[p. 289]

Gregory of Nyssa

Against Eunomius Book Three

Part Ten

§§1-17 The orthodox interpretation of the Lord’s words to Mary Magdalene

1. Let us now see what is added to the blasphemy in what follows, which indeed

is the chief point in support of their doctrine. Those who reduce the majestic

glory of the Only-begotten to mean and servile ideas reckon that the strongest

argument for what they say is the word of the Lord to Mary, which he utters after

his resurrection and before his ascension, saying, ‘Touch me not, for I am not yet

ascended to my Father; but go to my brothers and say to them, “I am ascending to

my Father and your Father, and my God and your God”’ (Jn 29.17). 2. Now the

truly religious understanding of these words, in accordance with which we

believe they were spoken to Mary, is, I believe, quite clear to those who have

received the faith in truth. We shall still also add our own explanation of this in

the proper place. Meanwhile it is right to enquire of those who bring such words

into debate, what it is that ascends, and is seen, and is recognized by touch, and

furthermore belongs to mankind by brotherhood: do they regard it as a feature of

the divine or of the human nature? 3. For if what is tangible and visible, and

nourished by food and drink, physically related and brother to human beings,

and all that is observed to relate to corporeal nature, [p. 290] are all perceived as

also in the godhead, let them say these things also of the Only-begotten God, and

let them claim what they like for him, including the action of moving and change

of location, which is a feature of things circumscribed by bodies. 4. If however the

one converses with brothers through Mary, while the Only-begotten has no

brothers (for how could his unique begetting remain intact among brothers?),

and he who says, ‘God is spirit’ (Jn 4.24) is the same as he who said to his

disciples, ‘Feel me’ (Luke 24.39), in order to show that while the human nature

may be touched, the divine is intangible; and he who said, ‘I am going’ (Jn 16.28),1

indicates a change of spatial position, whereas he who encompasses all things, he

in whom, as the Apostle says, all things were created, and in whom all things

consist (Col 1.16-17), has nothing in existence outside himself towards which by 1 Jaeger refers to Jn 20.17, but the actual verb does not occur there.

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a movement the change of place can come about. For there is no other way for

movement to operate, if that which changes position does not leave the place it

was in, and adopt another instead; but what permeates all things, and holds all in

its grasp, and is circumscribed by no existing thing, has no place it can change to,

being in no respect void of the divine fulness. 5. Why then do these people

abandon the attribution of these words to the physical, and attach them to the

divine nature which surpasses all understanding, when the Apostle in his address

to the Athenians rejected thinking in this way about God, on the ground that the

divine power is not discovered by touch, but by mental observation [p. 291] and

faith (Acts 17.27-29)? 6. Or again, he that ate before the eyes of his disciples (Lk

24.41-43), and who promised that he would go before them in Galilee and be

seen there, who is it that he indicates will be seen by them (Mk 16.7 etc.)? Is it

God, whom no man has seen nor can see, or the bodily manifestation, that is, the

form of the slave, in whom God was? If then it is obvious from what has been said

that the meaning of the words points to what is visible, solid, mobile, and akin in

nature to the disciples, and that no such thing is perceived connected with what

is invisible, incorporeal, intangible and formless, why do they degrade the Only-

begotten God, who is in the Beginning, and is in the Father, into equality of rank

with Peter, Andrew, John and the rest of the apostles, by saying that they are

brothers and fellow-slaves of the Only-begotten?

7. The goal to which their whole effort is directed is this: to prove that, in

terms of the majesty of his nature, the Son is as far distant from the rank, power and

being of the Father, as he also surpasses the essential being of man, and they claim

this saying in support of that idea, because it applies the same terms ‘Father’ and

‘God’ equally to the Lord and to the disciples of the Lord, as though no difference of

natural rank were envisaged between them, when he is reckoned to be in the same

way Father and God both to him and to them. 8. Something of this kind is the

argument of the blasphemy in what follows:

… that either, through the terms expressing the relationship, sharing of

[p. 292] being between the disciples and the Father is simultaneously

attested, or else the Lord himself is not directing us by this expression to

sharing the nature of the Father; and just as the fact that the God over all

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is named ‘their God’ argues the servile status of the disciples, by the same

argument it is conceded by these words that the Son is his slave.

