駁歐諾米 第 1 章 第 39/56 段

so that if in what follows he should be found contradicting what he has set forth beforehand, it may become plain to all that he is overthrown by his own hand, being convicted through his own words even before ours.

Let us then consider the argument by means of the very things spoken by him.

He confesses that the name of 'Son' could in no way properly be applied to the Only-begotten God, unless the natural order, as he says, secured the appellation for the one begotten.

Therefore, if anyone should take away the natural order in the case of the appellation 'Son,' he will be reciting the name over him in vain, it being severed from its proper and natural meaning.

But also the saying that these things are firmly asserted by one who abides by what is known from above much more strengthens the pious understanding concerning the appellation of the Son, inasmuch as the God-inspired teaching of the Scriptures, coming to us from above, confirms our doctrine about these matters.

If, then, these things are so, and this is the unerring definition of the truth—namely, that these two run together with one another, both the natural order, as he says, and the witness of the knowledge from above, confirming the judgment of nature—it is plain that to say anything contrary to these is nothing else than openly to do battle against the truth itself.

This man, then, who makes nature the teacher of this name, and who says that he abides by what has been known to us from above through the teaching of the saints—let us hear again what sort of things he goes through a little further on, after what has been said.

'For the present I will pass over the sequence of what is arranged in the discourse in consequence of these things, lest the contradiction of what is written should escape notice, being overshadowed by the reading of the matters interposed between.'

'The same argument,' he says, 'will fit also concerning the work and the creature, since the natural judgment and the mutual relation of the things, and furthermore the usage of the saints, afford us unhindered authority for the pattern;'

'wherefore one would not err in joining together the maker with the work and the creator with the creature.'

About what work and creature does he speak, as having by nature the relation in the name to the one who has made and created it? If indeed he means those things beheld in creation, both visible and invisible, as Paul sets forth, saying that in Him all things were created, both visible and invisible, so that this relational pairing of the names is properly fitted to itself—the work being arranged with the maker, and the creature with the creator—if he means these things, then we too agree;

for clearly the world itself and all things in it are named as a creature of the Creator.

If, then, looking to these things he distinguishes the order of nature, treating with technical skill the appropriation, in the nominal signification, of the mutual relation of names spoken relatively—even so it was superfluous, since no one is ignorant of these things, for us to make some technical fuss over a petty point of grammar, having let go of the doctrines.

But if he applies such expressions to the Only-begotten God, so as to say that He is a work of the maker and a creature of the creator, and refers the authority of this name-coinage to the usage of the saints, let him first demonstrate by his discourse which saints he says declared the Maker of all to be a work and a creature—following whom he grows bold in this utterance.

The Church knows as saints those borne by the Holy Spirit and inspired of God: patriarchs, lawgivers, prophets, evangelists, apostles.

If anyone among these, through his God-inspired words, lays down as doctrine that the God over all—who bears all things by the word of His power and holds all existing things in His grasp, and who by His will alone gave being to the universe through Himself—is created and a work, then he will be pardonable in the usage of the saints, following, as he says, those who lead to such doctrine-making.

But if the knowledge of the divine Scriptures lies open, according to authority, to all, and nothing is secret or hidden from any who wish to partake of the divine teaching, how does he attempt to deceive his hearers through this calumny against the Scriptures, referring the word 'creature' to the usage of the saints in the case of the Only-begotten? For that all things came to be through Him one may hear from well-nigh every holy voice, from Moses and the prophets and apostles who follow in order—of whom it would be a long task now to set forth each one severally.

But it suffices, along with the others and before the others, that the lofty John, in the preface of his theology of the Only-begotten, cried out this: that there is nothing of the things that have come to be which did not come to be through Him—which is an irrefutable and indisputable proof that He is Lord of the creation, not one numbered in the catalogue of created things.

For if all things that have come to be exist through none other than through Him, and John testifies that nothing among the things existing through creation came to be apart from Him, who is so blind in understanding as not even to see the truth in the proclamation of the evangelist—that He who made all creation is altogether something other than the creation? For if everything numbered among the things that have come to be exists through Him, while He Himself is in the beginning and is with God, being God and Word and Life and Light and Impress and Radiance, and none of the things that have come to be through creation is named by these same names—not Word, not God, not Life, not Light, not Truth, not Impress, not Radiance, nor is any other of the names befitting God to be found in relation to the creation—it is plain that He who is these things is by nature something other than the creation, which is and is called none of these.

