But even if the beginningless birth of the Son of God can be thought of without an internal contradiction, this conceivability of His is, of course, not yet a proof of its reality. In the opinion of Eunomius, the freedom of God the Father speaks most clearly against the reality of beginningless birth.

It is true that the appearance of the ray is contemporary with the appearance of the sun, but it must also be taken into account that this modernity is necessarily determined by the nature of the sun, depends on the fact that the sun cannot but emit rays, and therefore necessarily emits them. Yet we cannot think of any necessity in God, on the contrary, we confess Him to be absolutely free. If it is certain that God is absolutely free, then it is clear that He begat the Son not out of necessity, but freely; but if he is free, then, of course, when he wills. "The highest good, God," says Eunomius, "encountering neither obstacles in (His) nature, nor compulsion in any (external) cause, nor the urgency of need, begets and creates according to the superiority of His own power, having in His will a sufficient reason for the organization of existence. Hence, if every good happens according to His will, then He not only determines how to be beautiful, but also when it should be, because to do what you do not want is a sign of powerlessness." If this is true of God's work in general, it must be true of His birth of the Son. For God, "then it was good and proper to bring forth a Son, when He willed; hence the rational do not have any question as to why not before. This objection was a favorite Arian objection to the Orthodox teaching about the Son during all the dogmatic disputes of the fourth century, because the Orthodox teachers who fought against Arianism were apparently hampered by its solution. Thus, for example, St. Athanasius of Alexandria, deciding whether the Father gave birth to His Son by His will or by necessity, replied that God begat the Son not by His will or by necessity, but κατά φυσιν, by nature. But, firstly, this is not an answer to a question; The Arian dilemma was perfectly correct both in form and in substance, and therefore there is no reason to evade a direct solution to it; and, secondly, this is the most uncertain answer. St. Athanasius, obviously, did not want to say that the Son of God was born by the will of God the Father, because the Arians were only waiting for such an answer in order to turn it against Orthodoxy; at the same time, he did not want to say directly that the Son is necessarily eternally begotten of the Father, because there is not and cannot be any need for God; and so, avoiding the two extremes, he invented a special birth, κατα φυσιν, of course, understanding by it eternal birth, determined by the nature of God and yet in accordance with his will. It goes without saying that the Arians could not agree with this opinion of St. Athanasius. They demanded a direct, clear answer to the question: Did God give birth to His Son by will or by necessity, and since they did not receive the desired answer, they made of their question one of the most important objections to the Orthodox teaching on the eternal birth of the Son of God. In the middle of the fourth century, the theologizing sophists constructed a special syllogism out of this objection, on the basis of which they tried to prove the created origin of the Son of God. If, they reasoned, the Son is begotten by the will of the Father, then He is actually the Son not of the Father, but of the father's will, i.e., in other words: He was brought out of non-existence into being by the omnipotent will of God, which is therefore the direct cause of His being; but if He is born of necessity, how is any necessity possible in relation to God? This sophistic objection was spread to the people, and became the most popular argument in favor of the Arian doctrine. St. St. Gregory the Theologian called this argument "clingy and shameless," but nevertheless considered it necessary to expose its inconsistency. In this revelation, however, he very briefly and only in passing touched upon the positive solution of the question of the arbitrariness or involuntariness of the Divine birth. He only remarked that the Son is not the Son of willing, but of Him who wills, whose will may be birth itself. A more serious and firm solution to this question was given by St. Gregory of Nyssa, who had to deal not with a current sophism, but with the serious objection of Eunomius.

