Well, then; seeing that all, or at all events most, animals born by parturition have the same manner of generation, and, according to their logic, the manner of likeness follows this manner of generation, these animals, following as they do the same model in their production, will resemble entirely those similarly generated; for things that are like the same thing are like one another. If, then, according to the view of this heresy, the manner of the generation makes every thing generated just like itself, and it is a fact that this manner does not vary at all in diversified kinds of animals but remains the same in the greatest part of them, we shall find that this sweeping and unqualified assertion of his establishes, by virtue of this similarity of birth, a mutual resemblance between men, dogs, camels, mice, elephants, leopards, and every other animal which Nature produces in the same manner. Or does he mean, not, that things brought into the world in a similar way are all like each other, but that each one of them is like that being only which is the source of its life. But if so, he ought to have declared that the child is like the parent, not that the “manner of the likeness” resembles the “manner of the generation.” But this, which is so probable in itself, and is observed as a fact in Nature, that the begotten resembles the begetter, he will not admit as a truth; it would reduce his whole argumentation to a proof of the contrary of what he intended. If he allowed the offspring to be like the parent, his laboured store of arguments to prove the unlikeness of the Beings would be refuted as evanescent and groundless.
So he says “the manner of the likeness follows the manner of the generation.” This, when tested by the exact critic of the meaning of any idea!®, will be found completely unintelligible. It is plainly impossible to say what a “manner of generation” can mean. Does it mean the figure of the parent, or his impulse, or his disposition; or the time, or the place, or the completing of the embryo by conception; or the generative receptacles; or nothing of that kind, but something else of the things observed in ‘generation.’ It is impossible to find out what he means. The impropriety and vagueness of the word “manner” causes perplexity as to its signification here; every possible one is equally open to our surmises, and presents as well an equal want of connexion with the subject before us. So also with this phrase of his “manner of likeness;” it is devoid of any vestige of meaning, if we fix our atten- 165 évvotac Adyov.
ol His dictum that 'the manner of the likeness must follow the manner of the...
tion on the examples familiarly known to us. For the thing generated is not to be likened there to the kind or the manner of its birth. Birth consists, in the case of animal birth, in a separation of body from body, in which the animal perfectly moulded in the womb is brought forth; but the thing born is a man, or horse, or cow, or whatever it may chance to be in its existence through birth. How, therefore, the “manner of the likeness of the offspring follows the manner of its generation” must be left to him, or to some pupil of his in midwifery, to explain. Birth is one thing: the thing born is another: they are different ideas altogether. No one with any sense would deny that what he says is perfectly untrue in the case of animal births. But if he calls the actual making and the actual fashioning a “manner of the generation,” which the “manner of the likeness” of the thing produced is to “follow,” even so his statement is removed from all likelihood, as we shall see from some illustrations. Iron is hammered out by the blows of the artificer into some useful instrument. How, then, the outline of its edge, if such there happen to be, can be said to be similar to the hand of the worker, or to the manner of its fashioning, to the hammers, for instance, and the coals and the bellows and the anvil by means of which he has moulded it, no one could explain. And what can be said in one case fits all, where there is any operation producing a result; the thing produced cannot be said to be like the “manner of its generation.” What has the shape of a garment got to do with the spool, or the rods, or the comb, or with the form of the weaver'’s instruments at all? What has an actual seat got to do with the working of the blocks; or any finished production with the build of him who achieved it?—But I think even our opponents would allow that this rule of his is not in force in sensible and material instances.
It remains to see whether it contributes anything further to the proof of his blasphemy. What, then, was he aiming at? The necessity of believing in accordance with their being in the likeness or unlikeness of the Son to the Father; and, as we cannot know about this being from considerations of Providence, the necessity of having recourse to the “manner of the generation,” whereby we may know, not indeed whether the Begotten is like the Begetter (absolutely), but only a certain “manner of likeness” between them; and as this manner is a secret to the many, the necessity of going at some length into the being of the Begetter. Then has he forgotten his own definitions about the beings having to be known from their works? But this begotten being, which he calls the work of the supreme being, has as yet no light thrown upon it (according to him); so how can its nature be dealt with? And how can he “mount above this lower and therefore more directly comprehensible thing,” and so cling to the absolute and supreme being? Again, he always throughout his discourse lays claim to an accurate knowledge of the divine utterances; yet here he pays them scant reverence, ignoring the fact that it is not possible to approach to a knowledge of the Father except through the Son. “No man knoweth the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son shall reveal Him!®°.” Yet Eunomius, while on every occasion, where he can insult our His dictum that 'the manner of the likeness must follow the manner of the...devout and God-adoring conceptions of the Son, he asserts in plain words the Son’s inferiority, establishes His superiority unconsciously in this device of his for knowing the Deity; for he assumes that the Father’s being lends itself the more readily to our comprehension, and then attempts to trace and argue out the Son’s nature from that.
