駁歐諾米 第 1 章 第 51/56 段

And He who makes all things is the Only-begotten God, as the Gospel proclaims.

This One, when He willed, then also made the creation; then He encompassed with the heavenly body, by means of the circling substance, all the world enclosed within that figure.

When He judged it good that this should come to be, then He brought forth the dry land; then He shut up the waters in the hollow places.

Then the sprouting plants, then the fruits, then the generation of animals, then the fashioning of man—when each of these seemed timely to the Wisdom of the Creator.

And He who made all things (for again I will take up the same argument) is the Only-begotten God, who made the ages.

For, the interval of the ages having been laid down beforehand for the things that exist, it is timely to use this temporal adverb, namely, that "then He willed and then He made."

But when there is no age, nor any notion of interval contemplated concerning the divine nature—which is beheld as without quantity and without interval—it is altogether necessary that the significations of temporal adverbs should be idle.

So that to say that a temporal beginning was given to the creation according to what pleased the Wisdom of Him who made all things is not outside the bounds of what is reasonable.

But to contemplate the divine nature itself in some extension of interval belongs only to those who have been schooled in this new wisdom.

For such a point too, which lay embedded in what has been said, I willingly passed over, hastening toward the matter before me, which I will now take up again and read aloud for the demonstration of the writer's acuteness.

"For His most excellent God," says he, "before all other things that are begotten, has mastery over His own power."

From the very things labored over by Philo, the theft of Eunomius will be made manifest.

But I have noted this at present, not so much to reproach the writer with the poverty of his own words and thoughts, as wishing to show to my readers the affinity of Eunomius's doctrines to the sayings of the Jews.

For the language of Philo would not have been fitted, in its very wording, to this man's conceptions, unless there had also been some kinship of his understanding to that man's.

For thus one may find the statement laid down in the Hebrew: "God, before all other things that are begotten"; but what follows was thrown in from the new Judaism, namely, "has mastery over His own power."

But how much absurdity this contains, the argument, when examined, will clearly show.

"God," says he, "has mastery over His own power."

Being what, tell me, does He have mastery over what? Being Himself something other than the power, does He have mastery over the power which is something other? Then power is overcome by powerlessness.

For that which is something other than power is assuredly not power at all.

And thus He is found, in respect of that whereby He is not power, to have mastery over the power.

But if, being God, He is power, then again He has another power within Himself, and by this He has mastery over the other.

And what is the conflict and dissension, such that God, having divided the strength that exists within Himself, wrestles down the one part by the other part of the power? For He could not have mastery over His own power, unless some greater and more forceful power were fighting on His side toward this end.

Such is the God of Eunomius—a thing of double nature, or manifold composition, divided against Himself, having a power at variance with His power, so that by the one He is borne toward disorder, while by the other He restrains the faultiness of the movement.

And with what intent does He master the power that rushes toward begetting—lest some evil arise from the begetting not being hindered? Or rather, before this, let him explain what by nature is the thing that is mastered.

For what is said indicates a certain impulsive and deliberate movement, contemplated as existing peculiarly by itself.

For the one that masters is one thing, and the one that is mastered is of necessity another.

God, then, has mastery over the power—the power being what? A nature that is self-determining, or something else besides this? Rushing toward activity, or at rest? For if it is supposed to be at rest, that which is quiescent has no need of one to master it.

But if he says that He masters it, plainly He masters something that is in motion and rushing forth.

And this he will assuredly say is by nature something other than the One who masters it.

What, then, does he conceive this to be? Let him make it plain by argument.

Is it something other than God, contemplated in hypostasis? And how could that which is foreign be in God? Or a certain disposition, contemplated as non-subsistent, in the divine nature? But he would not say this.

For that which does not subsist does not exist, and that which is not can neither be mastered nor let go.

What, then, is that power which is mastered and hindered from its own activity, until the time of the Son's begetting, having come upon it, should let the power go forth unhindered to be borne toward the activity that is according to nature? And what is the cause in the interval of the delay, on account of which God postponed the begetting of the Only-begotten, deeming it not yet good to become a Father? And what is this interval that is inserted between the life of the Father and of the Son? Not time, not place, not any notion of interval, nor anything else of the kind.

Toward what, then, does the keen and sharp-sighted eye, fixing its gaze, behold the interval between the life of the Son and the life of the Father? But being driven together from every side, he too of necessity concedes that there is nothing in between.

