Against Eunomius 5.679–5.693

Concerning the saying of the apostle Peter, it would be time to examine more diligently what has been said about it both by Eunomius himself and by our father. If the exact contemplation stretches the discussion to great length, the fair-minded hearer will certainly forgive, not blaming us for prolixity, but laying the blame on the one who gave the occasion. And let me be allowed to go through a few things briefly before examining the matter at hand; perhaps they are not out of keeping with the aim of our effort. The divine word has laid down for human beings that nothing that has come into being by creation is to be worshipped, as one can learn from almost the whole of the divinely inspired Scripture. Moses, the tablets, the law, the prophets in succession, the Gospels, the doctrines of all the apostles, all alike forbid looking to the creature. It would be long to set out one by one the passages that bear on this; but even if we set out a few of the inspired testimonies out of many, the argument is equally credible, since each of the divine sayings has equal force for showing the truth, even if it is very small. For since our conception of beings is divided in two, into the created and the uncreated nature, if what our opponents now strive for should prevail, so that the Son of God is said to be created, it is altogether necessary either that the Gospel proclamation be set aside and that God the Word, who was in the beginning, not be worshipped, because worship must not be offered to the creature; or, if the wonders in the Gospels put us to shame, by which we are led to revere and worship the one revealed in them, … to bring the created and the uncreated into equal honour. If, according to our opponents’ doctrine, the created God too were worshipped, though he has no precedence in nature over the rest of creation, and if this should prevail, the doctrines of godliness will be carried over into a kind of complete anarchy and democratic self-rule. For when human beings do not believe that the nature worshipped is one, but are carried away in their thoughts to different godheads, there is no one who will halt the notion of the Divine as it advances through creation; rather, what was thought divine in creation will become a starting point for the same notion about what is seen after it, and that again for what comes next, and through this sequence the error will be carried through everything, the first deception passing through what lies next to it down to the last things. And that I am not guessing at anything unlikely, I will present as a credible witness of the argument the error that prevails to this day among the Greeks. For since with an untrained and petty mind they were moved to wonder at the beauties of creation, not using the wonder at what appears as a guide by the hand and a leader to the understanding of the beauty that lies above it, but halting their thought at what can be grasped and marvelling at each part of creation separately, for this reason they did not settle their notion of the Divine on any one thing among those that appear, but thought everything seen in creation divine. And so among the Egyptians, the error working more on intelligible things, the countless forms of demons were counted as natures of gods; among the Babylonians the revolution of the fixed sphere of the heavens was thought to be God, whom they also named Bel. So too Greek vanity deified separately the seven next to it and bowed to one or another, according to some peculiar account of the deception. For having observed all these circles turning within one another, since they had gone astray about the highest, they consistently kept the same error down to the lowest. And besides these, they declared that the ether itself, and the air spread beneath it, the earth and the sea and the region under the earth, and of the earth itself everything useful and necessary for human life—nothing whatever—was without a share in the divine nature. But to each of these they bowed, through some one of the things in creation that first appeared to them enslaving themselves to all the parts of creation in turn. So that if from the beginning it had appeared unlawful to them too to look to the creature, they would not have strayed into this deception of many gods. So that we may not suffer the same, we who are taught by Scripture to look to the true Godhead have been instructed to think of everything created as outside the divine nature, and to serve and revere the uncreated nature alone, whose character and mark is that it neither began to be at any time nor ceases to be. So the great Isaiah, speaking of God through his lofty voice about these doctrines, says in the divine person: “I am the first, and I am after these things, and before me there was no God, and after me there will be no God.” For this great prophet knew more exactly than all the mystery of Gospel godliness: he who announced that wonder of the Virgin, who proclaimed the good news of the Child’s birth, and who clearly set forth that name of the Son. He, then, who by the Spirit embraced all truth in himself, so that the character of the divine nature, by which we distinguish what truly is from what has come to be, might be made as clear as possible to all, says this in the person of God: “I am the first, and I am after these things, and before me no God has come to be, and after me there is none.”

