Against Eunomius

If all those upon whom the name of our God and Savior Jesus Christ has been invoked had been willing to attempt nothing against the truth of the gospel, and to be content with the tradition of the apostles and the simplicity of the faith, there would be no need of any words from us at present; even now we would surely have kept to the silence that we have honored from the beginning. But the enemy of the truth always increases evil by additions. Besides the tares that he sowed in the church of God from the beginning, he has now found instruments that take in his whole craft at once, and under the pretext of Christianity he brings in the denial of the divinity of the Only-Begotten, confounding the purity and simplicity of the teaching of the divine Spirit with this outside and vain wisdom, and misleading the more innocent with plausible talk. We too, therefore, of necessity, both for the love of you who have charged us with this and for our own safety, have disregarded our weakness in this matter. Although we are wholly untrained in this kind of discourse, we have undertaken, according to the measure of knowledge supplied to us by the Lord, to stand with the truth and to refute the falsehood. We consider that we shall surely not miss at least one of three goods: either the refutation will give those already taken in a remedy against the evil, or it will provide a moderate safeguard for the healthy, or at any rate we ourselves will obtain the reward for having chosen what is best for our brothers.

The first, as far as we know, who dared to say openly and to teach that the only-begotten Son is unlike God the Father in essence was Aetius the Syrian. I will not say in what sort of practices he was brought up from the beginning, nor how, as he went on, he slipped corruptingly into the churches of God, lest I seem to be reviling him and to have dropped the refutations. The one who took over the impiety and brought it to completion is this Eunomius the Galatian. He has won notoriety for himself out of the most shameful things ("for their glory," it says, "is in their shame"); preferring the ambition of writing what no one else had ever dared to the goods laid up for the pious, he was carried away into publishing in this splendid treatise the blasphemy that until then had been spoken under the breath, [eager to be proclaimed] the leader and … This, then, is the man we propose to call to account at present. Since there is one evil in both of them, it is clear that in the fully trained disciple the teacher too will be refuted together with him, the one who [sowed] the seeds … May it be given to us, through your prayers, to receive such power of argument that, like the zealot Phinehas, with the one stroke of refutation we may strike down both together, intertwined as they are with one another in impiety. Although, then, I could show him in this treatise to be a liar, ignorant, insolent, a dissembler, and a blasphemer, I will mention the rest only in passing; but I will try to strip the blasphemy that he uttered against the height of the glory of the Only-Begotten of the coverings his craft supplies, and to make it plain to all.

[2] Now I will proceed to the refutations, beginning from the very title. His first piece of mischief was to devise this form for his discourse, composing his teaching in the shape of an apology, so as not to seem to be setting out the doctrines of impiety of his own accord, but to have come to these arguments under compulsion. He wanted by every means to proclaim this wicked and godless message and to bring into the open the blasphemy he had long ago conceived and labored with. But he saw that to sit openly in the place of a teacher, besides being very vulgar and offensive to the hearers, would also make him unconvincing and suspect to the many, as one who had come to innovate from a desire for glory; whereas if he composed his arguments in the fiction of an apology, he would escape the suspicion of innovation and would rather win the hearers over by it, since all people by nature are accustomed to side in goodwill with the party at a disadvantage. That is why he blames accusers and slanderers and attaches to them the cause of his discourse. To make his craft plain to all, nothing is better than to hear the preface of his text. It runs thus:

EUNOMIUS: "We know that to slander and accuse people out of an unbridled tongue and an unfeeling mind is the work of the wicked and the quarrelsome; but for those who have been thought wicked through slander to try with all eagerness to turn back the falsehood by refutations is the work of prudent men, who together with their own good counsel set great store by the safety of the many."

BASIL: Such, then, is the form of his discourse, as it would be from one who does nothing simply or without guile. He shades the suspicion of innovation under the cover of an apology, and he hunts for goodwill from the hearers, as one who came to these arguments under the necessity of the slander. But his staging of an apology is refuted by this: since he cannot name an accuser for the charge against which he pretends to contend, he goes into a drama of apology without characters. It is not out of long-suffering that he refrains from naming those who grieved him (how could it be, when he drenches his opponents in so much abuse?); rather, suspecting that his lie would be obvious, he is ashamed to attach definite persons to himself as accusers. For if he had been able to name any, he would certainly have named them and shouted them abroad, if not to satisfy his own anger, at least to provide for the safety of the many, which he claims to care for most of all. For a hidden wickedness … the slanderers, we would more easily have escaped their unbridled tongues and unfeeling minds (for I will use the very words of this wisest of men). But since at that time, for whatever reason, he kept silent, let him now be questioned; let him now answer. Who are the accusers who, by getting in first with slanders, made the apology necessary for him? From what part of the world did they come? Who are the judges before whom he sets out his contest? In what court did he enter this suit? Where on land or sea was it convened? What, indeed, could they say? At Seleucia? But there they were convicted by their silence: although the assembled bishops summoned them many times to answer for the charges brought against them, they did not appear, and for this they were condemned on the spot. For common … because of their communion in impiety, like a diseased limb … there was no need there of apology and arguments. For having made their own the members of the imperial court and the most powerful of the rest, they dealt with affairs from a position of great superiority. They themselves were accusers and judges and executioners and whatever else they wished, when they expelled some bishops, installed others, and hung the danger of death over others, and divided the cities among themselves with great license. One of them, ousted from the cities of Syria, seized Constantinople as if for a tyranny; this invincible and clever speechwriter himself carried off Cyzicus as the prize of his impiety; and to Theosebius, after the refutations [of his defense] of the unspeakable blasphemies, the church of Sardis was [given] … the Cilicians, and all the regions upon which the evil spread as it moved around. What occasion for an apology was there then? Yet I think that not even someone who wished to could lie about this. So it is truer than anything that the form of his discourse is a device for deceit. So much for this.

A little further on, look at what he writes. For it is perhaps not useless, before the refutations of his impiety, to point out a few things about his conceit.

[3] EUNOMIUS: "Above all I ask you, both those who will hear now and those who will read later, not to want to distinguish falsehood from truth by numbers, joining the better to the larger share … … [nor to cloud] your judgment [with dignities], nor, by giving more weight to the order of those who came first, to stop your ears to those who come later."

BASIL: What are you saying? Are we not to give more weight to those who came first? Are we not to respect the multitude of the Christians now living and of all who have lived since the gospel was proclaimed? Are we not to take account of the dignity of those who have shone in spiritual gifts of every kind, against all of whom you have opened up this wicked road of impiety as a hostile and warring thing? Instead, are we to shut the eyes of our souls once and for all, banish from our minds the memory of every saint, and each of us lay his own heart, empty and swept clean, under your deceptions and sophisms? You would indeed have seized great power, if what the devil did not achieve by his manifold wiles you could achieve by command; if, persuaded by you, [we were to rank] the [tradition] that has prevailed through all past time under so many saints … your invention. It is not enough for him to steal away the thoughts of those now listening; he also expects those who will one day come upon his treatise to hold the same opinion. What arrogance! To think that his discourse will last into the future, and that his memory will be kept immortal for time to come! And this he now says presumptuously, though a little later, putting on airs before his hearers as if he cared nothing at all for conceit, he speaks thus to the judges in his drama:

EUNOMIUS: "Besides this, do not be harsh with us if, caring nothing for conceit and fear, and preferring immunity in the future to immediate favor and safety, [and judging] the threat appointed against the impious more fearful than every earthly hardship and temporal death, we set out the truth stripped of every covering."

BASIL: What excess of arrogance does this boast of words not surpass? And to the dissimulation is added insolence against the judges, if, because they find the good hard to bear, they can scarcely be restrained from being harsh toward one who cares nothing for presumption and conceit, who prefers immunity in the future to safety in the present, and who judges the punishment hereafter more fearful than temporal death. What does this amount to? "Do not be harsh with me, gentlemen, for having climbed to the very summit of virtue, having passed beyond earthly things and transferred my whole way of life to heaven." This is a new kind of arrogance. With the very words by which he pretends to care nothing for conceit he lifts himself up to the utmost pride. For if the things for which he shows that he deserves indulgence are the chief points of the gospel way of life, he leaves us to guess what sort of man he must think himself in his achievements. These things, then, which bear the stamp, as it were, of his whole purpose, have been said sufficiently, though much has been passed over in silence, so that by his lies we may recognize the father of lies speaking in him, and from his boasting … since the Apostle says that the one who is puffed up falls into the condemnation of the devil. Now at last let us come to the refutations of his impiety.

[4] First he sets out a faith composed of simple and undefined terms, which some of the Fathers too used, not aiming at questions under debate, but simply conversing among themselves in simplicity of heart. Even if Arius too, as they say, put it forward to Alexander with sophistical intent (for this too is said), he nevertheless puts it forward as agreeing with his own opinion, for two reasons: first, to escape the suspicion of innovation by accepting the faith of the Fathers as correct; second, so that all who trusted in the simplicity of these words might fall unawares into the snares of his sophisms. At the same time he also saw that he would be able to slip in his own opinion with a good face, as one supposedly explaining the teaching of the Fathers, and so above all escape notice as impious, or, if he were caught, be thought blameless, as saying nothing of his own or from himself, but only having become the interpreter of another's thought. In this he fell into something most ridiculous without noticing it. For after praising it greatly and at length, a little further down he heaps the most shameful reproaches on it again. But to make what I mean clearer, I will divide his discourse into parts and examine it. First let us learn the faith he puts forward, setting out his very words.

EUNOMIUS: "Setting forth beforehand the pious tradition that has prevailed from of old from the Fathers as a kind of gnomon and rule, let us use it as an exact criterion for judging what is said." …

EUNOMIUS: "We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, from whom are all things; and in one only-begotten Son of God, God the Word, our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things; and in one Holy Spirit, the Paraclete."

BASIL: Then he immediately adds:

EUNOMIUS: "This, then, to speak summarily and in passing, is the simpler faith, common to all who care to seem or to be Christians."

BASIL: About the contradiction in what he has said and the shameless conflict of his statements with one another we will speak a little later. But this … who in his earlier words so pompously promised us [the bare] truth … Here, then, it ought to have been written: "We believe that ingeneracy is the essence of the God of the universe," or, "We believe that the Only-Begotten is unlike the Father in essence." He would have written this if, as he promised, he had not shrouded his own mind in any deceitful curtain. But, I think, since he uses his words treacherously in everything, he keeps silent about his own views, lest by assailing untrained ears he make himself unconvincing and hard to accept …; and he puts forward the faith of the Fathers, which, because of the neutrality of its words, would raise no objection to the whole construction of his discourse, and would easily follow him as he steered the argument, in the form of an explanation, toward what he had chosen. That this is true is plain at once. For having set it out, he immediately leaps to its explanation, using as a pretext, among other things, that it is not sufficient for refuting the charge. Why then did you put it forward, instead of coming at once to those arguments that were exact and would deliver you from the charges? As it is, he puts it forward as a safe criterion, and then corrects it again as having nothing sound in it. And this is known to everyone: as on a hook that drags to death, he [wraps] the simplicity of the faith around his own opinion like a bait, so that the simpler … may unguardedly [fall] into the evil of impiety. And so that he might not seem to undertake the correction of the faith without necessity, the very faith he extolled with excessive praise, look how, as if he had forgotten his own words, he [disparages] it:

EUNOMIUS: "This, then, to speak summarily and in passing, is the simpler faith, common to all who care to seem or to be Christians."

BASIL: Tell me: is the pious tradition of the Fathers, the rule, as you yourself named it, the gnomon and the safe criterion, now to be called an instrument of deceit, an art of pretense, and the like? For if it fits not those who are truly Christians but those who have valued seeming above being, what else ought one to suppose about it but this? Who, unless completely out of his mind, would say that the rule of what is straight [fits] those whose souls are twisted, and the gnomon of truth the enemies of the truth? For those who have valued being called Christians above truly being so, and who put on this pretense to deceive the many, are far from all straightness and truth. So neither will what is crooked be made straight, as the word of Ecclesiastes says, nor will the criteria of truth fit those who have chosen falsehood in their way of life …

[5] But for the reasons I mentioned, he was carried into such obvious contradictions, so that by praising the faith he might seem to share the piety of the Fathers, and by finding fault with it again he might open for himself the road to his explanation. That is why he calls the same thing a rule and also says that it needs a more exact addition. Let this too be a sign of the utmost ignorance, if anyone cares to look into this as well. For a rule, most wise sir, and a gnomon, so long as they lack nothing of being a rule and a gnomon, admit no addition for the sake of exactness, since addition is made for what is lacking. And if they are incomplete, they would no longer rightly bear these names. So much for this. Now let us also examine the arguments he sets out about God.

EUNOMIUS: "There is, then," he says, "one God, acknowledged by us both according to natural notions and according to the teaching of the Fathers, who came to be neither from himself nor from another. For each of these is equally impossible … must exist before, and what is made must be second to its maker. Nor can a thing be prior or posterior to itself, nor can anything else be prior to God; for then that thing would have had the dignity of divinity before the second."

BASIL: Why, then, have I quoted this whole passage of his? So that the idle chatter the man uses throughout his treatise might become plain. For though he himself said that it is evident to the common notions of all that God is unbegotten, he tries to bring us proofs of it. He does much the same as someone who at high noon wished to teach people with healthy eyes, by argument, that the sun is the brightest of the stars in heaven. If one who shows by argument what is known to the senses is ridiculous, how is one who teaches what is agreed in our common preconceptions not guilty of the same folly? For surely, to sensible people, these are far more trustworthy than what appears to the sight. If, then, there were someone shamelessly opposing this truth and contending that the unbegotten had been begotten either from himself or from another, the vanity of what he says might perhaps have some excuse. But if to this day no one, either of those outside our teaching or of those from the church itself who have risen against the truth, [has raised a dispute] about the ingeneracy of the unbegotten, I do not see what gain there is in these arguments. Did we really need the syllogisms of Aristotle and Chrysippus to learn that the unbegotten was not begotten, neither by himself nor by another, and that he is neither older nor younger than himself? What, then, does he mean by these things? He seems to me, on the one hand, to be preening himself on his reasoning, as a shrewd man of surpassing intellect, quick to suspect an absurdity and quicker still to dissolve what he has detected, and for this reason to take pride in the twists of his arguments and to labor subtly over the proof that the unbegotten was begotten neither by himself nor by another. On the other hand, not even here does he forget his craft, but in his discussion of what is agreed he slips in for himself something like elements for the arguments that follow. For it is not idly that he holds that, in truth, what makes … so that in the arguments about the Son he may have it agreed in advance that the Son came into being after the Father, if indeed what makes is older than what comes to be; and that he may take it as a consequence of this that the Son was begotten from things that are not. But let the refutation of his impiety against the Son wait for its proper place. For my part, I would say that even the name "unbegotten," however much it may seem to agree with our notions, nevertheless deserves rightly to be passed over in silence, since it occurs nowhere in Scripture and is the first element of their blasphemy. The word "Father" has the same force as "unbegotten," and besides, through the relation, it brings in along with itself the notion of the Son. For he who is truly Father, and he alone, is from no other; and "from no one" is the same as "unbegotten." We should not, then, call him "unbegotten" rather than "Father," unless we mean to be wiser than the teachings of the Savior, who said, "Go, baptize in the name of the Father," not "of the unbegotten." So much for this. Let us examine what follows in his discourse. For a little further on, as if summing up for himself what he has said, he writes thus:

EUNOMIUS: "If, then, it has been shown that neither he himself nor anything else exists before him, but that he is before all things, the unbegotten follows upon this; or rather, it is itself unbegotten essence."

BASIL: The [knavery] we have caught here is, I think, very easy to see for anyone who pays even a little attention, but not easy to make plain to the many. Still, we must try, setting our hope on him who gives a word to those who proclaim good news with great power. Having said that if neither he himself nor anything else exists before him, the unbegotten follows upon him, he then saw that, by the logic of his premises, his argument had turned around against him (for if the unbegotten follows upon God, it clearly accompanies him from outside; and what is outside God is not his essence; and so his clumsy contrivance would melt away and be gone). To avoid this, what does he do? Caring little for the laughter he was going to incur for saying inconsistent things, he led his argument by a correction where he wanted it to go, saying, "or rather, it is itself unbegotten essence." This has no agreement with what precedes. For how could God, upon whom the unbegotten follows, … be contained in [one and the same] statement? Even so, he does not let his sophism be completely destroyed. For if, after saying that the unbegotten follows upon him, he had stopped his argument there, he would have had no way either to call ingeneracy the essence of the God of the universe or to show that the only-begotten Son is alien in his very essence, since nothing that follows from outside can break up the kinship of Father and Son in their very essence. But now, by adding, "or rather, it is itself unbegotten essence," he has indicated that the very thing that God is, is ingeneracy. How great a running start this gives him toward his attempt at impiety I will show when the argument has gone a little further. So then, what he said at first came to light from the truth of the matter, following from the premises; what he added at the end was tossed in from his heretical mind, the speechwriter leaping most shamelessly of all to correct his argument. For how can the same thing both follow upon God and be identical with him, when it is obvious to all that what follows is other than that of which it is the consequence? But he, as if he had found a road in the statement he had snatched by sleight of hand, proceeds from there to establish that ingeneracy is the essence of the God of the universe, so that, once this is shown, he may have it agreed that the Only-Begotten is unlike the Father in essence. Look at what he says:

EUNOMIUS: "When we say 'unbegotten,' we do not think we ought to honor him in name only, by human conceptualization, but to pay him the most necessary debt of all, the confession that he is what he is. For things said by conceptualization, having their existence in names and utterance only, naturally dissolve together with the sounds."