For if there were in such expressions any community of name between the creation and the one who made it, perhaps, through the community of the other names, it might be pardonable also to make the name 'creation' common to the created thing and to the maker;

teaching thoroughly the purified heart, above reason, through the unspeakable illumination of the concepts.

If, then, Paul cries out these things—that the creation is in bondage—while the Only-begotten God is truly Lord and God over all, and John testifies that the whole creation of the things that have come to be exists through Him, how will one who is in any way whatever numbered among Christians endure, through this incoherent and inconsequent technical jargon, to behold Eunomius dragging down into the lowliness of the creation the Power that is above all rule and authority and dominion, through the community of name with what is enslaved? But if he says he has certain of the saints who called Him a slave, or created, or made, or by any of the lowly and servile names—behold, the Scriptures are at hand;

let him, or someone else on his behalf, produce one such utterance, and we will keep silence.

But if there neither is any such expression, nor could there ever be found in the trustworthy God-inspired Scriptures any such notion which becomes an advocate of this impiety, what need is there to contend further about matters that are agreed upon, against one who not only calumniates the utterances of the saints, but also wrestles against his own definitions? For if the order of nature, as this very man confesses, bears witness to the name for the Son on account of His being begotten, and thus the conjunction of the name comes about through the relation of the begotten to the begetter, how, having torn away from the natural kinship the thing signified by 'Son,' does he transfer the relation to the work and the maker? which it is true to say not only of the elements of the world, but even if one should say it of a gnat and an ant—inasmuch as each of these is a work—the relation of the name to the maker holds equally.

The blasphemy, then, along with much else, is plain also from what has been said;

but the usage from the saints, following which he says he speaks these things, is manifestly nowhere to be found.

Yet perhaps that portion of the proverb might be brought forward to us by them, which the champions of the heresy are wont to adduce as testimony that the Lord was created—namely, 'The Lord created me as the beginning of His ways for His works.'

For because this saying was spoken by Wisdom, and Wisdom was named by the great Paul as the Lord, they put forward this utterance as though the Only-begotten God Himself, through the name of Wisdom, confesses that He was created by the Maker of all things.

But I, for my part, consider the pious meaning of this saying manifest to those who are more attentive and more diligent, so that no harm at all is done against the word of faith to those who have been instructed in the enigmas of the proverb;

nevertheless, I think it necessary to treat of the matter concerning this in a few words, so that, the meaning of this saying being more plainly uncovered, the argument of the heresy may nowhere have boldness, as though it had its testimony from the God-inspired Scripture.

For it is agreed by all that in the usage of Scripture the term 'proverb' is not applied to a manifest meaning, but is used of some hidden sense—just as the Gospel names the enigmatic and obscure sayings 'proverbs'—so that the proverb, if one should grasp the interpretation of this name by a definition, is a discourse which through other things understood in their obvious sense indicates something else by way of the hidden meaning, or a discourse which does not straightforwardly display the aim of its meaning, but conveys the teaching obliquely, through an indirect intimation.

And to this book in particular such a name has been inscribed, and the intimations of this appellation are at once distinguished in the preface by the wise Solomon.

For he named the words in this book not maxims, nor counsels, nor plain teaching, but proverbs, adding the interpretation of what the signification of this name intends;

he first enjoins that there be a preliminary education, and then thus to make room for the instruction that comes from the proverb.

For they are, he says, words of understanding, uncovering their aim by way of a turning.

For what is not understood straightforwardly needs a certain turning for the apprehension of the hidden thing; and just as Paul promised to change his own voice, being about to transfer the history into a figurative contemplation, so here the disclosure of the hidden things is named by Solomon a 'turning of speech,' since the beauty of the concepts cannot be understood unless one, turning back to the opposite side that which is displayed on the surface of the discourse, beholds the hidden radiance of the meaning;

as happens in the case of the feather with which the peacock adorns itself at its tail.

For in its case, he who beholds the back of the feather, by reason of its uncomeliness and shapelessness, altogether despises it as a paltry spectacle;

but if one, turning it over, should display its other aspect, he beholds the manifold painting of nature, and the half-completed circle gleaming with a purple dye at the center, and the golden-hued air around the circle, girded about at its edge and shining with many-colored irises.

