On Ecclesiastical Theology — Book III

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

Pin.1| Chapters of the Third Book. 1. How perversely Marcellus dared to interpret the divine Scriptures. 2. How “The Lord created me as the origin of his ways” and the words joined to it are to be understood, and how Marcellus transferred them to the Savior’s flesh. 3. Refutation of what he wrongly said on these passages, and a sound interpretation of them. 4. How Marcellus, failing to understand the Scriptures, laid down that there is one subsistence of Father and Son and Holy Spirit. 5. How the Savior taught about the Holy Spirit. 6. What the church hands down to be believed about Father and Son and Holy Spirit. 7. How Marcellus maintained that the image of the invisible God is the flesh. 8. How the same man declared that the Savior’s flesh profits nothing. 9. How he dared to say that at the end of all things the Savior’s flesh will be left behind, bereft of the Word. 10. What the divine Scriptures teach about the Savior’s flesh, and how Marcellus held the opposite. 11. How, not grasping the saying in the Gospel, he said that the Savior’s flesh gives offense and profits nothing. 12. Interpretation of the words of the Gospel. 13. How he maintained that Christ’s kingdom took its beginning four hundred years ago and will have its end at the consummation, producing perverse interpretations of the divine Scriptures. 14. Expositions of the sound sense of the passages read. 15. How it is said that all things will be subjected to the Son, and the Son himself to the Father. 16. In what sense the apostle said, “Then God will be all in all.” 17. How the divine Scriptures set forth the endless kingdom of our Savior, and how Marcellus declared barefaced that his kingdom will come to an end. 18. How in the kingdom of the Son all who are counted worthy of the blessedness of that time will become one. 19. That just as the Father and the Son are said to be one, so too will all the saints be. 20. That as the Father is within the Son, and the Son within the Father, so too will he be in all the saints. 21. How one should understand “The one who has seen me has seen the Father.”

1.1| The great evangelist John, then, proclaimed the theology of our Savior in various ways, in the manner set out above; and how Marcellus, in denying it, ran aground on Jewish unbelief has been made plain by what has been said. That he also perversely misinterpreted the acknowledged and clear teachings about our Savior you may learn from a great many other expositions of his, and not least from the following. In the Proverbs of Solomon, Wisdom is brought on speaking in her own person and recounting these things about herself: “I, Wisdom, have made counsel my dwelling,

1.2| and I have called on knowledge and understanding. The fear of the Lord hates wickedness—insolence and arrogance and the ways of the wicked; and I have hated the perverted ways of evil men. Counsel and safety are mine; I am understanding, and strength is mine.

1.3| Through me kings reign, and princes write righteousness; through me great men are magnified, and through me tyrants hold the earth. I love those who love me, and those who seek me shall find me. Wealth and glory belong to me, and the possession of many things, and righteousness.

1.4| It is better to reap my fruit than gold and precious stone, and my produce is better than choice silver. I walk in the ways of righteousness and move about in the midst of the paths of justice, that I may give substance as a portion to those who love me and fill their treasuries with good things. If I declare to you the things that happen day by day, I will remember to recount the things from of old.

1.5| The Lord created me for his works, as the beginning of his ways; before the age he founded me; at the start, prior to making the earth, prior to making the depths, before the springs of the waters came forth, before the mountains were set firm, but ahead of all the hills he begets me. The Lord made the lands, both the uninhabited and the inhabited heights of the land beneath heaven. As he prepared the heaven, I was there with him, and as he was marking out his throne upon the winds; when he was making the clouds above strong, and setting the springs beneath heaven secure, and making the foundations of the earth strong, I was beside him, setting all in order. I was the one in whom he took delight day by day, and I rejoiced before his face at every season, when he rejoiced at having completed the inhabited world, and rejoiced in the sons of men.”

2.1| This is what Wisdom says about herself in Proverbs. I have quoted it entire, deliberately and of necessity, to show that it is one person who says all this—[….] he transferred to the Savior’s flesh—with no change of speaker in between; Wisdom is thus shown teaching these things about herself. And here first we should note that she is named Wisdom absolutely: “I, Wisdom,” she says, “made counsel my dwelling,” and it is not said “the Wisdom of God.” Just as in the evangelist “In the beginning was the Word” was written absolutely, and again “the Word was with God,” and it was not said “the Word of God,” so that no one might suppose him to be spoken of as a relative term, or as an attribute in God, but as subsistent and living (which is why he adds “and the Word was God,” and does not say “and the Word was God’s”), so too in the case of Wisdom.

2.2| For God the Word and Wisdom were one and the same. Therefore she is named absolutely in Proverbs, both in the passages set out above and in those spoken in this manner: “Blessed is the man who has found wisdom,” and “God by wisdom founded the earth,” and “Say that wisdom is your sister,” and “Proclaim wisdom, that understanding may follow you,” and “For wisdom is better than costly stones,”

2.3| and “Wisdom built herself a house, and set up seven pillars,” and whatever else akin to these is found in the same book. In none of these is she called the wisdom of God, but simply Wisdom, without qualification, so that we should not suppose her to be some accident belonging to God, as knowledge belongs to a knowledgeable man, but a subsistent and living wisdom, the same as the Son of God.

2.4| But if someone supposes that the wisdom spoken of here is a wise disposition in God, according to which we understand God to be wise, let him listen to Scripture saying, “Say that wisdom is your sister.” Who would be so mad as to suppose that the God over all and the wise disposition within him is called a sister of those among human beings who act rightly?

2.5| But if you take the saying as applying to the Christ of God (for “Christ is God's power and God's wisdom”), nothing will stand in the way of the sense, since he does not refuse brotherhood with us, out of the excess of his love for humankind. But if God and the wisdom introduced in Proverbs were one and the same, being a wise disposition understood in him according to which God is wise, what would have prevented “God” from being written in place of “wisdom”? Then “Wisdom built herself a house, and set up seven pillars” and what is joined to it would have been said in place of “God built himself a house,” and so on; and again

2.6| “Say that wisdom is your sister” would have been said in place of “Say that God is your brother.” But you see how such a phrase strikes the ear, having no harmony.

2.7| But if you take the sayings as applying to the Son (for he himself was Wisdom), everything will flow smoothly, with no impious thought standing in the way, and the apostle Paul bearing witness with us, who in a clear voice named our Savior and Lord Jesus Christ wisdom, saying, “Christ, the power and the wisdom of God.”

2.8| With these points established in this way, it follows, along with all that has been set out, that “The Lord created me for his works, as the beginning of his ways” was also spoken from his own person. And if he says he was created, he would not be saying it as one who came from non-being into being, nor as one who, like the rest of created things, came to be from what was not, as some have wrongly supposed, but as one subsistent and living, who went before and existed before the constitution of the whole world, and who was appointed by the Lord, the same Father, to rule over the universe, “created” here being said in place of “appointed” or “established.”

2.9| Indeed the apostle expressly called the rulers and governors among human beings a “creation,” saying, “Be subject to every human creation for the Lord’s sake: whether to a king as supreme, or to governors as sent through him.”

2.10| And the prophet who said, “Prepare to call upon your God, Israel; for behold, he who makes firm the thunder and creates the spirit and announces to human beings his Christ,” and “Let this be written for another generation, and the people being created will praise the Lord,” took “creating” not of what came to be out of non-existence. For God did not create the Spirit at the time when through him he announced his Christ to all human beings; for there is nothing “new under the sun.”

2.11| Rather the Spirit was there and pre-existed, and was sent at the time when the apostles were gathered together, when, like thunder, “there came a sound from heaven, as of a violent rushing wind,” and they were filled “with the Holy Spirit,” and so announced the Christ of God to all human beings, in accord with the prophecy that says, “For behold, he who makes firm the thunder and creates the spirit and announces to human beings his Christ.” Here “creating” is said in place of “sending down” or “appointing,” and the thunder in another way indicates the gospel proclamation. And the one who says, “Create a clean heart in me, O God,” was not saying this as one who had no heart, but was praying that his mind be made clean.

2.12| So also “that he might create the two into one new man” is said in place of “bring together”; consider whether the same is true of “put on the new man, created according to God” and “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation,” and of whatever else of this kind one might find who searches the God-inspired Scripture. Do not be surprised, then, if “created” in “The Lord created me, the beginning of his ways,” is likewise said metaphorically in place of “established” or “appointed to rule,” since in the Gospels too, when our Savior says, “I confess to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you hid these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to infants,” we do not say that the Savior means a confession of sins (in the sense in which it is said elsewhere, “Confess your sins to one another”), but thanksgiving for the infants, “confess” being said in place of “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth.”

2.13| One who searched at leisure would find countless things said throughout the whole of divine Scripture in the metaphorical manner, others with many senses, and others of different things predicated under the same name. To go through them would take long and does not belong to the present occasion.

2.14| So here too “The Lord created me as a beginning of his ways, for his works” is said in place of “appointed me to rule over his works.” For this reason it is not simply said “created me,” but with the addition “as a beginning of his ways, for his works.”

2.15| The Hebrew expression especially shows this. If anyone should examine exactly the true sense of the God-inspired Scripture, he would find that the Hebrew reading does not contain “created me,” and for that reason none of the other translators has used this word either. Aquila, for example, has said, “The Lord acquired me, the head of his ways.” Symmachus: “The Lord acquired me, the beginning of his ways.” And Theodotion: “The Lord acquired me, the beginning of his way.”

2.16| And the interpretation has good reason. For he was the head of the constitution and salvation of all created things, seen and unseen, he whom the Father begot as only-begotten Son, and having begotten him appointed him Savior of the universe, summing up in him and through him the ordering of the whole, as the divine apostle taught when he said, “to sum up all things in Christ, the things in heaven and the things on earth.” Thus not only did all things come into being through him, passing from non-being into being, but he also takes on the providence over the governance of the universe, being Word and Wisdom and Life and the fullness of every good and noble thing, so that through him all things are steered and preserved.

