Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| He thus shows the oneness of the Eternal Son with the Father the identity of essence and the community of nature (wherein is a natural inquiry into the production of wine), and that the terms “Son” and “product” in the naming of the Only-Begotten include a like idea of relationship.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
§4. He
thus shows the oneness of the Eternal Son with the Father the identity
of essence and the community of nature (wherein is a natural inquiry
into the production of wine), and that the terms “Son” and
“product” in the naming of the Only-Begotten include a like
idea of relationship.
What has been said, therefore,
has clearly exposed the slackness which is to be found in the knavery
of our author, who, while he goes about to establish the opposition of
the essence of the Only-begotten to that of the Father, by the method
of calling the one “ungenerate,” and the other
“generate,” stands convicted of playing the fool with his
inconsistent arguments. For it was shown from his own words, first,
that the name of “essence” means one thing, and that of
“generation” another; and next, that there did not come
into existence, with the Son, any new and different essence besides the
essence of the Father, but that what the Father is as regards the
definition of His nature, that also He is Who is of the Father, as the
nature does not change into diversity in the Person of the Son,
according to the
truth of the argument displayed by our consideration of Adam and Abel.
For as, in that instance, he that was not generated after a like sort
was yet, so far as concerns the definition of essence, the same with
him that was generated, and Abel’s generation did not produce any
change in the essence, so, in the case of these pure doctrines, the
Only-begotten God did not, by His own generation, produce in Himself
any change in the essence of Him Who is ungenerate (coming forth, as
the Gospel says, from the Father, and being in the Father,) but is,
according to the simple and homely language of the creed we profess,
“Light of Light, very God of very God,” the one being all
that the other is, save being that other. With regard, however, to the
aim for the sake of which he carries on this system-making, I think
there is no need for me at present to express any opinion, whether it
is audacious and dangerous, or a thing allowable and free from danger,
to transform the phrases which are employed to signify the Divine
nature from one to another, and to call Him Who is generated by the
name of “product of generation.”
I let these matters pass, that
my discourse may not busy itself too much in the strife against lesser
points, and neglect the greater; but I say that we ought carefully to
consider the question whether the natural relation does introduce the
use of these terms: for this surely Eunomius asserts, that with the
affinity of the appellations there is also asserted an essential
relationship. For he would not say, I presume, that the mere names
themselves, apart from the sense of the things signified, have any
mutual relation or affinity; but all discern the relationship or
diversity of the appellations by the meanings which the words express.
If, therefore, he confesses that “the Son” has a natural
relation with “the Father,” let us leave the appellations,
and consider the force that is found in their significations, whether
in their affinity we discern diversity of essence, or that which is
kindred and characteristic. To say that we find diversity is downright
madness. For how does something without kinship or community
“preserve order,” connected and conformable, in the names,
where “the generated essence itself,” as he says,
“and the appellation of ‘Son,’ make such a relation
of words appropriate”? If, on the other hand, he should say that
these appellations signify relationship, he will necessarily appear in
the character of an advocate of the community of essence, and as
maintaining the fact that by affinity of names is signified also the
connection of subjects: and this he often does in his composition
without being aware of it579
| 579 Oehler’s punctuation is here slightly altered. | . For, by the
arguments wherewith he endeavours to destroy the truth, he is often
himself unwittingly drawn into an advocacy of the very doctrines
against which he is contending. Some such thing the history tells us
concerning Saul, that once, when moved with wrath against the prophets,
he was overcome by grace, and was found as one of the inspired, (the
Spirit of prophecy willing, as I suppose, to instruct the apostate by
means of himself,) whence the surprising nature of the event became a
proverb in his after life, as the history records such an expression by
way of wonder, “Is Saul also among the prophets580
?”
At what point, then, does
Eunomius assent to the truth? When he says that the Lord Himself,
“being the Son of the living God, not being ashamed of His birth
from the Virgin, often named Himself, in His own sayings, ‘the
Son of Man’”? For this phrase we also allege for proof of
the community of essence, because the name of “Son” shows
the community of nature to be equal in both cases. For as He is called
the Son of Man by reason of the kindred of His flesh to her of whom He
was born, so also He is conceived, surely, as the Son of God, by reason
of the connection of His essence with that from which He has His
existence, and this argument is the greatest weapon of the truth. For
nothing so clearly points to Him Who is the “mediator between God
and man581
” (as the great Apostle called Him), as
the name of “Son,” equally applicable to either nature,
Divine or Human. For the same Person is Son of God, and was made, in
the Incarnation, Son of Man, that, by His communion with each, He might
link together by Himself what were divided by nature. Now if, in
becoming Son of Man, he were without participation in human nature, it
would be logical to say that neither does He share in the Divine
essence, though He is Son of God. But if the whole compound nature of
man was in Him (for He was “in all points tempted like as we are,
yet without sin”582
), it is surely
necessary to believe that every property of the transcendent essence is
also in Him, as the Word “Son” claims for Him both
alike—the Human in the man, but in the God the Divine.