But when there is nothing intervening, does he not accept that the communion is immediate and conjoined? But he descends to our measures of knowledge, and after the manner of men he too converses with us as one of us, quietly confessing the weakness of his reasonings and taking refuge in an argument which neither Aristotle nor those of his school taught.

For "then," says he, "it was good and fitting to beget the Son, when He willed—no inquiry arising from this among the prudent as to why not sooner."

Abandoning the technical methods, you yourself also take refuge in irrational assent—you who so often reproached those who attempt to write without logical skill, you who say to Basil, "By saying that it is impossible for men to render account concerning spiritual matters, you convict your own ignorance," and again elsewhere bringing the same charge, that "you make common your own weakness, declaring that what is impossible for you is impossible for all"? You who say these and such things, do you thus present the argument to the ear of one inquiring the cause on account of which the Father delays to become the Father of such a Son? Do you think it enough for demonstration to say that He begot then when He willed, and let there be no inquiry about this? Has your comprehending imagination so failed you for the establishment of your doctrines? Where are the dilemmatic propositions? Where the forceful constructions? How have your fearful and inescapable conclusions of syllogisms vanished, dissolved into nothing and without substance, gone from your art? "He begot the Son then when He willed, and let there be no inquiry about this."

Are these the results of many sweats, these the fruits of those overweening promises? What was the question? Whether it is good and fitting for God to have such a Son, and why the good is not believed to be always with Him? What is the answer that he has made for us from the very inmost sanctuaries of philosophy, binding fast his argument with indissoluble necessities? "He made the Son then when He willed, and let there be no inquiry about this, as to why not sooner."

But if the inquiry had been set forth concerning some one of the irrational creatures that act according to a certain natural impulse—why the spider did not sooner accomplish what it purposed, or its threads, or the bee its honeycomb, or the turtledove its nest—what else could you have had to say? Would not this very answer have been ready at hand, that it did it then when it willed, and let there be no inquiry about this? But even concerning some modeler or painter accomplishing what he purposes by the imitative art, whether in drawings or in modelings, when he is not subject to some authority in bringing his art to activity, I think such a saying is fitting toward one wishing to learn why he did not sooner set his art to work—namely, that, not being under necessity, he made the season of the activity a matter of his own choice.

For men, because they neither always will the same things, nor for the most part have their power cooperating with their will, do some one of the things according to their purpose then, when both their choice inclines toward the work and nothing external hinders.

But that which is ever the same, to which nothing of the good is acquired from without, in which there is no place for any difference of counsels arising by way of the contrary through some error and ignorance, which comes to be nothing by change that was not before, nor chooses anything afterward which it did not from the beginning perceive as good—to say concerning this that it does not always have the good, but later chose to have something which it did not before choose, this belongs to a wisdom surpassing us.

For we have learned that the Divine is ever full of every good—nay rather, is itself the fullness of good things, ever, and needs no addition unto perfection, but is itself by its own nature the perfection of the good.

But the perfect is equally estranged from both increase and diminution.

And for this reason we say that the perfection of good things which is contemplated in the divine nature is always the same: however far we may extend our understanding, there too we apprehend it to be of such a kind.

Therefore the Divine is never empty of good.

But indeed the Son is the fullness of every good.

He is therefore always contemplated in the Father, whose nature is perfection in every good.

But, he says, let there be no inquiry as to why He was not begotten earlier.

To this we shall reply that it is one thing, O most wise one, to legislate something according to one's own opinion by way of command, and quite another to bring forward matters in dispute by way of reasoned argument.

So long, then, as you can allege no reason on account of which it is pious to say that the Son was afterwards added to the Father, your command will be idle among those who are of sound mind.

But let us, according to our custom, appropriate his argument for the establishment of the doctrines of the truth, so that by this too it may become plain that everywhere, being unwillingly constrained by the truth itself, they plead the case of our own position.

For if He then begat the Son when He willed, as the adversary says, and He always willed the good, and power runs together with the will, then the Son will always be conceived together with the Father, who both always wills the good and is able to have what He wills.

And if it is necessary to bring his next argument also into accord with the truth, it is easy to fit this too to our doctrine—namely, that among the sober-minded there should be no inquiry about this, why He was not begotten earlier.

For the expression 'earlier' carries an indication of time, being contrasted with 'afterwards' and 'later.'

But when there is no time, the very names of temporal interval are also wholly abolished together with it.

But indeed the Lord is before times and before ages.

The inquiry, then, about 'earlier' and 'later' is useless, in the case of the Maker of the ages, to those who have understanding.

For such names, when not spoken with reference to time, are empty of all meaning.