That the words spoken to Mary do not fit the deity of the Only-begotten may be deduced

from the very meaning of the words used. 9. The one who in every way humbled himself

to the level of our human littleness, is he who speaks the words. What the actual words

mean may be precisely known by those who by the Spirit explore the depths of the

mystery (cf 1 Cor 2.10). The things however, which have come to our attention through

the instruction of the fathers, those I can briefly present. He who is by nature Father of all

existing things, from whom they all have their origin, is announced as One by the

proclamation of the apostle: „On God and Father,‟ he says, „from whom are all things‟ (1

Cor 8.6). 10. Therefore the human nature did not come upon the creation from some

other source, nor was it generated among existing things of itself, but it too had as the

maker of its own constitution none other than the Father of all things. The very title of

Godhead, however, whether it represents the power of oversight or foresight, it possesses

in a way that befits the human. For he who gives beings the ability to exist, [p. 293] is the

God and overseer of the things made by him; but when by the plotting of him who sowed

in us the tare of disobedience our race failed to preserve his image of its own accord, but

was shamefully disfigured by sin, it was as a result turned by deliberate assimilation into

an evil kinship with the father of sin. Thus the one disowned through his own wickedness

no longer had the Good and True as his Father and God, but instead of him who is by

nature God, those who were not gods were worshipped, as the Apostle says (Gal 4.8),

and instead of the genuine Father, the fraudulent one was called father, as the prophet

Jeremiah says in a parable, „The partridge has called, gathered a brood not her own‟ (Jer

17.ll). 11. It was therefore because the chief feature of our calamity was that humanity

had lost its kinship with the good Father and come to be outside the divine supervision

and care, that the Shepherd of the whole rational creation, leaving on the heights the

unerring and supernal flock, for love of humanity pursued the lost sheep, I mean, our

race; for the human race is the last and least fraction, the race which in the figure of the

parable was the only one of the rational hundred that went astray through evil (Matt

18.12). 12. So, because it was impossible for our species, exiled from God, to be received

back again of its own accord to the high and heavenly place, for that reason, as the

Apostle puts it (2 Cor 5.11), he who knew no sin becomes sin for us, and liberates us

from the curse by making the curse his own (cf Gal 3.13), and [p. 294] taking up our

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enmity to God caused by sin, and, as the Apostle says (Eph 2.16), slaying it (and the

enmity was sin), and becoming what we are, by himself he re-attached humanity to God.

13. That new Man, created in accordance with God (Eph 4.24), in whom dwelt the

fullness of God bodily (Col 2.9), him he acquired by purity for kinship of our race with

the Father, and drew along with him into the same state of grace the whole race that

shared his body and was akin to him. It is this good news which is announced through the

woman (Jn 20.18), not only to those disciples, but also to all who have become disciples

of the word to this day, the news that Man is no longer under banishment or cast out of

the kingdom of God, but is again a son, again orderly under God, since together with the

first-fruits of mankind the whole mass of humanity has also been sanctified. 14. „See,‟ he

says, „it is I and the children God gave me‟ (Heb 2.13/Is 8.18); the place from which you

departed, when you became flesh and blood through sin, taking you up again he led you

back there, he who for our sakes shared flesh and blood. Thus he became also our Father

and God, he from whom we had become alienated through rebellion. Therefore the Lord

announced the good news of that great benefit in what he said, and the words are not

proof of the degradation of the Son, but the good news of our reconciliation with God.

15. What happened to the humanity of Christ,2 is a grace shared with the race of men; for

just as we believe the downward tendency, weighed down to the ground, of the body,

when we see it carried to heaven, [p. 295] as the Apostle says that we shall be caught up

in clouds to meet the Lord in the air (1 Thes 4.17), so too, when we hear that the true God

and Father has become Father and God of our First-fruits,3 we no longer doubt that the

same one has become our Father and God too, when we learn that we shall enter the same

place, where Christ has entered for our sake as forerunner. 16. The fact that the grace is

reported by a woman is itself in conformity with our interpretation, too. For because, as

the Apostle says, „The woman was deceived and fell into transgression‟ (1 Tim 2.14),

and led the way of rebellion against God by her disobedience, for that reason she became

the first witness of the resurrection, so that she might correct by her faith in the

resurrection the disaster her transgression caused; and just as, having become at the start

minister and advocate of the serpent‟s words, she consequently brought a beginning of

evil upon the world, so, by bearing to the disciples the words of him who had slain the

2 Literally, „to the Man in the case of Christ‟.

3 Jaeger is wrong to note James 1.18 and 2 Thes 2.13 as parallels, since there the body of

believers is seen as the firstfruits. Gregory speaks of Christ as the Firstfruits of the

resurrection of our race, as Paul does in 1 Cor 15.20-23.

