Dialogues on the Holy Trinity 1 part 5/23

Let, then, begetting according to nature and truth be set aside, seeing that it wholly and altogether introduces the necessity of passion, bringing effluence into that nature which is utterly above suffering and unharmed.

{A.} Then is this not clearly exactly what I said? For by whatever arguments they may contrive to make the subject mean whatever they wish, coloring it as it were with some dye, they shift these arguments into different shapes and easily incline them toward anything whatsoever—thinking it, I suppose, of no great account to differ in nothing from reeds—although surely they ought to love being firmly fixed, and ought to cast away, as useless and utterly counterfeit, being made like unto infants.

For infants, still being deprived of intellect and the best understanding, rush thoughtlessly toward anything that moves them;

while these men likewise seize without examination whatever comes into mind, and have honored every unsound and feeble argument.

But this, I think, is slavish, and belongs to a mind sick with somnolence.

'Brothers,' he says, 'do not become children in your minds, but be infants in malice, and become mature in your minds.' For to think less than one ought, and to fall short of what it would be fitting to attain of true knowledge — though counted among men, no longer adolescents and shallow of mind, but having already arrived at the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ — is surely not at all befitting saints;

but that it will bring a harm hard to wipe away upon whomever it should altogether settle in is not doubtful.

B: It could not be otherwise, for you speak rightly.

A: Do you wish, then, that we let these matters stand as they are in this regard, however they may be, and that we go on again to bring forth the truth in reply to their loose-tongued babblings? B: By all means.

For this is indeed also better.

A: The 'cause,' then, and the 'thing caused' — having seized upon these terms from I know not where, and naming them for us —

for surely they will not say they got them from the divine Scripture;

what then have they resolved to think? B: Indeed, you asked just now, when it was said that the cause is always in some way prior in conception and in existence to the thing caused;

and that what begets could never beget without passion and effluence.

And bringing these forward, they declared the Son to be in a lesser state than that in which the Father is, and they thought fit that he be second and, as it were, born late; and perhaps also impiously misnaming the very begetting itself as not true, they slander as spurious the phrase 'from the essence.'

A: Let them then tell us, when asked, this:

they have believed the Father to be the cause of the Son's being;

is it that he holds the rank of a maker and has brought him into being creatively, on equal terms with the creatures, or rather, not in this way, but will they agree with us that, according to the true manner of begetting, that which is begotten proceeds from his own essence? B: They speak of him as Father, that is, as Maker.

For God who is Most High, being simple in essence, in whatever way he may be conceived to create, in that same way he also begets.

For, he says, the fact that the activity is not of the same kind would surely, in every way, render one who is simple composite.

A: And indeed this is to churn everything upside down, and to pour together, without any composition at all, the easily distinguishable nature of things into utter confusion, and to bring into a common confluence — as into equal river-streams mingling in a ravine — those things which a long and precise argument separates from one another's quality;

for one of the wise men among the Greeks spoke thus.

For every argument, I think, will declare to us that creating is other than begetting.

I think it necessary that, in unreasonably attributing simplicity to the Father, we should not shake down toward absurd notions the reasoning that stands rightly and is well fixed in a fair opinion concerning him.

For if he creates just as he will beget, and both are conceived as the same thing, nothing distinguishing them into difference and into being otherwise, then I would in no way fear to say that of whatever he is the maker, of these he will surely also be the father, and everything made would be conceived also as his offspring.

This is indeed not easy, yet it is nevertheless available to those willing to reckon it out.

For there is nothing among existing things that will escape the principle of having been made.

But that even the things in the lowest and most degraded state belong wholly and altogether among existing things — who is there to deny it? Therefore God will be the father of all things, if indeed things stand thus in any case.

