Against Eunomius 1.405–1.419

If, then, the two were ranked as first principles, Manichaeism would slip unnoticed into the church of God. I say this examining the argument rather curiously, out of zeal against our opponents. And perhaps no one would deny that the reasoning comes near to what is probable: if the created were equal in power to the uncreated, what is of a different kind in nature would somehow set itself against what is not like it; and so long as power failed neither of them, the two would be carried into some discordant strife against each other. For it is entirely necessary to acknowledge that the will corresponds to the nature and belongs to it; and if they were unlike in nature, their wills too would be unlike. Since the power of each would be sufficient, neither would fall short in fulfilling its own will; and if each could do as much as it wills, rule would become a matter of contest between them, advancing to rivalry through the unfailing sufficiency of power. And so the doctrine of the Manichaeans will slip in: two things opposed to each other appear in the account of first principle, cut apart toward opposition by the difference of nature and will; and their construction of inferiority becomes the beginning of Manichaean doctrines. For discord of substance brings the doctrine round to two principles, as the argument showed, divided into created and uncreated. But many will perhaps fault this as a forced construction of the absurdity, and think it not worth writing at all with the rest. Let it be so; we do not object. It was not by our own impulse but because of our opponents that we were led by the sequence of the argument to carry it into such curiosity. But if these things should not be said, much sooner should our opponents' argument be silenced, since it provides the occasions for such a refutation; for there is no other way to restrain one who contradicts what is evil than by removing the occasion of the contradiction. I would gladly advise those so disposed to step a little outside their contentiousness, not to fight too passionately for the suppositions by which they happen to be already prejudiced, nor to search everywhere for how they might get the better of their adversaries, but, since the race is run for their soul, to side only with what is profitable and give the prize to the truth. If, then, someone gives up contentiousness and examines the argument by himself, he will easily find the absurdity apparent in the doctrine. Let us suppose it granted, according to our opponents' argument, that unbegottenness is substance, and likewise that generation is taken as substance. Then if anyone follows the sense of what they say precisely, the Manichaean doctrine will be fashioned for them by this road, if indeed the Manichaeans hold an opposition of evil to good, of light to darkness, and of all such things by contrariety of nature. That what I say is true, I think anyone who has not run carelessly through the argument will readily agree. Let us consider it thus. In each subject certain inherent marks are always seen, by which the peculiar character of the underlying nature is recognized, whether you examine the matter in the differences of animals or in all other things. Wood and animal are not characterized by the same marks; nor do the distinguishing signs of man belong in common to the irrational nature among animals; nor again do the same marks show life and death. In all things whatever, as has been said, the distinction of subjects is unmixed and without sharing, in no way confused by any sharing of the marks seen upon them. Following this line, then, let our opponents' argument be examined. They say unbegottenness is substance, and they likewise make generation substance. But as the marks of a man and of a stone are different and not the same (for in defining what each is you would not give the same account of the animate and the inanimate), so they will certainly grant that the unbegotten is known by some signs and the begotten by others. Let us, then, consider the properties of the unbegotten God, all that we have learned from the Holy Scripture to say and think of him piously. What are they? I think no Christian is ignorant that he is good, kind, holy, just and righteous, invisible and immortal, admitting no corruption, change, or alteration, powerful, wise, benefactor, Lord, judge, and all such things. Why prolong the argument by dwelling on what is agreed? If, then, we grasp these in the unbegotten nature, and being begotten is opposite in notion to not being begotten, those who define unbegottenness and generation as substance must necessarily agree, by the logic of the opposition of begotten to unbegotten, that the distinguishing marks of the begotten substance are also opposite to those seen in the unbegotten nature.

