On Ecclesiastical Theology — Book I

Eusebius of Caesarea · a new plain-English translation from the Greek

Pin.1| The first book contains the following. 1. That Marcellus slandered Sabellius to no purpose, since he holds the same views as he. 2. That the grace of Christ has bestowed on the church of God, as its special gift, the knowledge of the Father and the Son. 3. That the heterodox have erred in various ways in their account of the Son. 4. That those who do not confess that the Son of God subsists call themselves Christians to no purpose. 5. How Marcellus denied the Son of God in imitation of the heresy of Sabellius. 6. How the church of God believes. 7. How the heterodox have fallen away in different ways from the theology of the Son. 8. A statement of the sound orthodoxy of the church. 9. That the Son did not come to subsist in the same way as the many created things. 10. That, since he alone was begotten from the Father, he alone is rightly proclaimed both God and only-begotten Son. 11. How the church knows one God, while also accepting that the Son is God from God. 12. That his begetting from the Father is ineffable. 13. That the Son's governance is necessary and saving for all. 14. That the church was right to reject Marcellus, who thought the same as Sabellius. 15. In what words Marcellus attacked Sabellius, pretending not to think the same as he. 16. How he is convicted by his own words of holding the same views as Sabellius. 17. How he denied the subsistence of the Son outright. 18. How he asserted that before the incarnation the Son was nothing other than a word, just like the word among human beings. 19. How the divine Scriptures, even before the incarnation, called the Son of God not only Word but countless other things as well. 20. Passages from the proofs drawn from divine Scripture, with interpretations of particular points, in thirty chapters in all.

Pref.1| I had supposed that the quotations of Marcellus' own words, which I collected in the preceding books, would be enough to refute themselves. For the denial of the Son of God they contained was so manifest and so unblushing that, even without any rebuttal, the doctrine in them was something for the nurslings of the church of God to shun.

Pref.2| But since I considered that some might perhaps be drawn away from the church's theology by the great mass of quotation the man has used to lend credit to what he thought would support him, I judged that I ought now to set out the refutation of these as well, so that everyone may learn that not a single word of inspired Scripture offered him testimony in agreement with his denial of the Son of God, but that all of them, without distortion, flatly spoke against him, setting straight his incorrect misinterpretations of the divine Scriptures. Together with exposing these I shall join the theology of our Saviour, having nothing new to say, nor any clever discovery of my own, but holding forth the uncorrupted teaching of the church of God, which she received from of old, from the beginning, from those who saw and heard the Word for themselves, and which she keeps.

1.1| But before examining these: since I found Sabellius being attacked by him in the course of his treatise, I was astonished at the man's stupidity, that he did not refrain from speaking ill of the one whom he ought above all to have praised, since he had come to share his belief and his mind. I did not think it right to pass this matter by in silence, but to include a refutation of it too in the present writing. For his slandering of the ministers of God, even if it brought blame on himself and good repute to those who were freed from communion with him,

1.2| still had some show of reason: he could be thought to be disparaging what was not to his liking. But to strike at himself without noticing it, by abusing one of his own mind, seems to me a mark at once of shamelessness and of insensibility. That this is so, he himself would be his own proof, since, after the manner of Sabellius, he introduces God as a Son-Father, if not in plain words, then at any rate in truth, by doing away with the subsistence of the Son and defining God as one, and calling this one both his own Father and, again, his own Son. For having granted that there is a Word, the one in God,

1.3| and having defined him as one and the same with God, he said that God is styled his Father, and that the Word is his Son: not truly a Son in the subsistence of an essence, but properly and truly a Word. At any rate he points out that he is a Word not by a loose use of the term but properly and truly, and nothing other than a Word.

1.4| But if nothing other, it is plain that he was not properly and truly a son either, but only so named by misuse, as far as voice and name go. And by saying that the Word, the one who was made flesh and born of the virgin, is one and the same with God, he declared him to be God. This is exactly what the church of God rejected long, long ago, when Sabellius uttered it, numbering him among the godless heretics.

2.1| For to confess one God, in opposition to the polytheistic error of the Greeks, was first handed down by the children of the Jews. But to recognize the same God also as Father of an only-begotten Son is a special gift which the saving grace has given to the church. And the church knows Jesus Christ alone, and no other, as Son: not according to the birth of the flesh which he took up (for she has been taught to call this the form of a servant and son of man), but according to his begetting from God himself and Father before all ages, unknown to all; according to which the fullness of the Father's divinity caused him too, the Son, to subsist as God, not as a divinity of his own acquiring and set apart from the Father, nor as one unoriginate and unbegotten, nor as drawing in some foreign divinity from elsewhere, alien to the Father, but as filled from the Father's own participation poured out upon him as from a spring. For the great apostle taught that in him alone "all the fullness of the Father's divinity" dwells. Therefore one God is proclaimed to the church of God, "and there is no other beside him"; and one also is the only-begotten Son of God, image of the Father's divinity, and for that reason God.

3.1| Because most people could not take in this theology, they devised various by-paths of error. First, some who granted that the Son is God denied the man whom he took up. Second, others posited a mere man and were ignorant of the God in him. Third, others, for fear of seeming to introduce a second God, defined the Father and the Son as the same. The church of God, turning aside from these, glories in the gospel proclamation of the truth: she boasts of having one God over all, and acknowledges as hers one only-begotten Son, God from God, Jesus Christ; she confesses that the same one became Saviour and son of man, being Son of God before he became man too, and becoming this, what he was not, through the unspeakable surpassing love of the Father for humankind.

4.1| This, then, is what the word of truth cries out in the person of the church. But those who deny the Son of God and assert that there is one God and nothing else: why do they trouble the church in vain, when they ought to be frequenting the synagogues of the Jews? And why do they run themselves through with blasphemous words, slandering the one God with a double charge, if they posit that the same one is Father and the same one is Son? For whose father is he, if no son subsists? And whose son will he be, if the one who begot him does not exist beforehand? And being one, he will surely be the very one who was made flesh and suffered and lived out a mortal life among men.

5.1| But when Sabellius said this, the church of God drove him far away as venturing godless and impious things; and Marcellus tries to renew these things, using a cover that is not persuasive. For while rightly defining that there is one God, he says that this God has a Word in himself, united and joined to him; and then of the one God he calls one part Father and the other Son, so that there is in him a kind of double and composite essence.

5.2| And how much better than this, in a choice among evils, is the man who does not divide the unoriginate, unbegotten and divine power but confesses in bare words that it is the same; and how much better than either is the Jew, who neither divides the one God into Father and Son as Marcellus does, nor introduces the same one as a Son-Father as Sabellius does, but worships God while recognizing and expecting his Christ, proclaimed through the prophets as destined to come, whom, when he came, they did not receive, and so suffered, and will suffer, punishment for their unbelief in him.

6.1| But those whose desire is to believe in the one who came will recognize these three: the one "of the seed of David" and of the holy virgin; the Son of God who dwelt in him, pre-existing and subsisting in essence; and his Father, God, by whom he himself continually confesses that he was sent. "For us," then, according to the apostle, "there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things": the pre-existent only-begotten Son of God; and third, the son of man according to the flesh, whom the Son of God took up for our sake.

6.2| But neither was the body he took up the same as the Son of God who took it up, nor could the Son of God himself be considered one and the same with the one who begot him. With these three laid down, those who grant two but do away with the third would be rejected by the church.

7.1| Some godless men among those of other opinions, refusing the Saviour's flesh and saying that he was seen on earth in some appearance of illusion, were the first to miss the mark of the truth. Those who accepted the economy in the flesh but denied the pre-existent Son of God devised, as I said, various trackless ways for themselves: some said that he was a mere man, in no way superior to the common nature of all except in advantages of virtue; others laid down that the God of the universe himself dwelt in the body, and said that he was styled his own Son by reason of the economy he underwent as a man. These, granting two, God and man, deprived themselves of the third, by denying the Saviour himself, the only-begotten Son of God.

7.2| Carried along in thought with these, Sabellius long ago and Marcellus now maintained that, like the unbelieving Jews, they knew perfectly well the God over all, and they agreed also to the second, the flesh from the holy virgin; but the third, the very head of the salvation of us all, the Son of God, who is light and truth, they pushed aside, and in denying the Son they fell away at once from the light of truth.