Since, then, neither what is before God is God, nor what is after God is God (for what is after God is creation, and what is beyond God is nothing, and nothing is not God; or rather, what is beyond God is he himself, defined over against nothing in his eternal blessedness); since, then, this spiritual saying was spoken by the prophetic mouth, we learn through it the doctrine that the divine nature is one, continuous with itself and inseparable, not admitting before and after in itself, even if it is proclaimed in a Trinity, having nothing older or more recent among the things contemplated in it. Since, then, the saying is God’s, whether you grant that the word is the Father’s or the Son’s, the doctrine of godliness is equally strengthened by either. For if the Father says this, he bears witness that the Son is not after him. For if the Son is God, and everything after the Father is not God, it is clear that the saying bears witness that the Son is in the Father and not after the Father. Or if someone grants that this saying, “Before me there has not come to be,” is the Son’s, it will be clear teaching that the one contemplated in the beginning is understood together with the eternity of the beginning. If, then, anything is after God, it is found through what has been said to be creation and not God. For “what is after me,” he says, “is not God.” Having first set out this view of beings, it would be time to examine the passage before us. It was said by Peter to the Jews, “God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.” We say that it is not pious to refer “made” to the divinity of the Only-begotten, but to the form of the slave that came to be by the economy at the time of the presence in the flesh; but those who force the passage to the opposite say that by the word “made” the Apostle signifies the Son’s begetting before the ages. Setting the passage, then, before all, and examining both views with exactness, we shall leave to the hearer the judgment of the truth. Of our opponents’ sense Eunomius himself would be an adequate advocate, since he has fought not ignobly on this point; so, going through his statement word for word, we shall fully go through the argument on behalf of those who fight us. Of our own doctrine we shall be the champions as far as we can, following in the footsteps of what was set out before by the great Basil, as far as we are able. And let those who judge by reading in the interest of the truth, as one of the prophets says, “judge righteous judgment,” giving the prize not to contentious prejudices but to the truth shown by the examination. Let the accuser of our side come forward first, speaking, as in a court, what he has written: “Besides what has been said, refusing to take ‘made’ of the substance of the Son, and at the same time ashamed of the cross, he attributes to the apostles what none even of those most eager to revile them as foolish would, and clearly introduces two Christs and two Lords into his own doctrines and words. For he says that ‘God made Lord and Christ not the Word who was in the beginning, but him who emptied himself into the form of a slave and was crucified through weakness.’ And the great Basil writes expressly thus: ‘Moreover, the meaning of the apostle does not at all present to us the existence of the Only-begotten before the ages, which is the subject of the present discussion; for he clearly speaks not about the very substance of God the Word, who was in the beginning with God, but about him who emptied himself in the form of the slave, and became conformed to the body of our humiliation, and was crucified through weakness.’ And again: ‘This is known to everyone who has paid even a little attention to the intention of the apostolic saying, that he is not handing down to us a mode of theology but introducing the accounts of the economy. For “God made him,” he says, “both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified,” plainly resting with the demonstrative word on his humanity, visible to all.’ These things, then, says the man who has substituted his own mind for the intention of the apostles—for it is not lawful to say that he attended to it—lest anyone should condemn holy men, men chosen for the proclamation of godliness, of such madness as to insult their teaching, which falls short by such an excess. You who attribute your own nonsense to the memory of the holy, of what confusion are you not full? With what absurdity do you not teem, you who hold that a man was emptied into a man, and thereby make out that he who humbled himself by obedience to the form of the slave was conformed to men even before he took up this form?

“And who, having the form of a slave, takes up the form of a slave? How could anyone empty himself into what he is? You will find no device for this, though you are bold to say and think impossible things. And how are you not the most pitiable of all, holding that a man suffered for all men, and ascribing your own redemption to him? For if blessed Peter speaks not about the Word who was in the beginning and was God, but about the one who was seen and emptied himself, as Basil says; and the man who was seen emptied himself into the form of a slave; and the one who emptied himself into the form of a slave emptied himself into the coming to be of a man; then the man who was seen emptied himself into the coming to be of a man. But, O most careless of all, the very nature of things fights against these statements, and he too who hymned this economy with theology plainly contradicts them, saying that not the man who was seen, but the very Word who was in the beginning, and was God, took up flesh, which in other words is the same as taking the form of a slave. If, then, you think these things credible, turn from the error; stop holding that a man was emptied into a man. But if you are not able to persuade the unbelieving, undo the unbelief with another word and a second vote. Remember him who said, ‘who, being in the form of God, did not count it robbery to be equal with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave.’ For there is no one among men who will claim this saying for himself. None of the saints who ever lived was the only-begotten God become man. For this is what it is, being in the form of God, to take the form of a slave. If, then, blessed Peter speaks about the one who emptied himself into the form of the slave, and the Word who was in the beginning, being only-begotten God, emptied himself into the form of the slave, blessed Peter speaks about the one who was in the beginning and was God, and teaches that this one became Lord and Christ. This fight, then, Basil turns back upon himself, and he is clearly shown neither to have attended with his own mind to the intention of the apostles nor to keep the sequence of his own words. From these, either, perceiving the inconsistency, he will grant that the Word who was in the beginning and was God became Lord; or, joining conflicting things to conflicting things and remaining contentiously in them, he will add other things still more hostile, making out that there are two Christs and two Lords. For if God the Word who was in the beginning is one, and the one who emptied himself and took the form of a slave is another; and God the Word, through whom are all things, is Lord, and this Christ Jesus, who was crucified after all things