On Ecclesiastical Theology — Book II

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

Pin.1| This is what the second treatise of On Ecclesiastical Theology contains. 1. How Marcellus revived the opinion of Sabellius. 2. How he is also shown to be Judaizing in his opinion. 3. How he defined the Word of God, being in God, as without beginning and unbegotten. 4. How he said that the Word and God are one and the same. 5. That in saying this he denied the Son. 6. How the church teaches the theology of the Son. 7. How the church proclaims the monarchy of the Father. 8. In what words Marcellus denied the Son of God. 9. Refutation of the man's false belief. 10. That he did not rightly understand "In the beginning was the Word." 11. That he said the Word of God was at one time uttered and at another inward, like the word in human beings. 12. That the evangelist did not set out the theology of the Word as Marcellus thought. 13. In how many senses what is signified by the term "word" is understood. 14. How the gospel teaching about the Word ought to be interpreted. 15. Citations of Marcellus' own words in which he denied the Son of God, plainly declaring him to be an uttered and an inward word. 16. Refutation of the man's false belief. 17. Interpretation of the true sense of "Word." 18. Why the evangelist named the Son "Word" at the beginning of his writing. 19. How Marcellus, by citing the Scriptures of the Old Testament about one God, denied the Son of God as the Jews do. 20. Why Moses and the prophets did not hand on to the Jews the theology of the Son openly. 21. That it was the Son of God who spoke to Moses and to Abraham. 22. That in the prophets too the Father was set forth in theology through the Son. 23. That the church does not proclaim two gods. 24. How Marcellus likened the only-begotten Word to God's words that command what is to be done. 25. How he wrote things that contradict himself.

1.1| After the testimonies cited from the divine writings, through which it has been shown that before his coming in flesh the Son of God was named not only Word (as Marcellus supposed) but countless other things as well, come now, let us look at the phantom of Sabellius, risen up as it were out of the earth. He dared, then, to say that the God over all himself, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, was born of the holy virgin and himself suffered, writing in this manner (No. 49): "What then was it that came down before the becoming man? Surely, he says, spirit. For if he wishes to say anything other than this, the angel who said to the virgin, 'The Holy Spirit will come upon you,' will not allow him. And if he says it is spirit, let him hear the Savior saying, 'God is spirit.'"

1.2| In these words he said that the God of the universe, of whom our Savior and Lord taught when he said, "God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth," was the Spirit that came upon the virgin, plainly reviving Sabellius.

1.3| And going on next, although the prophet Jeremiah has clearly said of the Savior's becoming man, "After this he was seen on earth and lived among human beings," he refers the saying to the Father, stating in so many words (No. 50): "But it seems that the Father is in the Word, even if Asterius and those who think as he does disagree."

1.4| He does the same with the Savior's passion too. For after citing from Jeremiah's Lamentations, "The Spirit of our face, Christ the Lord, was seized in their corruptions," he adds (No. 51): "Here too the prophet likewise speaks of the Word who took up our flesh," and goes on to say (No. 51): "A spirit could never produce a shadow. And that God himself is spirit, the Savior said: 'God is spirit.' And that God is light, he himself teaches us, saying, 'I am the light.'" You see how he transfers what was said about the Savior to the divinity of the Father.

1.5| And again he does away with the subsistence of the Son, declaring bluntly that before the creation of created things there was nothing else but God alone. He writes thus, word for word (No. 93): "The authority given to him Asterius calls glory, and not glory only but glory before the world, not considering that, the world not yet having come to be, there was nothing else but God alone." And again he confirms the same thing, saying (No. 92): "Heaven and earth and all that is in the heavens and on the earth have come to be by God. If, then, he believes this, he must also agree to this, that besides God there was nothing else."

2.1| You see an outright Jew, denying the only-begotten Son of God, "through whom all things" came to be. For if nothing else was there besides God before the coming to be of the world, the Son was not; and how then "did all things come to be through him, and without him not one thing came to be"? The Jew, who denies the Christ of God, knows nothing before the coming to be of the world but God alone, and Marcellus bears witness with him. But the church of Christ is proud, with all boldness, to say, "For us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and one Lord, Jesus Christ,

2.2| through whom are all things." And when it says "through whom are all things," it knows him as before all things. So the one who says that before the coming to be of the world there was nothing else but God alone is lying against the truth. For along with the only God, his only-begotten Son also was before the establishing of the world, and was with the Father. For this was taught her also by the one who said, "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."

2.3| And in Proverbs, through Solomon, the Son himself teaches about himself, saying, "When he was making the heaven ready, I stood present beside him." And he himself "was the light that enlightens every person coming into the world," since "he was in the world, and through him the world came to be." And if "through him the world came to be," it is clear that he existed before the world.

2.4| God, then, was not alone before the establishing of the world, but his only-begotten Son was with him. The Father rejoiced as he looked upon him, as he himself, being wisdom, teaches, saying in Proverbs, "I was the one in whom he rejoiced day by day." And the Son himself, gazing upon the Father's thoughts, was filled with gladness, and so he says, "And I was glad before him at every moment." These pious and divine mysteries the church of Christ has received and guards. But the one who says (No. 93) that, the world not yet having come to be, there was nothing else but God alone

2.5| shows himself to be one of two things, either a Jew or a Sabellian. For either, flatly denying the Son and introducing God alone, he will be a Jew denying the Christ; or, accepting the name of Son in word only, but claiming that the one God himself is both Son and Father, he will revive Sabellius. For if before the world there was nothing else but God, he will either be himself Father and Son, or he will have no Son.

3.1| But Marcellus seems to say that the Word in God himself, by which he is understood as rational, is the Son; so that he is his own father and in turn his own son. Listen, at any rate, to his own words, in which he writes in this manner (No. 92): "For before all creation there was a certain quiet, as one would expect,

3.2| the Word being in God. For if Asterius has believed that God is the maker of all things, he will plainly agree with us that the one always exists, never having received a beginning of being, while the others have come to be by him and have come to be out of things that were not." You see how, having supposed God to be without beginning, he said that the Word, being in him, was at rest before the creation; and going on next he adds (No. 92): "If, then, he believes this, he must also agree to this, that besides God there was nothing else." So the Word had his own glory, being in the Father.

3.3| Hence he reasonably says that the Word is also eternal, that is, unbegotten, writing as follows (No. 48): "Do you hear, then, the harmony of the Holy Spirit, which through many different persons bears witness to the eternity of the Word?" And again (No. 48): "And for this reason he begins from the eternity of the Word, saying 'In the beginning the Word was; and the Word was in God's presence; and the Word was God.' By using three successive testimonies he wishes to show the eternity of the Word."

3.4| How he said that the Word was united with God and unbegotten together with him, one can hear from him speaking somewhat as follows (No. 61): "We know that the dispensation according to the flesh pertains to the man, but we have believed that the eternity according to the Spirit is united with the Father."

4.1| Having granted in this way that the Word is in God, he goes on to declare him one and the same with him, writing thus word for word (No. 62): "For if the examination were of the Spirit alone, the Word would reasonably appear to be one and the same with God; but if the addition according to the flesh is examined in the case of the Savior, the divinity seems to be extended by activity alone; so that, reasonably, it is truly an indivisible monad."

4.2| And again, going on, he says (No. 64): "It is not, then, because of the exact agreement in all words and deeds, as Asterius said, that the Savior says 'I and the Father are one,' but because it is impossible either for the Word to be divided from God, or for God to be divided from his own Word." If, then, God and the Word in him were one and the same, as Marcellus thinks, the one who came to be in the holy virgin and was made flesh and became man and suffered the things written and died for our sins was himself the God over all. When Sabellius dared to say this, the church of God numbered him among the godless and blasphemers.

5.1| But if Marcellus should say that it was the Word of God that was made flesh, yet he has defined him as inseparable from God, positing an indivisible monad, and one subsistence of God and of the Word in him, so that, according to him, the one who became man is no other than the God over all. And if the monad is indivisible, and God and the Word in him are one and the same, whom could one call father, and whom son, when the underlying subject is one? So in this way Marcellus, by introducing one and the same as son-father, was reviving Sabellius.

6.1| The church of God, however, recognizes the indivisible monad too, confessing one origin, the one unbegotten and unoriginate God; and it ascribes the title of Savior to the only-begotten Son begotten from him, who exactly is and lives and subsists, who is not without origin or unbegotten, lest it posit two origins and two gods, but who was begotten from the Father himself and has the one who begot him as his origin.

