Against Eunomius 3.575–3.589

For “the flesh lusts against the spirit” and rises up against the rule of the soul. It is this earth, then, that such a tyrant masters, the earth over which he was appointed ruler by the Word at the first creation. As, then, all people of sound mind agree that these things are to be read with such a sense rather than with the one that shows on the surface of the words, so it is reasonable that the saying written directly after them, in sequence, should not be accepted simply and without examination by people of sound mind: “If I declare to you,” it says, “the things that happen daily, I will remember to recount the things from of old: the Lord created me.” What, someone will say to me about this saying (the slave of the wording, who sits by the sound of the syllables in Jewish fashion), does not the construction strike the ears of the more attentive as strange? “If I declare to you the things that happen daily, the Lord created me.” As though, if she does not declare the things that happen daily, she will consequently deny altogether that she was created. For one who says, “If I declare, I was created,” has given us to understand, by what is left unsaid, “I was not created if I do not declare.” “The Lord created me,” it says, “as the beginning of his ways, for his works; before the age he founded me in the beginning, before he made the earth, before he made the depths, before the springs of the waters came forth, before the mountains were settled; and before all hills he begets me.” What is this new order in the making of this creature? First it is created, after that it is founded, and then it is begotten. “The Lord made,” it says, “countries and uninhabited places, and the inhabited heights of the land under heaven.” What Lord does it call the maker of uninhabited country and of the inhabited world? Surely the one who also made wisdom. For this saying and that come from the same person: the one who says, “The Lord created me,” and the one who adds, “The Lord made countries and uninhabited places.” The Lord, then, will equally be the maker of both: of wisdom herself, and of the inhabited and uninhabited country. Where, then, is “all things came into being through the Son, and without him not one thing”? For if the same Lord creates both wisdom, which they advise us to understand as the Son, and every particular thing that creation contains, how does the sublime John speak truly when he says that all things came into being through him? For this Scripture contradicts the voice of the Gospel by ascribing to the one who created wisdom the making of the uninhabited and the inhabited country. So too everything that follows describes a throne of God set apart upon the winds; it says that the clouds above become strong, and the springs under heaven secure; and the context contains many such things, which call for much thought, the kind found in what has been said by a subtle and discerning mind. What is the throne set apart upon the winds? What is the security of the springs under heaven? How do the clouds above become strong? For if one judges the passage by appearances, he will find much conflict between the facts and what is said. Who does not know that the extremities of the land under heaven are uninhabitable, because they are either too close to the sun’s heat or exceedingly far from it, through excess in one direction or the other, some becoming dry and scorched beyond measure, others abounding in moisture and frozen solid, while only those parts are inhabited which are equally removed from either extreme? If the middle of the earth is occupied by human beings, how does the proverb say that the extremities of the land under heaven are inhabited? And what strength could be seen in the clouds, so that the saying which says that the clouds above have become strong is true in its ready sense? For the nature of a cloud is a rather thin vapour, spread through the air, which rides on the wind in the air, made light by its great fineness; but when it flows together upon itself by compression it falls through the wind that held it up, becoming a heavy drop. What strength, then, is there in things that offer no resistance to those who touch them? For the thinness and easy dispersal of air can be seen in the cloud as well. And again, how is the divine throne set apart upon the unstable nature of the winds? And to say that it is first created, at the end begotten, and in between founded: what reason could one say this has that agrees with common and ready notions? And the question raised before these in the passage: how does the declaring of the things that happen daily, and the remembering of the recounting of things from of old, become a kind of cause for saying that wisdom was created by God? Since, then, it has been clearly shown by what has been said that nothing in these words is such that the passage may be accepted without examination and contemplation, it would be well, as with the rest, not to interpret “The Lord created me” either according to the sense that arises in us at once from the word, but to seek with all attention and care what is to be understood through the saying in a godly way.

