Against Eunomius 2.525–2.539

There is nothing that did not have its coming to be through the goodness of its maker. So what reason sees in all things, Eunomius graciously bestows on the Son out of kindness! As for his not sharing the substance or the dignity with the Father, and all the other such nonsense he goes through, it has already been refuted in advance in the discussion of the Father, as thrown out by him idly and without sense. For not even in us, who are born of one another, does a division of substance take place; for the account of the substance remains whole in each, in the begotten and in the begetter, the account of the substance admitting neither diminution in the begetter nor increase in the begotten. And a division of dignity or kingship, in the case of him who has all that is the Father’s, has no sense except as an exposure of impiety. So it would be superfluous to grapple with such things and stretch the discussion out without measure. Let us go on to what follows.

“Glorified,” he says, “by the Father before the ages.” The word of truth has been proved, strengthened by the testimony of its enemies. For this is the sum of our faith, that the Son is glorified by the Father from eternity. For “before the age” is the same in sense as “eternal,” as the prophecy interprets God’s eternity to us, where it says, “He who exists before the ages.” If, then, existing before the ages is beyond every beginning, whoever ascribes to the Son a glory before the ages has much earlier attested his existence from eternity; for it is not what is not but certainly what is that is glorified.

After this he lays down for himself the seeds of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, not to glorify the Son but to insult the Holy Spirit. For wishing to show that the Holy Spirit is part of the angelic power, he threw in this, saying, “Glorified by the Spirit through the age, and by every rational and begotten substance,” so that there is no difference between the Holy Spirit and everything that has come to be, if the Holy Spirit glorifies the Lord in the way that all the other things do which the Prophet goes through: the angels and the powers, and the heavens of heavens, and the water above the world, and all things from the earth, dragons, depths, fire, hail, snow, ice, stormy wind, the mountains and all the hills, fruit trees and all cedars, the wild beasts and all the cattle, creeping things and winged birds. If, then, he says that the Holy Spirit glorifies the Lord together with these, the God-fighting tongue declares that it too is certainly one of them.

What is attached next, disjointedly, I say we do well to pass over, not as blameless, but as things that could be said by the reverent too, if they were detached from their perverse implication. For if he has added anything that tends toward godliness, such a thing is held out to the simpler sort as bait, so that the hook of impiety may be swallowed along with it. For having said some things that a churchman too might say, he adds: “Obedient for the making and coming to be of existing things, obedient for all governance, not having acquired being Son, God, from his obedience, but from being Son and having been begotten only-begotten God, become obedient in words, obedient in works.” Yet who among those familiar with the divine words does not know when the great Paul said of him, and this only once, that he became obedient? For when he came to fulfill the mystery of the cross, he who emptied himself in the form of a slave and humbled himself in the likeness and fashion of a man, found as a man in the lowly nature of human beings, then he becomes obedient, he who took up our weaknesses and bore our diseases, healing human disobedience by his own obedience, so that by his stripe he might heal our wound and by his own death abolish the common death of human beings. Then for our sake he becomes obedient, as he also became sin and curse because of the economy on our behalf, not being this by nature but becoming it out of loving-kindness. But from what Scripture did he learn the catalogue of so many obediences? On the contrary, all inspired Scripture attests to him a sovereign and self-ruling authority, saying, “He spoke, and they came to be; he commanded, and they were created.” For it is plain that the Prophet says this of him who bears all things by the word of his power, whose authority established all substance and nature and all things conceived and seen in creation by the impulse of his will alone. What moves Eunomius, then, to fasten obedience on the King of creation in countless ways, saying, “obedient for all making, and obedient for all governance, obedient in words and works”?