Since, therefore, the Lord is before times, 'earlier' and 'later' have absolutely no place in His case.

Perhaps even these things suffice for the overthrow of arguments that need no one to wrestle against them, but collapse of their own feebleness.

For who is so far at leisure from the cares of life as to give himself to such a degree to listening both to the vanity of the opposing arguments and to our contending against these empty things? But since, for those already possessed by impiety, the deceit has been burned deep into their hearts like some fast and hard-to-wash dye, let us tarry yet a little longer with the argument, in case we might be able to wash away from their souls this wicked stain of theirs.

For having said what has been said, and having added to these, after the manner of his teacher Prunicus, certain incoherent and ill-fitting octads of insults and revilings, he proceeds to the crowning point of his attempts; and abandoning the illogical exposition of his vanity, he again arms his argument with the goads of dialectic, and, as he supposes, syllogistically constructs the absurdity against us.

Since no begetting extends to infinity but comes to some end, it is (he says) altogether necessary that those who accept the Son's begetting should hold that He at some point ceased to be begotten, and, indeed, that He did not lack a beginning either—for whatever has ceased from being begotten has also, of necessity, begun.

For the cessation of being begotten guarantees a beginning both of the begetting and of the being begotten; and it is not possible to disbelieve these things, on the ground both of nature itself, and moreover of the divine laws.

Since, then, according to the wisdom of those skilled in such matters, he sets forth the universal and attempts by induction to establish the point at issue, embracing within the general proposition the demonstration of the particular, let us first consider the universal, and then in this way examine the force of what is adduced.

Is it, then, pious from every begetting to make inference also concerning the Son's pre-eternal begetting, and ought we to put forward the common nature as a teacher of the Only-begotten's existence? For my part, I would not expect anyone to come to such a pitch of madness as to imagine any such thing concerning that divine and undefiled begetting.

Every begetting, he says, does not extend to infinity.

What is the thing signified by 'begetting'? Does he mean the fleshly and bodily bringing forth, or the fabrication of inanimate things? But of bodily begettings the affections are manifest, which no one would transfer to the divine begetting.

And so that our argument may not seem to be dragging on by describing the works of nature, we shall pass over such things in silence, since I suppose everyone who has understanding knows of himself the causes on account of which begetting is prolonged, both in its beginning and in its ending.

The forming, the travail, the birth, the time—without which it is impossible for the begetting of a body to come about.

All of which alike are foreign to the divine begetting of the Only-begotten.

For if any one of these be granted, all the rest also will of necessity enter in together with it.

In order, therefore, that the divine begetting may be pure of every affect-laden notion, we shall not conceive in its case even any extension of interval.

For that which begins and ceases is altogether contemplated in some extension.

But every extension is measured by time.

And when there is no time, by which we mark off both the end and the beginning of the birth, it would be vain to conceive an end and a beginning in the case of the begetting that is without interval, since no significative notion is to be found either in that at which it begins or in that at which it terminates.

But if he looks to the inanimate things among created objects, in their case likewise place, time, matter, preparation, and the power of the craftsman, and many such things concurring, bring the product to completion.

And since time is altogether coextended with all things that come to be, and the resources for fabrication are conceived together with everything that is created, whether it be something animate or inanimate, it is possible to find in these both the beginnings and the ends of their constitution.

For indeed the procuring of matter becomes a beginning of the fabricated thing, as does some local mark and a sequence of time.

All these things determine the beginnings and ends for the things that come to be; and no one would say that these have any communion with the pre-eternal existence of the Only-begotten God, so as, through the things contemplated here, to reckon by analogy any beginning and end in the case of that begetting.

These matters, then, having been thus distinguished by us, let us again consider the argument of our opponents.

Every begetting, he says, not extending to infinity, but terminating in some end.

Since, then, the thing signified by 'begetting' has been understood in each of its two senses—whether he wishes to signify by such a name the bringing forth of bodily things or the fabrication of created objects, neither of which has any communion with the incorruptible nature—the premise has been shown to be foreign to the point at issue.

For it does not follow that, because every making and begetting terminates in some limit, it is therefore altogether necessary, as he constructs it, that those who accept the Son's begetting should circumscribe it with a double limit, conceiving a beginning and an end in its case.

For only things circumscribed by some magnitude both begin to come to be and end in a limit; and the measure derived from time, being extended alongside the quantity of the thing begotten, separates the beginning from the end by the interval between.

