駁歐諾米 第 2 章 第 2/4 段

For above everything that can be conceived in terms of antiquity, the existence of God the Word, who was in the beginning with God, will be found to be higher.

And even if the mind, deceiving itself with countless fancies, and casting itself upon fabrications of things that have no existence, should imagine the things that are not, it will discover no contrivance among them all whereby it shall be able to set itself above the beginning of the Only-begotten;

and to leave life lower than its own motion—lower, that is, than Life-itself;

and to surpass with its own reasoning the beginning of God the Word;

and to survey ages that are bereft of the God of the ages.

But as he robs the Only-begotten of the glory that is owed him, consider with what arguments he extols him.

{Eun.} "The essence of the Son," he says, "is one that was begotten before all things, by the will of God and the Father."

{Bas.} This great thing he adds to the Son: that he is older than the creation, and that he pre-exists his own things-made—reckoning it sufficient for the glory of the Creator of all that he was ranked before his own creatures.

For having alienated from him whatever pertains to his fellowship with God and Father, he bears witness to his glory in his being preferred over the creatures.

Then, carrying the blasphemy to the point of shamelessness, he hems us in, as he supposes, with the inescapable necessities of his reasonings.

{Eun.} "For God," he says, "begot the Son either when he was, or when he was not."

"But if when he was not, let no one charge me with audacity;

but if when he was, then the argument involves not only absurdity and blasphemy, but also the height of all silliness;

for what already is has no need of begetting."

{Bas.} Now then, the much-bruited sophism—long ago discovered by others, but now brought to full completion in the brazen and shameless tongues of these men—is this.

But we will first remind our hearers of this: that this is the man who, on account of the ignorance of the many who hear of the Son's begetting in a human manner, came into the necessity of these very arguments;

this is the man who leads up the untaught souls from bodily notions to spiritual contemplation;

who, since the animals that are begotten did not exist before, and then are begotten, and he who is begotten today did not exist yesterday, transfers this notion also to the subsistence of the Only-begotten.

And, since he has been begotten, he says, he did not exist before the begetting.

So magnificently does he expound to us the begetting of the Only-begotten in theological terms, and by such arguments does he set right the ailments of our brethren—being worthy, if anyone is, to hear the proverb, "Physician, heal yourself."

And what consolation, indeed, for this absurd sickness of his reasonings, shall we bring him, other than the things spoken to us by the Holy Spirit through the blessed John: that "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God"? By these two clauses the evangelist shut him out: the one not to be overpassed, the other not to be evaded.

For neither is it possible to conceive anything older than the beginning;

for it would no longer be a beginning, if it had anything outside itself;

nor is it possible, having passed over the "was" in one's reasoning, to peer beyond it into the "when he was not."

For the notion of "when he was not" is a denial of the "was."

For if the "beginning" were of those things said in relation to another—as in "the beginning of wisdom," and "the beginning of a good way," and "In the beginning God made"—then perhaps it would be possible for those who subsist from such a beginning to overpass the begetting by thought;

but since this meaning of "beginning"

absolute and unrelated, makes plain the highest nature, how is he not ridiculous who conceives things outside it, or undertakes to overpass it with his reasonings? And the "was" is coextensive with the unsurpassable character of this beginning.

For the "was" does not suggest existence beginning from time, as in "There was a man in the land of Uz";

and, "There was a man from Armathaim";

and, "And the earth was invisible";

but the evangelist himself, in another passage, showed us the meaning of such a "was," saying:

"He who is, and who was, and the Almighty."

For such as is the "is," so too is the "was"—eternal alike and timeless.

But to say that he who was in the beginning was not, belongs neither to one who preserves the notion of the beginning, nor to one who joins to it the existence of the Only-begotten.

For inconceivable is anything older than the beginning, and inseparable from it is the being of God the Word.

So that, however far you wish to run back with the busy meddlings of your mind, you will be unable to overpass the "was," and to get outside it with your reasonings.

Let the counter-question, then, be put by us as well:

was God the Word in the beginning with God, or did he come to be later? For if he was, "Cease your tongue from evil"—from the blasphemy of "when he was not";

but if (which it is not even lawful to say)—I will use words more proper to you, against you—then the argument involves not only blasphemy, but also the height of derangement: to demand of men an accounting for the words of the Spirit, and to confess oneself a disciple of the Gospels, yet to rise up in revolt against these very Gospels.

For consider the divine utterances, how exactly and clearly they testify to the generation of the Son before the ages.