Since, then, there is no beauty upon the obvious sense of the wording ('For all the glory of the daughter of the king,' it says, 'is from within,' shining forth in the golden concepts by the hidden adornment), Solomon of necessity lays down for those who peruse this book the 'turning of the discourse,' that through this they may understand a parable and a dark saying, sayings of the wise and riddles.

Since, then, this proverbial teaching contains such things, no one of sound mind will receive without examination and without contemplation the things adduced from this book, even though it may be as clear and familiar as possible from its obvious sense.

For altogether there underlies, even in the things that seem to be evident, the contemplation according to the higher (anagogical) sense.

But if the obvious things of this writing necessarily require the more minute examination, how much more do those things in which there is much that is obscure and hard to contemplate from the immediate understanding? Let us then examine, from the context of the words concerning that passage, whether the reading of the adjacent matters has anything clear.

The discourse sketches Wisdom beforehand as setting forth certain sayings from her own person.

And the lover of learning certainly knows the things said in that passage: where Wisdom pitches her tent as counsel, and calls upon knowledge and understanding, and says she has as her possession strength and prudence, and that she herself is named intelligence, and that she walks in the ways of righteousness and dwells amid the paths of justice; and she says that through herself those who reign do reign, and that the mighty write righteousness, and that the tyrants gain dominion over their own land.

For that the reasonable person receives none of the things said without examination, out of the ready sense, is plain to everyone.

For if kings are advanced to dominion through her, and tyranny has its strength from her, there is every necessity that Wisdom should appear to us as a maker of tyrants, and should transfer to herself the blame for those who wickedly hold power in a kingdom.

But we know as kings those who are truly by Wisdom advanced to the unending rule—the poor in spirit, whose possession is the kingdom of heaven, as the Lord, who is Wisdom, proclaims through the Gospel;

and such also do we recognize the mighty ones to be—those who hold dominion over the passions, who are not enslaved to the dominion of sin, who, as upon a tablet, inscribe righteousness upon their own life.

Thus also the praiseworthy tyranny, by the alliance of Wisdom, having transformed the democracy of the passions into the monarchy of the mind, brings into bondage the things that wickedly rebel toward license—I mean all the fleshly and earthly mindsets.

For the flesh lusts against the spirit and rises up against the sovereignty of the soul.

This land, therefore, does such a tyrant hold sway over—the land over which he was appointed ruler at the first creation by the Word.

As, then, these things are agreed by all who are of sound mind to be read with such an understanding rather than with the meaning that appears on the surface in the wording, so it is likely that, in consequence of the sequence, that utterance which is written closely after these things should not be received simply and without examination by those of sound mind.

'If I announce to you,' she says, 'the things that come to pass day by day, I will remember to recount the things from of old;'

what will the slave of the wording say to me in answer to this utterance—he who sits attached, in Jewish fashion, to the sound of the syllables? Does not the construction seem to produce strangeness to the ear of the more attentive?—

'If I announce to you the things that come to pass day by day, the Lord created me'? So that, if she does not announce the things that come to pass day by day, then, by consequence, she will altogether deny also her having been created.

For she who said 'If I announce, I was created' has given us to understand, by way of what is left unspoken, that 'I was not created, if I do not announce.'

'The Lord created me,' she says, 'the beginning of His ways for His works; before the age He founded me in the beginning; before He made the earth, before He made the depths, before the springs of the waters came forth, before the mountains were settled, and before all the hills He begets me.'

What is this novel order of the fashioning of this creature? First it is created, and after this it is founded, and then it is begotten.

'The Lord made,' she says, 'both uninhabited regions, and the inhabited extremities of that which is under heaven.'

What Lord does she call the maker of the uninhabited and the inhabited region? Assuredly the very one who also made Wisdom;

for from the same person come both this saying and that—both the one saying 'The Lord created me' and the one adding 'The Lord made the regions and the uninhabited places.'

Therefore the Lord will equally be the fashioner of the two—both of Wisdom itself and of the inhabited and uninhabited region.

