Against Eunomius 4.661–4.673

What is purely without mediation, then, we say is mediated by nothing of this kind. For what is separated by some intermediate would no longer be without mediation. If, then, he too, having said that the Son’s begetting is without mediation, had added none of what follows, he would have been teaching the Son’s connection with the Father as it is piously understood. But since, as if repenting of what he had said, he immediately added that “it preserves its relation to the one who begot, made, and created it,” he defiled what came first with what came second, vomiting the blasphemous word over the pure statement. For it is clear that there too “without mediation” does not look to what is pious. It is as if one were to say that the hammer mediates between the nail and the smith, but that the hammer’s own making is without mediation: since tools had not yet been invented by the art, the hammer was made first by the craftsman, by some device, without any other tool, and then the other things through it. This is what the term “without mediation” shows the writer to think about the Only-begotten as well. And Eunomius is not alone in having gone astray in this absurd doctrine; one can find the same in the writings of Theognostus, who says that God, wishing to make this universe, first brought the Son into existence as a kind of rule for the making. Nor did he see the absurdity in his statement: that what exists not for its own sake but for the sake of something else is certainly less honourable than that for which it comes to be; as we make the farming implement for the sake of life, yet the plough is not honoured equally with life. So too, if the Lord exists for the sake of the world, and not all things for his sake, all the things for whose sake they say he came to be would be more honourable than the Lord. This is what they establish now too by their argument, by which they insist that the Son has his relation to the one who created and made him without mediation. But he is generous to what remains, and says that he “is compared with none of the things that came into being through him and after him.” Such is the bodyguard the enemies of truth provide for the Lord, by which the blasphemy is established more plainly. For tell me, which of the rest of the things in creation admits comparison with another, since the property seen in each does not admit communion at all with things of a different kind? There is no comparison of heaven with earth, nor of this with the stars, nor of the stars with the seas, nor of water with stone, nor of animals with trees, nor of land animals with birds, nor of four-footed beasts with swimming creatures, nor of irrational with rational. And why should one spend time going through particulars, showing that what was thrown to the Only-begotten as something exceptional, having no comparison with any of the things made after him and through him, can be said equally of each of the things seen in creation? For it is plain that whatever you think of by itself is incomparable with the whole and with each particular. And what can truly be said of any chance creature, as if this were sufficient and enough for honour and glory, is allotted to the only-begotten God by the enemies of the truth. And having constructed such things, he again in what remains exalts him with empty honours, calling him Lord and Only-begotten; but so that no pious thought may arise in his hearers through these names, he at once mixes blasphemies with the expressions of better sense. The text runs thus: “Since,” he says, “the begotten substance leaves no room to any other for communion (for it is only-begotten), nor is the activity of the maker seen as shared.” What insolence! As though haranguing irrational or senseless people who have no understanding, he leads his argument around through contraries at will; or rather he suffers the same as those deprived of sight, for they too often behave indecently before the eyes of those who see, because they do not see themselves and suppose that they are not seen. For who cannot see the contradiction in what has been said? “Because it was begotten,” he says, “the substance leaves no room for communion to others, for it is only-begotten”; and having said this as if in truth, either not seeing himself or not thinking himself seen, he adds, as if consistent with what was said, things that have no communion with it, fitting the maker’s activity to the substance of the Only-begotten. For the begotten certainly has his reference, by consequence, to the begetter, and the Only-begotten to the Father; and one who looks to the truth sees, in the correlation of the Son, not a maker’s activity but a begetter’s nature. But he, as if speaking of plants or seeds or some other thing in creation, sets the activity of the maker beside the existence of the Only-begotten.

