[p. 289] Gregory of Nyssa Against Eunomius Book Three Part Ten · 2011. 10. 20. · Gregory of...
Transcript of [p. 289] Gregory of Nyssa Against Eunomius Book Three Part Ten · 2011. 10. 20. · Gregory of...
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[p. 289]
Gregory of Nyssa
Against Eunomius Book Three
Part Ten
§§1-17 The orthodox interpretation of the Lord’s words to Mary Magdalene
1. Let us now see what is added to the blasphemy in what follows, which indeed
is the chief point in support of their doctrine. Those who reduce the majestic
glory of the Only-begotten to mean and servile ideas reckon that the strongest
argument for what they say is the word of the Lord to Mary, which he utters after
his resurrection and before his ascension, saying, ‘Touch me not, for I am not yet
ascended to my Father; but go to my brothers and say to them, “I am ascending to
my Father and your Father, and my God and your God”’ (Jn 29.17). 2. Now the
truly religious understanding of these words, in accordance with which we
believe they were spoken to Mary, is, I believe, quite clear to those who have
received the faith in truth. We shall still also add our own explanation of this in
the proper place. Meanwhile it is right to enquire of those who bring such words
into debate, what it is that ascends, and is seen, and is recognized by touch, and
furthermore belongs to mankind by brotherhood: do they regard it as a feature of
the divine or of the human nature? 3. For if what is tangible and visible, and
nourished by food and drink, physically related and brother to human beings,
and all that is observed to relate to corporeal nature, [p. 290] are all perceived as
also in the godhead, let them say these things also of the Only-begotten God, and
let them claim what they like for him, including the action of moving and change
of location, which is a feature of things circumscribed by bodies. 4. If however the
one converses with brothers through Mary, while the Only-begotten has no
brothers (for how could his unique begetting remain intact among brothers?),
and he who says, ‘God is spirit’ (Jn 4.24) is the same as he who said to his
disciples, ‘Feel me’ (Luke 24.39), in order to show that while the human nature
may be touched, the divine is intangible; and he who said, ‘I am going’ (Jn 16.28),1
indicates a change of spatial position, whereas he who encompasses all things, he
in whom, as the Apostle says, all things were created, and in whom all things
consist (Col 1.16-17), has nothing in existence outside himself towards which by 1 Jaeger refers to Jn 20.17, but the actual verb does not occur there.
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a movement the change of place can come about. For there is no other way for
movement to operate, if that which changes position does not leave the place it
was in, and adopt another instead; but what permeates all things, and holds all in
its grasp, and is circumscribed by no existing thing, has no place it can change to,
being in no respect void of the divine fulness. 5. Why then do these people
abandon the attribution of these words to the physical, and attach them to the
divine nature which surpasses all understanding, when the Apostle in his address
to the Athenians rejected thinking in this way about God, on the ground that the
divine power is not discovered by touch, but by mental observation [p. 291] and
faith (Acts 17.27-29)? 6. Or again, he that ate before the eyes of his disciples (Lk
24.41-43), and who promised that he would go before them in Galilee and be
seen there, who is it that he indicates will be seen by them (Mk 16.7 etc.)? Is it
God, whom no man has seen nor can see, or the bodily manifestation, that is, the
form of the slave, in whom God was? If then it is obvious from what has been said
that the meaning of the words points to what is visible, solid, mobile, and akin in
nature to the disciples, and that no such thing is perceived connected with what
is invisible, incorporeal, intangible and formless, why do they degrade the Only-
begotten God, who is in the Beginning, and is in the Father, into equality of rank
with Peter, Andrew, John and the rest of the apostles, by saying that they are
brothers and fellow-slaves of the Only-begotten?
7. The goal to which their whole effort is directed is this: to prove that, in
terms of the majesty of his nature, the Son is as far distant from the rank, power and
being of the Father, as he also surpasses the essential being of man, and they claim
this saying in support of that idea, because it applies the same terms ‘Father’ and
‘God’ equally to the Lord and to the disciples of the Lord, as though no difference of
natural rank were envisaged between them, when he is reckoned to be in the same
way Father and God both to him and to them. 8. Something of this kind is the
argument of the blasphemy in what follows:
… that either, through the terms expressing the relationship, sharing of
[p. 292] being between the disciples and the Father is simultaneously
attested, or else the Lord himself is not directing us by this expression to
sharing the nature of the Father; and just as the fact that the God over all
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is named ‘their God’ argues the servile status of the disciples, by the same
argument it is conceded by these words that the Son is his slave.
