(NOTE: The electronic text obtained from The Electronic Bible Society was
not completely corrected. EWTN has corrected all discovered errors. If you
find errors or omissions in the text, please notify [email protected].)

Transliteration of Greek words: All phonetical except: w = omega; h serves
three puposes: 1. = Eta; 2. = rough breathing, when appearing initially
before a vowel; 3. = in the aspirated letters theta = th, phi = ph, chi =
ch. Accents are given immediately after their corresponding vowels: acute =
' , grave = `, circumflex = ^. The character ' doubles as an apostrophe,
when necessary.


ST. GREGORY OF NYSSA

ANSWER TO EUNOMIUS' SECOND BOOK

[Translated by the Rev. M. Day, completed and revised by the Rev. William
Moore, M.A., Rector of Appleton, Late Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford.]


   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 uncompounded, 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
ungenerate 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, imperishableness 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 phaenomenon 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)" (a'nthrwpos), a word of human devising, that same being
Job calls "mortal(5)" (broto's), while of profane writers, some call him
"human being" (phw's), and others "articulate speaker" (me'rops)--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.

   "But God," he says, "gave the weakest of terrestrial things a share in
the most honourable names, though not giving them an equal share of
dignity, and to the highest He imparted the names of the lowest, though the
natural inferiority of the latter was not transferred to the former along
with their names." We quote this in his very words. If they contain some
deep and recondite meaning which has escaped us, let those inform us who
see what is beyond our range of vision--initiated as they are by him in his
esoteric and unspeakable mysteries. But if they admit of no interpretation
beyond what is obvious, I scarcely know which of the two are more to be
pitied, those who say such things or those who listen to them. To the
weakest of terrestrial things, he says, God has given names in common with
the most honourable, though not giving them an equal share of dignity. Let
us examine what is meant by this. The weakest things, he says, are
dignified with the bare name belonging to the honourable, their nature not
corresponding with their name. And this he states to be the work of the God
of truth--to dignify the worse nature with the worthier appellation! On the
other hand, he says that God applies the less honourable names to things
superior in their nature, the nature of the latter not being carried over
to the former along with the appellation. But that the matter may be made
plainer still, the absurdity shall be shown by actual instances. If any one
should call a man who is esteemed for every virtue, intemperate; or, on the
other hand, a man equally in disrepute for his vices, good and moral, would
sensible people think him of sound mind, or one who had any regard for
truth, reversing, as would be the case, the meanings of words, and giving
them a non-natural signification? I for my part think not. He speaks, then,
of things relating to God, out of all keeping with our common ideas and
with the holy Scriptures. For in matters of ordinary life it is only those
who are unsettled by drink or madness that go wrong in names, and use them
out of their proper meaning, calling, it may be, a man a dog, or vice
versa. But Holy Scripture is so far from sanctioning such confusion, that
we may clearly hear the voice of prophecy lamenting it. "Woe unto him,"
says Isaiah, "that calls darkness light, and light darkness, that calls
bitter sweet, and sweet bitter(7)." Now what induces Eunomius to apply this
absurdity to his God? Let those who are initiated in his mysteries say what
they judge those weakest of terrestrial things to be, which God has
dignified with most honourable appellations. The weakest of existing things
are those animals whose generation takes place from the corruption of moist
elements, as the most honourable are virtue, and holiness, and whatever
else is pleasing in the sight of God. Are flies, then, and midges, and
frogs, and whatever insects are generated from dung, dignified with the
names of holiness and virtue, so as to be consecrated with honourable
names, though not sharing in such high qualities, as saith Eunomius? But
never as yet have we heard anything like this, that these weak things are
called by high-sounding titles, or that what is great and honourable by
nature is degraded by the name of any one of them. Noah was a righteous
man, saith the Scripture, Abraham was faithful, Moses meek, Daniel wise,
Joseph chaste, Job blameless, David perfect in patience. Let them say,
then, whether all these had their names by contraries; or, to take the case
of those who are unfavourably spoken of, as Nabal the Carmelite, and
Pharaoh the Egyptian, and Abimelech the alien, and all those who are
mentioned for their vices, whether they were dignified with honourable
names by the voice of God. Not so! But God judges and distinguishes His
creatures as they are in nature and truth, not by names contrary to them,
but by such appropriate appellations as may give the clearest idea of their
meaning.

   This it is that our strong-minded opponent, who accuses us of
dishonesty, and charges us with being irrational in judgment,--this it is
that he pretends to know of the Divine nature. These are the opinions that
he puts forth respecting God, as though He mocked His creatures with names
untrue to their meaning, bestowing on the weakest the most honourable
appellations, and pouring contempt on the honourable by making them
synonymous with the base. Now a virtuous man, if carried, even
involuntarily, beyond the limits of truth, is overwhelmed with shame. Yet
Eunomius thinks it no shame to God that He should seem to give a false
colour to things by their appellations. Not such is the testimony of the
Scriptures to the Divine nature. "God is long-suffering, and plenteous in
mercy and truth," says David(8). But how can He be a God of truth Who gives
false names to things, and Who perverts the truth in the meanings of their
names? Again, He is called by him a righteous Lord(9). Is it, then, a
righteous thing to dignify things without honour by honourable names, and,
while giving the bare name, to grudge the honour that it denotes? Such is
the testimony of these Theologians to their new-fangled God. This is the
end of their boasted dialectic cleverness, to display God Himself
delighting in deceit, and not superior to the passion of jealousy. For
surely it is no better than deceit not to name weak things, as they are in
their true nature and worth, but to invest them with empty names, derived
from superior things, not proportioning their value to their name; and it
is no better than jealousy if, having it in His power to bestow the more
honourable appellation on things to be named for some superiority, He
grudged them the honour itself, as deeming the happiness of the weak a loss
to Himself personally. But I should recommend all who are wise, even if the
God of these Gnostics(1) is by stress of logic shown to be of such a
character, not to think thus of the true God, the Only-begotten, but to
look at the truth of facts, giving each of them their due, and thence to
deduce His name. "Come, ye blessed," saith our Lord; and again, "Depart, ye
cursed(2)," not honouring him who deserves cursing with the name of
"blessed," nor, on the other hand, dismissing him who has treasured up for
himself the blessing, along with the wicked.

   But what is our author's meaning, and what is the object of this
argument of his? For no one need imagine that, for lack of something to
say, in order that he may seem to extend his discourse to the utmost, he
has indulged in all this senseless twaddle. Its very senselessness is not
without a meaning, and smacks of heresy. For to say that the most
honourable names are applied to the weakest things, though not having by
nature an equal apportionment of dignity, secretly paves the way, as it
were, for the blasphemy to follow, that he may teach his disciples this;
that although the Only-begotten is called God, and Wisdom, and Power, and
Light, and the Truth, and the Judge, and the King, and God over all, and
the great God, and the Prince of peace, and the Father of the world to
come, and so forth, His honour is limited to the name.

   He does not, in fact, partake of that dignity which the meaning of
those names indicates; and whereas wise Daniel, in setting right the
Babylonians' error of idolatry, that they should not worship the brazen
image or the dragon, but reverence the name of God, which men in their
folly had ascribed to them, clearly showed by what he did that the high and
lofty name of God had no likeness to the reptile, or to the image of molten
brass--this enemy of God exerts himself in his teaching to prove the very
opposite of this in regard to the Only-begotten Son of God, exclaiming in
the style which he affects, "Do not regard the names of which our Lord is a
partaker, so as to infer His unspeakable and sublime nature. For many of
the weakest things are likewise invested with names of honour, lofty indeed
in sound, though their nature is not transformed so as to come up to the
grandeur of their appellations." Accordingly he says that inferior things
receive their honour from God only so far as their names go, no equality of
dignity accompanying their appellations. When, therefore, we have learned
all the names of the Son that are of lofty signification, we must bear in
mind that the honour which they imply is ascribed to Him only so far as the
words go, but that, according to the system of nomenclature which they
adopt, He does not partake of the dignity implied by the words.

   But in dwelling on such nonsense I fear that I am secretly gratifying
our adversaries. For m setting the truth against their vain and empty
words, I seem to myself to be wearing out the patience of my audience
before we come to the brunt of the battle. These points, then, I will leave
it to my more learned hearers to dispose of, and proceed with my task. Nor
will I now notice a thing he has said, which, however, is closely connected
with our inquiry; viz. that these things have been so arranged that human
thought and conception can claim no authority over names. But who is there
that maintains that what is not seen in its own subsistence has authority
over anything? For only those creatures that are governed by their own
deliberate will are capable of acting with authority. But thought and
conception are an operation of the mind, which depends on the deliberate
choice of those who speak, having no independent subsistence, but
subsisting only in the force of the things said. But this, he says, belongs
to God, the Creator of all things, who, by limitations and rules of
relation, operation, and proportion, applies suitable appellations to each
of the things named. But this either is sheer nonsense, or contradicts his
previous assertions. For if he now professes that God affixes names
suitable to their subjects, why does he argue, as we have seen that God
bestows lofty names on things without honour, not allowing them a share in
the dignity which their names indicate, and again, that He degrades things
of a lofty nature by names without honour, their nature not being affected
by the meanness of their appellations? But perhaps we are unfair to him in
subjecting his senseless collocation of phrases to such accusations as
these. For they are altogether alien to any sense (I do not mean only to a
sense in keeping with reverence), and they will be found to be utterly
devoid of reason by all who understand how to form an accurate judgment in
such matters. Since, then, like the fish called the sea-lung, what we see
appears to have bulk and volume, which turns out, however, to be only
viscous matter disgusting to look at, and still more disgusting to handle,
I shall pass over his remarks in silence, deeming that the best answer to
his idle effusions. For it would be better that we should not inquire what
law governs "operation," and "proportion," and "relation," and who it is
that prescribes laws to God in respect to rules and modes of proportion and
relation, than that, by busying ourselves in such matters, we should
nauseate our hearers, and digress from more important matters of inquiry.

   But I fear that all we shall find in the discourse of Eunomius will
turn out to be mere tumours and sea lungs, so that what has been said must
necessarily close our argument, as his writings will supply no material to
work on. For as a smoke or a mist makes the air in which it resides heavy
and thick, and incapacitates the eye for the discharge of its natural
function, yet does not form itself into so dense a body that he who will
may grasp and hold it in his palms, and offer resistance to its stroke, so
if one should say the same of his pompous piece of writing, the comparison
would not be untrue. Much nonsense is worked up in his tumid and viscous
discourse, and to one not gifted with over-much discernment, like a mist to
one viewing it from afar, it seems to have some substance and shape, but if
you come up to it and scrutinize what is said, the theories slip from your
hold like smoke, and vanish into nothing, nor have they any solidity or
resistance to oppose to the stroke of your argument. It is difficult,
therefore, to know what to do. For to those who like to complain either
alternative will seem objectionable; whether, leaping over his empty
wordiness, as over a ravine, we direct the course of our argument to the
level and open country, against those points which seem to have any
strength against the truth, or form our absurd battle along the whole line
of his inanities. For in the latter case, to those who do not love hard
work, our labour, extending over some thousands of lines to no useful
purpose, will be wearisome and unprofitable. But if we attack those points
only which seem to have some force against the truth, we shall give
occasion to our adversaries to accuse us of passing over arguments of
theirs which we are unable to refute. Since, then, two courses are open to
us, either to take all their arguments seriatim, or to run through those
only which are more important--the one course tedious to our hearers, the
other liable to be suspected by our assailants--I think it best to take a
middle course, and so, as far as possible, to avoid censure on either hand.
What, then, is our method? After clearing his vain productions, as well as
we can, of the rubbish they have accumulated, we will summarily run through
the main points of his argument in such a way as neither to plunge
needlessly into the profundities of his nonsense, nor to leave any of his
statements unexamined. Now his whole treatise is an ambitious attempt to
show that God speaks after the manner of men, and that the Creator of all
things gives them suitable names, indicative of the things themselves. And,
therefore, opposing himself to him who contended that such names are given
by that rational nature which we have received from God, he accuses him of
error, and of desertion from his fundamental proposition: and having
brought this charge against him, he uses the following arguments in support
of his position.

   Basil, he says, asserts that after we have obtained our first idea of a
thing, the more minute and accurate investigation of the thing under
consideration is called conception. And Eunomius disproves this, as he
thinks, by the following argument, that where this first, and this second
notion, i.e. one more minute and accurate than the other, are not found,
the operation which we call thought and conception does not find place.
Here, however, he will be convicted of dishonesty by all who have ears to
hear. For it was not of all thought and conception that our master (Basil)
laid down this definition, but, after making a special subdivision of the
objects of thought and conception (not to encumber the question with too
many words), and having made this part clear, he left men of sense to
reason out the whole from the part for themselves. And as, if any one
should say that we get our definition of an animal from considering a
number of animals of different species, he could not be convicted of
missing the truth in making man an instance in point, nor would there be
any need to correct him as deviating from the fact, unless he should give
the same definition of a winged, or four-footed, or aquatic animal as of a
man, so, when the points of view from which we may consider this conception
are so many and various, it is no refutation of Basil's statement to say
that it is improperly so called in one case because there is another
species. Accordingly, even if another species come under consideration, it
by no means follows that the one previously given is erroneously so called.
Now if, says he, one of the Apostles or Prophets could be shown to have
used these names of Christ, the falsehood would have something for its
encouragement. To what industrious study of the word of God on the part of
our opponent do not these words bear testimony! None of the Prophets or
Apostles has spoken of our Lord as Bread, or a Stone, or a Fountain, or an
Axe, or Light, or a Shepherd! What, then, saith David, and of whom? "The
Lord shepherds me." "Thou Who shepherdest Israel, give earn." What
difference does it make whether He is spoken of as shepherding, or as a
Shepherd? And again, "With Thee is the Well of life(4)." Does he deny that
our Lord is called a "Well"? And again, "The Stone which the builders
rejected(5)." And John, too,--where, representing our Lord's power to
uproot evil under the name of an axe, he says, "And now also the Axe is
laid to the root of the trees(6)"--is he not a weighty and credible witness
to the truth of our words?

   And Moses, seeing God in the light, and John calling Him the true
Light(7), and in the same way Paul, when our Lord first appeared to him,
and a Light shone round about him, and afterwards when he heard the words
of the Light saying, "I am Jesus, Whom thou persecutest(8),"--is he not a
competent witness? And as regards the name "Bread," let him read the Gospel
and see how the bread given by Moses, and supplied to Israel from heaven,
was taken by our Lord as a type of Himself: "For Moses gave you not that
Bread, but My Father giveth you the true Bread (meaning Himself) which
cometh down from heaven and giveth life unto the world(9)." But this
genuine  hearer of the law says that none of the Prophets or Apostles has
applied these names to Christ. What shall we say, then, of what follows?
"Even if our Lord Himself adopts them, yet, since in the Saviour's names
there is no first or second, none more minute or accurate than another, for
He knows them all at once with equal accuracy, it is not possible to
accommodate his (Basil's) account of the operation of conception to any of
His names."

