Against Eunomius 1.283–1.297

For he knows, like the fathers of his heresy — I mean the scribes and Pharisees — how to strain out the gnat with precision, while unsparingly swallowing the crooked camel loaded with the weight of wickedness. To him it would perhaps not be out of place to say: Spare our commonwealth such legislation, which bids us count the smallness of matters as nothing and not distinguish the charge of falsehood by its size. For Paul does not sin in the same way when he deceives, purifying himself in the Jewish manner at a time when some were usefully deceived, as Judas did at the time of the betrayal, putting on a friendly and affable appearance. Joseph too lied, teasing his brothers out of kindness, and that while swearing by the health of Pharaoh; but his brothers also lied against him, plotting first death and afterwards slavery out of envy. And many such things can be told: Sarah lies, blushing at her laughter; the serpent too lies, suggesting that man would pass into the divine nature through disobedience. Great is the difference of falsehood according to the circumstances, and one cannot say how great, whether you test the matter from the ancient narratives or from present life. So we too will grant that, according to the common verdict on men which the Holy Spirit pronounced through the prophet, “Every man is a liar,” the man of God also fell in with falsehood, naming the neighbouring country, as it happened, through ignorance or disregard of the name of the place. But Eunomius too lied — and what is his lie? A forgery of truth itself. He says that the one who always is once was not; he contrives that the one who is truly Son has a falsely named title; he defines the Creator of all as himself a creature and a thing made; he calls the Lord of all a slave; he ranks the one who has rule by nature with the nature that serves. Is the difference of falsehood small, then — so small that one might think it of no account to be thought to have lied this way or that?

And while reproaching others with sophistical argument, see what care he takes for true demonstration! Our teacher said in his discourse against him that at the time of the upheaval of affairs this man carried off Cyzicus as the prize of impiety. What, then, does the refuter of sophists do? He immediately fastens on the word “prize,” and says that we agree that he both made his defence, and won by his defence, and received the prize of victory through the contests; and he composes a syllogism, concluding his argument, as he thinks, by irrefutable steps. His own written words shall be given verbatim: “For if the prize is the token and end of victory, and the trial indicates the victory, and the trial certainly brings the accusation along with it, then the one who grants the prize will say that the apology too was necessary.” What do we say, then? That he contended, and very vehemently and vigorously, in this wicked contest of impiety, we do not dispute, nor that he outstripped his likes by no small measure and excels in sweating against the truth; but not that he won the victory over his opponents. Rather, by comparison with those who ran with him through impiety into error, he came first of all in the abundance of his falsehood, and so received Cyzicus as the prize for his excess in evil — as one who had beaten all who had stripped for similar contests against the truth, and was proclaimed for his victory in blasphemy by a brilliant and conspicuous herald’s cry, when Cyzicus was set apart for him as the wages of his absurdity by the presidents of such games. And that this is what we confessed, in the sense stated, our discourse shows: we say that Cyzicus came to him as a prize of impiety, not as the success of an apology. What, then, have our words in common with this childish tangle of sophisms, as though on that account a trial had been held for him and the apology made? It is as if someone at a banquet who had poured out more neat wine than the others, and for that had been awarded some prize over his fellow drinkers, were to make his victory at the banquet a proof that he had also been tried in court and had won his case. For he too could imitate the tangle of the syllogism: “If the prize is the token and end of victory, and the trial indicates the victory, and the trial certainly brings the accusation along with it, then I won my trial, since I was crowned for drinking in the contest of much drinking.” But surely someone will say to the man who prides himself so, that the contests in court are one thing and the manner of competing at banquets another, and that the one who won by the cup gains nothing from such a victory over his opponents in court, even if he is decked out with garlands of flowers.

So neither does the one who is ranked ahead of his likes in the argument for impiety thereby furnish, through the prize of impiety, evidence that he won at the trial. What, then, does our testimony that he excels in impiety contribute to an apology that was never spoken? If he had made his defence before the judges and overcome his opponents, and so received the honour of Cyzicus, he would have had occasion to bring our words forward against us. But if he testifies continually in his discourse that, fleeing the hostility of those who controlled the verdict, he accepted in silence the punishment imposed on him, not enduring to conduct the contests among enemies, why does he deceive himself and use the word “prize” as evidence that he made his defence? The admirable man did not understand the force of “prize”: that Cyzicus was handed to him as a kind of reward and prize of valour for his preeminence in impiety. But since he accepts the prize as he pleases, as a gift for victory, let him also accept what is joined to the word: that by his victory he gained the advantage in impiety. For since he relies on our words against us, it is just to use either both or neither.

