birth. 266. It was a complaint of the Jews that the Lord was considered to be the Son of the God over all. These men also object to those who truly make the sue confession about him. The Jews thought they were honouring the God of the universe by excluding the Son from like honour . These also bestow the same on the One over all, bestowing honour on the Father by talling away the glory of the Lord.

XXII ,267-294 One ought not to attribute greater and less to the divine being; including an elaborated statement of Church doctrine 267. It would be impossible to give a proper account of the ex-tent and nature of the other features of their violence done to the the Onlybegotten. Having first invented an activity preceding the hypostas1s of Christ, they call him a or. and an something the Jews have to this day never dared to do. Next they circumscribe the nature of the Lord, enclosing him within certain limits of the power that made him, delimiting him with a measure, to wit the size of the activity that brought him into existence, enclosed on every hand by the tunic of the activity thought up by them. We cannot accuse the Jews of that. 268. Next they Cp.1051 envisage a shortage for the being in terms of lessening, in some way using their own power of comprehension to measure what has no quantity or size, and managing to discover by what quantity the Onlybegotten God falls short of completeness, for lack of which he is considered smaller and incomplete. In many other instances they profess one thing openly while secretly arguing another, 1333Ml thus making the confession of the Son and Holy Spirit way of exercising their own malice. 269. Must they not therefore be under more wretched judgment than the Jews, if the doctrines they so openly argue are such as the Jews have never dared? The one who lessens the being of the . Son and the Holy Spirit might perhaps seem, if you just say or hear the words, to be only slightly irreverent. But 1f the statement is carefully inspected, he will be convicted of blasphemy at the capital point. Let us approach the subject in this way: in order to teach and clarify. the falsehood argued by my opponents, I hope I may be pardoned if I proceed by stating our own position. 270. The most important distinction of all beings is that between the intelligible and the sensible. The sensible nature is general-ly given the name "visible" by the Apostle . Because every material body has colour, and because it is vision that apprehends colour, he ignores such remaining qualities as sub-stantially inhere, and uses for convenience the term referring to visual rce tion. 271. For the whole intelligible nature the common name, used by the Apostle, is "the invisible" ; by removing the sensible apprehension Cp.1061 he leads the mind on to the incorporeal and intelligible. But reason divides the meaning of this intelligible nature also into two. For logic per-ceives one kind as uncreated, the other as created, an uncreated nature which makes the created, and a createa'!iifure which re-ceives its cause and ability to exist from the uncreated. 272. Among the sensible are all those things which we apprehend by the

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bodily senses, with reference to which the differences of quali-ties admit consideration of more and less, since differences of quantity and quality and other characteristics apply to them. 273 . As to the intelligible nature, the created one I mean, the sort of principle of differentiation which was perceived in the case of sensible things cannot operate, but another means is found for indicating the difference between greater and less. 27( . Because the fount and origin and supply of every good is considered to be in the uncreated nature, and the whole creation inclines towards the good, clasping at and partaking in the supreme nature through sharing in the first good, it follows of necessity that in proportion to their participation in the higher things some receive 11 larger share and others 11 smaller according to their freely exercised choice, and so more and less are known in the creation proportionately to the desire of each . 275 . Since the intelligible nature on the created side stands at _the border between good things and their opposite, so as to be capable of receiving either by inclining to those which it prefers, as Cp.1071 we learn from scripture, C336MJ there is room to speak of more and less in the one who excels in virtue in proportion to his rejection of the worse and approximation to the better. 276. The uncreated nature is far away from such 11 distinction, inasmuch as it does not have good as something acquired, nor does it receive moral virtue into itself by participation in some higher moral virtue, but because tt is by nature what goodness is in itself, and is perceived as goodness, and is attested even by our oppon-ents to be the fount of goodness, simple, uniform and uncom-pounded. 277 . It has a distinction of its own appropriate to the majesty of its nature, not thought of in terms of more and less, as Eunomius supposes; for one who lessens his conception of the good in any member of the holy Trinity we believe in, will surely be making out that some of the opposite state has been mixed in in the case of the one who falls short in goodness, which it is not pious to hold either about the Onlybegotten or about the Holy Spirit . Rather, being thought of as in utter perfection and incomprehensible transcendence, it possesses unconfused and clear differentiation through the characteristics to be found in each of the hypostases, being invariable in the common possession of uncreatedness, and singular in the special characteristics of each. 278 . The particularity attributed to each of the hypostases plainly and unambiguously distinguishes one from another. Thus the Father is confessed to be uncreated and unbegot ten, for he is neither begotten nor created . This uncreatedness therefore he has in common with the Son and the Cp. 1081 Holy Spirit. But he is both unbegotten and Father; this is personal and incommunicable, and it is not perceived in either of the others . 279. The Son is connected to the Father and the Spirit in uncreatedness, but has his individuation in being and being called Son and Onlybegot ten, which does not belong the God over all or of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit, who has 11 share with the Father and the Son in the uncreated nature, is again distinguished from them by recognisable features . His feature and mark is quite uniquely to be none of those things which reason envisaged as peculiar to the Father and

