[1131] Job xxvi. 7.
[1132] Exod. ii. 10.
[1133] Gen. xxv. 26.
[1134] Gen. xxxviii. 29.
[1135] Gen. xxix. 32-35
[1136] Gen. i. 26.
[1137] Job xiv. 1. brotos gar gennetos gunaikos, oligobios kai pleres orges.
[1138] Gal. iii. 13.
[1139] Heb. ix. 13.
[1140] Gen. xlix. 9.
[1141] Hosea xiii. 3.
[1142] Hosea xiii. 7.
[1143] diabebletai. The Latin, "vulgo usurpata sunt," misses the force of the Greek. Or "are disliked because of their obvious meaning." Cf. above "even though these words...seem not above suspicion (diabebleothai dokei)." For this use of diaballesthai (to be brought into suspicion or odium), cf. Origen c. Cels. iii. 58, diabeblemeno pros areten kai kalokagathian, i.e. "who has quite broken with virtue and decency?" and vi. 42, where Celsus blasphemously says, that "the Son of God ought to have himself punished the Devil, rather than frighten with his threats that mankind which had been dragged into the quarrel by himself" (tois hup' autou diabeblemenois anthropois): a passage quite missed in the Latin.
[1144] S. John vii. 37
[1145] E mikropsuchon k.t.l. Oehler's stopping here (and accent) is better than that of the Codices. i.e. hupokineseien, e k.t.l.
[1146] In other words, analogy implies thought (logos).
[1147] i.e.no other name. See note on 'Agennetos, p. 100.
[1148] Is. v. 20.
[1149] Ps. lxxxvi. 15.
[1150] Ps. xcii. 15.
[1151] Oehler has restored gnostikon from his Codices, and notices that Cotelerius, Eccl. Gr. Monum. tom. ii. p. 622, had made the same change. Gulonius translates Gnosticorum. But the Editt. have gnoristikon
[1152] S. Matt. xxv. 34.
[1153] Ps. xxiii. 1; lxxx. 1. Cf. S. John xxi. 16, 17.
[1154] Ps. xxxvi. 9.
[1155] S. Matt. xxi. 42.
[1156] S. Matt. iii. 10.
[1157] S. John i. 9
[1158] Acts ix. 5.
[1159] S. John vi. 32, sqq.
[1160] Gen. xviii. 12; xxi. 6.
[1161] he,i.e. Basil. "God's nature can be looked at in as many aspects as corn can (i.e. in its growth, fructification, distribution, &c.)."
[1162] He,i.e. Basil. The words ho Eunomios, here are the additions of a copyist who did not understand that eipen referred to Basil, or else phesin must be read with them. Certainly tauta eipon below must refer to the same subject as eipen.
[1163] diaphorous dechesthai epinoias. Oehler has rightly omitted the words that follow (dia te tas ennoias), both because of their irrelevancy, and from the authority of his mss.
[1164] Indestructibility. Such terms ("not-composite," "indivisible," "imperishable") were the inheritance which Christian controversy received from the former struggle with Stoicism. In the hands of Origen, they had been aimed at the Stoic doctrine of the Deity as that of corporeal Spirit, which does not perish, only because there is no cause sufficient. "If one does not see the consequences of such an assertion, one ought to blush" (in Johann. xiii. 21). The consequences of course are that God, the Word, and our souls, made in His image, are all perishable; for all body, in that it is matter, is by the Stoic assumption, liable to change.
[1165] Zech. ix. 17 (LXX.).
[1166] to noema. There is a lacuna in the Paris Editt., beginning here, and extending to "ungenerate," just below. Oehler's Codices have supplied it.
[1167] S. John xiv. 9
[1168] 1 Cor. ii. 10.
[1169] Ps. cx. 1.
[1170] Gen. ii. 19, 20.
