ANSWER TO EUNOMIUS' SECOND BOOK, PART 1
ANSWER TO EUNOMIUS' SECOND BOOK
THE first part of my contentions against Eunomius has with God's help been
sufficiently established in the preceding work, as all who will may see from
what I have worked out, how in that former part his fallacy has been completely
exposed, and its falsehood has no further force against the truth, except in
the case of those who show a very shameless animus against her. But since, like
some robber's ambuscade, he has got together a second work against orthodoxy,
again with God's help the truth takes up arms through me against the array of her
enemies, commanding my arguments like a general and directing them at her
pleasure against the foe; following whose steps I shall boldly venture on the
second part of my contentions, nothing daunted by the array of falsehood,
notwithstanding its display of numerous arguments. For faithful is He who has promised
that "a thousand shall be chased by one," and that "ten thousand shall be put to
flight by two"(2), victory in battle being due not to numbers, but to
righteousness. For even as bulky Goliath, when he shook against the Israelites that
ponderous spear we read of, inspired no fear in his opponent, though a shepherd and
unskilled in the tactics of war, but having met him in fight loses his own
head by a direct reversal of his expectations, so our Goliath, the champion of
this alien system, stretching forth his blasphemy against his opponents as though
his hand were on a naked sword, and flashing the while with sophisms fresh from
his whetstone, has failed to inspire us, though no soldiers, with any fear of
his prowess, or to find himself free to exult in the dearth of adversaries; on
the contrary, he has found us warriors improvised from the Lord's sheepfold,
untaught in logical warfare, and thinking it no detriment to be so, but simply
slinging our plain, rude argument of truth against him. Since then, that shepherd
who is in the record, when he had cast down the alien with his sling, and
broken his helmet with the stone, so that it gaped under the violence of the blow,
did not confine his valour to gazing on his fallen foe, but running in upon
him, and depriving him of his head, returns bearing it as a trophy to his people,
parading that braggart head through the host of his countrymen; looking to this
example it becomes us also to advance nothing daunted to the second part of
our labours, but as far as possible to imitate David's valour, and, like him,
after the first blow to plant our foot upon the fallen foe, so that enemy of the
truth may be exhibited as much as possible as a headless trunk. For separated as
he is from the true faith he is far more truly beheaded than that Philistine.
For since Christ is the head of every man, as saith the Apostle(3), and it is
only reasonable that the believer alone should be so termed (for Christ, I take
it, cannot be the head of the unbelieving also), it follows that he who is
severed from the saving faith must be headless like Goliath, being severed from the
true head by his own sword which he had whetted against the truth; which head
it shall be our task not to cut off, but to show that it is cut off.
And let no one suppose that it is through pride or desire of human
reputation that I go down to this truceless and implacable warfare to engage with the
foe. For if it were allowed me to pass a peaceful life meddling with no one, it
would be far enough from my disposition to wantonly disturb my tranquillity,
by voluntarily provoking and stirring up a war against myself. But now that
God's city, the Church, is besieged, and the great wall of the faith is shaken,
battered by the encircling engines of heresy, and there is no small risk of the
word of the Lord being swept into captivity through their devilish onslaught,
deeming it a dreadful thing to decline taking part in the Christian conflict, I
have not turned aside to repose, but have looked on the sweat of toil as more
honourable than the relaxation of repose, knowing well that just as every man, as
saith the Apostle, shall receive his own reward(4) according to his own labour,
so as a matter of course he shall receive punishment for neglect of labour
proportioned to his strength. Accordingly I supported the first encounter in the
discussion with good courage, discharging from my shepherd's scrip, i.e. from
the teaching of the Church, my natural and unpremeditated arguments for the
subversion of this blasphemy, needing not at all the equipment of arguments from
profane sources to qualify me for the contest; and now also I do not hang back
from the second part of the encounter, fixing my hope like great David(5) on Him
"Who teacheth my hands to war, and my fingers to fight," if haply the hand of
the writer may in my case also be guided by Divine power to the overthrow of
these heretical opinions, and my fingers may serve for the overthrow of their
malignant array by directing my argument with skill and precision against the foe.
But as in human conflicts those who excel in valour and might, secured by their
armour and having previously acquired military skill by their training for
facing danger, station themselves at the head of their column, encountering danger
for those ranged behind them, while the rest of the company, though serving
only to give an appearance of numbers, seem nevertheless, if only by their
serried shields, to conduce to the common good, so in these our conflicts that noble
soldier of Christ and vehement champion against the aliens, the mighty
spiritual warrior Basil--equipped as he is with the whole armour described by the
Apostle, and secured by the shield of faith, and ever holding before him that weapon
of defence, the sword of the spirit--fights in the van of the Lord's host by
his elaborated argument against this heresy, alive and resisting and prevailing
over the foe, while we the common herd, sheltering ourselves beneath the shield
of that champion of the faith, shall not hold back from any conflicts within
the compass of our power, according as our captain may lead us on against the
foe. As he, then, in his refutation of the false and untenable opinion maintained
by this heresy, affirms that "ungenerate" cannot be predicated of God except
as a mere notion or conception, whereof he has adduced proofs supported by
common sense and the evidence of Scripture, while Eunomius, the author of the
heresy, neither falls in with his statements nor is able to overturn them, but in his
conflict with the truth, the more clearly the light of true doctrine shines
forth, the more, like nocturnal creatures, does he shun the light, and, no longer
able to find the sophistical hiding-places to which he is accustomed, he
wanders about at random, and getting into the labyrinth of falsehood goes round and
round in the same, place, almost the whole of his second treatise being taken
up with this empty trifling--it is well accordingly that our battle with those
opposed to us should take place on the same ground whereon our champion by his
own treatise has been our leader.
First of all, however, I think it advisable to run briefly over our own
doctrinal views and our opponent's disagreement with them, so that our review of
the propositions in question may proceed methodically. Now the main point of
Christian orthodoxy(6) is to believe that the Only-begotten God, Who is the truth
and the true light, and the power of God and the life, is truly all that He is
said to be, both in other respects and especially in this, that He is God and
the truth, that is to say, God in truth, ever being what He is conceived to be
and what He is called, Who never at any time was not, nor ever will cease to
be, Whose being, such as it is essentially, is beyond the reach of the curiosity
that would try to comprehend it. But to us, as saith the word of Wisdom,(7) He
makes Himself known that He is "by the greatness and beauty of His creatures
proportionately" to the things that are known, vouchsafing to us the gift of
faith by the operations of His hands, but not the comprehension of what He is.
Whereas, then, such is the opinion prevailing among all Christians, (such at least
as are truly worthy of the appellation, those, I mean, who have been taught by
the law to worship nothing that is not very God, and by that very act of
worship confess that the Only-begotten is God in truth, and not a God falsely so
called,) there arose this deadly blight of the Church, bringing barrenness on the
holy seeds of the faith, advocating as it does the errors of Judaism, and
partaking to a certain extent in the impiety of the Greeks. For in its figment of a
created God it advocates the error of the Greeks, and in not accepting the Son
it supports that of the Jews. This school, then, which would do away with the
very Godhead of the Lord and teach men to conceive of Him as a created being, and
not that which the Father is in essence and power and dignity, since these
misty ideas find no support when exposed on all sides to the light of truth, have
overlooked all those names supplied by Scripture for the glorification of God,
and predicated in like manner of the Father and of the Son, and have betaken
themselves to the word "ungenerate," a term fabricated by themselves to throw
contempt on the greatness of the Only-begotten God. For whereas an orthodox
confession teaches us to believe in the Only-begotten God so that all men should
honour the Son even as they honour the Father, these men, rejecting the orthodox
terms whereby the greatness of the Son is signified as on a par with the dignity
of the Father, draw from thence the beginnings and foundations of their heresy
in regard to His Divinity. For as the Only-begotten God, as the voice of the
Gospel teaches, came forth from the Father and is of Him, misrepresenting this
doctrine by a change of terms, they make use of them to rend the true faith in
pieces. For whereas the truth teaches that the Father is from no pre-existing
cause, these men have given to such a view the name of "ungeneracy," and signify
the substance of the Only-begotten from the Father by the term
"generation,"--then comparing the two terms "ungenerate" and "generate" as contradictories to
each other, they make use of the opposition to mislead their senseless followers.
For, to make the matter clearer by an illustration, the expressions, He was
generated and He was not generated, are much the same as, He is seated and He is
not seated, and all such-like expressions. But they, forcing these expressions
away from the natural significance of the terms, are eager to put another
meaning upon them with a view to the subversion of orthodoxy. For whereas, as has
been said, the words "is seated" and "is not seated" are not equivalent in
meaning (the one expression being contradictory of the other), they pretend that this
formal contradiction in expression indicates an essential difference,
ascribing generation to the Son and non-generation to the Father as their essential
attributes. Yet, as it is impossible to regard a man's sitting down or not as the
essence of the man (for one would not use the same definition for a man's
sitting as for the man himself), so, by the analogy of the above example, the
non-generated essence is in its inherent idea something wholly different from the
thing expressed by "not having been generated." But our opponents, with an eye to
their evil object, that of establishing their denial of the Godhead of the
Only-begotten, do not say that the essence of the Father is ungenerate, but,
conversely, they declare ungeneracy to be His essence, in order that by this
distinction in regard to generation they may establish, by the verbal opposition, a
diversity of natures. In the direction of impiety they look with ten thousand
eyes, but with regard to the impracticability of their own contention they are as
incapable of vision as men who deliberately close their eyes. For who but one
whose mental optics are utterly purblind can fail to discern the loose and
unsubstantial character of the principle of their doctrine, and that their argument
in support of ungeneracy as an essence has thing to stand upon? For this is the
way in which their error would establish itself.
But to the best of my ability I will raise my voice to rebut our enemies'
argument. They say that God is declared to be without generation, that the
Godhead is by nature simple, and that which is simple admits of no composition. If,
then, God Who is declared to be without generation is by His nature without
composition, His title of Ungenerate must belong to His very nature, and that
nature is identical with ungeneracy. To whom we reply that the terms incomposite
and ungenerate are not the same thing, for the former represents the simplicity
of the subject, the other its being without origin, and these expressions are
not convertible in meaning, though both are predicated of one subject. But from
the appellation of Ungenerate we have been taught that He Who is so named is
without origin, and from the appellation of simple that He is free from all
admixture (or composition), and these terms cannot be substituted for each other.
There is therefore no necessity that, because the Godhead is by its nature
simple, that nature should be termed ungeneracy; but in that He is indivisible and
without composition, He is spoken of as simple, while in that He was not
generated, He is spoken of as ungenerate.
Now if the term ungenerate did not signify the being without origin, but
the idea of simplicity entered into the meaning of such a term, and He were
called ungenerate in their heretical sense, merely because He is simple and
incomposite, and if the terms simple and ungenerate are the same in meaning, then too
must the simplicity of the Son be equivalent with ungeneracy. For they will not
deny that God the Only-begotten is by His nature simple, unless they are
prepared to deny that He is God. Accordingly the term simplicity will in its meaning
have no such connection with being ungenerate as that, by reason of its
incomposite character, His nature should be termed ungeneracy; or they draw upon
themselves one of two absurd alternatives, either denying the Godhead of the
Only-begotten, or attributing ungeneracy to Him also. For if God is simple, and the
term simplicity is, according to them, identical with ungenerate, they must
either make out the Son to be of composite nature, by which term it is implied that
neither is He God, or if they allow His Godhead, and God (as I have said) is
simple, then they make Him out at the same time to be ungenerate, if the terms
simple and ungenerate are convertible. But to make my meaning clearer I will
recapitulate. We affirm that each of these terms has its own peculiar meaning, and
that the term indivisible cannot be rendered by ungenerate, nor ungenerate by
simple; but by simple we understand uncom-pounded, and by ungenerate we are
taught to understand what is without origin. Furthermore we hold that we are bound
to believe that the Son of God, being Himself God, is Himself also simple,
because God is free from all compositeness; and in like manner in speaking of Him
also by the appellation of Son we neither denote simplicity of substance, nor
in simplicity do we include the notion of Son, but the term Son we hold to
indicate that He is of the substance of the Father, and the term simple we hold to
mean what the word bears upon its face. Since, then, the meaning of the term
simple in regard to essence is one and the same whether spoken of the Father or of
the Son, differing in no degree, while there is a wide difference between
generate and ungenerate (the one containing a notion not contained in the other),
for this reason we assert that there is no necessity that, the Father being
ungenerate, His essence should, because that essence is simple, be defined by the
term ungenerate. For neither of the Son, Who is simple, and Whom also we believe
to be generated, do we say that His essence is simplicity. But as the essence
is simple and not simplicity, so also the essence is ungenerate and not
ungeneracy. In like manner also the Son being generated, our reason is freed from any
necessity that, because His essence is simple, we should define that essence as
generateness; but here again each expression has its peculiar force. For the
term generated suggests to you a source whence, and the term simple implies
freedom from composition. But this does not approve itself to them. For they
maintain that since the essence of the Father is simple, it cannot be considered as
other than ungeneracy; on which account also He is said to be ungenerate. In
answer to whom we may also observe that, since they call the Father both Creator
and Maker, whereas He Who is so called is simple in regard to His essence, if is
high time for such sophists to declare the essence of the Father to be
creation and making, since the argument about simplicity introduces into His essence
any signification of any name we give Him. Either, then, let them separate
ungeneracy from the definition of the Divine essence, allowing the term no more than
its proper signification, or, if by reason of the simplicity of the subject
they define His essence by the term ungeneracy, by a parity of reasoning let them
likewise see creation and making in the essence of the Father, not as though
the power residing in the essence created and made, but as though the power
itself meant creation and making. But if they reject this as bad and absurd, let
them be persuaded by what logically follows to reject the other proposition as
well. For as the essence of the builder is not the thing built, no more is
ungeneracy the essence of the Ungenerate. But for the sake of clearness and
conciseness I will restate my arguments. If the Father is called ungenerate, not by
reason of His having never been generated, but because His essence is simple and
incomposite, by a parity of reasoning the Son also must be called ungenerate, for
He too is a simple and incomposite essence. But if we are compelled to confess
the Son to be generated because He was generated, it is manifest that we must
address the Father as ungenerate, because He was not generated. But if we are
compelled to this conclusion by truth and the force of our premises, it is clear
that the term ungenerate is no part of the essence, but is indicative of a
difference of conceptions, distinguishing that which is generated from that which
is ungenerate. But let us discuss this point also in addition to what I have
said. If they affirm that the term ungenerate signifies the essence(8) (of the
Father), and not that He has His substance without origin, what term will they
use to denote the Father's being without origin, when they have set aside the
term ungenerate to indicate His essence? For if we are not taught the
distinguishing difference of the Persons by the term ungenerate, but are to regard it as
indicating His very nature as flowing in a manner from the subject-matter, and
disclosing what we seek in articulate syllables, it must follow that God is not,
or is not to be called, ungenerate, there being no word left to express such
peculiar significance in regard to Him. For inasmuch as according to them the
term ungenerate does not mean without origin, but indicates the Divine nature,
their argument will be found to exclude it altogether, and the term ungenerate
slips out of their teaching in respect to God. For there being no other word or
term to represent that the Father is ungenerate, and that term signifying,
according to their fallacious argument, something else, and not that He was not
generated, their whole argument falls and collapses into Sabellianism. For by this
reasoning we must hold the Father to be identical with the Son, the distinction
between generated and ungenerate having been got rid of from their teaching, so
that they are driven to one of two alternatives: either they must again adopt
the view of the term as denoting a difference in the attributes proper to
either Person, and not as denoting the nature, or, abiding by their conclusions as
to the word, they must side with Sabellius. For it is impossible that the
difference of the persons should be without confusion, unless there be a distinction
between generated and ungenerate. Accordingly if the term denotes difference,
essence will in no way be denoted by the appellation. For the definitions of
difference and essence are by no means the same. But if they divert the meaning of
the word so as to signify nature, they must be drawn into the heresy of those
who are called "Son-Fathers(9)," all accuracy of definition in regard to the
Persons being rejected from their account. But if they say that there is nothing
to hinder the distinction between generated and ungenerate from being rendered
by the term ungenerate, and that term represents the essence too, let them
distinguish for us the kindred meanings of the word, so that the notion of
ungenerate may properly apply to either of them taken by itself. For the expression of
the difference by means of this term involves no ambiguity, consisting as it
does of a verbal opposition. For as an equivalent to saying "The Son has, and the
Father has not, been generated," we too assent to the statement that the
latter is ungenerate and the former generated, by a sort of verbal correlation. But
from what point of view a clear manifestation of essence can be made by this
appellation, this they are unable to say. But keeping silence on this head, our
novel theologian weaves us a web of trifling subtleties in his former
treatise. Because God, saith he, being simple, is called ungenerate, therefore God is
ungeneracy. What has the notion of simplicity to do with the idea of ungenerate?