6.2| Therefore it has received the faith to believe in one God, Father almighty, and in our Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, this holy and mystical faith providing the rebirth in Christ to those who are enlightened by it. But Marcellus says the monad is extended by activity, which has its place in the case of bodies, but not in the case of the incorporeal, unspeakable and inexpressible essence.

6.3| For God is not extended by acting nor contracted by not acting, nor does he act at all as human beings do, nor is he moved as human beings are; but being an indivisible monad, God begot his only-begotten Son from himself, without being divided and without undergoing alteration or change or flux or any affection.

6.4| For when he commands or orders or legislates, he does not do these things speaking with tongue and lips as human beings do; nor does he look upon the ordering of the universe using eyes as we do, since he beholds even "the things that are not," already known beforehand by his ineffable and divine power, as though they already existed and subsisted.

6.5| Nor, when he makes and creates, does he take pre-existing matter in his hands and build with his fingers like craftsmen among us; rather, by an ineffable and incomprehensible power he gave subsistence to the essence of all created things out of things that were not. If, then, he made all things by means beyond our telling and reckoning, why should we be anxious lest we say that some affection like that of mortal creatures came upon him in the begetting of the Son, which he brought about above all and before all, not according to any of the things known to mortal nature, but in a manner known to him alone?

7.1| But are you afraid, O man, that by acknowledging two subsistences you will introduce two origins and fall away from the monarchic divinity? Learn, then, that when God is one, without origin and unbegotten, and the Son has been begotten from him, there will be one origin and one monarchy and one kingdom, since the Son himself assigns his Father as origin. For "the head of Christ is God," according to the apostle.

7.2| But are you anxious that one who acknowledges two subsistences, of Father and Son, must admit two gods? Know this too, that one who grants two subsistences, of Father and Son, is not compelled to speak of two fathers or two sons, but will grant one as father and the other as son. In the same way, then, he who posits the two subsistences is not compelled to grant two gods.

7.3| For we do not define them as equal in honor, nor both as without origin and unbegotten, but one is unbegotten and without origin, and the other begotten and possessing the Father as origin. Hence the Son himself teaches that his Father is also his own God, in the words, "I am going up to my Father and your Father, and my God and your God."

7.4| So God and Father is shown to be God of the Son himself as well;

7.5| and therefore one God is proclaimed by the church of the Son. But the Son, when he himself is set beside the Father, will no longer be God of the Father himself, but his only-begotten and beloved Son and "image of the invisible God" and "radiance" of the Father's glory; he reveres and worships and glorifies his own Father, ascribing to him the title of his own God (to whom he is also recorded as praying, to whom he also gives thanks, to whom he also becomes "obedient unto death"),

7.6| and he confesses that he lives "because of the Father" and can do nothing without the Father and does not do his own will but the Father's. He says in these very syllables, "that I have come down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me," and again, "I cannot do anything on my own; as I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just, because I do not seek my own will, but the will of him who sent me." And that the one who sent him was other than himself he shows next, saying, "If I testify about myself, my testimony is not true;

7.7| there is another who testifies about me." Then, after mentioning the Baptist, he teaches that the Father is his witness, saying, "And the Father who sent me has himself testified about me," and he adds, "If you loved me, you would have rejoiced that I am going to the Father, for my Father is greater than I."

7.8| By all these words he shows himself to be other than the Father. And he sets forth the superiority of the Father's glory by saying that the one has sent, and that he himself has been sent and has come down from heaven "not to do his own will but the will of the one who sent" him. And what would Marcellus say to this, hearing the one who came down from heaven teaching these things? For he surely will not say here too that it is the Savior's flesh that says this; for the flesh did not come down from heaven.

7.9| Whom then will he say it was who came down from heaven and taught these things? God himself, or the Word joined to him? But if he says the Father, laying Sabellius bare, the Savior himself will convict him of falsehood, saying, "I have come down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me,"

7.10| and "I cannot do anything on my own; as I hear, I judge," and "I do not seek my own will, but the will of him who sent me," and "my Father is greater than I." To suppose that the Father says these things would be the height of madness.

7.11| But if he says that the one who goes through the matters at hand is the Word naturally part of God, and his thought, by which he reasons and thinks within himself, then how could the reflection of God, the thought in him, have come down from heaven? How, when it came to be in the flesh it had taken, did it go through these things? And how will the Word in God say he has come down "not to do his own will but the will of the one who sent" him?

7.12| By these words the Son of God shows his reverence for the Father; but when he stands at the head of all created things that have come to be through him, as being Savior and Lord and Maker of all ("for all things came to be through him, and without him not one thing came to be"), then he may be proclaimed God and Master and Savior and King.

7.13| Therefore his church has been taught to revere and worship and honor him as God, having learned from him to do this.

7.14| The Savior himself says, "For the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, so that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father." He expressly commands us to honor him, not as we honor the prophets, nor as angels or their superior powers, but in a way like the Father himself. For the Father himself willed this: "he has given all judgment to the Son, so that all may honor him just as they honor the Father."

7.15| Thomas called Didymus, knowing this exactly, as he had become one of the company of the twelve disciples, in brilliant words gave him the titles of both God and Lord, saying, "My Lord and my God." So it is fitting for us too to revere the Son alone, and no one else, with divine honor, just as we honor the Father. And in this the Father is honored through the Son;

7.16| this the Son himself also teaches, saying, "The one who honors the Son honors the Father who sent him." For just as, when we honor an image of a king that has been sent out, we honor the king himself, the original of the image, in the same way the Father is honored through the Son, as he is also seen through him.

7.17| For "the one who has seen" the Son "has seen the Father," beholding the unbegotten divinity, as in an image and a mirror, stamped in the Son. "For he is a radiance of eternal light, and a spotless mirror of God's working, and an image of his goodness." All these things he has received from the Father and has them, and from him too the glory of the divinity, as a genuine and only-begotten Son. But the Father has not received it from anyone; being himself the origin and fountain and root of all good things, he is reasonably proclaimed the one and only God.

8.1| But Marcellus, in ignorance of this, does not want the Son to have truly been begotten from the Father, as a living and subsisting Son, and says instead that he came forth from God as a word that signifies something or commands something. Hear him say this too, without concealment, in these words (No. 31): "To say that he was begotten before the ages seems to have been said consistently; for an offspring is what comes forth from the father who sent it forth. But the other point has not been taken up soundly or piously by him. For to say that the one who came forth from him is not a word, and that this is the true manner of the begetting, but is truly only a son, usually gives those who hear a certain impression of a human form."

8.2| Then, to show that the Word has not been begotten from the Father, he says in so many words (No. 28): "Thus the holy apostle and disciple of the Lord, John, mentioning his eternity, became a true witness of the Word, saying 'In the beginning the Word was; and the Word was in God's presence; and the Word was God,' making no mention here of any begetting of the Word." So, denying the Son of God, he said that the Word in God was at one time within God, and at another came forth from God, and at yet another time will run back to God and be in him,

8.3| as he was before. Listen to how he says this in these words (No. 108): "But now I believe the divine Scriptures, that God is one. And his Word came forth from the Father, so that all things might come to be through him; but after the time of judgment and the setting right of all things and the abolition of all opposing activity, 'then he himself will be subjected to the one who subjected all things to him,' 'God and Father,' so that thus the Word may be in God, as he was before also, before the world existed. For when nothing existed before but God alone, and all things were to come to be through the Word, the Word came forth in effective activity, being the Word of the Father."

8.4| And again he sets out the same thought more plainly, writing thus (No. 54): "For before the world existed, the Word was in the Father. But when almighty God purposed to make all things in the heavens and on the earth, the coming to be of the world needed effective activity; and for this reason, there being nothing else but God (for it is agreed that all things have come to be by him), the Word then came forth and became the maker of the world, he who earlier had prepared it inwardly in thought."

8.5| And again, after all this, he adds (No. 34): "And 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, and so that after the end of the work he might again, as Word, be united with God, fulfilling what was said by the apostle: 'Then he himself will be subjected to the one who subjected all things to him, so that God may be all in all.' For he will then be what he was before." After saying so much about the Word in God, by which we understand God to be rational, Marcellus has fallen into a terrible difficulty, having dared to say that the Word in God once came to be outside God, and again within him after the time of judgment, so as to be in God, united with him, as he was before.

9.1| It is time, then, for him to answer our questions. What are we to think about the time in between, when the Word was outside God? How did he come forth? And in what condition was God, if he did not have his own Word in himself? For if at the consummation of the whole the Word will be in God, as he was before the time of the consummation, how will the Word be the one who came forth from God? If he came to be, subsisting by himself, other than God, Marcellus' labor is in vain; but if, after coming forth from God, like the uttered word in us, he remained inseparable from the Father, then he was always and continually in God, even when he was acting.