For if they should say the same things of the Son, the different character of the underlying natures will no longer be established, since the marks seen in them are the same. Of things that are differently constituted the marks too must certainly be thought different, while whatever is alike in the account of substance is evidently characterized by the same signs. If, then, they bear witness to the same marks in the Only-begotten, they conceive, as has been said, no difference in the subject. But if they persist in their blasphemous arguments and make out a variation of nature in the difference between begotten and unbegotten, the consequence that appears is easy to see. Since, by the opposition of the names, the nature of the things signified by the names is also thought to be opposite to itself, it is entirely necessary that what is seen in each should be carried over to the contrary as well. The opposites of what is said of the Father would then apply to the Only-begotten: of Godhead, holiness, goodness, incorruption, everlastingness, and whatever else presents the God over all to us through pious thoughts. Everything incongruous, contrasted with each of the things conceived as belonging to the better, would be thought proper to the begotten substance. For clarity's sake we must dwell on this point a little longer. Take hot and cold, which are opposite in nature; let fire and ice be supposed for the argument. Each is what the other is not, and the things that appear as peculiar to each of them are certainly different from each other: cold is proper to ice, and heat to fire. So if, by the opposition of the names "unbegotten" and "begotten," the nature shown by the names also stands apart in opposition, the powers of things opposite in nature cannot be like one another, just as cold cannot arise in fire nor burning in ice. If, then, goodness is conceived in the unbegotten substance, and the unbegotten, as they say, stands apart from the begotten in the account of nature, the property of the unbegotten will certainly stand apart along with it from what is peculiar to the begotten; so that if the good is in the one, what is opposed to the good is conceived in the other. And so, through these wise dogmatists, Mani will come to life again for us, ranging the nature of evil against the good and teaching, from the otherness of the substances, an opposition in their powers. And if one must speak frankly without holding back, Mani might reasonably be thought more pardonable than these men: Mani, who, they say, first ventured upon the doctrines of the Manichaeans and named the heresy after himself. I say this as if one were choosing which is kinder to man, the viper or the asp; yet since even among wild beasts there is a choice to be made, do not their doctrines, when tested, show that the Manichaeans are more tolerable than these? Mani thought he was pleading the cause of the very author of good things, so that no cause of evils should take its beginning from him; and for that reason he attached the cause of everything reckoned on the worse side to another, separate principle, as though defending the God of the universe, thinking it impious to blame the source of good things for the faults committed against reason. Through smallness of soul he did not understand that it was possible neither to think God the maker of evils nor to imagine anything else without beginning besides God. There is much to say on these matters, and it would not suit the present occasion. Why then have we mentioned them? Because Mani thought it necessary to remove the beginning of evil from the God of the universe, while these men construct this outrageous blasphemy against God more grievously even than the Manichaeans. They teach the nature of evils much as the Manichaeans do, through opposition in substance; but in declaring the God of the universe to be the maker of such a fabrication, since they say that the substance produced by his generating is alien in nature to the one who made it, they exceed those we have mentioned in impiety. Not only do they give existence to what is by nature opposite to the good, but they say that the good God is the cause of another God who differs in nature, all but crying out openly in their doctrine that there is something opposed to the nature of the good which has its existence from the good itself. For since the substance of the Father is believed to be good, and that of the Son, because it is not like the Father in the account of nature, as the heresy holds, is consequently found among the opposites, what is established by this? That what is opposed to the good exists, and that what is contrary in nature arose from the good itself. This, I say, is more horrible even than the absurdity of the Manichaeans.

But if they deny in words the blasphemy that the consequence of their doctrine shows, and say that the Only-begotten has inherited the good things of the Father, though he is not truly Son, as the impious hold, but has his existence through creation, let us examine this too, whether such a supposition can stand by reason. If it is granted, on their argument, that one who is not truly Son has inherited lordship over all, but was created and made to rule over beings of his own kind, how will the rest of creation accept it and not rise in revolt, thrust from equality into subjection, if, though it has nothing less in nature (for it too is created, as he is), it is then condemned to serve and bow down to one of its own kind? Such a thing is like tyranny: to assign power not by superiority of substance, but, while the nature remains equal in honor, to divide creation into slavery and lordship, so that one part of it rules and another is subject, as though the same rank had been distributed by lot and precedence over equals had fallen by chance to the one who drew it. Not even man received his rule over the irrational creatures by lot, as one equal in honor with the nature subject to him; he is lord over the others because he surpasses them in reason, set over them because his nature differs from theirs for the better. Human dominions undergo sudden reversals for this very reason: what is equal in honor by nature does not accept having no equal share in the higher position, but a natural desire is implanted in all to be made equal to the one in power, when he is of the same race. And how will it be true that all things came into being through him, if it is true that the Son himself is one of the things that came into being? Either he will have made himself, so that what is written, "All things came into being through him," may not be false; and so the absurdity they devised as a sophism against our doctrine, saying that he came into being by himself, will hold against them. Or, if this is unreasonable and impossible in nature, the insistence that all creation came into being through him will be shown to be utterly untenable, for the exception of one thing makes the statement about all false. So by defining the Only-begotten as created, their argument will by no means escape one of two evil and absurd consequences: either he is not the cause of all things that came into being, if he whom they insist is one of the works is himself