On Ecclesiastical Theology

I thought that the citations of Marcellus's own words, which I collected in the preceding books, were enough to refute themselves. For they contained so open and shameless a denial of the Son of God that, even without any rebuttal, the teaching in them would be something to flee for those nurtured by the church of God.

But since I considered that some might perhaps be drawn away from the church's theology by the abundance of citation the man uses to confirm what he thought would help him, I decided I must now set out the refutation of these too, so that everyone may learn that not one word of inspired Scripture gave testimony in agreement with him as he denied the Son of God, but all openly spoke against him, correcting straightforwardly his wrong interpretations of the divine Scriptures. Along with the exposure of these I shall join the theology of our Saviour; I have nothing newer to say, nor any wise discovery of my own, but I put forward the incorrupt teaching of the church of God, which it received from the beginning from those who were eyewitnesses and ear-witnesses of the Word, and guards.

Before examining these, since I found in the middle of his treatise that he attacks Sabellius, I was astonished at the man's foolishness, that he did not spare abusing the one whom he ought to have praised above all, as one who had become of the same opinion and mind as himself; and I did not think it right to pass over the matter in silence, but to give a refutation of this too in the present writing. For his slandering of God's ministers, even if it brought blame on him and good repute to those freed from communion with him,

still had some plausibility, since he seemed to disparage what was not dear to him; but to strike himself unawares by abusing one of the same mind seems to me to belong at once to shamelessness and insensibility. That this is so he would himself be the proof, introducing God as Son-Father in the manner of Sabellius, if not in bare words, at least in reality, by abolishing the hypostasis of the Son and defining one God, and calling him his own father and in turn his own son. For granting that the Word is in God,

and defining him as one and the same with God, he said that God is called his father, and that the Word is his son, not being truly a son in subsistence of substance, but being properly and truly a word. At any rate he points out that he is not a word loosely, but is properly and truly a word, and nothing other than a word.

But if nothing other, it is clear that he was not properly and truly a son either, but named loosely, only as a word and a name. And saying that the Word is one and the same with God, he declared that the one who became flesh and was born of the Virgin was God himself. This is what the church of God long, long ago rejected when Sabellius uttered it, numbering him among the godless heretics.

For the sons of the Jews were the first to receive the confession of one God, in distinction from the polytheistic error of the Greeks. But to know the same God also as Father of an only-begotten Son is a special privilege that saving grace has given to the church. And it knows Jesus Christ alone as Son, and no one else, not according to the birth of the flesh which he assumed (for it has been taught to call this the form of a servant and son of man), but according to the birth from God the Father himself before all ages, unknown to all; by which the fullness of the Father's divinity made the Son himself to subsist as God: not a divinity of his own acquiring and separated from the Father, nor one without beginning and unbegotten, nor drawn from somewhere else, foreign and alien to the Father, but filled from the Father's own participation, poured out upon him as from a spring. For the great apostle taught that in him alone dwells “all the fullness” of the Father's “divinity.” Therefore one God is proclaimed to the church of God, “and there is no other besides him”; and one only-begotten Son of God, image of the Father's divinity, and for that reason God.

Most people, unable to grasp this theology, devised various paths of error: (1) some granting that the Son is God, but denying the man whom he assumed; (2) others supposing him a mere man, ignorant of the God in him; (3) others, for fear of seeming to introduce a second God, defining the Father and the Son as the same. Turning away from these, the church of God glories in the gospel proclamation of the truth, boasting that it has one God over all, and enrolling itself under one only-begotten Son, God from God, Jesus Christ, confessing that the same became Saviour and Son of Man, being Son of God before he became Son of Man too, and having become also what he was not, through the unspeakable excess of the Father's kindness.

This is what the word of truth cries out in the person of the church. But those who deny the Son of God and say that God is one and nothing else, why do they trouble the church in vain, when they ought to join the synagogues of the Jews? And why do they pierce themselves with blasphemous words, slandering the one God with double titles, if indeed they suppose the same to be Father and the same Son? Whose father is he, if no son subsists? And whose son will he be, if the one who begot does not pre-exist? And being one, he himself will surely be the one who became flesh and suffered and completed the mortal life among men.

But the church of God drove Sabellius far away for saying this, as daring godless and impious things; and Marcellus tries to renew these things, using an unconvincing pretext. For while rightly defining God as one, he says that this God has his Word in himself, united and joined to him; and then he calls one part of the one God Father and the other Son, as though there were a double and composite substance in him.

And how much better than him, in a choice of evils, is the one who does not divide the divine power without beginning and unbegotten but confesses the same in bare words; and how much better than both is the Jew, who neither divides the one God into Father and Son like Marcellus nor introduces the same as Son-Father like Sabellius, but worships God, and knows and awaits his Christ who was proclaimed by the prophets as coming; and since they did not receive him when he came, they have paid and will pay the penalty for their unbelief toward him.

But those who pray to believe in the one who came will know these three: the one “from the seed of David” and of the holy Virgin; the Son of God who dwelt in him, pre-existing and subsisting in substance; and his Father, God, by whom he constantly confesses that he was sent. “For us,” then, “there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things,” according to the apostle, “and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things,” the pre-existing only-begotten Son of God; and third, the son of man according to the flesh, whom the Son of God assumed for our sake.

But neither was the body which he assumed the same as the Son of God who assumed it, nor would the Son of God himself be thought one and the same with the one who begot him. With these three set before us, those who grant two and put the third out of the way would be cast out of the church.

Some godless heterodox, rejecting the Saviour's flesh and saying that he was seen on earth in an appearance of fantasy, were the first to miss the mark of truth. Others, accepting the dispensation in the flesh but denying the pre-existing Son of God, devised for themselves, as I said, various trackless ways: some saying he was a mere man of the common nature of all, in no way superior except by the advantages of virtue; others teaching that the God of all himself dwelt in the body, and saying that he called himself his own son because of the human dispensation he underwent. These, granting two, God and man, robbed themselves of the third, denying the Saviour himself, the only-begotten Son of God.

Carried away with the opinion of these, Sabellius long ago and Marcellus now insisted that they knew very well the God over all, like the unbelieving Jews, and they agreed to the second, the flesh from the holy Virgin; but the third, the very head of the salvation of us all, the Son of God, they elbowed aside, though he is light and truth, and with the denial of the Son they have fallen also from the light of truth.

Hence you will hear them confessing one God and honouring the Saviour's flesh, while accepting the Son of God who dwelt in the flesh with voice and lips but rejecting him in deed. For one ought to seek a Son of God truly living and subsisting, neither the same as the body which he assumed, nor the same as God the Father. For no one would be pious in calling the God beyond all things a son (whose son will he be who is clothed with divinity without beginning and unbegotten?), nor will anyone who says that the only-begotten Son of God is himself the Father escape the penalty set for blasphemers.

Therefore the church of God, cutting straight the straight and royal road, rejected the other deviations. To its nurslings it hands on the knowledge of the divine grace, teaching them at the very mystery of rebirth to confess that they believe in one God, the Father Almighty, granting them to know this perfect, exact and complete theology, which hands on one God, separating it from the Greek and polytheistic error, knows him as Father, separating it from the Jewish teaching, and confesses him Almighty, turning away from the impiety of the godless heterodox.

None of the heterodox, at any rate, would say that the Father of Christ is himself God Almighty; just as no Jew, not knowing the only-begotten Son, would confess that God is Father, nor would a Greek say that he knows only one God. Therefore, cleansing away the error of all these, the church proclaims the one God, teaching that he is both Father and Almighty: Father of the one Christ alone, and God and creator and Lord of all the rest. So too it hands on the only-begotten Son of God, Jesus Christ, begotten from the Father before all ages, not the same as the Father, but existing and living by himself and truly being with him as Son, God from God and light from light and life from life, begotten from the Father for the salvation of all in ways unutterable and unspeakable and wholly unknown and incomprehensible to us; and not subsisting like the other begotten things, nor living a life like those begotten through him, but alone brought forth from the Father himself, and being life itself.

For it was fitting for the God over all to put forth this only-begotten offspring before every created thing and before all ages, as a kind of base and unbreakable foundation of the things that were to come into being through him. Therefore before all things that were to be he begot the Son, as a ray of light, a spring of life, and a treasury of good things, “in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge,” according to the divine apostle.

The Father, who alone is good, made the Son of such great good things to subsist: being life itself, giving life to all things; and light itself, “the true” light, enlightening every intellectual and rational substance; and Word itself and Wisdom itself, making all things subsist and governing them wisely and rationally. For these reasons he alone, and no one else, has been proclaimed and is the only-begotten Son of God.

Hence one would rightly blame those who have dared to say he is a creature, come into being from nothing like the other creatures. For how will he still be a Son? And how only-begotten of God, if he is enrolled under the same nature as the other creatures? For in this way he would rather be their brother, not the Son of God, and he will be one of the many created things, having shared in the same fellowship of creation from nothing as they.

But the divine oracles do not teach so about him. When they give teaching on the existence of created things, they testify all together that all things came into being through him: for “all things came into being through him, and without him nothing came into being,” and “in him were created all things in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible,” and “all things were created through him and for him; and he is before all things, and all things hold together in him,” according to the apostolic teachings.

But when they bring in the theology about him, they mark him off from all the rest, and know him as Lord and Master and Creator and God and Saviour of all; they declare him alone, and no one else, the only-begotten Son of God, and call him alone Wisdom and Word and Life and Light, and “image of the invisible God” and “radiance of eternal light,” and teach us to hold countless other things akin to these about him, showing in this way the relation of the Father's divinity peculiar to him alone, as to an only-begotten Son.

Therefore the Father's voice proclaimed him alone beloved Son at the streams of the Jordan, testifying with a great cry: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” And it repeated the testimony at the transfiguration on the mountain, sealing the same word.

Since, then, the God of all himself gave him this testimony, and the evangelist expressly taught that he is the only-begotten Son when he said, “No one has ever seen God; the only-begotten Son (or ‘only-begotten God’), who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known,” and the Saviour himself sealed this in his teachings about himself, saying, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life,”

the one who, after these words, defines the Son as a thing made from nothing and a creature brought forth from what is not, fails to see that he grants him only the name, while denying that he is truly Son. For one who came into being from nothing would not truly be Son of God, any more than any other of the begotten things.

But the true Son of God, brought forth from him as from a father, would rightly be called both only-begotten and beloved of the Father; and so he would also be God. For what could an offspring of God be but what is made like the one who begot it? A king founds a city but does not beget a city; he is said to beget a son, not to found one. And a craftsman would be the maker but not the father of what is made by him, but he would not be called the maker of the son born from him. So too the God of all would rightly be called Father of the Son, but founder and maker of the world.

And if anyone should find it said once somewhere in Scripture, “The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways for his works,” he must consider the sense of the saying, which I shall set out a little later, and not, like Marcellus, shake the most important dogma of the church from one phrase. For he too, having once heard that the Son is Word, fell back onto the man and rejected his existence.

How is it holy to compare with the other created things one who is testified by himself and by the Father to be Son? And how will he be only-begotten if he is counted with the multitude of things that have come into being? Indeed, by the very title “Son” he shows his natural relation to the Father, as again the name “only-begotten” touches both on his kind and on his generation itself, and on his being alone and on no other sharing his sonship. But these too seem to have suffered the same as Marcellus.

For he, out of fear of speaking of two gods, put forward the denial of the Son, rejecting his hypostasis. These, granting two hypostases, one unbegotten and the other created from nothing, set up one God; but the Son will no longer be for them either only-begotten or Lord or God, sharing nothing in the Father's divinity, but being compared with the other creatures, inasmuch as he came to subsist from nothing. But not so the church.

It proclaims the Son of God God and Lord, and teaches that he is truly Son and God: not like the many called sons and gods by title, of whom it is said, “I said, you are gods and sons of the Most High, all of you,” but inasmuch as he alone, begotten from the Father himself, “was in the form of God,” and was “the image of the invisible God and firstborn of all creation.” Therefore it has learned to honour and reverence and worship him alone, as its Lord and Saviour and God.

And if it makes them afraid that they may seem to proclaim two gods, let them know that, even when the Son is confessed by us as God, God would be one, that one alone, the only one without beginning and unbegotten, who possesses divinity as his own, and who has become the cause to the Son himself of his being and of his being such as he is; through whom the Son himself confesses that he lives, saying outright, “As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father,” and “For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself.”

Therefore he teaches that the Father is God both of us and of himself, when he says, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, and my God and your God.” And the great apostle teaches that God is head of the Son himself, and the Son head of the church, saying in one place, “and the head of Christ is God,” and in another, about the Son, “and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body.”

So he would be the ruler and head of the church, and the Father his head. Thus there is one God, the Father of the only-begotten Son, and one head even of Christ himself. And since there is one source and head, how could there be two gods, and not that one alone who claims no one higher than himself nor any other cause of himself, but possesses as his own the divinity of monarchic authority, without beginning and unbegotten, and has given the Son a share of his divinity and life? He it is who through him made all things subsist, who sends him, who commands him, who gives him charge, who teaches, who hands over all things to him, who glorifies him, who highly exalts him, who has shown him king of all, who hands over all judgment to him, who wills that we too obey him, who bids him occupy the throne at the right hand of his majesty, addressing him and saying,

“Sit at my right hand”; who, for all these reasons, is God of the Son himself too; obeying whom his only-begotten child “emptied himself, humbled himself, took the form of a servant, became obedient to death”; to whom he also prays, whom he obeys when he commands, to whom he gives thanks, whom he teaches us to regard as “the only true God,” and confesses to be greater than himself, and whom, above all this, he wishes all of us to know as his own God.

And the Father, glorifying in return the Son who so glorifies his own Father, has shown him Lord and Saviour and God of all and sharer of the throne of his kingdom. Taught this, the church of God deems it right to know him as its own God and Lord and Saviour, and as the only-begotten Son of the God over all, and to proclaim no other of the created things God, but knows this one alone as God, whom alone the Father begot from himself,

as he himself showed through Solomon, saying, “Before the mountains were settled, and before all hills, he begets me,” here hinting by mountains and hills at the divine and supramundane powers.

But if anyone should be curious how God could beget, and how he who is beyond all things will be Father, the one who said, “Do not seek what is too deep for you, and do not examine what is too high for you; think about what has been commanded you, for you have no need of hidden things,” will silence the boldness of the question. And let Paul too, who said, “O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and inscrutable his ways!”, persuade the one who dares to go further not to attempt the unreachable. Or let him first say himself, about the things he says came into being from nothing, how and in what way they came to subsist, having in no way at all existed before.

For he did not, like our craftsmen, take pre-existing matter and fashion the universe with his hands. But just as what is by nature impossible so far as men are concerned (I mean bringing what in no way exists from non-being into being) was possible for him, and he became maker of all things not in a human way but in ways unspeakable and inexpressible to us, so much more would the generation of his only-begotten be unsearchable and inscrutable, not, as one might say, to us alone, but to all the powers higher than us.

For how could things far lower in nature, placed below and very far from the unspeakable and divine substance, reach a comprehension of what is beyond and highest? And how could things that did not exist before, but were brought from non-being into being through him, have knowledge of the first generation of the one who brought them forth and became the cause of their existence? Or shall we, creatures of yesterday, clothed in “skin and flesh,” knit together “with bones and sinews,” not knowing even our own affairs, make a safe inquiry into unspeakable things, prying into how the Father begot the Son? That countless things right at our feet escape our knowledge would be clear from this.

For who could say how the soul is confined in the body, how it goes out, how it was put in at the beginning, what its kind is, what its shape, what its form, what its substance? Not yet do I speak of prying into demons, nor into the substance of angels, nor into principalities and thrones and dominions, nor into authorities and world-rulers.

And if we are at a loss in all these, why must we search out the knowledge of the divinity without beginning and unbegotten? Why ask the unreachable, how God became Father of an only-begotten Son, as if the Father's voice were not enough for us as testimony to the beloved, whom he proclaimed, saying, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; listen to him”?

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

not he who knows how he was begotten from the Father; for no one would have a share in eternal life, if indeed it is said that “no one has known the Father except the Son, nor has anyone known the Son except” the “Father” alone who begot him. The faith is enough for us, then, for salvation, which grants us to know God the Father Almighty, and to enrol ourselves under his only-begotten Son as Saviour, who besides other things handed this on too, saying: “What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit.” And “God is spirit.”

Therefore it follows to understand that what is begotten from God would be God. And as far as the God beyond all things is estranged and separated in nature from earthy flesh, so far must one understand that the manner in which the Father begot the Son is estranged from the generation of fleshly things. For he made him subsist not by emitting anything, nor by being altered, nor by being moved passibly, nor by undergoing anything at all of what we know.

For he was not a body, so that one might reckon an outflow or diminution or extension or change or turning or flowing or part or passion in him. Apart from all these, he made the generation subsist in a way unspeakable and unreckonable to us, or rather unsearchable and inscrutable to every created nature. The sun too begets its ray, and the Son is called “radiance of eternal light” and “radiance of the glory,” yet not according to the perceptible image of light; for beyond every example he made him subsist in ways unspeakable and incomprehensible, and this one, one and only-begotten.

But let every mouth be stopped of the impious and godless men sick with the error of many gods, who, casting down the special and peculiar generation of the only-begotten Son into a multitude, have proclaimed a father “of men and gods,” at once mixing men with gods, and at once introducing the same father as of one nature with them. But these, by demonic activity, let fall this impious and godless word, supposing gods of the same nature and passions as the mortal, passible and sinful race of men, and their common father surely made like his children; whereas the church's herald proclaims to all one only-begotten Son of one God, whom he made subsist for the salvation and providence of all created things.

For since the nature of created things, having its differences in bodies and bodiless things, living and lifeless, rational and irrational, mortal and immortal, could not approach the God above all and over all, nor share in the flashes of his divinity, because of the excess of its shortfall from the higher, but would have slipped away far and very far by weakness of nature, if it had not obtained God the Saviour as helper, the Father's kindness rightly set his only-begotten child over all, passing through all and presiding over all and watering them with his supplies.

For the Father who begot him showed him alone shepherd and saviour, guardian and keeper, physician and pilot of all things together in heaven and on earth, entrusting to him alone the helm of the founding and governing of the universe; as he himself teaches, saying, “All things have been handed over to me by my Father,” and again, “For the Father loves the Son, and has given all things into his hand.”

And he, like a wise pilot, having received the inheritance from the Father, mounting upon the whole world and looking up to his Father, steers and guides the universe, holding the rudder, neither overlooking the smallest of the things that need his supply nor disdaining the least; therefore he is present to all, assigning to each what is fitting, and, like a physician, supplying what is suitable for salvation in the care of all things.

Hence he rightly did not disdain human life either, but long before he gave his help to the God-loving men from of old: at one time appearing in human form to the forefathers of the Hebrews, at another ordaining suitable laws for their descendants, and then also giving out oracles through prophets to those who came after, that his divine appearing was going to shine forth on all men.

And when their time had passed, he fulfilled in deeds the outcomes of ancient oracles, and at last was present, mingling with mortal life; and he himself, the only-begotten Son of God, was as in a divine statue, the instrument of the body, conversing with the human race through teachings, healings,

and secret instructions of divine wisdom. And then by the Father's nod he went on even to the gates of death in surpassing kindness, so that he might count worthy of his grace those here too, drawing them up to the life with him. So “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself”; and he underwent the dispensation in the flesh, existing and pre-existing before it, honoured with the divinity of the Father's glory; yet he did not count “equality with God a thing to be grasped,” but “emptied himself” and, “taking the form of a servant, humbled himself, becoming obedient” to the Father “to death,” so that, “just as death” ruled over the whole race “through one man who sinned,” so also eternal life might reign through “his grace” over those who believe in him and are made known through him to God his Father.

Rightly, then, proclaiming this, the church rejected Sabellius, who had counterfeited the denial of the Son of God like some false coin, although he said, like Marcellus, that he knew one God and that there was none besides him. And the first preachers of our Saviour himself named “Ebionites”—calling them poor in understanding with a Hebrew word—those who said they knew one God and did not deny the Saviour's body, but did not know the Son's divinity.

And the man of Samosata too, although he taught that Jesus is the Christ of God and likewise confessed one God over all, like Marcellus, was declared by the church's fathers a stranger to the church of God, because he did not confess that Christ was Son of God and God before his birth in the flesh. But he was driven far from his church as impious toward Christ;

and Sabellius, as offending against the Father himself, whom he dared to call Son, suffered the same punishment as the godless heretics. Marcellus, suspecting he would suffer the same as he, found a newer device for his error, defining God and the Word in him as one, but granting him the two titles of Father and Son. But he did not escape notice or get away, being caught at last in his own nets;

but even before being caught, smitten by conscience, he set out to blaspheme Sabellius to clear away suspicion.

How he slandered the man, mentioning him by name, hear him writing this about him in these very syllables: “For Sabellius too, having slipped from the right faith, knew neither God exactly nor his holy Word. For he who did not know the Word was ignorant also of the Father. For ‘no one knows,’ he says, ‘the Father except the Son,’ that is, the Word; for the Word through himself gives the knowledge of the Father. For so too he said to those of the Jews who then thought they knew God but rejected his Word, through whom alone God is known: ‘No one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son reveals him.’ For since it was impossible to know God otherwise, he teaches men to know him through his own Word; so that Sabellius too erred, not knowing the Father and his Word exactly.”

This Marcellus wrote, clearing himself of the suspicion of Sabellianizing as far as voice and word; but in opinion and in agreement of mind with the man he is caught, pierced by the same darts as he, so that, as it seems to me, … and it would have been a matter for prayer that he not fall into the same; but now he appears to offend worse than that man. For Sabellius perhaps erred in ignorance; but Marcellus, admitting that the man erred and then pushing himself over the plain cliff of the same impiety, would deserve no pardon. But let us examine what was said.

First, since he said that neither Sabellius nor the Jews knew God because they did not know the Word, we must consider what sort of Word he supposes. For if he means the only-begotten Son of God, subsisting and living, he himself did not know him either. At once, then: though our Saviour mentioned the Son in various ways, and often called himself only-begotten Son, and never called himself Word, but taught through all the Gospels that he is Son of God (on which account he also calls Peter blessed for saying, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” and testifies that the knowledge came to him by revelation of the Father, saying, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven”), this admirable man, as though his ears were stopped, writes word for word: “And for this reason he does not name himself Son of God, but everywhere calls himself Son of Man, so that by such a confession he may prepare the man to become Son of God by adoption through fellowship with him.”

