Against Eunomius 1.423–1.435

hypostasis of the Only-begotten, why do they try to frighten us with these artful entanglements of sophistry, wishing to persuade us, or rather to cheat us, into thinking that if the unbegottenness of the God over all is confessed through the title "Father," the notion of the Father is split off from his relation to the Son? Let us spit on this childish and superficial attempt of theirs and confess manfully what they bring forward as an absurdity: the name "Father" signifies the same as "unbegotten"; "unbegotten" presents the Father as being from none; and "Father" brings in with itself, conjointly through the relation, the notion of the Only-begotten. For this phrase too stood in our teacher's text, and this fearsome and invincible combatant stole it from what was written, making his rebuttal easy for himself by removing what had been said with care. Our teacher's statement runs thus, word for word: "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 their blasphemy, I would say rightly deserves to be passed over in silence, since the word 'Father' has the same force as 'unbegotten,' besides bringing in conjointly with itself, through the relation, the notion of the Son." But this noble champion of the truth, with the freedom natural to him, took away what had been added to the statement for safety's sake (I mean the words "besides bringing in conjointly with itself, through the relation, the notion of the Son"). Having broken up the sense of what was written, he grapples with what remains; having mutilated the connected body and made it, as he thought, weaker and easy for him to attack, he deceives his followers with a cold and feeble sophism. He makes out that what shares a meaning in some respect shares it in every respect, and so carries off the superficial hearing of these people. For when we had said that the word "Father," in a certain sense, also conveys the meaning of "unbegotten," he made a total exchange of the meaning, departing from the usual sense of the names, and so drives the argument, as he supposes, into absurdity, as though this title would no longer show the relation to the Son if the notion of "unbegotten" were also signified by it. It is as if someone had learned two notions about bread, that it is made of wheat and that it becomes nourishment for the one who eats it, and then fought with the one who said so, using the same kind of sophism against him: that the account of its being made of wheat is one thing and the account of nourishment another; so if it is granted that bread is from wheat, it will no longer properly be called nourishment. Such is the sense of his syllogism. "For if 'unbegotten,'" he says, "is signified by the title 'Father,' this word no longer presents his having begotten the Son." But it is perhaps timely for us too to apply to what he says that solemn period of his. Such words certainly befit such people: he would have gained more toward seeming sensible if he had secured his safety in total silence. For one whose addition of words amounts to an addition of blasphemy, or rather of utter folly, silence is lighter not by half but by the whole of speaking. Perhaps someone may be brought to the truth of what we say more easily by things from his own experience. So let us leave the crooked tangle of sophisms and discuss the subject in a plainer and more ordinary way. Your father, Eunomius, was certainly a man; but this same man also became the cause of your being. Did you then use this wise reasoning in his case too, so that your father, if he accepted the definition of his nature by being a man, could no longer signify his relation to you? For he would certainly have to be one of the two: either a man or Eunomius's father. And yet in your case it is not permitted to apply the names of your own relatives other than in their proper sense. Though you would bring a charge of outrage against anyone who mocked you by swapping the names, do you not shudder when you laugh at the doctrines of the mysteries as though there were no danger? Your father shows his kinship with you, and his being a man is in no way hindered by this; no one in his senses, instead of calling the one who begot you your father, would give the definition of man; nor, asked about his kind and having confessed that he is a man, would he say that this confession prevents him from also being your father. So too in the case of the God of the universe, the pious man will not deny that the title "Father" signifies both that he exists unbegottenly and, in another sense, his kinship with the Son.