7.3| Hence you will hear them confessing one God and honouring the Saviour's flesh, while the Son of God who dwelt in the flesh they accept with voice and lips but refuse in deed. For one must seek a Son of God who is truly living and subsisting, neither the same as the body he took up nor the same as the God and Father. For no one who calls the God beyond the universe a Son would be pious (for whose son will he be who is clothed in the unoriginate and unbegotten divinity?), nor will anyone who says that the only-begotten Son of God is the Father himself escape the penalty due to those who speak impiously.

8.1| Therefore the church of God, cutting a straight and royal road, has rejected the other deviations, and hands down to her nurslings the knowledge of the divine grace, teaching them in the very mystery of rebirth to confess belief in one God, Father almighty, and providing that they know this theology complete, exact and whole: it hands down one God, setting itself apart from the Greek and polytheistic error; it knows him as Father, separating itself from the Jewish teaching; and it confesses him almighty, turning away from the impiety of the godless heretics.

8.2| None of those of other opinions, at any rate, would say that the Father of Christ is himself God almighty. Nor would any of the Jews confess God as Father, since they do not know the only-begotten Son; nor would a Greek say that he knows only one God. Therefore the church, cleansing away the error of all these, proclaims the one God, teaching that he is both Father and almighty: Father of the one Christ alone, and God and Creator and Lord of all the rest. So also she hands down Jesus Christ as only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all ages, not being the same as the Father, but existing in himself and living and being with him, truly a Son, God from God, light from light, life from life, begotten of the Father for the salvation of all things in ways ineffable and unspeakable, wholly unknown and incomprehensible to us; who did not come to subsist in the manner of other begotten things, nor live a life like those begotten through him, but was brought forth alone from the Father himself and is himself life.

8.3| For it was fitting that the God over all should put forth, before everything that comes to be and before all ages, this only-begotten offspring, as a kind of base and unbreakable foundation of the things that were to come to be through him. Therefore, before all things that were to be, he begot the Son as a ray of light, a spring of life and a treasure of good things, "in whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden," according to the divine apostle.

8.4| As the treasury of good things so great, the Father, who alone is good, caused the Son to subsist: life itself, who gives life to the whole; light itself, "the true," who gives light to every intellectual and rational essence; and Word itself and Wisdom itself, who wisely and rationally brings all things into subsistence and governs them. For these reasons he alone, and no other, is called and is the only-begotten Son of God.

9.1| Hence one may reasonably find fault with those who have dared to call him a creature, come to be from nothing like the other creatures. For how will he still be a son? How is he only-begotten of God if he is entered under the same nature as the other creatures? On that footing he would become a brother of these rather than Son of God, and will be one of the many things that have come to be, having shared, as they did, in the common lot of creation out of nothing.

9.2| But the divine oracles do not teach this about him. When they teach about the existence of things that have come to be, they testify that all of it came to be through him: "All things came to be through him, and without him not one thing came to be," and "in him were created all things in the heavens and on the earth, visible and invisible," and "all things have been created through him and for him, and he himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together," according to the apostolic teachings.

9.3| But when they bring in the theology concerning him, they set him apart from all the rest, and know him as Lord and Master and Maker and God and Saviour of the whole, and declare that he alone, and no other, is only-begotten Son of God, and call him alone Wisdom and Word and Life and Light, and "image of the invisible God" and "radiance of eternal light," and teach us to believe countless other things akin to these about him, which in some way show the particular relation of the Father's divinity to him alone, as to an only-begotten Son.

9.4| For this reason the Father's voice at the streams of the Jordan proclaimed him alone beloved Son, bearing witness with a great cry: "This is my Son, the beloved, in whom I take pleasure." And it repeats the testimony at the transfiguration on the mountain, sealing the same word.

9.5| So when the God of the universe himself gave him this testimony, and when the evangelist expressly teaches that he is the only-begotten Son in the words "No one has ever seen God; the only-begotten Son" (or "only-begotten God") "who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known," and when the Saviour himself also sets his seal on this in his teachings about himself, with the words "For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life,"

9.6| anyone who after these words defines the Son as having come to be out of nothing and as a creature brought forth from what is not is, without noticing it, granting him the name only, while denying that he is truly a son. For one who has come to be from nothing could not truly be a son of God, any more than could any other of the things that have come to be.

10.1| But the one who is truly Son of God, brought forth from him as from a father, might reasonably be styled both only-begotten and beloved of the Father; and so he would also be God. For what could God's offspring be but what is made like to the one who begot it? A king founds a city but does not beget a city, whereas he is said to beget a son but not to found one; and a craftsman is maker, not father, of what he makes, while of a son born from himself he could not be called maker. And so the God of the universe may reasonably be called Father of the Son, and Creator and Maker of the world.

10.2| But if one finds it said just once somewhere in Scripture, "The Lord created me a beginning of his ways, with his works in view," one must examine the sense of the saying, which I shall set out a little later, and not, like Marcellus, shake the church's most authoritative doctrine on the strength of a single expression. For he too, having heard once that the Son is a Word, fell upon the man and rejected the Son's existence.

10.3| How is it holy to compare with the other things that have come to be the one who is attested as Son both by himself and by the Father? How will he be only-begotten if he is numbered among the multitude of things that have come to be? Indeed, from the very name, "Son" shows the natural relation to the Father, and again the name "only-begotten" touches both the kind and the begetting itself, and the fact of being alone, with nothing else sharing sonship with him. But these men seem to have suffered the same affliction as Marcellus.

10.4| For he, out of fear of speaking of two gods, put forward the denial of the Son, rejecting his subsistence. And those who grant two subsistences, the one ungenerated and the other created out of nothing, posit one God; but the Son will then be for them neither the only-begotten, nor Lord, nor God, having no share in the Father's divinity and being compared to the rest of the creatures in that he came to subsist out of nothing. But the church does not do so.

10.5| She proclaims the Son of God as God and Lord, and teaches that he is truly Son and God: not like the many who are called by the title sons and gods, of whom it was said, "I said, You are gods, and all of you sons of the Most High," but in that he alone, begotten of the Father himself, "was in the form of God," and was "the image of the invisible God and firstborn of all creation." Hence she has learned to honour and revere and worship him alone, as her Lord and Saviour and God.

11.1| But if they are afraid that they may seem to be proclaiming two gods, let them know that, even though we confess the Son too as God, there would be one God only, the one who alone is unoriginate and unbegotten, who possesses the divinity as his own, and who has become to the Son himself the cause of his being and of his being such as he is. It is because of him that the Son himself confesses that he lives, saying outright, "As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father," and "For as the Father has life in himself, so he has given the Son also to have life in himself."

11.2| Therefore he teaches that the Father is God both of us and of himself, in the words "I am going up to my Father and your Father, and my God and your God." And the great apostle teaches that God is head of the Son himself, and the Son head of the church, saying in one place, "The head of Christ is God," and in another saying of the Son, "and he gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body."

11.3| So he would be leader and head of the church, and the Father his head; thus there is one God, the Father of the only-begotten Son, and one is the head of Christ himself. With one source and one head, how could there be two gods, rather than that one alone, who attributes to himself no one higher and no other cause of himself, but possesses the divinity as his own, unoriginate and unbegotten, of monarchic authority, and has given the Son a share of his divinity and life; who established the whole through him, who sends him, who gives him orders, who commands, who teaches, who hands over everything to him, who glorifies him, who exalts him, who made him king of the universe, who hands over all judgment to him, who wishes us too to obey him, who commands him to take the throne at the right hand of his majesty by addressing him and saying

11.4| "Sit at my right hand"; who for all these reasons is God of the Son himself, whom his only-begotten child obeyed, so that "he emptied himself, humbled himself, took the form of a servant, became obedient unto death"; to whom he prays, whose command he obeys, to whom he gives thanks, whom he teaches us to regard as the "only true God," whom he confesses to be greater than himself, and whom, over and above all this, he wishes all of us to know as his own God.

