Against Eunomius 5.697–6.713

And he became this after the passion. So the apostle does not present the Lord’s existence before the ages by the word “made,” but the transformation of the lowly into the lofty, which came about through the right hand of God. For through this word too the mystery of godliness is made clear. For he who said, “being exalted by the right hand of God,” plainly reveals the unspeakable economy of the mystery: that the right hand of God, which made all things that are, which is the Lord, through whom all things came to be and without whom nothing that is came to exist, itself raised the man united to it to its own height through the mingling, making him too what it is itself by nature. And it is Lord and King, for “Christ” means king; this it made him too. For as, coming to be in the Most High, he was highly exalted, so he became all the other things too: immortal in the immortal, light in the light, incorruptible in the incorruptible, invisible in the invisible, Christ in the Christ, Lord in the Lord. For in bodily minglings, when one part greatly exceeds in measure, the lesser is naturally transformed altogether into what prevails. This we are clearly taught in the mystical word too, through Peter’s voice: that the lowliness of him who was crucified through weakness (and the weakness signifies the flesh, as we have heard concerning the Lord), through its mingling with the infinite and unbounded good, no longer remained in its own measures and properties, but was lifted up together with the right hand of God and became, instead of a subject, Christ the King; instead of lowly, Most High; instead of man, God. What hold, then, has the one who pretends to fight us on behalf of the apostles found in what we wrote against the saints? But let this charge too be passed over in silence; for I think it small and ignoble to stand up against what is false and unproven in his statements. Let us pass on to the more vehement part of the accusation. He says that we say the man was emptied, and that he who humbled himself by obedience to the form of the slave was conformed to men even before he took up this form. Nothing has been altered in the wording; we have transferred his very words from his discourse to ours. If there is anything of the kind in what we have written (for I call the writings of our teacher ours), let no one accuse the orator of slander; I ask only for all care for the truth, and we will bear witness. But if there is nothing of the sort in what is written, and his account does not merely bring a charge but is indignant and angry as though at things plainly proven, calling us full of marvels and nonsense and confusion and inconsistency and the like, I do not see what one should do. As those at a loss before the groundless rages of the delirious do not know what to resolve, so I too find no device against this helplessness. The teacher says (for I will repeat his words again verbatim) that the apostle “is not handing down to us a mode of theology but the accounts of the economy.” But the accuser, starting from this, says that we make out that a man was emptied into a man. What communion is there between the one and the other? If we say that the apostle did not hand down to us a mode of theology but pointed out in his words the economy of the passion, are we for this reason slandered as speaking of the emptying of a man into a man, and of a form of a slave before the ages, and of the man from Mary as older than the presence in the flesh? But I think it superfluous to linger on things that are agreed, since the truth itself frees us from the charge. For one must stand up against accusers when someone has given the slanderer a hold against himself; but where there is no danger of being suspected of anything absurd, the accusation becomes a proof not of the slander against the accused but of the madness of the accuser. But just as, when we were charged with being ashamed of the cross, we showed by our examination that the charge turned against the accuser, so we will show that this charge too turns back upon the accusers, since it is they, not we, who teach the Son’s passing from like to like in the economy of the passion. For we will examine what each side says, setting the heads side by side. We say that the only-begotten God, having brought all things into being through himself, one of which is human nature, when that nature had slipped into wickedness and so had come to be in the corruption of death, drew it back again through himself to immortal life through the man in whom he dwelt, taking the whole human element to himself and mixing his life-giving power with the mortal and perishable nature, and transforming our deadness, through the mingling with himself, into living grace and power.

