Against Eunomius 8.769–8.783

For he says, “In the beginning was,” and “was with God,” and “was God,” and “was light,” and life and truth; and all good things he always was, and no good thing ever was not in him who is the fullness of all good things and is in the bosom of the Father. Moses, then, lays down for us, as a kind of stamp of the true Godhead, that we know nothing else about God except this alone, that he is—for this is what “I am he who is” shows. Isaiah cries out in his preaching that he who is is unbounded on every side, seeing that being in God is bounded neither by a beginning nor by an end. For he who said, “I am first, and hereafter,” sets the boundary of everlastingness in neither, so that neither when we look toward the beginning can we find a mark from which he is and before which he was not, nor, when we lead our mind on to what follows, can we cut off by any boundary the progress of being into everlastingness. And the prophet David forbids that any recent and foreign god be worshiped—and both of these are in the doctrines of the heresy: the recent is plainly shown in what is not everlasting, and the foreign in being estranged from the nature of the true God. Since this is so, we determine that the whole construction by sophisms to the effect that he who truly is once was not is nothing other than a transgression of Christianity and a turning to idolatry. For since the evangelist in his theology banished non-being from being on every side, and carefully wiped out the suspicion of non-existence by the continual repetition of “was,” and named him Only-begotten God, and Word of God, and Son of God, and equal to God, and all such things, we hold within ourselves this judgment, firm and unchangeable: that if the Only-begotten God is God, we must believe that he who is believed to be God always is. But indeed he truly is God: he always is all things, and is never found in non-being. For God, as we have often said, if he is now, certainly always was; and if he once was not, neither is he now at all. But since even the enemies of the truth confess that the Son is the Only-begotten God and abides for ever, we say this: that he who is in the Father is in him not in one respect only, but is in him in every respect, in all that the Father is understood to be. As, then, being in the incorruptibility of the Father, he is incorruptible, and in the good he is good, and in the powerful powerful, and being in each of the excellences understood in the Father he is that excellence, so too in the everlasting he is certainly everlasting. And the everlastingness of the Father is known by his neither beginning from non-being nor ending in non-being. He, then, who has without exception all that is the Father’s and is contemplated in all the glory of the Father—as, being in the endlessness of the Father, he has no end of life, so too, being in the Father’s being without beginning, he has no beginning of days, as the apostle says. Rather, he both is from the Father and is seen in the everlastingness of the Father; and in this way above all is seen the image’s exactness, in every respect, to him whose image it is. And in this the word is found true that said, “He who has seen me has seen the Father.” And what the apostle said would be best understood in this way, fittingly and naturally: that the Son is the radiance of the glory and the stamp of the hypostasis. For to those who are unable to raise their reasoning to the height of the knowledge of God through the contemplation of intelligible things, the apostle produces in his hearers some image of the truth from what appears to the senses. For as the body of the sun is marked out by the whole circle that encloses it, and one who has seen the circle reckons from what appears the reality of the whole mass that lies beneath in depth, so he said that the Father’s majesty is stamped in the greatness of the Son’s power, so that, as great as this is known to be, so great that too may be believed to be. And again, as radiance shines forth from the whole circle of the sun with the brilliance of its light—for it is not that one part of the circle shines and another is without light—so the whole glory, which is the Father, is surrounded on every side by the radiance that comes from it, that is, by the true light. And as the ray is from the sun—for there would be no ray if there were no sun—yet the sun is never understood by itself without the ray that shines from it, so the apostle, handing down the conjoined and everlasting existence of the Only-begotten from the Father, named the Son the “radiance of glory.”