   I have deluged my discourse with much nonsense of his, but I trust my
hearers will pardon me for not leaving unnoticed even the most glaring of
his inanities; not that we take pleasure in our author's indecorum, (for
what advantage can we derive from the refutation of our adversaries'
folly?) but that truth may be advanced by confirmation from whatever
quarter. "Since," says he, "our Lord applies these appellations to Himself,
not deeming any one of them first, or second, or more minute and accurate
than the rest, you cannot say that these names are the result of
conception." Why, he has forgotten his own object! How comes he by the
knowledge of the words against which he declares war? Our master and guide
had made mention of an example familiar to all, in illustration of the
doctrine of conception, and having explained his meaning by lower
illustrations, he lifts the consideration of the question to higher things.
He had said that the word "corn," regarded by itself, is one thing only as
to substance, but that, as to the various properties we see in it, it
varies its appellations, being called seed, and fruit, and food, and the
like. Similarly, says he, our Lord is in respect to Himself what He is
essentially, but when named according to the differences of His operations,
He has not one appellation in all cases, but takes a different name
according to each notion produced in us from the operation. How, then, does
what he says disprove our theory that it is possible for many appellations
to be attached with propriety, according to the diversity of His
operations, and His relation to their effects, to the Son of God, though
one in respect of the underlying force, even as corn, though one, has
various names apportioned to it, according to the point of view  from which
we regard it? How, then, can what  is said be overthrown by our saying that
Christ  used all these names of Himself? For the question was not, who
ascribed them, but about the meaning of the names, whether they denote
essence, or whether they are derived from His  operations by the process of
conception. But our shrewd and strong-minded opponent, overturning our
theory of conception, which declares that it is possible to find many
appellations for one and the same subject, according to the significances
of its operations, attacks us vigorously, asserting that such names were
not given to our Lord by another. But what has this to do with the case in
point? Since these names are used by our Lord, will he not allow that they
are names, or appellations, or words expressive of ideas? For if he will
not admit them to be names, then, in doing away with the appellations, he
does away at the same time with the conception. But if he does not deny
that these words are names, what harm can he do to our doctrine of
conception by showing that such titles were given to our Lord, not by some
one else, but by Himself? For what was said was this, that, as in the
instance of corn, our Lord, though substantively One, bears epithets
suitable to His operations. And as it is admitted that corn has its names
by virtue of our conception of its associations, it was shown that these
terms significative of our Lord are not of His essence, but are formed by
the method of conception in our minds respecting Him. But our antagonist
studiously avoids attacking these positions, and maintains that our Lord
received these names from Himself, in the same way as, if one sought for
the true interpretation of the name "Isaac," whether it means laughter(1),
as some say, or something else, one of Eunomius' way of thinking should
confidently reply that the name was given to him as a child by his mother
but that, one might say, was not the question, i.e. by whom the name was
given, but what does it mean when translated into our language? And this
being the point of the inquiry, whether our Lord's various appellations
were the result of conception, instead of being indicative of His essence,
he who thus seeks to demonstrate that they are not so derived because they
are used by our Lord Himself,--how can he be numbered among men of sense,
warring as he does against the truth, and equipping himself with such
alliances for the war as serve to show the superior strength of his enemy?

   Then going farther, as if his object were thus far attained, he takes
up other charges against us, more difficult, as he thinks, to deal with
than the former, and with many preliminary groans and attempts to prejudice
his hearers against us, and to whet their appetite for his address,
accusing us withal of seeking to establish doctrines savouring of
blasphemy, and of  ascribing to our own conception names assigned  by God
(though he nowhere mentions what  assignment he refers to, nor when and
where it took place), and, further, of throwing everything into confusion,
and identifying the essence of the Only-begotten with his operation,
without arguing the matter, or showing how we prove the identity of the
essence and the operation, he winds up with the same list of charges, as
follows: "And now, passing beyond this, he (Basil) asperses even the Most
High with the vilest blasphemies, using at the same time broken language,
and illustrations wide of the mark." Now prior to inquiry, I should like to
be told what our language is "broken" from, and what mark it is "wide of";
not that I want to know, except to show the confusion and obscurity of his
address, which he dins into the ears of the old wives among our men,
pluming himself on his nice phrases, which he mouths out to the admirers of
such things, ignorant, as it would seem, that in the judgment of educated
men this address of his will serve only as a memorial of his own infamy.

   But all this is beside our purpose. Would that our charges against him
were limited to this, and that he could be thought to err only in his
delivery, and not in matters of faith; since it would have been of
comparatively little importance to him to be praised or blamed for
expressing himself in one style or another. But however that may be, the
sequel of his charges against us contains this in addition: "Considering
the case of corn (he says), and of our Lord, after exercising his
conceptions in various ways upon them, he(2) declares that even in like
manner the most holy essence of God admits of the same variety of
conception." This is the gravest of his accusations, and it is m
prosecuting this that he rehearses those heavy invectives of his, charging
what we have said with blasphemy, absurdity, and so forth. What, then, is
the proof of our blasphemy? "He(3) has mentioned" (says Eunomius) "certain
well-known facts about corn,--perceiving how it grows, and how when ripe it
affords food, growing, multiplying, and being dispensed by certain forces
of nature--and, having mentioned these, he adds that it is only reasonable
to suppose that the Only-begotten Son also admits of different modes of
being conceived of(4), by reason of certain differences of operation,
certain analogies, proportions, and relations. For he uses these terms
respecting Him to satiety. And is it not absurd, or rather blasphemous, to
compare the Ungenerate with such objects as these?"--What objects? Why,
corn, and  God the Only-begotten! You see his artfulness. He would show
that insignificant corn  and God the Only-begotten are equally removed
from the dignity of the Ungenerate. And to show that we are not treating
his words unfairly, we may learn his meaning from the very words he has
written. "For," he asks, "is it not absurd, or rather blasphemous, to
compare the  Ungenerate with these?" And in thus speaking, he instances the
case of corn and of our Lord as on a level in point of dignity, thinking it
equally absurd to compare God with either. Now every one knows that things
equally distant from a given object are possessed of equality as regards
each other, so that according to our wise theologian the Maker of the
worlds, Who holds all nature in His hand, is shown to be on a par with the
most insignificant seed, since He and corn to the same degree fall short of
comparison with God. To such a pitch of blasphemy has he come!

   But it is time to examine the argument that leads to this profanity,
and see how, as regards itself, it is logically connected with his whole
discourse. For after saying that it is absurd to compare God with corn and
with Christ, he says of God that He is not, like them, subject to change;
but in respect to the Only-begotten, keeping silence on the question
whether He too is not subject to change, and thereby clearly suggesting
that He is of lower dignity, in that we cannot compare Him, any more than
we can compare corn, with God, he breaks off his discourse without using
any argument to prove that the Son of God cannot be compared with the
Father, as though our knowledge of the grain were sufficient to establish
the inferiority of the Son in comparison with the Father. But he discourses
of the indestructibility of the Father, as not in actuality attaching to
the Son. But if the True Life is an actuality, actuating itself, and if to
live everlastingly means the same thing as never to be dissolved in
destruction, I for myself do not as yet assent to his argument, but will
reserve myself for a more proper occasion. That, however, there is but one
single notion in indestructibility(5), considered in reference to the
Father and to the Son alike, and that the indestructibility of the Father
differs in no respect from that of the Son, no difference as to
indestructibility being observable either in remission and intension, or in
any other phase of the process of destruction, this, I say, it is
seasonable both now and at all times to assert, so as to preclude the
doctrine that in respect of indestructibility the Son has no communion with
the Father. For as this indestructibility is understood in respect of the
Father, so also it is not to be disputed in respect of the Son. For to be
incapable of dissolution means nearly, or rather precisely, the same thing
in regard to whatever subject it is attributed to. What, then, induces him
to assert, that only to the Ungenerate Deity does it belong to have this
indestructibility not attaching to Him by reason of any energy, as though
he would thereby show a difference between the Father and the Son? For if
he supposes his own created God destructible, he well shows the essential
divergence of natures by the difference between the destructible and the
indestructible. But if neither is subject to destruction,--and no degrees
are to be found in pure indestructibility,--how does he show that the
Father cannot be compared with the Only-begotten Son, or what is meant by
saying that indestructibility is not witnessed in the Father by reason of
any energy? But he reveals his purpose in what follows. It is not because
of His operations or energies, he says, that He is ungenerate and
indestructible, but because He is Father and Creator. And here I must ask
my hearers to give me their closest attention. How can he think the
creative power of God and His Fatherhood identical in meaning? For he
defines each alike as an energy, plainly and expressly affirming, "God is
not indestructible by reason of His energy, though He is called Father and
Creator by reason of energies." If, then, it is the same thing to call Him
Father and Creator of the world because either name is due to an energy as
its cause, the results of His energies must be homogeneous, inasmuch as it
is through an energy, that they both exist. But to what blasphemy this
logically tends is clear to every one who can draw a conclusion. For
myself, I should like to add my own deductions to my disquisition. It is
impossible that an energy or operation productive of a result should
subsist of itself without there being something to set the energy in
motion; as we say that a smith operates or works, but that the material on
which his art is exercised is operated upon, or wrought. These faculties,
therefore, that of operating, and that of being operated upon, must needs
stand in a certain relation to each other, so that if one be removed, the
remaining one cannot subsist of itself. For where there is nothing operated
upon there can be nothing operating. What, then, does this prove? If the
energy which is productive of anything does not subsist of itself, there
being nothing for it to operate upon, and if the Father, as they affirm, is
nothing but an energy, the Only-begotten Son is thereby shown to be capable
of being acted upon, in other words, moulded in accordance with the motive
energy that gives Him His subsistence. For as we say that the Creator of
the world, by laying down some yielding material, capable of being acted
upon, gave His creative being a field for its exercise, in the case of
things sensible skilfully investing the subject with various and multiform
qualities for production, but in the case of intellectual essences giving
shape to the subject in another way, not by qualities, but by impulses of
choice, so, if any one define the Fatherhood of God as an energy, he cannot
otherwise indicate the subsistence of the Son than by comparing it with
some material acted upon and wrought to completion. For if it could not be
operated upon, it would of necessity offer resistance to the operator:
whose energy being thus hindered, no result would be produced. Either,
then, they must make the essence of the Only-begotten subject to be acted
upon, that the energy may have something to work upon, or, if they shrink
from this conclusion, on account of its manifest impiety, they are driven
to the conclusion that it has no existence at all. For what is naturally
incapable of being acted upon, cannot itself admit the creative energy. He,
then, who defines the Son as the effect of an energy, defines Him as one of
those things which are subject to be acted upon, and which are produced by
an energy. Or, if he deny such susceptibility, he must at the same time
deny His existence. But since impiety is involved in either alternative of
the dilemma, that of asserting His non-existence, and that of regarding Him
as capable of being acted upon, the truth is made manifest, being brought
to light by the removal of these absurdities. For if He verily exists, and
is not subject to be acted upon, it is plain that He is not the result of
an energy, but is proved to be very God of very God the Father, without
liability to be acted upon, beaming from Him and shining forth from
everlasting.

   But in His very essence, he says, God is indestructible. Well, what
other conceivable attribute of God does not attach to the very essence of
the Son, as justice, goodness, eternity, incapacity for evil, infinite
perfection in all conceivable goodness? Is there one who will venture to
say that any of the virtues in the Divine nature are acquired, or to deny
that all good whatsoever springs from and is seen in it? "For whatsoever is
good is from Him, and whatsoever is lovely is from Him(6)." But he appends
to this, that He is in His very essence ungenerate too. Well, if he means
by this that the Father's essence is ungenerate, I agree with what is said,
and do not oppose his doctrine: for not one of the orthodox maintains that
the Father of the Only-begotten is Himself begotten. But if, while the form
of his expression indicates only this, he maintains that the ungeneracy
itself is the essence, I say that we ought not to leave such a position
unexamined, but expose his attempt to gain the assent of the unwary to his
blasphemy.

   Now that the idea(7) of ungeneracy and the belief in the Divine essence
are quite different things may be seen by what he himself has put forward.
God, he says, is indestructible and ungenerate by His very essence, as
being unmixed and pure from all diversity and difference. This he says of
God, Whose essence he declares to he indestructibility and ungeneracy.
There are three names, then, that he applies to God, being,
indestructibility, ungeneracy. If the idea of these three words in respect
of God is one, it follows that the Godhead and these three are identical.
Just as if any one, wanting to describe a man, should say that he was a
rational, risible, and broad-nailed creature; whereupon, because there is
no essential variation from these in the individuals, we say that the terms
are equivalent to each other, and that the three things seen in the subject
are one thing, viz. the humanity described by these names. If, then,
Godhead means this, ungeneracy, indestructibility, being, by doing away
with one of these he necessarily does away with the Godhead. For just as we
should say that a creature which was neither rational nor risible was not
man either, so in the case of these three terms (ungeneracy,
indestructibility, being), if the Godhead is described by these, should one
of the three be absent, its absence destroys the definition of Godhead. Let
him tell us, then, in reply, what opinion he holds of God the Only-
begotten. Does he think Him generate or ungenerate? Of course he must say
generate, unless he is to contradict himself. If, then, being and
indestructibility are equivalent to ungeneracy, and by all of these Godhead
is denoted, to Whom ungeneracy is wanting, to Him being and
indestructibility must needs be wanting also, and in that case the Godhead
also must necessarily be taken away. And thus his blasphemous logic brings
him to a twofold conclusion. For if being, and indestructibility, and
ungeneracy are applied to God in the same sense, our new God-maker is
clearly convicted of regarding the Son created by Him as destructible, by
his not regarding Him as ungenerate, and not only so, but altogether
without being, through his inability to see Him in the Godhead, as one in
whom ungeneracy and indestructibility are not found, since he takes the
ungeneracy and indestructibility to be identical with the being. But since
in this there is manifest perdition, let some one counsel these unhappy
folk to turn to the only course which is left them, and, instead of setting
themselves in open opposition to the truth, to allow that each of these
terms has its own proper signification, such as may be seen still better
from their contraries. For we find ungenerate set against generate, and we
understand the indestructible by its opposition to the destructible, and
being by contrast with that which has no subsistence. For as that which was
not generated is called ungenerate, and that which is not destructible is
called indestructible, so that which is not non-existent we call being,
and, conversely, as we do not call the generate ungenerate, nor the
destructible indestructible, so that which is non-existent we do not call
being. Being, then, is discernible in the being this or that, goodness or
indestructibility in the being of this or of that kind, generacy or
ungeneracy in the manner of the being. And thus the ideas of being, manner,
and quality are distinct from each other.

   But it will be well, I think, to pass over his nauseating observations
(for such we must term his senseless attacks on the method of conception),
and dwell more pleasurably on the subject matter of our thought. For all
the venom that our disputant has disgorged with the view of overthrowing
our Master's speculations in regard to conception, is not of such a kind as
to be dangerous to those who come in its way, however stupid they may be
and liable to be imposed on. For who is so devoid of understanding as to
think that there is anything in what Eunomius says, or to see any ingenuity
in his artifices against the truth when he takes our Master's reference to
corn (which he meant simply by way of illustration, thereby providing his
hearers with a sort of method and introduction to the study of higher
instances), and applies it literally to the Lord of all? To think of his
assertion that the most becoming cause for God's begetting the Son was His
sovereign authority and power, which may be said not only in regard to the
universe and its elements, but in regard to beasts and creeping things; and
of our reverend theologian teaching that the same is becoming in our
conception of God the Only-begotten--or again, of his saying that God  was
called ungenerate, or Father, or any other name, even before the existence
of creatures to call Him such, as being afraid lest, His name not being
uttered among creatures as yet unborn, He should be ignorant or forgetful
of Himself, through ignorance of His own nature because of His name being
unspoken! To think, again, of the insolence of his attack upon our
teaching; what acrimony, what subtlety does he display, while attempting to
establish the absurdity of what he (Basil) said, namely that He Who was in
a manner the Father before all worlds and time, and all sensitive and
intellectual nature, must somehow wait for man's creation in order to be
named by means of man's conception, not having been so named, either by the
Son or by any of the intelligent beings of His creation! Why no one, I
imagine, can be so densely stupid as to be ignorant that God the Only-
begotten, Who is in the Father(8), and Who seeth the Father in Himself, is
in no need of any name or title to make Him known, nor is the mystery of
the Holy Spirit, Who searcheth out the deep things of God(9), brought to
our knowledge by a nominal appellation, nor can the incorporeal nature of
supramundane powers name God by voice and tongue. For, in the case of
immaterial intellectual nature, the mental energy is speech which has no
need of material instruments of communication. For even in the case of
human beings, we should have no need of using words and names if we could
otherwise inform each other of our pure mental feelings and impulses. But
(as things are), inasmuch as the thoughts which arise in us are incapable
of being so revealed, because our nature is encumbered with its fleshly
surrounding, we are obliged to express to each other what goes on in our
minds by giving things their respective names, as signs of their meaning.

