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| He thus proceeds to a magnificent discourse of the interpretation of “Mediator,” “Like,” “Ungenerate,” and “generate,” and of “The likeness and seal of the energy of the Almighty and of His Works.”
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§12. He thus proceeds to a magnificent discourse of
the interpretation of “Mediator,” “Like,”
“Ungenerate,” and “generate,” and of “The
likeness and seal of the energy of the Almighty and of His
Works.”
Again, what is the manifold
mediation which with wearying iteration he assigns to God, calling Him
“Mediator in doctrines, Mediator in the Law411
| 411 Here
again the exact connexion of the quotation from Eunomius with the
extracts preceding is uncertain. | ”? It is not thus that we are taught by
the lofty utterance of the Apostle, who says that having made void the
law of commandments by His own doctrines, He is the mediator between
God and man, declaring it by this saying, “There is one God, and
one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus412
;” where by the distinction implied in
the word “mediator” he reveals to us the whole aim of the
mystery of godliness. Now the aim is this. Humanity once revolted
through the malice of the enemy, and, brought into bondage to sin, was
also alienated from the true Life. After this the Lord of the creature
calls back to Him His own creature, and becomes Man while still
remaining God, being both God and Man in the entirety of the two
several natures, and thus humanity was indissolubly united to God, the
Man that is in Christ conducting the work of mediation, to Whom, by the
first-fruits assumed for us, all the lump is potentially united413
. Since, then, a mediator is not a mediator of
one414
, and God is one, not divided among the
Persons in Whom we have been taught to believe (for the Godhead in the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost is one), the Lord, therefore,
becomes a mediator once for all betwixt God and men, binding man to
the Deity by Himself. But even by the idea of a mediator we are taught
the godly doctrine enshrined in the Creed. For the Mediator between God
and man entered as it were into fellowship with human nature, not by
being merely deemed a man, but having truly become so: in like manner
also, being very God, He has not, as Eunomius will have us consider,
been honoured by the bare title of Godhead.
What he adds to the preceding
statements is characterized by the same want of meaning, or rather by
the same malignity of meaning. For in calling Him “Son”
Whom, a little before, he had plainly declared to be created, and in
calling Him “only begotten God” Whom he reckoned with the
rest of things that have come into being by creation, he affirms that
He is like Him that begat Him only “by an especial likeness, in a
peculiar sense.” Accordingly, we must first distinguish the
significations of the term “like,” in how many senses it is
employed in ordinary use, and afterwards proceed to discuss
Eunomius’ positions. In the first place, then, all things that
beguile our senses, not being really identical in nature, but producing
illusion by some of the accidents of the respective subjects, as form,
colour, sound, and the impressions conveyed by taste or smell or touch,
while really different in nature, but supposed to be other than they
truly are, these custom declares to have the relation of
“likeness,” as, for example, when the lifeless material is
shaped by art, whether carving, painting, or modelling, into an
imitation of a living creature, the imitation is said to be
“like” the original. For in such a case the nature of the
animal is one thing, and that of the material, which cheats the sight
by mere colour and form, is another. To the same class of likeness
belongs the image of the original figure in a mirror, which gives
appearances of motion, without, however, being in nature identical with
its original. In just the same way our hearing may experience the same
deception, when, for instance, some one, imitating the song of the
nightingale with his own voice, persuades our hearing so that we seem
to be listening to the bird. Taste, again, is subject to the same
illusion, when the juice of figs mimics the pleasant taste of honey:
for there is a certain resemblance to the sweetness of honey in the
juice of the fruit. So, too, the sense of smell may sometimes be
imposed upon by resemblance, when the scent of the herb camomile,
imitating the fragrant apple itself, deceives our perception: and in
the same way with touch also, likeness belies the truth in various
modes, since a silver or brass coin, of equal size and similar weight
with a gold one, may pass for the gold piece if our sight does not
discern the truth.
