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Hymns on Faith

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

55. Rhythm the Fifty-fifth

Who, my son, would compare natures which are not like one another in their births: for from all of them is the Nature of Him who created all, different. For if the generation of fire¹ is hard to relate, though quite open to the eye, how much more hidden from us is the Fruit² of our Maker, and the Generation of our Creator. Praises to Thy concealedness! For he that discourseth of Him who gave all things their nature³, ought to discourse of every nature first. Let us let alone His Majesty, and speak of His chariot⁴; let us shadow forth how it is. Let us also explain the living wheels of it, and if⁵ too the beasts have reason. Who hath ever seen a chariot, whereto the air was made in the place of the earth, and the wind in the place of a road; lo! it leadeth its own self, and turneth not itself aside: for the four sides have four heads over the throne. This is the direction⁶ of its faces, and the countenance thereof looketh unto every place.

And since the son of Buzi saw the likeness of a Man upon⁷ the throne, and since that chariot turned not itself aside, was it the throne therefore that changed its posture that it might explore every side? But if the throne be a marvel, who can suffice for the Watcher that sitteth upon it? Speak, and shew us the nature of Heavenly Beings, the image of Michael, and the form of Gabriel, who are fire and spirit⁸. Wherein is this fire seen, wherein is this spirit breathed? and are they short or tall? and their cast, of what cast the feel of them is? whether it may be touched by thee? Who hath gone, upon investigation, out of the world, and beyond it, that he should come and tell thee⁹? And if there be no bound¹⁰ to it, so extended is it, go measure it with thy mind, that it may answer thee by the measures of it. There is One who hath measured all things, who may not Himself be measured; and that containeth all things, though nothing may contain Him¹¹.

Whatsoever is in the eternal Essence, that is a Nature which Nature¹²¹³ He never at any time gave at His Will; and this is to His glory. For there is one thing which is not in the power¹⁴ of that Lord, in whose power¹⁴ are all things; and this is His commendation. For His Will, than which there is nothing higher, alone and by itself is high; and this is its crown. Seeing that there is no possibility of this being declared in words, if one has been obliged to do so, it is not with a view to that being declared in words, which being hidden, never was at any time spoken or declared in words¹⁵; it was the prying that I wished to reprove: for, if His not having given a nature to Himself, is a thing beyond its reach to attain to, how much more beyond our reach is prying into His Eternal Essence¹⁶!

Who, my beloved, hath been able to feel or to embrace aught which existeth not? Even thus difficult and hard is it for thee to search into that which [really]¹⁷ is. And see how He sealeth up the searching into Himself, my son, since that which is not, beareth witness unto that which is, in this, that by scrutinizing Him, He cannot be searched out¹⁸ unto perfection. From this itself let us learn what perplexity¹⁹ is ours, every time we gaze upon that first Essence, who when there was nothing, yet is found to have existed, and there is no proof of the mode of His existence. There is also another perplexity, as often as we go into Him, and how He begot from all eternity hath not been comprehended from all eternity²⁰.

It is from Him that we say of Him, that as it is necessary to confess His Essence; this being matter of necessity, not of proof, since it is too great for any proof²¹: so too it is necessary that thou shouldest extol His Fatherhood without searching and scrutiny, seeing it is too high for any search. In prying into His Fatherhood, thou hast pried also into His Essence. Who will not honour in silence both of them? For they are withdrawn from all, and they are blended together. If they dispute, it is together; and if they overcome, it is together. For gracious is the Fatherhood: fearful is the Essence: after the fashion of the hands²² they assist one another, since their crown is one.

Who is there among ready speakers, whose speaking is equal to speak with all languages the Lord of all languages, which have never at any time spoken Him²³. For whatever will allow the whole of itself to be uttered, is also akin to us: its nature is fellow to ours. He alone it is who is not a servant: since by reason of His Father He is Lord²⁴.