   But if it were in any way possible by some other means to lay bare the
movements of thought, abandoning the formal instrumentality of words, we
should converse with one another more lucidly and clearly, revealing by the
mere action of thought the essential nature of the things which are under
consideration. But now, by reason of our inability to do so, we have given
things their special names, calling one Heaven, another Earth, and so on,
and as each is related to each, and acts or suffers, we have marked them by
distinctive names, so that our thoughts in regard to them may not remain
uncommunicated and unknown. But supramundane and immaterial nature being
free and independent of bodily envelopment, requires no words or names
either for itself or for that which is above it, but whatever utterance on
the part of such intellectual nature is recorded in Holy Writ is given for
the sake of the hearers, who would be unable otherwise to learn what is to
be set forth, if it were not communicated to them by voice and word. And if
David in the spirit speaks of something being said by the Lord to the
Lord(1), it is David himself who is the speaker, being unable otherwise to
make known to us the teaching of what is meant except by interpreting by
voice and word his own knowledge of the mysteries given him by Divine
inspiration.

   All his argument, then, in opposition to the doctrine of conception I
think it best to pass over, though he charge with madness those who think
that the name of God, as used by mankind to indicate the Supreme Being, is
the result of this conception. For what he is thinking of when he considers
himself bound to revile that doctrine, all who will may learn from his own
words. What opinion we ourselves hold on the use of words we have already
stated, viz. that, things being as they are in regard to their nature, the
rational faculty implanted in our nature by God invented words indicative
of those actual things. And if any one ascribe their origin to the Giver of
the faculty, we would not contradict him, for we too maintain mat motion,
and sight, and the rest of the operations carried on by the senses are
effected by Him Who endowed us with such faculties. 'So, then, the cause of
our naming God, Who is by His nature what He is, is referable by common
consent to Himself, but the liberty of naming all things that we conceive
of in one way or another lies in that thing in our nature, which, whether a
man wish to call it conception or something else, we are quite indifferent.
And there is this one sure evidence in our favour, that the Divine Being is
not named alike by all, but that each interprets his idea as he thinks
best. Passing over, then, in silence his rubbishy twaddle about conception,
let us hold to our tenets, and simply note by the way some of the
observations that occur in the midst of his empty speeches, where he
pretends that God, seating Himself by our first parents, like some
pedagogue or grammarian, gave them a lesson in words and names; wherein he
says that they who were first formed by God, or those who were born from
them in continuous succession, unless they had been taught how each several
thing should be called and named, would have lived together in dumbness and
silence, and would have been unequal to the discharge of any of the
serviceable functions of life, the meaning of each being uncertain through
lack of interpreters,--verbs forsooth, and nouns. Such is the infatuation
of this writer; he thinks the faculty implanted in our nature by God
insufficient for any method of reasoning, and that unless it be taught each
thing severally, like those who are taught Hebrew or Latin word by word,
one must be ignorant of the nature of the things, having no discernment of
fire, or water, or air, or anything else, unless one have acquired the
knowledge of them by the names that they bear. But we maintain that He Who
made all things in His wisdom, and Who moulded this living rational
creature, by the simple fact of His implanting reason in his nature,
endowed him with all his rational faculties. And as naturally possessing
our faculties of perception by the gift of Him Who fashioned the eye and
planted the ear, we can of ourselves employ them for their natural objects,
and have no need of any one to name the colours, for instance, of which the
eye takes cognizance, for the eye is competent to inform itself in such
matters; nor do we need another to make us acquainted with the things which
we perceive by hearing, or taste, or touch, possessing as we do in
ourselves the means of discerning all of which our perception informs us.
And so, again, we maintain that the intellectual faculty, made as it was
originally by God, acts thenceforward by itself when it looks out upon
realities, and that there be no confusion in its knowledge, affixes some
verbal note to each several thing as a stamp to indicate its meaning. Great
Moses himself confirms this doctrine when he says(2) that names were
assigned by Adam to the brute creation, recording the fact in these words:
"And out of the ground God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl
of the air, and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them, and
whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.
And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to an the beasts of the field."

   But, like some viscous and sticky clay, the nonsense he has concocted
in contravention of our teaching of conception seems to hold us back, and
prevent us from applying ourselves to more important matters. For how can
one pass over his solemn and profound philosophy, as when he says that
God's greatness is seen not only in the works of His hands, but that His
wisdom is displayed in their names also, adapted as they are with such
peculiar fitness to the nature of each work of His creation(3)? Having
perchance fallen in with Plato's Cratylus, or heating from some one who had
met with it, by reason, I suppose, of his own poverty of ideas, he attached
that nonsense patchwise to his own, acting like those who get their bread
by begging. For just as they, receiving some trifle from each who bestows
it on them, collect their bread from many and various sources, so the
discourse of Eunomius, by reason of his scanty store of the true bread,
assiduously collects scraps of phrases and notions from all quarters. And
thus, being struck by the beauty of the Platonic style, he thinks it not
unseemly to make Plato's theory a doctrine of the Church. For by how many
appellations, say, is the created firmament called according to the
varieties of language? For we call it Heaven, the Hebrew calls it Samaim,
the Roman coelum, other names are given to it by the Syrian, the Mede, the
Cappadocian, the African, the Scythian, the Thracian the Egyptian: nor
would it be easy to enumerate the multiplicity of names which are applied
to Heaven and other objects by the different nations that employ them.
Which of these, then, tell me, is the appropriate word wherein the great
wisdom of God is manifested? If you prefer the Greek to the rest, the
Egyptian haply will confront you with his own. And if you give the first
place to the Hebrew, there is the Syrian to claim precedence for his own
word, nor will the Roman yield the supremacy, nor the Mede allow himself to
be outdone; while of the other nations each will claim the prize. What,
then, will be the fate of his dogma when torn to pieces by the claimants
for so many different languages? But by these, says he, as by laws publicly
promulgated, it is shown that God made names exactly suited to the nature
of the things which they represent. What a grand doctrine! What grand views
our theologian allows to the Divine teachings, such indeed as men do not
grudge even to bathing-attendants! For we allow them to give names to the
operations they engage in, and yet no one invests them with Divine honours
for the invention of such names as foot-baths, depilatories, towels, and
the like--words which appropriately designate the articles in question.

   But I will pass over both this and their reading of Epicurus' nature-
system, which he says is equivalent to our conception, maintaining that the
doctrine of atoms and empty space, and the fortuitous generation of things,
is akin to what we mean by conception. What an understanding of Epicurus!
If we ascribe words expressive of things to the logical faculty in our
nature, we thereby stand convicted of holding the Epicurean doctrine of
indivisible bodies, and combinations of atoms, and the collision and
rebound of particles, and so on. I say nothing of Aristotle, whom he takes
as his own patron, and the ally of his system, whose opinion, he says, in
his subsequent remarks, coincides with our views about conception. For he
says that that philosopher taught that Providence does not extend through
all nature, nor penetrate into the region of terrestrial things, and this,
Eunomius contends, corresponds to our discoveries in the field of
conception. Such is his idea of determining a doctrine with accuracy! But
he goes on to say that we must either deny the creation of things to God,
or, if we concede it, we must not deprive Him of the imposition of names.
And yet even in respect to the brute creation, as we have said already, we
are taught the very opposite (of both these alternatives) by Holy
Scripture--that neither did Adam make the animals, nor did God name them,
but the creation was the work of God, and the naming of the things created
was the work of man, as Moses has recorded. Then in his own speech he gives
us an encomium of speech in general (as though some one wished to disparage
it), and after his eminently abusive and bombastic conglomeration of words,
he says that, by a law and rule of His providence, God has combined the
transmission of words with our knowledge and use of things necessary for
our service; and after pouring forth twaddle of this kind in the profundity
of his slumbers, he passes on in his discourse to his irresistible and
unanswerable argument. I will not state it in so many words, but simply
give the drift of it. We are not, he says, to ascribe the invention of
words to poets, who are much mistaken in their notions of God. What a
generous concession does he make to God in investing Him with the
inventions of the poetic faculty, so that God may thereby seem to men more
sublime and august, when the disciples of Eunomius believe that such
expressions as those used by Homer for "side-ways," "rang out," "aside,"
"mix(4)," "clung to his hand," "hissed," "thumped," "rattled," "clashed,"
"rang terribly," "twanged," "shouted," "pondered," and many others, are not
used by poets by a certain arbitrary licence, but that they introduce them
into their poems by some mysterious initiation from God! Let this, too, be
passed over, and withal that clever and irresistible attempt, that it is
not in our power to quote Scriptural instances of holy men who have
invented new terms. Now if human nature had been imperfect up to the time
of such men's appearance, and not as yet completed by the gift of reason,
it would have been well for them to seek that the deficiency might be
supplied. But if from the very first man's nature existed self-sufficing
and complete for all purposes of reason and thought, why should any one, in
order to establish this doctrine of conception, humour them so far as to
seek for instances where holy men initiated sounds or names? Or, if we
cannot adduce any instances, why should any one regard it as a sufficient
proof that such and such syllables and words were appointed by God Himself?

   But, says he, since God condescends to commune with His servants, we
may consequently suppose that from the very beginning He enacted words
appropriate to things. What, then, is our answer? We account for God's
willingness to admit men to communion with Himself by His love towards
mankind. But since that which is by nature finite cannot rise above its
prescribed limits, or lay hold of the superior nature of the Most High, on
this account He, bringing His power, so full of love for humanity, down to
the level of human weakness, so far as it was possible for us to receive
it, bestowed on us this helpful gift of grace. For as by Divine
dispensation the sun, tempering the intensity of his full beams with the
intervening air, pours down light as well as heat on those who receive his
rays, being himself unapproachable by reason of the weakness of our nature,
so the Divine power, after the manner of the illustration I have used,
though exalted far above our nature and inaccessible to all approach, like
a tender mother who joins in the inarticulate utterances of her babe, gives
to our human nature what it is capable of receiving; and thus in the
various manifestations of God to man He both adapts Himself to man and
speaks in human language, and assumes wrath, and pity, and such like
emotions, so that through feelings corresponding to our own our infantile
life might be led as by hand, and lay hold of the Divine nature by means of
the words which His foresight has given. For that it is irreverent to
imagine that God is subject to any passion such as we see in respect to
pleasure, or pity, or anger, no one will deny who has thought at all about
the truth of things. And yet the Lord is said to take pleasure in His
servants, and to be angry with the backsliding people, and, again, to have
mercy on whom He will have mercy, and to show compassion--the word teaching
us in each of these expressions that God's providence helps our infirmity
by using our own idioms of speech, so that such as are inclined to sin may
be restrained from committing it by fear of punishment, and that those who
are overtaken by it may not despair of return by the way of repentance when
they see God's mercy, while those who are walking uprightly and strictly
may yet more adorn their life with virtue, as knowing that by their own
life they rejoice Him Whose eyes are over the righteous. But just as we
cannot call a man deaf who converses with a deaf man by means of signs,--
his only way of hearing,--so we must not suppose speech in God because of
His employing it by way of accommodation in addressing man. For we
ourselves are accustomed to direct brute beasts by clucking and whistling
and the like, and yet this, by which we reach their ears, is not our
language, but we use our natural speech in talking to one another, while,
in regard to cattle, some suitable noise or sound accompanied with gesture
is sufficient for all purposes of communication.

   But our pious opponent will not allow of God's using our language,
because of our proneness to evil, shutting his eyes (good man!) to the fact
that for our sakes He did not refuse to be made sin and a curse. Such is
the superabundance of His love for man, that He voluntarily came to prove
not only our good, but our evil. And if He was partaker in our evil, why
should He refuse to be partaker in speech, the noblest of our gifts? But he
advances David in his support, and declares that he said that names were
imposed on things by God, because it is thus written, "He telleth the
number of the stars; He calleth them all by their names(5)." But I think it
must be obvious to every man of sense that what is thus said of the stars
has nothing whatever to do with the subject. Since, however, it is not
improbable that some may unwarily give their assent to his statement, I
will briefly discuss the point. Holy Scripture often-times is wont to
attribute expressions to God such that they seem quite accordant with our
own, e.g. "The Lord was wroth, and it repented Him because of their
sins(6)"; and again, "He repented that He had anointed Saul king(7)"; and
again, "The Lord awaked as one out of sleep(8)"; and besides this, it makes
mention of His sitting, and standing, and moving, and the like, which are
not as a fact connected with God, but are not without their use as an
accommodation to those who are under teaching. For in the case of the too
unbridled, a show of anger restrains them by fear. And to those who need
the medicine of repentance, it says that the Lord repenteth along with them
of the evil, and those who grow insolent through prosperity it warns, by
God's repentance in respect to Saul, that their good fortune is no certain
possession, though it seem to come from God. To those who are not engulfed
by their sinful fall, but who have risen from a life of vanity as from
sleep, it says that God arises out of sleep. To those who steadfastly take
their stand upon righteousness,--that He stands. To those who are seated in
righteousness,--that He sits. And again, in the case of those who have
moved from their steadfastness in righteousness,--that He moves or walks;
as, in the case of Adam, the sacred history records God's walking in the
garden in the cool of the day(9), signifying thereby the fall of the first
man into darkness, and, by the moving, his weakness and instability in
regard to righteousness.

   But most people, perhaps, will think this too far removed from the
scope of our present inquiry. This, however, no one will regard as out of
keeping with our subject; the fact that many think that what is
incomprehensible to themselves is equally incomprehensible to God, and that
whatever escapes their own cognizance is also beyond the power of His. Now
since we make number the measure of quantity, and number is nothing else
than a combination of units growing into multitude in a complex way (for
the decad is a unit brought to that value by the composition of units, and
again the hundred is a unit composed of decads, and in like manner the
thousand is another unit, and so in due proportion the myriad is another by
a multiplication, the one being made up to its value by thousands, the
other by hundreds, by assigning all which to their underlying class we make
signs of the quantity of the things numbered), accordingly, in order that
we may be taught by Holy Scripture that nothing is unknown to God, it tells
us that the multitude of the stars is numbered by Him, not that their
numbering takes place as I have described, (for who is so simple as to
think that God takes knowledge of things by odd and even, and that by
putting units together He makes up the total of the collective quantity?)
but, since in our own case the exact knowledge of quantity  is obtained by
number, in order, I say, that we  might be taught in respect to God that
all things are comprehended by the knowledge of His wisdom, and that
nothing escapes His minute cognizance, on this account it represents God as
"numbering the stars," counselling us by these words to understand this,
viz. that we must not imagine God to take note of things by the measure of
human knowledge, but that all things, however incomprehensible and above
human understanding, are embraced by the knowledge of the wisdom of God.
For as the stars on account of their multitude escape numbering, as far as
our human conception is  concerned, Holy Scripture, teaching the whole from
the part, in saying that they are numbered by God attests that not one of
the things unknown to us escapes the knowledge of God. And therefore it
says, "Who telleth the multitude of the stars," of course not meaning that
He did not know their number beforehand; for how should He be ignorant of
what He Himself created, seeing that the Ruler of the Universe could not be
ignorant of that which is comprehended in His power; which includes the
worlds in its embrace? Why, then, should He number what He knows? For to
measure quantity by number is the part of those who want information. But
He Who knew all things before they were created needs not number as His
informant. But when David says that He "numbers the stars," it is evident
that the Scripture descends to such language in accordance with our
understanding, to teach us emblematically that the things which we know not
are accurately known to God. As, then, He is said to number, though needing
no arithmetical process to arrive at the knowledge of things created, so
also the Prophet tells us that He calleth them all by their names, not
meaning, I imagine, that He does so by any vocal utterance. For verily such
language would result in a conception strangely unworthy of God, if it
meant that these names in common use among ourselves were applied to the
stars by God. For, should any one allow that these were so applied by God,
it must follow that the names of the idol gods of Greece were applied by
Him also to the stars, and we must regard as true all the tales from
mythological history that are told about those starry names, as though God
Himself sanctioned their utterance. Thus the distribution among the Greek
idols of the seven planets contained in the heavens will exempt from blame
those who have erred in respect to them, if men be persuaded that such an
arrangement was God's. Thus the fables of Orion and the Scorpion will be
believed, and the legends respecting the ship Argo, and the Swan, and the
Eagle, and the Dog, and the mythical story of Ariadne's crown. Moreover it
will pave the way for supposing God to be the inventor of the names in the
zodiacal circle, devised after some fancied resemblance in the
constellations, if Eunomius is right in supposing that David said that
these names were given them by God.