You see how he does not dare to confess him Son of God, lest he fall from Sabellius's dogma; but he calls him Son of Man because of the flesh he assumed. And through his whole treatise he names him Word, constantly pointing out that he was nothing other than Word.

And where he finds fault with Sabellius, he sets out the Saviour's words, in which he said, “No one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son reveals him,”

but as if correcting them, he names Word instead of Son, saying thus: “For ‘no one knows,’ he says, ‘the Father except the Son,’ that is, the Word”; and he adds, “for the Word through himself gives the knowledge of the Father”; and he adds, “it was impossible to know God otherwise than through his own Word,” and again he puts Word instead of Son and calls him his own Word; and in such very brief words he mentioned Word many times, but Son not once. Moreover he alters the Saviour's very saying,

adding “that is, the Word” instead of “the Son,” as though the meaning of “Son” did not rather fit the title “Father.” Hence the Saviour rightly and naturally joined the pairing of Son to that of Father, while he, refusing to say Son, prates of the Word up and down, and accuses Sabellius of denying the Son while doing the same himself, pretending, thinking to avoid the suspicion of wrong opinion by slandering him. If, then, he blames Sabellius for denying the Son of God, he ought to have blamed himself first; and if it is because Sabellius did not know the Word as he himself defined him, he was not right to make this charge.

For neither Sabellius nor even the Jews, who deny the Christ of God, were ignorant of the Word which Marcellus says is in God, through whom he gave oracles to Moses and the prophets; anyone at all, not only of the Jews but also of the Greeks, would say he knew him exactly. For who would not confess that God is rational, as also wise and good and powerful? Sabellius would not deny knowing this; but because he did not confess the Son of God living and subsisting, existing and pre-existing the flesh, for this agreement with Marcellus he was driven from the church of God, as Marcellus was.

How Marcellus thought the same as Sabellius would be clear from the fact that he laid down that God and his Word are one and the same, at one time saying in these very words:

“For if the examination were of the spirit alone, the Word would rightly appear to be one and the same with God”; at another time comparing the Word of God to the human word and adding that the word in a man is one and the same with the man, separated by nothing else than the activity of the deed alone. Therefore he declared at one time that before the founding of the world there was nothing else but God, and again said in these very words that when the world had not yet come into being there was nothing else but God alone;

at another he compared the Word of God to our signifying word, where he wrote thus: “As all things that have come into being by the Father have come into being through the Word, so also the things spoken by the Father are signified through the Word.” And having called him a signifying word here, he goes on next to present him as inseparable in hypostasis, one and the same with the Father, saying something like this: “This, I think, is easy for those who think well to know even from a small and humble example among us.

For no one can separate a man's word from him in power and hypostasis. For the word is one and the same with the man, and is separated by nothing else than the activity of the deed alone.” And again he uses the same image where he says: “For whatever the Father says, he is seen everywhere to say it through the Word. This is clear also from ourselves, so far as small things may be likened to great and divine; for we too do, so far as we can, all that we wish to say and do by our word.”

One should think one hears these words not more from Marcellus than from Sabellius; unless perhaps Marcellus is mocking Sabellius for this, that he did not shamelessly dare to name the signifying word in God, as he himself thinks it, Son. For he did not have such folly of reasoning as to grant a word to the God over all like that of men, nor was he so foolish as to call a non-subsisting word Son of God. Therefore Sabellius, saying there is one God and denying the Son,

consistently with the hypothesis he had granted himself, said that the same is Father and Son; but Marcellus, granting like him that God and the Word in him are one and the same, admits that Sabellius erred in vain, but not himself.

For either he ought to have accepted that man too, or else to blame himself also, and in blaming him to turn away from the wrong opinion like his own, and not to suppose, like a sculptor, that God converses with his own thought and his own reasoning and urges himself, saying: Come, let us make, come, let us mould a statue (for so, he said, God said “Let us make man”),

nor to suppose in God at one time an internal word, as in a man, and at another a signifying word, like our uttered word. For it would be more bearable to hear this from Sabellius or one of the Jews who openly deny the Son of God than from a Christian.

But he, as though priding himself on the Jewish teaching, brings into the church of Christ this impious and godless dogma that the Son of God does not exist, establishing through the whole treatise he toiled over that before the world came into being there was nothing else but God alone, so as to shut out the Son's entry. And he even gives himself airs, boasting that he knows one God;

as if we did not say this too, we who have received that the Son of God is truly Son, and have learned from him to know one God, and that he is at once God and Father of the only-begotten Son, who is clearly truly Son, begotten from him before all ages, and called not only Word before the taking up of the flesh, as the noble fellow defines, but countless other things too. But here too he lies against divine Scripture, insisting that before the coming in the flesh he was called nothing other than Word.

Hear, at any rate, how he insists, writing in these very words in this way: “So it is clear from every side that no other name fits the eternity of the Word than that which the most holy disciple and apostle of God, John, spoke at the beginning of the gospel. For since after the taking up of the flesh he is preached as Christ and Jesus, life and way and day and resurrection and door and bread, and whatever else he may be named by the divine Scriptures, we must not on that account be ignorant of the first name, that he was Word. For this reason the most holy evangelist and disciple of the Lord, very wakeful in the Spirit, mentioning the beginning from above and nothing newer, said, ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,’ so as to show that, if there is any new and newer name, it came to him from the new and recent dispensation according to the flesh.”

And next he adds: “Therefore, before coming down and being born through the Virgin, he was only Word. For what else was it, before taking human flesh, that came down ‘in the last days,’ as he too wrote, and was born from the holy Virgin? Nothing else than Word.” And again he adds: “For before, as I have often said, he was nothing other than Word.”

And he adds again, saying: “For the Word ‘was in the beginning,’ being nothing other than Word; but the man united to the Word, not having been before, became man, as John teaches us: ‘And the Word became flesh.’ For this reason, then, he appears to mention the Word alone.

For whether divine Scripture mentions the name of Jesus or of Christ, it appears to name the Word of God together with the human flesh. And if anyone should undertake to show that before the new covenant the name of Christ or Jesus could be applied to the Word alone, he will find this said prophetically.” And after other things he adds, saying: “Rightly, then, before the descent this was, as we have often said, Word; but after the descent and the taking up of the flesh he obtained different titles too.” These, then, are the words in which Marcellus is caught denying the Son of God who exists and lives and is truly Son, and introducing a mere word.

And it has been shown through the words of his set out earlier what sort of word he supposed him to be, using the example of the human word and saying that he is one and the same with God. And having laid down this principle, he went on consistently, from the hypothesis he had granted himself, to lie against inspired Scripture and to make perverse interpretations of it.

It seemed good to me to examine briefly some of these at present, and to show those who do not know that no Scripture agrees with him as he innovates and turns from the sound faith, but on the contrary all speak and testify against the narratives he has wrongly taken up. This had especially to be shown to those who honour the man, lest any of them, through inexperience of the divine readings, should think he hits the mark of the truth.

And this must be examined first, which he also first dared to declare: that before being born through the Virgin the Son of God was called by no other name than Word. For he says that he was nothing before the coming in the flesh but Word, and was named nothing else except prophetically; for he says he was and was named Word and nothing else, but after the coming in the flesh obtained different titles too.

This, then, must first be shown to have been declared ignorantly and without knowledge of the divine Scriptures. (1) First, the divine evangelist John himself, who called him Word, (2) not long after but immediately named him God, saying, “and the Word was God.” He could have said, “and the Word was God's,” but he did not say this, lest anyone should say he is like the word among men; instead he calls him God, showing in this way the transcendence of his divine dignity.

(3) And passing to another aspect of his praise, he named him light, showing by this very thing that he pre-existed the taking up of the body,

where he says of the Baptist: “He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light, which enlightens every man, coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world came into being through him, and the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own did not receive him.”

You see how by this he named him not only Word, as Marcellus thought, but also God and light, and taught that he pre-existed and that the world came into being through him. For as he had said before that all things came into being through the Word of God and “without him” nothing came into being, so also through the light; for “the world,” he says, “came into being through him.”

So the light and the God Word are one and the same. And in saying that through him came into being at one time the world and at another all things, he shows his ministering role toward God. The evangelist could have said, “All things came into being by him,” and again, “and the world came into being by him”; but he did not say “by him” but “through him,” to refer us to the Father's authority as maker of all things.

Moreover he says, “the world did not know him.” But all men confess the God over all by natural notions, and first the sons of the Jews, led by the hand by the prophetic Scriptures, as Marcellus himself showed as he went on in what follows.

So this one whom “the world did not know” was another, God and Word, being and named light; but not perceptible light, nor enlightening the eyes of the flesh like the sun, for then the nature of irrational animals too would share in him. But now he teaches what sort of light he was, saying, “He was the light that enlightens every man coming into the world.” This rational light, then, belonged to men alone.

Therefore by intellectual and rational power he made intellectual and rational the souls made “according to” his “image and likeness.” And as he was not perceptible light, so neither was he what is beyond all things, God himself. For “God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all.” And the one was unapproachable light, as the divine apostle teaches, saying, “dwelling in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see”;

but the other “was in the world,” “enlightening every man coming into the world.” And the world too, he says, came into being through this light, the higher, clearly the Father, establishing the universe through the Son. These three reverent and pious titles of the powers of the Son of God were taken up together by the theologian at the beginning of his writing: the Word, God, and the light.

(4) And now the same adds a fourth, calling him only-begotten, where he says, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only-begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.” So he was called only-begotten of God before he took the flesh. For even if, he says, “the Word became flesh” for our sake, yet we, to whom he deigned to show his own divinity, not looking at the flesh (for this was “the form of a servant”) but at his glory contemplated apart from the body by a pure mind, “beheld his glory,” a glory unspeakable and surpassing all mortal reasoning, such as one might conceive as the “glory” of an “only-begotten” Son of God.

And this glory was “from the Father.” You see how he did not say, “and we beheld his glory, glory as” of a word, although he had said before, “the Word became flesh”; but to teach what sort of Word he supposed him to be (that he was not a signifying word; for how could such a word become flesh?), he necessarily called him only-begotten.

And he teaches that this is his glory, by which he is understood as only-begotten Son of God. And he says that he has the glory from nowhere else than from the Father; for he did not have the glory unbegotten, nor without beginning, nor of his own acquiring, but received it from the Father. He himself showed this, saying, “Father, glorify me with the glory which I had with you before the world existed.”

And the Father answers him, saying, “I have both glorified and will glorify again.” And the same evangelist establishes his hypostasis still more, adding: “John bears witness about him, and cried out, saying: This was he who comes after me, who has come to be before me, because he was before me. For from his fullness we have all received.”

But though John cries out that “he was before” him, the new Sabellius does not hear. Yet John the Baptist preceded the Saviour's birth according to the flesh; how then does he testify that he came before him? For in birth according to the flesh the Saviour was not before him;

so it was as only-begotten of God that he was “before” John and “has come to be before” him. Can these words, then, be referred to the Father and God of all, or to a word in God without substance and without hypostasis, the same as God? And how could “he has come to be before me” be said of a word that does not subsist? And who would be so mad as to think that John the Baptist said of the God of all, “he has come to be before me” and “because he was before me”?

So it has been shown by this that the one spoken of as God pre-existed John's birth and came to be before him, and it has been established that he was not only Word, but also God and light and only-begotten, existing and so named before the coming in the flesh. (5) And from where the evangelist had knowledge of these things, he will show himself, saying next: “The only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known.” You see from whom he learned the theology of the Son.

For he says it was not Moses, nor any of the prophets after Moses, nor any of the angels or the higher powers, but “the only-begotten Son” himself “made this known.” So the invisible God did not make him known, but the only-begotten Son, having become visible, gave men the account of the Father, being clearly other than the invisible God. And he pre-existed, not in the Father's mind, as Marcellus thought, but in his bosom; just as the Saviour has promised us that we shall rest in the bosom of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, so too the Son was “in the bosom of the Father,” not being one and the same with the Father, since neither shall we be the same as the holy fathers.

But note besides this how, after naming him Word once, and calling him God, and naming him light, and saying only-begotten, and confessing him Son of God, he no longer names him Word, but from then on relates that the Saviour himself called himself not Word but Son and only-begotten and light and life and truth and countless other things, as one can hear him teaching in this way: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish,” and again, “For God did not send the Son into the world

to judge the world,” and again, “But he who does not believe has already been judged, because he has not believed in the name of the only-begotten Son of God.” And here again God gave and “sent the Son as Saviour of the world,” and the one sent was clearly other than the one who sent. Therefore, it seems to me, our Saviour himself is recorded in what follows to have said, as if to Marcellus himself and to those who begrudge the Son's nature: “Is it not written in the law, ‘I said, you are gods’?

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

and how he taught that he was sent and sanctified by the Father before being sent, and how he shames those who hesitate to confess him Son of God, teaching from divine Scripture that men mortal in nature were called not only sons of God but even gods; so that one must not think it blasphemous to confess as both Son of God and God “him whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world.”

What, then, should the man have suffered who, after so many words, dared to say that he was Word and nothing else, and said word for word, “And for this reason he does not name himself Son of God, but everywhere calls himself Son of Man, so that by such a confession he may prepare the man to become Son of God by adoption through fellowship with him”? Having said this, I do not know with what eyes Marcellus could look in the face of so many testimonies, or with what lips speak against them.

And the Saviour showed that he himself is light, in agreement with what was given before about the light, saying, “I am the light of the world,” and again, “I am the light, and the truth and the life,” and again, “that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light.”

And if anyone should ask from where he has come, the one will answer who said, “He who comes from above is above all,” and “He who comes from heaven bears witness to what he has seen and heard.” And who was “he who comes from heaven”? Surely not the flesh which the Saviour assumed? Not at all; but clearly he himself, the light and the Word and God and the only-begotten and the Son, being himself all these. He, then, “bears witness,” he says, “to what he has seen and heard.” So he both saw and heard before coming to earth.

And whom did he see but the Father? And whom did he hear but the Father? So he taught that he was not a signifying word but a Son truly living and subsisting, so as to say, “The Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hand. He who believes in the Son has eternal life.” Let us believe, then, that “the Father,” loving “the Son, has given all things into his hand.”

And one must pay careful attention to “all things,” which includes the existence of all created things, through which one might see the greatness of the power of the Son of God, considering how great and what kind of hand it was with which he received from the Father the existence of all beings.

For if the whole heaven and world is great, and still far greater and more excellent than these are the things beyond the visible, subsisting in bodiless and incorruptible, intellectual and divine powers, and all that escapes our mind and is hidden from our knowledge, the one hand of the only-begotten Son of God, grasping all these, shows the excellence of his power of boundless greatness.

The Son himself showed this again by another saying: “All things have been handed over to me by my Father.” Then, as if we were at a loss who and how great was the one who received so great a trust, he says: Do not seek, do not ask. For the exact comprehension of the Son of God is not by nature to be known by men, nor even by the higher and more divine powers.

Therefore, having first said, “All things have been handed over to me by my Father,” he added, “and no one knows the Son except the Father.” So let every word about the Son of God that is beyond speech be silent, and let the knowledge of his generation from the Father be left to the Father alone; and let no one go further inquiring about an unspeakable nature and substance, but let his own teaching about himself alone be confirmed for us by the grace of faith, which teaches clearly that all things have been handed over to him by the Father.

So God gave and handed over for improvement and benefit, making the handing over as to the saviour and physician and pilot of all; and the Son received, and as a faithful guardian of the trust held the gift, not as a word without substance and without hypostasis, but as being truly the only-begotten and beloved Son of the Father.

(7) Besides these he also called himself bread of life, saying, “I am the bread of life,” “I am the living bread that came down from heaven.” And how he was living he made clear, distinguishing most plainly, where he says, “As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father,

so he who eats me will also live because of me.” And he taught this elsewhere too, saying, “For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself.” So then he was bread of life and existed in heaven, watering and nourishing the angelic powers by the power of his divinity, and he was all these things before coming to earth, and was Son having life “in himself,” like the Father, who has life “in himself.”

For the special and peculiar character of the Father's unbegotten and divine life, because of which he alone is said, according to the divine apostle, “to have immortality,” the Son alone would have, inasmuch as he is the image of the Father in this respect too; but he has the life spoken of not without beginning, nor unbegotten, nor of his own acquiring like the Father, but having received it from the Father.

For so he says: “and he has granted the Son to have life in himself, as the Father has life in himself.” So the one gave, the other received. And he alone received this privilege, that life is not supplied to him from outside, like the other living things, but that he has it springing up in himself, like the life in the Father. Therefore all things that share in life live from the Son's supply; but he alone has life springing up in himself, the Father having given him this for the enjoyment of those who were to be made alive through him.

He himself teaches this, saying, “As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me will also live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven.” You see how even when he was in heaven he was the bread of life. That is why it is said somewhere, “Man ate the bread of angels.” So before being sent by the Father he was in heaven and lived because of the Father,

not as a signifying word, nor as one and the same with God, but as subsisting and having his own life, which the Father has given him.

And going on next, showing the superiority of the Father's glory, he said: “As the Father taught me, these things I speak. And he who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone, because I always do the things pleasing to him.” Note carefully how “always” is said.

For not now, he says, when I converse with men on earth through flesh, do I do the things pleasing to the Father, but always. And he testifies that he speaks what he learned from the Father as from a teacher; so he enrols the Father as teacher, being clearly other than he, since everyone who is taught by someone is other than the one who teaches.

But if the Word was in God, because of which he might be called rational, being a signifier of the Father's thoughts, how could he be his own teacher? How, being inseparable from God, did he say he was sent? And how, being one and the same with God, did he testify that he did what pleased him? And if Marcellus should say to this that the Word said these words while in the flesh, what shall we say this has to do with not confessing that he is Son, but only Word?

And how was he in the flesh when he said this? Was he living and subsisting and outside the Father? And who was the Father then, not having his own Word in himself, but subsisting without a Word? And if the Word dwelt in the flesh while he spent his time on earth, if he was outside the Father, living and subsisting and moving the flesh like a soul, he was clearly other than the Father, and again he and the Father were two hypostases,

and all Marcellus's labour is caught out as vain, since he defines the one who came to be in the flesh as a Word in substance, living and subsisting. But if the Word dwelling in the body was outside God, and yet was united and joined to God so as to be one and the same with him, he must of necessity grant either that the Father himself was in the flesh, or that the Son subsisted by himself and acted in the body, or a human soul; or, if none of these, that the flesh moved by itself, being lifeless and irrational.

If, then, he should say the Father, the Father will be for him the one who was born and suffered and underwent every human experience; which the church of God indicted as impiety when Sabellius uttered it. But if it is not lawful to say that the Father became man, he must confess the Son, being taught this by him.

But if Marcellus should deny that he subsists, it is time to suppose him a mere man, composed of body and soul, so as to differ in nothing from the common nature of men. But this dogma too has been driven from the church; the Ebionites long ago, and recently the man of Samosata and those named Paulianists after him, held it and suffered the penalty of blasphemers.

What, then, remains after this but to bring in the flesh alone without any indweller, moved like the self-moving figures of the wonder-workers? And how could the flesh, the body by itself without the one acting in it, have said, “As he taught me, these things I speak”? And how could the flesh have said, “because I always do the things pleasing to him”? And how did the flesh say that it had been sent by the Father? Is it holy to call God the father of the flesh, or rather of the one who dwelt and acted in it? Who, then, was this? Was it the Word in God, being God himself, according to Sabellius, or, as it is holy and true to say, the living and subsisting only-begotten Son of God?

But if he should say neither of these, he will of necessity suppose a human soul, and Christ will be for him a mere man; and our new writer will no longer be a Sabellian but a Paulianist. And if he should say that the Word in God dwelt in the flesh, being nothing other than Word, a signifying or active word,

how could such a one have said that he lived a life peculiar to himself beside the Father? How was he sent, being always joined and united to God? How does he say that the Father is his teacher? How did he say that he always did “the things pleasing to the Father”? For these would expressly be the words of a Son subsisting and living; and throughout the gospel the one who prays to the Father, who glorifies the Father, who asks to be glorified by the Father, what else does he show but that he subsists, especially when he says, “The testimony of two men is true.

I am the one who bears witness about myself, and the Father who sent me bears witness about me”? Having shown himself living by so many sayings, the Saviour himself nowhere named himself Word, but Son and light and only-begotten and bread of life and anything rather than Word.

And he teaches that he has a word, saying, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word,” but he does not say that he himself is the Word. How then, after all this, does he not blush who declared that he is only Word and nothing else? Hear, at any rate, how he wrote, saying: “So it is clear from every side that no other name fits the eternity of the Word than that which the most holy disciple and apostle of God, John, said at the beginning of the gospel.”

And again: “so as to show that, if there is any new and newer name, it came to him from the new and recent dispensation according to the flesh.”

And again: “Therefore, before coming down and being born through the Virgin, he was only Word. For what else was it, before taking human flesh, that came down ‘in the last days,’ as he too has written, and was born from the Virgin? It was nothing else than Word.”

So much Marcellus can say and declare because he does not confess the Son of God. To him the evangelist might have said with a great shout: What are you saying, man? I did not call him only Word, but also God, and “the light that enlightens every man coming into the world,” and the only-begotten Son who is “in the bosom of the Father.”

So let no one slander the theologian, but let him listen to him carefully, what sort of Word he supposed, joining at once “and the Word was God” and adding “all things came into being through him.” And according to the Saviour of all himself, he was not once named Word, but Son of God and only-begotten and light and life and truth and anything rather than Word.

(8) And if he should say that these things are said from the new covenant, it will be said to him that “In the beginning was the Word” too came from nowhere else than from it. One and the same gospel, then, and the same evangelist, who called him Word, wrote all the other things about him too.

(9) And Paul the divine apostle too, saying, “For us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things,” clearly names the Son of God before the coming in the flesh, “through whom” all things came into being, not Word but Lord Jesus and Christ. But if, according to Marcellus, God and the Word in him were one and the same, it would have been enough for the apostle to say, “For us there is one God, the Father,

from whom are all things.” For the thought would have been complete and the statement self-sufficient in presenting God as maker of all. But even a Jew might say this. The church's herald, however, teaches us not to be ignorant of the second as well as the first.

And what was this? “And one Lord Jesus Christ.” Therefore he adds the second next, saying, “For us (for even if not for all, yet for us, he says) one Lord Jesus Christ.” And why after the one God this one too is “one Lord for us,” he shows by adding, “through whom are all things”; for since “all things came into being through him,” he is rightly believed by us who know this to be Lord of all after the God over all.