2.17| He shows this himself through the sayings set out above, in which he said: “Through me kings reign, and rulers write justice; through me the great are made great, and tyrants rule the earth through me.”

2.18| By ineffable reasons, then, of the universal wisdom and providence of the Son of God all things are governed. This is what he taught through the passages set out above, and he urged us to hold fast to him, saying, “I love those who love me, and those who seek me will find me,” and turned us away from the opposite road by what he added: “and I hated the twisted ways of evil men.”

2.19| And when the Son of God (for he himself was Wisdom) had made these and like distinctions, he next hands down the mystical knowledge of himself to those who have been first helped by them, saying: “If I report to you what happens day by day, I shall remember to count the things from of old.”

2.20| For if I were to teach, he says, what is done by me each day, I would have to recall my works from the beginning of all the age and show that for this purpose the Father who begot me appointed me to rule over the universe, and to lead his ways and the works made by him through me. Accordingly he adds, “The Lord created me as a beginning of his ways, for his works,” or “The Lord acquired me,” according to the rendering given.

2.21| For the great possession of God was the only-begotten Son: in one respect because he had come to be from him, being his Son; in another because he has been established as a common benefit and savior of all, being and being named the greatest and most precious possession of the Father. For nothing else could be a more precious possession to a father than a son. Hence, when the first-formed Adam acquired the first son among human beings, it was said of that son too, “I have acquired a man through God,” the Hebrew having, in place of “I have acquired,” kanithe;

2.22| and “acquired” is pronounced kana among the Hebrews. So it is said of Abraham, “the field” “which Abraham acquired,” where the Hebrew has kana, the same word that stands in the Hebrew in “The Lord created me as a beginning of his ways, for his works.” For here too, where the word kana stands, all the translators have agreed in rendering it “acquired.”

2.23| But “created” is expressed by a different word among the Hebrews, one that does not stand in the Scripture before us. There would be a very great difference between “created” and “acquired,” in that creation, in the commoner sense, signifies passage from non-being into being, whereas acquisition signifies a particular kinship of the one acquiring with something that already existed.

2.24| So the Son of God, in saying “The Lord acquired me as a beginning of his ways, for his works,” was at once showing his pre-existence and his particular kinship with the Father, and at once the usefulness and necessity of his own providence and governance over the Father’s works.

2.25| Therefore he next adds: “Before the age he laid my foundation, in the beginning, before the making of the earth, before the springs of the waters came forth, before the mountains were set firm, yet before all the hills he begets me.” Through all this he shows how profitable and necessary he is to all: that he was and pre-existed, and existed before the whole world and led it, teaching of necessity. For Moses, in the making of the world, made no mention of the supercosmic and invisible powers because of the incompleteness of those being trained through him, but went through the constitution of the visible world, and at the beginning mentioned four elements, heaven and earth and abyss and water; and he said that two of them were made by God (“In the beginning,” he says, “God made the heaven and the earth”), but did not say likewise of the water and the abyss that these too were created, saying simply, “and darkness was over the abyss, and the Spirit of God was borne over the water.” Of necessity, then, the Son of God teaches through the passage before us about these also, that they are created, and that he himself is before all things and through him all things were made.

2.26| Therefore he says: “Before the age he founded me, at the beginning, before he made the earth, and before he made the depths, before the springs of the waters came forth.” Having mentioned three of these, earth and abyss and water, he adds the fourth last, keeping the better for the end, the heaven; so he goes on to say: “When he prepared the heaven, I was present with him.”

2.27| With these things clearly established by divine Scripture, and given a brief treatment by us in summary, let us hear how Marcellus, casting his mind to the ground, insists that all this was said about the flesh which the Savior took up, writing in these very words as follows:

2.28| “This being so, it follows that we should consider in thought this saying, spoken in proverbial form, ‘The Lord created me as a beginning of his ways.’ For our Master God truly created, having made what was not; for the flesh which the Word took up was not existing, but he created it when it did not exist.” And he adds: “So then, even though this new mystery appeared at the last times, it was for this reason foreordained before this age, and the prophet rightly said, ‘Before the age he established me,’ meaning the flesh.

2.29| And again he goes on, saying: “Then ‘in the beginning,’ he says, ‘before he made the earth.’ What earth is this, if not our flesh, which became earth again after the disobedience? For ‘you are earth,’ he says, ‘and to earth you shall return.’” You see how far he has gone wrong, turning aside from the straight road and devising for himself a rough, hard-to-travel path, with no way out.

2.30| See, then, how he has wrested the text, enduring to utter any shameless and brazen statement at all rather than confess that the Son of God is Wisdom.

2.31| He does refer “The Lord created me as a beginning of his ways, for his works” to the person of the Savior, admitting that he is the one who says this in Proverbs. And he says, in these very words: “Fittingly, then, when the old things had passed away and all things were to be made new through the newness of our Savior, our Master Christ cried out through the prophet, saying, ‘The Lord created me as a beginning of his ways.’”

2.32| Having said this, he drags the sense down to the flesh of our Savior, adding next: “For our Master God truly created, having made what was not; for the flesh which the Word took up was not existing, but he created it when it did not exist, ‘as the beginning of his ways.’” And the fine fellow does not understand that “I, Wisdom, made counsel my dwelling” and “The Lord created me” are a single utterance and the words of a single person; so that if the one is referred to the flesh, the other must be too, and Wisdom will be the one who says both.

2.33| And if the flesh, according to Marcellus, says “The Lord created me as a beginning of his ways,” then the flesh would be Wisdom; and it will be the flesh that says “Through me kings reign” and “Through me the great are made great.” How could the flesh say “I shall remember to count the things from of old,” to which is attached “The Lord created me as a beginning of his ways”? And he even shows what the ways are, saying next: “For he has become for us, who are to live justly, the way of piety, the beginning of all the ways after it.”

2.34| And he adds: “He fittingly called our Master the Savior ‘the beginning of ways’ because he also became the beginning, after the first way, of the other ways we have had, meaning the traditions through the holy apostles, who ‘with a lofty proclamation,’ according to the prophecy, proclaimed to us this new mystery.” So Marcellus.

3.1| Now if Marcellus did not accept the writing of Moses and of the prophets after Moses, his rendering might have had some plausible ground. But since he is not one of those who reject the old covenant, why on earth did he name the apostles and their teachings “ways,” and pay no attention to the prophets of God, who have written countless things about the ways of God? For first of all Moses, writing, said, “You shall go by the king’s highway,” and “Behold, I have set before you the way of life and the way of death,”

3.2| and David likewise, “The Lord knows the way of the righteous, and the way of the ungodly will perish,” and Jeremiah, “Stand in the ways and ask for the eternal paths of the Lord, and see what the good way is, and walk in it.” And you will find each of the prophets mentioning the ways of God in various forms.

3.3| If, then, our Savior and Lord Jesus Christ teaches that he is the beginning of the ways of God, saying “The Lord created me as a beginning of his ways, for his works” (being by all means older than Moses and the prophets and those still earlier who lived according to the ways of God), whereas the flesh which he took up was not earlier than all of those, then the saying is not rightly taken as applying to the flesh.

3.4| The Savior was not speaking these words, therefore, on account of the flesh, but on account of his pre-existing and leading all the ways of God, which all the God-loving men of old traveled.

3.5| And since the divine apostle, saying “O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how untraceable his ways,” puts forward certain other ways, the providential ways over the universe, by which with ineffable judgment and inapprehensible reasons he governs all things by divine power, it follows that the one who said “The Lord created me a beginning of his ways, for his works” is to be called the beginning of these ways as well. But the man who has not understood the ways of God declared that the flesh of our Savior is the beginning of them.

3.6| He also interprets “for his works,” saying: “‘He created me,’ it says, ‘a beginning of his ways for his works.’ And which works does he mean? Those about which the Savior says, ‘My Father is working until now, and I am working,’ and again, ‘I have finished the work that you gave me.’”

3.7| Then, as if clarifying the sense of what has been said, he adds: “For who, before the proof of the facts, would have believed that the Word of God, born of a virgin, would take up our flesh and show in it the whole divinity bodily?” And as though he had given the sense in full, he adds: “This, then, is what ‘The Lord created me a beginning of his ways for his works’ means.”

3.8| And he wrote this because he was unable to lift the eyes of his mind “on high” and say, like the prophet, “For I shall see the heavens, the works of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have established,” and because he did not remember the prophetic saying, “They do not look at the works of the Lord, and do not consider the works of his hands.”

3.9| For if he had attended to these, he would have known that the one who says this was and pre-existed before heaven and earth, before the whole world, and not only before the visible works but before the intelligible works of God that subsist in incorporeal and supercosmic powers. But he passes over to “Before the age he established me,” and again brings the flesh into the middle, saying thus: “naming this a foundation: his economy foreordained according to the flesh,

3.10| as the apostle also says, ‘For no one can lay another foundation than the one that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.’” And he adds: “Here he mentions one age, from which he said the things concerning Christ were founded, though many ages had already passed, as David said, ‘He who exists before the ages.’”

3.11| And passing on next to “In the beginning, before the making of the earth,” he says that the earth again is the flesh, writing thus: “What earth is this, if not our flesh, which became earth again after the disobedience? For ‘you are earth,’ he says, ‘and to earth you shall return.’ For this flesh needed to obtain healing.” He says this without remembering, wise man that he is, that he had said above that the flesh was created before the making of the earth as the beginning of the ways of God.

3.12| But if by “earth” he meant the flesh altogether, how is it not necessary to admit that the one who says that he is before the making of the earth pre-exists the flesh? For he says, “Before the age he founded me, in the beginning, before the earth was made.” Therefore the one who says this existed before the making of the flesh.