We have thus generally described
in a few words the several cases in which objects, because they are
deemed to be different from what they really are, produce delusions in
our senses. It is possible, of course, by a more laborious
investigation, to extend one’s enquiry through all things which
are really different in kind one from another, but are nevertheless
thought, by virtue of some accidental resemblance, to be like one to
the other. Can it possibly be such a form of “likeness” as
this, that he is continually attributing to the Son? Nay, surely he
cannot be so infatuated as to discover deceptive similarity in Him Who
is the Truth. Again, in the inspired Scriptures, we are told of another
kind of resemblance by Him Who said, “Let us make man in our
image, after our likeness415
;” but I do not
suppose that Eunomius would discern this kind of likeness between the
Father and the Son, so as to make out the Only-begotten God to be
identical with man. We are also aware of another kind of likeness, of
which the word speaks in Genesis concerning Seth,—“Adam
begat a son in his own likeness, after his image416
”; and if this is the kind of likeness
of which Eunomius speaks, we do not think his statement is to be
rejected. For in this case the nature of the two objects which are
alike is not different, and the impress and type imply community of
nature. These, or such as these, are our views upon the variety of
meanings of “like.” Let us see, then, with what intention
Eunomius asserts of the Son that “especial likeness” to the
Father, when he says that He is “like the Father with an especial
likeness, in a peculiar sense, not as Father to Father, for they are
not two Fathers.” He promises to show us the “especial
likeness” of the Son to the Father, and proceeds by his
definition to establish the position that we ought not to conceive of
Him as being like. For by saying, “He is not like as Father to
Father,” he makes out that He is not like; and again when he
adds, “nor as Ungenerate to Ungenerate,” by this phrase,
too, he forbids us to conceive a likeness in the Son to the Father; and
finally, by subjoining “nor as Son to Son,” he introduces a
third conception, by which he entirely subverts the meaning of
“like.” So it is that he follows up his own statements, and
conducts his demonstration of likeness by establishing unlikeness. And
now let us examine the discernment and frankness which he displays in
these distinctions. After saying that the Son is like the Father, he
guards the statement by adding that we ought not to think that the Son
is like the Father, “as Father to Father.” Why, what man
on earth is
such a fool as, on learning that the Son is like the Father, to be
brought by any course of reasoning to think of the likeness of Father
to Father? “Nor as Son to Son”:—here, again, the
acuteness of the distinction is equally conspicuous. When he tells us
that the Son is like the Father, he adds the further definition that He
must not be understood to be like Him in the same way as He would be
like another Son. These are the mysteries of the awful doctrines of
Eunomius, by which his disciples are made wiser than the rest of the
world, by learning that the Son, by His likeness to the Father, is not
like a Son, for the Son is not the Father: nor is He like “as
Ungenerate to Ungenerate,” for the Son is not ungenerate. But the
mystery which we have received, when it speaks of the Father, certainly
bids us understand the Father of the Son, and when it names the Son,
teaches us to apprehend the Son of the Father. And until the present
time we never felt the need of these philosophic refinements, that by
the words Father and Son are suggested two Fathers or two Sons, a pair,
so to say, of ungenerate beings.
Now the drift of Eunomius’
excessive concern about the Ungenerate has been often explained before;
and it shall here be briefly discovered yet again. For as the term
Father points to no difference of nature from the Son, his impiety, if
he had brought his statement to a close here, would have had no
support, seeing that the natural sense of the names Father and Son
excludes the idea of their being alien in essence. But as it is, by
employing the terms “generate” and
“ungenerate,” since the contradictory opposition between
them admits of no mean, just like that between “mortal” and
“immortal,” “rational” and
“irrational,” and all those terms which are opposed to each
other by the mutually exclusive nature of their meaning,—by the
use of these terms, I repeat, he gives free course to his profanity, so
as to contemplate as existing in the “generate” with
reference to the “ungenerate” the same difference which
there is between “mortal” and “immortal”: and
even as the nature of the mortal is one, and that of the immortal
another, and as the special attributes of the rational and of the
irrational are essentially incompatible, just so he wants to make out
that the nature of the ungenerate is one, and that of the generate
another, in order to show that as the irrational nature has been
created in subjection to the rational, so the generate is by a
necessity of its being in a state of subordination to the ungenerate.
