Orations (other than the Theological Orations) 23.1

[7] What, then, do you wish? Are you persuaded of this, so that we need no trouble, nor a second discourse on God, and do you spare my weakness, because of which I can barely utter even these things to you? Or must I, as with the hard of hearing, sound the same word many times, so that by persistence of voice we may speak into the ears of those who hear? You seem to me to call for the discourse by your silence; for the proverb too teaches that silence is consent. Receive, then, the word of both parties, from one soul and one mouth. I am vexed that I have not gone up some high mountain, nor received a voice equal to my desire, to utter these things to all those of evil mind together, as in a common theatre, the world: “Sons of men, how long will you be heavy of heart? Why do you love vanity and seek falsehood,” introducing not one nature of the Godhead, nor even a twofold one, but either three, estranged and torn apart from one another, and, not surprisingly, fighting one another through excesses and defects; or one, but petty and narrow, not able to be the principle of great things, as though unable or unwilling, and that for one of two reasons, envy or fear: envy, lest something of equal honour be brought in alongside it; fear, lest something hostile and warring? And yet, as much as God is more honourable than creatures, so much more magnificent is it for the first cause to be the principle of Godhead than of creatures, and to come to creatures through the Godhead between, than, on the contrary, that the Godhead should have come into being for their sake, as the over-inquisitive and high-flying suppose. … you will not bind them above the Father, nor estrange them from the cause, but you lead the fair offspring and the wonderful procession back to him. I will ask you briefly, you lover of the unbegotten and lover of the unoriginate: which God is dishonoured more, the one who is the principle of such beings as you bring in, or the one who is the principle not of such, but of beings alike in nature and glory, such as our doctrine holds? For to you your son is a great and very great honour, and the more so the more he resembles his father in everything and is the genuine stamp of the one who begot him; and you would not choose to be master of ten thousand slaves rather than father of one child. But to God, is anything greater than to be Father of a Son, which is an addition of glory, not a diminution, and producer of the Spirit as well? Or do you not know that, making him the principle of creatures (I mean of the Son and the Spirit), you neither honour the principle, and dishonour what comes from it? The one, because you make it the principle of small things unworthy of the Godhead; the others, because you make them small, and not only creatures but more dishonoured than all creatures, if indeed they came into being for the sake of creatures, and did not exist once, like instruments for a craftsman before the things made, nor would have come into being otherwise, unless God had wished to create something through them, as though his willing were not enough. For everything that exists for the sake of something is less honourable than that for which it came into being. [8] But I, bringing in a principle of the Godhead that is timeless, inseparable, and unbounded, honour both the principle and what comes from the principle equally: the one, because it is the principle of such beings; the others, because they are so and such, and from such a principle, separated neither by a “when,” nor by nature, nor by worship; one, though distinguished, and distinguished, though conjoined, paradoxical as it is to say; no less praiseworthy in their relation to one another than each conceived and taken by itself. A perfect Triad of three perfect: the Monad moved because of its richness, the Dyad passed beyond (for the Godhead is beyond matter and form, of which bodies consist), the Triad bounded because of its perfection, for it is the first number that passes beyond the composition of the dyad; so that the Godhead neither remains narrow nor is poured out without limit. For the one is ungenerous, the other disorderly; the one altogether Jewish, the other Greek and polytheistic. And I consider this too, perhaps not without education or learning, but after very careful thought: that for you there is no danger at all in bringing in the Son as begotten. For the Unbegotten will suffer nothing bodily or material in begetting, since he is not a body; this the common notions about God concede. So why do we fear where there is no fear, and act impiously in vain, as the saying goes? But for me there is danger that the Godhead may suffer loss, if I were to accept the creature. For what is created is not God, nor is a fellow servant lordly, even if it holds the first place in servitude and creation and is kindly treated only in being insulted. For whoever deprives something of its due honour does not honour it more by what he gives than he dishonours it by what