   Since, then, it is monstrous to regard God as the inventor of such
names, lest the names even of these idol gods should seem to have had their
origin from God, it will be well not to receive what has been said without
inquiry, but to get to the meaning in this case also after the analogy of
those things of which number informs us. Well, since it attests the
accuracy of our knowledge, when we call one familiar to us by his name, we
are here taught that He Who embraces the Universe in His knowledge not only
comprehends the total of the aggregate quantity, but has an exact knowledge
of the units also that compose it. And therefore the Scripture says not
only that He "telleth the number of the stars," but that "He calleth them
all by their names," which means that His accurate knowledge extends to the
minutest of them, and that He knows each particular respecting them, just
as a man knows one who is familiar to him by name. And if any one say that
the names given to the stars by God are different ones, unknown to human
language, he wanders far away from the truth. For if there were other names
of stars, Holy Scripture would not have made mention of those which are in
common use among the Greeks, Esaias saying(1), "Which maketh the Pleiads,
and Hesperus, and Arcturus, and the Chambers of the South," and Job making
mention of Orion and Aseroth(2); so that from this it is clear that Holy
Scripture employs for our instruction such words as are in common use. Thus
we hear in Job of Amalthea's horn(3), and in Esaias of the Sirens(4), the
former thus naming plenty after the conceit of the Greeks, the latter
representing the pleasure derived from hearing, by the figure of the
Sirens. As, then, in these cases the inspired word has made use of names
drawn from mythological fables, with a view to the advantage of the
hearers, so here it freely makes use of the appellations given to the stars
by human fancy, teaching us that all things  whatsoever that are named
among men have their origin from God--the things, not their names. For it
does not say Who nameth, but "Who maketh Pleiad, and Hesperus, and
Arcturus." I think, then, it has been sufficiently shown in what I have
said that David supports our opinion, in teaching us by this utterance, not
that God gives the stars their names, but that He has an exact knowledge of
them, after the fashion of men, who have the most certain knowledge of
those whom they are able, through long familiarity, to call by their names.

   And if we set forth the opinion of most commentators on these words of
the Psalmist, that of Eunomius regarding them will be still more convicted
of foolishness. For those who have most carefully searched out the sense of
the inspired Scripture, declare that not all the works of creation are
worthy of the Divine reckoning. For in the Gospel narratives of feeding the
multitudes in the wilderness, women and children are not thought worthy of
enumeration. And in the account of the Exodus of the children of Israel,
those only are enumerated in the roll who were of age to bear arms against
their enemies, and to do deeds of valour. For not all names of things are
fit to be pronounced by the Divine lips, but the enumeration is only for
that which is pure and heavenly, which, by the loftiness of its state
remaining pure from all admixture with darkness, is called a star, and the
naming is only for that which, for the same reason, is worthy to be
registered in the Divine tablets. For of His adversaries He says, "I will
not take up their names into my lips(5)."

   But the names which the Lord gives to such stars we may plainly learn
from the prophecy of Esaias, which says, "I have called thee by thy name;
thou art Mine(6)." So that if a man makes himself God's possession, his act
becomes his name. But be this as the reader pleases. Eunomius, however,
adds to his previous statement that the beginnings of creation testify to
the fact, that names were given by God to the things which He created; but
I think that it would be superfluous to repeat what I have already
sufficiently set forth as the result of my investigations; and he may put
his own arbitrary interpretation on the word Adam, which, the Apostle tells
us, points prophetically to Christ(7). For no one can be so infatuated,
when Paul, by the power of the Spirit, has revealed to us the hidden
mysteries, as to count Eunomius a more trustworthy interpreter of Divine
things--a man who openly impugns the words of the inspired testimony, and
who by his false interpretation of the word would fain prove that the
various kinds of animals were not named by Adam. We shall do well, also, to
pass over his insolent expressions, and tasteless vulgarity, and foul and
disgusting tongue, with its accustomed fluency going on about our Master as
"a sower of tares," and about "a deceptive show(3) of grain, and the blight
of Valentinus, and his grain piled in our Master's mind": and we will veil
in silence the rest of his unsavoury talk as we veil putrefying corpses in
the ground, that the stench may not prove injurious to many. Rather let us
proceed to what remains for us to say. For once more he adduces a dictum of
our Master(9), to this effect. "We call God indestructible and ungenerate,
applying these words from different points of view. For when we look to the
ages that are past, finding the life of God transcending all limitation, we
call Him ungenerate. But when we turn our thoughts to the ages that are yet
to come, Him Who is infinite, illimitable, and without end, we call
indestructible. As, then, that which has no end of life is indestructible,
so that which has no beginning we call ungenerate, representing things so
by the faculty of conception."

   I will pass over, then, the abuse with which he has prefaced his
discussion of these matters, as when he uses such terms as "alteration of
seed," and "teacher of sowing," and "illogical censure," and whatever other
aspersions he ventures on with his foul tongue. Let us rather turn to the
point which he tries to establish by his calumnious accusation. He promises
to convict us of saying that God is not by His nature indestructible. But
we hold only such things foreign to His nature as may be added to or
subtracted from it. But, in the case of things without which the subject is
incapable of being conceived by the mind, how can any one be open to the
charge of separating His nature from itself? If, then, the
indestructibility which we ascribe to God were adventitious, and did not
always belong to Him, or might cease to belong to Him, he might be
justified in his calumnious attack. But if it is always the same, and our
contention is, that God is always what He is, and that He receives nothing
by way of increase or addition of properties, but continues always in
whatsoever is conceived and called good, why should we be slanderously
accused of not ascribing indestructibility to Him as of His essential
nature? But he pretends that he grounds his accusation on the words of
Basil which I have already quoted, as though we bestowed indestructibility
on God by reference to the ages. Now if our statement were put forward by
ourselves, our defence might perhaps seem open to suspicion, as if we now
wanted to amend or justify any questionable expressions of ours. But since
our statements are taken from the lips of an adversary, what stronger
demonstration could we have of their truth than the evidence of our
opponents themselves? How is it, then, with the statement which Eunomius
lays hold of with a view to our prejudice? When, he says, we turn our
thoughts to the ages that are yet to be, we speak of the infinite, and
illimitable, and unending, as indestructible. Does Eunomius count such
ascription as identical with bestowing? Yet who is such a stranger to
existing usage as to be ignorant of the proper meaning of these
expressions? For that man bestows who possesses something which another has
not, while that man ascribes who designates with a name what another has.
How is it, then, that our instructor in truth is not ashamed of his plainly
calumnious impeachment? But as those who, from some disease, are bereft of
sight, are unseemly in their behaviour before the eyes of the seeing,
supposing that what is not seen by themselves is a thing unobserved also by
those whose sight is unimpaired, just such is the case of our sharp-sighted
and quick-witted opponent, who supposes his hearers to be afflicted with
the same blindness to the truth as himself. And who is so foolish as not to
compare the words which he calumniously assails with his charge itself, and
by reading them side by side to detect the malice of the writer? Our
statement ascribes indestructibility; he charges it with bestowing
indestructibility. What has this to do with our statement? Every man has a
right to be judged by his own deeds, not to be blamed for those of others;
and in this present case, while he accuses us, and points his bitterness at
us, in truth he is condemning no one but himself. For if it is
reprehensible to bestow indestructibility on God, and this is done by no
one but himself, is not our slanderer his own accuser, assailing his own
statements and not ours? And with regard to the term indestructibility, we
assert that as the life which is endless is rightly called indestructible,
so that which is without beginning is rightly called ungenerate. And yet
Eunomius says that we lend Him the primacy over all created things simply
by reference to the ages.

   I pass in silence his blasphemy in reducing God the Only-begotten to a
level with all created things, and, in a word, allowing to the Son of God
no higher honour than theirs. Still, for the sake of my more intelligent
hearers, I will here give an instance of his insensate malice. Basil, he
says, lends God the primacy over all things by reference to the ages. What
unintelligible nonsense is this! Man is made God's patron, and gives to God
a primacy owing to the ages! What is this vain flourish of baseless
expressions, seeing that our Master simply says that whatever in the Divine
essence transcends the measurable distances of the ages in either direction
is called by certain distinctive names, in the case of Him Who, as saith
the Apostle, hath neither beginning of days nor end of life(1), in order
that the distinction of the conception might be marked by distinction in
the names. And yet on this account Eunomius has the effrontery to write,
that to call that which is anterior to all beginning ungenerate, and again
that which is circumscribed by no limit, immortal and indestructible, is a
bestowing or lending on our part, and other nonsense of the kind. Moreover,
he says that we divide the ages into two parts, as if he had not read the
words he quoted, or as if he were addressing those who had forgotten his
own previous statements. For what says our Master? "If we look at the time
before the Creation, and if passing in thought through the ages we reflect
on the infinitude of the Eternal Life, we signify the thought by the term
ungenerate. And if we turn our thoughts to what follows, and consider the
being of God as extending beyond all ages, we interpret the thought by the
word endless or indestructible." Well, how does such an account sever the
ages in twain, if by such possible words and names we signify that eternity
of God which is equally observable from every point of view, in all things
the same, unbroken in continuity? For seeing that human life, moving from
stage to stage, advances in its progress from a beginning to an end, and
our life here is divided between that which is past and that which is
expected, so that the one is the subject of hope, the other of memory; on
this account, as, in relation to ourselves, we  apprehend a past and a
future in this measurable extent, so also we apply the thought, though
incorrectly, to the transcendent nature of God; not of course that God in
His own existence leaves any interval behind, or passes on afresh to
something that lies before, but because our intellect can only conceive
things according to our nature, and measures the eternal by a past and a
future, where neither the past precludes the march of thought to the
illimitable and infinite, nor the future tells us of any pause or limit of
His endless life. If, then, it is thus that we think and speak, why does he
keep taunting us with dividing the ages? Unless, indeed, Eunomius would
maintain that Holy Scripture does so too, signifying as it does by the same
idea the infinity of the Divine existence; David, for example, making
mention of the "kingdom from everlasting," and Moses, speaking of the
kingdom of God as "extending beyond all ages," so that we are taught by
both that every duration conceivable is environed by the Divine nature,
bounded on all sides by the infinity of Him Who holds the universe in His
embrace. For Moses, looking to the future, says that "He  reigneth from
generation to generation for evermore." And great David, turning his
thought backward to the past, says, "God is our King before the ages(2),''
and again, "God, Who was before the ages, shall hear us." But Eunomius, in
his cleverness taking leave of such guides as these, says that we talk of
the life that is without beginning as one, and of that which is without end
as quite another, and again, of diversities of sundry ages, effecting by
their own diversity a separation in our idea of God. But that our
controversy may not grow to a tedious length, we will add, without
criticism or comment, the outcome of Eunomius' labours on the subject, well
fitted as they are by his industry displayed in the cause of error to
render the truth yet more evident to the eyes of the discerning.

   For, proceeding with his discourse, he asks us what we mean by the
ages. And yet we ourselves might more reasonably put such questions to him.
For it is he who professes to know the essence of God, defining on his own
authority what is unapproachable and incomprehensible by man. Let him,
then, give us a scientific lecture on the nature of the ages, boasting as
he does of his familiarity with transcendental things, and let him not so
fiercely brandish over us, poor ignorant individuals, the double danger of
the dilemma involved in our reply, telling us that, whether we hold this or
that view of the ages, the result must be in either case an absurdity. For
if (says he) you say that they are eternal, you will be Greeks, and
Valentinians(3), and uninstructed(4): and if you say that they are
generate, you will no longer be able to ascribe ungeneracy to God. What a
terribly unanswerable attack! If, O Eunomius, something is held to be
generate, we no longer hold the doctrine of the Divine ungeneracy! And pray
what has become of your subtle distinctions between generacy and
ungeneracy, by which you sought to establish the dissimilarity of the
essence of the Son from that of the Father? For it seems from what we are
now being taught that the Father is not dissimilar in essence when
contemplated in respect of generacy, but that, in fact, if we hold His
ungeneracy, we reduce Him to non-existence; since "if we speak of the ages
as generate, we are driven to relinquish the Ungenerate. But let us examine
the force of the argument, by which he would compel us to allow this:
absurdity. When, says he, those things by comparison with which God is
without beginning are non-existent, He Who is compared with them must be
non-existent also. What a sturdy and overpowering grip is this! How tightly
has this wrestler got us by the waist in his inextricable grasp! He says
that God's ungeneracy is added to Him through comparison with the ages. By
whom is it so added? Who is there that says that to Him Who hath no
beginning ungeneracy is added as an acquisition through comparison with
something else? Neither such a word nor such a sense will be found in any
writings of ours. Our words indeed carry their own justification, and
contain nothing like what is alleged against us; and of the meaning of what
is said, who can be a more trustworthy interpreter than he who said it?
Have not we,  then, the better title to say what we mean when we speak of
the life of God as extending beyond the ages? And what we say is what we
have said already in our previous writings. But, says he, comparison with
the ages being impossible, it is impossible that any addition should accrue
from it to God, meaning of course that ungeneracy is an addition. Let him
tell us by whom such an addition has been made. If by himself, he becomes
simply ridiculous in laying his own folly to our charge: if by us, let him
quote our words, and then we will admit the force of his accusation.

   But I think we must pass over this and all that follows. For it is the
mere trifling of children who amuse themselves with beginning to build
houses in sand. For having composed a portion of a paragraph, and not yet
brought it to a conclusion, he shows that the same life is without
beginning and without end, thus in his eagerness working out our own
conclusion. For this is just what we say; that the Divine life is one and
continuous in itself, infinite and eternal, in no wise bounded by any limit
to its infinity. Thus far our opponent devotes his labours and exertions to
the truth as we represent it, showing that the same life is on no side
limited, whether we look at that part of it which was before the ages, or
at that which succeeds them. But in his next remarks he returns to his old
confusion. For after saying that the same life is without beginning and
without end, leaving the subject of life, and ranging all the ideas we
entertain about the Divine life under one head, he unifies everything. If,
says he, the life is without beginning and without end, ungenerate and
indestructible, then indestructibility and ungeneracy will be the same
thing, as will also the being without beginning and without end. And to
this he adds the aid of arguments. It is not possible, he says, for the
life to be one, unless indestructibility and ungeneracy are identical
terms. An admirable "addition" on the part of our friend. It would seem,
then, that we may hold the same language in regard to righteousness,
wisdom, power, goodness, and all such attributes of God. Let, then, no word
have a meaning peculiar to itself, but let one signification underlie every
word in a list, and one form of description serve for the definition of
all. If you are asked to define the word judge, answer with the
interpretation of "ungeneracy"; if to define justice, be ready with "the
incorporeal" as your answer. If asked to define incorruptibility, say that
it has the same meaning as mercy or judgment. Thus let all God's attributes
be convertible terms, there being no special signification to distinguish
one from another. But if Eunomius thus prescribes, why do the Scriptures
vainly assign various names to the Divine nature, calling God a Judge,
righteous, powerful, long-suffering, true, merciful and so on? For if none
of these titles is to be understood in any special or peculiar sense, but,
owing to this confusion in their meaning, they are all mixed up together,
it would be useless to employ so many words for the same thing, there being
no difference of meaning to distinguish them from one another. But who is
so much out of his wits as not to know that, while the Divine nature,
whatever it is in its essence, is simple, uniform, and incomposite, and
that it cannot be viewed under any form of complex formation, the human
mind, grovelling on earth, and buried in this life on earth, in its
inability to behold clearly the object of its search, feels after the
unutterable Being in divers and many-sided ways, and never chases the
mystery in the light of one idea alone. Our grasping of Him would indeed be
easy, if there lay before us one single assigned path to the knowledge of
God: but as it is, from the skill apparent in the Universe, we get the idea
of skill in the Ruler of that Universe, from the large scale of the wonders
worked we get the impression of His Power; and from our belief that this
Universe depends on Him, we get an indication that there is no cause
whatever of His existence; and again, when we see the execrable character
of evil, we grasp His own unalterable pureness as regards this: when we
consider death's dissolution to be the worst of ills, we give the name of
Immortal and Indissoluble at once to Him Who is removed from every
conception of that kind: not that we split up the subject of such
attributes along with them, but believing that this thing we think of,
whatever it be in substance, is One, we still conceive that it has
something in common with all these ideas. For these terms are not set
against each other in the way of opposites, as if, the one existing there,
the other could not co-exist in the same subject (as, for instance, it is
impossible that life and death should be thought of in the same subject);
but the force of each of the terms used in connection with the Divine Being
is such that, even though it has a peculiar significance of its own, it
implies no opposition to the term associated with it. What opposition, for
instance, is there between "incorporeal" and "just," even though the words
do not coincide in meaning: and what hostility is there between goodness
and invisibility? So, too, the eternity of the Divine Life, though
represented under the double name and idea of "the unending" and "the
unbeginning," is not cut in two by this difference of name; nor yet is the
one name the same in meaning as the other; the one points to the absence of
beginning, the other to the absence of end, and yet there is no division
produced in the subject by this difference in the actual terms applied to
it.