had come to be, is also Lord; there are, according to him, two Lords and Christs. No argument will excuse him from so manifest a blasphemy. But if someone, establishing this, should say that the Word in the beginning and the one who became Lord are the same, but that he became Lord and Christ at the presence in the flesh, he will certainly be compelled to say that before the presence in the flesh the Son was not Lord. But even if two Lords and Christs are falsely proclaimed by Basil and the unbelievers who follow him, for us at least there is one Lord and Christ, through whom all things came to be, not having become Lord by advancement, but existing as Lord Jesus before all creation and before all ages, through whom are all things. All the saints with one voice teach us this, and have proclaimed it as the finest of doctrines. For blessed John teaches that God the Word, through whom all things came to be, came to be in flesh, saying, ‘And the Word became flesh’; and the most wonderful Paul, leading those who attend to him to humility, calls Christ Jesus the one who was in the form of God and emptied himself into the form of a slave and was humbled to death, even death on a cross; and again elsewhere he names the one crucified the Lord of glory: ‘For had they known,’ he says, ‘they would not have crucified the Lord of glory’; and much more nakedly than this he names the very substance ‘Lord,’ saying, ‘Now the Lord is the Spirit.’ If, then, the Word in the beginning, inasmuch as he is spirit, is Lord and the Lord of glory, and God made this one Lord and Christ, God made the spirit itself and God the Word, and not some other Lord of whom Basil dreams.” Such, then, is the accusation. It seems to me necessary first to go through each of the charges briefly by its heads, and then to call to account what was said, so that the indictment against us, to which we must answer, may be easy to remember for those who judge the truth, and we may resolve each of the charges in order and sequence. He says that we are ashamed of the cross of Christ, that we accuse the saints, that we say a man was emptied into a man, that we think the Lord had the form of the slave before the presence through the flesh, that we ascribe the redemption to a man, and that we speak of two Christs and Lords in our doctrine; or, if not that, that we say the Only-begotten was not Christ and Lord before the passion.

“So, to escape this blasphemy,” he says, “we must confess that the substance of the Son was made, as the apostle Peter too confirms such a doctrine by his own words.” These are the heads of the accusation; for whatever has been laboured over for abuse of us I will pass over in silence, as contributing nothing to the aim. For perhaps such a torrent of words, according to some technical theory, is customary for rhetoricians, devised to swell the bulk of an accusation. Let the sophist, then, insult us for the sake of his art, and rise to the height of his reproaches against us; let him parade his invective in the midst of the contest; let him call us most careless of all and most pitiable of all, full of confusion and absurdity; and let him disparage us with whatever he likes, at his pleasure, and we will bear it. For the shame for one who has sense is not in hearing a reviler, but in turning to what was said. Perhaps it even has some use that he has used his nature against us; for by keeping his slanderous tongue busy with us, he may make at least a small truce in his war against God. Let him, then, take his fill of insults at his pleasure, and there will be no one to contradict him. For if someone gives off a strange and foul smell because of a bodily imbalance or some pestilential and stubborn illness, he would not provoke a healthy person to envy his misfortune, so that he should wish to repay the stench of the one who smells with an equal one through a disease of his own. For common nature counsels us to pity such people, not to imitate them. Passing over, then, all such things as he has eagerly mixed into his discourse, mocking, complaining, resenting, reviling, let us examine only the argument about the doctrines. Taking them up, then, from the beginning, we will deal in turn with each of the charges. The first head of the accusation was that we are ashamed of the cross. But the charge of making the cross a matter of shame would more properly belong to those who have turned aside to such a supposition. For if the economy of the passion is believed alike by both sides, but we think we must honour God, manifested through the cross, as the Father is honoured, while for them the passion becomes a hindrance to glorifying the only-begotten God equally with the Father who begot him, then the charges turn against the sophist, and by the very things by which he thinks to accuse us he publishes his own impiety against the doctrines. For it is clear that he places the Father above the Son and exalts him with greater honours for this reason: that the shame of the cross is not seen in him. And for this reason he insists that the Son’s nature is at variance for the worse, because the reproach of the cross is referred to him alone, not touching the Father. And let no one think that I say this following only the sequence of the writing as to its sense. For having gone on through all the blasphemy carefully assembled in his discourse, I found this blasphemy set out by him plainly in bare words in what follows. If you will, I will set beside the sequence of my words what he wrote, which runs thus: “If he can show that the God over all, who is unapproachable light, came to be in flesh, or can come to be, came under authority, obeyed commands, lived as a citizen under human laws, bore a cross, let him say that the light is equal to the light.” Who, then, is ashamed of the cross: the one who even after the passion worships the Son equally with the Father, or the one who insults him even before the passion, not only by putting him on equal honour with creation, but by making out that he is of a passible nature, as if he would not have come to the experience of sufferings had he not had a nature capable of them? For we say that even the body in which he accepted the passion, being mingled with the divine nature, was made by the mingling to be what the nature that took it up is. So far are we from thinking anything small about the only-begotten God that, if anything of the lower nature was taken up for the economy of his love for humankind, we believe that this too was transformed into what is divine and pure. But he has made the passion of the cross a sign of variance in substance toward the lower, taking—I do not know how—the surpassing activity of the power by which he was able to do even this as proof of weakness, not understanding even this: that nothing moving according to its own nature is wondered at as a marvel, but whatever goes beyond the bounds of nature, these above all become a wonder; to these every ear turns, and every mind strains, marvelling at the unexpected. For this reason all who proclaim the word point out the wonder of the mystery in this: that God was manifested in the flesh, that the Word became flesh, that the light shone in the darkness, that the life tasted death; and the heralds cry out all such things, by which the wonder is increased of him who showed the abundance of his power through things beyond nature.

