Theological Oration 1: Against the Eunomians, as a Preliminary Discourse

My discourse is aimed at those who are clever in speech. And to begin from Scripture: “Behold, I am against you, O insolent one.” For there are, there are some who have an itch in the ears and the tongue, and now, as I see, in the hand as well, for our words, and who delight in “profane babblings and the oppositions of knowledge falsely so called” and in “disputes about words” that lead to nothing useful. For so Paul calls everything that is excessive and superfluous in speech, he who is the herald and confirmer of the “word cut short,” the disciple and teacher of fishermen. As for these men of whom I speak: would that, just as they have a tongue that is nimble and clever at attacking nobler and more approved arguments, they would busy themselves a little, at least, with deeds as well. Then perhaps they would be less sophists and less absurd and outlandish acrobats of words, if I may say something laughable about a laughable matter.

But they have abandoned every road of piety and look to this one thing only: which of the propositions set before them they will bind or loose. They are like those who put on public wrestling shows in the theatres, and not the holds that lead to victory by the rules of the contest, but those that cheat the eyes of the ignorant and carry off the applause. Every marketplace must buzz with their arguments, every banquet be worn out with nonsense and tedium, every festival and every mourning be spoiled, the festival made no festival and full of gloom, the mourning consoled by a greater calamity, their questions; every women’s apartment, the nurse of simplicity, is troubled, and the flower of modesty is stripped away by quickness in argument. Since this is so, and the evil is unchecked and unbearable, and our great mystery is in danger of becoming a petty trick of technique, come then: let these spies bear with us so far, moved as we are with a father’s compassion and, as the divine Jeremiah says, torn in our inmost senses, as not to receive our word on these matters harshly; and let them hold their tongue a little, if indeed they can, and lend us their ear. You will lose nothing in any case. Either we have spoken into the ears of those who hear, and the word has borne some fruit, your own benefit (for the sower sows the word on every mind, but it is the good and fertile one that bears fruit); or you will go away having spat on this too and taken more material for contradicting and abusing us, so that you may feast yourselves the more. And do not be surprised if I say something paradoxical and contrary to your law, you who very boldly and grandly promise to know and to teach everything; I say “boldly and grandly” so as not to offend you by saying “ignorantly and rashly.”

It is not for everyone, sirs, to philosophize about God, not for everyone. The thing is not so cheap, nor for those who crawl on the ground. I will add: not always, not before everyone, not about everything, but at certain times, before certain people, and to a certain extent. Not for everyone, because it belongs to those who have been tested and have made progress in contemplation, and who before that have been purified in soul and body, or, at the very least, are being purified. For it is perhaps not even safe for the impure to touch what is pure, just as it is not safe for weak eyes to touch a sunbeam. When? When we are at leisure from the mire and tumult outside, and our ruling faculty is not confused by troubling and wandering images, as though one were mixing beautiful letters with ugly writing, or the fragrance of perfume with filth. For we must truly be at leisure and know God, and, when we find the right time, judge the straightness of theology. Before whom? Before those to whom the matter is a serious concern, and who do not chatter about it for pleasure as one more thing among others, after the races and the theatres and the songs and the belly and what is below the belly, people for whom this too is part of their luxury: wrangling about these things and clever oppositions. What should one philosophize about, and how far? About what is within our reach, and so far as the hearer’s condition and capacity reaches; so that, just as excessive sounds or foods harm the hearing or the body (or, if you like, burdens beyond their strength harm those who carry them, or too violent rains the earth), these too may not be crushed and weighed down by the solid food, so to speak, of discourse and so suffer loss even of the strength they had before.

