Against Eunomius 1 part 55/56

But doctrines have often been examined with diligence even by those outside the mystery, and one may hear many setting forth our doctrine as a subject for themselves in a contest of words; and we see some of them often even hitting upon the truth, and yet no less estranged from the faith.

How is this so peculiar to us as it is to the Greeks? For those too say that there is something, according to their own supposition, more plausible than our proclamation; and some of them posit some great god exalted above the rest, and confess certain subordinate powers, differing from one another, according to a certain order and sequence, in being greater or lesser, but all alike subjected to the one who is supreme.

These, then, are the very things which the teachers of the new idolatry also proclaim; and those who follow do not fear the condemnation that lies upon transgressors, as though they did not understand that to do in deed any of the absurdities is by far more grievous than merely to err in word.

Those, then, who in deed deny the faith, and make light of the customs, and disregard the confession of the names, and judge the sanctification derived from the mystical symbols to be worth nothing, but are persuaded to look to sophistical phrases and think that salvation lies in the technical wrangling over 'begotten' and 'unbegotten'—what else are they but transgressors of the doctrines of salvation? But if anyone thinks that these things are brought against them by us out of some slander, let him consider by himself the things written by him, both those set before us for examination and whatever is adduced consequently to what has been said.

For, misconstruing the law of the Lord (for the tradition of the divine mystagogy is a law), he says that baptism does not take place into Father and Son and Holy Spirit—as He commanded when, delivering the mystery to his disciples—but into Creator and Founder, and 'not only Father,' he says, 'of the Only-begotten, but also God.'

Alas! He who gives his neighbour a turbid overturning to drink—how he stirs it up with muddy admixture and befouls the truth! How is he not afraid of the curse that lies upon those who dare to add anything to the divine utterances or to take anything away? Let us read out, upon the very words, the voice of the Lord.

'Go,' he says, 'make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.'

Where did the Word call the Son a creature? Where did he teach the Father to be founder and fashioner of the Only-begotten? Where in the sayings is the Son taught to be a servant of God? Where in the delivery of the mystery is a God of the Son proclaimed? Do you perceive and understand, you who have been dragged down through deceit to destruction, whom you have set up as the guide of your own souls—the one who adulterates the holy Scriptures, who alters the divine utterances, who befouls with his own mire the purity of the doctrines of true religion, who not only arms his tongue against us, but also attempts to remodel the holy utterances themselves, who contends to prove his own distortion more authoritative than the teaching of the Lord? Do you not yet see that he sets himself up against the adored name, so that in time the name of the Lord may be silenced, and in place of Christ, Eunomius be introduced into the churches? Do you not yet reckon that this godless proclamation has been thrown down beforehand by the devil as a practice and preparation and prelude of the coming of the Antichrist? For he who contends to prove his own utterances more authoritative than the words of Christ, and to change the faith from the divine names and the mystical customs and symbols to his own deceit—what else could he properly be called but Antichrist? But let us look also at what is added, consequent upon the blasphemy, which is itself the very head of the advocacy of their doctrine.

For those who drag down the greatness of the Only-begotten's glory into low and servile suppositions think they have a most powerful proof of what they say in the word of the Lord to Mary, which he uttered after the resurrection, before the ascent, saying: 'Do not touch me, for I have not yet ascended to my Father.'

Now the pious sense of these words, according to which we have believed them to have been spoken to Mary, is, I think, evident to those who have received the faith in truth.

Nevertheless, our own account concerning this will be added in its proper place.

But for the present it is worth learning from those who bring forward to us such utterances, whether they suppose that which ascends, and that which is seen, and that which is known by touch, and, besides these, that which is made kin to men through brotherhood, to be proper to the divine or to the human nature.

For if the tangible and the visible, and that which is managed by food and drink, and that which is of the same kind and brother to men, and all the things that are observed pertaining to bodily nature—if they behold all these also in the Godhead, let them say these things too concerning the Only-begotten God, and let them bear witness to him of whatever they will, both the activity of walking and the change of place, which is proper to things circumscribed in a body.