He declares falsely that 'the manner of the generation is to be known from...§33. He declares falsely that ‘the manner of the generation is to be known from the intrinsic worth of the generator’.
He goes back, for instance, to the begetting being, and from thence takes a survey of the begotten; “for,” says he, “the manner of the generation is to be known from the intrinsic worth of the generator.” Again, we find this bold unqualified generalization of his causing the thought of the inquirer to be dissipated in every possible direction; it is the nature of such general statements, to extend in their meanings to every instance, and allow nothing to escape their sweeping assertion. If then ‘the manner of the generation is to be known from the intrinsic worth of the generator,’ and there are many differences in the worth of generators according to their many classifications!®” Greek, barbarian, Scythian, bond, free), what will be the result? Why, that we must expect to find as many “manners of generation” as there are differences in intrinsic worth amongst to be found (for one may be born Jew, the generators; and that their birth will not be fulfilled with all in the same way, but that their nature will vary with the worth of the parent, and that some peculiar manner of birth will be struck out for each, according to these varying estimations. For a certain inalienable worth is to be observed in the individual parent; the distinction, that is, of being better or worse off according as there has fallen to each race, estimation, religion, nationality, power, servitude, wealth, poverty, independence, dependence, or whatever else constitutes the lifelong differences of worth. If then “the manner of the generation” is shown by the intrinsic worth of the parent, and there are many differences in worth, we shall inevitably find, if we follow this opinion-monger, that the manners of generation are various too; in fact, this difference of worth will dictate to Nature the manner of the birth.
But if he should not!® thought outside the nature of their subject, we will not oppose him. But at all events he will admit that such worth is natural, because they can be put in agree to this; that man’s existence is separated by an intrinsic character from that of brutes. Yet the manner of birth in these two cases presents no variation in intrinsic character; nature brings man and the brute into the world in just the same way, i.e. by generation. But if he apprehends this native dignity only in the case of the most proper and supreme existence, let us see what he means then. In our view, the ‘native dignity’ of God consists in godhead itself, wisdom, power, goodness, judgment, justice, strength, mercy, truth, creativeness, 167 "Entvota is the opposite of Evvota, ‘the intuitive idea.’ It means an “afterthought,” and, with the notion of unnecessary addition, a ‘conceit.’ Here it is applied to conventional, or not purely natural difference. See Introduction to Book XIII. for the fuller meaning of Ertvoua.
168 pr 5éxorto. This use of the optative, where the subjunctive with éav might have been expected, is one of the few instances in Gregory’s Greek of declension from Classic usage; in the latter, when €1 with the optative does denote subjective possibility, it is only when the condition is conceived of as of frequent repetition, e.g. 1 Peter iii. 14. The optative often in this Greek of the fourth century invades the province of the subjunctive.
a He declares falsely that 'the manner of the generation is to be known from...domination, invisibility, everlastingness, and every other quality named in the inspired writings to magnify his glory; and we affirm that everyone of them is properly and inalienably found in the Son, recognizing difference only in respect of unoriginateness; and even that we do not exclude the Son from, according to all its meanings. But let no carping critic attack this statement as if we were attempting to exhibit the Very Son as ungenerate; for we hold that one who maintains that is no less impious than an Anomcean. But since the meanings of ‘origin’ are various, and suggest many ideas, there are some of them in which the title ee When, for instance, this word has the ‘unoriginate’ is not inapplicable to the Son meaning of ‘deriving existence from no cause whatever,’ then we confess that it is peculiar to the Father; but when the question is about ‘origin’ in its other meanings (since any creature or time or order has an origin), then we attribute the being superior to origin to the Son as well, and we believe that that whereby all things were made is beyond the origin of creation, and the idea of time, and the sequence of order. So He, Who on the ground of His subsistence is not without an origin, possessed in every other view an undoubted unoriginateness; and while the Father is unoriginate and Ungenerate, the Son is unoriginate in the way we have said, though not ungenerate.