3.13| And even if he does not mention many ages but one, of which the Savior too made mention when he said, “The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage,” even so it is not the flesh which our Savior took up that existed before the present age, but the very one who teaches these things through Solomon. You see into what rough country he has fallen, having turned aside from the straight and royal road.

3.14| In addition to what has been said, he adds this too, saying: “‘Before he made the depths,’ he says. Here the prophet says in proverbial manner that the depths are the hearts of the saints, which have in their depth the gift of the Spirit.” And he does not understand that before the fleshly coming of our Savior the holy prophets of God shared the same Spirit, Moses and those even older than Moses. Therefore, if these were the hearts of the saints, the one who says “Before he made the depths” must necessarily be older than all these depths.

3.15| How then could these words be referred to the flesh of the Savior? Indeed, if he had had any knowledge of the divine Scriptures, he would not so lightly have declared the hearts of the saints to be the depths, having noticed that there was “darkness over the abyss,” according to the testimony of Moses, and that the discourse about them in divine Scripture is long and hard to interpret. For the apostle says, “Do not say, Who will go up into heaven?

3.16| that is, to bring Christ down; or, Who will go down into the abyss? that is, to bring Christ up from the dead.” In these words he seems to have called the regions of Hades “the abyss.” And the Lord himself shows this more plainly in the oracle given to Job, saying: “Have you reached the spring of the sea, and walked in the tracks of the abyss? Have the gates of death been opened to you in fear, and did the gatekeepers of Hades shrink back when they saw you?”

3.17| And the evil powers in the abyss, about which it is said, “Praise him from the earth, you dragons and all the depths,” and further the darkness over the abyss, of which Moses said, “and darkness was over the abyss”: if he had learned all this, having read the divine Scriptures with labor and not carelessly, he would not have dared to say that the hearts of the saints are the depths,

3.18| and he would have understood how it was said, “Deep calls to deep at the sound of your cataracts,” and again, “The depths were stirred, a multitude of sounding water,” and again, “The abyss, like a garment, is his covering.”

3.19| He would have worked out these and like passages exactly, if he had taken any care to grasp them. As it is, having declared offhandedly and carelessly that the hearts of the saints are the depths, he did not even then understand that the one who said “Before he made the depths” was teaching that he himself existed before the holy and God-loving men who had lived from the beginning of the age; so that in every respect the words before us cannot be fitted to the Savior’s flesh.

3.20| He then moves on to another saying of the same Scripture and interprets it thus, saying: “What then is this next phrase, ‘Before the springs of the waters came forth’?” He says it is the holy apostles: “This mystery is shown to us by the Scripture of Exodus, which long ago foretold the types of the apostles,

3.21| for since the apostles were twelve in number, it mentions twelve springs.” In saying this he does not understand that Israel also had twelve tribes and twelve patriarchs of them, and that there is one book of the twelve prophets, and that the day has twelve hours and the whole year twelve months.

3.22| What, then, made the number twelve more fitting to the apostles than to all of those, if some mere quantity of number gave him the reason for such an interpretation of the saying? He should have seen that the prophets of God also, inasmuch as they shared the same Holy Spirit, were not strangers to the springs. For this reason it is said of them in the Psalms, “In the assemblies bless God the Lord, you who are from the springs of Israel.”

3.23| So it is necessary to confess that the Son of God, who says “Before the springs of the waters came forth,” was before those springs as well. But listen how he interprets, saying: “Fittingly, then, the Master, speaking through the prophet Solomon about the birth according to the flesh, said, ‘Before the springs of the waters came forth.’”

3.24| And he adds: “For so the Savior said to the holy springs, ‘Go and make disciples of every nation.’” Then, as if gathering up his argument, he attaches the conclusion to his exposition, saying: “It is clear from every side that the holy apostles were figuratively named springs by the prophet.” So he wants the apostles to be the springs. But the prophets do not please him;

3.25| why, if not because he could not make the Savior’s flesh older than they? And yet the Son of God, who teaches these things about himself in Proverbs, pre-existed even the naturally perceptible springs that Moses mentioned in the making of the world, saying, “A spring rose from the earth and watered the whole face of the earth,” and again, “A river goes out of Eden to water the garden.” And the one who gave the oracle to Job also mentions springs of the sea, saying, “Have you reached the spring of the sea, and walked in the tracks of the abyss?”

3.26| And since Scripture teaches that there are certain waters above the heavens too, saying, “Praise him, you heavens of the heavens, and the waters above the heavens,” it follows that we should understand there to be springs of those waters also (whatever their nature may be), so that the one who says he pre-existed “before the springs of the waters came forth” may be shown to be older than those as well.

3.27| But he, giving his mind to none of this and unwilling to take pains, persists in the same course; for saying this too, he says, “‘Before the mountains were set firm, he begets me before all the hills.’ He means by mountains and hills the apostles and the successors of the apostles, to signify in proverbial manner their righteous way of life as against other human beings.”

3.28| So the springs, the mountains and the hills were the same persons. But just as it is not in the nature of things to say that observable springs and mountains are the same (for there is nothing in common, in the matter of quality, between springs of water and the elevations of mountains), in the same way, in what is contemplated allegorically in thought, one must show a difference between the springs, mountains, and hills understood in the contemplation. But he, who knows nothing thoroughly tested and confuses everything out of carelessness, has declared that springs of water and mountains and hills are the same, and says that all of these are the apostles, without distinguishing the manner of the difference.

3.29| Why then did he not call mountains and hills likewise those who were made perfect in righteousness and piety before the flesh of our Savior, if not because he could not set the Savior’s flesh before them? Forced and compelled, therefore, is the reference of the words before us to the Savior’s flesh. And how would “he begets me” fit the flesh? For he said he was begotten before the springs and before the mountains and before the hills, in saying “The Lord created me to be a beginning of his ways, toward his works; before the age he established me.”

3.30| If then the flesh says this, as Marcellus supposes, how could the flesh say “and before every hill he begets me”? Grant that the flesh is before the apostles; but how does it say that it was begotten by God? For Marcellus saw fit to say that the flesh was created, not having existed before.

3.31| For he said: “For our Master God truly created, having made what was not; for the flesh which the Word took up was not existing, but he created it when it did not exist.” We know, then, that it was created; but how would it be granted that it was also begotten by God, when our Savior says, “What is born of the flesh is flesh,” and the apostle says, “born of a woman, born under the law”?

3.32| How then would the flesh say of the God of the universe, “and before every hill he begets me”? I think it is plain to everyone that this has a forced interpretation. But one can say without any force, and apart from any allegorical manner, that the Son of God makes these words true, since he pre-existed the earth, and was and existed before the bodily springs of the waters came forth and before the depths spoken of in the sensible sense and before the shape of the earth was formed in the elevations of mountains and hills; for “all things were made through him, and apart from him not one thing was made.”

3.33| And if someone asks why he did not teach that he is before the heavens, or before the divine and supercosmic powers and spirits in the heavens or beyond them, it will be said to him that the Word for the time did not mention these, since through Proverbs he was giving a certain training to those who were infants in their souls.

3.34| This is clear also from the fact that it is said at one time, “Hear, my son, your father’s instruction, and do not reject your mother’s ordinances,” at another, “My son, attend to my laws, and incline your ear to my words,” and again, “My son, do not despise the Lord’s discipline, nor lose heart when reproved by him,” and “My son,

3.35| if you are good to yourself, you will be good to your neighbors; but if you turn out wicked, you alone will draw up the evils.” You yourself could pick out countless sayings like these from the book of Proverbs, by which the Word is evidently speaking to those who are infants in their souls.

3.36| So also Moses, as a trainer of those whose minds were incomplete, mentioned heaven and earth and the making of visible things, but not the creation of angels or of divine powers or holy spirits, since those who were being taught by him could not yet take in the teaching about these.

3.37| It was therefore natural that the Word in Proverbs, for such hearers, made his teaching start from the mountains and hills and springs about the earth, as from better-known things, so that beginning from a lower step he might lead by the hand those being trained toward higher things, and prepare them to cross from smaller things to more divine ones.

3.38| This, then, is so if one inquires no further than the wording. But if someone wishes to understand these things at a deeper level, he will take them as applying no more to the apostles than to all the righteous and God-loving men who ever lived, and he will pass on from there to the divine and angelic powers, saying that mountains and hills hint at the differences among angels and archangels and divine spirits, thrones and lordships and rulers and authorities,

3.39| because the divine apostle taught that all these too were created “through him and for him” and that he is “before all” of them; starting from this, as is likely, because in these words “Before the mountains were set firm, and before every hill he begets me” is said from the person of the Son of God. The others, he said, were settled, but he alone was begotten before the establishment of the things mentioned.

3.40| The same apostle also knows the heavenly Jerusalem and the heavenly mountain on which he says it stands, saying: “You have come to Mount Zion and to the living God's city, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels, to the festal assembly and church of the firstborn enrolled in heaven.” Pre-existing all these things as well, the only-begotten Son of God hinted in a hidden way, through Proverbs, at his own ineffable begetting.

3.41| That he was suggesting these things for us to understand would become clear from what he links on next, saying: “When he prepared the heaven, I was present beside him.” Here the fine interpreter of the Scriptures was shut out and came to a halt, going no further, because he could not smooth out the sequence of the hypothesis he had offered about the Savior’s flesh.

3.42| For having mentioned the flesh up and down, and declared that everything was said about the flesh, he got as far as saying that the mountains and hills were the apostles, but what follows these he deliberately passed over in silence, no longer daring to go further in the Scripture.