11.5| When the Son thus glorifies his own Father, the Father in turn glorifies him in return, and has shown him to be Lord and Saviour and God of the whole and sharer of his throne in his kingdom. Having been taught this, the church of God recognizes him as her own God and Lord and Saviour, and as only-begotten Son of the God over all; she does not deem any other of the things that have come to be worthy to be proclaimed God, but knows as God only him, whom alone the Father begot from himself,

11.6| just as he himself showed through Solomon when he said, "Before the mountains were settled, before all the hills, he begets me," speaking in riddles in this way of the divine and supercosmic powers as mountains and hills.

12.1| But if someone busies himself further with how God could beget, and how the one beyond the universe can be a father, the one who said "Do not seek what is deeper than you, nor examine what is higher than you. Think on what has been commanded you; for you have no need of the hidden things" will silence the boldness of the question. And Paul, who said "O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and untraceable his ways!", should persuade the man who dares to go farther not to attempt the unattainable. Or let him first say himself how and in what manner the things he says came to be out of nothing came to subsist, when they in no way at all existed before.

12.2| For God did not, like the craftsmen among us, take material already lying to hand and build the whole with his hands. As what is impossible by nature, so far as men are concerned (I mean to bring into being out of what is not something that in no way existed), was possible to him, and he became maker of the whole not in the manner of a man but in ways unspeakable and inexpressible to us, so much more would the begetting of his only-begotten be unsearchable and untraceable, not to us alone, as one might say, but to all the powers superior to us.

12.3| For how could things that are far lower in nature, and stand below and furthest from the unspeakable and divine essence, reach a comprehension that lies beyond and above? How could things that did not exist before, and were brought by him out of nothing into being, have knowledge of the first generation of the one who brought them forward and became the cause of their existence? Or shall we, creatures of yesterday, clothed in "skin and flesh," knit together with "bones and sinews," who do not even know our own affairs, make a risk-free inquiry into the unspeakable things, meddling in how the Father begot the Son? That countless things right at our feet also escape our knowledge will be plain from this.

12.4| Who could say how the soul is shut up in the body, how it goes out, how it was admitted in the beginning, what its form is, what its shape, what its appearance, what its essence? I say nothing yet of meddling about demons, or the essence of angels, or rulers and thrones and dominions, or authorities and world-rulers.

12.5| But if in all these matters we are at a loss, why must we search out the knowledge of the unoriginate and ungenerated divinity? Why ask the unattainable, how God came to be father of an only-begotten Son, as though the Father's voice did not suffice for us as witness to the beloved, whom he proclaimed in the words "This is my Son, the beloved, in whom I take pleasure; listen to him"?

12.6| If he commands us to listen to him, let us obey the royal law and listen to the beloved Son. What he wishes us to know about himself he will show by saying, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life." We must believe him, then, that we may obtain eternal life; for "the one who believes in him," he says, "has eternal life";

12.7| not the one who knows how he was begotten of the Father; for no one would have a share in eternal life if it was said that "no one knew the Father except the Son, nor did anyone know the Son except" the "Father" alone who begot him. The faith, then, suffices us for salvation, the faith which lets us know God as Father almighty and to acknowledge his only-begotten Son as Saviour, who among other things handed on this also, saying, "What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit." And "God is spirit."

12.8| It follows, therefore, that we understand that what is begotten of God would also be God. And as far as the God beyond the universe is estranged and separated in nature from earthly flesh, so far we must understand that the manner in which the Father begot the Son is estranged from the generation of fleshly beings. For it was not by emitting anything, nor by being altered, nor by being moved in any passive way, nor by undergoing anything at all of the things known to us, that he caused him to subsist.

12.9| For he was not a body, so that one might reckon in his case an outflow or diminution or extension or change or turning or flux or part or affection. Apart from all these, he caused the generation to subsist in a way unspeakable and unreckonable for us, or rather unsearchable and untraceable for every created nature. The sun too begets its radiance, and the Son is also called "radiance of eternal light" and "radiance of glory," though not in the manner of the perceptible image of light; for beyond every pattern he caused him to subsist in ways unspeakable and incomprehensible, and him as one and only-begotten.

12.10| Let every mouth be stopped of impious and godless men who suffer from the polytheistic error, who have cast the special and singular begetting of the only-begotten Son down into a multitude and have called the Father "of men and gods," mixing men with gods, and at the same time bringing in a father of one nature with them and the same for both. But these men uttered this impious and godless saying under demonic activity, supposing gods of the same nature and the same passions as the mortal, passible and sinful race of men, and a common father of them who must surely resemble his children; whereas the church's herald proclaims to all one only-begotten Son of the one God, whom he caused to subsist for the salvation and providence of all things that have come to be.

13.1| For since the nature of the things that have come to be, having its differences in bodies and in incorporeal beings, ensouled and soulless, rational and irrational, mortal and immortal, was not able to draw near to the God above all and over all and to share in the gleams of his divinity, because of the excess of its deficiency in comparison with the better, it would have slipped far, far away in the weakness of its nature had it not obtained God as Saviour and helper. With good reason, then, the Father's love for humankind set his only-begotten child over all, passing through all, overseeing all and irrigating all with the supplies that come from him.

13.2| For the Father who begot him showed him alone to be shepherd and saviour, caretaker and guardian, physician and helmsman of all things at once, in heaven and on earth, entrusting to him alone the tiller of the constitution and governance of the whole; as he himself teaches, saying, "All things have been handed over to me by my Father," and again, "For the Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hand."

13.3| And he, like a wise helmsman who has received his allotment from the Father, having embarked on the whole world and looking upward to his Father, steers and conducts the whole at the helm, not overlooking even the smallest of those that need his supply, nor scorning the least; therefore he is present to all, dispensing to each what suits, and in his care of the whole, like a physician, providing what is fitting for salvation.

13.4| Hence it was with good reason that he did not scorn even life as a man, but long before, too, he gave his help to the God-loving men of old: here appearing in human form to the forefathers of the Hebrews, there laying down fitting laws for their descendants, and then delivering oracles to the later ones through prophets, announcing that his manifestation as God would shine forth to all humankind.

13.5| When the time of these things had passed, he fulfilled in deeds the accomplishment of the ancient oracles, and was now present, mingling with mortal life and consorting with it; and the only-begotten Son of God himself, as in a divine statue, the instrument of the body, lived among the race of men with teachings, healings,

13.6| and the unspeakable instructions of God-inspired wisdom. Then, at the Father's nod and in surpassing love for humankind, he went on for their sake as far as the gates of death, so that he might count those down here worthy of his grace, drawing them up to the life that is with him. Thus "God was in Christ, reconciling to himself the world"; and he underwent the economy in the flesh, while being before it and pre-existing it, honoured with the divinity of the Father's glory; yet "not counting equality with God a thing to be grasped," he "emptied himself" and, "taking the form of a servant, humbled himself, becoming obedient" to the Father "unto death," so that, "just as" "death" through "one man" who "sinned" ruled over the whole race, so eternal life through "his grace" might reign over those who believe in him and through him are made known to God, his Father.

14.1| It was with good reason that the church, proclaiming this, rejected Sabellius as having counterfeited, like a spurious coin, the denial of the Son of God, even though he said, like Marcellus, that he knew one God and that there is none besides him. And the first heralds of our Saviour himself gave the name Ebionites, calling them in the Hebrew tongue "poor" in understanding, to those who say they know one God and do not deny the Saviour's body, but do not know the divinity of the Son.

14.2| The fathers of the church also declared the man of Samosata alien to the church of God, although he taught that Jesus is Christ of God and confessed one God over all just as Marcellus does, because he did not confess Christ to be Son of God and God before his birth in the flesh. He was driven far from the church as impious toward Christ;

14.3| and Sabellius, as offending against the Father himself, whom he dared to call Son, underwent the same punishment as the godless heretics. Marcellus, suspecting that he would suffer the same, devised a more novel contrivance for error, defining God and the Word in him as one, but granting him two titles, of Father and of Son. Yet he did not escape notice, but was caught at last in his own nets;

14.4| and even before he was caught, struck by his conscience, he rushed to blaspheme Sabellius in order to clear away the suspicion.