For not only is the Only-begotten generated, but, without controversy, He is
simple also. But, saith he, He is without parts also, and incomposite. But what
is this to the point? For neither is the Son multiform and composite: and yet
He is not on that account ungenerate.
But, saith he, He is without both quantity and magnitude. Granted: for the
Son also is unlimited by quantity and magnitude, and yet is He the Son. But
this is not the point. For the task set before us is this: in what signification
of ungenerate is essence declared? For as this word marks the difference of the
properties, so they maintain that the essence also is indicated without
ambiguity by one of the things signified by the appellation.
But this thing he leaves untold, and only says that ungeneracy should not
be predicated of God as a mere conception. For what is so spoken, saith he, is
dissolved, and passes away with its utterance. But what is there that is
uttered but is so dissolved? For we do not keep undissolved, like those who make pots
or bricks, what we utter with our voice in the mould of the speech which we
form once for all with our lips, but as soon as one speech has been sent forth by
our voice, what we have said ceases to exist. For the breath of our voice
being dispersed again into the air, no trace of our words is impressed upon the
spot in which such dispersion of our voice has taken place: so that if he makes
this the distinguishing characteristic of a term that expresses a mere
conception, that it does not remain, but vanishes with the voice that gives it utterance,
he may as well at once call every term a mere conception, inasmuch as no
substance remains in any term subsequent to its utterance. No, nor will he be able
to show that ungeneracy itself, which he excepts from the products of
conception, is indissoluble and fixed when it has been uttered, for this expression of
the voice through the lips does not abide in the air. And from this we may see
the unsubstantial character of his assertions; because, even if without speech we
describe in writing our mental conceptions, it is not as though the
substantial objects of our thoughts will acquire their significance from the letters,
while the non-substantial will have no part in what the letters express. For
whatever comes into our mind, whether intellectually existing, or otherwise, it is
possible for us at our discretion to store away in writing. And the voice and
letters are of equal value for the expression of thought, for we communicate what
we think by the latter as well as by the former. What he sees, then, to
justify his making the mental conception perish with the voice only, I fail to
comprehend. For in the case of all speech uttered by means of sound, the passage of
the breath indeed which conveys the voice is towards its kindred element, but
the sense of the words spoken is engraved by hearing on the memory of the
hearer's soul, whether it be true or false. Is not this, then, a weak interpretation
of this "conception" of his that our writer offers, when he characterizes and
defines it by the dissolution of the voice? And for this reason the understanding
hearer, as saith Isaiah, objects to this inconceivable account of mental
conception, showing it, to use the man's own words, to be a veritably dissoluble and
unsubstantial one, and he discusses scientifically the force inherent in the
term, advancing his argument by familiar examples to the contemplation of
doctrine. Against whom Eunomius exalting himself with this pompous writing,
endeavours to overthrow the true account of mental conception, after this manner.
But before we examine what he has written it may be better to enquire with
what purpose it is that he refuses to admit that ungenerate can be predicated
of God by way of conception. Now the tenet which has been held in common by all
who have received the word of our religion is, that all hope of salvation
should be placed in Christ, it being impossible for any to be found among the
righteous, unless faith in Christ supply what is desired. And this conviction being
firmly established in the souls of the faithful, and all honour and glory and
worship being due to the Only-begotten God as the Author of life, Who doeth the
works of the Father, as the Lord Himself saith in the Gospel(1), and Who falls
short of no excellence in all knowledge of that which is good, I know not how
they have been so perverted by malignity and jealousy of the Lord's honour,
that, as though they judged the worship paid by the faithful to the Only-begotten
God to be a detriment to themselves, they oppose His Divine honours, and try to
persuade us that nothing that is said of them is true. For with them neither is
He very God, though called so, it would seem, by Scripture, nor, though called
Son, has He a nature that makes good the appellation, nor has He a community
of dignity or of nature with the Father. For, say they, it is not possible for
Him that is begotten to be of equal honour with Him Who made Him, either in
dignity, or in power, or in nature, because the life of the latter is infinite, and
His existence from eternity, while the life of the Son is in a manner
circumscribed, the beginning of His being begotten limiting His life at the
commencement, and preventing it from being coextensive with the eternity of the Father, so
that His life also is to be regarded as defective; and the Father was not
always what He now is and is said to be, but, having been something else before, He
afterwards determined that He would be a Father, or rather that He would be so
called. For not even of the Son was He rightly called Father, but of a
creature supposititiously invested with the title of son. And every way, say they, the
younger is of necessity inferior to the elder, the finite to the eternal, that
which is begotten by the will of the begetter, to the begetter himself, both
in power, and dignity, and nature, and precedence due to age, and all other
prerogatives of respect. But how can we justly dignify with the honours due to the
true God that which is wanting in the perfection of the diviner attributes?
Thus they would establish the doctrine that one who is limited in power, and
wanting in the perfection of life, and subject to a superior, and doing nothing of
himself but what is sanctioned by the authority of the more powerful, is in no
divine honour and consideration, but that, while we call him God, we are
employing a term empty of all grandeur in its significance. And since such statements
as these, when stripped of their plausible dress, move indignation and make the
hearer shudder at their strangeness (for Who can tolerate an evil counsellor
nakedly and unadvisably urging the overthrow of the majesty of Christ?), they
therefore try to pervert foolish hearers with these foreign notions by enveloping
their malignant and insidious arguments in a number of seductive fallacies.
For after laying down such premises as might naturally lead the mind of the
hearers in the desired direction, they leave the hearer to draw his conclusion for
himself.
For after saying that the Only-begotten God is not the same in essence
with the true Father, and after sophistically inferring this from the opposition
between generate and ungenerate, they work in silence to the conclusion, their
impiety prevailing by the natural course of inference. And as the poisoner
makes his drug acceptable to his victim by sweetening its deadliness with honey,
and, as for himself, has only to offer it, while the drug insinuating itself into
the vitals without further action on the part of the poisoner does its deadly
work,--so, too, do our opponents act. For qualifying their pernicious teaching
with their sophistical refinements, as with honey, when they have infused into
the mind of the hearer the venomous fallacy that God the Only-begotten is not
very God, they cause all the rest to be inferred without saying a word. For when
they are persuaded that He is not truly God, it follows as a matter of course
that no other Divine attribute is truly applicable. For if He is truly neither
Son nor God, except by an abuse of terms, then the other names which are given
to Him in Holy Scripture are a divergence from the truth. For the one thing
cannot be predicated of Him with truth, and the other be destitute of it; but they
must needs follow one another, so that, if He be truly God, it follows that He
is Judge and King, and that His several attributes are such as they are
described, while, if His godhead be falsely asserted, neither will the truth hold
respecting any of His other attributes. They, then, having been deceived into the
persuasion that the attribute of Godhead is falsely applied to the
Only-begotten, it follows that He is not rightly the object of worship and adoration, or,
in fact, of any of the honours that are paid to God. In order, then, to render
their attack upon the Saviour efficacious, this is the blasphemous method that
they have adopted. There is no need, they urge, of looking at the collective
attributes by which the Son's equality in honour and dignity with the Father is
signified, but from the opposition between generate and un-generate we must
argue a distinctive difference of nature; for the Divine nature is that which is
denoted by the term ungenerate. Again, since all men of sense regard it as
impracticable to indicate the ineffable Being by any force of words, because neither
does our knowledge extend to the comprehension of what transcends knowledge,
nor does the ministry of words have such power in us as to avail for the full
enunciation of our thought, where the mind is engaged on anything eminently lofty
and divine,--these wise folk, on the contrary, convicting men in general of
want of sense and ignorance of logic, assert their own knowledge of such matters,
and their ability to impart it to whomsoever they will; and accordingly they
maintain that the divine nature is simply ungeneracy per se, and declaring this
to be sovereign and supreme, they make this word comprehend the whole greatness
of Godhead, so as to necessitate the inference that if ungeneracy is the main
point of the essence, and the other divine attributes are bound up with it, viz.
Godhead, power, im-perishableness and so on--if (I say) ungeneracy mean these,
then, if this ungeneracy cannot be predicated of something, neither can the
rest. For as reason, and risibility, and capacity of knowledge are proper to man,
and what is not humanity may not be classed among the properties of his
nature, so, if true Godhead consists in ungeneracy, then, to whatsoever thing the
latter name does not properly belong, no one at all of the other distinguishing
attributes of Godhead will be found in it. If, then, ungeneracy is not predicable
of the Son, it follows that no other of His sublime and godlike attributes are
properly ascribed to Him. This, then, they define as a right comprehension of
the divine mysteries--the rejection of the Son's Godhead--all but shouting in
the ear of those who would listen to them; "To you it is given to be perfect in
knowledge(2), if only you believe not in God the Only-begotten as being very
God, and honour not the Son as the Father is honoured, but regard Him as by
nature a created being, not Lord and Master, but slave and subject." For this is the
aim and object of their design, though the blasphemy is cloaked in different
terms.
Accordingly, enveloping his former special-pleading in the mazy evolutions
of his sophistries, and dealing subtly with the term ungener-ate, he steals
away the intelligence of his dupes, saying to them, "Well, then, if neither by
way of conception it is so, nor by deprivation, nor by division (for He is
without parts), nor as being another in Himself(3) (for He is the one only
ungenerate), He Himself must be, in essence, ungenerate.
Seeing, then, the mischief resulting to the dupes of this fallacious
reasoning--that to assent to His not being very God is a departure from our
confession of Him as our Lord, to which conclusion indeed his words would bring his
teaching--our master does not indeed deny that ungenerate is no partial predicate
of God, himself also admitting that God is without quantity, or magnitude, or
parts; but the statement that this term ought not to be applied to Him by way of
mental conception he impugns, and gives his proofs. But again, shifting from
this position, our writer in the second of his treatises meets us with his
sophistry, combating his own statements in regard to mental conception.
It will presently be time to bring to their own recollection the method of
this argument. Suffice it first to say this. There is no faculty in human
nature adequate to the full comprehension of the divine essence. It may be that it
is easy to show this in the case of human capacity alone, and to say that the
incorporeal creation is incapable of taking in and comprehending that nature
which is infinite will not be far short of the truth, as we may see by familiar
examples; for as there are many and various things that have fleshly life, winged
things, and things of the earth, some that mount above the clouds by virtue of
their wings, others that dwell in hollows or burrow in the ground, on
comparing which it would appear that there was no small difference between the
inhabitants of air and of land; while, if the comparison be extended to the stars and
the fixed circumference, it will be seen that what soars aloft on wings is not
less widely removed from heaven than from the animals that are on the earth; so,
too, the strength of angels compared with our own seems preeminently great,
because, undisturbed by sensation, it pursues its lofty themes with pure naked
intelligence. Yet, if we weigh even their comprehension with the majesty of Him
Who really is, it may be that if any one should venture to say that even their
power of understanding is not far superior to our own weakness, his conjecture
would fall within the limits of probability, for wide and insurmountable is the
interval that divides and fences off untreated from created nature. The latter
is limited, the former not. The latter is confined within its own boundaries
according to the pleasure of its Maker. The former is bounded only by infinity.
The latter stretches itself out within certain degrees of extension, limited by
time and space: the former transcends all notion of degree, baffling curiosity
from every point of view. In this life we can apprehend the beginning and the
end of all things that exist, but the beatitude that is above the creature
admits neither end nor beginning, but is above all that is connoted by either,
being ever the same, self-dependent, not travelling on by degrees from one point
to another in its life; for there is no participation of other life in its
life, such that we might infer end and beginning; but, be it what it may, it is
life energizing in itself, not becoming greater or less by addition or diminution.
For increase has no place in the infinite, and that which is by its nature
passionless excludes all notion of decrease. And as, when looking up to heaven,
and in a measure apprehending by the visual organs the beauty that is in the
height, we doubt not the existence of what we see, but if asked what it is, we are
unable to define its nature, but we simply admire as we contemplate the
overarching vault, the reverse planetary motion(4), the so-called Zodiac graven
obliquely on the pole, whereby astronomers observe the motion of bodies revolving in
an opposite direction, the differences of luminaries according to their
magnitude, and the specialities of their rays, their risings and settings that take
place according to the circling year ever at the same seasons undeviatingly, the
conjunctions of planets, the courses of those that pass below, the eclipses of
those that are above, the obumbrations of the earth, the reappearance of
eclipsed bodies, the moon's multiform changes, the motion of the sun midway within
the poles, and how, filled with his own light, and crowned with his encircling
beams, and embracing all things in his sovereign light, he himself also at times
suffers eclipse (the disc of the moon, as they say, passing before him), and
how, by the will of Him Who has so ordained, ever running his own particular
course, he accomplishes his appointed orbit and progress, opening out the four
seasons of the year in succession; we, as I say, when we contemplate these
phenomena by the aid of sight, are in no doubt of their existence, though we are as far
from comprehending their essential nature as if sight had not given us any
glimpse whatever of what we have seen; and even so, with regard to the Creator of
the world, we know that He exists, but of His essential nature we cannot deny
that we are ignorant. But, boasting as they do that they know these things, let
them first tell us about the things of inferior nature; what they think of the
body of the heavens, of the machinery which conveys the stars in their eternal
courses, or of the sphere in which they move; for, however far speculation may
proceed, when it comes to the uncertain and incomprehensible it must stop. For
though any one say that another body, like in fashion (to that body of the
heavens), fitting to its circular shape, checks its velocity, so that, ever turning
in its course, it revolves conformably to that other upon itself, being
retained by the force that embraces it from flying off at a tangent, yet how can he
assert that these bodies will remain unspent by their constant friction with
each other? And how, again, is motion produced in the case of two coeval bodies
mutually conformed, when the one remains motionless (for the inner body, one
would have thought, being held as in a vice by the motionlessness of that which
embraces it, will be quite unable to act); and what is it that maintains the
embracing body in its fixedness, so that it remains unshaken and unaffected by the
motion of that which fits into it? And if in restless curiosity of thought we
should conceive of some position for it that should keep it stationary, we must
go on in logical consistency to search for the base of that base, and of the
next, and of the next, and so on, and so the inquiry, proceeding from like to
like, will go on to infinity, and end in helpless perplexity, still, even when some
body has been put for the farthest foundation of the system of the universe,
reaching after what is beyond, so that there is no stopping in our inquiry after
the limit of the embracing circles. But not so, say others: but (according to
the vain theory of those who have speculated on these matters) there is an
empty space spread over the back of the heavens, working in which vacuum the motion
of the universe revolves i upon itself, meeting with no resistance from any
solid body capable of retarding it by opposition and of checking its course of
revolution. What, then, is that vacuum, which they say is neither a body nor an
idea? How far does it extend, and what succeeds it, and what relation exists
between the firm, resisting body, and that void and unsubstantial one? What is
there to unite things so contrary by nature? and how can the harmony of the
universe consist out of elements so incongruous; and what can any one say of Heaven
itself? That it is a mixture of the elements which it contains, or one of them
or something else beside them? What, again, of the stars themselves? whence
comes their radiance? What is it and how is it composed? and what is the reason of
their difference in beauty and magnitude? and the seven inner orbs revolving in
an opposite direction to the motion of the universe, what are they, and by
what influence are they propelled? Then, too, what is that immaterial and ethereal
empyrean, and the intermediate air which forms a wall of partition between
that element in nature which gives heat and consumes, and that which is moist and
combustible? And how does earth below form the foundation of the whole, and
what is it that keeps it firmly in its place? what is it that controls its
downward tendency? If any one should interrogate us on these and such-like points,
will any of us be found so presumptuous as to promise an explanation of them? No!
the only reply that can be given by men of sense is this:--that He Who made all
things in wisdom can alone furnish an account of His creation. For ourselves,
"through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God,"
as saith the Apostle(5).