For if a stone or wood or something else of that kind were the subject of our contemplation, it would follow that we should think first of the maker’s activity. But if the only-begotten God is admitted even by our opponents both to be Son and to have come to exist by begetting, how do the same words fit him and the lowest of the parts of creation? What can truly be said of the ant or the gnat, this they think it pious to say of the Lord too. For if someone learned the nature of the ant, in what it is peculiar compared with the other animals, he would not speak outside the truth in saying that the activity of the maker that made it is not seen to be shared with the others. What is said of such things, then, they declare of the Only-begotten too. And as hunters are said to intercept the path of wild beasts with pits, hiding the snare by covering the mouths of the pits with flimsy and unsupported things, so that to one passing by the pit seems to be level ground, the heresy contrives something of the kind against men, covering the pit of impiety with these well-sounding and pious names as with a superficial roof; so that the more thoughtless, supposing because of the agreement of the words that their proclamation is the same as the true faith, run onto the bare name of Son and Only-begotten and step onto emptiness over the pit, since the meaning of the appellations does not support their footing but carries them down into the abyss of the denial of Christ. For this reason he mentions a begotten substance that leaves room to none for communion, and names him Only-begotten. These are the coverings of the pit. But when someone, standing by before he is caught in the chasm, applies to the statement the test of reason like a hand, he sees the ruin of idolatry dug beneath the doctrine. For approaching him as God and Son of God, he finds a creature of God set before him for worship. For this reason they carry the name of the Only-begotten up and down, so that ruin may be readily accepted by the deceived, as if someone mixed poison with bread and so welcomed with death those who needed food; they would not have accepted the destructive poison bare, had they not been baited by what appeared. Wisely, then, as far as his own purpose goes, he looks to what he is striving for. For if he had cast the word “Son” altogether out of his doctrine, the deceit would have been unacceptable to men, since the denial would have been shouted openly in a plain proclamation; but as it is, by leaving only the name and transferring its meaning to the notion of creation, he both succeeds in idolatry and steals away the refutation. But we have not been commanded to honour God with the lips, nor is godliness judged by the sound of a voice; rather, the Son must first be believed with the heart unto righteousness, and then confessed with the mouth unto salvation; and those who say in their heart that there is no God, even if they confess “Lord” with the mouth, have become corrupt, as the Prophet says. For this reason I say that we must look to the sense of those who put forward what are supposedly the words of the faith, and not be baited by the sounds. If, then, one who says “Son” does not look by the word to a creature, he is ours and not of our opponents. But if anyone gives the name of Son to a creature, he will be ranked among the idolaters. For they too named Dagon, and Bel, and the dragon “god,” but did not for that reason worship God; for the wood and the bronze and the beast are not God. But why need we conjecture their meaning and uncover in our discussion the hidden deceit, and perhaps give our hearers grounds for thinking that we bring these charges against our enemies untruly? For see, he sets out his blasphemy before us bare, hiding his trickery behind no veil, but speaking boldly of absurdities with a free voice. What he wrote runs thus: “We, then,” he says, “finding nothing other than the substance of the Son that receives the begetting, think that we must assign the appellations to the substance itself, if indeed we are not to say ‘Son’ and ‘begotten’ as bare words, which we would if we separated these from the substance; and starting from these we are also confident that the substances are at variance with each other.” I think there is no need for the absurdity of what has been said to be refuted by our arguments; the very reading of what was written is enough to pillory the blasphemy. Let us consider it thus. He says that the substances of the Son and of the Father are at variance with each other. What, then, is signified by “at variance”? Let us first examine the implication of the word in itself, so that the blasphemy may be uncovered more clearly by interpreting the term. The word “variance” is used, in the extended use of ordinary speech, of bodies, when through paralysis or some other affliction a limb is turned aside from its natural harmony. For when we compare the afflicted with the healthy, we call the turn for the worse of the part that has received the affliction a “variance.”

In the case of those who differ in character by virtue and vice, when the licentious life is set beside the pure and temperate, or the unjust man beside the just, or the angry, warlike, and unrestrained in wrath beside the gentle, peaceable, and quiet, and in general whatever is charged with vice in comparison with the better is said to be at variance, because the marks of the two, I mean of the good and of the worse, do not agree with each other. Again, we say that the qualities seen in the elements are at variance, those that stand opposite one another as contraries, having destructive power against each other, such as hot and cold, or dry and wet, or in general whatever stands opposed to another as its contrary; and we express their incompatibility by the word “variance.” And in general everything that disagrees with another in the marks observed in it is among things at variance: as health is at variance with sickness, life with death, war with peace, virtue with vice, and all things of like kind. These things having been thus distinguished by us, let us consider also in the case of the writer how he says that the substances of the Father and of the Son are at variance with each other. What does he mean by saying this? Does he mean that the Father is according to nature, but the Son deviates from nature? Or does he express by this word a deviation from virtue, separating by the name of variance the bad from the better, so as to see this substance in the good and the other in its opposite? Or, on the principle of the opposition of the elements, does he maintain that the divine substance too is at variance, the one from the other? Or does he see in the substances, as war stands to peace and life to death, the conflict found in all such things, so that they could not come together with each other, because the mixing of contraries has a power that consumes the things mixed, as the proverbial Wisdom says of such a principle, that “water and fire will never say, Enough,” expressing by the riddle the equally matched and equally balanced nature of contraries and their destruction of one another? Does he say that the variance to be seen in those substances is according to none of these? Then let him say what is meant besides these. But he could