3.43| Here, then, he stops the discussion; but after a great many other things said in between, he departs from the interpretation referring to the flesh, and admits that the Word of God is the one who said these things. He says in these very words: “For before the world existed, the Word was in the Father. But when God the Almighty purposed to make all things in heaven and on earth, the coming-to-be of the world needed an active energy; and therefore, with nothing else existing except God (for all things are agreed to have been made by him), then the Word came forth and became the maker of the world—the Word who earlier too was preparing it within, in thought, as the prophet Solomon teaches us, saying, ‘When he prepared the heaven, I was there with him,’ and ‘when he set securely the springs under heaven, when he made the foundations of the earth strong, I was beside him, fitting things together;

3.44| I was the one he took delight in.’” For the Father rightly delighted, making all things with wisdom and power through the Word. So Marcellus. If then he has at last, with difficulty, admitted that these words were spoken from the person of the Word, he must accept that the whole sequence of the passages before us refers to the same Word of God.

3.45| For the one who said, "When he prepared the heaven, I was there with him," was the very one who also said, "The Lord created me as the start of his ways, for the sake of his works." For it was shown to us at the start that one and the same person runs through all the passages before us. So the same speaker who said "The Lord created me as the start of his ways, for the sake of his works" went on to add "Before the age he founded me," and "In the beginning, before the making of the earth," and "before the mountains were settled, and ahead of all the hills he begets me."

3.46| The same speaker also joined to this "When he prepared the heaven, I was there with him," and what follows it. Now if it was the Word who said these things, how was he within God, and, being unoriginate together with God and one and the same with him, did he say that he had been created and begotten? For, as I said, it was demonstrated that it is one and the same person who runs through all the passages before us.

3.47| But if he has at last, late in the day, admitted that these words were spoken from the person of the Word within God, then his application of them to the flesh of the Savior was a forced reading, and all those arguments are found altogether stale, vain, and superfluous. Yet suppose it was the Savior's flesh that said "The Lord created me as the start of his ways, for the sake of his works," according to the interpretation he gave it; and suppose the flesh "was founded before the age and in the beginning, before the making of the earth" (the earth, of course, being the flesh, as he supposed, because it was said, "You are earth, and to earth you shall return"); and suppose it was the flesh that said "before he made the depths, before the springs of the waters came forth, before the mountains were settled, and ahead of all the hills he begets me" (because it was supposedly begotten before the choosing of the apostles, as that most wise man thought): then it follows that "When he prepared the heaven, I was there with him" must also be spoken from the person of the flesh.

3.48| But no one who had not lost his wits would ever agree to this interpretation; for the Word of truth will cry out loudly against him, showing who it was that went through all these words.

3.49| So that the only-begotten Son, begotten of God, living and subsisting, was another, existing even before the establishing of all created things, he himself makes plain by what he adds next, saying, "As he made ready the heaven, I was present with him." For he was with him and present with him before the heaven came to be, and what lies beyond heaven, and everything in heaven. This, at any rate, is what he hinted at by saying, "As he made ready the heaven, I was present with him."

3.50| And how did God prepare, except by laying down law before it came into being, and sketching the manner in which it was to be established? The Father sketched and prepared it, thinking out how so great a heaven ought to be established, what size it required, what shape, and measures and how many parts, for the sake of what was to be contained within it, what would lie outside it, and what would run its course within it. The Son, for his part, gazed upon the Father's designs and alone surveyed the depths within him, and went forth into works, serving the Father's nods.

3.51| Therefore it is said somewhere: "Praise the Lord out of the heavens, praise him in the highest places.

3.52| Praise him, all his angels; praise him, all his powers. Praise him, O sun and moon; praise him, all the stars and the light. Praise him, heavens of heavens, and the waters above the heavens. Let them give praise to the name of the Lord, for he spoke and they came to be; he commanded and they were created."

3.53| But even before the heaven came to be, and what lies beyond heaven and everything in heaven (for by one all things are indicated comprehensively), the Son of God existed, and was present with the Father and was with him while he was still deliberating about the establishing of all these things. That is why he says, "As he made ready the heaven, I was present with him." Then, like a good painter, taking the archetypal forms from the Father's designs, he transferred them to the essences of the works, shaping and bringing into being things such as he saw lying ready beforehand in the Father's mind.

3.54| Of these things he himself would be a trustworthy witness, teaching in the Gospels as follows: "Amen, amen, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of himself, unless he sees the Father doing it; for whatever that one does, the Son likewise does these things also.

3.55| For the Father loves the Son and shows him everything that he himself does." Here one might reasonably ask how the Son does again what has once been done by the Father. He himself resolved the question by saying, "For whatever the Father does, the Son likewise does these things also."

3.56| Accordingly, what is done by the Son consists of likenesses of archetypal works that pre-existed in the Father's ineffable designs; looking steadily at these in the Father's mind, the Son made copies of what he saw. That he surveys the depths of the Father is shown to be a work of the Father's love, as he makes clear in what follows when he says, "For the Father loves the Son and shows him everything that he himself does." So as the Father shows him his own hidden things, the Son, beholding them, brought into being through works the works of the Father's counsel. Being thus with the Father and present with him as he prepared the heaven beforehand and what is upon it, he taught this by saying, "As he made ready the heaven, I was present with him."

3.57| And the Father rejoiced even before the world came to be, looking to his own only-begotten Son and, as in an image, mirroring himself in him. That is why Wisdom says, "I was the one in whom he rejoiced every day." But the Son too was filled with gladness, delighting in the sight of the Father; this at least he himself teaches by saying, "I was glad before him at every season, when he was glad, having completed the inhabited world,"

3.58| where "the inhabited world" is understood as the completion of all created things, which the God of the universe was glad to see brought from non-being into being through the Son. This, then, would be the true account, set forth from the divine Scripture in brief and in a concise narrative. But he, swept from the heights down onto the flesh of our Savior, ran his understanding aground, twisting aside and misinterpreting the true meaning of the God-inspired Scripture.

3.59| And turning to the Word, he says that it was the Word within the Father, as in reflection and deliberation, who prepared the heaven.

3.60| He said, at any rate, in these very words: (No. 54) "For before the making of the world the Word was in the Father. But when the almighty God set out to make everything in the heavens and on the earth, the coming-to-be of the world required an active power; and for this reason, since there was no one else besides God (for it is agreed that all things were made by him), then the Word came forth and became the maker of the world, the very one who had previously prepared it within, in thought, as the prophet Solomon teaches us when he says, 'When he was making ready the heaven, I was present with him.'"

3.61| In these words one should consider how, willfully deaf, he does not hear "I was present with him," which expressly signifies the presence of the Son with the Father, and declares, contrary to the Scripture, that there was no one else besides God before the things that came to be came to be. He did not shudder at uttering this statement, which denies the Son, nor was he put to shame before the divine Scripture, which testifies that before the creation of heaven he alone was present with the Father. For it says, "When he was making ready the heaven, I was present with him."

3.62| For the prefix "with," added to "be present," shows presence in the same place together with another. So he teaches that he was not simply present but was present together with the Father. And the Father too did not simply rejoice but rejoiced over the Son's presence; that is why it says, "I was the one in whom he rejoiced every day."

3.63| And how could it fit a word that has no subsistence, but is inside God himself and acts only in the way a word signifies, that he is glad "before him"? Both "being glad" and "before him" plainly point to his subsistence. But Marcellus, taking no account of any of this, rejects the Son, and says that a Word who is within God sometimes goes forth in active operation and sometimes is within him without operating; and he does not see that to say that something is inside and outside God supposes a composite and bodily condition, which it is not right to admit in the ungenerated and incorporeal nature.

3.64| And how did the Word, once he had come forth, become the maker of the world? By tongue and voice, or surely with God using speech as well? And to whom would he have spoken, when no one else was with him? To whom would he have talked, when no one was present? Or did he talk to himself, using voice and speech, so that the Word came forth from him?

3.65| And why could he not, even with the Word still within him, have established by active power the things he wished, since among human beings most craftsmen finish their works even in silence, especially when no one is with them as they work? What, then, prevented God too from establishing all things in some such way, having the Word within himself? But Marcellus even supposes the picture of a sculptor conversing with himself and saying to himself: (No. 52) "Come, let us make, come, let us mold a statue"; for in this way, he says, the God and Master of the universe said to himself "Let us make man," as has already been shown many times in what went before, by which, I think, his denial of the Son of God has been laid bare.

3.66| For to say that God converses with himself, having his own Word within him, would belong to some Jewish way of thinking; but to say that he himself is the father of the Word within him, and that the Word within him is his son, was the mark of the bad doctrine of Sabellius;

4.1| just as, again, to say that the three are one, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, is Sabellius' too. This also Marcellus declared, writing somewhere as follows: (No. 60) "For it is impossible for three subsistences to be united in a monad, unless the triad first had its beginning from a monad. For the holy Paul said that those things are summed up in a monad, which differ in nothing from God in unity; for the Word and the Spirit alone differ from God in unity."

4.2| Then he tries to establish this by going on to say: (No. 60) "If, then, the Word appears to have come out of the Father himself and to have come to us, and the Holy Spirit, as Asterius too admitted, proceeds from the Father, and again the Savior says of the Spirit that 'he will not speak from himself, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will announce to you the things that are coming. He will glorify me, because he will take from what is mine and announce it to you,' does not the monad here appear plainly and openly, by an ineffable reckoning, extended into a triad, yet in no way submitting to division?"

4.3| "For if the Word proceeds from the Father, and the Spirit too is agreed to proceed from the Father, and again the Savior says of the Spirit, 'He will take from what is mine and announce it to you,' is it not obvious that some hidden mystery is being uncovered? For how, unless the undivided monad were extended into a triad, could he say of the Spirit at one time that he proceeds from the Father, and at another, 'He will take from what is mine and announce it to you,' and again, having breathed on the disciples, say, 'Receive the Holy Spirit'?"

