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| The eleventh book shows that the title of “Good” is due, not to the Father alone, as Eunomius, the imitator of Manichæus and Bardesanes, alleges, but to the Son also, Who formed man in goodness and loving-kindness, and reformed him by His Cross and Death.
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Book
XI.
§1. The eleventh book
shows that the title of “Good” is due, not to the Father
alone, as Eunomius, the imitator of Manichæus and Bardesanes,
alleges, but to the Son also, Who formed man in goodness and
loving-kindness, and reformed him by His Cross and
Death.
Let us
now go on to the next stage in his argument:—“….the
Only-begotten Himself ascribing to the Father the title due of right to
Him alone. For He Who has taught us that the appellation
‘good’ belongs to Him alone Who is the cause of His own972
| 972 That
is, of the Son’s goodness: for S. Gregory’s comment on the
awkward use of the pronoun σφετέρας, see p. 233, inf. | goodness and of all goodness, and is so at
all times, and Who refers to Him all good that has ever come into
being, would be slow to appropriate to Himself the authority over all
things that have come into being, and the title of ‘the
Existent.’” Well, so long as he concealed his blasphemy
under some kind of veil, and strove to entangle his deluded hearers
unawares in the mazes of his dialectic, I thought it necessary to watch
his unfair and clandestine dealings, and as far as possible to lay bare
in my argument the lurking mischief. But now that he has stripped his
falsehood of every mask that could disguise it, and publishes his
profanity aloud in categorical terms, I think it superfluous to undergo
useless labour in bringing logical modes of confutation to bear upon
those who make no secret of their impiety. For what further means could
we discover to demonstrate their malignity so efficacious as that which
they themselves show us in their writings ready to our hand? He says
that the Father alone is worthy of the title of “good,”
that to Him alone such a name is due, on the plea that even the Son
Himself agrees that goodness belongs to Him alone. Our accuser has
pleaded our cause for us: for perhaps in my former statements I was
thought by my readers to show a certain wanton insolence when I
endeavoured to demonstrate that the fighters against Christ made Him
out to be alien from the goodness of the Father. But I think it has now
been proved by the confession of our opponents that in bringing such a
charge against them we were not acting unfairly. For he who says that
the title of “good” belongs of right to the Father only,
and that such an address befits Him alone, publishes abroad, by thus
disclosing his real meaning, the villainy which he had previously
wrapped up in disguise. He says that the title of “good”
befits the Father only. Does he mean the title with the signification
which belongs to the expression, or the title detached from its proper
meaning? If on the one side he merely ascribes to the Father the title
of “good” in a special sense, he is to be pitied for his
irrationality in allowing to the Father merely the sound of an empty
name. But if he thinks that the conception expressed by the term
“good” belongs to God the Father only, he is to be
abominated for his impiety, reviving as he does the plague of the
Manichæan heresy in his own opinions. For as health and disease,
even so goodness and badness exist on terms of mutual destruction, so
that the absence of the one is the presence of the other. If then he
says that goodness belongs to the Father only, he cuts off these from
every conceivable object in existence except the Father, so that, along
with all, the Only-begotten God is shut out from good. For as he who
affirms that man alone is capable of laughter implies thereby that no
other animal shares this property, so he who asserts that good is in
the Father alone separates all things from that property. If then, as
Eunomius declares, the Father alone has by right the title of
“good,” such a term will not be properly applied to
anything else. But every impulse of the will either operates in
accordance with good, or tends to the contrary. For to be inclined
neither one way nor the other, but to remain in a state of equipoise,
is the property of creatures inanimate or insensible. If the Father
alone is good, having goodness not as a thing acquired, but in His
nature, and if the Son, as heresy will have it, does not share in the
nature of the Father, then he who does not share the good essence of
the Father is of course at the same time excluded also from part and
lot in the title of “good.” But he who has no claim either
to the nature or to the name of “good”—what he is assuredly
not unknown, even though I forbear the blasphemous expression. For it
is plain to all that the object for which Eunomius is so eager is to
import into the conception of the Son a suspicion of that which is evil
and opposite to good. For what kind of name belongs to him who is not
good is manifest to every one who has a share of reason. As he who is
not brave is cowardly, as he who is not just is unjust, and as he who
is not wise is foolish, so he who is not good clearly has as his own
the opposite name, and it is to this that the enemy of Christ wishes to
press the conception of the Only-begotten, becoming thereby to the
Church another Manes or Bardesanes. These are the sayings in regard of
which we say that our utterance would be no more effective than
silence. For were one to say countless things, and to arouse all
possible arguments, one could not say anything so damaging of our
opponents as what is openly and undisguisedly proclaimed by themselves.
For what more bitter charge could one invent against them for malice
than that of denying that He is good “Who, being in the form of
God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God973
,” but yet condescended to the low
estate of human nature, and did so solely for the love of man? In
return for what, tell me, “do ye thus requite the Lord974
?” (for I will borrow the language of
Moses to the Israelites); is He not good, Who when thou wast soulless
dust invested thee with Godlike beauty, and raised thee up as an image
of His own power endowed with soul? Is He not good, Who for thy sake
took on Him the form of a servant, and for the joy set before Him975
did not shrink from bearing the sufferings
due to thy sin, and gave Himself a ransom for thy death, and became for
our sakes a curse and sin?E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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