excepted from all; or he is shown to be his own maker, if the one who proclaimed that nothing that came into being came into being without him does not lie. Such, then, are their views. But if anyone, attending to sound teaching, believes that the Son is from the divine and pure nature, everything will appear in harmony with the doctrine of piety: that the Lord is the maker of all things; that he reigns over all that exists, not set over his own kind by lot or by some tyrannical dominion, but holding power over all by the superiority of his nature; and further, that the doctrine of the monarchy is not divided into different principles separated by otherness of nature, but that we believe in one Godhead, one principle, one authority over all. The Godhead is contemplated in the harmony of like with like, and leads the mind through like to like, since the principle of all things, who is the Lord, shines upon souls through the Holy Spirit. For it is impossible for him to be truly contemplated except in the Holy Spirit, as the Apostle says; and through the Lord, who is the principle of all things, we find the one who is beyond every principle, the God over all. It is not possible to know the archetypal good in any other way than as it appears in the image of the invisible. Then, as runners turning back in the double race after reaching the summit of the knowledge of God, I mean the God over all himself, we run back through what lies close and is proper to our thought, from the Father through the Son to the Spirit. Having been established in the conception of the unbegotten light, from there we conceived, as immediately adjoining, the light that is from it, like a ray coexisting with the sun, whose cause of being is from the sun, but whose existence is together with the sun, not added later in time but appearing from it as soon as the sun is seen. Or rather (for there is no need to be enslaved to the image in every respect and give slanderers a hold against the argument through the weakness of the illustration), let us conceive not a ray from the sun but another sun from the unbegotten sun, shining forth with it, as begotten, together with the conception of the first, and like it in every respect: in beauty, power, radiance, size, brightness, and everything seen in the sun. And again, another such light in the same way, not cut off from the begotten light by any interval of time, but shining forth through it, while having the cause of its existence from the archetypal light; yet itself light, shining after the likeness of the light conceived before, illuminating, and doing all the other things that light does.

For there is no difference of light from light in this very respect, when one is seen to lack or fall short in nothing of the grace of illumination, but, raised to the very highest in every perfection, is contemplated with the Father and the Son, is numbered after the Father and the Son, and through itself grants access to the light conceived in the Father and the Son to all who are able to partake of it. But enough of this. Since he is very fluent in abuse, makes insult the foundation of every principle, and brings in reviling in place of every proof of what is disputed, come, let us also discuss briefly all that he hurled against our teacher, both against the man himself and against his argument, slandering him over the word "unbegotten." He quoted our teacher's words on these matters, which run thus: "For my part, even the title 'unbegotten,' though it seems very much to agree with our notions, nevertheless, since it is nowhere found in Scripture and is the first element of his blasphemy, I would say rightly deserves to be passed over in silence; for the word 'Father' has the same force as 'unbegotten,' besides bringing in along with itself, through the relation, the notion of the Son. For he who is truly Father, and alone Father, is from no other; and 'from none' is the same as 'unbegotten.'" Let us hear what proof he adds that this was badly said: "He mixes inconsistency of words into his own arguments from rashness no less than shameless wickedness, carried about by the instability of his judgment and the weakness of his reasonings." See how well the answer hits the mark, how skillfully, with that logical expertise of his, he undoes the force of what was said and puts the more pious opinion in its place! Inconsistent in speech, he says, rash no less than wicked in judgment, unstable, carried about by weakness of reasoning. Whence these things, and what provoked this man of stable judgment and sound reasoning to say them? Which of the things said does he especially condemn? That Basil accepts the notion of "unbegotten" but says that the word, wrongly taken up by perverters, deserves silence? Is the safety of the faith endangered only in words and utterance, with no concern for exactness of thought? Or does not the word of truth prepare us above all to keep our hearts pure of evil thoughts, and to use words for showing the motions of the soul, whatever words can display the hidden thoughts of the mind, without quibbling over this or that sound of the voice? Saying a thing this way or otherwise is not the cause of the thought within us; the hidden thought of the heart is what gives rise to such words. "For out of the abundance of the heart," it says, "the mouth speaks." We make speech the interpreter of our thoughts; we do not, conversely, gather our thinking from what we say. If both come together, thinking rightly and expressing it, the man is complete in both; but if one is lacking, the loss in speech to the unlearned man is small, so long as the knowledge in his soul is well fitted to the good. "This people," it says, "honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me." What does this mean? That with God the judge, who hears the groanings that cannot be uttered, the disposition of the soul toward the truth counts for more than propriety of language. Words can be used for the opposite purpose too, as the speaker pleases, the tongue readily serving what he wishes; but the disposition of the soul, whatever it may be, is seen as it is by him who sees in secret. Why then is he inconsistent, and rash no less than wicked, who both understands and accepts what is piously meant by the word "unbegotten," but bids that what contributes to impiety for those who transgress in doctrine be passed over in silence? If he had said that God must not be thought unbegotten, Eunomius might have had occasion to use these reproaches against him, and harsher ones still. But if he confesses this, in keeping with the common belief of the pious, and gives what amounts to advice befitting a teacher's disposition, "Keep away from this word, since it is from here that the ground of ruin takes its beginning," while bidding us hold the notion that God is unbegotten through other names as well, he deserves none of these reproaches for it. Or have we not been taught by the Truth to do this very thing, and not to cling even to very precious things if any of them contributes to evil, when he bids us cut off the right eye, and the foot and the hand alike, whenever any of these causes us to stumble? What else does he counsel us to do through this figure?