If then the appellations, as
Eunomius says, indicate relationship, and the existence of relationship
is observed in the things, not in the mere sound of the words (and by
things I mean the things conceived in themselves, if it be not
over-bold thus to speak of the Son and the Father), who would deny that
the very champion of blasphemy has by his own action been dragged into
the advocacy of orthodoxy, overthrowing by his own means his own
arguments, and proclaiming community of essence in the case of the Divine
doctrines? For the argument that he unwillingly casts into the scale on
the side of truth does not speak falsely as regards this
point,—that He would not have been called Son if the natural
conception of the names did not verify this calling. For as a bench is
not called the son of the workman, and no sane man would say that the
builder engendered the house, and we do not say that the vineyard is
the “product583
” of the
vine-dresser, but call what a man makes his work, and him who is
begotten of him the son of a man, (in order, I suppose, that the proper
meaning might be attached by means of the names to the respective
subjects,) so too, when we are taught that the Only-begotten is Son of
God, we do not by this appellation understand a creature of God, but
what the word “Son” in its signification really displays.
And even though wine be named by Scripture the “product584
” of the vine, not even so will our
argument with regard to the orthodox doctrine suffer by this identity
of name. For we do not call wine the “product” of the oak,
nor the acorn the “product” of the vine, but we use the
word only if there is some natural community between the
“product” and that from which it comes. For the moisture in
the vine, which is drawn out from the root through the stem by the
pith, is, in its natural power, water: but, as it passes in orderly
sequence along the ways of nature, and flows from the lowest to the
highest, it changes to the quality of wine, a change to which the rays
of the sun contribute in some degree, which by their warmth draw out
the moisture from the depth to the shoots, and by a proper and suitable
process of ripening make the moisture wine: so that, so far as their
nature is concerned, there is no difference between the moisture that
exists in the vine and the wine that is produced from it. For the one
form of moisture comes from the other, and one could not say that the
cause of wine is anything else than the moisture which naturally exists
in the shoots. But, so far as moisture is concerned, the differences of
quality produce no alteration, but are found when some peculiarity
discerns the moisture which is in the form of wine from that which is
in the shoots, one of the two forms being accompanied by astringency,
or sweetness, or sourness, so that in substance the two are the same,
but are distinguished by qualitative differences. As, therefore, when
we hear from Scripture that the Only-begotten God is Son of man, we
learn by the kindred expressed in the name His kinship with true man,
so even, if the Son be called, in the adversaries’ phrase, a
“product,” we none the less learn, even by this name, His
kinship in essence with Him that has “produced585
| 585 γεγεννηκότα: which, as answering to γέννημα, is here translated “produced” rather than
“begotten.” | ” Him, by the fact that wine, which is
called the “product” of the vine has been found not to be
alien, as concerns the idea of moisture, from the natural power that
resides in the vine. Indeed, if one were judiciously to examine the
things that are said by our adversaries, they tend to our doctrine, and
their sense cries out against their own fabrications, as they strive at
all points to establish their “difference in essence.” Yet
it is by no means an easy matter to conjecture whence they were led to
such conceptions. For if the appellation of “Son” does not
merely signify “being from something,” but by its
signification presents to us specially, as Eunomius himself says,
relationship in point of nature, and wine is not called the
“product” of an oak, and those “products” or
“generation of vipers586
,” of which the
Gospel somewhere speaks, are snakes and not sheep, it is clear, that in
the case of the Only-begotten also, the appellation of
“Son” or of “product” would not convey the
meaning of relationship to something of another kind: but even if,
according to our adversaries’ phrase, He is called a
“product of generation,” and the name of “Son,”
as they confess, has reference to nature, the Son is surely of the
essence of Him Who has generated or “produced” Him, not of
that of some other among the things which we contemplate as external to
that nature. And if He is truly from Him, He is not alien from all that
belongs to Him from Whom He is, as in the other cases too it was shown
that all that has its existence from anything by way of generation is
clearly of the same kind as that from whence it came.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