For if, as they suppose, in God and Father the creating and the begetting are truly indistinguishable and not otherwise, because of his simplicity in essence, then, in the first place, they render the holy Scripture idle chatter to us when it names the Son 'only-begotten' — the Son who, if what those on the opposing side say is true, would be counted among many brothers, or rather among all things together believed to exist, whether as one who happened to be begotten or as one brought forth into existence by creative activity.

And it would seem that even he himself is guilty of misspeaking — the great mystagogue for us, John — as though he had brought forth, as some secret thing, the word 'only-begotten' concerning the Son;

whom he also says is in the bosom of God and the Father, thereby showing, I think, that the begetting concerning him is not falsified;

and this — though it is a wise saying — would already carry us into rashness, as though daring to leap even against the Son himself.

For I would say that, though it was possible for him to shake off the unreasoning impulses of the Jews, and quite easily too, he himself will be caught whetting them against himself.

For why did he not rather say:

'I am the creature and handiwork of God' — instead of calling God his own Father, making himself equal to God? And what else ought he rather to have proclaimed in the synagogues:

'He who believes in the Son is not judged' — instead of, as would have been fitting and quite easy, calming the untamed envy of his hearers by saying:

'He who believes in the creature is not judged'? For I think that, if someone had heard him crying out these things, he would not have thought it offensive, nor would he have wished to stone him, nor, carrying him off to the brow of the mountain, would they have attempted to hurl him unreasonably over the cliffs.

And indeed, what did the wisest disciples do, holding an opinion of him that was, in every way, surely that of the Son and not that of a creature? For when, walking upon the crest of the wave, and having spread the fluid and easily-dispersed nature of the waters beneath his own feet by ineffable power, he traversed the broad sea, he gave the holy apostles an unaccustomed wonder — yet he embarked scarcely and willingly on a boat and sailed across in it, although it was quite easy for him, had he chosen to accomplish it, to be borne upon the waves along with them as well.

And already amazed, and having reflected upon his invincible authority, they worshiped, saying:

'Truly you are the Son of God.' Will they not then, in making the matter thus certain as if by oath, and having declared him truly to be the Son of God, rightly be accused as speaking falsehood, and, having erred from the truth, be caught and refuted? For if he is not the Son, sprung forth from the essence of the one who begot him, but rather a work made — tinted over with the semblance of sonship and having obtained the title in mere empty acclamations — on what grounds did they worship him? And why did the mystagogues and heralds of the truth call him Son? B: The argument stands most excellently for us.

A: And the divine and most holy Paul — though named by God a 'vessel of election,' and appointed a priestly minister to the nations and an exact steward of the mysteries of our Savior — what could he mean to signify when he comes crying out concerning the Son himself and the holy angels:

'Who, being the radiance of his glory and the exact image of his substance, and upholding all things by the word of his power, having made purification for sins, sat down at the right hand of Majesty on high, having become as much greater than the angels as he has inherited a more excellent name than they'? For to which of the angels did he ever say:

'You are my Son; today I have begotten you'?

'Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet'? Are they not all ministering spirits, sent out to serve for the sake of those who are about to inherit salvation? And again:

'the word proved valid, and every transgression and disobedience received a just penalty, how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?' For how, in general, could the Son be conceived, in relation both to us ourselves and to the holy angels, as the image of the ineffable glory, and indeed as the radiance of the substance of God and the Father, if he does not truly possess the power of having been begotten in the reality of the matter, but is merely gilded over with bare and empty words, being otherwise in nature and ranked together with created things? For nothing, it seems, would then any longer prevent the Father himself also from being reckoned among created things, and from needing to be conceived as originated, if the Son, who is his image and radiance, is himself an originated being.

And how then has he still inherited a more excellent name than the angels? For if, with God, begetting is equivalent to creating, it would surely be clear that whatever is reckoned in the rank of Son will, without distinction, also be a made thing, and whatever is truly numbered among creatures is no less also an offspring.

Why then does God still delay, as regards its being fitting perhaps, to say even to each of the holy angels:

and both terms flow together toward one and the same thing signified, and admit of a convergence into identity.

for this, it seems, is somehow how they think and express it to themselves.