For since Matthew became the expounder of the generation according to the flesh, as he himself says:

"The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David";

while Mark made the preaching of John the beginning of the Gospel, saying:

"The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, as it is written in Isaiah the prophet:

A voice of one crying in the wilderness";

and while Luke also, for his part, approached the theology through bodily beginnings;

necessarily the evangelist John, coming last to the writing, having lifted his mind above every sensible thing, and above the time that attends upon such things—or rather, being lifted up by the power of the Spirit—approached him who is beyond all things, all but solemnly attesting, even himself, that, even if we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we no longer know him so.

For having laid hold of the very beginning, and having left all bodily and temporal notions lower than his own theology, he outsang the preceding proclamations by the loftiness of his knowledge.

"Not from Mary," he says, "is the beginning, nor from these times here."

But what then? "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God";

the existence from eternity, the impassible begetting, the connaturality with the Father, the majesty of the nature—all of these he comprehended in those few words, and, by the addition of the "was," led them up to the beginning, as it were stopping the mouths of those who blaspheme with "when he was not," and cutting off from afar the inroads of such men's sophisms.

Then, through this theology, having stamped, as it were, a vivid sketch of the nature of the Only-begotten, he points it out, as to those who already recognize it, in the words, saying:

"This one was in the beginning with God";

here again, by the addition of the "was," joining the begetting of the Only-begotten to the eternity of the Father;

"There was life, and the life was the light of men, and the true light was."

But nevertheless, though the argument was thus secured on all sides by the additions of the "eternal," he, thrusting aside all the testimonies of the Spirit, and not even seeming to hear it crying out to us so insistently with the "was," says, "Not being, he was begotten."

Therefore he was afterwards added by begetting.

But if this was not in the beginning, as you say, what more manifest conflict could one display against the utterances of the Gospels in which we have believed? And indeed, to which of fair-minded men would not this too seem fitting: that, just as the eye, when it has fallen out of the places that are illuminated, necessarily stands idle through the lack of the

light, idle in its activity—so too the mind, when by its fancies it forces itself out beyond that which is, as though the light of truth were failing it, is confounded and made senseless, and ceases from understanding? Neither, then, could the eye, outside the light, be able to use the act of seeing, nor the soul, when it has been carried aside from the notion of the Only-begotten, be able to make use of understanding.

For the falling away from the truth is a blindness and darkening of the understanding.

So that vain is the mind, and blinded, in truth knowing nothing, which fancies that it has apprehended the things older than the Only-begotten;

just as if one were to attest sharp-sightedness to an eye that strains to gaze at things shrouded in darkness.

For "in your light," it says, "shall we see light."

But he who asserts that he has apprehended the "when the light was not yet," has suffered something like those who, in frenzied derangement, fancy that they see things that are not present.

For the things above the Son are not [objects of] thought.

Since whatever the sensible light is to the eye, that God the Word is to the soul.

For it says, "There was the true light, which enlightens every man coming into the world."

So that an unenlightened soul is incapable of understanding.

How, then, could the things above the generation of the light be apprehended? But it were fitting, I think, for those who have taken even a little thought for the truth, abandoning bodily likenesses, and the defiling of their notions about God with material fancies, to follow the theologies handed down to us by the Holy Spirit, and, instead of these questions—which fall nothing short of riddles, having a perilous supposition either way—to conceive a begetting worthy of God: impassible, undivided, indivisible, timeless, being led to the divine begetting in accordance with the radiance that beams forth from the light;

and to conceive an image of the invisible God: not like these artificial ones, wrought out afterwards toward an archetype, but coexisting and subsisting alongside the prototype which gave it subsistence—being, by the very being of the archetype, not fashioned by imitation, as though the whole nature of the Father had been imprinted, as in a seal, upon the Son.

Or, if you will, [consider] of what sort is the subsistence of the arts, which, passing whole from the teachers into the learners, comes to be in them;

neither anything being lacking to the teachers, while perfection accrues to the learners.

Or rather this is not exact for the comparison, on account of the protraction of time.

But it is more proper to say that [consider] of what sort is the nature of thoughts, subsisting timelessly together with the motions of the mind.

And let no one calumniate the argument, if some of the illustrations do not in every respect agree with the things set forth.

For neither is it possible for small and paltry things to fit with exactness to things divine and eternal, but [they serve] only so far as to refute the dissembling of those who are unable to grasp an impassible begetting with their understanding.

And the Son both has been called and is a begotten "image," and is the "effulgence of the glory of God," and "wisdom," and "power," and "righteousness of God"—not as a habit, nor as an aptitude, but as a living and active essence, and is the effulgence of the glory of God.

Wherefore he also shows the Father whole in himself, being made to shine forth out of the whole of his glory.