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rebellious dragon, she might become a pioneer of faith for mankind, the faith by which

appropriately the first sentence of death is revoked. 17. It may be that experts may find a

more helpful exegesis of the text. If however none is forthcoming, then surely, in

comparison with the one offered, every truly religious person will agree that the one

presented by our opponents fails. Theirs has been concocted to demolish the glory of the

Only-begotten, and nothing else, but this one contains the purpose of the human

economy; for it was demonstrated that it was not the intangible, unmoveable, and

invisible, but the seen, moved and touched, that indeed which characterizes the human

nature, which gave Mary the command to carry the word to his brothers.

§§18-54 Defending Basil’s critique of Eunomius, who interpreted the Son’s Light

as less than the Father’s

18. A further matter for consideration is the sort of defence he makes against his

refutation by great Basil, in which he separates the Only-begotten God by allocating

darkness to him. He says,

„As much as the Begotten is separate from the Unbegotten, so is the Light

distinguished from the Light.‟

Basil demonstrated that it was not by some lowering or extensiion that the begotten

differs from the unbegotten, but that there is an absolute contradiction in the meanings,

and he drew the conclusion as a result of what had been postulated, that if the Father‟s

light differs from that of the Son in the same way that unbegottenness differs from being

begotten, then inevitably it is not reduction of light that is attributed to the Son, but

absolute alienation from it. For just as you cannot say that being begotten is a diminution

of unbegottenness, but the meanings of unbegottenness and being begotten differ totally

as contradicting each other, so if the Father‟s Light preserves the same distinction from

that attributed to the Son, it will follow that the Son will no longer be understood to be

Light, since he will be equally excluded from unbegottenness itself and from the Light

associated with it; and he who is something other than the Light will consequently

plainly belong to its opposite. 19. The absurdity [p. 297] having been exposed by these

arguments, Eunomius tries to refute them by formal logical demonstrations, in these

words:

„For we know, we know the true Light. We know him that made the light

after the heaven and the earth. We have heard the very Life and Truth, Christ,

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saying to his disciples, “You are the light of the world” (Matt 5.14). We have

learned from blessed Paul calling the God over all “Light unapproachable” (1

Tim 6.16), making a distinction by the epithet and declaring the

transcendence of the Light. aving then learned such a great difference of

light, we shall not allow ourselves even to hear that the meaning of “light” is

the same.‟

20. Is he by these efforts deliberately putting forward such propositions against the truth,

or using tricks to test the insensitivity of his followers, whether they can detect the

elementary flaw in the logic, or whether they are unaware of such an obvious trick? I do

not think any one is so stupid that he does not see the trick over the use of the same word,

by which Eunomius deceived himself and those who think like him. The disciples, he

says, were called „light‟, and what was made at creation is also called „light‟. Who is not

aware that the only thing in common is the word, while the meaning in each case differs?

The sun‟s light is visually discerned, whereas the thought in the teaching of the disciples

puts the illumination of truth in minds. 21. If he knows the difference in that light, that

the one light is physical, the other mental, we shall no longer have any argument with

him, since his Defence itself condemns him before we say anything. But if he [p.298]

cannot find such a difference in the case of that other Light in terms of its operation, —

since it is not a matter of one illuminating bodily eyes, the other the intellect, but there is

one operation of each of the two Lights operating on the same objects, —how do they

demonstrate from the rays of the sun and the apostles‟ words that the only-begotten Light

and the paternal Light are different? Yet, he says, the Son is called „true‟ Light, the

Father „unapproachable‟; so these additional epithets make clear the distinct superiority

of the paternal light, 22. for he supposes that „true‟ means one thing, „unapproachable „

another. Then who is so silly, that he cannot see that the meanings are the same? The true

and the unapproachable are equally repellent of contrary concepts. As truth admits no

admixture of falsehood, so the unapproachable does not allow anything contrary to come

near. The unapproachable is surely unapproachable by evil. But the Son‟s light is not

evil; how could any one see the true associated with evil? Since therefore truth is not an

evil, no one can say that the Light in the Father is not approachable even by truth. If it

thrusts truth away, it will surely coincide with falsehood. 23. Such is the nature of

opposites, that in the absence of the good, the contrary concept appears. So if one says he

understands that the light in the Father is a long way from the presence of the contrary, he

will be interpreting the word „unapproachable‟ exactly as the Apostle intended. But if he