But if the one who converses with the brethren through Mary is one thing, while the Only-begotten has no brethren (for how could the state of being 'only-begotten' be preserved among brethren?); and if He who said, 'God is Spirit,' the same says to the disciples, 'Handle me,' in order to show that the human nature is tangible, while the divine is intangible; and if He who said, 'I am going,' signifies the change of place, whereas He who has comprehended all things—in whom, as the Apostle says, all things were created, and in whom all things hold together—has nothing among things that are outside himself into which, by some motion, a passing-over might occur (for it is impossible for motion to be effected otherwise than by the one who changes place leaving that in which he was and taking another place in exchange; but that which pervades all things and is in all and holds all things in its grasp and is enclosed by none of the things that are, has nowhere to move away to, since nothing is empty of the divine fullness): how is it that these men, abandoning that which makes these utterances arise from the visible, apply them to the divine nature which surpasses all understanding, when the Apostle in his address to the Athenians clearly forbids one to think such a thing concerning God—namely, that the divine power is found not through touch, but through intellectual contemplation and faith? Or again, He who ate in the sight of the disciples, and who promised to go before them into Galilee and to be seen there—whom does He indicate as the one who shall be seen by them? Is it God, whom no one has seen or is able to see, or the bodily form, that is, the form of the servant, in which God was? If, then, the meaning of what was said is manifestly carried, through the things spoken, toward that which is beheld and offers resistance and is moved and is of the same kind as the nature of the disciples, and if none of such things is observed concerning the invisible and incorporeal and intangible and formless One, how do they drag down the Only-begotten God himself, who was in the beginning and was in the Father, into equality of rank with Peter and Andrew and John and the rest of the apostles, by saying that they too are brethren and fellow-servants of the Only-begotten? And all their zeal looks toward this aim: to show the Son to be as far removed, in the greatness of his nature, from the dignity and power and essence of the Father, as He is exalted above the human essence.

And they make this argument the advocate of that view—the argument that equally makes common the utterance of 'Father' and of 'God' with respect both to the Lord and to the disciples of the Lord, as though no difference according to natural dignity were conceived between them, in that he is thought to be, in a like manner, Father and God both of this one and of those others.

And such is the structure of the blasphemy, consequent upon its premises: that either the disciples too, through the relative signification, are attested to have community of essence with the Father, or the Lord himself is not, through this utterance, brought into communion with the nature of the Father; and that, just as the servitude of the disciples is what the being named 'their God' by Him who is over all establishes, so also, by the same reasoning, the Son too is confessed, through what has been said, to be a servant to God.

...that the words spoken to Mary are applied to the Godhead of the Only-begotten, it is possible to learn from the very meaning of what was said.

For He who in all things humbled himself into equality with the lowliness of humanity, He it is who utters the things that were said.

But what is the meaning of these very words—its exactness, indeed, those may know who through the Spirit search out the depths of the mystery;

but as much as comes also within our own comprehension, according to the guidance of the fathers, this we shall set forth in a few words.

That the Father by nature of the things that are, from whom all things have their generation, is one, has been proclaimed aloud by the great-voiced Apostle.

'For there is one God,' he says, 'and Father, from whom are all things.'

Therefore human nature did not enter into creation from some other source, nor did it spring up spontaneously among the things that came to be, but it too had no other maker of its own constitution than the Father of all.

And the very name of Godhead itself, whether it signifies the overseeing or the providential authority, is proper with respect to the human.

For He who bestowed upon the things that are the power of being is God and overseer of the things that came to be through him.

But since, by the design of him who sowed in us the tare of disobedience, our nature no longer preserved upon itself the image of the paternal character, but was transformed toward the shame of sin, for this reason, through the likeness according to choice, it was adopted into the wicked kinship of the father of sin;

so that no longer, for him cast out in his own wickedness, is the good and true one his Father and God, but instead of the God who is by nature, those who are not by nature gods came to be honoured, as the Apostle says; and instead of the true Father, the falsely-named one was reckoned Father, even as the prophet Jeremiah says somewhere in a dark saying: 'The partridge cried out; it gathered what it did not bring forth.'

Since, then, the sum of our calamity was this—that the human was estranged from the good Father and came to be outside the divine oversight and care—for this reason He who shepherds all the rational creation, leaving in the heights the unerring and supramundane flock, comes after the one strayed sheep, I mean our nature, out of his love for mankind.

For human nature is a very small and least part, if it be judged in relation to the whole—the one part which alone, according to the enigma of the parable, has strayed from the rational hundred through wickedness.