BASIL: He denies that "unbegotten" is contemplated in God by conceptualization, thinking that from this his attempt to prove that ingeneracy is the essence of God would be easy, and that from this he would show beyond contradiction that the only-begotten Son is unlike the Father in his very essence. That is why he attacks the word "conceptualization," as if it signified nothing at all but had its existence in utterance alone, and he pretends that it is unworthy of God to honor him with conceptualizations. For my part, whether or not "unbegotten" is contemplated by conceptualization I do not yet affirm, until we are taught by the examination of the argument itself.

[6] But this very thing, what conceptualization is, I would gladly ask him. Does this name signify nothing at all, and is it merely a noise falling from the tongue? But such a thing would be called not conceptualization but derangement and nonsense. If he grants that conceptualization signifies something, but that this is entirely false and nonexistent, like the fabrications of centaurs and chimeras in myths, how does the false thing signified vanish along with the noise of the tongue, when the sound is poured out into the air but the false notions remain in the mind? For when the soul has been filled with entirely false and empty images, whether in dreams or otherwise in the idle motions of the mind, and keeps them in memory and then chooses to report them aloud, the images do not vanish together with the spoken word. It would be worth a great deal to tell lies, if the nature of falsehood perished along with what is spoken; but this is not its nature. It remains to show how ordinary usage employs conceptualization and for what sort of things, and how the divine oracles have received its use. We see, then, that in common usage things that seem simple and single to the mind's comprehensive glance, but on detailed examination appear complex and are divided by the mind into many, are said to be divisible by conceptualization alone. For example, the first encounter says that a body is simple, but reason, going over it, shows it to be complex, resolving it by conceptualization into the things of which it is composed: color, shape, solidity, size, and the rest. Again, things that have no subsistence at all, but are only imprinted in the mind by a kind of mental picturing and imagination, such as the marvels that mythmakers and painters contrive to astonish those who meet them, are also said in common usage to be contemplated by conceptualization. Mentioning none of these, this man, whether from ignorance or from malice, has philosophized to us only about the conceptualization of things that do not exist, and not even this does he explain as it really is. For he does not say that conceptualization signifies something, though something false, but that the name is wholly without meaning and has its existence in the mere uttering. Yet the name "conceptualization" is so far from being applied only to vain and unsubstantial imaginings that, after the first notion arising in us from sense perception, the subtler and more exact reflection on what has been thought is called conceptualization; hence ordinary usage calls it "reckoning," though not properly. For example, a simple notion of grain is present in everyone, by which we recognize it when it appears; but in a precise examination of it the consideration of more aspects comes in, together with different designations that signify what has been thought. For the same grain we call now "fruit," now "seed," and again "food": fruit, as the end of the farming that is past; seed, as the beginning of the farming to come; food, as suited for growth to the body of the one who takes it. Each of these designations is contemplated by conceptualization, and it does not pass away with the noise of the tongue; rather, the notions are settled in the soul of the one who has thought them. In short, all things known by sense that seem simple in their substrate but admit a complex account when considered are said to be contemplated by conceptualization.

[7] We have been taught a use of conceptualization close to this kind by the divine word also. I will pass over the other examples, though I could mention many, and recall only the most pertinent. Our Lord Jesus Christ, in his words about himself, making known the love of the Godhead for humanity and the grace that comes to human beings from the economy, indicated it by certain distinctive features contemplated in him, calling himself door, and way, and bread, and vine, and shepherd, and light, though he is not a thing of many synonymous names; for not all the names carry the same meaning as one another. What "light" signifies is one thing, what "vine" signifies another, "way" another, "shepherd" another. But being one in substrate, one essence, simple and uncompounded, he names himself now in one way and now in another, fitting to his conceptualizations designations that differ from one another. For according to the difference of his activities and his relation to those who receive his benefits, he gives himself different names. He calls himself light of the world, signifying by this name both the inaccessibility of the glory in his Godhead, and that he illumines with the brightness of knowledge those who have purified the eye of the soul; vine, because he nourishes those rooted in him by faith to bear the fruit of good works; bread, because he is the most proper food of the rational creature, sustaining the constitution of the soul and preserving its distinctive character, always filling up from himself what is lacking and not letting it sink into the weakness that comes from irrationality. And so, if one goes through each of the names, one will find various conceptualizations of what is in essence one substrate for them all. Who, then, has so sharpened his tongue for blasphemy as to dare to say that these conceptualizations dissolve with the sounds? What is absurd, then, in taking some things in the God of the universe too according to conceptualization, and this very thing first of all, about which our whole discussion has been set in motion? For we shall find that "unbegotten" is said in no other way. We say that the God of the universe is incorruptible and unbegotten, addressing him by these names according to different ways of directing the mind. When we [direct our view] to the ages behind … the life of God, we call him unbegotten; when we stretch our mind forward to the ages to come, we call him incorruptible, the one who is unbounded and infinite and grasped by no end. As, then, the endlessness of his life was named incorruptible, so its being without beginning was named unbegotten, since we contemplate each of these by conceptualization. What argument, then, will deny both that each of these names is conceived by conceptualization and that it is a confession of what truly belongs to God? But he sets these apart from each other as conflicting and wholly incompatible: that something is said by conceptualization, and that it renders to God the confession that he is what he is.

[8] Let us not pass over this either: what sort of … show of reverence he has devised for the ruin of his hearers, when he says:

EUNOMIUS: "Not to honor God by human conceptualization with the name 'unbegotten,' but to pay him the most necessary debt of all, in the confession that he is what he is."

BASIL: What words could do justice to the crookedness of these tricks? He tries to frighten the simpler people, as if they were not paying God what is owed unless they confess that "unbegotten" is essence; and he calls his own impiety the payment of a debt, so that he may seem to say nothing of his own, but to be fulfilling what is necessarily owed to God. And he indicates to the rest that if they place "unbegotten" in the essence they will be let go without being called to account, but that if they understand it otherwise, in the pious way, they will receive inexorable wrath, as though the payment fell short. I would gladly ask him, then, whether he keeps this scrupulousness equally in all that is said of God, or only for this one word. For if he contemplates nothing at all by conceptualization, lest he seem to honor God with human [conceptualizations], he will confess that everything said of God is equally essence. How then is it not ridiculous to say that "creative" is essence, or again that "provident" is essence, or "foreknowing" likewise, and in short to make every activity essence? And if all these tend toward one meaning, the names must all have the same force as one another, as with things that have several names, when we call the same man Simon and Peter and Cephas. So the one who hears that God is unchangeable will be led to "unbegotten," and the one who hears that he is without parts will be carried off to "creative." What could be more absurd than this confusion: to take away from each of the names its proper meaning, and to legislate against both common usage and the teaching of the Spirit? Yet when we hear of God that he made all things in wisdom, we are taught his creative art; when we hear that he opens his hand and fills every living thing with good pleasure, we learn the providence that reaches through all things; when we hear that he made darkness his hiding place, we are instructed in the invisibility of his nature. Again, from the words spoken in the person of God, "I am, and I have not changed," we learn the ever-sameness and immutability of the divine essence. How is it not plain madness to say that no proper meaning underlies each of the names, but that, against their force, all the names are to be defined as meaning the same thing? Then, even if we grant this, they will gain nothing more toward their aim. For if all these, when taken of God the Father, signify his essence (I mean "unchangeable," "invisible," "incorruptible"), they will clearly in the same way indicate essence in the case of the only-begotten Son of God as well. For we also name the only-begotten Son invisible, unchangeable, incorruptible, without parts, and everything of the kind. And so their cleverness will turn around to the opposite. For they will not be more able to prove him unlike in essence because of a difference in one designation than they will be forced, by the very necessity of their premises, to confess him like because of the sharing in many. But if he should say that he uses this reverence only for the word "unbegotten" and is unguarded about the rest, let us ask him again: what is this arbitrary choice, when so many things are said of God, to show exactness in this one alone, and while rendering him in this one the confession that he is what he is, not to refuse to … in the others? For one who owes many debts is no more to be thanked for paying one than he is surpassingly ungrateful for withholding the many. So, like the cunning among beasts, he is caught by his own tricks, refuted all the more by the very means by which he tries to escape notice.

[9] Look at what comes next in his argument. Having shown, as he thinks, that "unbegotten" cannot be taken by conceptualization, he adds:

EUNOMIUS: "Nor indeed by privation, since privations are privations of what belongs to nature, and are posterior to the possessions."

BASIL: That he chatters about this out of the wisdom of the world, by which he was thrown headlong and took to such innovations in argument, is not hard to show. For the discussions of possession and privation belong to Aristotle, as those who have read him would say, in the work entitled the Categories, where he says that privations are posterior to possessions. For us it would have been enough, having shown that he speaks not from the teaching of the Spirit but from the wisdom of the rulers of this age, to say to him the words of the psalm, "The lawless have told me idle tales, but not as your law, O Lord"; and, having learned that what he says is not from the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ, to remember his own word, "When he speaks the lie, he speaks from his own"; and in this way to cut short most of the argument for ourselves, making it plain to all from this that we have no fellowship with them. For what accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion has a believer with an unbeliever? But lest we seem to take refuge in silence for want of refutations, come, let us discuss these things briefly too. Many of the things said of God, Eunomius, we see expressed in the same form, for example "incorruptible," "immortal," "invisible." We take "unbegotten" also to be of the same form. If, then, some call such terms privative, our argument is not with them; for we neither know the technicalities of words nor envy those who do. Only this we shall say: wherever the other words we have listed are placed, there also belongs the designation "unbegotten." As, then, "incorruptible" signifies that corruption does not belong to God, and "invisible" that he surpasses … every apprehension through the eyes, and "incorporeal" that his essence is not extended in three dimensions, and "immortal" that dissolution will never befall him, so we say that "unbegotten" also shows that begetting does not belong to him. If, then, none of these names is privative, neither is that one. But if you grant that those are said by way of privation, but do not concede it in the case of the designation "unbegotten," tell me: of what prior possession does "incorruptible" show the privation? And how does "unbegotten" not have the same force as it? But he plays his tricks about this one word alone, because on it the starting points of his impiety depend. To make his trick plain, do this: take the arguments he exercises on "unbegotten," that it is reasonable to say it of God neither by human conceptualization nor by privation, carry them over to another of the things said of God, and look: you will find them fitting each one exactly. If you like, let us say them of "incorruptible," carrying over his very wording: "When we say 'incorruptible,' we do not think we ought to honor him by human conceptualization, but to pay him the most necessary debt of all, the confession that he is what he is; nor indeed by privation, since privations are privations of what belongs to nature and are posterior to the possessions." Why is it more fitting to philosophize in this way about "unbegotten" than about "incorruptible," and in general about every word expressed in the same form? But none of the others helps him toward his impiety; that is why he does not mention the rest, though the things said of God are countless.

[10] The matter stands thus. There is no one name that suffices to embrace the whole nature of God and to declare it adequately; but many and varied names, each with its own meaning, gather for us a notion that is entirely dim and very slight compared with the whole, yet sufficient for us. Of the names said of God, some indicate what belongs to God, others the opposite, what does not belong. For from these two something like an impression of God arises in us: from the denial of what is incongruous and from the confession of what exists. For example, … to ourselves or to our hearers, "Do not suppose that God is subject to corruption"; and when [we say] "invisible," "Do not suppose that he is grasped by the sense of sight …" … to accrue to God. So too when [we say] "unbegotten," [we mean], "Do not think that the being of God depends on any cause or beginning." And in general, from each of these we are taught not to fall into unfitting notions in our conceptions of God. So, in order to recognize the exceptional property of God, we forbid one another, in our discourses about God, to bring our minds down to what we should not, so that people may never think that God is one of the corruptible things, or one of the visible, or one of the begotten. So through all these prohibitive names there is, as it were, a denial of what is foreign, as our mind is given articulate shape and puts away its conceptions of what does not belong to him. Again, we call God good, and just, and creator, and judge, and other such things. As in the former case the words signified a kind of rejection and prohibition of what is foreign to God, so here they indicate the positing and existence of what is proper to God and fittingly contemplated in him. From each kind of designation, then, we are taught either, about what belongs, that it belongs, or, about what does not belong, that it does not belong. Now "unbegotten" signifies one of the things that do not belong: it shows that begetting does not belong to God. Whether one wishes to call this ablative, or prohibitive, or negative, or something of the kind, we will not quarrel. That "unbegotten" does not signify any of the things that belong to God has, I think, been shown sufficiently by what has been said. But essence is not one of the things that do not belong; it is the very being of God, and to count this among the things that are not is the height of madness. For if essence is among the things that are not, hardly could anything else said of him be anything. It has been shown that "unbegotten" is ranked with the things that do not belong; so the one who asserts that [ingeneracy] is his very essence is speaking falsely …

[11] But he, objecting as if it were absurd that anything should be said of God by way of privation, takes refuge in what is supposedly more pious, the placing [of the unbegotten] in the very essence … pressing on to the main point, he writes thus:

EUNOMIUS: "Therefore, if [it is] neither by conceptualization, nor by privation, nor as a part (for he is without parts), nor in him as something other (for he is simple), nor alongside him as something other (for he is one and alone unbegotten), it would itself be unbegotten essence."

BASIL: He has brought his argument where he wanted, and having dragged "unbegotten" away from every side, he has driven it, as he thought, into the essence itself, saying of the God of the universe that "it would itself be unbegotten essence." For my part, I too would say that the essence of God is unbegotten, but not that the unbegotten is the essence. Then it is also worth noticing that "without parts" and "simple," though they are the same in concept (for what is not composed of parts is without parts, and likewise what does not have its constitution from many things is simple), he separates from each other as if they differed in their substrate. Then he forbids us to divide God up, or to suspect that one part of him is unbegotten and another begotten, or to think that the unbegotten lies in him as one thing in another. I shrink from refuting the vanity of these things; for somehow the one who answers comes to resemble the one who talks vanities. That, I think, is why the wise Solomon advises not to answer a fool according to his folly. For he subjected to division arguments that were never stated or ever said by anyone, so that, among the many things he enumerated, he might seem to find that "unbegotten" is properly said in one way only. Perhaps we would need a longer argument to establish the falsehood and to show that "unbegotten" is not the essence of God, if the items listed by him in his division had not already been clearly refuted. For even if his argument were strong that "unbegotten" is taken neither by conceptualization nor by privation, not even so would his conclusion follow at all. For what necessity is there that ingeneracy fall under one of the items he listed? Nevertheless, since he himself infers, as necessarily connected with the premises, "Therefore, if neither by conceptualization nor by privation nor in any other of the ways listed, it would itself be unbegotten essence," let us turn it around and say, "Therefore, since it is contemplated by conceptualization and the name is privative, the unbegotten is not the essence of God." For so long as … gives it its force, his conclusion will have no place at all.

[12] In general, how much arrogance and pride it is to think one has discovered the very essence of the God over all! Indeed, with their boasting they almost put in the shade the one who said, "I will set my throne above the stars"; for it is not the stars or heaven that they dare to assault, but the very essence of the God of the universe that they [claim] to penetrate. Let us examine him, then: from where does he say he has come to comprehend it? From the common notion? But that suggests to us that God is, not what he is. From the teaching of the Spirit? Which teaching? Where does it lie? Does not the great David, to whom God made known the hidden and secret things of his wisdom, plainly confess that knowledge is inaccessible, saying, "Your knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is too mighty, I cannot attain to it"? And Isaiah, who came to the vision of the glory of God, what did he make known to us about the divine essence? He who in his prophecy about Christ testifies, saying, "Who will declare his generation?" And what of the chosen vessel Paul, who had Christ speaking in him, who was caught up to the third heaven, who heard inexpressible words that it is not lawful for a man to speak: what teaching about the essence of God did he leave us? He who, when he grew dizzy before the impassability of contemplation, cried out that famous cry, "O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!" If these things are beyond the reach of those who have attained the measure of Paul's knowledge, how great is the conceit of those who profess to know the essence of God? I would gladly ask them about the earth on which they stand and from which they came into being: what do they say it is? What essence of it do they report to us? Then, if they can discuss with us beyond dispute the things that lie on the ground beneath our feet, we may believe them also when they insist on what lies beyond all thought. What, then, is the essence of the earth? What is the way of grasping it? Let them answer … [Is it] sense perception? And if they say sense perception, by which of the senses is it grasped? By sight? But sight perceives colors. By touch? This too discerns hardness and softness, hot and cold, and the like, none of which anyone would call essence unless carried to the extreme of folly. What need is there to speak of taste and smell, of which one perceives flavors and the other vapors? Hearing perceives noises and sounds, which have no affinity with the earth. It remains, then, for them to say that they have found its essence by reason. What reason? Where does it lie in Scripture? By which of the saints was it handed down?

