駁歐諾米 第 1 章 第 34/56 段

But this man, keen and comprehensive in mind, overturning the account given concerning conception—the account which said that it is possible to find many appellations for the one subject according to the significations of the activities—vigorously employs against us the battle, saying that such words were not imposed upon the Lord by any other.

What then has this to do with the present endeavor? Because the names are spoken by the Lord, will he grant that these are not names, nor appellations, nor words significative of notions? For if he does not admit that these are names, then by the abolition of the appellations, conception too is abolished along with them;

but if he does not deny that these words are names, what harm does it do to the doctrine of conception to show that these appellations were imposed not by any other, but by the Lord Himself? For what was being said was this: that, in a manner similar to the example of the wheat, the Lord, being one according to His subject, has names also suited to His activities.

And since it is agreed that the wheat has its names according to the conception of the things contemplated concerning it, it was thereby also established that these words, in the case of the Lord, are not significative of nature, but subsist by the principle of conception in the things thought concerning Him.

But our opponent, out of much attentiveness, does not make his fight against what was set forth, but says that He named these things by Himself—much as if someone, inquiring into the interpretation of the name Isaac, whether it is interpreted as 'laughter,' as some say, or signifies something else, and one of Eunomius' party should answer, with an air of authority, that the name was imposed upon the child by his mother.

But that, one might say, was not the question—by whom the name was procured—but what the meaning of the name signifies when rendered into our tongue.

He charges us with attaching to our conceptions appellations allotted by God, without saying what this allotment of appellations is, and when and how it came to be—but rather charging that we jumble together all things, and bring the essence and the activity of the Only-begotten to one and the same thing; yet without having discussed or demonstrated anything about this very point, namely, how the activity is by us established as identical with the essence—at the last he brings on the very crown of his accusations, speaking in these very words.

And now, he says, passing on from these matters, he even surrounds the God over all with the utmost blasphemies, employing broken-off arguments and examples that are utterly out of place.

But I, even before the things examined, would have wished to learn this: from what our arguments are 'broken off,' and from what our examples 'depart'—by no means because I need to learn these things, but rather to expose the rubbish-heap and reckless verbosity of the pamphleteer's words, with which, clattering among the little old wives who live among the men, and preening himself with the pomposity of his petty phrases in the ears of those who admire such things, he sets up this discourse as a monument against himself before the educated, and does not perceive it.

But this has nothing to do with our aim.

For would that the charges against him reached only thus far, and that, sinning in nothing concerning the faith, he were reckoned to err only concerning the delivery of his language—so that it would be a matter of neither praise nor blame to him whether the phrasing were thus or otherwise.

The sequence, then, of the things he has said against us adds this too.

In the case of the wheat, he says, and of the Lord, having variously exercised the conceptions, he says that likewise the most holy essence of God too admits the conceptions variously.

This is the most grievous of the accusations, and upon this he beforehand dramatized those weighty charges against us, imputing to what has been said impiety and absurdity and all such things.

What then is the proof of the impiety? Eunomius said certain things about the wheat—those common matters familiar to all at first glance—explaining both how it comes to be, and how, when brought to maturity, it nourishes through its fruit, being grown and increased and governed by certain natural powers;

and having said these things, he says that it is nothing unlikely that the Only-begotten God too should admit various conceptions, on account of the diversities of the activities and certain proportions and relations.

For these are the names he harps upon to satiety concerning Him.

But how, he says, is it not absurd—or rather unlawful—to compare the Unbegotten to these? To what 'these'? To the wheat, he says, and to the Only-begotten God.

Do you see his piety? He establishes that the paltry wheat and the Only-begotten God stand at an equal distance from the dignity of the Unbegotten God.

And that we do not slander his argument, it is possible to learn his mind from the very things he has written.

For how, he says, is it not absurd—or rather unlawful—to compare the Unbegotten to these? And having said this, he adds, as of equal rank, the argument concerning the wheat and the Lord, judging it an equal absurdity to compare God to either of these.

And it is altogether plain to everyone that things which stand at an equal measure of distance from something also have equality with one another;

so that, according to the wise theologian, the Maker of the ages, who grasps in His hand the whole nature of existing things, has been shown to be of equal standing with the tiniest seed, if indeed both He and the wheat fall equally short of comparison with God.

But the impiety of the argument is of such magnitude.