For which reason he attaches to the ungenerate the name of
“Almighty,” and this he does not apply to express
providential operation, as the argument led the way for him in
suggesting, but transfers the application of the word to arbitrary
sovereignty, so as to make the Son to be a part of the subject and
subordinate universe, a fellow-slave with all the rest to Him Who with
arbitrary and absolute sovereignty controls all alike. And that it is
with an eye to this result that he employs these argumentative
distinctions, will be clearly established from the passage before us.
For after those sapient and carefully-considered expressions, that He
is not like either as Father to Father, or as Son to Son,—and yet
there is no necessity that father should invariably be like father or
son like son: for suppose there is one father among the Ethiopians, and
another among the Scythians, and each of these has a son, the
Ethiopian’s son black, but the Scythian white-skinned and with
hair of a golden tinge, yet none the more because each is a father does
the Scythian turn black on the Ethiopian’s account, nor does the
Ethiopian’s body change to white on account of the
Scythian,—after saying this, however, according to his own fancy,
Eunomius subjoins that “He is like as Son to Father417
| 417 This is
apparently a quotation from Eunomius in continuation of what has gone
before. | .” But although such a phrase indicates
kinship in nature, as the inspired Scripture attests in the case of
Seth and Adam, our doctor, with but small respect for his intelligent
readers, introduces his idle exposition of the title “Son,”
defining Him to be the image and seal of the energy418
| 418 The
word employed is ἐνέργεια; which might be translated by “active force,” or
“operation,” as elsewhere. |
of the Almighty. “For the Son,” he says, “is the
image and seal of the energy of the Almighty.” Let him who hath
ears to hear first, I pray, consider this particular point—What
is “the seal of the energy”? Every energy is contemplated
as exertion in the party who exhibits it, and on the completion of his
exertion, it has no independent existence. Thus, for example, the
energy of the runner is the motion of his feet, and when the motion has
stopped there is no longer any energy. So too about every pursuit the
same may be said;—when the exertion of him who is busied about
anything ceases, the energy ceases also, and has no independent
existence, either when a person is actively engaged in the exertion he
undertakes, or when he ceases from that exertion. What then does he
tell us that the energy is in itself, which is neither essence, nor
image, nor person? So he speaks of the Son as the similitude of the
impersonal, and that which is like the non-existent surely has itself
no existence at all. This is what his juggling with idle opinions comes
to,—belief in nonentity! for that which is like nonentity
surely itself is not. O Paul and John and all you others of the band of
Apostles and Evangelists, who are they that arm their venomous tongues
against your words? who are they that raise their frog-like croakings
against your heavenly thunder? What then saith the son of thunder?
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and
the Word was God419
.” And what
saith he that came after him, that other who had been within the
heavenly temple, who in Paradise had been initiated into mysteries
unspeakable? “Being,” he says, “the Brightness of His
glory, and the express Image of His person420
.” What, after these have thus spoken,
are the words of our ventriloquist421
? “The
seal,” quoth he, “of the energy of the Almighty.” He
makes Him third after the Father, with that non-existent energy
mediating between them, or rather moulded at pleasure by non-existence.
