Against Eunomius 8.787–9.801

—while “stamp,” contemplated over the whole hypostasis of the Father, signifies that nothing is lacking in his own greatness, and “the form of God” reveals identity in every respect, by showing in itself all the marks by which the Godhead is characterized?

Let us set out Eunomius’s statement again, then. “He was not,” he says, “before his own begetting.” Who is this, whom he says was not? Let him tell the divine names by which he is named who, according to Eunomius, once was not. He will say, then, light and blessedness, life and incorruptibility, righteousness and sanctification, power and truth, and the like. He, then, who says that he was not before his begetting is openly crying out this: that there was no truth when he was not, there was no life, there was no light, there was no power, there was no incorruptibility, there was nothing else at all of what is understood in God. And what is still more absurd than these, and more grievous in impiety: there was no radiance, there was no stamp. For in saying that the radiance was not, it is certainly established at the same time that the power that radiates was not either, as in the example of the lamp. For he who speaks of the brightness of the lamp has shown at the same time that the lamp shines, and he who says that the brightness is not has signified at the same time that what gives the light has been put out. So when the Son is said not to be, the non-existence of the Father is necessarily established by consequence too. For if, according to the apostolic testimony, the one is joined to the other—the radiance of the glory, the stamp of the hypostasis, the wisdom of God—he who says that one of the things joined does not exist has certainly done away with the other along with the removal of the one. So if the radiance does not exist, it must be confessed that the radiating nature does not exist either; and if the stamp does not subsist, neither does the hypostasis that is stamped; and if the wisdom and power of God does not exist, it must certainly be confessed that neither does he exist who is not understood by himself apart from wisdom and power. If, then, the Only-begotten God was not before he came to be, as Eunomius says, and Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God, and stamp and radiance, then certainly the Father was not either, whose power and wisdom and stamp and radiance the Son is. For it is not possible to conceive in thought a hypostasis without its stamp, or glory without light, or God without wisdom, or a Creator without a hand, or a beginning without a Word, or a Father without a child. All such things appear together, both for those who confess them and for those who reject them, and by the removal of one the one joined to it vanishes as well. Since, then, they establish that the Son, who is the radiance of glory, was not before he came to be (and the consequence takes away, along with the non-existence of the radiance, the everlastingness of the glory too; and the glory is the Father, from whom the only-begotten light shone forth), let these men of excessive wisdom understand that they have shown themselves to be allies of the Epicurean doctrines, advocating atheism under the pretense of Christianity. Since, then, the absurdity has proved to be twofold by consequence—to say either that God does not exist at all or that he does not exist without beginning—let them choose, from what has been shown, whichever they please: either to be called atheists or no longer to say that the substance of the Father is without beginning. But no doubt they will avoid being thought atheists. It remains, then, for them to establish that God is not everlasting. And if the sequence of what has been proved forces this on them, where are their various and unconvertible conversions of names? Where is the inescapable necessity of the syllogisms, buzzing about the ears of old women with the distinction between the unbegotten and the begotten? But enough of this.

It would be well not to leave the next point unexamined either; but let the interlude of jokes be passed over in silence, in which this clever orator preens himself like a boy, whether joking or in earnest in his abuse of us, as though he would thereby get the better in argument. For no one will force us to twist our sight along with those whose eyes squint, or to be contorted along with those struck by a demonic disease, leaping and falling with their bodies. We will pity them, but we will not be moved from our settled state. He says, then, turning his argument on the matter against our teacher, as though fighting face to face, “You will be caught by your own feathers.” For our teacher had said that the good is always present to the God over all, and that it is good to be the father of such a child; so that the good is never absent from him, nor did the Father will to be without the Son, and having willed it he was not unable, and being able and willing, in being as he chose, he always has the Son, because he always wills the good—for this is where the thought of what our father said is directed. Eunomius, having first torn this to shreds as brought in from the outside wisdom, puts forward a statement of this kind to overturn it, and says, “What will become of you