not say it, even if he repeats his usual statement that the Son is at variance with the begetter. For by this the absurdity of what he says is refuted all the more. For what is so naturally and fittingly implanted and fitted in another as the Son’s relative meaning to the Father? A proof of this: even if the two names are not both spoken, the correlative is signified along with the one; so implanted and fitted is the one in the other, and both are seen in the one, so that neither of them can be thought of by itself apart from the other. But what is at variance is understood and spoken of as the opposite of what fits. For example, the mason’s line fits the straight; but the crooked set beside the straight does not fit; and musicians commonly call the concord of tones “harmony,” and what deviates and is out of tune “inharmonious.” To say “at variance,” then, is the same as to say “not fitting.” If, then, the nature of the only-begotten God is at variance with the substance of the Father, as the heresy’s argument holds, it certainly does not fit with it either; and what is fitted could not come to be in that with which it cannot be fitted. For as, when there is one form both in the wax and in the engraving on a signet ring, the wax that was stamped by the ring, when it is put back into the ring, fits its own impressed character to what contains it, taking up its own impressions in the engraving, sinking into the hollows and receiving the projections of the engraving in its own impressions; but if some foreign and alien impression is put into the engraving of the ring, it roughens and confuses its own form, carving round the shape with characters that do not belong to it: so he who exists in the form of God was not formed with any character other than the Father’s, being the express image of the Father’s hypostasis; and the form of God is certainly the same as the substance. For as, coming to be in the form of the slave, he was formed in the substance of the slave, not taking up the bare form by itself, nor a form separated from the substance, but the substance being signified along with the form, so too the one who said that he is in the form of God certainly showed the substance through the form.

If, then, he is in the form of God, and, being in the Father, is sealed with the Father’s glory, as the voice of the Gospel says, “Him has the Father, God, sealed” (for which reason also he who has seen the Son sees the Father), then the “image of goodness,” and the “radiance of glory,” and all such names bear witness that the substance of the Son is not unfitted to the Father. Plainly, then, the incoherence of the opponents’ blasphemy is refuted by what has been said. For if things at variance do not fit together, and he who was sealed by the Father, who shows the Father in himself, who is in the Father and has him in himself, shows through all these his natural union and fitting harmony, then by these the absurdity of the opponents is refuted with all force. For as what is at variance was shown to be unfitting, so conversely it is indisputably agreed that what fits well is altogether without variance. For as what is at variance does not fit, so what fits is not at variance. But one who says that the nature of the Only-begotten is at variance with the good substance of the Father certainly sees the variance in the good itself. As to what variance from the good is, “Understand, you innocent, subtlety,” says the Proverb. But I will pass over these things in my discussion, since their absurdity is evident; let us examine what comes before them. He says that nothing other than the substance of the Son is found that receives the begetting. What does he mean by saying this? Having distinguished two names from each other and separated in his argument the things they signify, he sets out each by itself: one name is begetting, another name is substance. “The substance,” he says, “receives the begetting,” being plainly something other than the begetting. For if the begetting were substance, as he constantly declares, so that the two appellations were equivalent in meaning, he would not have said that the substance receives the begetting; for it would have been the same as saying that the substance receives the substance, or that the begetting receives the begetting, if the begetting were this substance. So he understands the begetting as one thing and the substance that receives the begetting as another; for what is received would not be the same as what receives it. This, then, is what the writer’s wise technical argument says. Whether any sense lies in what has been said, let one practised in judging consider the statement. I will take up again what was said. He says he finds nothing other than the substance of the Son that receives the begetting. But that no sense lies in these words is plain to anyone who understands speech at all; it would remain to bring into the open the blasphemy which he constructs through these senseless words. For he wishes, though he cannot because of his weakness of expression, to produce in his hearers this thought: that the Son’s existence is something constructed; and he calls the construction “begetting,” wrapping the horror of the blasphemy in a most well-sounding word, so that assent to the Lord’s having been created may be readily accepted when construction is indicated by the word “begetting.” He says, then, that the substance receives the begetting, so that, as every construction is seen in some underlying thing (for no one would say that what does not subsist has been constructed), so, presenting the nature of the only-begotten God as a kind of construction, he puts forward the making in his statement. If, then, “this substance receives the begetting,” he says, wishing to signify something like this: that it would not exist if it had not been constructed. But what else among the things seen in creation exists without having come to be? Heaven, earth, air, sea, everything whatever exists, has certainly come to be; none of them would exist if it had not come to be. How, then, did he see as something exceptional in the nature of the Only-begotten its receiving the begetting into its very substance? For that is how he names the construction, as though the bumble-bee and the gnat received their coming-to-be not into themselves but into something else besides themselves. It is admitted, then, through what he wrote, that they put the substance of the Only-begotten on a common level even with the smallest parts of creation, and every argument by which the Son’s estrangement from the Father is constructed has equal force for each particular thing. What need, then, has he of this intricate subtlety to construct an estrangement by nature, when he ought to turn to the short road of denial by openly declaring that the name of Son must not be confessed, nor the only-begotten God proclaimed in the churches, but that the Jewish worship should be judged more proper than the Christian confession; and, confessing only the Father as Creator and Maker, should bring all the rest under the name and notion of creation, and among these call the work set before the others a thing made, which came to be through some constructive activity, naming it “first-created” instead of only-begotten God and true Son?