4.4| For how, if he proceeds from the Father, does he promise to receive this ministry from the Son? For if they were two divided persons, as Asterius said, then of necessity either the Spirit, proceeding from the Father, has no need of ministry from the Son (for everything that proceeds from the Father must be perfect, needing in no way help from another), or, if he receives from the Son and ministers the grace out of his power, he no longer proceeds from the Father.

4.5| And after other things he adds: (No. 60) "But if the Gospel says that he breathed on the disciples and said, 'Receive the Holy Spirit,' it is clear that the Spirit came forth from the Word. How then, if the Spirit came forth from the Word, does the same Spirit proceed again from the Father?" And after other things he adds: (No. 60) "He did not, therefore, speak rightly or fittingly when he said there are three subsistences, saying it not once but a second time." By these and similar arguments that very wise man tries to establish that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are one and the same, the three names being laid down for a single subsistence.

4.6| For in these passages too he has not understood how the Son is said to proceed from the Father, and the Holy Spirit likewise; nor has he been able to grasp how the Savior said of the Holy Spirit, "He will take from what is mine and announce it to you," or how, having breathed on his disciples, he said, "Receive the Holy Spirit." For those who look at the matter with piety this will have an easy solution, if one reasons that the Son, who was always with the Father and present with him, was somewhere within, as it were in the innermost and untrodden places of the Father's kingdom, and then, being sent out by the Father for the salvation of the human race, said that he had come out from the Father. This he also made clear elsewhere by a parable about himself, saying, "The sower went out to sow";

4.7| for from where did he go out, if not from the innermost palaces of the Father's godhead? In the same way the Holy Spirit too, always standing before the throne of God, since "ten thousand times ten thousand" stand before him, according to Daniel, was also sent out, at one time in dove-like form upon the Son of Man, at another upon each of the prophets and the apostles;

4.8| and so it is said of him too that he proceeds from the Father. And why do you wonder? For it is said of the devil, "And the devil went out from the Lord," and a second time again it is said, "And the devil went out from the Lord's presence." You would find it also in the case of Ahab, where the Scripture adds, "And an evil spirit came out and stood before the Lord and said, I will deceive him."

4.9| But these are opposing spirits, and how and in what manner this is said, this is not the time to inquire. The only-begotten Son of God teaches that he came out from the Father because he is always with him, and the Holy Spirit likewise, being other than the Son. This the Savior himself plainly shows when he says, "He will take from what is mine and announce it to you." For this would be a direct demonstration that the Son and the Holy Spirit are not one and the same; for what receives something from another is understood to be other than the giver.

5.1| And that the Holy Spirit is other than the Son, our Savior and Lord himself taught expressly and in various ways, in the clearest words, in which he said to his disciples: "If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Paraclete, to be with you forever, the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive." You see how he says that the Spirit, the Paraclete, is other, and different from himself. And if, having breathed on the disciples, he said, "Receive the Holy Spirit," we must not fail to see that the breathing was in a way a cleansing of the apostles' souls, making them fit for receiving the Holy Spirit.

5.2| For it is not said that he breathed into their face, nor that it was a breath of life, nor a holy spirit, as is written of Adam, that "God breathed into his face a breath of life"; rather it is said that he first breathed, and then said, "Receive the Holy Spirit." And that he gives the Spirit again shows him to be other than what is given;

5.3| for the giver and the gift would not be the same. Rather, the one who provides was the Savior, the thing given the Holy Spirit, and those who received it, the apostles; and the breathing was, as I said, either a cleansing of the apostles or an effecting of the imparting of the Holy Spirit, for it is possible to understand it either way.

5.4| At any rate, from these words the Holy Spirit is shown to be other than he, as also from what follows, where it is again recorded that he said, "If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him."

5.5| To this he adds: "I have spoken these things to you while remaining with you. But the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, whom my Father will send in my name, that one will teach you all things and remind you of all that I said to you." You hear how he used the plural, "we will come and make our dwelling with him," speaking of himself and the Father, and how, speaking of the Holy Spirit as of another, he said, "that one will teach you all things."

5.6| Of the same kind was this: "I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Paraclete, to be with you forever, the Spirit of truth." The Paraclete, then, about whom he taught so much, was other than himself. Reasonably, then, he added again: "I have spoken these things to you while remaining with you. But the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, whom my Father will send in my name, that one will teach you all things and remind you of all that I said."

5.7| For "I," he says, "have so far spoken these things to you; but the Spirit of truth, whom my Father too will send, will teach you everything" that you have not now learned because you cannot take it in;

5.8| "but that one, when he comes," meaning the Paraclete, will fill up the teaching, besides bringing to your remembrance the things now said by me. And again he adds: "But when the Paraclete comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, that one will testify about me." By all these words he plainly shows that the one sent by him, who is going to testify about him, is other than himself.

5.9| He works out the argument still further by what he goes on to say: "But I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away. For if I do not go away, the Paraclete will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you." In saying that he himself would go away, he was indicating by these words his passion and his ascent to the Father afterward.

5.10| Who, then, is so foolish that after so many sayings he would say that the one who speaks these words and the one about whom he speaks them are one and the same, when he hears him plainly marking off that he is telling the truth, and what the truth is, showing that unless he himself went away, the Holy Spirit would never come?

5.11| And if he distinguishes at one time that the Father will send the Holy Spirit and at another that he himself will, he surely teaches nothing contradictory; for all that he "sees the Father doing, the Son likewise does these things," and "as he hears, he judges." Therefore it is by the Father's judgment, when the Father also wishes it, that at that time the Son, and the Savior through him, sends to his disciples the Spirit of truth, the Paraclete, to encourage and console them for what they suffered from those who harried them as they proclaimed the gospel;

5.12| and not only to encourage them, but also to teach them the whole truth of the new covenant, which they were not able to be taught by the Savior when he spoke these things to them, because they were still enslaved to the Jewish way of training.

5.13| He fulfilled these things in deeds after his resurrection from the dead. After it he said to Mary, "Do not touch me, for I have not yet ascended to my Father"; and after this, having ascended to the Father, he appeared to the disciples, the Holy Spirit having been sent out and being with him, ready and standing by for the service to which he was appointed, at which time he even allows them to touch him.

5.14| For then "he breathed on them," and then he gave them a certain part of the gift of the Holy Spirit, the part that effects the forgiveness of sins; for "there are distributions of gifts," of which he then, being with them and present to them, bestowed a part, and afterward he filled them with greater and more perfect power. Concerning this he said to them in the Acts of the Apostles: "But you will receive power from on high when the Holy Spirit comes upon you"; and then he promised that they would be baptized in the Holy Spirit, which was also fulfilled after his ascension, on the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit was sent to them in accordance with his words.

5.15| Since the matters concerning this passage need more elaboration and clarity, this is not the time to go through them with exact examination, for that is not what lies before us either; but it was necessary to show that the Paraclete Spirit is other than the Son, which was demonstrated in various ways by the Savior's own teaching, among other places where he said: "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. But when that one comes, the Spirit of truth, he will tell you the whole truth;

5.16| for he will not speak from himself, but whatever he hears, and he will announce to you the things that are coming. That one will glorify me, because he will take from what is mine and announce it to you." In these words he again promises that his disciples will learn from the Holy Spirit what he himself did not teach, speaking as of another in "when that one comes," and "for he will not speak from himself," and "that one will glorify me," and "because he will take from what is mine." To suppose that the Savior says all this about himself is a terrible and hard-to-cure silliness.

5.17| No, plainly through these words the Savior himself taught that the Holy Spirit is other than himself, surpassing in honor and glory and precedence, and superior and higher than every intellectual and rational essence (which is why he is included with the holy and thrice-blessed Triad),

5.18| yet subordinate to him. This he showed by saying, "For he will not speak from himself, but whatever he hears he will speak"; and from whom he will hear he makes clear by saying, "He will take from what is mine and announce it to you," that is, from my treasury; for in him "are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge."

5.19| He himself, then, as the only-begotten Son, receives from the Father and hears from the Father, while the Holy Spirit is supplied by him; that is why he says, "He will take from what is mine and announce it to you." Now the God over all is also called spirit, as the Savior himself taught when he said, "God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth," and he will truly be himself holy of holies, and "resting among the holy." But the Son of God also is spirit, and he too is a spirit, holy of holies, if indeed he is the image of the invisible;

5.20| therefore it is said of him, "Now the Lord is the Spirit," and "the Spirit before our face is Christ the Lord."

5.21| But since the Holy Spirit is other than the Father and the Son, the Savior, showing his distinct character, called him the Paraclete, marking him off from the common sharing of the name by the title of Paraclete, since the angelic powers too may be called spirits; for it has been said, "who makes his angels spirits." But none of these can be made equal to the Paraclete Spirit. That is why he alone is included with the holy and thrice-blessed Triad,

5.22| the Savior having commanded his apostles to hand on the mystery of his rebirth to all who from the nations believe in him in no other way than by baptizing "them into the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit": the Father having authority and bestowing the grace, the Son ministering it (for "grace and truth came through Jesus Christ"), and the Holy Spirit, namely the Paraclete, being himself the one supplied according to the distributions of gifts in him: "for to one is given through the Spirit a word of wisdom, to another a word of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith in the same Spirit," and the rest of the gifts listed alongside these.

6.1| The Holy Spirit, then, is by nature at home only among the holy, being supplied through the Son to those whom the Father judges fit. And this would be his work, to sanctify all to whom he imparts one or more of the gifts in him, so that prophets and apostles and every soul beloved of God, and probably also the better and divine powers, share in the holiness that comes from him. But the Son, alone honored with the Father's godhead, would be the one who makes and fashions the existence of all created things, visible and invisible, and indeed the very existence of the Paraclete Spirit; for all things "came to be through him,

6.2| 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." But the God beyond the universe and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, an ineffable good, better than all reasoning and thought and every utterance and reflection, who is at once the leader of all things, whatever and of whatever kind they may be, and of the Holy Spirit himself, and also of the only-begotten Son, is rightly proclaimed alone as the God "over all and through all and in all," by the apostle who says, "One Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all."

