Against Marcellus (Book 1 – Book 2)

Against Marcellus

Eusebius of Caesarea

c. AD 336–337

Two books by Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea, against Marcellus, bishop of Ancyra. Marcellus had defended the Nicene faith against the followers of Arius, but Eusebius believed his teaching confused the Father and the Son. A council at Constantinople deposed Marcellus in AD 336, and Eusebius wrote this book soon after. It is a main source for the arguments of the years after Nicaea, and it quotes long passages of Marcellus’s lost book. The author and the date are secure; the sections are those of Klostermann’s edition.

Book 1

Table of contents

Book 1. [1] What led Marcellus to write this work. [2] That he did not even know the divine Scriptures accurately. [3] Marcellus on the proverbs of the Greeks. [4] That he slandered the church’s teaching and its leaders.

Chapter 1

1 The occasion of his book was hatred of his brothers, and the cause of that hatred was jealousy and envy. These have thrown countless others down into the worst of evils. Jealousy and envy, after all, produced the murder of a brother from the very beginning. Starting from this, the man wrote this one book, and would that he never had. Right from the start, at the very hearth, he set out to make war on God’s holy ministers. He gave up speaking and writing against the great, thick crowd of heretics who were ravaging his own country. That was exactly what he ought to have done, if he had any power of saving speech. Like a good shepherd he should have driven off the enemies of God’s church in the nation of the Galatians as if they were wolves and wild beasts. 2 Instead he overlooked his own land, as if it were a wasteland full of poisonous creeping things. He boiled over for no reason and to no purpose, and let loose his anger on God’s ministers. These were no ordinary men. By God’s grace they are distinguished before everyone for their way of life and their philosophic conduct. He attacked not only the living but also those who have fallen asleep in Christ. Among these he chose above all those whose fame, for their virtue in godliness and their practice of the divine words, is sung, one might say, through the whole inhabited world. He did not speak ill of these men once only, but often and in various ways, pouring out slanders and false accusations against them without restraint.

3 He has even used curses against them, as women do in a quarrel, abusing and calling down curses on men who had done him no wrong. That is why his writing ran on beyond what was fitting, to a long and immoderate length, so that this one work came to nearly ten thousand lines. 4 It is no surprise, then, that he sharpened a slanderous tongue against God’s holy ministers and practiced irreverence and fearlessness on them first. Then he went on and advanced to the very summit of everything, and subjected the only-begotten and beloved Son of God to godless blasphemies of the same kind. It is better to hear these a little later from his own mouth than from mine. 5 I will quote his words, and for the moment I will stop there. I will not add long arguments to oppose and overturn them. The men he blasphemed are not unknown or obscure; they are known to everyone even if I say nothing.

6 Nor is the blasphemy against God’s Christ doubtful or obscure, so as to need great and more reasoned effort to refute it. To all who share in the church’s grace, small and great alike, the empty talk of this strange theologian is plain as soon as it is spoken. So I will use only brief marginal notes. I will give the discussion body by arranging it in connected order, and I will merely point out how irrational the quoted statements are. 7 But before I come to his words, I must advise those who read the man’s book, especially if any of them are Galatians, not to forget the divine voice of the apostle Paul. Writing to the Galatians themselves, he urged them not to be removed “from the one who called” them “in the grace of Christ to another gospel.” For “there is not another,” as he himself said, “except that there are some who are troubling” them “and wanting to pervert the gospel of Christ.”

8 They must also give careful attention to the other saying, in which that great apostle, including himself in the charge, added these words to shame those who were trying to twist the men away: “But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel other than what we preached to you, let him be accursed.” 9 He repeated this and said it a second time: “As we have said before, so I say again now: if anyone preaches to you a gospel other than what you received, let him be accursed.” What was this, beyond which no other gospel could be preached? Surely it was exactly what the Savior is recorded to have said when he handed it on to his disciples: “Go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

10 For this grace, the knowledge of the holy Trinity, he alone has given us, through the mystical new birth. Neither Moses nor any of the prophets served the earlier people with it. It was fitting that the Son of God alone should announce the Father’s grace to all people, since “the law was given through Moses,” but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ alone, as through the “only-begotten Son.” 11 So it was natural that Moses, like a tutor, handed over to the earlier people, who were still infants, “the elements of the beginning of the oracles of God.” He kept them from the error of many gods and proclaimed that they should know one God only. But the saving grace gives us a knowledge that is above the world and like that of angels. It openly uncovered the mystery that had long been kept silent for the earlier people. It proclaims that the very God who is over all things, whom the men of old knew, is at the same time God and Father of the only-begotten Son. And through the Son it supplies the power of the Holy Spirit to those who are worthy.

