藥箱（駁八十異端） 第 1 章 第 70/82 段

And first, since, writing above to the athletes and female athletes of your own school, you said that certain Chronites had appropriated and corrupted what you had in hand of your little treatise, it may be shown, upon examining your own expression, that it is rather you who bear this name, together with those who have been made disciples by you — not to say, led astray.

For the holy faith of God, existing from the beginning, always primal and never growing old, exists forever; its foundation has been firmly established, and it continues to have its Master timeless.

Therefore it too is not bound to time, but exists always, dwelling as a fellow citizen with the angels, and adorning the saints from generation to generation.

But you rather are the one bound to time, having been led astray by error and puffed up in mind, and having vulgarly entangled the grazing herd of your flock in a thorny pasture.

For none of the ancients thought as you do, O Aetius, who write against the 'temporal ones' while yourself being temporal and not primal.

And immediately, from your very first undertaking, as you said you wrote the little treatise, having spoken concerning the Unbegotten God and the begotten, you have dazzled the world with such a brilliant onset of your discourse, that I might thus make your argument of disputation — full of such novel coinages of terms — an object of ridicule.

For which of the children of Christians who possess the saving preaching of God would abandon this, persuaded by you through your mythical error — forsaking the God who eternally is and His Holy Spirit who eternally is — and, coming to you, would hear from you concerning a begotten God, so that he too might be numbered among the fools, being taught to worship the creation rather than the Creator, who is blessed unto the ages, amen? For we do not have a created God, not one that is made, but one uncreated and unmade, begotten of the Father without beginning and without time.

For whether you play the sophist with the term 'begotten,' wishing to call it 'begotten' only in an equivocal sense, I will not accept your expression; or whether you do not understand it in that diminished sense, apart from its having been begotten of the Father —

For they do not gather grapes from thorns, nor figs from thistles, nor could a right word be supposed to come from a man who has gone astray.

For the Lord also muzzled the demons even when they confessed Him to be Christ.

But you claim that your little treatise is according to the sense of the divine Scriptures.

Tell me, which divine Scripture taught that a made god should be worshiped? And that God is unbegotten may be clear to anyone.

But not even this [term] is set down by name in the divine Scripture.

But from right and pious reasoning, and from understanding itself, it is firmly fitting to think and say this piously concerning God.

You say that, in order that those called by you 'athletes' and 'female athletes' — but rather led astray — might know how to answer each point, the chapters have been composed by you in a concise and easily-grasped discourse, after the manner of verse-lines.

Therefore these very words of yours that seem strong and sophistic, which you have trained for contradiction against your betters — or rather, that you might open your mouth against the truth — we, the lowly and untrained, who are not your betters but lesser than many in the holy Church of God, taking them up point by point, will make, as I said before, the refutation of this incoherent and utterly worthless nonsense.

And thus far let the refutation of our lowliness against your preface stand.

saying, 'The pride of your heart has brought this upon you.'

For you said these things in your mind:

'I will ascend into heaven, and above the stars of heaven I will set my throne;'

'I will sit on a high mountain, on the high mountains toward the north; I will ascend above the clouds, and I will be like the Most High.'

'But now you shall go down to Hades, to the foundations of the earth' — and so forth.

And this is the beginning of the chapters of Aetius:

'If it is possible for the Unbegotten God to make the begotten unbegotten —'

First, to reckon 'impossible' with respect to God is impious; or rather, the impossible is only that which is unfitting to His deity — and this not because He is incapable of doing it, but because vileness is unfitting to God, to whom nothing is impossible, but rather because vileness is impossible for His divine and powerful goodness, He Himself being good.

If it should be reckoned by God to be good, as a work, to make the begotten unbegotten, but He were unable to accomplish well that which tends toward the good, this would be a defeat concerning the One who is capable — [namely, one] wishing to work the better thing and yet not being able.