That the words spoken to Mary do not fit the deity of the Only-begotten may be deduced
from the very meaning of the words used. 9. The one who in every way humbled himself
to the level of our human littleness, is he who speaks the words. What the actual words
mean may be precisely known by those who by the Spirit explore the depths of the
mystery (cf 1 Cor 2.10). The things however, which have come to our attention through
the instruction of the fathers, those I can briefly present. He who is by nature Father of all
existing things, from whom they all have their origin, is announced as One by the
proclamation of the apostle: „On God and Father,‟ he says, „from whom are all things‟ (1
Cor 8.6). 10. Therefore the human nature did not come upon the creation from some
other source, nor was it generated among existing things of itself, but it too had as the
maker of its own constitution none other than the Father of all things. The very title of
Godhead, however, whether it represents the power of oversight or foresight, it possesses
in a way that befits the human. For he who gives beings the ability to exist, [p. 293] is the
God and overseer of the things made by him; but when by the plotting of him who sowed
in us the tare of disobedience our race failed to preserve his image of its own accord, but
was shamefully disfigured by sin, it was as a result turned by deliberate assimilation into
an evil kinship with the father of sin. Thus the one disowned through his own wickedness
no longer had the Good and True as his Father and God, but instead of him who is by
nature God, those who were not gods were worshipped, as the Apostle says (Gal 4.8),
and instead of the genuine Father, the fraudulent one was called father, as the prophet
Jeremiah says in a parable, „The partridge has called, gathered a brood not her own‟ (Jer
17.ll). 11. It was therefore because the chief feature of our calamity was that humanity
had lost its kinship with the good Father and come to be outside the divine supervision
and care, that the Shepherd of the whole rational creation, leaving on the heights the
unerring and supernal flock, for love of humanity pursued the lost sheep, I mean, our
race; for the human race is the last and least fraction, the race which in the figure of the
parable was the only one of the rational hundred that went astray through evil (Matt
18.12). 12. So, because it was impossible for our species, exiled from God, to be received
back again of its own accord to the high and heavenly place, for that reason, as the
Apostle puts it (2 Cor 5.11), he who knew no sin becomes sin for us, and liberates us
from the curse by making the curse his own (cf Gal 3.13), and [p. 294] taking up our
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enmity to God caused by sin, and, as the Apostle says (Eph 2.16), slaying it (and the
enmity was sin), and becoming what we are, by himself he re-attached humanity to God.
13. That new Man, created in accordance with God (Eph 4.24), in whom dwelt the
fullness of God bodily (Col 2.9), him he acquired by purity for kinship of our race with
the Father, and drew along with him into the same state of grace the whole race that
shared his body and was akin to him. It is this good news which is announced through the
woman (Jn 20.18), not only to those disciples, but also to all who have become disciples
of the word to this day, the news that Man is no longer under banishment or cast out of
the kingdom of God, but is again a son, again orderly under God, since together with the
first-fruits of mankind the whole mass of humanity has also been sanctified. 14. „See,‟ he
says, „it is I and the children God gave me‟ (Heb 2.13/Is 8.18); the place from which you
departed, when you became flesh and blood through sin, taking you up again he led you
back there, he who for our sakes shared flesh and blood. Thus he became also our Father
and God, he from whom we had become alienated through rebellion. Therefore the Lord
announced the good news of that great benefit in what he said, and the words are not
proof of the degradation of the Son, but the good news of our reconciliation with God.
15. What happened to the humanity of Christ,2 is a grace shared with the race of men; for
just as we believe the downward tendency, weighed down to the ground, of the body,
when we see it carried to heaven, [p. 295] as the Apostle says that we shall be caught up
in clouds to meet the Lord in the air (1 Thes 4.17), so too, when we hear that the true God
and Father has become Father and God of our First-fruits,3 we no longer doubt that the
same one has become our Father and God too, when we learn that we shall enter the same
place, where Christ has entered for our sake as forerunner. 16. The fact that the grace is
reported by a woman is itself in conformity with our interpretation, too. For because, as
the Apostle says, „The woman was deceived and fell into transgression‟ (1 Tim 2.14),
and led the way of rebellion against God by her disobedience, for that reason she became
the first witness of the resurrection, so that she might correct by her faith in the
resurrection the disaster her transgression caused; and just as, having become at the start
minister and advocate of the serpent‟s words, she consequently brought a beginning of
evil upon the world, so, by bearing to the disciples the words of him who had slain the
2 Literally, „to the Man in the case of Christ‟.
3 Jaeger is wrong to note James 1.18 and 2 Thes 2.13 as parallels, since there the body of
believers is seen as the firstfruits. Gregory speaks of Christ as the Firstfruits of the
resurrection of our race, as Paul does in 1 Cor 15.20-23.
