Against Eunomius 1 part 9/56

For since the first substance is confessed even by our adversaries to be simple, it is necessary to conceive of will as running together with the nature; and once the will has been shown to be good through providence, the nature from which the will comes is thereby shown to be good as well.

But if the Father alone were working good things, while the Son did not choose the same things (I speak by hypothesis, for the sake of our adversaries), then the difference according to substance would have been evident, being attested by the divergence of the choices.

But if the Father exercises providence over all things, and the Son likewise exercises providence over them as well (for whatever he sees the Father doing, the Son also does likewise), then the identity of choices altogether indicates the commonality of nature belonging to those who choose the same things.

Why, then, is the argument from providence dishonored, as though it contributed no aid toward what is sought? And yet many of the examples drawn from daily life also fight on the side of our argument.

The examples are familiar to all.

One who has beheld the light of fire and has come to the experience of its heating power, if he should approach another such light and such heat, will plainly be led up to the notion of fire, being brought by the likeness of the things that have appeared to him through sense-perception toward the kinship of the nature that produced them.

For nothing could act in all respects like fire without being fire.

In this way, if we discern the same account of providence to be alike and equal in both the Father and the Son, then through the things that reach our knowledge we also form our conjecture about the things that surpass our apprehension—concluding that what is different in kind according to nature could not be apprehended by equal and like activities.

For however the distinguishing marks that appear in each thing stand in relation to one another, so of necessity will the underlying subjects also stand.

And if the distinguishing marks are opposite, the things indicated through them must also by all means be reckoned opposite; but if these are alike, neither are those otherwise.

And just as the Lord says, by way of a riddle, that fruits are the signs of the nature of trees—since such things are not interchanged contrary to nature, nor do the fruits of good trees fit the bad, nor conversely the fruits of the bad fit the good (for 'by their fruits,' he says, 'the trees are known')—so also, since the fruit of providence admits no difference, we see also that the nature which has put forth these fruits is one, even though the fruit be produced from different trees.

Therefore, through the things familiar to our apprehension (and the account of providence, contemplated alike in the Father and in the Son, is familiar to us), the likeness and communion in nature of the Only-begotten with the Father also becomes free from all ambiguity, being known through the identity of the fruits of providence.

But lest this be understood as though he were forced by some necessity to abandon the works of providence and to be led up to the mode of generation, he says that the mode of likeness follows upon the mode of generation.

O the compulsion of his demonstrations!

How forcibly the abundance of his art in speaking compels us to agree with what has been said!

He says that the mode of likeness follows upon the mode of generation.

How artful and carefully considered is his declaration!

So then, if the mode of generation should be known, the mode of likeness is thereby jointly demonstrated together with it.

Since, then, of all—or of most—living creatures born through the flesh the mode of generation is the same, and, according to them, the mode of likeness follows upon the mode of generation, all things born after the same manner will surely be alike to those that are generated in like fashion.

[For things like the same thing are also like one another.] If, then, the mode of generation—as the argument of the heresy says—makes the offspring like to itself, and this mode in no way varies amid the manifold differences of living creatures, but is the same for the majority of them, then the declaration made universally and without any distinction will be found to render all things like one another because of the likeness of their generation—man, dog, camel, mouse, elephant, leopard, and all the rest that are naturally born after the like manner.

Or does he say that things born in similar fashion are not like one another, but each like only to that from which it has its generation? But if he wished to say this, he ought to have declared the offspring like to the begetter, not the mode of likeness like to the mode of generation.

But that which is probable and observed in nature—namely, that the offspring is of the same kind as the begetter—this he does not accept, lest his construction be overturned into its very opposite.

For if he had said that the offspring is like the begetter, all that he had laboriously composed concerning the unlikeness of the substances would have been convicted as vain and without foundation.

But now he says that the mode of likeness follows upon the mode of generation.

How will it not be found utterly inconceivable, as an expression of thoughts? For what one must conceive on hearing 'mode of generation' is one of the most perplexing of matters.

Does he mean the shape of the creature that gives birth, or the impulse, or the disposition, or place, or time, or the bringing of the embryo to completion through conception? Or is he mentioning the very organs of generation? Or none of these, but does he mean something else among the things observed in generation? And how could we learn what is meant? For the invalid and meaningless character of the word 'mode' makes us hesitate over its significations, since all the possibilities fall equally under conjecture and each holds an equal want of connection to the matter proposed.

