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| The eighth book very notably overthrows the blasphemy of the heretics who say that the Only-begotten came from nothing, and that there was a time when He was not, and shows the Son to be no new being, but from everlasting, from His having said to Moses, “I am He that is,” and to Manoah, “Why askest thou My name? It also is wonderful”;--moreover David also says to God, “Thou art the same, and Thy years shall not fail;” and furthermore Isaiah says, “I am God, the first, and hereafter am I:” and the Evangelist, “He was in the beginning, and was with God, and was God:”--and that He has neither beginning nor end: --and he proves that those who say that He is new and comes from nothing are idolaters. And herein he very finely interprets “the brightness of the glory, and the express image of the Person.”
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Book
VIII.
§1. The eighth book very
notably overthrows the blasphemy of the heretics who say that the
Only-begotten came from nothing, and that there was a time when He was
not, and shows the Son to be no new being, but from everlasting, from
His having said to Moses, “I am He that is,” and to Manoah,
“Why askest thou My name? It also is
wonderful”;—moreover David also says to God, “Thou
art the same, and Thy years shall not fail;” and furthermore
Isaiah says, “I am God, the first, and hereafter am I:” and
the Evangelist, “He was in the beginning, and was with God, and
was God:”—and that He has neither beginning nor end:
—and he proves that those who say that He is new and comes from
nothing are idolaters. And herein he very finely interprets “the
brightness of the glory, and the express image of the
Person.”
These, then, are the strong points of Eunomius’ case; and I think
that when those which promised to be powerful are proved by argument to
be so rotten and unsubstantial, I may well keep silence concerning the
rest, since the others are practically refuted, concurrently with the
refutation of the stronger ones; just as it happens in warlike
operations that when a force more powerful than the rest has been
beaten, the remainder of the army are no longer of any account in the
eyes of those by whom the strong portion of it has been overcome. But
the fact that the chief part of his blasphemy lies in the later part of
his discourse forbids me to be silent. For the transition of the
Only-begotten from nothing into being, that horrid and godless doctrine
of Eunomius, which is more to be shunned than all impiety, is next
maintained in the order of his argument. And since every one who has
been bewitched by this deceit has the phrase, “If He was, He has
not been begotten, and if He has been begotten, He was not,”
ready upon his tongue for the maintenance of the doctrine that He Who
made of nothing us and all the creation is Himself from nothing, and
since the deceit obtains much support thereby, as men of feebler mind
are pressed by this superficial bit of plausibility, and led to
acquiesce in the blasphemy, we must needs not pass by this doctrinal
“root of bitterness,” lest, as the Apostle says, it
“spring up and trouble us850
.” Now I say
that we must first of all consider the actual argument itself, apart
from our contest with our opponents, and thus afterwards proceed to the
examination and refutation of what they have set forth.
One mark of the true Godhead is
indicated by the words of Holy Scripture, which Moses learnt by the
voice from heaven, when He heard Him Who said, “I am He that is851
.” We think it right, then, to believe
that to be alone truly Divine which is represented as eternal and
infinite in respect of being; and all that is contemplated therein is
always the same, neither growing nor being consumed; so that if one
should say of God, that formerly He was, but now is not, or that He now
is, but formerly was not, we should consider each of the sayings alike
to be godless: for by both alike the idea of eternity is mutilated,
being cut short on one side or the other by non-existence, whether one
contemplates “nothing” as preceding “being852
| 852 Reading προθεωροίη
for προσθεωροίη | ,” or declares that “being”
ends in “nothing”; and the frequent repetition of
“first of all” or “last of all” concerning
God’s non-existence does not make amends for the impious
conception touching the Divinity. For this reason we declare the
maintenance of their doctrine as to the non-existence at some time of
Him Who truly is, to be a denial and rejection of His true Godhead; and
this on the ground that, on the one hand, He Who showed Himself to
Moses by the light speaks of Himself as being, when He says,
“I am He that is853
,” while on the
other, Isaiah (being made, so to say, the instrument of Him Who spoke
in him) says in the person of Him that is, “I am the first, and
hereafter am I854
| 854 See
note 4 on Book V. §1, where these words are also treated
of. | ,” so that hereby, whichever way
we consider it, we conceive eternity in God. And so, too, the word that
was spoken to Manoah shows the fact that the Divinity is not
comprehensible by the significance of His name, because, when Manoah
asks to know His name, that, when the promise has come actually to
pass, he may by name glorify his benefactor, He says to him, “Why
askest thou this? It also is wonderful855
”; so that by this we learn that there
is one name significant of the Divine Nature—the wonder, namely,
that arises unspeakably in our hearts concerning It. So, too, great
David, in his discourses with himself, proclaims the same truth, in the
sense that all the creation was brought into being by God, while He
alone exists always in the same manner, and abides for ever, where he
says, “But Thou art the same, and Thy years shall not fail856
.” When we hear these sayings, and
others like them, from men inspired by God, let us leave all that is
not from eternity to the worship of idolaters, as a new thing alien