Since, then, it was impossible for our life, having been made alien to God, to be taken up again by itself to the high and heavenly region, for this reason, as the Apostle says, He who knew no sin becomes sin for us, and frees us from the curse by making our curse his own, and, taking up our enmity that had come about through sin toward God and slaying it in himself (according to the word of the Apostle—for the enmity was sin), and becoming what we are, through himself again joined the human to God.

For that new man, created according to God, in whom dwelt the fullness of the Godhead bodily—him, having through purity made near, in the kinship of the Father, our nature, He drew along with him toward the same grace all the nature that shares his body and is akin to it.

And this, through the woman, is announced as good news not only to those disciples, but also to all who are being made disciples to the Word up to the present time: that man is no longer among the cast-out, nor rejected from the kingdom of God, but again a son, again ranked under God, since the lump too has been sanctified together with the first-fruits of humanity.

'For behold,' he says, 'I and the children whom God has given me.'

'Whence you departed, having become flesh and blood on account of sin, thither He again, having taken you up, has led you back—He who for our sake partook of flesh and blood.'

And thus He became our Father and God as well—He from whom we were formerly estranged through the apostasy.

...the good tidings of our reconciliation to God.

For what has come to pass concerning the man according to Christ is a common grace of the nature of men.

For just as, seeing the downward-tending and earthward-weighing bulk of the body borne aloft through the air toward the heavens, we too believe, according to the word of the Apostle, that we shall be caught up in clouds to meet the Lord in the air, so, having heard that the true God and Father has become Father and God of our first-fruits, we no longer doubt that the same has become our Father and God as well, having learned that we shall enter into that same place where Christ has entered as forerunner on our behalf.

And that the grace is made known through a woman—this too is in harmony with the meaning that has been given.

For since, as the Apostle says, the woman, having been deceived, came to be in transgression, and took the lead in the apostasy from God through her disobedience, for this reason she becomes the first witness of the resurrection, in order that she might set upright, through faith in the resurrection, the ruin arising from the transgression; and just as, having at the beginning become servant and counsellor to the man of the serpent's words, she introduced the beginning of evil into life in due sequence, so, having conveyed to the disciples the words of Him who put to death the apostate dragon, she becomes the leader for men of the faith, through which the first sentence of death is fittingly loosed.

But it is likely that some more profitable interpretation of the matters before us may be found by the more diligent;

and even if nothing should be found, I think everyone who is pious will agree that the interpretation brought forward by our enemies is assuredly idle in comparison with the one that has been discovered.

For the one has been fabricated for the demolition of the glory of the Only-begotten, and nothing more;

but this one embraces the aim of the economy concerning man.

For it has been shown that it was not the intangible, immutable, and invisible One, but that which is seen, moved, and handled—which is proper to human nature—that gave the commandment to Mary to minister the word to the brethren.

Let us further examine also this: what sort of defense he has made concerning those things for which he was refuted by the great Basil, when he consigns the only-begotten God to the portion of darkness by saying, 'As much as the begotten is distant from the unbegotten, by so much is light differentiated from light.'

For that one (Basil) had shown that the distance between the begotten and the unbegotten is not one of any lessening or intensification, but that the opposition exists diametrically in what is signified; and by the sequence of the premises laid down he had reasoned that, if the Father's light differs from that of the Son in proportion to the difference between unbegottenness and begottenness, then it is altogether necessary to conceive on the Son's part not a diminution of light but a total alienation from it. For just as one cannot say that begetting is a diminished unbegottenness, but the things signified by unbegottenness and by begetting stand wholly opposed to one another, so too, if the Father's light preserves the same disparity toward that which is conceived in the Son, the Son will by that same sequence no longer be supposed to be light at all, since he falls outside both unbegottenness itself and the light that goes with it.

And that which is something other than light will clearly, by the same consequence, stand in an intimate relation to its opposite.

Since, then, this absurdity has emerged from the premises laid down, Eunomius attempts to resolve it by the technical devices of demonstration, speaking thus:

'For we know—yes, we know—the true light; we know Him who created the light after the heaven and the earth; we have heard Christ Himself, the very Life and Truth, saying to His own disciples:

You are the light of the world.'

'We have learned from the blessed Paul, who names the God who is over all things unapproachable light, and who by that addition both marks Him off and teaches the surpassing eminence of that light;

then, having learned so great a difference of light, we shall not endure—not even in the bare hearing—that the notion of light should be one and the same.'