St. Gregory fully agrees with Eunomius that the Son is begotten by the will of God the Father and precisely when the Father willed, but in complete contrast to Eunomius, he asserts that this will of the Father is an eternal will, and therefore it is realized from eternity. True, going into dialectical subtleties, one could say that between the beginninglessness of the Father and the birth of the Son there is a small interval, which constitutes the father's will for the birth of the Son; but St. Gregory hastened to forestall this objection by remarking that in God the will does not precede action, but is completely simultaneous with it, so that the birth of the Son of God did not begin after the father's will, but together with it, i.e. from eternity. This idea, supposedly expressed by St. Gregory the Theologian, is considered by St. Gregory of Nyssa to be absolutely true, because "it is only characteristic of our heavy and inflexible nature that we do not have much at the same time, both to want and to have something, while in a simple and omnipotent nature everything is thought together and at the same time, and the desire for good, and the possession of what he desires." [449] Therefore, the birth of the Son of God by the will of the Father does not in the least limit His eternity. In order to make his thought more comprehensible and to impart to his teaching, so to speak, visual certainty, St. Gregory turns to various examples from the field of natural phenomena. "If," he says, "it is necessary that our word should be confirmed in another way, then the teaching on this subject could be made intelligible with the help of certain phenomena accessible to our sensory knowledge, only let no one blame our word for not being able to find in the existing such an image of the sought-after as would be fully sufficient in resemblance and likeness to represent the object" (450). This reservation proved to be essential, because St. Gregory presents examples that are not actually real, but, so to speak, semi-real, and moreover, not entirely successful. He points to the flame, and "presumably" puts the will to shine into it. If, he argues, the flame had such a will, it would certainly wish to shine at the very moment of its appearance, so that the kindling of the fire would coincide with the desire to shine it, and the desire to shine would coincide with the very work of light. Just as in this example the work of light is not late against the desire of the fire to shine, but appears simultaneously with it, so the birth of the Son of God must be accurately imagined. The Father without beginning expresses the will to have the Son without beginning and has Him without beginning, so that the Father's will does not serve as a kind of mediastinum between the unborn being of the Father and the begotten being of the Son, but is the birth itself.

But even after this explanation, the dispute between St. Gregory and Eunomius on the question of the beginningless birth of the Son of God was not yet over, because Eunomius raised another objection to this point of Orthodox teaching, an objection based on the understanding of the Divine birth in the image of human birth. Although Eunomius often denounced Orthodox theologians for the forced transfer of certain human ideas to divine life, he himself never denied himself this transference, never, however, confessing to it. He enclosed the act of divine birth in the temporal conditions of earthly existence and tried to convince everyone that such was the law of all existence, and at the same time the law of divine life. Since every birth, he says, does not extend into infinity, but reaches an end, it is quite necessary for those who receive the birth of the Son that He has now ceased to be begotten, and (as a consequence) not to be suspicious of the fact that that which has ceased to be born had its beginning, because the cessation testifies to the beginning, both of birth (γεννησεως) and of birth (του γεννασθαι); it is impossible not to recognize this on the basis of nature itself, and moreover on the basis of divine laws" [452]. What these divine laws to which Eunomius refers, he himself explains by his reference to the beginning and end of creation: God "added one day to the end of creation, precisely as a witness to its beginning, because He gave in remembrance of creation (δημιουργίας) not the first day of creation (γεννήσεως), but the seventh, on which He rested from His works" (453). By this reference Eunomius wanted to prove first of all that even for the Divine reason the end is an irrefutable proof of the beginning, so that in order that we should not recognize creation as coming about from eternity, God determined that it was sufficient to indicate only the cessation of His creative activity, and from this indication its temporal beginning becomes clear of itself. But Eunomius wanted to prove even more by this reference the correctness of his opinion about the termination of the birth of the Son of God. He deliberately confused the concepts δημιουργια and γεννησις in order to identify them and by means of this identification to prove that if on the seventh day God rested from all His works, then He rested absolutely, and not only from the external manifestation of His creative activity, but also from the internal activity, and therefore with the end of the creation of the world the birth of the Son also ended. But if, according to the clear teaching of the Bible. God Himself recognizes the end of the work as a natural proof of its beginning, then it goes without saying that, in obedience to the voice of God, we are obliged to think of the cessed birth of the Son as having a temporary beginning. Such was the essence of Eunomius' objection.