But if the unbegotten is good, and the begotten has come to be good in its own order — the order of the begotten being good since it is from the good God and reckoned good by Him — He would not make what has been well begotten unbegotten, since it has been rightly reckoned by Him that it is good to be thus.

Since, then, the order of what is good is not changed on account of impossibility, but on account of its being good to be thus, the Unbegotten God is therefore good, and good are the things that have come to be from Him in their own order, even though they have not received the name 'unbegotten'.

For He did not make created gods, so that the one, being set alongside the other, might, by the shared name, obscure the contrasting relation of the greater to the lesser.

For if the one is God unbegotten, and the other is God begotten, the natures being incommunicable, it is impossible for them to share, according to nature, in the dignity of the name; but if indeed they do, it would be by some misapplied grace, and this too by way of participation — the rich one graciously granting it to the lesser.

But the lesser would never call himself by the name of the greater, knowing altogether that he is alien to the natural dignity and name.

But someone might say to you, O Aetius, 'The Word was God,' and 'the Word did not become God.'

How then shall it possess, according to nature, the name of nobility, or how shall it be made equal to the dignity of God, if indeed it came into being? Or how shall 'the Word was' be excised, since time does not admit of making a division of that 'was,' even in the slightest instance? But you shall know that the beginningless God and the Unbegotten God begot from Himself a God like unto Himself — not only like, but also equal in every respect.

And He did not create him, lest the one created, having become unlike, should obscure the name of God through the estrangement of that variance.

For it is impossible for the one who begets to beget something unlike and unequal to himself, and impossible for the one begotten to be unlike the one who begot him.

Therefore here [Scripture] comprehends the natural identity, from the evangelical testimony that 'all that the Father has is mine' — that is, the Father is God, I am God.

The Father is life, I am life, and so on for all that follows: whatever befits the Father befits also the Son and the Holy Spirit in one Godhead, the Trinity having nothing at variance.

[Scripture] has clearly assured us, in perfect knowledge, that the hypostatic Word of the Father has been begotten without beginning and without time, and that the hypostatic Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and receives of the things of the Son.

If the Unbegotten God exists as superior to every cause, then for this reason He would also be superior to generation.

But if He is superior to every cause, it is clear that He is superior also to generation.

For neither has He received His being from another nature, nor has He Himself furnished His own being to Himself.

...it acquires for itself a dignity from a name other than that of the created things that have come to be, and does not, after the manner of the things that have come to be, procure honor for its Maker.

For the things that are outside Him acquire glory for their possessor, not being equal to their Maker, nor being called by the name of the Maker, but having become slaves for the glory of the Maker, so that, from the things that are glorious, that which is preferable — being above the things that have become glorious and existing above them — might be contemplated by analogy.

But He, no longer being called by their designation, but having His dignity united, through having been begotten, with the consubstantiality of the Superior — were He to differ from the Superior on account of variance, He would also procure a lesser dignity for the Superior, the fellowship of the offspring with the Superior thereby being altered.

Therefore the Offspring, like from like and equal from equal, is apprehended by us in faith not according to a corporeal conception, but as God from God, Light from Light, and the hypostatic Word of the Father — the unchangeable glory of the Superior being preserved, in that the Superior is not Himself His own cause, but from Himself begets, by an undefiled and incomprehensible substance, the equal, consubstantially [begetting] the substantial and hypostatic divine Offspring, which is an image not lifeless, but characterizing the race of the Father, as the divine Scripture says, ranking the Offspring on the equality of the Begetter, saying, an image of the invisible God.

And lest anyone should suppose that the image is a difference from the identity, the Father Himself, providing beforehand for the correction of our life, said, before this statement, 'Let us make man according to our image and likeness,' not distinguishing Himself from the Son, but adding a dual and equivocal expression, 'let us make man,' so that it might signify two — Himself and the Son, or, I might also say, the Holy Spirit as well.