Such, then, he is where our words are concerned. In the rest of what he said in insult, will he be shown to speak any truth? There he goes through against Basil that he was cowardly and timid, running away from the heavier labours, and all such things, laboriously working up the symptoms of cowardice: a hidden little room, a door securely fastened, starting in fear at those who came in, and voice, and look, and the signs on the face, and all such things by which the passion of cowardice is indicated. But even if he were refuted in no other falsehood, this alone would be enough to expose his character. For who does not know how that great combatant, at the very time of the Emperor Valens’s contentiousness against the churches of the Lord, rose above so great a weight of affairs by the greatness of his mind, and was loftier than those who threatened, lifted in spirit above all the terror devised against him? Who among the people of the East, who among those dwelling at the furthest ends of our world, was ignorant of his battle for the truth against those in power? Who was not struck with amazement on seeing his opponent? For that opponent was not one of the common sort, nor did his power to win lie in counterfeit petty sophistries, where even superiority is inglorious and defeat costs nothing. He had under him the whole Roman Empire, then governed by him; and proud of so great a kingdom, he had been prejudiced by the slander against our doctrine, Eudoxius of Germanicia having won him over to himself by deceit. He had as allies of his own impulse all those in office, his attendants, and those who held influence in affairs: some inclining to him willingly through likeness of mind, but most readily granting what pleased him out of fear of his power, and showing their zeal toward him by severity against those who held to the faith. Those were the days of flights, confiscations, banishments, threats and fines, dangers, prisons, jails, scourges — and what of the most dreadful things was not put into effect against those who did not agree with the emperor’s impulse? — when it was more dangerous for the pious to be caught in the house of God than to be convicted of the most wicked of crimes.

But to go through all these one by one would need a great treatise, much time, and a work of its own. Besides, since the evils of that time are evident to all, nothing would be gained for the present discourse by setting out those calamities exactly in writing. There is also another burden in narrating them: one who goes through the history of those sorrows in order would necessarily make some mention of our own people. For if anything has been done by us in the contests for piety that would bring glory to the narrative, Wisdom bids us leave it to our neighbours: “Let your neighbour praise you,” it says, “and not your own lips.” Not knowing this, the man who fitted out everything has spent the greater part of his treatise in boasting about himself. Passing over all such things, then, I shall set out exactly the deeds of our teacher’s “cowardice.” The one ranged against him in the opposing line was the emperor himself; the one who served his impulses was the man who governed the whole empire after him; those who worked together for such a desire were all those around him. Let the occasion also be added to these, for a more exact test and display of the athlete’s noble confidence. What, then, was the occasion? The emperor was marching out from Constantinople to the East, his pride lately lifted by his successes against the barbarians, and thinking that nothing ought to oppose his impulses. The prefect went before him on the march, arranging in advance, instead of any of the things needed for government, this one thing: that no one who held the faith should remain at home, but that all should be driven out from everywhere, and others, self-appointed, brought in instead of them, to the insult of the divine order.

With such a purpose, then, the imperial power moved from the Propontis against the churches like some grievous cloud. Bithynia was laid waste all at once; Galatia was swept away with great ease; everything in between had gone as they wished; and now our own region lay next in the course of the evil. What, then, did the great Basil do at that time — the coward, as this man says, the timid one, cowering before dangers and trusting his safety to a hidden little room? Was he terrified at the onset of the evil? Did he take the suffering of those already captured as his counsellor for his own safety? Did he consent to the advice to give way a little to the rush of the evil, and not to throw himself into open danger before men well practised in bloodshed? Or is every excess of language and every height of thought and word shown to fall somewhere short of the truth? How could anyone go through in words such contempt for terrors? How could anyone bring before our eyes that novel contest, which one could not fairly say was waged by men or against men, but was the virtue and boldness of a Christian contending against a murderous power?

For the prefect summoned him, having been given in advance the emperor’s authority. His office was fearful enough in any case because of its greatness, and he made it more fearful by the ruthlessness of his punishments; and after the tragedies he had worked in Bithynia, when the Galatians, with their usual pliancy, had come over without a struggle, he thought that our region too would be ready to meet his wishes. His speech was the prelude to the severity of his deeds, mixed with threats and promises at once: offering honour from the emperor and rule over the Church if Basil were persuaded, and if he resisted, everything that bitterness of soul, once it has the power, plans at will. Such, then, was their side. But our champion was so far from being terrified by anything seen or said, that, like a physician or a good counsellor called in to correct faults, he bade them repent of what they had already dared and cease for the future from murderous rage against the servants of the Lord, since their scheming could gain nothing against those who serve the kingdom of God alone and his immortal power. For those who wish to do harm, he said, can find nothing, said or done, that will grieve the Christian. “Confiscation,” he said, “will not touch one who possesses the faith alone; exile will not frighten one who walks over the whole earth with the same mind, and looks on every land as foreign because his dwelling in it is for a time, and on every city as his own because the creation is his fellow servant. As for undergoing blows, toils, or death, when it is for the truth, this does not cause fear even to women; rather it is for all Christians the highest bound of good fortune to suffer something irreparable for this hope.” He was grieved only, he said, that death is single by nature, and that he could find no way to fight for the truth with many deaths.