12 From this source, in a way, the church of God has received the holy, blessed and mystical Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, for the hope of salvation through the new birth in Christ, and she guards it. This was the gospel which it is not lawful to exchange for another gospel, “which is not another.” The great apostle still bears witness to this today to the Galatians, crying out in his letter to them, “Even if we or an angel from heaven preach to you anything beyond what you received, let him be accursed.” He is, as one would expect, giving a firm instruction to keep far away from bishops, rulers and teachers too, if any of them twists the true word of the faith. 13 And who was this, if not the one who teaches us to know God as Father, hands down the knowledge of the Son of God, and urges us to eagerly share in the Holy Spirit? These are the marks of Christians alone. In this way the holy church of God marks herself off from the Jewish way.

14 For as the Jew rejected the error of many gods and Greek religion by confessing one God, so the church’s distinctive knowledge of the Son brought something better and greater. She teaches us to know the same God as Father of an only-begotten Son, a Son who is truly a son, living and subsisting. For the only-begotten of God himself taught, saying, “As the Father has life in himself, so he gave the Son also to have life in himself.” 15 The purpose is that the Father may be truly Father (not called so in word only, nor holding a false title, but in truth and in fact the Father of an only-begotten Son), and that the Son may be truly Son. But consider the man who supposes that the Son is a bare word. He testifies that the Son is only a word, and he often says that he was nothing other than a word, remaining within the Father while he was at rest, and active when he made the creation. In this he is like our own word, which is at rest in those who are silent and active in those who speak. Clearly such a man runs along with a Jewish and merely human way of thinking, and he denies the one who is truly the Son of God.

16 For if someone asked a Jew whether God has a word, he would certainly say yes. Every Jew would admit that God has a word, and indeed many words. But if he were asked whether God has a son, he would no longer admit it. 17 Now suppose it is not a Jew but one of the bishops who introduces this opinion. He grants only a word united to God, and says this word is eternal and unbegotten, and one and the same with God. He says that God is called by different names, Father and Son, but is one in essence and substance. Would he not plainly be putting on the mask of Sabellius, and be a stranger to the knowledge and grace that are in Christ? For the rule of the church would not allow them to inquire, doubt or ask whether the only-begotten Son of God existed and pre-existed. It teaches, with a confession that is agreed and beyond doubt, and with great confidence and boldness, that we confess God as the Father of the only-begotten Son. It teaches us not to think the Father is the Son, or the Son the Father. We are to worship the Father as unbegotten, eternal, without beginning, first and alone. We are to believe that the Son was begotten from the Father and subsists, and that he alone is the only-begotten Son. And we are to recognize him as God, since he is truly Son of God.

18 Suppose, then, that someone is found who contradicts these teachings and defines the Word of God as being like the word in human beings. How would he not be exposed? He neither understands nor reasons that nothing mortal or merely human should be attributed to the God who is above all things, nor anything at all that comes up in our own thinking. This holds even if the divine Scriptures, guiding their readers like small children, speak of him in rather human terms and attach to him hands, feet, eyes, voices, words, a mouth, a face, and countless other things of this kind. These ought to be carried over into thoughts worthy of God, picturing nothing mortal or human in God. For the Savior himself taught: “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.” 19 But if God is spirit, it is clear that he is divine spirit, greater than every perceptible and composite body. So he has no perceptible word, sounded out by a tongue and heard through speech by mortal ears. Nor does he have a tongue, a voice, a face, or anything else that could be compared with mortal and human reasoning.