Such are the things he puts forward through his arguments against the truth—either making trial of the insensibility of those who follow his deceits, whether they are able to perceive the childish fallacy of the sophism, or being himself so dull as not to perceive so manifest a deceit. For my part I think that no one is so foolish as not to understand the deception drawn from equivocation, by which Eunomius deludes both himself and those of his party.

'The disciples,' he says, 'were named light; and that which came to be in the creation is also called light.'

Then who does not know that in these cases only the name is common, while the thing signified is different in each? For the sun's light is discerning of sight, whereas the word of the disciples' teaching implants in souls the illumination of the truth.

If, then, he also acknowledges this same difference in the case of that light—so as to think the one to be a light of the body and the other a light of the soul—we shall no longer have any argument with him at all, since his own defense condemns him even before our words.

But if he cannot find such a difference in the case of that light according to the mode of its operation—for it is not that the one illuminates the eyes of the flesh and the other the understanding, but one and the same is the operation of both this and that light, wrought upon the very same things—how does he demonstrate, by means of the sun's rays and the apostolic words, that the only-begotten light differs from the Father's light? 'But the Son,' he says, 'is called true light, and the Father unapproachable.'

So then the qualifying additions signify the greater difference of the Father's light?

For he thinks that 'true' is one thing and 'unapproachable' is another.

Then who is so silly as not to perceive the identity of the things signified? For both 'true' and 'unapproachable' are alike inaccessible to whatever is conceived as contrary to them.

For as the true does not admit the admixture of the false, so also the unapproachable does not permit the approach of its contrary.

For the unapproachable is in every way unapproachable to evil.

But the Son's light is not evil;

for how could anyone behold the true within evil? Since, then, the truth is not evil, no one could say that the light in the Father is unapproachable even to the truth.

For if it were to shake off the truth, it would in every way be brought together with falsehood.

For such is the nature of opposites, that in the absence of the better, that which is conceived by opposition makes its appearance.

If, then, someone should say that the light in the Father is beheld far removed from any juxtaposition with its contrary, he will have interpreted the word 'unapproachable' in a manner that hits upon the apostolic intent.

But if he says that 'unapproachable' signifies alienation from the good, he will be positing nothing other than that He is at enmity with Himself and alien to Himself—being good and yet opposed to the good.

But surely this is among the things that are impossible;

for the good is intimately related to the good.

Therefore this light is not differentiated from that;

for the Son is true light, and the Father is unapproachable light.

And I would say, taking courage, that even one who interchanges such appellations for each will not err.

For the true is unapproachable to falsehood, and the unapproachable, again, is apprehended in the pure and unmixed truth.

Therefore the unapproachable is the same as the true, because that which is signified in each is equally inaccessible to evil.

What difference, then, does he devise among these things—he who cheats both himself and those of his party by the equivocation of the 'lights'? But let us not pass over this either without examination: that, having falsified the Apostle's statement to suit his own opinion, he sets forth the passage as though it came from that source.

For Paul says that He is 'dwelling in unapproachable light.'

But there is a great difference between being it oneself and saying that one is in something.

For he who said 'dwelling in unapproachable light,' by the word 'dwelling' indicated not Him Himself but that which is around Him—which, according to our interpretation, is equivalent to the evangelical saying that declares the Father to be in the Son.

For the Son is true light, and the truth is unapproachable to falsehood;

the Son, therefore, is unapproachable light, in whom the Father dwells [that is, in whom the Father is].

'To the empty ones,' he says, 'I offer, from the very facts and from the oracles that have been believed, the assurance of what is said.'

This, then, is his undertaking;

but whether he advances his argument in a manner worthy of what he has promised, the intelligent hearer will surely examine.

'The blessed John,' he says, 'having declared the Word to be in the beginning and having called Him Life, then having named the Life light, a little further on says, And the Word became flesh.'

'If, then, the light is the Life, and the Life is the Word, and the Word became flesh, it becomes at once manifest that the light came to be in flesh.'

What then? Because the light and the Life and God and the Word were manifested in flesh, is the true light on this account differentiated from the light in the Father? And yet it is testified by the Gospel that even when it came to be in the darkness it remained unapproachable to the contrary nature.