These matters having been thus distinguished by us, no one could any longer be in doubt how the Only-begotten is both believed to be from the Father and is everlastingly—even if, at first thought, the statement that he is from the Father does not seem to agree with the one that testifies to his everlastingness. But if the statement must be confirmed by another means as well, it would be possible to understand the doctrine about this through certain things known to us by the senses. Let no one, however, find fault with the argument if it cannot find among beings an image of what is sought that will suffice in every respect, by analogy and likeness, to present the matter in hand. For we wish to persuade those who say that the Father first willed and then came to be Father, and who thereby make out that the Word is later, to bring their mind round to piety through whatever examples are possible for us. For neither does this immediate conjunction exclude the will of the Father, as though he had the Son by some necessity of nature, without choice; nor does the will separate the Son from the Father, falling between them as an interval. So we neither exclude from the doctrine the will of the begetter concerning the Son, as though it were squeezed out by the conjunction of the Son’s unity with the Father, nor dissolve the conjunction that has no interval when will is contemplated in the begetting. For it is a property of our heavy and slow-moving nature that having something and willing it are often not present to us at the same moment; rather, now we wish to have something we do not have, and afterward we obtain what we did not wish to obtain. But in the simple and all-powerful nature all things are understood together and at once: both willing the good and having what it willed. For the good and everlasting will is contemplated in the everlasting nature as wholly active, substantial, and subsistent, neither arising from some distinct beginning nor able to be understood apart from what is willed. For it is not possible in God either that the good will should not exist or that it should not be accompanied by what is willed, since no cause either diminishes what befits the Father, so that he is not all things, or hinders him from having what he wills. Since, then, the Only-begotten God is by nature the good, or rather beyond every good, and the good is not unwilled by the Father, it is clearly proved by this both that the Son’s conjunction with the Father is immediate and that the will that is always present in the good nature is not pushed out or excluded by the conjunction without interval.

And if anyone hears the argument without malice, I wish to add something like this to what has been said. If someone—I speak by way of hypothesis—were to give a flame a power of choice, it would be plain that together with its being the flame would also will to shine its brightness from itself; and having willed it, it would certainly not be unable to do it, since its natural power, together with the flame’s coming into existence, brings its will concerning the brightness to fulfilment. So, beyond dispute, if it were granted that the flame moves by choice, all would be understood in the same concurrence—the kindling of the fire, the will concerning the brightness, and the brightness itself—since the motion of choice in no way hinders the worthy existence of the brightness. So too, according to the example we have given, while you confess that the Father has the good will, you will not separate the Son from the Father by means of the will. For it is not reasonable that the will that he should be should become a hindrance to his being at once. But consider seeing and willing to see in the eye: the one is an activity of nature, the other, the impulse, belongs to choice; yet the motion of choice produces no hindrance, but rather an inclination of the activity of seeing toward this very thing. For each of these is contemplated separately and by itself, and neither becomes a hindrance to the other’s being; rather, the two are in a way with each other, the natural activity accompanying the choice, and the choice in turn not lagging behind the natural motion. As, then, perception is natural to the eye, and the will to see has produced no delay in the seeing itself, but the eye both wills to have sight and is what it wills, so too in the case of the nature that is ineffable and beyond every concept, the thought of all arises in us at once and together: of the Father’s everlasting existence, of the will concerning the Son, and of the Son himself, who, as John says, was in the beginning and is not understood as after the beginning. The beginning of all is the Father; but in this beginning the Son too has been proclaimed to be, being by nature that which the beginning is.

For the beginning is God, and the Word who was in the beginning is God. And since “the beginning” indicates everlastingness, John does well to join the Word to the beginning, saying that the Word was in it. By this, I think, he arranges that the beginning should not arise first and alone in the hearer’s mind, but that before it is impressed on the mind the Word who was in it should be understood together with the beginning, entering with it into the hearer’s thought and reaching the hearing together with the beginning.

Now that the doctrine has been made clear by us in this way, it would be time to set out and consider the opposing argument as well, examining it side by side with our conceptions. He speaks thus: “Since two things were really said by us—that the substance of the Only-begotten was not before its own begetting, and that, having been begotten, it was before all things—he refutes neither of the things said as false. For he did not dare to say that it was before its supreme begetting and constitution, since the Father’s nature and the judgment of sensible people stand against it. For who in his senses would admit that one who is Son and begotten was before his supreme begetting, when he who is without begetting does not need begetting in order to be what he is?” Whether he speaks the truth in saying that our teacher made no contest against these theses, let all judge who have spent time with his writings. For my part—since I reckon the refutation of his slander on this point a small thing as a proof of his malice—I will leave aside showing that this part was not passed over unexamined by our teacher, and turn my discourse, as far as I can, to the examination of what has been set out. He says that he said two things in his own treatise: one, that the substance of the Only-begotten was not before its own begetting; the other, that, having been begotten, it was before all things. Now that no new substance was begotten from the Father other than the one contemplated in the Father himself has, I think, been sufficiently shown by what we have said before, and we have no need, as though the argument had been put to us for the first time, to grapple with such a blasphemy. Our effort need be directed only to this—I mean to his godless and horrible saying, which plainly said of God the Word that he was not. But since the discourse has dealt sufficiently with this blasphemy too in what was said before, it would perhaps be superfluous to establish again through similar considerations what has already been shown. It was for this reason that we said those things first, so that, the pious understanding having been impressed beforehand, the blasphemy of our opponents, who establish that in the Only-begotten God non-being is older than being, might become clearer to readers.

