Against Eunomius 1.317–1.333

“it is surely wholly necessary that the activities following each of the substances should be lesser and greater, and that some should hold the first and others the second rank.”

The thought running through all he has said, though he concludes it in a multitude of words, is one: to establish that there is no conjunction of the Father with the Son, or again of the Son with the Spirit, but that the substances are split off from one another, torn apart into an estranged nature and an alienation of different kinds; and not in this only, but differing also in magnitude and in a lowering of rank, so that some are conceived as greater, as he himself says, and others as smaller, and differ in all other respects. Though it may seem superfluous to many to dwell on what is obvious, and to try to refute point by point what most people at once consider false, detestable, and without force, nevertheless, so as not to seem to pass over anything he said unexamined for lack of refutations, we will attack these too as far as we are able.

He says that each of these substances is pure, simple, and wholly one, both in being and in being conceived, according to its own dignity. Here again, putting forward disputed things as agreed, he thinks he is saying something, considering his own declaration enough in place of all proof. He says “three substances”: this is what he shows by saying “each of these substances”; he would not have spoken so if he thought it one. If, then, he speaks of the difference of the substances from one another so as not to seem to agree with the impiety of Sabellius, who fits three titles to one subject, we too agree, and none of the pious opposes the doctrine — except that he seems to err in the names alone and in the expression of his statement, naming “substances” instead of “hypostases.” For things that have the same definition of substance will not likewise agree in the account given of the hypostasis. Peter, James, and John were the same as one another in the definition of substance (for each of them was a man), but in the properties of the hypostasis of each they did not agree with one another. So if he were establishing this — that one must not confuse the hypostases nor fit the three titles to one person — his word would be “faithful,” as the Apostle testifies, “and worthy of all acceptance.” But since he does not have this in view, and says these things not to distinguish the hypostases from one another by the properties observed in them, but establishes that the underlying substance itself stands as alien to the other — or rather to itself — and therefore names many substances, as though each had some peculiar alienation from the others, I say for this reason that his argument has neither beginning nor head, since it builds the blasphemy on nothing agreed, as consistency requires. For it contains no argument by which one might be brought to such a view of the doctrine; but, as in the telling of a dream, it holds a bare and unargued exposition of impiety. For while the Church teaches us not to split the faith into a multitude of substances, but to believe that in three persons and hypostases there is no difference in being, and the opponents place variation and unlikeness in the substances themselves, this man boldly declares as already established what has neither been shown by any argument nor can be shown — perhaps never yet having spoken into the ears of real hearers. For he would have been taught by those who listen intelligently that every argument, so long as what is said is put forward at will without proof, is an old wives’ tale, with no force to show by itself what is sought, when no support is brought to what is said either from the divine words or from human reasoning.

So much for that. Let us examine what was said. He says that each of the substances which he has fashioned in his argument is simple and wholly one. That the divine and blessed nature, which transcends every mind, is simple, we think not even the most brutish and low-minded would deny. For how could one suppose that what is formless and shapeless, and separated from all magnitude and from quantity in size, is multiform and composite? But that thinking the transcendent substance simple does not agree with the doctrine they construct, however they may play with words, will be clear to anyone who attends even a little. For who does not know that simplicity in the case of the holy Trinity, by its own definition, does not admit more and less? Where no mixture and concourse of qualities can be conceived, but the mind grasps a power without parts and uncompounded, how, and by what reasoning, could one learn a difference by more and less? For whoever defines these as differing must necessarily conceive certain qualities occurring about the subject. Either he conceives the difference among them by excess and deficiency, and thereby brings the notion of magnitude into the question; or he establishes that they exceed or fall short in goodness, power, wisdom, and whatever else is piously conceived about the Divine; and in that way he will not escape the account of composition.

For nothing is deficient in wisdom or power or any other good if its good is not acquired, but it is by nature such as it is. So the man who says that he grasps lesser and greater substances in the divine nature has failed to notice that he is constructing the Divine as composite from unlike things, so that the subject is conceived as one thing and what is participated in as another, by participation in which what is not such comes to be in the good. But if he had truly conceived the substance as simple and wholly one, being itself that which is good and not becoming so by acquisition, he would not have reckoned greater and less about it. For it was said earlier that goods are diminished only by the presence of evil; where the nature cannot admit the worse, no limit of goodness is conceived; and the unlimited is not such by relation to something else, but, conceived in itself and by itself, escapes limit. To say that one infinite is more or less than another — I do not know how anyone who reasons could agree to it. So, if he confesses that the transcendent substance is simple and kindred with itself, let him agree that it is joined together in a communion of simplicity and infinity. But if he divides and estranges the substances from one another, conceiving that of the Only-begotten as other than the Father’s, and that of the Spirit as different from that of the Only-begotten, and speaks of more and less in them, let him not fail to notice that while seeming to grant simplicity he is in truth constructing composition.