[13] The one who gave us an account of creation taught us only this much: "In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth; and the earth was invisible and unformed." He thought it enough to declare who had made it and set it in order, but he declined to busy himself with what its essence is, as vain and unprofitable for his hearers. If, then, the knowledge of it is confirmed neither by the testimony of the senses nor by the teaching of reason, from where will they still say they have gained their grasp of it? For as much of it as is perceptible is either color, or bulk, or weight, or lightness, or density, or porousness, or resistance, or softness, or cold, or heat, or the qualities belonging to flavors, or the differences of shape; and none of these would they call essence, however readily they talk about everything. Nor, again, has it become contemplatable by any argument of the wise and blessed men. What way of knowing, then, still remains? Let them answer us, these men who despise everything at their feet, but pass beyond heaven and all the powers above the world and join themselves by the mind to the first essence itself. But it seems that conceit is the most grievous of all human passions, and truly casts those in whom it arises into the condemnation of the devil. That is why these men, who do not know even the nature of the earth they tread underfoot, what it is, boast that they penetrate the very essence of the God of the universe. His saints Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, because they had reached every virtue, God honored above others with the name of God, as something exceptional and befitting his own majesty, calling himself the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob ("for this is my eternal name," he says, "and my memorial for generations of generations"). To these, then, God did not make known even his name, much less reveal what his essence is. "I am the Lord," he says, "and I appeared to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, being their God, and my name I did not make known to them"—clearly because it is too great to be contained by human hearing. But to Eunomius, it seems, God has manifested not only his name but his very essence; and this ineffable secret, so great that it was disclosed to none of the saints, he himself publishes, writing it in books and blurting it out to all people without a thought. The things laid up for us in the promises are beyond all human knowledge, and the peace of God surpasses every mind; but he does not allow that the very essence of God is beyond every mind and beyond all human knowledge.

[14] I think that comprehension of it surpasses not only human beings but every rational nature; and by rational nature I mean here the rational nature within creation. For the Father is known to the Son alone and to the Holy Spirit: "No one knows the Father except the Son"; and, "The Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God. For no one knows," it says, "the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him; and no one has known the things of God except the Spirit who is from God." What, then, will they leave as exceptional to the knowledge of the Only-Begotten or of the Holy Spirit, if they themselves have comprehension of his very essence? For surely they will not assign to the Only-Begotten the contemplation of the power, goodness, and wisdom of God, and set down for themselves an understanding of the essence that is proportionate to themselves! Quite the opposite: it is likely that the essence itself is beyond the view of all except the Only-Begotten and the Holy Spirit, while we, being led up from the activities of God and thinking of the maker through the things made, receive an understanding of his goodness and wisdom. For this is "what can be known of God," which God has made manifest to all people. For whatever the theologians seem to have written about the essence of God in figures or allegories, the words point to other meanings. So if anyone, without testing, insists on standing by the bare letter in its ready sense, he will turn aside to Jewish and old wives' fables and grow old utterly poor in notions worthy of God. For besides conceiving of the essence of God as something material, and in this agreeing with the godless among the Greeks, he will also suppose it to be varied and composite, since the prophet describes God as of electrum from the loins upward and as [made up] of fire below. And the one who does not ascend to higher notions … through the letter, but stays somewhere there among its sensible outlines, and such a … … having been taught by Ezekiel that the essence of God is such, will hear again from Moses that God is fire, and will be carried off to other conceptions by the wise Daniel; and so, gathering up his imaginings from the Scriptures, he will be found to hold notions not only false but in conflict with one another. Letting go, then, of prying into the essence as something beyond reach, we must obey the simple exhortation of the Apostle, who says, "For one must first believe that God exists, and that he rewards those who seek him." For it is not the investigation of what he is, but the confession that he is, that prepares salvation for us. Since, then, it has been shown that the essence of God is incomprehensible to human nature and entirely ineffable, it remains to go through the question of ingeneracy: what it is, and how it is contemplated in the God of the universe.

[15] So, then, on reflection we find that the notion of the unbegotten does not fall under our inquiry into what he is, but rather, if I may force the expression, under the inquiry into how he is. For our mind, examining whether the God over all has some cause lying above himself, and then being unable to conceive of any, has called the beginninglessness of his life unbegotten. For just as in our accounts of human beings, when we say that so-and-so was born of so-and-so, we describe not what each is but where he came from, so also in speaking of God the word "unbegotten" signifies not what he is but that he is from nowhere. What I mean may become clearer this way. The evangelist Luke, setting out the genealogy according to the flesh of our God and Savior Jesus Christ, and going back from the last to the first, began from Joseph; and having said that he was the son of Heli, and Heli of Matthan, and so bringing his account back step by step to Adam, then coming to the earliest and saying that Seth was from Adam and Adam from God, he ended his ascent there. He was not showing the essences of those he listed in recounting the origin of each, but setting out the proximate beginnings from which each came to be. As, then, he said that … … and God from whom? Is it not readily present to everyone's mind that he is from no one? But "from no one" clearly means without beginning, and without beginning means unbegotten. As, then, in the case of human beings "being from someone" was not their essence, so too in the case of the God of the universe one cannot say that "unbegotten," which is equivalent to "from no one," is his essence. The one who says that being without beginning is essence does much the same as someone who, when asked what Adam's essence is and what his nature, should answer that he was not born of the union of man and woman but formed by the divine hand. "But I am not asking about the manner of his coming into existence," one might say, "but about the material substrate of man itself," and this I am far from learning from the answer. This is what happens to us too with the word "unbegotten": we are taught how God is rather than his very nature.

[16] In general, if anyone wishes to learn the truth of what we are saying, let him examine himself, when he wishes to think anything about God, whether he arrives at the meaning of "unbegotten." For my part, I see this: when we stretch our thought forward to the ages to come, we call "endless" the one whose life is bounded by no limit; so also, when we go up in our reasonings to what is above the ages, and, as if peering into a vast sea, look into the infinity of the life of God, unable to grasp any beginning from which it arose, but always conceiving the life of God as lying further out than what is thought and overflowing it, we have named this beginninglessness of his life "unbegotten." For this is the notion of "unbegotten": not having the beginning of one's being from elsewhere. But he, since "unbegotten" is contemplated only in the God of the universe, has snatched it up, most villainously of all, for his blasphemy against the Only-Begotten. For what does he say as he goes on?

EUNOMIUS: "But being unbegotten, according to the preceding demonstration, he would never admit a begetting so as to share his own nature with the one begotten, and he would escape all comparison and fellowship with the begotten."

BASIL: O shameless and wicked blasphemy! O hidden deceit and manifold knavery! How exactly he speaks out of the very wiles of the devil! For wishing to show that the only-begotten Son and God is unlike God the Father, he keeps silent about the names of Father and Son and speaks simply of unbegotten and begotten; and hiding the names of the saving faith, he hands over the doctrines of his blasphemy bare, so that, once the impiety has been laid bare in the things themselves and then carried over to the persons, he himself may seem to have said nothing blasphemous, while having the blasphemy constructed by the logical sequence of the argument. "But being unbegotten," he says, "he would escape all comparison and fellowship with the begotten." He did not say "Father and Son," but "unbegotten and begotten." This is one piece of his villainy; now see what the other is. "Being unbegotten," he says, "he would never admit a begetting"; and he adds, "so as to share his own nature with the one begotten." The phrase "he would never admit a begetting" means two things: one, that begetting does not fit his own nature (for it is impossible for the unbegotten nature to come under begetting); the other, that he does not consent to beget. He used the expression in the second sense, but he carries off the many by the first notion. That this is what he is constructing, what follows shows clearly. For having said, "he would never admit," he added, "so as to share his own nature with the one begotten." This follows from the second notion: that he does not consent to become Father, so as not to share his own nature with the one begotten. What could be more grievous than this impiety? Who has ever spoken such wickedness against the height?

[17] For my part, I fear that we too, by taking others' blasphemies on our lips, may defile our own minds and come to share their condemnation. But I am comforted by what is in the Gospels: the Holy Spirit too did not decline to hand on in writing to those who came later the blasphemy of the Jews against the Lord, pillorying their blasphemy for all time, not [as a blasphemy] against the stainless glory of the Only-[Begotten] … If, then, he would never admit a begetting so as to share his own nature with the one begotten, God is not Father, and [the Son] is not … But it is better for us … to leave the blasphemy unfinished. For the one did not admit a begetting, and the other did not share in the nature of the one who begot him. Then he outdoes himself, devising a new consolation for his blasphemy, not by saying anything that has to do with repentance, but by striving to hide what went before with what follows. For what has he brought himself to utter?

EUNOMIUS: "And he would escape all comparison and fellowship with the begotten."

BASIL: But if the Son has no comparison with the Father, and no fellowship with the one who begot him, then the apostles are liars, the Gospels are liars, and the Truth himself, our Lord Jesus Christ. But again I shudder at the blasphemy; anyone can easily see it. For if he has no comparison with the Father, how did he say to Philip, "Have I been with you so long, and you have not seen me, Philip?" and, "He who sees me sees him who sent me"? How could the Son show in himself one who admits no comparison and has no fellowship with him? For what is unknown is not grasped through what is unlike and foreign; rather, what is akin is naturally recognized by what is akin. So in the impression of a seal the stamp of the one who sealed it is seen, and through an image comes the knowledge of the archetype, since we compare, clearly, the sameness in each.

[18] So by this one blasphemy all the sayings handed down by the Holy Spirit for the glorification of the Only-Begotten are set aside. The Gospel teaches, "Him has God the Father sealed"; and the Apostle, "who is the image of the invisible God": an image not lifeless, not made by hand, not a work of art and invention, but a living image, or rather, being life itself, preserving its exactness always, not in a likeness of shape but in the very essence. For I say that "being in the form of God" has the same force as "being in the essence of God." For as "having taken the form of a servant" signifies that our Lord was born in the essence of humanity, so also "being in the form of God" certainly presents the distinctive character of the divine essence. "He who has seen me," he says, "has seen the Father." But this man, estranging the Only-Begotten from the Father and cutting him off entirely from fellowship with him, cuts off, as far as it lies with him, the ascent to knowledge that comes through him. "All that the Father has is mine," says the Lord; but Eunomius says that the Father has no fellowship with the one who is from him. And, "As the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself." This we have been taught by the Lord himself; and by Eunomius what? That the begotten has no comparison with the begetter. In short, by this one statement he abolishes the account of the image and sets aside his being the radiance and the stamp of the hypostasis. For one cannot conceive an image of what admits no comparison, nor a radiance of what has no fellowship in nature. He persists again in the same kind of trick, saying that the unbegotten has no comparison with the begotten, not that the Father has none with the one from him, so that whatever opposition he shows to exist between these words he may transfer to the very essence of the Father and the Son.

[19] So that we may not draw out our discussion to great length by following all his blasphemies and trying to call each of his statements to account, we will pass over whatever has its impiety ready to hand and is plain at once to readers, and we will set out what needs some argument to refute it. Having established in various ways that the Son has no share in the Father's essence, and having shown, as he thinks, the absurdity from every side, he adds:

EUNOMIUS: "For we would certainly not say this: that the essence is common to both, but that in order and in seniority of time one is first and the other second. For in things that excel, the cause of the excelling must be present; but neither time nor age nor order is joined to the essence of God. For order is posterior to the one who orders, and nothing belonging to God has been ordered by another. And time is a certain motion of the stars; and the stars came into being later not only than the unbegotten essence and all intelligible things, but even than the first bodies. And what need is there even to speak of the ages, when Scripture plainly declares that God exists before the ages?"

BASIL: Having laid down for himself in his argument whatever he wished, and having taken what follows from his hypotheses, and then pushing himself into absurd notions, he thinks he shows from this that his own doctrines must be accepted. For he says, "We would not say this: that the essence is common to both, but that in order and in seniority of time one is first and the other second." If, then, he said this understanding the commonness of the essence as though one were to conceive a kind of distribution and division of a preexisting matter into the things that come from it, we ourselves would not accept this notion either (God forbid!), and we declare that those who say it, if there are any, are no less impious than those who say "unlike." But if one takes the commonness of the essence in this sense, that one and the same account of being is contemplated in both, so that if, by hypothesis, the Father is conceived as light in his substrate, the essence of the Only-Begotten is also confessed to be light, and whatever account of being one gives for the Father, the same also fits the Son: if the commonness of the essence is taken thus, we accept it and will say that the doctrine is ours. For it is in this way that the Godhead too is one, since the unity, clearly, is conceived according to the account of the essence; so that the difference lies in number and in the distinguishing properties that characterize each, while the unity is contemplated in the account of the Godhead.

[20] Having defined, then, how the commonness of the essence should be understood, let us examine what follows, and what connection it has with what precedes. "But in order," he says, "and in seniority of time one is first and the other second." What necessity is there that, where the essence is common, these be subject to order and second in time? For it is not possible that the God of the universe should not be with his own image, which shone forth timelessly, from eternity, and should not have his conjunction with it beyond not only time but all the ages. That is why he is called radiance, that we may understand the conjunction, and stamp of the hypostasis, that we may learn that he is of the same essence. Moreover, order is of two kinds: one natural, the other by design. Natural order is like that of created things arranged according to the creative principles, like the position of numbers, and like the relation of causes to effects, it being agreed beforehand that God is the maker and creator of nature itself; designed and technical order is like that in constructions, in studies, in ranks, in number, and the like. Hiding the first of these, this man mentioned the second kind of order, and says that one must not speak of order in God, since order is posterior to the one who orders. But this he either did not notice or willingly concealed: that there is a kind of order not constituted by our positing, but arising from the natural sequence itself, as there is between fire and the light that comes from it. In these we call the cause prior and what comes from it second, not separating them from one another by an interval, but by reasoning about the effect in relation to its cause. How then is it reasonable to deny order where there is a prior and a second, not by our positing but by the sequence naturally present in them? Why, then, does he reject the taking of order in God? He thinks that if he shows that "prior" is conceived in God in no other way, it will remain for him to show the superiority in the essence itself. But we say that the Father is ranked before the Son according to the relation of causes to what comes from them, but not according to a difference of nature, nor according to superiority in time; or else in this way we shall set aside the very fact that God is Father, [doing away with] the natural conjunction by estrangement in essence …

[21] Since, however, this man who is wise in everything was led on to define for us the nature of time, let us see here too the firmness and circumspection of his thought. He says that time is a certain motion of the stars, of the sun, clearly, and the moon and the rest that have the power to move by themselves. Then what will this expert in celestial things declare about the [interval] from the genesis of heaven and earth to the …? For the one who wrote down the creation of the world by the power of the Spirit says plainly that the great lights and the other stars came into being on the fourth day. So there was no time, it seems, in the preceding days; for the stars were not yet moving. How could they be, when they had not even come into being at all? And again, when Joshua son of Nun was fighting the Gibeonites, and the sun stood unmoving, held fast by the command, and the moon had stood still in its place, was there no time then? What, then, shall we call that interval of the day? What name will you devise? For if the nature of time fails …, to call a part of a day … what excess of folly does that leave? But it seems that from his great acuteness he thinks that day and night come about in a certain motion of the stars, and that these are parts of time; hence he declared time to be a certain motion of the stars, not understanding even what he is saying. For it would have been more fitting to say not "a certain kind of" motion but, if anything, "a certain amount of" it. But who is so entirely a child in mind as not to know that days and hours and months and years are measures of time, not parts? Time is the interval coextensive with the constitution of the world, by which every motion is measured, whether of stars or of animals or of anything that moves, insofar as we say that one thing is faster or slower than another: faster, what passes over a greater distance in less time; slower, what moves a lesser distance in more time. But he, since the stars move in time, declares them to be makers of time. So, by the reasoning of this wisest of men, since beetles too move in time, let us define time as a certain motion of beetles; for what he said differs not at all from this, except in the solemnity of the words. So much for this; now look at what follows.

[22] EUNOMIUS: "Moreover," he says, "nothing can exist within the essence of God, such as form or bulk or size, because God is entirely free of composition. And if none of these or the like either is, or could ever piously be conceived as being, interwoven with the essence of God, what argument will still allow us to liken the begotten [essence] to the unbegotten? For likeness or comparison or fellowship in essence, leaving no superiority or difference, clearly produces equality, and together with equality shows that what is likened or compared is unbegotten. But no one is so senseless and so bold in impiety as to call the Son equal to the Father, when the Lord himself says expressly, 'The Father who sent me is greater than I.'" And again, a little later: "But that the God of all is unbegotten and incomparable, I think that what [has been said] is sufficient, though much has been left out."

BASIL: Whenever he is about to take up some wicked argument, … so that by his fair-mindedness in these points he may not be disbelieved about the rest. "Nothing," he says, "can exist within the essence of God, neither form nor bulk nor size, because God is entirely free of composition." Up to this point he is fair-minded; but in what follows he has returned to himself. For he attaches the blasphemy as if it followed necessarily from what he set out first, saying: "And if none of these or the like either is, or could ever piously be conceived as being, interwoven with the essence, what argument will allow us to liken the begotten to the unbegotten?" What logical connection do these things have with each other: that, if God is incomposite, the Son cannot admit likeness to him? For tell me: will you not also say likewise that the Son has neither form nor bulk nor size in himself, and is entirely [free] of composition …

[23] For my part, I do not think that even in madness you would ever dare to call the Son anything other than incorporeal, formless, shapeless, and all that you would say of the Father. How then is it not pious to compare the one who has no form with the one who has no form, and the one who has no size with the one who has none … … and the wholly incomposite with the incomposite? … [He] places likeness in form, and equality in bulk; as for size, whatever he thinks it is besides bulk, he himself could explain more fittingly …

EUNOMIUS: "For this reason he is neither equal nor like, since he is without quantity and without form."