   Such is our position; our adversary's, with regard to the precise
meaning of this term(5), is such as can derive no help from any reasonings;
he only spits forth at random about it these strangely unmeaning and
bombastic expressions(6), in the framework of his sentences and periods.
But the upshot of all he says is this; that there is no difference in the
meaning of the most varied names. But we must most certainly, as it seems
to me, quote this passage of his word for word, lest we be thought to be
calumniously charging him with something that does not belong to him. "True
expressions," he says, "derive their precision from the subject realities
which they indicate; different expressions are applied to different
realities, the same to the same: and so one or other of these two things
must of necessity be held: either that the reality indicated is different
(if the expressions are), or else that the indicating expressions are not
different." With these and many other such-like words, he proceeds to
effect the object he has before him, excluding from the expression certain
relations and affinities(7), such as species, proportion, part, time,
manner: in order that by the withdrawal of all these "Ungeneracy" may
become indicative of the substance of God. His process of proof is in the
following manner (I will express his idea in my own words). The life, he
says, is not a different thing from the substance; no addition may be
thought of in connection with a simple being, by dividing our conception of
him into a communicating and communicated side; but whatever the life may
be, that very thing, he insists, is the substance. Here his philosophy is
excellent; no thinking person would gainsay this. But how does he arrive at
his contemplated conclusion, when he says, "when we mean the unbeginning,
we mean the life, and truth compels us by this last to mean the substance"?
The ungenerate, then, according to him is expressive of the very substance
of God. We, on the other hand, while we agree that the life of God was not
given by another, which is the meaning of "unbeginning," think that the
belief that the idea expressed by the words "not generated" is the
substance of God is a madman's only. Who indeed can be so beside himself as
to declare the absence of any generation to be the definition of that
substance (for as generation is involved in the generate, so is the absence
of generation in the ungenerate)? Ungeneracy indicates that which is not in
the Father; so how shall we allow the indication of that which is absent to
be His substance? Helping himself to that which neither we nor any logical
conclusion from the premises allows him, he lays it down that God's
Ungeneracy is expressive of God's life. But to make quite plain his
delusion upon this subject, let us look at it in the following way; I mean,
let us examine whether, by employing the same method by which he, in the
case of the Father, has brought the definition of the substance to
ungeneracy, we may not equally bring the substance of the Son to
ungeneracy.

   He says, "The Life that is the same, and thoroughly single, must have
one and the same outward expression for it, even though in mere names, and
manner, and order it may seem to vary. For true expressions derive their
precision from the subject realities which they indicate; different
expressions are applied to different realities, the same to the same; and
so one or other of these two things must of necessity be held; either that
the reality indicated is quite different (if the expressions are), or else
that the indicating expressions are not different;" and there is in this
case no other subject reality besides the life of the Son, "for one either
to rest an idea upon, or to cast a different expression upon." Is there, I
may ask, any unfitness in the words quoted, which would prevent them being
rightly spoken or written about the Only-begotten? Is not the Son Himself
also a "Life thoroughly single"? Is there not for Him also "one and the
same" befitting "expression," "though in mere names, and manner, and order
He may seem to vary"? Must not, for Him also, "one or other of these two
things be held" fixed, "either that the reality indicated is quite
different, or else that the indicating expressions are not different,"
there being no other subject reality, besides his life, "for one either to
rest an idea upon, or to cast a different expression upon"? We mix up
nothing here with what Eunomius has said about the Father; we have only
passed from the same accepted premise to the same conclusion as he did,
merely inserting the Son's name instead. If, then, the Son too is a single
life, unadulterated, removed from every sort of compositeness or
complication, and there is no subject reality besides this life of the Son
(for how in that which is simple can the mixture of anything foreign be
suspected? what we have to think of along with something else is no longer
simple), and if the Father's substance also is a single life, and of this
single life, by virtue of its very life and its very singleness, there are
no differences, no increase or decrease in quantity or quality in it
creating any variation, it needs must be that things thus coinciding in
idea should be called by the same appellation also. If, that is, the thing
that is detected both in the Father and the Son, I mean the singleness of
life, is one, the very idea of singleness excluding, as we have said, any
variation, it needs must be that the name befitting the one should be
attached to the other also. For as that which reasons, and is mortal, and
is capable of thought and knowledge, is called "man" equally in the case of
Adam and of Abel, and this name of the nature is not altered either by the
fact that Abel passed into existence by generation, or by the fact that
Adam did so without generation, so, if the simplicity(1) and
incompositeness of the Father's life has ungeneracy for its name, in like
manner for the Son's life the same idea will necessarily have to be
attached to the same utterance, if, as Eunomius says, "one or other of
these two things must of necessity be held; either that the reality
indicated is quite different, or else that the indicating expressions are
not different."

   But why do we linger over these follies, when we ought rather to put
Eunomius' book  itself into the hands of the studious, and so, apart from
any examination of it, to prove at once to the discerning, not only the
blasphemy of his opinion, but also the nervelessness of his style(2)? While
in various ways, not going upon our apprehension of it, but following his
own fancy, he misinterprets the word Conception, just as in a night-battle
nobody can distinguish friend and foe, he does not understand that he is
stabbing his own doctrine with the very weapons he thinks he is turning
upon us. For the point in which he thinks he is most removed from the
church of the orthodox is this; that he attempts to prove that God became
Father at some later time, and that the appellation of Fatherhood is later
than all those other names which attach to Him; for that He was called
Father from that moment in which He purposed in Himself to become, and did
become, Father. Well, then, since in this treatise he is for proving that
all the names applied to the Divine Nature coincide with each other, and
that there is no difference whatever between them, and since one amongst
these applied names is Father (for as God is indestructible and eternal, so
also He is Father), we must either sanction, in the case of this term also,
the opinion he holds about the rest, and so contravene his former position,
seeing that the idea of Fatherhood is found to be involved in any of these
other terms (for it is plain that if the meaning of indestructible and
Father is exactly the same, He will be believed to be, just as He is always
indestructible, so likewise always Father, there being one single
signification, he says, in all these names): or else, if he fears thus to
testify to the eternal Fatherhood of God, he must perforce abandon his
whole argument, and own that each of these names has a meaning peculiar to
itself; and thus all this nonsense of his about the Divine names bursts
like a bubble, and vanishes like smoke.

   But if he should still answer with regard to this opposition (of the
Divine names), that it is only the term Father, and the term Creator, that
are applied to God as expressing production, both words being so applied,
as he says, because of an operation, then he will cut short our long
discussion of this subject, by thus conceding what it would have required a
laborious argument on our part to prove. For if the word Father and the
word Creator have the same meaning (for both arise from an operation), one
of the things signified is exactly equivalent to the other, since if the
signification is the same, the subjects cannot be different. If, then, He
is called both Father and Creator because of an operation, it is quite
allowable to interchange the names, and to turn one into the other and say
that God is Creator of the Son, and Father of a stone, seeing that the term
Father is to be devoid of any meaning of essential relation(3). Well, the
monstrous conclusion that is hereby proved cannot remain doubtful to those
who reflect. For as it is absurd to deem a stone, or anything else that
exists by creation, Divine, it must be agreed that there is no Divinity to
be recognized in the Only-begotten either, when that one identical meaning
of an operation, by which God is called both Father and Creator, assigns,
according to Eunomius, both these terms to Him. But let us hold to the
question before us. He abuses our assertion that our knowledge of God is
formed by contributions of terms applied to different ideas, and says that
the proof of His simplicity is destroyed by us so, since He must partake of
the elements signified by each term, and only by virtue of a share in them
can completely fill out His essence. Here I write in my own language,
curtailing his wearisome prolixity; and in answer to his foolish and
nerveless redundancy no sensible person, I think, would make any reply,
except as regards his charging us with "senselessness." Now if anything of
that description had been said by us, we ought of course to retract it if
it was foolishly worded, or, if there was any doubt as to its meaning, to
put an irreproachable interpretation upon it. But we have not said anything
of the kind, any more than the consequences of our words lead the mind to
any such necessity. Why, then, linger on that to which all assent, and
weary the reader by prolonging the argument? Who is really so devoid of
reflection as to imagine, when he hears that our orthodox conceptions of
the Deity are gathered from various ways of thinking of Him, that the Deity
is composed of these various elements, or completes His actual fulness by
participating in anything at all? A man, say, has made discoveries in
geometry, and this same man, let us suppose, has made discoveries also in
astronomy, and in medicine as well, and grammar, and agriculture, and
sciences of that kind. Will it follow, because there are these various
names of sciences viewed in connection with one single soul, that that
single soul is to be considered a composite soul? Yet there is a very great
difference in meaning between medicine and astronomy; and grammar means
nothing in common with geometry, or seamanship with agriculture.
Nevertheless it is within the bounds of possibility that the idea of each
of these sciences should be associated with one soul, without that soul
thereby becoming composite, or, on the other hand, without all those terms
for sciences blending into one meaning. If, then, the human mind, with all
such terms applied to it, is not injured as regards its simplicity, how can
any one imagine that the Deity, when He is called wise, and just, and good,
and eternal, and all the other Divine names, must, unless all these names
are made to mean one thing, become of many parts, or take a share of all
these to make up the perfection of His nature?

   But let us examine a still more vehement charge of his against us; it
is this: "If one must proceed to say something harsher still, he does not
even keep the Divine substance pure and unadulterated from inferior and
contradictory elements." This is the charge, but the proof of it is,--what?
Observe the strong professional attack! "If He is imperishable only by
reason of the unending in His Life, and ungenerate only by reason of the
unbeginning, then wherein He is not imperishable He is perishable, and
wherein He is not ungenerate He is generated." Then returning to the
charge, he repeats, "He will then be, as unbeginning, at once ungenerate
and perishable, and, as unending, at once imperishable and generated." Such
is his "harsher" statement, which, according to his threat, he has
discharged against us, to prove that we say that the Divine substance is
mingled with contradictory and even inferior elements. However, I think it
is plain to all who keep unimpaired within themselves the power of judging
the truth, that our Master has given no handle at all, in what he has said,
to this calumniator, but that the latter has garbled it at will, and then,
playing at arguing, has drawn out this childish sophistry. But that it may
be plainer still to all my readers, I will repeat that statement of the
Master word for word, and then confront Eunomius' words with it. "We call
the Universal Deity" (he says) "imperishable and ungenerate, using these
words with different applications(4) of thought; for when we concentrate
our view upon the ages behind us, we find the life of the Deity
transcending every limit, and so name Him 'ungenerate'; but when we turn
our thoughts upon the ages to come, we call the infinite in Him, the
boundless, the absence of all end to His living, 'imperishability.' As,
then, this endlessness is called imperishable, so too this
beginninglessness is called ungenerate; and we arrive at these names by
Conception." Such are the Master's words, and by them he teaches us this:
that the Divine Life is essentially single and continuous with Itself,
starting from no beginning, circumscribed by no end; and that the
intuitions which we possess regarding this Life it is possible to make
clear by words. That is, we express the never having come from any cause by
the term unbeginning or ungenerate; and we express the not being
circumscribed by any limit, and not being destroyed by any death, by the
term imperishable, or unending; and this absence of cause, he defines,
makes it right for us to speak of the Divine life as existing ungenerately;
and this being without end we are to denote as imperishable, since anything
that has ceased to exist is necessarily in a state of annihilation, and
when we hear of anything annihilated, we at once think of the destruction
of its substance. He says then, that One Who never ceases to exist, and is
a stranger to all destruction and dissolution, is to be called
imperishable.

   What, then, does Eunomius say to this? "If He is imperishable only by
reason of the unending in His Life, and ungenerate only by reason of the
unbeginning, then wherein He is not imperishable He is perishable, and
wherein He is not ungenerate He is generated." Who conceded to you this,
Eunomius, that the imperishability is not to be associated with the whole
life of God? Who ever divided that Life into two parts, and then put
particular names to each half of the Life, so that to the division which
the one name fitted the other could not be said to apply? This is the
result of your dialectic sharpness; to say that the Life which has no
beginning is perishable, and that what is imperishable cannot be associated
with what is unbeginning! It is just as if, when one had said that man was
rational, as well as capable of speculation and knowledge, attaching each
phrase to the subject of them according to a different application and
idea, some one was to jeer, and to go on in the same strain, "If man is
capable of speculation and knowledge, he cannot, as regards this, be
rational, but wherein he is capable of such knowledge, he is this and this
only, and his nature does not admit of his being the other"; and reversely,
if rational were made the definition of man, he were to deny in this case
his being capable of this speculation and knowledge; for "wherein he is
rational, he is proved devoid of mind." But if the ridiculousness and
absurdity in this case is plain to any one, neither in that former case is
it at all doubtful. When you have read the passage from the Master, you
will find that his childish sophistry will vanish like a shadow. In our
case of the definition of man, the capability of knowledge is not hindered
by the possession of reason, nor the reason by the capability of knowledge:
no more is the eternity of the Divine Life deprived of imperishability, if
it be unbeginning, or of beginninglessness, if we recognize its
imperishability. This would-be seeker after truth, with the artifices of
his dialectic shrewdness, inserts in our argument what comes from his own
repertoire; and so he fights with himself and overthrows himself, without
ever touching anything of ours. For our position was nothing but this; that
the Life as existing without beginning is styled, by means of a fresh
Conception, as ungenerate: is styled, I say, not, is made such; and that we
mark the Life as going on into infinity with the appellation of
imperishable; mark it, I say, as such, not, make it such; and that the
result is, that while it is a property of the Divine Life, inherent in the
subject, to be infinite in both views, the thoughts associated with that
subject are expressed in this way or in that only as regards that
particular term which indicates the thought expressed. One thought
associated with that life is, that it does not exist from any cause; this
is indicated by the term "ungenerate." Another thought about it is, that it
is limitless and endless; this is represented by the word imperishable.
Thus, while the subject remains what it is, above everything, whether name
or thought, the not being from any cause, and the not changing into the
non-existent, are signified by means of the Conception implied in the
aforesaid words.