6.3| And he alone would be styled "one God and Father" "of our Lord Jesus Christ," while the Son is "the only-begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father"; but the Paraclete Spirit is neither God nor Son, since he did not receive his coming-to-be from the Father in the same way as the Son, but is one of the things that came to be through the Son, because "all things came to be through him, and without him not one thing came to be."

6.4| These mysteries, then, are handed down to the holy and catholic church in some such way through the divine words. But Marcellus, confounding everything, at one time goes right into the whole depth of Sabellius, at another tries to renew the heresy of Paul of Samosata, and at another is plainly convicted of being a Jew; for he introduces a single subsistence with three persons, as with three names, saying that God and the Word within him and the Holy Spirit are the same.

6.5| Then, passing from here to the apostolic statements of theology concerning Christ, he again uses distorted interpretations. For when the divine apostle speaks expressly of the Son of God as God and says, "who is the image of the unseen God, the firstborn of all creation, because in him were created all things 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 for him; and he himself is before all things, and all things hold together in him,"

7.1| this marvelous man, falling again upon the flesh, declares that it is the image of the invisible God, not hearing that "who is the image" is put in the masculine form. For having fitted the "who," I do not know how, to the flesh, he said that the flesh is meant, as if it were itself the image "of the invisible God." And again he says that "he is before all things" was said of the flesh, not ashamed to take the "he" as applying to the flesh.

7.2| He says too that "firstborn of all creation" was said on account of the flesh, and persists unswervingly in claiming that "the things in the heavens and on the earth," "the visible and the invisible," were created in the flesh; nor is he abashed to say that thrones and lordships and rulers and authorities were counted worthy of creation in Christ through the Savior's flesh. But since in the writing before this I have already set out Marcellus' statements on these matters, out of regard for due proportion in my treatise I shall be content with their own testimony. That such an account of the apostolic words is distorted and forced, I do not think needs further demonstration, since the shamelessness of the interpretation is plain to anyone.

8.1| Yet after saying so much about the Savior's flesh, he does not keep even it safe for us; would that he had at least kept a pious reasoning about it! As it is, after everything he has said about it, he declares that at the consummation of the ages it is left behind, deprived of the Word, writing thus: (No. 104) "If, then, he agrees that the flesh profits him nothing, how is it possible that what is of the earth and profits nothing should also be with the Word in the ages to come, as if it were of benefit to him?"

9.1| And he says the same a second time in another place, saying: (No. 104) "If, then, Paul said that at the time of the restoration of all things even the creation itself will be changed from slavery to freedom (for he says, 'that the creation itself will be set free from slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God'), how could it still be possible for the form of a slave, which the Word took up, being a form of a slave, to be with the Word?"

10.1| You see what words he has dared to utter against the flesh of our Savior, without considering that even before the ascension into the heavens, while it was still on earth before the passion, he glorified it on the mountain in this way, showing to his three chosen disciples alone an image of his kingdom, so that his face flashed like lightning and gleams of light shone out

10.2| (for the divine Scripture says, "His face became like the sun, and his garments white as light"); nor did he understand what sort of body of glory of Christ the divine apostle was speaking of, and how he taught that our bodies too will be conformed to that body, saying, "who will transform the body of our humiliation to be conformed to the body of his glory," nor did he grasp in what way the mortal will be swallowed up by life, as the apostle wrote, saying, "in which we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed over, so that the mortal may be swallowed up by life." Being ignorant of these things, he insists that the Word will become one and the same with God as he was before, and that the flesh, left behind by the Word, will become something or other, I know not what.

10.3| Hear, then, how he puts it: (No. 108) "But if someone should ask about this flesh, which has become immortal in the Word, what do we say to him? That we think it unsafe to lay down doctrine about what we have not learned exactly from the divine Scriptures. For how is it possible to do this for those who are also overturning the doctrines of others?"

10.4| "But we shall say to those who want to learn from us an exact account of this that, trusting the holy apostle, we know that we ought to see the hidden mysteries in the way he himself said: 'For now we see through a mirror in a riddle, but then face to face,' and what follows. So do not ask me about what I have not clearly learned from the divine Scripture; for this reason I shall not be able to speak clearly about that divine flesh which had fellowship with the Word." Then the man who admits that he can say nothing and has learned nothing from the Scripture

10.5| has made such pronouncements about the flesh, taking them neither from the Scripture nor from others nor learning them from the church, but molding for himself and devising out of his own reflection an alien offspring, foreign to the truth, without bearing in mind the Scripture that says, "Do not add to his words, lest he rebuke you and you be found a liar," and "Woe to those who prophesy from their own heart."

10.6| See, then, into how great an impiety he has fallen. For the man who has cast the whole theology of the pre-existing only-begotten Son down upon the flesh, and has proclaimed it in these very words a crown of victory (for he said thus: (No. 114) that the Word of God made human flesh immortal through the resurrection, and, binding it on like a crown of victory, sits at the right hand of the Father), this same man says that it will be left desolate and orphaned at the end of all things, uniting the Word with God but separating the flesh from the Word's activity, and leaving it, I do not know how, immortal and incorruptible but lifeless and without activity from the Word.

10.7| And he again tries to establish this from divine readings that he has not understood. For when our Savior said to those who did not understand his teachings about his flesh and blood, "Does this scandalize you? What if you see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life,"

11.1| he did not attend to the sense of the saying and supposed that the Savior was rejecting the flesh which he had taken from the holy virgin. Then from this he tries to establish that after the consummation of the universe the Word who is in God will leave the flesh deprived of his own activity. He says, at any rate, in these very words: (No. 104) "For concerning the flesh that he had when he conversed with the disciples, he speaks thus: 'Does this scandalize you? What if you see the Son of Man going away to where he was before? The Spirit gives life; the flesh profits nothing.' If, then, he agrees that the flesh profits him nothing, how is it possible that what is of the earth and profits nothing should also be with the Word in the ages to come, as if it were of benefit to him?" You see how much distortion of the Gospel text he has used, because he does not understand the saving word of the Word, how it was said and for what reason.

12.1| But you, taking up the Gospel writing, see how our Savior's whole teaching was not about the flesh he had taken but about the mystical body and blood. For when he had fed the crowds with the five loaves, and performed this great wonder for those who saw it, most of the Jews, belittling what had happened, said to him, "What sign, then, do you do, that we may see and believe?" And then they put the manna in the wilderness alongside it, saying, "Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, as it is written: 'He gave them bread from heaven to eat.'"

12.2| To this the Savior answered: "Amen, amen, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven." Then he adds, "I am the bread of life," and again, "I am the bread that descended from heaven," and again, "The bread that I will give is my body." And he adds again: "Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in yourselves.

12.3| Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.

12.4| Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him." As he went through these and such things in a more mystical way, some of his disciples said, "This word is hard; who can listen to it?" To them the Savior answered, saying: "Does this scandalize you? What if you see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before?

12.5| It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life." By these words he trained them to hear spiritually what had been said about his flesh and blood. "Do not suppose," he says, "that I mean the flesh I am clothed in, as if it had to be eaten, nor imagine that I command you to drink perceptible, bodily blood; but know well that 'the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life,'" so that the very words and sayings are the flesh and blood. One who partakes of these continually, as if nourished with heavenly bread, shares in the heavenly life.

12.6| "Let it not scandalize you, then," he says, "what I have said about eating my flesh and drinking my blood, and do not let the ready hearing of what I said about flesh and blood trouble you; for these things 'profit nothing' when heard in a perceptible way, but it is the Spirit who gives life to those who are able to hear spiritually."

12.7| But the new interpreter of the Gospel lessons, understanding none of this, hear how he writes, in these very syllables: (No. 105) "Touching the human body and showing it to those who saw, he said: 'Does this scandalize you? What if you see the Son of Man going up to where he was before? The Spirit gives life; the flesh profits nothing.'"

12.8| To him one could say: And where do you get, noble sir, the addition of what is not found in the Gospel writing? For to say that the Savior, "touching the human body and showing it to those who saw," said "Does this scandalize you?" is something you mold on your own, and you dare to make the addition out of yourself. Having taken this daring from himself, he thinks he can establish from it that the Savior's flesh will be left deprived of the Word's activity, saying: (No. 104) "If, then, he agrees that the flesh profits him nothing, how is it possible that what is of the earth and profits nothing should also be with the Word in the ages to come, as if it were of benefit to him?" Thus, in ignorance and without knowledge, he rushed to misinterpret the Gospel saying. And he likewise produced distorted explanations of the apostolic words.

13.1| For example, in the Acts of the Apostles, when Peter said of our Savior, "whom heaven must receive until the times of restoration," not grasping the sense of the saying, he tries from this to circumscribe the kingdom of Christ, claiming that a certain limit and deadline for his kingdom is indicated by the words "until the times of restoration."

13.2| He says that the same point is confirmed by the Psalm that says, "Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies as a footstool for your feet," and that the apostle Paul said for the same reason, "For he must reign until he puts his enemies under his feet"; for he supposed that "until" and "up to" indicate a limited time. Hear, then, how he writes word for word: (No. 104) "For it is for this reason, it seems to me, that God the almighty, the Master, says to him, 'Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies as a footstool for your feet.' Seeming to separate him by activity alone on account of the human flesh, and as it were fixing for him a certain stated time of sitting at the right hand, he speaks to him thus: 'until I put your enemies as a footstool for your feet.'"