And this, we say, is the mystery of the Lord’s flesh: that the unchangeable comes to be in the changeable, so that, altering it for the better and changing it from the worse, he might make the wickedness mixed with the changeable condition vanish from the nature, consuming the evil in himself. For our God is a consuming fire, in which all the material of wickedness vanishes. That is our account. And what does the accuser say? That it was not the unchangeable and uncreated that was mingled with what came to be by creation and was therefore altered toward wickedness, but that he too, being created, came to what was akin to him and of the same race; that he did not, from a surpassing nature, put on the lowlier nature out of love for humankind, but became what he was. For by the general appellation, the name of creation is one over all things that came to exist from what was not, while the particular differences among the things seen in creation differ from one another by the variations of their properties. So, if he is created and man is created, he was emptied into himself, according to Eunomius’s words; and he passed not from the surpassing to the lowly but from like to what is of equal honour, except for the property of body and bodilessness. Against whom, then, will the just vote of the judges be cast? Or who will appear liable to those charges: the one who says that the created was saved by the uncreated God, or the one who ascribes the cause of our salvation to a creature? The judgment of the godly is not unclear. For one who knows exactly the difference between the created and the uncreated, whose variance is characterized by lordship and servitude (the uncreated God “ruling by his power for ever,” as the Prophet says, and all things in creation serving, according to the voice of the same prophet, who says, “All things are your slaves”), one who has considered these things with care certainly recognizes the one who moves the Only-begotten from servitude into servitude. For if all creation serves, according to Paul, and the substance of the Only-begotten is created, according to Eunomius, then our opponents certainly make out by their doctrines not that the Master was mingled with slaves, but that a slave came to be among slaves. But to say that the Lord was in the form of a slave before the presence in the flesh is equal to slandering us as saying that the stars are black, the sun murky, the sky low, water dry, and all such things. For let one who constructs nothing from what he has heard, but fashions what he pleases by his own impulse, not spare such charges against us either; for it is equal for us to be called to account for these and for those, since none of them has its starting point in what we have said. For how could one who defines the true Son as being in the glory of the Father insult the eternal glory of the Only-begotten with the form of a slave? Since, then, the writer is resolved to speak ill, and takes care to seem to construct plausible charges, it would not be superfluous and useless to contend with his groundless charges. For the next accusation contains a similar absurdity. He has charged us with speaking of two Christs and two Lords, having no ground for a refutation from our words, but using falsehood at will as he pleases. Since, then, it is in his power to say what he wishes, why is he so stingy with his falsehood, making out that we speak of only two Christs? Let him say at will, if he likes, that we champion ten Christs, and ten times as many, and let him stretch the number to a thousand, so as to take hold of his slander more boldly. For the blasphemy is equal whether two or more Christs are spoken of, and the unprovable character of the charges is likewise equal. Let him, then, show that we speak of two Lords and two Christs, and, as though he had proved it of countless ones, let him have the vote against us. But he says that he refutes us from our own words. Let us, then, examine again what was said by our teacher, by which this man thinks he moves the charges against us: “He is not handing down to us a mode of theology,” he says, “but the accounts of the economy, he who says, God made him both Lord and Christ, this [Jesus] whom you crucified, plainly resting with the demonstrative word on his humanity, visible to all.” This is what was written. From where, then, were the two Christs rolled in by Eunomius through what was said? Does saying that the demonstrative word rests on what appears contain the proof of a construction of two Christs? Then one ought also to deny that the Lord was highly exalted by him after the passion, lest we should be accused of speaking of two Most Highs, if the God Word who was in the beginning is Most High, and the one who rose from the dead was highly exalted after the passion, as the Apostle says.