But to have grasped exactly the sense of these words would belong only to those who search out the depths by the Holy Spirit and know how to speak the divine mysteries in the Spirit. Our discourse will occupy itself with them only so far as not to pass over the aim within them wholly without contemplation. What, then, is our account? It is not possible, I think, that the wisdom which comes to someone from divine illumination should be present alone, apart from the other gifts of the Spirit; the grace of prophecy must certainly enter with it. For if the grasp of the truth of things that are is proper to wisdom, and prophecy contains clear knowledge of things to come, no one would possess the perfect gift of wisdom unless, through the cooperation of prophecy, he included what is to come in his knowledge. Since, then, Solomon claims for himself no human wisdom (he who said, “God has taught me wisdom,” and who ascribed every word of his own to God, where he says, “My words have been spoken by God”), it would be well to search out the prophecy mingled with wisdom in this part of the Proverbs. We say, then, that in the words before this, when he said that wisdom had built herself a house, he hints by the saying at the forming of the Lord’s flesh; for the true Wisdom did not dwell in another’s building, but built the dwelling for herself from the virgin’s body. Here he adds to the account what was united from both, from the house, I mean, and from the wisdom that built the house, that is, from the human element and from the Godhead mingled with the man; and to each of these he fits the corresponding and suitable expressions, as one can see happen in the Gospels too, where the language, conducted according to what suits its subject, shows the divine through the loftier sense befitting God, and the human through the lowly and humble. So one can see Solomon too moved prophetically in this part and handing down the whole mystery of the economy. First he speaks of the power and activity of wisdom before the ages, and here he agrees in a way with the Evangelist even in the very words. For as the Evangelist, with an all-embracing expression, proclaimed him the cause and maker of all things, so Solomon says that the particular things counted in the universe came into being through him. For he says that “God founded the earth by wisdom, and prepared the heavens by understanding,” and whatever follows in sequence keeping the same sense. And so that he may not seem to pass over without mention the gift of virtue among human beings, he speaks again in the person of Wisdom, saying what we mentioned a little earlier, “I made counsel and knowledge and understanding my dwelling,” and all that belongs to intellectual and scientific teaching. Having gone through these and the like, he brings in also teaching about the economy concerning man: why the Word became flesh. For it is plain to all that the God who is over all has nothing in himself created or brought in from outside: not power, not wisdom, not light, not word, not life, not truth, nor anything at all of what is contemplated in the fullness of the divine bosom, all of which the only-begotten God is, “who is in the bosom of the Father.” The name of creation, then, could not reasonably be applied to anything contemplated in God, so that the Son who is in the Father, or the Word who is in the beginning, or the light in the light, or the life in the life, or the wisdom in the wisdom, should say, “The Lord created me.” For if the wisdom of God is created, and Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God, then God certainly had his wisdom brought in from outside, having acquired later, by making it, what he did not have at first. But he who is in the bosom of the Father never lets us think of the Father’s bosom as empty of himself; so he is not one of the things that have come to be in the bosom from outside. Being the fullness of every good, he who was in the beginning is certainly understood to be in the Father, not waiting to come to be in him through creation, lest the Father should ever be thought empty of good things. He who is understood to be in the eternity of the Father’s Godhead is always in him, being power and life and truth and light and wisdom and the like. The saying “He created me,” then, does not come from the divine and pure nature, but, as has been said, from what was mingled by the economy from our created nature. How, then, is the same one, called wisdom and understanding, who founds the earth, prepares the heavens, and breaks open the depths, here created as a beginning of works? Not without great cause, he says, is such an economy brought about.

“But since human beings, having received the commandment of the things to be kept, cast the grace out of their memory through disobedience and fell into forgetfulness of good things, therefore, so that I may declare to you again the things that happen daily for salvation, and remind you of the things from of old, recounting what you have forgotten (for I do not now announce some new Gospel, but am working for your restoration to the original state), for this reason I, who always am and need no creation in order to be, was created, so that I might become the beginning of ways for the works of God,” that is, for human beings. For since the first way had been corrupted, a new and living way had to be opened again for those who wander: myself, who am the way. And that the sense of “He created me” looks to the human element, the divine Apostle presents more clearly to us in his own words, where he commands, “Put on the Lord Jesus Christ,” and moreover where, taking up the same thought again, he says, “Put on the new man, created according to God.” For if the garment of salvation is one, and this is Christ, no one could say that the new man created according to God is anyone other than Christ. It is clear that he who has put on Christ has put on the new man created according to God. For only this one is truly and properly named a new man, who did not appear in human life through the known and customary ways of nature; in him alone a creation altered and peculiar to him was newly made. For this reason, looking to the wonder of his birth, he names the same one a new man created according to God; and looking to the divine nature mingled in the creation of this new man, he calls him Christ, so that the two expressions, “Christ,” I mean, and “the new man created according to God,” belong to one and the same. Since, then, Christ is the Wisdom, let the intelligent hearer consider the account of those who fight against us and our own, and judge which is more godly. Which better preserves in the text thoughts befitting God: the one who defines the Creator and Lord of the universe as made, and sets him on equal honour with the creation that serves, or rather the one who looks to the economy and keeps what suits both the conception of the divine and that of the human? The great Paul bears witness with this doctrine: in the new man he sees the creation, and in the true Wisdom the authority over creation. And the order of the passage agrees