And regarding the equality of the image — having inserted, by means of two expressions, the sense of 'not unlike' — He spoke of one image, while by 'our' He declared the dual; and the man who was coming to be was made an image not according to the image of the one, but according to the likeness and equality of the two, so that it might be altogether clear that the Superior, remaining in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, abides in identity and is not altered.

For neither the Father, nor the Son, nor the Holy Spirit has received being from another nature, nor has He given to another nature a share in His own nature and dignity; nor has the being of the Only-Begotten and the Holy Spirit from Him effected, by any division or emanation, an alteration of nature; but just as, from the beginning, the Superior nature was always unbegotten and uncreated, so also has [Scripture] clearly and unchangingly preached to us that the Superior Offspring and the Holy Spirit are always from Him.

But if he did not provide himself with being — not because of any weakness of nature, but because he transcends all causation — how then could one concede that the nature which came to subsist has, toward the nature that caused it to subsist, an unvarying sameness of substance, since such a subsistence does not admit of generation? Refutation.

You must, O Aetius, look to what is above, and, considering your own pitiable state, restrain the excess of impiety in your own audacious mind, lest we too, refusing to rave along with such great recklessness, be supposed to be defeated — while in fact we are counseling both you and ourselves toward piety.

For, supposing that in the things that are necessary and befitting to God, God is unlike and unequal to him who was begotten from him, you proclaim — out of much error — that †God† came forth in accordance with some pious device; but rather, in the most unbecoming respects, you proclaim him like to things unbefitting his own deity.

And in the first place, merely to think up so great an abyss of folly concerning God is a fruit of impiety, and rather of a maddened mind.

For by saying that he is his own cause, or that he provided himself with being, you have impaled yourself upon two evil suspicions, groping about and inquiring concerning God as to how he was:

whether he always provided himself with being, or has being spontaneously, of himself.

Stretched out beyond bounds by your own evil reasoning.

So stop — let us stop — content, sufficiently and devoutly, to think and believe that God always is, and that God always was.

For indeed, in this too, speaking and reasoning foolishly, as though you had greatly honored God, you said that he neither provided himself with being nor is himself his own cause:

then, according to you, if the salvation that comes by faith depends on phrases and syllogisms, this would mean that even inferior or pitiable bodies possess, in some measure, a likeness to reason itself.

For none of the creatures is its own cause, nor did any provide itself with being, from beasts up to man, and from men up to angels.

For none of the things that came into being provided itself with being; rather, each received the beginning of its being solely from him who Is.

So then, since here you have been refuted by the very things you thought would serve your syllogism, do not force yourself, contrary to nature, to stretch this argument up to the Greater One.

For you will be utterly undone on every point, since the Only-begotten is equal and like to the Father, even though he has this dignity by having been born — that is, begotten — of the Father.

For this makes no difference at all to his equality with the Father, just as it makes none to his likeness to the Father — since created things are, by nature, unable to provide themselves with being; just as also he who is to be exalted above all and is perfect in every respect did not derive his origin from anything above him.

For neither did he begin to be:

for he always was, and always is, even though he remains in unchanging sameness and does not provide himself with being — the question here not being about mere identical wording, but about a contemplation that, in genuine purity, tends toward piety.

'But if he himself did not provide himself with being — not because of any weakness of nature, but because he transcends all causation' — learn this too yourself: that it is not because of any weakness in the Son that this will be his designation, but that he has the distinction of consubstantiality precisely because it befits the one who begot him.

For since it is most fitting for the Father to transcend all causation, so too it is fitting for the same one deity — belonging to him who alone is from the Father alone, together with the Spirit alone — likewise not to admit of any cause, not because of weakness, but because it transcends every reckoning proper to things that came to be out of nothing; the deity being one, yet reckoned in one name as a Trinity, proclaimed to those being enlightened in one seal of the names of Father and Son and Holy Spirit, and having nothing at variance within itself, since the words spoken in truth fulfill the equality of designation belonging to Father and Son and Holy Spirit.