And that he said this not about the flesh but about the God Word is clear from his adding “through whom are all things.” For he says, “For us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things.” This was said also about the light and about the pre-existing Word. So Jesus Christ himself was the light and the Word, “through whom all things” came into being, and not the flesh. For he would not have said “through whom are all things” so incoherently about the flesh.

(10) The same Paul knows how to name the Son of God who pre-existed the flesh Christ, at the same time calling him rock, where he writes about those who spent time with Moses in the wilderness, saying, “For they drank from a spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ”; and he seals the same after other things, saying, “Nor let us put Christ to the test, as some of them tested him and were destroyed by serpents.”

And he confirms this still more, saying, “By faith Moses, having become great, refused to be called son of Pharaoh's daughter, considering the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt.” And he establishes this still more clearly where he says, “Have this mind among you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, and being found in fashion as a man.”

You see that before emptying himself and taking the form of a servant he was and pre-existed and was “in the form of God.” And who was this? None other than Jesus Christ. So he was himself the God Word, Jesus Christ, even before taking the flesh.

For one must listen carefully to the divine apostle saying, “Have this mind among you which was also in Christ Jesus,” and then making clear who this Jesus Christ was, in what he adds, saying, “who, being in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant.”

Can the saying be taken here too as referring to the flesh? Does it fit the flesh to say “who” and “being”? Did flesh “empty itself, taking the form of a servant”? That would be laughable. Come, then, let us examine how it is said, “who, being in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself.” If he was a word without existence, in no way subsisting outside God, but being within him, sometimes in quiet and silence and sometimes in activity,

how was he “in the form of God,” being in power God himself? How did he “not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,” being himself God? How did he “humble himself, becoming obedient” to the Father? For one obeying another would show two persons.

And since Marcellus uses the human word as an image, we must ask whether it can fit the human word to say: who, being in the form of man, did not count equality with man a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, becoming obedient to the man? And how could the word innate in a man do these things, being one and the same with the man? So he will not be a mere word without hypostasis, but truly the only-begotten Son of God, “being in the form of God,” who “did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant,” whom the divine apostle also named Jesus Christ, knowing exactly that he pre-existed the flesh.

(11) Besides this the same apostle named him mediator of God, saying that the legislation of Moses was given in his hand, where he says, “The law, ordained through angels, by the hand of a mediator. Now a mediator is not of one, but God is one.” You hear how, calling God by his own name and naming angels, he brings in the mediator between them, saying, “Now a mediator is not of one.” So he was mediating in the legislation even before becoming man, in the times of Moses.

(12) And the same apostle calls him high priest, saying, “Having then a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God.”

(13) Moreover he knows the same as radiance of the glory and imprint of God and Son and heir, saying, “In the last of these days he has spoken to us in a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom also he made the ages; who, being the radiance of his glory and the imprint of his hypostasis.” And here (as above it was said of the Word, “all things came into being through him,” and of the light, “he was in the world, and the world came into being through him,” and of Jesus Christ, “for us one Lord Jesus Christ,

through whom are all things”), see how likewise it is said of the same, “through whom also he made the ages.” (14) It is worth attending here to how he is named radiance; for I think the expression shows the Son's generation from the Father. For since he is often named Son and God is called Father, so that we may not fall down to the generations of animals and suppose some such manner, the apostle uses an image more fitting to God for God,

having said of the Father, “dwelling in unapproachable light,” and having defined the Son as the radiance of the Father's light, so that the radiance is the offspring of the first light, coming to subsist not according to the birth of mortal animals but according to the example given. Rightly, then, he also calls him image “of the invisible God,” because he is “in the form of God,” and because he is “radiance” “and imprint of the hypostasis.”

For these reasons, writing about him, he said: “who is the image of the invisible God, firstborn of all creation, for in him were created all things in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities; all things were created through him and for him; and he is before all things, and all things hold together in him.”

For these things were said about the divinity of the Son of God, even if Marcellus does not think so. For the divine apostle would not have said so much about the flesh. That would be foolish and senseless, besides making the interpretation of the phrase incoherent; for how would it fit to say of the flesh “who is the image,” when one would have to say (if at all) “which is the image”?

(15) And elsewhere again the same named him image of God, saying, “And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, in whom the god of this age has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, so that the illumination of the gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should not shine in their hearts.”

Here too one must attend to how the divine apostle brought out a defining word about Christ, calling him image of God, so that no one should suppose that there are two gods, but one, the God over all. For if “God is one, and there is no other besides him,” he would be the one who is also known through the Son as through an image.

Therefore the Son too is God, because of the Father's form in him as in an image. The divine apostle shows this, at one time saying, “who, being in the form of God,” at another defining him as “the image of God.” So among his other titles the Son was and was named “image of God” before the coming in the flesh too. But these things from the new covenant, a few out of countless, we have gathered for the sake of proportion in our discourse.

(16) And the prophets of God of old honoured the same with various theologies. One called him Spirit of God, saying, “A rod shall come forth from the root of Jesse, and a flower shall come up from the root, and the Spirit of God shall rest upon him, a spirit of wisdom and understanding,” and so on. For by this he clearly showed the one “from the seed of David according to the flesh” and the God Word who dwelt in him. Hence the divine apostle at one time said, “Now the Lord is the Spirit,” at another, “Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” And another likewise calls him spirit, saying, “The spirit of our face, Christ the Lord.” And in the gospel it is clearly said of him, “Behold my servant whom I have chosen, my beloved, in whom my soul is well pleased; I will put my Spirit upon him, and he will proclaim judgment to the nations.”

(17) Another of the prophets named him life and light, addressing God and saying, “For with you is the fountain of life; in your light we shall see light.” For what was the fountain of life with God, and the light, but he who said in the Gospels, “I am the light of the world,” and “I am the way and the truth and the life”? Therefore again the prophet, entreating God in prayer, says, “Send out your light and your truth; they will lead me.” (18) And Zerubbabel too, calling him truth, was counted worthy of the prize, when he is recorded to have said before the king of the Persians, “And truth abides and is strong for ever,

and lives and prevails for ever and ever. And with her there is no respect of persons, but she does what is just, and keeps away from all the unjust and wicked.” To which he adds, “And hers is the strength and the kingdom and the authority and the majesty of all the ages.” For saying that truth lives and conquers and prevails, he most expressively showed her subsistence. Consistently with this, the Saviour himself, naming himself truth, set his seal on Zerubbabel's testimony.

(19) And he named him river who said, “The rushings of the river gladden the city of God.”

(20) And he called him mountain who said, “the mountain in which God was pleased to dwell.” That is why in Daniel a stone is cut “from a mountain without hands,” and again the same is seen restored into a high mountain, the mountain signifying the pre-existence of his divinity and the stone his humanity.

(21) And they called him righteousness, as the one who says, “Who raised up righteousness from the east?” (22) And sun of righteousness, as the one who said, “But for those who fear me the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings.” And another says, “The sun shall set upon the prophets who lead my people astray.” For these things would not fit the perceptible sun, nor the Word in the flesh either.

(23) And Solomon names him wisdom in Proverbs, saying, “Wisdom has built herself a house and set up seven pillars,” and so on. And that wisdom was before the world, living and subsisting, he himself taught, uttering these words in her person: “I, Wisdom, have made counsel my dwelling, and I have called knowledge and understanding,” and then adding next, “Through me kings reign, and princes write righteousness; through me great men are magnified, and tyrants through me rule.”

(24) Moreover Solomon called him tree of life and Lord, saying, “She is a tree of life to all who hold fast to her, and to those who lean on her as on the Lord she is secure.”

(25) And Solomon's father David in the Psalms named him at once Lord and priest: at one time saying, “The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand,” at another, “The Lord has sworn and will not repent: You are a priest for ever according to the order of Melchizedek.”

(26) And the same knows how to confess him God, saying, “Your throne, O God, is for ever and ever; a sceptre of uprightness is the sceptre of your kingdom. You loved righteousness and hated lawlessness; therefore God, your God, anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions.” For who else would the God anointed by God here be than he who was proclaimed Christ because of the Father's anointing?

(27) And this same one was also God's beloved, as the title of the psalm shows, which contains “A song for the beloved.”

(28) And Isaiah called him arm, saying, “The Lord will reveal his holy arm before all the nations.” (29) And David knew him at once as righteousness and salvation; therefore he said, “The Lord has made known his salvation; before the nations he has revealed his righteousness,”

and again, “Proclaim his salvation from day to day,” and again, “Who will give the salvation of Israel out of Zion?” and “Show us, Lord, your mercy, and grant us your salvation.” (30) But why must I collect them one by one, when the lover of learning may gather such things from all inspired Scripture, through which the men of God, enlightened by the divine Spirit, are seen to have had the knowledge of the only-begotten Son of God, which was then secret and hidden from the multitudes of the Jewish people? Therefore they spoke of him variously, with veiled titles. For the grace of the proclamation of the theology about him was kept for his coming, which his church throughout the whole world has received and glories in, like a mystery long hidden and kept silent.

The divine apostle teaches this, at any rate, saying: “according to the stewardship of God given to me for you, to fulfil the word of God, the mystery hidden from the ages and from the generations, but now made manifest to his saints, to whom God willed to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the nations, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” You see how the Son of God was a mystery hidden before but now made manifest.

Therefore the prophets of God spoke of him as God mystically by the prophetic Spirit, but the multitude of the Jewish nation was in ignorance of the hidden mystery. Hence it was taught to know one God, because it was constantly being drawn into the error of many gods, but did not know that God is Father of an only-begotten Son; for this mystery was kept for the church from the nations,

given to it by special grace, for in him, according to the apostle, are “all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden.” But through so many testimonies the Word of God, who was “in the beginning with God,” has been shown not to be called Word only, as Marcellus thinks, but also Son and only-begotten and light and bread and Jesus and Christ and Lord and high priest and radiance and imprint and image and firstborn of all creation and fountain of life and truth and river and righteousness and sun of righteousness and wisdom and tree of life and Lord and God and beloved and priest and arm and righteousness and salvation. And being all these and pre-existing the flesh, he was so named, as the Scriptures cited have shown.

For what reason, then, does Marcellus, passing over all these, stop at “Word” alone, not going on to the other titles, but saying that he is only God's Word, and a signifying word, sometimes at rest in God, sometimes speaking or acting by activity alone? Is it not because he openly Sabellianizes, and does not believe in the Son of God, nor know the mystery which pre-existed long ago but was made manifest to the church of Christ alone through his grace?

And if he should say that the unknown mystery is that God has a word in himself and uses a word (for this is what Marcellus himself thinks, writing in this way: “For what else was the hidden mystery than the mystery concerning the Word? This mystery was formerly so hidden in God that no one of the former people clearly knew the things concerning the Word”) — if, then, he should say this, let him learn that every Jew who has not recognized the Christ of God would confess that God has a word and is not without reason.

Sabellius himself too, and every Greek and barbarian who holds that God exists, would say this without dispute; for in saying “God” one at once understands him as wise and rational and powerful and just and good. What hidden mystery, then, was this which is confessed by all? For who would not say that in God there is wisdom and power and life and light and truth and righteousness and word and everything fine and good? Or rather that he is all these, and whatever is higher and better than these and unknown to us; for self-taught nature compels every man to confess this about God. Hence we are taught that the Son too is all these,

inasmuch as he is the only-begotten Son and heir of the Father and has all that the Father has. Therefore he is said to be in the form of God and image of God, according to the divine apostle, who said, “who, being in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,” and again, “who is the image of God.”

So it was not this, that God is rational, that was “the mystery hidden from the ages and from the generations,” nor was what is known to all men by natural notions what “has now been made manifest.” But if anyone asks what it was, the apostle answers, saying, “but now it has been made manifest to his saints, to whom God willed to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the nations, which is Christ in you.”

So Christ was the mystery, clearly the Son of God. Therefore the prophets of God formerly glorified him mystically with various titles, hiding what was secret and reserving its revelation to all for his grace. When, then, after so many testimonies of Scripture, Marcellus insists that the Word in the beginning, before taking the flesh, was nothing other than Word and was called by no other name, but obtained different titles when “the Word became flesh,” being nothing other than Word before that, how would he not be convicted as ignorant and without understanding of the divine readings? But now that this is established, come, let us look at the new Sabellius as if come back to life.

After the testimonies of the divine readings set out above, by which it was established that before the coming in the flesh the Son of God was named not only Word (as Marcellus thought) but countless other things too, come now, let us look at the idol of Sabellius rising up as from the earth. He dared to say that the God over all himself, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, was born from the holy Virgin and himself suffered, writing in this way: “What, then, was this that came down before becoming man? Surely, he says, spirit. For if he wished to say anything besides this, the angel who said to the Virgin, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you,’ will not allow him. And if he says it is spirit, let him hear the Saviour saying, ‘God is spirit.’”

By this he said that the spirit that came upon the Virgin is the God of all, about whom our Saviour and Lord taught, saying, “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth,” openly renewing Sabellius.

And going on next, when the prophet Jeremiah had clearly said about the Saviour's becoming man, “After this he was seen on earth and lived among men,” he refers the saying to the Father, saying in these very words: “But it seems that the Father is in the Word, even if Asterius and those who think the same as he do not think so.”

And he does the same with the Saviour's passion. For having set out from Jeremiah's Lamentations “The spirit of our face, Christ the Lord, was taken in their corruptions,” he adds: “Here too the prophet likewise speaks of the Word who assumed our flesh”; and he goes on, saying: “Spirit could never be productive of a shadow. And that God himself is spirit, the Saviour said, ‘God is spirit.’ And that God is light, he himself teaches us, saying, ‘I am the light.’” You see how he transfers what was said about the Saviour to the Father's divinity.

And again he abolishes the hypostasis of the Son bareheaded, declaring that before the making of begotten things there was nothing else but God alone. He writes thus word for word: “Asterius names the authority given to him glory, and not only glory but glory before the world, not considering that when the world had not yet come into being there was nothing else but God alone.” And again he confirms the same, saying: “Heaven and earth and all things in the heavens and on earth came into being by God; if, then, he believes this, he must also agree that besides God there was nothing else.”

You see a Jew openly denying the only-begotten Son of God, “through whom all things” came into being. For if there was nothing else but God before the coming into being of the world, then the Son did not exist; and how “did all things come into being through him, and without him nothing came into being”? So the Jew, who denies the Christ of God, knows nothing before the coming into being of the world but God alone, with Marcellus testifying with him; but the church of Christ glories with all boldness, saying, “For us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and one Lord Jesus Christ,

through whom are all things.” And when it says “through whom are all things,” it knows him to be before all things; so that the one who says that before the coming into being of the world there was nothing else but God alone lies against the truth. For with the only God his only-begotten Son also existed before the founding of the world, and was with the Father. For this the one also taught it who said, “In the last of these days he has spoken to us in a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom also he made the ages.”

And in Proverbs, through Solomon, the Son himself teaches about himself, saying, “When he was preparing the heaven, I was present with him.” Moreover he “was the light that enlightens every man coming into the world,” since “he was in the world, and the world came into being through him.” And if “the world came into being through him,” clearly he pre-existed the world.

So God was not alone before the founding of the world, but his only-begotten Son was with him, looking at whom the Father rejoiced, as he himself, being Wisdom, teaches, saying in Proverbs, “I was the one in whom he rejoiced daily.” And the Son himself, gazing on the Father's thoughts, was filled with gladness; therefore he says, “And I was glad before him at every time.” These pious and divine mysteries the church of Christ has received and guards. But the one who says that when the world had not yet come into being there was nothing else but God alone

shows himself to be one of two things, either a Jew or a Sabellian. For either, denying the Son outright and bringing in God alone, he will be a Jew denying the Christ; or, accepting the title of Son only in word, but saying that he is the one God, Son and Father at once, he will renew Sabellius. For if before the world there was nothing else but God, either he himself will be Father and Son, or he will not even have a Son.

But Marcellus seems to say that the Word in God himself, by which he is understood as rational, is the Son; so that he is his own father and in turn his own son. Hear, at any rate, his words, in which he writes in this way: “For before all creation there was a kind of quiet, as is likely,

the Word being in God. For if Asterius has believed that God is maker of all things, it is clear that he too will agree with us that God always exists, never having received a beginning of being, and that the others came into being by him and came into being from nothing.” You see how, supposing God to be without beginning, he said that the Word in him was in quiet before creation; and going on next he adds: “If, then, he believes this, he must also agree that besides God there was nothing else. The Word, then, had his own glory, being in the Father.”

Hence, rightly, he also says the Word is eternal, that is, unbegotten, writing thus: “Do you hear, then, the agreement of the Holy Spirit, testifying through many different persons to the eternity of the Word?” And again: “And for this reason he begins from the eternity of the Word, saying, ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.’ Using three successive testimonies, he wants to show the eternity of the Word.”

And how he said that the Word is united to God and co-unbegotten with him, one can hear him saying something like this: “We know that the dispensation according to the flesh belongs to the man, but we have believed that the eternity according to the spirit is united to the Father.”

Having granted in this way that the Word is in God, he next declares that he is one and the same with him, writing word for word thus: “For if the examination were of the spirit alone, the Word would rightly appear to be one and the same with God; but if the addition according to the flesh in the Saviour were examined, the Godhead seems to be expanded by activity alone; so that it is rightly truly an indivisible monad.”

And again, going on, he says: “So it is not because of the exact agreement in all words and deeds, as Asterius said, that the Saviour says, ‘I and the Father are one,’ but because it is impossible either for the Word of God or for God to be separated from his own Word.” If, then, God and the Word in him were one and the same, as Marcellus thinks, the one who came to be in the holy Virgin and became flesh and became man and suffered what is recorded and died for our sins was himself the God over all; which, when Sabellius dared to say it, the church of God listed him among the godless and blasphemers.

And if Marcellus should say that it was the Word of God that became flesh, yet he defined him as inseparable from God, granting an indivisible monad and one hypostasis of God and the Word in him, so that on his view one must think the one who became man to be no other than the God over all. And if there is an indivisible monad, and God and the Word in him are one and the same, whom could one call Father and whom Son, when the subject is one? So Marcellus, introducing the one and same as Son-Father, renewed Sabellius.

But the church of God both knows the indivisible monad, confessing one first principle, the one God, unbegotten and without beginning; and it enrols itself under the only-begotten Son begotten from him, truly existing and living and subsisting, as Saviour, who is not without beginning nor unbegotten, so that it may not set up two first principles and two gods, but was begotten from the Father himself and has the one who begot him as his first principle.

Therefore it has received the faith in one God, the Father Almighty, and in our Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, this holy and mystical faith granting rebirth in Christ to those enlightened through it. But Marcellus says the monad is expanded by activity, which has a place in bodies, but no longer in the bodiless, ineffable and inexpressible substance.

For he is not expanded in acting nor contracted in not acting, nor does he act at all like men or move like men; but God, being an indivisible monad, begot his only-begotten Son from himself, not being divided nor undergoing alteration or change or flux or any passion.

For when he commands or gives orders or legislates, he does not do these things speaking with tongue and lips like men; nor, looking upon the ordering of the universe, does he gaze using eyes like us, since he foresees by unspeakable and divine power even “the things that are not” as already existing and subsisting.

Nor, in making and fashioning, does he take pre-existing matter like our craftsmen and work it with hands and fingers, but again by unspeakable and incomprehensible power he made the substance of all created things subsist from nothing into being. If, then, he made all things in ways unspeakable and unreckonable to us, why must we be anxious lest we say some passion like that of mortal animals happened to him in the generation of the Son, which he made subsist beyond all and before all, not according to anything known to mortal nature, but in the manner known to him alone?

But are you afraid, man, that by confessing two hypostases you may introduce two first principles and fall away from the monarchic Godhead? Learn, then, that since there is one God without beginning and unbegotten, and the Son is begotten from him, there will be one first principle and one monarchy and kingdom, since the Son himself also enrols his own Father as his first principle. For “the head of Christ is God,” according to the apostle.

But are you anxious lest the one who confesses that there are two hypostases of Father and Son must accept two gods? Know this too, that the one who grants two hypostases of Father and Son is not compelled to speak of two fathers, or two sons, but will grant that one is Father and the other Son. In the same way, then, the one who sets two hypostases is not compelled to grant two gods.

For we do not define them as equal in honour, nor both without beginning and unbegotten, but one as unbegotten and without beginning, and the other as begotten and having the Father as its first principle. Therefore the Son himself teaches that his own Father is his God too, where he says, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, and my God and your God.”

So God the Father is shown to be God of the Son himself too;

therefore one God is proclaimed to the church of the Son. And the Son, when he is compared with the Father, will no longer be God of the Father too, but his only-begotten and beloved Son and “image of the invisible God” and “radiance” of the Father's glory; and he reverences and worships and glorifies his own Father, enrolling him as his own God (to whom he is recorded to pray, to whom he gives thanks, to whom he becomes “obedient to death”),

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

there is another who bears witness about me.” Then, having mentioned the Baptist, he teaches that the Father is his witness, saying, “And the Father who sent me has himself borne witness about me,” and he adds, “If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father, because my Father is greater than I.”

By all these he shows himself to be other than the Father, and he shows the superiority of the Father's glory by saying that the Father sent and that he himself was sent and came down from heaven “not to do his own will but that of him who sent” him. And what would Marcellus say to this, hearing the one who came down from heaven teaching this? For surely he will not say now that the Saviour's flesh says this; for the flesh did not come down from heaven.

Whom, then, will he say came down from heaven and taught this? God himself, or the Word joined to him? But if he should say the Father, openly unveiling Sabellius, the Saviour himself will refute him as a liar, saying, “I have come down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me,”

and “I can do nothing of myself; as I hear, I judge,” and “I do not seek my own will but the will of him who sent me,” and “my Father is greater than I.” For to think that the Father says this would be the height of madness.

But if he says that the Word innate in God, and his mind, by which he reasons and thinks within himself, set out the things mentioned, how could God's thought and the mind in him have come down from heaven? How did it, having come to be in the flesh it assumed, set these things out? And how will the Word in God say he came down “not to do his own will but that of him who sent” him?

By these the Son of God shows his reverence toward the Father; but when he presides over all begotten things that came into being through him, as being Saviour and Lord and Creator of all (“for all things came into being through him, and without him nothing came into being”), then he would be proclaimed God and Master and Saviour and King.

Therefore his church has been taught to reverence and worship and honour him as God, having learned to do this from him.