A: But we shall say that it is not so;

for very great indeed is, for us, the difference both of the two terms and of the very thing itself.

Answer me, if it seems good to you, as I am eager to inquire.

A: John, the best and most exalted of our divine mystagogues, has written concerning the Son:

'He came to his own, and his own did not receive him;'

'but as many as received him, to them he gave the authority to become children of God.' Shall we then say that the grace of adoption has been granted to those who do not have the status of being reckoned as sons, or to those who have least need of receiving it, having been enriched with it from within and essentially, even should they perhaps not receive it from anyone? B: To those who do not have it.

For this, I think, is also true.

A: Then who, among all existing things, will be found altogether not having it, if begetting is nothing other than being created — or rather, if the two are one and the same, nothing at all distinguishing them into difference? For we shall then have to grant that everything that exists has been begotten, even if it was merely brought forth into being.

B: Has the Father, then, begotten us out of his own very nature? A: God and the Father has not begotten us out of his own nature;

however, whatever unfitting and impossible defect might appear to afflict us will surely not, by the same reasoning, be set up in opposition against the Son who is Son by nature as well.

For we, admittedly, have been created;

but he sprang forth from the essence of God and the Father; and it is toward him that we too are conformed, and, receiving in the rank of begetting the grace that comes from his kindness, we are ranked among the sons of God — obtaining the dignity from without, as it were adopted, being sons by adoption, formed after the true Son and called in to share the glory of the one who is Son by nature.

But there could be no adopted sons at all unless the one who is Son by nature pre-existed, and unless the true begetting had already, as the archetype, shown forth in itself the pattern for the image that comes afterward.

If, then, the Father has not truly begotten, precisely because in him begetting is not different from creating, then the very concept of the Son vanishes from our path, and the Father's nature is exposed as barren.

And likewise vanished is the hope of those who have received the faith.

For where, at all, is sonship any longer? And where is the resulting dignity, capable of restoring to a better state that which subsists among creatures, if the thing made is on equal terms and measure with the thing begotten, since, according to them, creation and begetting run together into one and the same thing? Would not one then say that these things are nonsense, and more shameful than what is already most shameful? B: Most certainly.

since, on their view, the truth of begetting does not entail that he must, in every way and altogether, be adorned with the glory of the one who begot him through complete likeness and equality — will they not then, in effect, openly declare that the glory befitting and inherent in the Creator extends also to the nature of created things, and that the dignity of the master has been attached to the slave? And indeed the divinely-inspired Paul writes:

'For to which of the angels did he ever say:'

'Sit at my right hand'? For on what account did God think it right that some should have allotted to them the most fitting glory in standing by and ministering, while he should glory in the highest thrones of the Godhead itself, and have as his fellow-councillor and co-enthroned one who is in no way of like nature to them? Some inclination, it seems, and will, underlying the matter, set the Father's authority to place the one in that estate, and the others in that in which they are — though they are not condemned.

For this is decreed for them: to stand without blame, and to be able to preserve their own proper order, running to and fro, above and below, ministering to God.

Has God and the Father, then, as would seem likely, done wrong in not permitting them also to be deemed worthy of the same honors? But this is by no means so.

For may we not be, like those heretics, bereft of the best understanding;

for very great indeed is that which lies between and immeasurably separates the begotten from the made.

And the one is Son, and, as being this, is co-enthroned;

while the others stand by, having been called into being by a creative act.

Why then do they blend together things that cannot be mixed, and try, contrary to reason, to bind into identity things so far removed from one another's kinship of nature as the very nature of things, being itself a self-witness, would cry aloud? But, it seems, their toil and aim is not at all to love discernment and press after truth, but rather to revel, as though impiously sporting, in intricate sophistries and unbridled loose talk.

For among them nothing necessary is pursued in earnest.

