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| The fifth book promises to speak of the words contained in the saying of the Apostle Peter, but delays their exposition. He discourses first of the creation, to the effect that, while nothing therein is deserving of worship, yet men, led astray by their ill-informed and feeble intelligence, and marvelling at its beauty, deified the several parts of the universe. And herein he excellently expounds the passage of Isaiah, “I am God, the first.”
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Book V.
§1. The fifth book
promises to speak of the words contained in the saying of the Apostle
Peter, but delays their exposition. He discourses first of the
creation, to the effect that, while nothing therein is deserving of
worship, yet men, led astray by their ill-informed and feeble
intelligence, and marvelling at its beauty, deified the several parts
of the universe. And herein he excellently expounds the passage of
Isaiah, “I am God, the first.”
It is
now, perhaps, time to make enquiry into what is said concerning the
words of the Apostle Peter688
, by Eunomius himself,
and by our father689
| 689 S.
Basil: the passages discussed are afterwards referred to in
detail. | concerning the
latter. If a detailed examination should extend our discourse to
considerable length, the fair-minded reader will no doubt pardon this,
and will not blame us for wasting time in words, but lay the blame on
him who has given occasion for them. Let me be allowed also to make
some brief remarks preliminary to the proposed enquiry: it may be that
they too will be found not to be out of keeping with the aim of our
discussion.
That no created thing is
deserving of man’s worship, the divine word so clearly declares
as a law, that such a truth may be learned from almost the whole of the
inspired Scripture. Moses, the Tables, the Law, the Prophets that
follow, the Gospels, the decrees of the Apostles, all alike forbid the
act of reverencing the creation. It would be a lengthy task to set out
in order the particular passages which refer to this matter; but though
we set out only a few from among the many instances of the inspired
testimony, our argument is surely equally convincing, since each of the
divine words, albeit the least, has equal force for declaration of the
truth. Seeing, then, that our conception of existences is divided into
two, the creation and the uncreated Nature, if the present contention
of our adversaries should prevail, so that we should say that the Son
of God is created, we should be absolutely compelled either to set at
naught the proclamation of the Gospel, and to refuse to worship that
God the Word Who was in the beginning, on the ground that we must not
address worship to the creation, or, if these marvels recorded in the
Gospels are too urgent for us, by which we are led to reverence and to
worship Him Who is displayed in them, to place, in that case, the
created and the Uncreated on the same level of honour; seeing that if,
according to our adversaries’ opinion, even the created God is
worshipped, though having in His nature no prerogative above the rest
of the creation, and if this view should get the upper hand, the
doctrines of religion will be entirely transformed to a kind of anarchy
and democratic independence. For when men believe that the nature they
worship is not one, but have their thoughts turned away to diverse
Godheads, there will be none who will stay the conception of the Deity
in its progress through creation, but the Divine element, once
recognized in creation, will become a stepping-stone to the like
conception in the case of that which is next contemplated, and that
again for the next in order, and as a result of this inferential
process the error will extend to all things, as the first deceit makes
its way by contiguous cases even to the very last.
