駁歐諾米 第 1 章 第 36/56 段

'For if the life,' he says, 'is beginningless and endless and incorruptible and unbegotten, then incorruptibility would be the same as unbegottenness, and beginninglessness the same as endlessness.'

And to these he adds the alliance drawn from reasonings:

'For it is not possible,' he says, 'that the life be one, while the meaning of the incorruptible is not the same as the meaning of the unbegotten.'

Rightly does the noble fellow add this!

Let him fill out the definition concerning each of the things spoken of.

And if you should be asked the meaning of 'judge,' give as your answer the interpretation of unbegottenness; and if it be necessary to render the definition of righteousness, let 'incorporeal' be ready to hand for your reply; and as for what 'incorruptibility' signifies, you will say precisely what the signification of 'mercy' or 'judgment' presents.

So too let all the several terms pass over into one another, no peculiar meaning distinguishing the one from the other.

And if Eunomius lays down this as law, why in vain do the Scriptures invoke the Divine Nature by many names, calling Him God, judge, righteous, mighty, long-suffering, true, merciful, and many other such things? For if none of the names is apprehended with reference to some peculiar conception, but all are jumbled together with one another through confusion of what is signified, it would be pointless to use many appellations for the same thing, no difference in what is signified distinguishing the names from one another.

But who is so stricken with palsy as to be ignorant that the Divine Nature, whatever it is according to essence, is one, simple, uniform, uncompounded, and in no way contemplated in any manifold composition; whereas the human soul, lying low and buried in this earthly life, being unable to behold clearly what it seeks, reaches out toward the ineffable Nature in many conceptions, in manifold and multiform ways, not hunting the hidden thing by some single act of thought? For indeed apprehension would be easy, if some single avenue toward the divine knowledge had been marked out for us.

But as it is, through the wisdom that appears in the universe we have conceived that He who presides over the universe is wise; through the mighty working of miracles we have received an indication of power; and the fact that all things depend upon Him becomes for us a proof that there is no cause of His existence.

Again, having perceived the abominableness of evil, we apprehend His unchangeableness and His unmingledness with evil; and having reckoned the corruption of death to be the last of evils, we have named Him who is alien to every such notion immortal and incorruptible — not dividing up along with these conceptions the subject that underlies them, but, having believed that whatever He is according to essence is one, we have supposed that what is conceived belongs fittingly to all such conceptions.

For the names do not war against one another according to the nature of opposites — as though, if the one exists, the other could not be contemplated together with it, in the way that it is not admissible for life and death to be conceived at once concerning the same subject — but such is the meaning of each of the things spoken of concerning the Divine Nature, that even if it be peculiar in what it signifies, it holds no contrariety toward that which is named together with it.

For what does 'righteous' oppose to 'incorporeal,' even if the terms do not coincide in conception? And what conflict has 'goodness' with 'invisible'? So too the eternity of the Divine life, being made known by twofold names and notions, by the endless and the beginningless, is not cut asunder by the difference of the names.

And the one term is not identical in meaning to the other (for the one indicated an estrangement from the beginning, the other an estrangement from the end); nor did the difference of the notions contemplated in the subject introduce any partition of that subject itself.

Such, then, are the things we have to say; but the utterances of the one who wages war against us, judged by the very syntax of his phrasing, are such as to have no support whatsoever from reasoning, since he spews out these bombastic and unintelligible sounds in the guise of clauses and periods, at random, as it happens.

But the aim of what he says is this: that there is no difference among the various names according to their significations.

It is altogether necessary, as it seems, to set down his very words verbatim, so that we may not appear to be slanderously charging him with anything that does not belong to him.

For, since [true statements] are fitted to their objects, just as also the same statements to the same objects, of necessity one of two things must hold: either the thing signified is altogether other, or else the signifying statement is not other at all.

These, and many other such things besides, he goes through in support of the aim he has set before himself, having cast out of the account all relations and juxtapositions, and species and measure and part and time and place, so that, by the removal of these, ungeneracy might become indicative of the essence.

And his argument is of this character; but I shall state the notion in my own words.

Life, he says, is not something other than the essence, lest any composition should be conceived concerning the simple nature, when the concept is divided into that which participates and that which is participated in.

But that very thing which life is, he says, is essence—philosophizing well on such matters.

For no one of sound mind would contradict this, that these things are not so.