9.2| Why then does he refer it to the time of judgment, saying that he will then be united with God and will be as he was before? For if he will then be as he was before, neither will the Word that came forth from God exist as he was earlier, but God himself will be unlike himself: long ago having the Word in himself, and at the consummation of the whole taking him back and then becoming as he was before, but in the time between standing otherwise. And the Word likewise, having come to be outside God, will not be before the consummation of the whole what he was earlier.

9.3| And what account could be more impious than this? For in general "was" and "will be" and "having come to be at one time" and "being about to be again," which indicate change in time, would be foreign to an essence that is timeless and without beginning, unbegotten and unchangeable, of which it is fitting only to think "is," and to be without variation always in the same way and in the same condition, not diminished, not contracted, not stretched, not spread out, having nothing outside and inside itself, not becoming at one time one thing and at another time another, nor being one thing before and then becoming something else, and again being restored to its original state.

9.4| Marcellus dared to suppose these very things. He says that long ago God existed and sketches for himself a kind of quiet together with God (following that very leader of the godless heretics who, laying down godless doctrines, declared, "There was God and silence"), and that after the silence and the quiet the Word of God came forth at the beginning of the making of the world, in effective activity; so that he was no longer as he had been before, resting in the silent God, but acting as he came forth from God. And how then did he come forth?

9.5| Surely by the utterance of an articulate voice, God plainly sounding and speaking as human beings do. This at any rate is what he thought, writing in this manner (No. 55): "For just as all things that have come to be have come to be by the Father through the Word, so also the things said by the Father are signified through the Word."

9.6| And again (No. 56): "For everything the Father says, he is seen to say everywhere through the Word. This is clear from ourselves too, if I may compare small things with great and divine ones; for we also do all that we wish to say or do, as far as we are able, by means of our own word."

9.7| If, then, the Word came forth from the Father in this way in effective activity, where did it occur to Marcellus to fix the time of the consummation as the limit of the Word's activity, at which he says the Word will be in God as he was before (and before, he granted, he was resting in the silent God)? Then even after the consummation there will be a kind of quiet, with the Word about to do nothing. But before the establishment of created things, he says, there was nothing but God, and since there was nothing, it was reasonable that God sketched for himself the quiet;

9.8| yet at the time of the consummation the prophet Daniel prophesies that there will be myriads before the throne of God, saying, "A thousand thousands served him, and before him stood ten thousand times ten thousand,"

9.9| and surely all the sons of the coming age will then be there too: the blessed souls of patriarchs and prophets and apostles, and the holy spirits of martyrs, and all the sheep of our Savior who will stand at his right hand and will hear, "Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world."

9.10| With so many, then, existing and living immortal life after the time of judgment, why will the Word of God not be active even then? From where did it occur to Marcellus to declare that God will then no longer speak to the saints nor use his Word in action, but that he will be as he was before, silent, that is, and at rest in him? For this is what he showed by often saying that he would then be as he was before; and before, as he himself said, he was at rest.

9.11| So God will then fall silent, who before this was speaking and using his Word in action, while then, in the very kingdom of heaven that was promised, he deprives his saints of his own Word and of the wisdom in him. You see into what a precipice he has gone, using no guide, not even the divine Scriptures; all this he composed for himself from a single expression which he did not understand.

9.12| For as soon as he turned to the proofs from the new and recent Testament, he was hard pressed from every side and driven off; but finding one single phrase that fitted his false doctrine, as if he had come upon a lucky find, he clung to that alone, and not even that was spoken in the person of our Savior, but in the person of the evangelist, by which he named him when he said, "In the beginning the Word was; and the Word was in God's presence; and the Word was God." Setting out from this, therefore, as though he were nothing other than a word like the one known among us, he denied the Son.

10.1| And yet the great and divine evangelist himself has called him not only Word, as we have often said, but also God and light and Son and only-begotten; and he records the Savior himself as nowhere in Scripture calling himself Word, while throughout the whole Gospel he calls himself life and light and only-begotten and Son of God and truth and resurrection and bread of life and vine and shepherd and countless other things, as has already been shown.

10.2| Why, then, with so many titles, does he not stop at the mere wording in the case of all the rest, but busily examines the meaning of what is said, while in the case of the Word alone he says that he is spoken of in the proper sense, as being nothing other than Word? He writes in these very words (No. 40): "Not called Word loosely, even if those who teach otherwise burst with their lying, but being Word properly and truly."

10.3| And again (No. 39): "Let him learn, then, that a Word of God has come, not called Word loosely, as they say, but being a true Word." And once more (No. 43 = 81): "Before, as I have often said, he was nothing other than Word." And again (No. 42): "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 wrote, and was born of the virgin? It was nothing other than Word." To Marcellus saying this it would be right to put such a question as this: and where do you get it from, my good man,

10.4| this addition of "nothing other" and "only"? For "In the beginning was the Word" we know exactly; and not only that, but also "and the Word was God" and "he was the light that enlightens every person" and "he was an only-begotten Son" and all the other things that have been collected. But that he was only Word and nothing other than Word no one could show to have been said.

10.5| Where, then, does the daring of the addition come from? For why would one not rather say that he is only Son and nothing other than Son? Or why not God and nothing other than God? Why not light of the world and nothing other than this? Why not life and nothing other? And in the case of similar titles one might most justly put forward the same.

10.6| But just as anyone who said this would be convicted of error (for he is all these things at once, being one Son of God, and whatever is higher than these, having been deemed worthy of different titles according to each conception of the divine powers in him),

10.7| so also in the case of the Word, the one who says that he is only Word and nothing other would reasonably be said to be mistaken. For only the evangelist John has called him Word, and not this alone but other names as well, while the Savior called himself light and truth and life and only-begotten Son and the rest, but nowhere Word. How is it not absurd, in the case of the names he gave himself, not to say that he is one of these and nothing else, but in the case of the evangelist's word about him, the one that called him Word, to insist that he was nothing other than Word?

10.8| But also, he says (No. 40), "being Word properly and truly." Why not also being God properly and truly? For it was not one man who called him Word and another who called him God; the one and same evangelist taught that he was both God and Word, saying "and the Word was God," and the same man also named him light. Why not, then, properly and truly only-begotten Son, and all the other things that the Master and Savior himself testified about himself through the evangelist? But he passes over everything and says that he is properly and truly only Word, and adds that he is therefore only Word, and from this he falls into likening him to the human word.

11.1| When he hears him called light, he does not fall into thinking of bodily light, nor does he say that he is like the sun's brightness; but in the case of the Word he makes him one that signifies, and like the human one: so that he says he at one time rests in God and at another comes forth from God, and becomes inside and outside him, after the likeness of the word among us, the one called inward and the one heard by utterance through the voice.

11.2| He says in these very words (No. 56): "For everything the Father says, he is seen to say everywhere through the Word. This is clear from ourselves too, if I may compare small things with great and divine ones; for we also do all that we wish to say or do, as far as we are able, by means of our own word." And once more he says (No. 92): "For before all creation there was a certain quiet, as one would expect, the Word being in God." Then he adds (No. 108): "For when nothing existed before but God alone, and all things were to come to be through the Word, the Word came forth in effective activity."

11.3| Having said so much about the Word, listen to how he tries to interpret the evangelist's saying, writing thus (No. 46): "The holy apostle and disciple of the Lord, John, teaching clearly and expressly at the beginning of the Gospel, as of something previously unknown among human beings, and naming him Word of the Almighty, said: 'In the beginning the Word was; and the Word was in God's presence; and the Word was God.' By using not one testimony but several he signifies the eternity of the Word."

11.4| And again he says (No. 48): "By using three successive testimonies he wishes to show the eternity of the Word." And again he adds (No. 47): "so that by saying 'In the beginning was the Word' he might show that the Word was in the Father in potency (for God is the beginning of all that has come to be, 'from whom are all things'), and by 'and the Word was with God'

11.5| that the Word was with God in activity ('for all things came to be through him, and without him not one thing came to be'), and by saying that the Word was God, that he does not divide the divinity, since the Word is in him and he himself is in the Word: for 'the Father is in me,' he says, 'and I in the Father.'" By so many words Marcellus, who does away with the subsistence of the only-begotten Son of God, calls the divine evangelist as witness to his own false doctrine, as if he knew him as nothing other than Word, at one time acting and at another resting in God, and being nothing other than God himself.

