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| Against those who say that the Holy Ghost is not to be numbered with, but numbered under, the Father and the Son. Wherein moreover there is a summary notice of the faith concerning right sub-numeration.
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Chapter XVII.
Against those who say that the Holy Ghost is not to be
numbered with, but numbered under, the Father and the Son.
Wherein moreover there is a summary notice of the faith concerning
right sub-numeration.
41. What, however,
they call sub-numeration,1077
| 1077
“The word was used as a quasi philosophical term to
express the doctrine quoted by St. Basil, in § 13: it
does not occur in the confession of Eunomius, which was prepared
after this book, a.d. 382; but it was used
by him in his Liber Apologeticus (before
a.d. 365) against which St. Basil
wrote.” Rev. C.F.H. Johnston. For
“ὑπαρίθμησις”
the only authorities given by the lexicons are
“ecclesiastical.” But the importation from the
“wisdom of the world” implies use in heathen
philosophy. | and in what sense
they use this word, cannot even be imagined without difficulty.
It is well known that it was imported into our language from the
“wisdom of the world;”1078
but a point
for our present consideration will be whether it has any immediate
relation to the subject under discussion. Those who are adepts in
vain investigations tell us that, while some nouns are common and of
widely extended denotation, others are more specific, and that the
force of some is more limited than that of others. Essence, for
instance, is a common noun, predicable of all things both animate and
inanimate; while animal is more specific, being predicated of fewer
subjects than the former, though of more than those which are
considered under it, as it embraces both rational and irrational
nature. Again, human is more specific than animal, and man than
human, and than man the individual Peter, Paul, or John.1079
| 1079 “This
portion of the theory of general language is the subject of what
is termed the doctrine of the Predicables; a set of distinctions
handed down from Aristotle, and his follower Porphyry, many of
which have taken a firm root in scientific, and some of them even
in popular, phraseology. The predicables are a five-fold
division of General Names, not grounded as usual on a difference
in their meaning, that is, in the attribute which they connote,
but on a difference in the kind of class which they denote.
We may predicate of a thing five different varieties of
class-name:
A genus of the thing (γένος).
A species (εἶδος).
A differentia (διαφορα).
A proprium (ἰδιόν).
An accidens (συμβεβηκός).
It is to be remarked of these
distinctions, that they express, not what the predicate is in its own
meaning, but what relation it bears to the subject of which it happens
on the particular occasion to be predicated.” J. S.
Mill, System of Logic, i. 133. | Do they then mean by sub-numeration
the division of the common into its subordinate parts? But I
should hesitate to believe they have reached such a pitch of
infatuation as to assert that the God of the universe, like some common
quality conceivable only by reason and without actual existence in any
hypostasis, is divided into subordinate divisions, and that then this
subdivision is called sub-numeration. This would hardly be said
even by men melancholy mad, for, besides its impiety, they are
establishing the very opposite argument to their own contention.
For the subdivisions are of the same essence as that from which they
have been divided. The very obviousness of the absurdity makes it
difficult for us to find arguments to confute their unreasonableness;
so that really their folly looks like an advantage to them; just as
soft and yielding bodies offer no resistance, and therefore cannot be
struck a stout blow. It is impossible to bring a vigorous
confutation to bear on a palpable absurdity. The only course open
to us is to pass by their abominable impiety in silence. Yet our
love for the brethren and the importunity of our opponents makes
silence impossible.
42. What is it that they maintain? Look at
the terms of their imposture. “We assert that connumeration
is appropriate to subjects of equal dignity, and sub-numeration to
those which vary in the direction of inferiority.”
“Why,” I rejoined, “do you say this? I fail to
understand your extraordinary wisdom. Do you mean that gold is
numbered with gold, and that lead is unworthy of the connumeration,
but, because of the cheapness of the material, is subnumerated to
gold? And do you attribute so much importance to number as that
it can either exalt the value
of what is cheap, or destroy the dignity of what is valuable?
Therefore, again, you will number gold under precious stones, and such
precious stones as are smaller and without lustre under those which are
larger and brighter in colour. But what will not be said by men
who spend their time in nothing else but either ‘to tell or to
hear some new thing’?1080
Let these
supporters of impiety be classed for the future with Stoics and
Epicureans. What sub-numeration is even possible of things less
valuable in relation to things very valuable? How is a brass obol
to be numbered under a golden stater? “Because,” they
reply, “we do not speak of possessing two coins, but one and
one.” But which of these is subnumerated to the
other? Each is similarly mentioned. If then you number each
by itself, you cause an equality value by numbering them in the same
way but, if you join them, you make their value one by numbering them
one with the other. But if the sub-numeration belongs to the one
which is numbered second, then it is in the power of the counter to
begin by counting the brass coin. Let us, however, pass over the
confutation of their ignorance, and turn our argument to the main
topic.
43. Do you maintain that the Son is numbered
under the Father, and the Spirit under the Son, or do you confine your
sub-numeration to the Spirit alone? If, on the other hand, you
apply this sub-numeration also to the Son, you revive what is the same
impious doctrine, the unlikeness of the substance, the lowliness of
rank, the coming into being in later time, and once for all, by this
one term, you will plainly again set circling all the blasphemies
against the Only-begotten. To controvert these blasphemies would
be a longer task than my present purpose admits of; and I am the less
bound to undertake it because the impiety has been refuted elsewhere to
the best of my ability.1081
| 1081 i.e. in
the second book of his work against Eunomius. | If on the
other hand they suppose the sub-numeration to benefit the Spirit alone,
they must be taught that the Spirit is spoken of together with the Lord
in precisely the same manner in which the Son is spoken of with the
Father. “The name of the Father and of the Son and of the
Holy Ghost”1082
is delivered in
like manner, and, according to the co-ordination of words delivered in
baptism, the relation of the Spirit to the Son is the same as that of
the Son to the Father. And if the Spirit is co-ordinate with the
Son, and the Son with the Father, it is obvious that the Spirit is also
co-ordinate with the Father. When then the names are ranked in
one and the same co-ordinate series,1083
| 1083 ουστοιχία,
a series of similar things, as in Arist. An. Pr. ii. 21,
2. In the Pythagorean philosophy, a co-ordinate or parallel
series. Arist. Met. i. 5, 6, and
Eth. Nic. i. 6, 7. | what room is
there for speaking on the one hand of connumeration, and on the other
of sub-numeration? Nay, without exception, what thing ever lost
its own nature by being numbered? Is it not the fact that things
when numbered remain what they naturally and originally were, while
number is adopted among us as a sign indicative of the plurality of
subjects? For some bodies we count, some we measure, and some we
weigh;1084
| 1084 cf.
Wis. xi. 20. “Thou hast ordered all
things in measure and number and weight.” | those which
are by nature continuous we apprehend by measure; to those which
are divided we apply number (with the exception of those which on
account of their fineness are measured); while heavy objects are
distinguished by the inclination of the balance. It does not
however follow that, because we have invented for our convenience
symbols to help us to arrive at the knowledge of quantity, we have
therefore changed the nature of the things signified. We do
not speak of “weighing under” one another things which
are weighed, even though one be gold and the other tin; nor yet do
we “measure under” things that are measured; and so in
the same way we will not “number under” things which
are numbered. And if none of the rest of things admits of
sub-numeration how can they allege that the Spirit ought to be
subnumerated? Labouring as they do under heathen
unsoundness, they imagine that things which are inferior, either
by grade of rank or subjection of substance, ought to be
subnumerated.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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