Against Eunomius 1 part 7/56

Thus our discourse, guided by the holy Scripture, sets both the Only-begotten and the Holy Spirit above creation, and, according to the declaration of the Savior, prompts us to behold them by faith in the blessed and life-giving and uncreated nature.

so that what is believed to be above creation and to belong to the primary and in all respects perfect nature admits in no way the notion of diminution — even though the champion of the heresy cuts off its infinitude, as it were mutilating and contracting the perfection of the divine essence by the notion of the 'lesser,' in defining that greater and lesser are to be discerned in them.

Let us then consider what he adds to the sequence of what has been said.

Having claimed that of necessity we must think the essences to be lesser and greater, and that some occupy the first rank, being arranged in precedence according to a certain difference of magnitude and dignity, while others are thrust down into a secondary place because of the inferiority of their nature and dignity, he brought in these things:

'The difference,' he says, 'reaches as far as the works reach, since it is not even lawful to speak of the same activity by which He made the angels, or the stars and heaven, or man; but by as much as some works are prior and more honorable than other works, by so much would one asserting about this say that the activity too has risen above the other activity — inasmuch as the same activities produce the identity of works, while differing works display differing activities also.'

Now these things I, for my part, suppose that not even the author himself would be able readily to say — what he was thinking when he wrote them;

so muddied is the sense of what is said by the slime of the phrasing, that no one could easily discern the meaning through the mire of the diction.

For the statement that 'the difference reaches as far as the works reach' — one might suppose it to be the utterance of some Loxias, according to the pagan myth, babbling to deceive his hearers.

But if one must, following what has already been examined, guess also at what he is here constructing, this is what he indicates: that as great as is the variance of the works with one another, so great also will the difference of the activities with one another be recognized to be.

Now concerning what works he is here making his discourse, it is not possible to find out from what has been said.

For if he is speaking about the things beheld in creation, I do not know what connection these have with what precedes.

For, since the inquiry is about the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, what occasion is there for one who reasons rightly to give a natural philosophy of earth and water and air and fire and the differences of animals, and to go through them in discourse, and to describe works prior and more honorable than other works, and to say that one activity has risen above another? But if he calls the Only-begotten Son and the Holy Spirit 'the works,' what again are these differences of the activities through which these works are produced? And what in turn are those activities that rise above the other activities? For neither has he made clear what he means by the ascent by which, as he himself says, one activity ascends above another activity, nor has he discussed anything about the nature of the activities; but up to now his argument has rested on nothing — neither establishing that anything subsists substantially, nor indicating some insubstantial movement of will.

His statement, flung into the middle between the two suppositions, is tossed back and forth toward either conjecture.

And he adds that it is not even permitted to speak of the same activity by which He made the angels, or the stars and heaven, or man.

Again, from what necessity or logical connection he brought these things in upon what had been said, or what is the more established by them — namely, that the activities differ from one another by just as much as is the difference of the works from one another, on the ground that all things are not the works of the same activity but that one comes to be from another — this I, for my part, do not perceive.

For heaven and angel and star and man and all things that are conceived within the creation — we have learned from Scripture that all are the works of One.

But the argument of their doctrine establishes that the Son and the Spirit are not the works of one and the same, but that the Son is the work of the activity that attends the first essence, while the Spirit is again another work of that work.

What fellowship, then, do heaven and man and angel and star — now taken up together by his argument — have with the establishing of his doctrine? Let him say himself, or anyone who shares in his ineffable wisdom.

For in these things the impiety is plainly manifest in what has been said, but the construction of the impiety is discordant even with itself.

For to think that so great a difference is beheld in the holy Trinity as one may conceive between the heaven that encompasses all creation and the single man in number, or between an angel and the star that appears in heaven — this has manifest impiety.

But the orderliness and coherence of the thoughts in the very construction of this — this, I say, is not readily discernible either to me or, perhaps, to the father of the blasphemy himself.

For if he had reasoned such things about creation — that heaven is the work of some superior activity, and the star the product of the activity that attends heaven, and the angel the product of that activity, and man of this — his argument would have had some force, establishing the doctrine by the juxtaposition of like cases.