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says that „unapproachable‟ means „alienated from good‟, it will implied that he is no less

than hostile and alien to himself, being both good and opposed to good. This however is

impossible: what is good belongs to the Good. 24. The one Light is therefore no different

from the other, [p. 299] for the Son is true Light and the Father unapproachable Light. I

might even go so far as to say that it would not be wrong to exchange designations of this

sort between them. The true is not approachable by the false, and conversely the

unapproachable is apprehended in purest truth, for the meaning in both cases alike is that

evil cannot come near. 25. He therefore who cheats himself and those who think like him,

what does he conceive to be the difference between these two? There is however a

further criticism we should not omit: he produces the saying of the Apostle with a

misrepresentation of his wording to suit himself. Paul says „dwelling in light

unapproachable‟ (1Tim 6.16). There is a considerable difference between saying that he

is something, and saying that he is in something. The one who says, „dwelling in light

unapproachable‟, by using the word for dwelling did not refer to him, but to what is

around him, and that on our argument is the same as the Gospel verse, which says that

the Father is in the Son. For the Son is true Light, and Truth ia unapproachable by

falsehood; so the Son is Light inapproachable, in which the Father dwells, [or indeed, in

whom the Father is].4

26. Still he struggles with his vanities, and says,

„From the actual facts and the sayings we believe in, I provide the proof of

my words.‟

(Such is his promise. Whether he proceeds with the argument to suit his promises,

the intelligent hearer will surely observe.)

„Blessed John,‟ he says, „having said that the Word was in the beginning, and

having called him Life, and having then named the Life “Light”, a little [p.

300] further on he says, “and the Word became flesh.” If then the Life is

Light, and the Word Life, and the Word became flesh, it becomes apparent

from this that the Light came to be in flesh.‟

27. What? Because the Light, the Life, the God, and the Word were manifested in flesh,

therefore the true Light differs from the Light in the Father? —and yet it is attested by the

Gospel that even when it was in the darkness it remained unapproachable by the contrary

nature: „The Light shone in the darkness,‟ it says, „and the darkness did not lay hold on

4 Jaeger deletes the bracketed words as an alternative reading in the manuscripts.

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it‟ (Jn 1.5). If then the Light had been changed into its opposite and dominated by the

gloom when it came to be in darkness, that would have been a strong proof for those who

want to show how much this Light differs for the worse when compared with that held to

be in the Father. 28. If however the Word, though it comes to be in flesh, remains Word,

and the Light, though it shines in the darkness, is no less Light, admitting no community

with its opposite, and the Life, though it comes to be in death, is preserved within itself,

and the God, though he is subjected to the form of the slave, does not actually become a

slave, but the subordinate is exalted to lordship and royalty, making Lord and Christ what

was lowly and human, how does he demonstrate by this the change of the Light for the

worse, when both alike remain unchanged for the worse and invariable. He does not even

notice that the one who saw the enfleshed Word, who was both Light and Life and God,

through the visible glory perceived the Father of glory, and said, „We have seen his glory,

glory as of an Only-begotten from a Father‟ (Jn 1.14).

29. He has however come to the irrefutable argument, which we long since detected

as following from what he had said, but is now stated in naked terms: he wants to

demonstrate that the essential being of the Son is something passible and fragile,

differing not at all from the material nature subject to flux, so as to demonstrate thereby

his difference from the Father. He says:

„If he is able to show the God over all too, who is indeed unapproachable

Light, having become enfleshed, or being able to do so, came under

authority, obeyed commandments, lived by human laws, or was crucified, let

him say that Light is equal to Light.‟

30. If these things had been alleged by us in our investigations as a consequence of the

previous arguments, and they were not substantiated by his words, everybody would have

accused us of lying, as if we were in a verbal frenzy exposing the doctrine of our

opponents to this charge of absurdity. As it is, there is support for the view that we are

with due discretion correcting the argument of the heresy, in the fact that even they

themselves do not leave unmentioned the absurdity which appears in what follows. Look

how undisguised and frank is their war against the Only-begotten God, and how his work

