Against Eunomius

With regard to his attempting to show that we say the Only-begotten God is ungenerate, it is as though he should say that we actually define the Father to be begotten: for either statement is of the same absurdity, or rather of the same blasphemous character. If, therefore, he has made up his mind to slander us, let him add the other charge as well, and spare nothing by which it may be in his power more violently to exasperate his hearers against us. But if one of these charges is withheld because its calumnious nature is apparent, why is the other made?

For it is just the same thing, as we have said, so far as the impiety goes, to call the Son ungenerate and to call the Father generated. Now if any such phrase can be found in our writings, in which the Son is spoken of as ungenerate, we shall give the final vote against ourselves: but if he is fabricating false charges and calumnies at his pleasure, making any fictitious statement he pleases to slander our doctrines, this fact may serve with sensible men for an evidence of our orthodoxy, that while truth itself fights on our side, he brings forward a lie to accuse our doctrine and makes up an indictment for unorthodoxy that has no relation to our statements.

To these charges, however, we can give a concise answer. As we judge that man accursed who says that the Only-begotten God is ungenerate, let him in turn anathematize the man who lays it down that He who was in the beginning “once was not.” For by such a method it will be shown who brings his charges truly, and who calumniously. But if we deny his accusations, if, when we speak of a Father, we understand as implied in that word a Son also, and if, when we use the name “Son,” we declare that He really is what He is called, being shed forth by generation from the ungenerate Light, how can the calumny of those who persist that we say the Only-begotten is ungenerate fail to be manifest?

Yet we shall not, because we say that He exists by generation, therefore admit that He “once was not.” For every one knows that the contradiction between “being” and “not being” is immediate, so that the affirmation of one of these terms is absolutely the destruction of the other, and that, just as “being” is the same in regard to every time at which any of the things that “are” is supposed to have its existence (for the sky, and stars, and sun, and the rest of the things that “are,” are not more in a state of being now than they were yesterday, or the day before, or at any previous time), so the meaning of “not being” expresses non-existence equally at every time, whether one speaks of it in reference to what is earlier or to what is later.

For any of the things that do not exist is no more in a state of “not being” now than if it were non-existent before, but the idea of “not being” is one applied to that which “is not” at any distance of time. And for this reason, in speaking of living creatures, while we use different words to denote the dissolution into a state of “not being” of that which has been, and the condition of non-existence of that which has never had an entrance into being, and say either that a thing has never come into being at all, or that which was generated has died, yet by either form of speech we equally represent by our words “non-existence.”

For as day is bounded on each side by night, yet the parts of the night which bound it are not named alike, but we speak of one as “after night-fall,” and of the other as “before dawn,” while that which both phrases denote is night, so, if any one looks on that which is not in contrast to that which is, he will give different names to that state which is antecedent to formation and to that which follows the dissolution of what was formed, yet will conceive as one the condition which both phrases signify— the condition which is antecedent to formation and the condition following on dissolution after formation.

For the state of “not being” of that which has not been generated, and of that which has died, save for the difference of the names, are the same—with the exception of the account which we take of the hope of the resurrection. Now since we learn from Scripture that the Only-begotten God is the Prince of Life, the very life, and light, and truth, and all that is honourable in word or thought, we say that it is absurd and impious to contemplate, in conjunction with Him Who really is, the opposite conception, whether of dissolution tending to corruption, or of non-existence before formation: but as we extend our thought in every direction to what is to follow, or to what was before the ages, we nowhere pause in our conceptions at the condition of “not being,” judging it to tend equally to impiety to cut short the Divine being by non-existence at any time whatever.

For it is the same thing to say that the immortal life is mortal, that the truth is a lie, that light is darkness, and that that which is is not. He, accordingly, who refuses to allow that He will at some future time cease to be, will also refuse to allow that He “once was not,” avoiding, according to our view, the same impiety on either hand: for, as no death cuts short the endlessness of the life of the Only-begotten, so, as we look back, no period of nonexistence will terminate His life in its course towards eternity, that that which in reality is may be clear of all community with that which in reality is not. For this cause the Lord, desiring that His disciples might be far removed from this error (that they might never, by themselves searching for something antecedent to the existence of the Only-begotten, be led by their reasoning to the idea of non-existence), says, “I am in the Father, and the Father in Me,” in the sense that neither is that which is not conceived in that which is, nor that which is in that which is not.

And here the very order of the phrase explains the orthodox doctrine; for because the Father is not of the Son, but the Son of the Father, therefore He says, “I am in the Father,” showing the fact that He is not of another but of Him, and then reverses the phrase to, “and the Father in Me,” indicating that he who, in his curious speculation, passes beyond the Son, passes also beyond the conception of the Father: for He who is in anything cannot be found outside of that in which He is: so that the man who, while not denying that the Father is in the Son, yet imagines that he has in any degree apprehended the Father as external to the Son, is talking idly.

Idle too are the wanderings of our adversaries' fighting about shadows touching the matter of “ungeneracy,” proceeding without solid foundation by means of nonentities. Yet if I am to bring more fully to light the whole absurdity of their argument, let me be allowed to spend a little longer on this speculation. As they say that the Only-begotten God came into existence “later,” after the Father, this “unbegotten” of theirs, whatever they imagine it to be, is discovered of necessity to exhibit with itself the idea of evil.

Who knows not, that, just as the non-existent is contrasted with the existent, so with every good thing or name is contrasted the opposite conception, as “bad” with “good,” “falsehood” with “truth,” “darkness” with “light,” and all the rest that are similarly opposed to one another, where the opposition admits of no middle term, and it is impossible that the two should co-exist, but the presence of the one destroys its opposite, and with the withdrawal of the other takes place the appearance of its contrary?