'By as much,' he says, 'as some works are prior and more honorable than other works, by so much would one reasoning piously say that the activity too has risen above the other activity.'

For if he is speaking these things about the sensible things, the discourse is far from what was proposed.

For what necessity is there that one who has set out to say something about the doctrines should philosophize about the order of the things fashioned in the world's genesis, and should insist that the activities of the Creator are higher and lower in proportion to the magnitude of each of the things that have come to be? But if he is making his discourse about those divine realities and calls 'works prior and more honorable than works' the things now fashioned by him in his doctrine — that is, the Son and the Holy Spirit — perhaps it is better to abhor the argument in silence than, by grappling with it, to make it seem that it is even an argument worth refuting.

For how could the more honorable be found where the less honorable does not exist? But if he goes so far, in his readiness and facility toward evil, as to suspect both the word and the notion of 'the less honorable' concerning any of those believed to be in the holy Trinity, it is fitting to stop one's ears and to flee with all one's might from the wicked hearing, lest some fellowship of the defilement should come upon the hearer, as though the discourse were poured, as from some vessel full of uncleanness, into the heart of the one who hears.

This utterance, then, legislating equality of honor (for the divine voice is law), this man annuls both the law and the lawgiver Himself, and distributes to the one more honor and to the other less — I know not how discovering the measures of the honor that is in excess.

For in human custom the differences according to rank determine the honors given to those in power, so that subjects do not approach kings and the lower authorities in the same and equal manner;

but the greater or lesser display of fear and reverence on the part of those approaching indicates the deficiency or excess of honor in those honored; and by this especially one may find who are held in greater honor in the disposition of the subjects — namely, whenever someone seems to be more to be feared than his neighbors and to be deemed worthy of greater reverence than the rest.

But in the case of the divine nature, because the whole perfection according to the good is co-implied in the very name of the divine, it is not possible — at least according to our understanding — to find any mode of preferential honor.

For in Beings in which no excess or diminution of power, of glory, of wisdom, of love for mankind, nor of any conception whatever according to the good is thought of — but all the good things the Son has are the Father's, and all the Father's things are beheld in the Son — how, being so disposed, shall we display greater honor toward the Father? If we take up in our mind royal power and dignity, the Son is King;

if we conceive of a judge, all judgment is the Son's;

if we receive into our soul the grandeur of creation, all things came into being through Him;

if we consider the cause of our life, we know the true Life that descended down to our nature;

and if we learn of our removal out of darkness, we are not ignorant of the true Light, through whom we were made strangers to the darkness;

and if to anyone wisdom seems honorable, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.

Since, then, our soul is disposed with wonder toward such and so great wonders of Christ, as much as is fitting and as far as it can contain, what excess of honor could be conceived, offered to the Father alone by way of special distinction, of which the Lord would fittingly have no share? For this very thing — human honor toward the divine, considered according to right reason — is nothing else than a loving relation and the confession of the good things that belong to Him; and it seems to me that the command that the Son must be honored just as the Father is honored has been laid down by the Word in the place of love.

For the law commands us, in loving God with the whole heart and strength, to render to Him the honor that is fitting; and here God the Word, legislating equality of love, says that the Son must be honored just as the Father is honored.

If, then, the Only-begotten Son is not these things becoming present to men, let the excess of honor toward Him be withheld, according to the law of the heresy;

But if we have believed the Only-begotten to be, and to be named, all these things and even beyond these, being made equal, according to every conception of a good thing and a good notion, to the greatness of the goodness that is in the Father, how could anyone say it reasonable either not to love such a One or to dishonour the Beloved? For no one would say that love must proceed from the whole heart and strength, but honour only by half.

presenting the notion of the less-honoured by way of a comparison.

But indeed, to speak of the 'elder' is true in the case of the perceptible creation;

for since the sequence of the works is displayed in the order of the days, one might say that the heaven is by so much prior to the fashioning of man, and one may measure out the intervening time by the interval of the days.

But in the case of the primal Nature, which transcends every notion of time and leaves behind every conception capable of comprehension, to suppose that one member takes precedence in temporal seniority while the other comes later belongs to a wisdom that has only now made its appearance.

