Against Eunomius

How comes it, therefore, that Eunomius, when the Divine generation is the subject for discourse, leaves his subject, and discusses at length the things of earth, when on this matter we have no dispute with him? Surely our craftsman's aim is clear—that by the slanderous insinuation of passion he may raise an objection to the generation of the Lord. And here I pass by the blasphemous nature of his view, and admire the man for his acuteness—how mindful he is of his own zealous endeavour, who, having by his previous statements established the theory that the Son must be, and must be called, a “product of generation,” now contends for the view that we ought not to entertain regarding Him the conception of generation. For, if all generation, as this author imagines, has linked with it the condition of passion, we are hereby absolutely compelled to admit that what is foreign to passion is alien also from generation: for if these things, passion and generation, are considered as conjoined, He that has no share in the one would not have any participation in the other. How then does he call Him a “product” by reason of His generation, of Whom he tries to show by the arguments he now uses, that He was not generated? And for what cause does he fight against our master, who counsels us in matters of Divine doctrine not to presume in name-making, but to confess that He is generated without transforming this conception into the formula of a name, so as to call Him Who is generated “a product of generation,” as this term is properly applied in Scripture to things inanimate, or to those which are mentioned “as a figure of wickedness”? When we speak of the propriety of avoiding the use of the term “product,” he prepares for action that invincible rhetoric of his, and takes also to support him his frigid grammatical phraseology, and by his skilful misuse of names, or equivocation, or whatever one may properly call his processes— by these means, I say, he brings his syllogisms to their conclusion, “not refusing to call Him Who is begotten by the name of 'product of generation.'” Then, as soon as we admit the term, and proceed to examine the conception involved in the name, on the theory that thereby is vindicated the community of essence, he again retracts his own words, and contends for the view that the “product of generation” is not generated, raising an objection by his foul account of bodily generation, against the pure and Divine and passionless generation of the Son, on the ground that it is not possible that the two things, the true relationship to the Father, and exemption of His nature from passion, should be found to coincide in God, but that, if there were no passion, there would be no generation, and that, if one should acknowledge the true relationship, he would thereby, in admitting generation, certainly admit passion also.

Not thus speaks the sublime John, not thus that voice of thunder which proclaims the mystery of the Theology, who both names Him Son of God and purges his proclamation from every idea of passion. For behold how in the very beginning of his Gospel he prepares our ears, how great forethought is shown by the teacher that none of his hearers should fall into low ideas on the subject, slipping by ignorance into any incongruous conceptions. For in order to lead the untrained hearing as far away as possible from passion, he does not speak in his opening words of “Son,” or “Father,” or “generation,” that no one should either, on hearing first of all of a “Father,” be hurried on to the obvious signification of the word, or, on learning the proclamation of a “Son,” should understand that name in the ordinary sense, or stumble, as at a “stone of stumbling,” at the word “generation”; but instead of “the Father,” he speaks of “the Beginning”: instead of “was begotten,” he says “was”: and instead of “the Son,” he says “the Word”: and declares “In the Beginning was the Word.” What passion, pray, is to be found in these words, “beginning,” and “was,” and “Word”? Is “the beginning” passion? Does “was” imply passion? Does “the Word” exist by means of passion? Or are we to say, that as passion is not to be found in the terms used, so neither is affinity expressed by the proclamation? Yet how could the Word's community of essence, and real relationship, and coeternity with the Beginning, be more strongly shown by other words than by these? For he does not say, “Of the Beginning was begotten the Word,” that he may not separate the Word from the Beginning by any conception of extension in time, but he proclaims together with the Beginning Him also Who was in the Beginning, making the word “was” common to the Beginning and to the Word, that the Word may not linger after the Beginning, but may, by entering in together with the faith as to the Beginning, by its proclamation forestall our hearing, before this admits the Beginning itself in isolation. Then he declares, “And the Word was with God.” Once more the Evangelist fears for our untrained state, once more he dreads our childish and untaught condition: he does not yet entrust to our ears the appellation of “Father,” lest any of the more carnally minded, learning of “the Father,” may be led by his understanding to imagine also by consequence a mother. Neither does he yet name in his proclamation the Son; for he still suspects our customary tendency to the lower nature, and fears lest any, hearing of the Son, should humanize the Godhead by an idea of passion. For this reason, resuming his proclamation, he again calls him “the Word,” making this the account of His nature to you in your unbelief. For as your word proceeds from your mind, without requiring the intervention of passion, so here also, in hearing of the Word, you shall conceive that which is from something, and shall not conceive passion. Hence, once more resuming his proclamation, he says, “And the Word was with God.” O, how does he make the Word commensurate with God! rather, how does he extend the infinite in comparison with the infinite! “The Word was with God”— the whole being of the Word, assuredly, with the whole being of God. Therefore, as great as God is, so great, clearly, is the Word also that is with Him; so that if God is limited, then will the Word also, surely, be subject to limitation. But if the infinity of God exceeds limit, neither is the Word that is contemplated with Him comprehended by limits and measures. For no one would deny that the Word is contemplated together with the entire Godhead of the Father, so that he should make one part of the Godhead appear to be in the Word, and another destitute of the Word. Once more the spiritual voice of John speaks, once more the Evangelist in his proclamation takes tender care for the hearing of those who are in childhood: not yet have we so much grown by the hearing of his first words as to hear of “the Son,” and yet remain firm without being moved from our footing by the influence of the wonted sense. Therefore our herald, crying once more aloud, still proclaims in his third utterance “the Word,” and not “the Son,” saying, “And the Word was God.” First he declared wherein He was, then with whom He was, and now he says what He is, completing, by his third repetition, the object of his proclamation. For he says, “It is no Word of those that are readily understood, that I declare to you, but God under the designation of the Word.” For this Word, that was in the Beginning, and was with God, was not anything else besides God, but was also Himself God. And immediately the herald, reaching the full height of his lofty speech, declares that this God Whom his proclamation sets forth is He by Whom all things were made, and is life, and the light of men, and the true light that shines in darkness, yet is not obscured by the darkness, sojourning with His own, yet not received by His own: and being made flesh, and tabernacling, by means of the flesh, in man's nature. And when he has first gone through this number and variety of statements, he then names the Father and the Only-begotten, when there can be no danger that what has been purified by so many precautions should be allowed, in consequence of the sense of the word “Father,” to sink down to any meaning tainted with pollution, for, “we beheld His glory,” he says, “the glory as of the Only-begotten of the Father.”