Against Eunomius 2 part 4/4

but how great is the impiety? He names the essence of the Father unmastered and free (if indeed that which bows beneath the law of nature is unmastered);

but declares that of the Only-begotten to be, by contrast, servile, and thereby takes away the equality of honor of the nature.

For there being two things — creation and Godhead;

and creation being ranged in servitude and obedience, but Godhead being ruling and lordly;

he who takes away the dignity of lordship, and casts Him down into the lowliness of servitude, is he not plainly thereby also showing Him to be in the same rank as all creation? For surely this is no honor to Him, if He shall excel His fellow-servants.

But if He be not confessed as King and Lord — not by a diminution of nature, but accepting the subjection by the goodness of His choice;

this is grievous and dreadful, and bears destruction to those who deny it.

[EUN.] That the essence of God, following the laws of nature, neither admits the comparison with another, and grants us to conceive its activity as consistent with and befitting its own dignity.

[BAS.] This was said by him for the demonstration of the estrangement of the Only-begotten from the Father;

but it establishes our argument.

For if the essence of God grants us to conceive also its activity as consistent with and befitting its own dignity, and the dignity is unbegottenness, as Eunomius thinks;

and the same is also essence, according to their argument, while the activity of God is the Only-begotten, or the image of the activity;

and this also according to their argument;

so that to contradict them would be superfluous, since they have nothing.

Or I would prize it greatly that they deny this blasphemy;

but, since they have said it, let us reason from the very things said by them: that unbegottenness pertains to the dignity of God, and the same is also essence, and the activity is consistent with and befitting the dignity of God, and this activity is Christ according to their supposition, He will therefore be proper and befitting to the essence of God.

And of these things nothing is ours.

For having put together their very words, we make the demonstration upon them.

Upon the essence of God, he says, follows the dignity;

with the dignity the activity is proportionate;

the image of the activity is the Only-begotten;

and conversely, if the Only-begotten is the image of the activity, and the activity is of the dignity, and the dignity of the essence, the Only-begotten will be the image of the essence.

Thus also the very workers of falsehood themselves, often, being constrained by the truth, bear witness to the truth even against their will.

Since even the demons did not do the work of evangelists, but, being unable to look full at the power of the truth

'We know You, who You are, the Holy One of God.'

But let us look also at what follows.

{EUN.} For he says: If someone, examining things from the created works, were led up from these to the essences—finding the Son to be a thing made by the Unbegotten, and the Paraclete by the Only-begotten, and being convinced of the difference of activity from the superiority of the Only-begotten—he obtains an indisputable demonstration of the difference also in essence.

{BAS.} First, then, how it is possible to infer the essences from the created works, I for my part do not see.

For the things made are indicative of power, wisdom, and skill, but not of the essence itself.

Nor do they necessarily present the whole power of the maker, since the craftsman may sometimes not put forth all his strength in his works, but often employs slackened tension in the works of his art.

But even if he should rouse his whole power upon the work, even so it would be possible to measure his strength through the works, but not to grasp the essence, whatever it may be.

But if, on account of the simplicity and non-composite nature of the divine nature, he posits the essence as running together with the power, and on account of the goodness present in God says that the whole power of the Father was moved to the begetting of the Son, and again the whole power of the Only-begotten to the subsistence of the Holy Spirit—so that from the Spirit the power of the Only-begotten is contemplated, and together with it the essence, and from the Only-begotten again the power and essence of the Father is grasped—

then from the very things by which he attempted to establish the unlikeness of essence, from these he was shown to be constructing the likeness.

For if the power has nothing in common with the essence, how was one led through the created works—which are the results of power—to the apprehension of it? But if essence and power are the same, then that which characterizes the power will surely also characterize the essence.

So that the created works, as you yourself say, lead not to the unlikeness of essence, but to the exactness of the likeness.

Yet again this very undertaking establishes our argument rather than his own.