Yet I suppose they will nonetheless say this: how could the simple bring forth for us diverse activities, begetting in one manner different from how it might perhaps act, and acting not in the same way as it might beget, without corrupting the principle of simplicity? {A.} And indeed this, I think, is nothing other again than taking a reed staff into one's hands, as the prophet Isaiah says.

For as to those who, having grown bold in such rotten and easily-broken reasonings, suppose themselves to stand firmly in right thinking — how would one not declare that they have foolishly chosen to set up a reed staff for their own souls? For you will find that the problem which seems wise is altogether easy to overturn, if you examine it thus, applying to the realities a most painstaking and exact scrutinizing mind.

For countless are the natures of existing things; of these, some have been led by him who calls into being the things that once were not, not at all into difference and mutual conflict with one another, but have rather been set apart into a distinct allotment, existing otherwise than the rest;

while others have obtained not only this, but also destroy one another in their entanglements, having a concurrence into the same state that admits no reconciliation;

for the law of their nature kindles enmity in them.

{A.} Does your mind follow the track of what has been said? {B.} Not entirely.

{A.} Understand, then, what I mean, for I shall not hesitate at all to explain it.

Have not angel and man alike been called into being by the art and activity of God, and likewise heaven and earth, ox and horse, wood and stone?

Each of these is conceived in its own distinct nature, and not in every way and altogether without difference from all the others or from those it shares its kind with, yet it does not stand in opposition to the others.

For angel is not something incompatible with man, nor otherwise unmixable with him, nor is man with angel;

for their natures are in no way opposed to one another;

and the existence of heaven, that is, the principle of its existing, does not war against the others.

For earth will not stand apart from heaven in enmity, nor heaven from earth, nor wood from stone, since none of them received the principle of its being from things set in opposition and cut off into a contrariety of nature.

Fire, which burns, and water, known for cooling, are both works of God's activity, yet both are the products of one, the simple God.

And if these are the works of a single activity, though standing so far apart from one another in difference, how then shall we still take away the simple essence on account of the manifoldness of the activity, having somehow supposed that the destruction of truth is an occasion for piety? Consider, if you will, yet another point besides these.

For if, since God is simple, he will act in a single manner — and they will say this is especially fitting to him — why then do they not also believe that a simple disposition exists in him? {B.} What do you mean? {A.} Does he not, best of men, abhor and deride the wicked and hold the sinner in detestation, while he rejoices over the holy and assigns praise as befitting those good in disposition? {B.} How could he not? {A.} And will you grant that there is a movement toward wrath, the punishment against offenders, and a fruit of gentleness, the honor and grace that might perhaps come to the saints? {B.} I grant it, for so it is.

{A.} Therefore, since they say the divine nature is simple, and for this reason have removed from it the manifoldness of activity, let them likewise suppose that the disposition within himself is simple and not manifold.

Then whomever he praises, these same, I think, he would also blame;

and whomever he admires, he would altogether also censure.

And the working of wrath and anger will be a fruit of gentleness, and we shall reckon anger to be the very same thing as gentleness.

I myself would add this also to what has been said:

the nature of the Godhead is one and simple;

yet we say that it is life, and power, and wisdom, and glory.

And by life that which is made alive lives; by power that which is empowered is empowered; by wisdom that which is made wise is made wise; and by glory that which lacks glory is glorified, that is, becomes the one glorified.

Is not what I say true? {B.} Very much so.

{A.} But how, according to what they suppose to be sound, could the manifold in activity be a fruit of the simple essence? Yet God acts in many ways, though he is simple in nature.

Would you then grant, Hermias, that anything could be more unreasonable than this? For is it not seen to be far better, and altogether filled with due reasoning, to think that God is simple in nature, yet to yield to him alone the exact knowledge of how he exists and acts variously, and to inquire into it no further? For God, and all that belongs to him, are altogether surely above mind and reason.