For the Saviour himself says, “For the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, so that all may honour the Son as they honour the Father,” expressly commanding that he be honoured not like the prophets, nor like angels or the powers that excel them, but like the Father himself. For the Father himself, wishing this, “has given all judgment to the Son, so that all may honour him as they honour the Father.”

Thomas called Didymus, knowing this exactly, since he was of the choir of the twelve disciples, enrolled him in brilliant words as both God and Lord, saying, “My Lord and my God.” Therefore it is fitting for us too to reverence the Son alone, and no one else, with divine honour, as we honour the Father; and in this the Father is honoured through the Son;

which he himself teaches, saying, “He who honours the Son honours the Father who sent him.” For just as, honouring an image of the king that has been sent out, we would honour the original of the image, the king himself, in the same way the Father would be honoured through the Son, as also seen through him.

For “he who has seen” the Son “has seen the Father,” seeing the unbegotten Godhead portrayed in the Son as in an image and mirror; “for he is a radiance of eternal light, and a spotless mirror of the working of God, and an image of his goodness.” All these things he has received from the Father, and from him he has received and holds the glory of the Godhead too, as a genuine and only-begotten Son. But the Father has not received from anyone; being himself the source and spring and root of all good things, he would rightly be proclaimed the one and only God.

But Marcellus, being in ignorance of these things, does not want the Son to have been truly begotten from the Father as a Son living and subsisting, but says that he went forth from God like a word signifying something or commanding. Hear him saying this too without disguise in these words: “To say, then, that he was begotten before the ages seems to have been said consistently; for what goes forth becomes the offspring of the father who sent it forth. But the other point he has taken up neither soundly nor piously. For to say that the one who went forth from him is not Word, and that this is not the true manner of the generation, but only truly Son, usually gives the hearers an impression of a human sight.”

Then, showing that the Word was not even begotten from the Father, he says word for word: “The holy apostle and disciple of the Lord John, then, mentioning his eternity, became a true witness of the Word, saying, ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,’ mentioning nothing here of a generation of the Word.” So, denying the Son of God, he said that the Word in God was at one time within God, at another went forth from God, and at another time would run back into God and be in him,

as he was before. Hear how he says this in these words: “But now I believe the divine Scriptures, that God is one, and that his Word came forth from the Father, so that all things might come into being through him; but after the time of the judgment, and the setting right of all things, and the destruction of every opposing activity, ‘then he himself will be subjected to him who subjected all things to him,’ ‘to God and the Father,’ so that thus the Word may be in God, as he was before the world existed. For since nothing existed before but God alone, and all things were going to come into being through the Word, the Word came forth by effective activity, being the Word of the Father.”

And again he puts the same meaning more plainly, writing thus: “For before the world existed the Word was in the Father. But when Almighty God purposed to make all things in the heavens and on earth, the coming into being of the world needed effective activity; and for this reason, since nothing else existed besides God (for all things are agreed to have come into being by him), then the Word came forth and became the maker of the world, he who before was also preparing it mentally within.”

And again after all this he adds, saying: “And for this reason he does not name himself Son of God, but everywhere calls himself Son of Man, so that by such a confession he may prepare the man to become Son of God by adoption through fellowship with him, and after the completion of the work may again, as Word, be united to God, fulfilling what was said by the apostle: ‘Then he himself will be subjected to him who subjected all things to him, so that God may be all in all.’ For then he will be what he was before.” Having said so much about the Word in God, by which we understand him to be rational, Marcellus has fallen into a terrible difficulty, daring to say that the Word in him was at one time outside God, and again within him after the time of the judgment, so that thus he may be in God, united to him, as he was before.

It is time, then, for him to answer our questions. What must one think about the intervening time, when the Word was outside God? How did he go forth? And in what condition was God, not having his own Word in himself? For if at the consummation of all the Word will be in God, as he was before the time of the consummation, how will the Word be the one that went forth from God? For if, subsisting by himself, he became other than God, Marcellus's labour is in vain; but if, though going forth from God like our uttered word, he remained inseparable from the Father, then he was always and continually in God, even when he was active.

How then does he refer us to the time of the judgment, saying that then he will be united to God and will be as he was before? For if then he will be as he was before, neither will the Word that went forth from God be such as he was before, but God himself will be unlike himself, having the Word in himself of old and receiving him back at the consummation of all and becoming then as he was before, but in the intervening time being in an unlike condition. And the Word likewise, having come to be outside God, will not be, before the consummation of all, such as he was before.

And what word could be more impious than this? For in general “was” and “will be,” and having come to be at some time and again being about to be, which indicate change in time, would be foreign to the substance that is timeless and without beginning and unbegotten and unchangeable, of which it is fitting to think only of being, and of being always without variation, in the same respect and the same way, not diminished, not contracted, not extended, not unfolded, nor having anything outside and inside itself, nor becoming different at different times, nor being one thing before and then becoming something else and again being restored to its former state.

These things Marcellus dared to suppose, saying that of old there was God, and sketching for himself a kind of quiet together with God (just like that founder of the godless heretics who, laying down godless dogmas, declared, “There was God and Silence”), and that after the silence and the quiet the Word of God went forth at the beginning of the making of the world by effective activity; so that he was no longer such as he was before, resting in God when God was silent, but active, going forth from God. And how then did he go forth?

Surely by the utterance of an articulate voice, God, clearly, speaking and talking like men. This at least was his view, writing in this way: “For as all things that have come into being by the Father have come into being through the Word, so also the things spoken by the Father are signified through the Word.”

And again: “For whatever the Father says, he is seen everywhere to say it through the Word. This is clear also from ourselves, so far as small things may be likened to great and divine; for we too do, so far as we can, all that we wish to say and do by our word.”

If, then, the Word went forth from the Father in this way by effective activity, where did Marcellus get the idea of limiting the Word's activity to the time of the consummation, at which he says the Word will be in God as he was before (and before he granted that he was at rest in God when God was silent)? So after the consummation too there will be a kind of quiet, the Word being about to do nothing. But before the founding of created things, he says, there was nothing but God, and since there was nothing, he rightly pictured quiet for himself;

but at the time of the consummation the prophet Daniel foretells that there will be myriads before the throne of God, saying, “Thousands of thousands ministered to him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him,”

and all the sons of the age to come will surely be there then, and the blessed souls of patriarchs and prophets and apostles and the holy spirits of martyrs, and all the sheep of our Saviour, who will stand at his right hand and will hear, “Come, you blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.”

Since so many will exist and live an immortal life after the time of the judgment, why will the Word of God not be active then too? And where did Marcellus get the idea of declaring that God will then no longer speak to the saints nor use his active Word, but that he will be as he was before, clearly silent and at rest in him? For he showed this, often saying that he will then be as he was before; and before, as he said, he was in quiet.

So God will then fall silent, having spoken before and used his active Word, but then, in the very kingdom of heaven that was promised, depriving his saints of his own Word and the wisdom in him. You see to what a cliff he has gone, using no guide, not even the divine Scriptures; for he put all this together for himself from one saying which he did not understand.

For at once, when he went to the proofs of the new covenant, he was driven back on every side, hemmed in; and finding only one phrase that contributed to his wrong opinion, he clung to it alone as if he had found a windfall, a phrase not even spoken in the person of our Saviour but in the person of the evangelist, by which he named him, saying, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Setting out from there, he denied the Son, as being nothing other than a word like the one known among us.

And yet the great and divine evangelist himself did not call him Word only, as we have often said, but also God and light and Son and only-begotten; and he records that the Saviour himself nowhere in Scripture called himself Word, but throughout the gospel life and light and only-begotten and Son of God and truth and resurrection and bread of life and vine and shepherd and countless other things, as has already been shown.

Why then, when there are so many, does he not stop at the wording in all the others but busies himself with the sense of what is said, while for “Word” alone he says he is so named in the proper sense, as being nothing other than Word? He writes in these very words, saying: “Not called Word loosely, even if those who teach otherwise burst with their lies, but being properly and truly Word.”

And again: “Let him learn, then, that the Word of God has come, not a Word called so loosely, as they say, but being a true Word.” And again: “Before, as I have often said, he was nothing other than Word.” And again: “Before coming down and being born through the Virgin he was only Word. For what else was it, before taking human flesh, that came down ‘in the last days,’ as he too wrote, and was born from the Virgin? It was nothing else than Word.” To Marcellus saying this it would be right to put this question: And where, my good man, do you get for us

the addition “nothing other” and “only”? For “In the beginning was the Word” we know exactly; and not only that, but also “and the Word was God,” and “he was the light that enlightens every man,” and “he was the only-begotten Son,” and all the other things listed. But that he was only Word and nothing other than Word, no one could show to have been said.

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

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

so in the case of “Word” too, the one who says he is only Word and nothing else would rightly be said to err. For since John the evangelist alone called him Word, and not only this but other things too, while the Saviour called himself light and truth and life and only-begotten Son and the rest, but never Word, how is it not absurd, for the names he called himself, not to say that he is one of them and nothing else, but for the evangelist's word about him, which called him Word, to insist that he was nothing other than Word?

But he also says, “being properly and truly Word.” And why not being properly and truly God? For the one who called him Word was not one person and the one who called him God another; one and the same evangelist taught that he is at once God and Word, saying, “and the Word was God,” and the same named him light. Why, then, not properly and truly only-begotten Son, and whatever else the Master and Saviour himself testified about himself through the evangelist? But he, passing over everything, says that he is properly and truly Word alone, and adds that he was only Word; and from there he falls down to the likeness of the human word.

And hearing him called light, he does not fall down to bodily light, nor say that he is like the sun's beam; but in the case of “Word” he makes him a signifying word, like the human one, so as to say that he is at one time at rest in God, at another goes forth from God, and comes to be within and outside him, after the likeness of our word, both the one called internal and the one heard by utterance through the voice.

He says in these very words: “For whatever the Father says, he is seen everywhere to say it through the Word. This is clear also from ourselves, so far as small things may be likened to great and divine; for we too do, so far as we can, all that we wish to say and do by our word.” And again he says this: “For before all creation there was a kind of quiet, as is likely, the Word being in God.” Then he adds: “For since nothing existed before but God alone, and all things were going to come into being through the Word, the Word came forth by effective activity.”

Having said so much about the Word, hear how he tries to interpret the gospel saying, writing thus: “But the holy apostle and disciple of the Lord John, teaching clearly and expressly at the beginning of the Gospel, as though he had been unknown among men before, names him Word of the Almighty. He said thus: ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.’ Using not one testimony, he signifies the eternity of the Word.”

And again he says: “Using three successive testimonies, he wants to show the eternity of the Word.” And again he adds: “So that, in saying ‘In the beginning was the Word,’ he might show that the Word is in the Father in power (for God is the beginning of all things that have come into being, ‘from whom are all things’), and in ‘and the Word was with God,’

that the Word is with God in activity (‘for all things came into being through him, and without him nothing came into being’), and in saying that the Word is God, that he might not divide the Godhead, since the Word is in him and he in the Word; for he says, ‘The Father is in me, and I in the Father.’” By so many words Marcellus, abolishing the hypostasis of the only-begotten Son of God, calls the divine evangelist to witness for his wrong opinion, as though he knew him as nothing other than Word, at one time active and at another at rest in God, and nothing other than God himself.

And yet the great evangelist and theologian, mentioning the Word three times in the same place, did not once call him Word of God. For he did not say, “In the beginning was the Word of God,” but indefinitely, “In the beginning was the Word,” leaving us to seek what sort of Word he was. And again he said, “and the Word was with God,” though he could have said, “and the Word of God was in God.” Moreover he said “and the Word was God,” not “and the Word was God's,” so that we should not suppose him to be some activity of God signifying something or making something.

Thinking this, Marcellus often defined him as God's eternal Word, that is, unbegotten, not seeing that if he says the Word is other than God, there will be two eternal beings (the Word and God) and there will no longer be one first principle; and if he says the eternal is one, defining God to be the same as the Word, he will confess Sabellius bare, introducing the one as Son-Father just as that man did.

So for him the Father will be the one who was born and suffered, and he himself will be the one who prays to himself and says he was sent by himself, and calls himself his own Son and only-begotten, not speaking truly but lying in irony. And what word could be more impious than this? But come, let us see what sort of Word the evangelist announces to us, saying, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

The term signifying “word” (logos), put forward in the Greek tongue, suggests a manifold consideration. (1) For that too is called logos which is laid down in the rational soul, by which we are able to reason; (2) and besides this another, which signifies something through tongue and articulate voice; (3) and in a third way, that which is composed by a writer in writing.

(4) And we are also accustomed to call logos the seminal or vegetative principle, by which things not yet grown lie in power in seeds, about to come forth into the light shortly in actuality. (5) And besides these they are accustomed to name logos, in another way, the scientific principle of some art or science, comprehending all such theorems, such as the medical or architectural or geometrical.

Since, then, different meanings arise from the word logos, and the evangelist said absolutely, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” one must attend and learn that the evangelist here hands on something strange in the way of a Word, beside the ones known to us, saying “Word” absolutely, but adding the strangeness and wonder of the power peculiar to him in “and the Word was God.”

For do not think, he says, that this one too is one of the relative things, like the word in the soul, or the one heard through the voice, or the one in bodily seeds, or the one subsisting in mathematical theorems; for all these, being relative, are understood in another underlying substance. But the God Word does not need another underlying thing in which to come to subsist, but is by himself living and subsisting, inasmuch as he is God. For “the Word was God.”

But hearing him called God, he says, do not suppose that he too is without beginning and unbegotten like his Father, but learn that “in the beginning” was this God Word. And what beginning of his he supposes, he makes clear next, not saying “and the Word was the God,” with the addition of the article, so as not to define him as the God over all, nor “in God,” so as not to cast him down to human likeness, but he said, “and the Word was with God.”

For if he had said, “and the Word was in God,” granting him as an accident in a subject and as one thing in another, he would have introduced God as composite, supposing him a substance without a word and the Word an accident of the substance.

Thinking this, Marcellus draws together the Father and the Son into the same, calling the substance the Father and the Word in him the Son; not reckoning that one who grants this, supposing God without a Word, would fall into a godless and impious dogma, accepting God as without reason, having a word as an accident in him but not being Word himself;

whereas one ought to confess that what is beyond all things is one divine, unspeakable, good, simple, uncompounded, uniform being: God himself, Mind itself, Word itself, Wisdom itself, Light itself, Life itself, the Beautiful itself, the Good itself, and whatever better than these one might conceive, or rather above all mind and beyond all thought and reflection;

and that his only-begotten Son, as image of the Father, sprung from him and in every way and in all things most like the one who begot him, is himself God and Mind and Word and Wisdom and Life and Light and image of the Beautiful and Good itself; not being the Father himself but the only-begotten Son of the Father, nor being the unbegotten and without beginning, but sprung from him and enrolling the one who begot him as his first principle.

But if Marcellus, contradicting this, should say that God and the Word in him are the same, defining God as uncompounded and simple, it is time to confess him neither Father nor Son, but openly to put forward the Jew or introduce Sabellius, who says that the same is Father and Son; so that on his view “In the beginning was the Word” would be equal to “In the beginning was God,” and “and the Word was with God” equal to “and God was with God,”

and likewise the third the same as “and God was God,” which, besides being incoherent, would also be most unreasonable. And how will “all things came into being through him” have a place, when the subject is one? For he does not say that all things came into being by him or from him, but “through him.” The preposition “through” signifies service, as the same evangelist shows going on next, saying, “The law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” For as the law, not being human nor belonging to Moses himself, but being from God, enrolled Moses as minister and servant of its giving to men, and for this reason it is said “the law was given through Moses,” so also “grace came through Jesus Christ,” the Father having worked it through Christ.

In the same way, then, “all things came into being through him” is said, another having made them and he having served; so that one must seek another as maker of all, who made all things subsist through the one spoken of as God. And who would this be? But he could not say.

This being so, one must confess that the one spoken of as God by the evangelist is not the God over all nor the Father himself, but his only-begotten Son, not an accident of the Father, nor being in him as in a subject, nor one and the same with God, but being truly Son, living and subsisting, being in the beginning and being with God and being God, through whom he creates all things;

so that one might rightly, making it clearer, say instead of “In the beginning was the Word,” “In the beginning was the Son,” and instead of “and the Word was with God,” “and the Son was with the Father,” and instead of “and the Word was God,” “and the Son was God.” And so what is added next would fit too: “For all things came into being through him, and without him nothing came into being.”

Rightly, therefore, the divine evangelist said he was “in the beginning,” granting him a beginning, clearly his generation from the Father; for everything begotten from something has the one who begot it as its beginning. But he did not go on likewise to say “and the Word was in God,” but “the Word was with God,” teaching that the one begotten, who has the Father as his beginning, is not somewhere far from the Father, nor cut off and standing far away from him, but present to him and with him;

which he taught also in Proverbs, first saying, “Before all hills he begets me,” and then adding, “When he was preparing the heaven, I was present with him.” So the Word, clearly the only-begotten Son, was with his own Father, God, being with him and present with him always and at every time;

which he showed when he said, “and the Word was with God.” And since we had to know what dignity he had, he necessarily added, “and the Word was God.” For how was the one begotten from the one and only unbegotten God not going to be God? For if “what is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit,” according to the saving teaching, it follows that what is begotten of God would be God. Therefore “the Word was God”;

and God, maker and creator of all things. The evangelist showed this too by adding next “all things came into being through him.” The law, then, as a tutor through Moses, presenting God as maker of the universe in the making of the world, and handing on elements and introductions to godliness, taught, saying, “In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth,” and what follows,

by which, educating the Jewish people, it urged them to regard the world as created, so as not to worship “the creature rather than the Creator.”

But how God created all things and through whom, Moses no longer handed on to those under him; but “grace and truth through Jesus Christ,” announcing the mystery kept silent by Moses, began a newer and mystical teaching for the church of God, crying out openly for all to hear, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” and “all things came into being through him,

and without him nothing came into being,” and adding to these, “What came into being in him was life, and the life was the light of men, and the light shines in the darkness,” and what follows, by which it teaches the Son of God and the special marks of the divine light and of the life in him, and how through him all that Moses spoke of, and what is beyond it, came to be. But Marcellus, knowing none of this, is caught now Judaizing and now Sabellianizing,

like the Jew saying that before the founding of the world there was nothing but God alone, while the church confesses that before the founding of the world the Father and the Son exist; and like Sabellius declaring that the Son and the Father are one and the same, and introducing him now as an internal word and now as an uttered one.

For even if he pretends not to accept these terms, it is clear from his saying at one time that the Word is within God and at another that he goes forth from him by effective activity, and from his likening him to the human word. But the divine evangelist did not set up the one he spoke of as God as a word in any of the ways described, but such as it was fitting to understand the only-begotten Son of God: being Word inasmuch as he established all things by reason and without reason nothing of what exists came to be; and God and only-begotten inasmuch as he alone was truly Son of the God over all, a genuine and beloved Son, made like his Father in all things.

Therefore he was also truly light, inasmuch as he shines the intellectual and rational beam into the souls made according to his image. Therefore he says he is light not of all things, but of men alone; for he said the light was “that which enlightens every man coming into the world.” So too he was truly life, inasmuch as he provides all living things with the stream of his supply. And for each aspect of the divine powers in him you would find titles that represent him and are true. For in all things the Son of God was truth, which he himself shows, saying, “I am the truth.”

But the new writer neither understands these things nor knows them, nor knows that he does not know how what he boasts of knowing came about. Come, let us take it up again and hear how he likens him to the word in men, both the one in thought and the one in utterance, writing in this way: “This, I think, is easy for those who think well to know even from a small and humble example among us. For no one can separate a man's word from him in power and hypostasis; for the word is one and the same with the man, and is separated from him by nothing else than the activity of the deed alone.”

Here, then, he uses the uttered word as an image, and the internal word where he says this: “For God did not need another preparation, such as matter or any other human one, for his fashioning, but this preparation in his own mind. Since, then, it was impossible for God to think about the fashioning of heaven without a Word and the wisdom that belongs to the Word, he rightly said, ‘When he was preparing the heaven, I was present with him.’”

Then, going on next, he presents the Word of God as internal too, writing thus: “For who, either of the holy angels or of just men, was so trustworthy as to undo the punishment decreed for man from the face of God, except the Word himself, who was present and fashioning with him, to whom the Father said, ‘Let us make man’?”

Next he makes clear what sort of Word he introduces, saying: “But suppose someone, using a small and human example from among us, should examine the divine act as through an image: just as a skilled sculptor, wishing to mould a statue, first considers its outlines and features within himself, then thinks out how great a breadth and length is fitting, and examines the proportion of the whole in each part; and having prepared the suitable material of bronze, and having first shaped the future statue in his own mind, and thinking he sees it mentally, and conscious that the word works with him, by which he reasons and by which he is accustomed to do everything (for nothing done without word is good), beginning this perceptible work he urges himself as if another, saying: Come, let us make, come, let us mould a statue: so God, the Master of all, making the living statue from earth, urges no one else but his own Word, saying, ‘Let us make man.’” By this he clearly attached to God both an internal word, by which one reasons, and an uttered word, by which one converses, supposing the Word in God to be such as ours.

Since all these are denials of the Son of God, there is no need to elaborate further. But I think it fitting to ask this much: if there was one God and nothing else, neither Father nor Son, why did Scripture tell lies with such names? And why does Marcellus himself play a part, calling Son what is not a son but a word? And since he uses the example of the word in men, it must be said that not every man has a son, though he is rational and has the innate word in himself;

so a son is something other than the word. If, then, he says that God has a word in himself and nothing else, by which he thought, by which he conversed with himself, saying “Let us make man,” why does he name him Son in vain? Why does he play the part of the church? Why, not believing in the Son of God, does he pretend to believe, putting on a show by calling the Word in God Son, when his example clearly teaches that the word innate in a soul is far distant from a son begotten from someone, subsisting and living and acting by himself?

But not I, he will probably say, but the divine evangelist called him Word; it would follow, then, that we too agree with him. Yes, I say so too.

But I think one ought to hear the term in no other way than by again being taught by the evangelist himself what sort of Word he defined. He showed clearly what he was, adding next and saying, “and the Word was God.” He could have said, “and the Word was the God,” with the addition of the article, if he thought the Father and the Son were one and the same and that the Word himself was the God over all; but he did not publish the writing so.

