The fifth book promises to speak about the saying of the Apostle Peter (Acts 2:36), but puts it aside and, first, discusses about creation, that there is nothing worthy in it, but that people, through immaturity and weakness of reason, having gone astray and being amazed at its beauty, have deified parts of the world; here he also beautifully interprets the saying of Isaiah: "I am the first God" (Isa. 41, 4). 2.

Then he explains the saying of Peter: "God created His Lord and Christ" (Acts 2:36), and here he also sets forth the objection made by Eunomius to this saying against St. Basil, the abuse and insults committed by Eunomius. 3. Against them he gives an amazing and extraordinary rebuff, proves the power of the Crucified One and that there was a subjection to human nature, and not to the nature of the Only-begotten from the Father; he explains the image of the cross, the name of Christ and the blessings granted through the merging of the Divinity with humanity. 4.

Then he shows the falsity of Eunomius' slander, as if the great Basil said that man had exhausted himself into man, and he explains that the exhaustion of the Only-begotten occurred at the invocation (Matt. 27:46) during His suffering as a man. 5. After this, he shows that there are not two Christs, nor two Lords, but one Christ and one Lord, and that the divine nature, united with the human, has preserved the properties of the one and the other unmerged; He explains in detail and very cleverly that because of the unity of the natures, common actions are also ascribed, since the Divine takes upon Himself the infirmities of the servant, and the human is required by the honor of the Lord, and by the power of dissolution the Divine nature transforms the human into Itself.     1. Concerning the Saying of the Apostle Peter (Acts 2:36)

it would be time to study more diligently what Eunomius himself said about him, what was said about him by our father (St. Basil the Great). If, however, careful consideration prolongs our discourse, then, of course, the benevolent listener will excuse us, and will not accuse us of talkativeness, but will lay the blame on the one who gave the reason for this; And let me first be allowed to briefly review what is to be investigated, and this may not be inconsistent with the purpose I have in mind.

The Divine Word has legitimized that nothing created should be idolized by people, this is taught to us by almost all the divinely inspired Scriptures; Moses, the tablets, the law, then the prophets, the Gospel, the teaching of all the apostles equally forbid the reverence for creation, and it would be a long time to offer one passage after another relating to it. But, although we offer a few of the many divinely inspired testimonies, the word will undoubtedly have equal certainty, because each of the Divine utterances, even the slightest, equally serves to reveal the truth.

Since what exists is usually divided into two parts, into creature and uncreated nature, then if what is now proved by opponents, namely, that the Son of God was created, had power, it would be quite necessary either to reject the preaching of the Gospel and not to worship God the Word in the beginning, because it should not serve the creature, or, being ashamed of the Gospel miracles, which lead to the worship and worship of Him, Whoever reveals himself in them should consider both the created and the uncreated to be equal in honor.

If, according to the teaching of the adversaries, it were necessary to worship a created god, who by nature has no preference over any other creature, and if this teaching were to have force, then the dogmas of piety would certainly be reduced to a kind of anarchy and a multi-power self-law, because as soon as people believe that not one nature is worshipped, but turn their thoughts to different deities, then no one will stop the movement of thought that has allowed the created divinity; but the recognition of a divinity in any creature will be a reason for an equal opinion about what follows it, and so on; the error will gradually spread to everything, as soon as the first lie reaches its last extremes through its application.

And that my divination is not beyond probability, I will present a reliable witness to the truth of my word - an error that even prevails among the Greeks to this day. For after people, with their inexperienced and weak minds, had become amazingly attached to the beauties of creation, and had not used the miraculousness of phenomena as a guide and guide to the understanding of the transcendental beauty, but had focused their thought only on what was comprehended, and had made each part of creation an object of wonder, then they did not recognize any one of the visible things as Divinity, but considered everything visible in creation to be divine.

Thus, among the Egyptians, who had a particularly strong error about the spiritual world, innumerable kinds of demons were numbered among divine beings. Among the Babylonians, the immutable circumference of the heavens was revered as a god, whom they called Baal, and the next seven circles were also considered by the Hellenic vanity, having made each separately a god, and for some special reason of error subordinated one to another.

For having discovered that all these circles revolve one within the other, they have gone astray about the highest, and have consistently retained the same error to the last extremes. Moreover, they recognized as true that the ether itself, and the air poured out beneath it, and the earth, and the sea, and the subterranean part, and on the earth itself, everything that is useful and necessary for human life, and all the rest, partake of the Divine nature; One thing that had previously struck their eyes into the creature gave occasion for the service of all the subsequent parts of creation, and they bowed down before each of these objects, so that if it had at first seemed inadmissible for them to turn their eyes with reverence to the creature, they would not have fallen into such a deception of polytheism.

How much more should we not suffer from this ailment, who are taught by the Divine Scriptures to look upon the true Divinity and are instructed to consider all created things as alien to the Divine nature, but to serve and honor one uncreated Nature, whose property and attribute is that it has never had a beginning of existence and will not have an end. Thus the great Isaiah, commandingly theologizing about these dogmas, says on behalf of God: "I am the first, and I after these, before Me was not God, neither shall it be after Me" (Isaiah 44:6; 43:10).

This great Prophet, who knew more accurately than anyone else the mystery of the Gospel piety, and who proclaimed this wondrous sign of the Virgin, and who proclaimed the birth of the "Child," and clearly pronounced His very name, — this Prophet, who by the power of the spirit embraced within himself all the truth, so that it might be especially clear to all that quality of the Divine nature, by means of which we distinguish the self-existent from the happened, says on behalf of God: "I am the first, and I am after this, and before Me there was no God, and after Me he bore it."

For God is neither God before God, nor God after God, for what is after God is creation, and before God there was nothing; nothing is God, or, rather, before God He Himself is in unlimited, eternal bliss; Inasmuch as this spiritual word is further spoken by the mouth of the prophets, we learn the dogma that there is a certain one Divine nature, identical in itself and indivisible, not admitting into itself either before or after, although it is preached in the Trinity, and having nothing in itself that could be conceived by the elder or after what happened.