Against Eunomius

Since, then, these kinds of generation, those, I mean, which arise as the result of some cause, and are recognized in our every-day experience, are also employed by Holy Scripture to convey its teaching concerning transcendent mysteries in such wise as each of them may reasonably be transferred to the expression of divine conceptions, we may now proceed to examine Eunomius' statement also, to find in what sense he accepts the meaning of “generation.” “Very Son,” he says, “not ungenerate, verily begotten before the worlds.”

One may, I think, pass quickly over the violence done to logical sequence in his distinction, as being easily recognizable by all. For who does not know that while the proper opposition is between Father and Son, between generate and ungenerate, he thus passes over the term “Father” and sets “ungenerate” in opposition to “Son,” whereas he ought, if he had any concern for truth, to have avoided diverting his phrase from the due sequence of relationship, and to have said, “Very Son, not Father”?

And in this way due regard would have been paid at once to piety and to logical consistency, as the nature would not have been rent asunder in making the distinction between the persons. But he has exchanged in his statement of his faith the true and scriptural use of the term “Father,” committed to us by the Word Himself, and speaks of the “Ungenerate” instead of the “Father,” in order that by separating Him from that close relationship towards the Son which is naturally conceived of in the title of Father, he may place Him on a common level with all created objects, which equally stand in opposition to the “ungenerate.”

“Verily begotten,” he says, “before the worlds.” Let him say of Whom He is begotten. He will answer, of course, “Of the Father,” unless he is prepared unblushingly to contradict the truth. But since it is impossible to detach the eternity of the Son from the eternal Father, seeing that the term “Father” by its very signification implies the Son, for this reason it is that he rejects the title Father and shifts his phrase to “ungenerate,” since the meaning of this latter name has no sort of relation or connection with the Son, and by thus misleading his readers through the substitution of one term for the other, into not contemplating the Son along with the Father, he opens up a path for his sophistry, paving the way of impiety by slipping in the term “ungenerate.”

For they who according to the ordinance of the Lord believe in the Father, when they hear the name of the Father, receive the Son along with Him in their thought, as the mind passes from the Son to the Father, without treading on an unsubstantial vacuum interposed between them. But those who are diverted to the title “ungenerate” instead of Father, get a bare notion of this name, learning only the fact that He did not at any time come into being, not that He is Father. Still, even with this mode of conception, the faith of those who read with discernment remains free from confusion.

For the expression “not to come into being” is used in an identical sense of all uncreated nature: and Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are equally uncreated. For it has ever been believed by those who follow the Divine word that all the creation, sensible and supramundane, derives its existence from the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. He who has heard that “by the word of the Lord were the heavens made, and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth,” neither understands by “word” mere utterance, nor by “breath” mere exhalation, but by what is there said frames the conception of God the Word and of the Spirit of God.

Now to create and to be created are not equivalent, but all existent things being divided into that which makes and that which is made, each is different in nature from the other, so that neither is that uncreated which is made, nor is that created which effects the production of the things that are made. By those then who, according to the exposition of the faith given us by our Lord Himself, have believed in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, it is acknowledged that each of these Persons is alike unoriginate, and the meaning conveyed by “ungenerate” does no harm to their sound belief: but to those who are dense and indefinite this term serves as a starting-point for deflection from sound doctrine.

For not understanding the true force of the term, that “ungenerate” signifies nothing more than “not having come into being,” and that “not coming into being” is a common property of all that transcends created nature, they drop their faith in the Father, and substitute for “Father” the phrase “ungenerate:” and since, as has been said, the Personal existence of the Only-begotten is not connoted in this name, they determine the existence of the Son to have commenced from some definite beginning in time, affirming (what Eunomius here adds to his previous statements) that He is called Son not without generation preceding His existence.