Yet it is plain to everyone that only he becomes obedient to another in words and works who has not yet achieved in himself the authority to act accurately or speak blamelessly, but, looking to his teacher and guide, is trained by his instructions in accuracy of words and works. But to think that Wisdom needs a supervisor and teacher to direct its consistency or righteousness to what is required belongs to Eunomius’s imagination alone. And of the Father he says, “faithful in words, and faithful in works,” but to the Son he did not attest faithfulness in what is done and said; he declared him obedient in words, and not faithful; so that through everything he says the blasphemy against him is the same. As for the folly and senselessness of the phrase inserted between these, it is perhaps fitting to pass it over in silence, lest some heedless person laugh at its vanity, when one ought rather to weep over the ruin of their souls than laugh at the folly of their words. For this wise and circumspect dogmatist says that he did not acquire being Son from obedience. What sharpness! How necessarily he defines for us about these things that he did not first become obedient and then Son, and that we must not think his obedience older than his begetting! If he had not added this definition, who would have been so foolish and silly as to suppose that begetting was given him by the Father as a reward for obedience, as to one who had shown docility and obedience before his begetting? But so that no one may be too readily carried off to laughter by the folly of what is said, let him understand that the folly of the words has something worthy of tears. For what he wishes to establish by these words is this: that obedience is his nature, so that even if he wished it, it would not be possible for him not to be obedient. For he says that he was so made that his nature is suited to obedience alone, like a tool shaped to a certain pattern, which necessarily stamps on the material the form that the smith put into the making of the tool, and which has no power either to make a straight mark on what receives it if its working is curved, or to show a circle by its stamp if the tool happens to be shaped straight. How blasphemous such a thought is, why need our words reveal, when the heretical utterance itself cries out its absurdity? For if he is obedient because he was made such, he is not even on an equal footing with human nature. For our soul is self-determining and without a master, choosing what it pleases with sovereign authority; but he, yoked under the necessity of nature, performs obedience always, or rather undergoes it, his nature not allowing it even if he did not wish to do so. “For from being Son and having been begotten so, he became obedient in words, and obedient in works.” Oh, the senselessness of the doctrine! You make the Word obedient to words, and you conceive other words before the Word who is; and another word mediates for the Word who is in the beginning, ferrying across to him the will of the beginning. And there is not one only: there are several words inserted by Eunomius between the beginning and the Word, which misuse his obedience as they please.

But why linger over the vanity of what is said? It is plain to everyone that even when Paul said he became obedient (and he said he became so as he became flesh and slave and curse and sin for our sake), not even then did the Lord of glory, who despised the shame and accepted the passion in the flesh, estrange himself from his sovereign authority, saying, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up”; and again, “No one takes my life from me; I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it again.” And when, on the night before the passion, those armed with iron and clubs came near him, he threw them all backward by saying, “I am”; and again, when the robber begged to be remembered by him, he showed his authority over all, saying, “Today you will be with me in paradise.” If, then, not even at the time of the passion is he separated from his authority, where does the heresy see subjection in the King of glory? And what is this manifold mediation that he keeps babbling of God, calling him “mediator in doctrines, mediator in the law”? We were not taught this by the lofty voice of the Apostle, who says that, having abolished the law of commandments by his own decrees, this is the mediator of God and human beings,

having said this word: “One God, and one mediator of God and human beings, the man Christ Jesus.” Here, through the word “mediator,” he has comprehended and revealed to us the whole aim of the mystery. And the aim is this. Humanity once revolted through the malice of the adversary, and, enslaved to sin, was also estranged from the true life. After this the Lord of the creature calls back his own creature, and becomes man while being God, being wholly the one and becoming wholly the other; and so humanity was blended with God, the man in Christ accomplishing the mediation, in whom, through the first fruits taken up for us, the whole lump was blended with the power. Since, then, a mediator is not of one, but God is one, not divided among the persons handed down in the faith (for the Godhead in Father and Son and Holy Spirit is one), for this reason the Lord becomes mediator once for all, of God and human beings, joining humanity to the Godhead through himself. And through the notion of the mediator we have also been taught the reverent sense of the faith: for as the mediator of God and human beings received fellowship in human nature, not being thought a man but having become one in truth, so too, being true God, he has not been honored with a bare title of Godhead, as Eunomius would have it.