In response to this objection, St. Gregory of Nyssa briefly expounded the teaching about the continuous birth of the Son of God, and drew from this a conclusion opposite to that of Eunomius: that which has no end has no beginning. The whole argumentation of this conclusion is very simple. It rests on the already proven necessity to distinguish the image of the birth of the Son of God from the image of the origin of creatures. "From the fact that," says St. Gregory, "every creation and birth reaches an end, it is not at all necessary, as Eunomius asserts, that those who receive the birth of the Son should limit it to two limits, admitting in it a beginning and an end, because only that has a beginning of being and ceases with its end, which is determined by a certain quantity" (454). For example, it may be said of every work of art that it is then begun and then finished, because it is accomplished by the combined action of matter, art, and the power of the artist, and consequently necessarily requires a certain length of time for its execution. In absolutely simple nature, which does not admit of any quantity and no extension, there are no distances along which it would be possible to limit it to the beginning and the end, and therefore there is no reason to speak of the beginning and end of the birth of the Son of God. "That which begins and ceases is, of course, represented by us in a certain continuation, and every continuation is measured by time: but when there is no time by which we can designate the end and the beginning of birth, it would be in vain to think of a beginning and an end in a continuous (άδιάστατος) birth, since no concept can be found which is able to designate how it begins and ends" (455).

Summarizing the revelation by Gregory of Nyssa of the Orthodox teaching about the co-origination of the Son of God with God the Father, we can express the essence of this revelation in the following brief definition of the relationship between begotten and co-beginning: "The Son, eternally abiding with His Father, is begotten, and at the same time is without beginning; is without beginning by eternal abiding with the Father, but is born because he received existence from the Father" [456].

This abbreviated formula of the Orthodox teaching about the Son of God gave Eunomius a reason to raise a new objection to this teaching: if the Father is beginningless and the Son is beginningless, then there are two beginningless ones. "Acknowledging," he says, "that these essences (i.e., the Father and the Son) are without beginning separated from each other (i.e., coexisting with each other from eternity as independent Persons), and then elevating one of them through birth to the rank of Son, and insistently proving that from the Eternal was born the one who exists without beginning, you are subject to your own reproaches," i.e., you pronounce a proper sentence on yourself. The recognition of two beginningless ones is the same as the recognition of two gods; if bitheism is unconditionally condemned by Christianity as pagan superstition, then it is self-evident that the teaching about the two beginningless Persons in the Godhead must also be condemned as an anti-Christian teaching.

In response to this accusation of bitheism, St. Gregory of Nyssa remarks that although he confesses both the Father and the Son to be beginningless, yet in application to both Persons he does not understand this beginninglessness in one and the same sense. In his opinion, the Father is absolutely beginningless, both in His essence and in His personal being, while the Son is beginningless only in essence, and not in His personal being; in this latter respect He has a beginning, namely in His birth from God the Father, and therefore can no longer be called beginningless [458]. Thus, Church teaching does not allow for a plurality of principalities; nor does it admit of two gods. Confessing the Father and the Son of one essence with Him, the Church confesses one and the same God in two Persons, because the unity of essence allows us to speak only of persons, and not of gods. "As the Father is God, so is the Son God, and one and the same God in both confessions, because the mind does not imagine any difference in the Godhead, either in nature or in activity" (459). But it seemed inconceivable to Eunomius to speak of this consubstantiality, when the Father is absolute God, and the Son is God, who came into being according to His will. There must be only one and only divinity, absolute and original; if it is not original, then it is not absolute, and the absolute is not the Godhead. Hence, if the Son has existence from the Father, then He is not original, and if He is not original, then it is clear that He does not possess the Father's divinity, and consequently is not of one essence with the Father. Against this series of conclusions, St. Gregory put forward the thesis that there is no temporal interval in the existence of the Father and the Son, but even if there were one, then even then the doctrine of consubstantiality could not meet with any serious objections. Everyone knows that David is the same person as Abraham, although the latter is older than the former by as much as fourteen generations. Mankind (ανθρωπότης) does not suffer from time in the least, and one and the same essence belongs to all men, however long periods of time they may be separated from each other. But this answer of St. Gregory was not at all a question. For Eunomius asserted the distinction between the essence of the Son and the essence of the Father, not on the basis of the temporal difference of Their being, but on the basis of the difference in Their mode of being: the one exists unbegotten, the other begotten, the one original, the other from the cause; hence it seemed to Eunomius that in Them there is a different nature, because one and the same Divinity at one and the same time cannot be and not be something. The whole essence of his objection, therefore, may be briefly expressed in the following question: Can the Born be of one essence with the Unborn? This question is somewhat answered by another example of St. Gregory, in which he clearly tries to clarify the relationship between the concept of consubstantiality and the concepts of begotten and unbegotten. He takes Adam and Abel as an example. The former may be called unborn in relation to the second, while the latter received existence from the former by birth. If we take the point of view of Eunomius, it turns out that Abel was not of the same essence with Adam, as he was born to the unborn; but such a conclusion is manifestly absurd, because in reality they both possess the same complete measure of human essence. Consequently, the mode of being has no significance in relation to the essence, and therefore the consubstantiality of the Son of God with God the Father can be accepted without any contradictions. It goes without saying that this example is far from accurate, because the unbegotten of Adam does not have even a shadow of the likeness of the unbegotten of God the Father, and the begotten of Abel does not have even a shadow of resemblance to the begotten of the Son of God; but in order to clarify the true relationship between the concepts of consubstantiality, begottenness and unbegottenness, it has full significance, and therefore the conclusion of St. Gregory must be recognized as essentially correct.