For he who declares the Father to be elder than the subsistence of the Only-begotten declares nothing else than that the Son Himself is younger than the things that came to be through the Son, if indeed it is true to say that all ages and every temporal interval came to be after the Son and through the Son.

And besides these things—that which exposes the absurdity of the doctrine even more—not only will a temporal beginning of existence be constructed for the Son by such an argument, but neither will they, by such a train of reasoning, spare the Father from being made to have His beginning likewise from time.

For if some sign is posited as marking the generation of the Son, that same sign will obviously also define for the Father the beginning of His subsistence.

But for the sake of clarity it is perhaps not untimely to examine the argument more laboriously.

He who lays down as doctrine that the Father's life is elder than the life of the Son by all means separates the Only-begotten from the God who is over all by some interval;

and this interval he will suppose to be either something infinite as that which lies between, or something bounded by certain limits and manifest signs.

But the very notion of a 'middle' will not permit him to call it infinite, or else it will utterly efface by that argument the conception of Father and Son, and will not even conceive of it as a middle so long as it remains infinite, being bounded toward neither side—since neither does the conception of the Father cut off the advance of the infinite on the upper side, nor does the Son cut off its infinity on the lower.

For this is the notion of the infinite: to be poured out on every side in its nature, and to be circumscribed by no limit from any quarter.

Therefore, in order that the supposition of being may remain firm and unshakable concerning both the Father and the Son, there will be no room to conceive the interval as infinite; rather, by every necessity they will separate the Only-begotten from the Father by something finite.

This, then, is what I say: that this argument will establish that the God who is over all is not from eternity, but has had His beginning from some determinate sign.

And what I mean is of this sort:

I shall speak, clarifying the thought through familiar illustrations, so that through things visible the unknown may become clear to us.

When we say, from the writing of Moses, that man came to be on the fifth day after the heaven, we established along with that statement, by way of what is left unspoken, that before the number of these days not even the heaven existed;

in this way, that which came to be after something defines, through the interval prior to itself, also the subsistence of that which is presupposed as prior.

But if we have not sufficiently clarified the argument by this illustration, it is possible to set forth what is meant by others also.

When we say that the Law given through Moses was later by four hundred and thirty years than the promise made to Abraham, if, traversing backward the previous time by analysis in our reckoning from the Law, we arrive at the term of the numbered years, we clearly grasp that before this time the promise of God was not yet.

And there are many such things one might say, to go through each of which in detail I shall decline as burdensome.

In accordance, then, with the sequence of what has been said in the illustrations, let us examine also the argument before us.

And this argument was, according to the supposition of our opponents, to say that there is an 'elder' and a 'younger' in the subsistence of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, one being other than the other.

Then let us proceed to the intervening interval, which the vain conceit of those who lay down these doctrines supposes—reckoning that there is something between the Son and the Father: if we reach that extreme sign by which they circumscribe the interval that lies between, there too we find the life of the God of all coming to a stand on the upper side, so that it is of necessity established that before that point not even the ever-existing God is believed to be.

But if you still hesitate, let us again consider the argument through illustrations.

For just as in the case of two rulers, when the one is shorter and the other longer, by equalizing the bases of both we recognize the excess at their tops (for setting side by side the end of the shorter, we come to know the excess of the longer from that point, and by measuring out with some measure how much the shorter falls short of the end of the greater, we find it, whether it be a cubit or however much—that is, by how much the greater stands apart from the lesser)—so, if there is, according to the argument of our adversaries, any excess of the Father's life over against the life of the Son, it is altogether within some stated interval; but this they will not necessarily concede to run over into what follows in perpetuity.

For even the enemies of the truth confess that both are alike immortal; yet they conceive this difference on the upper side, not equalizing the life of the Son to the Father, but overextending the conception concerning the Father by the interval of life.

Since, then, every interval is by all means circumscribed by two limits, there is every necessity that the two signs marking the limits of the interval conceived by them also be apprehended.

As, therefore, according to them, the one part has its beginning from the generation of the Only-begotten, so also the other extremity will by all means terminate at some other limit, upon which the interval, being completed, circumscribes itself.