of loving kindness is reckoned by his enemies an insult and imputation against the nature

of the Son of God, as if he had slithered down into life in the flesh and the suffering of

the cross, not by deliberate choice, but of his own nature. 31. Just as it is natural for stone

to fall downwards and for fire the opposite, and the substances do not exchange

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characteristics with each other, so that stone should become airborne and fire be heavy

and fall downwards, so they argue that [p. 302] the sufferings are essentially combined

with the Son‟s nature, and for this reason it comes to what is akin and proper to itself,

while that of the Father, being free from such passions, remains unapproachable by the

assault of evil. For he says that the God over all, who is indeed unapproachable Light,

neither became enfleshed, nor is able to do so. 32. It was enough to make the first of the

statements, that the Father did not become enfleshed but now by the addition there is a

duplication of the argument for the absurdity, since he is either accusing the Son of evil

or the Father of impotence. 33. If participation in the flesh is an evil, he is affirming the

wickedness of the Only-begotten God; if generous kindness is a good, he is

demonstrating that the Father is incapable of the good, by saying that he was unable to

exercise such grace through flesh. Yet everybody knows that lifegiving power proceeds

into operation alike from Father and Son. „Just as the Father raises the dead,‟ he says, „so

the Son makes alive those whom he will‟ (Jn 5.21); he refers to us, who have fallen away

from true life, as „dead‟. 34. If then, just as the Father gives life, so also, and in no other

way, the Son exercises the same grace, why does God‟s enemy use his blasphemous

tongue against both, insulting the Father as impotent towards the good, and the Son as

associated with evil?

35. „Nevertheless,‟ he says, „the one Light is not equal to the other, because one is

called “true”, the other “unapproachable”.‟ Therefore the true is reckoned inferior.5 Why?

Indeed, for this very reason the godhead of the Father is deemed to be greater and higher

than that of the Son, because the one [p. 303] is described in the Gospel as „true‟ God (Jn

17.3), while the other lacks the adjective. So why does the same word indicate superiority

in the concept where godhead is concerned, inferiority in the case of light? For if the

reason he says the Father is greater than the Son, is that he is true God, on the same

principle the Son will be confessed as greater than the Father, because the one is called

„true‟ Light, the other is not. 36. However,

„This Light,‟ he says, „effected the works of kindly love, the other remained

inoperative for giving grace of this kind.‟

A new kind of promotion! They judge the one who performs no works of kindly love

higher than the one who effects them. There never was and never will be such an idea

among Christians, whereby it is argued that not every good which there is in beings has

5 Jaeger punctuates this statement as a question.

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its source in the Father. Among those who think aright the chief good in our case is

believed to be the way back to life. This however was achieved through the dispensation

of the Lord in his manhood, with the Father not inactive and inoperative, as the heresy

would have it, holding himself apart at the time of that dispensation. That is not what he

shows us, who said, „He that sent me is with me‟ (Jn 8.29), and „The Father abiding in

me does these works‟ (Jn 14.10). 37. Why then does the heresy claim the work of grace

on our behalf as the Son‟s alone, and exclude the Father from a share in the thanksgiving

for things restored? The return of thanks is naturally owed only to benefactors, and the

one who is incapable of giving benefit is surely not included in the thanksgiving. You see

how in every way their plan to blaspheme the Only-begotten turns back in reverse, with

consequent effects on the Father instead. In my view this sort of thing was bound to

happen. If „he who honours the Son honours the Father,‟ as the divine declaration says

(Jn 5.13), then conversely efforts against the Son have their consequences for the Father.

38. I say that for those who simply accept the message of the cross and resurrection the

same gift of grace should be the subject of equal thanksgiving both to Father and Son,

since the Son carried out the Father‟s will, which is that all mankind should be saved, as

the Apostle says (1 Tim 1.4); and we should equally honour for this grace both the Father

and the Son, because salvation would not have come to us, had not the good purpose of

the Father through his own Power reached out to us to effect it, and we learn from the

Scriptures that the Son is the Power of the Father.