Where, then, is the 'All things came to be through the Son, and apart from Him nothing came to be'? For if the same Lord both creates Wisdom—which they counsel us to understand in place of the Son—and each of the several things that the creation contains, how does the lofty John speak truly when he says that all things came to be through Him? For this Scripture speaks in opposition to the utterance of the Gospel, ascribing the making of the inhabited and uninhabited region to the one who created Wisdom.

And so likewise all that follows.

It speaks of a certain throne of God set apart upon the winds, and says that the clouds above become strong, and that the springs beneath heaven are made secure; and the passage contains many such things, requiring a mind subtle and keen of vision to discover the meaning that lies hidden in what is set before us.

What is the throne set apart upon the winds? What is the security of the springs beneath heaven?... How do the clouds above become strong? For if one were to judge the saying by outward appearances, he would find much conflict between the facts and what is said.

For who does not know that the extremities of the region beneath heaven are uninhabitable, either because they lie too close to the sun's heat or because they are set at too great a distance from it, being made unfit for dwelling through the excess in either direction—the one becoming dry and parched beyond measure, the other overladen with moisture and frozen fast by the ice—while only those parts are inhabited which lie equally removed from the extremity of either of the two opposites? And if the middle of the earth is that which men have taken for their habitation, how does the proverb say that the extremities of the region beneath heaven are inhabited? And what strength could be observed in the clouds, such as to make the saying true according to its obvious sense, which asserts that the clouds above have become strong? For the nature of a cloud is a rather rarefied vapour diffused through the air, which is borne up by the breath of the air, being made light through its great fineness; but when it flows together upon itself through compression, it falls out from the breath that upholds it, becoming a heavy drop.

What then is the strength in these things, in which no resistance is offered to those who touch them? For the rarity of the air and its ready diffusion can be seen also in the cloud.

...to be apportioned—what reason could one say it has, as agreeing with the common and obvious conceptions? And the difficulty raised before this in the discourse: how does the proclamation of the things that happen day by day, and the remembrance of the reckoning of things from of old, become as it were a cause of Wisdom's being created by God? Since therefore it has been clearly shown through what has been said that there is nothing of such a kind in these matters that the saying should be received without examination and without contemplation, it would be well, in likeness with the rest, to interpret also the words 'The Lord created me' not according to the sense that arises in us immediately from the utterance, but to seek, with all attention and diligence, the godly meaning intended by what is said.

But to grasp accurately the meaning of what lies before us would belong only to those who search out the depths by the Holy Spirit and know how to speak the divine mysteries in the Spirit.

Yet for our part, the discourse will occupy itself with these matters only so far as not to leave altogether unconsidered the aim contained in them.

What then is our account? It is not possible, I think, that the wisdom which comes to be in someone from divine illumination should come to him alone, apart from the other gifts of the Spirit; but there must by all means enter in together with it also the grace of prophecy.

For if it is proper to wisdom to comprehend the truth of the things that are, while prophecy embraces clarity concerning things to come, one could not be in the perfect gift of wisdom without also, through the cooperation of prophecy, including within his knowledge that which shall be.

Since therefore Solomon bears witness to himself that his is no human wisdom—he who said 'God has taught me wisdom,' and who refers all his words to God, saying 'My words are spoken from God'—it would be well to examine the prophecy that is mingled with wisdom in this part of the proverb.

We say then that, whereas in the words preceding this, when he said that Wisdom built herself a house, he was hinting through the discourse at the fashioning of the flesh of the Lord;

for the true Wisdom did not dwell in a building belonging to another, but built for herself the dwelling-place out of the virginal body—

here, on the other hand, he sets before the discourse that which is united out of both, I mean out of the house and out of the Wisdom that built the house—that is, out of the human element and out of the Godhead that was blended with the man; and to each of these he fits the fitting and appropriate expressions, just as one may see done also in the Gospels, in which the Word, being conducted according to what is suitable to the subject, indicates the divine through the higher and God-befitting signification, and the human through the lowly and humble.

So one may see also in this part that Solomon is moved prophetically and has handed down the whole mystery of the economy.

For he speaks first of the pre-eternal power and activity of Wisdom, in which he in a certain way agrees with the Evangelist, even in the very words themselves.

For as that one, by the all-embracing expression, proclaimed Him to be the cause and maker of all things, so Solomon says that the individual things numbered in the universe came to be from Him.