And you also said, 'how then could one concede that the nature which came to subsist has, toward the nature that caused it to subsist, an unvarying sameness of substance, since such a subsistence does not admit of generation' — yet you neither understand, nor have you ever understood, how you have estranged yourself from the knowledge of the truth of God, since you are taught the things of truth not by the Holy Spirit, but by a worldly wisdom that has been made foolish, and by it you attempt to trespass into the things above.

For accordingly you too will hear that your reasoning has been made vain:

for God knows the reasonings of the wise, that they are vain.

For he who begets the substantial Word begot him equal to himself, and not at variance with his own deity — not because of any variation in the one begotten, but because it would have been altogether unfitting for us to think that the one who begot, begot his offspring unworthy of himself, unequal to and lower than the begetter.

For this reason he said that all things came into being through the Son, the substantial Word, so that he might not number him among the things that came to be, but declare him, in every respect, like and equal to the Father, because it is fitting for him to bear the Father's own designation, always being like in substance to him who Is, being no stranger but a true offspring, as a consubstantial Son begotten from him.

If God endlessly remains in an unbegotten nature, and the offspring is endlessly an offspring, then the false doctrine of the 'consubstantial' and the 'like-in-substance' will be exposed.

And the incomparability in substance stands firm, each nature remaining unceasingly in its own proper dignity of nature.

Eternal, possessing this dignity endlessly, not for any other reason, but because he is self-divine and self-eternal — will then the offspring too be consubstantial, if in your view it has received the name 'endless,' since you have plausibly theorized about nature in order fickly to bestow this favor upon the Son?

For you will be forced, even under compulsion, to confess that the name 'endless' is, in every respect, immense and incomprehensible.

How then will he not be consubstantial? Since you thought to mock, attempting through a false name to insult the truth, you will be convicted by the very words you yourself spoke.

For either you will grant that the one whom you blaspheme as different in substance has an end, or, having defined him as endless, you will be compelled to introduce him as immutable and unvarying in every respect with the dignity belonging to the endless — since the truth does not allow that the Son has an end, because Scripture says of his kingdom there shall be no end, on account of his reigning forever with the Father and with his Holy Spirit; whereas everything that has a beginning will also have an end, should the one who gave being to the one who received a beginning so will —

which, though possible in the case of all other beings, is impossible in the case of the Son.

For he always is, from him who Is, and always with him who Is, never ceasing to be.

Therefore he was, and is, and will be, consubstantial — alone from the Alone, and in nothing at variance in substance; rather, the deity remains in the sameness that belongs to the dignity of the names, having neither confusion nor providing itself with a beginning of being, nor admitting anything unlike itself to exist — the deity which always is and never ceases to be, yet is fitting to itself, ever existing in the dignity of Father toward Son and Son toward Father, and of the Holy Spirit together with the Father and the Son, and never failing.

For the Trinity is, in itself, incomparable, admitting no division whatsoever in its dignity.

If God is unbegotten in substance, then that which was begotten was not begotten by a division of substance, but out of the substance which caused it to subsist.

For no pious reasoning permits that the same substance be both begotten and unbegotten.

Many times you have come before us, my friend, brandishing 'the unbegotten' and 'the begotten,' snorting with the name of God — you who have buried your own understanding in every kind of lawlessness.

But this is what everyone in difficulty longs for: some resource for the perplexed, for comfort — even just to have it on one's lips, should one not have any real resource of the kind.

And you, since you happen to be godless, do not even take pride in merely carrying his name on your lips, since by nature — in respect of fear of him, faith, hope, and love toward him — you never possessed him at all.

For it would have sufficed for you to say this once, without overstepping the limit appointed by due order.

For clear is the declarative proof concerning you given by our Savior, that 'by their fruits you shall know them' — you being outwardly clothed with a sheep's fleece, but inwardly a ravening wolf in disguise.