For one of two things must necessarily be chosen: either, by saying that he was highly exalted after the passion, which is the same as becoming Lord and Christ, to bear an indictment for impiety before Eunomius; or, avoiding the accusation, to deny the confession of the exaltation of the one who suffered. But against these things we must again set up the accuser’s own statement as an advocate of our defence. We shall quote word for word what he set down, by which our account is established, in this way: “Blessed John,” he says, “teaches that God the Word, through whom all things came to be, came to be in flesh, saying, ‘And the Word became flesh.’” Does he add these things to his own argument understanding what he writes? I do not think that the same man could both know the sense of these words and fight against our account. For if one examines what is said exactly, he will find in them no conflict between what is said by us and what is said by him. For we both see what was done in the economy through the flesh by itself, and understand the divine power by itself; and he, like us, says that the Word in the beginning was manifested in the flesh, and neither has anyone else ever accused him, nor has he accused himself, of proclaiming two Words, the one who was in the beginning and the one who became flesh. For he certainly knows that the Word is the same as the Word, the one who appeared in flesh the same as the one who was with God; but the flesh is not the same as the Godhead, before this too is transformed into the Godhead, so that of necessity some things fit God the Word and others the form of the slave. If, then, he does not charge himself with a pair of Words for such a confession, how are we slandered as dividing the faith into two Christs, we who say that the one who was highly exalted after the passion became Lord and Christ through union with him who is truly Lord and Christ, knowing from what we have learned that the divine nature is always one and the same and unchanging, while the flesh by itself is what reason and sense grasp about it, but, mingled with the divine, no longer remains in its own bounds and properties, but is taken up into what prevails and surpasses? Yet the contemplation of the properties of the flesh and of the Godhead remains unconfused, as long as each of these is contemplated by itself. For example: the Word was before the ages; the flesh came to be in the last times. And no one could say, reversing it, either that this is before the ages or that the Word came to be in the last times. The flesh is of a passible nature; the Word of an active one. Neither is the flesh creative of beings, nor does the Godhead have a passible power. The Word was in the beginning with God; the man was in the experience of death. Neither is the human eternal, nor the Divine mortal. And all the other things are contemplated in the same way. The human nature does not make Lazarus alive, nor does the impassible authority weep for the one lying dead; the tear is proper to the man, and the life to the true life. Human poverty does not feed the thousands, nor does the almighty authority run to the fig tree. Who is it that is weary from the journey, and who is it that established the whole world without toil by his word? What is the radiance of the glory? What is pierced by the nails? What form is struck in the passion, and what form is glorified from eternity? These things are plain even if no one explains them in words: the blows belong to the slave, in whom the Master is; the honours to the Master, about whom the slave is; so that through the connection and union both become common to each, the Master taking the slave’s stripes upon himself, and the slave being glorified with the Master’s honour. For this reason the cross is called the cross of the Lord of glory, and every tongue confesses that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. If we must divide the rest too in the same way, let us consider what it is that dies and what it is that destroys death, what it is that is renewed and what it is that is emptied. The Godhead is emptied, so that it may become capable of being contained by human nature; and the human is renewed, becoming divine through its mingling with the Divine. For as air is not held fast in water when it has been dragged down by something heavier and left in the depth of the water, but runs up to what is akin to it, and the water is often lifted up along with the air as it rises, curved round it in a thin, membrane-like surface in an airy sphere; so too, when the true life that was in the flesh ran up to itself after the passion, the flesh around it was lifted up with it by the divine immortality, raised together from corruption to incorruption.

And as the fire in wood, often hidden within the surface, escapes the senses of those who see or touch it, but is manifested when it is fanned into flame; so too in the death which he brought about by his own authority, he who separated the soul from the body, who said to his own Father, “Into your hands I commit my spirit,” who, as he says, has authority to take it again, he who despised shame among men because he is Lord of glory, having as it were covered the spark of life with the nature of the body in the economy of death, kindled it again and fanned it into flame by the power of his own Godhead, warming what had been put to death, and so pouring the infinity of the divine power over that small firstfruits of our nature. What he himself was, he made that too: the form of a slave, Lord; the man from Mary, Christ; the one crucified through weakness, life and power; and he made in what was taken up by the Word all that is piously contemplated in God the Word; so that these things seem not to belong separately to each by division, but the perishable nature, re-made by its mingling with the Divine according to what prevails, shares in the power of the Godhead. It is as if someone were to say that a drop of vinegar mixed into the sea has been made sea by the mixture, because the natural quality of this liquid no longer remains in the infinity of what prevails. So our account, championing not a number of Christs, as Eunomius accuses, but the union of the man with the Divine, calls “making” the transformation of the mortal into the immortal, of the slave into the Lord, of sin into righteousness, of the curse into blessing, and of the man into Christ. What argument, then, is still left to the slanderers, that we proclaim two Christs in our doctrine, if we do not say that he who was from the beginning, uncreatedly from the Father, Lord and Christ and Word and God, was made? We maintain that blessed Peter, briefly and in passing pointing to the mystery of the flesh, speaks according to the sense shown before: that what was crucified through weakness, itself too, through the prevailing power of the one who dwelt in it, became what the indweller is and is named, Christ and Lord, as we have said.