For he says that God by Wisdom founded the earth, and prepared the heavens in understanding, and whatever follows in due sequence upon these, holding to the same sense.

And that he might not seem to overlook the gift of virtue among men, leaving it unremembered, again in the person of Wisdom he goes through those things which we mentioned a little before—the words 'I settled counsel and knowledge and understanding,' and whatever belongs to intellectual and scientific teaching.

Having gone through these and such things, he brings in also teaching concerning the economy according to man—why the Word became flesh.

The only-begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, could not with reason have the name of 'creation' applied to any of the things contemplated in God, so as to say that the Son who is in the Father, or the Word who is in the beginning, or the Light in the light, or the Life in the life, or the Wisdom in the wisdom, 'The Lord created me.'

For if the wisdom of God is created, but Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God, then God assuredly had His wisdom brought in from outside, later acquiring by fabrication what He did not have from the first.

But surely He who is in the bosom of the Father never gives us to conceive of the paternal bosom as empty of Himself.

Therefore He is not among the things that have come into the bosom from outside, but, being the fullness of every good, He who is in the beginning is always conceived as in the Father, not awaiting that He should come to be in Him through creation—lest the Father should ever be conceived as empty of goods—but He who is conceived as being in the eternity of the paternal Godhead is always in Him, being power and life and truth and light and wisdom and such things.

Therefore the utterance 'He created me' is not from the divine and undefiled nature, but, as has been said, from that which was blended according to the economy from our created nature.

How then does the same Wisdom both found the earth and prepare the heavens and break open the deeps—being called wisdom and understanding and divine perception—and here is created for a beginning of works? Not without great cause, he says, is such an economy wrought together.

But since men, having received the commandment of the things to be guarded, cast the grace out of their memory, coming through their disobedience into forgetfulness of good things—for this reason, 'that I may again proclaim to you the things happening day by day for salvation, and remind you, having numbered the things from of old which you had forgotten';

for I do not now proclaim any new gospel, but I am working out your restoration to the ancient state;

for this cause I was created—I who always am and who need nothing of being created in order to be—that I might become a beginning of ways unto the works of God, I mean, unto men.

For since the first way had been corrupted, there was need again that a way, fresh and living, should be made new for those who had gone astray—namely myself, who am the Way.

And that the meaning of 'He created me' looks toward the human element, the divine Apostle sets this before us more clearly through his own words, in which he enjoins, 'Put on the Lord Jesus Christ,' and moreover, where, taking up the same discourse, he says, 'Put on the new man, who was created according to God.'

For if the saving garment is one, and this is Christ, one could not say that the new man created according to God is anything other than Christ; but it is plain that he who has put on Christ has put on the new man created according to God.

For this one alone is truly and properly named 'new man'—who appeared in the life of men not through the known and customary ways of nature, but in whom alone a strange and peculiar mode of creation was inaugurated.

For this reason he names the same one, looking to the paradox of the birth, 'a new man created according to God,' and, looking to the divine nature that was blended into the creation of this new man, he calls Him 'Christ'—so that the two expressions are laid upon one and the same, I mean both that of 'Christ' and that of the 'new man created according to God.'

Since then Christ is Wisdom, let the intelligent hearer consider both the argument of those who contend against us and our own, and let him judge which is the more godly—which the more preserves conceptions befitting God in the text: he who determines that the Maker and Lord of all has been made, and renders Him equal in honor with the enslaved creation, or rather he who looks to the economy and preserves what is fitting both in his supposition concerning the divine and in that concerning the human—great Paul bearing joint witness to the doctrine, who in the new man sees the creation, but in the true Wisdom the authority over creation.

And the order of the discourse also agrees with the contemplation of the doctrine.

Had not the beginning of the ways been created in us, the foundation of the ages we look for would not have been laid, nor would the Lord have become for us the Father of the age to come, had He not, according to Isaiah, been born a child to us and had His name been called, together with all the other things which the prophet named, and above all, Father of the age to come.

First, then, came to pass the mystery according to virginity and the economy concerning the Passion, and then the wise master-builders of the faith laid down the foundation of the faith.

And this is Christ, the Father of the age to come, upon whom is built the life of the ages that have no end.

For He who is in those who have received Him has not yet been born in the unbelieving.

In order, then, that these things may come to pass also in us, the Maker of these things must be born in us.