駁歐諾米 第 1 章 第 37/56 段

For the untimely insertions among the superfluous matter in the middle, as contributing nothing further to the construction of the argument, I pass over.

But the sense of our own words, from which he himself drew his citation, is, I think, easy for anyone to perceive, that it has no fellowship whatever with the accusation he has constructed against us.

'For,' says the teacher, 'we call the God of all incorruptible and unbegotten, using these names according to different applications.'

'For,' he says, 'inasmuch as He transcends the circumscription of the ages throughout every interval of temporal extension—whether we reckon that which is from the beginning or that which follows after—we signify, by each of these two conceptions of the eternal life, that which is undefined and uncircumscribed: the one by the name of incorruptibility, the other by that of unbegottenness.'

And thus he constructs the absurdity, positing his own statements and interweaving them with his own, and thrusting into absurdity the conceptions put together by himself—laying hold of none of what is ours.

For the notion that God is incorruptible only in respect of the endlessness of life belongs to him and is not ours.

In like manner also, the notion that the incorruptible is not without beginning is the discovery of the same shrewdness—of that shrewdness which ranks what is not present as belonging to the account of the essence.

For we define nothing that is not present with Him as being essence.

But there is not present with God either the ending of life in corruption, or the beginning of being from generation;

which is presented through these two names, both incorruptibility and unbegottenness.

But he who has noised abroad his own drivel against our teachings, setting up a pillar of shame against himself through his accusation against us, does not perceive it.

For he who defines unbegottenness as essence will, by consequence, fall into that very absurdity which he brings against our teachings.

For, since 'beginning' and 'end' are conceived as different things according to their extension in interval, if one should grant that the privation of one of these is essence, he will make His life subsist by halves, existing only in the beginningless, but no longer extended by nature towards endlessness—if indeed unbegottenness be reckoned as nature.

But if one should force both to be essence, then by every necessity, according to the argument rendered by Eunomius, each of the names, according to the import contained in it, must have its being also in the account of the essence, subsisting only in so much as the meaning of the appellation indicates;

and thus Eunomius' argument will become strong: that the beginningless does not possess endlessness, nor the endless beginninglessness—since, according to his argument, each of the things named is also an essence, and the two stand unmingled in their notions towards one another, and neither does the beginning bear the same account towards the end, nor do the names that negate these agree with one another in their meanings.

But that he himself too may recognize his own drivel, the refutation will come from the things spoken by him.

For he says, contending against our teachings, that God is both unbegotten in respect of endlessness and endless in respect of unbegottenness, as though there were one import in each of the names.

If, then, He is also unbegotten in respect of endlessness, and 'endless' and 'unbegotten' are the same in what they signify, and he agrees that the Son also is endless, then by this consequence he will of necessity also grant that the Son is unbegotten—if indeed, as he has said, 'endless' is the same as 'beginningless.'

For as in the unbegotten he sees endlessness, so he confesses that he has also conceived beginninglessness in endlessness.

For otherwise he would not have made the inversion of the names on an equal footing.

'But it is by nature, and not by juxtaposition with the ages,' he says, 'that God is unbegotten.'

But who is it that contends about this—that God is not by nature all that He is also said to be? For indeed we call God just and powerful and Father and incorruptible neither by juxtaposition with the ages nor by reference to any other of existing things, but concerning the very underlying subject—whatever it be according to nature—we contemplate every reverent conception.

So that, if hypothetically neither an age nor any other of the things conceived in creation had been made, God would none the less have been what He is now believed to be, needing none of the ages in order to become what He is.

'But,' he says, 'He has a life that is not introduced from without, nor composite, nor differentiated;

for He Himself is the eternal life, immortal in respect of that very life, incorruptible in respect of that very immortality.'

These things we have learned also concerning the Only-begotten, and there is none to gainsay it—unless indeed someone should openly do battle with the words of John.

For neither was life introduced into the Son from without (for He says, 'I am the life'), nor is His life composite, nor differentiated, but He is immortal in respect of that very life (for in what else could one contemplate immortality save in life?), and incorruptible in respect of that very immortality.

For that which is superior to death is altogether incapable of corruption.

Thus far our own argument also follows along.

But as for the riddle composed together with what has been said, let those interpret it who have been trained in the wisdom of Prunicus;

for it seems to me that it is out of that stock-in-trade that he has brought forth what he has said.