But how did he bring his argument to bear upon his aim? If, he says, in signifying that which is without beginning we signified life, and if the word of truth compels us to call this life 'essence,' then he asserts that 'ungenerate' is significative of the divine essence itself.

But we, for our part, agree that the divine life was not generated from another—which is what the notion of 'without beginning' signifies; yet to suppose that the very thing signified by the expression 'not having been generated' is essence, we hold to be the mark only of those who are carried away by madness.

For who is so out of his senses as to declare that non-generation is the definition of essence? For just as generation is proper to that which is generate, so plainly non-generation will be applicable to the ungenerate.

That, then, which does not belong to the Father when ungeneracy is being indicated—how do we for our part reckon into essence the indication of that which is not present? But having granted himself what is conceded to him neither by us nor by the consequence of the premises he laid down, he concluded that ungeneracy is significative of the divine life, that is, of God.

But that his nonsense on this point may become as conspicuous as possible, let us scrutinize his argument in this way.

For by the very means through which, in the case of the Father, he led the account of essence round to ungeneracy, let us examine whether we shall not likewise, by the same arguments, refer the essence of the Son also to ungeneracy.

For since true statements receive their determination from the underlying things that are signified, and different statements are fitted to different things, just as also the same to the same, of necessity one of two things must hold: either the thing signified is altogether other, or else the signifying statement is not other—there being no underlying thing besides the life of the Son upon which one might fix one's thought, or against which one might cast the other statement.

Is there, then, any incongruity in what has been said, so that it were improper to say or write such things concerning the Only-begotten? Is not the Son also himself purely one life? Is it not fitting that in his case too there be one and the same statement, even if in names, or in mode and order, it appear diverse? Will not in his case too one of the two of necessity hold: either the thing signified is altogether other, or else not even the signifying statement is other—there being no underlying thing besides his life upon which one might fix one's thought, or against which one might cast the other statement? Nothing of Eunomius' has been mingled by us into what was said concerning the Father; rather, we have come to that very confession and consequence, only inserting the name of the Son.

Since neither intensification nor relaxation, nor otherness in respect of quantity or quality, produces any variation, it is altogether necessary that things which coincide in the same concepts be named also by the same appellations.

If, then, one and the same thing—that pertaining to the simplicity of life—is apprehended in Father and in Son, the account of simplicity, as has been said, admitting no variation, it is altogether necessary that the name fitted to the one be suitably applicable also to the other.

So that, if the simplicity of the Father's life is denoted by the name of ungeneracy, the term is not incongruous even in respect of the simplicity of the Son.

For just as that which is rational and mortal and receptive of mind and knowledge is named 'man' alike in the case of both Adam and Abel, and nothing altered the appellation of the nature—neither in the case of Abel his coming into life through generation, nor in the case of Adam his coming into life without generation—so likewise, if the name of the simple and uncomposite [character] of the Father's life is ungeneracy, in the same way the same concept will of necessity be applied by the same term also to the life of the Son, if indeed, as Eunomius says, it must be that one of two things hold: either the thing signified is altogether other, or else the signifying statement is not other.

But why do we vainly linger over these trifles, when we ought rather to hold out Eunomius' book to the more diligent for the refutation of the folly of his arguments, and, apart from those who set matters straight, to display to the intelligent from the book itself not only the blasphemy of the doctrine but also the feebleness of the style? For, in many ways interpreting the word 'conception' not according to our notion but as seems good to himself, as though in a night-battle where no one distinguishes friend from foe, he does not perceive that, through the very things by which he thinks he is warring against us, he is stabbing his own doctrine.

For that from which he thinks he must estrange himself, above all, from the Church of the godly, is this: to maintain that God became Father only at a late point, and that the name of fatherhood is more recent than the rest of the names that are spoken concerning him.

For he was called Father, [Eunomius says,] from that point at which he purposed to become Father, and became [Father].

Since, then, in this discourse he maintains that all the appellations attached to the divine nature agree with one another in their signification and that there is no difference among them, and since one of the names attached [to God] is also 'Father' (for just as he is named incorruptible and everlasting, so also is he named Father), either he will ratify, in the case of this term also, the opinion concerning the rest of the names, and will destroy his first supposition—if indeed the concept of fatherhood too be comprehended together with all the appellations (for it is plain that, if the signification of 'incorruptible' and of 'Father' were the same, then as he is ever incorruptible, so also he will be confessed ever Father, there being, as he says, one signification for all the names)—or else, if he fears to attest fatherhood to God from all eternity, he will of necessity dissolve his own argument, confessing that a signification peculiar to each of the names inheres in it; and thus his great babble about the names, bursting like a bubble, is quenched.