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the Son. 280. To be neither unbegotten nor onlybegotten, but certainly to be, provides his special personal difference from the others mentioned. Connected with the Father in uncreatedness, he is conversely separated from the Father by not being. Father as he is. His connexion with the Son in uncreatedness is not continued when it comes to the personal characteristic, since he did not come to be onlybegotten from the Father and has been Cp.1091 manifested through the Son himself. Again, since the creation came to exist through the Onlybegotten, lest the Spirit be thought to have anything in common with it because he was manifested through the Son, the Spirit is distinguished from the creation by changelessness and immutability and independence of outside good-ness. Creation C337MJ does not have changelessness in its nature, as Scripture says when it relates the fall of Lucifer , of which the Lord also speaks when he tells mysteries to his disciples: "I saw Satan fallen as lightning from the sky" . What separates him from the creation is the same as what unites him intimately to the Father and the Son. In the case of those whose nature admits nothing bad one and the same account must be given of changelessness and immutability. 282. After these preliminary remarks it is now perhaps time to examine our opponents account . In his artful statement about the Son and the Holy Spirit he says, Necessity requires that the beings are greater and lesser. Let us enquire by what logic he arrives at the necessity of such a difference, whether some material comparison has been made between things measured against each other, or whether it is conceived in terms of the intelligible as one exceeds or falls short in virtue, or whether it is in the being itself. 283. In the case of being however it has been shown by those who are skilled in such philosophy that no difference can be predicated, if one examines it by itself in accordance with its own Cp.1101 principle of being, stripped bare of the qualities and characteristics attributed to it. To conceive such a distinction in connexion with the Onlybegotten and the Spirit in terms of success or failure of virtue, and consequently to suppose that the nature of each of them is necessarily defectible, equally receptive of opposites and lying on the boundary between good and its opposite, is utterly profane . 284. One who says this will be arguing that it is one thing in its own proper definition, and becomes something else by participation in good and evil. Thus with iron it happens that, if it associates for a long time with fire, it takes on the quality of heat, while remaining iron, but if it gets into snow or ice, it changes its quality towards the pre-vailing influence, taking the cold of the snow into its own intimate parts. 285. Therefore , just as we do not give the material the name of the quality to the iron, for we do not call something fire or water because it has been affected by one of these, so if it be gnnted that, as the impious argue , in the case of the lifegiving power goodness does not essentially inhere in it, but that it is acquired by participation, it will no longer have the right to be called by the title the gqod , but such an under-standing will demand some other conception, such that goodness is

