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Translated by W. Moore and H. A. Wilson
St Gregory of Nyssa Resources Online and in Print
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This Part: 128 Pages
Page 77
ยง38. Several ways of controverting his quibbling syllogisms.
Let us, if you please, examine his irrefragable syllogisms, and his subtle transpositions [197] of the terms in his own false premisses, by which he hopes to shake that argument; though, indeed, I fear lest the miserable quibbling in what he says may in a measure raise a prejudice also against the remarks that would correct it. When striplings challenge to a fight, men get more blame for pugnaciousness in closing with such foes, than honour for their show of victory. Nevertheless, what we want to say is this. We think, indeed, that the things said by him, with that well-known elocution now familiar to us, only for the sake of being insolent, are better buried in silence and oblivion; they may suit him; but to us they afford only an exercise for much-enduring patience. Nor would it be proper, I think, to insert his ridiculous expressions in the midst of our own serious controversy, and so to make this zeal for the truth evaporate in coarse, vulgar laughter; for indeed to be within hearing, and to remain unmoved, is an impossibility, when he says with such sublime and magnificient verbosity, "Where additional words amount to additional blasphemy, it is by half as much more tranquillizing to be silent than to speak." Let those laugh at these expressions who know which of them are fit to be believed, and which only to be laughed at; while we scrutinize the keenness of those syllogisms with which he tries to tear our system to pieces.
He says, "If Father' is the same in meaning as Ungenerate,' and words which have the same meaning naturally have in every respect the same force, and Ungenerate signifies by their confession that God comes from nothing, it follows necessarily that Father signifies the fact of God being of none, and not the having generated the Son." Now what is this logical necessity which prevents the having generated a Son being signified by the title "Father," if so be that that same title does in itself express to us as well the absence of beginning in the Father? If, indeed, the one idea was totally destructive of the other, it would certainly follow, from the very nature of contradictories [198] , that the affirming of the one would involve the denial of the other. But if there is nothing in the world to prevent the same Existence from being Father and also Ungenerate, when we try to think, under this title of Father, of the quality of not having been generated as one of the ideas implied in it, what necessity prevents the relation to a Son being any longer marked by the word Father? Other names which express mutual relationship are not always confined to those ideas of relationship; for instance, we call the emperor [199] autocrat and masterless, and we call the same the ruler of his subjects; and, while it is quite true that the word emperor signifies also the being masterless, it is not therefore necessary that this word, because signifying autocratic and unruled, must cease to imply the having power over inferiors; the word emperor, in fact, is midway between these two conceptions, and at one time indicates masterlessness, at another the ruling over lower orders. In the case before us, then, if there is some other Father conceivable besides the Father of Our Lord, let these men who boast of their profound wisdom show him to us, and then we will agree with him that the idea of the Ungenerate cannot be represented by the title "Father." But if the First Father has no cause transcending His own state, and the subsistence of the Son is invariably implied in the title of Father, why do they try to scare us, as if we were children, with these professional twistings of premisses, endeavouring to persuade or rather to decoy us into the belief that, if the property of not having been generated is acknowledged in the title of Father, we must sever from the Father any relation with the Son.
[197] Transpositions of the terms in his own false premises; ton sophismaton antistrophas. The same as "the professional twisting of premisses," and "the hooking backward and forward and twisting of premisses" below. The terms Father and 'Agennetos are transposed or twisted into each other's place in this irrefragable syllogism.' It is a reductio ad absurdum' thus:-- Father means 'Agennetos (Basil's premiss), ? 'Agennetos means Father. The fallacy of Eunomius consists in making Father' universal in his own premiss, when it was only particular in Basil's. "'Agennetos means the whole contents of the word Father," which therefore cannot mean having generated a son. It is a False Conversion. This Conversion or antiotrophe is illustrated in Aristotle's Analytics, Prior. I. iii. 3. It is legitimate thus:-- Some B is A ? Some A is (some) B.
[198] kata ten ton antikeimenon phusin. If 'Agennetos means not having a son, then to affirm God is always 'Agennetos' is even to deny (its logical contradictory) God once had a Son.'
[199] ton basilea.
Reference address : https://elpenor.org/nyssa/against-eunomius.asp?pg=77