if one of those practised in such arguments should say: ‘Just as, if creating is good and fitting for God, how was what is good and fitting not present to him without beginning, if God is without beginning? And this when neither ignorance prevented him, nor weakness hindered him, nor age, from creating’”—and all the other things he gathered together and poured out, to his harm, upon himself; for it is not lawful to say upon God. Now if it were possible for our teacher himself to answer the question, he would have shown Eunomius what would become of him, as he asked, with that God-taught tongue of his, both uncovering the divine mystery and scourging the champions of deceit with his refutations, so that it would become plain to all how great is the distance between a minister of the mysteries of Christ and a ridiculous mime or a maker of new and outlandish doctrines. But since the one, as the apostle says, though dead speaks to God, while the other puts such things forward as if there were no one to answer him, we will say this for the present to the questioner, even if our answer may not have equal force with the voice of the great Basil: your argument, put forward to overturn our words, becomes a testimony that we speak the truth in refuting the doctrine of impiety. For there is nothing we blame so much as your thinking that the Master of creation differs in nothing from creation in general; and what you put forward against the Only-begotten is what we blame. For if you think that what you see in creation must be fitted to the Only-begotten God too, our effort has reached its goal: the absurdity has been refuted by your own words and has become plain to all, both that we direct the argument in truth and that your conception of the Only-begotten God is such as it is of the rest of the creatures. About whom was the dispute? Was it not about the Only-begotten Son of God, the Creator of all creation—whether he always was, or was added to the Father later? What, then, does our teacher’s voice say about this? That it is not pious to believe that what is good by nature is not always in God. For he sees no cause for which it is likely that the good should not be present to the good, whether through lack of power or through barrenness of will. What does the one who fights against these words say to this? That if you grant that God the Word is believed to be from everlasting, you will grant the same of the creatures. Oh, how well he knows how to distinguish in his argument the nature of creatures from the divine majesty! How well he understands what fits each, what it is pious to think of God and what of creation! “If the Creator,” he says, “begins from the time of creation …” For it is not possible to mark the beginning of things that have come to be by anything other than time, which in its own interval defines beginnings and ends for things that come to be. For this reason he says that the maker of times too must have begun to be from a similar beginning. But creation has the ages as its beginning; what beginning will you conceive of the maker of the ages? For if someone speaks of the beginning in the Gospel, that is what is meant—the beginning with which the confession of the Son is shown to be joined—and it is not possible that he who is in the Father, as the Lord says, began from some point of time. But if someone speaks of another beginning besides that one, let him tell the name by which he marks such a beginning, since nothing is found before the constitution of the ages. So such an argument will not move us at all from the pious conception of the Only-begotten God, even if old women applaud it as a strong problem. For we abide by what was known from the beginning, having our argument firmly set on the truth: that whatever the word of piety supposes about the Only-begotten God has no kinship with creation, but the marks of him who made all things and those of his works are separated by a wide gap. If, then, the Son had any community with creation in other respects, we would certainly have to say that he does not differ in the mode of existence either. But if creation has no share in the things we have learned about the Son, it is certainly necessary to say that it has no community in this respect either. For creation was not in the beginning, nor was it with God, nor was it God, nor life, nor light, nor resurrection, nor any of the other God-befitting names, such as truth, righteousness, sanctification, judge, just, maker of all, existing before the ages, reigning for ever and ever and beyond. Creation is not radiance of glory, not stamp of hypostasis, not image of goodness, not grace, not power, not truth, not salvation, not redemption; nor is anything at all of what Scripture says to the glory of the Only-begotten found in creation, or said of it—to say nothing of the loftier sayings, “I am in the Father and the Father in me,” and “He who has seen me has seen the Father,” and “No one has seen the Son except the Father.”