For what does he say? 'Being incorruptible without beginning, He is unbegotten without end, being spoken of neither in respect of another, nor through another, nor towards another.'

For anyone whose hearing has been purified and whose mind is perceptive knows, even before my own words, that apart from the clatter of the names which he has strung together in their bizarre combination, no trace of scientific reasoning is to be found in what he has said.

But if perchance even some shadow of a thought is to be found in the noise of his phrases, what is found will assuredly be either impious or ridiculous.

For tell me, with what meaning do you say this, that He is without beginning endlessly, and without end beginninglessly? Do you suppose that the beginning is the same as the end, and that the two terms rest upon a single concept—just as the appellations 'Peter' and 'Simon' indicate through themselves one and the same underlying subject—and for this reason you reckon the beginning to be the same as the end? Thus, having joined into one signification the two terms which are each destructive of the other—I mean of the end and of the beginning—and having conceived by inversion that the endless is the same as the unbeginning, you have merged and blended the two terms into one another; and is this what your mixture of the names is meant to convey, when you say that He is unbegotten endlessly and endless unbegottenly? And how did you fail to see the impiety in what is said, together with its absurdity? For if, through this novel mixture, the reversal of the names comes about on equal terms—so that the unbegotten is unbegotten endlessly, and the endless is endless unbegottenly—then it is wholly necessary that everything endless be in no other way than by being unbegotten;

and thus there is found for you, my dear friend, that much-babbled-of Unbegottenness—which according to you alone characterizes the essence of the Father—rendered common to everything that is immortal, and making all things consubstantial with the Father, because it is manifested alike in all those in whom, through immortality, life proceeds unto infinity: in archangels, in angels, in human souls, and perhaps even in that apostate power itself, in the devil and the demons.

For if, according to your argument, the endless and the incorruptible is altogether unbegottenly, then the unbegotten must altogether be contemplated together with everything that is endless and incorruptible.

Into such things do those fall who, before learning what it is fitting to learn, undertake to teach, thereby publishing abroad their own ignorance.

For if he had had any discriminating knowledge, he would not have been ignorant of the meaning that peculiarly belongs to 'without beginning' and to 'endless' respectively—namely, that the endless is common to all things which are believed to endure in life unto infinity, whereas 'without beginning' belongs to Him alone who exists without a cause.

How then is it possible to reckon that which is common to all as equal in force to those things which are believed by all to belong to God alone in an exceptional manner—so that through this one either renders unbegottenness common to all things that partake of immortality, or else concedes that nothing is immortal, if indeed to be endless belongs to the unbegotten alone, and conversely, if to be unbegottenly belongs to the endless alone?

For thus all endless things would be reckoned to be unbegotten.

But let these things also be dismissed, and let his customary abuse, which he has poured out upon what has been said, be passed over in silence along with them; and let us come to what follows in the reading.

And perhaps it seems good to me to run past most of what comes next without examination.

For in everything he is the same, not being interwoven with what comes from us, but supplying to himself, as though from what is ours forsooth, the occasions for refutation;

and to pursue these matters with precision anyone of those who have taken thought to judge would call a vain thing, since each of those who read his treatise with understanding grasps his calumny from the very things he says.

He says that the dignity of God is older than the notion of our teacher.

The dignity of God—whatever one ought to suppose this also to be—not only takes precedence over the generation that is against us, but also surpasses all creation and transcends the ages themselves.

What then accrues to his argument from these things, if the dignity of God is confessed to be higher not only than Basil but than all things that are? 'Yes,' he says, 'but the name is the dignity.'

And who has demonstrated that the appellation is the same as the dignity, so that we too might assent to what is said? 'The ordinance of nature,' he says, 'teaches us that the dignity of names lies in the things that are named, not in the authority of those who do the naming.'

What is this law of nature, and how is it not established over all things? For if nature laid down such an ordinance, it would have to hold sway over all who share in nature, just as does everything else that is proper to nature.

If then the law of nature made appellations spring up for us out of the things themselves, as shoots spring from seeds or roots, and did not commit to the choice of those who signify things the significative designations of their subjects, we men would all speak the same tongue to one another.

For if the names attached to things were not diversified, we should not differ from one another in the form of our speech.

He says that it is holy, and most fitting to the law of providence, that the sounds be imposed upon things from above.