If, then, the lower creation which comes under our organs of sense
transcends human knowledge, how can He, Who by His mere will made the worlds, be
within the range of our apprehension? Surely this is vanity, and lying madness, as
saith the Prophet(6), to think it possible to comprehend the things which are
incomprehensible. So may we see tiny children busying themselves in their play.
For oft-times, when a sunbeam streams down upon them through a window, delighted
with its beauty they throw themselves on what they see, and are eager to catch
the sunbeam in their hands, and struggle with one another, and grasp the light
in the clutch of their fingers, and fancy they have imprisoned the ray in
them, but presently when they unclasp their hands and find that the sunbeam which
they held has slipped through their fingers, they laugh and clap their hands. In
like manner the children of our generation, as saith the parable, sit playing
in the market-places; for, seeing the power of God shining in upon their souls
through the dispensations of His providence, and the wonders of His creation
like a warm ray emanating from the natural sun, they marvel not at the Divine
gift, nor adore Him Whom such things reveal, but passing beyond the limits of the
soul's capabilities, they seek with their sophistical understanding to grasp
that which is intangible, and think by their reasonings to lay hold of what they
are persuaded of; but when their argument unfolds itself and discloses the
tangled web of their sophistries, men of discernment see at once that what they
have apprehended is nothing at all; so pettily and so childishly labouring in vain
at impossibilities do they set themselves to include the inconceivable nature
of God in the few syllables of the term "ungenerate," and applaud their own
folly, and imagine God to be such that human reasoning can include Him under one
single term: and while they pretend to follow the teaching of the sacred
writers, they are not afraid of raising themselves above them. For what cannot be
shown to have been said by any of those blessed ones, any words of whose are
recorded in the sacred books, these things, as saith the Apostle, "understanding
neither what they say, nor whereof they affirm(7)," they nevertheless say they
know, and boast of guiding others to such knowledge. And on this account they
declare that they have apprehended that God the Only-begotten is not what He is
called. For to this conclusion they are compelled by their premises.
How pitiable are they for their cleverness! how wretched, how fatal is
their over-wise philosophy! Who is there who goes of his own accord to the pit so
eagerly as these men labour and bestir themselves to dig out their lake of
blasphemy? How far have they separated themselves from the hope of the Christian!
What a gulf have they fixed between themselves and the faith which saves! How
far have they withdrawn themselves from Abraham the father of the faith! He
indeed, if in the lofty spirit of the Apostle we may take the words allegorically,
and so penetrate to the inner sense of the history, without losing sight of the
truth of its facts--he, I say, went out by Divine command from his own country
and kindred on a journey worthy of a prophet eager for the knowledge of God(8).
For no local migration seems to me to satisfy the idea of the blessings which
it is signified that he found. For going out from himself and from his country,
by which I understand his earthly and carnal mind, and raising his thoughts as
far as possible above the common boundaries of nature, and forsaking the
soul's kinship with the senses,--so that untroubled by any of the objects of sense
his eyes might be open to the things which are invisible, there being neither
sight nor sound to distract the mind in its work,--"walking," as saith the
Apostle, "by faith, not by sight," he was raised so high by the sublimity of his
knowledge that he came to be regarded as the acme of human perfection, knowing as
much of God as it was possible for finite human capacity at its full stretch to
attain. Therefore also the Lord of all creation, as though He were a discovery
of Abraham, is called specially the God of Abraham. Yet what saith the
Scripture respecting him? That he went out not knowing whither he went, no, nor even
being capable of learning the name of Him whom he loved, yet in no wise impatient
or ashamed on account of such ignorance.
This, then, was the meaning of his safe guidance on the way to what he
sought--that he was not blindly led by any of the means ready to hand for his
instruction in the things of God, and that his mind, unimpeded by any object of
sense, was never hindered from its journeying in quest of what lies beyond all
that is known, but having gone by reasoning far beyond the wisdom of his
countrymen, (I mean the philosophy of the Chaldees, limited as it was to the things
which do appear,) and soaring above the things which are cognizable by sense, from
the beauty of the objects of contemplation, and the harmony of the heavenly
wonders, he desired to behold the archetype of all beauty. And so, too, all the
other things which in the course of his reasoning he was led to apprehend as he
advanced, whether the power of God, or His goodness, or His being without
beginning, or His infinity, or whatever else is conceivable in respect to the divine
nature, using them all as supplies and appliances for his onward journey, ever
making one discovery a stepping-stone to another, ever reaching forth unto
those things which were before, and setting in his heart, as saith the Prophet,
each fair stage of his advance(9), and passing by all knowledge acquired by his
own ability as falling short of that of which be was in quest, when he had gone
beyond every conjecture respecting the divine nature which is suggested by any
name amongst all our conceptions of God, having purged his reason of all such
fancies, and arrived at a faith unalloyed and free from all prejudice, he made
this a sure and manifest token of the knowledge of God, viz. the belief that He
is greater and more sublime than any token by which He may be known. On this
account, indeed, after the ecstasy which fell upon him, and after his sublime
meditations, falling back on his human weakness, "I am," saith he, "but dust and
ashes(10)," that is to say, without voice or power to interpret that good which
his mind had conceived. For dust and ashes seem to denote what is lifeless and
barren; and so there arises a law of faith for the life to come, teaching those
who would come to God, by this history of Abraham, that it is impossible to
draw near to God, unless faith mediate, and bring the seeking soul into union with
the incomprehensible nature of God. For leaving behind him the curiosity that
arises from knowledge, Abraham, says the Apostle, "believed God, and it was
counted unto him for righteousness(1)." "Now it was not written for his sake," the
Apostle says, "but for us," that God counts to men for righteousness their
faith, not their knowledge. For knowledge acts, as it were, in a commercial
spirit, dealing only with what is known. But the faith of Christians acts otherwise.
For it is the substance, not of things known, but of things hoped for. Now that
which we have already we no longer hope for. "For what a man hath," says the
Apostle, "why doth he yet hope for(2)"? But faith makes our own that which we
see not, assuring us by its own certainty of that which does not appear. For so
speaks the Apostle of the believer, that "he endured as seeing Him Who is
invisible(3)."
Vain, therefore, is he who maintains that it is possible to take knowledge
of the divine essence, by the knowledge which puffeth up to no purpose. For
neither is there any man so great that he can claim equality in understanding
with the Lord, for, as saith David, "Who is he among the clouds that shall be
compared unto the Lord?(4)" nor is that which is sought so small that it can be
compassed by the reasonings of human shallowness. Listen to the preacher exhorting
not to be hasty to utter anything before God, "for God," (saith he,) "is in
heaven above, and thou upon earth beneath(5)."
He shows, I think, by the relation of these elements to each other, or
rather by their distance, how far the divine nature is above the speculations of
human reason. For that nature which transcends all intelligence is as high above
earthly calculation as the stars are above the touch of our fingers; or
rather, many times more than that.
Knowing, then, how widely the Divine nature differs from our own, let us
quietly remain within our proper limits. For it is both safer and more reverent
to believe the majesty of God to be greater than we can understand, than, after
circumscribing His glory by our misconceptions, to suppose there is nothing
beyond our conception of it.
And on other accounts also it may be called safe to let alone the Divine
essence, as unspeakable, and beyond the scope of human reasoning. For the desire
of investigating what is obscure and tracing out hidden things by the
operation of human reasoning gives an entrance to false no less than to true notions,
inasmuch as he who aspires to know the unknown will not always arrive at truth,
but may also conceive of falsehood itself as truth. But the disciple of the
Gospels and of Prophecy believes that He Who is, is; both from what he has learnt
from the sacred writers, and from the harmony of things which do appear, and
from the works of Providence. But what He is and how--leaving this as a useless
and unprofitable speculation, such a disciple will open no door to falsehood
against truth. For in speculative enquiry fallacies readily find place. But where
speculation is entirely at rest, the necessity of error is precluded. And that
this is a true account of the case, may be seen if we consider how it is that
heresies in the churches have wandered off into many and various opinions in
regard to God, men deceiving themselves as they are swayed by one mental impulse
or another; and how these very men with whom our treatise is concerned have
slipped into such a pit of profanity. Would it not have been safer for all,
following the counsel of wisdom, to abstain from searching into such deep matters, and
in peace and quietness to keep inviolate the pure deposit of the faith? But
since, in fact, human nothingness has commenced intruding recklessly into matters
that are above comprehension, and supporting by dogmatic teaching the figments
of their vain imagination, there has sprung up in consequence a whole host of
enemies to the truth, and among them these very men who are the subject of this
treatise; dogmatizers of deceit who seek to limit the Divine Being, and all
but openly idolize their own imagination, in that they deify the idea expressed
by this "ungeneracy" of theirs, as not being only in a certain relation
discernible in the Divine nature, but as being itself God, or the essence of God. Yet
perchance they would have done better to look to the sacred company of the
Prophets and Patriarchs, to whom "at sundry times, and in divers manners(6)," the
Word of truth spake, and, next in order, those who were eye-witnesses and
ministers of the word, that they might give honour due to the claims on their belief
of the things attested by the Holy Spirit Himself, and abide within the limits
of their teaching and knowledge, and not venture on themes which are not
comprehended in the canon of the sacred writers. For those writers, by revealing God,
so long unknown to human life by reason of the prevalence of idolatry, and
making Him known to men, both from the wonders which manifest themselves in His
works, and from the names which express the manifold variety of His power, lead
men, as by the hand, to the understanding of the Divine nature, making known to
them the bare grandeur of the thought of God; while the question of His essence,
as one which it is impossible to grasp, and which bears no fruit to the
curious enquirer, they dismiss without any attempt at its solution. For whereas they
have set forth respecting all other things, that they were created, the heaven,
the earth, the sea, times, ages, and the creatures that are therein, but what
each is in itself, and how and whence, on these points they are silent; so,
too, concerning God Himself, they exhort men to "believe that He is, and that He
is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him(7)," but in regard to His nature,
as being above every name, they neither name it nor concern themselves about
it. For if we have learned any names expressive of the knowledge of God, all
these are related and have analogy to such names as denote human characteristics.
For as they who would indicate some person unknown by marks of recognition
speak of him as of good parentage and descent, if such happen to be the case, or as
distinguished for his riches or his worth, or as in the prime of life, or of
such or such stature, and in so speaking they do not set forth the nature of
the person indicated, but give certain notes of recognition (for neither
advantages of birth, nor of wealth, nor of reputation, nor of age, constitute the man;
they are considered, simply as being observable in the man), thus too the
expressions of Holy Scripture devised for the glory of God set forth one or another
of the things which are declared concerning Him, each inculcating some special
teaching. For by these expressions we are taught either His power, or that He
admits not of deterioration, or that He is without cause and without limit, or
that He is supreme above all things, or, in short, something, be it what it may,
respecting Him. But His very essence, as not to be conceived by the human
intellect or expressed in words, this it has left untouched as a thing not to be
made the subject of curious enquiry, ruling that it be revered in silence, in
that it forbids the investigation of things too deep for us, while it enjoins the
duty of being slow to utter any word before God. And therefore, whosoever
searches the whole of Revelation will find therein no doctrine of the Divine nature,
nor indeed of anything else that has a substantial existence, so that we pass
our lives in ignorance of much, being ignorant first of all of ourselves, as
men, and then of all things besides. For who is there who has arrived at a
comprehension of his own soul? Who is acquainted with its very essence, whether it is
material or immaterial, whether it is purely incorporeal, or whether it
exhibits anything of a corporeal character; how it comes into being, how it is
composed, whence it enters into the body, how it departs from it, or what means it
possesses to unite it to the nature of the body; how, being intangible and
without form, it is kept within its own sphere, what difference exists among its
powers, how one and the same soul, in its eager curiosity to know the things which
are unseen, soars above the highest heavens, and again, dragged down by the
weight of the body, falls back on material passions, anger and fear, pain and
pleasure, pity and cruelty, hope and memory, cowardice and audacity, friendship and
hatred, and all the contraries that are produced in the faculties of the soul?
Observing which things, who has not fancied that he has a sort of populace of
souls crowded together in himself, each of the aforesaid passions differing
widely from the rest, and, where it prevails, holding lordship over them all, so
that even the rational faculty falls under and is subject to the predominating
power of such forces, and contributes its own co-operation to such impulses, as
to a despotic lord? What word, then, of the inspired Scripture has taught us
the manifold and multiform character of what we understand in speaking of the
soul? Is it a unity composed of them all, and, if so, what is it that blends and
harmonizes things mutually opposed, so that many things become one, while each
element, taken by itself, is shut up in the soul as in some ample vessel? And
how is it that we have not the perception of them all as being involved in it,
being at one and the same time confident and afraid, at once hating and loving
and feeling in ourselves the working as well of all other emotions confused and
intermingled; but, on the contrary, take knowledge only of their alternate
control, when one of them prevails, the rest remaining quiescent? What in short is
this composition and arrangement, and this capacious void within us, such that
to each is assigned its own post, as though hindered by middle walls of
partition from holding intercourse with its neighbour? And then again what account has
explained whether passion is the fundamental essence of the soul, or fear, or
any of the other elements which I have mentioned; and what emotions are
unsubstantial? For if these have an independent subsistence, then, as I have said,
there is comprehended in ourselves not one soul, but a collection of souls, each
of them occupying its distinct position as a particular and individual soul. But
if we must suppose these to be a kind of emotion without subsistence, how can
that which has no essential existence exercise lordship over us, having reduced
us as it were to slave under whichsoever of these things may have happened to
prevail? And if the soul is something that thought only can grasp, how can that
which is manifold and composite be contemplated as such, when such an object
ought to be contemplated by itself, independently of these bodily qualities?
Then, as to the soul's power of growth, of desire, of nutrition, of change, and
the fact that all the bodily powers are nourished, while feeling does not extend
through all, but, as in things without life, some of our members are destitute
of feeling, the bones for example, the cartilages, the nails, the hair, all of
which take nourishment, but do not feel,--tell me who is there that understands
this only half-complete operation of the soul as to these? And why do I speak
of the soul? Even the inquiry as to that thing in the flesh itself which
assumes all the corporeal qualities has not been pursued to any definite result. For
if any one has made a mental analysis of that which is seen into its component
parts, and, having stripped the object of its qualities, has attempted to
consider it by itself, I fail to see what will have been left for investigation. For
when you take from a body its colour, its shape, its degree of resistance, its
weight, its quantity, its position, its forces active or passive, its relation
to other objects, what remains, that can still be called a body, we can
neither see of ourselves, nor are we taught it by Scripture. But how can he who is
ignorant of himself take knowledge of anything that is above himself? And if a
man is familiarized with such ignorance of himself, is he not plainly taught by
the very fact not to be astonished at any of the mysteries that are without?