But the man who mocks the truth says that the title "Father" no longer signifies having begotten the Son if we are also taught by the same word that he is unbegotten. Let us bring in this too to refute the absurdity of what he said, a thing that I say no one is ignorant of, not even very young children led by a schoolmaster and tutor into the technical study of nouns. Who does not know that some names are absolute and without relation, while others are given with reference to some relation? And among these, again, some lean toward either, according to the intention of those who use them: said by themselves they show a simple force, but when transferred they often become relative. So as not to lengthen the argument with examples far from the subject, I will make my meaning clear from the doctrines themselves. God is called Father and king, and is named by the Holy Scripture with countless other names. Of these names, some can be said simply, by themselves, in an absolute sense: incorruptible, for instance, eternal, immortal, and anything else of the kind. These, even if no other notion is understood with them, mark out in themselves a complete conception of God. Other names signify only usefulness to something, such as helper, shield, protector, and whatever is found with such a meaning; if you take away what needs help, the power shown in the name is idle. And some, as was said before, are used both by themselves and with relative terms, such as "God" and "good" and the like; the notion of these does not always remain absolute. God in general often becomes the particular God of the one who calls on him, as we can hear from the saints, who make their own the nature that has no master: "Holy is the Lord God." So far there is no relation; but the one who added "our" no longer allowed the name to be understood by itself, appropriating its meaning by the relation to himself. Again, "Abba, Father," the Spirit cries: this is the word freed from particular relation. But we have also been commanded to call the Father in heaven "our Father": this again is the relative meaning. As, then, one who has made the universal God his own has in no way obscured his dignity over all, so nothing prevents the title "Father" from signifying, together, that the Father has begotten the Son, the one from himself whom he showed forth as the firstborn of all creation, and from expressing by the same word that he is not from a cause above him. For one who said "the first Father" pointed to the one conceived before all. He is beyond; he is that one, with nothing before himself to look to and no limit after himself at which to end. Being always alike on every side, passing beyond the boundary of an end and the notion of a beginning by the infinity of his life, he has everlastingness understood along with every title. But Eunomius, great in the contemplation of the incomprehensible, does not accept this plain usage, nor does he grant that the meaning of "Father" is twofold: one, that all things are from him, and before all things the only-begotten Son through whom are all things; the other, that he has no cause above him. Even if he spits on the argument, we, counting his mocking laughter as nothing, will boldly answer what we have already said: "Father" is the same as "unbegotten"; it signifies having begotten the Son and presents being from none. But he contends further against what was said, and says: "And yet the argument turns round again to the opposite. For if God is Father because he has begotten the Son, and 'Father' and 'unbegotten' have the same meaning, then God is unbegotten because he has begotten the Son." Let us look, then, at the argument of his conversion, and see how, resolving the composition of the earlier sophism into its opposite, he hems us in again by this one too with inescapable necessities. The earlier syllogism contained this absurdity: if "Father" signifies that God is from none, of necessity it will no longer show that he has begotten the Son. This one, by the conversion to the opposite, promises us another absurdity against our doctrine. What, then, is his resolution of what was shown there? "If," he says, "God is Father because he has begotten the Son." The earlier syllogism did not present this to us; the course of that syllogism ostensibly showed only that the title cannot signify the relation to the Son if the Father's unbegottenness is signified. That God is Father for this reason, because he has begotten the Son, the construction of the earlier sophism did not lay down at all. What it is, then, that his dialectical and technical shrewdness converts, I do not yet understand.

Nevertheless, let us consider the sense of what he says: "If God is unbegotten because he has begotten the Son, then before he begot him he was not unbegotten." Again the reply of the truth is ready and simple: the title "Father" shows both that he has begotten the Son, as we have already shown above, and that the begetter is not conceived as from any cause. If you look to what is from him, the hypostasis of the Only-begotten is made known through the title "Father"; if you examine what is before him, the title "Father" shows that the one who begot the Son is without beginning. But to say that before begetting the Son God was not unbegotten brings a double charge against the speech-writer: slander against us and insult against the doctrine. He mocks as though it were agreed something said neither by our teacher nor now by us; and he says that God at some later time became Father, having previously been something else and not Father. By the very words with which he mocks the absurdity of our argument he proclaims his own lawlessness about the doctrine. As though it were agreed that God was formerly something else and afterwards by progress both became and was named Father, he says that before begetting the Son, and so being called Father, he was not even unbegotten, if unbegottenness is known by the notion of Father. How much folly this contains needs no one, I think, to refute it; it shows itself sufficiently to those who have sense. If God was something else before he became Father, what will the champions of the doctrine say? In what state will they say he was seen? What name will they give to his manner of life then: boy, infant, babe, youth? Or will they say none of these, blushing perhaps at the plainness of the absurdity, and not deny that he was perfect from the beginning? Then how was he perfect, when he was not yet able to be Father? Or will they not take his ability away, but say that it was not fitting for him to be Father at the same time as he was? And if it was neither good nor fitting for him to be Father of such a Son from the beginning, how did he acquire what was not good as he went on? "But it is good now, and befitting God's majesty, to become Father of such a one." Then they make out that at