has nothing more than John and Moses? For the Scripture says concerning that one: 'This is he of whom it is written:'

'Behold, I send my messenger before your face.'

But even if the enemy of the Lord names the Lord 'God,' he establishes Him as analogous to the godhood of Moses, since that man too was appointed a servant of the God over all, but a god of the Egyptians.

And yet even the title 'over all,' as has been said in what precedes, is common to the Son with the Father, since the Apostle has borne witness to such a designation for Him where he says: 'Of whom is Christ according to the flesh, who is over all, God.'

But this man degrades the Lord of angels to the rank of an angel, as though he had never heard that the angels are 'ministering spirits' and 'flames of fire.'

For by these words the Apostle makes an unconfused and clear distinction of the things under discussion, defining the subject nature as being 'a spirit' and 'fire,' but marking out the ruling power by the name of divinity.

And though there are so many who proclaim the glory of the only-begotten God, Eunomius alone cries out against them all, saying that He is an angel of the God who is over all—by his contrast with the One over all defining Him to be one of the 'all,' and by his sharing of the name with the angels establishing that He differs in nothing from them in nature.

For he often says in what precedes that whatever things share the same appellation cannot be otherwise than the same in nature also.

Does the argument then still need those who would set it right, concerning the man who plainly cries out that the angel announces not his own word but that of the One who is? For by this it is shown that the Word who was in the beginning [God the Word] is not Himself Word, but becomes the word of some other word, and a servant;

and becoming an angel of that One.

And who among all men is ignorant of this, that only 'non-being' is set in contradistinction to 'being'? So that he who contrasts the Son with 'the One who is' clearly judaizes, stealthily removing the subsistence of the Only-begotten from the doctrine.

For whomever he places outside the appellation of 'the One who is,' him he thereby establishes as altogether excluded from existence.

For surely one who grants that He exists will not be carried away by the mere sound of the word.

But he even attempts to fortify his absurdity by Scripture, and he puts forward Moses as an advocate against the truth.

For as though conversing with us from there, he sets forth his own myths with an air of authority, saying that He who sent Moses was Himself 'the One who is,' but that He through whom He sent and spoke was the angel of the One who is, yet the god of all the others.

But that this saying is not from the written text, the refutation comes from Scripture itself;

and if he says that this is the meaning of the text, then the original wording of the Scripture must itself be examined by us.

And first let us consider that Eunomius, by naming the Lord a god of those who come after Him, grants Him nothing beyond the angelic nature.

For neither did Moses, when he was called a god of Pharaoh, step outside his humanity; rather, having equality of honor in nature, he was raised above his kind by the pre-eminence of authority, and nothing prevented him, called 'god,' from still being a man.

So here too, Eunomius, having established Him to be one of the angels, attempts to remedy such an offense by the appellation of divinity, according to the account given, having made the title 'God' common to Him by a mere homonymy.

Let us again examine the very words of the blasphemy, setting them forth.

'He who sent was the One who is, but He through whom He sent was the angel of the One who is'—thus naming the Lord.

Therefore the absurdity of this writer is refuted by Scripture itself, in the passage where Moses entreats the Lord not to set an angel over the leadership of the people, but that He Himself should lead their journey.

The wording runs thus, spoken in the person of God:

'Go, get down, and lead this people to the place of which I have spoken to you;'

'and behold, my angel shall go before you in the day when I visit.'

And again, a little later, He says: 'And I will send my angel before you.'

Then, a little further on in sequence, there is a supplication from the servant to God, running in this manner:

'If I have found favor before You, let my Lord go along with us;'

and again, 'If You Yourself do not go along with us, do not bring me up from here.'

Then comes God's answer to Moses:

'This very thing also which you have spoken I will do;'

'for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you above all others.'

Therefore, if Moses declines the angel, but He who gave the oracle to him becomes his fellow-traveler and the leader of the host, it is clearly demonstrated by these things that He who made Himself known by the appellation of 'the One who is' is the only-begotten God.

But if anyone should contradict this, he will be an advocate of the Jewish supposition, not taking the Son along into the salvation of the people.

For if the angel does not go along with the Israelites, but the One indicated by the appellation of 'the One who is' is not the Only-begotten, as Eunomius wishes, then nothing else than the doctrines of the synagogue are being transferred to the Church of God.

Therefore they will of necessity confess one of two things: either that the only-begotten God was nowhere present with Moses, or that the Son Himself is 'the One who is,' from whom the word comes to the servant.

But he contradicts what has been said, putting forward the very Scripture which says that an angel's voice was set first, and that in this way the discourse of the One who is was introduced.

But this is no contradiction; it is rather a confirmation of our position.