Wherefore also, of the elements of the world, we know only so much by our senses
as to enable us to receive what they severally supply for our living. But we
possess no knowledge of their substance, nor do we count it loss to be ignorant of
it. For what does it profit me to inquire curiously into the nature of fire,
how it is struck out, how it is kindled, how, when it has caught hold of the
fuel supplied to it, it does not let it go till it has devoured and consumed its
prey; how the spark is latent in the flint, how steel, cold as it is to the
touch, generates fire, how sticks rubbed together kindle flame how water shining in
the sun causes a flash; and then again the cause of its upward tendency, its
power of incessant motion?--Putting aside all which curious questions and
investigations, we give heed only to the subservience of this fire to life, seeing
that he who avails himself of its service fares no worse than he who busies
himself with inquiries into its nature.
Wherefore Holy Scripture omits all idle inquiry into substance as
superfluous and unnecessary. And methinks it was for this that John, the Son of
Thunder, who with the loud voice of the doctrines contained in his Gospel rose above
that of the preaching which heralded them, said at the close of his Gospel,
"There are also many other things which Jesus did, the which if they should be
written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books
that should be written(8)." He certainly does not mean by these the miracles
of healing, for of these the narrative leaves none unrecorded, even though it
does not mention the names of all who were healed. For when he tells us that the
dead were raised, that the blind received their sight, that the deaf heard,
that the lame walked, and that He healed all manner of sickness and all manner of
disease, he does not in this leave any miracle unrecorded, but embraces each
and all in these general terms. But it may be that the Evangelist means this in
his profound wisdom: that we are to learn the majesty of the Son of God not by
the miracles alone which He did in the flesh. For these are little compared
with the greatness of His other work. "But look thou up to Heaven! Behold its
glories! Transfer your thought to the wide compass of the earth, and the watery
depths! Embrace with your mind the whole world, and when you have come to the
knowledge of supramundane nature, learn that these are the true works of Him Who
sojourned for thee in the flesh," which (saith he), "if each were written"--and
the essence, manner, origin, and extent of each given--the world itself could
not contain the fulness of Christ's teaching about the world itself. For since
God hath made all things in wisdom, and to His wisdom there is no limit (for
"His understanding," saith the Scripture, "is infinite"(9)), the world, that is
bounded by limits of its own, cannot contain within itself the account of
infinite wisdom. If, then, the whole world is too little to contain the teaching of
the works of God, how many worlds could contain an account of the Lord of them
all? For perhaps it will not be denied even by the tongue of the blasphemer that
the Maker of all things, which have been created by the mere fiat of His will,
is infinitely greater than all. If, then, the whole creation cannot contain
what might be said respecting itself (for so, according to our explanation, the
great Evangelist testifies), how should human shallowness contain all that might
be said of the Lord of Creation? Let those grand talkers inform us what man is,
in comparison with the universe, what geometrical point is so without
magnitude, which of the atoms of Epicurus is capable of such infinitesimal reduction in
the vain fancy of those who make such problems the object of their study,
which of them falls so little short of non-existence, as human shallowness, when
compared with the universe. As saith also great David, with a true insight into
human weakness, "Mine age is as nothing unto Thee(1)," not saying that it is
absolutely nothing, but signifying, by this comparison to the non-existent, that
what is so exceedingly brief is next to nothing at all.
But, nevertheless, with only such a nature for their base of operations,
they open their mouths wide against the unspeakable Power, and encompass by one
appellation the infinite nature, confining the Divine essence within the narrow
limits of the term ungeneracy, that they may thereby pave a way for their
blasphemy against the Only-begotten; but although the great Basil had corrected
this false opinion, and pointed out, in regard to the terms, that they have no
existence in nature, but are attached as conceptions to the things signified, so
far are they from returning to the truth, that they stick to what they have once
advanced, as to birdlime, and will not loose their hold of their fallacious
mode of argument, nor do they allow the term "ungeneracy" to be used in the way
of a mental conception, but make it represent the Divine nature itself. Now to
go through their whole argument, and to attempt to overthrow it by discussing
word by word their frivolous and long-winded nonsense, would be a task requiring
much leisure, and time, and freedom from calls of business. Just as I hear that
Eunomius, after applying himself at his leisure, and laboriously, for a number
of years exceeding those of the Trojan war, has fabricated this dream for
himself in his deep slumbers studiously seeking, not how to interpret any of the
ideas which he has arrived at, but how to drag and force them into keeping with
his phrases, and going round and collecting out of certain books the words in
them that sound grandest. And as beggars in lack of clothing pin and tack
together tunics for themselves out of rags, so he, cropping here a phrase and there a
phrase, has woven together for himself the patchwork of his treatise, glueing
in and fixing together the joinings of his diction with much labour and pains,
displaying therein a petty and juvenile ambition for combat, which any man who
has an eye to actuality would disdain, just as a steadfast wrestler, no longer
in the prime of life, would disdain to play the woman by over-niceness in dress.
But to me it seems that, when the scope of the whole question has been briefly
run through, his roundabout flourishes may well be let alone.
I have said, then (for I make my master's words my own), that reason
supplies us with but a dim and imperfect comprehension of the Divine nature;
nevertheless, the knowledge that: we gather from the terms which piety allows us to
apply to it is sufficient for our limited capacity. Now we do not say that all
these terms have a uniform significance; for some of them express qualities
inherent in God, and others qualities that are not, as when we say that He is just
or incorruptible, by the term "just" signifying that justice is found in Him,
and by "incorruptible" that corruption is not. Again, by a change of meaning, we
may apply terms to God in the way of accommodation, so that what is proper to
God may be represented by a term which in no wise belongs to Him, and what is
foreign to His nature may be represented by what belongs to Him. For whereas
justice is the contradictory of injustice, and everlastingness the contrary of
destruction, we may filly and without impropriety employ contraries in speaking of
God, as when we say that He is ever existent, or that He is not unjust, which
is equivalent to saying that He is just, and that He admits not of corruption.
So, too, we may say that other names of God, by a certain change of
signification, may be suitably employed to express either meaning, for example "good," and
"immortal," and all expressions of like formation; for each of these terms,
according as it is taken, is capable of indicating what does or what does not
appertain to the Divine nature, so that, notwithstanding the formal change, our
orthodox opinion in regard to the object remains immovably fixed. For it amounts
to the same, whether we speak of God as unsusceptible of evil, or whether we
call Him good; whether we confess that He is immortal, or say that He ever liveth.
For we understand no difference in the sense of these terms, but we signify
one and the same thing by both, though the one may seem to convey the notion of
affirmation, and the other of negation. And so again, when we speak of God as
the First Cause of all things, or again, when we speak of Him as without cause,
we are guilty of no contradiction in sense, declaring as we do by either name
that God is the prime Ruler and First Cause of all. Accordingly when we speak of
Him as without cause, and as Lord of all, in the former case we signify what
does not attach to Him, in the latter case what does; it being possible, as I
have said, by a change of the things signified, to give an opposite sense to the
words that express them, and to signify a property by a word which for the time
takes a negative form, and vice versa. For it is allowable, instead of saying
that He Himself has no primal cause, to describe Him as the First Cause of all,
and again, instead of this, to hold that He alone exists ungenerately, so that
while the words seem by the formal change to be at variance with each other,
the sense remains one and the same. For the object to be aimed at, in questions
respecting God, is not to produce a dulcet and melodious harmony of words, but
to work out an orthodox formula of thought, whereby a worthy conception of God
may be ensured. Since, then, it is only orthodox to infer that He Who is the
First Cause of all is Himself without cause, if this opinion is established, what
further contention of words remains for men of sense and judgment, when every
word whereby such a notion is conveyed to us has the same signification? For
whether you say that He is the First Cause and Principle of all, or speak of Him
as without origin, whether you speak of Him as of ungenerate or eternal
subsistence, as the Cause of all or as alone without cause, all these words are, in a
manner, of like force, and equivalent to one another, as far as the meaning of
the things signified is concerned; and it is mere folly to contend for this or
that vocal intonation, as if orthodoxy were a thing of sounds and syllables
rather than of the mind. This view, then, has been carefully enunciated by our
great master, whereby all whose eyes are not blindfolded by the veil of heresy may
clearly see that, whatever be the nature of God, He is not to be apprehended
by sense, and that He transcends reason, though human thought, busying itself
with curious inquiry, with such help of reason as it can command, stretches out
its hand and just touches His unapproachable and sublime nature, being neither
keen-sighted enough to see clearly what is invisible, nor yet so far withheld
from approach as to be unable to catch some faint glimpse of what it seeks to
know. For such knowledge it attains in part by the touch of reason, in part from
its very inability to discern it, finding that it is a sort of knowledge to know
that what is sought transcends knowledge (for it has learned what is contrary
to the Divine nature, as well as all that may fittingly be conjectured
respecting it). Not that it has been able to gain full knowledge of that nature itself
about which it reasons, but from the knowledge of those properties which are,
or are not, inherent in it, this mind of man sees what alone can be seen, that
that which is far removed from all evil, and is understood in all good, is
altogether such as I should pronounce ineffable and incomprehensible by human reason.
But although our great master has thus cleared away all unworthy notions
respecting the Divine nature, and has urged and taught all that may be
reverently and fittingly held concerning it, viz. that the First Cause is neither a
corruptible thing, nor one brought into being by any birth, but that it is outside
the range of every conception of the kind; and that from the negation of what
is not inherent, and the affirmation of what may be with reverence conceived to
be inherent therein, we may best apprehend what He is--nevertheless this
vehement adversary of the truth opposes these teachings, and hopes with the sounding
word "ungeneracy" to supply a clear definition of the essence of God.
And yet it is plain to every one who has given any attention to the uses
of words, that the word incorruption denotes by the privative particle that
neither corruption nor birth appertains to God: just as many other words of like
formation denote the absence of what is not inherent rather than the presence of
what is; e.g. harmless, painless, guileless, undisturbed, passionless,
sleepless, undiseased(2), impossible, unblamable, and the like. For all these terms are
truly applicable to God, and furnish a sort of catalogue and muster of evil
qualities from which God is separate. Yet the terms employed give no positive
account of that to which they are applied. We learn from them what it is not; but
what it is, the force of the words does not indicate. For if some one, wishing
to describe the nature of man, were to say that it is not lifeless, not
insentient, not winged, not four-fooled, not amphibious, he would not indicate what it
is: he would simply declare what it is not, and he would be no more making
untrue statements respecting man than he would be positively defining his subject.
In the same way, from the many things which are predicated of the Divine
nature, we learn under what conditions we may conceive God as existing, but what He
is essentially, such statements do not inform us.
While, however, we strenuously avoid all concurrence with absurd notions
in our thoughts of God, we allow ourselves in the use of many diverse
appellations in regard to Him, adapting them to our point of view. For whereas no
suitable word has been found to express the Divine nature, we address God by many
names, each by some distinctive touch adding something fresh to our notions
respecting Him,--thus seeking by variety of nomenclature to gain some glimmerings for
the comprehension of what we seek. For when we question and examine ourselves
as to what God is, we express our conclusions variously, as that He is that
which presides over the system and working of the things that are, that His
existence is without cause, while to all else He is the Cause of being; that He is
that which has no generation or beginning, no corruption, no turning backward, no
diminution of supremacy; that He is that in which evil finds no place, and from
which no good is absent.
And if any one would distinguish such notions by words, he would find it
absolutely necessary to call that which admits of no changing to the worse
unchanging and invariable, and to call the First Cause of all ungenerate, and that
which admits not of corruption incorruptible; and that which ceases at no limit
immortal and never failing; and that which presides over all Almighty. And so,
framing names for all other Divine attributes in accordance with reverent
conceptions of Him, we designate them now by one name, now by another, according to
our varying lines of thought, as power, or strength, or goodness, or
ungeneracy, or perpetuity.
I say, then, that men have a right to such word-building, adapting their
appellations to their subject, each man according to his judgment; and that
there is no absurdity in this, such as our controversialist makes a pretence of,
shuddering at it as at some gruesome hobgoblin, and that we are fully justified
in allowing the use of such fresh applications of words in respect to all things
that can be named, and to God Himself.
For God is not an expression, neither hath He His essence in voice or
utterance. But God is of Himself what also He is believed to be, but He is named,
by those who call upon Him, not what He is essentially (for the nature of Him
Who alone is is unspeakable), but He receives His appellations from what are
believed to be His operations in regard to our life. To take an instance ready to
our hand; when we speak of Him as God, we so call Him from regarding Him as
overlooking and surveying all things, and seeing through the things that are
hidden. But if His essence is prior to His works, and we understand His works by our
senses, and express them in words as we are best able, why should we be afraid
of calling things by words of later origin than themselves? For if we stay to
interpret any of the attributes of God till we understand them, and we
understand them only by what His works teach us, and if His power precedes its exercise,
and depends on the will of God, while His will resides in the spontaneity of
the Divine nature, are we not clearly taught that the words which represent
things are of later origin than the things themselves, and that the words which are
framed to express the operations of things are reflections of the things
themselves? And that this is so, we are clearly taught by Holy Scripture, by the
mouth of great David, when, as by certain peculiar and appropriate names, derived
from his contemplation of the works of God, he thus speaks of the Divine
nature: "The Lord is full of compassion and mercy, long-suffering, and of great
goodness(3)." Now what do these words tell us? Do they indicate His operations, or
His nature? No one will say that they indicate aught but His operations. At what
time, then, after showing mercy and pity, did God acquire His name from their
display? Was it before man's life began? But who was there to be the object of
pity? Was it, then, after sin entered into the world? But sin entered after
man. The exercise, therefore, of pity, and the name itself, came after man. What
then? will our adversary, wise as he is above the Prophets, convict David of
error in applying names to God derived from his opportunities of knowing Him? or,
in contending with him, will he use against him the pretence in his stately
passage as out of a tragedy, saying that "he glories in the most blessed life of
God with names drown from human imagination, whereas it gloried in itself alone,
long before men were born to imagine them"? The Psalmist's advocate will
readily admit that the Divine nature gloried in itself alone even before the
existence of human imagination, but will contend that the human mind can speak only so
much in respect of God as its capacity, instructed by His works, will allow.
"For," as saith the Wisdom of Solomon, "by the greatness and beauty of the
creatures proportionably the Maker of them is seen(4)."
But in applying such appellations to the Divine essence, "which passeth
all understanding," we do not seek to glory in it by the names we employ, but to
guide our own selves by the aid of such terms towards the comprehension of the
things which are hidden. "I said unto the Lord," saith the Prophet, "Thou art
my God, my goods are nothing unto Thee(5)." How then are we glorifying the most
blessed life of God, as this man affirms, when (as saith the Prophet) "our
goods are nothing unto Him"? Is it that he takes "call" to mean "glory in"? Yet
those who employ the latter word rightly, and who have been trained to use words
with propriety, tell us that the word "glory in" is never used of mere
indication, but that that idea is expressed by such words as "to make known," "to show,"
"to indicate," or some other of the kind, whereas the word for "glory in"
means to be proud of, or delight in a thing, and the like. But he affirms that by
employing names drawn from human imagination we "glory in" the blessed life. We
hold, however, that to add any honour to the Divine nature, which is above all
honour, is more than human infirmity can do. At the same time we do not deny
that we endeavour, by words and names devised with due reverence, to give some
notion of its attributes. And so, following studiously in the path of due
reverence, we apprehend that the first cause is that which has its subsistence not
from any cause superior to itself. Which view, if so be one accepts it as true,
is praiseworthy for its truth alone. But if one should judge it to be superior
to other aspects of the Divine nature, and so should say that God, exulting and
rejoicing in this alone, glories in it, as of paramount excellence, one would
find support only from the Muse by whom Eunomius is inspired, when he says, that
"ungeneracy" glories in itself, that which, mark you, he calls God's essence,
and styles the blessed and Divine life.