Now it would be the fitting time to examine also the very structure of his blasphemy, in what connection it has been coherently knit together with itself in his discourse.

Having established in this section the incomparability of the Son with the Father, on the ground that what was contemplated concerning the grain was sufficient to indicate together the Son's variance with the Father in respect of what is lower,

he then discourses concerning the incorruptibility of the Father, as not belonging to Him from an activity accruing to Him.

But whether an activity is that true Life which activates itself, and whether it is identical in meaning both to live always and never to be dissolved into corruption—this I do not yet add to my discourse, but reserve for its own proper places.

But that there is one meaning of incorruptibility, conceived in the same way both of the Father and of the Son, and that in no respect does the incorruptibility of the Father differ from the incorruptibility of the Son—no variance in respect of incorruptibility being found either by any diminution and intensification, or by any other mode of difference—this I say it is timely to affirm both now and always, so that his argument may have no room through this to attest to the Father, by the notion of incorruptibility, that which is incommunicable to the Son.

For just as incorruptibility is apprehended concerning the Father, so also concerning the Only-begotten it is not in doubt that it exists.

For the unreceptiveness of corruption—which both is and is called incorruptibility—has an equal, or rather the same, account in whatever it may be spoken of.

What, then, has he learned that he attests only to the Unbegotten God that His incorruptibility is not from activity, as thereby showing the Father's variance in relation to the Only-begotten? For if he supposes that his created God is corruptible, he rightly demonstrates the variance according to nature by the difference of the corruptible from the incorruptible;

but if each alike is unreceptive of corruption, and neither the 'more' nor the 'less' is apprehended in the incorruptibility that is according to nature, how does he show the incomparability of the Father with the Only-begotten Son? Or what does he mean by attesting to the Father that His incorruptibility is not from activity? But he uncovers his aim in the argument that follows.

'It is not from activities,' he says, 'that He is incorruptible and unbegotten, whereas He is called Father and Creator (from activities).'

To this I would ask the hearer to give special heed.

How does he suppose the signification of these two names to be the same—I mean of 'creatorship' and of 'fatherhood'? For he defines each of these equally to be an activity, thus plainly declaring in his argument that He is incorruptible not by activity, but that He is named Father and Creator from activities.

If, then, it is the same thing to be called Father and Creator, in that the activity becomes for Him the cause of both these names, then it is altogether necessary that the results of the activities also be of the same kind with one another, in respect of this very being from activity in like manner.

To what extreme of blasphemy this leads, by logical sequence, is plain to everyone who has learned to look to what follows.

For my part, I wish to add to this joint examination of the arguments whatever reflections I have upon these matters.

An operation that produces some result cannot subsist by itself, apart from something that receives the motion of the operation; as we say, for instance, that the smith acts, while the material set before his craft is acted upon.

These two, then—the active and the passive power—necessarily have a certain relation to each other; and if one of them be separated in thought, the remaining one could not subsist by itself either.

For if there be no thing that suffers the action, there will be no thing that acts.

What, then, is established by this? If an operation that brings some thing to completion does not subsist by itself, there being no subject that is acted upon, and if the Father, as these men say, is nothing else than an operation, then by their reasoning the Only-begotten Son is proved to be passible, being molded in response to the motion of the operation that gives Him substance.

not by qualities, but by acts of free purpose, shaping the subject; so likewise, of necessity, if one were to define fatherhood as an operation, he will not otherwise demonstrate the subsistence of the Son than as wrought upon some altogether passive matter.

For if He be reckoned impassible, then His impassibility will surely resist the one who acts; and when the operation is thus hindered, there will assuredly be no thing that is wrought.

so that it comes to one of two things: either by this reasoning they will make the essence of the Only-begotten passible, that it may receive the operation; or, shrinking from this because of the manifest impiety, they will establish that He has no existence at all.

For that which is by nature incapable of suffering does not of itself admit the creative operation at all.

He, therefore, who names the Son the product of some operation, ranks Him too among those passible things whose coming forth was by way of an operation; or else, if he denies the passivity, he will together with the passivity deny also His very subsistence.

But since, on either horn of the dilemma set before us, the impiety is manifest—both to say that He does not exist and to suppose Him passible—the truth shines forth plainly, made manifest through the doing away of these absurdities.

For if He truly is, and yet is not passible, it is clear that He is not derived from an operation, but, as befits Him, is true God from the true God the Father, impassibly, from all eternity beamed forth and shining out.

