駁歐諾米 第 1 章 第 16/56 段

But if His pre-subsisting even before speech and thought is confessed by all, while the imposition of the name—by which the mind is declared—is said to have been devised by us through conception; and if his aim in his quarrel with us is to show that the name was not devised by men, but that this too existed even before our constitution—then I do not know, whatever is being said, what the assertion that God pre-subsists over existing things in an ungenerate manner has in common with the earnestness set before him, and with his contending strenuously to affirm that the conception of God is of later origin.

For let no one declare that God is a conception, so as to contend against Him with such arguments and to say what he has said—that it is the mark of madmen to hold the conception more ancient than those who conceive it—and, besides these, all the other things he goes on to expound.

Just as, likewise, it is the mark of those who are not in their right mind to prefer men—though they are the last of God's works—to their own conception. For truly the argument would have great force, if indeed anyone, out of madness or derangement, were declaring that God is a conception.

But if this argument neither exists nor has ever been made (for who would drive himself into such a pitch of insanity as to say that He who truly is, and who has brought all other existing things into being, does not exist according to His own hypostasis, but to declare Him a conception of a name?)—why do you fight in vain, contending with a shadow, waging war against things that have not been laid down? Or is the reason for this senseless contentiousness plain: that, being ashamed on behalf of those who were deceived through the sophistry concerning ungeneracy—since it was thoroughly proven that the name is very far separated from any signification of the essence—he willingly makes a confusion of what is said, transferring the fight from the name to the things themselves, so that the unwary might easily be misled through such confusion, supposing either that God is said by us to be a conception, or that He is second to the invention of human names? And on this account, leaving our argument unrefuted, does he transfer the fight to other matters? For what came from us, as has been said, was that the name of ungeneracy does not display the nature, but is fitted to the nature by conception, whereby it is signified that He subsists without a cause.

But what was being constructed by them was that the term is indicative of the essence itself.

Where, then, has it been established that the force of the name is such? But these things, at any rate, are altogether reserved for some other discourses, while all his labour has been busied about God's subsisting in an ungenerate manner.

It is as though, if someone had plainly asked him about these matters—what thought he holds concerning the name of ungeneracy, whether as conceived toward the indication that the First Cause is without beginning, or as declarative of the essence itself—he had answered, very solemnly and knowingly, that he does not doubt that God is the Maker of heaven and earth.

Just as, then, this answer is out of tune with what was proposed and is not connected with it, in the same way you would find, in the case of the finely-penned battle he has waged against us, that it is disconnected from its aim.

With this we too agree.

But that ungeneracy is also an essence—

against this there is a rejoinder from us.

For we say that this is a name indicative of God's subsisting in an ungenerate manner, not that ungeneracy is God.

He undertakes to refute our argument.

What, then, is the refutation? 'That before the constitution of men,' he says, 'He was, in an ungenerate manner.'

What has this to do with the point in question? This man promises to show that the name is the same as the subject.

For he defines ingeneracy as being substance itself.

What, then, is the demonstration? To show that God pre-existed those who make use of speech? O for this irrefutable and marvellous demonstration!

This is the logical subtlety derived from the dialectical art, against which which of the uninitiated in that ineffable instruction could hold up his gaze? Yet solemnly, in his distinctions concerning conception, he holds up to ridicule the very name of conception.

For of things thus spoken of according to conception, he says that some have their existence only in the utterance, as things signifying nothing, while others exist according to a proper meaning of their own;

and of these latter, some are by way of enlargement, as in the case of colossuses; some by way of diminution, as in the case of pygmies; some by way of addition, as in the case of the many-headed; or by way of composition, as in the case of hybrid monsters.

Do you see into what the sage has chopped up conception for us, and how he has not deigned to let its power advance any further?

He says that conception is meaningless and unintelligible, contriving things contrary to nature, or curtailing, or overstretching the appointed measures of nature, or compounding things of diverse natures, or working monstrosities by outlandish additions.

By these means, having mocked the name of conception, he demonstrates that, according to him, it is useless and profitless for life.