he takes away, even if what is done has a show of honour. … (as far as one may compare intelligible things with sensible ones, and the greatest with the small, since no image reaches the truth), a Godhead in harmony with itself, always the same, always perfect, without quality, without quantity, timeless, uncreated, incomprehensible, never falling short of itself nor ever going to fall short; lives and life, lights and light, goods and good, glories and glory, true and truth and Spirit of truth, holy ones and holiness itself; each God, if contemplated alone, the mind separating what is inseparable; the three God, when conceived with one another, by the identity of their movement and nature; leaving nothing above itself, nor surpassed by anything else, for there was nothing; nor going to leave anything after itself, or to be surpassed, for there will be nothing; nor admitting anything of equal honour with itself, for nothing created, servile, participating, and circumscribed reaches the uncreated, lordly, participated, and infinite nature. For some things are altogether far off, others in some measure approach and will approach, and this not by nature but by participation. And when? When serving the Triad well has become something beyond service; unless this itself is freedom and kingship, to know lordship rightly and not to confuse what is distinct through lowliness of mind. And for those to whom service is so great, how great is their lordship? And if knowing is blessedness, how great is what is known? [12] This is what the great mystery means for us; this is what faith and regeneration into Father and Son and Holy Spirit and the common name mean: the denial of godlessness and the confession of Godhead; for this is the common name. So to dishonour or to separate any of the three is to dishonour the confession, both the regeneration and the Godhead, both the deification and the hope. See what the Spirit grants us when confessed as God, and what loss he brings when rejected; I leave aside the fear and the threatened wrath, not for those who honour him but for those who dishonour him. These things have been set forth to you briefly, as doctrine and not as controversy; in the fishermen’s way, not Aristotle’s; spiritually, not maliciously; in the manner of the Church, not of the marketplace; for profit, not for display; so that you who harangue against us and make a festival of it, and agree only in this, may know that we think the same, are breathed upon by one Spirit and breathe one breath; and that you may not, like the starving, pick up our little things, whether they should be called slips or games. O extreme misfortune, to have one’s security not in one’s own soundness but in the rotten things of others! [13] See, we give one another our right hands before your eyes. See the works of the Triad, glorified and worshipped by us alike. This will make you kinder and more orthodox. Would that we might be heard, and that this day might become a day called holy, not of contradiction but of spaciousness; not a memorial of temptation but a feast of victory; so that our agreement with one another, and that of almost the whole world, part of which was sound, part has now recovered its health, and part is beginning to be healthy, may become for you too a cause of salvation and refashioning. O holy, worshipful, and long-suffering Triad! For long-suffering you are, who have borne so long with those who cut you. O Triad, whom I have been counted worthy both to serve and to herald, unfeignedly, for so long! O Triad, who will one day be known to all, to some by illumination, to others by punishment! May you receive these too as worshippers, who are now insulters; and may we lose no one, not even the least, even if I must lose something of grace myself; for I do not dare to say as much as the Apostle. [14] But are these things not dear to you? Is your tongue convulsed and in labour with contradiction? We shall see this too some day, or others will who have more leisure than we; we shall know your elegant offspring, or rather abortions, when, breaking or crushing the asps’ eggs with a hard and resisting word, we show them to be wind-eggs and empty, and bring out into the open the basilisk of impiety hidden in them: a basilisk, but dead, unformed, and motionless, dying in the birth pangs, and not existing before it is born (to use your way of speaking, so that I may do you a small favour), no more hateful in its conception than pitiable in its miscarriage. This he will give us, I know, who gave us to tread on asp and basilisk and to walk upon serpents and scorpions; who will also crush Satan quickly under our feet, whether falling like lightning from heaven because of his ancient brightness, or fleeing as a serpent because of his later crookedness and his change into a creeping thing; so that we may breathe a little from evils, pain, grief, and sighing having fled away altogether, now and hereafter, in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be glory and might for ever and ever. Amen.