How then did the prophets fail to know what is holy, and how were they not schooled in the law of providence—they who, according to your argument, nowhere deified unbegottenness? And how too does God Himself remain ignorant of such a kind of holiness—He who does not impose from above the appellations upon the living creatures fashioned by Him, but grants to Adam the authority of name-giving? For if, according to Eunomius, it is befitting to the law of providence and holy that the sounds be imposed from above upon things, then it is altogether unholy and unfitting that the names should be applied to things by those below.

'But the Guardian of all,' he says, 'by a law of creation saw fit to sow these things into our souls.'

And if these things were sown into the souls of men, how is it that from Adam down to your transgression the fruit of this vanity did not sprout up, though—as you say—it lay implanted in the souls of men, so that unbegottenness should be called the name of the Father's essence? For Adam too would have said this, and all those in succession after him, if indeed such a thing had been sown into their nature by God.

For just as the things now springing from the earth persist forever by seminal succession from the first creation, and no new seed is now innovated by nature, so also this word too, if indeed it had been sown into nature from God as you say, would have sprouted together with the very first utterance of the first-formed, and would have passed on together through the succession of those born after.

But since this was not so from the beginning (for none of the first men down to now, before you, uttered such a thing), it is clear that it sprang up as something spurious and contrived, from a weed-like sowing, not from those good seeds which—to speak in the language of the Gospel—God cast into the field of nature.

For whatever things assuredly exist in the common nature do not now have the beginning of their being, but appeared together with nature from the first constitution—such as the activity of the senses, and the disposition of human beings to be affected either with desire or with aversion toward something, and whatever else of this sort is confessed to be common to nature; none of which has life innovated among those born later, but in the same properties the human race is preserved throughout from the first to the last, nature neither casting off any of the attributes belonging to it from the beginning, nor taking on any of those that did not belong to it.

—contemplation, or anything else of this sort, in which not the seeing but the using of the seeing toward some end has been devised by art)—so also one might say that to be rational is common to human nature and is proper to it, being co-essentially bestowed upon that nature from above, whereas the devising of certain significative appellations for existing things belongs to those men who possess within themselves from God the rational power, and who ever, according to what pleases them, devise for the clarity of what is to be signified certain expressive words for things.

But if these things hold good, he says, one of two things is established: either the notion of those who conceive it is older, or the appellations that belong to God by nature and pre-exist all things are later than the origin of men.

Must one then contend even against such things, and grapple by argument against so manifest a folly? And who is so worthless as to be harmed by such things, and to suppose that if the words be believed to belong to the rational power, one must either confess the sounds of the words to be older than those who speak them, or think it a transgression against the Divine that men should name the Divine, insofar as they have capacity after they have become men? For that the transcendent Nature has no need of words shaped by voice and tongue has already been said, and it would be superfluous to burden the argument with the same things over again.

For that which by nature is without need, and perfect, and without superfluity, neither lacks any of the things it ought to have, nor possesses any of the things it ought not.

Since then it has been demonstrated from the foregoing arguments that He has no need of a nominal designation, and this is confessed by the common agreement of those who have understanding, no one could gainsay that it is of the utmost impiety to attribute to God the things that do not befit Him.

But I think there is no need to dwell on these and suchlike things, nor to refute with precision what has been said in the sequel;

for to the more discerning the very argument that has been laboured over by our adversary will sufficiently show itself to be an advocate of the doctrines of piety.

For he says that the essence itself is incorruptibility, and likewise immortality.

But whether these things are attributes of the divine nature, or whether these very things according to their signification are the essence, I think there is no need to contend against him about it;

for whichever of the statements should prevail, it will assuredly establish our argument.

For if incorruptibility—the not being corrupted—belongs to the essence, there belongs to it also, assuredly, the not being through generation; and thus the notion of unbegottenness will be thrust outside the signification pertaining to the essence.

But if, because God is not corrupted, one should say the essence to be incorruptibility, and because He is superior to death should on this account define the nature itself to be immortality, then, since the Son too is incorruptible and immortal, incorruptibility and immortality would be the essence also of the Only-begotten.

If then the Father is incorruptibility, and the Son is incorruptibility, and each of these is essence, and no difference is conceived according to the concept of incorruptibility, then in no respect at all will the essence differ from the essence, if indeed in both alike the nature is estranged from corruption.