BASIL: But it is in this very thing that I place the likeness. For just as the Father is free of all composition, so too the Son is entirely simple and incomposite; and likeness is contemplated not according to sameness of form but according to the essence itself. For things that are clothed with shape and figure have likeness according to sameness of form; but the formless and shapeless nature can only have its likeness in the essence itself, and its equality not in measuring bulks against each other but in sameness of power. "Christ," it says, "the power of God and the wisdom of God," the whole power of the Father being, clearly, stored up in him. Hence whatever he sees the Father doing, the Son also does likewise.

EUNOMIUS: "But likeness or comparison or fellowship in essence," he says, "leaving no superiority or difference, clearly produces equality."

BASIL: How then does it leave no difference, not even the one that exists in causes in relation to what comes from them? Then he adds:

EUNOMIUS: "But who is so senseless or so bold in impiety as to call the Son equal to the Father?"

BASIL: Let us say to him in reply the words of the prophet: "You had the face of a harlot; you were shameless toward all." For those women too fasten their own disgrace on those who have lived chastely; and this man calls senseless and bold in impiety those who desire to magnify the glory of the Only-Begotten, angered at the same things that provoked the Jews at that time, when they said, "He makes himself equal to God."

[24] And yet (let no one think what I say strange) those men seemed somehow to see the consequence better. For they were indignant that he called God his own Father, inferring the next step for themselves, that by this he was making himself equal to God, as though being equal to him follows necessarily from having God as Father. But he, supposedly granting the first, balks at the second, and puts forward to us the Lord's words, "The Father who sent me is greater than I"; but he does not hear the Apostle saying, "He did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped." Yet if, by your argument, ingeneracy were essence, and he wished to show superiority in essence, he would have said, "The unbegotten is greater than I." But it is your argument that the name "Father" signifies an activity and not an essence. When you call the Father greater than the Son, then, you are saying that the activity is greater than the work. But surely every activity corresponds in measure to what comes from it: it is great in great works and small in smaller ones. So to confess, by this argument, that the Father is greater than the Son is nothing other than to make the activity disproportionate to the work, and to say that God was moved in vain toward the greatness of the activity, since he was unable to make the result equal to the activity. So one of the two must necessarily fall. Either "Father" does not indicate an activity but an essence, and then their sophistical account of likeness will be struck out, since they make the Son like the Father, that is, like his activity (for "such as the Father willed," they say, "such he made," which is why they call him the image of the will); or, keeping this, they must not say that the Father is greater. For every activity, when nothing outside resists it, is proportionate to its own effects. Let this be said, then, to refute the inconsistency in their doctrines.

[25] To whom of all people is it not plain that "greater" is said either according to the account of cause, or according to an excess of power, or according to superiority of dignity, or according to an abundance of bulk? That it is not according to bulk … and this is reasonable, since "greater" belongs to magnitudes just as much as "less" and "more" do. But things that cannot be encompassed by magnitude, or rather that are without magnitude and wholly without quantity: who could measure them against one another? And where comparison is impossible, by what means could the excelling be recognized in them? To say that Christ, the power of God, falls short in power is the mark of utter infants, who do not even hear the voice of the Lord saying, "I and the Father are one," and taking "one" in the sense of equal in power, as we shall show from the very words of the Gospel. For having said of those who believed, "No one will snatch them out of my hand," and that "My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all," and, "No one can snatch them out of my Father's hand," he added, "I and the Father are one," plainly taking "one" in the sense of equal and the same in power. Again, if the throne of God, as we have believed, is a name of dignity, what else does the seat at the Father's right hand assigned to the Son signify but equality of honor in dignity? The Lord also promises to come in the glory of the Father. It remains, then, that here "greater" is said according to the account of cause. For since the Son's origin is from the Father, in this sense the Father is greater, as cause and origin. That is why the Lord said, "My Father is greater than I," clearly inasmuch as he is Father. And what else does "Father" signify but being the cause and origin of the one begotten from him? In general, essence is not said to be greater or less than essence, even by your wisdom. So both according to them and according to the truth itself, the statement before us could in no way indicate a superiority in essence. Nor indeed would he himself say that God the Father is greater in bulk, since he declared that one must not suppose size in God. What remains, then, is the sense of "greater" that we have given: that of origin, I mean, and of cause. Such, then, is his attempt at blasphemy concerning "greater."

[26] … turning around to the most contrary statements, as if the eyes of his soul had been struck with blindness, he was unable to see the conflict in what he had said; so that he might be shown to be so much a stranger to the peace of God, which our Lord left to those who have believed in him genuinely and without guile, saying, "Peace I leave you, my peace I give you," that he is at war not only with others but even with himself. For having called the God and Father of the only-begotten Son greater, and having charged those who say "equal" with madness, as one who himself had incontrovertible proofs of this, a little further down, look at what he writes:

EUNOMIUS: "But that the God of all is one, unbegotten and incomparable, I think that what has been said is sufficient for demonstration, though much has been left out."

BASIL: Let him be asked, then: if God is incomparable, from where was his superiority grasped? For "greater" is contemplated by setting a thing beside what it surpasses. How then is the same one both greater and incapable of being set beside anything? But in order to show the essence of God differing from that of the Only-Begotten, he took "greater," which is said by way of comparison, to mean a difference of essence; and in order again to bring the Only-Begotten down to equal honor with creation, he lays it down that the Father is incomparable, devising a new and truly incomparable road of blasphemy. Pretending, of course, to exalt and lift up the God and Father, he belittles the glory of the only-begotten Son and God, although the Lord testifies and says, "He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father," and, "He who rejects me rejects not me but him who sent me." But the enemy of the truth, who works in them to say and write such things, saw this: that if he blinded them to the understanding of the glory of the Only-Begotten, the knowledge of God the Father himself would be taken away with it; so that, even if they seem to assign some superlatives to God the Father, they have no benefit from it, since they have been deprived of the knowledge of the road that leads to him. For the Jews too think that they glorify God, and one will hear some of the Greeks wishing to say something great about God; but still no one would say that they magnify God without faith in Christ, through whom is the access to knowledge.

[27] He calls God incomparable, then, in order to show the Son to be equal to creation, in that he falls short of the Father's glory in the same way; for things surpassed by an equal measure are necessarily equal to one another. According to his argument, the only-begotten Son is surpassed by the God and Father as much as each of the other things is. For such is incomparability: that which is equally unapproachable and unattainable for all. But if he falls short of the Father equally with the others, he is equal to those with whom he falls short. What worse than this blasphemy could the Jews say? What are we to hear from the heathen? And they do not blush, who, pretending to honor the Word of God … is not compared with God the Father, as neither angels nor heaven nor sun nor earth nor each of the animals and plants upon it is compared, how will he have any difference from his own creatures? And from where will he have his kinship with the one who begot him? "I and the Father," he says, "are one." For let us recall the same words again. Tell me: is this not the saying of one who compares himself? Why do I say "compares"? Rather of one who unites himself, so to speak, and from this presents the exactness of the nature. But he declares God to be incomparable. The goodness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ leads human beings, as far as we are able to receive it, through the practice and exercise of good works to likeness with the God of the universe, when he says, "Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect"; but this man, as far as it lies with him, deprives the Only-Begotten of the kinship he has by nature with the one who begot him. Yet even so his argument will turn around to the opposite. For if the Father is incomparable, from where will he get the proofs of the Son's unlikeness that he will offer? If he says that he has found the unlikeness by setting the essences side by side, how is such a one incomparable? And if he is not compared at all, how could he come to know … or a difference? So it seems that evil is opposed not only to the good but even to itself. … from which may it be granted to us to be redeemed by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, with whom be glory to the Father without beginning, with the Holy Spirit, now and always …

[1] Having thus, in his arguments about the God of the universe, laid the groundwork as far as he could for his blasphemies against the Son of God, he at last let loose his tongue against the only-begotten God himself. For what does he say?

EUNOMIUS: "And one Son; for he is Only-Begotten. About him it would have been possible to be rid of all concern and trouble by citing the words of the saints in which they proclaim him both offspring and thing made, making plain by the differences of the names the difference of essence as well. But because of those who suppose the begetting to be bodily … , it is perhaps necessary to speak briefly about these things too."

BASIL: So says Eunomius. For my part, if one must think about his whole discourse as a fiction, of the kind set before boys in the schools of vanity as practice in making a falsehood plausible (for everything he does is like those exercises, a shadow-boxing: a fight against accusers who do not exist, an apology against an accusation never made, and a speech before judges who appear nowhere): if one must listen to this too in that way, I myself give up the examination and urge everyone not to trouble about anything he has said. But if the claim is something greater, and many have suspected that he has some concern for the truth, it is entirely necessary to set straight each of his statements as far as possible. What way of examining them, then, could be more just than to compare his argument with the teachings given us by the Spirit, accepting whatever we find in agreement with them, and distrusting what is contrary and fleeing it as an enemy?

[2] First, then, let him show this: which of the saints … has words of Scripture for proof? For if … "and Christ God has made, this Jesus whom you crucified," first of all nothing proper … to call the Maker of all things a thing made? For if … such a designation befitted him, it would not have been passed over in silence … of God no longer. For "In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth"; and again, "In …"; "[for] his invisible things from the creation of the world [are seen] by the …"; "… of stumbling and a rock of offense," and other such things in which there seems to be no great reverence … but nowhere at all did [Scripture] name him a thing made. And yet … this man [claims] to have taken the name from the saints themselves … he says this so that with his slanders he may involve not only those of his own time but also the saints of old.

[3] But apart from the fact that, because of the danger, one must not … remodel on one's own …, not even the … of the Apostle … presents to us the subject that our discussion is now about. For he is clearly speaking not about the very essence of God the Word, who was in the beginning with God, but about the one who emptied himself in the form of a servant, was conformed to the body of our humiliation, and was crucified in weakness. And this is known to anyone who pays even a little attention to the intention of the apostolic words: that he is handing down to us not a manner of theology but making known the accounts of the economy. "For God has made him Lord and Christ," he says, "this Jesus whom you crucified," pressing, with the demonstrative word, all but on his humanity, which was plainly visible to all. But this man transfers the word "made" to the original begetting of the Only-Begotten. Nor does it shame him that "Lord" is the name not of an essence but of authority. So the one who said, "God made him Lord and Christ," speaks of the rule and lordship over all that was entrusted to him by the Father; he is not describing his passage into being. We shall show this a little later, when we refute him for citing the testimonies of Scripture against the intention of the Spirit; now let us go on to what follows in his discourse. What, then, does this name mean to him? And why does he call the Maker of all things a thing made? … he thinks that by the differences of the names the … of the essence also …

[4] Yet who in his right mind would agree with this argument, that things whose names differ must also differ in essence? For the designations of Peter and Paul, and in short of all human beings, are different, but the essence of all is one. That is why in most respects we are the same as one another, and differ from one another only by the distinctive features contemplated in each. Hence designations are indicative not of essences but of the particular characteristics that mark out each individual. So when we hear "Peter," we do not understand his essence from the name (by essence I now mean the material substrate, which the name in no way signifies), but we receive the impression of the distinctive features contemplated in him. For at once from this word we think of the son of Jonah, the man from Bethsaida, the brother of … called to the apostolate, the one who because of the preeminence of his faith received upon himself the building of the church: none of these is essence, understood as substance. So the name marks out for us the character of Peter, but in no way presents his essence. Again, when we hear "Paul," we think of a concurrence of other distinctive features: the man of Tarsus, the Hebrew, as to the law a Pharisee, the disciple of Gamaliel, in zeal a persecutor of the churches of God, the one brought to knowledge by the fearful vision, the apostle of the nations. All these are delimited by the one word "Paul." And yet, if it were true that things whose names differ have opposite essences, … Paul and Peter, and in short all human beings, would be of different essence from one another. But since no one is so ignorant and so [inattentive] … to the common nature ("for you were formed," it says, "as I was," the passage signifying nothing other than that all human beings are of the same essence), the one who argues sophistically that difference of essence follows difference of names is a liar. For the nature of things does not follow the names; rather, the names were found after the things. If this were true, things whose designations are the same would have to be of one and the same essence. Then, since those perfect in virtue have been counted worthy of the designation "God," human beings would be of the same essence as the God of the universe. But just as to say this is plain madness, so that argument of his is held by an equal derangement.

[5] It is clear, then, from what has been said, that in the case of the Father and the Son too the names do not present essence but are indicative of distinctive features; so that there is no room for an argument that brings in an opposition of essences from the difference of names. In this way he would refute himself before all. For if "thing made" and "offspring" differ, the essences of the Only-Begotten also will be different, following the difference of the names. But if to say this belongs to the deranged, … neither does that belong to those in their right mind. He pretends to have countless proofs that the Son has been called a thing made by the saints; but, as though hurrying on to some other, more important matters, he supposedly defers any mention of them for now. This too is a crafty piece of mischief: to prefer silence where he is at a loss for arguments. For if he had even a shadow of testimony of the … … before all else … calling the Only-Begotten a thing made, it would not have been passed over in silence; … our ears would by now be ringing with it. Then he says that because of those who suppose the Lord's begetting to be bodily and stumble over homonyms, it is necessary for him to speak briefly about these things too. Yet what prevented him from first confirming his argument by the testimonies of Scripture, and then coming to the correction of the weaker, and to remedying the harm from the homonymy, if it has ever come or will come to anyone? For who is so entirely fleshly in mind and so inexperienced in the divine words that, on hearing of a divine begetting, he is carried down to bodily images, in which there is the union of male with female, conception in the womb, formation, shaping, and at the due times a coming forth into the open? Who is so like a beast that, hearing that God the Word came forth from God, and hearing that wisdom was begotten from God, he falls in his reasonings to the passions of the body?

[6] But he has devised this too, along with the rest, as a specious form for his arguments: to seem to take on the labor of teaching out of compassion for the brothers who lack understanding. The bodily suspicions arising from this designation he supposedly corrects; but the harm from calling the Lord a thing made he does not avoid. Yet the one who imagines the begetting to be bodily would also be carried down to the material ways of making. For surely the weak person, from the word "beget," will not conceive a division, transfer, and flowing out of the begetter's essence, without [also conceiving] a matter brought in from outside, from what [is not], into the [constitution] of what you call … ? Why then does he heal the infirmities of the brothers' reasonings by halves, and … overlook those who stumble at the designation "thing made"? Because he knows that "having been begotten" is hostile to his doctrines, since what is begotten must surely be akin to the begetter and without difference from him; whereas "having been made" is friendly and allied to his hypotheses, because it presents the notion of something alien, foreign, and wholly unrelated to its maker. Then he adds to this, saying:

EUNOMIUS: "We say, then, that the Son is offspring according to the teaching of the Scriptures, not understanding the essence to be one thing and what is signified something else besides it, but that the subsistence itself is what the name signifies, since the designation is true of the essence."

BASIL: In this too, then, he openly fights against the truth, yet says what is consistent with himself. For just as in his earlier arguments he defined "unbegotten" in the God of the universe as signifying his essence, so here too he says that "offspring" signifies the essence of the Son, so that by the opposition of begotten to unbegotten he may show the Only-Begotten opposed to the Father in his very essence. That is why he legislates words outside the usage of the divine Spirit, calling the Son "offspring." Where did he get it? From what teaching? From which prophet? Which of the apostles applied this name to him? For my part, I have found this word used in this way nowhere in Scripture.

[7] And yet this man boasts that he has taken these designations from nowhere but the teaching of the Spirit. For it is a small thing to him to give trouble to human beings unless he also makes bold against the Spirit himself. That the Father has begotten we have been taught in many places; but that the Son is "offspring" we have not heard to this day. "For a child," it says, "is born to us, a son is given to us, and his name is called" not "offspring" but "Angel of great counsel." Yet if "offspring" were indicative of essence, we would have been taught by the Spirit no other name than the one that would plainly present his essence. And again Peter, who for his knowledge of the truth was counted worthy of that blessing, did not say, "You are the offspring," but, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." And Paul, who filled all his writing with the designation "Son," will nowhere be found to have mentioned "offspring." This man, from great self-confidence, as though he had received it from the divine school, … transferring to the Son of God the word "begot," which belongs to the Father. For the one trained in the fear of God does not attend to what … , but loves to persist in the names found in Scripture and through them to render the glorification in a manner befitting God. For if those who first translated the Hebrew tongue into the Greek language did not dare to translate some names, but carried over the Hebrew word itself, such as "Sabaoth," "Adonai," "Eloi," and the like, showing this reverence not only with the divine names but with many others as well, how great a fear ought we to have about the names of the Lord? When would they have endured to make up any of the names of their own accord, they who did not even dare to translate some, lest by the unsuitability of the meanings they should weaken the clarity of the expression?