'But,' he says, 'according to His very essence God is incorruptible.'

But what other of the thoughts befitting God does not belong to the very essence of the Son—justice, goodness, eternity, the incapacity for any evil whatever, the being unbounded in all that is conceived as good? Is there anyone who says that any of these excellences is something acquired by the divine nature, and not rather that everything whatsoever that is good takes its origin thence and is beheld in it—as the prophet says, 'For if anything is beautiful, it is His, and if anything is good, it is from Him'? And to this he joins that God is also unbegotten according to His essence.

But as for me: if he says this understanding it thus, that the essence of the Father exists in an unbegotten manner, I assent to what is said and do not oppose the doctrine.

For no one at all among the godly supposes the Father of the Only-begotten to be begotten.

But if, while this is what he indicates by the outward form of his statement, he is really establishing that unbegottenness itself is the essence, this I say must not be passed over unexamined, lest, by insinuation, he lure those easily deceived into assenting to the blasphemy.

That, then, the notion of unbegottenness is one thing, and the account of the divine essence another, is refuted out of his very own statements.

'According to His very essence,' he says, 'He is incorruptible and unbegotten, being unmixed with and pure of all otherness and difference.'

He says these things concerning God, whose essence he declares to be incorruptibility and unbegottenness.

Three names, then, he has used of God: the essence, the incorruptible, the unbegotten.

If the notion is one and the same in the case of God with respect to these three names, then the Godhead is assuredly these three things.

As if one, wishing to characterize man, should say that he is rational, capable of laughter, and broad-nailed.

In such cases, since there is no difference according to nature in each individual, we say that the names are equivalent to one another and that the three are one in respect of the subject—namely, the humanity that is delineated by these names.

If, then, this is the Godhead—the unbegottenness and the incorruptibility and the essence—then of absolute necessity, upon the removal of any one of these, the Godhead too is done away with together with it.

For as one would not call that which is not rational either capable of laughter or even man at all, so also in the case of these three names—I mean the unbegotten and the incorruptible and the essence—if the Godhead is characterized by these, then whenever any one of the three is not present, the account of the Godhead too is assuredly blotted out along with the one that is lacking.

Let him, then, answer what opinion he holds concerning the Only-begotten God.

Does he think Him begotten or unbegotten? He will certainly say 'begotten,' if he is not to fight against his own tenets.

[begotten,] then His essence too and His incorruptibility are done away with together with this; and these being absent, the Godhead too will of all necessity be taken away.

Thus, by the blasphemous consequence of their reasoning, the argument has arrived at a twofold conclusion.

For if in one and the same signification essence and incorruptibility and unbegottenness are predicated of God, then this newfangled maker of gods is clearly shown to know the Son whom he has created both as corruptible, because he does not know Him as unbegotten, and—not only that—as altogether without subsistence, because he cannot behold in Godhead one in whom the unbegotten and the incorruptible are not discerned, seeing that he thinks the unbegotten and the incorruptible to be identical with the essence.

But since in these things the ruin is manifest, let someone counsel these wretched men to turn to the alternative in the argument, and not to wrangle openly against the truth, but to agree that the signification of each of these names is proper to itself—which one might rather understand by means of the contrasted terms.

For we find out the unbegotten by its contrast with the begotten, and the incorruptible is recognized by its being set beside the corruptible, and essence is contemplated by its variation from the non-subsistent.

For as that which was not begotten is called unbegotten, and that which is not corrupted incorruptible, so also that which is not non-existent we name essence; and conversely, as we call the begotten not unbegotten, and name the corruptible not incorruptible, so likewise we do not say that essence is non-existent.

Essence, then, is apprehended in the fact of a thing's being something; the corruptible or the incorruptible in the fact of its being of a certain kind; the begotten or the unbegotten in the fact of its being in a certain manner.

Other, therefore, is the account of 'being,' and different is that which of itself makes clear the 'how' or the 'of what kind.'

And it seems to me good, passing over the nausea that comes between (for thus, I think, one must name his senseless attacks upon the notion), to dwell upon the thought that lies before us.

For all that has been vomited forth by this word-monger, like some phlegmatic humor, against the overthrow of what our teacher had reasoned concerning the notion, is such as to present no danger to readers, even should one happen to be exceedingly foolish and easily led astray.