15.1| How he slandered the man, mentioning him by name, listen as he writes about him in these very syllables (No. 38): "For Sabellius too, having slipped from the right faith, knew neither God accurately nor his holy Word. For one who did not know the Word was ignorant of the Father also. 'No one,' it says, 'knows the Father except the Son,' that is, the Word; for the Word by himself provides the knowledge of the Father. So too he said to those of the Jews who then supposed that they knew God but rejected his Word, through whom alone God is known, 'No one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son may reveal him.' For since it was impossible to know God otherwise, he teaches that men know him through his own Word; so that Sabellius too went wrong in not accurately knowing the Father and his Word."

15.2| This is what Marcellus wrote, clearing himself of the suspicion of Sabellianizing in voice and word only; but in thought and in agreement with the man he is caught entangled in the same darts as he, so that for my part [….] and it would have been a thing to pray for that he not fall into the same; but as it is, he appears to offend more badly than that man. For the one, perhaps, being in error, did not know it; but the one who confesses that the man erred, and then pushes himself over the evident precipice of the same impiety, would be worthy of no pardon. But let us consider what was said.

16.1| First, then, since he said that neither Sabellius nor the Jews knew God because they did not know the Word, we must consider what kind of Word he supposes. If he means the only-begotten Son of God, subsisting and living, then he himself did not know him either. For instance, when our Saviour mentions the Son in different ways and often calls himself the only-begotten Son, and never once calls himself the Word, but teaches through all the Gospels that he is Son of God (for which he pronounces Peter blessed when he said, "You are the Christ, the Son of the God who lives," and testifies that the knowledge came to him through a revelation of the Father, saying, "Blessed are you, Simon bar Jonah, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my Father who is in heaven"), this marvellous man, as though his ears were stopped, writes these words verbatim (No. 34): "And for this reason he does not name himself Son of God, but everywhere calls himself son of man, so that through such a confession he may bring it about that man, through fellowship with him, becomes by adoption a son of God."

16.2| You see how he does not dare to confess him as Son of God, lest he fall from the doctrine of Sabellius, but calls him son of man because of the flesh he took up. And throughout his whole treatise he continually names him Word, remarking that he was nothing other than Word.

16.3| And even where he finds fault with Sabellius, he cites the Saviour's words, in which he said, "No one has known the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son may reveal him,"

16.4| but, as though correcting them, he again names Word in place of Son, saying (No. 38): "'No one,' it says, 'knows the Father except the Son,' that is, the Word," and he goes on (No. 38): "for the Word by himself provides the knowledge of the Father," and adds (No. 38): "It was impossible to know God otherwise than through his own Word"; and again he puts Word in place of Son and calls him God's own Word. In these very few words he mentioned Word often, but Son not once. He even alters the Saviour's own saying,

16.5| adding in place of "the Son" the words (No. 38) "that is, the Word," as if the meaning of "Son" did not fit better with the title of Father. So the Saviour fittingly paired the Son with the Father, but he, who declines to say Son, keeps harping on Word up and down, and accuses Sabellius of denying the Son while doing the same as he, and so pretends, thinking by slander against him to turn aside the suspicion of false doctrine. If, then, he blames Sabellius for denying the Son of God, he should have blamed himself first; and if it was because Sabellius did not know the Word that he himself defined, he was not right to make that charge.

16.6| For neither Sabellius nor the Jews themselves, who deny the Christ of God, were ignorant of what Marcellus says is the Word in God, through whom he spoke oracles to Moses and the prophets; anyone, not only of the Jews but also of the Greeks, would say that they know him precisely. For who would not confess that God is rational, as he is wise and good and powerful? Sabellius would not deny that he knew this. But because he did not also confess a Son of God, living and subsisting and existing before the flesh, he was driven out of the church of God, because of this agreement with Marcellus, just as Marcellus is.

16.7| How Marcellus held the same opinions as Sabellius would be clear from the points on which he laid down that God and his Word are one and the same, saying at one time in these very words

17.1| (No. 62): "If the examination were of the spirit alone, the Word would reasonably appear to be one and the same as God"; at another time, comparing God's Word with the human word, he adds (No. 55) that the word in a man is one and the same with the man, separated from him by nothing else than the activity of the action. So at one time he declared that before the constitution of the world there was nothing other than God, and again said in these very words (No. 93) that "when the world had not yet come to be there was nothing other than God alone";

17.2| and at another he compared God's Word to our significant speech, in the passage where he wrote thus (No. 55): "Just as all things that have come to be were made by the Father through the Word, so also what is said by the Father is signified through the Word." Here he calls him a significant word, and going on next he shows him to be inseparable in subsistence, one and the same with the Father, saying something like this (No. 55): "This is easy, I think, for those of sound mind to learn even from a small and humble example from among ourselves."

17.3| "For no one can separate a man's word from him in power and subsistence. The word is one and the same with the man, and is separated from him by nothing else than the activity of the action." And again he uses the same image where he says (No. 56): "For everything the Father says he is evidently saying everywhere through the Word. This is plain from ourselves too, so far as small things can be likened to great and divine ones; for we too do and say everything we wish, as far as we can, by means of our word."

17.4| One should think that these words are no more Marcellus' than Sabellius', unless perhaps Marcellus is taunting Sabellius for not having shamelessly dared to name the significant word in God, as Marcellus himself conceives it, a Son. For Sabellius did not have so great a folly of reasoning as to grant the God over all a word just as men have one, nor was he so simple as to call a word without subsistence the Son of God. So Sabellius, who said one God and denied the Son,

17.5| said in keeping with his own hypothesis that the same one is Father and Son; but Marcellus, granting like him that God and the Word in him are one and the same, pointlessly confesses that Sabellius erred, without confessing that he himself did too.

17.6| For either he ought to have accepted the other, or he should blame himself too, and in blaming him turn aside the same false doctrine as his own, and not suppose God to be like a sculptor, conversing with his own thought and his own reasoning, and urging himself to say, "Come, let us make, come, let us fashion a statue" (for thus he said that God spoke the words "Let us make man"),

17.7| nor posit in God at one time an inward word, as in a man, and at another a significant one, like the spoken word in us. For it would be more tolerable to hear these things from Sabellius or one of the Jews who openly deny the Son of God than from a Christian.

17.8| But he, as though priding himself on the Jewish teaching against the church of Christ, brings in this impious and godless doctrine that the Son of God does not exist, setting up throughout the whole treatise he laboured over that before the world came to be there was nothing other than God alone, in order to shut out the Son's entry. Yet he also vaunts himself, boasting that he knows one God;

17.9| as though we do not say this too, who have accepted that the Son of God is truly Son, and have learned from him to recognize one God, who is at once God and Father of the only-begotten Son, who is truly his Son, begotten from him before all ages, and who was called not only Word before the taking up of the flesh, as the noble man declares, but countless other things as well. In this too he lies against the divine Scripture, insisting that before the coming in the flesh he was called nothing other than Word.

18.1| Listen, then, to how he affirms it, writing in these very words (No. 37): "So it is plain from every side that no other name fits the eternity of the Word than the one that the most holy disciple and apostle of God, John, gave at the beginning of the gospel. For since after the taking up of the flesh he is proclaimed Christ and Jesus, and life and way and day and resurrection and door and bread, and whatever else is named by the divine Scriptures, it is not fitting for this reason that we be ignorant of the first name, that he was Word. For this reason the most holy evangelist and disciple of the Lord, keenly alert in the Spirit, mentioning the beginning from above and nothing more recent, said, 'In the beginning the Word was; and the Word was in God's presence; and the Word was God,' to show that, if there is any new and more recent name, it came from the new and recent economy in the flesh."

18.2| And he adds next (No. 42): "Before he came down and was born through the virgin, then, he was only Word. For what else was it, before it took human flesh, that came down 'in the last days,' as he himself wrote, and was born of the holy virgin? Nothing other than Word." And again he adds (No. 43 = 81): "For before, as I have often said, he was nothing other than Word."

18.3| And he adds again, saying (No. 36): "For the Word 'was in the beginning,' being nothing other than Word; but the man united to the Word, who did not exist before, became man, as John teaches us: 'And the Word became flesh.' For this reason, therefore, he evidently mentions the Word alone."