To say, then, that the glory of God does not have effulgence, or that the wisdom of God was at some time not present with God—of what extreme of absurdity [is this not full]? "But if he was," he says, "he has not been begotten."

Let us answer, then, that: Since he has been begotten, he was;

having his being not as unbegotten, but being always and being together with the Father, from whom he has also the cause of his existence.

When, then, was he brought into being by the Father? From the time that the Father is. "But the Father is from eternity," he says;

from eternity, then, is the Son also, being joined by begetting to the unbegottenness of the Father.

And that this is not our own argument, we will furnish them the very utterances of the Holy Spirit.

From the Gospel, then, let us take the "In the beginning was the Word";

and from the Psalm, that which is spoken as it were in the person of the Father: "From the womb, before the morning star, I have begotten you";

and putting both together, let us say that he both was and has been begotten.

But the "I have begotten" signifies the cause from which he has the beginning of being;

his timeless and pre-eternal existence.

But he, contending on behalf of his own deception, supposes that he is leading the argument to an absurdity.

{Eun.} "For if," he says, "the Son was before his own begetting, he was unbegotten."

{Bas.} But this "before the begetting," O foolish man, is either utterly nonexistent, and a fabrication of a mind resting upon no underlying object;

and what need is there to gainsay the senseless? For this is much the same as if we were doing battle with one whose reasoning has been carried aside by frenzy;

or else, if it is borne toward some one of the things that are, it will also be borne toward the notion of the ages.

But if indeed all the ages are conceived to be somewhere below the generation of the Only-begotten, being themselves things-made of that very one, then vain is he who seeks the things older than the subsistence of the Son.

For he asks nothing different than if he were inquiring also concerning the Father, whether he existed before his own constitution, or not.

For just as there it is senseless, the question—to seek what is higher in the case of the unoriginate and unbegotten—

so too here, in the case of him who is from eternity together with the Father, and who has nothing intermediate between himself and the one who begot him, to put temporal questions about a "prior" is of truly equal senselessness.

For it is much the same to ask what will be after the end of the immortal, and to inquire what existed before the begetting of the eternal.

But these men, since the unoriginateness of the Father is named "eternal," declare the "eternal" to be the same as the "unoriginate," and, since the Son is not unbegotten, they refuse to confess that he is eternal either.

But these differ greatly in meaning…

For that is called 'unbegotten' which has no beginning of itself, nor any cause of its being;

while 'everlasting' is that which is older, as to being, than all time and every age.

Whence the Son also is everlasting, though not unbegotten.

Now some even think the ages worthy of the appellation 'everlasting,' as having obtained this name from their always existing.

But we reckon it to be the same madness both to ascribe everlastingness to creation and to deprive the Lord of creation of this confession.

But he, pushing his argument to the point of shamelessness, what does he say? [EUN.] But we, abiding by what has been demonstrated by the saints both of old and in our own day, since the essence of God does not admit of begetting, nor is there any other subject underlying for the begetting of the Son, say that the Son, when He was not, was begotten.

[BAS.] Who is so zealous for piety? Who has prided himself so on being a lover of Christ, as these men exult in words of insult and dishonor, words destructive of the glory of the Only-begotten? Will you not cease, O godless one, to call 'non-existent' Him who truly exists, the fountain of life, who imparts being to all that exist — He who, in His oracle to His own servant Moses, devised for Himself an appellation proper to Himself and befitting His own eternity, naming Himself 'the Existing One'? For He says, 'I am He who is.'

And no one will contradict that these words were spoken in the person of the Lord;

none, at least, who does not have the Jewish veil lying upon his own heart at the reading of Moses.

For it is written that the angel of the Lord appeared to Moses in a flame of fire in the bush.

Thus, having set 'angel' at the head of the narrative, the Scripture then brings in the voice of God.

For He said, it says, to Moses:

'I am the God of your father Abraham.'

Who, then, is the same both angel and God? Is it not He of whom we have learned that His name is called 'Angel of great counsel'? I, for my part, do not think more is needed for the proof; rather, for those who love Christ even the reminder suffices, while to those who are incurably disposed no benefit will come from the multitude of arguments.

For even if He later became the Angel of great counsel, yet neither beforehand did He disdain the appellation of angel.

For not here only shall we find our Lord named both angel and God by the Scripture;

but also Jacob, recounting the vision to his wives, says:

'And the angel of God said to me';

and a little after, from the same one:

'I am the God who appeared to you in the place where you anointed a pillar to Me there.'

And yet there, at the pillar, it was said to Jacob:

'I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father, and the God of Isaac.'

He, therefore, who is here called 'angel,' this same one says that He was manifested there to Jacob.