12.1| Yet the great evangelist and theologian, who mentions the Word three times in the same place, never once called him the Word of God. For he did not say, "In the beginning was the Word of God," but indefinitely, "In the beginning was the Word," leaving us to inquire what kind of word it was. And again he said, "and the Word was with God," when he could have said, "and the Word of God was in God." And again, "and the Word was God," not "and the Word was God's," lest we should suppose him to be some activity of God that signifies or makes something.

12.2| Marcellus, thinking this to mean that he is the eternal Word of God, that is, unbegotten, has often so defined him. He does not see that if he says the Word is other than God, there will be two eternal things (the Word and God), and there will no longer be one origin. But if he says the eternal is one, defining God and the Word as the same, he will openly acknowledge Sabellius, introducing, like him, one son-father.

12.3| For him, then, the Father will be begotten and suffer, and he himself will be the one who prays to himself, and says that he has been sent by himself, and calls himself his own Son and only-begotten, not speaking truly but lying with irony. And what other account could be more impious than this? But come, let us see what sort of Word the evangelist announces to us when he says, "In the beginning the Word was; and the Word was in God's presence; and the Word was God."

13.1| The word that denotes "word," expressed in the Greek tongue, offers a sense of many meanings. 1. The "word" is what is laid down in the rational soul, by which reasoning is ours. 2. Beside this, another is what signifies something through the tongue and articulate voice. 3. And in a third way, the word is what is composed in writing by the writer.

13.2| 4. We are also accustomed to call "word" the seminal or vegetative principle, by which things not yet grown lie in the seeds in potency, about to come into the light in actuality at any moment. 5. And besides these they are accustomed to give the name "word" in another way to the knowledge of an art or science, which grasps all the theorems of that kind, such as medical or architectural or geometrical.

14.1| Since, then, different senses are set before us by the term "word," and the evangelist said without qualification, "In the beginning the Word was; and the Word was in God's presence; and the Word was God," it is fitting to fix the mind and learn that the evangelist here delivers a strange thing, a word different from those we know; he says "Word" without qualification, but adds the strange and paradoxical character of its peculiar power in the words "and the Word was God."

14.2| For do not suppose, he says, that this one too is among the things that exist in relation to something else, like the word in the soul, or the word heard through the voice, or the word in bodily seeds, or the word subsisting in mathematical theorems; for all these, being among relative things, are understood to exist in another essence that underlies them. But the Word who is God needs no other underlying thing to subsist by coming to be in it; he is living and subsisting by himself, as being God. For "the Word was God."

14.3| And when you hear that he is God, he says, do not suppose that he too is without beginning and unbegotten like his Father, but learn that "in the beginning" this God the Word "was." What beginning he has, he makes clear next, not saying "and the Word was the God," with the addition of the article, lest he define him as the God over all, nor "in God," lest he sink to a human likeness, but he said, "and the Word was with God."

14.4| For if he had said, "and the Word was in God," giving it as an accident in a subject, and as one thing in another, he would have been introducing God as a composite, as it were, positing God as an essence without a word, and the Word as an accident of the essence.

14.5| Thinking this, Marcellus brings the Father and the Son together into the same, calling the essence the Father and the Word in him the Son; he did not reckon that anyone who grants this, having supposed God to be without a Word, would fall into an atheistic and impious doctrine by admitting a God without reason, having a word as an accident in him, but not being Word himself;

14.6| whereas one ought to acknowledge a single divine being, ineffable, good, simple, uncompounded, uniform, beyond the universe, God-in-himself, mind-in-himself, word-in-himself, wisdom-in-himself, light-in-himself, life-in-himself, beauty-in-himself, good-in-himself, and whatever better than these anyone could conceive, or rather above all mind and beyond all thought and reflection,

14.7| and his only-begotten Son, as the image of the Father sprung from him, wholly and in all respects most like the one who begot him, as himself God and mind and word and wisdom and life and light, and image of the beautiful and good itself, not being the Father himself but the only-begotten Son of the Father, nor himself the unbegotten and without origin but the one sprung from him, who names the one who begot him as his origin.

14.8| But if Marcellus, contradicting these points, should claim that God and the Word in him are the same, defining God as uncompounded and simple, it is time for him to acknowledge neither Father nor Son, and to put forward the Jew outright, or to bring in Sabellius, who says that Father and Son are the same; so that, according to him, "In the beginning was the Word" is equal to "In the beginning was God," and "and the Word was with God" is equal to "and God was with God,"

14.9| and likewise the third is the same as "and God was God," which, besides being incoherent, would be utterly irrational. And how would "all things came to be through him" have room, when the underlying subject is one? For he does not say that all things came to be by him, or from him, but "through him." The preposition "through" signifies a service, as the same evangelist shows when he goes on to say, "The law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ." For just as the law, which is not human nor Moses' own but from God, assigned Moses as servant and minister of its delivery to human beings, and therefore it is said, "The law was given through Moses," so also "grace came through Jesus Christ," the Father having brought it about through Christ.

14.10| In the same way, then, "all things came to be through him" is said, with another having made and he having served; so that one must look for another maker of the universe, who established all things through the one spoken of as God. And who could he be? But Marcellus would not be able to say.

14.11| Since this is so, it is necessary to acknowledge that the one called God by the evangelist is neither the God over all nor the Father himself, but his only-begotten Son, not an accident of the Father, nor being in him as in a subject, nor one and the same with God, but truly a Son, living and subsisting, who was in the beginning, and with God, and God, and through whom he creates all things;

14.12| so that one might rightly paraphrase more plainly, instead of "In the beginning was the Word," "In the beginning was the Son," and instead of "and the Word was in God's presence," "and the Son was in the Father's presence," and instead of "and the Word was God," "and the Son was God." In this way what follows would also fit: "all things came to be through him, and without him not one thing came to be."

14.13| Reasonably, then, the divine evangelist said "in the beginning," giving him a beginning, plainly his begetting from the Father; for everything begotten from something has the one who begot it as its origin. And he did not go on in the same way to say "and the Word was in God," but "the Word was with God," teaching that the one begotten, who has the Father as his origin, is not somewhere far from the Father, nor cut off and standing at a distance from him, but is present to him and with him;

14.14| this he taught also in Proverbs, saying first, "Before all hills he begets me," and then adding, "At the time he was preparing the heaven, I was present with him." Thus the Word, plainly the only-begotten Son, was with his own Father, God, being with him and present with him always and at all times;

14.15| and this is what he showed in saying, "And the Word was with God." And since we also had to know of what dignity he was, he necessarily added, "and the Word was God." For how could the one begotten from the one and only unbegotten God fail to be God? For if "what is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit," according to the Savior's teaching, then consistently what is begotten from God would be God. Therefore "the Word was God,"

14.16| and a God who makes and creates all things. This too the evangelist showed by joining on next, "all things came to be through him." The tutoring law, then, through Moses, introducing God as maker of the universe in the account of the world's making, and handing on the elements and introductions of piety, taught, saying, "In the beginning God made heaven and earth," and what follows,

14.17| by which it urged the Jewish people under tutelage to believe that the world was created, so as not to revere the creation instead of the Creator.

14.18| But how God created the universe, and through whom, Moses no longer handed on to those under him; and "the grace and the truth through Jesus Christ," proclaiming the mystery passed over in silence by Moses, began a newer and mystical teaching for the church of God, crying out plainly for all to hear, "In the beginning the Word was; and the Word was in God's presence; and the Word was God," as well as "all things came to be through him,

14.19| and without him not one thing came to be," and adding to these, "What has come to be in him was life, and that life was the light of human beings, and the light shines in the darkness," and what follows, through which it instructs us about the Son of God, and the distinctive qualities of the divine light and of the life in him, and how through him everything said by Moses, and what lies beyond that, was established. But knowing none of this, Marcellus is caught now Judaizing and now Sabellianizing,

14.20| in Jewish fashion saying that before the establishing of the world there was nothing but God alone, whereas the church confesses that before the establishing of the world there were the Father and the Son; and in Sabellian fashion declaring that Son and Father are one and the same, and introducing him now as an inward word and now as an uttered one.

14.21| For even if he pretends not to accept these terms, it is still plain that he holds them, from his saying that the Word is at one time inside, in God, and at another comes forth from him by effective activity, and from his likening him to the human word. The divine evangelist, however, in none of the ways described established the Word he speaks of; rather, as it was fitting to understand the only-begotten Son of God, he is Word in that he set up all things by a word and without a word nothing of what is came to be, and God and only-begotten in that he alone was truly Son of the God over all, a genuine Son indeed and beloved, made like his Father in all things.

