Against Eunomius 1.371–1.383

Such is the sameness of the works that come from the one energy! And what of the sun? Does it not also, warming all things alike by the same power, make one plant grow and another wither, the result of its energy varying with the capacity of what receives it? One plant on the rock it dried up, while another, from deep soil, it made yield a hundredfold. If you go into the works of nature and see how many things it works with artistry in bodies, you will learn still better how circumspect is the man who says, "The same energy brings about sameness of works." One energy is the cause of conception, yet the compound of what is formed within is so manifold that no one could easily count the different qualities in the body. Again, in infants the drawing in of milk is one energy; but what speech could go through the variety of the results of such nourishment? The milk passes from the mouth as through a pipe into the passages that receive it, and the altering power of nature brings it fittingly to each of the members, breaking the nourishment up by digestion into countless differences and making what suits each part kindred to the parts that receive it. From the same food are nourished arteries, veins, brain, membranes, marrow, bones, nerves, ligament, tendons, flesh, skin, cartilages, fat, hair, nails, sweat, vapors, phlegm, bile, and whatever other superfluous and useless things depend on the same cause. And if you name the members, both the organs and the senses, and whatever else fills the bulk of the body, from one and the same energy of nourishment it is altered into all these differences. If anyone considers the arts as well, he will find through them too how carefully examined this doctrine is. In every art, for the most part, we see one energy in those who make something by hand: the movement of the hand itself. But let us consider what the results have in common. What has the building of a temple in common with a cloak, though in each the art is carried out by the movement of the hand? The housebreaker moves his hand, and so does the well-digger; earth is mined, and a man is murdered; all are works of a movement of the hand. The soldier in battle works the slaughter of the enemy by hand, and the farmer in turn breaks up the clod by hand with the hoe. How then does our dogmatist declare that the same energies bring about sameness of works? Yet even if what he said is granted to have some truth, this too establishes all the more the kinship in substance of the Son with the Father and of the Spirit with the Son. If there were some variation in the energies, so that the Father worked what he pleased in one way and the Son in another, it would be right to infer from the variation of the energies a variation also in the substance worked by each of them. But the Son does all things in the same way that the Father works, according to the Lord's own words and to reason. One does not work without a body and the other through a body, nor one from this matter and the other from another; nor does one accomplish what he wills in a different time or place from the other; nor do differences of instruments produce any variation. The mere motion of the will and the impulse of choice suffices, having concurrent with it, and following upon it for the existence of things, the power that brings all things into existence. If, then, in all things alike the Father, from whom are all things, and the Son, through whom are all things, work by the very same kind of energy, how does this man think he proves a difference in substance in the case of the Son and the Spirit from a variation of the energy of the Father and of the Son, separated from each other? The opposite, as we said, follows. Since no kind of variation of energies is seen in Father and Son, the sameness of the power that brought them into existence shows that there is no separation in the substances of the Son and the Spirit, as the speech-writer's own testimony confirms. His words are these: "Since," he says, "the energies bring about sameness of works." So if sameness of works is achieved by likeness of energies, and according to them the Son is the work of the Father and the Holy Spirit the work of the Son, then the likeness in manner of the energy of the Father and of the Son will certainly show the sameness of the substance produced. But he adds: "and differing works show the energies too to differ." Let us again consider this too, where its strength lies, and, if you like, understand it through clear examples.

