One Unoriginate or Two?

These considerations encourage the faithful and distress the heretics, who see their heresy overthrown by them. Their further question, too, ‘Is the Unoriginate one or two?’ shows how false their views are, how treacherous and full of deceit. They do not ask this for the Father’s honor, but to dishonor the Word. So if anyone who does not see their trick answers, ‘The Unoriginate is one,’ they at once spit out their own venom and say, ‘Then the Son is among the things that are originated, and we were right to say, “He was not before he was begotten.”’ In this way they stir up every kind of disturbance and confusion, if only they can separate the Son from the Father and count the Fashioner of all things among his own works. Now first, they can be convicted on this score. They blame the bishops at Nicaea for using phrases that are not in Scripture, though those phrases did no harm but overthrew their impiety. Yet they themselves have fallen into the same fault, using words that are not in Scripture, and using them to insult the Lord, understanding ‘neither what they say nor what they affirm.’ For instance, let them ask the Greeks, who have been their teachers, since the word is the Greeks’ invention and not Scripture’s. And when they have been taught its various meanings, they will discover that they cannot even ask a proper question on the subject they have taken up. [a]

For they have led me to find out that by ‘unoriginate’ is meant what has not yet come to be but can come to be, as wood that has not yet become a vessel but is able to become one. Again, it means what neither has come to be nor ever can, as a four-sided triangle or an even number that is odd. For a triangle neither has become nor ever can become four-sided, and an even number neither has become nor ever can become odd. Moreover, by ‘unoriginate’ is meant what exists but has not come into being from anyone, and has no father at all. Further, Asterius, the unprincipled sophist and the champion of this heresy, has added in his own treatise that what is not made, but always is, is ‘unoriginate.’ So when they ask the question, they ought to add in what sense they take the word ‘unoriginate,’ and then those they question would be able to answer to the point.

But if they are still content merely to ask, ‘Is the Unoriginate one or two?’ they must first of all be told, as the badly educated men they are, that in one sense many things are unoriginate and in another nothing is: many, namely the things that are able to come into being, and nothing, namely what is not able to, as has been said. But if they ask in the sense Asterius laid down, as if ‘what is not a work but has always been’ were unoriginate, then they must be told again and again that in this sense the Son as well as the Father must be called unoriginate. For he is not among the things that have come into being, nor is he a work; he has always been with the Father, as has already been shown, for all their many shifts made only to speak against the Lord: ‘He is from nothing,’ and ‘He was not before he was begotten.’ When, then, after failing at every point, they fall back on the other sense of the question, ‘existing, but not begotten of anyone and having no father,’ we shall tell them that in this sense the unoriginate is only one, namely the Father; and they will gain nothing by their question. For to say that God is Unoriginate in this sense does not show that the Son is a thing originated, since it is clear from the proofs given above that the Word is such as he is who begot him. So if God is unoriginate, his Image is not originated, but an Offspring, which is his Word and his Wisdom. For what likeness does the originated have to the unoriginate? One must not grow tired of repeating it. If they insist that the one is like the other, so that whoever sees the one sees the other, they are likely to end by saying that the Unoriginate is the image of creatures. And that ends in confusing the whole subject, in putting things originated on a level with the Unoriginate, and in denying the Unoriginate by measuring him against his works; and all this to bring the Son down into their number. [e]

However, I suppose that even they will be unwilling to go so far, if they follow Asterius the sophist. For he, eager as he is in pleading for the Arian heresy, and though he holds that the Unoriginate is one, runs against them when he says that the Wisdom of God is unoriginate and without beginning as well. Here is a passage from his work: “Blessed Paul did not say that he preached Christ as ‘the power of God’ or ‘the wisdom of God,’ but, without the article, as ‘God’s power and God’s wisdom.’ In this way he preached that the power belonging to God himself, which is natural to him and exists with him without origin, is something else besides.” And again, a little later: “However, his eternal power and wisdom, which truth argues to be without beginning and unoriginate, must surely be one.” [f]