But if he should plead, concerning the contradiction, that the appellation of Father and of Creator alone came to God supervenientially, on the ground that both these terms are, as he himself says, applied to God from activity, he will cut short our great preoccupation with the matter before us, by confessing those very things which would have required much labor on our part to prove against him.

For if the signification of the term 'Creator' and of the term 'Father' is one (for each is from activity), then the things signified through the terms are altogether equivalent to one another.

For of those things whose signification is the same, neither is the underlying subject at all different.

The name 'Father' [belongs] to the relational signification according to nature.

But what is established through this no longer has an absurdity that is ambiguous, at least to those who possess understanding.

For just as it is absurd to regard a stone as God, or any other of the things that have come into being through creation, so it will be confessed that neither ought Godhead to be attested to the Only-begotten God—since, according to Eunomius' argument, one and the same signification according to activity attests both titles to God, by which he is named both Father and Creator.

But let us hold to the matters before us.

For in traducing our argument, which says that the knowledge concerning God is gathered up for us according to various approaches, he asserts that on our account he is no longer maintained to be simple, on the ground that he partakes of the notions signified through each appellation, and that through participation in those [notions] he fills up for himself the perfection that pertains to being.

These things I write in my own words, abridging his long garrulity.

But against this vain and, I think, feeble superfluity of words, no one of right mind could even make any reply that would be free from the charge of folly.

For if there had been anything of the sort in what was said by us, it would altogether have been necessary for us either to retract what was ill-spoken, or to bring the ambiguity of the meaning round to an unassailable interpretation.

But since neither has anything of the sort been said by us, nor does the consequence of what has been said push the thought toward any such necessity, why should one, by dwelling upon what is agreed, weary out his readers with the prolongation of the argument? For who is so bereft of understanding as, on hearing that pious suppositions concerning God are gathered up for us through many notions, to suppose the Divine to be composite out of diverse things, or to gather up perfection for himself out of the participation in certain things? Suppose, for the sake of argument, someone had discovered geometry, and let this same man be supposed to be also a discoverer of astronomy, and again of medicine and grammar and geometry and certain other such pursuits.

Since, then, the many and diverse names of these pursuits are contemplated with respect to one and the same soul, will the soul on this account be reckoned composite? And yet what is signified by medicine differs greatly from the science of astronomy, and grammar has no fellowship in signification with geometry, nor again navigation with agriculture.

But nevertheless the account of each of these can be gathered up with respect to the one soul, and the soul does not on that account become highly composite, nor are all the names of the pursuits blended together into one signification.

If, then, the human mind is in no way impaired in respect of its simplicity by so many names spoken concerning it, how could anyone suppose that God—if he be called wise and just and good and everlasting and by all the names befitting God—must, unless one signification be reckoned for all the names, either become multipartite or gather up for himself the perfection of nature out of participation in these? But let us examine also his more vehement accusation against us, which runs thus.

But if it be necessary, he says, to proceed to the more incisive argument: not even the essence itself does he keep unmixed and pure from what is worse and from its contraries.

Such, then, is the accusation; but what is the proof of the charges? Let us look at his vehement and rhetorical assault against us.

If, he says, God is incorruptible only in respect of the endlessness of his life, and ungenerate only in respect of his being without beginning, then in respect of that in which he is not incorruptible he will be corruptible, and in respect of that in which he is not ungenerate he will be generate.

And taking up the same thing again, he says:

He will therefore be, in respect of his being without beginning, ungenerate and at the same time corruptible; and in respect of his being without end, incorruptible and at the same time generate.

This, then, is his more incisive argument, which he threatened to bring forth against us for the refutation of our saying that the essence of God is mixed with the contraries and with the worse things.

Since in what was said the teacher had given the slanderer a handle, this man, distorting what had been said to suit his own fancy, brought to a conclusion this puerile plaything of a sophism.

But, that it may become more evident to all readers, I shall once more read out that passage verbatim and set over against it the words of Eunomius.

We call the God of all incorruptible and ungenerate, says the teacher, using these names according to different approaches.

For whenever we look back to the ages behind, finding the life of God to overleap all circumscription, we call him ungenerate.

But whenever we direct the mind to the ages to come, we have named 'incorruptible' that which is boundless and infinite and not to be comprehended by any end.