18.4| "For whether the divine Scripture mentions the name Jesus or Christ, it is evidently naming the Word of God as he is with human flesh. And if anyone claims to be able to show the name of Christ or Jesus used of the Word alone before the new covenant, he will find it said prophetically." And after other matter he adds, saying (No. 44): "Reasonably, then, before the descent he was what we have often said, Word; but after the descent and the taking up of the flesh he obtained various titles." These are the passages in which Marcellus is caught denying the Son of God who exists and lives and is truly Son, and bringing in a bare Word.

18.5| It has also been shown, through his words quoted earlier, what kind of Word he supposed him to be, using as his example the human word and saying that he is one and the same with God. And having established this beginning, he proceeded consistently, from the hypothesis given himself, to lie against the God-breathed Scripture and to make distorted interpretations of it.

19.1| It seemed good to me to consider a few of these for the present, and to show those who do not know that no Scripture is in harmony with him in his innovation and turning from the sound faith; on the contrary, all of them speak against, and bear witness against, the interpretations he has wrongly adopted. This is what should especially be shown to those who honour the man, lest any of them, in ignorance of the divine readings, suppose that he has hit the mark of the truth.

19.2| And this is the first point to examine, which he also first dared to declare: that before the Son of God was born through the virgin he was not called by any name other than Word. For he says that before the coming in the flesh he was nothing but Word and was named nothing else, unless prophetically (for he says he was and was named Word and nothing else), and that after the coming in the flesh he obtained various titles.

20.1| This, then, must first be shown, that he made this declaration in ignorance and without knowledge of the divine Scriptures. For, first, the divine evangelist John himself, the very one who called him Word, then, second, not long after but at once, right on its heels, named him God, saying, "and the Word was God." Though he could have said "and the Word was of God," he did not say this, lest anyone say he was like the word among men, but calls him God, thus showing the surpassing divine dignity that belongs to him.

20.2| Third, passing to another conception of his glorification, he called him Light, showing by this very thing that he pre-existed the taking up of the body,

20.3| in the passage where he says of the Baptist: "That man was not the light, but came to bear witness to the light, which gives light to every man, coming into the world. He was in the world; and through him the world came to be, and the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own did not receive him."

20.4| You see how in these words he named him not Word alone, as Marcellus supposed, but also God and Light, and taught that he pre-existed and that the world came to be through him. For as he had said earlier that all things came to be through the Word of God and that "without him" nothing came to be, so also through the Light: "the world," he says, "came to be through him."

20.5| So the Light and the God Word are one and the same. And in saying at one time that the world, and at another that all things, came to be through him, he shows the ministering role of the God Word. For though the evangelist could have said "all things were made by him," and again "the world was made by him," he did not say "by him" but "through him," to refer us to the Father's creative authority over the whole.

20.6| But "the world," he says, "did not know him." Yet all men acknowledge the God over all by natural conceptions, and first of all the children of the Jews, led by the prophetic Scriptures, as Marcellus himself showed as he went on later.

20.7| So this was another, whom "the world did not know," God and Word, being and being named Light. And a Light not perceptible, nor one that illumines the eyes of the flesh as the sun does; for in that case the nature of irrational animals would have shared in it. But now he teaches what kind of light it was, saying, "There was the light that gives light to every man coming into the world." This rational light, then, belonged to men alone.

20.8| Therefore by an intellectual and rational power he made souls, created "according to his image and likeness," intellectual and rational. And as this light was not perceptible, so too the one beyond the whole, God himself, was not. For "God is light, and in him is no darkness at all." And indeed he was light unapproachable, as the divine apostle teaches, saying, "dwelling in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see";

20.9| but the other "was in the world," "giving light to every man coming into the world." Yet the world too, it says, came to be through this light, since the Superior one, namely the Father, constituted the whole through the Son. These are three titles of the Son of God's powers, auspicious and pious, taken up together by the theologian of Scripture at the start: the Word and God and the Light.

20.10| Fourth, the same writer now adds another, calling him the Only-begotten in the words: "And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we saw his glory, glory as of an only-begotten from a father, full of grace and truth." So he was styled the Only-begotten of God before taking flesh. For even though, as he says, "the Word became flesh" for our sake, nevertheless we, to whom he deigned to show his own divinity, did not look to the flesh (for that was "the form of a servant") but to his glory seen with a pure mind apart from the body: "we saw his glory," a glory unspeakable and surpassing all mortal reasoning, such as one might conceive for the "glory" of the "only-begotten" Son of God.

20.11| And this was a glory "from the Father." You see that he did not say, "and we saw his glory, glory as of a Word," although he had said before, "the Word became flesh," but, to teach what kind of Word he took him to be (that is, not a significant one; for how could such a thing become flesh?), he of necessity called him Only-begotten.

20.12| And he teaches that this is his glory, according to which he is understood as the only-begotten Son of God. And he says that the glory belongs to him from no other source than from the Father; for he did not have the glory ungenerated or unoriginate or as his own acquisition, but received it from the Father. This he himself also showed, saying, "Father, glorify me with the glory which I had with you before the world was."

20.13| The Father answers him, saying, "I have glorified, and I will glorify again." And the same evangelist establishes his subsistence still more by adding: "John bears witness about him and cries out, saying: This was he who comes after me, who has come to be before me, because he was before me. For from his fullness we have all received."

20.14| But when John cries that "he was before" him, the new Sabellius does not hear. Yet John the Baptist preceded the Saviour in birth according to the flesh; how then is it testified that he was before him? For in birth according to the flesh the Saviour was not before him;

20.15| so it is as Only-begotten of God that he "was before" John and "has come to be before him." Does this, then, admit of being referred to the Father, the God of the universe, or to an essenceless and subsistenceless word in God, who is the same as God? And how could "he has come to be before me" be said of a word that has no subsistence? And who would be so mad as to think that John the Baptist said of the God of the universe "he has come to be before me" and "he was before me"?

20.16| It has thus been shown through these words that the one of whom theology is spoken pre-existed John's birth and came to be before him, and that he stands established, existing and named not only Word but also God and Light and Only-begotten before the coming in the flesh. Fifth, from where the evangelist had knowledge of these things he himself will make clear, saying next: "The only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known." You see from whom he learned the theology of the Son.

20.17| For not Moses, he says, nor any of the prophets after Moses, nor any of the angels or of the higher powers, but "the only-begotten Son himself made this known." The invisible God, then, did not make him known; the only-begotten Son, having become visible, made the exposition about the Father to men, being evidently another than the invisible God. And he pre-existed not in the thought of the Father, as Marcellus supposed, but in his bosom; just as the Saviour has promised us that we shall find rest in the bosoms of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, so the Son was "in the bosom of the Father," without being one and the same with the Father, since neither shall we be the same as the holy fathers.

20.18| But note besides this that after once naming him Word, and then calling the same one God and Light and Only-begotten and confessing him Son of God, he no longer names him Word, but reports the Saviour himself as not calling himself Word, but Son and Only-begotten and Light and Life and Truth and countless other things, as one may hear him teaching somewhere in these words: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that everyone who believes in him may not perish," and again, "For God did not send the Son into the world

20.19| to judge the world," and again, "But whoever does not believe is already judged, because he has not believed in the name of the only-begotten Son of God." Here again God was giving and "sending the Son as Saviour of the world," and the Son was being sent, evidently another than the one who sends. For this reason it seems to me that our Saviour himself, speaking as it were to Marcellus himself and to those who begrudge the Son his nature, said in what follows, "Is it not written in your law, 'I said, You are gods'?

20.20| If he called them gods to whom the word of God came, and the Scripture cannot be broken, do you say of the one whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, 'You are blaspheming,' because I said, 'I am the Son of God'?" You hear how often the Saviour himself named himself not Word but Son, and called himself Only-begotten,

20.21| and how he taught that he had been sent, and sanctified before being sent by the Father, and how he shames those who hesitate to confess him Son of God by teaching them from the divine Scripture that not only sons of God but even gods were called men who were mortal by nature; therefore one ought not to think it blasphemy to confess both Son of God and God "whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world."