It is plain to all, then, that where one and the same is called both angel and God, it is the Only-begotten who is indicated, manifesting Himself in every generation to men, and declaring the will of the Father to His own saints.

So that, even in the case of Moses, when He named Himself 'the Existing One,' it can be understood as none other than the God Word, who in the beginning was with God.

But those who 'speak unrighteousness on high' did not shrink from calling the Son 'non-existent.'

And 'the fool said in his heart, There is no God';

but these men not only thought it, but even uttered it in wickedness, and did not refuse to consign it to writing for time to come, daring to name God 'non-existent.'

And since they see that not even the demons themselves deny that He is God, these men, going back in their argument to former time, there fulfill their impious desire, blaspheming that the Son once was not, as being non-existent in His own nature, but brought into being by the grace of God.

Then the utterance which Paul let fall concerning the idols, saying:

'You served gods which by nature are no gods';

And, 'They swore by them that are no gods';

'Do not give over, O Lord, Your scepter to them that are not';

this utterance these men, having said it concerning the true God, how could they still justly lay claim to the appellation of Christians? For indeed elsewhere this same Apostle, speaking in the Spirit of God, names the nations 'non-existent' because of their being deprived of the knowledge of God, saying that 'God chose the things that are not.'

For since God is being, and truth, and life, those who are not united to the God who is by faith, but have made themselves at home in the non-existence of falsehood through the error concerning idols, were fittingly, I think, called 'non-existent,' because of their deprivation of the truth and their estrangement from life.

But also, writing to the Ephesians as to those genuinely united to Him who is, through knowledge, he named them distinctively as 'existing,' saying:

'To the saints who are, and faithful in Christ Jesus.'

For so also those before us have handed down, and we ourselves have found it in the ancient copies.

But he did not even endure to count our God worthy of the appellation which the servants of Christ partake of; rather, He who brought creation from non-being into being, this one called 'non-existent.'

And one might learn his contempt still more from the very things in which he pretends, forsooth, to magnify the Lord.

[EUN.] We do not, he says, make common the essence of the Only-begotten with the things made from non-being, since non-being is not an essence;

but we allot to Him such superiority as it is necessary for the maker to have over his own works.

[BAS.] Having led his argument to this point by his constructions, he then, forsooth, plays the philanthropist in word, and says that he does not make common with the things from non-being the essence of the Only-begotten.

And yet, if the God of all, because He is unbegotten, has a necessary distinction from the begotten things, while all begotten things have in common their subsistence from non-being, how are these not necessarily joined together according to nature? For just as there the inaccessibility separates the natures, so here the equality of rank brings them together into identity with one another.

And while saying that the Son and the things made by Him are from non-being, and in this respect making their nature common, they say that they do not give Him an essence like that of the things from non-being.

For indeed this too, as though being Lord himself, dispensing to the Only-begotten as much dignity as he wishes, thus he frames his words:

'For we allot to Him,' he says, 'such superiority as it is necessary for the maker to have over his own works.'

He did not say, 'We have apprehended' or 'We glorify,' as would have been fitting in regard to God;

but, 'We allot,' as though he himself were the one initiating the measure of distribution.

And how great a superiority does he grant? 'As much,' he says, 'as it is necessary for the maker to surpass his own works.'

This does not yet carry the testimony of a difference according to essence.

For men surpass their own works in skill, yet are nonetheless of the same essence with them;

as the potter with the clay, and the shipwright with the timbers.

For both are alike bodies, alike perceptible, and alike earthly.

But while conceding so great a difference for the Son in relation to creation, he already works mischief even concerning the very notion of the Only-begotten.

[EUN.] For on this account, he says, He is Only-begotten, since, being begotten and created alone from the One alone by the power of the Unbegotten, He became a most perfect minister.

[BAS.] I do not know at which of his statements I ought rather to be indignant;

whether at the cunning with which he worked mischief upon the name of the Only-begotten, taking its meaning contrary both to the custom of men and to the pious tradition of the Scriptures (for 'Only-begotten,' in common usage, denotes not Him who came from the One alone, but Him who alone was begotten);

or at the blasphemy concerning the creature, which he deliberately joined to 'begotten';

in order to show that no differently from the creatures does the appellation of 'having been begotten' belong to the Lord;

but just as the words, 'I have begotten sons and exalted them,' and, 'Israel is my firstborn son';

so also the Lord is named Son, not as having the name which is above every name, but as deemed worthy of the appellation on an equal footing with the others.

But they take refuge in the saying of Solomon;

and from there, as from some base of operations, they run down the faith.

For because it is said in the person of Wisdom, 'The Lord created me,' they have supposed it permissible for them to call the Lord a creature.