   What, then, out of all that we have said, has stirred him up to this
piece of childish folly, in which he returns to the charge and repeats
himself in these words: "He will, then, be, as unbeginning, at once
ungenerate and perishable, and, as unending, at once imperishable and
generated." It is plain to any possessing the least reflection, without our
testing this logically, how absurdly foolish it is, or rather, how
condemnably blasphemous. By the same argument as that whereby he
establishes this union of the perishable and the unbeginning, he can make
sport of any proper and worthily conceived name for the Deity. For it is
not these two ideas only that we associate with the Divine Life, I mean,
the being without beginning, and the not admitting of dissolution; but It
is called as well immaterial and without anger, immutable and incorporeal,
invisible and formless, true and just; and there are numberless other ways
of thinking about the Divine Life, each one of which is announced by an
expressive sound with a peculiar meaning of its own. Well, to any name--any
name, I mean, expressive of some proper conception of the Deity--it is open
for us to apply this method of unnatural union devised by Eunomius. For
instance, immateriality and absence of anger are both predicated of the
Divine Life; but not with the same thought in both cases; for by the term
immaterial we convey the idea of purity from any mixture with matter, and
by the term "without anger" the strangeness to any emotion of anger. Now in
all probability Eunomius will run trippingly over all this, and have his
dance, just as before, upon our words. Stringing together his absurdities
in the same way, he will say: "If wherein He is separated from all mixture
with matter He is called immaterial, in this respect He will not be without
anger; and if by reason of His not indulging in anger He is without anger,
it is impossible to attribute to him immateriality, but logic will compel
us to admit that, in so far as He is exempt from matter, He is both
immaterial and wrathful;" and so you will find the same to be the case in
respect to his other attributes. And if you like we will propound another
pairing of the same, i.e. His immutability and His incorporeality. For both
these terms being used of the Divine Life in a distinct sense, in their
case also Eunomius' skill will embellish the same absurdity. For if His
being always as He is is signified by the term immutable, and if the term
incorporeal represents the spirituality of His essence, Eunomius will
certainly say the same here also, that the terms are irreconcilable, and
alien to each other, and that the notions which our minds attach to them
have  no point of contact one with the other; for in  so far as God is
always the same He is immutable, but not incorporeal; and in regard to the
spirituality and formlessness of His essence, while He possesses attributes
of incorporeality, He is not immutable; so that it happens that when
immutability is considered with respect to the Divine Life, along with that
immutability it is established that It is corporeal; but if spirituality is
the object of search, you prove that It is at once incorporeal and mutable.

   Such are the clever discoveries of Eunomius against the truth. For what
need is there to go through all his argument with trifling prolixity? For
in every instance you may see an attempt to establish the same futility.
For instance, by an implication such as that above, what is true and what
is just will be found opposed to each other; for there is a difference in
meaning between truth and justice. So that by a parity of reasoning
Eunomius will say about these also, that truth is not injustice, and that
justice is absent from truth; and it will happen that, when in respect of
God we think of His being alien to injustice, the Divine Being will be
shown to be at once just and untrue, while if we regard His being alien to
untruth, we prove Him to be at once true and unjust. So, too, of His being
invisible and formless. For according to a wise reasoning similar to that
which we have adduced, it will not be permissible to say either that the
invisible exists in that which is formless, or to say that that which is
formless exists in that which is invisible; but he will comprise form in
that which is invisible, and so again, conversely, he will prove that that
which is formless is visible, using the same language in respect of these
as he devised in respect to that which is imperishable and unbeginning, to
the effect that when we regard the incomposite nature of the Divine Life,
we confess that it is formless, yet not invisible; and that when we reflect
that we cannot see God with our bodily eyes, while thus admitting His
invisibility, we cannot admit His being formless. Now if these instances
seem ridiculous and foolish, much more will every sensible man condemn the
absurdity of the statements, starting from which his argument has logically
brought him to such a pitch of absurdity. Yet he carps at the Master's
words, as wrong in seeing that which is imperishable in that which is
unending, and that which is unending in that which is imperishable. Well,
then, let us also have our sport, in a manner something like this
cleverness of Eunomius. Let us examine his opinion about these two names
aforesaid, and see what it is.

   Either, he says, that which is endless is distinct. in meaning from
that which is imperishable, or else the two must make one. But if he call
both one, he will be supporting our argument. But if he say that the
meaning of the imperishable is one thing, and that that of being unending
is another, then of necessity, in the case of things differing from each
other, the force of the one cannot be equivalent to the force of the other.
If, then, the idea of the imperishable is one, and that of being endless is
another, and each of these is what the other is not, neither will he grant
that the imperishable is unending, nor that the unending is imperishable,
but the unending will be perishable, and the imperishable will be
terminable. But I must beg my readers not to turn a ridiculous method of
condemnation against us. We have been compelled to adopt such a sportive
vein against the mockeries of our opponent, that we might thereby break
through the puerile toil of his sophistries. But if it would not be too
wearisome to my readers, it would not be out of place again to set forth
what Eunomius says in his own words. "If," says he, "God is imperishable
only by reason of the unending in His Life, and ungenerate only by reason
of the unbeginning, then wherein He is not imperishable He is perishable,
and wherein He is not ungenerate He is generated." Then returning to the
charge, he repeats, "He will then be, as unbeginning, at once ungenerate
and perishable: and, as unending, at once imperishable and generated;" for
I pass over the superfluous and unseasonable remarks which he has
interspersed here, as in no way contributing to the proving of his point.
Now I think it is easy for any one to see, by his own words, that the drift
of our argument has no connection whatever with the accusation which he
lays against us. "For we call the God of the universe imperishable and
ungenerate," says the Master, "using these words with different
applications." "His transcending," he continues, "every limit of the ages,
and every distance in temporal extension, whether we consider the previous
or the subsequent, this absence of limit or circumscription on either hand
in the Eternal Life we mark in the one case with the name of
imperishability, and in the other case with the name of ungeneracy." But
Eunomius would make out that we say that the being without beginning is His
essence, and again that the being without end is His essence, as though we
brought forward two contradictory segments of essence; and in this way he
establishes an absurdity, and while laying down, and then fighting against,
positions of his own, and reducing notions of his own concoction to an
absurdity, he lays no hold on our argument in any single point. For that
God is imperishable only wherein His Life is unending, is his statement,
not ours. In like manner, that the imperishable is not without beginning,
is an invention of that same subtle cleverness which would constitute a
negative attribute an essence; whereas we do not define any such negative
attribute as an essence. Now it is a negative attribute of God, that
neither does the Life cease in dissolution, nor did It have a commencement
in generation; and this we express  by these two words, imperishability and
ungeneracy. But Eunomius, mixing up his own folly with our teaching, does
not seem to understand that he is publishing his own disgrace by his
calumnious accusations. For, in defining ungeneracy as an essence, he will
logically arrive at the same pitch of absurdity which he ascribes to our
teaching. For as beginning means(5) one thing, and end means another, by
virtue of an intervening extension, if any one allow the privation of the
first of these to be essence, he must suppose His Life to be only half
subsisting in this being without beginning, and not to extend further, by
virtue of His nature, to the being without end, if ungeneracy be regarded
as itself His nature. But if any one insist that both are essence, then,
according to the definition put forward by Eunomius, each of these terms
must necessarily, by virtue of its inherent meaning, be counted as essence,
being just as much as, and no more than, is indicated by the meaning of the
term; and thus the argument of Eunomius will not be without force, inasmuch
as that which is without beginning does not involve the notion of being
without end, and vice versa, since according to his account each of the
things mentioned is an essence, and there is no confusion between the two
in their relation to each other, the notion of beginning being different to
that of ending, while the words which express privation of these also
differ in their significations.

   But that he himself also may be brought to the knowledge of his own
trifling, we will convict him from his own statements. For in the course of
his argument he says that God, in that He is without end, is ungenerate,
and that, in that He is ungenerate, He is without end, as if the meanings
of the two terms were identical. If, then, by reason of His being without
end He is ungenerate, and the being without end and ungenerate are
convertible terms, and he admits that the Son also is without end, by a
parity of reasoning he must necessarily admit that the Son is ungenerate,
if (as he has said) His being without end and His being without beginning
are identical in meaning. For just as in the ungenerate he sees that which
is without beginning, so he allows that in that which is without end also
he sees that which is without beginning. For otherwise he would not have
made the terms wholly convertible. But God, he says, is ungenerate by
nature, and not by contrast with the ages. Well, who is there that contends
that God is not by nature all that He is said to be? For we do not say that
God is just, and almighty, and Father, and imperishable, by contrast with
the ages, nor by His relation to any other thing that exists. But in
connection with the subject itself, whatever He may be in His nature, we
entertain every idea that is a reverent idea; so that supposing neither
ages, nor any other created thing, had been made, God would no less be what
we believe Him to be, being in no need of the ages to constitute Him what
He is. "But," says Eunomius, "He has a Life that is not extraneous, nor
composite, nor admitting of differences; for He Himself is Life eternal by
virtue of that Life itself immortal, by virtue of that immortality
imperishable." This we are  taught respecting the Only-begotten. as well;
nor can any one impugn this teaching without openly opposing the
declaration of S. John. For life was not brought in from without upon the
Son either (for He says, "I am the Life(6) "), nor is His Life either
composite, nor does it admit difference, but by virtue of that life itself
He is immortal (for in what else but in life can we see immortality?), and
by virtue of that immortality He is imperishable. For that which is
stronger than death must naturally be incapable of corruption.

   Thus far our argument goes with him. But the riddle with which he
accompanies his words we must leave to those trained in the wisdom of
Prunicus(7) to interpret: for he seems to have produced what he has said
from that system. "Being incorruptible without beginning, He is ungenerate
without end, being so called absolutely, and independently of aught beside
Himself." Now whoever has purged ears and an enlightened understanding
knows, even without my saying it, that beyond the jingle of words produced
by their extraordinary combination, there is no trace of sense in what he
says; and if any shadow of an idea could be found in such a din of words,
it would prove to be either profane or ridiculous. For what do you mean
when you say that He is without beginning as being without end, and without
end as being without beginning? Do you think beginning identical with end,
and that the two words are employed in the same sense. just as the
appellations Simon and Peter represent one and the same subject, and on
this account, in accordance with your thinking beginning and end the same,
did you, combining under one signification these two words which denote
privation of each other,--end, I mean, and beginning,--and taking the being
without end as convertible with the being without end, blend and confound
one word with the other; and is this the meaning of such a mixing up of
words, when you say that He is ungenerate as being without end, and that He
is without end as being ungenerate? Yet how is it that you did not see the
profanity as well as the ridiculous folly of your words? For if by this
novel confusion of the words they are made convertible, so that ungenerate
means ungenerate without end, and that which is without end is such
ungenerately, it follows by necessity that that which is without end must
needs be so as being ungenerate: and thus it comes to pass, my good friend,
that your much-talked-of ungeneracy, which you say is the only
characteristic of the Father's essence, will be found to be shared with
whatever is immortal, and to be making all things con-substantial with the
Father, because it is alike apparent in all things whose life, by reason of
their immortality, goes on to infinity, archangels, that is, angels, human
souls, and, it may be also, in the Apostate host, the Devil and his drmons.
For if that which is without end, and imperishable, must also by your
argument be ungenerately imperishable, then in whatsoever is without end
and imperishable there must be connoted ungeneracy. These are the
absurdities into which those men fall who, before they have learnt what it
is fitting for them to learn, only publish their own ignorance by what they
attempt to teach. For if he had any faculty of discernment, he would not be
ignorant of the peculiar sense inherent in his terms, "without beginning,"
and "without end," and that the term without end is common to all things
whose life we believe capable of extension to infinity, while the term
without beginning belongs to Him alone Who is without originating cause,
How, then, is it possible for us to regard that which is common to them
all, as equivalent to that which is believed by all to be a special
attribute of the Deity alone, so that we thereby either extend ungeneracy
to everything that shares in immortality, or else must not allow
immortality to any one of them, seeing that the being without end is to
belong only to the ungenerate, and vice versa, the being ungenerate is to
belong only to that which is without end? Thus everything without end would
have to be regarded as ungenerate.

   But let us leave this, and along with it the usual foul deluge of
calumny in his words; and let us go on to his subsequent quotations (of
Basil). But I think it would perhaps be well to pass without examination
over most of these subsequent words. For in all of them he shows himself
the same, not grappling with that which we have really said, but only
inventing for himself points for refutation which he pretends are taken
from our statement. To go carefully through these would be pronounced
useless by any one possessed of judgment; for any understanding reader of
his book can from his very words perceive his scurrility. He says that
God's Glory is prior to our leader's "conception." We too do not deny that.
For God's glory, whatever we are to think of it. is prior not only to this
present generation of ours, but to all creation; it transcends the ages.
What, then, is gained for his argument from this fact, that God's glory is
conceded to be superior not only to Basil, but to all the ages? "Yes, but
this name is His glory," he says. But pray tell us, in order that we may
assent to this statement, who has proved that the appellation is identical
with the glory? "A law of our nature," he replies, "teaches us that, in
naming realities, the dignity of the names does not depend on the will of
those who give them." What is this law of nature? And how is it that it is
not in force amongst all? If nature had really enacted such a law, it ought
to have authority amongst all who share the common nature, just as the
other things peculiar to that nature have. If, in fine, it was the law of
nature that caused the appellations to spring up for us from the objects,
just as her plants spring up from seeds and roots, and she did not entrust
the significant naming of each of the subjects to the choice of those who
had to indicate the objects, then all mankind would be of one tongue. For
if the names imposed upon these objects did not vary, we should not differ
from one another in the department of speech. He says it is "a holy thing,
and most closely connected with the designs of Providence. that their
sounds should be imposed upon realities from a source above us." How, is
it, then, that the Prophets were ignorant of this holy thing, and were not
instructed in this design of Providence, who according to your account did
not make God at all of this Ungeneracy? How, too, is it that the Deity
Himself never knew of this kind of holiness,  when He did not give names
from above to the animals which He had formed, but gave away this power of
name-giving to Adam? If it is closely connected with the designs of
Providence, as Eunomius says, and a holy thing, that their sounds should be
imposed from above upon realities, it is certainly an unholy thing, and an
unfitting thing, that these names should have been fitted to the things
that are by any here below. "But the universal Guardian," he says, "thought
it right to engraft these names in our minds by a law of His creation." And
how was it, then, if these were engrafted in the minds of men, that from
Adam onward to your transgression no fruits of this folly were produced,
grafted as they were, according to you, in those minds, so that ungeneracy
should be the name of the Father's essence? Adam and all in succession
after him would have pronounced this word, if such had been grafted by God
in his nature. For as all that now grows upon the earth continues always,
owing to a transmission of its seed from the first creation, and not one
single seed at the present time innovates upon the natural form, so this
word, if it had been, as you say, grafted by God in our nature, would have
sprung up along with the first utterances of the first-formed human beings,
and would have accompanied the line of their posterity. But seeing that
this word did not exist at the first (for no one in former generations and
up to the present ever uttered such a word, except this man), it is plain
that it is a bastard invention, that has sprung up from the seed of tares,
not from that good seed which God has sown, to use evangelic words, in the
field of our nature. For all the things that characterize our common nature
do not have their beginning now, but appeared with that nature at its first
formation; such, for instance, as the operation of the senses, the
appetitive, or contrary, instinct of the man with regard to anything, and
other generally acknowledged accompaniments of his nature, none of which a
particular epoch has introduced amongst those born in it; but our humanity
is preserved continually, from first to last, within the same circle of
qualities, losing none which it had at the beginning, any more than it
acquires any which it had not then. But just as, while sight is a faculty
common to our nature, scientific observation comes by training to those who
have devoted themselves to some science (it is not every one, for instance,
who can observe with the theodolite, or prove a theorem by means of lines
in geometry, or do anything else, where art has introduced, not mere sight,
but a special use of sight), so too, while one might pronounce the
possession of reason to be a common property of humanity united to the very
essence of our nature from above, the invention of terms significative of
realities is the work of men who, possessing from above the power of
reason, are continually finding out, according as they wish for them
towards the elucidation of that which they plainly see, certain words
expressive of these things. "But if these views are to prevail," says he,
"one of two things is proved; either that conception is anterior to those
who conceive, or that the names naturally befitting the Deity, and pre-
existent to everything, are posterior to the beginning of man." Ought we to
continue the fight against such assertions, and join issue with such
manifest absurdity?

   But who, pray, is so simple as to be harmed by such arguments, and to
imagine that if names are once believed to be an outcome of the reasoning
faculty, he must allow that the utterance of names is anterior to those who
utter them, or else that he must think he is sinning against the Deity, in
that every man continues to name the Deity, according as each after birth
is capable of conceiving Him? As to this last supposition, it has been
already explained that the Supreme Being has no need Himself of words as
delivered by a voice and a tongue; and it would be superfluous to repeat
what would only encumber the argument. In fine, a Being Whose nature is
neither lacking nor redundant, but simply perfect, neither fails to possess
anything that is necessary, nor possesses what is not necessary. Since,
then, we have proved previously, and all thinking men unanimously agree,
that the calling by names is not a necessity of the Deity, no one can deny
the extreme profanity of thus assigning to Him what is not a necessity.