But it seems good to me to examine in the discourse, more carefully, the very meaning of begetting. That this name indicates being from some cause is plain to all, and I think there is no need to contend about it. But since the account of things that subsist from a cause varies, I think it fitting to make this clear in the discourse by a technical division. Of things that come into being from something, then, we have grasped these differences. Some come from matter and art, like the construction of buildings and other works, which come about through suitable matter, while some art leads the way, bringing what was proposed to completion toward its own aim for what comes to be. Others come from matter and nature: for nature builds up the births of living creatures from one another, carrying out its own work through the material substrate in bodies. Others come from a material outflow, where both the original remains what it is and what flows from it is understood by itself, as with the sun and its ray, or the lamp and its brightness, or spices and ointments and the quality given off from them. For these, remaining undiminished in themselves, at once have accompanying each the natural property given off from them: the sun its ray, the lamp its brightness, and the spices the fragrance they produce in the air. There is also another kind of begetting besides these, whose cause is immaterial and bodiless, while the begetting is perceptible and comes through the body—I mean the word begotten from the mind; for the mind, being bodiless in itself, gives birth to the word through the organs of sense. So many differences of begetting we have observed, as it were in a general survey. For all the wonders that nature works—when it changes the bodies of some animals into another kind, or produces certain animals from some alteration of liquids, or the corruption of seeds, or the rotting of wood, or transforms the cold vapor from firebrands, trapped in their depths by the compression of the fire, into the birth of an animal, which they call the salamander—even if they seem to lie outside the classes defined, are none the less contained in what has been said.

For nature contrives these various kinds of living things through bodies: a certain change in the body, disposed in a certain way by nature, has fashioned this or that form of animal—which is no other kind of begetting than the one brought about from nature and matter. Since, then, these modes of begetting are plain to human beings, the loving economy of the Holy Spirit, in handing down the divine mysteries to us, gives its teaching about what is beyond reason through things we can grasp. It does this in all other matters too, when it describes the divine in bodily terms, recounting of God an eye, and eyelids, and an ear, and fingers, and a hand, and a right hand, and an arm, and a foot, and sandals, and the like, none of which is found in the divine nature according to the ordinary meaning. Rather, leading the teaching to what we can easily take in, it marks out things beyond all meaning by words worn smooth in human usage, while we are led up by analogy, through each thing said of God, to some loftier conception. So too, then, the God-inspired teaching takes up the many kinds of begetting to present the ineffable hypostasis of the Only-begotten, taking from each as much as it is reverent to admit into our conceptions of God. For as the mention of fingers, and of a hand and an arm, in the case of God does not describe in words the structure of the limb out of bones and sinews and flesh and ligaments, but signifies by such a name his effective and active power, and as through each of the others it indicates what fits the things understood of God, without admitting the bodily suggestion of the names, so too it speaks of these kinds of birth in the case of the divine nature, yet not in the way our usage knows how to understand them. For when it speaks of the power that constructs, it names such activity a begetting, because the word must come down to our lowliness from the divine power; yet it does not indicate the things seen along with constructive coming-to-be among us—not place, not time, not preparation of material, not the cooperation of tools, not the bustle over what is being made. Leaving these to us, it testifies magnificently and loftily that the birth of beings is God’s, as when it says, “He spoke, and they came to be; he commanded, and they were created.” Again, when it interprets the hypostasis of the Only-begotten from the Father, which is ineffable and beyond reason, then, because human poverty cannot contain teachings beyond reason and conception, it makes use of our terms and names him “Son”—the name our usage gives to those born from matter and nature. But as the word, in speaking of the coming-to-be of creation from God, did not add that it came about through some matter, declaring that the power of his will served as substance of matter, and place, and time, and all such things, so here too, having said “Son,” it left aside all the other things that human nature sees in birth here below—passions, I mean, and dispositions, and the cooperation of time, and the need of place, and above all matter, without all of which birth here below by nature does not take place. And when every such material and spatial notion has been excluded from the meaning of “Son,” nature alone was left; and therefore by the word “Son” the kinship and genuineness of his manifestation from the Father is interpreted in the case of the Only-begotten.