20.22| What, then, ought to happen to a man who, after so many sayings, dared to claim (No. 43 = 81) that he is the Word and nothing else, and who has said in so many words (No. 34) that for this reason he does not call himself Son of God but everywhere speaks of himself as Son of man, so that through such a confession he might bring it about that man, by adoption, through his fellowship with him, becomes a son of God? For after saying these things, I do not know with what eyes Marcellus could face so many testimonies, or with what lips he could answer them.

20.23| The Savior also showed himself to be light, in agreement with what was set out earlier about the light, when he says, "I am the world's light," and again, "I am the light, and the truth, and the life," and once more, "that the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness more than the light."

20.24| And if anyone should ask where he has come from, the one who said, "He who comes from above is above all," and "He who comes from heaven testifies to what he has seen and heard," will answer. Who was "he who comes from heaven"? Surely not the flesh which the Savior took up? By no means. Plainly it was he himself, the light and the Word and God and the only-begotten and the Son, being all these things. What "he has seen," then, and "what he has heard," he says, "he testifies." So he both saw and heard before he came to earth.

20.25| Whom did he see, if not the Father? Whom did he hear, if not the Father? In this way he taught that he is not a Word that merely signifies, but a Son truly living and subsisting, so that he says, "The Father loves the Son, and has given all things into his hand. He who believes in the Son has eternal life." Let us believe, then, that the Father, loving "the Son," "has given all things into his hand."

20.26| Careful attention must be paid to the word "all," which embraces the existence of everything that has come to be. By it one can see the greatness of the power of the Son of God, if one considers how great and what kind of a hand it was that received from the Father the existence of all that is.

20.27| For if the whole heaven and world is great, and if what lies beyond the visible things is by far better and more excellent, subsisting in incorporeal, incorruptible, intellectual and divine powers, and if everything that escapes our mind and is hidden from our knowledge is so too, then the one hand of the only-begotten Son of God, which grasps all these together, displays the excellence of his boundless power.

20.28| This the Son himself again showed through another saying: "All things have been handed over to me by my Father." Then, as though we were at a loss to know who and how great the one was who received so great a trust, he says: do not seek, and do not ask. For it is not in the nature of things for him to be known by human beings; nor can even the higher and more divine powers have an exact comprehension of the Son of God.

20.29| Therefore, having said "All things have been handed over to me by my Father," he added, "and no one fully knows the Son except the Father." Let every unspeakable account of the Son of God, then, be passed over in silence, and let the knowledge of his generation from the Father be left to the Father alone. Let no one go further in his inquiry into an ineffable nature and essence, but let his own teaching about himself be made firm for us by the grace of faith, which clearly instructs us that all things have been handed over to him by the Father.

20.30| Thus God gave and handed over for the sake of improvement and benefit, making the handing over as to a savior and physician and pilot of the universe; and the Son received, and held the gift as a faithful guardian of a deposit, not as a Word without essence and without subsistence, but as truly an only-begotten Son and beloved of the Father.

20.31| 7. Furthermore, he also called himself the bread of life, saying, "I am the bread of life," and "I am the living bread that came down from heaven." And how he was alive he made perfectly plain, articulating it in the words, "As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father,

20.32| so too the one who eats me will live because of me." He taught this also elsewhere, saying, "For as the Father has life in himself, so he has given the Son also to have life in himself." So he was indeed the bread of life, and existed in heaven, watering and nourishing the angelic powers with the power of his divinity, and was all this before he came to earth; and he was a Son having life "in himself," just as the Father has life "in himself."

20.33| For the exceptional and peculiar character of the unbegotten and divine life of the Father, by reason of which he is said, according to the divine apostle, "alone to have immortality," the Son alone could have, being the image of the Father in this respect as well. But he has the life of which I spoke not without beginning, nor unbegotten, nor acquired by himself as the Father has it, but as having received it from the Father.

20.34| For he says it thus: "He has given the Son also to have life in himself, just as the Father has life in himself." So the one gave, and the other received. And he alone received this prize, so that he did not have to obtain life from somewhere outside, as the rest of the living do, but has it welling up within himself, in accordance with the life that is in the Father. Hence all that share in life live by the supply that comes from the Son, while he alone has life welling up in himself, the Father having granted him this for the enjoyment of those who are to be given life through him.

20.35| This he himself also teaches when he says, "As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so the one who eats me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven." You see how, even while in heaven, he was the bread of life. For this reason it is said somewhere, "Man ate the bread of angels." So even before he was sent by the Father he was in heaven and lived because of the Father,

20.36| not as a Word that merely signifies, nor as being one and the same with God, but as subsisting and having a life of his own, which the Father gave him.

20.37| And going on next, to show the superiority of the Father's glory, he said, "As the Father taught me, so I speak. And the one who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone, because I always do what is pleasing to him." Observe carefully how the word "always" is used.

20.38| For it is not only now, he says, when I converse with human beings on earth through flesh, that I do what pleases the Father, but always. And he bears witness that he speaks these things, which he has learned from the Father as from a teacher. So he gives the Father the title of teacher, being plainly other than he, since everyone who is a pupil of someone is other than the one who teaches.

20.39| But if the Word were in God, on which account he might also be called rational, being a kind of signifier of the Father's thoughts, how could he become his own teacher? How, being inseparable from God, could he say that he had been sent? How, being one and the same with God, could he have testified that he does what is pleasing to him? And if Marcellus should reply to this that the Word spoke these words while in the flesh, what, we shall ask, does that have to do with his refusing to confess that he is Son, and not only Word?

20.40| But how was he in the flesh when he said these things? Was he living and subsisting and existing apart from the Father? And who was the Father then, if he did not possess his own Word in himself, but subsisted without a Word? And if the Word dwelling in the flesh, when he spent his time on earth, was apart from the Father, living and subsisting and moving the flesh as a soul does, then he was plainly other than the Father, and there were again two subsistences, he and the Father,

20.41| and all Marcellus' labor is found to be in vain, since he defines the Word who came to be in the flesh as an essential Word, living and subsisting. But if the Word who dwelt in the body was outside God, yet was so united and joined to God as to be one and the same with him, he will necessarily have to grant either that the Father himself was in the flesh, or that the Son, subsisting by himself, was working in the body, or that it was a human soul, or, if none of these, that the flesh moved of itself, though it was without soul and without reason.

20.42| If, then, he says it was the Father, the Father will be the one who was begotten and suffered and underwent every experience proper to a human being. It was for uttering this that the church of God indicted Sabellius for impiety. But if it is not permissible to say that the Father became man, then those who are his pupils must confess that it was the Son, since he himself teaches this.

20.43| And if Marcellus should deny that the Son has subsistence, it is time to suppose him a mere man, composed of body and soul, differing in nothing from the common nature of human beings. But this doctrine too has been driven out of the church; those who held it long ago, the Ebionites, and recently the man of Samosata and those called Paulians after him, paid the penalty as blasphemers.

20.44| What is left after this, then, but to introduce the flesh alone, with no indweller at all, moving like the automata of conjurers? And how could the flesh, the body by itself without one who works in it, have said, "As he taught me, so I speak"? How could the flesh have said, "because I always do what is pleasing to him"? How could the flesh have said that it had been sent by the Father? Is it holy to call God the Father of the flesh, or rather of the one who dwells and works in it? Who then was this? Was it the Word in God, himself being God, according to Sabellius, or, as it is holy and true to say, the living and subsisting only-begotten Son of God?

20.45| But if he says neither of these, he will of necessity posit a human soul, and for him Christ will be a mere man; and then the new writer will no longer be a Sabellian, but for us a Paulian. And if he should say that the Word in God dwelt in the flesh, being nothing other than a word, and a word that signifies or acts,

20.46| how could this Word be said to live a life of his own apart from the Father? How could he have been sent, if he was always joined and united to God? How could he say that the Father was his teacher? How could he say of himself that he does "always what is pleasing to the Father"? For these would be the plain words of a subsisting and living Son. And throughout the whole Gospel, the one who prays to the Father, who glorifies the Father, who asks to be glorified by the Father, what else does he show but that he himself subsists, and above all when he says, "The testimony of two people is true.