When he thus rose above those threats, and looked past the whole weight of that power as nothing, then — as on the stage, when the masks are changed, one thing is suddenly shown in place of another — in the same way the bitterness of the threats was turned into flattery; and the man who had until then been harsh and terrifying in spirit changed to mild and submissive words: “But you,” he said, “do not think it a small thing for the great emperor to be joined to your people; accept being called his teacher as well, and do not oppose his wish. He wishes this to come about by the removal of one small thing from what is written in the creed: the word homoousios.” But the teacher answered again that for the emperor to share in the Church was among the greatest of things — “for it is a great thing,” he said, “to save a soul, not because it is an emperor’s, but because it is a man’s at all” — but that he was so far from making any subtraction from the faith, or any addition, that he would not even change the order of what was written. These things the coward, the unmanly one who started at the creak of the door, said to a man of such rank, and confirmed by his deeds what he had said. He alone checked in himself and turned back the overthrow of the churches at that time, which was flowing like a torrent through the powers that be; he alone was equal to the onset of the evil, like some great and unshaken rock in the sea, which breaks up on itself, instead of a great and mighty wave, the onset of dreadful things.

And his struggle did not stop there. The emperor himself took up the attempt in turn, indignant that he had not achieved his pleasure at the first assault. And just as once the Assyrian, through Nebuzaradan the chief cook, accomplished at Jerusalem the destruction of the temple of the Israelites, so this man too, assigning such a service to one Demosthenes, who was set over the kitchens and was chief of the cooks, as being bolder than the others, thought that he would carry the whole undertaking.

So when that man was throwing everything into confusion, and one of the fighters against God from Illyricum was holding a tablet in his hands and gathering all the officials to it, and kindling Modestus’s anger again more fiercely than his former onslaught, all were stirred to share the emperor’s wrath, joining in his indignation and gratifying the anger of his power, and all were struck down beforehand by fear of what was expected. For again there was that prefect; again risings of terrors more violent than before, additions to the threats, anger at a higher pitch, and the tragic apparatus of the court: heralds, ushers, lictors, railings, curtains, by which even the spirits of the well-prepared are easily cowed. And again the athlete of God, in the second round of the contests, surpassed even the glory of the first. If you seek the proofs of this, look at the facts themselves. What place of the churches did the overthrow of that time not overrun? What nation remained untouched by the rule of the heretics? Which of those esteemed in the churches was not shaken off from his labours? What people escaped such abuse? Was it not all Syria, and Mesopotamia as far as the borders toward the barbarians; was it not Phoenicia, Palestine, Arabia, Egypt, and the nations of Libya up to the boundary of our world; was it not everything on this side — Pontians, Cilicians, Lycians, Lydians, Pisidians, Pamphylians, Carians, Hellespontines, islanders, up to the Propontis itself; was it not everything in Thrace, as far as Thrace extended, and the nations round it, up to the Danube itself? What of all these remained in its former state, except whatever had already been occupied by such evil? Of all of them the people of Cappadocia alone felt nothing of the common misfortune of the churches, because our great champion kept it safe in the trials.

These are the results of our teacher’s cowardice! These are the achievements of the man who cowered before the harsher labours: who did not win his fame among wretched old women, nor practise deceiving silly women ready for every deceit, nor think it great to be admired by the condemned and the corrupt, but showed by his deeds the strength of his soul, and the steadfast, courageous, and noble temper of his spirit. His achievement was the salvation of the whole country, peace for our Church, an example of every good for those who live by virtue, the overthrow of the adversaries, the defence of the faith, the security of the weaker, the confirmation of the more zealous — everything believed to belong to the better part. Where these narratives are concerned, hearing and sight agree upon the facts; for it is the same thing to tell the noblest things in word and to show in deed the evidence for the words, and to confirm each by the other, the memory by what is seen and the facts by what is said.

But somehow my discourse has been carried so far outside the subject, turning to each of the things said in insult by the slanderer — although it is no small gain for Eunomius that the discourse should spend its time on such things, when in accusing him of human wrongs it is hindered from coming to the more important matters. Just as it is useless to reproach a man on trial for murder with rashness in speech (for the proof of the murder is enough to bring the sentence of death, even if no rashness of speech is proved against the murderer along with it), so it seems right to me to bring only his impiety to proof and to let his abuse of us go. For it is clear that when his wickedness has been detected in the greatest and most important things, all the rest is in effect proved along with it, even if we do not go through each point exactly.