For he ought to have said either “and the Word was God's” or “the Word was the God,” with the addition of the article, if he were making the writing agree with Marcellus's thought. But now he shows that the Word himself is God too, like the God with whom he was. For having said before, “and the Word was with God,” he adds, saying, “and the Word was God,” all but teaching us more clearly first to regard as God the one beyond all, the Father of the Word, with whom the Word was, and then after him not to be ignorant that his Word, the only-begotten Son, was not himself the God over all, but that he too was God.

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

And since Marcellus thought good to compare the Word of God to the human word, how much better, we shall say, if one uses the human word as an image, to use this example rather and say that the father of our word is the mind, which is other than the word. For no man has ever known the mind, who or what it is in substance; but like a king seated within its secret chambers it deliberates what is to be done; and the word from it, begotten as from a father out of inner recesses, becomes known to all outside.

Then others share in the benefit of the word, but no one has ever seen the hidden and invisible mind, the father of the word.

In the same way, or rather beyond every image and example, the perfect Word of the God and King of all, not composed of syllables and words and names like the uttered word of men, but as the only-begotten Son of God, living and subsisting, goes forth from the Father's divinity and kingdom and waters the whole world with his supplies, flooding all created things with participation in life and reason and wisdom and light and every good; while the Father and God of all is beyond, ungraspable and uncontainable by all, like the hidden and invisible mind, for which reason it is said he “dwells in unapproachable light.”

But the Father would be unapproachable and uncontainable by all, while the Son is nearer to all, inasmuch as he steers all things by the Father's nod (therefore “he was in the world, and the world came into being through him” was said not of the Father but of the Son); and the one was beyond all things and above all “dwelling in unapproachable light,” while the other pervades through all and in all with caring providence, so that in this respect only the image of the human word fits him. But now that this has been shown, a lover of learning might well ask:

Why did the evangelist, at the beginning of his writing, call the only-begotten Son of God Word? To him we shall say: because of the prophecies about him, hidden long ago. For since for each prophet it is said, “the word of the Lord which came,” say, “to Isaiah,” and “the beginning of the word of the Lord in Hosea,” and “the word of the Lord which came to Joel,” and “the word of the Lord came to Jonah,”

and likewise “to Micah,” and to the rest of the prophets similarly, for each prophet “came” was added (divine Scripture noting exactly and necessarily that he was in none of the prophets, but came to each, approaching to the extent each one's capacity could contain, and supplying to each one's soul the fitting spirit from himself); and since the evangelist was rightly going to announce at present the intellectual dispensation of the Word, he teaches that he no longer came to someone else, as with those of old, but that he himself took flesh and became man. Then, since he was going to proclaim to all his saving entry among men, saying next, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us,” he necessarily runs back to the beginning, showing who and of what sort was the Word who became flesh yesterday and the day before,

and he speaks of him as God, announcing at once the knowledge of him and his divine appearing among men. Then, since those of old had learned beforehand from the divine readings about the Word who came to each prophet, he himself proclaims his more divine and special beginning, which none of the prophets revealed to men so nakedly and openly.

Therefore, handing on to all with a great voice the hidden and secret mystery about the Word, he cried out, saying: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things came into being through him, and without him nothing came into being.”

For if, he says, educated by the former divine Scriptures, you learned long ago that the word of the Lord came to this prophet, and likewise came to another, and again to another, now it is necessary to announce to all not how he came but how he was in the beginning, and that “he was God,” and that “all things came into being through him,” and that that very God Word, “through whom are all things,” by the Father's kindness “became flesh and dwelt among us.”

This John, the great disciple and apostle of Christ, announced, teaching all men the new and recent mysteries of the Saviour: not that God was rational, nor that he thought within himself and conversed with himself, saying “Let us make man,” nor that he uses words commanding what is to be done. For anyone denying the Son of God would say these things.

Doing just this, Marcellus flees to the old Scripture as to a refuge, and tries to collect the commands given to the infant Jewish people about not worshipping idols but knowing and worshipping one God alone. There the teaching about the one God was abundant for him, handed on usefully then and in due season to Jews who were worshipping idols. And having fled there, and fenced himself in as in a fortress with Jewish hardness of heart, he put forward the denial of the Son of God.

Hear, at any rate, what words he uses, writing word for word thus: “Whom then does Asterius think is the one saying ‘I am he who is,’ the Son or the Father? For looking to the human flesh which the Word of God assumed, and imagining things because of it, he said there are two hypostases, of Father and Son, thus separating the Son of God from the Father as one might separate a son of man from his natural father.

And he adds next: “If, then, he says that the Father, separating himself from the Son, said this to Moses, he will confess that the Son is not God. For how is it possible that the one who says ‘I am he who is’ does not agree that he calls himself ‘he who is’ in distinction from what is not? And if he says that the Son, divided in hypostasis, says this, ‘I am he who is,’ he will be thought to say the same again about the Father; and each of these is impious.”

And again, trying to show that the Father and the Son are one, he writes thus: “For he himself confesses, saying, ‘The Father is in me and I in the Father’; and that he did not say this simply or without aim is clear also from another saying of the apostle; for the one who said, ‘One Lord, one faith, one baptism,’ said, ‘One God and Father, who is over all and through all and in all.’ You see that here too he does not depart from the agreement, but here too he has the same experience. For having said ‘one Lord,’ he again said ‘one God,’ so that whenever he mentions the one Lord he may include the Father, and whenever he speaks of the Father he may testify that the Word of God is not outside.”

Having said this, Marcellus next collects more Scriptures from the old covenant to prove that God has no Son.

At any rate, saying that God is an indivisible monad, he shows that the same is Father and the same is Son, writing in this way: “What then? If, not attending to the spirit, we should not think the monad to be indivisible in power, shall we not sin, when the Word clearly teaches us, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and serve him alone’?”

“He proclaims the same also through the Gospel according to Mark. For when a scribe came to him and asked which was the first of the commandments, he answered him, saying: ‘First of all: Hear, Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your soul and with all your strength. This is the first; and the second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself.

There is no other commandment greater than these. And the scribe said to him: Well said, Teacher; truly you have said that God is one and there is none besides him.’

But the scribe, who thought he had learned godliness through the law, is seen praising the Saviour's saying, ‘Hear, Israel,’ when he says, ‘the Lord your God is one,’ and affirming with an oath that it was well said; for he says, ‘Truly you have said that God is one and there is no other besides him.’ But those who boast of knowing the mysteries of the new covenant want to fashion a second God, separated from the Father in hypostasis and power.”

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

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

And again a little later he says, ‘I am the Lord your God,’ saying that he himself is Lord and God. And what do we learn through another Scripture? ‘And you shall know today,’ he says, ‘and you shall not be turned aside in mind, that the Lord your God, he is God in heaven above and on the earth below, and there is none besides him.’ And again in the same Deuteronomy he says, ‘Hear, Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’

And again in the same: ‘See, see that I am, and there is no God besides me; I will kill and I will make alive; I will strike and I will heal.’ How then did Asterius, pretending to follow the holy Scriptures simply and with fear, not know this part, which says, ‘The Lord your God, he is God in heaven above and on the earth below, and there is no other besides him,’ and that ‘he is one’ and besides him there ‘is no’ other?

And after other things he adds to this again, saying: “How then will the holy prophet Jeremiah not openly refute him as teaching otherwise? For prophesying to us the things concerning the Saviour he said thus: ‘This is our God; no other shall be reckoned beside him. He found out every way of knowledge, and gave it to Jacob his servant and to Israel who was beloved by him. After this he was seen on earth and lived among men.’

And again he adds, saying: “But it seems that the Father is in the Word, even if Asterius and those who think the same as he do not think so. For this is the view of the inspired prophet Isaiah, who says through the Holy Spirit: ‘And they will worship you, and in you they will pray, because God is in you, and there is no other besides you. For you are God.’ You see how he overturns root and branch the crafty wickedness of those who teach otherwise?”

And again he adds: “And if you wish to hear another prophecy of the same, confirming one God for us: ‘I am God, first, and for the things to come I am.’ For ‘I’ indicates one person; for the two words signify to us one person. For having said ‘I,’ he adds ‘am,’ so that through the two parts of speech, pronoun and verb, the monad of the Godhead is testified.

And if he needs another testimony too, I will provide him again the same prophet saying: ‘I am first and I am after these things, and besides me there is no God.’ If Asterius thinks the Son is divided from the Father in hypostasis, like a son of man, being offended by the human flesh which he took for our sake, let him show us who says this;

for here too the saying is of one person. Who then is the one who says, ‘There is no God besides me’? And let him hear another prophecy saying, ‘There is no righteous one and Saviour besides me.’ If he thinks there are two gods, he must confess that the other is not righteous nor Saviour. And if not righteous nor Saviour, how can he still be God? For he declares that one is righteous and Saviour. And again he says, ‘Before me there was no other, and after me there will be none; I am God, and there will be none who saves besides me.’

And if he wishes to hear another prophetic saying too, spoken perhaps to him and to those of like mind with him about the Godhead, let him hear Isaiah himself saying: ‘Repent, you who go astray, turn in heart, and remember the former things from of old, that I am the God and there is none besides me.’

He did not say ‘I am God,’ so that by the addition of the article too he might clearly show that he is one God. And what of Hosea the prophet? Does he not also testify the same, saying, ‘I brought you up out of Egypt, and you shall know no God besides me, and there is none who saves besides me’? And again Malachi: ‘Did not one God

create you?’ he says; ‘is there not one father of you all?’ But Asterius will perhaps say that David said nothing about this, though he is the oldest of the other prophets after Moses, and for that reason he is in doubt whether one ought to think there are two gods divided in hypostasis or not. So, lest he say this, I think it follows to show him that David too says the same as the saints mentioned before: ‘Hear,’ he says, ‘my people, and I will speak to you; Israel, and I will testify to you. If you hear me, there shall be no new god among you, nor shall you worship a foreign god.

For I am the Lord your God.’ The one who shows himself and says ‘I am,’ is he not clearly saying that there is one God only, that is, himself?”

All these and still more Marcellus heaped together for the denial of the Son of God, not reckoning, through lack of knowledge, that such teaching was given them because of the hardness of heart of the Jewish people. For it was not possible for the Holy Spirit, through the prophets of God, to hand on the complete word of godliness to men imperfect in mind.

So, at any rate, it legislated for them to offer sacrifices, and circumcision of the body, and keeping of the sabbath, and abstinence from certain foods, and purifications of bodies, and bodily blessings, and indeed promises of a land flowing “with milk and honey,” but not of the kingdom of heaven. And our Saviour and Lord, when asked how, when Moses commanded that whoever wished should give a bill of divorce and send away his wife, he himself ordered the opposite, gave the general reason, saying, “Moses wrote because of your hardness of heart; but from the beginning it was not so.”

He would have said the same if anyone had asked why Moses and the prophets after him, urging them to worship one God, did not teach them the knowledge of the Son: for those continually led away by the polytheistic error were not able to receive the grace of the gospel. Therefore they gave the teaching about one God because of their hardness of heart, educating them for the time being by turning them from thinking there are many gods and leading them to the introduction of the one.

So Moses handed on an incomplete teaching to those of his time because of the incompleteness of their understanding, so that he made no mention of the creation of angels in the account of the making of the world, although the prophets after him mentioned not only angels but also divine powers and holy spirits and the supra-heavenly ministers of God, about whom Daniel taught, saying, “Thousands of thousands ministered to him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him.”

But Moses passed over the accounts of all these in silence, although he was not ignorant of them, but had beforehand exact knowledge of all by the divine Spirit; yet he nowhere mentioned them in the making of the world as having come into being by God.

And one could give no other reason for this than the hardness of heart of the people, as the Saviour himself taught. And you may learn from the readings of the new covenant that there are countless other things in the constitution of the universe not found at all in the writing of Moses; he did not mention principalities or authorities or world-rulers or the spiritual forces “of wickedness,” against which the divine apostle says our struggle is set.

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

and again when he names thrones and dominions and principalities and authorities, saying, “For in him were created all things in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities,” must we not accept these because neither Moses nor the other prophets spoke of them beforehand? Or shall we say the same about these, that “the stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears” were not able to believe the accounts of them? To them the prophets of God did not reveal even the Jerusalem above, as Paul, making clear the accounts of it too to the church of Christ, cried out, saying, “But the Jerusalem above is free, which is our mother,” and “You have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels, to the festal gathering and church of the firstborn enrolled in heaven.”

Let Marcellus say in answer to this whether he can bring forward the teaching on these things from the old writings.

And if he does not find it, let him give the reason why all these and countless others akin to them were kept silent by the prophets of God, things about which the same apostle prayed God for us, “that we may be strong enough to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height, and to know the love of God that surpasses knowledge.”

And our Saviour himself revealed very many mysteries about the kingdom of heaven, about the consummation of all, and about the promises, sometimes through parables and sometimes in secret, to his disciples, to whom he said, “To you it has been given to know the mysteries of God.” One would not find their equal in Moses or the other prophets.

What then? Since these were not handed on to the Jewish people, being kept for the church of Christ for a suitable time, ought we on that account to reject the grace given us, or rather give greater thanks to the one who counted us worthy of such knowledge? In the same way, then, it would be fitting to receive the teachings about the Son from his new covenant, not at all surprised if the men of God did not reveal the knowledge of him to the hard-hearted people, reserving the account of him for the right time.

For it did not seem suitable at that time to hand on the mystery of Father and Son to men who were being drawn into the error of many gods, to whom they did not reveal even the accounts of the lower powers, lest on this pretext they should fall into the Greek polytheism, the Greeks having fashioned their god as father “of men and gods.”

Therefore the word, holding them back from such error, proclaimed the one God, but did not deny that the same is Father; and it taught them to worship the true God and urged them to know none besides him, but did not deny that he is Father. And if it called him Lord and God and righteous and Saviour, it did not exclude thinking that he is also Father of his only-begotten and beloved Son; whether the Father or the Son says “I am he who is,”

the saying would be true either way. For the Father would be “he who is,” being alone “God over all and through all and in all,” as the divine apostle taught. And the Son too, being called “he who is,” would speak truly, being the only only-begotten Son of the one who is; and being the image of the invisible God, he would be his image in this respect too, in which he alone was “he who is”; therefore he too would be called “he who is,” since he too, like the Father, is proclaimed God and Lord throughout the inspired Scripture.

This can be learned also from the oracle to Moses. Scripture says: “And God spoke to Moses and said to him: I am the Lord; and I appeared to Abraham and to Isaac and to Jacob, being their God.” You see how he said he had appeared to the fathers. And when he appeared, Scripture again testifies, saying, “And the Lord God appeared to Abraham at the oak of Mamre, as he sat at the door.” And how did he appear but in human form? And whom ought one to believe this to be but the Son of God? He himself showed this in the Gospels, saying to the Jews, “Abraham your father rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it and was glad”;

when, as they marvelled at the saying, he added, “Before Abraham came to be, I am,” showing his pre-existence most plainly. What then does the saying establish but that it was the Son of God himself who gave the oracle to Moses and said, “I am he who is”? For he taught that he appeared to Abraham. And how he was himself “he who is” has been said.

And the great apostle Paul knows that the Son of God became mediator of the legislation through Moses, where he teaches, saying, “The law, ordained through angels, by the hand of a mediator. Now a mediator is not of one.” So the one who gave the oracle to Moses was the mediator, from that time mediating for the salvation of men, before taking the flesh.

And that this is Jesus Christ the same apostle showed, saying, “One God, and one mediator also of God and men, the man Jesus Christ.” So whether “I am he who is” was spoken in Moses in his own person, or it was the Father who uttered this word through him, the saying would be true either way.

So let Marcellus not be at a loss, using what he thinks an inescapable syllogism, in which he says: “Whom then does Asterius think is the one saying ‘I am he who is,’ the Son or the Father?” And then concluding that if the Father is he who is, the Son will no longer be God, because he calls himself he who is in distinction from what is not; “and if he says that the Son, divided in hypostasis, says this, ‘I am he who is,’ he will be thought to say the same again about the Father; and each of these is impious.”

But in saying this he himself has fallen into each absurdity, defining one as he who is and denying the other. And which one, he himself would know. For either granting the Father he will deny the Son, or accepting only the Son he will reject the Father; or rather he will be convicted of knowing neither Father nor Son, granting only one and putting the other out of the way. And if he hears God saying, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

You shall have no other gods besides me,” let him not be troubled in soul here either, but let him hear what is joined next; for having said, “You shall have no other gods besides me,” he added, “You shall not make for yourself an idol, nor a likeness of anything that is in heaven above and that is on the earth below and that is in the waters under the earth. You shall not worship them nor serve them; for I am the Lord your God, a jealous Lord.”

You see how he commanded them not to be carried away with the polytheistic error of the nations, but to know him alone as God and Lord. And who was this? The Son, having the image of the Father in himself, and giving these orders by his authority to those sick with idolatry. For as “all things came into being through him,” the Father making the substance of all created things subsist through the Saviour, so it was the Father himself who handed on the knowledge of and piety toward himself to men through the Son as mediator.

And the apostle taught this in these very words, writing to the Galatians, where he said, “The law, ordained through angels, by the hand of a mediator. Now a mediator is not of one, but God is one.”

And if he says, “See, see that I am, and there is no God besides me,” again it was the Father saying this through the Son as through an image and mediator. For when the prophet Isaiah says, “I have begotten sons and raised them up,” and again, “But Israel has not known me, and the people has not understood me,” and again, “I commanded all the stars, and with my hand made firm the heaven,” and other such things, we shall not say that Isaiah says these things, but God who speaks in him through him; would it not fit in the case of the only-begotten Son of God too that the Father must testify these things through him to those who needed such commands? And these were idolaters, as the same Scripture teaches, saying: “And the Lord said: Where are their gods, in whom they trusted, whose fat of sacrifices you ate and whose wine of libations you drank? Let them rise up and help you and be your protectors.” For to these is joined “See, see that I am, and there is no God besides me.”

So even if he cries out ten thousand times through the prophet, “Besides me there is no God,” and “Besides me there is no righteous one and Saviour,” and “You shall know no God besides me, and there is none who saves besides me,” and other things akin to these found in the other prophets, it was God who even from that time was “in Christ reconciling the world to himself.” And it was the Father himself speaking these things to men through the only-begotten Son as through an interpreter. The Son himself handed this on in the Gospels, teaching us to know one God only, where he said, “And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and him whom you sent, Jesus Christ.”

So he himself was the true God, the one alone, and there is no other besides him, who gave these commands to the Jewish nation, then idolatrous, not only through the prophets but through his own Son. At once, then, Isaiah (or rather God through him), having said, “Besides me there is no God; who is like me?” and next, “You are witnesses whether there is a God besides me,” added, “And they were not then. Those who mould and those who carve are all vain, doing what they desire.”

And through his whole prophecy you would find lifeless images struck down, and in each prophet likewise you will find the one God proclaimed to turn men from the error of many gods. So we too are accustomed, in our dialogues with the superstitious among the Greeks, to reserve the teaching about Christ for the right time, meanwhile bringing them refutations of idolatrous error and establishing by demonstrative arguments that God is one.

Let Marcellus learn, then, if he has grown old in the episcopate of the church of Christ and has not yet learned even now, that the knowledge of the hidden mystery about the Son of God was in no way suited to the old people, slippery as it was toward idolatry; and that “the mystery hidden from the ages and from the generations” was reserved by his grace for his church alone, in which mystery the doctrine of the holy Trinity of Father and Son and Holy Spirit was contained.

But he, having collected as much as a teacher of the Jews might say when speaking about circumcision in a Jewish synagogue, gives himself airs putting these before Christ's disciples, not knowing that a fleshly Jew would say more than he. On these he boasts, but he is not ashamed to distort the true theologies about our Saviour.

At once, then, he does not understand the words of the divine apostle, who taught in various ways that he is the image of God, through the words of his I set out; whereas he ought to have understood from this that the church of God does not proclaim two gods. For it does not introduce two unbegotten beings nor two without beginning, as we have often said, nor two substances ranged against each other in equality of honour, and therefore not two gods; but it teaches one first principle and God, the same being Father of the only-begotten and beloved Son, and likewise one image “of the invisible God,” which is the same as his only-begotten and beloved Son. And even if the apostle, speaking of the Father, says “the blessed and only Sovereign” and again “who alone has immortality,

dwelling in unapproachable light,” and again, “to the King of the ages, incorruptible, invisible, the only God,” and again, “to the only wise God through Jesus Christ be glory for ever; amen,” and even if still more than these is said in praise of the one God over all, one must understand that the only-begotten Son of God is the image of all these, formed not as in lifeless matter but as in a living Son. And even if the Saviour himself teaches that the Father alone is true God, saying, “that they may know you, the only true God,” yet one must not hesitate to confess him too as true God, possessing this too as in an image, so that the addition “only” may fit the Father alone as the archetype of the image.

At any rate the inspired Paul taught most clearly that he is the image and radiance of the Father and “in the form” of God, as has been shown before. So, just as when one Father subsists and one Son is born from the Father, no one in his right mind would say there are two fathers or two sons; and just as when one king rules and his image is carried everywhere on earth, no one of sound mind would say there are two rulers, but one, who is honoured also through the image: in the same way (as we have often said) the church of God, having received one God to worship, remains worshipping the same also through the Son, as through an image.

Not understanding this, Marcellus declared that the image “of the invisible God” is the Saviour's flesh, which the apostle called “the form of a servant,” not reckoning that all men are formed like the Saviour's flesh. And he insists that the body which the Saviour assumed is the image of the unbegotten and unspeakable Godhead of the Father, but denies that the only-begotten Son of God, through whom all things were established (“for all things came into being through him, and without him nothing came into being”), is the image of God, saying in these very syllables: “It is therefore plain that before the taking up of our body the Word by himself was not the image of the invisible God.” You see how great a distortion of the apostle's meaning he uses.

So, when the evangelist John announced and unveiled the mystery known in hidden fashion in Moses and the other prophets, and proclaimed with a great cry, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

All things came into being through him,” and testified that “he was the light that enlightens every man coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world came into being through him, and the world did not know him,” and clearly showed the sonship in saying of the Father, “No one has ever seen God,” and of the Son, “The only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known,”

this admirable teacher of Christ's words, collecting from divine Scripture the commandments of God and the words commanding what is to be done, defines the Word “in the beginning” as something of this kind. Hear how he tries to establish this, writing in this way: “… while those who teach them are as if ashamed to mention the Word, whom all the divine Scriptures proclaim in this way. For David says of him: ‘By the word of the Lord the heavens were made firm,’ and again the same: ‘He sent forth his word and healed them.’ And Solomon: ‘The wicked will seek me and will not find me; for they hated wisdom, and did not choose the word of the Lord.’ And Isaiah: ‘Out of Zion will go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.’ And again Jeremiah says: ‘The wise were put to shame and terrified and caught, because they rejected the word of the Lord.’