Whence, then, come the higher branches of learning? Whence geometry and the philosophy of arithmetic, and the teaching of logical and physical theorems, and the inventions of machines and the wonders wrought in water-clocks by means of bronze and water, and philosophy itself concerning that which is, and the contemplation of intelligible things, and, to speak comprehensively, the whole occupation of the soul with things great and lofty? And what of agriculture, what of navigation, what of the rest of the management of our life? Whence is the sea made passable for man? How has the air been made subject to the land-dweller, how is the untamed tamed, how is the more fearsome subdued, how does the stronger not rebel? Were not all these things invented for human life through conception? For, according at least to my reasoning, conception is a method for discovering the unknown, finding out what comes next by means of what is proximate to and consequent upon the first notion concerning the object of study.

For having conceived something concerning the object of inquiry, we fit what follows to the beginning of what was grasped by means of the notions we discover, and so bring the undertaking to the completion of what we are pursuing.

And why should I enumerate the greater and loftier achievements of conception? For it is possible for anyone not contentiously disposed toward the truth to see that all the other things too—whatever is beneficial and useful to human life, and which time has discovered—have been found out in no other way than through conception.

And it seems to me that, of all the good things at work in us in this life, of those present in our souls by divine providence, whoever judges conception more honourable would not fall short of a fitting judgement.

I say these things having been taught by Job, in that passage where God is represented as speaking by his word to his servant through storm and clouds, saying among other things whatever it was fitting for God to say, and that it was he who set man over the arts and bestowed on women the science of weaving and embroidery.

For that he did not teach us such arts by some direct operation, himself presiding over the work, as one may see in things taught bodily, no one at all would gainsay—unless he were someone fleshly and brutish.

But nevertheless it has been said by him that the guidance in such arts has come to us from him.

He himself brought us forward to the arts by giving the power for the things sought; and by the account of causation, everything that is discovered and successfully accomplished is referred back to the author of this power.

In this way life discovered medicine also; yet nonetheless one will not err in calling medicine a gift of God.

And everything whatsoever has been discovered in human life, whether in peace or war, aptly suited to some useful purpose, has come to us from no other source, but from the mind conceiving and discovering each thing for us correspondingly;

therefore all things which have been provided for us through the mind are from God.

But that fabulous fictions and false monstrosities are, as our adversaries allege, fashioned and framed as fables by conception—this too I myself do not deny;

for their argument too tends toward our aim.

For we ourselves also say that the knowledge of opposites is one and the same—of things beneficial and of things otherwise disposed—such as medicine and steersmanship and anything else of the sort;

for he who knows how to help the sick by means of a drug would also know, if he were to use his art for evil, how to rub the poison into the healthy;

and he who steers the vessel with the rudder toward the harbour could also steer it upon reefs or rocks, if this were dear to him—to destroy the passengers by treachery;

and the painter, by one and the same art, both displays the fairest form upon the panel and vividly imitates again the most shameful;

so the trainer, by his experience in anointing, both fits back the dislocated limb and, if he should wish, by the same art puts out of joint the one that is sound.

And why should I speak of each in particular and bring a great throng into the argument? As, then, in the cases mentioned no one would gainsay that the one who has learned an art for a better use of its working could also use that same art for what he ought not, so too we say that the power of conception has been implanted in human nature by God for good, but that, some having misused the discovering power, it often becomes a servant and helper of unprofitable inventions.

Therefore it is not the case that, because conception can plausibly fashion false and non-existent things, for this reason it cannot investigate things that truly are and really subsist; rather, its aptitude for the former becomes, for the fair-minded, a testimony of its power toward the latter.

For the fact that one who has set out to contrive some astonishment or delight for the beholders does not lack the conception directed toward his object, but can shape figures many-handed or many-headed, or breathing fire, or coiled together in the folds of serpents, or exalt proportion to something greater, or curtail the measures of nature to the ridiculous, or narrate men becoming, through transformation, springs and trees and birds—by which those who take pleasure in such things can find some entertainment—this, I affirm, is a most manifest demonstration that it can also comprehend, by its discovering power, the better sort of learning.

For it is not the case that the mind has been implanted in us by its Giver as complete for the fashioning of things non-existent, yet has been allotted no productive power for the discovery of things beneficial to the soul, of things profitable;

but just as the impulsive and elective power of our soul was principally framed by nature for the desire of things beautiful and good, though one might use such a motion also for what one ought not—and no one would say that its inclining sometimes toward base things is a proof that the will inclines toward no good at all—so too the movement of conception toward things vain and profitless is no accusation of an incapacity toward the useful, but becomes a demonstration that it is not idle toward things beneficial to the soul and necessary as well.