And even if he should again take up the same things and bind us fast, as he supposes, with the inescapable constraints of his dilemmas—saying that if what belongs to the existent be distinguished by us from it, the Divine is made composite; but if simplicity be confessed, then incorruptibility and unbegottenness will assuredly show themselves to be significative of the essence itself—again we shall prove him an ally of our own arguments.

For if he makes the divine essence altogether composite by saying that something belongs to it, then neither will he assuredly deny that fatherhood is outside the essence, but he will confess Him to be Father by nature just as He is incorruptible and immortal; and thus, even against his will, he will admit the Son into the intimacy of nature.

For it will not be possible, that One being Father by nature, to sever the Son from the natural relation to Him.

But if he should say that fatherhood belongs to God outside of nature, then he will assuredly grant to us as well, according to authority, to say that something belongs to the Father, since simplicity is in no way set aside if what pertains to unbegottenness be signified outside the essence.

Should he insist that 'incorruptible' and 'unbegotten' are equal in force to one another, both of the names, so that there is no difference in them since the same thing signified is contained in each, and should he say that the concept of the incorruptible and of the unbegotten is one, then he who is the one of these is assuredly also the other.

But indeed that the Son is incorruptible is not disputed even by these men;

therefore, according to the argument of Eunomius, He too is unbegotten, if indeed 'incorruptible' signifies the same as unbegottenness.

So that one of two things: either he will agree that 'unbegotten' signifies something other than incorruptibility, or, remaining fixed in his opinions, he will in many ways blaspheme against the Only-begotten God—either making Him corruptible in order not to call Him unbegotten, or establishing Him as unbegotten in order not to prove Him corruptible.

But I do not know what it is fitting to do—whether to pursue in sequence all the matters set before us, or to confine to these the contest against vain things.

For just as in the case of those who sell poisons, a small test guarantees to the buyers the death-dealing power of the whole drug, and no one, having learned through some test the destructive effect of a portion, doubts that the whole of what is sold is a drug of destruction—so I think it necessary that this poisonous drug of his argument too, having been shown through the things examined, should no longer be doubtful, to those at least who have understanding, that it is throughout such as it has been proved to be by the foregoing; and for this reason I reckon it preferable not to draw out at length the lingering over vain things.

But since the champions of deceit find their plausibility from many quarters, and there is fear lest the passing over of any of the things laboured at by them should become for the enemy a specious occasion of slander against us, as though we had left out the stronger point—for this reason I have begged those who share in our zeal, condemning no idle talk, to follow readily the argument as it everywhere of necessity marches out to meet the assaults of falsehood.

Since therefore he has at last, with difficulty, ceased fashioning in deep sleep his dream about conceptual notion, and, arming himself with those feeble and unintelligible arguments, he transfers his discourse to another dream far more senseless than the preceding fantasy.

And it is possible to know the vanity of his labour by considering his verbal artifice concerning the privation of it.

But to grapple with the whole of his nonsense would befit Eunomius himself and those like him, who have taken on no care for the more serious of matters.

But we shall run over what has been said summarily, in headings, so that neither should any of the culpable things be left out, nor should any of the vain things draw the discourse out to a useless length.

For being about to add his verbal treatment concerning privative names, he has promised to show the absurdity of our doctrines—as he himself says—incurable, and a certain feigned and reprehensible piety.

This then is his promise;

but what is the proof of his charges? 'When certain persons said,' he says, 'that God is unbegotten by privation of generation, we, in refutation of these, declared that neither this expression nor this concept in any way befits God.'

Let him point out the champion of this argument, if anyone of those who have existed from the time men came to be down to now—whether among barbarians or among Greeks—is shown to have uttered such a thing amiss, and we shall be silent.

But none of the men who have come into being in all time could be convicted of having said such a thing, unless someone were mad.

For who is so deranged by drunkenness, who so driven out of his mind by madness or frenzy, as to utter this statement: that to the unbegotten God generation belongs by nature, but that, having been deprived of what is by nature, He came to be afterwards, out of begotten, unbegotten as He formerly was? But these are the artifices of rhetoric—to escape, by the imputations put upon certain persons, the shame arising from the refutations in the matters wherein they are refuted.

the ground for the indictment, being unable to point to accusers, or trial, or tribunal.