14.22| Therefore he was also truly light, in that he sheds the intellectual and rational radiance on the souls made in his image. So he says he is the light not of all things, but of human beings alone: "He was the light," he said, "that enlightens every person coming into the world." So too he was truly life, in that he provides the stream of supply from himself to all who live. And in accordance with each conception of the divine powers in him, you would find titles of his that express them and are true. For in every respect the Son of God was truth, which he himself shows when he says, "I am the truth."

15.1| But the new writer neither understands this nor knows it, nor knows that he is ignorant of it, though he boasts of knowing how these things were established. Come, let us take up again and hear how he likens him to the word among human beings, both the one in thought and the one in utterance, writing in this manner (No. 55): "This is easy, I think, for those who think rightly, to know even from some small and humble example among us. For it is not possible for anyone to separate the human word from the man in power and subsistence; the word is one and the same with the man, and is separated from him by nothing else but the activity of action."

15.2| In these words he has used the uttered word as an illustration, and the inward word in the following (No. 53): "For God did not need any other preparation, such as matter or anything else human, for the construction, but only this preparation in his own thought. Since, then, it was impossible for God to conceive of the construction of the heaven without a word and the wisdom accompanying the word, he reasonably said, 'As he prepared the heaven, I was present with him.'"

15.3| Then, going on next, he shows the Word of God to be also inward, writing thus (No. 52): "For which of the holy angels or righteous men was trustworthy enough to dissolve the punishment decreed for him in the person of God, if not the Word himself, who was present and shaping with him, to whom the Father said, 'Let us make man'?"

15.4| Next he makes plain what sort of word he introduces, saying: “But suppose someone were to use a small, human example, such as we have among us, and examine the divine activity as though in an image. Take a skilled sculptor who wants to model a statue. First he considers its types and characteristic forms within himself; then he thinks out how broad and how long it should be to look well, and he examines the proportion of the whole in each separate part. Having prepared the suitable bronze as his material, and having sketched the future statue in advance in his own mind and supposed that he sees it with the intellect, and being aware that the reason by which he calculates, and by which he is accustomed to do everything, works together with him (for nothing done without reason is beautiful), he begins this work of the senses and exhorts himself as though he were another, saying: ‘Come, let us make, come, let us model a statue.’ So too God, the Master of the universe, in making the living statue from earth, exhorts no one else but his own Word, saying, ‘Let us make man.’” By these words he has plainly attached to God both an inner word, by which one reasons within oneself, and an uttered word, by which one speaks, supposing that the word in God is of the same kind as the word in us.

16.1| All this, then, since it amounts to a denial of the Son of God, needs no further working out. But I think it fitting to ask only this much: if God were one and nothing else, neither Father nor Son, why did Scripture falsely use such names? And why does Marcellus himself dissemble, calling one who is not a Son but a Word by the name of Son? And since he has used as his example the word among human beings, it must be said that not every human being has a son, though he is rational and possesses the word that is native to him.

16.2| Therefore a son is something other than the word. If, then, he claims that God has a word within himself and nothing else, by which he thought and by which he spoke to himself, saying “Let us make man,” why does he idly give the name Son? Why does he pretend to share the church’s view? Why does he feign belief in the Son of God while not believing, putting on a show by calling the word in God a Son, when the very example clearly teaches that the word implanted in a soul differs widely from a son who has been begotten from someone and has his own subsistence, living and acting?

16.3| “But it was not I,” he will presumably say, “it was the divine evangelist who called him Word; it follows, then, that we too should agree with him.” Yes, I say so myself.

17.1| Yet I think the term should not be understood in any other way than by becoming pupils again of the evangelist himself, who teaches what kind of word he was defining. And he made it clear what sort of being this was by attaching next the words “and the Word was God.” He could have said “and the Word was the God,” with the addition of the article, if he held that the Father and the Son were one and the same and that the Word himself was the God over all; but he did not put the Scripture forth that way.

17.2| For he ought either to have said that the Word was “of God,” or “the Word was the God,” with the article added, if he were making Scripture agree with the thought of Marcellus. As it is, he shows that the Word himself is God, in the same way as the God with whom he was. For having first said “and the Word was with God,” he adds, “and the Word was God,” all but teaching us outright, first, to regard as God the one beyond the universe, the very Father of the Word, with whom the Word was; and next, after him, not to be ignorant that his Word, the only-begotten Son, was not himself the God over all, but that he too was God.

17.3| For the conjunction “and” joins the Son’s divinity to the Father. That is why he says “and the Word was God,” so that we may see as God the one over all, with whom the Word was. And understand the Word himself to be God as the image of God—an image not as in lifeless matter, but as in a living Son made most exactly like the archetypal divinity of the Father.

17.4| But since it seemed good to Marcellus to compare the Word of God with the human word, how much better, we shall say, it would have been for him, using the human word as an image, to use this example the more and to say that the father of the word among us is the mind, which is something other than the word. For the mind—whatever it is and of whatever sort in its essence—no human being has ever known; it sits like a king in secret, within his own inner chambers, deliberating what must be done. But the word that comes from it, as begotten from a father’s innermost sanctuary, becomes known to everyone outside.

17.5| Then people receive benefit from the word, but the unseen and invisible mind, the father of the word, no one has ever seen.

17.6| In just the same way, or rather beyond every image and example, the perfect Word of God the universal King—not composed, like the uttered word of human beings, of syllables and verbs and nouns, but as the living and subsistent only-begotten Son of God—proceeds from the Father’s divinity and kingship and waters the whole world with the supplies that come from him, flooding all created things with a share in life, reason, wisdom, light and every good, while the Father and God of the universe remains beyond, unattainable and uncontainable by all, like the unseen and invisible mind; on which account it has also been said, “dwelling in unapproachable light.”

17.7| But whereas the Father is unapproachable and uncontainable by all, the Son is nearer to all, inasmuch as he steers all things by the Father’s nod (and for this reason the words “he was in the world, and through him the world came to be” were spoken not of the Father but of the Son). The one was beyond the universe and above all, “dwelling in unapproachable light”; the other extends through all things and in all, with a providence that cares for them—so that only in this respect does the image of the human word compare with him. But now that we have demonstrated this, one of the lovers of learning will probably ask:

18.1| Why did the evangelist, at the beginning of his writing, proclaim the only-begotten Son of God as “Word”? To him we shall answer: because of the prophecies about him that were long hidden. For of each prophet it is said, for example, “The word of the Lord that came to Isaiah,” and “The beginning of the word of the Lord in Hosea,” and “The word of the Lord that came to Joel,” and “The word of the Lord came to Jonah,”

18.2| and likewise “to Micah,” and similarly with the remaining prophets the word “came” was attached to each prophet. (Holy Scripture thus marks exactly, and as was necessary, that the Word was not in any of the prophets, but came to each one, approaching him according to what each one’s capacity was able to receive, and supplying from himself the spirit fitting to each soul.) Since the evangelist was now about to proclaim the economy of the Word, a spiritual one, as was fitting, he teaches that the Word did not come to some other person as he did to the ancients, but that he himself took flesh and became man. Then, since he was about to proclaim to all the Word’s saving visit among human beings, saying next, “And the Word became flesh, and made his dwelling among us,” he necessarily runs back to the beginning, showing who the Word incarnate yesterday and the day before had been, and of what kind,

18.3| and he speaks of him in terms of theology, announcing at once the knowledge of him and his manifestation as God among human beings. Then, on the assumption that the ancients had learned beforehand from the divine readings about the word that came to each prophet, he himself proclaims the more divine and exceptional beginning of the Word, which no prophet ever disclosed to human beings so nakedly and without veil.

18.4| Therefore, handing on to all in a great voice the hidden and secret mystery concerning the Word, he cried out, saying: “In the beginning the Word was; and the Word was in God's presence; and the Word was God. Through him all things came to be, and apart from him not even one thing came to be.”

18.5| For if, he says, you were trained by the earlier divine Scriptures and learned long ago that the word of the Lord came to this prophet, and likewise to another, and again to yet another, now it is necessary to proclaim to all not that he came, but that he was in the beginning, and that “he was God,” and that “all things were made through him,” and that this very God the Word, “through whom are all things,” by the Father’s love for humankind “became flesh and dwelt among us.”

