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| He declares falsely that 'the manner of the generation is to be known from the intrinsic worth of the generator'.
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§33. He declares falsely that ‘the manner of the
generation is to be known from the intrinsic worth of the
generator’.
He goes back, for instance, to
the begetting being, and from thence takes a survey of the begotten;
“for,” says he, “the manner of the generation is to
be known from the intrinsic worth of the generator.” Again, we
find this bold unqualified generalization of his causing the thought of
the inquirer to be dissipated in every possible direction; it is the
nature of such general statements, to extend in their meanings to every
instance, and allow nothing to escape their sweeping assertion. If then
‘the manner of the generation is to be known from the intrinsic
worth of the generator,’ and there are many differences in the
worth of generators according to their many classifications168
| 168 ᾽Επίνοια is the opposite of ἔννοια, ‘the
intuitive idea.’ It means an “afterthought,” and,
with the notion of unnecessary addition, a ‘conceit.’ Here
it is applied to conventional, or not purely natural difference. See
Introduction to Book XIII. for the fuller meaning of ᾽Επίνοια. |
to be found (for one may be born Jew, Greek, barbarian, Scythian, bond,
free), what will be the result? Why, that we must expect to find as
many “manners of generation” as there are differences in
intrinsic worth amongst the generators; and that their birth will not
be fulfilled with all in the same way, but that their nature will vary
with the worth of the parent, and that some peculiar manner of birth
will be struck out for each, according to these varying estimations.
For a certain inalienable worth is to be observed in the individual
parent; the distinction, that is, of being better or worse off
according as there has fallen to each race, estimation, religion,
nationality, power, servitude, wealth, poverty, independence,
dependence, or whatever else constitutes the life-long differences of
worth. If then “the manner of the generation” is shown by
the intrinsic worth of the parent, and there are many differences in
worth, we shall inevitably find, if we follow this opinion-monger, that
the manners of generation are various too; in fact, this difference of
worth will dictate to Nature the manner of the birth.
But if he should not169
| 169 μὴ
δέχοιτο.
This use of the optative, where the subjunctive with ἐαν might have been expected, is
one of the few instances in Gregory’s Greek of declension from
Classic usage; in the latter, when ει with the optative does denote
subjective possibility, it is only when the condition is conceived of
as of frequent repetition, e.g. 1 Peter iii.
14.
The optative often in this Greek of the fourth century invades the
province of the subjunctive. | admit that such worth is natural, because
they can be put in thought outside the nature of their subject, we will
not oppose him. But at all events he will agree to this; that
man’s existence is separated by an intrinsic character from that
of brutes. Yet the manner of birth in these two cases presents no
variation in intrinsic character; nature brings man and the brute into
the world in just the same way, i.e. by generation. But if he
apprehends this native dignity only in the case of the most proper and
supreme existence, let us see what he means then. In our view, the
‘native dignity’ of God consists in godhead itself, wisdom,
power, goodness, judgment, justice, strength, mercy, truth,
creativeness, domination, invisibility, everlastingness, and every
other quality named in the inspired writings to magnify his glory; and
we affirm that everyone of them is properly and inalienably found in
the Son, recognizing difference only in respect of unoriginateness; and
even that we do not exclude the Son from, according to all its
meanings. But let no carping critic attack this statement as if we were
attempting to exhibit the Very Son as ungenerate; for we hold that one
who maintains that is no less impious than an Anomœan. But since
the meanings of ‘origin’ are various, and suggest many
ideas, there are some of them in which the title
‘unoriginate’ is not inapplicable to the Son170
. When, for instance, this word has the
meaning of ‘deriving existence from no cause whatever,’
then we confess that it is peculiar to the Father; but when the
question is about ‘origin’ in its other meanings (since any
creature or time or order has an origin), then we attribute the being
superior to origin to the Son as well, and we believe that that whereby
all things were made is beyond the origin of creation, and the idea of
time, and the sequence of order. So He, Who on the ground of His
subsistence is not without an origin, possessed in every other view an
undoubted unoriginateness; and while the Father is unoriginate
and Ungenerate, the Son is unoriginate in the way we have said, though
not ungenerate.
What, then, is that native
dignity of the Father which he is going to look at in order to infer
thereby the ‘manner of the generation.’ “His not
being generated, most certainly,” he will reply. If, then, all
those names with which we have learnt to magnify God’s glory are
useless and meaningless to you, Eunomius, the mere going through the
list of such expressions is a gratuitous and superfluous task; none of
these other words, you say, expresses the intrinsic worth of the God
over all. But if there is a peculiar force fitting our conceptions of
the Deity in each of these words, the intrinsic dignities of God must
plainly be viewed in connexion with this list, and the likeness of the
two beings will be thereby proved; if, that is, the characters
inalienable from the beings are an index of the subjects of those
characters. The characters of each being are found to be the same; and
so the identity on the score of being of the two subjects of these
identical dignities is shown most clearly. For if the variation in a
single name is to be held to be the index of an alien being, how much
more should the identity of these countless names avail to prove
community of nature!
What, then, is the reason why
the other names should all be neglected, and generation be indicated by
the means of one alone? Why do they pronounce this
‘Ungeneracy’ to be the only intrinsic character in the
Father, and thrust all the rest aside? It is in order that they may
establish their mischievous mode171
| 171 See
Note on ᾽Αγέννητος, p. 100. | of unlikeness of Father and
Son, by this contrast as regards the begotten. But we shall find that
this attempt of theirs, when we come to test it in its proper place, is
equally feeble, unfounded, and nugatory as the preceding
attempts.
Still, that all his reasonings
point this way, is shown by the sequel, in which he praises himself for
having fittingly adopted this method for the proof of his blasphemy,
and yet for not having all at once divulged his intention, nor shocked
the unprepared hearer with his impiety, before the concatenation of his
delusive argument was complete, nor displayed this Ungeneracy as
God’s being in the early part of his discourse, nor to weary us
with talk about the difference of being. The following are his exact
words: “Or was it right, as Basil commands, to begin with the
thing to be proved, and to assert incoherently that the Ungeneracy is
the being, and to talk about the difference or the sameness of
nature?” Upon this he has a long intervening tirade, made up of
scoffs and insulting abuse (such being the weapons which this thinker
uses to defend his own doctrines), and then he resumes the argument,
and turning upon his adversary, fixes upon him, forsooth, the blame of
what he is saying, in these words; “For your party, before any
others, are guilty of this offence; having partitioned out this same
being between Begetter and Begotten; and so the scolding you have given
is only a halter not to be eluded which you have woven for your own
necks; justice, as might have been expected, records in your own words
a verdict against yourselves. Either you first conceive of the beings
as sundered, and independent of each other172
; and
then bring down one of them, by generation, to the rank of Son, and
contend that One who exists independently nevertheless was made by
means of the Other existence; and so lay yourselves open to your own
reproaches: for to Him whom you imagine as without generation you
ascribe a generation by another:—or else you first allow one
single causeless being, and then marking this out by an act of
causation into Father and Son, you declare that this non-generated
being came into existence by means of itself.”E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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