But let us hear how, "in the way most needed, and the form that preceded"
(for with such rhymes he again gives us a taste of the flowers of style), let
us hear, I say, how by such means he proposes to refute the opinion formed of
him, and to keep in the dark the ignorance of those whom he has deluded. For I
will use our dithyrambist's own verbal inflections and phraseology. When, says
he, we assert that words by which thought is expressed die as soon as they are
uttered, we add that whether words are uttered or not, whether they are yet in
existence or not, God was and is ungenerate. Let us learn, then, what connection
there is between the conception or the formation of words, and the things which
we signify by this or that mode of utterance. Accordingly, if God is
ungenerate before the creation of man, we must esteem as of no account the words which
indicate that thought, inasmuch as they are dispersed along with the sounds that
express them, if such thought happen to be named after human notion. For to
be, and to be called, are not convertible terms. But God is by His nature what He
is, but He is called by us by such names as the poverty of our nature will
allow us to make use of, which is incapable of enunciating thought except by means
of voice and words. Accordingly, understanding Him to be without origin, we
enunciate that thought by the term ungenerate. And what harm is it to Him Who
indeed is, that He should be named by us as we conceive Him to be? For His
ungenerate existence is not the result of His being called ungenerate, but the name is
the result of the existence. But this our acute friend fails to see, nor does
he take a clear view of his own positions. For if he did, he would certainly
have left off reviling those who flamed the word ungeneracy to express the idea
in their minds. For look at what he says, "Words so spoken perish as soon as
they are spoken; but God both is and was ungenerate, both after the words were
spoken and before. You see that the Supreme Being is what He is, before the
creation of all things, whether silent or not, being what He is neither in greater
nor in less degree; while the use of words and names was not devised till after
the creation of man, endowed by God with the faculty of reason and speech."
If, then, the creation is of later date than its Creator, and man is the
latest in the scale of creation, and if speech is a distinctive characteristic
of man, and verbs and nouns are the component elements of speech, and ungeneracy
is a noun, how is it that he does not understand that he is combating his own
arguments? For we, on our side, say that by human thought and intelligence
words have been devised expressive of things which they represent, and he, on his
side, allows that those who employ speech are demonstrably later in point of
time than the Divine life, and that the Divine nature is now, and ever has been,
without generation. If, then, he allows the blessed life to be anterior to man
(for to that point I return), and we do not deny man's later creation, but
contend that we have used forms of speech ever since we came into being and
received the faculty of reason from our Maker, and if ungeneracy is a word expressive
of a special idea, and every word is a part of human speech, -- it follows that
he who admits that the Divine nature was anterior to man must at the same time
admit that the name invented by man to express that nature was itself later in
being. For it was not likely that the use of speech should be exercised before
the existence of creatures to use it, any more than that farming should be
exercised before the existence of farmers, or navigation before that of
navigators, or in fact any of the occupations of life before that of life itself. Why,
then, does he contend with us, instead of following his premises to their
legitimate conclusion?
He says that God was what He is, before the creation of man. Nor do we
deny it. For whatsoever we conceive of God existed before the creation of the
world. But we maintain that it received its name after the namer came into being.
For if we use words for this purpose, that they may supply us with teaching
about the things which they signify, and it is ignorance alone that requires
teaching, while the Divine Nature, as comprehending all knowledge, is above all
teaching, it follows that names were invented to denote the Supreme Being, not for
His sake, but for our own. For He did not attach the term ungeneracy to His
nature in order that He Himself might be instructed. For He Who knoweth all things
has no need of syllables and words to instruct Him as to His own nature and
majesty.
But that we might gain some sort of comprehension of what with reverence
may be thought respecting Him, we have stamped our different ideas with certain
words and syllables, labelling, as it were, our mental processes with verbal
formulae to serve as characteristic notes and indications, with the object of
giving a clear and simple declaration of our mental processes by means of words
attached to, and expressive of, our ideas. Why, then, does he find fault with our
contention that the term ungeneracy was devised to indicate the existence of
God without origin or beginning, and that, independently of all exercise of
speech, or silence, or thought, and before the very idea of creation, God was and
remains ungenerate? If, indeed, any one Should argue that God was not ungenerate
till the name ungeneracy had been found, the man might be pardonable for
writing as he has written, in contravention of such an absurdity. But if no one
denies that He existed before speech and reason, whereas, while the form of words
by which the meaning is expressed is said by us to have been devised by mental
conception, the end and aim of his controversy with us is to show that the name
is not of man's device, but that it existed before our creation, though by whom
it was spoken I do not know(6), what has the assertion that God existed
ungenerately before all things, and the contention that(7) mental conception is
posterior to God, got to do with this aim of his? For that God is not a conception
has been fully demonstrated, so that we may press him with the same sort of
argument, and reply, so to say, in his own words, e.g. "It is utter folly to regard
understanding as of earlier birth than those who exercise it"; or again, as he
proceeds a little below, "Nor as though we intended this, i.e. to make men,
the latest of God's works of creation, anterior to the conceptions of their own
understanding." Great indeed would be the force of the argument, if any one of
us, out of sheer folly and madness, should argue that God was a conception of
the mind. But if this is not so, nor ever has been, (for who would go to such a
pitch of folly as to assert that He Who alone is, and Who brought all else
whatsoever into being, has no substantial existence of His own, and to make Him out
to be a mere conception of a name?) why does he fight with shadows, contending
with imaginary propositions? Is not the cause of this unreasonable
litigiousness clear, that, feeling ashamed of the fallacy respecting ungeneracy with which
his dupes have been deluded (since it has been proved that the word is very far
removed from the Divine essence), he is deliberately shuffling up his
arguments, shifting the controversy from words to things, so that by throwing all into
confusion the unwary may more easily be seduced, by imagining that God has been
described by us either as a conception, or as posterior in existence to the
invention of human terminology; and thus, leaving our argument unrefuted, he is
shifting his position to another quarter of the field? For our conclusion was,
as I have said, that the term ungeneracy does not indicate the Divine nature,
but is applicable to it as the result of a conception by which the fact that God
subsists without prior cause is pointed at. But what they were for establishing
was this: that the word was indicative of the Divine essence itself. Yet how
has it been established that the word has this force? I suppose the handling of
this question is in reserve in some other of his writings. But here he makes it
his main object to show that God exists ungenerately, just as though some one
were simply questioning him on such points as these--what view he held as to
the term ungenerate, whether he thought it invented to show that the First Cause
was without beginning and origin, or as declaring the Divine essence itself;
and he, with much assumption of gravity and wisdom, were replying that he, for
his part, had no doubt that God was the Maker of heaven and earth. How widely
this method of proceeding differs from, and is unconnected with, his first
contention, you may see, in the same way as you may see how little his fine
description of his controversy with us is connected with the question at issue. For let
us look at the matter in this wise.
They say that God is ungenerate, and in this we agree. But that ungeneracy
itself constitutes the Divine essence, here we take exception. For we maintain
that this term is declarative of God's ungenerate subsistence, but not that
ungeneracy is God. But of what nature is his refutation? It is this: that before
man's creation God existed ungenerately. But what has this to do with the point
which he promises to establish, that the term and its Subject are identical?
For he lays it down that ungeneracy is the Divine essence. But what sort of a
fulfilment of his promise is it, to show that God existed before beings capable
of speech? What a wonderful, what an irresistible demonstration! what perfection
of logical refinement! Who that has not been initiated in the mysteries of the
awful craft may venture to look it in the face? Yet in particularizing the
meanings of the term "conception," he makes a solemn travesty of it. For, saith
he, of words used to express a conception of the mind, some exist only in
pronunciation, as for instance those which signify nonentity, while others have their
peculiar meaning; and of these some have an amplifying force, as in the case of
things colossal, others a diminishing, as in that of pigmies, others a
multiplying, as in that of many-headed monsters, others a combinative, as in that of
centaurs. After thus reducing the force of the term "conception" to its lowest
value, our clever friend will allow it, you see, no further extension. He says
that it is without sense and meaning, that it fancies the unnatural, either
contracting or extending the limits of nature, or putting heterogeneous notions
together, or juggling with strange and monstrous combinations.
With such gibes at the term "conception," he shows, to the best of his
ability, that it is useless and unprofitable for the life of man. What, then, was
the origin of our higher branches of learning, of geometry, arithmetic, the
logical and physical sciences, of the inventions of mechanical art, of the marvels
of measuring time by the brazen dial and the water-clock? What, again, of
ontology, of the science of ideas, in short of all intellectual speculation as
applied to great and sublime objects? What of agriculture, of navigation, and of
the other pursuits of human life? how comes the sea to be a highway for man? how
are things of the air brought into the service of things of the earth, wild
things tamed, objects of terror brought into subjection, animals stronger than
ourselves made obedient to the rein? Have not all these benefits to human life
been achieved by conception? For, according to my account of it, conception is the
method by which we discover things that are unknown, going on to further
discoveries by means of what adjoins to and follows(8) from our first perception
with regard to the thing studied. For when we have formed some idea of what we
seek to know, by adapting what follows to the first result of our discoveries we
gradually conduct our inquiry to the end of our proposed research.
But why enumerate the greater and more splendid results of this faculty?
For every one who is not unfriendly to truth can see for himself that all else
that Time has discovered for the service and benefit of human life, has been
discovered by no other instrumentality than that of conception. And it seems to
me, that any one who should judge this faculty more precious than any other with
the exercise of which we are gifted in this life by Divine Providence would not
be far mistaken in his judgment. And in saying this I am supported by Job's
teaching, where he represents God as answering His servant by the tempest and the
clouds, saying both other things meet for Him to say, and that it is He Who
hath set man over the arts, and given to woman her skill in weaving and
embroidery(9).
Now that He did not teach us such things by some visible operation,
Himself presiding over the work, as we may see in matters of bodily teaching, no one
would gainsay whose nature is not altogether animal and brutish. But still it
has been said that our first knowledge of such arts is from Him, and, if such is
the case, surely He Who endowed our nature with such a faculty of conceiving
and finding out the objects of our investigation was Himself our Guide to the
arts. And by the law of causation, whatever is discovered and established by
conception must be ascribed to Him Who is the Author of that faculty. Thus human
life invented the Art of Healing, but nevertheless he would be right who should
assert that Art to be a gift from God. And whatever discovery has been made in
human life, conducive to any useful purposes of peace or war, came to us from no
other quarter but from an intelligence conceiving and discovering according to
our several requirements; and that intelligence is a gift of God. It is to
God, then, that we owe all that intelligence supplies to us. Nor do I deny the
objection made by our adversaries, that lying wonders also are fabricated by this
faculty. For their contention as to this makes for our own side in the
argument. For we too assert that the science of opposites is the same, whether
beneficial or the reverse; e.g. in the case of the arts of healing and navigation, and
so on. For he who knows how to relieve the sick by drugs will also know, if
indeed he were to turn his art to an evil purpose, how to mix some deleterious
ingredient in the food of the healthy. And he who can steer a boat with its rudder
into port can also steer it for the reef or the rock, if minded to destroy
those on board. And the painter, with the same art by which he depicts the fairest
form on his canvas, could give us an exact representation of the ugliest. So,
too, the wrestling-master, by the experience which he has gained in anointing,
can set a dislocated limb, or, should he wish to do so, dislocate a sound one.
But why encumber our argument by multiplying instances? As in the
above-mentioned cases no one would deny that he who has learned to practise an art for right
purposes can also abuse it for wrong ones, so we say that the faculty of
thought and conception was implanted by God in human nature for good, but, with
those who abuse it as an instrument of discovery, it frequently becomes the
handmaid of pernicious inventions. But although it is thus possible for this faculty
to give a plausible shape to what is false and unreal, it is none the less
competent to investigate what actually and in very truth subsists, and its ability
for the one must in fairness be regarded as an evidence of its ability for the
other.
For that one who proposes to himself to terrify or charm an audience
should have plenty of conception to effect such a purpose, and should display to the
spectators many-handed, many-headed, or fire-breathing monsters, or men
enfolded in the coils of serpents, or that he should seem to increase their stature,
or enlarge their natural proportions to a ridiculous extent, or that he should
describe men metamorphosed into fountains and trees and birds, a kind of
narrative which is not without its attraction for such as take pleasure in things of
that sort;--all this, I say, is the clearest of demonstrations that it is
possible to arrive at higher knowledge also by means of this inventive faculty.
For it is not the case that, while the intelligence implanted in us by the
Giver is fully competent to conjure up non-realities, it is endowed with no
faculty at all for providing us with things that may profit us. But as the
impulsive and elective faculty of the soul is established in our nature, to incite
us to what is good and noble, though a man may also abuse it for what is evil,
and no one can call the fact that the elective faculty sometimes inclines to
evil a proof that it never inclines to what is good--so the bias of conception
towards what is vain and unprofitable does not prove its inability for what is
profitable, but, on the contrary, is a demonstration of its not being
unserviceable for what is beneficial and necessary to the mind. For as, in the one case, it
discovers means to produce pleasure or terror, so, in the other, it does not
fail to find ways for getting at truth. Now one of the objects of inquiry was
whether the First Cause, viz. God, exists without beginning, or whether His
existence is dependent on some beginning. But perceiving, by the aid of thought,
that that cannot be a First Cause which we conceive of as the consequence of
another, we devised a word expressive of such a notion, and we say that He who is
without anterior cause exists without origin, or, so to say, ungenerately. And
Him Who so exists we call ungenerate and without origin, indicating, by that
appellation, not what He is, but what He is not.
But as far as possible to elucidate the idea, I will endeavour to
illustrate it by a still plainer example. Let us suppose the inquiry to be about some
tree, whether it is cultivated or wild. If the former, we call it planted, if
the latter, not planted. And such a term exactly hits the truth, for the tree
must needs be after this manner or that. And yet the word does not indicate the
peculiar nature of the plant. From the term "not-planted" we learn that it is of
spontaneous growth; but whether what is thus signified is a plane, or a vine,
or some other such plant, the name applied to it does not inform us.
This example being understood, it is time to go on to the thing which it
illustrates. This much we comprehend, that the First Cause has His existence
from no antecedent one. Accordingly, we call God ungenerate as existing
ungenerately, reducing this notion of ungeneracy into verbal form. That He is without
origin or beginning we show by the force of the term. But what that Being is which
exists ungenerately, this appellation does not lead us to discern. Nor was it
to be supposed that the processes of conception could avail to raise us above
the limits of our nature, and open up the incomprehensible to our view, and
enable us to compass the knowledge of that which no knowledge can approach(1).
Nevertheless, our adversary storms at our Master, and tries to tear to pieces his
teaching respecting the faculty of thought and conception, and derides what has
been said, revelling as usual in the rattle of his jingling phraseology, and
saying that he (Basil) shrinks from adducing evidence respecting those things of
which he presumes to be the interpreter. For, quoting certain of the Master's
speculations on the faculty of conception, in which he shows that its exercise
finds place, not only in reference to vain and trivial objects, but that it is
competent to deal also with weightier matters, he, by means of his speculation
about the corn, and seed, and other food (in Genesis), brings Basil into court
with the charge, that his language is a following of pagan philosophy(2), and
that he is circumscribing Divine Providence, as not allowing that words were
given to things by God, and that he is fighting in the ranks of the Atheists, and
taking arms against Providence, and that he admires the doctrines of the profane
rather than the laws of God, and ascribes to them the palm of wisdom, not
having observed in the earliest of the sacred records, that before the creation of
man, the naming of fruit and seed are mentioned in Holy Writ.