39. Let us look again at what is said:

„If he is able to show the God over all too, who is indeed unapproachable

Light, having become enfleshed, or being able to do so, came under

authority, let him say that Light is equal to Light.‟6

The purpose of what is said is obvious from the logical structure of the words, namely

that he does not think that by his almighty power the Son is capable also of generosity of

this kind, but that he allowed himself to suffer by crucifixion because he was passible by

nature. 40. I thought about this, and considered the question of where he came upon such

ideas about the Deity, that the Unbegotten [p. 305] is Light unapproachable by its

contrary and thought of as purely passionless and undefiled, while the Begotten is

ambiguous in nature, so that it does not retain its deity absolute and pure in impassibility,

but has its being combined and commingled with opposites, a being which both yearns

6 Abbreviating the quotation in §29 above.

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for participation in the Good and is diverted towards a disposition subject to passion.

Since I could not find in the scriptures the basis for such absurdities, it occurred to me to

wonder whether he had admired the myths of the Egyptians about the deity, and mixed in

their views in what he thinks about the Only-begotten. It is reported that they say that

their outlandish idol-making, when they attach certain animal forms to human bodies, are

a symbol of their mixed nature, which they call a daemon,7 and that this is more refined

than human nature and superior in power to our nature, but does not have divinity

unmixed or undiluted, but combined with mental life (physis) and corporeal sensation, so

that it receives pleasure and pain, none of which is true of the unbegotten God. They too

use this concept, attributing unbegottenness to what is in their thinking the transcendent

God. It seems therefore to us that this clever theologian has brought Anubis, Isis or Osiris

from the dark Egyptian shrines into the Christian Gospel, without actually confessing the

names; though there is surely no difference in the impiety between one who confesses the

names of the idols, and the one who holds these opinions of them in himself, while

avoiding the names. 42. If then they can find no support for this impiety in the divine

scripture, and their argument gets its strength from hieroglyphic symbols, it is surely not

difficult to see what men of good will ought [p. 306] to think about them. That we are not

making this accusation merely abusively, Eunomius himself would be our witness in his

own words, when he says that the Unbegotten is unapproachable Light and not able to

enter the experience of sufferings, and states that in the case of the Begotten such a

condition is proper and congenital. So man would receive no favour from the Only-

begotten God in the things he suffered, if he actually slipped automatically, as they tell

us, into the experience of the sufferings, since his passible being would drag him

naturally to this, and that merits no thanks. 43. For who would regard what happens of

necessity as a matter for gratitude, even if it were beneficial and helpful? We do not

acknowledge the heat of fire or the fluidity of water as a favour, since we attribute what

is done to a necessity of nature, for fire cannot quit its heating function, nor water remain

stable on a flat surface, but of its own accord gets forward momentum from its sloping

situation. So if they say that it was by necessity of nature that the benefit through

incarnation was done by the Son to mankind, they surely acknowledge no favour,

because they attribute what he did not to a power to act freely, but to a necessity of

nature. 44. If however they are conscious of the benefit of the gift and do not honour it, I

7 The Greek daivmwn, from which we get the English word „demon‟, usually referred to

a minor divinity, like a nymph or local god.

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am afraid their impiety may again go into reverse, and make the passionate status of the

Son superior to the passionlessness of the Father, shifting right judgment to the one they

regard as Good. For if the Son too, in the same fashion they teach about the Father, had

ended up immune to suffering, [p. 307] the disastrous state of our race would have

remained incorrigible: there would have been none to deliver mankind into imperishable

life by his personal experience. Thus unawares the cunning of the sophists, by the

arguments it uses to demolish the majesty of the Only-begotten God advancing him

towards greater and more honourable notions, if indeed the one who is able to act for

good is more honourable than the one who is not.

45. However, I am aware that my book is getting somewhat disorderly. It does not

stay in its correct course, but like a hot and headstrong foal is being carried away by the

arguments of our adversaries towards the absurdities of their position. It must therefore

be allowed to defy the rein immoderately in order to deal with absurdities. The kindly

hearer will pardon the things said, not attributing the absurdity arising from the study to

us, but to those who lay down bad principles. It is for us turn out attention to something

else in his writing. 46. He says:

„He also makes God composite for us, by suggesting that the Light is

common, but that they are distinct one from another by certain characteristics

and various differences, for what coincides in one shared aspect, but

distinguished by certain differences and sets of characteristics, is no less

composite.‟

Our argument with this is brief and easily dealt with. The charge he brings against our

teachings, if he did not state it in his own words, is a charge we plead guilty to. Let us

note the things he has written. He names the Lord „true Light‟, and the Father,

„unapproachable Light‟; so he himself has acknowledged they have light in common,

since he so names both. 47. Since names are [p. 308] adapted to realities, as he stipulates

in many places, we do not think it is as a mere word that „Light‟ is uttered without

meaning in the case of the divine nature, but it designates an underlying reality.