And likewise what he says—a 'mode of likeness' expressed in this way—we suppose to be foreign to all thought, when we look off to the examples of things familiar through common experience.

For the offspring is not made like to the form or to the mode of birth.

For birth, in the case of generation through the flesh, is the parting of the body, which brings forth to the outside the creature completed in the formation of the inward parts; but that which is born is a man, or a horse, or an ox, or whatever chances to come into existence through generation.

How, then, does the mode of the offspring's likeness follow upon the mode of generation? Let this very man say, or anyone who has been instructed by him in the art of midwifery.

For birth is one thing, and that which comes from the birth is another; and the account of each of them is distinct.

That, then, in the case of things born through the flesh what he says is false, no one of those possessed of sense would gainsay.

But if by 'mode of generation' he means the making and the fashioning, upon which he says the mode of the likeness of what comes to be follows, then in this way too the argument is divorced from what is probable.

Let us examine it thus, by means of examples.

Iron is stamped by blows, being shaped by the craftsman toward some one of the things useful in life.

The shape of a spade, say, as it happens—how is it made like to the hand of the craftsman, or to the mode of the fabrication, such as the hammers and coals and bellows and anvil, by which the craftsman shaped it? No one could say.

And what has been said in the case of the one example fits all things wrought through some fabrication: that what comes to be is in no way made like to the mode of generation.

For what has the form of a garment in common with the bobbin, or the rods, or the shuttle, or in general with the mode of the weaver's fabrication? And what has the bench in common with the working of the wood, or any other of the things produced with the shape of the one who wrought it? But in the case of things perceptible and corporeal, I think that even our adversaries themselves would agree that this argument fails.

It would remain, then, to consider whether it contributes anything toward the construction of the blasphemy.

What, then, was the thing being sought? That it must be confessed whether the Son is according to substance like or unlike to the Father—which, he says, because it could not be learned from the accounts of providence, he ascended to the mode of generation, so that through this he might know, not whether the begotten stands in likeness to the begetter, but some 'mode of likeness'; and because this is unknown to the many, on this account he busies himself with the substance that begot.

Has he then forgotten his own definitions, in which he says that essences must be apprehended from their works? How is it that, while the begotten essence—which he names a 'work' of the essence set above it—has not yet been made manifest as to how it stands with respect to its nature, he passes over what is, as he himself says, 'lower' and therefore nearer to the apprehension of those who inquire, and instead attaches himself to the most authoritative and highest? And though in his own discourse he sets up an exact knowledge of the divine utterances, he now makes but little account of them, as though ignorant that it is not possible to draw near to the knowledge of the Father except by approaching through the Son. For 'No one has known the Father,' He says, 'except the Son, and he to whom the Son may will to reveal Him.'

He says that these conjectures, taken by the bare word alone, are the lesser; yet in the conception involved in the knowledge of divine things he unwittingly establishes what is the greater concerning it—since, having grasped the essence of the Father as more readily accessible to understanding, he attempts through that essence to track out and to reason to the nature of the Son.

At any rate he ascends to the begetting essence, and through it examines the begotten.

The reason, he says, is that the manner of begetting is displayed by the natural dignity of the one begetting.

Once again, this—thrown out simply and without distinction—makes the inquirer's notion spread indiscriminately over all cases alike.

For such are dogmas laid down universally: that they are carried by their implications onto all cases, and that nothing is exempted from the all-embracing statement.

If, then, the manner of begetting is in every case made known by the natural dignity of the one begetting, and if the differences among those who beget are many according to their dignities and are apprehended under many conceptions (for there is begotten a Jew, a Greek, a barbarian, a Scythian, a slave, a free man), what is established from these things? That there will be, in all likelihood, as many manners of begetting as there are differences among the begetters according to their natural dignities.

So that begetting is not fulfilled in the same manner in all cases, but the natures change together with the dignities of the begetters, and there must be innovated for each of the offspring some peculiar manner of begetting according to the difference of dignities.

For certain dignities are altogether connatural with each individual and are observed in them, differing from one another towards the better or the worse, according as there befalls each one: race, rank, religion, homeland, sovereignty, servitude, wealth, poverty, freedom, subjection—all the things that produce the differences of dignity in the course of life.

If, then, as Eunomius says, the manner of begetting is displayed by the natural dignity of the one begetting, and if the differences of dignities are many, then assuredly, according to this dogmatist, the manners of begetting will also be found to be many, and one will be brought forth in one way and another in another, since the difference of dignities legislates for the nature the manner of birth.