But that which is without quantity and without interval—how could anyone either measure or divide it? What measure could he find in the case of the quantityless, or what interval in the case of the intervalless? And how could anyone mark off the boundless by an end and a beginning? For 'beginning' and 'end' are names of the limits of things that have interval.

And where there is no interval, neither is there any limit.

But indeed the divine nature is without interval; and being without interval, it has no limit; and that which is without limit both is and is called infinite.

It is vain, therefore, to circumscribe the infinite with a beginning and an end.

For that which is circumscribed cannot be infinite.

Whence, then, does this Platonic Phaedrus stitch together, incongruously with his own doctrines, the things there philosophized by Plato concerning the soul? For as that man there spoke of a 'cessation of motion,' so this man too has desired to speak of a 'cessation of begetting,' that he might dazzle those unacquainted with these matters by his Platonic fine phrases.

And it is not possible, he says, to disbelieve these things, on the ground both of nature itself, and moreover of the divine laws.

But nature, from what has been said, has appeared to us not worthy of credit for teaching the divine begetting—not even if one should bring forward the world itself as an illustration of the argument; since with the creation of this too, as we learned from Moses in the account of the cosmogony, the measure derived from time ran through it, each of the things that came to be being measured out by fixed days and nights according to a certain order and sequence.

...saying that the Lord is before eternal times.

It would remain, then, to consider the advocacy of the point at issue drawn from the divine laws, through which he professes to demonstrate both an end and a beginning of the Son's begetting.

God, he says, wishing that the law concerning the creation should be impressed upon the Hebrews, deposited [not the first day of the begetting] in the completion of the creation the assurance also of its beginning.

For not the first day of the begetting, but the seventh, on which He rested from His works, He gave as the reminder of the creation.

Will anyone be persuaded that these things were written by him, and were not inserted by us as a slander upon the treatise, so that he might seem ridiculous to his readers, dragging in things that have nothing in common with the questions at issue toward the demonstration of the matters proposed? For the thing to be shown was, as he professed, that the Son, not existing, was begotten, but took a beginning of begetting and ceased being begotten, as of some travail prolonging the begetting in time.

But what is the construction that leads to this? That the people of the Hebrews keep the Sabbath by law on the seventh day.

Oh, what great harmony there is between the testimony and the point at issue!

Since the Sabbath is honored by the Jew with rest, it has been demonstrated that the Lord, as this man says, both took a beginning of birth and ceased being born!

How many other testimonies to this point were passed over by this scribbler, falling in no way short of the one mentioned for establishing the matter sought? The circumcision on the eighth day, the week of unleavened bread, the mystery on the fourteenth of the moon's course, the sacrifices of purification, the observance concerning lepers, the ram, the calf, the heifer, the scapegoat.

But if these things are far from the matters at issue, how is that one within the question sought—let the zealots of the Jewish mysteries tell us.

For we, deeming it petty and unmanly to trample upon what has been laid down, will search out from the sequence of the things written whether there is anything of such a kind as to raise a sweat in our antagonist.

Whatever, then, he goes through in what follows, constructing an argument that one ought not to conceive anything intermediate between the Son and the Father, I will pass over as being somehow in agreement with our doctrine.

For it would be a mark of both indiscrimination and folly not to distinguish, in the things said, the unobjectionable from the culpable, since, while at war with his own positions, he does not follow what is agreed upon: both saying there is no intermediary and not accepting continuity; both conceiving that there is nothing before the Only-begotten and yet suspecting that there is a Son; but contending that He, not existing, was begotten.

Having, then, occupied ourselves a little with these matters, we shall take up the argument of the points proposed, since it has already been sufficiently prepared beforehand by what has preceded.

It does not belong to the same man both to set nothing before the hypostasis of the Only-begotten and to say that He did not exist before the begetting, but was then begotten when the Father willed.

For 'then' and 'when' properly and naturally carry their signification to a temporal indication, both according to the common usage of those who speak soundly and according to the signification in Scripture.

'Then shall they say among the nations,' and 'When I sent you,' and 'Then shall the kingdom be likened,' and countless such expressions can be taken throughout all Scripture for the demonstration of the point at issue—that by such particles of speech the usage of Scripture marks time.

If, then, there was no time, as the objector agrees, the temporal signification too has been altogether abolished.

And this being absent, the notion of the eternal will, by every necessity, enter in its place.

For with the utterance 'did not exist,' the 'at some time' is also altogether understood along with it.

For if he speaks of non-existence apart from any 'once,' then he will not grant existence even now.

But if, while granting present existence, he still contends against eternity, then assuredly it is not absolute non-existence that he has in mind, but a 'once not being.'