[8] "But if God begot," he says, "why should one not call the one begotten offspring?" Because it is a fearful thing for us to address with names of our own the one to whom God has given the name that is above every name: "You are my Son," he says, "today I have begotten you." Yet by their argument it would have been more consistent for him to be called offspring rather than Son, because he was begotten; but this has not been said. Therefore the one who has the judgment seat of Christ before his eyes, and knows how great is the danger of taking anything away from or adding anything to what has been handed down by the Spirit, must not be eager to innovate on his own, but must rest content with what was proclaimed beforehand by the saints. What, then, neither common usage nor the usage of the Scriptures has received—how is it not the height of folly to venture on it? For what father or mother, kindly and gently disposed toward the one born of them, would leave off calling him son or child and call him offspring? "Child," it says, "go into the vineyard"; and elsewhere, "God will provide for himself a sheep for the slaughter, my child"; and again Isaac: "Who are you, my child?" and, "My son, do not make light of discipline" … ; but nowhere is anyone shown to have called his own "offspring." The reason is plain: "son" and "child" are names of living beings, but "offspring" is not always so. For even what is cast out in miscarriages before it has taken form can be called offspring, but such a thing is not worthy of the name "child." The fruits of the earth are offspring, but they are not children: "I will not drink," it says, "of this offspring of the vine." We have found the name applied to living beings rarely, and where it is used, one can see it said of an animal under reproach and taken as an image of wickedness: "Serpents," it says, "offspring of vipers." That is why, I think, common usage has held this name in no honor, and divine Scripture is seen to decline it, especially in speaking of the only-begotten Son of God. It did not even admit the name "child," as having much that is human about it. The Apostle shows this, calling the Lord "Son" again and again, and … and image and radiance, but avoiding the designation "offspring." But if [it is said anywhere], let this man show it, or any other of the leaders of this teaching, and we will let them strike out everything. But he could not, unless, imitating the impious Marcion, he … Thus the word "offspring" has been proved foreign both to common usage and to the usage of the Scriptures.

[9] Let us now see whether this name can be ranged against the very essence of the Son. For he himself says:

EUNOMIUS: "It is impossible to conceive the essence as one thing and what is signified as something else besides it; rather, the subsistence itself is what the name signifies, since the designation is true of the essence."

BASIL: Truly worthy of the judges whom you yourself fashioned are these doctrines of yours! For as if in a dream … in a marketplace or an assembly of drunkards, where no one either hears or understands what is said, you legislate with great license, thinking it enough, in place of all proof, that you yourself have said it. For who does not know that some names, uttered absolutely and by themselves, signify the things that underlie them, while others, said in relation to something else, show only the relation to that to which they are said? For example, "man," "horse," and "ox" each present the thing named; but "son," "slave," or "friend" indicate only the connection with the name joined to them. So the one who hears "offspring" is not carried in thought to some essence, but understands that it is joined to another; for an offspring is called the offspring of someone. What, then, produces the notion not of some subsistence but signifies only the relation to another—how is it not the height of madness to legislate that this is essence? Yet a little before, we showed that even the absolute names, however much they seem to indicate some substrate, do not present the essence itself, but mark off certain distinctive features about it.

[10] But this wisest of men, who has spent his whole life in the pursuits of vain artistry, does not blush to say that "offspring" signifies the very essence of the Only-Begotten. See how much absurdity this involves. If essence is offspring, and conversely, if anything is offspring, it is essence, then all offspring will be of the same essence as one another. What follows from this by his reasoning? The Creator of all will appear to have the same essence as everything that has a share in generation. For he will surely not say that in the case of the Son "offspring" signifies essence, but in the case of the rest that share in generation it no longer keeps the same sense. Or let him give some clear and incontrovertible reason why the same designation does not have equal force for all alike. But he could not. For whatever account of "offspring" he devises will fit all begotten things alike. The greatest evidence of the truth of the argument is the mind of each hearer. Let each one ask himself, when he hears "so-and-so is the offspring of so-and-so," what notion he forms. Is it that the one begotten is the essence of the begetter? Or is this ridiculous, and that true, that he was brought into being by him by way of begetting? This, then, can be said alike of the Only-Begotten and of anyone at all who has been begotten. And let no one think (since the relation is common) that this lowers the dignity of the Only-Begotten. For the Son's difference from the others lies not in standing in a certain relation; rather, the superiority of God over mortal things appears in the distinctive character of the essence. But see to what absurdity their argument carries them. If "offspring" is said to be the offspring of another, as common usage confirms and no one will deny, and this very word, according to their argument, signifies essence in the case of the Son as well, he will be the essence of that one of whom he is also called the offspring. So by this sequence the designation "offspring" will no longer signify the essence of the Only-Begotten, as they insist by force, but that of the God of the universe. For if it is not possible to conceive the essence as one thing and the offspring as something else besides it, and one may equally say, so to speak, essence and offspring, and the Son is the offspring of God, he will be the essence of God, if indeed "offspring" shows the essence. And so, by his argument, the offspring will turn out to be the essence of the unbegotten. If the conclusion is ridiculous, let the one who laid down the premises inherit the shame. For it seems that an argument, once it has strayed from the truth, is carried by the logic of its error into many dangerous absurdities.

[11] These things, then, are like preliminary bouts and preparations for the blasphemy; but the chief point of the evil he brings forward in what follows, saying:

EUNOMIUS: "… [the essence of the Son was begotten], not being before its own constitution, but existing, having been begotten before all things by the will of the Father."

BASIL: He still holds to the same tricks. He discusses with us the essence of the Son as though he meant the Son to be something other than it, and in this way he tames our hearing in advance for the blasphemy, not saying openly that the Son was begotten from things that are not, but that his essence was begotten, not being. Not being before what? Tell me. Do you see his sophism? He compares the essence with itself, so that he may seem to say what everyone can tolerate, saying not that it was not before the ages, nor simply that it was not, but that it was not before its own constitution. And the essence of the Father, tell me: do you say that it is older than its own constitution? If he does not subject the essence of the Son to times, and does not conceive "before" in this sense, his argument is vain and idle, and therefore not worth an answer. Indeed, those who wish will be able to transfer this vanity no less to the God of the universe; for to say that God was not before his own constitution and to say that he was before himself belong to the same folly. But if he takes "before" in a temporal sense in the case of the Son's essence, he will also say that his essence was begotten from things that are not, or rather the Son himself (for, as far as the meaning goes, it makes no difference to speak one way or the other). First, he makes the maker of the ages second to time, or to the ages if you prefer; and then, following his own blasphemies, he will say that the Father too was not Father from the beginning but became so later.

[12] Yet if it is good and fitting to the blessedness of God to be Father, why was what is fitting not present to him from the beginning? They will attribute the lack either to ignorance of the better or to inability: to ignorance, if he discovered the better later; to inability, if, knowing and understanding it, he failed to attain the best. But if (though it is not right to say it) it is not good for him to be Father, why did he choose the worse by a change? But let the blasphemy turn back upon those responsible: the God of the universe is Father from infinity, not having begun at some time to be Father. He was not hindered by any lack of power from fulfilling his will, nor did he wait for some period of ages, so that, as with human beings and the other animals, he might obtain what he desired when the power to beget had come to him with the completion of his growth (to think or to say this belongs to madmen); rather, he has his fatherhood (if I may name it so) coextensive with his own eternity. So the Son too, being before the ages and always being, did not begin at some time to be; but from when the Father is, the Son also is, and at once the notion of the Son enters together with the notion of the Father. For the Father is clearly Father of a Son. There is no beginning of the Father, but the beginning of the Son is the Father; and between them there is nothing. How, then, did he not exist from the beginning (for this is what these men call, sophistically, "before his own constitution"), he who has nothing conceived prior to himself except the one from whom he has his being, who surpasses him not by an interval but is ranked before him by being the cause? If, then, the Son's fellowship with God the Father has been shown to be eternal, since our thought proceeds from the Son to the Father through no empty space, but joins the Son to the Father without interval, what entry does the one who is separated by nothing in between leave for the wicked blasphemy of those who say that he was brought from what is not into being?

[13] Then one may well wonder at their folly … the Son, they show him younger not only than the Father, but also than that by which they separate the Only-Begotten from the Father. For if there is anything between the Father and the Son, it must be older than the Son's existence. What, then, would this be? What else, surely, but an age or a time? For the one who conceives the life of the Father as older than that of the Only-Begotten: by what else would he measure the excess, if not by an interval of ages or of times? If this is true, the Scripture is false that says the ages came to be through him, and the one that teaches that all things came to be through him, the ages clearly being included in "all things." But if they say that they do not deny that the Son was begotten before the ages, let them not miss that … For let us ask them, those who bring the essence of the Only-Begotten out of things that are not: when he was not, as you say, what was that interval? What name will you devise for it? Common usage subjects every interval either to times or to ages: what time is among sensible things, the nature of the age is among things above the world. If they conceive some third thing out of their own wisdom, let them say it. But as long as they keep silent, let them not miss that they are making the essence of the Only-Begotten second to the ages. For if there was some interval older than the Son, coextending with the life of the Father, it was clearly one of these. But nothing is, or could ever come to be, older than the hypostasis of the Only-Begotten. For the existence of God the Word, who was in the beginning with God, will be found higher than everything that can be conceived under the heading of antiquity. And even if the mind, deceiving itself with countless fantasies and applying itself to fabrications of things that do not exist, conceives what is not, it will find no device at all by which it can place itself above the beginning of the Only-Begotten, leave the life of Life itself below its own movement, pass beyond the beginning of God the Word by its own reasoning, and survey ages empty of the God of the ages.

[14] Having taken away the glory owed to the Only-Begotten, see with what words he extols him:

EUNOMIUS: "The essence of the Son," he says, "is begotten before all things by the will of God the Father."

BASIL: This is the great thing he adds to the Son: that he is older than creation and exists before his own works, setting down as enough for the glory of the Creator of the universe that he is ranked before his own creatures. For having estranged him, as far as it lies with him, from fellowship with God the Father, he bears witness to his glory by his precedence over creatures. Then, carrying his blasphemy on to shamelessness, he [hems] us in, as he thinks, with inescapable …

EUNOMIUS: "For God begot the Son either when he was or when he was not. If when he was not, let no one charge me with audacity; but if when he was, the argument is the height not only of absurdity and blasphemy but of all silliness; for what is has no need of begetting."

BASIL: This, then, is the notorious sophism, invented long ago by others, but now brought to completion by these men on their brazen and shameless tongues. First let us remind his hearers that this is the man who, because of the ignorance of the many who take the begetting of the Son in a human way, came under the necessity of these arguments; this is the one who leads untrained souls up from bodily notions to spiritual contemplation; who, since animals that are born did not exist before and then are born, and the one born today did not exist yesterday, transfers this notion to the hypostasis of the Only-Begotten as well. "And since he has been begotten," he says, "he did not exist before the begetting." So magnificently does he theologize to us the begetting of the Only-Begotten, and with such arguments he corrects the infirmities of our brothers, worthy as he is, if anyone is, to hear the proverb, "Physician, heal yourself." What remedy, then, for this absurd disease of his reasonings shall we offer him, but the words spoken to us by the Holy Spirit through the blessed John: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God"? By these two sayings the evangelist shut out … ; … [than a beginning] one can conceive nothing older; for it would no longer be a beginning if it had anything outside itself. Nor is it possible, passing beyond "was" by reasoning, to peer out into "when he was not"; for the notion "when he was not" is the denial of "was." If "beginning" were one of the things said in relation to another, as in "the beginning of wisdom," and "the beginning of a good way," and "in the beginning God made," it might perhaps be possible to pass beyond, by reflection, the begetting of what subsists from such a beginning. But since this meaning of "beginning," absolute and without relation, indicates the supreme nature, how is one not ridiculous who conceives things beyond it, or tries to surpass it in his reasonings? And "was" is coextensive with the unsurpassability of this beginning. For "was" does not indicate existence from a point in time, as in "There was a man in the land of Ausitis," and "There was a man from Armathaim," and "The earth was invisible"; rather, the evangelist himself showed us in another book the meaning of such a "was," saying, "He who is, and who was, and the Almighty." For as "who is," so also "was": alike eternal and timeless. To say that the one who was in the beginning was not neither preserves the notion of the beginning nor joins the existence of the Only-Begotten to it. For what is older than the beginning cannot be conceived, and the being of God the Word is inseparable from it. So however far you wish [to run] with the busy curiosity of your mind … you will not be able [to pass beyond "was"] by reasoning.

[15] Let him be asked by us in turn, then: was God the Word with God in the beginning, or did he come to be later? If he was, "Keep your tongue from evil," from the blasphemy "he was not." But if [he was not], which it is not even right to say, I will use your own words against you more aptly: the argument is the height not only of blasphemy but of insanity, that human beings should demand an accounting of the words of the Spirit, and profess to be disciples of the Gospels while rising up against them. For see how exactly and clearly the divine words bear witness to the Son's begetting before the ages. Since Matthew became the narrator of the begetting according to the flesh, as he himself says, "The book of the genesis of Jesus Christ, son of David"; and Mark made the preaching of John the beginning of the Gospel, saying, "The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, as it is written in Isaiah the prophet: A voice of one crying in the wilderness"; and Luke too approached the theology through the bodily beginnings … ; of necessity the evangelist John, coming last to write, raised his mind above everything sensible and the time that accompanies such things, or rather, lifted up by the power of the Spirit, drew near to the one who is beyond all things, all but testifying himself that "even if we have known Christ according to the flesh, we know him so no longer." For laying hold of the beginning itself, and leaving all bodily and temporal notions below his own theology, he outsounded the earlier proclamations by the grandeur of his knowledge. "Not from Mary," he says, "is the beginning, nor from these times. But what? In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God": embracing in these few words the existence from eternity, the impassible begetting, the natural unity with the Father, the grandeur of the nature; and by adding "was" he led back to the beginning, as if stopping the mouths of those who blaspheme "he was not," and cutting off from afar the entries of such sophisms. Then, having imprinted by his theology a clear outline, as it were, of the nature of the Only-Begotten, he points to him with his word as to those who now recognize him, saying, "He was in the beginning with God," again by the addition of "was" joining the begetting of the Only-Begotten to the eternity of the Father; and again, "In him was life, and the life was the light of men," and "He was the true light." But nevertheless, though the argument is … on every side … the testimonies of the Spirit, and seeming not even to hear him crying out to us so often the "was" … … "Not being," he says, "he was begotten." So he [came to be] later … has come to be. But if this was not in the beginning, as you say, what more manifest conflict could anyone show with the words of the Gospels in which we have believed?

[16] And surely every fair-minded person would agree that, just as the eye, when it has passed out of the illuminated places, necessarily ceases from its activity for lack of light, so also the mind, forcing its way by imaginations to what lies outside being, as if the light of truth were failing it, is confounded, grows foolish, and ceases from thinking. The eye could not use its sight outside the light, nor could the soul, carried away from the notion of the Only-Begotten, make use of its thinking. For … of the truth … that mind is vain and blinded, truly knowing nothing, which thinks it has grasped what is older than the Only-Begotten; as if one were to … an eye straining. "For in your light," it says, "we shall see light." But he who claims to have come to grasp the time when the light had not yet come to be is in much the same state as those who in a frenzied delirium imagine they see what is not there. For what is above the Son is not an object of thought. For what perceptible light is to the eye, God the Word is to the soul: "He was," it says, "the true light, which enlightens every man coming into the world." So the unenlightened soul is incapable of thinking. How then could what lies above the begetting of the light be grasped? It was necessary, I think, for those who care even a little for the truth to let go of bodily comparisons and of soiling their notions of God with material imaginings, and to follow the teachings about God handed down to us by the Holy Spirit; and instead of these questions, which fall nothing short of riddles, since an answer either way is dangerous, to conceive a begetting worthy of God, impassible, without partition, undivided, and timeless, being led to the divine begetting by the radiance that shines from light; and to conceive the image of the invisible God, not like the man-made [images] …, which are produced afterward in relation to the archetype, but coexisting and subsisting alongside the prototype that gives it subsistence, being by the very fact that the archetype is; not imprinted by imitation, but as in a seal, the whole nature of the Father being impressed upon the Son. Or, if you prefer, it is like the way an art comes to be whole in learners from those who teach, nothing being lost to the teachers while completion accrues to the learners. Or this is not exact as a likeness, because of the extension of time. It is more fitting to say: like the nature of thoughts, which subsist timelessly together with the movements of the mind.