And Hosea the prophet said: ‘They hated the one who reproves in the gates, and abhorred a holy word.’ And Micah likewise, he too mentioning the word, said: ‘Out of Zion will go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.’” Collecting these and things akin to them, he thinks he strengthens his own opinion by them.

But see how he jumbled together the testimonies from divine Scripture, collecting both the word of God that is sent, the saving and healing one, and the word commanding what is to be done. For what word does “They hated the one who reproves in the gates, and abhorred a holy word” suppose, if not surely the one commanding holy and just actions? He wants to confess anything rather than the Son of God, as if ashamed to mention the Son. For we know that the Son of God is most properly Son and truly only-begotten of God, and we know exactly that he is Word, not like the word in men, but such as it is fitting to understand the Word of God, living and subsisting and Son. But he, introducing a signifying word and one commanding what is to be done, rightly hesitated to confess the Son, whom he denied in deed.

Then he does not notice that he writes the opposite of himself. For elsewhere he insists that no one of the former people knew the things concerning the Word, for it was a hidden mystery. He writes thus in these very words: “For what else was the hidden mystery than the mystery concerning the Word? This mystery was formerly so hidden in God that no one of the former people clearly knew the things concerning the Word, but we now enjoy the riches of the glory and of the hidden mystery.” And again he adds: “But the holy apostle and disciple of the Lord John, teaching clearly and expressly at the beginning of the gospel, as though he had been unknown among men before, names him Word of the Almighty. He said thus: ‘In the beginning was the Word.’” Here, then, he defines the hidden mystery as God's having a Word; but in the prophetic words just set out he establishes that all the divine Scriptures proclaim the things about him, and he collects very many testimonies about the Word of God.

So he was not unknown to the former people, for they all knew such words, carrying the prophetic oracles on their lips and in memory. But the Christian holds up to us the scribe of the Jews, not hearing the Saviour saying, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites,” and he admires him for affirming with an oath that “God is one and there is none besides him,” not knowing that even “the demons believe and shudder.”

Note how from the prophetic Scriptures themselves he collects the passages about a word that teaches what is to be done, which the sons of the Jews too will confess they know, having received it before us. But not even Sabellius himself was ignorant of such a word.

How then, attacking the Jews and Sabellius, did he say they did not know the Word, in the words of his I set out? And since the same man declared earlier that no one could know God or recognize his Word unless he had received the image of the invisible God, clearly the flesh, as he himself said

(for he contended that God and his Word are known through the image alone, saying the flesh is the image), it must be pointed out from what has been set forth that, without the coming in the flesh, all the Jews knew exactly the word of God and the words in the prophetic Scriptures commanding holy deeds, studying them from tender years, and confessed God the maker and creator of all, as the scribe too affirmed this with an oath.

So much, then, to prove that the man Sabellianizes. It is time now to go on also to the perverse interpretations of the divine Scriptures he has made, so that every one of those who honour the man may learn that he turned aside not only from the right faith but also from a sound reading and study of the inspired Scriptures.

The great evangelist John, then, announced the theology of our Saviour in various ways, in the manner described; and how Marcellus, denying it, ran aground on Jewish unbelief has been shown by what has been said. And how he also perversely misinterpreted the agreed and clear teachings about our Saviour you may learn from very many other expositions of his, but above all from the following. In the Proverbs of Solomon Wisdom is introduced in her own person, going through these things about herself: “I, Wisdom, have made counsel my dwelling,

and I have called knowledge and understanding. The fear of the Lord hates wickedness, insolence and pride and the ways of the wicked; and I have hated the perverse ways of the evil. Counsel and security are mine; I am understanding, and strength is mine.

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

It is better to gain my fruit than gold and precious stone, and my produce is better than choice silver. I walk in the ways of righteousness, and I move among the paths of justice, that I may give a portion to those who love me and fill their treasuries with good things. If I tell you the things that happen day by day, I will remember to count the things from everlasting.

The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways for his works; before the age he founded me; in the beginning, before he made the earth, before he made the depths, before the springs of the waters came forth, before the mountains were settled, and before all hills he begets me. The Lord made lands, both uninhabited and the inhabited heights of the world under heaven. When he was preparing the heaven, I was present with him, when he marked off his own throne upon the winds; when he made strong the clouds above, and set as secure the springs under heaven, and made strong the foundations of the earth, I was beside him, fitting things together; I was the one in whom he rejoiced daily; and I was glad before his face at every time, when he rejoiced at having completed the world, and rejoiced over the sons of men.”

This Wisdom says about herself in Proverbs. I have deliberately and necessarily set out the whole, showing that the one saying these things is one person, with no change of speaker in between; so Wisdom is shown teaching these things about herself. And here first one must note that she is named Wisdom absolutely; for she says “I, Wisdom, have made counsel my dwelling,” and it is not said “wisdom of God.” But 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 should think he is spoken of as one of the relative things, or as an accident in God, but as subsisting and living (therefore he adds “and the Word was God,” not saying “and the Word was God's”), so also with Wisdom.

For the God Word and Wisdom were one and the same. Therefore she is named absolutely in Proverbs, both in the sayings set out and in those where it is said in this way: “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, so that understanding may follow you,” and “For wisdom is better than costly stones”

and “Wisdom has built herself a house and set up seven pillars,” and as many other things akin to these as are found in the same book; in which she is nowhere named wisdom of God, but indefinitely, Wisdom, so that we should not think her some property of God, like knowledge in a knowing man, but a subsisting and living Wisdom, the same as the Son of God.

And if anyone should suppose the wisdom spoken of here to be a wise habit in God, by which we understand God to be wise, let him hear Scripture saying, “Say that wisdom is your sister.” Who would be so mad as to suppose that the God over all, and the wise habit in him, is called sister of those among men who do right?

But if you take the saying of the Christ of God (for “Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God”), there will be nothing in the way of the sense, since through surpassing kindness he does not refuse brotherhood with us too. But if God and the Wisdom introduced in Proverbs were one and the same, being a wise habit understood in him by which God is wise, what prevented God from being written instead of Wisdom? So that “Wisdom has built herself a house and set up seven pillars” and what is joined to it would have been said instead of “God has built himself a house” and so on, and again

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

But if you take the oracles of the Son (for he was Wisdom), everything will flow smoothly for you, no impious thought standing in the way, the apostle Paul testifying with it, who named our Saviour and Lord Jesus Christ wisdom with a brilliant voice, saying, “Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”

This being established thus, it follows that, together with all that was set out before, “The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways for his works” was also said in his own person. And if he says he was created, he would not say this as having come from non-being into being, nor as having come from non-being like the other creatures, as some have wrongly supposed, but as subsisting and living, existing and pre-existing before the founding of the whole world, and appointed by the Lord, his Father, to rule over all things, “created” here being said instead of “appointed” or “established.”

At any rate the apostle expressly named rulers and governors among men a creation, saying, “Submit to every human creation for the Lord's sake, whether to the king as supreme, or to governors as sent by him.”

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

But he was and pre-existed, and was sent at the time when the apostles were gathered, when, like thunder, “there came a sound from heaven like a rushing violent wind,” and they were filled “with the Holy Spirit,” and so proclaimed the Christ of God to all men, in accordance with the prophecy which said, “For behold, I am he who makes firm the thunder and creates spirit and announces to men his Christ”; “creates” being said instead of “sends down” or “appoints,” and the thunder in another way signifying the gospel proclamation. And the one who says, “Create a clean heart in me, O God,” did not say this as one who had no heart, but prayed that his mind might be made clean.

So too is said “that he might create the two into one new man,” instead of “gather together”; consider whether such too is “Put on the new man created according to God,” and “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation,” and whatever else of this kind one might find searching the inspired Scripture. Do not be surprised, then, if metaphorically in “The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways” too, “created” is said instead of “established” or “appointed to rule,” since in the Gospels too, when our Saviour says, “I confess to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to infants,” we do not say that confession of sins (in the sense in which it is said elsewhere, “Confess your sins to one another”) is meant by the Saviour, but thanksgiving for the infants, “confess” being said instead of “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth.”

One who searched at leisure would find countless things said in the metaphorical way throughout divine Scripture, and others having a manifold sense, and others predicated homonymously of different things. It would be long, and not for the present occasion, to go through them.

So here too “The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways for his works” is said instead of “He appointed me to rule over his works”; therefore it is not said simply “He created me,” but with the addition “as the beginning of his ways for his works.”

The Hebrew wording shows this most of all. At any rate, if one should examine exactly the true sense of inspired Scripture, he would find that the Hebrew reading does not contain “He created me,” and therefore none of the other translators uses this word either. At once, then, Aquila said, “The Lord acquired me as the head of his ways”; Symmachus, “The Lord acquired me as the beginning of his ways”; and Theodotion, “The Lord acquired me as the beginning of his way.”

And the rendering would have reason. For he was the head of the founding and salvation of all created things, seen and unseen, he whom the Father begot as only-begotten Son, and, having begotten him, appointed Saviour of all, summing up in him and through him the ordering of the universe, as the divine apostle taught, saying “to sum up all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on earth”; so that not only were all things established through him, coming forth from non-being into being, but he also took on the providence of the government of all, being Word and Wisdom and Life and the fullness of everything beautiful and good, so that all things are steered and preserved through him.

He himself showed this also through the oracles set out before, in which he said, “Through me kings reign, and princes write righteousness; through me great men are magnified, and tyrants through me rule the earth.”

So by unspeakable ways of the universal wisdom and providence of the Son of God all things are governed. This, then, he taught through what was set out before, and he urged men to hold fast to him, saying, “I love those who love me, and those who seek me will find,” and turned them from the opposite road by adding, “And I have hated the perverse ways of the evil.”

And having ordained these and things akin to them, the Son of God (for he was Wisdom) next hands on to those already helped by them the mystical knowledge about himself, saying, “If I tell you the things that happen day by day, I will remember to count the things from everlasting.”

For if I am going, he says, to teach what is done by me each day, I must also remember my works from the beginning of the whole age, and show that the Father who begot me appointed me for this, to rule all things, and to lead his ways and the works made by him through me. Therefore he adds consistently, “The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways for his works,” or “The Lord acquired me,” according to the rendering given.

For the only-begotten Son was God's great possession: inasmuch as he was begotten from him, being his Son; inasmuch as he has been established as beneficial and saving to all, he is and is named the greatest and most precious possession of the Father. For nothing could be a more precious possession for a father than a son. Hence too, when the first-formed Adam acquired the first son among men, it was said of him, “I have acquired a man through God,” the Hebrew word containing qanithi instead of “I have acquired”;

and “he acquired” is pronounced kana among the Hebrews. So too it is said of Abraham, “the field which Abraham acquired,” where the Hebrew contains kana, the same word lying among the Hebrews in “The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways for his works” too. For here too, since the word kana lies there, all the translators in agreement rendered “acquired”;

but “he created” is expressed differently among the Hebrews, and it does not lie in the present Scripture. And there would be the greatest difference between “he created” and “he acquired,” since creation, in the commoner sense, signifies passage from non-being into being, while acquisition signifies the special belonging of what already exists to the one who acquires it.

So the Son of God, saying “The Lord acquired me as the beginning of his ways for his works,” showed at once his pre-existence and his special belonging to the Father, and at once the usefulness and necessity of his own providence and government over the Father's works.

Therefore he adds next, “Before the age he founded me; in the beginning, before he made the earth, before the springs of the waters came forth, before the mountains were settled, and before all hills he begets me”; by all of which he shows his benefit and necessity to all, teaching necessarily that he was and pre-existed and existed before the whole world and led it. For Moses, in the making of the world, made no mention of the supramundane and unseen powers because of the immaturity of those he was educating, but went through the founding of the visible world, mentioning four elements at the beginning, heaven and earth and abyss and water, and saying that two were made by God (for “in the beginning,” he says, “God made the heaven and the earth”), but no longer likewise mentioning that the water and the abyss were created too, but saying simply, “and darkness over the abyss, and the Spirit of God was borne over the water.” Necessarily, then, the Son of God teaches through these words about them too, that they are created, and that he himself is before all things and all things were made through him.

Therefore he says, “Before the age he founded me; in the beginning, before he made the earth and before he made the depths, before the springs of the waters came forth.” And having mentioned these three, earth and abyss and water, he adds the fourth last, keeping the better, heaven; therefore he adds next, “When he was preparing the heaven, I was present with him.”

Since these things are set out plainly by divine Scripture and have received a brief account from us, as in summary, let us hear how Marcellus, casting his mind to the ground, insists that all these were said about the flesh which the Saviour assumed, writing word for word in this way:

“This being so, it follows to consider in the mind this chapter spoken in a proverb, ‘The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways.’ For our Master God truly created, having made what was not; for the flesh which the Word assumed did not exist, but he created it when it did not exist.” And he adds: “So, even though this new mystery appeared in the last times, because it was predestined before this age, the prophet rightly said, ‘Before the age he founded me,’ clearly meaning the flesh.”

And again he adds, saying: “Then he says, ‘in the beginning, before he made the earth.’ What earth is this but clearly our flesh, which after the disobedience became earth again? For he says, ‘Earth you are, and to earth you shall go.’” You see how far he has gone wrong, turning from the straight road and devising for himself a rough, hard and as it were dead-end road.

See, at any rate, how he forced himself, submitting to utter any shameless and impudent word rather than confess that Wisdom is the Son of God himself.

He refers “The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways for his works” to the person of the Saviour, confessing that he is the one saying these things in Proverbs. He says in these very words: “So rightly, since the old things had passed away and all things were going to be new through the newness of our Saviour, our Master Christ cried out through the prophet, saying, ‘The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways.’”

Having said this, he casts his mind down to the flesh of our Saviour, adding next: “For our Master God truly created, having made what was not; for the flesh which the Word assumed did not exist, but when it did not exist ‘he created it as the beginning of his ways.’” And the noble fellow does not understand that there is one discourse and one person that says “I, Wisdom, have made counsel my dwelling” and “The Lord created me”; so that if one is referred to the flesh, the other must be too; and Wisdom will be the one who says both.

And if, according to Marcellus, the flesh should say “The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways,” it would be Wisdom; and the flesh will be the one saying “Through me kings reign” and “Through me great men are magnified.” And how would the flesh say “I will remember to count the things from everlasting,” to which “The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways” is joined? And he shows what the ways are, saying next: “For he has become for us who are going to live righteously the way of godliness, the beginning of all the ways after this.”

And he adds: “He rightly called our Master the Saviour ‘beginning of ways’ for this reason, that he became the beginning also of the other ways that we have had after the first way,” meaning the traditions through the holy apostles, who proclaimed to us this new mystery “with lofty proclamation,” according to the prophecy. So much Marcellus.

If, then, he did not accept the Scripture of Moses and of the prophets after Moses, his rendering would have some plausible reason; but since he is not one of those who reject the old covenant, why did he name the apostles and their teachings ways, and not attend to the prophets of God, who wrote countless things about the ways of God? For first Moses, writing thus, said, “You shall go by the king's way,” and “Behold, I have set before your face the way of life and the way of death,”

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 which is the good way, and walk in it”; and you will find each of the prophets mentioning the ways of God in various ways.

If, then, our Saviour and Lord Jesus Christ teaches that he is the beginning of the ways of God, saying, “The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways for his works” (being surely older than Moses and the prophets and those still earlier who lived according to the ways of God), and the flesh which he assumed was not earlier than all those, the saying has not been rightly taken of the flesh.

So the Saviour said this not because of the flesh, but because he pre-existed and leads all the ways of God which all the God-loving men of old have travelled.

And since the divine apostle, saying, “O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and inscrutable his ways!”, suggests certain other ways, those of providence over all, through which he steers all things by divine power with unspeakable judgment and ungraspable reasons, it follows to say that the one who said “The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways for his works” is the beginning of these ways too. But he, not understanding the ways of God, declared that the flesh of our Saviour is their beginning.

And he interprets “for his works” too, saying: “‘He created me, then,’ he says, ‘as the beginning of his ways for his works.’ And what works does he mean? Those of which the Saviour says, ‘My Father is working until now, and I am working,’ and again, ‘I have finished the work which you gave me.’”

Then, as if making clear the sense of what was said, he adds: “For who, before the demonstration of the facts, would have believed that the Word of God, born through a virgin, would take our flesh and display the whole Godhead bodily in it?” And as if he had given the complete sense, he adds: “So this is ‘The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways for his works.’”

And he wrote this, unable to lift the eyes of his mind “on high” and to say like the prophet, “For I will see the heavens, the works of your fingers, the moon and stars, which you have founded,” nor remembering the prophetic word in which it is said, “But they do not look at the works of the Lord, and do not consider the works of his hands.”

For if he had attended to these, he would have known that before heaven and earth and before the whole world, and not only before the visible but also before the intelligible works of God, those subsisting in bodiless and supramundane powers, the one saying this was and pre-existed. But passing on to “Before the age he founded me,” he again brings the flesh into the middle, saying thus: “naming this foundation the dispensation according to the flesh which was predestined.

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: “And here he mentions one age, from which he said the things of Christ had been founded,” although many ages had passed, as David said, “He who exists before the ages.”

And passing next to “In the beginning, before he made the earth,” he says again that the earth is the flesh, writing thus: “What earth is this but clearly our flesh, which after the disobedience became earth again? For he says, ‘Earth you are, and to earth you shall go.’ For this had to obtain healing.” And the most wise man says this, not remembering that above he happened to have said that the flesh was created as the beginning of God's ways before he made the earth.

And if he signified the flesh at all by the earth, how must one not confess that the one who says he was before he made the earth pre-existed the flesh? For “before the age,” he says, “he founded me, in the beginning, before he made the earth.” So the one saying this existed before he made the flesh.

And even if he did not mention many ages but one, which the Saviour too mentioned, saying, “The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage,” even so it was not the flesh which our Saviour assumed that existed before the present age, but he himself who teaches this through Solomon. You see into what difficulty the one has fallen who turned aside from the straight and royal road.

But besides what was said he adds this too, saying: “‘Before he made the depths,’ he says; here the prophet, speaking in a proverb, says that the depths are the hearts of the saints, which have in their own depth the gift of the Spirit.” And he does not understand that before the coming in the flesh of our Saviour the holy prophets of God shared in the same Spirit, Moses and those still older than Moses. So, if the depths were the hearts of the saints, the one saying “before he made the depths” must be older than all these depths.

How then could these be referred to the Saviour's flesh? And indeed, if he had any knowledge of the divine Scriptures, he would not so readily have declared that the depths are the hearts of the saints, having noticed that “darkness” was “over the abyss,” according to Moses' testimony, and how much and how hard to interpret is the account of them in the divine Scripture. For the apostle says: “Do not say, Who will go up into heaven?

that is, to bring Christ down; or, Who will go down into the abyss? that is, to bring Christ up from the dead.” Here, at any rate, he seems to have called the regions of Hades the abyss. And the Lord himself shows this more clearly, saying in the oracle to Job: “Have you come to the spring of the sea, and walked in the tracks of the abyss? Do the gates of death open to you in fear, and did the gatekeepers of Hades, seeing you, cower?”

And having learned all these, the evil powers in the abyss, about which it is said, “Praise him from the earth, dragons and all depths,” and further the darkness over the abyss, about which Moses said, “and darkness over the abyss,” if he had read the divine Scriptures laboriously and not superficially, he would not have dared to say that the depths are the hearts of the saints,

and he would have known how it is said, “Deep calls to deep at the voice of your cataracts,” and again, “The depths were troubled, a multitude of the sound of water,” and again, “The deep, like a garment, is his covering.”

He would have examined these and things akin to them exactly, if he had any concern to understand them. But now, declaring so offhandedly and loosely that the depths are the hearts of the saints, he did not even understand this, that the one who said “before he made the depths” taught that he existed before the holy and God-loving men from of old; so that from every side the present words cannot fit the Saviour's flesh.

And passing to another saying of the same Scripture, he interprets this too in this way: “What then is this chapter too, ‘before the springs of the waters came forth’? He says they are the holy apostles. The Scripture of Exodus sets this mystery before us, foretelling long ago the types of the apostles,

for since the apostles are twelve in number, it mentions twelve springs.” And saying this he does not understand that Israel too had twelve tribes, and their patriarchs were twelve, and the book of the twelve prophets is one, and moreover there are twelve hours of the day and twelve months of the whole year.

Why then did the number twelve belong more to the apostles than to all those, if the mere number of the quantity gave him the reason for such an interpretation of the saying? He ought to have seen that the prophets of God too, inasmuch as they shared in the same Holy Spirit, were not strangers to the springs. Therefore it is said of them in the Psalms, “In the assemblies bless God the Lord, from the springs of Israel.”

So one must confess that the Son of God, who says “before the springs of the waters came forth,” existed even before those springs. But hear how he interprets, saying: “Rightly, then, the Master said about the birth according to the flesh, through the prophet Solomon speaking, ‘before the springs of the waters came forth.’”

And he adds: “For so the Saviour said to the holy springs, ‘Go and make disciples of all the nations.’” Then, as if drawing the argument together, he brings the conclusion to his exposition, saying: “It is clear from every side that the holy apostles were also called springs figuratively by the prophet.” And he wants the apostles to be the springs, but the prophets do not please him;

why, unless because he could not place the Saviour's flesh before them? And yet the Son of God, who teaches these things about himself in Proverbs, pre-existed even the natural perceptible springs, which Moses too mentioned in the making of the world, saying, “A spring went up 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 gives the oracle to Job also mentions springs of the sea, saying, “Have you come to the spring of the sea, and walked in the tracks of the abyss?”

And since Scripture teaches that there are certain waters above the heavens too, when it says, “Praise him, you heavens of heavens, and the waters above the heavens,” it follows to think that there are some springs of those waters too (whatever they may be in nature), so that the one who said that he pre-existed “before the springs of the waters came forth” may be shown to be older than those too.

But he, attending to none of these and unwilling to labour, keeps to the same, since he says this too: “‘Before the mountains were settled,’ he says, ‘and before all hills he begets me.’ He calls the apostles and the successors of the apostles mountains and hills, so as to signify in a proverb their righteous way of life compared with other men.”