I do not say this to mean that we should not always remember God; let not those who are ready and quick about everything fasten on us again. For we should remember God more often than we breathe, and, if one may say this, we should do nothing else. I too am one of those who praise the word that bids us meditate day and night, and tell of him evening and morning and noon, and bless the Lord at all times; and, if we must also use Moses’ words, lying down, rising up, walking on the road, whatever else one is doing, and be moulded toward purity by this remembrance. So it is not remembering continually that I forbid, but theologizing; and not theology, as though it were impious, but its untimeliness; not teaching, but lack of measure. Surfeit and satiety even of honey produce vomiting, though it is honey; and there is a time for every matter, as Solomon thinks and I do too; and the beautiful is not beautiful when it is not done beautifully, like a flower in winter, wholly out of season, or men’s adornment on women or women’s on men, or geometry in mourning, or tears at a drinking party. Shall we then disregard the right time here alone, where fitness of time most deserves to be honoured?

By no means, my friends and brothers (for I still call you brothers, though you are not behaving like brothers); let us not think so. Let us not, like hot-blooded, hard-mouthed horses, throw off our rider, reason, and spit out reverence, which holds us well in check, and run far past the turning-post. Let us philosophize within our own boundaries, and not be carried off into Egypt or dragged down among the Assyrians, nor “sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land,” that is, before every kind of hearing, strange and our own, hostile and friendly, fair-minded and unfair. Such hearing watches our affairs very carefully and would like the spark of our evils to become a flame; it secretly kindles and fans it and raises it to heaven with its own breezes, and makes it higher than the Babylonian flame that burned up everything around. For since they have no strength in their own doctrines, they hunt for it in our weak points, and so they settle on our (should I call them misfortunes or sins?) as flies settle on wounds. But let us at least no longer be ignorant of ourselves, nor disregard good order in these matters. If it is not possible to end the enmity, let us at least agree with one another on this: to speak mysteries mystically and holy things in a holy manner, and not to throw before profane ears what may not be divulged, nor to show that those who worship demons and serve shameful myths and deeds are more reverent than we are; for they would sooner share their blood with the uninitiated than certain of their words. Let us recognize that, as there is a certain decorum in dress and diet and laughter and gait, so there is in speech and in silence, since among the other names and powers of God we honour the Word too. Let even our love of contention keep within the law.

Why should the bitter listener hear of a begetting of God and a creation, of God from things that are not, of cutting and division and dissolution? Why do we seat our accusers as judges? Why do we put swords into the hands of our enemies? How, do you think, will he receive a discourse about such things, or with what kind of mind, the man who praises adulteries and the corruption of boys, who worships the passions and can conceive nothing above the body, who only yesterday or the day before set up gods for himself, and gods known for the most shameful deeds? Will it not be materially? shamefully? ignorantly? as he is used to? Will he not make your theology an advocate for his own gods and passions? For if we ourselves abuse these terms, we will hardly persuade them to philosophize on our terms; and if they are inventors of evils on their own, when would they keep their hands off evils handed to them? This is what our war with one another brings us. This is what comes of those who fight for the word more than pleases the Word, and who behave like madmen who set fire to their own houses, or tear their own children, or thrust away their parents, thinking them strangers.

Now that we have cleared out of our discourse what is foreign to it, and sent the great legion off into the herd of swine to rush down into the depths, the second task is to look at ourselves and to polish the theologian into beauty, like a statue. First let us consider this: what is this great ambition for talk and this itch of the tongue? What is this new disease and insatiability? Why have we tied our hands and armed our tongues? Do we not praise hospitality? Do we not admire brotherly love, love between husband and wife, virginity, feeding the poor? Psalmody, standing all night in vigil, tears? Do we not bring the body under by fasting? Do we not travel away to God through prayer? Do we not yoke the worse under the better, I mean the dust under the spirit, as those would who judge our compound nature rightly? Do we not make life a practice of death? Do we not make ourselves masters of the passions, mindful of our nobility from above? Do we not tame anger when it swells and grows savage, pride that throws us down, unreasoning grief, undisciplined pleasure, a harlot’s laughter, unruly sight, insatiable hearing, immoderate speech, wandering thought, and everything the evil one takes from us to use against us, bringing in death through the windows, as Scripture says, that is, through the senses? Quite the opposite: we have given freedom to other people’s passions, as kings give amnesties after a victory, on the one condition that they lean toward us and attack God more boldly; and we give back an evil reward for a deed that is not good, freedom of speech in exchange for impiety.