If, then, the word could testify such and so great things of creation, he would rightly have thought that what is observed in it must also be fitted to our conceptions of the Only-begotten, since the comparison would be made from things of the same kind to what is akin. But if all such concepts and names have community with the Father and rise above our notion of creation, does not this wise and shrewd man sink down with shame for explaining the nature of the Lord of creation by what is observed in creation, not yet understanding that the marks of creation are of another kind? For the highest division of all beings cuts them into created and uncreated, the one as the cause of what has come into being, the other as having come into being from it. Since, then, the created nature and the divine substance are divided and have no intermixture in their distinguishing properties, it is wholly necessary not to understand each through the same terms, nor to seek the same marks in things that stand apart in the account of their nature. Now the nature that is in creation, as the word of the all-virtuous Wisdom says, shows in itself the beginning and end and middle of times, and extends along with all the intervals of time; and we take this property as a kind of stamp of the subject, in that we certainly see some beginning of its constitution, look to the middle, and stretch out in our hopes toward the end. For we have learned that heaven and earth were neither from everlasting nor will be for everlasting, so that it is plain from this that beings both began from some beginning and will certainly come to some end. But the divine nature, bounded in no part but on every side passing beyond every limit in its boundlessness, is far from the marks found in creation. For the power without interval, without quantity, and uncircumscribed, which holds in itself the ages and all the creation in them, and on every side overflows the infinity of the ages by the everlastingness of its own nature, either has no mark that reveals its nature or certainly some other mark, and not the one that creation has. Since, then, it is proper to creation to have a beginning, what is proper to creation would be foreign to the uncreated nature. For if anyone should see fit to suppose that the existence of the Only-begotten too is apprehended from some beginning, after the likeness of creation, he will necessarily fit everything to his account of him according to the sequence of the rest. For when the beginning is granted, one cannot avoid agreeing to what follows as well. For just as, if one granted that someone is a man, he has by this confession attached to him all that belongs to the nature, saying that he is a living being and rational and whatever else is understood of man, by the same reasoning, if we were to conceive one of the properties of creation in the divine substance, it will no longer be in our power not to fit to the pure nature the account of what is observed in creation. For the beginning will forcibly and necessarily seek what follows it; for a beginning so understood is a beginning of what comes after it, so that if those exist, it exists too, and if what is joined to it is taken away, neither does what goes before remain. Since, then, Wisdom sets middle and end beside the beginning, if we assume in the nature of the Only-begotten some beginning of his hypostasis marked off from some point, as the heresy teaches, Wisdom will certainly not allow us to avoid attaching the end and the middle to the beginning. And if this should happen, our theologian will be found to be proving by his arguments that the divine is mortal. For if, according to the word of Wisdom, the end necessarily follows the beginning, and the middle is seen between the limits, he who grants the one has by implication established the others too, setting measures and a limit of life for the boundless nature. And if this is impious and absurd, it deserves equal or even greater blame to grant a beginning to the argument that speaks impiety; and the beginning of such absurdity has proved to be the thought that the Son’s life is circumscribed by some beginning. So one of two things: either, compelled by what has been said, they will change over to sound doctrine and contemplate him who is from the Father together with the Father’s everlastingness; or, if they do not wish this, they will set limits to the Son’s everlastingness on both sides, bringing the infinity of his life to non-existence by a beginning and an end. But if the nature both of souls and of angels is endless, and nothing prevents it from proceeding into everlastingness because it is created and has had the beginning of its constitution from some point, so that our opponents could on this ground say the same of Christ—that he, though not being from everlasting, extends to endlessness—

let him who puts this forward consider also how far apart the Godhead stands from creation in its properties. For it is proper to the Godhead to lack nothing of any concept contemplated as good; but creation comes to be in the good by participation in what is better. It not only began to be, but is also always found to be beginning to be in the good, through its growth toward what is better. For it never stands still at what it has attained, but everything acquired by participation becomes the beginning of the ascent to what is greater; and, in Paul’s words, it never ceases stretching out to what lies ahead and forgetting what lies behind. Since, then, the Godhead is life itself, and the Only-begotten is God—God and life and truth and every lofty and God-befitting concept—while creation receives its supply of goods from there, it would be plain from this that if creation is in life by participating in life, then if it should cease from participating, it will certainly cease to be in life as well. If, then, they dare to say of the Only-begotten God what it is true to say of creation, let them say this too along with everything else: that, like creation, he both begins to be and continues in life after the likeness of souls. But if he is life itself, and needs no life brought in from outside to have it in himself, while all other things are not life but become participants in life, what necessity is there to strike everlastingness from the Only-begotten on the basis of what is seen in creation? For what is always the same by nature does not admit its opposite and is incapable of change into the other. But in those whose nature lies on the border, the inclination wavers toward either side, according to the power of those who are moved by choice. If, then, true life is contemplated in the divine and transcendent nature, the falling away from it will certainly end, as is likely, in the opposite.

The notion of life and death has many meanings and is not understood in the same way. In the case of the flesh, the activity and motion of the bodily senses is called life, and conversely their extinction and dissolution is named death. But in the case of the intellectual nature, kinship with the divine is the true life, and falling away from it bears the name of death. That is why the devil, the primal evil, is called both death and the inventor of death; indeed, he is said by the apostle to hold the power of death. Since, then, as has been said, the meaning of death is understood from the Scriptures as twofold, he who is truly unchangeable and unalterable alone has immortality and dwells in light that is unapproachable and inaccessible to the gloom of wickedness. But whatever shares in death has become far from immortality through its inclination to the opposite; and if a thing should flow away from participation in the good, it would receive, through the changeability of its nature, communion with the worse—which is nothing other than death, bearing some analogy to bodily death. For as here the extinction of nature’s activities is called death, so too in the intellectual substance immobility toward the good is death and a withdrawal from life. So what is understood about the bodiless creation does not oppose the argument that refutes the heretical absurdity. For the death fitting for the intellectual nature—that is, separation from God, whom we call life—is not, in potentiality, kept apart even from this nature. For its passage from non-being reveals the changeability of its nature. And that to which alteration is akin is kept from participation in the opposite by the grace of him who strengthens it, and does not remain in the good by the power of its own nature; and such a thing is not everlasting. If, then, he speaks truly in saying that the divine substance and the created nature must not be reckoned by the same terms, neither may one circumscribe the being of the Son by some beginning, lest, if this is granted, the other properties of creation too should come in along with the confession of the one. For the absurdity is plainly refuted of one who cuts the Only-begotten God off from the everlastingness of the Father by means of what is said about creation. For as none of the other marks that characterize creation is seen in the maker of creation, so neither does creation’s being from some beginning prove anything against the Son’s being always in the Father—he who is wisdom and power and light and life and all that is contemplated in the Father’s bosom.