13.3| "And the holy apostle, interpreting this prophetic saying of David more clearly for us, said something like this: 'For he must reign until he puts his enemies as a footstool for his feet.' His administration and kingdom as a man therefore seems to have a certain limit." And after other things he adds: (No. 104) "And for this reason the Acts of the Apostles teach concerning this man, whom the Word of God took up and, having taken him up, sits at the right hand of the Father, speaking thus: 'whom heaven must receive until the times of restoration,' and these too fixing, as it were, a limit and deadline."

13.4| To these words he adds after other things: (No. 104) "How, then, could it still be possible for the form of a slave, which the Word took up, being a form of a slave, to be with the Word? Clearly and expressly, then, the inspired Paul has said that the administration of the Word in the flesh, which came about for our sake, took place within a brief time between the ages past and the ages to come, and that it has an end as it has a beginning, speaking somewhat like this: 'Then the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God and the Father.'"

14.1| In all this Marcellus did not know the "body of glory" of the Son and denies his endless kingdom, not noticing that "until" is customarily taken in a way peculiar to a certain usage of the Scripture. So, for instance, the Savior said to his disciples, "Behold, I am with you through all the days, until the consummation of the age," not abolishing his being with them even after the consummation, but teaching that he will now be with them until the consummation, watching over and guarding all who are his disciples, and after the consummation will be with them in a better way, making them sharers of his kingdom.

14.2| So too "Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies as a footstool for your feet," and "whom heaven must receive until the times of restoration," are not said as though he will no longer be there afterward, but as though at the time of the consummation he is going to rise from the Father's throne and make a second descent from heaven, about which the apostle teaches when he says: "that the Lord himself, with a command, with the voice of an archangel and with the trumpet of God, will come down from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so we shall always be with the Lord." The Savior, then, must remain in heaven and sit at the right hand of the Father "until the consummation," and at the very consummation of the universe, making his glorious second coming, he will take his saints to be with him always, not for a certain time but for an endless age; for "so," he says, "we shall always be with the Lord."

14.3| The saints, then, who will be with him always, will enjoy his kingdom in the announced kingdom of the heavens. But the noble man, not understanding this, when the divine apostle said of our Savior, "For he must reign until he puts his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death," and again, "But when all things have been subjected to him,

14.4| then he himself will also be subjected to the one who subjected all things to him, so that God may be all in all," using this same habit, misinterprets these words also, hearing somehow the Son's being subjected to the Father as the Word's being united to God. And when was he not united to him, if indeed he was the Word existing eternally in God? How then does it say, "then he will be subjected" "to God and the Father"?

15.1| One must note that the apostle said that all things will be subjected to the Son himself, and that by the same subjection he himself will be subjected to the Father, teaching: "But when all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to the one who subjected all things to him,

15.2| so that God may be all in all." He does not hear this; for it does not say that God will be "all things" in the Son, but "in all"; which would rather seem to indicate a certain joining and union of all, if God is going to be all in all. But he interprets the Son's subjection as the union of the Word, who will become one and the same with the Father as he was before, as he himself said.

15.3| If, then, he defines the subjection to the Father as a union, it would follow that the subjection of all things to the Son also signifies the same union with him, so that the Son would no longer exist by himself, nor would the multitudes of the saved who are to be subjected to him live a life of their own, but a kind of smearing together and confusion of the whole would come about, with the Son and all the rest becoming one and the same, and not only they but God himself as well.

15.4| For if all things are united to the Son, and the Son to the Father, in being subjected, see what follows from the argument.

15.5| But just as the apostle did not mean a union when he said that "all things" will be subjected to the Son, but the obedience of willing choice and the glory and honor which all things will render to him as Savior and King of the universe, in the same way the Son's being subjected to the Father would signify nothing else than the glory and honor and reverence and splendor and willing obedience which he too will render to "God and the Father," once he has made all worthy of the Father's godhead.

15.6| For in the meantime, since they are not yet worthy of this, he has taken the lead himself, and like a common savior of all he reigns with a kingdom that corrects the imperfect and heals those needing healing, bringing the enemies of the kingdom under his feet. The Psalm shows this in these words: "The Lord said to my Lord, Sit on my right hand until I set your enemies as a footstool for your feet,"

15.7| and when he puts the enemies under his feet and establishes those worthy of his kingdom in endless life, then death, the enemy of all, will be destroyed last; for when no one is dying any longer, and those worthy of the kingdom are then living in eternal life, death will likely be idle, having no one left to put to death.

15.8| When these things have been made ready in this way, all the saints will be subjected to the Son of God in a saving subjection: they will live eternally by him who is life, become wise by him who is wisdom, and be made rational by him who is Word. In this way too they will become christs, anointed with the Spirit of his fragrance, and will be shown to be luminaries of the new age, supplied with their lights from him; they will be sons of God, adorned with the Spirit of adoption; and those who are subjected to him will share in his other powers, so as to become righteous from his righteousness and holy from his holiness. And since "the Word was God," he will not begrudge them even divinity.

15.9| So the apostle will be proved true in having foretold that the saints will become "heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ." Indeed they will also have heavenly bodies like the sun and moon and stars, and in this too will share in his glory;

15.10| which the same apostle shows when he says: "from which we also await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform the body of our humiliation to be conformed to the body of his glory, according to the working of his power to subject all things to himself." You see how by his power to subject all things to himself he will transform our body into conformity with "the body of his glory," and will make ours so too.

15.11| But if ours will be conformed to "the body of his glory," how much more will the body of his glory share in his kingdom? And if ours will be swallowed up by life, as the apostle testified, saying, "in which we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed over, so that the mortal may be swallowed up by life," how much more will his body, as having served his godhead, be swallowed up, not by life alone as ours is, but by his godhead as well? Let no one, then, ask or be in doubt within himself what one ought to think about the saving body, when he hears Paul say plainly that "the mortal" must be "swallowed up by life," and that our body will be conformed to "the body of the glory of Christ, according to the working of his power to subject all things to himself."

15.12| So he will subject all things to himself; and we must understand the saving subjection in some such way, in which "the Son himself will be subjected to the one who subjected all things to him," making a subjection unspeakable and ineffable and fitting for him alone, when, having surrounded all who are under him like a chorus, he will bring to "God and the Father" the glory and the honor and the reverence and the majesty, offering them as to the cause of all good things.

16.1| Then the conclusion of the apostolic teaching will reach its end, in saying "so that God may be all in all." This too we shall understand from another promise, in which God himself says, "I will dwell in them and walk among them, and I will be God to them, and they shall be my people." But now, in the present age, the promise goes forward only to a few who are worthy and in part, according to "we know in part and we prophesy in part"; but after the consummation of the universe, when the new age has come, he will no longer dwell in a few, but in all who are then worthy of the kingdom of the heavens.

16.2| So it will be "all in all": that is, "dwelling in them and walking among them" and "their God," not disdaining to be their God and making all his own as a people. He will be in them as he is said to be in the Son himself, as the Son teaches when he says, "The Father is in me and I in the Father." And he will be "all" in them by offering himself to all, in the measure in which each one's capacity can share in his godhead; the thrice-blessed hope and the endless, incorruptible life will be established in this end, in which God will be "all in all," filling all with the gleams of his godhead, a light beyond telling, while the Son, exulting and rejoicing in his achievement, placing around himself like a crown those who through him have been judged worthy of blessedness, will go on, under the Father's oversight, in the ageless and endless kingdom, the oracles about him being fulfilled at that time, among them those which the angel Gabriel spoke to the all-holy virgin about the one to be born of her, that "he will reign forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end."

16.3| Reigning then, the Son of God will hand over to his Father all who are ruled by him, without ceasing from his kingdom or withdrawing from it. For the divine apostle did not say that he will cease from his kingdom (otherwise he would have written the opposite of what Gabriel prophesied to the virgin, that he will reign forever and of his kingdom there will be "no end"), but that he will hand over "the kingdom," that is, those ruled by him, "to God and the Father."

16.4| For when all have been brought to perfection under him, he will hand them over to the Father, rejoicing as it were in his achievement, as one who has received a deposit; which he himself teaches when he says, "All things have been handed over to me by my Father." Therefore, consistently, as a good guardian he will bring the deposit safe and sound in every respect and hand it to God, presenting to him, like a high priest, all who are consecrated under him, clothed in white and shining as in the most brilliant robes with the incorruptible bodies of the resurrection, so that they may not only enjoy the kingdom under him but also be filled with the Father's ineffable good things.

16.5| For thus, according to the apostle, "God will be all in all," when the Son brings those he rules to him, in order that this whole may come about, I mean that the Father be "all in all." For as he was before in the Son, according to "the Father is in me and I in the Father," so then he will be in all who have been perfected under the Son.

16.6| For the apostle did not say that the Son will cease from his kingdom and God will reign instead, but that the Son will hand over "the kingdom to God and the Father," displaying the deposit safe and sufficient for the service and priesthood of the Father, and that God will be "all in all," as God dwelling and walking "in them" and becoming everything to them. For to some he will be master, to others king, to others something else; but to all together he will be God, becoming everything to them by the divine virtues and powers that are in him.

16.7| This is the end of the thrice-blessed hope which the great apostle outlined when he said, "so that God may be all in all." But in all he will be all in proportion to each one's capacity, supplying to all the various aspects of his godhead; and to his only-begotten Son alone he will preserve the exceptional, paternal glory and honor and kingdom, which is shared with none of the rest.

17.1| If these things must be sealed with a prophetic seal, I shall use for firm confirmation of what has been said the testimony of the prophetic spirit through Ezekiel the prophet, who prophesies these very things in such words: "Thus says the Lord, the Lord: Behold, I will seek my sheep and visit them. As a shepherd seeks his flock on a day when there is darkness and cloud in the midst of sheep that have been scattered, so will I seek out my sheep." And after other things: "And I will save my sheep, and they shall no longer be for plunder. And I will judge between ram and ram.