Though he misunderstood the apostle’s words and thought there were two wisdoms, still, by speaking of a wisdom that exists together with God, he declares that the Unoriginate is not simply one, but that there is another Unoriginate with him. For what coexists does not coexist with itself, but with another. So if they agree with Asterius, let them never ask again, ‘Is the Unoriginate one or two?’ or they will have to argue the point with him. If, on the other hand, they differ even from him, let them not rely on his treatise, or ‘biting one another, they will be consumed by one another.’ So much for their ignorance. But who can say enough about their craftiness? Who would not justly hate them while they are possessed by such madness? For when they were no longer allowed to say ‘out of nothing’ and ‘He was not before he was begotten,’ they hit on this word ‘unoriginate.’ Their aim was that, by telling simple people that the Son was ‘originate,’ they might imply those very phrases, ‘out of nothing’ and ‘He once was not’; for such phrases imply things originated and creatures.

If they have confidence in their own positions, they should stand by them and not keep shifting about in so many ways. But this they will not do, because they imagine success comes easily if only they shelter their heresy under cover of the word ‘unoriginate.’ Yet after all, this term is not used in contrast with the Son, however they may clamor, but with things originated. The same may be found with the words ‘Almighty’ and ‘Lord of the Powers.’ For if we say that the Father has power and mastery over all things through the Word, and that the Son rules the Father’s kingdom and has power over all, as his Word and as the Image of the Father, then it is quite plain that here too the Son is not counted in that ‘all,’ nor is God called Almighty and Lord with reference to him, but with reference to the things that come to be through the Son, over which he exercises power and mastery through the Word. And therefore the Unoriginate is named not in contrast to the Son, but to the things that come to be through the Son. And rightly so, since God is not like the things originated, but is their Creator and Fashioner through the Son. And as the word ‘Unoriginate’ is used in relation to things originated, so the word ‘Father’ points to the Son. Whoever names God Maker and Fashioner and Unoriginate has in view and understands things created and made; and whoever calls God Father thereby thinks of and contemplates the Son. [h]

So one may well marvel at the obstinacy that is added to their impiety. The term ‘unoriginate’ has the good sense just described and can be used reverently; yet they, in their heresy, bring it out to dishonor the Son. They have not read that whoever honors the Son honors the Father, and whoever dishonors the Son dishonors the Father. If they had any concern at all for reverent speech and for the honor due to the Father, it would have been more fitting for them, and better and higher, to acknowledge and call God Father than to give him this name. For in calling God unoriginate they are, as I said before, naming him from his works, as Maker and Fashioner only, imagining that in this way they may signify that the Word is a work, as they please. But whoever calls God Father names him from the Son, well aware that if there is a Son, then of necessity all things that come into being were created through that Son. And they, when they call him Unoriginate, name him only from his works, and know the Son no more than the Greeks do. But whoever calls God Father names him from the Word; and knowing the Word, he acknowledges him to be the Fashioner of all, and understands that all things were made through him.

So it is more reverent and more accurate to name God from the Son and call him Father, than to name him from his works alone and call him Unoriginate. For the latter title, as I have said, does nothing more than point to all the works, each one and all together, that have come to be at the will of God through the Word; but the title Father has its meaning and its bearing from the Son alone. And as far as the Word surpasses things originated, so far and further does calling God Father surpass calling him Unoriginate. For the latter is not in Scripture, and it is open to suspicion because it has various senses, so that when a person is asked about it, his mind is carried off to many ideas. But the word Father is simple and scriptural and more accurate, and it implies the Son alone. And ‘Unoriginate’ is a word of the Greeks, who do not know the Son; but ‘Father’ has been acknowledged and granted by our Lord. For he, knowing whose Son he was, said, ‘I am in the Father, and the Father is in me,’ and, ‘Whoever has seen me has seen the Father,’ and, ‘I and the Father are one.’ But nowhere is he found calling the Father Unoriginate. Moreover, when he teaches us to pray, he does not say, ‘When you pray, say, O God Unoriginate,’ but rather, ‘When you pray, say, Our Father in heaven.’ And it was his will that the summing up of our faith should point the same way, when he commanded us to be baptized, not into the name of Unoriginate and originate, nor into the name of Creator and creature, but into the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. For by such an initiation we too, though counted among his works, are made sons; and as we use the name of the Father, we acknowledge from that name the Word also, in the Father himself. So their argument about the term ‘Unoriginate’ is a vain thing, as has now been proved, and nothing more than a fantasy. [j]