Such are his charges against us; not indeed his notions as expressed in
his own phraseology, for we have made such alterations as were required to
correct the ruggedness and harshness of his style. What, then, is our answer to this
careful guardian of Divine Providence? He asserts that we are in error,
because, while we do not deny man's having been created a rational being by God, we
ascribe the invention of words to the logical faculty implanted by God in man's
nature. And this is the bitterest of his accusations, whereby our teacher of
righteousness is charged with deserting to the tenets of the Atheists, and is
denounced as partaking with and supporting their lawless company, and indeed as
guilty of all the most atrocious offences. Well, then, let this corrector of our
blunders tell us, did God give names to the things which He created? For so says
our new interpreter of the mysteries: "Before the creation of man God named
germ, and herb, and grass, and seed, and tree, and the like, when by the word of
His power He brought them severally into being." If, then, he abides by the
bare letter, and so far Judaizes, and has yet to learn that the Christian is a
disciple not of the letter but of the Spirit (for the letter killeth, says the
Apostle, but the Spirit giveth life(3)), and quotes to us the bare literal reading
of the words as though God Himself pronounced them--if, I say, he believes
this, that, after the similitude of men, God made use of fluency of speech,
expressing His thoughts by voice and accent--if, I repeat, he believes this, he
cannot reasonably deny what follows as its logical consequence. For our speech is
uttered by the organs of speech, the windpipe, the tongue, the teeth, and the
mouth, the inhalation of air from without and the breath from within working
together to produce the utterance. For the windpipe, fitting into the throat like a
flute, emits a sound from below; and the roof of the mouth, by reason of the
void space above extending to the nostrils, like some musical instrument, gives
volume from above to the voice. And the checks, too, are aids to speech,
contracting and expanding in accordance with their structural arrangement, or
propelling the voice through a narrow passage by various movements of the tongue, which
it effects now with one part of itself now with another, giving hardness or
softness to the sound which passes over it by contact with the teeth or with the
palate. Again, the service of the lips contributes not a little to the result,
affecting the voice by the variety of their distinctive movements, and helping
to shape the words as they are uttered.
If, then, God gives things their names as our new expositor of the Divine
record assures us, naming germ, and grass, and tree, and fruit, He must of
necessity have pronounced each of these words not otherwise than as it is
pronounced; i. e. according to the composition of the syllables, some of which are
sounded by the lips, others by the tongue, others by both. But if none of these
words could be uttered, except by the operation of vocal organs producing each
syllable and sound by some appropriate movement, he must of necessity ascribe the
possession of such organs to God, and fashion the Divine Being according to the
exigencies of speech. For each adaptation of the vocal organs must be in some
form or other, and form is a bodily limitation. Further, we know very well that
all bodies are composite, but where you see composition you see also
dissolution, and dissolution, as the notion implies, is the same thing as destruction.
This, then, is the upshot of our controversialist's victory over us; to show us
the God of his imagining whom he has fashioned by the name
ungeneracy--speaking, indeed, that He may not lose His share in the invention of names, but
provided with vocal organs with which to utter them, and not without bodily nature to
enable Him to employ them (for you cannot conceive of formal utterance in the
abstract apart from a body), and gradually going on to the congenital affections
of the body--through the composite to dissolution, and so finding His end in
destruction.
Such is the nature of this new-fangled Deity; as deducible from the words
of our new God-maker. But he takes his stand on the Scriptures, and maintains
that Moses explicitly declares this, when he says, "God said," adding His words,
"Let there be light," and, "Let there be a firmament." and, "Let the waters be
gathered together ... and let the dry land appear," and, "Let the earth bring
forth," and, "Let the waters bring forth," and whatsoever else is written in
its order. Let us, then, examine the meaning of what is said. Who does not know,
even if he be the merest simpleton, that there is a natural correlation between
hearing and speech, and that, as it is impossible for hearing to discharge its
function when no one is speaking, so speech is ineffectual unless directed to
hearing? If, then, he means literally that "God said," let him tell us also to
what hearing His words were addressed. Does he mean that He said them to
Himself? If so, the commands which He issues, He issues to Himself. Yet who will
accept this interpretation, that God sits upon His throne prescribing what He
Himself must do, and employing Himself as His minister to do His bidding? But even
supposing one were to allow that it was not blasphemy to say this, who has any
need of words and speech for himself, even though a man? For every one's own
mental action suffices him to produce choice and volition. But he will doubtless
say that the Father held converse with the Son. But what need of vocal utterance
for that? For it is a property of bodily nature to signify the thoughts of the
heart by means of words, whence also written characters equivalent to speech
were invented for the expression of thought. For we declare thought equally by
speaking and by writing, but in the case of those who are not too far distant we
reach their hearing by voice, but declare our mind to those who are at a
distance by written characters; and in the case of those present with us, in
proportion to their distance from us, we raise or lower the tones of our voice, and to
those close by us we sometimes point out what they are to do simply by a nod;
and such or such an expression of the eye is sufficient to convey our
determination, or a movement of the hand is sufficient to signify our approval or
disapproval of something going on. If, then, those who are encompassed by the body
are able to make known the hidden working of their minds to their neighbours,
even without voice, or speech, or correspondence by means of letters, and silence
causes no hindrance to the despatch of business, can it be that in the case of
the immaterial, and intangible, and, as Eunomius says, the Supreme and first
Being, there is any need of words to indicate the thought of the Father and to
make known His will to the Only-Begotten Son--words, which, as he himself says,
are wont to perish as soon as they are uttered? No one, methinks, who has
common sense will accept this as the truth, especially as all sound is poured forth
into the air. For voice cannot be produced unless it takes consistence in air.
Now, even they themselves must suppose some medium of communication between the
speaker and him to whom he speaks. For if there were no such medium, how could
the voice travel from the speaker to the hearer? What, then, will they say is
the medium or interval by which they divide the Father from the Son? Between
bodies, indeed, there is an interval of atmospheric space, differing in its
nature from the nature of human bodies. But God, Who is intangible, and without
form, and pure from all composition, in communicating His counsels with the
Only-Begotten Son, Who is similarly, or rather in the same manner, immaterial and
without body--if He made His communication by voice, what medium would He have had
through which the word, transmitted as in a current, might reach the ears of
the Only-Begotten? For we need hardly stop to consider that God is not separable
into apprehensive faculties, as we are, whose perceptions separately apprehend
their corresponding objects; e. g. sight apprehends what may be seen, hearing
what may be heard, so that touch does not taste, and hearing has no perception
of odours and flavours, but each confines itself to that function to which it
was appointed by nature, holding itself insensible, as it were, to those with
which it has no natural correspondence, and incapable of tasting the pleasure
enjoyed by its neighbour sense. But with God it is otherwise. All in all, He is at
once sight, and hearing, and knowledge; and there we stop, for it is not
permitted us to ascribe the more animal perceptions to that refined nature. Still we
take a very low view of God, and drag down the Divine to our own grovelling
standard, if we suppose the Father speaking with His mouth, and the Son's ear
listening to His words. What, then, are we to suppose is the medium which conveys
the Father's voice to the hearing of the Son? It must be created or uncreate.
But we may not call it created; for the Word was before the creation of the
world: and beside the Divine nature there is nothing uncreate. If, therefore, there
was no creation then, and the Word spoken of in the cosmogony was older than
creation, will he, who maintains that speech and a voice are meant by "the Word,"
suggest what medium existed between the Father and the Son, whereby those
words and sounds were expressed? For if a medium exist, it must needs exist in a
nature of its own, so as to differ in nature both from the Father and the Son.
Being, then, something of necessity different, it divides the Father and the Son
from each other, as though inserted between the two. What, then, could it be?
Not created, for creation is younger than the Word. Generated we have learnt the
Only-begotten (and Him alone) to be. Except the Father, none is ungenerate.
Truth, therefore, obliges us to the conclusion that there is no medium between
the Father and the Son. But where separation is not conceived of the closest
connection is naturally implied. And what is so connected needs no medium for voice
or speech. Now by "connected," I mean here what is in all respects
inseparable. For in the case of a spiritual nature the term connection does not mean
corporeal connection, but the union and blending of spiritual with spiritual through
identity of will. Accordingly, there is no divergence of will between the
Father and the Son, but the image of goodness is after the Archetype of all
goodness and beauty, and as, if a man should look at himself in a glass (for it is
perfectly allowable to explain the idea by corporeal illustrations), the copy will
in all respects be conformed to the original, the shape of the man who is
reflected being the cause of the shape on the glass, and the reflection making no
spontaneous movement or inclination unless commenced by the original, but, if it
move, moving along with it,--in like manner we maintain that our Lord, the
Image of the invisible God, is immediately and inseparably one with the Father in
every movement of His Will. If the Father will anything, the Son Who is in the
Father knows the Father's will, or rather He is Himself the Father's will. For,
if He has in Himself all that is the Father's, there is nothing of the
Father's that He cannot have. If, then, He has all things that are the Father's in
Himself, or, say we rather, if He has the Father Himself, then, along with the
Father and the things that are the Father's, He must needs have in Himself the
whole of the Father's will. He needs not, therefore, to know the Father's will by
word, being Himself the Word of the Father, in the highest acceptation of the
term. What, then, is the word that can be addressed to Him who is the Word
indeed? And how can He Who is the Word indeed require a second word for instruction?
But it may be said that the voice of the Father was addressed to the Holy
Spirit. But neither does the Holy Spirit require instruction by speech, for
being God, as saith the Apostle, He "searcheth all things, yea the deep things of
God(4)." If, then, God utters any word, and all speech is directed to the ear,
let those who maintain that God expresses Himself in the language of continuous
discourse, inform us what audience He addressed. Himself He needs not address.
The Son has no need of instruction by words. The Holy Ghost searcheth even the
deep things of God. Creation did not yet exist. To whom, then, was God's word
addressed?
But, says he, the record of Moses does not lie, and from it we learn that
God spake. No! nor is great David of the number of those who lie, and he
expressly says; "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth His
handy work. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth
knowledge;" and after saying that the heavens and the firmament declare, and that day
and that night showeth knowledge and speech, he adds to what he has said, that
"there is neither speech nor language, and that their voices are not heard(5)."
Yet how can such declaring and showing forth be other than words, and how is it
that no voice addresses itself to the ear? Is the prophet contradicting
himself, or is he stating an impossibility, when he speaks of words without sound,
and declaration without language, and announcement without voice? or, is there
not rather the very perfection of truth in his teaching, which tells us, in the
words which I have quoted, that the declaration of the heavens, and the word
shouted forth by the day, is no articulate voice nor language of the lips, but is
a revelation of the power of God to those who are capable of hearing it, even
though no voice be heard?
What, then, do we think of this passage? For it may be that, if we
understand it, we shall also understand the meaning of Moses. It often happens that
Holy Scripture, to enable us more clearly to comprehend a matter to be revealed,
makes use of a bodily illustration, as would seem to be the case in this
passage from David, who teaches us by what he says that none of the things which are
have their being from chance or accident, as some have imagined that our world
and all that is therein was framed by fortuitous and undesigned combinations of
first elements, and that no Providence penetrated the world. But we are taught
that there is a cause of the system and government of the Universe, on Whom
all nature depends, to Whom it owes its origin and cause, towards Whom it
inclines and moves, and in Whom it abides. And since, as saith the Apostle, His
eternal power and godhead are understood, being clearly seen through the creation of
the world(6), therefore all creation and, before all, as saith the Scripture,
the system of the heavens, declare the wisdom of the Creator in the skill
displayed by His works. And this is. what it seems to me that he is desirous to set
forth, viz. the testimony of the things which do appear to the fact that the
worlds were framed with wisdom and skill, and abide for ever by the power of Him
who is the Ruler over all. The very heavens, he says, in displaying the wisdom
of Him Who made them, all but shout aloud with a voice, and, though without
voice, proclaim the wisdom of their Creator. For we can hear as it were words
teaching us: "O men, when ye gaze upon us and behold our beauty and magnitude, and
this ceaseless revolution, with its well-ordered and harmonious motion, working
in the same direction and in the same manner, turn your thoughts to Him Who
presides over our system, and, by aid of the beauty which you see, imagine to
yourselves the beauty of the invisible Archetype. For in us there is nothing
without its Lord, nothing that moves of its own proper motion: but all that appears,
or that is conceivable in respect to us, depends on a Power Who is inscrutable
and sublime." This is not given in articulate speech, but by the things which
are seen, and it instils into our minds the knowledge of Divine power more than
if speech proclaimed it with a voice. As, then, the heavens declare, though
they do not speak, and the firmament shows God's handy-work, yet requires no voice
for the purpose, and the day uttereth speech, though there is no speaking, and
no one can say that Holy Scripture is in error--in like manner, since both
Moses and David have one and the same Teacher, I mean the Holy Spirit, Who says
that the fiat went before the creation, we are not told that God is the Creator
of words, but of things made known to us by the signification of our words. For,
lest we should suppose the creation to be without its Lord, and spontaneously
originated, He says that it was created by the Divine Being, and that it is
established in an orderly and connected system by Him. Now it would be a work of
time to discuss the order of what Moses didactically records in his historical
summary respecting the creation of the world. Or (if we did)(7) each second
passage would serve to prove more clearly the erroneous and futile character of our
adversaries' opinion. But whoever cares to do so may read what we have written
on Genesis, and judge whether our teaching or theirs is the more reasonable.
But to return to the matter in question. We assert that the words "He
said" do not imply voice and words on the part of God; but the writer, in
showing(8) the power of God to be concurrent with His will, renders the idea more easy
of apprehension. For since by the will of God all things were created, and it is
the ordinary way of men to signify their will first of all by speech, and so
to bring their work into harmony with their will, and the scriptural account of
the Creation is the learner's introduction, as it were, to the knowledge of
God, representing to our minds the power of the Divine Being by objects more ready
to our comprehension (for sensible apprehension is an aid to intellectual
knowledge), on this account, Moses, by saying that God commanded all things to be,
signifies to us the inciting power of His will, and by adding, "and it was so,"
he shows that in the case of God there is no difference between will and
performance; but, on the contrary, that though the purposing initiates God's
activity, the accomplishment keeps pace with the purpose, and that the two are to be
considered together and at once, viz. the deliberate motion of the mind, and the
power that effects its purpose. For the idea of the Divine purpose and action
leaves no conceivable interval between them, but as light is produced along
with the kindling of fire, at once coming out from it and shining forth along with
it--in the same manner the existence of things created is an effect of the
Divine will, but not posterior to it in time.
For the case is different from that of men endowed by nature with
practical ability, where you may look at capability and execution apart from each
other. For example, we say of a man who possesses the art of shipbuilding, that he
is always a shipbuilder in respect of his ability to build ships, but that he
operates only when he displays his skill in working. It is otherwise with God;
for all that we can conceive as in Him is entirely work and action, His will
passing over immediately to its object. As, then, the mechanism of the heavens
testifies to the glory of their Creator and confesses Him Who made them, and needs
no voice for the purpose, so on the other hand any one who is acquainted with
the Mosaic Scripture will see that God speaks of the world as His creation,
having brought the whole into being by the fiat of His will, and that He needs no
words to make known His mind. As, then, he who heard the heavens declaring the
glory of God looked not for set speech on the occasion (for, to those who can
understand it, the universe speaks through the things which are being done,
without regard or care for verbal explanation), so, even if any one hears Moses
telling how God gave order and arrangement to each several part of Creation by
name, let him not suppose the prophet to speak falsely, nor degrade the
contemplation of sublime verities by mean and grovelling notions, thus, as it were,
reducing God to a mere human standard, and supposing that after the manner of men he
directs His operations by the instrumentality of speech; but let His fiat mean
His will only, and let the names of those created things denote the mere
reality of their coming into being. And thus he will learn these two things from what
is recorded:(1) That God made all things by His will, and(2) that without any
trouble or difficulty the Divine Will became nature.