What, then, is that native dignity of the Father which he is going to look at in order to infer thereby the ‘manner of the generation.’ “His not being generated, most certainly,” he will reply. If then, all those names with which we have learnt to magnify God’s glory are useless and meaningless to you, Eunomius, the mere going through the list of such expressions is a gratuitous and superfluous task; none of these other words, you say, expresses the intrinsic worth of the God over all. But if there is a peculiar force fitting our conceptions of the Deity in each of these words, the intrinsic dignities of God must plainly be viewed in connexion with this list, and the likeness of the two beings will be thereby proved; if, that is, the characters inalienable from the beings are an index of the subjects of those characters. The characters of each being are found to be the same; and so the identity on the score of being of the two subjects of these identical dignities is shown most clearly. For if the variation in a single name is to be held to be the index of an alien being, how much more should the identity of these countless names avail to prove community of nature!
What, then, is the reason why the other names should all be neglected, and generation be indicated by the means of one alone? Why do they pronounce this “Ungeneracy’ to be the only intrinsic character in the Father, and thrust all the rest aside? It is in order that they may establish their mischievous mode!”?
of unlikeness of Father and Son, by this contrast as regards the begotten. But we shall find that this attempt of theirs, when we come to test it in its proper place, is equally feeble, unfounded, and nugatory as the preceding attempts.
169 un dmeuqatverv 170 See Note on ’Ayévvntog, p. 100.
al He declares falsely that 'the manner of the generation is to be known from...
Still, that all his reasonings point this way, is shown by the sequel, in which he praises himself for having fittingly adopted this method for the proof of his blasphemy, and yet for not having all at once divulged his intention, nor shocked the unprepared hearer with his impiety, before the concatenation of his delusive argument was complete, nor displayed this Ungeneracy as God’s being in the early part of his discourse, nor to weary us with talk about the difference of being. The following are his exact words: “Or was it right, as Basil commands, to begin with the thing to be proved, and to assert incoherently that the Ungeneracy is the being, and to talk about the difference or the sameness of nature?” Upon this he has a long intervening tirade, made up of scoffs and insulting abuse (such being the weapons which this thinker uses to defend his own doctrines), and then he resumes the argument, and turning upon his adversary, fixes upon him, forsooth, the blame of what he is saying, in these words; “For your party, before any others, are guilty of this offence; having partitioned out this same being between Begetter and Begotten; and so the scolding you have given is only a halter not to be eluded which you have woven for your own necks; justice, as might have been expected, records in your own words a verdict against yourselves.
Either you first conceive of the beings as sundered, and independent of each other!”!; and then bring down one of them, by generation, to the rank of Son, and contend that One who exists independently nevertheless was made by means of the Other existence; and so lay yourselves open to your own reproaches: for to Him whom you imagine as without generation you ascribe a generation by another:—or else you first allow one single causeless being, and then marking this out by an act of causation into Father and Son, you declare that this nongenerated being came into existence by means of itself.”
171 dvapxws.
The Passage where he attacks the wt _, and the contention in answer...§34. The Passage where he attacks the ‘Owoovotov, and the contention in answer to it.
I will omit to speak of the words which occur before this passage which has been quoted. They contain merely shameless abuse of our Master and Father in God, and nothing bearing on the matter in hand. But on the passage itself, as he advances by the device of this terrible dilemma a double-edged refutation, we cannot be silent; we must accept the intellectual challenge, and fight for the Faith with all the power we have, and show that the formidable two-edged sword which he has sharpened is feebler than a make-believe in a scene-painting.
He attacks the community of substance with two suppositions; he says that we either name as Father and as Son two independent principles drawn out parallel to each other, and then say that one of these existencies is produced by the other existence: or else we say that one and the same essence is conceived of, participating in both names in turn, both being!” Father, and becoming Son, and itself produced in generation from itself. I put this in my own words, thereby not misinterpreting his thought, but only correcting the tumid exaggeration of its expression, in such a way as to reveal his meaning by clearer words and afford a comprehensive view of it. Having blamed us for want of polish and for having brought to the controversy an insufficient amount of learning, he decks out his own work in such a glitter of style, and passes the nail’, to use his own phrase, so often over his own sentences, and makes his periods so smart with this elaborate prettiness, that he captivates the reader at once with the attractions of language; such amongst many others is the passage we have just recited by way of preface. We will, by leave, again recite it. “And so the scolding you have given is only a halter, not to be eluded, which you have woven for your own necks; justice, as might have been expected, records in your own words a verdict against yourselves.”