As, then, the endlessness of the life is [called] incorruptible, so also its being without beginning has been named ungenerate, while we contemplate these things in conception. This is the teacher's argument, teaching us by what has been said that the divine life, being one in nature and continuous with itself, neither begins from any beginning nor is circumscribed by any limit, and that it is possible to make manifest through certain names the concepts contemplated in this life.

For that he is not from any cause we announce through the term 'without beginning' and 'ungenerate'; and that he is circumscribed by no end nor dissolved into corruption, this the expression 'incorruptible' and 'endless' denotes.

And by this it is determined that, concerning the divine life, one ought to say that its not having a beginning is to be 'ungenerately,' and to name its being without end 'incorruptible'; since everything that ceases to be assuredly passes into vanishing, and, on hearing of the vanishing of that which is, we understood the corruption of that which subsists.

He says, then, that the one who never ceases to be, and is estranged from dissolution by corruption, is named incorruptible.

What, then, does Eunomius say against these things? If, he says, God is incorruptible only in respect of the endlessness of his life, and ungenerate only in respect of his being without beginning, then in respect of that in which he is not incorruptible he will be corruptible, and in respect of that in which he is not ungenerate he will be generate.

Who has granted you this, O Eunomius, that incorruptibility is not contemplated together with the whole life of God? Who has divided the divine life into two and named each of the halves by peculiar terms, so that in whichever section this name belongs, one must say that the other does not belong to it? This is the sharpness of your dialectic: to say that the life which exists without beginning is corruptible, and that the being-without-beginning is not contemplated together with the incorruptible.

It is just as if someone should say that man is rational and receptive of mind and knowledge, applying each of these names to the subject according to a different approach and concept, and then were derided by some such person who ran through similar arguments—that if man is receptive of mind and knowledge, he cannot on this account be rational, but will be only that in respect of which he is receptive of knowledge, and his nature will not admit the other; and again, if one should define man as rational, it will no longer concede to him receptivity of mind.

For in respect of that whereby he is rational, he will be shown to be without a share in understanding.

But if in these cases the ridiculous and senseless character is evident to everyone, neither in that other case is it at all ambiguous.

For, on reading the teacher's statement, you will find the plaything of the sophism to be [but] a shadow.

For neither, in the illustration concerning man, is the receptivity of knowledge hindered by rationality, nor is rationality hindered by the receptivity of understanding; nor does the eternity of the divine life fail to possess incorruptibility if it be without beginning, nor, if anyone should attest incorruptibility to it, will its being-without-beginning be taken away.

But he who, by the artifice of dialectical cleverness, seeks out the truth, inserting into our argument, out of his own, whatever he wished, does battle with himself and overturns himself, while not so much as touching upon what is ours.

[It is not] incorruptible, but signifies [the life] to be of such a kind.

So that the boundlessness of the divine life in either respect is proper to the subject, whereas the saying that the notions contemplated in the subject are 'thus' or 'thus' pertains only to the term that is indicative of the signified notion.

One notion concerning the divine life is that it is not from a cause.

This the term 'ungenerate' indicates.

Another notion concerning the divine life is that it is boundless and endless.

This the appellation 'incorruptible' presents.

Thus the underlying subject is that which it is, beyond all name and thought; while the fact that it neither derives its being from a cause nor is ever reduced to non-existence—these things are signified through the conception of these names.

What, then, out of our own words prompted him to this senseless sport, so that he takes up the same point again and says in these very terms:

'He will therefore be, in respect of being without beginning, at once unbegotten and corruptible; but in respect of being without end, at once incorruptible and begotten.'

Now even if this be not sifted out by us in argument, it is plain to everyone who partakes of understanding in any degree whatsoever how ridiculous and senseless it is—nay rather, how impious and worthy of condemnation.

For by the same reasoning with which he constructs the yoking of the corruptible to the beginningless, in that very manner he mocks every reverent and God-befitting name.

For not only are these two things contemplated concerning the divine life—that it exists without beginning and admits no corruption—but it is also called immaterial and free from wrath, immutable and incorporeal, invisible and without shape, true and just; and there are countless other conceptions concerning the divine life, each of which is proclaimed by itself, according to some distinctive notion, by significant utterances.

With every name, then—I mean with every name that signifies a God-befitting conception—it is possible to interweave the incongruous yoking devised by Eunomius.

For example, both 'immaterial' and 'free from wrath' are said concerning the divine life, yet neither is spoken according to the same notion.