But now he passes on to loftier words, and, lifting himself up and swelling with an empty blast, he attempts to say something worthy of God’s majesty. What he says is this: “For God, being the most excellent good of all, and the mightiest of all, and free from all necessity …” Nobly does the gallant man, like a ship without ballast, carried by the waves of deceit, bring his discourse of its own accord into the harbor of truth! God is the most excellent of all goods. Splendid confession! He would surely not indict the great John for an illegal proposal, by whom the Only-begotten is proclaimed God in his lofty preaching, he who was with God and was God. So if that herald of the Godhead of the Only-begotten is trustworthy, and God is the most excellent good, then the Son has been testified by the enemy of his glory to be the most excellent good. And since such a phrase fits the Father too, the superlative force of “most excellent” admits no diminution or excess by comparison. Having taken these points from the testimony of our enemies to prove the glory of the Only-begotten, we must add his next statement too, as an ally of sound doctrine. For he says: “God, the most excellent good, since neither nature hinders nor cause compels nor need presses, begets and creates according to the supremacy of his own authority, having his will as a power sufficient for the constitution of the things that come to be. If, then, every good is according to his will, he determines not only what has come to be as good but also when it is good for it to come to be; since it is surely a mark of weakness to do what one does not will.” Up to this point we must take, for the support of pious doctrines, our opponents’ statement, pinned together out of dirty and wholly counterfeit little phrases. For he who created all things—having his will, by the supremacy of his own authority, as a power sufficient for the constitution of the things that come to be, with neither nature hindering nor cause compelling—determines not only what has come to be as good but also when it is good for it to come to be. And he who makes all things is the Only-begotten God, as the Gospel proclaims. When he willed, then he made the creation; then he enclosed with the heavenly body, by its revolving substance, the whole world shut in within that figure; when he thought it good that this should come to be, then he made the dry land appear, then he shut the waters up in hollow places; then plants, then fruits, then the birth of animals, then the forming of man—when each of these seemed timely to the wisdom of the Creator. And he who made all things (for I will repeat the same statement again) is the Only-begotten God, who made the ages. Had the interval of the ages been laid down before beings, there would be occasion to use this temporal adverb and say “then he willed” and “then he made.” But since there was no age, and no notion of interval is contemplated in the divine nature, which is without quantity and without interval, the force of temporal adverbs must certainly lie idle. So to say that a beginning in time was given to creation according to the good pleasure of the wisdom of him who made all things is not unreasonable; but to view the divine nature itself in some extension of interval belongs only to those taught in the new wisdom.

For what a thing that is, set in his words, which I gladly passed over in my haste to reach the matter at hand, and which I will now take up again and read out to show the speech-writer’s shrewdness! “For the most excellent God himself, before the other things that are begotten,” he says, “has mastery over his own power.” The phrase has been carried over word for word by the speech-writer from Philo the Hebrew into his own treatise, and to anyone who cares to look, Eunomius’s theft will be caught red-handed from Philo’s own works. I have noted this for the present not so much to reproach the speech-writer with the poverty of his own words and ideas as from a wish to show readers the kinship of Eunomius’s doctrines with the arguments of the Jews. For Philo’s phrase would not have been fitted word for word to this man’s ideas unless there were also some kinship of his thinking with Philo’s. For the phrase is found in the Hebrew in this form: “God, before the other things that are begotten.” What follows was thrown in from the new Judaism: “has mastery over his own power.” How much absurdity this contains, examination of the phrase will clearly show. Over what does God have mastery? Is he one thing besides his power, and does he master his own power as something other than himself? Then power is overcome by powerlessness. For what is something other than power is certainly not power.