What our opponents mean by “sub-numbering,” and how they imagine the term applies, is difficult even to conceive. Everyone knows that the expression has been imported into our discussion from “the wisdom of the world.” We must ask whether it has any real connection with the present subject.
Those skilled in empty inquiries tell us that some names are common and extend over many things, while others are more specific and apply to fewer. “Essence,” for example, is common and can be predicated of living and nonliving things. “Animal” is narrower, applying to fewer things than essence but more than the classes beneath it, since it includes both rational and irrational nature. “Human” is narrower than animal, “man” narrower still, and finally the individual—Peter, Paul, or John.
Do they mean, then, that “sub-numbering” is the division of a common genus into subordinate kinds? I can hardly believe that their madness has reached the point of saying that the God of the universe is like some universal concept existing only in thought and not in a concrete hypostasis, divided into subordinate species that are then “sub-numbered.” Even someone suffering from severe madness would hesitate to say such a thing.
And besides its impiety, such an argument proves the opposite of what they want. The subdivisions are of the same essence as the genus under which they are divided. Their absurdity is so obvious that it is difficult even to find an argument against it. Their folly almost becomes an advantage to them, much as a soft and yielding body offers no resistance and therefore cannot receive a solid blow. A manifest absurdity is hard to strike with a vigorous refutation.
We might therefore pass over their detestable impiety in silence. But love for the brethren and the persistence of our opponents do not permit us to remain silent.
What, then, do they actually claim? Listen to the terminology of their deception: “Things equal in dignity are numbered together; things that differ by inferiority are numbered beneath.”
Why say this? I cannot understand such extraordinary wisdom. Do you mean that gold is numbered with gold, but lead is too cheap to be counted with it and must therefore be “sub-numbered” under gold? Does number possess such power that it can raise the value of what is cheap or destroy the dignity of what is precious? On the same reasoning, you would have to number gold beneath precious stones, and smaller or duller stones beneath larger and more brilliant ones.
What will people not say when they spend their time doing nothing but telling or hearing something new? From now on, let these advocates of impiety be ranked with Stoics and Epicureans.
How could something of lesser value possibly be “sub-numbered” to something more valuable? How is a bronze coin counted beneath a gold coin? They answer, “Because we do not say that we have two coins, but one and one.” But which one is sub-numbered to the other? Each is mentioned in exactly the same way. If you count each separately, your method of counting treats them equally; if you combine them, you make a single total by counting one with the other. And if the thing counted second is automatically the one sub-numbered, the counter can simply begin with the bronze coin and reverse the supposed order.
Let us pass over the refutation of their ignorance and return to the principal subject.
Do you say that the Son is sub-numbered beneath the Father and the Spirit beneath the Son, or do you reserve this treatment for the Spirit alone?
If you apply sub-numbering to the Son as well, you revive the same impious teaching all over again: unlikeness of substance, inferiority of rank, later coming into existence—in a single word you set every blasphemy against the Only-begotten turning again in a circle. Refuting all of that would require more space than our present purpose allows, and I am less obliged to do so because, to the best of my ability, I have answered that impiety elsewhere.
If, however, they suppose that only the Spirit is to be sub-numbered, they must learn that Scripture speaks of the Spirit together with the Lord in exactly the same way that it speaks of the Son together with the Father. “The name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” is delivered in one and the same form. According to the coordination of the words given in baptism, the Spirit stands to the Son as the Son stands to the Father. If the Spirit is coordinated with the Son, and the Son with the Father, it is evident that the Spirit is also coordinated with the Father.
When the names stand in one and the same coordinated sequence, what room remains for speaking of some as “numbered together” and another as “numbered beneath”? More fundamentally, what thing has ever lost its own nature by being counted? Things remain what they are by nature whether or not we number them. Number is simply a sign we use to indicate plurality.
Some bodies we count, some we measure, and some we weigh. Things continuous by nature are apprehended by measure; things divided into distinct units are counted, apart from things so fine that we measure them; heavy objects are distinguished by the movement of the balance. But because we have invented these signs for our convenience in knowing quantity, we do not thereby alter the nature of the things indicated.
We do not speak of “weighing beneath” one another the things placed on a scale, even when one is gold and another tin. We do not “measure beneath” things that are measured. In the same way, we will not “number beneath” things that are counted. If none of these other operations admits such a notion, how can they claim that the Spirit must be sub-numbered?
Affected as they are by pagan unsoundness, they imagine that anything inferior in rank or subjected in substance must therefore be counted in a subordinate fashion.