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Hymns on Faith

St Ephrem the Syrian, tr. Morris, 1847; selections

45. Rhythm the Forty-fifth

The eye and the mind teach one another: for any little thing that falleth into the eye worries and disturbs it; and so is thy mind. Scripture and a light, each make thee wise, the light is fair to the eye, and truth to the mind. Choose¹ light for thine eye, the Scriptures² for thy mind. How averse the eye is to aught that falleth into it: evil meddlesomeness however is cast into our imagination. A mote is distressing to the eye, how much more is meddlesomeness distressing to the mind³, corrupting all things at all times. The finger is no assistance to the eye that it should meddle with it; nor is searching to the mind that it should fix in it.

His Fatherhood is easier to us than His Essentiality⁴. It is impossible that another Ever-being should come from space⁵: but it is possible that He should generate one Son, that is like unto Himself. Aught that is from aught is an easy thing, but [to conceive] an Everbeing which was not from aught is difficult, which though it upholdeth all things, yet dwelleth⁶ in all things. For if He dwelt in a space He would be small in His greatness, for then there would be a greater than He, since He would be found to dwell in space, and this is subject to a limit. But He that is illimitable, is a space which nothing can comprehend, and as it is not possible that space should be filled with the whole of Him, thus neither is it possible that His fulness should be in the mind⁷.

And if He were commensurate with that which is space in regard to His knowledge, and yet not commensurate with it in regard to His Essence; then were His knowledge greater than His Essence, and it is found that He is made up out⁸ of two things⁹: for lo, it is inconsistent, that He being One should be in them both. This His littleness contraries His greatness, while He knoweth not if there be in that space entities without limit, and worlds, and creatures. The foolish therefore fall into a maze of blasphemy, and hence it is high time for them to say, that He is One from Himself¹⁰, and a Father from Himself, and perfect, and entire, and Self-sufficing in all things.

For if He dwelleth in space, He would be little in His Majesty; and if He could not beget, then would His Fatherhood be void¹¹; and if He could not create, He would be weak in His Essence. Lo, He is wholly perfect in all these things, for He begat without suffering, and created without labour¹², and dwelt without space, and is rich without treasure! For there is no place that surroundeth and hemmeth Him in, neither is there any scrutiny which searcheth Him out sufficingly. Great is His Essence, as is also His Fatherhood. Space and intellect are cast and condemned, and as there is no space that sufficeth for His Essence. Whose is the mind¹³¹⁴ that sufficeth to search into His Fatherhood?

Though it be quite true, yet it is hard to search out how He created any thing when there had not been any thing, and there would be no demonstration¹⁵ whereby thou mightest search out if it were possible. And since in the discourse of reason¹⁶ there is no place where thy mind may rest and say, ‘lo, thus it was!’ believe and repress the haughtiness of scrutiny. And inasmuch as thy spirit sufficeth not to gaze upon the difficulty of the actual thing, search Him out in another way, that from another side thou mayest rest thyself; and reflect that to Him, the Lord of all, all is easy¹⁷. The pleading wherewith thou hast silenced investigation into the creatures, oh, clad it on, and silence therewith the investigation into the Generation!

Notes

Eccles. 11, 7.
R. xlvi. §. 1. and p. 279, n. d.
contr. Scrut. ii. §. 5.
or Eternity.
Assem. paraphrases: si a se existentem ab alio existere dicas ipse tecum pugnas. Possibly the words [Syriac] mean merely, ‘from any where.’ But though slurred over by Ass. they would rather seem intended to convey by implication the doctrine of the perichoresis as stated in Vol. ii. p. 471, d. quoted above, p. 132. col. 2. To suppose two Eternal Beings, would be to suppose a space in which they were, as he goes on here (as there) to shew, and from which they must be conceived as coming. Very probably he means, by the way, to hint that Eunomian would, if followed out, lead to Manichean error, though his main object here is to shew that, if the eternal Generation is objected to on the ground of its incomprehensibility, a fortiori the Existence of God ought also to be objected to. See n. b. p. 231.
comp. p. 105, n. i.
comp. n. e.
S. that his composition is of
The Fathers held God’s simplicity in such sense as to deny that He was compounded of Essence and Attributes; our idea of Him is so compounded, He is not. Vide Petav. de Deo, ii. 8. St. E. here shews what will follow from the absurdity of supposing two Eternals inclosed in space, noticed in §. 2. Assume the Father to have a knowledge reaching beyond Himself into the other Eternal, and you make Him ‘of a compound nature having’ knowledge ‘a constituent or complement of His Substance,’ to use the words of St. Athanasius, p. 334. O. T. and p. 514-15. Aetius (in Epiphan. i. p. 929. xxxix.) argues, that ‘if God remained ingenerate, He could have no consciousness of a generate condition:.....without supposing Him to be ignorant of Himself, we cannot make His Being the same as the Son’s, who is generate.’ This is perhaps here retorted on himself.
This is the doctrine of the Monarchy; see on Athan. p. 45, n. h. which is also the doctrine of the Athanasian Creed, ‘The Father is made of none,’ &c.
On Athan. p. 284, n. e. ab. p. 179, e.
So Basil c. Eun. ii. §. 23 fin. “If He creates without suffering then allow that His Generation is without suffering also.” ἀπαθῆ. Comp. ibid. v. §. 5. p. 316. Greg. Nyss. ii. p. 630, d. “Neither the making of the creation nor the thing meant by having a Son admits with it time or matter or labour or suffering.” Epiphan. Hær. lxix. §. 26. “If in begetting He suffered, then He was wearied in creating.” Epiph. in H. lxxvi. §. 22. and more at length Cyril in Thes. vi. p. 43, a. states and combats the Anomœan doctrine here alluded to. “How,” says Eunomius in Cyril, “can it be other than a necessary admission that the Father’s Essence was impaired, if the Son came out of It, being as it were a part of It? But if ye would preserve to the Father His unchangeableness and superiority to such impairment, then ye will not decline saying that the Son is not a part of His Essence, nor from Him, but from without, and that he hath His coexistence owing to the power which is in the Will [of the Father] alone.” See also on Athanas. p. 140, n. n. and Or. i. §. 28.
§. 3.
Space is an element which enters into a vast majority of our conceptions of things; we explain time and its properties by reference to space, as the primary meanings of prepositions, &c. would shew. St. E. then probably means that, as we cannot bring God’s Essence under space, it is impossible for our mind to conceive how the whole of that Essence was communicated to the Son. Even Angels we conceive to have relation to space and so comprehend their operations or energies. (See p. 187, n. b.) But such dim and vague apprehension of God’s Essence as we have, presupposes Him to transcend space, and so precludes our reasoning about His operations. See however on R. lvii. §. 2.
or model, see Is. 40, 13. 14.
S. [Syriac]
R. xxxix. §. 3.