Observe these flowers of the old Attic; what polished brilliance of diction plays over his composition; what a delicate and subtle charm of style is in bloom there! However, let this be as people think. Our course requires us again to turn to the thought in those words; let us plunge once more into the phrases of this pamphleteer. “Either you conceive of the beings as separated and independent of each other, and then bring down one of them, by generation, to the rank of Son, and contend that One who exists independently nevertheless was made by means of the Other existence.” That is enough for the present. He says, then, that we preach!”4 two causeless Beings. How can this man, who is always accusing us of levelling and confusing, assert this from our believing, as we do, in a single substance of Both. If two natures, alien to each other on the score of their being, were preached by our Faith, just as it is preached by the Anomecean school, then there would be good reason for thinking that this distinction of natures led to the supposition of two causeless beings. But if, as is the 172 Reading oboav for obotav of Oehler and Migne. 173 éovvyxiler 174 mpeofevetv. So Lucian. Diog. Laert., and Origen passim.
ei The Passage where he attacks the wt _, and the contention in answer...
case, we acknowledge one nature with the differences of Person, if, while the Father is believed in, the Son also is glorified, how can such a Faith be misrepresented by our opponents as preaching Two First Causes? Then he says, ‘of these two causes, one is lowered’ by us ‘to the rank of Son.’ Let him point out one champion of such a doctrine; whether he can convict any single person of talking like this, or only knows of such a doctrine as taught anywhere at all in the Church, we will hold our peace. For who is so wild in his reasonings, and so bereft of reflection as, after speaking of Father and Son, to imagine in spite of that two ungenerate beings: and then again to suppose that the One of them has come into being by means of the Other? Besides, what logical necessity does he show for pushing our teaching towards such suppositions? By what arguments does he show that such an absurdity must result from it? If indeed he adduced one single article of our Faith, and then, whether as a quibble or with a real force of demonstration, made this criticism upon it, there might have been some reason for his doing so with a view to invalidate that article. But when there is not, and never can be such a doctrine in the Church, when neither a teacher of it nor a hearer of it is to be found, and the absurdity cannot be shown, either, to be the strict logical consequence of anything, I cannot understand the meaning of his fighting thus with shadows.
It is just as if some phenzy-struck person supposed himself to be grappling with an imaginary combatant, and then, having with great efforts thrown himself down, thought that it was his foe who was lying there; our clever pamphleteer is in the same state; he feigns suppositions which we know nothing about, and he fights with the shadows which are sketched by the workings of his own brain.
For I challenge him to say why a believer in the Son as having come into being from the Father must advance to the opinion that there are two First Causes; and let him tell us who is most guilty of this establishment of two First Causes; one who asserts that the Son is falsely so named, or one who insists that, when we call Him that, the name represents a reality? The first, rejecting a real generation of the Son, and affirming simply that He exists, would be more open to the suspicion of making Him a First Cause, if he exists indeed, but not by generation: whereas the second, making the representative sign of the Person of the Onlybegotten to consist in subsisting generatively from the Father, cannot by any possibility be drawn into the error of supposing the Son to be Ungenerate. And yet as long as, according to you thinkers, the non-generation of the Son by the Father is to be held, the Son Himself will be properly called Ungenerate in one of the many meanings of the Ungenerate; seeing that, as some things come into existence by being born and others by being fashioned, nothing prevents our calling one of the latter, which does not subsist by generation, an Ungenerate, looking only to the idea of generation; and this your account, defining, as it does, our Lord to be a creature, does establish about Him. So, my very learned sirs, it is in your view, not ours, when it is thus followed out, that the Only-begotten can be named Ungenerate: The Passage where he attacks the wt _, and the contention in answer...and you will find that “justice,”—whatever you mean by that,—records in your own words!”> a verdict against us.
