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, perish- able, 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 Answer to Eunomius' Second Book.
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 caution!””°.” 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, ifany 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 gener- ated? 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!70!
, 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 1200 evAaeiav tiva Tpoonointov Kal EntAnmtov 1201 See Book L. vii., ix., xi.
Answer to Eunomius' Second Book.
“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 al- lowed 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 Answer to Eunomius' Second Book.
is carried 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 com- mands 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 in- adequate 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 minutize 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 contem- plated 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 circum- scribed 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 pheznomenon by means of an associ- ation of qualities 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 incorpor- eal, 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 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.
Answer to Eunomius' Second Book.
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 alter- ation 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!”°”.” 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 incorrupt- ibility 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 (@¢0c) we understand to have come into usage from the activity of His seeing; for our faith tells us that the Deity is every- where, and sees (8eao8at) all things, and penetrates all things, and then we stamp this thought with this name (@£0c¢), guided to it by the Holy Voice. For he who says, “O God, attend unto me!?°3,” and, “Look, O God!?"4”” and, “God knoweth the secrets of the heart plainly!7°>,” reveals the latent meaning of this word, viz. that @gc is so called from @gacGan.
1202. Wisdom xiii. 5.
Answer to Eunomius' Second Book.
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.
For there is no difference between saying “Attend unto, 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!”°°.” 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!*°”, Thus much, then, is known to us about the names uttered in any form whatever in ref- erence to the Deity. We have given a simple explanation of them, unencumbered with argu- ment, 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 ex- istence either as a fact or a thought.
1206 Philip. ii. 9.
1206 Philip. ii. 9.
1207 The theology of Gregory and his master Origen rises above the unconscious Stoicism of Tertullian, and even that of Clement, which has an air of materialistic pantheism about it, owing to his attempt, like that of Eunomius, to base our knowledge of God upon abstractions and analogies drawn from nature. The result, indeed, » of the “abstraction process” of Clement is only a multiplication of negative terms, “immensity,” “simplicity,” “eternity,” &c. But they will lead to nothing, if there is not already behind them all some positive idea which we have received from a different source. Faith is this source; it is described by Origen as “an ineffable grace of the soul which comes from God in a kind of enthusiasm;” which formula expresses the primary fact of religious consciousness such as Leibnitz demonstrated it: and the positive idea supplied by this faculty is with Origen Goodness (rather than the Good). He would put Will as well as Mind into the Central Idea of Metaphysics, and would have the heart governed as well as the reason. All that he says about the “incomprehensibility” of God does not militate against this: for we must have some idea of that which is incomprehensible to us: and the Goodness of the Deity is the side on which we gain this idea.
Answer to Eunomius' Second Book.
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!?°8 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 as- serting, on the contrary, that while separation from good things is privation, the absence of bad things is not to be marked by that term! Ifhe is to get his way here, he will take the truth from the Apostle’s words, which say that He “only hath immortality!*’,” 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 1208 But there are two meanings of d8&vatoc,—and of these perhaps Eunomius was thinking,—i.e. 1. Not dead; 2. Immortal. In Plato’s Phedo there is an argument for the immortality of the soul, certainly not the strongest one, drawn from this. It is assumed there that the thing, whose nature is such that so long as it exists it neither is nor can be dead, can never cease to exist i.e. the soul by virtue of not actually dying, though capable of death, is immortal. Perhaps this accounts for Eunomius saying (lower down) that “the perishable is not opposed to the imperishable.”
Answer to Eunomius' Second Book.
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 some- thing 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 ne- cessitates 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’”!°.” And on the strength of this clever sally he calls ita 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 1210 The reasoning, which precedes and follows, amounts to this. Basil had said that the terms ungenerate, imperishable, immortal, are privative, i.e. express the absence of a quality. Eunomius objects that—No term expressive of the absence of a quality can be God’s Name: the Ungenerate (which includes the others) is God’s Name, therefore It does not express a privation. You mean to say, Gregory replies, that Ungenerate, &c. does not mean not-generated, &c. But what is not not-generated is generated (by your own law of dichotomy); therefore, Ungenerate means generated; and you prove God perishable and mortal. Here, the fallacy arises from Gregory’s assuming more than Eunomius’ conclusion: i.e. “the Ungenerate means not only the not-generated,” changes into “the Ungenerate does not mean,” &c.
Answer to Eunomius' Second Book.
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 indes- tructible, generated beings as ungenerate, just in the same degree. Is it not, then, plain to all what this blasphemy ofa fighter against God would prove? or must we by verbal demonstra- tion 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 indestruct- ible 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 case 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.