But I perceive that I have lingered over this passage longer than was needed, since the force of the ideas led us up to this contemplation. We must take up again the sequence of the charges, so that we pass over none of the accusations brought against us without a defense. And first, if you please, let us consider how he charges us with saying that a common man brought about the salvation of the universe. For although this has already been shown sufficiently by what we have examined, yet, so that the suspicion may be cleared away in every respect among those who judge on the strength of slander, we will take it up again briefly. We are so far from referring the cause of the great grace, which is beyond reason, to a common man, that if anyone ascribes such a benefit even to Peter and Paul, or to an angel from heaven, we pronounce him anathema according to Paul’s law. For Paul was not crucified for us, nor were we baptized into a human name. Yet because we confess that the saving power of Christ is greater than human nature, the doctrine of our opponents against the truth is not thereby strengthened. For their aim is to establish by every means the estrangement of the Son’s substance from the Father’s, and they strive to prove the unlikeness in substance not only by the distinction between the begotten and the unbegotten but also by the contrast between the passible and the impassible. This is built up more nakedly in the last parts of his treatise, but it is no less plain from what is said now. For if he blames those who assign the suffering to the human nature, he certainly wishes to subject the Godhead itself to suffering. For since the supposition is twofold and ambiguous—whether it was the divine or the human that was in suffering—the accusation of the one is certainly the establishment of the other. If, then, they blame those who see the suffering in the man, they will certainly praise those who say that the Godhead of the Son is passible. And what is thus established becomes an advocate of the absurdity of their doctrine. For if, by their account, the Godhead of the Son suffers, while that of the Father is kept in complete impassibility as to its substance, then the impassible nature is alien to the one that admits suffering. Since, then, what is said is short in the compass of its words, but supplies the beginnings and occasions of all the wickedness concerning the doctrine, it would be fair for readers to demand not brevity in the answer but soundness.

We, then, neither attribute our salvation to a man nor admit that the pure and divine nature is passible and perishable. But since we must by all means believe the divine words, which proclaim that the Word who was in the beginning is God, and that afterward the Word, having become flesh, was seen on earth and lived among human beings, we receive by faith the meanings that fit the divine words. For when we hear that he is light, and power, and righteousness, and life, and truth, and that all things were made through him, we hold all these and the like as worthy of belief, referring them to God the Word. But when we hear of grief, and sleep, and want, and trouble, and bonds, and nails, and spear, and blood, and wounds, and burial, and tomb, and whatever else is of this kind, even if they are contrary to what was said before, we none the less accept them as worthy of belief and true, looking to the flesh, which by faith we received together with the Word. As the properties of the flesh cannot be observed in the Word who was in the beginning, so in turn the properties of the Godhead cannot be perceived in the nature of the flesh. Therefore, since the gospel teaching about the Lord is mixed, made up of lofty and God-befitting things and of lowly ones, we fit each of the meanings appropriately to each of the things understood in the mystery, the human to the human, the lofty to the Godhead. And we say that the Son, as God, is altogether impassible and incorruptible; and if any suffering is spoken of him in the Gospel, he wrought it altogether through the human element, which admits suffering. For the Godhead truly works salvation through the body that is about it, so that the suffering belongs to the flesh and the working to God. And even if some drag in the apostle as an advocate of the contrary doctrine when he says, “He did not spare his own Son,” and, “God sent his own Son,” and other such words that seem to look to the divine nature, and not to the human, in the economy of the suffering, we will none the less not let go of sound doctrine, since Paul himself has made this mystery plainer to us. For everywhere he assigns the economy of the suffering to the human part of Christ, saying, “For since death came through a man, through a man also came the resurrection of the dead”; and, “God, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, condemned sin in the flesh”—in the flesh, he says, not in the Godhead; and, “He was crucified out of weakness,” signifying the flesh by the weakness, “but he lives by power,” indicating the divine by the power; and, “He died to sin,” that is, in the body, “but he lives to God,” that is, in the Godhead.