20.47| I am the one who testifies about myself, and the Father who sent me testifies about me"? Although the Savior himself, through so many sayings, has shown himself to be living, he nowhere called himself Word, but Son and light and only-begotten and bread of life and everything rather than Word.

20.48| He teaches that he has a word, saying, "If anyone loves me, he will keep my word," but he does not say that he himself is the Word. How then, after all this, is the man not ashamed who declared that he is only a Word and nothing else? Listen, at any rate, to how he wrote (No. 37): "So it is clear from every side that no other name suits the eternity of the Word than the very one that John, the most holy disciple and apostle of God, spoke at the beginning of the Gospel."

20.49| And again (No. 37): "to show that, if there is any new and recent name, it arose from his new and recent dispensation in the flesh."

20.50| And once more (No. 42): "Therefore before he came down and was born through the virgin he was only Word. For what else was it, before it took on human flesh, that came down 'in the last of the days,' as he himself has written, and was born of the virgin? It was nothing other than Word."

20.51| So much Marcellus permits himself to say and declare, because he will not confess the Son of God. The evangelist would have cried out loudly to him: what are you saying, man? I did not call him Word only, but also God, and "the light that enlightens every person coming into the world," and the only-begotten Son "who is in the bosom of the Father."

20.52| Let no one, then, slander the theologian, but let him listen carefully to what kind of Word he posited, when he immediately joined to it "and the Word was God" and added "all things came to be through him." And in the Savior of the universe's own words he was not even once called Word, but Son of God and only-begotten and light and life and truth and everything rather than Word.

20.53| 8. But if he should say that these things were said in the New Testament, it will be said to him that "In the beginning was the Word" also came from no other source than that. It is one and the same Gospel, then, and the same evangelist who called him Word wrote all the rest about him as well.

20.54| 9. And the divine apostle Paul, when he says, "For us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things," makes it clear that the Son of God before the coming in flesh is the one "through whom all things" came to be, naming him not Word but Lord Jesus and Christ. But if, as Marcellus has it, God and the Word in him were one and the same, it would have sufficed for the apostle to say, "For us there is one God, the Father,

20.55| from whom are all things." For the thought would have been complete and the statement self-sufficient, introducing God as maker of the universe. But even a Jew would say this. The herald of the church, however, in addition to the first teaches us not to be ignorant of the second as well.

20.56| What was this? "And one Lord, Jesus Christ." So he adds the second next, saying, "For us" (for if not for all, yet for us, he says) "one Lord, Jesus Christ." And why, after the one God, he is also "for us one Lord" he makes plain by adding "through whom are all things." Since "all things came to be through him," it is reasonable that for us who know this he is believed to be Lord of the universe after the God over all.

20.57| That he was not speaking of the flesh in this, but of God the Word, is clear from his adding "through whom are all things." For he says, "For us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things." This was said both of the light and of the pre-existing Word. So it was Jesus Christ himself, the light and the Word, "through whom all things" came to be, and not the flesh. For he would not have said "through whom are all things" so incoherently of the flesh.

20.58| 10. The same Paul knows how to call Christ the Son of God who existed before the flesh, and in the same way he calls him a rock, in what he writes about those who spent time with Moses in the wilderness, saying, "For they drank from a spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ," and he seals the same point after other things, saying, "Nor let us test Christ, as some of them tested him and were destroyed by the serpents."

20.59| And he confirms this very thing still more by saying, "By faith Moses, when he had grown great, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, considering the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt." And most plainly of all he establishes it in the words, "Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, existing in the form of God, did not count equality with God something to be seized, but emptied himself, taking on the form of a slave, and, found in appearance as a human being."

20.60| You see that before he emptied himself and took a slave's form, he was, and pre-existed, and "was in the form of God." And who was this? No one other than Jesus Christ. So Jesus Christ was himself God the Word even before he took the flesh.

20.61| For we must listen carefully to the divine apostle, who says, "Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus," and then makes clear who this Jesus Christ was, in what he joins on: "who, though in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be seized, but emptied himself, taking on the form of a slave."

20.62| Can the saying here, then, be taken as referring to the flesh? Does it fit to say "who" and "being" of the flesh? Surely the flesh did not "empty itself" by "taking the form of a slave"? That is ridiculous. Come then, let us examine how it is said: "who, though in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be seized, but emptied himself." If he was a Word without existence of his own, in no way subsisting outside God but within him, at one time in rest and silence and at another in action,

20.63| how was he "in the form of God," being himself God in potency? How could he have "not regarded being equal with God as something to be seized," being himself God? How could he have "humbled himself, becoming obedient" to the Father? For one's obeying another would indicate two persons.

20.64| And since Marcellus has used the human word as an illustration, we must ask whether it could fit the human word to say: who, being in the form of a man, did not regard being equal to a man as something to be seized, but emptied himself, becoming obedient to the man? And how could the word that is naturally part of a man do this, being one and the same with the man? So he will not be a bare word without subsistence, but truly the only-begotten Son of God, the one "who was in the form of God," who "did not regard equality with God as something to be seized, but emptied himself, taking on the form of a slave," whom the divine apostle also called Jesus Christ, knowing exactly that he existed before the flesh.

20.65| 11. Beyond this, the same apostle called him mediator of God, saying that the legislation of Moses was given in his hand, in the words, "The law was ordained through angels, in the hand of a mediator. Now a mediator is not of one, but God is one." You hear how he names God on his own, and names angels, and brings in the mediator between them, saying, "Now a mediator is not of one." So even before the taking of human nature, in the times of Moses, he was acting as mediator for the legislation.

20.66| 12. The same apostle also calls him high priest, saying, "Having therefore a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God."

20.67| 13. Moreover, he knows him also as radiance of the glory and stamp of God, and Son and heir, saying, "At the end of these days he spoke to us in a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also made the ages; who, being the radiance of the glory and the stamp of his subsistence." And here (just as above it was said of the Word, "all things came to be through him," and of the light, "he was in the world, and through him the world came to be," and of Jesus Christ, "for us one Lord, Jesus Christ,

20.68| through whom are all things") see how of the same one it is likewise said, "through whom he also made the ages." 14. It is worth fixing the mind on how he is called "radiance." For I think the word expresses the Son's generation from the Father. Since he is often called Son, and God is styled Father, lest we should fall into supposing some such manner as the generations of living creatures, the apostle has used for God an image more fitting to God,

20.69| saying of the Father, "dwelling in unapproachable light," and defining the Son as the radiance of the paternal light, so that the radiance is an offspring of the first light, not coming into being after the manner of the generation of mortal creatures, but according to the example mentioned. Reasonably, then, he also calls him image "of the invisible God," because he exists "in the form of God," and because he is "radiance" and "stamp of his subsistence."

20.70| For on this account, writing about him, he said, "who is the image of the unseen God, firstborn of all creation, for in him all things were created, in the heavens and on the earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or lordships or rulers or authorities. All things have been created through him and unto him; and he himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together."

20.71| These things were said about the divinity of the Son of God, even if Marcellus does not think so. For the divine apostle would not have said so much about the flesh. That would be foolish and unintelligible, and the interpretation would also make the phrase incoherent. For how would it fit to say of the flesh "who is the image," when, if it were so, he ought to have said "which is the image"?

20.72| 15. And in another place again the same apostle called him image of God, saying, "And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled among those who are perishing, among whom the god of this age has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, so that the illumination of the gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should not shine in their hearts."

20.73| Here it is fitting to observe that the divine apostle put forward a defining statement about Christ when he called him the image of God, so that no one would suppose there are two gods, but one over all. For if there is "one God, and there is no other besides him," it is he who is also made known through the Son as through an image.

20.74| Hence the Son too is God, because of the Father's form being imprinted on him as on an image. This is what the divine apostle makes plain, at one time saying "who, being in the form of God," and at another defining him as "image of God." Therefore, among his other designations, the Son both was and was named "image of God" before his coming in flesh. But these few out of countless texts from the New Testament I have gathered, to keep the discourse in proportion.