For who is so far out of his mind as to suppose, when our teacher set down by way of illustration those things concerning grain—whereby he was suggesting to the hearer, as it were, an art and a method for the contemplation of lofty things—as to suppose that Eunomius, applying these baldly to his statements about the essence of the God of all, is saying anything, or is with some cleverness contriving against the truth? For his saying that the most fitting cause, in the case of God, of His begetting the Son is His masterless authority and His insuperable power—which can be said not only concerning the world and the elements in it, but even concerning creeping things and wild beasts—and that this venerable theologian sets forth this as befitting the conception of the Only-begotten God; or his saying that even before the birth of those named, God is called unbegotten or Father or the rest of the names, as though fearful lest, the name being kept silent among those not yet in being, He should be ignorant of Himself or fall into oblivion of Himself through the silence of the name of what He is—and his mocking, jeering assault upon our arguments—how much of sharpness and cleverness has it!

By these things he establishes the absurdity that He who became Father before all ages and times and before every sensible and intelligible nature somehow waits for men, that He may be named through their notion.

Not being named, as that man says, either by the Son or by the intelligible essences that came into being through Him.

the bodiless nature of the supramundane powers names the Divine by voice and tongue.

For in the case of the immaterial and intelligible nature, the operation according to mind is itself word, making no use at all of the material service of organs.

For even in the case of human nature there would have been no need for us to use words and names at all, if it were possible to display to one another the motions of the understanding stripped bare.

But as it is, since the thoughts that arise in us cannot be made manifest, because our nature is enclosed within the covering of the flesh, we necessarily lay upon things the various imposed names, like signs, and through them we publish to one another the motions of the mind.

But if it were somehow possible to lay bare the motions of the understanding in another way, then, bidding farewell to the roundabout service of words, we would consort with one another more clearly and more purely, uncovering by the impulses of the understanding the very nature of the things about which the mind is occupied.

But as it is, for this reason we have given to one of the things that exist the name 'heaven,' and to another 'earth,' and to another something else, and we mark relation, or acting, or being acted upon, all by their own peculiar words, that the motion of the mind might not remain in us incommunicable and unknown.

But that supramundane and immaterial nature, being free and unconstrained from the corporeal enclosure, needs neither names nor words, whether concerning itself or concerning the nature that lies above it; but if anywhere a word be even recorded, mentioned by the intelligent nature and written down in the sacred books, such a thing is said for the sake of us who hear, who are unable in any other way to learn what is signified, unless it be declared through voices and words.

All the words, then, that he has philosophized against the notion, I think it well to pass over, even though he charge with madness those who suppose that the name of Godhead is used by men, through a notion, to indicate the transcendent nature.

For what this man has in mind in thinking he ought to tear the notion to pieces, it is possible for those who wish to be instructed from his own words.

But what we suppose concerning the use of names, we have stated in what precedes: namely, that, things being as they are by nature, the rational power implanted by God in our nature has devised the voices that interpret the things that exist.

Of these, if anyone refers the cause back to Him who gave the power, neither do we contradict—just as we say that moving and seeing and the other operations through the senses come to be from Him, from whom we have received such a power.

Thus, then, also with respect to naming God, who according to His nature is what He is: the cause, according to the common account, has its reference back to Him Himself, while the authority of naming all that is conceived in this way or in another lies in our nature.

And whether one wishes to call this a 'notion' or something else, we shall not dispute.

And we make this a proof of our argument: that the Divine is not named alike among all peoples, but that what is conceived is interpreted according to what seems good to each.

Therefore, silencing all his rubbishy chatter concerning the notion, we shall hold fast to the doctrines, marking off only so much from certain things inserted by him in the midst of his empty verbiage—where he supposes that God, sitting beside the first-formed as some tutor or grammar-teacher, gives out instruction in words and names.

of the signifiers—that is to say, of words and names.

So great is the frenzy of this word-monger, that he thinks the power implanted in our nature by God does not suffice for every method of rational operation, but that, unless men learn each thing individually—like those who are taught the Hebrew or the Roman tongue word by word—they are ignorant of what things are: not recognizing fire, nor water, nor air, nor the rest of the things that exist, unless they acquired the knowledge of them through the names attached to them.

But we say that He who made all things in wisdom, and who formed this rational creature as a living being, by the mere act of granting reason to our nature deposited therein the whole rational power.