But if he will not admit that such dignities are natural, on the ground that they are contemplated as outside of nature, neither do we contradict him.

He will, however, altogether agree to this: that it is by a certain natural dignity that human life is entirely distinguished from the life of the irrational creatures.

But the manner of birth has no variation corresponding to the difference in natural dignity, since nature brings both the rational and the irrational into life through begetting in a like manner.

But if it is only in the case of that essence which he himself names the 'most authoritative and highest' that the connatural dignity applies, let us see what he even means by saying this.

For as our own account holds, connatural with God as His dignity is Godhead itself, wisdom, power, being good, a just judge, mighty, long-suffering, true, Creator, Sovereign, invisible, unending—and whatever else is spoken by the God-inspired Scripture unto His glorifying; all of which we affirm are contemplated properly and connaturally in the Only-begotten Son as well, recognizing the difference only in the notion of being without beginning, and this we do not sever from the Only-begotten in every sense of the term.

Let no one tear our argument to pieces by calumny, as though we were undertaking to prove that the true Son is unbegotten.

For we distinctly declare that those who say such things are guilty of no less impiety than those who dogmatize that He is unlike.

But since the term 'beginning' has many meanings and is carried by its implications in many directions, there are senses in which we say that the appellation 'without beginning' is not incongruous even with the Only-begotten Son.

For when by the word 'without beginning' is meant not having one's subsistence from any cause, this we confess to be proper to the Father alone, who exists in an unbegotten manner.

...to believe that there is a sequence of order in Him through whom all things came to be.

So that He who, in respect of the account of subsistence, is not without beginning, yet in all other respects is confessed to have that which is without beginning; and the Father is both without beginning and unbegotten, while the Son is without beginning in the manner stated, but not also unbegotten.

To what connatural dignity of the Father, then, does he look when through it he reasons out the manner of begetting? To ungeneracy, he will assuredly say.

Therefore, if we call idle and meaningless all the names which we have learned unto the glorifying of the God of all, then the enumeration of such utterances, brought forward in a bare catalogue, is superfluous and otiose—since none of the remaining appellations presents the natural dignity of Him who is over all.

But if each of the things spoken is recognized as having a peculiar meaning befitting the conception we hold concerning God, then plainly, according to the number of the names, the connatural dignities of God also are contemplated; and through these the likeness of the essences is established, seeing that the dignities connatural with essences are indicative of the underlying subjects.

And since these same dignities appear in each of the two, the identity in essence of the things underlying the same dignities is clearly demonstrated.

For if the variation of a single name is thought sufficient to indicate the foreignness of essence, how much more will the identity of ten thousand names avail to present the commonness of nature? What, then, is the reason for which the rest of the names are disregarded, and by the one alone the begetting is inferred? And why do they dogmatize that the sole connatural dignity of the Father is ungeneracy, thrusting aside the rest? It is in order that, by the antithesis to that which is begotten, they may pervert the mode of the likeness—which very thing too, when it is corrected in its proper season, will, like the points already mentioned, be found equally ineffectual, without substance, and worth nothing.

That all his constructions look to this, what follows shows, wherein he congratulates himself on having, as was fitting, used that method for the establishing of his blasphemy—not straightway laying bare the intent of his argument, nor, before he had knit together the fabric of his deceit, assailing with impiety ears still unpracticed, nor even in the prefaces of his discourse declaring the ungenerate essence and dinning into men's ears the otherness of essence—but speaking thus, according to the very letter of his words.

'Or, as Basil legislates, one ought to have begun from the very matters under inquiry, disjointedly asserting the ungenerate essence and dinning in the otherness—or the identity—of essence?' Concerning which, after going on at length in the meantime with jibes and revilings and insults (for such is the wise man's way of contending on behalf of his own dogmas), he again takes up the argument, and, aiming forsooth at his adversary and laying upon him the responsibility for what is said, he speaks as follows:

'Since indeed you, before all others, are liable to these faults—you who have assigned the same essence to the one who begot and to the one begotten; wherefore you have also fashioned against yourselves, as it were, an inescapable snare in the reviling directed at these matters, since justice, as is fitting, casts its vote by your own arguments against your very selves.'

'For either, supposing these essences to be separated from one another without beginning, and leading the one of them into the rank of a son through begetting, and maintaining that the one who is without beginning came to be by the One who is—you fall under your own revilings (for the one whom you imagine to be unbegotten, to him you ascribe a begetting from another); or, confessing one and only essence without beginning, and then circumscribing this into Father and Son by begetting, you will say that the unbegotten essence has been begotten by its very own self.'