18.6| This is what John, the great disciple and apostle of Christ, proclaimed, instructing all people in the new and strange mysteries of the Savior. Not that God was rational, nor that he reasoned within himself and conversed with himself, saying “Let us make man,” nor that he used words that give orders for what must be done. For anyone who denies the Son of God would say these things.

18.7| This is just what Marcellus does: as into a hiding place he flees to the old Scripture and tries to collect what was commanded to the Jewish people, then in its infancy, about not worshiping idols but knowing and revering one God alone. There the teaching about the one God ran smoothly for him—a teaching that was delivered usefully and in season to Jews who were then worshiping idols. And having fled here, and fenced himself in as in a stronghold with the hardness of heart of the Jews, he put forward his denial of the Son of God.

19.1| Listen, then, to the expressions he uses, as he writes in these very words: “Whom, then, does Asterius suppose to be the one who says ‘I am he who is’? The Son or the Father? For, looking to the human flesh which the Word of God took up and imagining things this way because of it, he said that there are two subsistences, of the Father and of the Son, thus separating the Son of God from the Father just as one might separate the son of a man from his natural father.”

19.2| And next he adds: “If, then, he says that the Father, separating himself from the Son, said these things to Moses, he will be admitting that the Son is not God. For how can anyone who says ‘I am he who is’ fail to agree that he declares himself to be the one who is in contrast to what is not? But if he claims that it is the Son, divided in subsistence, who says this ‘I am he who is,’ the same will in turn be thought to be said of the Father; and either of these is impious.”

19.3| And again, trying to show that the Father and the Son are one, he writes thus: “For he himself confesses, saying, ‘The Father is in me and I in the Father.’ That he did not say this simply or without purpose is clear also from another apostolic statement. For the one who said ‘One Lord, one faith, one baptism’ said also ‘One God and Father, who is over all and through all and in all.’ You see that here too he does not depart from agreement, but here too does the same. For having said ‘one Lord,’ he said again ‘one God,’ so that whenever he mentions the one Lord he embraces the Father as well, and whenever he speaks of the Father he testifies that the Word of God is not outside him.”

19.4| After saying this, Marcellus next gathers more passages from the Old Testament to prove that God has no Son.

19.5| Asserting that God is an undivided monad, he shows him to be the same one as Father and the same one as Son, writing in this manner: “What then? If we do not, giving heed to the Spirit, consider the monad to be undivided in power, shall we not be in error, when the Word teaches us clearly: ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and him alone you shall serve’?”

19.6| The same thing is proclaimed through the Gospel according to Mark. For when one of the scribes came to him and asked which was the first of the commandments, he answered him, saying: “First of all: Hear, Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord, is one, and you shall love the Lord your God with your whole soul and with your whole strength. This is the first; and the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

19.7| There is no other commandment greater than these. And the scribe said to him: Well said, teacher; you have said truly that God is one, and there is no other besides him.”

19.8| But the scribe, who seems to have learned reverence for God through the law, appears to praise the Savior’s saying “Hear, Israel,” which says “The Lord your God is one,” and confirms that it was well said by an oath: “You have said truly,” he says, “that God is one and there is no other besides him.” Yet those who boast of knowing the mysteries of the new covenant want to fashion a second God, divided from the Father in subsistence and power.

19.9| To these he adds, to establish that God is one and that there is no Son, the following: “That Holy Scripture knows how to call the monad both Lord and God has already become clear from what was said before, where God said to his servant Moses: ‘And God said again to Moses: Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel: The Lord, the God of your fathers, God of Abraham, and God of Isaac, and God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ You see how, showing us here a single person, he calls the same one Lord and God.

19.10| And again Scripture says likewise: ‘And the Lord spoke all these words, saying: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods besides me.’ You hear how through the pronoun he declares that there is one God alone.

19.11| And again a little later he says, ‘I am the Lord your God,’ saying that he himself is Lord and God. What do we learn also from another passage? ‘And you shall know today,’ it says, ‘and not turn aside in your mind, that the Lord your God, he is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath, and there is none besides him.’ And again in the same Deuteronomy it says: ‘Hear, Israel: the Lord our God is a single Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart and with your whole soul and with your whole mind.’

19.12| And again in the same book: ‘See, see that I am, and there is no God besides me; I will put to death, and I will bring to life; I will strike and I will heal.’ How then did Asterius, who pretends to follow the holy Scriptures simply and in fear, not recognize this passage that says, ‘The Lord your God, he is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath, and there is no other besides him,’ and that ‘he is one’ and besides him there ‘is not’ another?”

19.13| And after other matters he adds to these, saying: “How then will the holy prophet Jeremiah not plainly refute him for teaching strange doctrine? For prophesying to us about the Savior he said: ‘This is our God; no other shall be reckoned beside him. He found out every way of knowledge, and gave it to Jacob his servant and to Israel his beloved. After this he appeared on the earth, and lived among human beings.’”

19.14| And again he adds, saying: “But the Father seems to be in the Word, even if this does not seem so to Asterius and to those who think as he does. For this is the view of the inspired prophet Isaiah, who says through the Holy Spirit: ‘And they will worship you, and in you they will pray; for in you God is, and there is no other except you. For you are God.’ Do you see how he overturns by the root the crafty villainy of those who teach strange doctrine?”

19.15| And once more he says: “And if you wish to hear another prophecy of the same prophet confirming one God for us: ‘I am God,’ he says, ‘first, and for what comes after I am.’ For the ‘I’ points to a single person. The two expressions signify a single person for us: having said ‘I,’ he adds also ‘am,’ so that through the two parts of speech, pronoun and verb, the monad of the divinity is attested.

19.16| And if further testimony is needed, I shall bring the same prophet before him again, saying: ‘I am first and I am after this. And besides me there is no God.’ If Asterius supposes the Son to be divided from the Father in subsistence, as the son of a man is, stumbling at the human flesh which he took up for our sake, let him show us the one who says these things.

19.17| For here too the statement is that of one person. Who then is the one who says ‘There is no God besides me’? Let him hear also another prophecy that says, ‘There is no just one and savior besides me.’ If he supposes there are two gods, he must admit that the other is neither just nor a savior. But if he is neither just nor a savior, how can he still be God? For he declares that there is one just one and savior. And again: ‘Before me there was no other, and after me there will not be; I am God, and there will be no savior apart from me.’”

19.18| “And if he wishes to hear another prophetic saying too, perhaps one spoken against him and those who are similarly disposed to him about the divinity, let him hear Isaiah himself saying: ‘Repent, you who are astray; turn back in heart, and remember the former things from of old, that I am God, and there is none besides me.’

19.19| He did not say ‘I am God’ without the article, so that by the addition of the article he might clearly show that God is one. And what of the prophet Hosea? Does he not also bear the same witness, saying, ‘I brought you up out of Egypt, and you shall know no God besides me, and there is no savior apart from me’? And again Malachi: ‘Did not one God

19.20| create you?’ he says. ‘Is there not one Father of you all?’ But Asterius will perhaps say that David said nothing about this, although he is older than the other prophets after Moses, and that for this reason he is in doubt whether one ought to think there are two gods divided in subsistence or not. Well then, to prevent him from saying this, I think it fitting to show that David too says the same things as the holy men already mentioned: ‘Hear, my people,’ he says, ‘and I will speak to you; Israel, and I will testify to you. If you hear me, there shall be no new god in you, nor shall you worship a foreign god.

19.21| For I am the Lord your God.’ Is it not clear that the one who points to himself and says ‘I am’ is saying that there is one God alone, that is, himself?”

20.1| All this, and still more than this, Marcellus heaped together to deny the Son of God, in his ignorance not reckoning that this kind of teaching was given to the Jewish people because of their hardness of heart. For it was not possible for the Holy Spirit, through the prophets of God, to hand over the word of true piety in its fullness to people whose minds were incomplete.

20.2| Thus he legislated for them to perform sacrifices, bodily circumcision, observance of the sabbath, abstinence from certain foods, purifications of the body and bodily blessings, and indeed a land flowing with “milk and honey,” but not the promise of the kingdom of heaven. Our Savior and Lord, when asked how it was that, though Moses commanded anyone who wished to give a bill of divorce and send away his wife, he himself laid down the opposite, gave a universal answer, saying: “Moses wrote this for your hardness of heart; but from the beginning it was not so.”

20.3| He would therefore have said the same thing if someone had asked why on earth Moses and the prophets after him, while urging them to worship one God, did not teach them knowledge about the Son. For those who were continually being led off by the error of many gods were not able to receive the grace of the gospel. Therefore, in view of their hardness of heart, they made the teaching about one God, training them in the meantime by turning them away from thinking there are many gods and leading them toward the introduction of the one.