{B.} Better indeed, and incomparably so;

but they will further demand, as is reasonable to say, how the Father should be understood to have begotten.

And then, without undergoing any of those things that are wont to accompany those who beget — I mean division and effluence —

how could the cause of that which is caused not be, in every way and altogether, prior to it in conception and in position? {A.} It is an altogether difficult matter, Hermias, and very hard to traverse, one impossible to express even for the most skilled in speech, or rather, even to comprehend at all.

For the mind cannot grasp what is above mind, nor can reason fully clarify what is above reason.

That God is Father, and has truly begotten the Son for us from his own essence, faith has handed down to us; and the God-inspired Scripture has set its seal upon this and declared it true, everywhere naming him Father and speaking of begetting.

I think it necessary that what has been received by faith should no longer be subjected, as it were, to overbold and probing investigations.

For faith is no longer the object of inquiry.

For in the very way that hope which is seen is not hope —

for what one sees, why does he still wait for it? — according to the word of the most wise Paul; so too faith, when it is examined and no longer retains what should not be searched into, would not be faith, by the same reasoning as with hope.

For that which is honored by faith is altogether free from testing.

I say, then, that it is necessary — just as, of course, he who draws near to God must believe that he exists, but no longer inquire further —

for I think that no one at all who has soberly considered that victory ought to be granted to things exceedingly transcendent will smile in derision at this.

The manner of the divine begetting must be understood to surpass every mind.

One can indeed learn this clearly from God and Father, crying aloud to the Word who has shone forth from him by nature:

'From the womb, before the morning star, I have begotten you.' For the phrase 'from the womb', taken most fittingly as an example from our own experience, would very well show forth the, so to speak, genuine reality of the birth-pang, and that the Son has been brought forth for us from the very essence of the Father.

But to say that the bringing-forth was 'before the morning star' signifies, perhaps, that the manner of the begetting is enclosed in obscurity and incomprehensibility, as it were in deep darkness.

For when the bright morning star has just leapt up from the eastern bounds toward the height, fine rays are scattered through the upper air, and a light, still thin and feeble, springs up together as a herald of the sun's radiance, the darkness of night now having already passed its prime.

But before it has appeared in the sky, the things of night will still lie at their height, when thick darkness is poured down upon the eyes, and those who have had no experience of that affliction fare no better than those whose sight has been maimed.

Since that is so, would you yourself tell us what is the God-befitting wonder in the Son's having been begotten, if he is understood to be so even before the morning star? {B.} The matter of the begetting is not without wonder, my friend.

For one might learn its antiquity and great age precisely through its being conceived as before the morning star. {A.} Then how would it not be better to say 'before the sun and moon,' or rather 'before heaven and earth'? For these are older than the stars and the morning star.

Nay rather, I myself would think it a small and trivial thing even to say that the Son exists before earth and heaven and the whole of creation altogether;

for he has shone forth from a Father without beginning, and the manner of his begetting is altogether ineffable and inconceivable.

And so indeed the famed Isaiah himself says to us:

'Who shall declare his generation? For his life is taken up from the earth' — calling, I think, quite fittingly 'generation' his begetting, and 'life' his existence, which is 'taken up from all the earth', that is, is lifted up and surpasses every human thought of things on earth, and lies, as it were, above our conceptions, trackless and inaccessible to the measures of humanity — this seems to me to be said most truly.

That the Son has appeared beyond all time and superior to such a beginning, no less than the Father, another of the holy prophets will persuade us, crying out:

'And you, Bethlehem, house of Ephrathah, are little to be among the thousands of Judah;'

'out of you shall one come forth for me, to be a ruler in Israel, and his goings-forth are from the beginning, from the days of eternity' — calling his existence from the Father, as it were, a peculiar 'going-forth', according to which we understand him to have co-subsisted with his own begetter from a beginning beyond which there is absolutely nothing, not in an unbegotten manner, but begottenly.