Now the things written by him before those which have been read out, since they contain but a bare shamelessness against our teacher and father and contribute nothing to the aim before us, I shall pass over.

Having sharpened his weapon by the device of dilemmas, he sets it forth; and it is necessary for us too not to receive this war against the doctrine in silence, but, so far as we have the power, to fight on the side of the argument and to show that this dread and two-edged sword, which he has whetted against the truth, is feebler than the things that appear in shadow-paintings.

These things I write in my own wording—not misinterpreting his meaning, but correcting the bombastic and overloaded character of his phrasing, so that his intent may become easily surveyable to all, being uncovered through the clarity of the wording.

For he who mocks our want of learning and reproaches us with having come to the discussion from an insufficient preparation, so prides himself on the brilliance of his phrasing in his own discourse, so pares his words to the quick—as he himself terms it—adorning his composition with this excessive fine style, that he might straightway captivate the hearer by the pleasure of the diction;

of which sort, among many others, are also the passages now read out.

And, if it seems good, I will read them out once again.

'Wherefore you have also fashioned against yourselves, as it were, an inescapable snare in the reviling directed at these matters, since justice, as is fitting, casts its vote by your own arguments against your very selves.'

Behold the blossoms of the ancient Attic tongue—how the smoothness and burnished polish of the diction flashes forth in the arrangement of the discourse, how gracefully and with varied ornament it is decked out with flowers by the bloom of the language!

But let these things be as anyone pleases; for us, however, let our course turn back again to the meaning of what has been said, and through these very words, if it seems good, let us come to grips with the diction of this word-monger.

'For either, supposing these essences to be separated from one another without beginning, and leading the one of them into the rank of a son through begetting, and maintaining that the one who is without beginning has come to be by the One who is...'

He says that we champion two unbegotten essences. But how does he say this, he who charges us with confounding and confusing all things by our confessing one essence? For if our own account, on a par with those who dogmatize the Unlike, championed two natures which stand foreign to one another in respect of being, it would rightly be thought to carry the division of nature over into the notion of two several first-principles.

But if one nature in differing hypostases is confessed by us, and the Father is believed in and the Son is glorified, how is such a doctrine slanderously charged by our opponents with championing two first-principles? Then, out of these two first-principles, he says that one is by us brought down into the rank of a son, and that the One who is has come to be by the One who is.

Let him point out the sponsor of this statement, and we will keep silence—whether he can convict some person who has blurted out these things, or whether he simply knows this statement to be current in the churches.

For who is so deranged in his reasonings and so out of his mind as to speak of Father and Son, and yet again to suppose two unbegotten, and once more to hold that the one has come to be by the other? And what is the necessity that thrusts the doctrine into such suppositions? By what arguments of his own was this constructed, so that this absurdity should of necessity crop up? For if he had brought forward something of what is confessed by us, and then through this had advanced—whether sophistically or by some demonstrative force—such a calumny, he would perhaps have had occasion to bring forth such things unto the discrediting of the doctrine.

But if there neither exists, nor could ever arise in the church, such a statement, and neither is the one who spoke it convicted, nor is the one who heard it produced, nor is any necessity found which, through some logical consequence, establishes this absurdity—then what his shadow-boxing is meant to accomplish, I do not see.

...like one grappling, who then, in his eagerness, having thrown himself down, imagines that it is his opponent whom he has thrown—some such thing the wise word-monger has undergone, fabricating suppositions which we do not recognize, and grappling with shadows which he has fashioned by his own reasonings.

For let him say: what necessity is there that one who confesses the Son to have been begotten of the Father should be carried away into the supposition of two unbegotten? Or to whom does it rather belong to establish two unbegotten—to him who maintains that the Son is so called falsely, or to him who firmly affirms that the nature is truly verified by the appellation? For he who does not accept the true begetting of the Son, yet confesses that He is at all, might more fittingly be supposed to call unbegotten the one who indeed is, but does not have his being through begetting;

whereas he who defines the distinguishing likeness of the Only-begotten's hypostasis to be this very thing—that He has His subsistence from the Father by way of begetting—how could he be thought to be carried aside into the notion of the unbegotten? And yet, according to you wise men, so long as it holds that the Son was not begotten of the Father, He too will properly be named unbegotten, in some one of the senses signified by 'unbegotten.'