from the true Godhead. For that which now is, and formerly was not, is
clearly new and not eternal, and to have regard to any new object of
worship is called by Moses the service of demons, when he says,
“They sacrificed to devils and not to God, to gods whom their
fathers knew not; new gods were they that came newly up857
.” If then everything that is new in
worship is a service of demons, and is alien from the true Godhead, and
if what is now, but was not always, is new and not eternal, we who have
regard to that which is, necessarily reckon those who
contemplate non-existence as attaching to Him Who is, and who say that
“He once was not,” among the worshippers of idols. For we
may also see that the great John, when declaring in his own preaching
the Only-begotten God, guards his own statement in every way, so that
the conception of non-existence shall find no access to Him Who is. For
he says858
that He “was in the beginning,”
and “was with God,” and “was God,” and was
light, and life, and truth, and all good things at all times, and never
at any time failed to be anything that is excellent, Who is the fulness
of all good, and is in the bosom of the Father. If then Moses lays down
as a law for us some such mark of true Godhead as this, that we know
nothing else of God but this one thing, that He is (for to this
point the words, “I am He that is859
”); while Isaiah in his preaching
declares aloud the absolute infinity of Him Who is, defining the
existence of God as having no regard to beginning or to end (for He Who
says “I am the first, and hereafter am I,” places no limit
to His eternity in either direction, so that neither, if we look to the
beginning, do we find any point marked since which He is, and
beyond which He was not, nor, if we turn our thought to the future, can
we cut short by any boundary the eternal progress of Him Who
is),—and if the prophet David forbids us to worship any new and
strange God860
(both of which are involved in the
heretical doctrine; “newness” is clearly indicated in that
which is not eternal, and “strangeness” is alienation from
the Nature of the very God),—if, I say, these things are so, we
declare all the sophistical fabrication about the non-existence at some
time of Him Who truly is, to be nothing else than a departure from
Christianity, and a turning to idolatry. For when the Evangelist, in
his discourse concerning the Nature of God, separates at all points
non-existence from Him Who is, and, by his constant repetition of the
word “was,” carefully destroys the suspicion of
non-existence, and calls Him the Only-begotten God, the Word of God,
the Son of God, equal with God, and all such names, we have this
judgment fixed and settled in us, that if the Only-begotten Son is God,
we must believe that He Who is believed to be God is eternal. And
indeed He is verily God, and assuredly is eternal, and is never at any
time found to be non-existent. For God, as we have often said, if He
now is, also assuredly always was, and if He once was not, neither does
He now exist at all. But since even the enemies of the truth confess
that the Son is and continually abides the Only-begotten God, we say
this, that, being in the Father, He is not in Him in one respect only,
but He is in Him altogether, in respect of all that the Father is
conceived to be. As, then, being in the incorruptibility of the Father,
He is incorruptible, good in His goodness, powerful in His might, and,
as being in each of these attributes of special excellence which are
conceived of the Father, He is that particular thing, so, also, being
in His eternity, He is assuredly eternal. Now the eternity of the
Father is marked by His never having taken His being from nonexistence,
and never terminating His being in non-existence. He, therefore, Who
hath all things that are the Father’s861
, and
is contemplated in all the glory of the Father, even as, being in the
endlessness of the Father, He has no end, so, being in the
unoriginateness of the Father, has, as the Apostle says, “no
beginning of days862
,” but at once
is “of the Father,” and is regarded in the eternity of the
Father: and in this respect, more especially, is seen the complete
absence of divergence in the Likeness, as compared with Him Whose
Likeness He is. And herein is His saying found true which tells us,
“He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father863
.” Moreover, it is in this way that
those words of the Apostle, that the Son is “the brightness of
His glory, and the express image of His Person864
,” are best understood to have an
excellent and close application. For the Apostle conveys to those
hearers who are unable, by the contemplation of purely intellectual
objects, to elevate their thought to the height of the knowledge of
God, a sort of notion of the truth, by means of things apparent to
sense. For as the body of the sun is expressly imaged by the whole disc
that surrounds it, and he who looks on the sun argues, by means of what
he sees, the existence of the whole solid substratum, so, he says, the
majesty of the Father is expressly imaged in the greatness of the power
of the Son, that the one may be believed to be as great as the other is
known to be: and again, as the radiance of light sheds its brilliancy
from the whole of the sun’s disc (for in the disc one part is not
radiant, and the rest dim), so all that glory which the Father is,
sheds its brilliancy from its whole extent by means of the brightness
that comes from it, that is, by the true Light; and as the ray is of
the sun (for there would be no ray if the sun were not), yet the sun is
never conceived as existing by itself without the ray of brightness
that is shed from it, so the Apostle delivering to us the continuity
and eternity of that existence which the Only-begotten has of the
Father, calls the Son “the brightness of His
glory.”E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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