But as soon as the unity of essence is affirmed, a new objection immediately arises: if the Father and the Son have one and the same divine essence, how could the Father beget His Son from his own essence, when this essence is indivisible, one and only in the absolute sense? In this case, it seems that one of two things must be recognized: either the Father begat His own essence, i.e., Himself, or He begat another essence, but in this case no longer from His own indivisible essence. Taking advantage of the obvious absurdity of the first article of the dilemma, Eunomius turned it into an objection to Orthodox teaching, as a deduction ad absurdum. "You ascribe," he says to the Orthodox theologians, "the birth of another to him of whom you imagine that He is unbegotten, (so that) confessing that the beginningless essence is one and only, and then by birth extending it to the Father and the Son, you affirm that it was born of itself" (462). This objection was the most serious of all the Arian objections we have considered to the direct ecclesiastical belief in the Holy Trinity, because it concerned the accusation of the Church of Sabellianism, and apparently had sufficient grounds for this accusation; but it was also the most difficult objection on the part of the Arians, because it concerned the most incomprehensible mystery of the inner Divine life, and could not be sufficiently revealed by any efforts of human thought. It is not surprising, therefore, that St. Gregory of Nyssa did not resolve this objection quite satisfactorily.

He fully recognized that the Son of God, as consubstantial with God the Father, is in unity with Him in all divine attributes, in divine will and activity, in unity to absolute identity in everything except hypostasis. But what is this hypostasis? In what way does it differ essentially from the meaningless ονομα Sabellians? Avoiding this phantom of Sabellianism, St. Gregory rather sharply inclined to distinguish the divine hypostases almost to the point of their complete separation, so that the real unity of essence for him was merely an identity in essence. In response to Eunomius' objection that in Orthodox teaching, as in Sabellianism, the Persons of the Father and the Son are merged, he put forward an unfortunate example of the consubstantiality and difference of human individuals, and on the basis of this example he tried to clarify the separate existence of the Divine Persons of the same essence. "Two men, Adam and Abel," he says. In relation to nature, they are one man, but in the distinctive properties seen in each of them, they have an unmerged difference between them. Therefore, it cannot be said in the proper sense that Adam begot a different essence in comparison with himself, but it is more correct (to say) that he begot another self from himself, (because) in this (other) together (with birth) everything conceivable in the essence of the begetter is given. Hence, what we have learned on the basis of human nature in the way which reason has consistently indicated to us, this, I think, we must take as the path to an infallible understanding of the divine dogmas" (463). If in Adam and Abel there is μία ουσια, while υποστάσείς their υποστάσείς are different and unmerged in one and the same essence, then this will be an image of the consubstantiality and difference of the Divine hypostases. According to the example of Abel, the essence in the Son of God is not any new and different from the essence of the Father, but the same essence of the Father, because everything that is only thought in the essence of the Father is also thought in the essence of the Son born of Him. Such an understanding of consubstantiality most consistently led to the formulation of the question: if the essence of the Son is identical with the essence of the Father, but not one with it, then is not the division of the indivisible divine essence recognized in this case? From the point of view of St. Gregory, the answer to this question should have been affirmative, and yet he categorically denied the obvious conclusion from his understanding. In his view, the divine essence is one and indivisible, and this indivisibility, in his understanding, is not only preserved, but