But let us take up again, in order, the statement he made: “since the substance is pure, simple, and wholly one, both in being and in being conceived, according to its own dignity.” What does he mean by “according to its own dignity”? If he sees their substances in a common dignity, the addition to the statement was superfluous and redundant even so, dwelling on what is agreed; still the untimeliness of the expression might perhaps have been pardonable, since the more pious sense would make the vain overflow of words unobjectionable. But as it is, the danger for him does not stop at a fault of words (for then the sickness would be easily curable); he still clings to wicked devices. For he calls each of the three substances simple “according to its own dignity,” so that, with the distinctions he stated at the beginning about the first, second, and third substance, the account of simplicity too may be perverted along with them. For just as he called the substance of the Father alone highest and alone proper, admitting for the Son and the Spirit neither the word “high” nor “most proper,” so by the same reasoning, having called the substances simple, he thinks one must apply the notion of simplicity too according to the measure of the dignity observed in each: so that the most proper and first is seen in the highest and perfect simplicity, while the second, proportionally, lowers the account of simplicity too according to the measure of its fall from the first rank; and in the last likewise it descends from perfect simplicity as far as the proportion of dignity is diminished in the last. From this it follows that the substance of the Father is supposed to be purely simple, while that of the Son is not exactly simple but also has composite nature mixed into it, and the nature of the Holy Spirit is still more composite, the account of simplicity being diminished little by little in the last. For as what is not perfectly good is admitted to share in some part of the opposite state, so what is not wholly simple cannot escape being thought composite.

And that he uses these words with this meaning is shown more clearly by what follows, in which he brings down the notion of the Son and the Spirit more plainly to grovelling and low suppositions. “Since the activities,” he says, “are bounded together with the works, and the works are measured by the activities of those who wrought them, it is surely wholly necessary that the activities following each of the substances should be lesser and greater, and that some should hold the first and others the second rank.” Although he has laboriously covered these words with a fog of language and made their sense hard for most people to catch, it will easily be made clear from the sequence of what has been examined. “Since the activities are bounded together with the works,” he says. He calls the Son and the Spirit “works,” and “activities” the powers productive of them, through which they were produced, which a little before he said “follow” the substances. The word “bounded together” shows the equal extent of the substance produced with the power that brought it into subsistence — or rather not the power, but the activity of the power, as he himself names it — so that the product may be the work not of the whole power of the agent but of some partial activity, so much of the whole power being moved as would appear commensurate with the production of what comes to be.

And turning the same thing round again, he says: “and the works are measured by the activities of those who wrought them.” The meaning of these words would become better known to us through an example. Let us suppose that the argument concerns one of the cobbler’s tools, in this way. If the knife bent into the shape of a circle is applied to something on which such a figure is to be made, what is cut by it is bounded by the shape of the iron, and the circle shown in the cut will be as large as the one in the tool; and again, by as much as the tool is bent round, so large a circle will it describe by the cut. Such is the theologian’s notion of the divine hypostasis of the Only-begotten. He says that an activity accompanying the first substance like a tool made the Lord a work commensurate with itself. So he has seen fit to glorify the Son of God, who is now glorified in the glory of the Father and will be revealed at the time of the judgment: he says that he, being a work, is measured by the activity that wrought him.

What, then, is the activity that accompanies the God of all, is conceived before the Only-begotten, and bounds his substance? Some substantial power subsisting by itself and producing what it pleases by free movement? Then it is itself the Father of the Lord. And why is the title of Father still repeated of the God over all, if it was not he but some activity among those that accompany from outside that produced the Son? And how is the Son a Son, whom he says came into subsistence through something else, and who, like one of the supposititious children (may the Lord be gracious to my words!), puts on kinship with the Father, honoured only with the title of Son? And how is the Lord in the second rank after the God of all, when he counts the Son third from the Father, that mediating activity being counted second after the God over all? By this sequence the Holy Spirit will certainly be found no longer in the third but in the fifth rank, since the activity accompanying the Only-begotten, by which the Holy Spirit came into subsistence according to Eunomius’s account, is certainly counted in between. And the statement that “all things came into being through the Son” will be shown by these things to be untenable, since another hypostasis older than the Only-begotten has been fashioned beforehand by the new theologian, to which the cause of the creation of all things will reasonably be referred, because the construction of the Only-begotten himself, according to their account, depends on that activity.

