駁歐諾米 第 1 章 第 38/56 段

For this reason, in order that the transcendent nature may be seen to have no kinship with the things below, we have used, concerning the divine nature, notions and words that separate it from such things: calling it pre-eternal as being above the ages, unoriginate as being above beginning, endless as not being completed, incorporeal as having its subsistence apart from body, incorruptible as not being corrupted, and impassible, immutable and unalterable as not admitting of change or passion or alteration.

Let those who wish coin technical terms concerning such names as pleases them, and fit other names to these names, calling them privative or ablative or whatever pleases them; but let us, yielding the teaching or learning of such things to the ambitious, examine only the meaning—whether it lies within the pious and God-befitting conception, or is separated from it.

If, then, God either was not before, or shall not be at some time, He could not properly be called either endless or unoriginate.

Likewise He could be called neither unalterable, nor incorporeal, nor incorruptible, if body, or corruption, or alteration, or anything of the kind were surmised concerning Him.

But if it is impious to conceive any of these things concerning Him, it would surely be pious to use of Him the words that separate off the incongruous things, and to say those things which we have already often said—incorruptible, endless, unbegotten, and whatever is of this kind—the significance implanted in each of these names teaching only the separation, for our understanding, of the things that lie ready to hand, and not interpreting the very nature that is separated from the incongruous things.

For while the signification of these names points out what the Divine is not, what that thing is in its nature which these things are not remains in obscurity.

But the remaining names too, whose signification is indicative of some position and existence, have their indication not of the divine nature itself, but of the things piously contemplated concerning it.

Having thus considered, and taking from all these and such like other conceptions concerning the Divine, we interpret each of the conceptions that arise in us by its own proper names, following the counsel of Wisdom, which says that from the greatness and beauty of created things the Maker of all is proportionately to be contemplated.

We call Him Craftsman as the Maker of mortal things, and Powerful as having mastered so great a creation—He to whom His power sufficed to make His will into substance.

And having conceived the good of our life, we consistently name Him who leads it by the appellation of the Good; and having been taught by the divine Scripture the incorruptibility of the coming judgement, we address Him through these as Judge and just.

And, to speak in sum, we translate into the form of names all the conceptions that arise in us concerning the divine nature, so that no appellation is spoken of the divine nature without some distinctive notion.

But we have also apprehended that the very word 'God' (theos) has prevailed from the activity of overseeing.

For, having believed that the Divine is present to all things, and beholds all things, and passes through all things, we signify such a meaning by this name, being led to this by the holy voice.

For he who said, 'O my God, attend unto me,' and 'Behold, O God,' and 'God knoweth the secrets of the heart,' clearly interprets the meaning inherent in this word: that from beholding (theasthai) He is named God (theos).

For there is no difference between saying 'Attend,' and 'Behold,' and 'Look.'

Since, then, the beholder sees the thing to be beheld, He who beholds is fittingly called the God of that which is seen.

So that even through this, though taught some partial activity of the divine nature, we have not come by means of this word into the comprehension of its very substance.

Nor indeed, because we lack a fitting name, do we suppose that the Divine suffers any loss as regards its glory.

For the inability to express the inexpressible, while it accuses the poverty of our nature, affords a greater demonstration of the glory of God, teaching us, as the Apostle says, that the only name proper to God is to believe that He is above every name.

For the fact that He transcends every movement of the understanding, and is found outside the grasp of any name, becomes for men a token of His ineffable majesty.

Concerning, then, the names applied to God, uttered in whatever form, these are the things we know.

The exposition of which, unadorned and simple, we have set before the more fair-minded of our hearers, judging it at once shameful and unseemly for us ourselves to set ourselves passionately in opposition to the feeble battles of Eunomius concerning these matters.

For what could one say to him who asserts that we make the form of the names more authoritative than the worth of the things named, bestowing upon the names the prerogative over the things, and equality of honour upon things unequal? These things have thus been said by that man's own voice.

Let him who has undertaken to judge decide whether the vehement accusation of the slanderer has anything pertinent against us, on which it would be worth making a defence—namely, that we bestow on the names the prerogative over the things—since it is plain to all that no one of the names has in itself any substantial subsistence, but every name becomes a mark and sign of some substance and thought, itself by itself neither existing nor being conceived.

But how can one apportion gifts to that which has no subsistence? Let him who deems the names and words to be fittingly employed teach the disciples of his deceit.

Of these things I should not have made mention at all, had it not been necessary through them to make the demonstration of the writer's feebleness both in mind and in expression.