The sum of what he constructs, then, is blasphemy against the doctrine of piety, both in his earlier discourse and in the one now being called to account by us; and all his effort is to destroy, to strike out, and to overturn entirely the pious beliefs about the only-begotten God and about the Holy Spirit. So that his construction against the doctrines of the truth may be shown to be as false and unsound as possible, I shall first set out his statement about these matters word for word, and then take up again what he said, examining each part separately.

“The whole account of our doctrines is made up of the highest and most proper substance; of the substance that exists through it, and after it holds first place among all the others; and of a third, ranked with neither of these, but subordinated to the one by reason of cause and to the other by reason of the activity by which it came to be. There are of course included, to complete the whole account, the activities that accompany the substances and the names connatural to these. Again, since each of these substances is, and is conceived to be, purely simple and wholly one according to its own dignity, and since the activities are bounded together with the works, and the works measured by the activities of those who wrought them, it is surely wholly necessary that the activities following each of the substances should be lesser and greater, and that some should hold the first and others the second rank,

and, to speak generally, that they should reach to as great a difference as the works reach to. For it is not even lawful to say that the activity by which he made the angels is the same as that by which he made the stars and the heaven, or man; but one who thinks piously would say that by as much as some works are older and more honourable than others, by so much one activity surpasses another, since the same activities produce works that are the same, and altered works show altered activities. These things being so, and preserving the sequence in their relation to one another unbroken, it befits those who make their examination according to the order connatural to the things, and who do not force everything together and confuse it, if a dispute should arise about the substance, to make the proof of what is being shown and the resolution of what is disputed from the first activities, those adjacent to the substances; and, while resolving the uncertainty about the activities from the substances, still to consider the descent from the first to the second more fitting and more effective for all.”

Such, then, is the technical system of the blasphemy. May the true God, the Son of the true God, through the guidance of the Holy Spirit, direct our discourse to the truth. Let us take up again what was said, in order. He said that the account of his own doctrines is made up of the highest and most proper substance, of the substance that exists through it and after it holds first place among all the others, and of a third, ranked with neither of these, but subordinated to the one by reason of cause and to the other by reason of activity. The first of the mischiefs done in this account is this: having promised to set out for us the mystic doctrine, as though correcting the words of the Gospel, he does not use those names by which the Lord handed on the mystery in the perfecting of faith, but, passing over in silence the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, he speaks instead of the Father of a certain highest and most proper substance, instead of the Son of the substance that exists through it and after it holds first place among the others, and instead of the Holy Spirit of the substance ranked with neither of these. Yet if it had been more fitting to speak so, the truth would certainly not have been at a loss to find these words. Nor would those who received the proclamation of the mystery in succession — those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, those after them who filled the whole world with the doctrines of the Gospel, and again, later, those who at various times settled in common council the uncertainties raised about the doctrine, whose traditions are always preserved in writing in the churches — if these things ought to have been said, have made mention of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, if it were at all pious or safe to recoin the words of the faith into this novelty. Otherwise all those men were ignorant and uninstructed in the mysteries, and had never heard of the “connatural names,” as this man calls them, since they neither knew how nor wished to prefer their own conceptions to the names handed down to us by the divine voice.

But the cause of this name-making is, I think, plain to all: that all people, on hearing the titles Father and Son, at once recognize from the names themselves their proper and natural relation to each other; for the kinship of nature is spontaneously conveyed by these titles. So that these things may not be understood of the Father and the only-begotten Son, he steals from his hearers the impression of intimacy that comes in with the names; and leaving aside the God-inspired words, he makes his exposition of the doctrine in terms devised for the ruin of the truth. He does well, though, to say that it is the account not of the doctrines of the Church at large but of their own that is made up of these things. The impiety of what he said is easy for anyone with sense to perceive; but it is perhaps not untimely to examine it point by point in argument as well. What does he mean by attesting “highest” and “most proper” to the substance of the Father alone, not conceding that the substance either of the Son or of the Holy Spirit is high and proper? For my part I think this is a rehearsal for a complete denial of the Only-begotten and the Spirit as regards substance, and that by such technical devices he contrives secretly that they should seem to exist only as far as a name, while the true confession of their hypostasis is set aside by such a construction. And that this is so, one may perceive without difficulty by dwelling a little on the argument. It is not the part of one who believes that the Only-begotten and the Holy Spirit truly exist in their own hypostasis to be so precise about the acknowledgment of the names by which he thinks he must honour the God who is over all.