first he had no share in the good; and as long as God did not have the Son (may God be gracious to the argument), they will say that he had neither wisdom, nor power, nor truth, nor any of the other things that the only-begotten Son both is and is called under different conceptions. But may these things fall on the heads of those responsible. We must return to where we left off. "If God is Father," he says, "because he has begotten, and 'Father' signifies 'unbegotten,' then before he begot him he was not unbegotten." Suppose he were saying this according to human custom. Among men it is impossible for anyone to acquire the habit of several pursuits at the same time without taking up each of the things he pursues in some order and sequence of time. If one had to reason in the same way about the God of the universe, that he has unbegottenness now, afterwards takes on power, then incorruption, then wisdom, and as he goes on becomes Father, and again just, and next everlasting, acquiring everything seen in him by some sequence, it would perhaps not be very absurd to think that one of the names concerning God comes before another, and to say that he was first unbegotten and afterwards became Father. But as it is, who is so low in mind and so uninitiated in the grandeur of the divine doctrines that, having taken the cause of all things into his mind, he does not take up the thought of everything piously conceived of God at once, gathered together, but thinks that one thing came later, another at the beginning, and another in between in some sequence of order? It is not possible, having passed in reasoning through any one of the things piously said of God, to come upon another reality or notion that can rise above the antiquity of what was said. Rather, every divine name, every lofty thought, every word and supposition that fits our notions of God, is joined and united with the others; and all our conceptions of God are grasped continuously, together and gathered with one another: fatherhood, unbegottenness, power, incorruption, goodness, authority, and all the rest. None of these is conceived separately, by itself, cut off from the rest at some interval of time, as preceding or following another; whatever lofty and pious name may be found is shown together with the everlastingness of God.

As, then, one cannot say that God was once not good, or powerful, or incorruptible, or immortal, in the same way it is impious not to bear witness to his fatherhood as eternal, and to say instead that it was added later. He who is truly Father is always Father. But if "always" is not part of the confession, and some notion vainly conceived as prior cuts off and truncates the notion of the Father upward, it will no longer properly be confessed that he is truly Father, since that notion conceived as prior to the Son sets aside the everlastingness and continuity of the fatherhood. How is it possible for what came to be at some later time to be conceived as what it is now said to be? If, then, he was first unbegotten and afterwards became and was named Father, he certainly was not always what he is now called. But God is what he is now and always is, becoming neither worse nor better by addition, nor taking on one thing in place of another and being altered; he is always the same with himself. If, then, he was not Father from the beginning, neither did he become Father afterwards. But if he is confessed to be Father, I will take up the same argument again: if he is now, he also always was; and if he always was, he also always will be. Therefore the Father is always Father, and the Son is certainly conceived together with the Father; for the title of Father cannot be made firm unless the name of Son is borne out as true. And all that is seen in the Father is beheld also in the Son. For "all that the Father has is the Son's, and the Father has all that is the Son's." He said, "the Father has what is the Son's," so that the slanderer might not be able to include spitefully among "all" either the Son's not being begotten, by saying that the Son has all that is the Father's, or the Father's being begotten, by saying that all that is the Son's is seen in the Father. For the Son has all that is the Father's, yet he is not Father; and conversely, all that is the Son's is seen in the Father, yet he is not Son. If, then, all that is the Father's is in the Only-begotten, and he is in the Father, and fatherhood is not cut off from unbegottenness, I for my part do not see what can be conceived about the Father separately, by itself, at some interval, before the notion of the Son. We may, then, take courage and close fearlessly with what is brought against us by the sophism; and, not at all terrified by the Gorgon of a syllogism contrived to frighten children, we may say that God is holy, immortal, Father, unbegotten, everlasting, all of these at once; and if you suppose, for argument's sake, that any one of the things piously said of him is not so, all of them are removed together with that one. If he is not immortal, the rest cannot be either; and what is said of one part, let it be understood of all. There is, therefore, nothing in him earlier or younger; otherwise he would be found to be older and younger than himself. For suppose God is not always all things, but in some order and sequence one thing is and another comes to be. Yet there is no composition in him; whatever he is, he is wholly. If, then, according to the heresy's argument, he is first unbegotten and afterwards becomes Father, since no accumulation of acquirements is conceived in him, he becomes nothing other than, wholly, both older and later than the whole of himself: preceding himself as unbegotten, and becoming second to himself in the notion of Father. But if, as the Prophet says of God, he is the same, then he speaks vainly who says that before begetting he was not unbegotten; for neither name is found without the other, neither "Father" nor "unbegotten." The two come together, and the notions arise with each other in the minds of those who reason piously. God is Father from eternity, and an everlasting Father, and all that is piously said of him is named in the same way, since this temporal sequence and order, as we said, has no place in the nature that is before the ages. Let us look also at the rest of his dialectical dexterity, which he himself says is both ridiculous and pitiable. He says this well; truly broad is the laughter at what is said, or rather great the lament over the deceit that holds his soul. Since "Father," in a certain sense, also includes the notion of "unbegotten," as our argument says, he exchanges the proper meaning of "Father" for "unbegotten" and says: "For if it is the same to say 'unbegotten' or 'Father,' we shall be allowed to leave the word 'Father,' substitute 'unbegotten,' and say: 'The unbegotten is unbegotten of a Son.'"