And whatever he drags in of the God-inspired Scripture unfittingly and not according to its aim, in coining a technical distinction of immortality between angels and men—I know not with what in view, nor what he is establishing thereby—these too I shall let pass (for the immortal, so long as it is immortal, does not admit the 'more' and the 'less' by way of comparison).

If the one of the two things set side by side should stand in the category of immortality by way of comparison, then by every necessity such a thing cannot even be named immortal.

For how could that any longer be properly called immortal, of which the antithetical juxtaposition by comparison has predicated mortality? And that subtle nicety of his—that he bids the notion of privation not be indifferent and midway, but calls the separation from better things privation, while asserting that the removal from worse things ought not be signified by this name—so that, if these things should prevail, the apostolic voice would no longer, according to him, be speaking truth when it says that He alone has immortality and bestows it on others.

For what the sentence he has adduced has in common with his preceding argument, it is not possible either for us or for any others of those who have understanding to conceive.

And since we were not strong enough to discern these wise and subtle points, he calls us ignorant both of the judgement of things and of the use of names, writing thus in these words.

And all such things, as having no force against the truth, I shall pass over without examination: both his slandering of the conception of the incorruptible and the incorporeal set forth by us—namely, that of these two appellations the one signifies the dimensionlessness in which the threefold extension of bodies is not contemplated, while the other signifies that which does not admit of corruption—and his saying, in these very words, that 'we do not deem it right that the form of the names should fall away into unfitting conceptions,' and that 'each of these <should not> be supposed to be significative of not-being or of not-being-present, but of being itself'; and having judged these things worthy of silence and deep oblivion, I shall leave it to the readers to detect for themselves the impiety mingled with folly.

He who deems it right that the corruptible be not set in antithesis to the incorruptible, nor that the ablative signification indicate the removal of the worse, but that being itself be signified through the subject.

If, then, the signification of the incorruptible is not deemed by this man who idly coins these technicalities to be ablative of corruption, then, by every necessity, such a form of the name will indicate altogether the contrary.

For if incorruptibility is not an estrangement from corruption, it is altogether an assent to the incongruous.

For this is the nature of opposites: that by the removal of the one there enters in the positing of the opposite.

But let us also bid farewell to that sharp contrivance of his—that God is by nature not susceptible of death—as though there existed one holding the contrary opinion about these matters.

For we, in the case of opposites, hold that it makes no difference whether one says a thing is, or that the contrary is not.

As indeed also in the present discourse, having said that God is life, we by this confession implicitly forbid the conceiving of death concerning Him, even if we do not declare it through the voice.

And whenever we confess that He is not susceptible of death, by the same reasoning we have established that He is life.

'But I do not see,' he says, 'how God could be superior to His own works from things that are not present in Him.'

And upon this wise argument, together with impiety, he calls the great Basil a fool, for having ventured upon such words.

To whom I would say: not to use insults too unsparingly against those who say these things, lest somehow he unawares be insulting himself with the same.

For perhaps not even he himself would deny that in this the majesty of the divine nature is recognized: in its having no share in those things in which the lower nature is shown to partake.

For if it were in any of these, it would not have the more, but would be altogether identical, in respect of that property, to each of the things that share it in common.

But if it is above these, then plainly by not having these it is raised above those that have them—just as we say that the sinless one is better than those who are in sins.

For to be separated from evil becomes a demonstration of being rich in the best things.

But let the insolent one make use of nature as he will.

As for us, having briefly noted some of the things said in this section, we shall transfer our discourse to the matters that lie before us.

'...immortal in comparison with mortal things, incorruptible in comparison with corruptible things, unbegotten in comparison with begotten things.'

Is the fabrication of this fighter against God's impiety plain to all, or does it befit reasoning to uncover his wickedness? Who does not know that things exceeded by the same measure are altogether equal to one another? If, then, the corruptible and the begotten are alike exceeded by God, and the Lord too is begotten, let Eunomius draw the conclusion of the impiety that emerges from what has been laid down.

For it is plain that he deems begetting to be the same as corruption and death, just as in his preceding arguments he declared the unbegotten to be the same as the incorruptible.

If, then, he views corruption and begetting on an equal footing, and says alike that God stands apart from the two, and the Lord is begotten, let no one demand of us that the consequence from the argument be added, but let him reason out the conclusion for himself—if indeed the nature of God stands apart from the begotten and the corruptible equally and by the same reasoning.

'But it is not possible,' he says, 'to call Him incorruptible and immortal by the absence of death and corruption.'