For if you had truly been begotten of the Holy Spirit, and been a disciple of the prophets and apostles, you ought to have gone through — from the beginning of the world's creation down to the times of Esther — the twenty-seven books of the Old Testament, reckoned as twenty-two, and the four holy Gospels, and the fourteen epistles of the holy apostle Paul, and, before these and belonging to their same era, the Acts of the Apostles, and the catholic epistles of James and Peter and John and Jude, and the Revelation of John, and the Wisdom books — I mean of Solomon and of the son of Sirach — and, in short, all the divine Scriptures whatsoever, searching them and condemning yourself, to discover that the name you have come bringing us — nowhere included in them, not because it is unbefitting God, but because it is pious toward God, namely the name 'unbegotten' — is nowhere spoken in divine Scripture:

for no one, unless out of his mind, ever conceived of God as begotten.

...belonging to the right teaching, the Holy Spirit teaching all the sons of truth not to marvel at this as something apart from themselves, but to know it according to what is required, and what already exists within them, of right reasoning tending toward piety concerning God.

But if it is because he is unbegotten — and this we agree upon — yet we do not derive the wording of this designation from Scripture, but know, of itself, through right reasonings, this piety: that it is so.

For into what distinction of substance could there be between the unbegotten and the begotten, if in truth he has this name from having been begotten by some natural and ineffable necessity, befitting both God and the one begotten from him timelessly and without beginning, in truth and not by some misapplied notion? Hence we do not say the substance is created, nor alien as though it were a mere product, but that it is begotten essentially, and not different from him who begot it.

Therefore it also remains uncreated, not made, but begotten out of that very substance of God, not subject to time.

For he who begot did not, in truth, fall under time, so as to give subsistence to a temporal substance.

For whatever the offspring is, such is the begetter; and whatever the begetter is, such also is the one begotten.

If the unbegotten was begotten, what prevents the begotten from having become unbegotten? For indeed every nature is impelled to move from what is foreign to it toward what is properly its own.

If the unbegotten made the begotten, and did not beget him — the designation being fixed upon a single identity, and the one term not extending to cover the other, on account of their true and mutually exclusive naming — then the force of this relation stands on one side alone, in disagreement, having nothing in common with the other except only with respect to authority, the superior nature being the cause of everything created by it.

But since between the maker and the thing made, and the creator and the thing created, there exists yet another designation — one that draws near to the name 'unbegotten,' yet stands far off from the name 'created' — it is impossible to confuse everything, O Aetius, and to obliterate from your own mind the fellowship, according to a true relation, of designation between the Son — who ever exists and is uncreated — and the Father.

For it is impossible for the unbegotten and uncreated nature ever to become created, and then, having repented of having been created, to run back again to its own state of unbegottenness — even should you weave for us countless Aristotelian conundrums, having abandoned the simple and pure teaching of the Holy Spirit that comes from above.

If God is not wholly unbegotten, nothing prevents him from having begotten essentially.

But if he is wholly unbegotten, then he did not divide essentially into an act of generation, but by his own authority gave subsistence to an offspring.

Both are true: God is wholly unbegotten and uncreated, and the one begotten from him is uncreated, and so too his Holy Spirit — whom you belittle, O fleshly Aetius, animal-souled man being spiritually examined — possessing in a unique manner that distinguishing property which comes from him, not to be likened to the many, that is, to those created out of him, and through him, and from him.

Therefore he will neither share fellowship with all created things, nor will anyone else share fellowship with his dignity.

For everything flies past and gives way, and every syllogistic pretext yields before the teaching word from divine Scripture, that 'no one knows the Son except the Father, nor the Father except the Son, and whomever he chooses to reveal him.'

And he reveals him through the Holy Spirit, not to those who reason about him syllogistically, but to those who have believed in him genuinely and perfectly.

For neither will you be able to search out his judgments, nor will you trace out his ways, as it is written — even should you come to us babbling countless things, O pitiable little man, in my estimation.