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rebellious dragon, she might become a pioneer of faith for mankind, the faith by which
appropriately the first sentence of death is revoked. 17. It may be that experts may find a
more helpful exegesis of the text. If however none is forthcoming, then surely, in
comparison with the one offered, every truly religious person will agree that the one
presented by our opponents fails. Theirs has been concocted to demolish the glory of the
Only-begotten, and nothing else, but this one contains the purpose of the human
economy; for it was demonstrated that it was not the intangible, unmoveable, and
invisible, but the seen, moved and touched, that indeed which characterizes the human
nature, which gave Mary the command to carry the word to his brothers.
§§18-54 Defending Basil’s critique of Eunomius, who interpreted the Son’s Light
as less than the Father’s
18. A further matter for consideration is the sort of defence he makes against his
refutation by great Basil, in which he separates the Only-begotten God by allocating
darkness to him. He says,
„As much as the Begotten is separate from the Unbegotten, so is the Light
distinguished from the Light.‟
Basil demonstrated that it was not by some lowering or extensiion that the begotten
differs from the unbegotten, but that there is an absolute contradiction in the meanings,
and he drew the conclusion as a result of what had been postulated, that if the Father‟s
light differs from that of the Son in the same way that unbegottenness differs from being
begotten, then inevitably it is not reduction of light that is attributed to the Son, but
absolute alienation from it. For just as you cannot say that being begotten is a diminution
of unbegottenness, but the meanings of unbegottenness and being begotten differ totally
as contradicting each other, so if the Father‟s Light preserves the same distinction from
that attributed to the Son, it will follow that the Son will no longer be understood to be
Light, since he will be equally excluded from unbegottenness itself and from the Light
associated with it; and he who is something other than the Light will consequently
plainly belong to its opposite. 19. The absurdity [p. 297] having been exposed by these
arguments, Eunomius tries to refute them by formal logical demonstrations, in these
words:
„For we know, we know the true Light. We know him that made the light
after the heaven and the earth. We have heard the very Life and Truth, Christ,
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saying to his disciples, “You are the light of the world” (Matt 5.14). We have
learned from blessed Paul calling the God over all “Light unapproachable” (1
Tim 6.16), making a distinction by the epithet and declaring the
transcendence of the Light. aving then learned such a great difference of
light, we shall not allow ourselves even to hear that the meaning of “light” is
the same.‟
20. Is he by these efforts deliberately putting forward such propositions against the truth,
or using tricks to test the insensitivity of his followers, whether they can detect the
elementary flaw in the logic, or whether they are unaware of such an obvious trick? I do
not think any one is so stupid that he does not see the trick over the use of the same word,
by which Eunomius deceived himself and those who think like him. The disciples, he
says, were called „light‟, and what was made at creation is also called „light‟. Who is not
aware that the only thing in common is the word, while the meaning in each case differs?