Is not the energy of commanding one, the energy of him who established the whole world and everything in it by will alone? "He spoke, and they came to be; he commanded, and they were created." Did not the command take substance alike in all things, and was the will alone not enough to bring into existence what was not? How then, when so great a difference is seen to come from the one energy of commanding, can this man, as though he did not see the facts, say that the variation of the works shows a variation of the energy? On the contrary, everything in the world would have to be uniform, if, as the dogmatist says, the variation of the energies is shown by the difference of the works. Or does he see all these things as alike, and observe unlikeness only in the Father and the Son? Let him consider now, if not before, the difference among the elements, and how each of the things in the world that contribute to the constitution of the whole has been drawn off toward a nature opposite to the others. Some are by nature light and tend upward, others heavy and weigh downward; some always stand still, others are in constant motion. And among moving things, some move unvaryingly in one direction, like the heaven and the planets, whose course turns back against that of the whole; others, spreading out on every side, are always carried as chance falls, like the air and the sea and the whole nature of liquid substance. What should one say of the opposition of hot to cold, or the difference of moist from dry, or the distance of above from below? How many unlikenesses of nature are there among living creatures? And in plants, the variations in shape and size and in their fruits and qualities: what human speech could go through them? Yet this wise man declares to us that differing works show the energies too to differ. Either he has not yet learned the kind of the divine energy, of which Scripture says that by the word of command all things came to be, or he is dim-sighted toward the difference of the things that have come into being. And so, speaking to us without circumspection, he legislates about divine doctrines, perhaps never having heard from anyone that every assertion that is not wholly unassailable and agreed concerning the matter in question, in which the dogmatist speaks with authority about things to which no one who has examined them would agree, is no different from telling dreams or myths over wine. Such is the incoherence of what he has said. People who in the fantasy of a dream think they see something they eagerly pursue when awake cling eagerly to what does not exist and think they have it, because desire for what appears persuades them through their deluded sight. So he too, imagining through this dreamlike sketch of doctrines that what he has said holds good, affirms that these things are so and tries to build the rest upon them. It is worth setting out his very words, which run thus: "These things being so, and maintaining in their relation to one another an unbroken connection, it surely befits those who conduct the inquiry according to the order natural to the realities, and do not mix all things together and confuse them by force, if any dispute arises about the substance, to establish what is being shown and to resolve what is doubted from the first energies, those closest to the substances; and to resolve doubt about the energies from the substances." Now I think that the very words of impiety are enough to prove the absurdity of what is said. One who describes in words a face disfigured by disease would show it better by stripping the coverings from the disease, so that those who see the sight need learn nothing by words. So I think this ugly and mutilated heretical doctrine is made plain enough to those with discerning souls, uncovered by the mere reading. But since one must bring a demonstrating argument like a finger to the rotten parts of the doctrine and make the deformity in it plainer to the many, I will take up what he said again in order. "These things being so," he says. What does the dreamer mean? Which are "these things," and how are they? That the substance of the Father alone is sovereign and highest, while the next is consequently not sovereign at all, and the third still less so? For he laid this down in what he said. Or that some energy accompanies the first substance, whose result and work is the only-begotten Son, bound by the measure of the energy that brought him into existence? Or that the substances are conceived as lesser and greater because they are somehow laid within one another and the smaller is contained by the more spacious, as happens with jars set one inside another, the sense in which he sees greater and lesser substances, though they are enclosed by no limit or boundary? Or that the differences of the things fashioned also show the otherness of the fashioners, as though it were impossible for different products to come from like energies?

Is anyone, then, so sunk in stupor in the senses of his soul that on hearing such doctrines he would at once agree with the man who affirms, "These things being so, and maintaining in their relation to one another an unbroken connection"? I think it is the same madness to say such things and to listen without examination to those who say them: that things split apart from one another by unlikeness of nature are kept in line by some connection through their relation to one another. Either they are united by the substance, as our doctrine holds, and so will maintain an unbroken connection in their relation to one another; or they stand apart from one another by estrangement of nature, as he thinks. And then what relation in connection, keeping it unbroken, will be found among things that are foreign to one another? And what is the "order natural to the realities" according to which he legislates that the inquiry be conducted? If he looked to the doctrine of the truth and reckoned the difference of the realities believed in the Holy Trinity only by their order in sequence, this natural order, as he calls it, making the distinction of the hypostases unconfused, so as to hold that they share the substance and are divided by the account of hypostasis, he would certainly not have been ranked among our opponents, since he would be saying what we champion. As it is, his whole argument looks the opposite way and makes the order he has conceived here impossible to understand. There is surely a very great difference between things that come about by prior deliberation and things whose end comes about spontaneously from some natural necessity. Heat is natural to fire, brightness to the ray, flowing to water, downward motion to a stone, and many such things can be mentioned. But if someone built a house, or pursued an office, or set out on a trading voyage, or undertook any other thing achieved by deliberation and preparation, one cannot properly say of him that a natural order belongs to what he has done. The order is brought in by those who carry out each thing, according to the will of the one who chooses and the usefulness of the thing done. Here, then, the argument of the heresy splits the Son off from natural kinship with the Father, and thinks the same of the Spirit, as estranged from union with the Son and the Father; in every argument it establishes that the Son is the work of the Father and the Spirit in