But since this expression is altogether without substance unless it be anchored to the signification of time, it would be senseless and vain both to say that anything existed before the Son and to maintain that the Son did not always exist.

There is neither place nor time nor any other created thing in which the Word who is 'in the beginning' is not present; and therefore the notion that the Lord at some time did not exist is banished from every quarter by the doctrine of true religion.

It is therefore not with us but with himself that he who dogmatizes that the Only-begotten both is and is not comes into conflict.

For in confessing that the Son's conjunction with the Father is divided from Him by nothing, he has thereby wholly borne witness to His eternity.

But if he should say that the Son does not exist in the Father, we ourselves will not contradict such a statement, but will set against it the Scripture, which says that the Son is in the Father and the Father in the Son, without appending to the saying any 'when' or 'at what time' or 'then,' but rather by this negative and absolute utterance bearing witness to His eternity.

But to allege that we call the Only-begotten God 'ingenerate' is the same as saying that we also define the Father to be 'generate.'

For each of these charges belongs to the same absurdity, or rather to the same blasphemy.

So that if he has resolved to slander us, let him add the other accusation too, sparing nothing whereby he might the more harshly exasperate his hearers against us.

But if, on account of the manifest character of the slander, he does not press the one of these charges, let him drop the remaining one as well.

For it is, as has been said, equally impious to call the Son 'ingenerate' and the Father 'generate.'

If, then, there be found in our writings any such expression whereby the Son is named 'ingenerate,' we will pronounce upon ourselves the utmost sentence of condemnation.

But if he fabricates false charges and slanders at his own pleasure, framing what seems good to him for the calumny of our doctrines, then perhaps to those at least who have understanding this too would be a proof of the piety that is in us: namely, that since the truth fights on our side, he had to put forward falsehood for the accusation of our doctrine, contriving a text of impiety foreign to our own teaching.

But it is possible to answer these charges briefly in our defense.

For just as we judge accursed the man who says that the Only-begotten God exists 'ingenerately,' so let him likewise pronounce a curse upon the one who defines that He who is 'in the beginning' at some time did not exist.

For from such a procedure it will be shown who brings his charges in accordance with truth and who does so in slanderous fashion.

But if we deny the accusations, and in saying 'Father' by that very word conceive also the Son, and in naming the Son affirm that He truly is what He is called, having shone forth by generation from the ingenerate Light, how is not the slander evident of those who noise it abroad that we call the Only-begotten 'ingenerate'? Nor indeed, because we affirm that He exists by generation, shall we on that account admit that He at some time did not exist.

For who does not know that the opposition, in respect of what is signified, between 'being' and 'not-being' is immediate, so that the affirmation of one of these terms is altogether the abolition of its contrary; and that just as 'being' is the same throughout all time in whatever time one may suppose any existing thing to subsist (for heaven and the stars and the sun and the rest of existing things are no more now than yesterday and the day before and in all preceding time), in the same way also the thing signified by 'not-being' equally possesses non-existence in every time, whether one speak of it as prior or as subsequent?

For that which subsists is no more non-existent now than if it had previously been non-existent; but there is one single account of 'not-being' applied to that which is not, throughout every interval of time.

Wherefore, in the case of living creatures also, both the dissolution of that which has come to be into non-being, and the case of that which has not yet passed into coming-to-be, we signify their non-existence by different names, saying either that a thing 'has not yet come to be' at all or that what has come to be 'has died'; yet by each of the two expressions we equally set forth non-existence in our discourse.

the thing signified by both [that is, both what is before the constitution and what is after the dissolution of what has been constituted].

For the non-being of that which has not been generated and of that which has died is, apart from the difference of the names, one and the same, once the consideration of the hope of the resurrection has been set aside.

Since, therefore, we have learned from Scripture that the Only-begotten God is the Author of life and Life itself, and Light and Truth and everything that is honorable in name and conception, we declare it absurd and impious to contemplate together with Him who truly is that which is conceived as its opposite—either dissolution into corruption or non-existence prior to His constitution; but rather, extending our mind in every direction toward what comes after and toward what is before the ages, we nowhere terminate our conceptions at non-being, judging it equally impious in any time whatsoever to cut off the Divine by non-existence.

For it is one and the same thing to call the immortal Life mortal, and the Truth false, and the Light dark, and to say that Being is not.

He, therefore, who does not grant that He will at some time cease to be, will not, according to our argument, concede that He at some time did not exist, fleeing the same absurdity in either respect.