For as there it discovered what conduces to pleasure or astonishment, so here too it will not fail of the methods that lead toward truth.

It has its being dependent upon a beginning.

And having grasped by the understanding that what is conceived as being from another cannot be first, we conceived a name expressive of such a supposition, and we say that he who is without a cause lying above him is without beginning, or in other words ingenerate.

And him who thus is, we have named ingenerate and without beginning, indicating by the name not what he is, but what he is not.

And in order that the thought may become as clear as possible, I shall try to set it forth by means of a plainer illustration.

Let it be granted that the inquiry concerns some tree, whether it is planted or has come to be spontaneously.

If, then, it be from planting, we shall by all means call the tree planted; but if spontaneous, unplanted.

Such a name, then, does not miss the truth;

for the tree will by all means be either thus or otherwise, yet it does not indicate the distinctive nature of the plant.

For that it exists by its own growth we learned through the word 'unplanted'; but whether the thing signified is a plane-tree or a vine or some other of such plants, by such a naming we were not taught.

If, then, the illustration has been understood, it would be the moment to transfer the argument to the matter of which it is an illustration.

We have grasped that the First Cause has its being from no cause lying above it.

Bringing, then, this notion concerning the God who is ingenerately into the form of a name, we have named him ingenerate.

That, then, he is not through generation, we have made clear from the signification of the name; but as to what the very substance which is ingenerately is according to its own nature, by this appellation we were led to nothing toward beholding it.

For it was not likely that the conception of our reasonings should have strength up to such a point as to raise us above the measures of nature, and to set us upon things ungraspable, and to comprehend within our knowledge those things to which there is no approach for understanding.

But he shakes and drags about our teacher and the argument which the latter states concerning conception, and he mocks what has been said, again as usual playing the satyr in his words with the clatter of his little phrases, and he says:

Of those things whose interpretation he appropriates, he is ashamed of their testimony.

For having reported some part of the things contemplated according to conception by our teacher—in which the latter asserted that the use of conception is at work not only in vain matters but also has some power toward greater things—he adduces, by means of the illustration concerning the corn and the seed and the nourishment, the aforesaid things, charging him with following the philosophy that is from without, and he says that he cuts away the providential care of God, in that he does not confess that the names were imposed upon things by him, and that he allies himself with the atheists and arms himself against providence, and admires their opinion above the laws, and assigns to them a greater share of wisdom, not having considered the first words of the account, namely that, men not yet having been brought into being, the appellation of fruit and seed was named by Scripture.

These are the charges brought against us by him—the thoughts not written thus in his words, but our phrasing has been so far altered as to set right the harsh and ill-sounding character of the syntax of what was said.

What, then, do we, what do we answer to this guardian of divine providence? He says that we do wrong, in that we do not deny that man has been made rational by God, yet we refer the inventions of words to the rational power implanted by God in the nature of men.

And this is the gravest of the charges, through which the teacher of piety is accused of deserting to the opinion of the atheists, and is named heir and advocate of a lawless custom, and everything most terrible.

Let the corrector of our faults, then, tell us: Did God impose the appellations upon the things that are? For this the new expositor of the mystical doctrines says—that God named sprout and herb and grass and seed and tree and such things before the fashioning of man, in bringing into creation, by his command, the things that had come to be.

Therefore if he abides by the bare letter and in this respect judaizes in his opinion, and has not yet been taught that the Christian is a disciple not of the letter but of the Spirit (for the letter, it says, kills, but the Spirit gives life), and offers to us the bare reading of what is written according to the word, as though God had recounted these things, and if he has believed this, he will establish nothing other than that God, in the likeness of men, used discursive speech and by voice and utterance gave shape to his thoughts.

If, then, he thinks this, he will assuredly not deny the things that follow upon it;

for the speech that comes from us is uttered through the vocal parts—windpipe, tongue, teeth, mouth—the drawing of the air and the breath from within also cooperating toward the utterance.

For the windpipe resounds to us from below, fitted to the throat after the manner of a pipe;

and the palate, through the cavity lying above that runs along the nostrils, like a bridge from above spreads out the utterance upon the sound.