It is easy also to find mud in his words after that to cast upon this execrable teaching. For the other horn of his dilemma partakes in the same mental delusion; he says, “or else you first allow one single causeless being, and then marking this out by an act of generation into Father and Son, you declare that this non-generated being came into existence by means of itself.” What is this new and marvellous story? How is one begotten by oneself, having oneself for father, and becoming one’s own son? What dizziness and delusion is here? It is like supposing the roof to be turning down below one’s feet, and the floor above one’s head; it is like the mental state of one with his senses stupified with drink, who shouts out persistently that the ground does not stand still beneath, and that the walls are disappearing, and that everything he sees is whirling round and will not keep still. Perhaps our pamphleteer had such a tumult in his soul when he wrote; if so, we must pity him rather than abhor him.
For who is so out of hearing of our divine doctrine, who is so far from the mysteries of the Church, as to accept such a view as this to the detriment of the Faith. Rather, it is hardly enough to say, that no one ever dreamed of such an absurdity to its detriment. Why, in the case of human nature, or any other entity falling within the grasp of the senses who, when he hears of a community of substance, dreams either that all things that are compared together on the ground of substance are without a cause or beginning, or that something comes into existence out of itself, at once producing and being produced by itself?
The first man, and the man born from him, received their being in a different way; the latter by copulation, the former from the moulding of Christ Himself; and yet, though they are thus believed to be two, they are inseparable in the definition of their being, and are not considered as two beings, without beginning or cause, running parallel to each other; nor can the existing one be said to be generated by the existing one, or the two be ever thought of as one in the monstrous sense that each is his own father, and his own son; but it is because the one and the other was a man that the two have the same definition of being; each was mortal, reasoning, capable of intuition and of science. If, then, the idea of humanity in Adam and Abel does not vary with the difference of their origin, neither the order nor the manner of their coming into existence making any difference in their nature, which is the same in both, according to the testimony of every one in his senses, and no one, not greatly needing treatment for insanity, would deny it; what necessity is there that against the divine nature we should admit this strange thought? Having heard of Father and Son from the Truth, we 175 your own words, i.e. not ours, as you say. The Codex of Turin has toig nuetépois, and npiv above: but Oehler has wisely followed that of Venice. Eunomius had said of Basil’s party ($34) ‘justice records in your own words a verdict against yourselves.’ ‘No,’ Gregory answers; ‘your words (interpreting our doctrine) alone lend themselves to that.’ But to change xa’ nudv of the Codd. also to ka’ budv would supply a still better sense.
al The Passage where he attacks the wt __, and the contention in answer...
are taught in those two subjects the oneness of their nature; their natural relation to each other expressed by those names indicates that nature; and so do Our Lord’s own words. For when He said, “I and My Father are one!’°,” He conveys by that confession of a Father exactly the truth that He Himself is not a first cause, at the same time that He asserts by His union with the Father their common nature; so that these words of His secure our faith from the taint of heretical error on either side: for Sabellius has no ground for his confusion of the individuality of each Person, when the Only-begotten has so distinctly marked Himself off from the Father in those words, “I and My Father;” and Arius finds no confirmation of his doctrine of the strangeness of either nature to the other, since this oneness of both cannot admit distinction in nature. For that which is signified in these words by the oneness of Father and Son is nothing else but what belongs to them on the score of their actual being; 77 their nature may without error be set down as shared in by all created beings. For instance, Our all the other moral excellences which are to be observed in them as over and above Lord is called merciful and pitiful by the prophet’’”, and He wills us to be and to be called the same; “Be ye therefore merciful!”’,” and “Blessed are the merciful'®°,” and many such passages. If, then, any one by diligence and attention has modelled himself according to the divine will, and become kind and pitiful and compassionate, or meek and lowly of heart, such as many of the saints are testified to have become in the pursuit of such excellences, does it follow that they are therefore one with God, or united to Him by virtue of any one of them? Not so. That which is not in every respect the same, cannot be ‘one’ with him whose nature thus varies from it. Accordingly, a man becomes ‘one’ with another, when in will, as our Lord says, they are ‘perfected into one!®!? this union of wills being added to the connexion of nature. So also the Father and Son are one, the community of nature and the community of will running, in them, into one. But if the Son had been joined in wish only to the Father, and divided from Him in His nature, how is it that we find Him testifying to His oneness with the Father, when all the time He was sundered from Him in the point most proper to Him of all?
177 doa En1WewpeEitan TH PvOEL. 178 Psalm ciii. 8.
180 Matthewv. 7.