'For the light,' he says, 'shone in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.'

If, then, the light, having come to be in the darkness, had been altered toward its contrary and overmastered by the gloom, it would have been a strong point for demonstration to those who wish to show how far, toward the worse, this light is differentiated from the light beheld in the Father;

but if the Word, even though it come to be in flesh, remains Word, and the light, even though it shine in the darkness, is no less light, not receiving fellowship with its contrary, and the Life, even though it come to be in death, is preserved in itself, and God, even though He assume the form of a servant, does not Himself become a servant, but exalts what is subject into lordship and kingship, making the lowly and human thing Lord and Christ—how does he by this demonstrate a differentiation of the light toward the worse, when each equally possesses immutability into evil and unalterableness? Nor does he attend even to this: that he who looked upon the incarnate Word—who was both light and life and God—recognized through the glory that was seen the Father of glory, saying, We beheld His glory, glory as of an only-begotten from a father.

But he has come to that irrefutable argument, which was long ago detected by us from the sequence of what was said, but is now brought forward in bare utterance.

For he wishes to exhibit the essence of the Son as passible, perishable, and in no way differing from material and fluid nature, so that by this he may demonstrate its difference from the Father.

For he says: 'If he is able to show that the God who is over all things—who is unapproachable light—came to be in flesh, or was able to come to be, to come under authority, to obey commands, to live by human laws, to bear a cross, let him say that light is equal to light.'

If these things were being brought forward by us, by drawing them out according to the consequence from what had been previously established, and were not corroborated by his own utterances,

who would not have accused us of slander, as though by some ingenuity of words we were casting the doctrine of our adversaries into this absurdity? But as it is, it is a certain vindication of the fact that we, together with the truth, are carefully calling to account the argument of the heresy, that not even by those very men has the absurdity, which emerges according to the consequence, been passed over in silence.

For behold how unveiled and openly declared is the war against the only-begotten God, and how the work wrought out of love for mankind has been reckoned by the enemies as a slander and an accusation against the nature of the Son of God—as though He slipped down into the life in the flesh and the passion of the cross not by providence but by nature.

And just as it is the nature of the stone to be borne downward and of fire to be borne the opposite way, and these materials do not exchange one another's properties—so that the stone should be borne upward and fire, weighed down, borne downward—so they construct their doctrine to the effect that the passions are consubstantial with the Son's nature, and that for this reason He came to what is akin and proper to Himself, while the Father's nature, being free of such passions, remained unapproachable to the assault of evils.

For he says that the God who is over all things—who is unapproachable light—neither came to be in flesh nor was able to come to be.

But now, by this addition, the construction of the absurd is twofold.

For he either accuses the Son of evil or the Father of powerlessness.

For if fellowship with the flesh is an evil, he attributes the evil to the only-begotten God;

but if love for mankind is a good, he demonstrates the Father to be powerless with respect to the good, in saying that He could not have wrought such a grace through flesh.

And yet who of all men does not know that the life-giving power proceeds alike from the Father and from the Son into operation? 'For as the Father,' He says, 'raises the dead and gives life, so also the Son gives life to whom He will'—meaning, evidently, that we are the dead, we who have fallen away from the true life.

If, then, just as the Father gives life, so also and not otherwise the Son works the same grace, how does this fighter against God move his blasphemous tongue against both—reviling the Father with powerlessness toward the good, and the Son with intimacy toward evil? 'But,' he says, 'light is not equal to light, because the one is called true and the other unapproachable.'

Is 'true,' then, adjudged to be in a state of diminution? Why so? And yet it is their argument that the Godhead of the Father is conceived to be greater and higher than that of the Son for this reason: because the one is addressed in the Gospel as true God, while the other is without the addition of 'true.'

How then does the same argument signify, in the case of the Godhead, an increase, but in the case of the light, a diminution of what is conceived? For if he says the Father is greater than the Son because He is true God, then by the same argument the Son would be confessed greater than the Father, because the one is named true light and the other is not so named.

'But this light,' he says, 'wrought the works of love for mankind, while that one remained inoperative with respect to such a grace.'

A novel mode of preferment!

They judge the inactivity with respect to love for mankind to be superior to Him who wrought it.

But there neither is nor ever will be among Christians such a notion, whereby it should be established that not everything good, whatsoever exists among things that are, has its cause from the Father.