So the same persons were the springs, the same the mountains, the same the hills. But just as it is not natural, among things seen, to say that springs and mountains are the same (for in the account of quality springs of water have nothing in common with the heights of mountains), in the same way, with things contemplated allegorically in the mind, one must show the difference between the springs and mountains and hills understood in contemplation. But he, knowing nothing that has been tested, jumbling everything through carelessness, has declared that the same are springs of waters and mountains and hills, and says that all these are the apostles, without distinguishing the manner of the difference.

Why then did he not likewise call mountains and hills those perfected in righteousness and godliness before our Saviour's flesh, unless because he could not make the Saviour's flesh exist before them? So the reference of the present words to the Saviour's flesh is forced and constrained. 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, saying, “The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways for his works; before the age he founded me.”

If, then, the flesh says these things, as Marcellus thinks, how would the flesh say “and before all hills he begets me”? Grant that the flesh was before the apostles; but how does it say that it was begotten by God? For Marcellus seemed to say that the flesh was created when it did not exist before.

For he said: “For our Master God truly created, having made what was not; for the flesh which the Word assumed did not exist, but he created it when it did not exist.” We know, then, of its being created; but how could its being begotten by God be explained, when our Saviour says, “What is born of the flesh is flesh,” and the apostle says, “born of a woman, born under the law”?

How then would the flesh have said of the God of all, “and before all hills he begets me”? That these things have a forced interpretation is, I think, plain to everyone. But one would say without force that the Son of God makes these things true even without any allegorical manner, since he pre-existed the earth too, and was and pre-existed before the bodily springs of the waters came forth, and before the depths spoken of in the perceptible sense, and before the shape of the earth was established in the heights of the mountains and hills; for “all things came into being through him, and without him nothing came into being.”

And if anyone should ask why he did not teach that he was before the heavens, or before the things in the heavens, or the divine and supramundane powers and spirits beyond, it will be said to him that the word did not yet mention these, since it was handing on a kind of education through the Proverbs to those infant in soul.

This is clear also from its saying at one time, “Hear, son, your father's instruction, and do not reject your mother's rules,” at another, “Son, attend to my laws, and incline your ear to my words,” and again, “Son, do not despise the Lord's discipline, nor faint when you are reproved by him,” and “Son,

if you become good for yourself, you will be good also for your neighbours; but if you turn out bad, you alone will bear the evils.” You could collect for yourself countless things like these from the book of Proverbs, by which the word is seen conversing with those infant in soul.

So too Moses, being a tutor of those imperfect in mind, mentioned heaven and earth and the making of visible things, but not the creation of angels or divine powers or holy spirits, because his pupils could not yet grasp the teaching about them.

Rightly, therefore, the word in Proverbs too gave its teaching to such people from the mountains and hills and springs on earth, as from things more familiar, so that, beginning from a base, it might lead those being educated by the hand to higher things, and prepare them to pass from the smaller things to the more divine.

So much, if one does not busy oneself beyond the wording. But if one wishes to understand these things more deeply, one will take them not more of the apostles than of all the righteous and God-loving men who have ever lived, and from there will pass on to the divine and angelic powers, saying that mountains and hills hint at the differences of angels and archangels and divine spirits, thrones and dominions and principalities and authorities,

since the divine apostle taught that all these too were created “through him and for him” and that he is “before all” of them, setting out, it seems, from here, because in these words it is said in the person of the Son of God, “Before the mountains were settled, and before all hills he begets me.” He said that the other things were settled, but that he alone was begotten before the establishment of the things mentioned.

And the same apostle knows the heavenly Jerusalem and the heavenly mountain on which he says it is, saying, “You have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels, to the festal gathering and church of the firstborn enrolled in heaven.” Pre-existing all these, then, the only-begotten Son of God hinted in a hidden way through the Proverbs at the things of his own unspeakable generation.

And that he suggested these things to be understood would become clear from what he joins next, saying, “When he was preparing the heaven, I was present with him.” There the noble interpreter of the Scriptures stopped, shut in, not going further, because he could not smooth out the sequence of the hypothesis he had given himself about the Saviour's flesh.

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

Here, then, he stops the argument; but after very many things said in between, he departs from the interpretation referring to the flesh and confesses 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 Almighty God purposed to make all things in the heavens and on earth, the coming into being of the world needed effective activity; and for this reason, since nothing else existed besides God (for all things are agreed to have come into being by him), then the Word came forth and became the maker of the world, he who before was also preparing it mentally within, as the prophet Solomon teaches us, saying, ‘When he was preparing the heaven, I was present with him,’ and ‘when he set as secure the springs under heaven, when he made strong the foundations of the earth, I was beside him, fitting things together;

I was the one in whom he rejoiced.’ For the Father rightly rejoiced, making all things through the Word with wisdom and power.” So much Marcellus. If, then, he at last reluctantly confessed that these were said in the person of the Word, he must accept that the whole context of what is set out refers to the same Word of God.

For the one who said, “When he was preparing the heaven, I was present with him,” was the one who also said, “The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways for his works”; for one and the same person was shown to us at the beginning, going through all that is set out. He, therefore, who said, “The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways for his works,” added “Before the age he founded me,” and “in the beginning, before he made the earth,” and “before the mountains were settled, and before all hills he begets me”;

and the same joined “When he was preparing the heaven, I was present with him” and what follows. If, then, the Word was the one who said these things, how was he within God and, being co-unbegotten with God and one and the same with him, did he say that he was created and begotten? For one and the same person, as I said, has been shown to go through all that is set out.

And if even at last he confessed that these were said in the person of the Word in God, his rendering referring them to the Saviour's flesh was forced, and all those things together are caught out as stale and vain and superfluous. But if it was the Saviour's flesh that said “The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways for his works,” according to the interpretation he gave, and if the flesh “was founded before the age, and in the beginning before he made the earth” (earth clearly being the flesh, as he thought, because it was said, “Earth you are, and to earth you shall go”), and if 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 before all hills he begets me” (because it was begotten before the choice of the apostles, as the most wise man thought), it follows that “When he was preparing the heaven, I was present with him” too was said in the person of the flesh.

But no one not out of his mind would ever agree to this interpretation; for the word of truth will speak against him with a great cry, showing who it was that went through these things.

That the only-begotten Son begotten from God was another, living and subsisting, existing even before the founding of all created things, he himself shows by what he adds next, saying, “When he was preparing the heaven, I was present with him”; for he was with him and beside him even before the heaven came into being and the things beyond heaven and all the things in heaven. This, at any rate, he hinted at by saying, “When he was preparing the heaven, I was present with him.”

And how did God prepare the heaven, unless by legislating and designing, before it came into being, the way it was to be established? The Father, then, designed and prepared, thinking out how so great a heaven was to be established, what size it needed and what shape, and how many measures and parts, for the sake of the things to be contained within it, and of those that would be outside it, and of those that would run their course in it; and the Son, gazing on the Father's reasonings and alone beholding the depths in him, went forward to works, serving the Father's nods.

Therefore it is said somewhere: “Praise the Lord from the heavens, praise him in the highest.

Praise him, all his angels; praise him, all his powers. Praise him, sun and moon; praise him, all stars and light. Praise him, heavens of heavens, and the waters above the heavens. Let them praise the name of the Lord; for he spoke and they came into being, he commanded and they were created.”

But even before the heaven itself and the things beyond heaven and all the things in heaven came into being (for all are signified comprehensively by one), the Son of God existed, and was present and with the Father while he was still deliberating about the founding of all these. Therefore he says, “When he was preparing the heaven, I was present with him.” Then, like a good painter, taking the archetypal ideas from the Father's reasonings, he transferred them to the substances of the works, forming and making to subsist such things as he saw lying beforehand in the Father's mind.

He himself would be a worthy witness of these things, teaching thus in the Gospels: “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of himself, unless he sees the Father doing something; for whatever he does, these the Son also does likewise.

For the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself does.” Here one might rightly ask how the Son makes again what has once been made by the Father. He himself resolved the question, saying, “For whatever the Father does, these the Son also does likewise.”

So the things done by the Son are likenesses of archetypal works pre-existing in the Father's unspeakable reasonings, which the Son, seeing intently in the Father's mind, made as imitations of what he saw. And that his beholding the Father's depths is the work of the Father's love he shows, making it clear next and saying, “For the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself does.” So, as the Father shows, the Son, contemplating his secret things, made the works of the Father's will subsist through deeds. Thus, being with the Father and present with him as he prepared beforehand the heaven and the things on it, he taught this, saying, “When he was preparing the heaven, I was present with him.”

And the Father rejoiced even before the world came into being, looking upon his only-begotten Son and seeing himself mirrored in him as in an image; therefore Wisdom says, “I was the one in whom he rejoiced daily.” And the Son too was filled with gladness, delighting in the sight of the Father; this at any rate he himself teaches, saying, “And I was glad before him at every time, when he rejoiced at having completed the world,”

the “world” here meaning the completion of all created things, at which, as it was brought from non-being into being through the Son, the God of all rejoiced. Such, then, would be the true account, set out from divine Scripture briefly and in a summary narrative. But he, borne from above downward, has run his mind aground on the flesh of our Saviour, turning aside and misinterpreting the true sense of inspired Scripture.

But passing to the Word, he says that it is he who was within the Father, preparing the heaven as in reasoning and thought.

He said, at any rate, in these very words: “For before making the world the Word was in the Father. But when Almighty God purposed to make all things in the heavens and on earth, the coming into being of the world needed effective activity; and for this reason, since nothing else existed besides God (for all things are agreed to have come into being by him), then the Word came forth and became maker of the world, he who before was also preparing it mentally within, as the prophet Solomon teaches us, saying, ‘When he was preparing the heaven, I was present with him.’”

Here one must consider how, willfully deaf, he does not hear “I was present with,” which expressly signifies the Son's presence with the Father, but declares, against Scripture, that there was no other besides God before created things came into being; and he did not shudder at letting out this word, which denies the Son, nor was he shamed by divine Scripture testifying that before the creation of heaven he alone was present with the Father. For “when he was preparing the heaven,” it says, “I was present with him.”

For the preposition “with” added to “being present” shows presence together with another. So he teaches not that he was simply present, but that he was present with the Father. And the Father did not simply rejoice, but rejoiced at the Son's presence; therefore he says, “I was the one in whom he rejoiced daily.”

And how would being glad before the Father fit a Word that does not subsist, but is in God himself and acts by signifying, when “being glad” and “before him” openly show his hypostasis? But Marcellus, taking no account of these, rejects the Son, and says that the Word, being within God, at one time goes forth by effective activity, at another is within him not acting; and he does not see that to say there is something within and outside God supposes something composite and a bodily experience, which it is not right to accept in the unbegotten and bodiless nature.

And how did the Word, going forth, become maker of the world? With tongue and voice, or surely with God using speech? And to whom would he have spoken, when no one else was with him? With whom would he have conversed, when no one was present? Did he converse with himself, using voice and speech, so that the Word went forth from him?

And why did he not, while the Word was within him, establish by effective power what he wished, since among men too most craftsmen complete their works in silence, especially when no one is present while they work? What then prevented God from establishing all things in some such way, having the Word in himself? But he even supposes the image of a sculptor conversing with himself and saying to himself, Come, let us make, come, let us mould a statue; for so, he says, the Master of all, God, said to himself, “Let us make man,” as has often been shown already, by which, I think, his denial of the Son of God has been laid bare.

For to say that God converses with himself, having his own Word within, would belong to a Jewish way of thinking; and to say that he himself is father of the Word in him, and the Word in him his son, was the mark of Sabellius's wrong opinion;

as again to say that the three are one, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, for this too is Sabellius's. Marcellus declared this too, writing something like this: “For it is impossible for three hypostases, if they are such, to be united in a monad, unless the triad has its beginning from the monad. For the holy Paul said that those things are summed up in a monad which have nothing to do with unity with God; for the Word and the Spirit alone pertain to God in unity.”

Then he tries to establish this, going on next and saying: “If, then, the Word appears to have come out from the Father himself and come to us, and the Holy Spirit, as Asterius too confessed, proceeds from the Father, and again the Saviour says about the Spirit that ‘he will not speak from himself, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things to come. He will glorify me, because he will take from what is mine and declare it to you,’ does not the monad appear here, not clearly and openly but in an unspeakable way, expanded into a triad, yet in no way admitting division?

For if the Word proceeds from the Father, and the Spirit too is confessed to proceed from the Father, and again the Saviour says about the Spirit, ‘He will take from what is mine and declare it to you,’ is it not plain that some hidden mystery is being unveiled? For how, unless the monad, being indivisible, were expanded into a triad, is it possible for him to say about the Spirit at one time that he proceeds from the Father, at another, ‘He will take from what is mine and declare it to you,’ and again, having breathed on the disciples, to have said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’?

For how, if he proceeds from the Father, is he promised to receive this ministry from the Son? For if there were two divided persons, as Asterius said, it would be necessary either that the Spirit, proceeding from the Father, should not need the Son's ministry (for everything that proceeds from the Father must be perfect, in no way needing help from another), or, if he received from the Son and ministered the grace from his power, that he should no longer proceed from the Father.”

And after other things he adds: “And if the Gospel says that, having breathed on the disciples, he said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit,’ it is clear that the Spirit came out from the Word. How then, if the Spirit came forth from the Word, does the same again proceed from the Father?” And after other things he adds: “So he did not rightly or fittingly say that there are three hypostases, saying it not once but twice.” By these and similar arguments the most wise man tries to establish that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are one and the same, three names lying on one hypostasis.

For he did not understand in these how the Son too is said to proceed from the Father, and the Holy Spirit likewise, nor could he grasp how the Saviour said about the Holy Spirit, “He will take from what is mine and declare it to you,” nor how, having breathed on his disciples, he said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” This will have an easy solution for those who consider piously, if one reckons that the Son, always being with and present with the Father, was somewhere within, as in the inaccessible sanctuaries of the Father's kingdom, and then, being sent by the Father for the salvation of the human race, said that he had come out from the Father. He showed this elsewhere too about himself in a parable, saying, “The sower went out to sow”;

for from where did he go out but from the innermost palaces of the Father's divinity? In the same way the Holy Spirit too, always standing by the throne of God, since “ten thousand times ten thousand” stand by him according to Daniel, was sent too, at one time in the form of a dove upon the Son of Man, at another upon each of the prophets and apostles;

therefore it too is said to proceed from the Father. And why do you wonder? When even of the devil it is said, “And the devil went out from the Lord,” and again a second time it is said, “And the devil went out from the Lord.” You would find it also in the case of Ahab, where Scripture adds, “And an evil spirit went out and stood before the Lord and said, I will deceive him.”

But these are opposing spirits, and how and in what way this is said it is not now the time to inquire. But 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. The Saviour himself shows this clearly, saying, “He will take from what is mine and declare it to you.” For this would plainly show 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.

And that the Holy Spirit is other than the Son, our Saviour and Lord himself taught expressly and in various ways in the plainest words, where 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 for ever, the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive.” You see how he says that the Spirit, the Paraclete, is other and another besides himself. And if, having breathed on the disciples, he said, “Receive the Holy Spirit,” one must not be ignorant that the breathing was in a way cleansing for the apostles' souls, making them fit for receiving the Holy Spirit.

For it is not said that he breathed into their face, nor a breath of life, nor the Holy Spirit, as it is written of Adam, “God breathed into his face the breath of life”; but it is said that he first breathed, and then said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” And his giving the Spirit again shows him other than what is given;

for the giver and the given would not be the same. But the one bestowing was the Saviour, what was given was the Holy Spirit, those receiving were the apostles, and the breathing, as I said, was cleansing for the apostles or else effective of the imparting of the Holy Spirit; for one may understand it either way.

But from this it is shown that the Holy Spirit is other than he, as also from what follows, in which again he is recorded to have 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.”

To which he adds: “These things I have spoken to you while remaining with you; but the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, whom my Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and remind you of all that I said to you.” You hear how he uses the plural, “we will come and make our dwelling with him,” speaking of himself and the Father, and how, speaking about the Holy Spirit, he said as of another, “he will teach you all things.”

Such too was “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Paraclete, to be with you for ever, the Spirit of truth.” So the Paraclete about whom he taught so much was other than he. Rightly, then, he added again, saying, “These things I have spoken to you while remaining with you; but the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, whom my Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and remind you of all that I said.”

For I, he says, have spoken these things to you for the time being; but the Spirit of truth, whom my Father too will send, will teach you all things, whatever you have not now learned because you cannot contain them;

but he, when he comes (I mean the Paraclete), will fill up the teaching, together with bringing to your memory what is now said by me. And again he adds, “But when the Paraclete comes, whom I will send you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me.” By all of which he clearly shows that the one sent by him and about to bear witness about him is other than himself.

And he works out the argument still more by what he adds: “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.” And saying that he goes away, he signified here both his passion and his ascent to the Father after it.

Who then is so foolish as to say, after so many words, that the one saying these things and the one about whom he said them are one and the same, hearing him clearly insisting that he speaks the truth, and showing what the truth is, that unless he went away the Holy Spirit would never come?

And if at one time he defines that the Father will send the Holy Spirit and at another that he himself will, he surely does not teach contradictions; for whatever he “sees the Father doing,” “these the Son also does likewise,” and “as he hears, he judges.” Therefore by the Father's judgment, when the Father too wills, then the Son, … the Saviour, sends to his disciples the Spirit of truth, the Paraclete, to comfort and console them in what they suffered from their persecutors while preaching the gospel;

and not only to comfort them, but also to teach them all the truth of the new covenant, which they could not contain being taught by the Saviour when he spoke with them, because they were still enslaved to the Jewish way of life.

He fulfilled these things in deeds after his resurrection from the dead. After it, having said to Mary, “Do not touch me, for I have not yet ascended to my Father,” afterwards, as having gone up to the Father, he appeared to the disciples, the Holy Spirit having been sent and being with him and standing ready for the ministry to which it is appointed, when he also permits them to touch him.

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

Since the matters of this passage need more working out and clarity, it is not now the time to go into them with exact examination, since this is not our purpose; but it was necessary to show that the Paraclete Spirit is other than the Son, which has been shown in various ways from what the Saviour himself taught, among other places where he said: “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now; but when he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will tell you all the truth;

for he will not speak from himself, but whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things to come. He will glorify me, because he will take from what is mine and declare it to you.” In which again he promises that his disciples will learn from the Holy Spirit what he himself did not teach, speaking as of another: “when he comes,” and “for he will not speak from himself,” and “he will glorify me,” and “because he will take from what is mine.” For to suppose that the Saviour says all these about himself is a terrible and incurable simplicity.

But clearly by these the Saviour himself taught that the Holy Spirit is other than himself, surpassing in honour and glory and privileges, and being better and higher than every intellectual and rational substance (therefore it is also included with the holy and thrice-blessed Trinity).

But it is lower than he. He showed this, saying, “For he will not speak from himself, but whatever he hears he will speak.” And from whom he will hear, he makes clear, saying, “He will take from what is mine and declare it to you,” from mine, that is, from my treasury; for “in him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”

He himself, then, as only-begotten Son, receives from the Father and hears from the Father, while the Holy Spirit is supplied by him; therefore he says, “He will take from what is mine and declare it to you.” The God over all is also called spirit, as the Saviour himself taught, saying, “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth,” and he will truly be himself the holy of holies, and “resting among the holy ones.” And the Son of God too is spirit, and he too spirit holy of holies, if indeed he is the image of the invisible God;

therefore it is said of him too, “Now the Lord is the Spirit,” and “The spirit of our face, Christ the Lord.”

But since the Holy Spirit is other than the Father and the Son, the Saviour, showing its distinctive character, called it Paraclete, marking off what is common in the shared name by the title “Paraclete,” since the angelic powers too would be spirits; for it is said, “who makes his angels spirits.” But none of these can be made equal to the Paraclete Spirit. Therefore it alone is included with the holy and thrice-blessed Trinity,

since the Saviour commanded his apostles to hand on the mystery of his rebirth to all from the nations who believe in him in no other way than by baptizing “them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”: the Father having authority and giving the grace, the Son ministering it (for “grace and truth came through Jesus Christ”), and the Holy Spirit, that is, the Paraclete, being itself what is supplied, according to the varieties of gifts in it; “for to one is given through the Spirit the word of wisdom, to another the word of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit,” and what is listed with these likewise.

The Holy Spirit, then, is by nature disposed to dwell gladly in the holy alone, supplied through the Son to those whom the Father may judge worthy. And this would be its work, to sanctify all to whom it imparts one or more of the gifts in it, such as prophets and apostles and every God-loving soul, and probably the higher and divine powers too share in the holiness from it. But the Son alone, honoured with the Father's divinity, would be the maker and creator of the existence of all created things, visible and invisible, and indeed of the existence of the Paraclete Spirit itself; for “all things came into being through him,

and without him nothing came into being,” and “in him were created all things in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible.” But the God beyond all things and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, being an unspeakable good, better than all reasoning and thought and every voice and reflection, presiding at once over all things whatever and of whatever kind they are, and over the Holy Spirit itself, and moreover over the only-begotten Son, is rightly called alone the God over all and through all and in all by the apostle, who said, “One Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God, Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.”

And he alone would be called “one God and Father” “of our Lord Jesus Christ,” and the Son “only-begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father”; but the Paraclete Spirit is neither God nor Son, since it has not received its origin from the Father like the Son, but is one of the things that came into being through the Son, since “all things came into being through him, and without him nothing came into being.”

These are the mysteries handed on in some such way to the holy and catholic church through the divine words. But Marcellus, jumbling everything, at one time goes into the whole depth of Sabellius, at another tries to renew the heresy of Paul of Samosata, at another is openly convicted of being a Jew; for he introduces one hypostasis with three faces, as it were, and three names, saying that God and the Word in him and the Holy Spirit are the same.

Then, passing from here to the apostle's theology about Christ, he again uses perverse interpretations. For when the divine apostle expressly speaks of the Son of God as God and says, “who is the image of the invisible God, firstborn of all creation, for in him were created all things in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities; all things were created through him and for him; and he is before all things, and all things hold together in him,”

this admirable man, falling down again onto the flesh, declares that it is the image of the invisible God, not hearing that “who is the image” is expressed in the masculine form. For fitting “who” to the flesh, I do not know how, he said that it 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 about the flesh, not ashamed to take “he” of the flesh.