[17] And let no one slander the argument if any of the examples does not fit the matters before us in every respect. For it is not possible to apply small and paltry things with exactness to things divine and eternal, but only so far as to refute the dissembling of those who supposedly cannot grasp an impassible begetting in thought. The Son is called, and is, a begotten image, and the radiance of the glory of God, and the wisdom and power and righteousness of God: not as a state or an aptitude, but as a living and active essence, the radiance of the glory of God. That is why he shows the whole Father in himself, having shone forth from his whole glory. To say, then, that the glory of God has no radiance, or that the wisdom of God was ever not with God, belongs to every absurdity … "But if he was," he says, "he has not been begotten." Let us answer, then: since he has been begotten, he was; not having unbegotten being, but always being and being with the Father, from whom he also has the cause of his existence. When, then, was he brought into being by the Father? From when the Father is. "But the Father is from eternity," he says. From eternity, then, is the Son too, joined by way of begetting to the ingeneracy of the Father. That this argument is not ours, we will present to them the very words of the Holy Spirit. From … the "Word"; and from the psalm, as spoken in the person of the Father, "From the womb before the morning star I have begotten you"; and putting both together, let us say that he both was and has been begotten. But "I have begotten" signifies the cause from which he has the beginning of his being, and "was" his timeless existence before the ages. But he, contending on behalf of his own deceit, thinks he is driving the argument into absurdity:

EUNOMIUS: "For if," he says, "the Son was before his own begetting, he was unbegotten."

BASIL: But this "before the begetting," you vain man, is either wholly nonexistent and … (and what need is there to argue with the senseless? For this is as if with one who … his reason …), or [if his thought] is carried …, it will be carried to the notion of the ages. But if all the ages are conceived somewhere below the begetting of the Only-Begotten, since they are his works, vain is the one who seeks what is older than the hypostasis of the Son. He asks nothing different than if he were inquiring about the Father whether he existed before his own constitution or not. For as there the question is senseless, to seek what is higher than the one who is without beginning and unbegotten, so here too, in the case of the one who is with the Father from eternity and has nothing between himself and the one who begot him, to raise temporal questions about "before" belongs to equal folly. It is like asking what will be after the death of the immortal, or inquiring what existed before the begetting of the eternal. But they, since the beginninglessness of the Father is called eternal, declare "eternal" to be the same as "without beginning," and since the Son is not unbegotten, they do not confess him to be eternal either. But the two differ greatly in concept. "Unbegotten" is said of what has no beginning of itself and no cause of its being; "eternal" of what is older in being than all time and every age. Hence [the Son] is both not unbegotten and eternal. Some even think the ages worthy of the name "eternal," as having obtained this name from always being. But we consider it the same madness to bear witness to eternity for the creation and to deprive the Master of creation of this confession.

[18] But he, carrying his argument on to shamelessness, says:

EUNOMIUS: "But we, [following] what has been shown by the saints both of old and now in our own time, since the essence of God does not admit a begetting, and no other essence is available as a substrate for the begetting of the Son, say that the Son was begotten not being."

BASIL: Who was ever so ambitious for piety? Who ever prided himself so much on loving Christ as these men exult in words of insult and dishonor that tear down the glory of the Only-Begotten? Will you not stop, godless man, calling "not being" the one who truly is, the fountain of life, the one who grants being to all that are? He found for himself, in his oracle to his own servant Moses, a name proper to himself and fitting to his own eternity, naming himself "the One who is": "For I am," he says, "the One who is." And no one will deny that these words were spoken in the person of the Lord, no one, at least, who does not have the Jewish veil lying over his heart at the reading of Moses. For it is written that an angel of the Lord appeared to Moses in the bush in a flame of fire. Having set an angel at the head of the account, Scripture then brings in the voice of God: "He said," it says, "to Moses: I am the God of your father Abraham"; and a little after, again, "I am the One who is." Who, then, is the same one both angel and God? Is it not the one of whom we have learned that his name is called "Angel of great counsel"? I do not think more is needed for the proof: for lovers of Christ even the reminder suffices, and for the incurable nothing will be gained from a multitude of words. For if … he did not disdain the name of angel even before. For not only here shall we find our Lord named by Scripture both angel and God; Jacob too, telling his wives of the vision, says, "And the [angel] of God said to me," and a little after, from the same one, "I am the God who appeared to you in the place where you anointed a pillar for me." Yet there, at the pillar, it was said to Jacob, "I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac." So the one called angel here is the one who says he appeared there … … It is plain to everyone, then, that wherever the same one is called both angel and God, the Only-Begotten is meant, manifesting himself to human beings in each generation and announcing the will of the Father to his saints. So also in the case of Moses, the one who named himself "the One who is" would be understood to be no other than God the Word, who was in the beginning with God.

[19] But those who speak wickedness against the height did not shrink from calling the Son "not being." "The fool has said in his heart, There is no God"; but these men not only thought it, but spoke in wickedness and did not refuse to hand it down in writing to later times, daring to name God "not being." And since they see that not even the demons deny that God is, they go back in their argument to the time before, and there fulfill their impious desire, blaspheming that the Son once was not, as though by his own nature he were not, but had been brought into being by grace by God. Then the word that Paul uttered about idols, saying, "You served gods that by nature are not," and Jeremiah, "And they swore by those that are not gods," and the most wise Esther, "Do not give over your scepter, Lord, to those who are not": this word these men have spoken of the true God. How could they still rightly lay claim to the name of Christians? For elsewhere too this same Apostle, speaking in the Spirit of God, names the Gentiles "things that are not" because they were deprived of the knowledge of God, saying, "God chose the things that are not." For since God is the One who is, and truth, and life, those who were not united by faith to God who is, but had been made akin to the nonexistence of falsehood through the error of idols, were fittingly, I think, called "not being," because of the privation of truth and estrangement from life. But writing to the Ephesians as to those genuinely united to the One who is through knowledge, he named them in a special way "those who are," saying, "To the saints who are, and faithful in Christ Jesus." For so those before us have handed it down, and we too have found it in the old copies. But he did not bring himself to grant our God even the name that the servants of Christ share, but called "not being" the one who brought creation from not being into being. One may learn his contempt even more from the words by which he pretends to extol the Lord:

EUNOMIUS: "We do not make the essence of the Only-Begotten common," he says, "with the things that came to be from what is not, since what is not is not an essence; but we assign him as much superiority as the maker must have over his own works."

BASIL: Having led his argument to this point by his constructions, he plays the generous man in words, and says that he does not make the essence of the Only-Begotten common with the things from what is not. Yet if the God of the universe, because he is unbegotten, necessarily differs from begotten things, and all begotten things have in common their subsistence from what is not, how are these not necessarily joined in nature? For as there inaccessibility separates the natures, so here equality of honor brings them together into the same. Saying that the Son and the things made by him are from what is not, and making their nature common in this respect, they say that they do not give him an essence like the things from what is not. And again, as though he himself were lord, he frames his words as if granting the Only-Begotten as much dignity as he wishes: "We assign him," he says, "as much superiority as the maker must have over his own works." He did not say, "We have grasped" or "We glorify," as was fitting in speaking of God, but "We assign," as if he himself controlled the measure of the distribution. And how much superiority does he give? "As much," he says, "as the maker must surpass his own works." This does not yet bear witness to a difference in essence. For human beings surpass their own works in art, and yet are of the same essence as them, as the potter with the clay and the shipbuilder with the timbers; for both alike are bodies, alike perceptible, and alike earthy.

[20] Having granted the Son only so much difference from creation, he now does mischief also with the very notion of the …:

EUNOMIUS: "For this reason he is Only-Begotten: because, begotten and created alone by the only one through the power of the unbegotten, he became the most perfect minister."

BASIL: I do not know at which of the things he has said I should be more indignant. Is it at the knavery he has worked on the name "Only-Begotten," taking its sense against both the usage of human beings and the pious tradition of the Scriptures (for in common usage "only-begotten" is said not of one who came to be from only one, but of one who alone was begotten)? Or at the blasphemy of "creature," which he deliberately joined to "begotten," to show that the Lord shares the name "having been begotten" no differently from creatures, but that, as in "I have begotten sons and raised them up" and "Israel is my firstborn son," so the Lord too has been named Son, not having the name that is above every name, but [counted worthy] of the designation equally with the others … the text, and from there, as from a base of operations, they overrun the faith. For because "The Lord created me" was said in the person of Wisdom, they have supposed they may call the Lord a creature. For my part, though I have much to say about this word (first, that it is said only once in all the Scriptures; then, that it is in a book that has much of its sense hidden and proceeds for the most part by proverbs, parables, dark sayings, and riddles, so that nothing undisputed or clear can be taken from it), I pass over saying it, so as not to lengthen the discourse with longer digressions, especially since the examination of what they have understood badly has been deferred by us to its own place, in which this part too, God granting, will be set right. And I think, if this may be said with God's help, that a much more consistent sense of the text before us, and one that brings no danger, will appear in the examination. Meanwhile let us not leave this unremarked: that other translators, who have hit upon the meaning … more aptly, have rendered "acquired me" instead of "created." This will be the greatest obstacle for them to the blasphemy of "creature." For the one who said, "I have acquired a man through God," plainly used this word not of creating Cain but of begetting him.

[21] But let us return to the beginning.

EUNOMIUS: "For this reason," he says, "he is Only-Begotten: because, begotten and created from the only one, he became the most perfect minister."

BASIL: If, then, he is called Only-Begotten not because he alone was begotten but because he is from the only one, and in your view being created is the same as being begotten, why do you not also call him "only-created," you who think and say everything so easily? By our reckoning, then, it seems, no human being is only-begotten, since everyone is born of a pair. Nor was Sarah the mother of an only-begotten child, since she bore him not alone but with Abraham. And if your views prevail, we must relearn the whole of life: the name will indicate not the absence of brothers but the lack of co-parents. And now creation too falls short in dignity of the cause, God the Word, only so far as it misses being itself only-begotten, in so far as the Son had a hand with the Father in the work of creation; and yet not even this is granted by them, for they name him the most perfect minister. How then, on your view, has creation not come to be from the only one, when you add God the Word to the Father as a kind of lifeless instrument? Unless one will deny that the shipbuilder alone made the ship because he used tools to build it. So creation too is only-begotten, and its parts: not only the invisible powers but also perceptible bodies, and the cheapest of them, gnats and locusts and frogs. "For he spoke, and they came to be." What ministry would he need who creates by will alone, creation coming to subsist together with his willing? What then? How, on our view, are all things through the Son? Because the divine will, issuing as from a spring of the first cause, through … But he has [named] the only-begotten Son a minister, adding to him this great thing: that he is well suited to the service of what is commanded. For if he has his glory not in being perfect God but in being an exact minister, how will he differ from the ministering spirits, who accomplish the work of their service blamelessly? That is why he joined "created" to "begotten," so that from this too he might show that there is no difference between the Son and a creature.

[22] The exhortation also deserves a hearing:

EUNOMIUS: "One must not," he says, "attending to the designation of Father and Son, conceive his begetting in a human way, and, being led up from generations among human beings, subject God to the names and passions of participation."

BASIL: The exhortation is that one must not conceive a likeness in essence between Son and Father. For this is what his prohibition of participation means: as if the Father's essence had no communion with that of the Only-Begotten. That is the purpose of those solemn distinctions of names, whose crowd we have passed over: that things whose utterances are the same are not therefore the same in meaning, so that he might take away God's being Father of the Son because of those on earth who are called fathers. For my part, among the many things that set Christianity apart from Greek … , I think no doctrine in the Gospel of our salvation is more decisive than faith in Father and Son. For that God is creator and maker even those who have broken away in any way at all agree. But the one who proclaims a falsely named Father, and a Son only in bare name, and thinks it makes no difference whether one confesses Father or creator, or says Son or thing made: where will he be ranked by us? To which party will he be counted, that of the Jews or that of the Greeks? For he will surely not enroll himself among the Christians, he who denies the power of piety and, as it were, the stamp of our worship. For we did not … believe in a maker and a thing made, but were sealed by the grace of baptism into Father and Son. So the one who dares to set aside these words strikes out at once the whole power of the Gospels, proclaiming a Father who did not beget and a Son who was not begotten. "But I say this," he says, "to avoid the notion of passion that arises from the word Father." Yet one who knows how to be pious ought surely, if anything incongruous is present in the sense of these words, not to set aside the word wholesale, nor on the pretext of what is unfitting to throw out with it whatever is useful in it, but in doctrines about God to keep himself clean of lowly and fleshly notions and to conceive a begetting befitting the holiness and impassibility of God: leaving the manner in which God begot as ineffable and incomprehensible, but being guided by the name "begetting" to likeness in essence. And yet it is plain to anyone who examines it that these names, I mean "father" and "son," do not in their proper and primary sense naturally produce a notion of bodily passions; said by themselves, they indicate only their relation to each other. For a father is one who has provided another with the beginning of being in a nature like his own; a son is one who has had the beginning of his being from another by way of begetting.

[23] So when we hear that a man is a father, we take in with it the notion of passion; but when we hear that God is Father, we run up in our reasonings to the impassible cause. But he, accustomed to this name in the case of the nature subject to passion, denies as impossible what is beyond the grasp of his own reasonings. For it was not right, attending to the passion of corruptible beings, to disbelieve the impassibility of God, nor to set the unchanging and unalterable essence beside the flowing nature that is subject to countless changes. Nor, because mortal animals beget through passion, should one have thought the same of God; rather, one should have been guided from this toward the truth: that since corruptible beings beget in this way, the incorruptible one does so in the opposite way. Nor indeed would he say this: that these names are applied properly and primarily to human beings, and that we apply them to God by a misuse of terms. For our Lord Jesus Christ, leading us up to the beginning of all things and the true cause of beings, says, "Call no one your father on earth; for you have one Father, the heavenly one." How then does he think we should reject these words as indicating fleshly passions in the first place, when the Lord transfers them from human beings to himself as befitting the impassibility of God? And if … … is in conflict with ours. For the one who has brought forth the drops of dew, in the words of Job, did not bring forth the drops and the Son in the same way. Or if they dare to say this, so as to call the substance of the dew "son" in the same rank, they will release us from all argument with them, having carried their blasphemy on to the most manifest shamelessness. For not even when God is called Father of us all is he Father of us and of the Only-Begotten in the same way. And if the fact that the Lord has been called "firstborn of all creation" and "firstborn among many brothers" trains them for impiety, let them learn from the Gospel that the Lord also calls "mother" and "brothers" those made akin to him by the works of virtue: "Who," he says, "is my mother, and who are my brothers, but those who do the will of my Father in heaven?" So God is named our Father not by a misuse of terms nor by metaphor, but properly, primarily, and truly, since he has brought us from not being into being through our bodily parents, and by his care … If, then, we say that God is truly called Father of us, who are counted worthy of the grace of adoption, what argument will take away from the Son by nature, who came forth from his essence, that he fittingly calls him Father?

EUNOMIUS: "One must not," he says, "because of the designation of Father and Son, conceive the Lord's begetting as human."

BASIL: I say so too. But what prevents the pious from believing in one that is divine and impassible? But, I think, he uses these words not to show that God begot impassibly, but that he did not beget at all. How then, my good man, did you declare in your earlier arguments that the essence of the Only-Begotten is offspring? For if he has not been begotten, from where did being offspring belong to him, by your argument? But because of the opposition of begotten to unbegotten he strove to show that the essence is offspring; but now, seeing again that the kinship of essence is … by this word, he takes away from the offspring its having been begotten. Yet if he rejects this as indicating passion, what prevents him, for the same reasons, from not admitting that he is creator either? For with all bodily activities some greater or lesser toil is joined, in proportion to the power of the maker and the difference in the magnitudes of the works. But to say that the divine and blessed nature is held by weariness is no less impious than to subject it to the most shameful passions. If, then, he creates impassibly, accept that the begetting too is impassible.

[24] That God is called Father properly and fittingly, then, and that this is a name not of passion but of kinship, either by grace, as with human beings, or by nature, as with the Only-Begotten, has been said sufficiently. But let us grant that this word too, like countless others, is figurative and said by metaphor. When we hear that God is angry, and sleeps, and flies, and other such things that present meanings unfitting by the ready sense, we neither strike out the words of the Spirit nor take what is said in a bodily way. Why then, when this word is used so constantly by the Spirit, do we not search out its meanings worthy of God? Or shall we erase this one alone from Scripture, slandering it from human usage? Let us consider it thus. Two things are signified by the name "to beget" in our usage here: the passion of the one begetting and the kinship with the one begotten. When the Father says to the Only-Begotten, "From the womb before the morning star I have begotten you," and, "You are my Son, today I have begotten you," which of these shall we say is presented by the word: the passion of those who beget, or the kinship of nature? For my part, I say the latter, and I do not think that even these men, unless carried off into a manifest frenzy, will oppose it. So, if the word is proper to God, why do you dishonor it as foreign? And if it is [taken] from …, flee the worse of the things it indicates. For surely, with a word of many meanings, one may be guided by the word to the right notion and pass beyond what is lowly and shameful in its suggestion. And do not say to me, "What, then, is the begetting? Of what kind? And how could it take place?" For since the manner is ineffable and wholly incomprehensible, we shall not on that account throw out the firm foundation of our faith in Father and Son. For if we are to measure everything by our comprehension, and suppose that what cannot be grasped by our reasonings does not exist at all, the reward of faith will be gone, and the reward of hope will be gone. How could we still be worthy of the blessings laid up for faith in things unseen, if we trust only what is evident to reasoning? Why did the nations become futile, and their senseless heart darkened? Was it not because, following what appeared from their reasonings, they disobeyed the proclamation of the Spirit? And whom does Isaiah lament as lost? "Woe to those who are wise in themselves, and …"

Passing over much of what lies between, then, all that he contended openly about the Son's not having been begotten, and all that he contrived about the Only-Begotten's admitting to be a creature and a thing made, I will turn to the most critical points of his impiety, noting only this about what has been passed over: that, wishing to overshadow with words the blasphemy he had previously constructed in deed, and to soften the shamelessness of his argument, he said that he [did not] make the Only-Begotten common with creation, forgetting his own doctrines, which he set out in his earlier arguments in bare and undisguised language. By them he has fallen into … Now he writes thus:

EUNOMIUS: "Let no one, hearing that the Son is a thing made, be troubled, as if the essence were made common by the commonness of the names."