And now, as though correcting another's folly, he says he has come of necessity to speak in this way.

This is the refutation of our incurable absurdity, and of our feigned and reprehensible piety.

But he says that we, being at a loss and not having what use we shall make of the matters at hand, and concealing our perplexity, slander him on the strength of his words as belonging to the wisdom of the world, while we appropriate to ourselves the teaching of the Holy Spirit.

This is another dream—to suppose that so much of external wisdom belongs to himself that Basil should on this account regard him as formidable.

In this way certain men have often fancied themselves sharers of a throne with kings and belonging to a loftier dignity, the deluded vision of dreams instilling the notion concerning this out of a waking desire.

He says that Basil, not having what he might make use of in reply to the things said, slanders him on account of the wisdom of the world.

Yet he would have prized such a slander highly—to be reckoned formidable by the abundance of his words even to any chance person, much less to Basil and to any of those like him, if indeed there is anyone at all like him, or ever was.

But the intervening discourse—if indeed his slavish abuse and his boorish jeers, by which he supposes he runs down our positions, are a discourse—I shall pass over entirely, deeming it a loathsome and distasteful thing that our own discourse should be befouled with so many defilements, like those who abhor the swollen and stinking of sores, and cannot bear the sight of those whose surface has been altered by warts and calluses arising from some plethoric heaviness of humours.

Setting forth his meaning in brief, I shall pass over the great foulness of what he has said.

For the present my discourse shall proceed at liberty, turning aside to nothing so as to tear insultingly at any of the things said.

Every word, if it be truly a word, is a sound signifying the movements of the mind that arise from thought.

And every activity and movement of a sound understanding looks, so far as it is able, toward the knowledge and contemplation of the things that are.

Now the nature of things that exist is divided in two, being separated into the intelligible and the sensible.

But as for the things that appear to sense-perception, because their apprehension is ready at hand, the knowledge of them lies open in common to all, since the judgement of sense produces no ambiguity concerning the object.

For all of us who share in the same nature alike recognize and name the differences of colours and of the other qualities—all that we discern through hearing, or smell, or the sense of touch, or taste—and likewise all those affairs occupied in daily life whose apprehension seems more superficial, which have to do with the civic and the ethical aim of life.

But in the contemplation of the intellectual nature, since it lies beyond sensible apprehension, the understanding reaches out by conjecture toward the things that escape sense; and we are moved variously, each in his own way, about the object of inquiry, and according to the notion that arises in each concerning the subject we declare, so far as we are able, what has been conceived, coming as near as possible to the power of the things conceived through the expression given by words.

In these matters it is often possible for what is sought to be rightly attained through both together, when the understanding does not miss what is inquired after, and the voice, aiming straight, declares the thing conceived by means of a fitting interpretation.

But it may happen that one fails in both, or in one of these—either the apprehending understanding, or the interpretative power, being carried aside from what is fitting.

Since, then, there are two things by which every discourse is set right—the security of the mind and the utterance in words—it would be better that a discourse be approved in both; yet it is no less good not to err from the fitting conception, even if the wording chances to fall short of the thought.

When the mind sets its earnest concern upon those things which sense does not reach (I speak of the divine and ineffable nature, in which it is rash even to grasp anything readily by the understanding, and yet more rash to entrust to whatever words come to hand the interpretation of the conception that arises in us), then, bidding farewell to the mere sound in the words—expressed thus or otherwise according to the ability of the speakers—we examine only the meaning displayed in the words, whether it be sound or otherwise, yielding these verbal or nominal niceties to the arts of grammarians.

Since, then, we mark by naming only the things that are known, but it is not possible to comprehend by any significative appellations the things that are beyond knowledge (for how could one signify what is unknown?), for this reason, since no fitting appellation is found for them which would sufficiently present the subject, we strive, by many and various names, so far as is possible, to disclose the surmise that has arisen in us concerning the Divine.

But indeed the things that come under our apprehension are of such a kind that, entirely, either the things that are are contemplated in some dimensional extension, or they afford the notion of a local space in which each thing is apprehended to be, or they come within our purview through their circumscription by beginning and end, being alike bounded at either extremity by non-being (for everything that has a beginning and an end of its being begins from non-being and terminates in non-being), or, as the last of all, we apprehend by the corporeal composition of qualities that which appears, with which are yoked corruption, passion, change, alteration, and the like.