Let those who are led by the nose, and dragged around to whatever seems good to each, be persuaded by what has been said, and let them say that corruption and death are present to God, so that He may be called immortal and incorruptible.

For if the ablative appellations of these do not, as Eunomius says, signify the absence of death and of corruption, then altogether, by this technical device of his, it is established that the contrary and alien things are present to Him.

For each of the things conceived by the mind is either wholly deprived of some quality or is not deprived of it; as, for example, light and darkness, life and death, health and sickness, and all such things.

In these cases, if one should say that one of the two conceived opposites is absent, he thereby establishes the entire presence of the other.

If, then, he says that God is not called immortal by reason of the absence of death, he would plainly be establishing that death is present to Him, and thereby denying immortality to the God of all.

For how could He still be truly immortal and incorruptible, from whom he does not say that corruption and death are absent? But perhaps someone will say that we are fastening upon his argument in too captious a manner.

For no one, they say, would be so mad as to establish that God is not immortal.

But of the things conceived hiddenly in secret no man has knowledge; rather, through the things spoken our conjecture about the hidden things comes to be.

Let us therefore take up again what has been said.

God, he says, is not called immortal by reason of the absence of death.

How shall we receive this statement, that death is not absent from God, even though He is called immortal? If, then, this is what he bids us understand, the god of Eunomius will assuredly be mortal and subject to corruption.

For that from which death is not absent cannot have an immortal nature.

But if the appellations signify neither the absence of death nor of corruption, then either they are applied in vain to the God who is over all, or they contain within themselves some other meaning.

What, then, is this meaning? Let the technical wordsmith expound it.

But we, who, as Eunomius says, are unlearned both in the judgment of things and in the use of names, have learned to call 'free from disease' not that from which power is separated, but that from which disease is separated; and 'unmaimed' not the one who is outside the banquets, but the one who has no maiming in himself.

And all other things we likewise name from what is present or from what is not present: brave and cowardly, drowsy and sleepless, and all that belong to this same usage.

But I do not know what profit it brings to deem these foolish trifles worthy of examination.

For to a man living in gray hairs and looking toward the truth, it is no small ground for condemnation to carry through his mouth the ridiculous and unserious matters of his adversary's contentiousness.

Wherefore I shall pass over both those things and what follows next upon them.

He says that truth testifies to God no natural conjunction of its own;

as it were grafting it in; then he says that neither does truth, molded from without and by us, inscribe such a notion by the laws of piety.

But again I shall make my apology concerning what has been said, that it is not as one making sport for his readers that I have set forth these laughable utterances, but in order that I might persuade the hearer from what sort of preparation of arguments this man sets out—he who, while scouring away our rusticity, thereafter grows insolent against the truth.

What manner of man is he, in respect of his argument, and what sort of things does he utter—he who luxuriates and struts before the thick-skinned among his hearers, who acclaim him, as he clumsily carries through these bombastic, dry-mouthed effusions, as though he had conquered all by the power of his words? But he says that the essence itself is immortality.

'And the essence of the Only-begotten, what do you say of it,' I would say to him, 'is it immortality or not? Since in its case too, as you say, simplicity admits no natural conjunction.'

If, then, he denies that the essence of the Son is immortality, it is plain what he is looking to.

For what is set in contradistinction to the immortal is not the mark of a very subtle mind to perceive.

For just as the sequence of the antithetical division shows that what is not incorruptible is corruptible, and what is not immutable is mutable, so also what is not immortal is assuredly mortal.

What, then, will this expositor of novel doctrines pronounce authoritatively to us concerning the essence of the Only-begotten? For again I shall put the same question to the pamphleteer.

Will he grant that this too is immortality, or will he not consent? If, then, he does not accept that the essence of the Son is immortality, he will of necessity consent to the contrary, establishing it to be death by the removal of the better.

But if, fleeing the absurdity, he should also name the essence of the Only-begotten immortality, he will of necessity consent that on this account there is no difference in essence.

For if the nature of the Father and of the Son is equally immortality, and immortality is by no principle of difference sundered from itself, then even by the enemies themselves it is confessed that no principle of difference is found in respect of essence between the Father and the Son.

But it would now be time to set forth his grievous accusation against us, which he made at the end of his discourse, saying that we assert the Father to be from that which is utterly non-existent.

Having stolen a certain phrase out of the context, and dragged it, bare and unconstrued, away from the rest of the body of the text, he attempts to worry it with his blunt teeth, tearing it to pieces, or rather beslavering the argument with spittle.