   But I do not think that we need linger on this, nor minutely examine
that which follows. To the more attentive reader, the argument elaborated
by our opponent will itself appear in the light of a special pleader on the
side of orthodoxy. He says, for instance, that imperishability and
immortality are the very essence of the Deity. For my part I see no need to
contend with him, no matter whether these qualities aforesaid only accrue
to the Deity, or whether they are, by virtue of their signification, His
essence; whichever of these two views is adopted, it will completely
support our argument. For if the being imperishable only accrues to the
essence, the not being generated will also most certainly only accrue to
it; and so the idea of ungeneracy will be ejected from being the mark of
the essence. If, on the other hand, because God is not subject to
destruction, one affirms imperishability to be His essence, and, because He
is stronger than death, one therefore defines immortality to be His very
essence, and if the Son is imperishable and immortal (as He is),
imperishability and immortality will also be the essence of the Only-
begotten. If, then, the Father is imperishability, and the Son
imperishability, and each of these imperishabilities is the essence, and no
difference exists between them as regards the idea of imperishability, one
essence will differ from the other essence in no way at all, seeing that in
both equally the nature is a stranger to any corruption. Even if he should
resume the same method as before, and place us on the horns of his dilemma
from which, as he thinks, there is no escape, saying that, if we
distinguish that which accrues from that which is, we make the Deity
composite, whereas if we acknowledge His simplicity, then the
imperishability and the ungeneracy are seen at once to be significative of
His very essence--even then again we can show that he is fighting for our
side. For if he will have it that God is made composite by our saying that
anything accrues to Him, then he certainly cannot eject the Fatherhood
either from the essence, but must confess that He is Father by His nature
as much as He is imperishable and immortal; and so without intending it he
must admit the Son also to partake of that intimate nature; for it will not
be possible, if God is essentially Father, to exclude the Son from a
relationship to Him thus essential. But if he says that the Fatherhood
accrues to God, but is outside the circle of the substance, then he must
concede to us that we may say anything we like accrues to the Deity, since
the Divine simplicity is in no way marred, if His quality of ungeneracy is
made to mean something outside the essence. If, however, he declares that
the imperishability and the ungeneracy do mean the essence, and if he
insists that these two words are equivalent, since, by reason of the same
meaning lying in each, there is no difference between them, and if he thus
assert that the very idea of imperishability and ungeneracy is one and the
same, the One who is the first of these must necessarily be the second too.
But that the Son is imperishable, let us observe, even these men entertain
no doubt; therefore, by Eunomius' argument, the Son also is ungenerate, if
imperishability and ungeneracy are to mean the same thing. So that he must
accept one of two alternatives; either he must agree with us that
ungeneracy is other than imperishability, or, if he abides by his
assertions, he must in various ways speak blasphemy about the Only-
begotten, making Him, for instance, perishable, in order that he may not
have to say that He is ungenerate or ungenerate, in order that he may not
prove Him perishable.

   But now I do not know which it is best to do; to pursue step by step
this subject, or to put an end here to our contest with such folly. Well,
as in the case of those who are selling destructive drugs, a very slight
experiment guarantees to the purchasers the destructive power latent in all
the drug, and no one doubts, after he has found out by an experiment its
partial deadliness, that the drug sold is entirely of this deadly
character, so I think it can be no longer doubtful to reflecting persons
that this poisonous dose of argument, of which a specimen has been shown in
what we have already examined, will continue throughout to be such as that
which we have just refuted. For this reason I think it better not to
prolong this detailed dwelling upon his absurdities. Nevertheless, seeing
that the champions of this error discover plausibility for it from many
quarters, and there is reason to fear lest to have overlooked any of their
efforts will be made a specious pretext for misrepresenting us as having
shirked their strongest point, I beg for this reason those who follow us
out in this work to accompany our argument still, without charging us with
prolixity, while it expands itself to meet the attacks of error along the
whole line. Observe, then, that he has scarcely ceased weaving in the
depths of his slumber this dream about conception before he arms himself
again from his storehouse with those monstrous and senseless methods, and
turns his argument into another dream much more meaningless than his
previous illusion. But we may best know how absurd his efforts are by
observing his treatment of "privation"; though to grapple with his nonsense
in all its range would require a Eunomius, or one of his school, men who
have never spent a thought on serious realities. We will, however, in a
concise way run over the heads of it, that while none of his charges is
omitted, no meaningless item may help to prolong the discussion to an
absurd length.

   When, then, he is on the point of introducing this treatment of terms
of "privation," he takes upon himself to show "the incurable absurdity," as
he calls it, of our teaching, and its "simulated and culpable cautions(8)."
Such is his promise; but the proof of these accusations is, what? "Some
have said that the Deity is ungenerate by virtue only of the privation of
generation; but we say, in refutation of these, that neither this word nor
this idea is in any way whatever applicable to the Deity." Let him point
out the maintainer of such a statement, if any from the first creation of
man to the present day, whether in foreign or in Greek lands, has ever
committed himself to such an utterance; and we will be silent. But no one
in the whole history of mankind will be found to have said such a thing,
except some madman. For who was ever so reeling from intoxication, who was
ever so beside himself with madness or delirium, as to say, in so many
words, that generation belongs naturally to the ungenerate God, but that,
deprived of this natural condition, He becomes ungenerate instead of
generated? But these are the shifts of rhetoric; namely, to escape when
they are refuted from the shame of their refutation by means of some
supposititious characters. It was in this way that he has apologized for
that celebrated "Apology" of his, transferring as he did the blame for that
title to jurymen and accusers(9), though unable to show that there were any
accusers, any trial, or any court at all. Now, too, with the air of one who
would correct another's folly, he pretends that he is driven by necessity
to speak in this way. This is what his proof of our "incurable absurdity,"
and our "simulated and culpable caution," amounts to. But he goes on to say
that we do not know what to do in our present position, and that to cover
our perplexity we take to abusing him for his worldly learning, while we
ourselves claim a monopoly of the teaching of the Holy Spirit. Here is his
other dream, namely, that he has got so much of the heathen learning, that
he appears by means of it a formidable antagonist to Basil. Just so there
have been some men who have imagined themselves enthroned with basilicals,
and of an exalted rank, because the deluded vision of their dreams, born of
their waking longings, puts such fancies into their hearts. He says that
Basil, not knowing what to do after what has been said, abuses him for his
worldly learning. He would indeed have set a high value on such abuse, that
is, on being thought formidable because of the abundance of his words even
by any ordinary hearer, not to mention by Basil, and by men like him (if
any are entirely like him, or ever have been). But, as for his intervening
argument, if such low scurrility, and such tasteless buffoonery, can be
called argument, by which he thinks he impugns our cause, I pass it all
over, for I deem it an abominable and ungracious thing to soil our treatise
with such pollutions; and I loathe them as men loathe some swollen and
noisome ulcer, or turn from the spectacle presented by those whose skin is
bloated by excess of humours, and disfigured with tuberous warts. And for a
while our argument shall be allowed to expand itself freely, without having
to turn to defend itself against men who are ready to scoff at and to tear
to pieces everything that is said.

   Every term--every term, that is, which is really such--is an utterance
expressing some movement of thought. But every operation and movement of
sound thinking is directed as far as it is possible to the knowledge and
the contemplation of some reality. But then the whole world of realities is
divided into two parts; that is, into the intelligible and the sensible.
With regard to sensible phenomena, knowledge, on account of the perception
of them being so near at hand, is open for all to acquire; the judgment of
the senses gives occasion to no doubt about the subject before them. The
differences in colour, and the differences in all the other qualities which
we judge of by means of the sense of hearing, or smell, or touch, or taste,
can be known and named by all possessing our common humanity; and so it is
with all the other things which appear to be more obvious to our
apprehension, the things, that is, pertaining to the age in which we live,
designed for political and moral ends. But in the contemplation of the
intelligible world, on account of that world transcending the grasp of the
senses, we move, some in one way, some in another, around the object of our
search; and then, according to the idea arising in each of us about it, we
announce the result as best we can, striving to get as near as possible to
the full meaning of the thing thought about through the medium of
expressive phrases. In this, though it is often possible to have achieved
the task in both ways, when thought does not fail to hit the mark, and
utterance interprets the notion with the appropriate word, yet it may
happen that we may fail even in both, or in one, at least, of the two, when
either the comprehending faculty or the interpreting capacity is carded
beside the proper mark. There being, then, two factors by which every term
is made a correct term, the mental exactitude and the verbal utterance, the
result which commands approval in both ways, will certainly be the
preferable; but it will not be a lesser gain, not to have missed the right
conception, even though the word itself may happen to be inadequate to that
thought. Whenever then, our thought is intent upon those high and unseen
things which sense cannot reach (I mean, upon that divine and unspeakable
world with regard to which it is an audacious thing to grasp in thought
anything in it at random and more audacious still to trust to any chance
word the representing of the conception arising from it), then, I say,
turning from the mere sound of phrases, uttered well or ill according to
the mental faculty of the speaker, we search for the thought, and that
alone, which is found within the phrases, to see whether that itself be
sound, or otherwise; and we leave the minuti of phrase and name to be dealt
with by the artificialities of grammarians. Now, seeing that we mark with
an appellation only those things which we know, and those things which are
above our knowledge it is not possible to seize by any distinctive terms
(for how can one put a mark upon a thing we know nothing about?),
therefore, because in such cases there is no appropriate term to be found
to mark the subject adequately, we are compelled by many and differing
names, as there may be opportunity, to divulge our surmises as they arise
within us with regard to the Deity. But, on the other hand, all that
actually comes within our comprehension is such that it must be of one of
these four kinds: either contemplated as existing in an extension of
distance, or suggesting the idea of a capacity in space within which its
details are detected, or it comes within our field of vision by being
circumscribed by a beginning or an end where the non-existent bounds it in
each direction (for everything that has a beginning and an end of its
existence, begins from the non-existent, and ends in the non-existent), or,
lastly, we grasp the phaenomenon by means of an association of qualifies
wherein dying, and sufferance, and change, and alteration, and such-like
are combined. Considering this, in order that the Supreme Being may not
appear to have any connection whatever with things below, we use, with
regard to His nature, ideas and phrases expressive of separation from all
such conditions; we call, for instance, that which is above all times pre-
temporal, that which is above beginning unbeginning, that which is not
brought to an end unending, that which has a personality removed from body
incorporeal, that which is never destroyed imperishable, that which is
unreceptive of change, or sufferance, or alteration, passionless,
changeless, and unalterable. Such a class of appellations can be reduced to
any system that they like by those who wish for r one; and they can fix on
these actual appellations other appellations "privative," for instance, or
"negative," or whatever they like. We yield the teaching and the learning
of such things to those who are ambitious for it; and we will investigate
the thoughts alone, whether they are within or beyond the circle of a
religious and adequate conception of the Deity.

   Well, then, if God did not exist formerly, or if there be a time when
He will not exist, He cannot be called either unending or without
beginning; and so also neither inalterable, nor incorporeal, nor
imperishable, if there is any suspicion of body, or destruction, or
alteration with regard to Him. But if it be part of our religion to
attribute to Him none of these things, then it is a sacred duty to use of
Him names privative of the things abhorrent to His Nature, and to say all
that we have so often enumerated already, viz. that He is imperishable, and
unending, and ungenerate, and the other terms of that class, where the
sense inherent in each only informs us of the privation of that which is
obvious to our perception, but does not interpret the actual nature of that
which is thus removed from those abhorrent conditions. What the Deity is
not, the signification of these names does point out; but what that further
thing, which is not these things, is essentially, remains undivulged.
Moreover, even the rest of these names, the sense of which does indicate
some position or some state, do not afford that indication of the Divine
nature itself, but only of the results of our reverent speculations  about
it. For when we have concluded generally that no single thing existing,
whether an object of sense or of thought, is formed spontaneously or
fortuitously, but that everything discoverable in the world is linked to
the Being Who transcends all existences, and possesses there the source of
its continuance, and we then perceive the beauty and the majesty of the
wonderful sights in creation, we thus get from these and such-like marks a
new range of thoughts about the Deity, and interpret each one of the
thoughts thus arising within us by a special name, following the advice of
Wisdom, who says that "by the greatness and beauty of the creatures
proportionately the Maker of them is seen(1)." We address therefore as
Creator Him Who has made all mortal things, and as Almighty Him Who has
compassed so vast a creation, Whose might has been able to realize His
wish. When too we perceive the good that is in our own life, we give in
accordance with this the name of Good to Him Who is our life's first cause.
Then also having learnt from the Divine writings the incorruptibility of
the judgment to come, we therefore call Him Judge and Just, and to sum up
in one word we transfer the thoughts that arise within us about the Divine
Being into the mould of a corresponding name; so that there is no
appellation given to the Divine Being apart from some distinct intuition
about Him. Even the word God (Theo`s) we understand to have come into usage
from the activity of His seeing; for our faith tells us that the Deity is
everywhere, and sees (thea^sthai) all things, and penetrates all things,
and then we stamp this thought with this name (Theo`s), guided to it by the
Holy Voice. For he who says, "O God, attend unto me(2)," and, "Look, O
God(3)," and, "God knoweth the secrets of the heart plainly(4)," reveals
the latent meaning of this word, viz. that Theo`s is so called from
thea^sthai. For there is no difference between saying "Attend unto,"
"Look," and "See." Since, then, the seer must look towards some sight, God
is rightly called the Seer of that which is to be seen. We are taught,
then, by this word one sectional operation of the Divine Being, though we
do not grasp in thought by means of it His substance itself, believing
nevertheless that the Divine glory suffers no loss because of our being at
a loss for a naturally appropriate name. For this inability to give
expression to such unutterable things, while it reflects upon the poverty
of our own nature, affords an evidence of God's glory, teaching us as it
does, in the words of the Apostle, that the only name naturally appropriate
to God is to believe Him to be "above every name(5)." That he transcends
every effort of thought, and is far beyond any circumscribing by a name,
constitutes a proof to man of His ineffable majesty(6).

   Thus much, then, is known to us about the names uttered in any form
whatever in reference to the Deity. We have given a simple explanation of
them, unencumbered with argument, for the benefit of our candid hearers; as
for Eunomius' nerveless contentions about these names, we judge it a thing
disgraceful and unbecoming to us seriously to confute them. For what could
one say in answer to a man who declares that we "attach more weight to the
outward form of the name than to the value of the thing named, giving to
names the prerogative over realities, and equality to things unequal"? Such
are the words that he gives utterance to. Well, let any one who can do so
considerately, judge whether this calumnious charge of his against us has
anything in it dangerous enough to make it worth our while to defend
ourselves as to our "giving to names the prerogative over realities"; for
it is plain to every one that there is no single name that has in itself
any substantial reality, but that every name is but a recognizing mark
placed on some reality or some idea, having of itself no existence either
as a fact or a thought.

   How it is possible, then, to assign one's gratuities to the non-
subsistent, let this man, who claims to be using words and phrases in their
natural force, explain to the followers of his error. I would not, however,
have mentioned this at all, if it had not placed a necessity upon me of
proving our author's weakness both in thought and expression. As for all
the passages from the inspired writings which he drags in, though quite
unconnected with his object, formulating thereby a difference of
immortality(7) in angels and in men, I do not know what he has in his eye,
or what he hopes to prove by them, and I pass them by. The immortal, as
long as it is immortal, admits of no degrees of more and less arising from
comparison. For if the one member of the comparison is, by the force of
contrast, to suffer a diminution or privation as regards its immortality,
it must needs be that such a member is not to be called immortal at all;
for how can that be called absolutely immortal in which mortality is
detected by this juxtaposition and comparison? And to think of that fine
hair-splitting of his, in not allowing the idea of privation to be
unvarying and general, but in asserting, on the contrary, that while
separation from good things is privation, the absence of bad things is not
to be marked by that term! If he is to get his way here, he will take the
truth from the Apostle's words, which say that He "only hath
immortality(8)," which He gives to others. What this newly-imported dictum
of his has to do with his preceding argument, neither we nor any one else
amongst reflecting people are able to understand. Yet because we have not
the mental strength to take in these scientific subtleties, he calls us
"unscientific both in our judgment as to objects, and in our use of terms";
those are his very words. But all this, as having no power to shake the
truth, I pass over without further notice; and also how he misrepresents
the view we have expounded of the imperishable, and of the unembodied,
namely, that of these terms the latter signifies the undimensional, where
the threefold extension belonging to all bodies is not to be found, and the
former signifies that which is not receptive of destruction: and also how
he says, that "we do not think it right to let the shape of these words be
lost by extending them to ideas inapplicable to them, or to imagine that
each of them is indicative of something not present or not accruing; but
rather we think they are indicative of the actual essence"; all this I deem
worthy only of silence and deep oblivion, and leave to the reader to detect
for himself their mingled folly and blasphemy. He actually asserts that the
perishable is not opposed to the imperishable, and that the privative sign
does not mark the absence of the bad, but that the word which is the
subject of our inquiry means the essence itself!