also proved in the most convincing way. "Man," he said, "when he gives birth to a man, does not divide his nature, but it is wholly in the begotten and in the begotten: it is not divided or transferred from one to another, nor is it lost in the one when it is perfect in the other, but being wholly in the one, it is also wholly in the other" (465). By analogy with this indivisibility of human essence, St. Gregory thought to explain the indivisibility of essence in the Divine birth; but it is self-evident that this inseparability is only logical, inseparability in the idea, and not in reality. If this is how the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father should be understood, then Eunomius is quite right when he accuses the Orthodox Church of paganism, because the Father and the Son, in the understanding of St. Gregory, are two Gods, just as Peter and John are two people. But this misunderstanding was caused only by the terrible specter of Sabellianism, when the Arians made a grave accusation of the Orthodox theologians of merging the Divine Persons, and when this accusation necessarily forced the Church Fathers to express their disagreement with the teaching of Sabellius as sharply as possible. In a perfectly legitimate striving for a visual separation of his teaching from the teaching of Sabellius, St. Gregory of Nyssa deliberately chose the sharpest, and therefore the most extreme, example, which fatally led him to the separation of the Divine essence, and as a consequence necessarily called for the construction of crude analogies. But when he was not in danger of being accused of Sabellianism, and when he could reason independently of the sophistic questions and objections of the Arians, he reasoned quite correctly, understanding the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father in his own absolute sense. In the "Discourse Against Arius and Sabellius," for example, denouncing the wisdom of the latter, St. Gregory explains the well-known words of the Saviour in the following way: "I and the Father are one in essence, one in dignity, one in reason, one in wisdom, but not one in hypostasis" (466). Explaining to the "raging Arian Achilles" how the two can be one, he says: "The Father and the Son, occupying one and the same place, and being perceiving each other, and being one, as we said a little earlier, differ only in one hypostasis and name, one from the other, being in fact one in the other" (467). How this existence of one in the other is possible, St. Gregory clearly illustrates by the following example: the smell of the world, when it is poured out in the air, becomes inseparable from the air, so that it seems to us that it has merged (συνδιακεχυται) with the air, but in reality both the smell of the world and the air exist unchangeably: in the same way in the Godhead "you will find that both are one in essence and in agreement of thought, and that (yet) this one (God), as we said before, hypostasis and name (is divided) into the Father and the Son" [468]. Here the real unity of the divine essence is unconditionally affirmed, so that the Divine hypostases seem to lose all real significance and are mere names: but whoever compares this teaching of St. Gregory with his teaching expressed in polemics with Eunomius, will certainly be far from being accused of Sabellianism, but will only agree that he thought the unity of the Divine essence to be equally real. and the distinction of the Divine Persons.

Thus ended the polemic between St. Gregory of Nyssa and Eunomius on the question of the true divinity of the Son of God. The general conclusion of all St. Gregory's arguments about the Son of God and His relation to God the Father can be expressed in the following three propositions: a) the Son of God has His personal existence by an incomprehensible act of beginningless, uninterrupted birth from the essence of God the Father: therefore b) He is co-existent with His Father and consubstantial with Him, and therefore

c) He is the true Son of God and the true God.

4. The revelation by St. Gregory of Nyssa of the Orthodox teaching about the Holy Spirit in connection with the objections to this teaching on the part of Eunomius and the Doukhobors.