[1171] Compare with this view of Eunomius on the sacredness of names, this striking passage from Origen (c. Cels. v. 43). "We hold, then, that the origin of names is not to be found in any formal agreements on the part of those who gave them, as Aristotle thinks. Human language, in fact, did not have its beginning from man. Any one can see this who reflects upon the real nature of the incantations which in the different languages are associated with the patriarchal names of those languages. The names which have their native power in such and such a language cease to have this influence of their peculiar sound when they are changed into another language. This has been often observed in the names given even to living men: one who from his birth has been called so and so in Greek will never, if we change his name into Egyptian or Roman, be made to feel or act as he can when called by the first name given....If this is true in the case of names given to men, what are we to think of the names connected in some way or other with the Deity? For instance, there must be some change in translating Abraham's name into Greek: some new expression given to Isaac,' and Jacob': and, while he who repeats the incantation or the oath names the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob,' he produces those particular effects by the mere force and working of those names: because the dæmons are mustered by him who utters them: but if on the other hand he says, God of the chosen Father of the Crowd,' of the Laughter,' of the Supplanter,' he can do nothing with the names so expressed, any more than with any other powerless instrument....We can say the same of Sabaoth,' which is used in many exorcisms: if we change it to Lord of Powers,' or, Lord of Hosts,' or, Almighty,' we can do nothing ..."--and (46), "This, too, is the reason why we ourselves prefer any degradation to that of owning Zeus to be Deity. We cannot conceive of Zeus as the same as Sabaoth: or as Divine in any of all possible meanings....If the Egyptians offer us Ammon,' or death, we shall take the latter, rather than pronounce the divinity of Ammon.' The Scythians may tell us that their Papoeus is the God of the Universe, we shall not listen: we firmly believe in the God of the Universe, but we must not call him Papoeus, making that a name for absolute Deity, as the Being who occupies the desert, the nation, and the language of the Scythians would desire: although, indeed, it cannot be sin for any to use the appellation of the Deity in his own mother tongue, whether it be the Scythian way or the Egyptian."
[1172] Reading keraire, according to Oehler's conjecture, from Iliad ix. 203. All the Codd. and Editt., read kekaire, however. The Editt., in the Homeric words which follow, show a strange ignorance, which Gulonius has reproduced, viz. Phocheiri, Poudese, Ische! (for phu cheiri, Doupese, Iache)
[1173] Ps. cxlvii. 4.
[1174] Ps. cvi. 40.
[1175] 1 Sam. xv. 35.
[1176] Ps. lxxviii. 65.
[1177] Gen. iii. 8.
[1178] The words here attributed to Isaiah are found in Job ix. 9 (LXX.): and Orion in Isaiah xiii. 10 (LXX.), with "the stars of heaven;" and in Amos v. 8 with "the seven stars."
[1179] For Aseroth perhaps Mazaroth should be read. Cf. Job xxxviii. 32, "Canst thou lead forth the Mazaroth in their season?" (R.V.) and 2 Kings xxiii. 5, "to the planets (tois mazouroth)," i.e. the twelve signs of the Zodiac.
[1180] 'Amaltheias keras. So LXX. for the name of Job's third daughter, Keren-happuch, for which Symmachus and Aquila have Karnaphouk, i.e. Horn of purple (fucus). The LXX. translator of Job was rather fond of classical allusions, and so brought in the Greek horn (of plenty). Amalthea's goat, that suckled Jupiter, broke its horn. "Sustulit hoc Nymphe, cinctumque recentibus herbis Et plenum pomis ad Jovis ora tulit."--Ovid, Fasti, v. 123.
[1181] Isaiah xiii. 21. kai anapausontai ekei seirenes, kai daimonia ekei orchesontai, "and ostriches shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there" (R.V.). The LXX. render the Hebrew (bath-jaana) by seirenes also in Isaiah xxxiv. 13, xliii. 20: and in Micah i. 8: Jeremiah i. 39. Cyril of Alexandria has on the first passage, "Birds that have a sweet note: or, according to the Jewish interpretation, the owl." And this is followed by the majority of commentators. Cf. Gray-- "The moping owl doth to the moon complain." But Bochart has many and strong arguments to prove that the ostrich, i.e. the stroutho-kamelos, or "large sparrow with the long neck," is meant by bath-jaana: it has a high sharp unpleasant note. Cf. Job xxx. 29, "I am a companion to ostriches" (R.V.), speaking of his bitter cry.--Jerome also translates "habitabunt ibi struthiones;" and the LXX. elsewhere than above by strouthia. Gregory follows the traditional interpretation, of some pleasant note; and somehow identifies the Greek word with the Hebrew.
[1182] Ps. xvi. 4.
[1183] Is. xliii. 1.
[1184] Rom. xvi. 25.--On Eunomius' knowledge of Scripture, see Socrates iv. 7. "He had a very slender knowledge of the letter of Scripture: he was wholly unable to enter into the spirit of it. Yet he abounded in words, and was accustomed to repeat the same thoughts in different terms without ever arriving at a clear explanation of what he had proposed to himself. Of this his seven books on the Apostle's Epistle to the Romans, on which he expended a quantity of vain labour, is a remarkable proof." But see c. Eunom. II. p. 107.