But the cheeks also cooperate with speech, being hollowed and widened according to the various shapings of the articulations, and again bringing forth the utterance through a narrow passage, according to the many turnings of the tongue, which it makes now in one part of itself, now in another, roughening or pressing somewhat the breath that passes through it against either the teeth or the palate.

And the service of the lips also contributes something, in the varied manner of their motion diversely touching upon the utterance and completing the form of the words.

If, then, God imposes the names upon things, as the new expositor of the divine history has explained—naming sprout and herb and tree and fruit—there is every necessity that he speak each of these in no other way than as it is spoken, namely according to the combinations of syllables, of which some are shaped through the lips, some through the tongue, some through both.

If, then, the name could not be uttered otherwise, the vocal parts not generating the syllables and the speech through their particular motion, it follows by all means that he attributes these also to God, and for the need of speech will fashion the divine into a shape.

For the particular fashioning of the parts that accomplish the voice is by all means in a figure;

and every body has not escaped being composite.

And where composition is contemplated, there is by all means grasped also the dissolution of the composite;

and dissolution is the same, in respect of the notion, as corruption.

Therefore this is the sum of the victory over us for the word-fabricator: to have shown his own private god, whom he fashioned through the name of ingeneracy, as uttering sound—that he may not be destitute of the invention of names; as being shaped by the vocal members—that he may utter the names; as not destitute of the nature of body by reason of the necessity of the figures (for no figure could be contemplated by itself, being by all means impressed in a body); and, advancing little by little toward the passions congenital with body, as terminating, through the composite, in dissolution, and through this in corruption.

Such is the nature of the newfangled god that has, through the sequence of the things said by the new god-maker, been brought to light.

But he lays hold of the things written, and says that Moses cries these things out expressly—that God said—and he adds the words: 'Let there be light,' and 'Let there be a firmament,' and 'Let the waters be gathered together,' and 'Let the dry land appear,' and 'Let the earth put forth,' and 'Let the waters bring forth,' and all that is recorded thereafter in order.

Let us, then, examine the meaning of the things that have been said.

Who does not know, even among mere infants, that hearing and speech have a natural relation to one another, and that just as it is impossible for hearing to be active when no one is uttering a sound, so neither can speech be operative unless it is directed toward hearing?

If, then, he says that God spoke, let him also point out to us the hearing toward which He spoke.

Or will he say that He spoke these things to Himself? In that case He is issuing commands to Himself, giving orders as by injunction.

...making use of commands and of a servant? But even if one should grant that it is pious to say this, who, in dealing with himself, ever needed words and speech—even if he be a man? For to each person the mere movement of the mind suffices to produce the impulse of the will.

But he will surely say that He was conversing with the Son.

And what need was there of a voice for this? For it is peculiar to embodied nature to declare the thoughts of the heart by means of words.

Hence also there has been devised, by the invention of letters, a means of manifestation equal in force to the use of the voice.

For equally by speaking and by writing we declare what has been conceived; but with those not very far off we reach the hearing by the voice, while to those at a distance we make our mind known by letters; and with those present, according to the measure of the distance, we either raise or lower the pitch of the voice; and there are times when, merely by a nod, we have made clear to those near us what is to be done, and the purpose in the soul has been indicated both by an eye so disposed and by a certain movement of the hand, which either forbade or accepted something being done.

If, then, those who are enclosed in a body often make known to their neighbors the hidden movements of the mind even without voice or word or written intercourse, and silence has brought no loss to the matter being pursued, is there then need of words for the immaterial, intangible, and (as Eunomius says) highest and first Essence—words that make plain the Father's thought and reveal His will to the Only-begotten? Words which, as he himself says, are by nature dissolved together with the voice? I do not know whether any person of sense would accept these things as true; especially since, every sound being altogether poured out into the air (for it is not even possible for a voice to be formed except as it is constituted in air), there is every necessity to posit also some medium between the one speaking and the one to whom the discourse is addressed.

For if there were no intermediary, how would the voice make its way from the one speaking to the one hearing? What, then, will they say is the medium by which they separate the Son from the Father? For in the case of bodies the space along the air becomes the medium, being something other in its own nature than the substance of human bodies.