But I shall first state the meaning of what has been carefully explained to us by the teacher concerning this matter, and then thus set forth the argument itself verbatim, so that it may become manifest to all who this man is that insinuates himself, to the ruin of truth, into the endeavors of the pious.

For our teacher, leading us to the meaning of 'ungenerate' by his own arguments, laid down for us such an approach toward the knowledge of the thing sought, showing that the signification of 'ungenerate' lies far from the notion of essence.

The evangelist, he says, having made the beginning of the Lord's genealogy according to the flesh from Joseph, and then proceeding to those ever older in time, and having set the end of the genealogy in Adam, and having said that God is the father of the first-formed man because there is no bodily father set above him—he says that it is ready to hand for each one's understanding to grasp this concerning God: that God, from whom Adam is, does not, after the likeness of those genealogically reckoned in human fashion, Himself have His subsistence from another.

For when, having traversed all things, we take God with the mind after all things, we have conceived the beginning of all.

And every beginning, if it should happen to be dependent upon some other thing, is not a beginning.

Therefore, if God is the beginning of all, there will be nothing whatsoever set above the beginning of all things.

This is the teacher's exposition concerning the signification of 'ungenerate.'

And that nothing outside the truth has been testified concerning him by us, I shall set forth the very statement about this in his own words.

Setting forth [the genealogy] of Christ and going back from the last to the first, he began from Joseph, and having said that this one was of Heli, and Heli of Matthat, and thus carrying the exposition up by ascent to Adam, then having come to those above and having said that Seth was from Adam, and Adam from God, there he brought the ascent to its end.

As, then, that one said that Adam was from God, let us ask ourselves: and God is from whom? Is it not ready to hand for each one's understanding that He is from no one? And 'from no one' plainly means the unoriginate, and the unoriginate means the ungenerate.

As, then, in the case of men, 'being from someone' was not essence, so neither in the case of the God of all is it possible to call 'ungenerate' an essence. With what eyes do you still look toward your guide? To you I speak, the herd of the perishing.

How do you still incline your ear to the one who by his arguments has set up such a monument of his own shamelessness? Are you not now at least, if not before, ashamed to employ such a guide by the hand toward the truth? Will you not use this as a sign of his madness concerning doctrines, namely his so shamelessly setting himself against the truth of the Scriptures? Thus does he interpret for you the divine utterances, thus does he champion the truth of the doctrines—so as to convict Basil of genealogizing the God who is over all from that which is utterly non-existent? Shall I speak his statement, shall I set forth the words of his shamelessness? I pass over the outrages, I do not blame the revilings;

For I do not blame the man foul-breathed at the mouth because he stinks, nor the one maimed in body because he is maimed.

For such things are misfortunes of nature, escaping the blame of those who have understanding.

The zeal for insolence, therefore, is a sickness of the reasonings and an ill-luck of a soul whose healthy reasoning has been maimed.

No account, then, do I take of the revilings; but that vehement and irresistible weaving of the syllogism, by which he brought his accusation against us to a conclusion toward his own aim, I shall write out plainly in his very words.

'For,' he says, 'in order that he might not be prevented from saying that the Son is from participation in Him who is, he has unwittingly said that the God who is over all is from that which is utterly non-existent.'

'For if nothing is, according to the notion, the same as that which is utterly non-existent, and the interchange of things equal in force is unhindered, then he who says that God is from no one says that God is from that which is utterly non-existent.'

Toward which of the things said before let us first look—that he supposes the Son to be from participation in God, and sheds upon those who do not accept this the foul stench of his own mouth; or shall we examine the cold and dreamlike construction of the sophism? But that to attach 'from participation' to the divine nature belongs only to poets and myth-fabricators, no one who partakes in prudence in any way whatever could fail to know.

Therefore it is fitting to pass over this argument in silence, as one that carries in itself the refutation of both folly and impiety, and rather to set forth that irresistible syllogism, so that our common folk may learn what and how great are the harms suffered by those untrained in the technical approaches.

'For if nothing,' he says, 'is according to the notion the same as that which is utterly non-existent, and the interchange of things equal in force is unhindered, then he who says that God is from no one says that God is from that which is utterly non-existent.'

Who granted to the one who brandishes against us the Aristotelian spear-point, that to say someone has no father is the same as to say that he has come to be from that which is utterly non-existent? For he who numbered in order those genealogized by the Gospel plainly conceives, as father, the one set above each one mentioned.