For either he has nowhere to furnish the demonstrations of what he has said, or, if he should take his images from human things, he will find that we come to a conception of the essence not from the works of the craftsman, but recognize the nature of the begetter from the begotten.

For it is not possible to grasp the essence of the builder from the house;

yet from the offspring it is easy to conceive the nature of the begetter.

So that if the Only-begotten is a created thing, he does not present to us the essence of the Father;

but if he makes the Father known to us through himself, he is not a created thing, but a true Son, and the image of God, and the express character of the subsistence (hypostasis).

And how great is the insertion of his blasphemy! Despising the threat in the Gospels, which the Lord held out as most fearful against those who blaspheme the Holy Spirit, he calls the Holy Spirit a created thing;

nearly not even granting it to be a living being, since this appellation for the most part fits inanimate things.

For surely it is not the case that, because he anticipated the Lord with this blasphemy, we should relax anything of the indignation that is due.

For this is no mitigation of the impiety, but an addition to the condemnation.

Since indeed the Lord, out of goodness, forgave the blasphemy against himself;

but he declared that the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit was inescapable for those who dared it.

He, then, is the first of those who, since the proclamation of true religion was announced, have grown upon the truth like a parasite, to have dared to utter this word concerning the Spirit.

Indeed, up to this day we have not heard anyone call the Holy Spirit a created thing, nor have we found this appellation in the writings left by them.

{EUN.} If someone were led up from the created works to the apprehension of the essence, he will find the Son to be a thing made by the Unbegotten, and the Paraclete by the

Only-begotten.

{BAS.} This is another mode of impiety:

to blaspheme doubly in one utterance, and, taking the nullification of the Holy Spirit as though agreed upon, to set out from there toward the demonstration of the diminution of the Only-begotten.

And, as it seems, “The heavens declare the glory of God,”

but the Holy Spirit announces the diminution of the glory of the Only-begotten!

And the Lord, speaking concerning the Paraclete, says, “He will glorify me”;

but this accusing tongue declares that the Spirit is a hindrance to the Son's comparison with the Father.

For since, he says, the Son is the maker of the Spirit (may you be merciful to us, Lord, concerning what is being said), and this is of such a kind as to add no dignity to the one who created, on this account he is not even worthy to be compared with the Father, being deprived of equality of honor in dignity because of the worthlessness of the things he made.

Have you ever heard a more grievous blasphemy? Has anyone ever so conspicuously fallen into the inescapable judgment of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit? It belonged to Montanus alone to rage so against the Spirit, both to insult it with lowly names and to so debase its nature as to say that disrepute attaches to the one who made it.

Rather, even he would have shrunk from saying anything lowly concerning the Spirit, lest he should cast down his own conceit.

But concerning this we will speak at leisure.

But that following point—to whom of all is it unclear, that no activity of the Son is severed from the Father, nor is there anything among existing things belonging to the Son which is alienated from the Father? For, he says, “All mine are yours, and yours are mine.”

How then does he attribute the cause of the Spirit to the Only-begotten alone, and take its creation as an accusation against his nature? If, then, setting two principles over against one another, he says these things, he will be crushed along with Mani and Marcion;

but if he derives existing things from one source, then that which is said to have come into being from the Son has its reference back to the first cause.

So that even if we believe all things to have been brought into being through the Word of God, yet we do not take away that God, the God of all, is the cause of all.

And how does he not manifestly run the risk of dividing the Spirit from God? since the Apostle delivers this to us in conjunction, now saying “of Christ,” now “of God,” in what he writes:

“But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, this one is not his”;

“But you have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is from God”;

and this is the Lord calling it the Spirit of truth;

since he himself is the truth, and it proceeds from the Father.

But this man, for the abolishing of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ, removes it from the Father, and assigns it especially to the Only-begotten for the abolishing of his glory, insulting him, as he supposes, while awaiting no requital for his wicked doctrines in the day of recompense.