What he adds to what has been said clings to the same folly, or rather malice. For having called him Son, whom a little before he plainly defined as created, and having named him only-begotten God, whom he counted with the rest of the things that came to be by creation, he said that he is like the one who begot him, “by a special likeness only, according to the peculiar sense.” We must first, then, distinguish the meaning of “like,” in how many ways it is said in loose ordinary usage, and then come to the examination of what is before us. First, there are things that deceive our senses: not being the same as one another in nature, but, through some of the accidents of the subjects (I mean shape and color and sound, and whatever produces the deception through taste and smell and touch), being different in nature yet pretending to be something other than they are, these usage says are alike. For example, when lifeless matter is formed by art into an imitation of some animal, by carving or painting or modeling, the imitation is called like the original. For here the nature of the animal is one thing, and that of the matter that deceives the sight by color and shape alone another. Of the same kind of likeness is the image in a mirror, which bears clear impressions of the original form but is not in nature what the original is. Likewise the hearing can be affected in the same way, when someone imitating the nightingale’s song with his own voice persuades the hearing that it is listening to a bird. Taste too suffers such deception, when the juice of the fig imitates the pleasure of honey; for the juice of the fruit has something like the sweetness of honey. So too smell can sometimes be deceived by likeness, when the scent of the chamomile plant, imitating with its fragrance the sweet-smelling apple itself, deceives the sense. In the same way, in touch too, likeness variously belies the truth, since a silver or bronze coin of the same size as a gold one and alike in weight may be taken for gold, when sight does not judge the truth. These things have been stated generally and in a few words: things that through some likeness produce deception in the senses, being thought other than they are. One might, by a more laborious examination, broaden the discussion through the things themselves that are of different kinds from one another but are thought like one another through some accident. Does he, then, babble of some such kind of likeness in the Son? But he would not come to such madness as to see a deceptive likeness in the case of the Truth. Again, we were taught another likeness in the inspired Scripture by him who said, “Let us make man according to our image and according to likeness.” But I do not think Eunomius sees this kind of likeness in the Son and the Father, so as to declare the only-begotten God the same as man. We know another kind of likeness too, which the word in the account of the world’s making states about Seth: “Adam begot Seth according to his form and according to his likeness.” If Eunomius says this, we do not reject the statement; for here the nature of the things likened to each other is not different, and the character and form have fellowship. These and the like are what we have understood about the varieties of “like.”

Let us see, then, what Eunomius has in view when he attests that special likeness of the Son to the Father, saying that he is like the one who begot him “only by a special likeness, according to the peculiar sense, not as Father to Father, for there are not two Fathers.” Having promised to show the special likeness of the Son to the Father, he builds up in his statement how one ought not to think him like. For having said that he is not like as Father to Father, he made out in his statement that he is not like. And again, adding “nor as unbegotten to unbegotten,” he forbade us for this reason too to think of the Son’s likeness to the Father; then, adding “nor as Son to Son,” he brought in a third thought, by which he altogether carries off the meaning of “like.” He, then, follows his own words, making his proof of likeness by building up unlikeness. But let us examine the wisdom and frankness that he displays in his definitions. For having said that the Son is like the Father, he secures the hearing, so that we must not think that the Son resembles the Father as a Father resembles a Father. But who among human beings is so senseless that, having learned that the Son is like the Father, he would be led in his reasonings to the likeness of a Father to the Father? “Nor as Son to Son,” he says. Again the shrewdness of the definition is equal: having said that the Son is like the Father, he adds the definition that he must not be like as to another Son. These are the mysteries of Eunomius’s reverend doctrines, by which his disciples become wiser than others: learning that the Son who resembles the Father does not resemble a Son, for the Father is not a Son; nor as unbegotten to unbegotten, for the Son is not unbegotten. But our mystery, when it says Father, certainly bids us think of the Father of a Son, and when it names Son, teaches us to think of the Son of a Father; and until now we have had no need of this superfluous wisdom, so as to suppose through Father and Son two Fathers or two Sons, like a pair of unbegottens.

What Eunomius’s great zeal for “unbegotten” intends has often been shown already, and now it will be said again in a few words. Since the meaning of “Father” shows no difference of nature from the Son, if he had stopped his statement there, the impiety would have had no strength, since the natural sense of the names does not admit what is foreign in substance. But now, saying “unbegotten” and “begotten,” since the opposition of these names to each other admits no middle, like that of mortal and immortal, rational and irrational, and all that are expressed in the same way, which stand against one another by contrary meanings, he opened a road to blasphemy through these names, so that the difference of mortal from immortal might be seen in the begotten as against the unbegotten. And as the nature of the mortal and that of the immortal differ, and the properties of the rational and the irrational are incompatible in substance, so he wishes to make out one nature for the unbegotten and another for the begotten; so that, as the irrational nature was made subject to the rational, so he may show the begotten yoked by natural necessity under the unbegotten. That is why he joins to “unbegotten” the name “Almighty,” taking the interpretation of “Almighty” not as providential activity, as our discussion showed earlier, but as tyrannical authority, so as to make the Son too part of the ruled and subject nature, serving with all things the one who holds all equally by tyrannical authority. And that he uses such distinctions of speech with this in view will be made clear from what follows. For he said those wise and circumspect things, that he is not like as a Father to a Father, nor as a Son to a Son (although there is no necessity at all that a father resemble a father and a son a son: for there is a father among the Ethiopians and a father among the Scythians, and a son of each, the Ethiopian’s black, the Scythian white-skinned and with golden-tinged hair; and none the more, because each is a father, does the Scythian turn black because of the Ethiopian, or the Ethiopian’s body change to white because of the Scythian). Yet, having said these things as he pleased, Eunomius added that “he is like the Father as Son.” But though such a statement shows kinship according to nature, as the inspired teaching testifies in the case of Seth and Adam, the dogmatist, caring little for intelligent hearers, added an empty interpretation of the title “Son,” defining him as image and seal of the activity of the Almighty. For he says, “The Son is image and seal of the activity of the Almighty.” Let him who has ears to hear consider this point first.