The sun‟s light is visually discerned, whereas the thought in the teaching of the disciples
puts the illumination of truth in minds. 21. If he knows the difference in that light, that
the one light is physical, the other mental, we shall no longer have any argument with
him, since his Defence itself condemns him before we say anything. But if he [p.298]
cannot find such a difference in the case of that other Light in terms of its operation, —
since it is not a matter of one illuminating bodily eyes, the other the intellect, but there is
one operation of each of the two Lights operating on the same objects, —how do they
demonstrate from the rays of the sun and the apostles‟ words that the only-begotten Light
and the paternal Light are different? Yet, he says, the Son is called „true‟ Light, the
Father „unapproachable‟; so these additional epithets make clear the distinct superiority
of the paternal light, 22. for he supposes that „true‟ means one thing, „unapproachable „
another. Then who is so silly, that he cannot see that the meanings are the same? The true
and the unapproachable are equally repellent of contrary concepts. As truth admits no
admixture of falsehood, so the unapproachable does not allow anything contrary to come
near. The unapproachable is surely unapproachable by evil. But the Son‟s light is not
evil; how could any one see the true associated with evil? Since therefore truth is not an
evil, no one can say that the Light in the Father is not approachable even by truth. If it
thrusts truth away, it will surely coincide with falsehood. 23. Such is the nature of
opposites, that in the absence of the good, the contrary concept appears. So if one says he
understands that the light in the Father is a long way from the presence of the contrary, he
will be interpreting the word „unapproachable‟ exactly as the Apostle intended. But if he
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says that „unapproachable‟ means „alienated from good‟, it will implied that he is no less
than hostile and alien to himself, being both good and opposed to good. This however is
impossible: what is good belongs to the Good. 24. The one Light is therefore no different
from the other, [p. 299] for the Son is true Light and the Father unapproachable Light. I
might even go so far as to say that it would not be wrong to exchange designations of this
sort between them. The true is not approachable by the false, and conversely the
unapproachable is apprehended in purest truth, for the meaning in both cases alike is that
evil cannot come near. 25. He therefore who cheats himself and those who think like him,
what does he conceive to be the difference between these two? There is however a
further criticism we should not omit: he produces the saying of the Apostle with a
misrepresentation of his wording to suit himself. Paul says „dwelling in light
unapproachable‟ (1Tim 6.16). There is a considerable difference between saying that he
is something, and saying that he is in something. The one who says, „dwelling in light
unapproachable‟, by using the word for dwelling did not refer to him, but to what is
around him, and that on our argument is the same as the Gospel verse, which says that
the Father is in the Son. For the Son is true Light, and Truth ia unapproachable by
falsehood; so the Son is Light inapproachable, in which the Father dwells, [or indeed, in
whom the Father is].4
26. Still he struggles with his vanities, and says,
„From the actual facts and the sayings we believe in, I provide the proof of
my words.‟
(Such is his promise. Whether he proceeds with the argument to suit his promises,
the intelligent hearer will surely observe.)
„Blessed John,‟ he says, „having said that the Word was in the beginning, and
having called him Life, and having then named the Life “Light”, a little [p.
300] further on he says, “and the Word became flesh.” If then the Life is
Light, and the Word Life, and the Word became flesh, it becomes apparent
from this that the Light came to be in flesh.‟
27. What? Because the Light, the Life, the God, and the Word were manifested in flesh,
therefore the true Light differs from the Light in the Father? —and yet it is attested by the
Gospel that even when it was in the darkness it remained unapproachable by the contrary
nature: „The Light shone in the darkness,‟ it says, „and the darkness did not lay hold on
4 Jaeger deletes the bracketed words as an alternative reading in the manuscripts.
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it‟ (Jn 1.5). If then the Light had been changed into its opposite and dominated by the
gloom when it came to be in darkness, that would have been a strong proof for those who
want to show how much this Light differs for the worse when compared with that held to
be in the Father. 28. If however the Word, though it comes to be in flesh, remains Word,
and the Light, though it shines in the darkness, is no less Light, admitting no community
with its opposite, and the Life, though it comes to be in death, is preserved within itself,
and the God, though he is subjected to the form of the slave, does not actually become a
slave, but the subordinate is exalted to lordship and royalty, making Lord and Christ what
was lowly and human, how does he demonstrate by this the change of the Light for the
worse, when both alike remain unchanged for the worse and invariable. He does not even
notice that the one who saw the enfleshed Word, who was both Light and Life and God,
through the visible glory perceived the Father of glory, and said, „We have seen his glory,
glory as of an Only-begotten from a Father‟ (Jn 1.14).