And he says that the “firstborn of all creation” was so called because of the flesh, and persists unashamed in the flesh, saying that “the things in the heavens and on earth,” “the visible and the invisible,” were created, and he is not ashamed to say that thrones and dominions and principalities and authorities were counted worthy of the creation in Christ through the Saviour's flesh. Since I set out Marcellus's words about these in the preceding writing, sparing proportion in my discourse, I shall be content with their testimony. And since such an exposition of the apostle's wording is perverse and forced, I do not think more argument is needed, because the shamelessness of the interpretation is obvious to everyone.

But having said so much about the Saviour's flesh, he does not even keep it safe for us; would that he had kept a pious thought even toward it. But now, after all he has said about it, he declares that at the consummation of the ages it will be left deserted by the Word, writing thus: “If, then, he confesses that the flesh profits him nothing, how is it possible that what is from the earth and profits nothing should be with the Word in the ages to come as though it were of use to him?”

And he repeats the same elsewhere, saying: “If, then, Paul said that at the time of the restoration of all things creation itself also will be changed from slavery to freedom (for he says, ‘that creation itself also will be set free from the slavery of corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God’), how could the form of the servant, which the Word assumed, being the form of a servant, still be with the Word?”

You see what words he has dared to let out against our Saviour's flesh, not considering that even before the ascension into heaven, while it was still on earth before the passion, he so glorified it on the mountain, showing to his three chosen disciples alone an image of his kingdom, so that his face flashed like lightning and shone with gleams of light

(for, divine Scripture says, “his face became like the sun and his garments white as the light”); nor did he understand what kind of body of Christ's glory the divine apostle spoke of, and how he taught that our bodies too would 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 understand in what way he wrote that the mortal will be swallowed up by life, saying, “because we do not wish to be unclothed but further clothed, so that the mortal may be swallowed up by life.” Ignorant of these things, he affirms that the Word will become one and the same with God, as he was before, but that the flesh, left by the Word, will become I do not know what.

Hear, then, how he says this: “But if anyone should inquire about this flesh which has become immortal in the Word, what do we say to him? That we do not think it safe to lay down dogmas about things we have not learned exactly from the divine Scriptures. For how could those who overturn the dogmas of others do this?

But we shall say to those who wish to learn from us the exact account of this, that, obeying the holy apostle, we know that it is fitting for us to see the hidden mysteries as he himself said: ‘For now we see,’ he says, ‘through a mirror in a riddle, but then face to face,’ and so on. So do not inquire of me about things I have not clearly learned from divine Scripture; for this reason, then, I shall not be able to speak clearly even about that divine flesh which shared in the Word.” Then the one who confesses that he can say nothing and has learned nothing from Scripture

declared such things about the flesh, neither taking them from Scripture nor receiving them from others nor learning them from the church, but fashioning for himself and devising from his own reflection a strange offspring alien to the truth, not even keeping in mind the Scripture that says, “Do not add to his words, lest he refute you and you be found a liar,” and “Woe to those who prophesy from their own heart.”

See, then, into what impiety he has fallen. For the one who cast down onto the flesh the whole theology about the pre-existing only-begotten Son, and in so many words proclaimed it a crown of victory (for so he said that the Word of God prepared the human flesh to become immortal through the resurrection and, as if crowning himself with a crown of victory, sits at the right hand of the Father), this same man says it will be deserted and orphaned at the end of all, uniting the Word to 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.

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

not attending to the sense of the saying, he supposed that he was rejecting the flesh which he assumed from the holy Virgin. Then from this he tries to establish that after the consummation of all the Word in God will leave the flesh deserted of his activity. He says in these very words: “For about the flesh, having which he conversed with the disciples, he says thus: ‘Does this offend us? What then 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 confesses that the flesh profits him nothing, how is it possible that what is from the earth and profits nothing should be with the Word in the ages to come as though it were of use to him?” You see what distortion of the gospel saying he uses, because he does not understand the saving word of the Word, how it was said and for what reason.

But you, taking up the gospel Scripture, see how the whole teaching of our Saviour was not about the flesh he assumed, but about the mystical body and blood. For when he had fed the multitudes with the five loaves, and offered this great wonder to 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?” Then they compared the manna in the wilderness, saying, “Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, as it is written: He gave them bread from heaven to eat,”

the Saviour answered: “Truly, truly, 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 came down from heaven,” and again, “And the bread that I will give is my body.” And again he adds, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in yourselves.

He who 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.

He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him.” When he went through these and such things more mystically, some of his disciples said, “This saying is hard; who can listen to it?” To them the Saviour answered, saying, “Does this offend you? What then if you see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before?

It is the Spirit that gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.” By this he taught them to hear spiritually what was said about his flesh and blood. For do not think, he says, that I am speaking of the flesh which I wear, as if it must be eaten, nor suppose that I am commanding you to drink the perceptible and bodily blood; but know well that “my words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life”; so that the words and sayings themselves are the flesh and the blood. He who shares in them always, as if nourished by heavenly bread, will share in the heavenly life.

So, he says, let not this offend you, what I have said about eating my flesh and drinking my blood, nor let the surface hearing of what I said about flesh and blood trouble you; for these “profit nothing” when heard in a perceptible way, but it is the Spirit that gives life to those able to hear spiritually.

But the new interpreter of the gospel teachings, understanding none of this, hear how he writes, saying in these very syllables: “Touching the human body and showing it to those who saw, he said, ‘Does this offend you? What then if you see the Son of Man going up to where he was before? The Spirit gives life; the flesh profits nothing.’”

To him one might say: And where do you get, noble fellow, the addition of things not found in the gospel Scripture? For that the Saviour, touching the human body and showing it to those who saw, said, “Does this offend you?”, you invent from yourself, and you dare to make the addition yourself. Taking this daring from himself, he thinks to prepare from it that the Saviour's flesh will be left deserted of the Word's activity, saying: “If, then, he confesses that the flesh profits him nothing, how is it possible that what is from the earth and profits nothing should be with the Word in the ages to come as though it were of use to him?” So ignorantly and unskilfully did he set out to misinterpret the gospel saying. And he likewise made perverse expositions of the apostle's words.

At once, then, when Peter in the Acts of the Apostles said of our Saviour, “whom heaven must receive until the times of restoration,” not understanding the sense of the saying, he tries from this to circumscribe the kingdom of Christ, saying that a limit and appointed time of his kingdom is shown, because it says “until the times of restoration.”

And he says the same is established by the Psalm that says, “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet,” and that Paul the apostle for this reason said, “For he must reign until he puts his enemies under his feet”; for he supposed that “until” signifies a limited time. Hear, then, how he writes word for word, saying: “For this reason, it seems to me, the Almighty God, the Master, also says to him, ‘Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.’ Seeming to separate him by activity alone because of the human flesh, and as it were fixing for him a definite time for the session at the right hand, he says to him thus: ‘until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.’

And the holy apostle, interpreting this prophetic saying of David more clearly for us, said something like this: ‘For he must reign until he has put his enemies as a footstool for his feet.’ So his human dispensation and kingdom seems to have some limit.” And after other things he adds: “And for this reason the Acts of the Apostles too teach thus about this man, whom the Word of God assumed and, having assumed him, sits at the right hand of the Father, saying, ‘whom heaven must receive until the times of restoration,’ these too as it were fixing a limit and appointed time.”

To which after other things he adds: “How could the form of the servant, which the Word assumed, being the form of a servant, still be with the Word? Clearly and expressly the inspired Paul said that the Word's dispensation according to the flesh took place for our sake in a short time of the past and future ages, and that it has, as a beginning, so also an end, saying something like this: ‘Then the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God and the Father.’”

By so much Marcellus was both ignorant of “the body of the glory” of the Son and denies his unending kingdom, not considering that “until” is customarily used according to a peculiar usage of Scripture. So, at any rate, the Saviour said to the disciples, “Behold, I am with you all the days until the end of the age,” not abolishing his being with them also after the end, but teaching that now he will be with them until the end, overseeing and guarding all who are taught by him, and after the end he will be with them in a better way, making them sharers of his kingdom.

So too “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet” and “whom heaven must receive until the times of restoration” were said not as though he would no longer be after this, but as though he would rise from the Father's throne at the time of the consummation and make a second descent from heaven, about which the apostle teaches, saying, “For the Lord himself, with a command, with the voice of an archangel and with the trumpet of God, will descend 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 the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so we shall always be with the Lord.” So the Saviour must remain in heaven and sit at the right hand of the Father until the consummation, and at the very consummation of all, having made his glorious second coming, he will take his saints to be with him always, not for some time but for an unbounded age; for “so,” he says, “we shall always be with the Lord.”

So the saints, being always with him, will enjoy his kingdom in the proclaimed kingdom of heaven. But the noble fellow, not understanding this, when the divine apostle said about our Saviour, “For he must reign until he puts his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be abolished is death,” and again, “And when all things are subjected to him,

then he himself too will be subjected to him who subjected all things to him, so that God may be all in all,” using this usage he misinterprets these too, understanding, I do not know how, 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 he was a Word existing eternally in God? How then does it say “then he will be subjected” “to God and the Father”?

One must note that the apostle said all things will be subjected to the Son himself too, and that he teaches that he too will be subjected to the Father with the same subjection, saying, “And when all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself too will be subjected to him who subjected all things to him,

so that God may be all in all” — he does not hear; for he does not say that God will be “all” in the Son, but “in all”; which would rather have seemed to signify some joining and union of all things, if God is 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.

If, then, he defines subjection to the Father as union, it would follow that the subjection of all things to the Son signifies the same union with him, so that the Son would no longer exist by himself, nor would the multitudes of the saved who will be subjected to him live their own life, but there would be a kind of blending and confusion of all things, the Son and all the rest becoming one and the same, and not only so, but with God himself too.

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

But just as the apostle did not mean union when he said that “all things” will be subjected to the Son, but the obedience from free choice, and the glory and honour which all things will render to him as Saviour and King of all, in the same way his being subjected to the Father would signify nothing other than the glory and honour and reverence and magnificence and free obedience which he too will render “to God and the Father,” when he has made all worthy of the Father's divinity.

For in the meantime, since they are not yet worthy of this, he himself, taking it up beforehand as the common Saviour of all, reigns with a kingdom that corrects the imperfect and heals those who need healing, bringing the enemies of the kingdom under his feet; which the Psalm shows that says, “The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet,”

and when he puts his enemies under his feet, and establishes those worthy of his kingdom in unending life, then too death, the enemy of all, will be abolished last; for since no one dies any longer, but those worthy of the kingdom then live in eternal life, death will likely become idle, no longer having anyone to kill.

When these things have been so prepared, all the saints will be subjected to the Son of God with a saving subjection: living eternally by him who is Life, becoming wise by him who is Wisdom, made rational by him who is Word. So too they will become christs, anointed with the Spirit of his fragrance, and will be shown as lights of the new age, supplied with lights from him, and they will be sons of God, adorned with the Spirit of adoption; and those subjected to him will share in the other powers in him too, so as to become righteous from his righteousness and holy from his holiness. And since “the Word was God” too, he will not begrudge them even divinity.

So the apostle will prove true, who foretold that the saints would become “heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ.” And indeed they will have heavenly bodies like the sun and moon and stars, sharing in this too in his glory;

which the same apostle showed, saying, “from which we also await a Saviour, 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 even to subject all things to himself.” You see how by his power to subject all things to himself he will both make the transformation of our body and make ours “conformed to the body of his glory.”

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, “because we do not wish to be unclothed but further clothed, so that the mortal may be swallowed up by life,” how much more will his body, as having served his divinity, be swallowed up, not by life alone like ours, but also by his divinity? So let no one inquire or be at a loss within himself what one should think about the saving body, hearing Paul plainly saying that “the mortal” must be swallowed up “by life,” and that our body will be conformed “to the body” of Christ's glory, “according to the working of his power even to subject all things to himself.”

So he will subject all things to himself; and one must understand some such saving subjection, according to which “the Son himself too will be subjected to him who subjected all things to him,” making an unspeakable and ineffable subjection fitting to him alone, when, having gathered round himself all those under him like a choir, he brings them “to God and the Father,” offering him the glory and the honour and the reverence and the majesty as the cause of all good things.

Then too the conclusion of the apostle's teaching will reach its end, which says, “so that God may be all in all.” This too we shall understand from another promise, in which it is said by God himself, “I will dwell in them and walk among them; and I will be their God, and they will be my people.” But now, in the present age, the promise goes forward to a few worthy ones only and in part, according to “we know in part and we prophesy in part”; but after the consummation of all, 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 heaven.

So he will be “all in all,” clearly “dwelling in them and walking among them,” and not disdaining to be “their God,” and making all his own people. So he will be in them as he is also said to be in the Son himself, as he teaches, saying, “The Father is in me and I in the Father.” And he will be “all” in them by giving himself to all, as far as each one's capacity can share in his divinity; the thrice-blessed hope and the unending and incorruptible life being established in this end, in which God will be “all in all,” filling all with the flashes of the unspeakable light of his divinity, and the Son, exulting and rejoicing in the success, putting round himself like a crown those counted worthy of blessedness through him, will continue under the Father as overseer the ageless and unending kingdom; the oracles about him being then fulfilled, among the others, above all the words of the angel Gabriel to the all-holy Virgin about the one to be born of her, that he “will reign for ever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”

Then the Son of God, reigning, will hand over all those reigned over by him to his Father, not ceasing from his kingdom nor 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 Gabriel, who prophesied to the Virgin that he would reign for ever and that of “his kingdom” there would be no “end”), but that he will hand over “the kingdom,” that is, those reigned over by him, “to God and the Father.”

For he will hand over to the Father all those perfected under him, as if radiant at the success, as a trust he had received; as he himself teaches, saying, “All things have been handed over to me by my Father.” Therefore consistently, like a good guardian bringing the trust safe and in every way sound, he will hand it over to God, presenting to him, like a high priest, all those consecrated under him clothed in white, flashing as with most brilliant robes with the incorruptible bodies of the resurrection, so that they may enjoy not only the kingdom under him but be filled also with the unspeakable good things of the Father.

For so, according to the apostle, “God will be all in all,” the Son bringing those reigned over to him, so that this whole may come about, I mean that the Father is “all in all.” For as he was before in the Son, according to “The Father is in me and I in the Father,” so he will then be in all those perfected under the Son.

For the apostle did not say that the Son will cease from his kingdom and God will reign, but that the Son will hand over “the kingdom to God and the Father,” showing the trust safe and sufficient for the worship and priesthood of the Father, and that God will be “all in all,” as God dwelling and walking “among them” and becoming all things to them. For of some he will be Master, of others King, of others something else; but of all together God, becoming all things to them by the divine virtues and powers in him.

This end of the thrice-blessed hope the great apostle sketched, saying, “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 divinity, while to his only-begotten Son alone he will keep the special and fatherly glory and honour and kingdom, shared by none of the others.

And if one must seal these things with a prophetic seal, for a sure confirmation of what has been said I shall use as witness the prophetic Spirit, which through Ezekiel the prophet foretold 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 scattered sheep, so I will 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.

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 ruler 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 a ruler in their midst; and he shall be shepherd of them all.”

And again he adds, “And David my servant their ruler for ever.” See in all these how God is said to be not shepherd nor ruler but God of those who will be counted worthy of the blessed end; while David is prophesied to become ruler and shepherd of these same, David here hinting in a veiled way at Christ, because he came “from his seed.”

This is clear from the fact that David had died before the time when these things were said. And Daniel the prophet foretells these things more clearly, naming the Christ of God plainly Son of Man, just as the writing of the holy Gospels is accustomed to call him. He speaks in this way: “I watched in the vision of the night, and behold, one like a son of man was coming with the clouds of heaven, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was brought to him. And to him was given the dominion and the honour and the kingdom, and all peoples, tribes, tongues will serve him;

his authority is an eternal authority which will not pass away, and his kingdom will not be destroyed.” You see how here too the prophet shows that the kingdom, incorruptible and ageless and unending, will belong not to the Word in God but to the Son of Man, and he clearly teaches that the Son of Man, who receives the incorruptible kingdom from the Ancient of Days, that is, from his own Father, is other than the Ancient of Days.

But Marcellus defines them as one and the same, one hypostasis lying under two names; and further he dares to circumscribe his kingdom, and declares so shamelessly that there will be an end of Christ's kingdom after the time of the judgment, writing in this way: “Here the apostle reveals to us a very great mystery, saying that there will be an end of Christ's kingdom;

and the end will be then, when all things are subjected under his feet.” And he elaborates the argument in some such way, saying: “We said in our previous words that our Master Christ had a beginning of his kingdom, using proofs from the divine Scriptures.” And he adds: “And in general one could show, having an abundance of countless sayings for testimony, that the man received a beginning of kingdom through the Word.

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

And he adds after other things, saying: “What, then, do we learn about the human flesh which the Word assumed for our sake not four hundred whole years ago? Will the Word have it also in the ages to come, or only until the time of the judgment?” Such things Marcellus dared to say; but the prophets of God, defining Christ's kingdom as unending, say that after the time of the judgment he will hold the rule of the new age. For see how the prophet Ezekiel, supposing a judgment of God's sheep, after their judgment sets David over them as shepherd and foretells that the same will be their ruler.

And Daniel, having said first, “I watched until thrones were set, and the Ancient of Days sat, and his clothing was white as snow, and the hair of his head like pure wool; his throne a flame of fire, its wheels burning fire. A river of fire flowed before him; thousands of thousands ministered to him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him; the court sat, and books were opened,” having first seen these things, next sees the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven to the Ancient of Days and receiving the incorruptible kingdom. So then too, in a different and better way than now, he will hold the rule of reigning over those worthy of blessedness.

The Gospel testifies to these things, in which the Saviour himself seals the prophetic words, handing on to his disciples the words about the consummation, by which he taught this, saying: “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 at his right hand, and the goats at his left. Then the King will say to those at his right hand: Come, you blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” Note how these agree with what was 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 as his Father.

For he himself taught this, saying, “Then the King will say to those at his right hand, Come, you blessed of my Father,” corresponding to the one named David in the prophecy, whom the word teaches will be shepherd and ruler of the sheep, about to shepherd and rule God's flock under God as overseer.

And one must also note that what was said in the apostle, “when he abolishes every rule and every authority and power,” the prophecy hinted at, saying, “And I will destroy evil beasts from the land.”

For what would the beasts be which long troubled the sheep but the opposing powers? When they have been removed, the new and recent age, cleansed of all evil, will have the Son of Man as King (or, according to the prophecy hinting in a veiled way, David as shepherd and ruler, because he came “from the seed” of David), but it is said to have God not as shepherd or ruler but as God himself, by a conception higher than shepherd and ruler and king, leading by the magnificence of divine power not only the sheep but the shepherd himself. For “my servant David,” he says, “will be their shepherd; and I, the Lord, will be their God”; and he calls David servant because our Saviour and Lord took “the form of a servant” “from the seed of David.”

And this was the thrice-blessed end, in which, when our Saviour confirms the promised kingdom of heaven to those worthy of it, the God over all and his Father, the highest good of all, will give himself to those reigned over by the Son, becoming “all in all.” Our Saviour and Lord himself showed this again, sending up the great prayer for his own “to God and the Father,” 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.

And the glory which 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.

Father, those whom you have given me, I want them also to be with me where I am, so that they may behold the glory which you have given me.” This is our Saviour's great intercession for us: that we may be with him wherever he is, and that we may behold his glory, and that the Father may love us as he loved him, and give us too what he gave him, and give us too the glory he gave him; making us all one, so that we may no longer be many but all one, united to his divinity and to the glory of the kingdom, not by a blending into one substance, but by perfection of virtue to its height.

For he taught this, saying, “that they may be perfected.” For so, made perfect by him in wisdom and understanding and righteousness and godliness and every virtue, we shall be joined to the unspeakable light of the Father's divinity, becoming lights ourselves from our joining to him, and made sons of God by participation in the fellowship of his only-begotten, by sharing in the flashes of his divinity.

And in this way 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, by the Word being united to God and joined in substance, but as the truth has testified, the Saviour himself saying, “The glory which 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 so then the apostle's saying too will reach its end, which says, “so that God may be all in all.”

And since Marcellus and those who Sabellianize in the same way as he are accustomed to use three sayings, 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 before them what he prays for his disciples, that they too may all obtain the same union; he says, “that they may be one as we are one;

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 his word again by which, praying for them, he said, “As you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, and the glory which you have given me I have given to them”; by which he clearly shows that the Father is in him in the same way as he wants him to be in us too; not that he and the Father are one in one hypostasis, but that, the Father having given him a share of his own glory, he too, imitating the Father, gives a share to his own likewise.

Therefore he says, “And the glory which you gave me I have given to them, 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 by fellowship of glory, a share of which he gave his disciples and counted them worthy of the same union.

And again, the Father was in him and he in the Father in the way the divine apostle teaches about all who are worthy of the heavenly kingdom, saying, “Then God will be all in all,” as also “I will dwell in them and walk among them” is said. And we too “live and move and have our being in him.” And all these are said about us, who subsist and live each in our own hypostasis and have nothing in common with the Father's divinity.

Why then wonder if similar words are said of the Son too, not abolishing his hypostasis nor teaching that he is Father and Son, but showing the Father's peculiar and special honour toward him and the glory of the only-begotten and divine fellowship?

So too “he who has seen” him “has seen the Father,” because he alone and no other is “the image of the invisible God” and “the radiance of the glory and the imprint of his hypostasis,” and exists “in the form of God,” according to the apostolic teachings. For as one who has looked at the royal image, made exactly like him, and taken the impress of the features of the form through the painting, pictures the king, in the same way, or rather beyond all reason and beyond every example, the one who with a clear mind and eyes of the soul cleansed and enlightened by the Holy Spirit has gazed at the greatness of the power of the only-begotten Son and Lord, and has considered how “in him dwells all the fullness of the Father's divinity,” and how all things “came into being through him,” and “in him were created all things in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible,” and has reckoned that the Father begot him alone as only-begotten Son, made like him in all things, will see in power the Father himself through the Son, who is contemplated by those cleansed in mind, of whom it is said, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”

Let these things, then, have been exercised by us briefly, as in a summary, since we set brevity as our aim. And since the matters of this passage need very much working out, whoever cares for an exact grasp of them, fixing his mind on the gospel and apostolic readings, will gather the whole sense from them at leisure. And since countless other things are heaped together incoherently in Marcellus's treatise, very many said contrary to the intention of Scripture, and others forced and preserving no sequence, thinking that the common refutation has become plain to those of sound mind through what we have examined, I shall be content with these.