[1185] prosopsin, the reading of Oehler's mss.: also of Pithoeus' ms., which John the Franciscan changed into the vox nihili prosepsin (putredinem), which appears in the Paris Editt. of 1638.
[1186] These words are in S. Basil's first Book against Eunomius.
[1187] Heb. vii. 3.
[1188] Cf. Ps. xliv. 4, and xlviii. 14, with lxxiv. 12.
[1189] Valentinus "placed in the pleroma (so the Gnostics called the habitation of the Deity) thirty æons (ages), of which one half were male, and the other female" (Mosheim), i.e. these æons were co-eternal with the Deity.
[1190] barbaroi here being not opposed to "Greeks" must imply mere inability to speak aright: amongst those who claimed to use Catholic language another "barbarism," or "jargon," had arisen (i.e. that of heresy, whether Platonist or Gnostic), different from that which separated the Greeks from the Jews, Africans, Romans alike. Hesychius; barbaroi hoi apaideutoi. So to S. Paul "the people" of Malta (Acts xxviii. 2-4), as to others the Apostles, were barbarian.
[1191] i.e. agennetos
[1192] allokotos autou tas toiautas stomphodeis kai adianoetous phonas...pros to sumban apoptuontos
[1193] ekbalon tou logou scheseis tinas kai paratheseis. Gulonius' Latin is wrong; "protulit in medium."
[1194] Reading eiper to haploun with the editt., which is manifestly required by the sense.
[1195] sunetheias, lit. usage of language. Cf. Plato, Theæt. 168 B, ek sunetheias rhematon te kai onomaton. It is used absolutely, by the Grammarians, for the "Vulgar dialect."
[1196] tes kata phusin schetikes semasias.
[1197] epibolas.
[1198] The Latin is wrong here, "secundum rerum intellectarum distinctricem significationem;" for nooumenon without the article must be the gen. absol. Besides this the mss. read paratasin (not parastasin).
[1199] S. John xi. 25
[1200] This may mean "short-hand" i.e. something difficult to decipher. See Book I. vi. note 10.
[1201] eulabeian tina prospoieton kai epilepton
[1202] See Book I. vii., ix., xi.
[1203] Wisdom xiii. 5.
[1204] Ps. lv. 2.
[1205] Ps. cxix. 132.
[1206] Ps. xliv. 21.
[1207] Philip. ii. 9.
[1208] The theology of Gregory and his master Origen rises above the unconscious Stoicism of Tertullian, and even that of Clement, which has an air of materialistic pantheism about it, owing to his attempt, like that of Eunomius, to base our knowledge of God upon abstractions and analogies drawn from nature. The result, indeed, of the "abstraction process" of Clement is only a multiplication of negative terms, "immensity," "simplicity," "eternity," &c. But they will lead to nothing, if there is not already behind them all some positive idea which we have received from a different source. Faith is this source; it is described by Origen as "an ineffable grace of the soul which comes from God in a kind of enthusiasm;" which formula expresses the primary fact of religious consciousness such as Leibnitz demonstrated it: and the positive idea supplied by this faculty is with Origen Goodness (rather than the Good). He would put Will as well as Mind into the Central Idea of Metaphysics, and would have the heart governed as well as the reason. All that he says about the "incomprehensibility" of God does not militate against this: for we must have some idea of that which is incomprehensible to us: and the Goodness of the Deity is the side on which we gain this idea.
[1209] But there are two meanings of athanatos,--and of these perhaps Eunomius was thinking,--i.e. 1. Not dead; 2. Immortal. In Plato's Phædo there is an argument for the immortality of the soul, certainly not the strongest one, drawn from this. It is assumed there that the thing, whose nature is such that so long as it exists it neither is nor can be dead, can never cease to exist i.e. the soul by virtue of not actually dying, though capable of death, is immortal. Perhaps this accounts for Eunomius saying (lower down) that "the perishable is not opposed to the imperishable."
[1210] 1 Tim. vi. 16.
[1211] The reasoning, which precedes and follows, amounts to this. Basil had said that the terms ungenerate, imperishable, immortal, are privative, i.e. express the absence of a quality. Eunomius objects that--No term expressive of the absence of a quality can be God's Name: the Ungenerate (which includes the others) is God's Name, therefore It does not express a privation. You mean to say, Gregory replies, that Ungenerate, &c. does not mean not-generated, &c. But what is not not-generated is generated (by your own law of dichotomy); therefore, Ungenerate means generated; and you prove God perishable and mortal. Here, the fallacy arises from Gregory's assuming more than Eunomius' conclusion: i.e. "the Ungenerate means not only the not-generated," changes into "the Ungenerate does not mean," &c.