But I, though having much to say concerning this utterance;

first, that it is said but once in all the Scriptures; and next, that it stands in a book which contains much that is hidden in meaning, and which is for the most part presented through proverbs and parables and obscure sayings and riddles, so that nothing indisputable nor luminously clear can be taken from it;

I pass over saying these things, that I may not lengthen the discourse with longer digressions, especially since the examination of the things ill-conceived by them has been reserved by us for its own place, in which this portion too, God granting, shall be set straight.

And I think — let this be said with God — that a far more consistent understanding of the proposed saying, one bearing no danger, will appear upon examination.

For the present, however, let us not leave even this unremarked;

that other translators, who more aptly attained to the meaning of the Hebrew, rendered it 'He possessed me,' instead of 'He created me.'

Which will be the greatest hindrance to them against their blasphemy of the creature.

For he who said, 'I have gotten a man through God,' is evidently using this word not as having created Cain, but as having begotten him.

But let us return to where we began.

[EUN.] On this account, he says, He is Only-begotten, since, having been begotten and created from the One alone, He became a most perfect minister.

[BAS.] If, then, it is not from His being begotten alone, but because of His being from the One alone, that He is called Only-begotten, and if, according to you, 'to have been created' is the same as 'to have been begotten';

why do you not also call Him 'only-created,' O you who so readily both conceive and utter everything? But 'only-begotten,' it seems, is no man, at least according to our reckoning, because begetting belongs to all through union.

Nor was Sarah mother of an only-begotten child, because she bore him not alone, but together with Abraham.

And if your views prevail, it would be necessary to relearn the whole of life — that the word denotes not the lack of brothers, but the bereavement of those who beget together.

And now creation too, compared with the cause, the God Word, has been diminished in dignity, falling short of even itself being 'only-begotten' by just so much as the Son joined with the Father in the work of creation;

and yet not even this is conceded by them.

For they call Him a most perfect minister.

How, then, was not creation also made by the One alone, according to you, who set the God Word alongside the Father like some lifeless instrument — unless one were also to take the shipwright away,

and say that the ship alone made itself, because forsooth it used instruments for its construction? So that creation too is only-begotten, and the parts of it;

not only the invisible powers, but also the perceptible bodies, and the meanest of these — gnats, and locusts, and frogs.

For He Himself spoke, and they came into being.

For of what ministry would He have need, who creates by will alone, creation subsisting together with the volition? But what then? How, even according to us, are all things through the Son? Because the divine will, set in motion as it were from a fountain, the first cause, proceeds into operation through the proper image, the God Word.

But he called the only-begotten Son a 'minister,' attributing this to Him as a great thing, that He is well-suited to the service of the things commanded.

For if He has obtained His glory not in being perfect God, but in being an exact minister, in what will He differ from the ministering spirits, who blamelessly accomplish the work of their service? On account of these things he joined 'created' to 'begotten,' that even from this he might exhibit no difference existing between Son and creature.

But it is worth hearing also his exhortation.

[EUN.] It is not right, he says, for those attending to the appellation of Father and of Son to conceive His begetting as human, and, being led up from the births among men, to subject God to the names and passions of participation.

[BAS.] The exhortation is that one ought not to conceive the likeness according to essence of Son and Father.

For this is what his prohibition of 'participation' means to convey — that the essence of the Father is uncommunicated to that of the Only-begotten.

On account of these things came those solemn distinctions of names, whose throng we have passed over;

namely, that not all things whose pronunciations are the same are therefore already identical in what is signified, in order that he might do away with God's being Father of the Son on account of the fathers named upon earth.

But I, of the many things which separate Christianity from the error of the Greeks and the ignorance of the Jews,

consider no doctrine more authoritative than the faith in Father and Son being present in the Gospel of our salvation.

Since the fact that God is creator and maker is agreed upon even by those severed off in error of whatever kind.

But he who proclaims a falsely-named Father, and a Son in bare appellation only, and who reckons it to make no difference whether one confess 'Father' or 'creator,' and whether one say 'Son' or 'thing made' — where will he be ranked by us? Or to what party shall he be numbered as belonging — that of the Jews, or that of the Greeks? For surely he will not enroll himself among Christians, who denies the power of piety and, as it were, the very stamp of our worship.

For we did not believe into a creator and a thing made;

but into Father and Son were we sealed through the grace in baptism.

So that he who dares to set aside these utterances at once cancels the whole power of the Gospels, proclaiming a Father who did not beget, and a Son who was not begotten.

But I say these things, he says, evading the notion of passion which arises from the appellation of 'Father.'