For once these views have prevailed, it is very easy to bring the doctrines to the conclusion they aim at, since all are led, as one would expect, by such a starting point to the consequence that one who was neither begotten nor is Son, but came to exist through some activity, cannot share the substance of God. But as long as the words of the Gospels prevail, through which he is proclaimed Son, and Only-begotten, and from the Father, and from God, and the like, he will talk nonsense in vain, deceiving himself and his followers with such drivel. For since the appellation “Son” proclaims aloud the true relation to the Father, who is so foolish that, while John and Paul and the rest of the choir of the saints proclaim these genuine words, which show the kinship, he does not look to them, but, led by the empty rattles of Eunomius’s sophisms, thinks Eunomius truer than the teaching of those who speak mysteries through the Spirit and carry Christ in themselves? Who is this Eunomius? From where was he raised up to be the guide of Christians? But let these things be; and, as far as possible, let our zeal for the matters before us soothe our heart, which swells with zeal for the faith against the blasphemers. For how is it possible not to be stirred to anger and hatred when our God and Master, the giver of life, and Saviour, is insulted by these petty men? If someone reviled my father in the flesh, or was hostile to my benefactor, would it be possible to bear without feeling the anger on behalf of those I love? But if the Lord of my soul, who brought it into being when it was not and ransomed it when it was enslaved, who gave me a taste of the present life and prepared the life to come, who calls me to the kingdom and charges me how I may escape the condemnation of Gehenna (these are small things I am saying, and not yet worthy of the greatness of the common Master), who is worshipped by all creation, things in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, before whom stood myriads of the ministers in heaven, to whom everything that dwells here and has the desire for the good is turned: if he is exposed to the abuse of men for whom it is not enough to have attached themselves to the apostate’s portion, but who count it a loss not to drag others with them into the same abyss by their writing, so that those who come after may not lack guidance by the hand to destruction, will anyone blame the anger over these things? But let us run back to the sequence. In what follows he again slanders us as dishonouring the Son’s begetting by human likenesses, and he mentions what our father wrote on these matters, where he says that, since two things are signified by the word “son,” formation through passion and genuineness toward the begetter, the unfitting and fleshly sense is not to be admitted in divine discourse, but only so much as serves to bear witness to the glory of the Only-begotten is to be received into the lofty doctrines. Who, then, dishonours the Son’s begetting by human suppositions: the one who banishes what is passible and human from the divine begetting and joins the Son impassibly to the begetter, or the one who puts the one who brought all things into being on a common level with the lower creation? But this new wisdom, it seems, regards it as dishonour to make the Son akin to the majesty of the Father, and as great and lofty to bring him down to equal honour with the creation that is our fellow slave. What empty charges! Basil is slandered as dishonouring the Son, he who honours him as the Father is honoured; and Eunomius champions the honour of the Only-begotten, he who makes him vanish from the good nature of the Father. Paul too once met such a charge among the Athenians, accused before them of proclaiming foreign divinities, when he was refuting the error about demons of those mad for idols and leading them by the hand to the truth, proclaiming the resurrection in the Areopagus. The same charges the new Stoics and Epicureans now bring against the imitator of Paul, men who, as the history says of the Athenians, have leisure for nothing else but to tell or hear something newer. For what could be found newer than these: a Son of an activity, a Father of a creature, a newly made God springing up from what was not, and a good at variance with the good? These are the men who pretend to honour him with fitting honours by saying that he is not what the nature of the begetter is. Would Eunomius feel shame at this kind of honour, if someone said that he was akin by nature not to his own father but shared communion with something of another kind? If one who puts the Lord of creation on a common level with creation claims to honour him by this, then let Eunomius too be honoured by being put on a common level by nature with what is irrational or insensible. But if communion with the worse is grievous and insulting to him, how is it an honour to him who “rules by his power for ever,” as the Prophet says, to be ranked with the nature that is subject and in servitude? But so much for this.