But if any one would give a more sensuous interpretation to the words "God
said," as proving that articulate speech was His creation, by a parity of
reason he must understand by the words "God saw," that He did so by faculties of
perception like our own, through the organs of vision; and so again by the words
"The Lord heard me and had mercy upon me," and again, "He smelled a sweet
savour(9)," and whatever other sensuous expressions are employed by Scripture in
reference to head, or foot, or hand, or eyes, or fingers, or sandals, as
appertaining to God, taking them, I say, in their plain literal acceptation, he will
present to us an anthropomorphous deity, after the similitude of what is seen
among ourselves. But if any one hearing that the heavens are the work of His
fingers, that He has a strong hand, and a mighty arm, and eyes, and feet, and
sandals, deduces from such words ideas worthy of God, and does not degrade the idea of
His pure nature by carnal and sensuous imaginations, it will follow that on
the one hand he will regard the verbal utterances as indications of the Divine
will, but on the other He will not conceive of them as articulate sounds, but
will reason thus; that the Creator of human reason has gifted us with speech
proportionally to the capacity of our nature, so that we might be able thereby to
signify the thoughts of our minds; but that, so far as the Divine nature differs
from ours, so great will be the degree of difference between our notions
respecting it and its own inherent majesty and godhead. And as our power compared
with God's, and our life with His life, is as nothing, and all else that is ours,
compared with what is in Him, is "as nothing in comparison(1)" with Him, as
saith the inspired Teaching, so also our word as compared with Him, Who is the
Word indeed, is as nothing(2). For this word of yours was not in the beginning,
but was created along with our nature, not is it to be regarded as having any
reality of its own, but, as our master (Basil) somewhere has said, it vanishes
along with the sound of the voice, nor is any operation of the word discernible,
but it has its subsistence in voice only, or in written characters. But the word
of God is God Himself, the Word that was in the beginning and that abideth for
ever, through Whom all things were and are, Who ruleth over all, and hath all
power over the things in heaven and the things on earth, being Life, and Truth,
and Righteousness, and Light, and all that is good, and upholding all things
in being. Such, then, and so great being the word, as we understand it, of God,
our opponent allows God, as some great thing, the power of language, made up of
nouns, verbs, and conjunctions, not perceiving that, as He Who conferred
practical powers on our nature is not spoken of as fabricating each of their several
results, but, while He gave our nature its ability, it is by us that a house
is constructed, or a bench, or a sword, or a plough, and whatsoever thing our
life happens to be in need of, each of which things is our own work, although it
may be ascribed to Him Who is the author of our being, and Who created our
nature capable of every science,--so also our power of speech is the work of Him
Who made our nature what it is, but the invention of each several term required
to denote objects in hand is of our own devising. And this is proved by the fact
that many terms in use are of a base and unseemly character, of which no man
of sense would conceive God the inventor: so that, if certain of our familiar
expressions are ascribed by Holy Scripture to God as the speaker, we should
remember that the Holy Spirit is addressing us in language of our own, as e.g. in
the history of the Acts we are told that each man received the teaching of the
disciples in his own language wherein he was born, understanding the sense of the
words by the language which he knew. And, that this is true, may be seen yet
more clearly by a careful examination of the enactments of the Levitical law.
For they make mention of pans, and cakes, and fine flours, and the like, in the
mystic sacrifices, instilling wholesome doctrine under the veil of symbol and
enigma. Mention, too, is made of certain measures then in use, such as ephah, and
nebel(4), and hin, and the like. Are we, then, to suppose that God made these
names and appellations, or that in the beginning He commanded them to be such,
and to be so named, calling one kind of grain wheat, and its pith flour, and
flat sweetmeats, whether heavy or light, cakes; and that He commanded a vessel of
the kind in which a moist lump is boiled or baked to be called a pan, or that
He spoke of a certain liquid measure by the name of hin or nebel, and measured
dry produce by the homer? surely it is trifling and mere Jewish folly, far
removed from the grandeur of Christian simplicity, to think that God, Who is the
Most High and above every name and thought, Who by sole virtue of His will
governs the world, which He brought into existence, and upholds it in being, should
set Himself like some schoolmaster to settle the niceties of terminology. Rather
let us say, that as we indicate to the deaf what we want them to do, by
gestures and signs, not because we have no voice of our own, but because a verbal
communication would be utterly useless to those who cannot hear, so, inasmuch as
human nature is in a sense deaf and insensible to higher truths, we maintain
that the grace of God at sundry times and in divers manners spake by the Prophets,
ordering their voices conformably to our capacity and the modes of expression
with which we are familiar, and that by such means it leads us, as with a
guiding hand, to the knowledge of higher truths, not teaching us in terms
proportioned to their inherent sublimity, (for how can the great be contained by the
little?) but descending to the lower level of our limited comprehension. And as
God, after giving animals their power of motion, no longer prescribes each step
they take, for their nature, having once for all taken its beginning from the
Creator, moves of itself, and makes its way, adapting its power of motion to its
object from time to time (except in so far as it is said that a man's steps are
directed by the Lord), so our nature, having received from God the power of
speech and utterance and of expressing the will by the voice, proceeds on its way
through things, giving them distinctive names by varying inflections of sound;
and these signs are the verbs and nouns which we use, and through which we
signify the meaning of the things. And though the word "fruit" is made use of by
Moses before the creation of fruit, and "seed" before that of seed, this does not
disprove our assertion, nor is the sense of the lawgiver opposed to what we
have said in respect to thought and conception. For that end of past husbandry
which we speak of as fruit, and that beginning of future husbandry which we speak
of as seed, this thing, I mean, underlying these names,--whether wheat or some
other produce which is increased and multiplied by sowing--does not, he
teaches us, grow spontaneously, but by the will of Him Who created them to grow with
their peculiar power, so as to be the same fruit and to reproduce themselves as
seed, and to support mankind with their increase. And by the Divine will the
thing is produced, not the name, so that the substantial things is the work of
the Creator, but the distinguishing names of things, by which speech furnishes
us with a clear and accurate description of them, are the work and the invention
of man's reasoning faculty, though the reasoning faculty itself and its nature
are a work of God. And since all men are endowed with reason, differences of
language will of necessity be found according to differences of country. But if
any one maintain that light, or heaven, or earth, or seed were named after
human fashion by God, he will certainly conclude that they were named in some
special language. What that was, let him show. For he who knows the one thing will
not, in all probability, be ignorant of the other. For at the river Jordan,
after the descent of the Holy Ghost, and again in the hearing of the Jews, and at
the Transfiguration, there came a voice from heaven, teaching men not only to
regard the phenomenon as something more than a figure, but also to believe the
beloved Son of God to be truly God. Now that voice was fashioned by God, suitably
to the understanding of the hearers, in airy substance, and adapted to the
language of the day, God, "who willeth that all men should be saved and come to
the knowledge of the truth(6)," having so articulated His words in the air with a
view to the salvation of the hearers, as our Lord also saith to the Jews, when
they thought it thundered because the sound took place in the air. "This voice
came not because of Me, but for your sakes(7)." But before the creation of the
world, inasmuch as there was no one to hear the word, and no bodily element
capable of accentuating the articulate voice, how can he who says that God used
words give any air of probability to his assertion? God Himself is without body,
creation did not yet exist. Reason does not suffer us to conceive of anything
material in respect to Him. They who might have been benefited by the hearing
were not yet created. And if men were not yet in being, neither had any form of
language been struck out in accordance with national peculiarities, by what
arguments, then, can he who looks to the bare letter make good his assertion, that
God spoke thus using human parts of speech?
And the futility of such assertions may be seen also by this. For as the
natures of the elements, which are the work of the Creator, appear alike to all,
and there is no difference to human sense in men's experience of fire, or air,
or water, but the nature of each is one and unchanging, working in the same
way, and suffering no modification from the differences of those who partake of
it, so also the imposition of names, if applied to things by God, would have
been the same for all. But, in point of fact, while the nature of things as
constituted by God remains the same, the names which denote them are divided by so
many differences of language, that it were no easy task even to calculate their
number.
And if any one cites the confusion of tongues that took place at the
building of the tower, as contradicting what I have said, not even there is God
spoken of as creating men's languages, but as confounding the existing one(8), that
all might not hear all. For when all lived together and were not as yet
divided by various differences of race, the aggregate of men dwelt together with one
language among them; but when by the Divine will it was decreed that all the
earth should be replenished by mankind, then, their community of tongue being
broken up, men were dispersed in various directions and adopted this and that form
of speech and language, possessing a certain bond of union in similarity of
tongue, not indeed disagreeing from others in their knowledge of things, but
differing in the character of their names. For a stone or a stick does not seem one
thing to one man and another to another, but the different peoples call them
by different names. So that our position remains unshaken, that human language
is the invention of the human mind or understanding. For from the beginning, as
long as all men had the same language, we see from Holy Scripture that men
received no teaching of God's words, nor, when men were separated into various
differences of language, did a Divine enactment prescribe how each man should talk.
But God, willing that men should speak different languages, gave human nature
full liberty to formulate arbitrary sounds, so as to render their meaning more
intelligible. Accordingly, Moses, who lived many generations after the building
of the tower, uses one of the subsequent languages in his historical narrative
of the creation, and attributes certain words to God, relating these things in
his own tongue in which he had been brought up, and with which he was
familiar, not changing the names for God by foreign peculiarities and turns of speech,
in order by the strangeness and novelty of the expressions to prove them the
words of God Himself(9).
But some who have carefully studied the Scriptures tell us that the Hebrew
tongue is not even ancient(10) like the others, but that along with other
miracles this miracle was wrought in behalf of the Israelites, that after the
Exodus from Egypt, the language was hastily improvised(1) for the use of the nation.
And there is a(2) passage in the Prophet which confirms this. For he says,
"when he came out of the land of Egypt he heard a strange language(3)." If, then,
Moses was a Hebrew, and the language of the Hebrews was subsequent to the
others, Moses, I say, who was born some thousands of years after the Creation of the
world, and who relates the words of God in his own language--does he not
clearly teach us that he does not attribute to God such a language of human fashion,
but that he speaks as he does because it was impossible otherwise than in
human language to express his meaning, though the words he uses have some Divine
and profound significance?
For to suppose that God used the Hebrew tongue, when there was no one to
hear and understand such a language, methinks no reasonable being will consent.
We read in the Acts that the Divine power divided itself into many languages
for this purpose, that no one of alien tongue might lose his share of the
benefit. But if God spoke in human language before the Creation, whom was He to
benefit by using it? For that His speech should have some adaptation to the capacity
of the hearers, with a view to their profit, no one would conceive to be
unworthy of God's love to man, for Paul the follower of Christ knew how to adapt his
words suitably to the habits and disposition of his hearers, making himself
milk for babes and strong meat for grown men(4). But where no object was to be
gained by such use of language, to argue that God, as it were, declaimed such
words by Himself, when there was no one in need of the information they would
convey--such an idea, methinks, is at once both blasphemous and absurd. Neither,
then, did God speak in the Hebrew language, nor did He express Himself according
to any form in use among the Gentiles. But whatsoever of God's words are
recorded by Moses or the Prophets, are indications of the Divine will, flashing forth,
now in one way, now in another, on the pure intellect of those holy men,
according to the measure of the grace of which they were partakers. Moses, then,
spoke his mother-tongue, and that in which he was educated. But he attributed
these words to God, as I have said, repeatedly, on account of the childishness of
those who were being brought to the knowledge of God, in order to give a clear
representation of the Divine will, and to render his hearers more obedient, as
being awed by the authority of the speaker.
But this is denied by Eunomius, the author of all this contumely with
which we are assailed, and the companion and adviser of this impious band. For,
changing insolence into courtesy, I will present him with his own words. He
maintains, in so many words, that he has the testimony of Moses himself to his
assertion that men were endowed with the use of the things named, and of their names,
by the Creator of nature, and that the naming of the things given was prior in
time to the creation of those who should use them. Now, if he is in possession
of some Moses of his own, from whom he has learned this wisdom, and, making
this his base of operations, relies on such statements as these, viz. that God,
as he himself says, lays down the laws of human speech, enacting that things
shall be called in one way and not in another, let him trifle as much as he
pleases, with his Moses in the background to support his assertions. But if there is
only one Moses whose writings are the common source of instruction to those who
are learned in the Divine Word, we will freely accept our condemnation if we
find ourselves refuted by the law of that Moses. But where did he find this law
respecting verbs and nouns? Let him produce it in the very words of the text.
The account of the Creation, and the genealogy of the successive generations,
and the history of certain events, and the complex system of legislation, and
various regulations in regard to religious service and daily life, these are the
chief heads of the writings of Moses. But, if he says that there was any
legislative enactment in regard to words, let him point it out, and I will hold my
tongue. But he cannot; for, if he could, he would not abandon the more striking
evidences of the Deity, for such as can only procure him ridicule, and not
credit, from men of sense. For to think it the essential point in piety to attribute
the invention of words to God, Whose praise the whole world and the wonders
that are therein are incompetent to celebrate--must it not be a proceeding of
extreme folly so to neglect higher grounds of praise, and to magnify God on such as
are purely human? His fiat preluded Creation, but it was recorded by Moses
after human fashion, though Divinely issued. That will of God, then, which brought
about the creation of the world by His Divine power, consisted, says our
careful student of the Scriptures, in the teaching of words. And as though God had
said, "Let there be a word," or, "Let speech be created," or, "Let this or that
have such or such an appellation," so, in advocacy of his trifling, he brings
forward the fact that it was by the impulse of the Divine will that Creation
took place. For with all his study and experience in the Scriptures he knows not
even this, that the impulse of the mind is frequently spoken of in Scripture as
a voice. And for this we have the evidence of Moses himself, whose meaning he
frequently perverts, but whom on this point he simply ignores. For who is there,
however slightly acquainted with the holy volume, who does not know this, that
the people of Israel who had just escaped(5) from Egypt were suddenly
affrighted in the wilderness by the pursuit of the Egyptians, and when dangers
encompassed them on all sides, and on one side the sea cut off their passage as by a
wall, while the enemy barred their flight in the rear, the people coming together
to the Prophet charged him with being the cause of their helpless condition?
And when he comforted them in their abject terror, and roused them to courage, a
voice came from God, addressing the Prophet by name, "Wherefore criest thou
unto Me?(6)" And yet before this the narrative makes no mention of any utterance
on the part of Moses. But the thought which the Prophet had lifted up to God is
called a cry, though uttered in silence in the hidden thought of his heart.
If, then, Moses cries, though without speaking, as witnessed by Him Who hears,
those "groanings which cannot be uttered(7)," is it strange that the Prophet,
knowing the Divine will, so far as it was lawful for him to tell it and for us to
hear it, revealed it by known and familiar words, describing God's discourse
after human fashion, not indeed expressed in words, but signified by the effects
themselves? "In the beginning," he says, "God created," not the names of heaven
and earth, but, "the heaven and the earths(8)." And again, "God said, Let
there be light," not the name Light: and having divided the light from the
darkness, "God called," he says, "the light Day, and the darkness He called Night."
On these passages it is probable that our opponents will take their stand.
And I will agree for them with what is said, and will myself take advantage of
their positions(9) further on in our inquiry, in order that what we teach may
be more firmly established, no point in controversy being left without due
examination. "God called," he says, "the firmament Heaven, and He called the dry
land Earth, and the tight Day, and the darkness He called Night." How comes it,
then, they will ask, when the Scripture admits that their appellations were
given them by God, that you say that their names are the work of human invention?
What, then, is our reply? We return to our plain statement, and we assert, that
He Who brought all creation into being out of nothing is the Creator of things
seen in substantial existence, not of unsubstantial words having no existence
but in the sound of the voice and the lisp of the tongue. But things are named
by the indication of the voice in conformity with the nature and qualities
inherent in each, the names being adapted to the things according to the vernacular
language of each several race.