17.2| And I will raise up over them a shepherd, and he will shepherd them, my servant David; and he will be their shepherd. And I, the Lord, will be their God, and David a prince in their midst. I the Lord have spoken, and I will make a covenant with David." And after other things he repeats the same prophecy, saying: "And I will deliver them from all their lawless deeds in which they sinned, and I will cleanse them, and they shall be my people, and I will be their God; and my servant David shall be prince in their midst, and he shall be shepherd of them all."

17.3| And again he adds: "And David my servant shall be their prince forever." Observe in all this that God is said to be, not shepherd or prince, but God of those who will be deemed worthy of the blessed end; while of these same people David is prophesied to become prince and shepherd, the prophecy here hiding Christ under the name of David because he came "from his seed."

17.4| That this is so is clear from the fact that David had died before the time at which these words were spoken. More plainly the prophet Daniel too prophesies these things, naming the Christ of God a son of man openly in this way, just as the writing of the holy Gospels is accustomed to call him. He speaks in this manner: "I was watching in a vision of the night, and behold, with the clouds of heaven one like a son of man was coming, and he reached the Ancient of Days, and was brought before him. And the rule and the honor and the kingdom were given to him; all peoples, tribes, and tongues shall serve him;

17.5| his authority is an eternal authority that shall not pass away, nor shall his kingdom be destroyed." You see that in these words too the prophet shows the incorruptible, ageless, and endless kingdom to belong, not to the Word who is in God, but to the Son of Man, and teaches plainly that the Son of Man, who received the incorruptible kingdom from the Ancient of Days, that is, from his Father, is other than the Ancient of Days.

17.6| But Marcellus defines them as one and the same, a single subsistence underlying two names; and further he dares to circumscribe his kingdom, and shamelessly declares that there will be an end of the kingdom of Christ after the time of judgment, writing in this fashion: (No. 101) "The apostle here uncovers for us a very great mystery, saying that there will be an end of the kingdom of Christ;

17.7| and the end then, when all things are subjected under his feet." And he elaborates the argument somewhere in these words: (No. 102) "We said in our preceding statements, using proofs from the divine Scriptures, that our Master Christ had a beginning of his kingdom." And he adds: (No. 102) "And in general one can easily produce countless sayings as testimony to show that the man received a beginning of kingdom through the Word."

17.8| "If, then, he received a beginning of kingdom not more than four hundred years ago, it is nothing strange if the apostle says that the one who obtained this kingdom so short a time ago will hand the kingdom over to God."

17.9| And after other things he adds, saying: (No. 103) "What, then, are we to learn about the human flesh which the Word took up for our sake not quite four hundred years ago? Will the Word have it in the ages to come also, or only until the time of judgment?" Such things Marcellus dared to say; but the prophets of God, who define the kingdom of Christ as endless, say that after the time of judgment he will hold the rule of the new age. For see how the prophet Ezekiel, having set up a judgment of the sheep of God, sets David over them after their judgment as shepherd and prophesies that the same will be their prince.

17.10| And Daniel, having first said, "I was looking on until thrones were set in position, and an Ancient of Days was seated; his garment was white like snow, and the hair on his head like clean wool; his throne a flame of fire, its wheels burning fire. A river of fire streamed along before him; thousands of thousands ministered to him, and myriads of myriads stood in attendance before him; the court took its seat, and books were opened," having first seen these things, next sees the Son of Man on the clouds of heaven approaching the Ancient of Days and receiving the incorruptible kingdom. Then too, therefore, he will hold the rule to reign over those worthy of blessedness, in a way surpassing and better than now.

17.11| The Gospel bears witness to this, in the passage where the Savior himself seals the prophetic words, delivering to his disciples the discourses on the consummation, in which he taught this, saying: "But when the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory; and all the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate them from one another, as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will set the sheep on his right and the kids on his left. Then the king will say to those on his right: Come, you blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world." Note how these words agree with what is said in the prophecy about the judgment of sheep and rams, and how the Son of Man is introduced as king after the judgment of the sheep, and God is his Father.

17.12| For this he himself taught when he said, "Then the king will say to those on his right, Come, you blessed of my Father," in correspondence with the David named in the prophecy, whom the passage teaches will be shepherd and prince of the sheep, being about to shepherd and rule the flocks of God under the oversight of God.

17.13| And it is necessary to attend to this too, that what is said by the apostle in "when he abolishes every rule and every authority and power" was hinted at by the prophecy in saying, "And I will destroy evil beasts from the land."

17.14| For what could the beasts that formerly troubled the sheep be, other than the opposing powers? When these have been removed and the new and fresh age has been cleansed of all evil, it will have as king the Son of Man (or, according to the prophecy, which hints in a hidden way, David as shepherd and prince, because he came "from the seed" of David), but God is said to be possessed by them not as shepherd or prince but as God himself, in a conception higher than shepherd and prince and king, who by the magnificence of his divine power will lead not the sheep only but the shepherd himself. For "my servant David," he says, "will be shepherd to them; and I, the Lord, will be their God"; and he calls David "servant" on account of the "form of a servant" which our Savior and Lord took "from the seed of David."

18.1| And this was the thrice-blessed end according to which our Savior pledges the promised kingdom of the heavens to those worthy of it: the God over all and his Father, the highest good of all, will give himself to those who are ruled under the Son, becoming "all in all." This our Savior and Lord himself shows again, sending up the great prayer to "God and the Father" on behalf of his followers, in which he asks, saying: "that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be one in us, so that the world may believe that you sent me.

18.2| And the glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me, that they may be perfected into one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them as you loved me.

18.3| Father, those whom you have given me, I want them to be where I am, with me, so that they may behold the glory that you have given me." This is the great intercession of our Savior for us, that we may be with him wherever he is, and behold his glory, and that he may love us as his Father loved him, and that what the Father bestowed on him he may give to us also, and the glory he gave him he may give to us also; making us all one, so that we are no longer many but all of us one, united to his godhead and to the glory of the kingdom, not by a smearing together into one essence but by the perfecting of virtue to its height.

18.4| For this he taught by saying, "that they may be perfected." For thus, made perfect by him in wisdom and understanding and righteousness and piety and every virtue, we shall be joined to the unspeakable light of the Father's godhead, and shall ourselves become lights from our union with him, and shall be completed as sons of God by participation in the fellowship of his only-begotten Son, by sharing in the gleams of his godhead.

19.1| And in this way indeed we shall all become one with the Father and the Son. For as he said that he and the Father are one, saying, "I and the Father are one," so he prays that all of us, in imitation of him, may share the same unity; not, as Marcellus has it, with the Word being united to God and joined to him in essence, but as the truth itself bore witness, the Savior saying: "The glory that you gave me I have given to them, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me, that they may be perfected into one." For thus too at that time the apostolic saying will reach its end, which said, "so that God may be all in all."

19.2| And since Marcellus, and those who are Sabellians in a similar way, are accustomed to use three sayings in trying to show that the Father and the Son are one, at one time harping on "I and the Father are one," at another on "The Father is in me and I in the Father" and "He who has seen me has seen the Father," to "I and the Father are one" we must bring what lies before us, in which he prays for his disciples that they all too may obtain the same union; for he says, "that they may be one as we are one;

19.3| I in them and you in me, that they may be perfected into one." And to "The Father is in me and I in the Father" we shall set again his own saying, in which, praying for them, he said, "As you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, and I have given them the glory that you gave me." By this he plainly shows that the Father is in him in the same way as he wishes the Father to be in us; not because the Father and he are one in a single subsistence, but because, the Father having imparted to him his own glory, he too in like manner imparts to his own, imitating the Father.

19.4| Therefore he says, "And I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one," "As you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us." So the Father and the Son are one in the fellowship of glory, and by imparting this glory to his disciples he deemed them worthy of the same union.

20.1| And again, the Father was in him and he in the Father in the same way as the divine apostle teaches about all who are worthy of the heavenly kingdom, saying: "then God will be all in all," just as "I will dwell in them and walk among them" was said. And we too "live and move and have our being in him." And all this is said about us, who exist and live each with our own subsistence and have nothing in common with the Father's godhead.

20.2| Why then should one wonder if similar sayings are also applied to the Son? They do not do away with his subsistence, nor teach that he is himself Father and Son, but show the Father's peculiar and exceptional honor and glory toward him, belonging to the divine fellowship of the only-begotten.

21.1| So too "he who has seen" him "has seen the Father," because he alone and no one else is "the image of the invisible God" and "the radiance of his glory and the exact imprint of his subsistence," and exists "in the form of God," according to the apostolic teachings. For just as someone who has looked at the emperor's portrait, made in exact likeness of him, takes the impress of the features of his form from the painting and so pictures the emperor to himself, in the same way, or rather in a manner beyond all speech and past every comparison, the one who with a clear mind, and with the eyes of the soul purified and enlightened by the Holy Spirit, has fixed his gaze on the greatness of the power of the only-begotten Son and Lord, and has pondered how "in him dwells all the fullness of the Father's godhead," and how "all things came to be through him," and "in him were created all things in the heavens and on the earth, the visible and the invisible," and has reasoned that the Father begot him alone as only-begotten Son, made like him in every respect, will in power see the Father himself through the Son, as he is beheld by those who are pure in mind, of whom it is said, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."

21.2| Let this, then, serve as an exercise in summary, since we set ourselves brevity as our aim. But since the matters belonging to this subject call for very full working out, whoever cares to grasp them exactly will fix his mind on the readings of the Gospels and the apostles and will gather their whole sense from them at leisure. As for the countless other things heaped together without connection in Marcellus' treatise, a great many of them said contrary to the intent of Scripture, and others forced and keeping no coherence, I consider that the refutation common to them all has been made plain to right-minded readers by what we have examined, and with this I shall be content.

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