If the unbegotten God is wholly generative, then the thing begotten was not begotten essentially, since his whole substance possesses the property of begetting, but not that of being begotten.

But if, having been transformed, the substance of God is called 'offspring,' then his substance is not immutable, since the transformation itself brought about the formation of the Son;

and if the substance of God is superior to generation, then whatever pertains to the Son will be confessed to amount to no more than a bare title.

It was fitting, then, not only for you, Aetius, but for every heretic, to be rejected after a single admonition, as the holy and wise word commands.

For you stand self-condemned, drawing destruction upon yourself, and being compelled by no one else.

Who, then, will have mercy on one who is evil to himself, and good to no one? But lest, because of the evils you have brought forth into the world, you should suppose within yourself that these are great and weighty matters, we too will persist, with patience, with the two-edged sword, cutting off, by the word of Christ, your thorny roots, standing firm in the sound, perfect, and true confession toward God.

For glory be to the merciful God who has exposed you for what you truly are, holding the rank of Judas — who was numbered among the disciples, yet was set apart, not having the mind of Christ, but having received from Satan the denial of his own Master's deity.

For by a bare form of words you have professed the Son, while in your understanding you do not hold that he is the Son of God at all.

And what need is there of any further speech to you, since you stand altogether estranged from Christians, from the prophets and apostles and evangelists, from the martyrs and all the saints — who stand ready to convict you on the day of judgment, they who endured, even unto death, being tortured, scourged, flayed, thrown to wild beasts and to fire, and put to death by the sword, in order that they might not deny that he is the Son of God, truly begotten from him?

For the Father is the begetter only of the one Only-begotten, and of no other besides that one; and he is the sender-forth of the Holy Spirit, and of no other spirit; but he is creator and maker of the things that came into being through him, and that are ever coming into being.

Wherefore no longer are many sons begotten, nor do many spirits proceed from him, the same Godhead ever remaining in the Trinity and being glorified, and never being added to, nor ceasing, nor ever being supposed as though it did not exist.

Wherefore also the dignity does not stop at a mere name in the case of the Offspring;

since otherwise he would have had, after him, many brothers like himself -- as in the saying, 'sons have I begotten and reared,' and 'he who has begotten the drops of dew,' and 'from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named,' and 'have we not all one father?', and 'my servant Jacob,' and 'my firstborn Israel.'

For all these, having advanced by mere expression, by way of elevation, from not being to being, do not stand in the true name according to essence, but merely in word and by grace.

Wherefore they were created through the One who is named neither by grace nor by a mere name, but who exists according to truth -- from the One, through the One, together with him who proceeds from him and receives of the same nature.

If the Offspring existed seminally in the unbegotten God, then, after being begotten, having received something further from outside, it grew, so to speak, to manhood.

The Son, then, is perfect not from that out of which he was begotten, but from what he received in addition.

For things that receive by kinship, inasmuch as they are constituted from those very things, are by nature admitted to the name of 'perfect' in a different manner.

If it were not confessed that the Begetter is incorporeal, let everything be staged by you as a drama.

But in staging this drama you frighten no one else; rather, you muddy your own mind, away from the true confession.

For God, being perfect, begot from himself a perfect Son, not other than himself as regards nature.

For he is not unfitting in relation to the Begetter, nor does he need any addition from outside.

For there is nothing greater beyond the essence of God that could impart to one in need a share of the addition required for perfection.

For he who is ever incorporeal, existing eternally with him who truly is in a begetting manner, being perfect, has ever truly begotten as perfect the one who is incorporeal -- being God who is Spirit, and having begotten the enhypostatic Word who is Spirit.

It has seemed to you, upon investigating by syllogisms and your logic-loving reasoning, that although he who made all things out of what did not exist, and was able to accomplish all things perfectly at once, having no need of any additional increase, has nonetheless bound these things by a fixed law -- you style the Word as one needing a maturing essence and an addition of Godhead, and you do not even make him equal to the things created by him.