Introduction to 'Epinoia
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It is important, for the understanding of the following Book, to determine what faculty of the mind 'Epinoia is. Eunomius, Gregory says, "makes a solemn travesty" of the word. He reduces its force to its lowest level, and makes it only "fancy the unnatural," either contracting or extending the limits of nature, or putting heterogeneous notions together. He instances colossi, pigmies, centaurs, as the result of this mental operation. "Fancy," or "notion," would thus represent Eunomius' view of it. But Gregory ascribes every art and every science to the play of this faculty. "According to my account, it is the method by which we discover things that are unknown, going on to further discoveries, by means of what adjoins and follows from our first perception with regard to the thing studied." He instances Ontology (!), Arithmetic, Geometry, on the one hand, Agriculture, Navigation, Horology, on the other, as the result of it. "Any one who should judge this faculty more precious than any other with the exercise of which we are gifted would not be far mistaken." "Induction" might almost represent this view of it. But then Gregory does not deny that "lying wonders are also fabricated by it." By means of it "and entertainer might amuse an audience" with fire-breathing monsters, men enfolded in the coils of serpents, &c. He calls it an inventive faculty. It must therefore be something more spontaneous than ratiocination, whether deductive or inductive; while it is more reliable than Fancy or Imagination.
This is illustrated by what S. John Damascene, in his Dialectica (c. 65), says of 'Epinoia: "It is of two sorts. The first is the faculty which analyses and elucidates the view of things undissected and in the gross (holoschere): whereby a simple phenomenon becomes complex speculatively: for instance, man becomes a compound of soul and body. The second, by a union of perception and fancy, produces fictions out of realities, i.e. divides wholes into parts, and combines those parts, selected arbitrarily, into new wholes; e.g. Centaurs, Sirens." Analysis (scientific) would describe the one; fancy, the other. Basil and Gregory were thinking of the one, Eunomius of the other; but still both parties used the same expression.
If, then, there is one word that will cover the whole meaning, it would seem to be "Conception." This word at all events, both in its outward form and in its intention, stands to perception in a way strictly analogous to that in which 'Epinoia stands to Ennoia. Both Conception and 'Epinoia represent some regulated operation of the mind upon data immediately given. In both cases the mind is led to contemplate in a new light its own contents, whether sensations or innate ideas. The fitness of Conception as an equivalent of 'Epinoia will be clear when we consider the real point at issue between Basil and Eunomius. Their controversy rages round the term Ungenerate. Is it, or is it not, expressive of the substance (being) of the Deity? To answer this question, it was found necessary to ascertain how such a name for the Supreme has been acquired. "By a conception," says Basil. "No," says Eunomius: "it would be dangerous to trust the naming of the Deity to a common operation of the mind. The faculty of Conception may and does play us false; it can create monstrosities. Besides, if the names of the Father are conceptions, the names of the Son are too; for instance, the Door, the Shepherd, the Axe, the Vine. But as our Lord Himself applied these to Himself, He would, according to you, be employing the faculty of conception; and it is blasphemous to think that He employed names which we too might have arrived at by conceiving of Him in these particular ways. Therefore, Conception is not the Source of the Divine Names; but rather they come from a perception or intention implanted in us directly from on High. Ungenerate is such a name; and it reveals to us the very substance of the Deity." But Gregory defends Basil's position. He shows the entire relativity of our knowledge of the Deity. Ungenerate and every other name of God is due to a conception; in each case we perceive either an operation of the Deity, or an element of evil, and then we conceive of Him as operating in the one, or as free from the other; and so name Him. But there is no conception, because there is no perception, of the substance of the Deity. Scripture, which has revealed His operations, has not revealed that. "The human mind...feels after the unutterable Being in divers and many-sided ways; and never chases the mystery in the light of one idea alone. Our grasping of Him would indeed be easy, if there lay before us one single assigned path to the knowledge of God; but, as it is, from the skill apparent in the Universe, we get the idea of skill in the Ruler of the Universe;...and again, when we see the execrable character of evil, we grasp His own unalterable pureness as regards this,...not that we split up the subject of such attributes along with them, but, believing that this Being, whatever it be in substance, is one, we still conceive that it has something in common with all these ideas."
To sum up, it had suited Eunomius to try to disparage 'Epinoia so far as to make it appear morally impossible that any name of God, but especially 'Agennetos, should be derived from such a source. He scoffs at the orthodox party for treating the privative terms for the Deity as merely privative, embodying only a "notion," and for adhering to the truth that God's name is "above every name." He "does not see how God can be above His works simply by virtue of such things as do not belong to Him;" this is only "giving to words the prerogative over realities." He wants, and believes in the existence of, a word for the substance of God, and he finds it in 'Agennetos, which according to him is not privative at all; it is the single name for the single Deity, and all the others are bound up in it. "The universal Guardian thought it right to engraft these names in our minds by a law of His creation." "These utterances are from above." The importance of this word to the Anomoeans is obvious. Gregory, as spokesman of the Nicene party, defends the efficacy of the mental operation of conception to supply terms for the Deity, which, however, can none of them be final. God is incomprehensible. At the same time there is a spiritual insight of God (an ennoia in fact) which far surpasses Eunomius' intellectual certainty (see note p. 256).
Answer to Eunomius' Second Book [1066] .