God the Word, Who was in the beginning, is “the seal of the
energy”:—the Only-begotten God, Who is contemplated in the
eternity of the Beginning of existent things, Who is in the bosom of
the Father422
, Who sustains all things, by the word
of His power423
, the creator of the ages, from Whom and
through Whom and in Whom are all things424
, Who
sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and hath meted out heaven with
the span, Who measureth the water in the hollow of his hand425
, Who holdeth in His hand all things that are,
Who dwelleth on high and looketh upon the things that are lowly426
, or rather did look upon them to make all the
world to be His footstool427
, imprinted by the
footmark of the Word—the form of God428
is
“the seal” of an “energy.” Is God then an
energy, not a Person? Surely Paul when expounding this very truth says
He is “the express image,” not of His energy, but “of
His Person.” Is the Brightness of His glory a seal of the energy
of God? Alas for his impious ignorance! What is there intermediate
between God and His own form? and Whom does the Person employ as
mediator with His own express image? and what can be conceived as
coming between the glory and its brightness? But while there are such
weighty and numerous testimonies wherein the greatness of the Lord of
the creation is proclaimed by those who were entrusted with the
proclamation of the Gospel, what sort of language does this forerunner
of the final apostasy hold concerning Him? What says he? “As
image,” he says, “and seal of all the energy and power of
the Almighty.” How does he take upon himself to emend the words
of the mighty Paul? Paul says that the Son is “the Power of God429
”; Eunomius calls Him “the seal of
a power,” not the Power. And then, repeating his expression, what
is it that he adds to his previous statement? He calls Him “seal
of the Father’s works and words and counsels.” To what
works of the Father is He like? He will say, of course, the world, and
all things that are therein. But the Gospel has testified that all
these things are the works of the Only-begotten. To what works of the
Father, then, was He likened? of what works was He made the seal? what
Scripture ever entitled Him “seal of the Father’s
works”? But if any one should grant Eunomius the right to fashion
his words at his own will, as he desires, even though Scripture does
not agree with him, let him tell us what works of the Father there are
of which he says that the Son was made the seal, apart from those that
have been wrought by the Son. All things visible and invisible are the
work of the Son: in the visible are included the whole world and all
that is therein; in the invisible, the supramundane creation. What
works of the Father, then, are remaining to be contemplated by
themselves, over and above things visible and invisible, whereof he
says that the Son was made the “seal”? Will he perhaps,
when driven into a corner, return once more to the fetid vomit of
heresy, and say that the Son is a work of the Father? How then does the
Son come to be the seal of these works when He Himself, as Eunomius
says, is the work of the Father? Or does he say that the same Person is
at once a work and the likeness of a work? Let this be granted: let us
suppose him to speak of the other works of which he says the Father was
the creator, if indeed he intends us to understand likeness by the term
“seal.” But what other “words” of the Father
does Eunomius know, besides that Word Who was ever in the Father, Whom
he calls a “seal”—Him Who is and is called the Word
in the absolute, true, and primary sense? And to what counsels can he
possibly refer, apart from the Wisdom of God, to which the Wisdom of
God is made like, in becoming a “seal” of those counsels?
Look at the want of discrimination and circumspection, at the confused
muddle of his statement, how he brings the mystery into ridicule,
without understanding either what he says or what he is arguing about.
For He Who has the Father in His entirety in Himself, and is Himself in
His entirety in the Father, as Word and Wisdom and Power and Truth, as
His express image and brightness, Himself is all things in the Father,
and does not come to be the image and seal and likeness of certain
other things discerned in the Father prior to Himself.
Then Eunomius allows to Him the credit of the destruction of men
by water in the days of Noah, of the rain of fire that fell upon Sodom,
and of the just vengeance upon the Egyptians, as though he were making
some great concessions to Him Who holds in His hand the ends of the
world, in Whom, as the Apostle says, “all things consist430
,” as though he were not aware that to
Him Who encompasses all things, and guides and sways according to His
good pleasure all that hath already been and all that will be, the
mention of two or three marvels does not mean the addition of glory, so
much as the suppression of the rest means its deprivation or loss. But
even if no word be said of these, the one utterance of Paul is enough
by itself to point to them all inclusively—the one utterance
which says that He “is above all, and through all, and in all431
| 431 Eph. iv. 6. The application
of the words to the Son is remarkable. | .”E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