For since some things come to be by being born and others by being fashioned, nothing prevents us from saying that that which has its subsistence not through begetting subsists unbegottenly—according to the one signification of 'begetting' alone.

But this is precisely what your own account concerning the Lord establishes—the account which defines Him to be a creature.

Therefore, according to you, O most wise men, the Only-begotten will, by such a logical consequence, be named unbegotten—not according to our doctrine; and there is found against you the justice—whatever kind of justice you speak of—casting its vote by your own arguments against you.

For it is opportune, out of the mire of the arguments from that quarter, to spit upon the loathsomeness of the doctrine.

For indeed the other member also of the things set forth by him in the dilemma is possessed of equal madness.

'Or,' he says, 'confessing one and only essence without beginning, and then circumscribing this into Father and Son by begetting, you will say that the unbegotten essence has been begotten by its very own self.'

What again is this new monstrous tale? How is one begotten by one's own self, having oneself as father and again becoming one's own son? What is this nausea, what this reeling—that the ceiling should turn upside down beneath one's feet and one should have the floor overhead? Which is the very thing that men heavy-headed with drunkenness imagine, and cry out and stoutly maintain that neither has the ground stayed firm beneath them, and that the walls are fleeing away, and that all things are whirling round in a circle, and that the things before their eyes have no fixity at all.

Perhaps, then, it was with his soul in some such tossing that the word-monger was composing; and it is fitting rather to pity him for what he has written than to loathe him.

For who is so deaf to the divine doctrines, who is so far removed from the mysteries of the church, as to admit such a notion against the faith? Or rather, it is perhaps too small a thing to say this—that no one has ever entertained this absurdity against the faith.

But who, in the case of human nature or of any other of the things apprehended through sense-perception, when he hears of the commonness of essence, either supposes all those things which agree with one another in respect of essence to be without beginning, or says that any one of them comes to be out of itself, and at once both begets itself and is begotten by itself? The first man and he who came from him, though each of the two has his being differently—the one from the union of parents, the other from the fashioning of the clay—are both believed to be two, and are not sundered from one another in respect of the account of essence; and neither are two essences without beginning said to be set in opposition to one another, nor is he who is said to be begotten by him who is, nor were the two ever conceived as one, in that monstrous fashion of the argument, so as for both to be reckoned each his own father and again his own son.

For a man is both this one and that one, and the account of essence is common to the two.

Each is mortal, rational alike, receptive of intellect and knowledge in like manner.

Though the manner of existence introduces the variation into the nature, yet by the common assent of sober minds it is agreed that they are alike; and no one would gainsay this who does not stand greatly in need of hellebore. What necessity, then, is there for this irrational notion to be established against the divine nature? Having heard from the truth of Father and Son, we were taught the unity of nature in two underlying subjects, the relation to one another being naturally signified by the very names, and again by the very voice of the Lord.

For He who said, 'I and the Father are one,' what else does He do but present, through the confession of the Father, that He Himself is not without beginning, and signify the commonness of nature through the unity with the Father? So that, I think, through the things said, the doctrine of the faith may be kept pure of the deviation towards either of the heresies—neither Sabellius having room to bring the distinctness of the hypostases into confusion, since the Only-begotten plainly distinguished Himself from the Father in saying 'I and the Father,' nor Arius being able to establish the foreignness of nature, since the unity of the two does not admit the division according to nature.

For nothing else is that which, in this saying, is signified through the unity concerning Father and Son, except unity in respect of the essence itself.

For as to the rest of the good things which are contemplated in the nature, one who says that they lie open in common to all will not err even with respect to the things that have come to be through creation.

For example, 'Compassionate and merciful is the Lord,' is said by the prophet.

These things the Lord again wills that we too should both become and be called;

for 'Be compassionate,' and 'Blessed are the merciful,' and all such sayings.

Is it then the case that, if someone, by attention and diligence, having likened himself to the divine will, became good, or compassionate and merciful, or gentle and lowly in heart—as many of the saints have been attested to have become in these excellences—that by reason of this he is one with God, or joined to Him through some one of these qualities? This is not so.

For that which is not the same in all respects cannot be one with that which differs from it in nature.

For this reason man becomes one with man, when they are perfected into one through free choice, as the Lord said, the unity according to choice being taken up in addition to the natural conjunction.

Both the Father and the Son are one, since their communion according to nature and according to purpose has run together into a single unity.