And since this kind of begetting was not sufficient to produce in us an adequate image of the ineffable existence of the Only-begotten, it also takes up another kind of begetting to signify the Son in its theology—the one from a material outflow—and speaks of “radiance of glory,” “fragrance of ointment,” and “breath of God,” which in the technical classification we set out before our usage calls a material outflow. But as in what was said before neither the making of creation nor the meaning of “Son” admitted time, or matter, or labor, or passion, so here too the word cleanses the meaning of “radiance” and of the other things mentioned of every material notion, takes only what is God-befitting in such a kind of begetting, and indicates by the suggestion of this expression that he is understood to be both from him and with him. For neither does “breath” represent a diffusion into the air from an underlying matter, nor “fragrance” the passing from the quality of the ointment into the air, nor “radiance” the outflow from the body of the sun through its rays. Rather, by such a mode of begetting this alone of all is shown, as has been said: that he is from him and is understood with him, no interval coming between the Father and him who is from him.

And since the grace of the Holy Spirit, out of greater love for humankind, arranged that the divine conceptions about the Only-begotten should come to us from many sides, it added also the remaining kind of those observed in birth—I mean the one from the mind, the word. But the lofty John uses greater forethought, so that the hearer may never, from weakness and smallness of soul, fall into the common notion of a word, so that the Son should be thought to be an utterance of the Father. That is why by his first proclamation he prepares us to see the Word in substance—and in a substance not estranged, broken off from that from which it is, but in the first and blessed nature itself. For this is what he teaches when he says, “In the beginning was the Word,” and was with God, and was God, and is himself all that the beginning is. For this is how he treats the everlastingness of the Only-begotten in his theology. These modes of begetting, then—or of things that subsist from a cause—are known in our usage and have also been taken up by holy Scripture for teaching about transcendent things, each of them adapted as is fitting to present divine conceptions. Let the reader of this treatise, then, judge with just judgment whether anything put forward by the heresy has any strength against the truth.

I will set down again, word for word, the statement of our opponent, which runs thus: “Since two things were said by us—that the substance of the Only-begotten was not before its own begetting, and that, having been begotten, it was before all things.” What kind of begetting does this dogmatist put before us? Is it the one it is fitting to understand and speak of in God? And who is so godless as to conceive non-being as prior to God? But clearly, looking to this material birth, he makes the nature here below the teacher of his conception of the Only-begotten God; and since an ox, or an ass, or a camel does not exist before its own birth, he wants to say of the Only-begotten too what the sequence of nature here below lets us see in animals. This bodily theologian does not understand even this, that “only-begotten,” said of God, by the very word signifies what is unique and has nothing in common with any other birth. For how would this birth be only-begotten if, in what the word suggests, it had community and identity with another birth? For what alone is understood as exceptional in him, which cannot be observed in any other birth, is properly and fittingly expressed by the title “Only-begotten”; so that if anything of birth here below is seen in him too, he who is made common with the rest of the begotten by certain properties of birth would no longer be Only-begotten. For if the same things were said of him that are said of the others who proceed into being by birth, the word would turn the meaning of “Only-begotten” into some brotherly relation. If, then, the meaning of “Only-begotten” indicates what is unmixed and has nothing in common with the rest of the things that come into being, we will not accept that any of the things seen in birth here below is understood in the hypostasis of the Son from the Father either. But it is a property of all that subsists by birth not to exist before the birth; this, then, is foreign to what is proper to the Only-begotten, for the title “Only-begotten” testifies that nothing of the mode of common birth belongs to him. So let this material man, this friend of the senses, be persuaded to correct the error of his conceptions by means of the other kind of begetting.

But perhaps you will say, when you hear “radiance of glory” and “fragrance of ointment,” that the radiance did not exist before its own birth. But when you say this, you will certainly grant that neither did the glory exist, nor the ointment. For it is not possible that the glory should ever be thought blind and lightless in itself, or the ointment barren of fragrance. So if the radiance was not, neither was the glory at all; and if the fragrance was not, it is shown at the same time that the ointment was not either. And if anyone is afraid of these examples taken from Scripture, as not presenting the majesty of the Only-begotten accurately, because the vapor is not the same in substance as the ointment from which it comes, nor the ray as the sun, let the true Word correct the fear—he who was in the beginning, and is all that the beginning is, and existed before the universe—since John cries out in his proclamation, “And the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” If, then, the Father is God and the Son too is God, what doubt is still left about the exact theology of the Only-begotten, when by the meaning of “Son” the kinship of nature is made known, by “radiance” the conjunction without interval, and by the appellation “God,” applied equally to Father and Son, equality of honor in every respect?