   Well, if the term imperishable or indestructible is not considered by
this maker of an empty system to be privative of destruction, then by a
stern necessity it must follow that this shape given to the word indicates
the very reverse (of the privation of destruction). If, that is,
indestructibility is not the negation of destruction, it must be the
assertion of something incongruous with itself; for it is the very nature
of opposites that, when you take away the one, you admit the other to come
in in its place. But as for the bitter task which he necessitates of
proving that the Deity is unreceptive of death, as if there existed any one
who held the contrary opinion, we leave it to take care of itself. For we
hold that in the case of opposites, it makes no difference at all whether
we say that something is A, or that it is not the opposite of A; for
instance, in the present discussion, when we have said that God is Life, we
implicitly forbid by this assertion the thought of death in connection with
Him, even though we do not express this in speech; and when we assert that
He is unreceptive of death, we in the same breath show Him to be Life.

   "But I do not see," he rejoins, "how God can be above His own works
simply by virtue of such things as do not belong to Him(9)." And on the
strength of this clever sally he calls it a union of folly and profanity,
that our great Basil has ventured on such terms. But I would counsel him
not to indulge his ribaldry too freely against those who use these terms,
lest he should be unconsciously at the same moment heaping insults on
himself. For I think that he himself would not gainsay that the very
grandeur of the Divine Nature is recognized in this, viz. in the absence of
all participation in those things which the lower natures are shown to
possess. For if God were involved in any of these peculiarities, He would
not possess His superiority, but would be quite identified with any single
individual amongst the beings who share that peculiarity. But if He is
above such things, by reason, in fact, of His not possessing them, then He
stands also above those who do possess them; just as we say that the
Sinless is superior to those in sin. The fact of being removed from evil is
an evidence of abounding in the best. But let him heap these insults on us
to his heart's content. We will only remark, in passing, on a single one of
the points mentioned under this head, and will then return to the
discussion of the main question.

   He declares that God surpasses mortal beings as immortal, destructible
beings as indestructible, generated beings as ungenerate, just in the same
degree. Is it not, then, plain to all what this blasphemy of a fighter
against God would prove? or must we by verbal demonstration unveil the
profanity? Well, who does not know the axiom, that things which are
distanced to the same amount (by something else) are level with one
another? If, then, the destructible and the generated are surpassed in the
same degree by the Deity, and if our Lord is generated, it will be for
Eunomius to draw the blasphemous conclusion resulting from these data. For
it is clear that he regards generation as the same thing as destruction and
death just as in his previous discussions he declares the ungenerate to be
the same thing as the indestructible. If, then, he looks upon destruction
and generation as upon the same level and asserts that the Deity is equally
removed from both of them, and if our Lord is generated, let no one demand
from ourselves that we should apply the logical conclusion, but let him
draw it for himself; if indeed it is true, as he says, that from the
generated and from the destructible God is equally removed. "But," he
proceeds," it is not allowable for us to call Him indestructible and
immortal by virtue of any absence of death and destruction." Let those who
are led by the nose, and turn in any direction that each successive teacher
pleases, believe this, and let them declare that destruction and death do
belong to God, to make it possible for Him to be called immortal and
indestructible! For if these terms of privation, as Eunomius says, "do not
indicate the absence of death and destruction," then the presence in Him of
the things opposite to, and estranged from, these is most certainly proved
by this treatment of terms. Each one amongst conceivable things is either
absent from something else, or it is not absent: for instance, light,
darkness; life, death; health, disease, and so on. In all these cases, if
one asserts that the one conception is absent, he will necessarily
demonstrate that the other is present. If, then, Eunomius denies that God
can be called immortal by reason of the absence of death, he will plainly
prove the presence of death in Him, and so deny any immortality in the ease
of the universal Deity. But perhaps some one will say that we fix unfairly
on his words; for that no one is so mad as to affirm that God is not
immortal. But then, when none of mankind possess any knowledge of that
which certain people secretly imagine, it is by their words that we have to
make our guess about those secret things.

   Therefore let us again handle this dictum of his: "God is not called
immortal by virtue of the absence of death." How are we to accept this
statement, that death is not absent from the Deity though He be called
immortal? If he really commands us to think like this,  Eunomius' God will
be certainly mortal, and subject to destruction; for he from whom death is
not absent is not in his essence immortal. But again; if these terms
signify the  absence neither of death nor of destruction, either they are
applied falsely to the God over  all, or else they comprise within
themselves some different meaning. What this meaning  is, our system-maker
must explain to us. Whereas we, the people who according to Eunomius are
unscientific in our judgment of objects and in our use of terms, have been
taught to call sound (for instance), not the man from whom strength is
absent, but the man from whom disease is absent; and unmutilated, not the
man who keeps away from drinking-parties, but the man who has no mutilation
upon him; and other qualities in the same way we name from the presence or
the absence of something; manly, for instance, and unmanly; sleepy and
sleepless; and all the other terms like that, which custom sanctions.

   Still I cannot see what profit there is in deigning to examine such
nonsense. For a man like myself, who has lived to gray hairs(1), and whose
eyes are fixed on truth alone, to take upon his lips the absurd and
flippant utterances of a contentious foe, incurs no slight danger of
bringing condemnation on himself. I will therefore pass over both those
words and the adjoining passage; this, for instance, "Truth gives no
evidence of any union of natures with God." Well, if these words had not
been spoken, who ever was there (except yourself) who mentioned a double
nature in the Deity at all? You, however, unite each idea of each name with
the essence of the Father, and deny that anything externally accrues to
Him, centering every one of His names in that essence. Again, "Neither does
she write in the statute-book of our religion any idea that is external and
fabricated by ourselves." With regard to these words again I shall
deprecate the idea that I have quoted them with a view of amusing the
reader with their absurdity; rather I have done so with a view to show with
what a slender equipment of arguments this man, after rating us for our
want of system, advances to take these audacious liberties with the name of
Truth. What is he in reasoning, and what is he in speech, that he should
thus revel in showing himself off before his hidebound readers, who applaud
him as victorious over everybody  by force of argument when he has brought
these disjointed utterances of his dry bombastic jargon to an end(2).
"Immortality," he says, "is the essence itself." But what, then, do you
assert to be the essence of the Only-begotten? I ask you that: is it
immortality, or is it not? For remember that in His essence also the
singleness admits, as you say, of no complexity of nature. If, then
Eunomius denies that immortality is the essence of the Son, it is clear
what he is aiming at; for it does not require an exceedingly penetrating
understanding to discover what is the direct opposite to the immortal. Just
as the logic of dichotomy exhibits the destructible instead of the
indestructible, and the mutable instead of the immutable, so it exhibits
the mortal instead of the immortal. What, therefore, will this setter forth
of new doctrine do? What proper name will he give us for the essence of the
Only-begotten? Again I put this question to our author. He must either
grant that it is immortality, or deny it. If, then, he will not assent to
its being immortality, he must assent to the contradictory proposition; by
negativing the superior term he proves that it is death. If, on the other
hand, he shrinks from anything so monstrous, and names the essence of the
Only-begotten also as immortality, he must perforce agree with us that
there is in consequence no difference whatever, as to essence, between
them. If the nature of the Father and the nature of the Son are equally
immortality, and if immortality does not divide itself by any manner of
difference, then it is confessed by our foes themselves, that on the score
of essence no manner of difference is discoverable between the Father and
the Son.

   But it is time now to expose that angry accusation which he brings
against us at the close of his treatise, saying that we affirm the Father
to be from what is absolutely non-existent. Stealing an expression from its
context, from which he drags it, as from its surrounding body, into a naked
isolation, he tries to carp at it by worrying the word, or rather covering
it with the slaver of his maddened teeth. I will therefore first give the
meaning of the passage in which our Master explained this point to us; then
I will quote it word for word: by so doing the man who intrudes upon(3) the
expository work of orthodox writers, only to undermine the truth itself,
will be revealed in his true colours. Our Master, in introducing us in his
own treatise to the true meaning of ungenerate, suggested a way to  arrive
at a real knowledge of the term in dispute somewhat as follows, pointing
out at the same time that it had a meaning very far removed from any idea
of essence. He says that the Evangelist(4), in beginning our Lord's lineage
according to the flesh from Joseph, and then going back to the generation
continually preceding, and then ending the genealogy in Adam, and, because
there was no earthly father anterior to this first-formed creature, saying
that he was "the son of God," makes it obvious to every reader's
intelligence with regard to the Deity, that He, from Whom Adam was, has not
Himself His subsistence from another, after the likeness of the human lives
just given. When, having passed through the whole of it, we at last grasp
the thought of the Deity, we perceive at the same moment the First Cause of
it all. But if any such cause be found dependent on something else, then it
is not a first cause. Therefore, if God is the First Cause of the Universe,
there will be nothing whatever transcending this cause of all things. Such
was our Master's exposition of the meaning of ungenerate; and in order that
our testimony about it may not go beyond the exact truth, I will quote the
passage.

   "The evangelist Luke, when giving the genealogy according to the flesh
of our God and Saviour Jesus Christ, and stepping up from the last to the
first, begins with Joseph, saying that he was 'the son of Hell, which was
the son of Matthat,' and so by ascending brings his enumeration up to Adam;
but when he has come to the top and said, that Seth 'was the son of Adam,
which was the son of God,' then he stops this process. As, then, he has
said that Adam was the son of God, we will ask these men, 'But God, who is
He the son of?' Is it not obvious to every one's intelligence that God is
the son of no one? But to be the son of no one is to be without a cause,
plainly; and to be without a cause is to be ungenerate. Now in the case of
men, the being son of somebody is not the essence(5); no more, in the case
of the Deity Who rules the world, is it possible to say that the being
ungenerate is the essence."

   With what eyes will you now dare to gaze upon your guide? I speak to
you, O flock(6) of perishing souls! How can you still turn to listen to
this man who has reared such a monument as this of his shamelessness in
argument? Are ye not ashamed now, at least, if not before, to take the hand
of a man like this to lead you to the truth? Do ye not regard it as a sign
of his madness as to doctrine, that he thus shamelessly stands out against
the truth contained in Scripture? Is this the way to play the champion of
the truth of doctrine--namely, to accuse Basil of deriving the God over all
from that which has absolutely no existence? Am I to tell the way he
phrases it? Am I to transcribe the very words of his shamelessness? I let
the insolence of them pass; I do not blame their invective, for I do not
censure one whose  breath is of bad odour, because it is of bad odour; or
one who has bodily mutilation, beause he is mutilated. Things such as that
are the misfortunes of nature; they escape blame from  those who can
reflect. This strength of vituperation, then, is infirmity in reasoning; it
is an affliction of a soul whose powers of sound argument are marred. No
word from me, then, about his invectives. But as to that syllogism, with
its stout irrefragable folds, in whose conclusion, to effect his darling
object, he arrives at this accusation against us, I will write it out in
its own precise words. "We will allow him to say that the Son exists by
participation in the self-existent(7); but (instead of this), he has
unconsciously affirmed that the God over all comes from absolute nonentity.
For if the idea of the absence of everything amounts to that of absolute
nonentity(8), and the transposition of equivalents is perfectly legitimate,
then the man who says that God comes from nothing says that He comes from
nonentity." To which of these statements shall we first direct our
attention? Shall we criticize his opinion about the Son "existing by
participation" in the Deity, and his bespattering those who will not
acquiesce in it with the foulness of his tongue; or shall we examine the
sophism so frigidly constructed from the stuff of dreams? However, every
one who possesses a spark of practical sagacity is not unaware that it is
only poets and moulders of mythology who father sons "by participation"
upon the Divine Being. Those, that is, who string together the myths in
their poems, fabricate a Dionysus, or a Hercules, or a Minos, and such-
like, out of the combination of the superhuman with human bodies; and they
exalt such personages above the rest of mankind, representing them as of
greater estimation because of their participation in a superior nature.
Therefore,  with regard to this opinion of his, carrying as it does within
itself the evidence of its own folly and profanity, it is best to be
silent; and to repeat instead that irrefragable syllogism of his, in order
that every poor ignoramus on our side may understand what and how many are
the advantages which those who are not trained in his technical methods are
deprived of. He says, "If the idea of the absence of everything amounts to
that of absolute nonentity, and the transposition of equivalents is
perfectly legitimate, then the man who says that God comes from nothing,
says that He comes from nonentity." He brandishes over us this Aristotelian
weapon, but who has yet conceded to him, that to say that any one has no
father amounts to saying that he has  been generated from absolute
nonentity? He who enumerates those persons whose line is recorded in
Scripture is plainly thinking of a father preceding each person mentioned.
For what relation is Heli to Joseph? What relation is Matthat to Heli? And
what relation is Adam to Seth? Is it not plain to a mere child that this
catalogue of names is a list of fathers? For if Seth is the son of Adam,
Adam must be the father of one thus born from him; and so tell me, who is
the father of the Deity Who is over all? Come, answer this question, open
your lips and speak, exert all your skill in expression to meet such an
inquiry. Can you discover any expression that will elude the grasp of your
own syllogism? Who is the father of the Ungenerate? Can you say? If you
can, then He is not ungenerate. Pressed thus, you will say, what indeed
necessity compels you to say,--No one is. Well, my dear sir, do you not yet
find the weak seams of your sophism giving way? Do you not perceive that
you have slavered upon your own lap? What says our great Basil? That the
Ungenerate One is from no fatlier. For the conclusion to be drawn from the
mention of fathers in the preceding genealogy permits the word father, even
in the silence of the evangelist, to be added to this confession of faith.
Whereas, you have transformed "no one" into "nothing at all," and again
"nothing at all" into "absolute nonentity," thereby concocting that
fallacious syllogism of yours. Accordingly this clever result of
professional shrewdness shall be turned against yourself. I ask, Who is the
father of the Ungenerate One? "No one," you will be obliged to answer; for
the Ungenerate One cannot have a father. Then, if no one is the father of
the Ungenerate, and you have changed "no one" into "nothing at all," and
"nothing at all" is, according to your argument, the same as "absolute
nonentity," and the transposition of equivalents is, as you say, perfectly
legitimate, then the man (i.e.  you) who says that no one is the father of
the Ungenerate One, says that the Deity Who is over all comes from absolute
nonentity!

   Such, to use your own words, is the "evil," as one might expect, not
indeed "of valuing the character for being clever before one is really
such" (for perhaps this does not amount to a very great misfortune), but of
not knowing oneself, and how great the distance is between the soaring
Basil and a grovelling reptile. For if those eyes of his, with their divine
penetration, still looked on this world, if he still swept over mankind now
living on the pinions of his wisdom, he would have shown you with the
swooping rush of his words, how frail is that native shell of folly in
which you are encased, how great is he whom you oppose with your errors,
while, with insults and invectives hurled at him, you are hunting for a
reputation amongst decrepit and despicable creatures. Still you need not
give up all hope of feeling that great man's talons(9). For this work of
ours, while, as compared with his, it will be a great thing for it to be
judged the fraction of one such talon, has, as regards yours, ability
enough to have broken asunder the outside crust of your heresy, and to have
detected the deformity that hides within.


Taken from "The Early Church Fathers and Other Works" originally published
by Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co. in English in Edinburgh, Scotland, beginning in
1867. (LNPF II/V, Schaff and Wace). The digital version is by The
Electronic
Bible Society, P.O. Box 701356, Dallas, TX 75370, 214-407-WORD.

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