But if, to avoid these absurdities, he should call the activity, of which he defines the Son to be the product, something without subsistence, let him say again how what is not follows what is, and how what does not subsist produces what subsists. For it will be found by these means that non-existent things accompany God, that things which are not become causes of things which are, and that things which do not subsist in their own nature bound the nature of things that subsist; and the whole power that produced and fashioned creation will, by his own account, be enclosed by the non-existent. Such are the doctrines of the theologian, who says that the Lord of heaven and earth, the Creator of all creation, the Word of God who was in the beginning, through whom all things are, came into subsistence by some non-existent and unsubstantial thing — or whatever one ought to call the activity now fashioned by him — and was bounded in it, enclosed on every side by non-existence as by a fence. And he who sees things invisible does not understand to what end the sequence of his argument turns. For if the activity of God is without subsistence, and the work produced from non-existence is enclosed in it, the product will certainly be conceived as of such a nature as the nature of the one who brought the work into subsistence was fashioned in his argument. For what is produced from non-existence and enclosed by it — it is plain to everyone what that is conceived to be: nothing. For opposites are not of a nature to be contained by opposites: neither water by fire, nor life by death, nor light by darkness, nor what is by what is not. But these things, through the wisdom that abounds in him, he either does not understand or shuts his eyes to the truth willingly.

And he establishes that by some necessity one must conceive the “less” in the hypostasis of the Only-begotten, and again observe in the Holy Spirit a further degree of diminution compared with the Son, saying in these words: “It is wholly necessary that the activities following each of the substances should be lesser and greater.” The necessity that forces these things in the divine nature, and allots the greater and the less, we have neither learned from him nor been able until now to understand by ourselves.

For until now the doctrine has prevailed with all who accept the plainness of the simpler proclamation: that no necessity stands above the divine nature, bending the Only-begotten to the less and forcing him like one of the bought slaves. But passing over this, though it deserves no small inquiry, he teaches only that one must conceive him as less. Yet the necessity does not bring his argument to this alone; it establishes something still more toward blasphemy, as has already been partly examined. For if the Son sprang not from the Father but from some unsubstantial activity, he will be conceived not only as less than the Father, but the doctrine must Judaize altogether. For the consequence of this necessity shows that the product of the non-existent is not something small, but what it is not safe to say even for one who accuses. For just as what has its birth from what is is necessarily admitted to be, so, conversely, what springs from what is not will necessarily be admitted not to be. For when something itself is not, how will it bring another into subsistence from itself? If, then, the activity that accompanies God and produces the Son does not exist in a substance of its own, who is so blind as not to see the construction of the blasphemy — that his aim looks to the very denial of our Saviour? And if the sequence of their doctrine steals the hypostasis of the Son from the faith, leaving him nothing but a bare name, hardly could the Holy Spirit be believed to exist in his own hypostasis, whose genealogy is traced through a sequence of non-existents. For when the activity accompanying God does not exist in substance, and the argument from necessity finds its product non-existent, and some other non-existence of activity accompanies this in turn, and then the Spirit is established as having come into being through this — how is the blasphemy not evident to all: that after God, who exists unbegottenly, they establish nothing truly subsisting, since their doctrine proceeds through shadows and non-existent fabrications and rests on nothing that truly subsists?

But the construction of those who teach such things drives the argument into such absurdity. Let it be granted, by hypothesis, that it is not so; for they do profess, forsooth, and are generous in word, conceding that the only-begotten Son and the Holy Spirit exist in their own hypostasis. But if, while confessing this, they also agreed with the beliefs about them, they would certainly not be fighting against the doctrine of the Church, nor be split off from the common hope of Christians. But if they grant being to the Son and the Spirit only as material and pretext for blasphemy for themselves, then perhaps — even if it is bold to say — it would be more profitable for them to desert to the worship of the Jews, abjuring the faith, than to outrage the name of Christians by a seeming confession. For the Jews, having remained till now unreceptive of the word, are impious only so far as not to confess the Christ who has come, but to hope that he will come; one cannot hear them saying anything wicked or destructive of the glory of the one they expect. But these men of the new circumcision — or rather, as the Apostle says, of the mutilation — do not deny that the expected one has come, but they imitate those who dishonoured the Lord’s coming in the flesh by unbelief and insult. Those tried to stone the Lord; these stone the word of truth with their blasphemous words. Those brought forward the lowliness and obscurity of his birth according to the flesh, not accepting his divine birth before the ages; in the same way these men, denying the confession of his magnificent, lofty, and ineffable birth from the Father, establish that he has his being through creation, from which human nature and all things that have come to be have their origin. It was the charge of the Jews that the Lord was regarded as Son of the God over all; these men too are indignant against those who in truth make this confession about him. Those thought they honoured the God of all by shutting the Son out from equal honour with him; these men too do the God over all the same favour, bestowing honour on the Father by pulling down the Lord’s glory.