"For as the unbegotten is Father of a Son, so conversely the Father is unbegotten of a Son." It occurs to me after all to admire the man's resourcefulness, and to think that the versatility and variety of his training in doctrine is beyond the capacity of most. What our teacher said is a single statement, briefly bounded: that unbegottenness can also be signified through the title "Father." But this man's statements are so many, and their number lies not in any difference of thought but in the circling and turning about of the same words. As those who go round the mill with their eyes covered travel a long way and stay in the same place, so he always turns about the same things and never leaves them. He said once in mockery, "'Father' signifies not having begotten but being from none." Again he wove the like: "If 'Father' signifies 'unbegotten,' then before begetting he was not unbegotten." Then a third time he comes back to the same: "For it is permitted," he says, "substituting 'unbegotten,' to say: 'The unbegotten is unbegotten of a Son.'" And at once he took up again what he had often vomited forth, and says: "For as the unbegotten is Father of a Son, so conversely the Father is unbegotten of a Son." How many times has he run back to his own vomit! How many times has he taken it up again, how many times spewed it out! Shall we not become burdensome to most people ourselves, dragging our own argument about with the emptiness of what he brings forward? Perhaps silence is more fitting in such matters. But lest anyone think that our argument gives way through weakness of speech, we will answer what was said thus. You are not permitted to say that the Father is "unbegotten of a Son," even if the title "Father" signifies that the begetter is not from a cause. In the example we gave, on hearing the dignity of a king we conceived two things from the name: that he who is preeminent in authority is subject to no one, and that he rules over his subjects. So too the title "Father" gives us a double meaning in the case of God: the one conceived in relation to the Son, and that he depends on no cause conceived before him. In the case of the king one cannot say that, since two things are signified by the same title, ruling his subjects and having no one above him, it is permitted to call him not the ruler of the nation but "unkinged of his subjects"; nor, combining the two, to say that as he is called king of a nation, so he will be named unkinged of the nation. In the same way, since the word "Father" both points to the Son and presents the notion of "unbegotten," it is not permitted to transfer the meaning improperly and glue the notion of "unbegotten" ridiculously onto the kinship with the Son by saying "unbegotten of a Son." After saying such things, as though he had trampled on the truth and refuted the absurdity of his opponents, he speaks with great boasting: "And who in his senses ever thought it right to pass over the natural notion in silence and to honor the derangement?" No one, most wise sir; nor, then, did our argument, which said that the title "unbegotten" agrees with our notions and should be kept unmoved in our hearts, but that, instead of the word that has been perverted, the title "Father" is sufficient and leads to that notion. Remember the words you yourself quoted: he did not think it right to pass over the natural notion in silence and honor the derangement, as you call it. He advises that only the title "unbegotten," that is, its utterance in syllables, be safely passed over in silence, since it has been taken in a bad sense and is not said in Scripture either; the meaning, he says, very much agrees with our notions. Such, then, is our view. But he who slanders the Sophists, arms his argument with truth, and accuses our faults, does not blush to play the wit with sophisms in arguments about doctrine, imitating those who draw laughter at banquets with witticisms. See the weight and deliberation of his syllogism's weaving (for I will mention the same words again): "For if it is the same to say 'unbegotten' or 'Father,' we shall be allowed to leave the word 'Father,' substitute 'unbegotten,' and say: 'The unbegotten is unbegotten of a Son.' For as the unbegotten is Father of a Son, so conversely the Father is unbegotten of a Son." This is like the following. Suppose someone said, with right and sound reason, that it makes no difference whether one calls Adam the father of all men or the first man formed by God, since the same is signified by both. Then one of Eunomius's dialecticians, pouncing on what was said, imitated this kind of weaving: "If it is the same to say that he was formed first by God or that he is father of those after him, we shall be allowed to leave the word 'father,' substitute 'first-formed,' and say: 'Adam is not the father of Abel, but first-formed.'