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not attributed to it eternally, nor is it intrinsically understood to possess the nature of goodness, but that the good sometimes is not in it and sometimes will not be. 266. If good things come to be by participation in wh.at is better, then clearly before their participation they were not such; and if when they were something else they Cp.111 340MJ were tinged with the presence of good, then surely if they are deprived of it, they will be reckoned someth.ing other than the good. And if this is maintained, the divine nature will be understood as not so much a provider of good things as itself in need of a benefactor. 267. How can one provide another with what it does not itself possess? If then it has it perfect-ly, we shall envisage no falling short in perfection, and it is vain to argue for what is less 1n what is perfect . If on the other hand participation in the good is deemed imperfect in them and in this respect they speak of the less, observe the conse-quence , that the one in this condition will not be benefactor to what is inferior, but will make efforts to fill up what it itself lacks. Thus according to them the doctrine of providence is false, as are those of providence, of judgment, of the dispen-sation, and of all the things which are held to have been done by the Onlybegotten and to be done eternally by him, since he is apparently busy attending to his own goodness and neglects the government of the universe. 288 , If this idea were to prevail, that the Lord is not perfect in every good, it is not diff,icult to see where the blasphemy ends up . Truly the faith of such persons is vain , empty their preach-ing, insubstantial their hopes, whose substance comes with faith . Why are they baptized into Christ, who has no power of goodness of his own? - far be it from me to utter such blasphemy. 289. And why do they believe in the Holy Spirit, 1f they think the same things about him? How can Cp .1 121 they after their mortal birth be born again by baptism, when on their view even the power that gives them rebirth does not possess indefectibility and self-sufficiency? How is the body of their humiliation transformed

ore and less to them in terms of corporeal concepts, Cp.113J the absurdity of the argument is at once generally granted, even without precise exa11ination of the detail. On this theory it inevitably follows that qualities and dimensions, weights and shapes, and all those things which together make up the account of a physical object, should be included in the divine nature. And where composition is alleged, there surely it must be conceded there is dissolution of the composite. 293 . These and similar things are established by the doctrinal absurdity, which dares to allege lesser and superior in the sizeless and inco11parable, as our account has indicated by taking some of the many points; it would be difficult to expose here all the guile hidden in the doc-trine. But even a few statements will equally well demonstrate the absurdity of what is claimed in the sequence of blasphemy.

XXIII,294-316 Tb& teaching of the faith is not unattested, being supported by scriptural testhlonies 294. It is for us now to proceed with the next stage of the argu-ment, after some slight further definitions have been added in support of our doctrine. Since the divine testimony is a sure test of truth in any doctrine, I think it would be as well also to con-firm our word too with the words of God. 295. We know these differences in the distinction of beings, first the one which 1s first in our apprehension, I mean the sensible, and next the one perceived by the mind through the leading of sensible things, which we say is intelligible. We also accepted another further distinction of the intelligible , which divides it into created and uncreated. We decided that the Holy Trinity belongs to the uncreated nature, and whatever is mentioned, exists and Cp.1141 has a n1111e besides the Trinity belongs to the created. 296. So that our definition may not stand unsupported, but secured by the testimonies of Scripture, we shall add one thing to what has been said: that the Lord was not created, but came forth from the Father, as the Divine Word himself in person attests in the Gospel (Jn 8,24; 16,27; 17,8), by that ineffable and inexplicable manner of his birth or coming-forth. 297. What truer witness could be found than the voice of the Lord, who throughout the Gospel calls his own true Father "Father" and not "Creator", and refers to himself not as "work of God" but as "Son of God"? 298 . Just as, in order to indicate his fleshly participation in the human, he used the title "Son of Man" for the visible, showing the natural affinity of his flesh with that from which 1t was taken, so he points out by the title "Son" his true and genuine relation to the God of the universe, using the word "Son" to point to the natural intimacy. If some, C344MJ to refute the truth , put forward barely and without interpretation the things from the proverbial saying which are darkly and enigmatically expressed in a parable, and avail the11Selves of the expression about being created, which the proverb- writer put into the mouth of Wisdom, in support of the perversity of their doctrine, saying that ''The Lord created 11e CProv 8 ,22 > is 11 confession that the Lord is created, since the Onlybegotten by this expression did not reject such 11 thing, we

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