with the contemplation of the doctrine. For if the beginning of the ways had not been created in us, the foundation of the ages hoped for would not have been laid; nor would the Lord have become for us Father of the age to come unless, according to Isaiah, a child had been born to us and his name had been called, with all the other names the prophet gave, and with them all, “Father of the age to come.” First, then, came the mystery of the virginity and the economy of the passion; and then the wise master builders of the faith laid the foundation of the faith. This foundation is Christ, the Father of the age to come, on whom the life of the endless ages is built. When this had happened, so that in each believer the divine wills of the Gospel law and the varied gifts of the Holy Spirit might come to be (all of which the divine Scripture figuratively, by a fitting sense, names mountains and hills, calling righteousness “the mountains of God,” calling judgments “depths,” and calling “earth” what is sown by the Word and bears abundant fruit; or, as elsewhere in David, we are taught peace by the mountains and righteousness by the hills), wisdom is of necessity begotten in the faithful, and the Word is true. For he who is in those who have received him is not yet begotten in the unbelieving. So that these things may come to be in us too, their maker must be begotten in us. In this way we shall understand what follows as well, according to the same sequence. For if wisdom is begotten in us, then the country and the uninhabited place are prepared by God in each one: the country is the soul that receives the sowing and ploughing of the Word; the uninhabited place is the heart separated from evil inhabitants; and so our dwelling will be on the heights of the earth. For since the earth has a certain depth and a surface, when someone does not become subterranean or a cave-dweller by thinking on things below (such is the life of those who live in sin, stuck fast in the bottomless mud of the deep, for whom life is truly a pit, according to the psalm that says, “Let not the pit shut its mouth upon me”)…

If, then, anyone in whom wisdom has been begotten sets his mind on things above, touching the earth only so far as is necessary, he dwells on the heights of the land under heaven, not sinking deep into earthly thinking; wisdom is present to him as he prepares heaven in himself instead of earth. And when he makes the teaching of the clouds above strong for himself by putting its precepts into practice, and by an exact way of life marks off the great and broad sea of wickedness as with a shore, he prevents its salt water from going beyond its mouth. And if he is led down into springs by the gift of teaching, pouring out the stream of the word securely, so as not to give anyone a muddy stirring-up to drink instead of clean water; and if, raised above every earthly footing, he becomes airborne in his life, having stepped onto the spiritual way of life which the passage named “winds,” so that he is set apart as a throne for the one established in him (such was Paul, “set apart for the Gospel,” to become “a vessel of election to bear the name” of God, who became a kind of second throne for the Word, carrying the one established in him); when these and similar things have been achieved, so that he who has completed God’s inhabited world in himself now rejoices, rejoicing because he has become father not of wild and irrational beasts but of men (these would be the godlike thoughts, formed after the divine image through faith in him who was created and begotten in us; and faith, according to Paul’s word, is understood to be the foundation through which wisdom is begotten in the faithful and accomplishes everything that has been said), then the life of the one who has succeeded becomes truly blessed; with him wisdom is in harmony, and over him she rejoices at every season, as he rejoices daily in her alone. For “the Lord rejoices over his holy ones,” and in heaven there is joy over those who are saved; and Christ, as Father, holds a feast over the son brought back safe. Since these things have been said by us in passing, let the diligent reader who studies the ground of the divine Scripture fit the riddles to these contemplations, testing whether it is not far better to think that the sense of the riddles looks to this, and not to what is supposed at first sight. For the theology of John, which hymned all created things as the work of the Word, cannot be thought true if the one who created wisdom here is believed to have made all other things along with her. For then all things will no longer be through her; she will be counted with all the things that have come to be. That the riddling expressions look to this is clearly revealed by the passage that follows, which says, “Now then, son, hear me,” and, “Blessed is he who keeps my ways,” meaning by “ways,” plainly, the approaches to virtue, whose beginning is the acquiring of wisdom. Who, then, looking to the divine Scripture, will not agree that the enemies of the truth are at once impious and slanderers? Impious, because, so far as lies in them, they pull down the ineffable glory of the only-begotten God and attach it to creation, striving to show the Lord, whose power over all is unique, to be one of the things made by him. Slanderers, because, though Scripture gives them no starting-point for such suppositions, they arm themselves against godliness as if bringing their testimony from it. Since, then, they can show no saying from any of the holy Scriptures that counsels us to view the pre-eternal glory of the only-begotten God together with the creation subject to him, it would be well, now that this has been demonstrated by us, for the prize of victory over falsehood to be awarded to the account of godliness; and, rejecting all these verbal technicalities of theirs by which they fit the creature to the Creator and the thing made to the maker, to confess, as the Gospel from heaven teaches, a beloved Son, not illegitimate, not supposititious; and, accepting with the name “Son” all natural kinship, to call him true God from true God, and to believe likewise of him everything that is seen in the Father, because they are one, and the one is understood in the other, not exceeding, not falling short, not differing or altered in any character befitting God and good. Since, then, Eunomius’s fight with himself has become plain, in which he is refuted as contradicting himself, now saying that he must be named Son because he was begotten by nature, and again that because he was created he must be called no longer Son but a thing made, I think it fitting for one who listens sensibly and attentively, since truth cannot be found equally in each of two statements that fight one another, to reject from both what is impious and blasphemous, I mean the language of creature and thing made, and to assent only to what looks to godliness, the statement that confesses that the name of Son belongs to the only-begotten God by nature, so that the account of godliness may gain support even through the voice of its enemies.