turn the work of the Son; and all works are results of choice, not of nature. How then does this man define a work of the will as a natural order of realities? I do not know what he has in mind in his argument. That the God of the universe fashioned this nature in the case of the Son and the Holy Spirit, and made the superiority among the substances such that the one is subject to the other? And if he means this, why did he not make clear on what ground we are to know these things of God beforehand? So that God's power might be shown the greater in the smallness of his works? But who will agree that a great cause and power is seen in the smallness of its products, and not rather that it is shown to be unable to bring into existence along with itself what is perfect in all that comes from it? And how does what is highest and most sovereign bear witness to him, if he shows his power to be less than his choice? Or does he say that God did not even intend the account of the perfect to belong to what is from him, lest the honor and glory of the one honored for his superiority be in any way diminished? And who is so wretched as to reckon that not even the divine and blessed nature is free of the passion of envy? What fitting cause, then, is there for these things to have been so ordered by the God of the universe in the case of the Only-begotten and the Spirit? "But not from that source," he says. From where else, then, is the natural order seen in them, if they are not akin in nature? But perhaps he calls the inferiority of substance in the Son and the Spirit the natural character of the order. But I need to learn the cause of this very thing: why the Son is lessened in substance, when substance and energy are found to have equal and identical marks and properties. And if the account of substance and that of energy are not the same, but what is signified differs in each, how are proofs of what is sought drawn from things foreign and alien? It is as if, when human substance was being investigated and the question was whether man is an animal capable of laughter or receptive of grammar, someone took as proof of the proposition the building of a house or a ship, which the builder or the shipwright constructed, and then insisted with this wise argument that we know substances by their energies, and the energy of man is the house and the ship.

Do we learn from these things, simplest of men, that man is broad-nailed and capable of laughter? "But that," someone might say, "is not the question, whether man has some motion and energy; the question is what the very thing that acts is by nature." And that I am far from learning from your answer. If I wanted to learn something about the wind, you would not have given a complete account of what I was seeking by pointing to a heap of sand piled up by the wind, or a stack of chaff, or a scattering of dust. The account of the wind is a different one, and the things shown in place of what is sought are other things. How then does this man show substances by energies, and present the account of the being of what is from the things that came into being from what is? Let us consider this as well: what is the work of the Father through which, he says, the substance of the one who acted is grasped? He will certainly say the Son, if he says what he usually says. But this Son, most wise sir, measured on your account by the energy that worked him, shows that energy alone; and what is sought remains no less obscure, since you yourself have testified that the energy is one of the things that accompany the first substance. The energy extends along with the work it produced, as you say, and is shown through the result; yet not even the energy itself is shown as to what it is by nature: only a quantity of it is seen in the work. It is not the whole power of the smith, set in motion, that made the gimlet; the art worked through the craftsman's hand only as much as was proportionate to making the tool, though it was able to make many things of every kind. So what came into being from the energy shows in itself the measure of the energy. But what is sought is not the quantity of the energy but the very substance of the one who exerted it. By the same reasoning, if he should say that he has grasped the nature of the Only-begotten through the Spirit (whom he calls the work of the energy that accompanies the Son), the argument has no standing, since here too the energy extends along with the result but does not show, through what it produced, either its own nature or that of the one who acts. But let us concede this too: let it be granted that substances are known by energies. Then the first substance is known through the work that comes from it, and the work produced by the second likewise shows the second. Tell us, then, most wise sir, what shows the third, since no such work of the third substance is to be seen. If, as you say, substances are grasped by energies, you will have to confess that the nature of the Spirit is incomprehensible, since you have no such immediately connected energy, and have shown none, by which to infer the nature of the Spirit. Either show some substantial work of the Spirit, through which you claim to have grasped the substance of the Spirit, or your whole spider's web will dissolve at the touch of reason. For if, on the premise we are now granting, the substance is known from its immediately connected energy, and there is no substantial energy of the Spirit such as you say the Father has in the Son and the Son in the Spirit, then by these premises the nature of the Spirit is admitted to be wholly unknowable and incomprehensible, since no energy conceived as subsisting gives any indication of it. And if the Spirit has escaped comprehension, how is the substance above it grasped through what has not been grasped? If the work of the Son, which they say is the Spirit, is unknown, the Son too will certainly not be known, overshadowed by the obscurity of what gives evidence of him. And if the substance of the Only-begotten is hidden in this way, how will the highest and most sovereign substance be made manifest through one that is hidden, when the obscurity of the Spirit is passed back through the Son to the Father? So these premises clearly prove, even by the testimony of our enemies, that the substance of the Father is wholly incomprehensible. How then does this sharp-sighted man, who sees things that do not exist, himself see the nature of things invisible and incomprehensible through one another, and command us to do the same, saying that substances are grasped from works and works from substances? But let us examine his next statement too: he says one should resolve the doubt about the energies from the substances. How could anyone lead him away from his vain suppositions? He thinks it possible to resolve doubts about the energies by comprehending the substances. How does he bring what is doubted to certainty through things that have not been comprehended? If the substance had been comprehended, what need would there be to busy ourselves about the energy, as though through it we were to be brought to comprehend what is sought? But if the examination of the energy is necessary for this very reason, that through it we may be guided to understand the substance that exerts it, how can a nature not yet known resolve for us the doubt about the energies?