And yet, you dialectician and chatterer, I will ask you a small question. “And you, answer,” says he who gave his oracles to Job through whirlwind and clouds. Are there many dwelling places with God, as you hear, or one? Many, you will clearly grant, and not one. Must they all be filled, or some and not others, so that they are empty and prepared in vain? Certainly all, for nothing that God has made is pointless. And can you say what you take this dwelling place to be? Is it the rest and glory laid up there for the blessed, or something else? Nothing else than this. Since we have agreed on this, let us examine that too. Is there something that procures these dwelling places, as I say, or nothing? Certainly there is. What is it? That there are different ways of life and choices, leading one person to one place and another to another according to the proportion of faith; these we also call ways. Must we then travel all of them, or some of these ways? The same person should travel all, if possible; if not, as many as possible; if not, some; and if not even that, it is a great thing, as it seems to me, to travel even one outstandingly well. You understand this correctly. What then? When you hear that there is one way, and that narrow, what does the saying seem to you to mean? One because of virtue, for it is one, even if it divides into many branches; narrow because of the toil, and because few walk it compared with the crowd of those on the other side, all who travel by way of vice. That is what I think too. Why then, my good man, if this is so, do you abandon all the other ways, as though you had convicted our teaching of some poverty, and rush and push along this one way alone, the way of argument and speculation, as you think, but, as I say, of idle talk and marvel-mongering? Let Paul rebuke you, who reproaches this bitterly after listing the gifts: “Are all apostles? Are all prophets?” and the rest.

Be it so: you are lofty, even beyond the lofty, above the clouds, if you like, the beholder of things unseen, the hearer of things unspeakable, raised aloft after Elijah, granted theophanies after Moses, heavenly after Paul. Why do you also mould others into saints in a single day, ordain them theologians, as it were breathe learning into them, and produce many assemblies of ignorant scholars? Why do you tie the weaker in spiders’ webs, as though this were something wise and great? Why do you stir up wasps’ nests against the faith? Why do you make a crop of dialecticians spring up suddenly around us, as the myths once did the giants? Why have you gathered everything light and unmanly among men into one gully, like sweepings, made them still more effeminate by flattery, and built a new workshop of impiety, cleverly reaping the harvest of their folly? Do you dispute this too? Is nothing else anything to you? Must your tongue rule at all costs, and can you not hold back the birth-pangs of your speech? You have many other subjects, and ones that bring honour. Turn your disease to them, and to some profit. Pelt me Pythagoras’s silence, and the Orphic beans, and the newfangled boast about “He himself said it.” Pelt me Plato’s ideas, and the transmigrations and cycles of our souls, and the recollections, and the loves, not beautiful, that go through beautiful bodies to the soul; Epicurus’s atheism, his atoms, and his unphilosophical pleasure; Aristotle’s petty providence, his technical system, his mortal arguments about the soul, and the all-too-human character of his doctrines; the Stoa’s haughty brow, the Cynics’ greed and vulgarity. Pelt me the void and the plenum, plenty of nonsense, and all the marvels they tell about gods or sacrifices, about idols, about good and evil-working demons, about divination, the conjuring of gods and souls, and the power of the stars. But if you think these unworthy of discussion, as petty and often refuted, and you keep turning to your own subjects and seek the honour there, here too I will offer you broad roads. Philosophize for me about the world or worlds, about matter, about the soul, about rational natures better and worse, about resurrection, judgment, and retribution, about the sufferings of Christ. On these, to hit the mark is not useless and to miss it is not dangerous. But with God we shall converse, now a little, but a little later perhaps more perfectly, in Christ Jesus our Lord himself, to whom be glory for ever. Amen.