Speaking again, he takes up the statement of his which I set out at the beginning: “Since the Son is begotten,” he says, “we do not refuse to call him also offspring, since the begotten substance itself and the name of Son make such a relation of the names appropriate.” For the moment, then, let the one who listens critically to what is said remember this: he speaks of the begotten substance, so that neither unbegottenness nor begetting is any longer taken in place of substance; rather, the substance is taken by itself, and its having been begotten, or not begotten, is understood separately, through the properties contemplated in it. Let us consider his statement on this point more diligently. He says that a substance has been begotten, and that “Son” is the name of the begotten substance. But here our argument will refute two things in our opponents’ statement: the one, the attempt at mischief; the other, the weakness of the attack on us. He works mischief by speaking of a begetting of substance, in order to establish the opposition of the substances to one another, split into a difference of nature by “begotten” and “unbegotten.” But the weakness of the attack is exposed by the very means by which the mischief is constructed. For one who says that the substance has been begotten clearly defines begetting as something other than the substance, so that what “begetting” signifies could not be fitted to the definition of substance. For he has not done here what he contrived in many places, so as to say that the begetting itself is the substance; he admits that the substance was begotten, so that a distinct notion arises in the hearers from each word. For one notion arises in someone who hears that something was begotten, and another through the name “substance.” Our argument may become clearer through examples. The Lord said in the Gospel that when the pangs draw near the woman is in sorrow, but afterwards she rejoices with joy “because a man has been born into the world.” In this passage, then, we learn from the Gospel two distinct notions: one, the birth, which we understood through “born”; the other, what comes into being from the birth itself; for the man is not the birth, but the man is through the birth. So here too, since Eunomius has admitted that the substance was begotten, we have been taught by the first word that it is from something, and by the next we have understood the subject itself, whose hypostasis is from something. If, then, what “substance” signifies is one thing, and the word “begetting” suggests another to the mind, their clever devices have collapsed all at once, like earthen vessels knocked against one another and shattered by one another. For they will no longer be able, when they transfer the distinction of begotten from unbegotten to the substance of the Son and of the Father, to transfer along with it to the realities the conflict of the names with one another. For since Eunomius has admitted that the substance was begotten, just as the Gospel example explains this sense (where, having learned that a man was born, we did not understand the man to be the same as the birth, but received a proper notion for each of the names), the heresy will no longer have any room at all for teaching the difference of the substances through such terms. That our account of these matters may be revealed more clearly still, let us take up the subject again in this way. He who established the universe made human nature at the beginning along with all things, and after Adam came into being, he then laid down for human beings the law of begetting from one another, saying, “Increase and multiply.” Since, then, Abel came into existence by begetting, who of sound mind would not say that, in the very sense of human begetting, Adam came into existence unbegotten? Yet the first man had in himself the whole definition of human substance, and the one begotten from him is described by the same definition of substance. If the begotten substance were made out to be other than the one not begotten, the same definition of substance would not have fitted both. For where the substance differs, the definition of the substance is not the same either. Since, then, the substance of Adam and that of Abel are characterized by the same properties, it must by all means be agreed that there is one substance in both, but one and another person shown in the same nature. For Adam and Abel, in the definition of their nature, are one, the two of them; but in the properties contemplated in each they have an unconfused distinction from each other. It cannot properly be said, then, that Adam begot a substance other than himself, but rather that from himself he begot another himself, with whom the whole definition of the begetter’s substance was brought forth. What we have learned in the case of human nature, then, through the guidance shown us by reason following its sequence, this I think we must take as a guide also to the pure understanding of the divine doctrines.