BASIL: How then, most wise sir, if difference of essence necessarily follows the difference of names (for we surely remember him going through this in his earlier arguments), will not commonness of essence now follow commonness of names? For he does not appear to have uttered this argument once, or in passing. And now immediately, as if repenting of what he had said, namely that commonness of names will not make the essences common, he again adds a little later, attacking his opponents:

EUNOMIUS: "That, if they had any concern for the truth, they ought … to confess that the essences too [differ]."

BASIL: How could anyone use words more lightly? Turning round to opposites in a short space, he says now that difference of names necessarily indicates difference of essences, and now again that their commonness does not make the essences common. But, I think, we are doing something like those who judge a murderer on charges of abuse, or a blow, or some such offense …

[25] Let us pass on, then, to the chief of his evils. This man saw that a common preconception is present in all Christians alike (in those, at least, who are truly worthy of this name) concerning the … : that the Son is begotten light, shining forth from the unbegotten light, and life itself and good itself, come forth from the life-giving spring of the Father's goodness. Then he reflected that unless he shook these notions of ours, he would gain nothing more from his sophisms, since the one who confesses the Father to be light and the Son also light, the notion of light being one and the same, would be led of himself to the confession of kinship in essence; for between light and light, by the very account of light, there is no difference either in utterance or in the notion itself. In order, then, to take this away from us, he [throws] around the … of … the nets of his tricks, teaching that they are wholly without fellowship with one another, and saying that the opposition of the unbegotten to the begotten is also that of light to light, or else forcing us, if we flee this, to confess that God is composite. But let us rather hear his very words.

EUNOMIUS: "Does light," he says, "signify something different in the unbegotten from the begotten, or the same in each? If one thing and another, it is clear that what is composed of one thing and another is composite; and what is composite is not unbegotten. But if the same, then as much as the begotten differs from the unbegotten, so much must light differ from light, life from life, and power from power."

BASIL: … "As much," he says, "as the unbegotten differs from the begotten, so much will light differ from light, life from life, and power from power." Let us ask him, then: by what measure is the unbegotten separated from the begotten? By some small one, so small that they could sometimes come together into the same? Or is this wholly impossible, more impossible even than for the same person to be alive and dead at the same time, to be well and ill at once, to be awake and asleep together? For such are all things that stand opposed to one another in extreme opposition, so that when one is present the other must necessarily …, things that by nature cannot coexist at all and are incompatible.

[26] Since, then, the opposition of the begotten to the unbegotten is of this kind, the one who names the Father light and the Son also light, and says that this light is separated from that light as much as the begotten is separated from the unbegotten—is it not plain that, even if in word he pretends to be generous, naming the Son also, supposedly, light, yet by the force of what he says he carries the notion to the opposite? For see: what is opposed to the unbegotten, another unbegotten or the begotten? The begotten, clearly. And what is opposed to light, another light or darkness? Darkness, surely. If, then, as much as the begotten differs from the unbegotten, so much must light differ from light, to whom of all is the impiety not plain: that, bringing in under the name of light what is opposed to light, he suggests that the essence of the Only-Begotten is contrary to the nature of light? Or let him show us a light opposed to light, having the measure of opposition that the begotten has to the unbegotten. But if this neither exists nor could he himself conceive it, let the art not go unnoticed with which he constructs the blasphemy so deeply. For since he thinks that the begotten is opposed to the unbegotten as a contrary, he applies the same opposition to light in relation to light, so that through everything he may show the essence of the Father to be hostile and at war with that of the Only-Begotten. That is the purpose of this new legislation of doctrines: "As much as the begotten differs from the unbegotten, so much must light differ from light." Yet between the unbegotten and the begotten there is some opposition according to the position of the words, if not according to the nature of the things (which is what these men are constructing); but between light and light one cannot conceive any opposition, either in utterance or in notion. But it seems that he deceives himself with deceptive sophisms. For he thinks that what follows from contraries has the same conflict with one another that the antecedents have, and that when a contrary belongs to one of the contraries, the contrary will surely follow the other as well. For example, if light follows sight, darkness follows blindness; if sensation follows living, insensibility follows being dead. That this observation is weak and collapses is known to anyone who pays even a little attention. For since life follows being awake, it does not by any means follow that death follows sleeping. Nor is the begotten contrary to the unbegotten. For even if they were contraries and destructive of each other (may that fall on the heads of the blasphemers!), still they are not hostile by nature, nor will what follows from them necessarily have the same distance that he was showing the antecedents to have.

[27] Either, then, erase your words, or do not deny the impiety. For yours is the blasphemy of the one who said, "As much as the unbegotten differs from the begotten, so much must light differ from light." So, as the begotten will never share in ingeneracy, so you will never grant him a share of light. And by your account the essence of the Only-Begotten will be as far from being thought and named light as from being unbegotten. But John cries out to you with the loud voice of the Spirit, saying, "He was the true light"; but you have no ears to hear nor heart to understand, but with your sophisms you drive the essence of the Only-Begotten to the opposing nature, which cannot coexist with light. For you will not call this a strong point: that even in the case of the Only-Begotten you did not take away the name of light. For piety lies not in a noise of air but in the force of the things signified. But he did not stop at these; he also brings in life and power with the same measure of departure toward the opposite, saying, "As much as the begotten differs from the unbegotten, so much must light differ from light, life from life, and power from power." So by your account the Only-Begotten is neither life nor power. But you strike out the Lord himself, who says, "I am the life," and you strike out Paul, who said, "Christ the power of God." For what was shown earlier will fit these too. For no one would say that life is opposed to life, or power to power; rather, death and powerlessness complete the most perfect opposition. These things this man constructs in … and covertly, the horror of his impiety, and having removed the nature of the Only-Begotten, by the tricks of his words, to the opposite of the Father, he leaves only the fair sound of the names. What then do we say? How, confessing the Father unbegotten and the Son begotten, shall we escape contrariety in their very being? By saying what? That from a good Father the Son is good; from the unbegotten light the eternal light has shone forth; from the true life the life-giving spring has come forth; and from power itself the power of God has appeared. But darkness and death and weakness are ranked with the ruler of this world, the world-rulers of darkness, the spiritual forces of wickedness, and every power hostile to the divine nature; not that these were allotted their contrariety to the good in their very essence (for so the blame would rise to the Creator), but because they flowed away into wickedness of their own choice, in the privation of the good. Nevertheless, the God-fighting tongue has tried to bring the nature of the Only-Begotten round into this rank. For he cannot say that, positing the essence of the Father as light surpassing in glory and brilliance, he supposed that of the Only-Begotten also to be light, but somewhat dimmer and, as it were, clouded. Not even this belongs to a pious mind, to take away the likeness of the image by its dimness. Still, it would be something to wish for, that this was his view; for we would not need much of a struggle to correct it. … hiding his deceit in knavery of words, … the hidden part of …

[28] But as it is, the difference of the unbegotten from the begotten is not by more and less, as of a lesser light from a greater, but as great as the distance between things wholly incapable of coexisting with each other. For it is impossible that what has the one should ever pass by change to its opposite, so as to become begotten from unbegotten or, conversely, to change from begotten to unbegotten. For the one, then, who has once declared that "as much as the begotten differs from the … so much must light differ from light," not even this argument is left as a way of escape. For pure light differs from light that is, so to speak, faded and dimmer only by intensity, being the same in kind; but the unbegotten is not an intensification of the begotten, nor is the begotten a diminution of the unbegotten; rather, their distance is, as it were, diametrical. For those who make begotten and unbegotten essence, these absurdities and still more will follow. For the contrary will have been begotten from its contrary, and instead of natural kinship a necessary strife will appear for them in the very essence. And this shows more ignorance than impiety: to say that an essence is contrary to any essence at all, when it has long been agreed even among the wise outside (whom these men, when they do not find them fighting on the side of their blasphemies, set aside as worthless) that contrariety cannot exist in essence. But if, as is true, one accepts that begotten and unbegotten are certain distinguishing properties contemplated in the essence, leading us by the hand to a clear and unconfused notion of Father and Son, he will escape the danger of impiety and preserve consistency in his reasonings. For the properties, like certain marks and forms contemplated in the essence, divide what is common by their distinguishing characters, but do not cut apart the sameness of nature of the essence. For example, the Godhead is common, but fatherhood and sonship are certain properties; and from the combination of both, the common and the proper, the comprehension of the truth arises in us. So, when we hear "unbegotten light," we think of the Father, and when we hear "begotten light," we receive the notion of the Son. Insofar as they are light and light, there is no contrariety in them; insofar as they are begotten and unbegotten, the opposition is contemplated. For this is the nature of properties: to show otherness in the sameness of the essence. The properties themselves, divided against each other, often stand apart to the point of opposition, but they do not tear apart the unity of the essence, as winged and footed, aquatic and terrestrial, rational and irrational. For one essence underlies them all, and these properties do not estrange the essence or persuade it, as it were, to revolt against itself; by the activity of the distinguishing marks, placing a kind of light in our souls, they guide us to the understanding our minds can attain. But this man, transferring the opposition of the properties to the essence, draws from there the occasion for his impiety, frightening us like children with his sophisms: … God will necessarily be shown to be composite.

[29] What do I say? That if light were not something other than the unbegotten, it could no longer be said of the Son, just as the unbegotten itself cannot. One may also learn the difference of what the words signify from this: God is said to dwell in light and to put on light as a garment, but the word nowhere says that he dwells in his own ingeneracy or has it lying around him from outside (these things are ridiculous). Begotten and unbegotten are certain distinguishing properties. For if there were nothing that characterizes the essence, it would in no way reach our understanding. For since the Godhead is one, it is impossible to grasp a distinct notion of Father or of Son unless our thought is articulated by the addition of the properties. As for God's appearing composite unless light is taken as the same as the unbegotten, we can say this: if we took the unbegotten as a part of the essence, his argument that what is made of different things is composite would have a place. But if we posit that the essence of God is light, or life, or the good, that he is, in what he is, wholly life, wholly light, wholly good, while life has the unbegotten as a concomitant, how is the one who is simple in essence not incomposite? For the modes that indicate his property will surely not undo the account of his simplicity; or else in this way everything said of God will show us that God is composite. And it seems that, if we are to preserve the notion of the simple and partless, either we shall say nothing about God except "unbegotten," and refuse to name him invisible, incorruptible, unchangeable, creator, judge, and all that we now take up to glorify him; or, accepting these names, what shall we do? Shall we put them all into the essence? Then we shall show him not only composite but composed of unlike parts, since each of these names signifies something different. Or shall we take them as outside the essence? Then whatever account they give for each of those, let them give the same for the designation "unbegotten" too …

[30] Having filled his argument with empty chatter, and exalting himself over all who have ever devoted themselves to the knowledge of God, as though he had cut a new and fresh road leading to God that none of his predecessors found, he finally brings in, as though taught by the very essence of God, the blasphemy against the Son:

EUNOMIUS: "That the [essence] which is above kingship and wholly incapable of generation, teaching these things to the mind that approaches it with goodwill, bids us thrust away as far as possible, by a law of nature, comparison with another."

BASIL: … he was counted worthy of the revelation of unspeakable things, having brought his mind to God with goodwill? And for this reason he thrusts the Only-Begotten as far as possible from fellowship with the Father, not even deeming him worthy to be admitted to comparison; and he also says that the essence of the Only-Begotten has been separated by a law of nature from that of the Father. What does he mean by this? That the God of the universe, even if he wished, could not admit the Only-Begotten to kinship of essence, being shut out by a law of nature from union with him; not being, it seems, master of himself, but yoked under the limits of necessity. For such are the things held by the law of nature: they are led without choice to what seems good to the nature. As heat belongs to fire by nature, not by choice, and it necessarily cannot admit cold, being deprived by the law of nature of fellowship with it, so he wants God the Father too to have his essence estranged from the Son by a law of nature. And yet the laws of nature make not a separation of the Son from the Father, but a necessary and unbreakable fellowship. If he had said that the God of the universe had by his will established that the Son should have no fellowship with himself, not even so would the account of God's goodness allow it to be credible, that the Father gives the one from him no share in what is his; yet what he said would at least be consistent. But to say that the estrangement exists by a law of nature belongs to one who has not even examined the nature found in sensible things, according to which each thing naturally begets not what is foreign or contrary, but rather what is akin and fitting.

[31] Here again, then, he did not notice the contradiction of his statements with each other. For in his earlier arguments, indignant at those who say that the Only-Begotten is like the Father in essence, he wrote thus:

EUNOMIUS: "In the first place, those who have dared to compare the essence that is masterless, superior to every cause and free of all laws, with the one that is begotten and serves paternal laws, seem to me either never to have examined the nature of the universe at all, or not to make their judgments about these things with a pure mind."

BASIL: How then has the masterless essence, free of all laws, now appeared as having its incomparability not voluntarily but held fast by a law of nature, and driving the begotten from fellowship with itself without choice, so that for this reason it is unapproachable even to the Only-Begotten himself? So great is the inconsistency in what he says; and how great the impiety? He calls the essence of the Father masterless and free (if indeed what bows to the law of nature is masterless), and by contrast declares that of the Only-Begotten servile, and by this too he takes away the equality of honor in nature. For since there are two things, creation and Godhead, and creation is set in servitude and obedience, while the Godhead is ruling and sovereign, the one who takes away from him the dignity of lordship and casts him down to the lowliness of servitude: is he not plainly showing him by this too to be ranked with all creation? For it is surely no honor to him to be foremost among fellow servants. But not to confess him King and Lord, who accepts this obedience not through any inferiority of nature but through the goodness of his choice, is grievous and dreadful and brings destruction on those who deny it. And he adds:

EUNOMIUS: "For the essence of God, following the laws of nature, does not admit comparison with another, and grants us to conceive its activity as consequent upon and fitting to its own dignity."

BASIL: This was said by him to prove the estrangement of the Only-Begotten from the Father, but it establishes our argument. For if the essence of God grants us to conceive its activity too as consequent upon and fitting to its own dignity, then the dignity is ingeneracy, as Eunomius thinks; this same thing is also essence, by their argument; and the Only-Begotten is God's activity, or the image of his activity, this too by their argument; so that it would be pointless for them to contradict this, since they have nothing to say. I would give much for them to deny this blasphemy; but since they have said it, let us reason from their own statements: that God's dignity is ingeneracy; that the same thing is also essence; and that the activity consequent upon and fitting to God's dignity is, on their supposition, Christ. Therefore he will be proper to and fitting for the essence of God. None of this is ours; we make the demonstration against them by putting their own words together. "Dignity," he says, "follows the essence of God; the activity is proportionate to the dignity; the Only-Begotten is the image of the activity." And conversely, if the Only-Begotten is the image of the activity, and the activity of the dignity, and the dignity of the essence, the Only-Begotten will be the image of the essence. So the workers of falsehood themselves, often constrained by the force of it, bear witness to the truth even against their will. For the demons too were not doing the work of evangelists, but, unable to look upon the light of truth, they cried out, "We know who you are, the Holy One of God."

[32] Let us see what follows as well.

EUNOMIUS: "For if one, considering things from the works, is led up from them to the essences, … the Paraclete from the Only-Begotten, and, confirming the difference of activity from the superiority of the Only-Begotten, he receives an undisputed proof of the difference of essence too."

BASIL: First, then, how it is possible to infer the essences from the works I do not see. For things made indicate power and wisdom and art, not the essence itself. And they do not necessarily present even the whole power of the maker, since it is possible for the craftsman not to put all his strength into his activities, but often to use the slackened tensions of his art in his works. And even if he set his whole power in motion for the work, even so it would be possible to measure his strength through his works, but not to grasp his essence, whatever it is. But if, because of the simplicity and incompositeness of the divine nature, he sets the essence as coinciding with the power, and because of the goodness that belongs to God says that the whole power of the Father was moved to the begetting of the Son, and in turn the whole power of the Only-Begotten to the subsistence of the Holy Spirit, so that from the Spirit the power of the Only-Begotten is contemplated, and with it the essence, and from the Only-Begotten in turn the power and essence of the Father are grasped: see the conclusion. From the very things by which he tried to establish the unlikeness of the essence, he has been shown to construct its likeness. For if power has nothing in common with … from the house the essence of the builder … which are the results of power, led to the grasp of it? But if essence and power are the same, what characterizes the power will surely characterize the essence too. So the works, as you say, lead not to unlikeness of essence but to exactness of likeness. Again, then, this attempt too establishes our argument rather than his. For either he has nowhere to furnish proofs of what he has said, or, if he takes images from human things, he will find that we come to an understanding of a craftsman's essence not from his works but from the one begotten … it is possible; but from the offspring it is easy to understand the nature of the begetter. So if the Only-Begotten is a work, he does not present to us the essence of the Father; but if he makes known to us through himself the Father, … image of God and stamp of the hypostasis.