For by the word 'immaterial' we conceived that the Divine is pure from any admixture of matter, while by 'free from wrath' is signified its alienation from the passion of anger.

Eunomius, then, will in all likelihood run over these too, and will dance out the same nonsense in what has been said.

For he will speak, weaving together the absurdity in the same sequence:

'If, in that it is separated from any admixture of matter, it is called immaterial, in that respect it will not be free from wrath; and if it is free from wrath because it does not admit anger, it is impossible that immateriality be confessed of it. But by every necessity, in its being pure from matter it will be shown to be at once immaterial and prone to wrath, while in its not admitting anger it will be found at the same time both free from wrath and material.'

And so he will do with all the rest.

And, if it seems good, let us set forth another such yoking of names—I mean 'immutable' and 'incorporeal.'

For since each of these two names is applied to the divine life according to its own distinctive import, in like manner Eunomius' wisdom will also, in their case, construct the absurdity.

For if by the word 'immutable' is signified that which always remains the same, and the appellation 'incorporeal' presents the intellectual nature of the essence, Eunomius will assuredly say the same things in these cases too: that the conceptions contemplated in these names are incompatible, alien, and have no fellowship with one another.

For in its being always the same, the Divine will be only immutable and not incorporeal; while in the intellectual and formless nature of the essence, it possesses incorporeality but is separated from immutability.

So that it comes about that, whenever unchangeableness is contemplated in the divine life, it is thereby, along with immutability, made out to be also a body; but whenever the intellectual character is examined, it is defined as being at once incorporeal and mutable.

Such are Eunomius' clever discoveries against the truth.

For why need one go through them all and prolong the discourse in idle chatter? For it is possible to behold this same irrationality being constructed alike in all cases.

They will do battle with one another according to the aforesaid interweaving.

For the thing signified by 'truth' is one, and that signified by 'just' is another.

So that Eunomius might, by consequence, say concerning these too that the true is not present with the just, and that the just is wanting in the truth; and that it comes about that, whenever one reckons the alienation from injustice as belonging to God, one declares the Divine to be at the same time just and false; but if we reckon its alienation from falsehood, one constructs the Divine to be at once true and unjust.

So too with 'invisible,' so too with 'without shape.'

For, by a wisdom similar to that already set forth, it will be permitted to say that neither is the invisible present in the shapeless nor the shapeless in the invisible; but he will interweave shape with the invisible, and by the reverse procedure will construct the shapeless to be visible—saying about these the same things which he elaborated concerning the incorruptible and the beginningless: namely, that whenever we reckon the uncompounded character of the divine life, we confess it to be shapeless indeed, yet not also invisible; and whenever we consider that God cannot be seen with bodily eyes, having granted him invisibility, we will not admit that he is outside shape.

But if these things appear to all alike ridiculous and senseless, much more will the man of sense condemn the absurdity of those from which the argument, having set out, led on by consequence to this absurdity.

But he lays hold of the teacher's utterance, as though it improperly contemplated incorruptibility in endlessness and conceived endlessness in incorruptibility.

Let us, then, jest a little in a manner akin to Eunomius' shrewdness.

For let us examine what this his opinion concerning these names is.

Will he say that endlessness is, in what it signifies, something other than incorruptibility, or will he combine the two into one?

But if he says the two are one, he will be pleading on behalf of our own argument.

But if he says that the thing signified by 'incorruptible' is one and that of 'endless' another, then by every necessity, in the case of things that stand alien to one another, the one is not the same in force as the other.

Therefore, if the notion of 'incorruptible' is one, and again that of 'endless' another, and each of these is precisely what the other is not, then he will grant neither that the incorruptible is endless nor that the endless is incorruptible; but the endless will be corruptible, and the incorruptible will have an end.

But I beg my readers not to turn against us the censure that attaches to this ridicule.

For we have played thus against the jester under compulsion, in order that by like sport we might dissolve the puerile interweaving of his sophistry.

But if it should not appear burdensome and vexatious to my readers, it would not be untimely to set forth once more, word for word, the sayings of Eunomius.

'If,' he says, 'it is only in respect of the endlessness of life that He is incorruptible, and only in respect of beginninglessness that He is unbegotten, then in that in which He is not incorruptible He will be corruptible, and in that in which He is not unbegotten He will be begotten.'

And taking up the same again he says: 'He will therefore be, in respect of beginninglessness, at once unbegotten and corruptible; but in respect of endlessness, at once incorruptible and begotten.'