Is it not clear even to utter babes that the catalogue of these mentioned names is an enumeration of fathers? For if Seth is the son of Adam, then Adam is assuredly the father of the one begotten from him.

Thus tell me also: who is the father of the God who is over all? Answer the one who asks, break forth in voice, reply, set all your logical art in motion toward this question;

will you find any argument that escapes the grip of your own sophism? Who is the father of the ungenerate? Can you say who it is? Then is he not ungenerate? But, hard-pressed, you will assuredly say—what indeed it is also necessary to say—that there is no one.

What then, dearest friend? Has this soft entanglement of your sophism not yet been loosed for you? Have you understood that you have beslavered yourself in your own bosom? What says the great Basil? That the ungenerate is from no father.

For the sequence, from the fathers previously genealogized, grants that the addition of 'father' is to be confessed by what is left unspoken.

You have made 'from no father' into 'nothing,' and again, having interchanged 'nothing' into 'that which is utterly non-existent,' you have brought that dissolved syllogism to its conclusion.

Therefore these clever devices of your technical ingenuity will be turned back against yourself.

Who is the father of the ungenerate, I ask? No one, you will say by every necessity.

For the ungenerate assuredly has no father.

If, then, no one is the father of the ungenerate, and 'no one' was by you interchanged into 'nothing,' and 'nothing,' according to your argument, is the same in notion as that which is utterly non-existent, and the interchange of things equal in force is, as you say, unhindered, then he who has said that no one is the father of the ungenerate says that the God who is over all is from that which is utterly non-existent.

Such, as it seems, is the evil, O Eunomius (for I shall use your own words), not to have honored seeming to be wise before being so (for perhaps such a thing is a small matter as regards misfortune), but to be ignorant of oneself and not to know how great is the difference between the high-soaring Basil and the land-crawling beast.

For if that keen and divine eye were watching over our life, if it went round about human life upon the wing of wisdom, it would have shown, swooping down upon you with the rushing sound of its words, to what a shell of folly you have grown fast, and against whom you have raised yourself up through deception—hunting, by outrages and revilings against him, after the appearance of being someone in the eyes of old crones and eunuchs.

Nevertheless, you must not despair even of that one's talons.

For our own contribution, judged in relation to him, though it be but the portion of a talon, would be much; but in relation to you it is as much as suffices to strip off from you the sheath of deception and to show the unseemliness hidden in the shell.

If for one who lawfully contends the limit of the toils in the contests is either that the antagonist, having wholly given up before the toils, should willingly withdraw in favor of the one who has prevailed for the victory, or that he be thrown by three falls according to the athletic law—by which there comes to the victor, by the judgment of the umpires, the glory of the crown through the brilliant proclamation—since, then, Eunomius, having already been twice thrown in the foregoing discourses, still does not concede that truth holds the prize of victory over falsehood, but for a third time again girds himself against piety through his pamphleteering, contending in the customary wrestling-school of falsehood, having strengthened himself for the contests on behalf of deception, of necessity now too, through us, the word of truth is raised up in opposition to the overthrow of falsehood, entrusting its hopes to the victory-giver and president of the contest, and at the same time being empowered against the ill-craft of the adversary's wrestling-bouts.

For we confess without shame that we have neither prepared for the contests any discourse sharpened through rhetoric, nor put forward any cleverness of dialectical ingenuity as an ally against those arrayed in opposition—a cleverness which often, before the inexperienced, transfers even the truth into the suspicion of falsehood.

For it is of itself overturned through itself and falls down.

But that it may be made altogether clear to everyone that Eunomius' own labor becomes for those who wrestle against him the very material of his own overthrow, I will set before the readers of the discourse his image itself (for so I think one ought to name a discourse that stands outside the truth).

And may you all become just arbiters of this lawful contest of words—you who peruse our labors and observe the present grappling of our discourse with its adversary—so that, through your righteous judgment, the word of piety may be proclaimed to the whole theater of the Church, having received from all an unrivaled dominion over impiety, and, through the three falls of the enemy, being adorned with the ever-blooming crown of those who are saved.

This passage, then, is thrown up in the preface against the truth of the third discourse, and it runs in this manner:

'Preserving,' he says, 'the natural order, and abiding by what has been known from above, we do not decline to call the Son begotten and an offspring, since the begotten essence and the appellation of the Son claim for themselves this relation of the names.'

To this let the hearer carefully attend, that in naming the Only-begotten God both 'begotten' and 'Son,' he traces back the cause of these names to the natural order, and he calls to witness the knowledge from above in support of such a notion;