Notes

n. g. p. 234.
p. 179, n. e.
§. 3.
See n. b. p. 164. Of Christ’s riding in a chariot to be like man in all things he speaks, R. lxiii. §. 3. see also R. lxxix. §. 2. In vol. i. p. 264. he says, the ass of Balaam is a type of human nature, which had become a chariot for the accuser. But the fact that as soon as ever as it saw the Angel of God, it threw Balaam, this is what takes place when by His revelation the soul is allowed the sight of the Bridegroom: it shakes from its neck the yoke of the stranger, and becomes a chariot of Immanuel, instead of what it had been made, that of the adversary’s powers.” Elsewhere he speaks of the Cross as Christ’s chariot, R. xvii. §. 2. and speaks vol. i. p. 430, e. of God’s mounting upon the Cherubim and flying, as indicating that ‘the Angels move the Heavens round, and produce the changes belonging to their natural movements.’
Ezech. 1, 15. &c.
S. [Syriac]
Ez. 1, 26.
p. 146, n. c.
R. xlii. §. 5. R. lvii. §. 2.
i. e. if there is no ascertainable bound, attempt to form an imaginary one, that when this effort has not succeeded, it, i. e. the world, may by its own infinity convince thee that its Infinite Creator cannot be measured by man’s finite intellect.
p. 105, n. i.
This passage might have been noticed above, p. 133. were it not, though sufficiently to the point, a little less so, perhaps, in the original than in the translation. In Scholastic Latin it might be rendered, Quicquid in Essentia æternâ est, omne id est natura, quam Ille non voluit ut naturaret, or, non volendo naturavit. The Semi-arians, and much more the Anomeans, did not allow the Son to be in the Father’s Substance, but made him a second substance: hence St. E. insists that what is in the Eternal Essence is eternal. See on Athan. p. 63, g. p. 485, n. g. By the words ‘this is to His glory,’ he means this doctrine, that He who is in the Father does not depend upon the Father’s will for His existence, so far from shewing any imperfection in the Father, shews that perfection of His whereby all that, in this sense, is in God is God. St. Gr. Nyss. ii. p. 772, d. “The conjunction we speak of does not indicate in the spiritual Nature any bodily concrescence, but the union and blending together of One Spiritual [Person] with the Other through the identity of wills, (or the acts of Their will, ταυτότητος θελημάτων.) Wherefore there is not any diversity of the Son and the Father in respect of will, but as is the Archetypal Beauty of Goodness so is the Image of that Goodness; and as, if any one were to look at himself in a mirror, (for there is no objection to one’s using bodily semblances to bring the conception of the mind before one,) in all respects will the image be like in form to the original, in such way that the form which looks into the mirror is the source of the form in it; and so, that the image neither moves nor turns by itself unless the original commences the turning or moving; and so, that if the principal move, of necessity that which is displayed in the mirror moveth along with it. So say we that the Image of the Invisible God, the Lord, at every motion of His will, without any mean or intervention adjusteth Himself to the Father. If the Father willeth aught, then the Son who is in the Father sees at once the will of the Father, or rather hath Himself become the will of the Father. For He hath all that the Father hath in Himself, and so there is nothing of the Father’s that He hath not. But if He hath in Himself all that is the Father’s, or rather hath the Father Himself, of necessity with the Father and what is the Father’s He hath in Himself the whole of His Father’s will.” This celebrated passage will serve to make St. E.’s meaning clearer: what he implies is that the will of God is not a personal attribute of the Father’s only, but an essential attribute of the Godhead, communicated indeed to the Son by the Father, but in the same sense only as His eternal Subsistency is communicated to Him. St. Cyril Thes. p. 211. shews how the Anomeans put their argument. “By will it was that the Father gave the Son His Subsistency; in this way also He made Him Creator; but we deny that it is from out of the Father’s Essence that He subsisteth, lest any division or efflux be conceived to appertain to that unspeakable Essence.” The following is part of St. C.’s answer: “If according to them the Nature of God is dry and unfruitful, what is that operative will which proceedeth from Him, which also according to them gave the Son His Subsistency, it being able forsooth to create and to make the things that are not? While they avoid saying that the Father’s Creative Word was generated from His Essence, in very truth they are driven to the selfsame point—for the Will of the Father which liveth and is in His Essence is the Son, and His Word by whom all things are wrought.” Epiphan. i. p. 963, c. “In all things whatsoever thou sayest concerning God, O Aetius, He is wholly very simplicity, incomparable, perfect in Himself, not standing in need of aught. For He is perception itself and will itself. Wherefore in a way incomparable the Only-begotten Son did He beget, yet neither thereby did He deprive Himself of His own Essence, &c.” See on contr. Scrut. i. §. 30. where the subject of the one Will in the Trinity will occur.
§. 1.
S. hands
§. 6. R. lv. §. 2.
i. e. if one cannot conceive an unoriginate Nature in such way as to keep clear of difficulties, then neither can we so conceive His Eternal Essence. It may be said, that if God did not give Himself His own Nature, He cannot alter that Nature, therefore He is not free in the absolute way He ought to be; for a necessity forces Him to be what He is, and prevents Him from being other than He is. This indeed is a case which no pious mind would wish to put, and which the confutation of heretics is the only object which will justify one in putting. Still when men profess to be able to investigate His Eternal Essence, it is allowable to shew, how what we conceive as attributes belonging to that Essence, and so more intelligible than the Essence Itself, are incomprehensible to us. Heretics say God begat at His Will: let them explain that Will, is St. E.’s reply, and then we may think of arguing with them. See R. xliv. §. 2.
R. xxx. §. 1.
S. the scrutinizing of Him cannot be searched
Eunomius in his Apology, §. 7. said as follows: “One then going by one’s natural sense, as well as by the teaching of the Fathers, is God confessed by us to be, who neither came from Himself nor from any one else; for either of these is alike impossible. But since in truth what makes must needs exist before what is made, &c.” To this Basil says: (i. §. 5. p. 214, b.) “After he has told us that it is plain to every one’s common sense that God is ingenerate, he goes about bringing us demonstrations of this, much as if at full mid-day any one were to essay to teach men with their eyesight sound by argument, that the sun is the brightest of all the heavenly bodies. Now if a man who shews by argument things plain to sense is ridiculous, how can he who so teaches the things admitted by men’s common notions be else than guilty of the same absurdity? For sure to men of right mind things like this are far better believed than the objects of sight.....Do we indeed want the syllogisms of Aristotle and Aristippus to learn that the Ingenerate is not generate either from Himself or from any other, and that He is neither older nor younger than Himself? What then is he aiming at in all this? I suppose he wishes to make a display amongst his followers, as a person of a deep and piercing mind, sharp at spying out an absurdity, and sharper still at confuting what he detects, and that this is why he disports himself in a wreath of arguments, and works so subtly at a demonstration of the truth, that the Ingenerate is not generate either from Himself or from any else.” St. E. seems in this and the next § to be alluding to the above-cited passage of Eunomius, who, as St. Basil goes on to shew, in spite of all his parade of argument only involves himself in contradictions.
p. 136, n. e.
The last note will explain his meaning here. The words ‘of necessity’ may be illustrated by Aristot. Meta. iv. 5. “That which doth not admit of being otherwise we say is necessarily so.....demonstration moreover belongs to the head of’ necessary,’ because it cannot be otherwise, if it be demonstrated in an absolute sense. But of this the principles will be the cause, if those from which the syllogism is made are incapable of being otherwise, &c.” St. E. uses the word of all principles we cannot prove.
Comp. p. 174.
§. 3.
R. lii. §. 1.