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The first part of my contentions against Eunomius has with God's help been sufficiently established in the preceding work, as all who will may see from what I have worked out, how in that former part his fallacy has been completely exposed, and its falsehood has no further force against the truth, except in the case of those who show a very shameless animus against her. But since, like some robber's ambuscade, he has got together a second work against orthodoxy, again with God's help the truth takes up arms through me against the array of her enemies, commanding my arguments like a general and directing them at her pleasure against the foe; following whose steps I shall boldly venture on the second part of my contentions, nothing daunted by the array of falsehood, notwithstanding its display of numerous arguments. For faithful is He who has promised that "a thousand shall be chased by one," and that "ten thousand shall be put to flight by two" [1067] , victory in battle being due not to numbers, but to righteousness. For even as bulky Goliath, when he shook against the Israelites that ponderous spear we read of, inspired no fear in his opponent, though a shepherd and unskilled in the tactics of war, but having met him in fight loses his own head by a direct reversal of his expectations, so our Goliath, the champion of this alien system, stretching forth his blasphemy against his opponents as though his hand were on a naked sword, and flashing the while with sophisms fresh from his whetstone, has failed to inspire us, though no soldiers, with any fear of his prowess, or to find himself free to exult in the dearth of adversaries; on the contrary, he has found us warriors improvised from the Lord's sheepfold, untaught in logical warfare, and thinking it no detriment to be so, but simply slinging our plain, rude argument of truth against him. Since then, that shepherd who is in the record, when he had cast down the alien with his sling, and broken his helmet with the stone, so that it gaped under the violence of the blow, did not confine his valour to gazing on his fallen foe, but running in upon him, and depriving him of his head, returns bearing it as a trophy to his people, parading that braggart head through the host of his countrymen; looking to this example it becomes us also to advance nothing daunted to the second part of our labours, but as far as possible to imitate David's valour, and, like him, after the first blow to plant our foot upon the fallen foe, so that enemy of the truth may be exhibited as much as possible as a headless trunk. For separated as he is from the true faith he is far more truly beheaded than that Philistine. For since Christ is the head of every man, as saith the Apostle [1068] , and it is only reasonable that the believer alone should be so termed (for Christ, I take it, cannot be the head of the unbelieving also), it follows that he who is severed from the saving faith must be headless like Goliath, being severed from the true head by his own sword which he had whetted against the truth; which head it shall be our task not to cut off, but to show that it is cut off.
And let no one suppose that it is through pride or desire of human reputation that I go down to this truceless and implacable warfare to engage with the foe. For if it were allowed me to pass a peaceful life meddling with no one, it would be far enough from my disposition to wantonly disturb my tranquillity, by voluntarily provoking and stirring up a war against myself. But now that God's city, the Church, is besieged, and the great wall of the faith is shaken, battered by the encircling engines of heresy, and there is no small risk of the word of the Lord being swept into captivity through their devilish onslaught, deeming it a dreadful thing to decline taking part in the Christian conflict, I have not turned aside to repose, but have looked on the sweat of toil as more honourable than the relaxation of repose, knowing well that just as every man, as saith the Apostle, shall receive his own reward [1069] according to his own labour, so as a matter of course he shall receive punishment for neglect of labour proportioned to his strength. Accordingly I supported the first encounter in the discussion with good courage, discharging from my shepherd's scrip, i.e. from the teaching of the Church, my natural and unpremeditated arguments for the subversion of this blasphemy, needing not at all the equipment of arguments from profane sources to qualify me for the contest; and now also I do not hang back from the second part of the encounter, fixing my hope like great David [1070] on Him "Who teacheth my hands to war, and my fingers to fight," if haply the hand of the writer may in my case also be guided by Divine power to the overthrow of these heretical opinions, and my fingers may serve for the overthrow of their malignant array by directing my argument with skill and precision against the foe. But as in human conflicts those who excel in valour and might, secured by their armour and having previously acquired military skill by their training for facing danger, station themselves at the head of their column, encountering danger for those ranged behind them, while the rest of the company, though serving only to give an appearance of numbers, seem nevertheless, if only by their serried shields, to conduce to the common good, so in these our conflicts that noble soldier of Christ and vehement champion against the aliens, the mighty spiritual warrior Basil--equipped as he is with the whole armour described by the Apostle, and secured by the shield of faith, and ever holding before him that weapon of defence, the sword of the spirit--fights in the van of the Lord's host by his elaborated argument against this heresy, alive and resisting and prevailing over the foe, while we the common herd, sheltering ourselves beneath the shield of that champion of the faith, shall not hold back from any conflicts within the compass of our power, according as our captain may lead us on against the foe. As he, then, in his refutation of the false and untenable opinion maintained by this heresy, affirms that "ungenerate" cannot be predicated of God except as a mere notion or conception, whereof he has adduced proofs supported by common sense and the evidence of Scripture, while Eunomius, the author of the heresy, neither falls in with his statements nor is able to overturn them, but in his conflict with the truth, the more clearly the light of true doctrine shines forth, the more, like nocturnal creatures, does he shun the light, and, no longer able to find the sophistical hiding-places to which he is accustomed, he wanders about at random, and getting into the labyrinth of falsehood goes round and round in the same place, almost the whole of his second treatise being taken up with this empty trifling--it is well accordingly that our battle with those opposed to us should take place on the same ground whereon our champion by his own treatise has been our leader.