How much laughter, then, do you think they deserve to incur, who have somehow supposed that they can attain, by human deliberations and measured-out notions, to things so far transcendent? For in what way could anyone know how God might beget, without first having thoroughly learned what he actually is by nature? {B.} But that is impossible;

'For he made darkness his hiding place,' as it is written, 'and his tabernacle round about him' — calling, I think, that which is hard to behold, or rather invisible and incomprehensible, 'darkness', and naming it 'tabernacle'; under which, having in some manner entered, he who fills all things is known both by himself and only by his own offspring.

For he said: 'No one knows who the Son is except the Father, nor does anyone know who the Father is except the Son, and he to whom the Son may reveal him.' {A.} You speak well, and it is you especially whom I now admire for such words.

Therefore, if someone should meddle over-curiously and recklessly track down things unattainable by mind and not to be subdued by the power of words, we shall say of such a one that he is by no means a lover of learning, but rather that he swims about in vain and superfluous labors.

This applies to every such person, and not without reason:

'He who leans upon lies, this one shepherds the winds, and the same pursues winged birds.'

'For he has abandoned the paths of his own vineyard, and the tracks of his own tillage; he has gone astray, and journeys through a waterless desert and a land set in thirsty places, and gathers barrenness with his hands.' For as though bidding a most foolish farewell to things useful and profitable and filled with truth, such men cherish falsehood and receive as necessary that which bears no fruit of piety; and their mind leaps up in arrogance over this, so that they even come to regard it as a reproach and a matter for accusation not to know for themselves how the divine nature stands, and to leave this alone to God — although the God-inspired Scripture cries out that the divine ways are inexpressible and far surpass human reasoning, that is, the administration in each of the things that have come to be, as it were a kind of dispensation.

'In the sea is your way, and your paths are in many waters, and your footprints shall not be known.' For when a merchant-ship is well driven forward by favorable winds and darts through this deep sea, its track is invisible;

for, in the manner of a plow, scarcely scratching the surface of the sea's back, it darts, as it were winged, through the midst of the waves, which, rushing together again into one another, at once blend back what seemed to have been cut through.

Or is it not so? {B.} Quite so indeed.

But consider how the begetting will be for us without passion and without effluence, and whether it is possible to say that the cause does not pre-exist that which is caused by it.

{A.} It will by no means pre-exist in that sense — far indeed from it;

but neither would division and passion ever accompany the begetting, if the matter is understood in reference to God, in whose case both the capacity to suffer and the necessity for what is begotten to be born in time do not apply.

For if the argument at present concerned bodies — things to which suffering too might fittingly apply, nature being no stranger to flux, and it following firmly that what is bounded by time should attend upon time, and that the beginning of generation should not be without a beginning — I would reasonably say that their suspicion would perhaps not fail to be plausible.

But since our argument concerns the nature that is above every tangible and visible body alike, which is also the craftsman of the ages themselves and the eldest of all time, how is it not utterly senseless to suppose that it suffers something in begetting, and that what comes from it has generation in time as though this belonged properly to it and were inherent in it? To speak of 'cause' and 'caused' is not even lawful here; it would be more fitting instead, in the case of God, to say 'Father' and 'begotten Son.'

{B.} But know that we too, perhaps, would be willing to grant that this is so, if it seems good;

nevertheless we shall still ask how, according to you, the Father could beget from himself, and not put something forth by undergoing a severance and a flowing-away into something other than himself, if the Son is truly from him, subsisting in his own right according to essence;

and how is it not the case that in every way and altogether the begetter must pre-exist the begotten, and be conceived of before it?

{A.} 'The fool will speak folly, and his heart will devise vain things,' according to the voice of the prophet.

For at the very things over which it would be fitting for them to blush not a little, if they had any share of good sense, at these — I know not how — they senselessly pride themselves, defining for us, upon the divine nature itself, cuttings and flowings-away and the necessity of bringing forth in time.