As for the rest, how could one go through worthily the number and the kind of things by which they display their insult against the Only-begotten? Fashioning in advance some activity before the hypostasis of Christ, they call him its work and product — which the Jews have never yet dared to this day. Then they bound the nature of the Lord, shutting him within certain limits of the power that made him, and as it were roping him in by a measure of quantity, that of the activity that brought him into subsistence, enclosed on every side as by a tunic by the activity they have invented. These things we cannot charge against the Jews. Then they observe in his substance a certain smallness by diminution — by what method I do not know, having measured round by their own supposition the one who is without quantity and magnitude, and having been able to find how much the magnitude of the only-begotten God lacks for perfection, so that, lacking it, he is seen among the smaller and the imperfect. And by many other things, some confessed openly, others constructed secretly, they have made their confession of the Son and of the Holy Spirit an exercise of their own wickedness.

How, then, are they not more pitiable than the Jews in their condemnation, if what was never dared by the Jews is so plainly constructed by these men? For the one who lessens the substance of the Only-begotten and of the Holy Spirit seems perhaps, as far as saying it or hearing it goes, to be only slightly impious; but if one examines the statement exactly, he will be convicted of blasphemy on the main point itself. Let us consider it in this way — and let it be granted me, for the sake of instruction and to make plain the falsehood constructed by the opponents, to bring my discourse forward to an exposition of our own beliefs.

The highest division of all beings makes its cut into the intelligible and the sensible. The sensible nature has been named generically by the Apostle “visible”: for since every body is coloured, and sight perceives this, he passed over the remaining qualities that are by essence bound up with it and called it “visible” from what lies most readily at hand to perception. The common name of the whole intelligible nature, as the Apostle says, is “the invisible”; for by the removal of sense perception it leads the mind by the hand to what is incorporeal and intelligible. But reason divides the notion of this too into two: by sound inference one part is grasped as uncreated, the other as created — uncreated, that which makes creation; created, that which has the cause and the power of its being through the uncreated nature. Among the sensible things are all that we grasp through the senses of the body, in which the differences of qualities admit the account of greater and less, the difference being seen in quantity, quality, and the other properties. But in the intelligible nature — I mean the intelligible nature within creation — such an account of difference as was found in the sensible has no place; another mode is found which discovers the difference of greater from less. For since the source, the principle, and the supply of every good are seen in the uncreated nature, and the whole creation inclines toward it through communion with the first good of the lofty nature — touching it and necessarily participating in proportion to its share in the things above, some partaking more, others less, according to the free will of their choice — the more and the less are recognized in creation in proportion to the impulse of each. For since the nature conceived within creation stands on the border between goods and their opposites, so as to be capable of either at will, according to which way it inclines by its choice, as we have learned from Scripture, there is room to speak of more and less in excellence of virtue, in proportion to its withdrawal from the worse and its approach to the good.

But the uncreated nature is far removed from such difference, since it does not have its good as acquired, nor receive the good into itself by participation in some higher good, but is itself by nature what it is: good, conceived as good, and source of good, simple, uniform, and uncompounded, as even those who fight against us testify. It has a difference within itself befitting the majesty of its nature, not seen in terms of greater and less, as Eunomius thinks; for one who lessens the notion of the good in any one of those in whom we believe in the holy Trinity will certainly make out that something of the opposite state is mixed into whatever falls short in good — which it is not pious to reckon of either the Only-begotten or the Holy Spirit. Rather, being seen in the highest perfection and in incomprehensible excellence, it has an unconfused and distinct difference in the properties inherent in each of the hypostases: in the communion of being uncreated it has no variation, and in the special properties of each it has what is not shared. For the property observed in each of the hypostases clearly and purely distinguishes one from the other. Thus the Father is confessed to be uncreated and unbegotten, for he was neither begotten nor created. This “uncreated,” then, is common to him with the Son and the Holy Spirit; but he is also unbegotten and Father, and this is peculiar and not shared, found in neither of the others. The Son, joined with the Father and the Spirit in being uncreated, has his peculiarity in being and being named Son and Only-begotten, which belongs neither to the God over all nor to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, having communion of nature with the Son and the Father in being uncreated, is again distinguished from them by his own marks. For his mark and most peculiar sign is to be none of those things which reason has observed as proper to the Father and to the Son.