Therefore, given the sharing of the name, they are admitting the identity of the things

indicated, since when things have the same name, they have declared their natures to be

no different. Since then one thing is meant by „Light‟, the addition of „unapproachable‟

and „true‟ on the heretical argument distinguishes the universal by the particulars, so that

one Light is thought of as the Father‟s, the other as the Son‟s: they are distinguished by

their characteristics. He must either abolish the peculiar features, so that what he says

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does not argue the divinity to be composite, or he should not blame us for things which

he can see in his own arguments. 48. The case is in not at all damaged by these points,

since being is not community and particularity, in such a way that the combination of

these proves the object to be composite. The being in itself, whatever it may be by nature,

abides, being just what it is. Any one who has some intelligence would say that these

things are what are perceived and understood to apply to them, since it is even possible to

observe something in common between the divine nature and us men, but the divine is

not therefore humanity, nor the human deity. 49. Believing that God is good, we know

that this word is used by scripture for mankind, but the particularity of each divides the

community arising from the common name; the one, being the fount of goodness, is

named after it, while the one who shares that goodness also participates in the name, and

God is not composite just because he shares the designation „good‟ with man. [p. 309] It

is therefore plainly to be concluded from this that the definition of what is held in

common is one thing, that of the being another; and any composition or multiplicity in

the simple and unquantifiable nature is no more argued on this ground, if one of the

things attributed to it is either considered in its particularity or gets the designation

because of some common feature.

50. Let us now go on to another of the things he has said, saying goodbye to the

ravings in between, where he laboriously makes a lot of noise about the Aristotelian

classification of beings, and in what we have written elaborates on the kinds and species

and distinctions and indivisibles, and deploys all the rest of the technical logic of the

Categories to insult our doctrines. So leaving that aside, let us take our argument on to

his serious point, the most difficult to refute. With the fury of a Demosthenes he has shot

his book against us and declared himself another Paianeus from Oltiseris, imitating the

orator‟s sharp shooting in his battle with us. I will quote verbatim our wordsmith‟s

words:

„Yes‟, he says. „but if, since “begotten” is the opposite of “unbegotten”, the

begotten Light meets the unbegotten Light on equal terms, the one will be

light, the other darkness.‟

The sharpness and accuracy of this antithetical confrontation, any one with leisure may

perceive from his words. I would like to ask him who acts our part, either to use our

words, or to present his imitation of our speech as closely as possible, or else as he has

learnt and is able, to use his book to argue for himself and not for us. For, lest any one of

our people be misled in such a way as [p. 310] to think that, because „begotten‟ is

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opposite in meaning to „unbegotten‟, decline is implied of one from the other. Not every

contrary is distinguished by declension, but its opposition consists wholly in the

difference indicated, as we might say someone is asleep or not asleep, seated or not

seated, begotten or not begotten, and everything else of the same kind, where removing

the one means positing its contrary. So just as living is not a declining from not living,

but total opposition, so we reckon that having been begotten is not a declension from not

having been begotten, but its contradiction and absolute antithesis, so that what is

signified in each has nothing in common with the other in any way either small or large.

He therefore who says that what is deemed contrary declines from its opposite must

produce the argument in his own name. 53. Our own naiveté tells us that things

analogous to opposites differ between themselves to the same extent as their prototypes

do. So if Eunomius perceives the same difference in the Light as be does between

begotten and unbegotten, I shall respond by using our argument, that as in that case the

one part of the contradiction continues to have nothing in common with its contrary, so,

if indeed if the Light is attached to one side of the antithesis, then its other partner will

certainly be shown to be bound up with darkness: the necessity of the antithesis will, on

the analogy of what precedes, set the principle of light against its opposite.

54. This is what we, who „set our hands to writing without training in logic,‟ as our

abuser says, offer rustically in our local dialect to the new Paianeus. As to why he has

struggled against this contradiction, shooting at us fire-breathing words with the force of

a Demosthenes, let those who enjoy a laugh go to our orator‟s actual writings. Our own is

not too difficult to put into action for refuting the doctrines of the impious, but for poking

fun at the ignorance of the uneducated it is quite unsuitable.