And just as, having in our nature the power in the sense-organs from Him who fashioned the eye and planted the ear, we of ourselves use each one of the sense-organs for that to which it is by nature suited, and need neither one who names the colors—of which sight has the apprehension (for the eye suffices to become for itself the teacher of such things)—nor, for the things we perceive through hearing or through taste or through touch, do we need outside teachers for the knowledge of them, having within ourselves the criterion of each of the things that come to us by sense-perception.

so we say that the intellectual power of the soul also, having come to be such from God, thereafter moves of itself and looks to the things that are; and, that knowledge might suffer no confusion, it lays upon each of the things the significations through voices, like certain seals.

And the great Moses confirms such a doctrine when he says that the appellations were imposed by Adam upon the irrational animals, writing thus in these words:

'And God formed yet again out of the earth all the beasts of the field and all the birds of heaven, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them;'

'and whatsoever Adam called each living soul, that was its name;'

'and Adam gave names to all the cattle and to all the beasts of the field.'

But it seems that, like some gluey and adhesive mud, the nonsense he has composed against the notion holds us fast and does not permit us to lay hold of more useful matters.

For how could one pass over that earnest and elaborate philosophy of his, in which he says that not only is the magnificence of the Creator displayed in His works, but that the wisdom of God is also shown forth in the names, He having fitted the appellations aptly and suitably to each of the things that came to be? These things, having chanced upon the Cratylus, the Platonic dialogue—either himself, or hearing it from someone who had chanced upon it—out of the great poverty, I think, of his own thoughts, he stitches into his own drivel the twaddle found there, doing something like those who gather food for themselves by begging.

For as those men, receiving a little from each of those who hold out to them, collect their food for themselves from various and manifold sources, so also the discourse of Eunomius, through its penury of the true bread, gathers together into its own labor the crumbs of words and names from every quarter; and for this reason, being deafened by the fine sound of Platonic diction, he thinks it fitting to make that man's philosophy a doctrine of the Church.

For with how many voices, tell me, according to the differences of the nations, is the creation of the firmament named? We call it 'heaven,' the Hebrew 'shamayim,' the Roman 'caelum,' and otherwise the Syrian, the Mede, the Cappadocian, the Moor, the Thracian, the Egyptian; nor is it easy even to number the differences of the names, so many as there happen to be, nation by nation, concerning both the heaven and the rest of things.

Which then, tell me, of these is the fitting name by which the magnificent wisdom of God is displayed? If you prefer the Greek tongue above the rest, the Egyptian will perhaps stand against you, putting forward his own;

and if you assign the first place to the Hebrew tongue, the Syrian will bring forward his own speech in opposition;

the Mede too will not give way, nor will he allow that his own should not take precedence; and from among the remaining nations each one will claim that his own should come first before the others.

How then will the doctrine not suffer, torn asunder by the disputants amid so great a diversity of tongues? But from these, he says, as from laws plainly set forth, it is shown that God assigns to the natures names that are fitting and correspondent.

O the grand profundity of the doctrine!

What notions this theologian bestows upon the divine teachings—notions which men do not begrudge even to bath-attendants!

For to those men also we grant the coining of names for the operations at which they happen to labor, and no one has dignified them with honors equal to God's when they assign names such as 'foot-washing water' and 'hair-scraper' and 'hand-towel' and many such things to what is produced by them, names that by the very expression of the words fittingly indicate the thing at hand.

But I will pass over these things too, and their Epicurean natural philosophy set out next in order, which he will say is of equal force with 'conceptualization' (epinoia)—he who declares that the void and the atom and the chance generations of existing things are akin to what is indicated through conceptualization.

O how well he has understood Epicurus!

If, because we attribute the significative sounds of things to the rational faculty of our nature, we are on that account convicted of speaking, after the manner of Epicurus, of indivisible bodies and the interweavings of atoms and their collisions and reboundings and such like—

then let his patron and ally in these doctrines, Aristotle, also be silenced, whose opinion he says in what follows agrees with the reasonings concerning conceptualization.

For he says that it is Aristotle's doctrine that providence does not extend through all existing things nor pass down even to earthly affairs—which he stoutly maintains to be in harmony with the conclusions reached regarding conceptualization.

So carefully has he examined and judged the doctrines with precision!

But going on, he says that one must either not concede to God the generation of existing things, or, having granted this, not take away from Him the imposition of names.