20.4| So incomplete was the teaching Moses handed down to the people of his time, because of the incompleteness of their understanding, that he made no mention at all of the creation of angels in his account of the making of the world—although the later prophets mention not only angels but also divine powers and holy spirits and the heavenly ministers of God, about whom Daniel said in his teaching: “A thousand thousands served him, and myriads upon myriads stood in attendance before him.”

20.5| But Moses passed over the accounts of all these in silence, though he was not ignorant of them, having beforehand an exact knowledge of everything through the divine Spirit; yet he made no mention at all of them in the making of the world as things brought into being by God.

20.6| And no one could give any other reason for this than that it was the hardness of heart of the people, as the Savior himself taught. You could learn from the readings of the new covenant that there are countless other things in the constitution of the universe that are not reported at all in the writing of Moses. He did not mention rulers or authorities or world-rulers or the spiritual forces “of wickedness,” against which, the divine apostle says, our wrestling is set.

20.7| What then? Since the accounts of these things cannot be found clearly in Moses or in the other prophets, are we to disbelieve the apostle? Or, when the same apostle again mentions the order of the higher beings, saying that Christ sits “at the right hand” of God “far above every rule and authority and power and lordship and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come,”

20.8| and again, when he names thrones and lordships and rulers and authorities, saying, “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,” are we then not to accept these things because neither Moses nor the other prophets spoke of them beforehand? Or shall we say the same about these, that “the stiff-necked, uncircumcised in heart and ears” were not able to believe the accounts about them? To them the prophets of God did not reveal even the Jerusalem above, as Paul, making plain to the church of Christ the accounts of it, cried out, saying, “But the Jerusalem above is free; she is our mother,” and “You have approached Mount Zion, and a city of the living God, a Jerusalem in the heavens, and myriads of angels, a festal assembly and church of the firstborn enrolled in heaven.”

20.9| Let Marcellus say in reply whether he is able to produce the teaching about these things from the old writings.

20.10| And if he cannot find it, let him give the reason why all these things were passed over in silence by the prophets of God, and countless other things akin to them, about which the same apostle prayed to God on our behalf, “that we may be strong enough to grasp, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and depth and height, and to know the love of God that surpasses knowledge.”

20.11| And our Savior himself disclosed to his disciples very many mysteries about the kingdom of heaven, about the consummation of the universe, and about the promises, sometimes in parables and sometimes in secret teachings, and to them he said, “To you it has been given to know the mysteries of God.” Equals of these one could not find in Moses or in the other prophets.

20.12| What then? Since these things were not handed down to the Jewish people, being kept for the church of Christ until a suitable time, should we on that account reject the grace given to us, or rather give greater thanks to the one who counted us worthy of so great a knowledge? In the same way, then, it is fitting to take the teachings about the Son from his own new covenant, without being at all surprised that the men of God did not reveal the knowledge of him to the hard-hearted people, but kept the account of him in store for an opportune time.

20.13| For it did not seem suitable at that time to hand over the mystery of the Father and the Son to men who were being dragged down into the error of many gods—men to whom they did not even disclose the accounts of the subordinate powers, lest on that pretext they should fall into the polytheism of the Greeks, who fashioned their own god as “father of men and gods.”

20.14| For that reason the Word, holding them back from such error, proclaimed the one God, though without denying that this same God was Father. He taught them to worship the true God and urged them to know no one besides him, though without denying that he was Father. And if he called him Lord and God and just and Savior, he did not exclude us from regarding him also as Father of his only-begotten and beloved Son; and whether the Father says “I am he who is,” or the Son,

20.15| the statement would be true either way. For the Father may be “he who is,” being himself alone “God over all, and through all, and in all,” as the divine apostle taught. And the Son also, being styled “he who is,” would speak truly, being the sole only-begotten Son of the one who is; and since he is the image of the invisible God, he would be his image in this respect, that he alone was “he who is.” For this reason he too may be styled “he who is,” since throughout all the God-inspired Scripture he is proclaimed both God and Lord, just like the Father.

21.1| This can be known also from the oracle given to Moses. For Scripture says: “And God spoke to Moses and said to him: I am the Lord; and I appeared to Abraham and to Isaac and to Jacob, being their God.” You see how he said he had appeared to the fathers. When he appeared, Scripture again bears witness, saying: “And the Lord God appeared to Abraham by the oak of Mamre, as he sat at the door.” And how did he appear, if not in human form? And whom were we to believe this to be, if not the Son of God? This he himself also shows in the Gospels, saying to the Jews: “Abraham your father rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it and was glad.”

21.2| When they were amazed at the saying, he added, “Before Abraham came to be, I am,” declaring his pre-existence most plainly. What then does the account establish, if not that it was the Son of God himself who gave the oracle to Moses and said “I am he who is”? For he himself taught that he had appeared to Abraham. And how he himself was “he who is” has been explained.

21.3| The great apostle Paul too knows that the Son of God became the mediator of the legislation given through Moses, in the passage where he teaches, saying: “The law was ordained through angels by the hand of a mediator. But a mediator is not of one.” Therefore the one who gave the oracle to Moses was the mediator, who from that time was mediating for the salvation of human beings before he took on flesh.

21.4| That this is Jesus Christ the same apostle showed, saying: “One God, and one mediator between God and human beings, the man Christ Jesus.” Whether, then, the words “I am he who is” are spoken in Moses from his own person, or it was the Father who sent forth this voice through him, in either case the statement would be true.

21.5| Let Marcellus, then, not be at a loss, using as he does a syllogism he thinks inescapable, in which he says: “Whom, then, does Asterius suppose to be the one who says ‘I am he who is’—the Son or the Father?” And then he goes on to infer that if the Father is the one who is, the Son will no longer be God: “because he says that he is the one who is in contrast to what is not. But if he claims that it is the Son, divided in subsistence, who says this ‘I am he who is,’ the same will in turn be thought to be said of the Father; and either of these is impious.”

21.6| But in saying this he has himself fallen into both absurdities, defining the one who is as one while denying the other. And who this one is, he himself might know. For either, granting that it is the Father, he will deny the Son, or, accepting only the Son, he will reject the Father; or rather he will be shown to know neither Father nor Son, granting only one and removing the other from the way. And even if he hears God saying, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

21.7| You shall have no other gods besides me,” here again let him not be troubled in his soul, but let him listen also to what is joined to it. For having said “You shall have no other gods besides me,” he went on, “You shall not make for yourself an idol or a likeness of anything that is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters under the earth. You shall not bow down to them nor serve them; for I am the Lord your God, a jealous Lord.”

21.8| You see how he was making a distinction, so that they would not be carried off with the many-gods error of the nations, but would know him alone as God and Lord. And who was this? The Son, who has the image of the Father in himself and who from the Father’s own authority gave these commands to people sick with idolatry. For just as “all things were made through him,” the Father having established through the Savior the essence of all created things, so it was the Father himself who handed down to human beings the knowledge of himself and reverence for him through the mediator, the Son.

21.9| This the apostle also taught in so many words when writing to the Galatians, where he said: “The law was ordained through angels by the hand of a mediator. But a mediator is not of one, and God is one.”

21.10| And even if he says, “See, see that I am, and there is no God besides me,” again it was the Father saying this through the Son, as through an image and mediator. For if, when the prophet Isaiah says, “I begot sons and exalted them,” and again, “Israel did not know me, and the people did not understand me,” and again, “I commanded all the stars, and with my hand I made firm the heaven,” and such other things, we shall say that it is not Isaiah who says these things but God who speaks in him through him, would it not equally be fitting in the case of the only-begotten Son of God that the Father should have to bear these testimonies through him to people who needed commands of this sort? These people were idolaters, as the same Scripture teaches, saying also, “And the Lord said: Where are their gods, in whom they trusted? You ate the fat of their sacrifices and drank the wine of their libations; let them rise up and help you, and let them be your protectors.” For to these words is joined, “See, see that I am, and there is no God besides me.”

22.1| So even if ten thousand times over, crying out through the prophet, he says “Besides me there is no God,” and “Besides me there is no just one and savior,” and “You shall know no God besides me, and there is no savior apart from me,” and whatever else akin to these is found in the remaining prophets, it was God who, even from that time, “in Christ,” was reconciling the world to himself. And it was the Father himself who spoke these things to human beings through the only-begotten Son, as through an interpreter. The Son himself also handed this down in the Gospels, teaching that there is only one God to be known, in the words: “This is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you sent.”