[33] And how great is the addition to his blasphemy? Despising the threat in the Gospels, the most fearful one, which the Lord held over those who blaspheme the Holy Spirit, he calls the Holy Spirit a work, all but refusing even to grant that he is a living being, since this designation fits lifeless things for the most part. For the fact that he first directed this blasphemy against the Lord is surely no reason for us to relax any of our indignation; it is no mitigation of the impiety but an addition to the condemnation. For the Lord pardoned the blasphemy against himself because of his goodness, but [declared] the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit inescapable for those who dared it. He is the first, then, of all since the proclamation of … to have dared to utter this word about the Spirit. For to this day we have not heard of anyone calling the Holy Spirit a work, nor have we found this designation in the writings they have left. Then he says:

EUNOMIUS: "If one is led up from the works to the comprehension of the essence, he will find the Son a thing made of the unbegotten, and the Paraclete of the Only-Begotten."

BASIL: This is another manner of impiety: to blaspheme doubly in one statement, and, taking the disparagement of the Holy Spirit as agreed, to set out from there to prove the inferiority of the Only-Begotten. And so, it seems, "the heavens declare the glory of God," but the Holy Spirit announces the diminution of the glory of the Only-Begotten! The Lord, speaking of the Paraclete, says, "He will glorify me"; but the accusing tongue declares that he is an obstacle to the Son's comparison with the Father. For since, he says, the Son is the maker of the Spirit (be gracious to us, Lord, in what we say!), and this is such as to add no dignity to the one who made it, therefore the Son is not worthy to be compared with the Father, being deprived of equality of dignity by the cheapness of what he made.

[34] Have you ever heard a more grievous blasphemy? Has anyone fallen so openly into the inescapable judgment of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit? [Only] … against the Spirit, both to insult him with lowly names and to cheapen his nature so far as to say that it brings dishonor on the one who made him. Rather, even that man would have avoided saying anything lowly about the Spirit, so as not to overthrow his own conceit. But of this we shall speak at leisure. To whom of all is it not plain that no activity of the Son is cut off from the Father, and that there is nothing among the things that are which belongs to the Son and is estranged from the Father? "For all that is mine," he says, "is yours, and yours is mine." How then does he assign the cause of the Spirit to the Only-Begotten alone, and take his creation of the Spirit as a predicate of his nature? If, then, he says this setting up two principles against each other …, he will be crushed together with Mani and Marcion; but if he attaches the things that are to one principle, what is said to have come to be from the Son has its reference to the first cause. So, even though we believe that all things were brought into being through God the Word, we do not take away from the God of the universe his being the cause of all. And how does it not carry an obvious danger to divide the Spirit from God? The Apostle hands him down to us as joined, speaking of him now as Christ's and now as God's, when he writes, "If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not his," and again, "But you [received] not the … but the [Spirit] that is from God"; and the Lord calls him the Spirit of truth, since he himself is the truth … to the lowering of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ, he takes the Spirit away from the Father and assigns him specially to the Only-Begotten, to the lowering of his glory, insulting him, as he thinks, and expecting no vengeance for his wicked doctrines in the day of recompense.

[1] BASIL: Having at last had his fill of blasphemies against the Only-Begotten, he has passed on to the Holy Spirit, speaking about him too in keeping with his whole purpose. He writes thus:

EUNOMIUS: "Having said so much about the Only-Begotten, it would be fitting to speak next about the Paraclete as well, not following the unexamined opinions of the many, but keeping in all things the teaching of the saints, from whom we learned that he is third in dignity and order, and have believed that he is third in nature as well."

BASIL: That he does not think it right to abide by the simple and unaffected faith of the many, but by artful and sophistical arguments once again to twist the truth toward what seems good to him, he has shown well enough by what he said. For, dishonoring the opinion of the many, by which they glorify the Holy Spirit, he pretends to keep the teaching of the saints, and passes over in silence those who handed it down to him, doing now what he was shown to do in his arguments about the Only-Begotten too. Then he says that from the saints he learned that the Spirit is third in order and dignity, but that of himself he has believed that he is third in nature as well. Who the saints are, and in what writings they gave this teaching, he cannot say. … ever been so daring a man as to introduce innovations concerning the divine doctrines? For what necessity is there, if [the Spirit] is third in dignity and order, … Perhaps the word of piety hands down that he is second to the [Son] in dignity; but that he has a third nature we have neither been taught by the holy Scriptures, nor is it possible to infer it consistently from what has been said. For as the Son is second to the Father in order, because he is from him, and in dignity, because the Father is principle and cause by being his Father, and because through him is our approach and access to the God and Father, but no longer second in nature, because the Godhead in each is one; so plainly the Holy Spirit too, even if he is below the Son in order and dignity (to concede this entirely), would not on that account fittingly follow as being of a foreign nature. That is clear from this. All the angels, as they have one designation, so they are wholly of the same nature with one another; yet some of them preside over nations, while others accompany each one of the faithful. As much as a whole nation is more honorable than one man, so much greater, surely, must the dignity of the angel ruling a nation be than that of the one [entrusted with] the protection of each individual. That an angel is with each of the faithful, like a tutor and shepherd directing his life, no one will dispute who remembers the words of the Lord, who said, "Do not despise one of these least ones, for their angels continually behold the face of my Father who is in heaven." And the Psalmist says, "the angel who delivered me from my youth," and the like. That there are also angels who preside over whole nations, Moses teaches us in his song, saying, "When the Most High divided the nations, when he scattered the sons of Adam, he fixed the boundaries of the nations according to the number of his angels." And the wise Daniel, in the vision of the angel, heard him saying, "The prince of the Persians stood against me, and behold, one of the chief princes [came] to help me, and I left him there with the prince of the king of the Persians." And a little later the same says, "And the prince of the … was coming." Moreover, a certain chief captain of the Lord's host is spoken of, the one who appeared to Joshua son of Nun at the Jordan. And again certain legions of angels are mentioned, when the Lord said to his disciples, "Or do you think that I cannot [call upon] my Father, and he will provide me here with more than twelve [legions] of angels?" The chief captain, then, of the angels ranked in the legions is plainly a ruler.

[2] To what, then, does our argument lead? That it is not necessarily the case that, if something is second or third in order and dignity, it also has a different nature. For as among the angels one is a ruler and another … , yet all are angels by nature, and the difference is in dignity while the fellowship is in nature (for "star differs from star in glory," but the nature of all the stars is one; and there are "many dwelling places" with the Father, that is, differences of dignity, but the nature of those glorified is alike); so plainly the Holy Spirit too, even if he is below in dignity and order, as they say (for we have received him, he says, as numbered third after Father and Son, the Lord himself having handed down the order in the tradition of saving baptism when he said, "Go, baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit"), yet that he has been cast out into some third nature apart from the Son and the Father we have nowhere learned. For since two things are spoken of, Godhead and creation, lordship and servitude, sanctifying power and power that is sanctified, that which has virtue from nature and that which achieves it by choice: in which portion shall we rank the Spirit? Among the sanctified? But he is sanctification itself. Among those who acquire virtue by good deeds? But he is good by nature. Among the ministering? But the ministering spirits sent out for service are different. It is not lawful, then, to call him our fellow servant, who is sovereign by nature, nor to number him with creation, who is numbered with the divine and blessed Trinity. For principalities and powers and all such creation, having their sanctification from attention and diligence, could not fittingly be said to be holy by nature. For, reaching out for the good, they receive their measure of holiness in proportion to their love for God. And as iron placed in the midst of fire does not cast off being iron, but, set aglow by its most intense contact with the fire and receiving the whole nature of fire into itself, passes over to the fire in color and activity, so too the holy powers, from their fellowship with that which is holy by nature, have sanctification through their whole … . But this is their difference from the Holy Spirit: for him holiness is nature, while for them being sanctified comes from participation. Those to whom the good belongs as something acquired and given from elsewhere are of a nature that can fall. For the Morning Star that rose at dawn would not have fallen or been crushed upon the earth, if by nature he had been incapable of receiving what is worse. How then is it pious to rank him with creation, when he is set apart from creation by so great a measure? For creation is so constituted as to have sanctification as a prize for progress and for pleasing God, but it has a self-determining nature and can incline to either side, choosing the good or the worse; but the Holy [Spirit] is the spring of sanctification. And as the Father is holy by nature and the Son holy by nature, so the Spirit of truth too is holy by nature; therefore he has also been counted worthy of the special and distinctive designation 'holy.'

[3] If, then, sanctification is his nature, as it is for the Father and the Son, how is he of a third and foreign nature? For this reason, I think, Isaiah records the Seraphim crying out 'holy' three times: because holiness by nature is contemplated in three hypostases. And not only the name of holiness is common to him with the Father and the Son, but also the very designation 'spirit.' For "God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth." And the prophet says, "The Spirit before our face, Christ the Lord, of whom we said, 'In his shadow we shall live.'" And the Apostle refers the designation 'spirit' to the Lord, saying, "[Now] the Lord is the Spirit." From these it is plain to everyone that the fellowship of the names presents not an estrangement of nature but kinship with the Father and the Son. And God is said to be good, and is; and the Holy Spirit too is good, not having goodness as something acquired, but coexisting with him by nature. Otherwise the most irrational thing of all would be to say that what is holy by nature does not have goodness by nature, but … to him. And in that the Lord said, "I will ask the Father, and he will give you …," he shows that the Spirit too is our Paraclete. So the designation 'Paraclete' also contributes not a little to the demonstration of the glory of the Holy Spirit.

[4] Such, then, are the names that indicate the greatness of his nature. But what are the activities of the Holy Spirit like? "By the [word] of the Lord," it says, "the heavens were made firm, and by the Spirit of his mouth all their power." As, then, God the Word is the maker of the heavens, so the Holy Spirit supplies the heavenly powers with the firmness and stability of virtue. And again Job: "The Spirit of the Lord, who made me," speaking, I think, not of creation but of perfection in human virtue. And Isaiah, speaking in the person of the Lord, plainly with reference to his humanity, says, "The Lord [has sent] me, and his Spirit." And again the psalm, showing that the power of the Spirit has passed through all things, says, "Where shall I go from your Spirit, and from your face where shall I flee?" And the benefits that reach us from him: what kind are they, and how great? As the Lord himself … … to become, so the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of adoption. And as our Lord is the true teacher, according to the saying, "Do not call anyone on earth your …, for one is your teacher, the Christ," so the Holy Spirit too is testified by the Lord himself to teach all who have believed in the name of the Lord, when he said, "But the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send, he will teach you all things." And as the Father is said to distribute the activities to those worthy to receive the activities, and the Son to distribute the services in the ranks of service, so the Holy Spirit is testified to distribute the gifts to those worthy to receive the gifts. For "there are distributions of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are distributions of services, but the same Lord; and there are distributions of activities, but it is the same God who works all things in all." Do you see how here too the activity of the Holy Spirit is ranked with the activity of the Father and the Son? Then, from what follows, the divinity of the Holy Spirit's nature is made still more manifest. For what does it say? "All these the one and the same Spirit works, distributing to each individually as he wills." This testifies to nothing else than his sovereign and lordly authority. That is why in the New Testament the prophets cried out, "Thus says the Holy Spirit." And searching the depths of God: from where does this belong to the Spirit? "As," it says, "no one among men knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man that is in him, so too no one has known the things of God except the Spirit of God." For as no outsider or stranger can look upon the inner thoughts of the soul, so plainly, if anything shares in God's secrets, it is not foreign or strange to him, and it can search out the depths of God's judgments. Then too life is supplied to us from God through Christ in the Holy Spirit. For God gives life, as Paul says: "I charge you before God, who gives life to all things"; and Christ gives life: "For my sheep," he says, "hear my voice, and I give them eternal life"; and we are made alive through the Spirit, as Paul says: "He who raised Christ from the dead will give life also to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you."

[5] But this man, daring in everything, and not cowering before the danger that hangs over those who dare to hurl a blasphemous word against the Holy Spirit, declares him to have no share in Godhead, writing thus about the Spirit:

EUNOMIUS: "Third in order and in nature, having come to be at the command of the Father and by the activity of the Son, honored in the third place, as the first and greatest of all and the only such work of the Only-Begotten, falling short of Godhead and of creative power."

BASIL: The one who says this seems not even to have believed that the Godhead dwells in us, though John says about God, "By this we know that he is in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us," and the Apostle, "Do you not know that you are God's temple and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?" and again, "In whom the whole building, joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit." If, then, God is said to dwell in us through the Spirit, how is it not manifest impiety to call the Spirit himself without share in the Godhead? And if we name "gods" those who are perfect in virtue, and perfection comes through the Spirit, how does he who makes others gods himself fall short of Godhead? Nor is it pious to say that the Spirit, as with human beings, has been honored with a Godhead that is participated, and not one that coexists with him by nature. For whoever is made god by grace is of a nature that can fall, sometimes flowing away from what is better through inattention. And this plainly conflicts with the tradition of saving baptism: "Go," it says, "baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." For baptism is the seal of faith, and faith is assent to Godhead; for one must first believe, and then be sealed with baptism. And our baptism, according to the Lord's tradition, is into the name of Father and Son and Holy Spirit, no creature and no servant being ranked with Father and Son, since the Godhead is completed in the Trinity. What is outside these is all fellow servant, even if some are honored above others by the greatest excesses of dignity.

[6] And do not again [bring] me these wise sayings:

EUNOMIUS: "If he is not a creature, then he is offspring or unbegotten. But there is one God without beginning and unbegotten. Nor yet is he offspring. It remains, then, that he is named creature and thing made."

BASIL: For my part, if I declared that all things were comprehensible to our knowledge, I would perhaps be ashamed to confess ignorance. But as it is, countless things are hidden from us, not only of those laid up in the age to come, nor only of those now in the heavens; but not even of the things that belong to us in the body is the comprehension clear and indisputable. For instance, about sight: do we form our perceptions by receiving the images of visible things? And how is the image of things vast in size, of the boundless earth and the infinite sea, and even of heaven itself, contained in the small measure of our pupil? Or do we send out something from ourselves, and when this approaches visible things, do we so have perception of them? And what is this, and how great, that it suffices to spread over earth and sea, to cross the space between earth and heaven, and to strike heaven itself, moving with such speed that in an equal time both the body around us and the stars in heaven are discerned? And why speak of the rest? Even the very motions of the mind: whether the soul is such as to create them or to beget them, who could say exactly? What wonder, then, if about the Holy Spirit too we confess our ignorance without shame, while yet rendering the glory that is indisputably attested to him? For that he is above creation, the things handed down through the Scriptures sufficiently show us, since it is impossible that what sanctifies and what is sanctified, what teaches and what is taught, what reveals and what needs revelation, should be of the same nature. But no one is so utterly out of his mind as to dare to call anything unbegotten except the God of the universe; nor yet Son, since the Only-Begotten is one. What, then, must we call him? Holy Spirit, and Spirit of God, and Spirit of truth, sent from God, supplied through the Son; not a servant, but holy, good, sovereign Spirit, life-giving Spirit, Spirit of adoption, knowing all the things of God. So too in the Trinity the account of the unity will be preserved, as we confess one Father, and one Son, and one Holy Spirit.

[7] They bring proofs that the Holy Spirit is called a creature: one from the prophet, who says, "He who makes firm the thunder and creates wind"; another from the Gospel: "All things came to be through him." But we are convinced that the prophetic saying refers not to the Holy Spirit but to this common breath, the wind of the air. That is clear from this: he did not say "who created wind" but "who creates wind." For as thunder is not something created once for all in some bodily subsistence, but is such as always to come into being and dissolve at the will of God, produced to make human beings fear, so too wind now arises, as the air flows like a river, and again ceases, when what was moving before is still, according to the will of him who orders all things for the salvation and preservation of the universe; so that through the whole creation, from thunders and winds and the rest of creation, the Creator is proclaimed. That is why, after saying "who makes firm the thunder and creates wind," it says, "and proclaims to human beings his Christ." For as "the heavens declare the glory of God" to those who can reckon from them the art of the Creator, so the sounds of thunder and the motions of winds proclaim their Creator. Perhaps this would also be a prophecy pointing to the Lord's becoming man: when the voice that came from heaven seemed to its hearers to be thunder, the voice which the God and Father sent forth to proclaim the Christ to human beings through it; and the winds that moved and stirred up the sea, then dropped at the Lord's command, plainly also proclaimed his Christ to human beings. And "All things came to be through him" in no way shows us that the Holy Spirit is created, as though the Spirit were numbered among all things. For if there is one Holy Spirit, and only one, how can what is of a singular nature be included with all things? And let no one think that denying that the Spirit is a creature is a setting aside of his hypostasis. For it belongs to a pious mind to beware of applying to the Holy Spirit what is passed over in silence in the holy Scriptures, and to be convinced that the experience and exact comprehension of him is laid up for us in the age to come, when, passing beyond seeing the truth through a mirror and in a riddle, we are counted worthy of contemplation face to face.