But since the nature of most things that are seen in Creation is not
simple, so as to allow of all that they connote being comprehended in one word, as,
for instance, in the case of fire the element itself is one thing in its nature
while the word which denotes it is another (for fire itself possesses the
qualities of shining, of burning, of drying and heating, and consuming whatever
fuel it lays hold of, but the name is but a brief word of one syllable), on this
account speech, which distinguishes the powers and qualities seen in fire, gives
each of them a name of its own, as I have said before. And one cannot say that
only a name has been given to fire when it is spoken of as bright, or
consuming, or anything else that we observe it to be. For such words denote qualities
physically inherent in it. So likewise, in the case of heaven and the firmament,
though one nature is signified by each of these words, their difference
represents one or other of its peculiar characteristics, in looking at which we learn
one thing by the appellation "heaven," and another by "firmament." For when
speech would define the limit of sensible creation, beyond which it is succeeded
by the transmundane void apprehended by the mind alone, in contrast with the
intangible and incorporeal and invisible, the beginning and the end of all
material subsistences is called the firmament. And when we survey the environment of
terrestrial things, we call that which encompasses all material nature, and
which forms the boundary of all things visible, by the name of heaven. In the same
manner with regard to earth and dry land, since all heavy and downward-tending
nature was divided into these two elements, earth and water, the appellation
"dry" defines to a certain extent its opposite, for earth is called dry in
opposition to moist, since having thrown off, by Divine command, the water that
overspread it, it appeared in its own character. But the name "earth" does not
continue to express the signification of some one only of its qualities, but, by
virtue of its meaning, it embraces all that the word connotes, e.g. hardness,
density, weight, resistance, capability of supporting animal and vegetable life.
Accordingly, the word "dry" was not changed by speech to the last name put upon
it (for its new name did not make it cease to be called so), but while both the
appellations remained, a peculiar signification attached itself to each, the
one distinguishing it in nature and property from its opposite, the other
embracing all its attributes collectively. And so in light and day, and again in
night and darkness, we do not find a pronunciation of syllables created to suit
them by the Maker of all things, but rather through these appellations we note the
substance of the things which they signify. At the entrance of light, by the
will of God the darkness that prevailed over the earliest creation is scattered.
But the earth lying in the midst, and being upheld on all sides by its
surrounding of different elements, as Job saith, "He hangeth the earth upon
nothing(10)," it was necessary when light travelled over one side and the earth
obstructed it on the opposite by its own bulk, that a side of darkness should be left by
the obscuration, and so, as the perpetual motion of the heavens cannot but
carry along with it the darkness resulting from the obscuration, God ordained this
revolution for a measure of duration of time. And that measure is day and
night For this reason Moses, according to his wisdom, in his historical elucidation
of these matters, named the shadow resulting from the earth's obstruction, a
dividing of the light from the darkness, and the constant and measured
alternation of light and darkness over the surface of the earth he called day and night.
So that what was called light was not named day, but as "there was light," and
not the bare name of light, so the measure of time also was created and the
name followed, not created by God in a sound of words, but because the very
nature of the thing assumed this vocal notation. And as, if it had been plainly said
by the Lawgiver that nothing that is seen or named is of spontaneous
generation or unfashioned, but that it has its subsistence from God, we might have
concluded of ourselves that God made the world and all its parts, and the order
which is seen in them, and the faculty of distinguishing them, so also by what he
says he leads us on to understand and believe that nothing which exists is
without beginning. And with this view he describes the successive events of Creation
in orderly method, enumerating them one after another. But it was impossible
to represent them in language, except by expressing their signification by words
that should indicate it. Since, then, it is written that God called the light
day, it must be understood that God made the day from light, being something
different, by the force of the term. For you cannot apply the same definition to
"light" and "day," but light is what we understand by the opposite of darkness,
and day is the extent of the measure of the interval of light. In the same way
you may regard night and darkness by the same difference of description,
defining darkness as the negation of light, and calling night the extent of the
encompassing darkness. Thus in every way our argument is confirmed, though not,
perhaps, drawn out in strict logical form--showing that God is the Maker of
things, not of empty words. For things have their names not for His sake but for
ours. For as we cannot always have all things before our eyes, we take knowledge of
some of the things that are present with us from time to time, and others we
register in our memories. But it would be impossible to keep memory unconfused
unless we had the notation of words to distinguish the things that are stored up
in our minds from one another. But to God all things are present, nor does He
need memory, all things being within the range of His penetrating vision. What
need, then, in His case, of parts of speech, when His own wisdom and power
embraces and holds the nature of all things distinct and unconfused? Wherefore all
things that exist substantially are from God; but, for our guidance, all things
that exist are provided with names to indicate them. And if any one say that
such names were imposed by the arbitrary usage of mankind, he will be guilty of
no offence against the scheme of Divine Providence. For we do not say that the
nature of things was of human invention, but only their names. The Hebrew calls
Heaven by one name, the Canaanite by another, but both of them understand it
alike, being in no way led into error by the difference of the sounds that
convey the idea of the object. But the over-cautious and timid will-worship of these
clever folk, on whose authority he asserts that, if it were granted that words
were given to things by men, men would be of higher authority than God, is
proved to be unsubstantial even by the example which we find recorded of Moses.
For who gave Moses his name? Was it not Pharaoh's daughter who named him from
what had happened(11)? For water is called Moses in the language of the Egyptians.
Since, then, in consequence of the tyrant's order, his parents had placed the
babe in an ark and consigned it to the stream (for so some related concerning
him), but by the will of God the ark was floated by the current and carried to
the bank, and found by the princess, who happened just then to be taking the
refreshment of the bath, as the child had been gained "from the water," she is
said to have given him his name as a memorial of the occurrence,--a name by which
God Himself did not disdain to address His servant, nor did He deem it beneath
Him to allow the name given by the foreign woman to remain the Prophet's proper
appellation.
In like manner before him Jacob, having taken hold of his brother's heel,
was called a supplanter(1), from the attitude in which he came to the birth.
For those who are learned in such matters tell us that such is the interpretation
of the word "Jacob," as translated into Greek. So, too, Pharez was so named by
his nurse from the incident at his birth(2), yet no one on that account, like
Eunomius, displayed any jealousy of his assuming an authority above that of
God. Moreover the mothers of the patriarchs gave them their names, as Reuben, and
Simeon, and Levi(3), and all those who came after them. And no one started up,
like our new author, as patron of Divine providence, to forbid women to usurp
Divine authority by the imposition of names. And what shall we say of other
particulars in the sacred record, such as the "waters of strife," and the "place of
mourning," and the "hill of the foreskins," and the "valley of the cluster,"
and the "field of blood," and such-like names, of human imposing, but oftentimes
recorded to have been uttered by the Person of God, from which we may learn
that men may notify the meaning of things by words without presumption, and that
the Divine nature does not depend on words for its evidence to itself?
But I will pass over his other babblings against the truth, possessing as
they do no force against our doctrines, for I deem it superfluous to linger any
longer over such absurdities. For who can be so wanting in the more important
subjects of thought as to waste energy on silly arguments, and to contend with
men who speak of us as asserting that "man's forethought is of superior weight
and authority to God's guardianship," and that we "ascribe the carelessness
which confuses the feebler minds to the providence of God"? These are the exact
words of our calumniator. But I, for my part, think it equally as absurd to pay
attention to remarks like that, as to occupy myself with old wives' dreams. For
to think of securing the dignity of rule and sovereignty to the Divine Being by
a form of words, and to show the great power of God to be dependent upon this,
and on the other hand to neglect Him and disregard the providence which
belongs to Him, and to lay it to our reproach that men, having received from God the
faculty of reason, make an arbitrary use of words to signify things--what is
this but an old wife's fable, or a drunkard's dream? For the true power, and
authority, and dominion, and sovereignty of God do not, we think, consist in
syllables. Were it so, any and every inventor of words might claim equal honour with
God. But the infinite ages, and the beauties of the universe, and the beams of
the heavenly luminaries, and all the wonders of land and sea, and the angelic
hosts and supra-mundane powers, and whatever else there is whose existence in
the realm above is revealed to us under various figures by Holy Scripture--these
are the things that bear witness to God's power over all. Whereas, to attribute
the invention of vocal sound to those who are naturally endowed with the
faculty of speech, this involves no impiety towards Him Who gave them their voice.
Nor indeed do we hold it to be a great thing to invent words significative of
things. For the being to whom Holy Scripture in the history of the creation gave
the name of "man(4)" (<greek>anqrwpos</greek>), a word of human devising, that
same being Job calls "mortal(5)" (<greek>brotos</greek>), while of profane
writers, some call him "human being" (<greek>fws</greek>), and others "articulate
speaker" (<greek>meroy</greek>)--to say nothing of other varieties of the name.
Do we, then, elevate them to equal honour with God, because they also invented
names equivalent to that of "man," alike signifying their subject. But, as I
have said before let us leave this idle talk, and make no account of his string
of revilings, in which he charges us with lying against the Divine oracles, and
uttering slanders with effrontery even against God.
To pass on, then, to what remains. He brings forward once more some of the
Master's words, to this effect: "And it is in precisely the same manner that
we are taught by Holy Scripture the employment of a conception. Our Lord Jesus
Christ, when declaring to men the nature of His Godhead, explains it by certain
special characteristics, calling Himself the Door, the Bread, the Way, the
Vine, the Shepherd, the Light." Now I think it seemly to pass over his insolent
remarks on these words (for it is thus that his rhetorical training has taught him
to contend with his opponents), nor will I suffer myself to be disturbed by
his ebullitions of childish folly. Let us, however, examine one pungent and
"irresistible" argument which he puts forward for our refutation. Which of the
sacred writers, he asks, gives evidence that these names were attributed to our Lord
by a conception? But which of them, I reply, forbids it, deeming it a
blasphemy to regard such names as the result of a conception? For if he maintains that
its not being mentioned is a proof that it is forbidden, by a parity of
reasoning he must admit that its not being forbidden is an argument that it is
permitted. Is our Lord called by these names, or does Eunomius deny this also? If he
does deny that these names are spoken of Christ, we have conquered without a
battle. For what more signal victory could there be, than to prove our adversary
to be fighting against God, by robbing the sacred words of the Gospel of their
meaning? But if he admits that it is true that Christ is named by these names,
let him say in what manner they may be applied without irreverence to the
Only-begotten Son of God. Does he take "the stone" as indicative of His nature? Does
he understand His essence under the figure of the Axe (not to encumber our
argument by enumerating the rest)? None of these names represents the nature of the
Only-begotten, or His Godhead, or the peculiar character of His essence.
Nevertheless He is called by these names, and each appellation has its own special
fitness. For we cannot, without irreverence, suppose anything in the words of
God to be idle and unmeaning. Let him say, then, if he disallows these names as
the result of a conception, how do they apply to Christ? For we on our part say
this, that as our Lord provided for human life in various forms, each variety
of His beneficence is suitably distinguished by His several names, His provident
care and working on our behalf passing over into the mould of a name. And such
a name is said by us to be arrived at by a conception. But if this is not
agreeable to our opponents, let it be as each of them pleases. In his ignorance,
however, of the figures of Scripture, our opponent contradicts what is said. For
if he had learned the Divine names, he must have known that our Lord is called
a Curse and Sin(6), and a Heifer(7), and a lion's Whelp(8), and a Bear bereaved
of her whelps(9), and a Leopard(1) and such-like names, according to various
modes of conception, by Holy Scripture, the sacred and inspired writers by such
names, as by well-directed shafts, indicating the central point of the idea
they had in view; even though these words, when taken in their literal and obvious
signification, seem not above suspicion, but each single one of them, unless
we allow it to be predicated of God by some process of conception, will not
escape the taint of a blasphemous suggestion. But it would be a lengthy task to
bring them forward, and elucidate in every case how, in the general idea, these
words have been perverted(2) out of their obvious meanings, and how it is only in
connection with the conceptive faculty that the names of God can be reconciled
with that reverence which is His due.
But to return. Such names are used of our Lord, and no one familiar with
the inspired Scriptures can deny the fact. What then? Does Eunomius affirm that
the words are indicative of His nature itself? If so, he asserts that the
Divine nature is multiform, and that the variety which it displays in what is
signified by the names is very complex. For the meanings of the words Bread and Lion
are not the same, nor those of Axe and Water(3), but to each of them we can
assign a definition of its own, of which the others do not partake. They do not,
therefore, signify nature or essence, yet no one will presume to say that this
nomenclature is quite inappropriate and unmeaning. If, then, these words are
given us, but not as indicative of essence, and every word given in Scripture is
just and appropriate, how else can these appellations be fitly applied to the
Only-begotten Son of God, except in connection with the faculty of conception?
For it is clear that the Divine Being is spoken of under various names, according
to the variety of His operations, so that we may think of Him in the aspect so
named. What harm, then, is done to our reverential ideas of God by this mental
operation, instituted with a view to our thinking upon the things done, and
which we call conception, though if any one choose to call it by some other name,
we shall make no objection.
But, like a mighty wrestler, he will not relinquish his irresistible hold
on us, and affirms in so many words, that "these names are the work of human
thought and conception, and that, by the exercise of this operation of the mind
by some, results are arrived at which no Apostle or Evangelist has taught." And
after this doughty onslaught he raises that sanctimonious voice of his,
spitting out his foul abuse at us with a tongue well schooled to such language. "For,"
says he, "to ascribe homonyms, drawn from analogy, to human thought and
conception is the work of a mind that has lost all judicial sense, and that studies
the words of the Lord with an enfeebled understanding and dishonest habit of
thought." Mercy on us! what a logical argument! how scientifically it proceeds to
its conclusion! Who after this will dare to speak up for the cause of
conception, when such a stench is poured forth from his mouth upon those who attempt
speaking? I suppose, then, that we, who do attempt speaking, must forbear to
examine his argument, for fear of his stirring up against us the cesspool of his
abuse. And verily it is weak-minded(4) to let ourselves be irritated by childish
absurdities. We will therefore allow our insolent adversary full liberty to
indulge in his method as he will. But we will return to the Master's argument, that
thence too we may muster reinforcements for the truth. Eunomius has been
reminded of "analogy" and has perceived "the homonyms to be derived from it." Now
where or from whom did he learn these terms? Not from Moses, not from the
Prophets and Apostles, not from the Evangelists. It is impossible that he should have
learned them from the teaching of any Scripture. How came he, then, to use
them? The very word which describes this or that signification of a thought as
analogy, is it not the invention of the thinking faculty of him who utters it(5)?
How is it, then, that he fails to perceive that he is using the views he fights
against as his allies in the war? For he makes war against our principle of
words being formed by the operation of conception, and would endeavour to
establish, by the aid of words formed on that very principle, that it is unlawful to
use them. "It is not," says he, "the teaching of any of the sacred writers." To
whom, then, of the ancients do you yourself ascribe the term "ungenerate," and
its being predicated of the essence of God? or is it allowable for you, when you
want to establish some of your impious conclusions, to coin and invent terms
to your own liking; but if anything is said by some one else in contravention of
your impiety, to deprive your adversary of similar licence? Great indeed would
be the power you would assume if you could make good your claim to such
authority as this, that what you refuse to others should be allowable to you alone,
and that what you yourself presume to do by virtue of it, you should prevent
others from doing. You condemn, as by an edict, the doctrine that these names were
applied to Christ as a result of conception, because none of the sacred
writers have declared that they ought so to be applied. How, then, can you lay down
the law that the Divine essence should be denoted by the word "ungenerate"--a
term which none of the sacred writers can be shown to have handed down to us? For
if this is the test of the right use of words, that only such shall be
employed as the inspired word of Scripture shall authorize, the word "ungenerate" must
be erased from your own writings, since none of the sacred writers has
sanctioned the expression. But perhaps you accept it by reason of the sense that
resides in it. Well, we ourselves in the same way accept the term "conception" by
reason of the sense that resides in it. Accordingly we will either exclude both
from use, or neither, and whichever alternative be adopted, we are equally
masters of the field. For if the term "ungenerate" be altogether suppressed, all our
adversaries' clamour against the truth is suppressed along with it, and a
doctrine worthy of the Only-begotten Son of God will shine forth, inasmuch as
logical opposition can furnish no name(6) to detract from the majesty of the Lord.
But if both be retained, in that case also the truth will prevail, and we along
with it, when we have altered the word "ungeneracy" from the substance, into a
conception, of the Deity. But so long as he does not exclude the term
"ungenerate" from his own writings, let our modern Pharisee admonish himself not to
behold the mote that is in our eye, before he has cast out the beam that is in his
own.