What, then, is this limit? Let them themselves tell us, if indeed they are not ashamed to follow their own arguments.

But the argument admits no ambiguity, that they will find no other limit at the other part of the interval they have fabricated, unless they altogether posit some beginning of the life of the Unbegotten, from which they mark off the middle by the argument as toward the generation of the Son.

This, then, is what we say: that he who says the Son is later by some interval-extension of the Father's life will also assign to the Father a determinate beginning of existence, circumscribed together with the interval conceived at the middle;

and thus that much-vaunted 'unbegottenness' of the Father will be found, through such a construction, to be stolen away from them by the very champions of unbegottenness—so as to say that the unbegotten God does not always exist, but to construct that He has had the beginning of His being from some determinate beginning.

For he who has a beginning of being is not without beginning.

But if in every way it is fitting that the beginninglessness of the Father be confessed, let no determinate sign of the Son's life be busily inquired after, from which, having begun to be, He is cut off from the life beyond that sign;

rather, it suffices, according to the notion of cause alone, to conceive the Father as prior to the Son, and not to conceive at any time a separate and peculiar life of the Father before the generation of the Son, lest there enter along with this supposition some notion of interval, measured out against the life of the Begetter before the manifestation of the Son—upon which there will necessarily follow the positing of some beginning of the Father's life as well, according to which the interval fabricated before the Son, advancing upward, will come to a stand, circumscribing along with itself the beginning of the Father's presupposed life.

But it is needful, while confessing that which is from Him—even if it appear somewhat bold—not to deny also that which is with Him, being guided toward this conception by the Scripture in its instructions;

for having heard from Wisdom of a 'radiance of eternal light,' we contemplate the radiance together with the eternity of the archetypal light, and while conceiving the cause of the radiance, we do not admit the notion of 'elder';

and thus the word of piety will be preserved for us, with neither the life of the Son falling short on the upper side, nor the eternity of the Father being curtailed by positing a determinate beginning of the Son.

But perhaps one of those who oppose the argument will say that the creation too has a confessedly acknowledged beginning of being, and yet the things that have come to be are neither conceived together with the eternity of the Creator, nor do they, through their own beginning, bring to a stand the indeterminateness of the divine life—as the argument, when examined in the case of the Son and the Father, showed to be the absurdity;

so that, as a consequence of this, one might fearlessly say either that the creation too is co-eternal with God, or that the Son too is later in time.

For the argument of interval will likewise indicate the absurdity when it is measured out from the creation up to the One who made it.

But he who brings forward such an objection, perhaps not having accurately attended in his understanding to the doctrine, wages his battle against what has been said by means of things foreign and wholly uncommunicable with the matter at hand.

For if he were able to point to any of the things above the creation as having the beginning of its subsistence at some interval-sign, and this were confessed by all to be possible—to conceive the notion of interval even before the creation—then perhaps he would have occasion to attempt to undo, by such arguments, the eternity of the Only-begotten that has been demonstrated through what has been said.

But since it is confessed by all the votes of the pious that, of all beings, one class is by way of creation and the other is prior to the creation, and that the divine Nature is believed to be uncreated—in which the word of piety teaches that the cause and that which is from the cause hold their subsistence without interval—while the creation is contemplated in a certain interval-extension, every temporal order and sequence of the things that have come to be is comprehended through the ages, but the pre-eternal Nature has escaped the differences of 'elder' and 'younger,' by reason that none of the things the argument peculiarly beholds concerning the creation is contemplated together with the divine and blessed life.

For all the creation, as has been said, having come to be according to a certain sequence of order, is measured out by the interval of the ages; and if anyone should ascend in argument, through the sequence of the things created, to the beginning of the things that have come to be, he will bound his inquiry at the foundation of the ages.

But the Being that is above the creation, inasmuch as it is separated from every notion of interval, has escaped every temporal sequence, neither proceeding from any such beginning nor coming to any end by any manner of what is found according to some order.