29. He has however come to the irrefutable argument, which we long since detected
as following from what he had said, but is now stated in naked terms: he wants to
demonstrate that the essential being of the Son is something passible and fragile,
differing not at all from the material nature subject to flux, so as to demonstrate thereby
his difference from the Father. He says:
„If he is able to show the God over all too, who is indeed unapproachable
Light, having become enfleshed, or being able to do so, came under
authority, obeyed commandments, lived by human laws, or was crucified, let
him say that Light is equal to Light.‟
30. If these things had been alleged by us in our investigations as a consequence of the
previous arguments, and they were not substantiated by his words, everybody would have
accused us of lying, as if we were in a verbal frenzy exposing the doctrine of our
opponents to this charge of absurdity. As it is, there is support for the view that we are
with due discretion correcting the argument of the heresy, in the fact that even they
themselves do not leave unmentioned the absurdity which appears in what follows. Look
how undisguised and frank is their war against the Only-begotten God, and how his work
of loving kindness is reckoned by his enemies an insult and imputation against the nature
of the Son of God, as if he had slithered down into life in the flesh and the suffering of
the cross, not by deliberate choice, but of his own nature. 31. Just as it is natural for stone
to fall downwards and for fire the opposite, and the substances do not exchange
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characteristics with each other, so that stone should become airborne and fire be heavy
and fall downwards, so they argue that [p. 302] the sufferings are essentially combined
with the Son‟s nature, and for this reason it comes to what is akin and proper to itself,
while that of the Father, being free from such passions, remains unapproachable by the
assault of evil. For he says that the God over all, who is indeed unapproachable Light,
neither became enfleshed, nor is able to do so. 32. It was enough to make the first of the
statements, that the Father did not become enfleshed but now by the addition there is a
duplication of the argument for the absurdity, since he is either accusing the Son of evil
or the Father of impotence. 33. If participation in the flesh is an evil, he is affirming the
wickedness of the Only-begotten God; if generous kindness is a good, he is
demonstrating that the Father is incapable of the good, by saying that he was unable to
exercise such grace through flesh. Yet everybody knows that lifegiving power proceeds
into operation alike from Father and Son. „Just as the Father raises the dead,‟ he says, „so
the Son makes alive those whom he will‟ (Jn 5.21); he refers to us, who have fallen away
from true life, as „dead‟. 34. If then, just as the Father gives life, so also, and in no other
way, the Son exercises the same grace, why does God‟s enemy use his blasphemous
tongue against both, insulting the Father as impotent towards the good, and the Son as
associated with evil?
35. „Nevertheless,‟ he says, „the one Light is not equal to the other, because one is
called “true”, the other “unapproachable”.‟ Therefore the true is reckoned inferior.5 Why?
Indeed, for this very reason the godhead of the Father is deemed to be greater and higher
than that of the Son, because the one [p. 303] is described in the Gospel as „true‟ God (Jn
17.3), while the other lacks the adjective. So why does the same word indicate superiority
in the concept where godhead is concerned, inferiority in the case of light? For if the
reason he says the Father is greater than the Son, is that he is true God, on the same
principle the Son will be confessed as greater than the Father, because the one is called
„true‟ Light, the other is not. 36. However,
„This Light,‟ he says, „effected the works of kindly love, the other remained
inoperative for giving grace of this kind.‟
A new kind of promotion! They judge the one who performs no works of kindly love
higher than the one who effects them. There never was and never will be such an idea
among Christians, whereby it is argued that not every good which there is in beings has
5 Jaeger punctuates this statement as a question.
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its source in the Father. Among those who think aright the chief good in our case is
believed to be the way back to life. This however was achieved through the dispensation
of the Lord in his manhood, with the Father not inactive and inoperative, as the heresy
would have it, holding himself apart at the time of that dispensation. That is not what he
shows us, who said, „He that sent me is with me‟ (Jn 8.29), and „The Father abiding in
me does these works‟ (Jn 14.10). 37. Why then does the heresy claim the work of grace
on our behalf as the Son‟s alone, and exclude the Father from a share in the thanksgiving
for things restored? The return of thanks is naturally owed only to benefactors, and the
one who is incapable of giving benefit is surely not included in the thanksgiving. You see
how in every way their plan to blaspheme the Only-begotten turns back in reverse, with
consequent effects on the Father instead. In my view this sort of thing was bound to
happen. If „he who honours the Son honours the Father,‟ as the divine declaration says
(Jn 5.13), then conversely efforts against the Son have their consequences for the Father.
38. I say that for those who simply accept the message of the cross and resurrection the
same gift of grace should be the subject of equal thanksgiving both to Father and Son,
since the Son carried out the Father‟s will, which is that all mankind should be saved, as
the Apostle says (1 Tim 1.4); and we should equally honour for this grace both the Father
and the Son, because salvation would not have come to us, had not the good purpose of
the Father through his own Power reached out to us to effect it, and we learn from the
Scriptures that the Son is the Power of the Father.