For we also say plainly that the prophet, wishing to make manifest to men the mystery concerning Christ, called the One who is an angel, so that the mind of the hearers might not, when only the appellation of 'the One who is' was found in the discourse with the Father, be referred back to Him alone.

But just as our own word becomes the announcer and messenger of the motions of the mind, so we say that the true Word who was in the beginning, in announcing the counsel of His own Father, is called 'angel' by reason of the activity of announcing.

And just as the lofty John, having first called Him 'Word,' then adds that the Word is God, so that we might not, when the appellation 'God' was placed first, be carried away by our suppositions to the Father, so also the great Moses, having first named Him an angel, teaches in what follows that He is the One who is, in order that the mystery concerning Christ might be plainly foretold—Scripture teaching, by means of the word 'angel,' that He is the interpreter of the Father's will, and by means of the appellation 'the One who is,' the natural intimacy of the Son with the Father in respect of being itself.

And if he should also put forward Isaiah as having said that His name is called 'Angel of great counsel,' not even so will he overturn our argument.

For it is clear and incontrovertible there that the economy according to the human nature is signified through the prophecy.

'For a child,' he says, 'is born to us, and a son is given to us, whose government is upon His shoulder, and His name is called Angel of great counsel.'

'For I have been appointed king by Him,' He says, 'upon Zion His holy mountain, proclaiming the decree of the Lord.'

For the angel becomes the announcer of something, and the word likewise uncovers the thought lying within, and the seal shows in its own impression the archetype, and the image interprets through itself the beauty of that which is imaged—so that all these are equivalent in their power in relation to one another with respect to what they signify.

For this reason the word 'angel' is set before the appellation of 'the One who is': He is called 'angel' as the announcer of the Father, but 'the One who is' as not having a name that discloses His essence, but as transcending all significance that can be expressed by a name.

Wherefore also His name has been testified by the Apostle to be above every name—not as being one thing preferred above the others, but as being above every name, since He truly is the One who truly is.

But I see that my discourse has already been drawn out to an immoderate length, and I fear to seem to be some prattler and superfluous person, having extended my refutation to such a multitude of words—and this though I have passed over much of my opponent's intervening treatise, out of foresight lest the discourse be stretched out to many myriads of lines.

For to the more industrious even the lack of brevity is an occasion for reproach; but for those whose mind looks not to necessity, but to the desire of the idle and unserious, it is a matter of prayer to traverse many stadia of the road in few steps.

What then must be done, seeing that the blasphemy draws us onward? Or is it perhaps superfluous and truly the mark of a prattler to contend against arguments of the same kind? For all their zeal, even in the discourse that follows his, is in agreement with what has already been examined, having nothing new for its construction beyond the arguments that preceded.

If therefore our refutation of what has been set forth stands firm, then what remains has been refuted together with what has already been examined;

but if to the contentious and obstinate it seems that the strongest point lies in what has been passed over, then it would be necessary, for their sakes, to run briefly through what remains.

He says that the Lord did not exist before His own generation—he who is able to show Him separated from the Father by nothing—and this he asserts not confirming his statement from Scripture, but establishing his premise from his own reasonings.

But this has been shown to be common to all the parts of creation:

neither the frog, nor the worm, nor the beetle, nor grass, nor thorn, nor any other of the most trifling things existed before its own composition.

So that what he establishes concerning the Son by means of logical artifice, with sweat and toil, this is also conceded beforehand in the case of the chance parts of creation; and it is a great labor for this writer to show that the only-begotten God is equal in honor, in the community of properties, with the lowest of the things in creation.

Therefore it is sufficient proof that they think wrongly concerning the doctrines, that their suppositions about the only-begotten God and about the generation of frogs coincide.

Then he says that 'not to exist before generation' is equal in truth and force to 'not to be unbegotten.'

Once more the same argument will fit this point of mine: that one would not err in saying the same thing of a dog, or a flea, or a serpent, or any whatsoever of the lowest creatures; since in truth and in force it is one and the same thing to say that the dog is not unbegotten and to say that it did not exist before its birth.

But if, according to their own definition—which they have laid down in many places—whatever things share in the properties also share in the nature, and it is proper to a dog and to each individual thing not to have existed before it came to be (the very thing which he thinks he must also establish concerning the Son), then the hearer will assuredly perceive, from what follows, the remainder of the argument.

But he shifts his discourse toward something more moderate, granting the Son also some measure of his benevolence, and says: 'We declare the Son not only to be, and to be above all things that are'—thus a little later in his writings fencing him off from the appellation of Him who is—'but we also call him,' he says, 'Lord, and Creator, and God of every sensible and intelligible essence.'

