Against Eunomius

Does he, by what still remains, make at all more secure this headless and rootless statement of his, in which, in its earliest stage, nothing was laid down that had any force with regard to the point he is trying to establish? Or does the rest also cling to the same folly, not deriving its strength from any support it gets from argument, but setting out its exposition of blasphemy with vague details like the recital of dreams? He says (and this he subjoins to what I have already quoted)— “Having its generation without intervention, and preserving indivisible its relation to its Generator, Maker, and Creator.” Well, if we were to leave alone the absence of intervention and of division, and look at the meaning of the words as it stands by itself, we shall find that everywhere his absurd teaching is cast upon the ears of those whom he deceives, without corroboration from a single argument. “Its Generator, and Maker, and Creator,” he says. These names, though they seem to be three, include the sense of but two concepts, since two of the words are equivalent in meaning. For to make is the same as to create, but generation is another thing distinct from those spoken of. Now, seeing that the result of the signification of the words is to divide the ordinary apprehension of men into different ideas, what argument demonstrates to us that making is the same thing with generation, to the end that we may accommodate the one essence to this difference of terms? For so long as the ordinary significance of the words holds, and no argument is found to transfer the sense of the terms to an opposite meaning, it is not possible that any one nature should be divided between the conception of “product of making,” and that of “product of generation.” Since each of these terms, used by itself, has a meaning of its own, we must also suppose the relative conjunction in which they stand to be appropriate and germane to the terms. For all other relative terms have their connection, not with what is foreign and heterogeneous, but, even if the correlative term be suppressed, we hear spontaneously, together with the primary word, that which is linked with it, as in the case of “maker,” “slave,” “friend,” “son,” and so forth. For all names that are considered as relative to another, present to us, by the mention of them, each its proper and closely connected relationship with that which it declares, while they avoid all mixture of that which is heterogeneous. For neither is the name of “maker” linked with the word “son,” nor the term “slave” referred to the term “maker,” nor does “friend” present to us a “slave,” nor “son” a “master,” but we recognize clearly and distinctly the connection of each of these with its correlative, conceiving by the word “friend” another friend; by “slave,” a master; by “maker,” work; by “son,” a father. In the same way, then, “product of generation” has its proper relative sense; with the “product of generation,” surely, is linked the generator, and with the “product of creation” the creator; and we must certainly, if we are not prepared by a substitution of names to introduce a confusion of things, preserve for each of the relative terms that which it properly connotes.

Now, seeing that the tendency of the meaning of these words is manifest, how comes it that one who advances his doctrine by the aid of logical system failed to perceive in these names their proper relative sense? But he thinks that he is linking on the “product of generation” to “maker,” and the “product of making” to “generator,” by saying that the essence of the Son “admits for itself the appellations of 'product of generation,' 'product of making,' and 'product of creation,'” and “preserves indivisible its relation to its Generator, Maker, and Creator.” For it is contrary to nature, that a single thing should be split up into different relations. But the Son is properly related to the Father, and that which is begotten to him that begot it, while the “product of making” has its relation to its “maker”; save if one might consider some inexact use, in some undistinguishing way of common parlance, to overrule the strict signification.

By what reasoning then is it, and by what arguments, according to that invincible logic of his, that he wins back the opinion of the mass of men, and follows out at his pleasure this line of thought, that as the God Who is over all is conceived and spoken of both as “Creator” and as “Father,” the Son has a close connection with both titles, being equally called both “product of creation” and “product of generation”? For as customary accuracy of speech distinguishes between names of this kind, and applies the name of “generation” in the case of things generated from the essence itself, and understands that of “creation” of those things which are external to the nature of their maker, and as on this account the Divine doctrines, in handing down the knowledge of God, have delivered to us the names of “Father” and “Son,” not those of “Creator” and “work,” that there might arise no error tending to blasphemy (as might happen if an appellation of the latter kind repelled the Son to the position of an alien and a stranger), and that the impious doctrines which sever the Only-begotten from essential affinity with the Father might find no entrance— seeing all this, I say, he who declares that the appellation of “product of making” is one befitting the Son, will safely say by consequence that the name of “Son” is properly applicable to that which is the product of making; so that, if the Son is a “product of making,” the heaven is called “Son,” and the individual things that have been made are, according to our author, properly named by the appellation of “Son.” For if He has this name, not because He shares in nature with Him that begot Him, but is called Son for this reason, that He is created, the same argument will permit that a lamb, a dog, a frog, and all things that exist by the will of their maker, should be named by the title of “Son.” If, on the other hand, each of these is not a Son and is not called God, by reason of its being external to the nature of the Son, it follows, surely, that He Who is truly Son is Son, and is confessed to be God by reason of His being of the very nature of Him that begot Him. But Eunomius abhors the idea of generation, and excludes it from the Divine doctrine, slandering the term by his fleshly speculations. Well, our discourse, in what precedes, showed sufficiently on this point that, as the Psalmist says, “they are afraid where no fear is.” For if it was shown in the case of men that not all generation exists by way of passion, but that that which is material is by passion, while that which is spiritual is pure and incorruptible, (for that which is begotten of the Spirit is spirit and not flesh, and in spirit we see no condition that is subject to passion,) since our author thought it necessary to estimate the Divine power by means of examples among ourselves, let him persuade himself to conceive from the other mode of generation the passionless character of the Divine generation. Moreover, by mixing up together these three names, of which two are equivalent, he thinks that his readers, by reason of the community of sense in the two phrases, will jump to the conclusion that the third is equivalent also. For since the appellation of “product of making,” and “product of creation,” indicate that the thing made is external to the nature of the maker, he couples with these the phrase, “product of generation,” that this too may be interpreted along with those above mentioned. But argument of this sort is termed fraud and falsehood and imposition, not a thoughtful and skilful demonstration. For that only is called demonstration which shows what is unknown from what is acknowledged; but to reason fraudulently and fallaciously, to conceal your own reproach, and to confound by superficial deceits the understanding of men, as the Apostle says, “of corrupt minds,” this no sane man would call a skilful demonstration.