39. Let us look again at what is said:
„If he is able to show the God over all too, who is indeed unapproachable
Light, having become enfleshed, or being able to do so, came under
authority, let him say that Light is equal to Light.‟6
The purpose of what is said is obvious from the logical structure of the words, namely
that he does not think that by his almighty power the Son is capable also of generosity of
this kind, but that he allowed himself to suffer by crucifixion because he was passible by
nature. 40. I thought about this, and considered the question of where he came upon such
ideas about the Deity, that the Unbegotten [p. 305] is Light unapproachable by its
contrary and thought of as purely passionless and undefiled, while the Begotten is
ambiguous in nature, so that it does not retain its deity absolute and pure in impassibility,
but has its being combined and commingled with opposites, a being which both yearns
6 Abbreviating the quotation in §29 above.
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for participation in the Good and is diverted towards a disposition subject to passion.
Since I could not find in the scriptures the basis for such absurdities, it occurred to me to
wonder whether he had admired the myths of the Egyptians about the deity, and mixed in
their views in what he thinks about the Only-begotten. It is reported that they say that
their outlandish idol-making, when they attach certain animal forms to human bodies, are
a symbol of their mixed nature, which they call a daemon,7 and that this is more refined
than human nature and superior in power to our nature, but does not have divinity
unmixed or undiluted, but combined with mental life (physis) and corporeal sensation, so
that it receives pleasure and pain, none of which is true of the unbegotten God. They too
use this concept, attributing unbegottenness to what is in their thinking the transcendent
God. It seems therefore to us that this clever theologian has brought Anubis, Isis or Osiris
from the dark Egyptian shrines into the Christian Gospel, without actually confessing the
names; though there is surely no difference in the impiety between one who confesses the
names of the idols, and the one who holds these opinions of them in himself, while
avoiding the names. 42. If then they can find no support for this impiety in the divine
scripture, and their argument gets its strength from hieroglyphic symbols, it is surely not
difficult to see what men of good will ought [p. 306] to think about them. That we are not
making this accusation merely abusively, Eunomius himself would be our witness in his
own words, when he says that the Unbegotten is unapproachable Light and not able to
enter the experience of sufferings, and states that in the case of the Begotten such a
condition is proper and congenital. So man would receive no favour from the Only-
begotten God in the things he suffered, if he actually slipped automatically, as they tell
us, into the experience of the sufferings, since his passible being would drag him
naturally to this, and that merits no thanks. 43. For who would regard what happens of
necessity as a matter for gratitude, even if it were beneficial and helpful? We do not
acknowledge the heat of fire or the fluidity of water as a favour, since we attribute what
is done to a necessity of nature, for fire cannot quit its heating function, nor water remain
stable on a flat surface, but of its own accord gets forward momentum from its sloping
situation. So if they say that it was by necessity of nature that the benefit through
incarnation was done by the Son to mankind, they surely acknowledge no favour,
because they attribute what he did not to a power to act freely, but to a necessity of
nature. 44. If however they are conscious of the benefit of the gift and do not honour it, I
7 The Greek daivmwn, from which we get the English word „demon‟, usually referred to
a minor divinity, like a nymph or local god.
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am afraid their impiety may again go into reverse, and make the passionate status of the
Son superior to the passionlessness of the Father, shifting right judgment to the one they
regard as Good. For if the Son too, in the same fashion they teach about the Father, had
ended up immune to suffering, [p. 307] the disastrous state of our race would have
remained incorrigible: there would have been none to deliver mankind into imperishable
life by his personal experience. Thus unawares the cunning of the sophists, by the
arguments it uses to demolish the majesty of the Only-begotten God advancing him
towards greater and more honourable notions, if indeed the one who is able to act for
good is more honourable than the one who is not.
45. However, I am aware that my book is getting somewhat disorderly. It does not
stay in its correct course, but like a hot and headstrong foal is being carried away by the
arguments of our adversaries towards the absurdities of their position. It must therefore
be allowed to defy the rein immoderately in order to deal with absurdities. The kindly
hearer will pardon the things said, not attributing the absurdity arising from the study to
us, but to those who lay down bad principles. It is for us turn out attention to something
else in his writing. 46. He says:
„He also makes God composite for us, by suggesting that the Light is
common, but that they are distinct one from another by certain characteristics
and various differences, for what coincides in one shared aspect, but
distinguished by certain differences and sets of characteristics, is no less
composite.‟
Our argument with this is brief and easily dealt with. The charge he brings against our
teachings, if he did not state it in his own words, is a charge we plead guilty to. Let us
note the things he has written. He names the Lord „true Light‟, and the Father,
„unapproachable Light‟; so he himself has acknowledged they have light in common,
since he so names both. 47. Since names are [p. 308] adapted to realities, as he stipulates
in many places, we do not think it is as a mere word that „Light‟ is uttered without
meaning in the case of the divine nature, but it designates an underlying reality.