Does he not make even things that seem good idle and useless, if through the folly of those who use them they lead a man away to some evil, since it is more profitable to be saved with the members that lead to sin cut off than to cling to them and perish through them? And what of Paul, the imitator of Christ? He too, in the depth of his wisdom, teaches the same. He who called all things good, and nothing to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, sometimes, because of the conscience of the weak, sets aside some of the very things he had accepted and bids us refuse them. "If my brother is grieved because of food," he says, "I will never eat meat." This, then, is what Paul's imitator does too. He saw the deceit of those who teach the "unlike" by means of this word strengthened through the heresy's wicked use of the term "unbegotten," and he advised us to preserve in our souls the pious notion of the unbegotten, but not to be too eager about the word, since it had become a provision for sin to those who are perishing. For the title "Father," in what it signifies, conveys to us sufficiently the meaning of "unbegotten" as well. When we hear "Father," we at once conceive of the cause of being for all things; and if he had some other cause above him, he would not properly be called Father, since the proper title of Father would pass up to the cause conceived before him. But if he himself is the cause of all, and all things are from him, as the Apostle says, clearly nothing can be conceived before his existence; and that is to believe that he exists unbegottenly. But the man who does not deign to let even the truth seem more persuasive than himself does not grant that this is well said; he legislates against it, contradicts it, and mocks the argument. If you like, let us examine the inescapable syllogisms and the varied twists of sophistry by which he thinks he refutes the argument. Yet I fear that the pettiness and meanness of what he says may in some way discredit the argument that corrects it as well. To grapple with lads who challenge one to a contest brings grown men more blame for contending with such opponents than praise for seeming to win. Still, this is what he says. As for what he said in insult, with that customary fine diction of his, things befitting him to say and set before us as an exercise in patience, we treat them as worthy of silence and oblivion. I do not think it seemly to sow the ridiculous things he said among our serious concerns and dissolve our zeal for the truth into disorderly and vulgar laughter. One cannot keep from laughing on hearing these things, when we hear him speak from the heights of that grand and gifted eloquence: "Of those whose addition of words amounts to an addition of blasphemy, silence is lighter by half than speech." But let such things be laughed at by those who know what deserves acceptance and what deserves laughter. Let us consider the sharpness of the syllogisms with which he drags our argument about. "For if," he says, "'Father' is the same in force as 'unbegotten,' and names that have the same force naturally signify the same thing, and 'unbegotten,' according to them, signifies that God is from none, then of necessity 'Father' also signifies that God is from none, and not that he has begotten the Son." Is it no longer signified by the word "Father," then, if the same title also presents to us by itself the Father's being without beginning? If the one excluded the other, as opposites do by nature, the positing of one would necessarily bring about the removal of the other. But if nothing prevents the same one from being both Father and unbegotten, and if through the title of Father we also, in a certain sense, understand "unbegotten," what necessity is there that the relation to the Son should no longer be known through the word "Father"? It is not so with the other names either, which have fellowship with one another and agree in their notions throughout. We call a king both sovereign and subject to no master, and the same man the ruler of his subjects; and it is neither false to say of him that the word "king" signifies being subject to no master, nor do we say it follows of necessity, if sovereignty and independence are signified by this word, that power over his subjects is no longer signified by kingship. The name of kingship, lying midway between both notions, shows independence in one respect and rule over those subordinate in another. So too here. If some other Father is conceived before the Father of the Lord, let those who boast of secret wisdom show it, and then we will agree that the notion of "unbegotten" cannot be conveyed by the title "Father." But if the first Father has no cause of his constitution above him, and along with the Father there is certainly understood also the