20.75| 16. And the prophets of God long ago honored him with various theological titles. One called him the Spirit of God, saying, "A rod will come out of the root of Jesse, and a flower will rise from the root, and the Spirit of God will rest upon him, a spirit of wisdom and understanding," and what follows. For through these words he plainly indicated the one "from David's seed according to the flesh" and God the Word who dwelt in him. Hence the divine apostle at one time said, "Now the Lord is the Spirit," and at another, "Christ is God's power and God's wisdom." Another likewise calls him Spirit, saying, "The Spirit of our face, Christ the Lord." And in the Gospel it is said plainly of him, "Here is my servant, whom I selected, my beloved, with whom my soul was well pleased. I have put my Spirit upon him, and he will bring forth judgment to the nations."

20.76| 17. Another of the prophets called him life and light, in addressing God and saying, "For with you is the fountain of life; in your light we shall see light." For what was the fountain of life and the light with God if not the one who said in the Gospels, "I am the world's light," and "I am the way and the truth and the life"? So again the prophet in prayer entreats God, saying, "Send out your light and your truth; they will lead me." 18. Zerubbabel too was deemed worthy of victory for proclaiming him truth, since in the presence of the king of the Persians he is recorded as saying, "And truth remains and is strong forever,

20.77| and lives and prevails forever and ever. With her there is no taking of persons, but she does what is just, and keeps away from all that is unjust and evil." To this he adds, "and to her belong the strength and the kingdom and the power and the majesty of all ages." In saying that truth lives and conquers and prevails, he most vividly set forth her subsistence. Consistent with this, the Savior himself, calling himself truth, sealed the testimony of Zerubbabel.

20.78| 19. The one who said, "The currents of the river gladden the city of God," named him a river as well.

20.79| 20. The one who said, "the mountain which God was pleased to dwell in," also called him a mountain. For this reason, in Daniel too, a stone was cut "from a mountain" "without hands," and again the same stone was seen set back on a high mountain, the mountain signifying the pre-existence of his divinity, and the stone his humanity.

20.80| 21. And they called him righteousness, as the one who says, "Who has raised up righteousness from the east?" 22. And sun of righteousness, as the one who said, "But for you who fear me the sun of righteousness will rise, and healing is in his wings." And another says, "The sun will go down upon the prophets" "who lead my people astray." For these things would not fit the perceptible sun, nor indeed the Word in the flesh.

20.81| 23. And Solomon in Proverbs names him wisdom, saying, "Wisdom has built a house for herself, and has set up seven pillars," and what follows. And that wisdom was living and subsisting before the world, he himself taught, speaking these words in her person: "I, wisdom, have pitched my tent in counsel, and I have called upon knowledge and thought," and then going on: "Through me kings reign, and rulers write justice; through me the great are magnified, and tyrants hold power through me."

20.82| 24. Solomon also called him a tree of life and Lord, saying, "She is a tree of life to all who hold fast to her, and for those who lean upon her as upon the Lord she is secure."

20.83| 25. And Solomon's father David, in the Psalms, named him at once Lord and priest: at one time saying, "The Lord declared to my Lord: Sit on my right," and at another declaring, "The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind: you are a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek."

20.84| 26. The same David also knows how to acknowledge him as God, declaring, "Your throne, O God, stands forever and ever; the rod of uprightness is the rod of your kingdom. You loved righteousness and hated lawlessness; for this reason God, your God, anointed you with the oil of exultation beyond your partners." For who else could be the God here anointed by God but the very one who, because of the Father's anointing, is proclaimed Christ?

20.85| 27. This same one was also the beloved of God, as the heading of the psalm shows, which contains "A song for the beloved."

20.86| 28. Isaiah called him arm, saying, "The Lord will reveal his holy arm before all the nations." 29. David likewise knew him as righteousness and salvation, and so he said, "The Lord made his salvation known; in the sight of the nations he revealed his righteousness,"

20.87| and again, "Proclaim his salvation from day to day," and once more, "Who will give salvation for Israel out of Zion?" and, "Show us, Lord, your mercy, and grant us your salvation." 30. But why must I recount each one, when the lover of learning can gather such things from the whole of divinely inspired Scripture, in which the men of God are seen, enlightened by the divine Spirit, to have had knowledge of the only-begotten Son of God, a knowledge which was then ineffable and hidden from the multitudes of the Jewish people? For this reason they proclaimed him in different ways under veiled titles. For the grace of the proclamation of the theology concerning him was reserved for his own coming, and his church throughout the whole world has received it as a mystery once hidden and kept in silence, and is proud of it.

20.88| This indeed the divine apostle also teaches when he says, "according to the stewardship from God that was given to me for you, to fulfill the word of God, the mystery hidden from the ages and from the generations — but now revealed to his saints, to whom God wished to make known what is the wealth of the glory of this mystery among the nations, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory." You see how the Son of God was a mystery hidden before, but now made manifest.

20.89| Therefore the prophets of God, by the prophetic Spirit, spoke of him mystically in their theology, while the multitude of the Jewish nation remained ignorant of the hidden mystery. Hence it was taught to know one God, because it was continually being dragged along by the error of many gods, but it did not know that God is Father of an only-begotten Son. For this mystery was being kept for the church of the nations,

20.90| given to her by an exceptional grace; for in him, according to the apostle, "are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." But through all these texts the Word of God, the one "in the beginning with God," has been shown to be not only called Word, as Marcellus supposes, but also Son and only-begotten and light and bread and Jesus and Christ and Lord and high priest and radiance and stamp and image and firstborn of all creation and fountain of life and truth and river and righteousness and sun of righteousness and wisdom and tree of life and Lord and God and beloved and priest and arm and righteousness and salvation. And being all these, and pre-existing the flesh, he was so named, as the passages of Scripture adduced have shown.

20.91| For what reason, then, does Marcellus pass over all of this and fix on the Word alone, not going on to the other titles as well, but asserting that he is only the Word of God, and a word that signifies, at one time at rest in God and at another speaking or acting by activity alone? Is it not because he is an outright Sabellian, and does not believe in the Son of God, nor recognize the mystery that existed of old but has been made manifest by his grace to the church of Christ alone?

20.92| But if he should say that the unknown mystery is that God has a word in himself and makes use of a word (for this is Marcellus' own view, as he writes in this manner (No. 45): "For what else was the hidden mystery but what concerns the Word? This mystery was formerly so hidden in God that none of the former people knew clearly the things concerning the Word") — if, then, he says this, let him learn that any Jew among those who have not recognized the Christ of God would also confess that God has a word and is not without reason.

20.93| Sabellius himself would say this too without dispute, and so would every Greek and barbarian who holds that God exists; for in the very act of saying "God," one conceives of him as wise and rational and powerful and just and good. What sort of hidden mystery, then, was something that everyone acknowledges? For who would not say that in God there are wisdom and power and life and light and truth and righteousness and word, and everything fine and good, or rather, that he is all these things himself, and whatever is higher and better than these and unknown to us? For self-taught nature compels every human being to acknowledge these things about God. Hence we are taught that the Son too is all these things,

20.94| inasmuch as he is the only-begotten Son and heir of the Father and has everything the Father has. That is why he is said to be in the form of God and the image of God, according to the divine apostle, who says, "who, existing in God's form, did not count it plunder to be equal with God," and again, "who is the image of God."

20.95| So God's being rational was not "the mystery hidden from the ages and from the generations"; nor was it this, which all human beings know by their natural notions, that "has now been revealed." If anyone asks what it was, the apostle answers, saying, "but now it has been revealed to his saints, to whom God willed to make known what is the wealth of the glory of this mystery among the nations, which is Christ in you."

20.96| The mystery, then, was Christ, that is, plainly, the Son of God. That is why the prophets of God formerly glorified him mystically under various titles, hiding what could not be spoken and keeping its revelation to all in store for his grace. When, therefore, after so many testimonies of the Scriptures, Marcellus maintains that the Word who was in the beginning, before he took up the flesh, was nothing but Word and bore no other name, and that he received his various titles only when "the Word became flesh," having been nothing other than Word before that, how could he fail to be convicted of ignorance and lack of understanding of the divine writings? But since this has been established, come now, let us take a look at the new Sabellius, as though he had come back to life.

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