Therefore, given the sharing of the name, they are admitting the identity of the things
indicated, since when things have the same name, they have declared their natures to be
no different. Since then one thing is meant by „Light‟, the addition of „unapproachable‟
and „true‟ on the heretical argument distinguishes the universal by the particulars, so that
one Light is thought of as the Father‟s, the other as the Son‟s: they are distinguished by
their characteristics. He must either abolish the peculiar features, so that what he says
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does not argue the divinity to be composite, or he should not blame us for things which
he can see in his own arguments. 48. The case is in not at all damaged by these points,
since being is not community and particularity, in such a way that the combination of
these proves the object to be composite. The being in itself, whatever it may be by nature,
abides, being just what it is. Any one who has some intelligence would say that these
things are what are perceived and understood to apply to them, since it is even possible to
observe something in common between the divine nature and us men, but the divine is
not therefore humanity, nor the human deity. 49. Believing that God is good, we know
that this word is used by scripture for mankind, but the particularity of each divides the
community arising from the common name; the one, being the fount of goodness, is
named after it, while the one who shares that goodness also participates in the name, and
God is not composite just because he shares the designation „good‟ with man. [p. 309] It
is therefore plainly to be concluded from this that the definition of what is held in
common is one thing, that of the being another; and any composition or multiplicity in
the simple and unquantifiable nature is no more argued on this ground, if one of the
things attributed to it is either considered in its particularity or gets the designation
because of some common feature.
50. Let us now go on to another of the things he has said, saying goodbye to the
ravings in between, where he laboriously makes a lot of noise about the Aristotelian
classification of beings, and in what we have written elaborates on the kinds and species
and distinctions and indivisibles, and deploys all the rest of the technical logic of the
Categories to insult our doctrines. So leaving that aside, let us take our argument on to
his serious point, the most difficult to refute. With the fury of a Demosthenes he has shot
his book against us and declared himself another Paianeus from Oltiseris, imitating the
orator‟s sharp shooting in his battle with us. I will quote verbatim our wordsmith‟s
words:
„Yes‟, he says. „but if, since “begotten” is the opposite of “unbegotten”, the
begotten Light meets the unbegotten Light on equal terms, the one will be
light, the other darkness.‟
The sharpness and accuracy of this antithetical confrontation, any one with leisure may
perceive from his words. I would like to ask him who acts our part, either to use our
words, or to present his imitation of our speech as closely as possible, or else as he has
learnt and is able, to use his book to argue for himself and not for us. For, lest any one of
our people be misled in such a way as [p. 310] to think that, because „begotten‟ is
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opposite in meaning to „unbegotten‟, decline is implied of one from the other. Not every
contrary is distinguished by declension, but its opposition consists wholly in the
difference indicated, as we might say someone is asleep or not asleep, seated or not
seated, begotten or not begotten, and everything else of the same kind, where removing
the one means positing its contrary. So just as living is not a declining from not living,
but total opposition, so we reckon that having been begotten is not a declension from not
having been begotten, but its contradiction and absolute antithesis, so that what is
signified in each has nothing in common with the other in any way either small or large.
He therefore who says that what is deemed contrary declines from its opposite must
produce the argument in his own name. 53. Our own naiveté tells us that things
analogous to opposites differ between themselves to the same extent as their prototypes
do. So if Eunomius perceives the same difference in the Light as be does between
begotten and unbegotten, I shall respond by using our argument, that as in that case the
one part of the contradiction continues to have nothing in common with its contrary, so,
if indeed if the Light is attached to one side of the antithesis, then its other partner will
certainly be shown to be bound up with darkness: the necessity of the antithesis will, on
the analogy of what precedes, set the principle of light against its opposite.
54. This is what we, who „set our hands to writing without training in logic,‟ as our
abuser says, offer rustically in our local dialect to the new Paianeus. As to why he has
struggled against this contradiction, shooting at us fire-breathing words with the force of
a Demosthenes, let those who enjoy a laugh go to our orator‟s actual writings. Our own is
not too difficult to put into action for refuting the doctrines of the impious, but for poking
fun at the ignorance of the uneducated it is quite unsuitable.