For to him who has crossed the ages and all the things that have come to be within them, the contemplation of the divine Nature, appearing to his reasonings like some boundless sea, will give upon itself no sign marking any beginning to him who stretches his comprehensive imagination into what lies beyond;

so that he who busily inquires into the 'elder' of the ages and ascends to the beginning of beings can come to a stand at no point in his reasoning, since the object sought forever runs on ahead and shows no halt to the busy inquisitiveness of the understanding.

And the argument is clear even to one who has moderately considered the nature of beings, that to the divine and blessed life there is nothing that measures it out;

for that life is not in time, but time is from that life;

whereas the creation, proceeding from some altogether acknowledged beginning toward its own goal through temporal intervals, is borne along, so that of it it is possible, as Solomon says somewhere, to descry beginning and end and middle, marking through the temporal segments the sequence of the things belonging to it.

But the transcendent and blessed life, inasmuch as no interval travels along with it, has nothing that measures or divides it.

For all the things that have come to be, being circumscribed by their own measures according to what pleased the wisdom of the Creator, are comprehended, as by a certain boundary, within the fitting measure, with a view to the harmonious fitting-together of the whole.

It is not doubted that all things are within the bounds of the creation by the power of the One who made them;

but the power that makes beings, circumscribing within itself the nature of the things that have come to be, itself has nothing containing it, enclosing within itself every thought that presses to ascend to the beginning of the divine life, and overflowing beyond every curiosity and busy meddling that contends to reach the limit of the indeterminate.

For all the ascent and extension of the mind beyond the ages will be raised up only so far as to descry the impassability of that which is sought; and the age, and the things within it, seem to be like a certain measure and boundary of the movement and activity of human reasonings, while the things above these remain ungraspable and inaccessible to reasonings, being pure of everything that can come under human comprehension.

For in those things where no form, no place, no magnitude, no measure derived from time, nor anything else of the comprehensible is conceived, of necessity the comprehensive power of the mind also, seeking to lay hold of something among the things concerning the ages and the creation within them, will settle down into what is akin and of the same kindred with itself, slipping off on every side from the ungraspable Nature.

For I think this is known to everyone who has even moderately considered beings, that the Maker of all, having first laid down the ages and the place within them as a certain receptacle capable of receiving the things that come to be, creates all things within these.

For it is not admissible that any of the things that have come to be or are coming to be through creation should have its being in any way otherwise than either in place or in time.

But the Nature that is without need, and eternal, and comprehensive of beings, is neither in place nor in time, but before these and above these; according to the ineffable manner it is contemplated by itself, upon itself, through faith alone, neither measured out by ages nor running along with times, but standing upon itself and seated within itself, divided neither with the past nor with the future;

for neither is there anything alongside it outside of itself, in the passing of which one part goes by and another is to come.

For these are the affections peculiar to the things in creation, when life is split, according to the division of time, toward hope and memory;

but to that exalted and blessed Power, to which all things are always alike present according to the present, both the past and that which is expected are beheld as held fast by the power that comprehends all things.

This, then, is the Being in which, as the Apostle says, all things consist, and in which we who severally partake of being both live and move and are; which is higher than every beginning, yet furnishes no signs of its own nature, but is known only in the fact that it cannot be comprehended.

For this is its most peculiar mark: that its nature is higher than every characterizing notion.

The creation, then, on account of not having the same account as the uncreated, by this very thing is separated from comparison and communion with the One who made it—I mean by the difference in respect of being, and by its admitting for itself the account that represents its nature as having nothing in common with that from which it has come to be.

But the divine Nature, being alien to all the signs peculiarly contemplated in the creation, leaves below itself the temporal segments—I mean the 'elder' and the 'younger'—and the local notions, so that not even 'higher' is properly said of it.

For everything that is conceived in the case of the uncreated Power is 'above,' and is beginning, and holds the account of that which is most sovereign.

Since, then, it has been shown by what has been said that the Only-begotten Son and the Spirit of God are not to be sought among created things, but must be believed to exist above creation, the creation may perhaps be apprehended by those who contend to investigate such matters as having its beginning from some particular starting-point, through their busy inquisitiveness; but that which is above the creation could not by these means come any more within our knowledge, since no sign indicative of it is found before the ages.