So it is established by these words that the man tasted death, while the immortal nature did not admit the suffering that belongs to death. And again: “Him who knew no sin he made sin for us,” once more calling the flesh sin. And though we say this in passing, the digression perhaps does not seem less useful than the matter in hand. For when the holy Peter says, “He made him Lord and Christ,” and again the apostle Paul says to the Hebrews that “he made him a priest,” Eunomius seizes on the word “made” as indicating his existence before the ages, and thinks that by it he must establish that the Lord is a thing made. Let him hear, then, Paul saying, “Him who knew no sin he made sin for us.” If he refers the word “made,” said of the Lord in the Epistle to the Hebrews and in Peter’s words, to a meaning before the ages, he would do well to refer the word here too, where it says that God made him sin, to the first hypostasis of the substance, and on that ground to try to prove that he was made, in line with the other testimonies, so that, in referring the word “made” to the substance, he may be consistent with himself and see the sin in the substance too. But if he is ashamed of this because the absurdity is so glaring, and says that the apostle, by saying “he made him sin,” indicates the economy of the last times, let him persuade himself by the same logic that there too “made” looks to the economy.

But let us return to the point from which we digressed. For countless other passages besides these could be taken from the same Scripture for our purpose. And let no one think that the divine apostle is divided against himself toward opposite positions, supplying from his own words material equally to those who fight over the doctrines, for an attack in either direction. For anyone who examines carefully would find that his discourse looks precisely to one thing and does not waver in its conceptions. For while he everywhere proclaims the blending of the human with the divine, he none the less discerns in each what is proper to it, since the human weakness was changed for the better through its communion with the incorruptible, and the divine power was not dragged down with it by the union of its nature with the lowly. When, then, he says, “He did not spare his own Son,” he distinguishes the true Son from those who were begotten and exalted and who rejected him—those, I mean, who were brought into being by command—marking by the addition of “own” his kinship by nature. And so that no one should attach the suffering of the cross to the incorruptible nature, he corrects such an error by other, clearer words, naming him “mediator between God and men,” and both man and God, so that, from the two being said of the one, what is fitting might be understood of each: of the divine, impassibility; of the human, the economy of the suffering—the conception thus dividing in thought what is united by his love for humankind. When he proclaims what is transcendent and surpasses every mind, he uses the loftier names, calling him “God over all,” and “great God,” and “power of God,” and “wisdom,” and the like. But when in his discourse he describes the whole experience of sufferings, which was necessarily taken on together with our weakness, he names the two together from what is ours, calling him man—not, by the word, making him common with the rest of nature, but so that reverence might be kept toward each: the human being glorified by the assumption, and the divine emptied by the condescension, yet giving over the human part to the sufferings while working the resurrection of what had suffered by the divine power. And thus the experience of death is referred to him who shared in the passible nature, because of the union of the man with him; and the lofty and God-befitting names come down to the man, so that he who appeared on the cross is even named “Lord of glory,” the grace of the names passing over from the divine to the human together with the blending of his nature with the lowly. For this reason Paul presents him in various and different ways: now as the one who came down from heaven, now as the one born of a woman, both God before the ages and man in the last days. Thus the Only-begotten God is believed to be impassible and the Christ to be passible, and the Word does not lie through the opposite statements, since he fits in thought what is appropriate to each of the names.