But even if it seems right to them to insult him on this account, and they cut the Son off from equal honour with the Father because of the economy of the cross, we, as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word handed down to us, have believed through the holy Scriptures that the God who was in the beginning afterwards, as Baruch says, “was seen on the earth and lived among men,” and, becoming a ransom for our death, loosed the bonds of death by his own resurrection and made the resurrection a way for all flesh through himself; and being of one throne and one glory with his own Father, he will pass sentence on those who are judged in the day of judgment, according to the worth of the lives they have lived. This is what we have believed about the crucified one; and for this reason we do not cease exalting him above all, according to the measure of our power, because he who can be contained by none, because of his unspeakable and unapproachable majesty, except by himself and the Father and the Holy Spirit, was able to come down even to communion with our weakness. But they make the Lord’s being manifested through flesh and cross a proof of the Son’s foreignness by nature to the Father, as though the Father’s nature remained pure in impassibility, while the Son, because his nature varies toward the lower, was not incapable of coming to the experience of flesh and death; as though the change were not great, but in a way passed from like to what is akin and of the same race, since they suppose that human nature is created and the nature of the Only-begotten is created too. Who, then, is rightly accused of being ashamed of the cross: the one who says lowly things about him, or the one who contends for the loftier? I do not know whether the accuser, who so belittles the God made known on the cross, has heard Paul’s grand voice, what and how great things he goes through about the cross with his lofty mouth. For he who had so many and such great wonders by which to make himself known says, “Far be it from me to boast in anything else except in the cross of Christ.” And to the Corinthians he says that the word of the cross is the power of God to those who are being saved; and to the Ephesians he describes the power that holds and holds together the universe by the figure of the cross, where he wishes them, being lifted up, to know the surpassing glory of this power, naming height and depth and breadth and length, calling each arm of the figure of the cross by its own name: so that he calls the upper part height, and the part below the crossing depth, and signifies each of the transverse arms by the names length and breadth, so that through this the great mystery might be made manifest: that things in heaven and things under the earth and all the ends of existing things are ruled and held together by the one who displayed this unspeakable and great power in the figure of the cross. But I think there is no need to contend further with these charges, judging it superfluous to take pride in refuting a slander when the truth has been shown in a few words. Let us, then, pass in our discussion to another charge. He says that the saints are slandered by us. If he has heard it himself, let him state the words of the accusation; if he says we have said it to others, let him show the charge true through witnesses. If he proves it from what we have written, let him read what was said, and we will accept the charge. But he could not bring forward anything of the kind, for what we have written lies open to examination by anyone who wishes. If it was neither said to him, nor has he heard it from others, nor has he a proof from what is written, I think the one who defends himself on these points should keep silent; for against a groundless charge the fitting defence is silence. The apostle Peter says, “God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.” Having learned these words from him, we say that the whole context of what is said looks to one thing: the cross itself, the human name, and the demonstrative word. For the word of Scripture says that two things happened concerning one person: from the Jews the passion, and from God the honour; not as though one suffered and another was honoured by the exaltation. And he explains this more clearly by what follows, saying, “Being exalted, then, by the right hand of God.” Who, then, was exalted, the lowly or the Most High? And what else is the Most High but the Divine? But God, being Most High, does not need to be exalted. So the apostle says that the human element was exalted; and it was exalted by becoming Lord and Christ.