But God, who is intangible and formless and free from all composition, communicating His own counsels in a manner like the Only-begotten God—or rather in the very same way, immaterially and incorporeally—if indeed He effected this communication by means of a voice, what medium did He have through which the word, flowing and being transferred, might be conveyed into the hearing of the Only-begotten?... if indeed we must also pass over this, unexamined: that the Divine is not divided among perceptive faculties, as with us each of the senses grasps its own kindred object distinctly—sight the visible, and the sense of hearing the audible—and neither does touch taste, nor does hearing have the perception of vapors or of flavors, but each remains fixed to the one activity to which it was appointed by nature, in a manner insensible to that for which it was not made, and untasting of the enjoyment which its neighboring sense reaps.

But there it is not so; rather, the Divine is wholly through the whole sight and hearing and knowledge.

For it is surely not lawful to fit the more animal-like of the senses to the undefiled Nature.

Yet if one must suppose something lowly and bring down the Divine to grovelling notions—so as to think that the Father speaks words through a mouth, and the hearing of the Son is active—what medium do we posit as conveying the paternal voice into the hearing of the Son?... Must this be created or uncreated? But it cannot be said to be created;

for the Word came into being before the creation was constituted.

But apart from the divine Nature there is nothing uncreated.

...the Father, and the Son inserted in the midst between the two.

What, then, is this? It is not created;

for the creation is younger than the Word.

We have been taught that the Only-begotten is begotten; but apart from the Father nothing is unbegotten.

Therefore, of necessity, the word of truth constrains us to conceive that there is nothing intermediate between the Father and the Son.

And where no interval is conceived, there conjunction is altogether confessed; and that which is conjoined throughout is not mediated by voice and word.

By 'conjoined' I mean that which is in all respects inseparable.

For in the case of the intelligible Nature the name of conjunction does not indicate some bodily connaturality, but the union and commingling of the intelligible with the intelligible through the identity of wills.

And just as if one were to behold himself in a mirror (for nothing prevents presenting the thought by bodily examples), the image will be shaped in every respect according to the prototype, so that the form looking in is the cause of the form in the mirror, and the image neither moves nor inclines of itself unless the prototype has begun the inclination or the movement, and if the leading form is moved, that which is shown in the mirror is likewise altogether moved along with it—so we say that the Image of the invisible God, the Lord, is disposed together with the Father toward every movement of the will, without any medium and without any interval.

The Father willed something, and the Son who is in the Father had the will of the Father; or rather, He Himself became the will of the Father.

For He who has all things of the Father in Himself lacks nothing of what belongs to the Father.

If, then, He has in Himself all that belongs to the Father—or rather the Father Himself—He surely has in Himself, together with the Father and the things of the Father, the whole paternal will.

He has no need, therefore, to learn the Father's will by word, being Himself the Word of the Father according to the higher signification of 'word.'

Who, then, is that word which comes to the true Word? And how does the true Word again need another word for instruction? But someone will say that the voice of the Father is directed toward the Holy Spirit.

Neither does the Spirit need instruction from words—the Spirit who is in God, as the Apostle says, and searches all things, even the depths of God.

If, then, God utters words, and every discourse is effected upon hearing, let those who declare that God harangues in continuous discourses make known to us also the auditorium of the divine words.

He had no need to speak to Himself; the Son was without need of instruction from words; the Holy Spirit, it says, searches all things, even the depths of God; the creation did not yet exist;

toward whom, then, was the word directed? But the Scripture of Moses, he says, does not lie, through which it declares that God said something.

'Day to day pours forth speech, and night declares knowledge to night.'

And having said that the heavens and the firmament recount, and that knowledge and words are proclaimed by the day and by the night, he again adds to what has been said that these are not utterances, nor words, nor are their voices heard.

How then are they narrations and proclamations and words, yet not utterances, nor a voice arising through the sense of hearing? Does the prophet contradict himself? Does he set forth something impossible, teaching of a soundless word, a speechless narration, and a proclamation without voice? Or is the prophecy true above all else, which teaches through these words this very thing: that the heavenly narration and the word cried out by the day is neither an articulate voice nor speech through a mouth, but becomes an instruction of the divine power to those who know how to hearken to a silent voice?... What, then, have we supposed concerning these things? For perhaps, if we understand this, we shall also have understood what is from Moses.