What is “the seal of the activity”? For every activity is seen in the one who is working at what he is busy with; but when what he was busy with is completed, it does not subsist by itself. For example, the activity of running is the motion of the feet; when the motion stops, the activity no longer exists by itself. So in every pursuit one can say the same: the activity ceases together with the effort of one who labors at something, and does not exist by itself, neither while someone is carrying out the effort before him nor if he ceases from it. What, then, does he say the activity is by itself, which is neither substance, nor character, nor hypostasis? So he has called him the likeness of what has no hypostasis; and what is like the non-existent certainly does not exist itself. This is the marvel of empty doctrines: believing in what is not. For what is not like what is, certainly is not.

O Paul and John, and the rest of the chorus of evangelists and apostles! Who are these that arm their venomous tongues against your voice? Who raise their froglike croaking against your heavenly thunders? What, then, does the son of thunder say? “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” And what does the one after him say, that other, who came within the heavenly sanctuary, who was initiated into things unspeakable in paradise? “Being,” he says, “the radiance of the glory and the character of his hypostasis.” What does the ventriloquist say after these? “Seal,” he says, “of the activity of the Almighty.” He makes him third after the Father, with that non-existent activity mediating, or rather stamped as non-existence pleases. A seal of an activity is he who is in the beginning, God the Word, contemplated in the eternity of the beginning of existing things, the only-begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, who bears all things by the word of his power, the maker of the ages, from whom are all things and through whom are all things, who holds the circle of the earth, who has measured the heaven with a span, who measures the water with his hand, who grasps all existing things, who dwells on high and looks on what is lowly (or rather looked on it, so as to make the whole world his footstool, imprinted with the footprint of the Word): the form of God is a seal of an activity! Then God is an activity, not a hypostasis! Yet Paul, interpreting this very thing, says that he is the character not of the activity but of the hypostasis. Or is the radiance of the glory a seal of an activity of God? Oh, the impious ignorance! What is there between God and his eternal form? By whom is the hypostasis mediated to its own character? What is conceived between the glory and the radiance? But when there are so many such words by which the majesty of the Master of creation is proclaimed by those entrusted with the proclamation, what does the forerunner of the apostasy set out about him? What does he say? “As image,” he says, “and seal of all the activity and power of the Almighty.” How does he cancel the words of the great Paul? Paul says that the Son is the power of God; this man calls him a seal of power, not power. And repeating the statement, what does he add to what has been said? He calls him the seal of the Father’s works and counsels. To what works of the Father is he like? He will certainly say the world and all things in it; but the Gospel has testified that all these are works of the Only-begotten. To what works of the Father, then, was he likened? Of what works did he become the seal? What Scripture called him the seal of the Father’s works? And if one grants him this too, to fashion statements at will as he pleases, even if Scripture does not agree, let him say what works of the Father there are, separate from those that came to be by the Son, of which he says the Son became the seal. All things visible and invisible are works of the Word: among the visible, the whole world and all things in it; among the invisible, the creation above the world. What works of the Father, then, remain, outside the visible and the invisible, seen by themselves, of which he says the Son became the seal? Or perhaps, hard pressed, he will return again to the stinking vomit of the heresy and say that the Son is a work of the Father? How, then, does the Son become the seal of these works, being himself, as he says, the work? Or does he call the same one both work and likeness of a work? Let these be granted; let him name the other works of which he says the Father is the maker, to which the Son was likened, if by “seal” he means likeness. And what other words of the Father does Eunomius know besides the Word who is always in the Father, whom he calls a seal, him who properly and truly and primarily is and is called Word?