To show that I am not making a
random statement beyond what probability admits of, I will cite as a
credible testimony in favour of my assertion the error which still
prevails among the heathen690
| 690 With
the following passage may be compared the parallel account in the Book
of Wisdom (ch. xiii.). | . Seeing that they,
with their untrained and narrow intelligence, were disposed to look
with wonder on the beauties of nature, not employing the things they
beheld as a leader and guide to the beauty of the Nature that
transcends them, they rather made their intelligence halt on arriving
at the objects of its apprehension, and marvelled at each part of the
creation severally—for this cause they did not stay their
conception of the Deity at any single one of the things they beheld,
but deemed everything they looked on in creation to be divine. And thus
with the Egyptians, as the error developed its force more in respect of
intellectual objects, the countless forms of spiritual beings were
reckoned to be so many natures of Gods; while with the Babylonians the
unerring
circuit of the firmament was accounted a God, to whom they also gave
the name of Bel. So, too, the foolishness of the heathen deifying
individually the seven successive spheres, one bowed down to one,
another to another, according to some individual form of error. For as
they perceived all these circles moving in mutual relation, seeing that
they had gone astray as to the most exalted, they maintained the same
error by logical sequence, even to the last of them. And in addition to
these, the æther itself, and the atmosphere diffused beneath it,
the earth and sea and the subterranean region, and in the earth itself
all things which are useful or needful for man’s life,—of
all these there was none which they held to be without part or lot in
the Divine nature, but they bowed down to each of them, bringing
themselves, by means of some one of the objects conspicuous in the
creation, into bondage to all the successive parts of the creation, in
such a way that, had the act of reverencing the creation been from the
beginning even to them a thing evidently unlawful, they would not have
been led astray into this deceit of polytheism. Let us look to it,
then, lest we too share the same fate,—we who in being taught by
Scripture to reverence the true Godhead, were trained to consider all
created existence as external to the Divine nature, and to worship and
revere that uncreated Nature alone, Whose characteristic and token is
that it never either begins to be or ceases to be; since the great
Isaiah thus speaks of the Divine nature with reference to these
doctrines, in his exalted utterance,—who speaks in the person of
the Deity, “I am the first, and hereafter am I, and no God was
before Me, and no God shall be after Me691
| 691 Cf. Is. xli. 4, xliv.
6, xlviii. 12 (LXX.). If the whole passage is intended to be a quotation,
it is not made exactly from any one of these; the opening words are
from the second passage referred to; and perhaps this is the only
portion intended to be a quotation, the second clause being
explanatory; the words of the second clause are varied in the
repetition immediately afterwards. | .” For knowing more perfectly than all
others the mystery of the religion of the Gospel, this great prophet,
who foretold even that marvellous sign concerning the Virgin, and gave
us the good tidings692
of the birth of the
Child, and clearly pointed out to us that Name of the Son,—he, in
a word, who by the Spirit includes in himself all the truth,—in
order that the characteristic of the Divine Nature, whereby we discern
that which really is from that which came into being, might be
made as plain as possible to all, utters this saying in the person of
God: “I am the first, and hereafter am I, and before Me no God
hath been, and after Me is none.” Since, then, neither is that
God which was before God, nor is that God which is after God, (for that
which is after God is the creation, and that which is anterior to God
is nothing, and Nothing is not God;—or one should rather say,
that which is anterior to God is God in His eternal blessedness,
defined in contradistinction to Nothing693
| 693 πρὸς οὐδὲν
ὁριζόμενος; i.e. before the name of “God” could be
applied, as now, in contradistinction to creation, it was
applied in contradistinction to nothing, and that distinction was in a
sense the definition of God. Or the words may be turned, as Gulonius
turns them, “nulla re determinatus,” “with no
limitation”—the contradistinction to creation being
regarded as a limitation by way of definition. | ;—since, I say, this inspired utterance
was spoken by the mouth of the prophet, we learn by his means the
doctrine that the Divine Nature is one, continuous with Itself and
indiscerptible, not admitting in Itself priority and posteriority,
though it be declared in Trinity, and with no one of the things we
contemplate in it more ancient or more recent than another. Since,
then, the saying is the saying of God, whether you grant that the words
are the words of the Father or of the Son, the orthodox doctrine is
equally upheld by either. For if it is the Father that speaks thus, He
bears witness to the Son that He is not “after” Himself:
for if the Son is God, and whatever is “after” the Father
is not God, it is clear that the saying bears witness to the truth that
the Son is in the Father, and not after the Father. If, on the other
hand, one were to grant that this utterance is of the Son, the phrase,
“None hath been before Me,” will be a clear intimation that
He Whom we contemplate “in the Beginning694
” is apprehended together with the
eternity of the Beginning. If, then, anything is “after”
God, this is discovered, by the passages quoted, to be a creature, and
not God: for He says, “That which is after Me is not God695
| 695 Taking
the whole phrase τὸ
μετ᾽ ἐμὲ ον
as a loose quotation. | .”E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