He gives false witness in attributing to the Son the creation of the uncreated nature; but if he should believe that nature to be created, then he sets him up as being his own creator.

For if the work of creation is not marked off by that which is in itself uncreated in the intelligible essence, then nothing will be left to distinguish anything, since the sensible creation and the intellectual essence would be conceived as sharing a common lot.

But he adds to these that, in the creation of things that are, there was committed to him by the Father the fashioning of all things visible and invisible, and the providence over the things that come to be, the power allotted to him from above being sufficient for the generation of the things fashioned.

These things urge me to pass over in brief the multitude of what he has written; but in a way the blasphemy holds back my discourse, since it encloses within it a great swarm of notions, like so many venomous wasps.

'The work of creation,' he says, 'was committed to him by the Father.'

But if the discourse were about some craftsman who carried out the work according to the will of him who hired him, would he not have used the very same words? For indeed concerning Bezalel we err not at all in saying that, being entrusted by Moses with the making of the tabernacle, he became the fashioner of the things there recorded—he who would never have come to the task had he not first acquired his skill by divine power and dared to undertake the work by the commission of Moses.

Therefore the expression 'was committed' indicates that the creative power and authority came to be in him as something acquired—so that before it was committed he neither had the boldness nor the ability; but when he received the authority over the works and power adequate for the works, then in this way he became the fashioner of things that are, since, as Eunomius says, the power allotted from above was sufficient for him.

Can it be that, according to some marvel-mongering of the astrological doctrines, he places the Son's generation under a kind of fate—just as those who have practised this vain deceit assert that, according to certain conjunctions and separations of the stars, the allotments of lives come to pass for those being born, the revolution moving above in a fixed chain spinning out upon the things that come to be their several powers? Perhaps the sage has some such thing in mind, and says that upon him who is above all rule and authority and dominion and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come, there has been allotted from above, as though he were shut up in certain hollow regions, a power measured out to the quantity of the things that come to be.

I shall pass over this argument too by way of brevity, casting down, from a small beginning drawn from what has been examined, seeds toward the understanding of the blasphemy for the more intelligent among my readers.

Then, in what follows, a kind of apology on our behalf has been written by him.

For we would no longer seem to our readers to be guessing at the sense of his discourse and translating his words to make him accountable, since his own utterance confesses the absurdity.

For his writing runs thus:

'For have not both earth and angel come to be, not having existed before?' See how the lofty theologian is not ashamed to apply the same statement to earth, to angels, and to the very Maker of the universe himself. Therefore, if he thinks it fitting to say the same things about the earth and about the Lord, either he will assuredly deify the earth as well, or he will dishonour Him also along with it.

Then he adds to these things statements by which the blasphemy is laid the more bare, so that the absurdity is not hard to grasp even for a child.

For he says that it would be a long task to go through all the generations or the essences of the intelligible beings, to all of which there belongs not some common nature of non-being, but rather the difference is according to the activities of him who fashioned them.

For these statements, even if we keep silent, contain a plain and conspicuous blasphemy against the Son, when he confesses that what is said of every generation and essence differs in nothing from the account concerning the divine hypostasis of the Only-begotten.

...to come to a condemnation of their own doctrine.

For he will be found to be demonstrating that the mystery of regeneration is vain, that the mystical gift-offering is profitless, and that participation in these brings to those who partake nothing more.

For he says—after those strenuous contests in which he brought forward Valentinus and Cerinthus and Basilides and Montanus and Marcion to slander the doctrine held by us, and after having established that those who declare the divine nature to be unknowable, and the manner of the generation to be unknowable as well, do not even properly belong to the name of Christians, and after having numbered us together with those held in reproach—he thus adduces his own argument in these words:

'But we, being persuaded by the holy and blessed men, declare that the mystery of true religion is confirmed neither by the solemnity of names, nor by the peculiarity of customs and mystical symbols, but by the exactness of doctrines.'

Now that he writes these things persuaded neither at that time by the evangelists, nor by the apostles, nor by any of those who were guides in the more ancient Scripture, is plain to everyone who is not ignorant of the sacred and divine Scripture.

But it would be consistent for him to mean that Manichaeus, Nicolaus, Colluthus, Aetius, and Arius, and all of the same troop, are the holy and blessed men, in following whom he lays down these laws: that neither the confession of names, nor the customs of the Church, nor the mystical symbols confirm true religion.

But we, having learned from the holy voice that unless one is born from above of water and the Spirit, he shall not enter into the kingdom of God, and that 'He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood, he shall live unto the age,' are persuaded that the mystery of true religion is confirmed by the confession of the divine names—I mean of Father and Son and Holy Spirit—and that salvation is made secure by the communion of the mystical customs and symbols.