When anything is in doubt, proofs are made through what is agreed. But when what is unclear lies equally in both things sought, how can Eunomius say that things unknown in themselves are grasped through each other? When the substance of the Father is in doubt, he says that what is sought is made manifest through the energy that accompanies him and the work brought about by that energy. And again, when the question is what the substance of the Only-begotten is (whom he calls either an energy or the result of an energy, for he uses both expressions), he says that the dispute about the Only-begotten is easily resolved from the substance of his Maker. I should gladly learn this from him too: does he say that the doubt about energies is resolved from the substance that worked them only in the case of the divine nature, or does he also recognize the nature of things made through the substance of the maker in the case of everything with which some productive power coexists? If he declares such a doctrine of the divine power alone, let him show how he resolves the dispute about the works of God through the nature of the one who worked them. Here is an undisputed work of God: heaven, earth, sea, the whole world. Let the substance of one of these be sought, for the sake of argument, and let heaven be set before the contemplation of reason. Since the substance of heaven is in doubt because of the various opinions about it among those who philosophize about nature, each as it seemed to him, how does the contemplation of the Maker of heaven bring us a resolution of the doubt about what is sought? He is immaterial, invisible, without form, unbegotten, remaining forever, admitting no corruption, change, alteration, or anything of the kind. How then will one who has formed such a notion of the one who worked be led to the knowledge of the nature of heaven? How will he come to understand what is sought from everything opposite to it: the visible from the invisible, the corruptible from the incorruptible, what has its constitution from time from what exists unbegottenly, what possesses a temporary existence from what remains forever? Let the man who has examined existing things with precision say; let him say how things unlike in nature can be known through each other. And yet through these very things that he says, if he had known how to follow his own arguments, he would have been led to assent to the doctrine of the church. For if the nature of the maker shows what came into being from it, as he says, and according to them the Son is a thing made by the Father, then whoever has understood the nature of the Father has certainly come to know through it the nature of the Only-begotten as well, if indeed the nature of the one who worked indicates what he worked. So that, if on the argument of unlikeness the Only-begotten were cut off from the works of providence, there would be no need to busy oneself about his generation or to force a proof of the Only-begotten's unlikeness from that source; for the difference of choices would itself suffice to reveal the otherness of nature. Since even our opponents agree that the first substance is simple, one must necessarily conceive its choice as running together with its nature; and since its choice is shown to be good by its providence, the nature from which the choice comes is shown to be good as well. If the Father alone worked what is good, and the Son did not choose the same things (I speak hypothetically, for our opponents' sake), the difference in substance would be obvious, attested by the variation of their choices. But if the Father provides for all things and the Son likewise provides (for "what he sees the Father doing, the Son also does likewise"), the sameness of their choices certainly shows the common nature of those who choose the same things. Why, then, is the account of providence slighted, as though it gave no help toward what is sought? Yet many examples from life support our argument, examples, I mean, familiar to everyone. One who has seen the light of fire and experienced its power to warm, if he comes near another such light and such heat, will clearly be brought to the notion of fire, led from the likeness of what appeared to him to the kinship of the nature that produced them; for nothing that was not fire would work in every respect what fire works. So if we see the same account of providence, like and equal, in the Father and in the Son, we conjecture through what reaches our knowledge about what exceeds our comprehension too, since a being of a different nature would not be grasped through equal and like workings. However the marks that appear in each are related to one another, so necessarily will the underlying realities be. If the marks are opposite, one must certainly reckon the things made known through them opposite as well.