22.2| He himself, then, was the true God, the one alone, and there is no other besides him, who gave these commands not only through the prophets but through his own Son to the idolatrous Jewish nation at that time. Thus Isaiah (or rather God through him), having said, “Besides me there is no God. Who is like me?” and next, “You are my witnesses whether there is a God besides me,” went on to add, “And they were not then. All who mold and carve are vain, making what they desire.”

22.3| And throughout his whole prophecy you would find the lifeless idols being cut down, and in each prophet likewise you will find the one God proclaimed to turn them away from the error of many gods. So we too are accustomed, in our discussions with the superstitious among the Greeks, to keep the teaching about Christ in store for a fitting time, and meanwhile to bring them refutations of idolatrous error and to establish by demonstrative arguments that God is one.

22.4| Let Marcellus, then, learn—if after growing old in the oversight of Christ’s church he has not learned it yet—that the knowledge of the hidden mystery about the Son of God was in no way suited to the ancient people, who were prone to slip into idolatry, and that for his church alone, through his grace, there was kept in store “the mystery hidden from the ages and from the generations,” the mystery which contained the account of the holy Trinity of Father and Son and Holy Spirit.

22.5| But he has heaped together just so much as a teacher of the Jews could say when speaking about the cutting-off in a Jewish synagogue, and he prides himself on putting this before the disciples of Christ, not knowing that the bodily Jew could say more than he. In these things he boasts; yet in twisting the true theology of our Savior he is not ashamed.

23.1| Yet he does not understand the words of the divine apostle, who taught in various ways, in the sayings I have set out, that the Son is the image of God. From these he ought to have understood that the church of God does not proclaim two gods. For it introduces not two unbegotten beings, nor two without beginning, as we have said many times, nor two essences set against each other on equal footing, and therefore not two gods; rather it teaches one beginning and God, who is also the Father of the only-begotten and beloved Son, and likewise one image “of the invisible God,” the same as his only-begotten and beloved Son. And even if the apostle, speaking of the Father in terms of theology, says “the blessed and only Sovereign,” and again “who alone has immortality,

23.2| dwelling in unapproachable light,” and again “to the King of the ages, the incorruptible, invisible, only God,” and again “to the only wise God, through Jesus Christ, be glory forever; amen,” and even if still more than this is said in praise of the one God over all, it must be understood that the image of all this is the only-begotten Son of God, formed not in lifeless matter but as in a living Son. And even if the Savior himself teaches that the Father is the only true God, saying, “that they may know you, the only true God,” we must not shrink from confessing him also to be true God, as possessing this too in the manner of an image, so that the addition of “only” fits the Father alone, as the archetype of the image.

23.3| Most clearly, then, the inspired Paul taught that he is the image and radiance of the Father and “in the form” of God, as has been shown in what precedes. Just as, when there is one subsistent father and one son born of the father, no one of sound mind would say that there are two fathers or two sons; and just as, when one king rules and his image is carried everywhere on earth, no one in his right mind would say that those ruling are two, but one, who is honored also through the image; in the same way (as we have said many times) the church of God, having received the worship of one God, continues to worship the same God through the Son, as through an image.

23.4| Not understanding this, Marcellus declared that the image “of the invisible God” is the flesh of the Savior, which the apostle called “the form of a slave”; he did not reckon that all human beings, too, are formed according to the Savior’s flesh. And he insists that the body the Savior took up is the image of the unbegotten, ineffable, and paternal divinity, while he denies that the only-begotten Son of God, through whom all things were established (“for all things were made through him, and apart from him not one thing was made”), is the image of God, saying in these very syllables: “It is therefore clear that before the taking up of our body the Word was not, by himself, the image of the invisible God.” You see how great a distortion of the apostolic interpretation he has used.

23.5| And so, when the evangelist John proclaims and uncovers the mystery that was known in concealment to Moses and the other prophets, and cries out in a great voice, “In the beginning the Word was; and the Word was in God's presence; and the Word was God.

23.6| All things were made through him,” and testifies that “there was the light that enlightens every person coming into the world; he was in the world, and through him the world came to be, and the world did not know him,” and clearly sets out the sonship by saying of the Father, “No one has ever seen God,” and of the Son, “The only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known,”

24.1| this wonderful teacher of the words of Christ, having gathered from divine Scripture the commandments of God and the sayings that give orders for what must be done, defines the Word “in the beginning” as being of such a kind. Listen to how he tries to establish this, writing in this manner: “ . . . while those who teach them are, as it were, ashamed to mention the Word, whom all the divine Scriptures proclaim in this way. For David says of him, ‘The heavens were strengthened by the Lord's word,’ and again the same: ‘He sent out his word and healed them.’ And Solomon: ‘The wicked will seek me and will not find me; for they hated wisdom, and did not choose the word of the Lord.’ And Isaiah: ‘Out of Zion shall go forth law, and the word of the Lord out of Jerusalem.’ And again Jeremiah says: ‘The wise were put to shame and were dismayed and were taken, because they rejected the word of the Lord.’

24.2| And the prophet Hosea said: ‘They hated the one who reproved in the gates, and abhorred a holy word.’ And Micah likewise, himself mentioning the word, said: ‘Out of Zion shall go forth law, and the word of the Lord out of Jerusalem.’” Having gathered these and their like, he thinks he strengthens his own opinion through them.

24.3| But see how he has mixed together testimonies from divine Scripture, bringing together the word of God that is sent forth, the saving and healing one, and the word that gives orders for what must be done. For the words “They hated the one who reproved in the gates, and abhorred a holy word”: what sort of word does this suppose, other than altogether the word that commands holy and just actions? He is willing to confess anything rather than the Son of God, as though ashamed to mention the Son. We know that the Son of God is Son in the most proper sense and truly the only-begotten of God, and we know exactly that he is Word too, not like the word among human beings, but as it is fitting to understand a word of God: living, subsistent, and a Son. But he who introduces a word that is merely significant and commands what must be done understandably shrank from confessing the Son, whom he was in fact denying.

25.1| Then he does not notice that he is writing things that contradict himself. For in other places he insists that none of the earlier people knew the things concerning the Word, since it was a hidden mystery. And he writes thus, in these very words: “For what else was the hidden mystery but that concerning the Word? And this mystery was hidden in God earlier in such a way that no one of the earlier people knew plainly the things concerning the Word, but we now enjoy the riches of the glory and of the hidden mystery.” And again he adds: “The holy apostle and disciple of the Lord, John, teaching clearly and explicitly at the beginning of the Gospel, as of something previously unknown among human beings, naming him the Word of the Almighty, said thus: ‘In the beginning was the Word.’” In these passages, then, he defines as the hidden mystery that God has a Word; but in the prophetic sayings just set out he establishes that all the divine Scriptures proclaim the things concerning him, and collects the very many testimonies concerning the word of God.

25.2| So he was not unknown to the earlier people; for they all knew such words, carrying the prophetic oracles on their lips and in memory. But this Christian sets the Jewish scribe before us, not hearing the Savior say, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites,” and he admires him for confirming by an oath that “God is one and there is no other besides him,” not knowing that even “the demons believe and shudder.”

25.3| Note how from the prophetic Scriptures themselves he collects the passages about the word that teaches what must be done; this word even the children of the Jews will admit they know, having received it before us. But not even Sabellius himself was ignorant of such a word.

25.4| How then, in striking at the Jews and Sabellius, did he say that they did not know the Word, in the words of his that I have quoted? And since he declared earlier that no one could know God, or recognize his Word, unless he had received the image of the invisible God, that is, the flesh, as he himself said

25.5| (for he maintained that God and his Word are made known through the image alone, saying that the image is the flesh), we must remind him from what has been set out above that, quite apart from the coming in the flesh, all the Jews knew precisely the word of God and the words in the prophetic Scriptures that enjoin holy works, having studied them closely from their earliest years, and that they confessed God as the Creator and Maker of all things—just as did the scribe who confirmed this with an oath.

25.6| So much, then, to prove that the man is a Sabellian. It is time now to go on to the distorted interpretations of the divine Scriptures that he has produced, so that every one of those who hold the man in honor may learn that he has turned aside not only from the right faith but also from the sound reading and contemplation of the God-inspired Scriptures.

Cite a passage by its number: every paragraph here has its own anchor (for example https://openscriptorium.com/read/eusebius/124-on-ecclesiastical-theology-book-ii#p1), and the bracketed reference numbers link the same way.

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