20 The divine apostle taught that the things “which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have they entered the human heart” are the things “which God has prepared for those who love him.” If so, then God himself, the giver of these unspeakable things, must be more unspeakable than all of them. It would then be far truer to say, in speaking of God, that no eye has seen, no ear has heard, and the knowledge of grasping him has not “entered the human heart.” 21 The same must be said about the begetting of the Son. And for these matters the Savior himself would be a trustworthy teacher of sacred mysteries for us, when he says something like this: “All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one fully knows the Son except the Father, nor does anyone fully know the Father except the Son.”

22 Suppose, then, that someone speaks against these things. He does not dare to say that the Son, to whom the Father handed over all things, has a real existence of his own. He defines him only as a word like the word in human beings. At one time, he says, this Word rests quietly in God, like a person among us who is silent. At another time it is active, much like a person among us who speaks aloud. Then, he says, at a certain time, not even four hundred years ago (I do not know how), this Word took on flesh and through it carried out the saving plan in human form. Only then, he says, did he become Son of God, and take the name Jesus Christ, and was proclaimed king and “image of the invisible God” and “firstborn of all creation,” though he had not been these things before. And after so absurd a claim, he does not even give Christ, from the time he supposes, life and a kingdom without limit and without end. Instead he brings him to an end that is not good, and not what those will receive who are counted worthy through him of the promises the Savior himself made, when he promised eternal life, incorruption, immortality, and the kingdom of heaven to those who love him.

23 For at that time, according to the hope we expect from these promises, he would say that the blessings of the kingdom will last forever for all others, but that Christ alone will suffer the total loss of all these things. His kingdom will cease. The flesh he took on will be left empty. The Word who existed beforehand in God will be separated from the body (even if that body is immortal and incorruptible) and joined to God, so that he becomes again one and the same with God, as he was before. What greater extreme of ungodliness could be left to such a man? 24 For this reason the apostle’s pointed testimony is necessary against such people, when he said: “Even if an angel from heaven proclaims a gospel contrary to what you received, let him be accursed.” I am moved to wonder as I consider the apostle’s thinking. It is as though he foresaw the future and spoke with precision to the Galatians themselves about the doctrine of the Savior. Right at the beginning of his letter to them he writes in a more striking way than was his custom: “Paul, an apostle, not from human beings nor through a human being, but through Jesus Christ.”

25 You would not find him writing this way to other churches. The reason, presumably, is that none of the others he wrote to were in the same state of faith. He brought his correction to the Galatians because they supposed Christ was a mere man, and so at the very start of the letter he taught them that Christ is not a man. Going on, he told the same people, “The gospel that was preached to you by me is not according to man; I neither received it from a man nor was I taught it, but it came through a revelation of Jesus Christ.” By these words he again shows that Jesus Christ was not a man. 26 But if he was not a man, what was he? Going on, Paul made this plain again when he said, “But when God, who set me apart from my mother’s womb, was pleased to reveal his Son in me.” You see how clearly he proclaimed the Savior to be the Son of God, and therefore God.

27 And that he knew him to be God’s Son before his coming in the flesh, Paul shows most plainly by adding in the same letter to the Galatians, “But when the fullness of time came, God sent out his Son, born of a woman.” So the Father sent him not as one who became a Son only now. He was already Son and already existed before he was born of a woman. In this way the one who had long been Son of God also became a son of man, by being “born of a woman.” 28 The apostle also teaches that he became mediator of the law of Moses, and he defines what this mediation means when he says, “What then? The law was added for the sake of transgressions, until the seed should come to whom the promise was made, and it was ordained through angels by the hand of a mediator. But a mediator is not of one, and God is one.” You hear how in these words the apostle taught the Galatians that from that time there was one God, and one mediator between God and angels.

29 He made the same point elsewhere when he said, “For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” But when he named him “mediator between God and men,” he rightly called him a man, because of his becoming man. When he brought him in as mediator not between God and men but between God and angels, he no longer called him a man. He says only “mediator,” when he says the law was ordained “through angels by the hand of a mediator.” 30 Paul also had to make clear the meaning of the word “mediator” by drawing a distinction, when he said, “But a mediator is not of one, and God is one.” So God cannot be the mediator, for whose mediator would he be? Nor can the mediator himself be God, for “a mediator is not of one.” 31 He therefore stands in the middle of two. Which two, Paul makes clear by naming angels and God. The Son of God stands between these, and Paul says he received the law from the Father with his own hand, and ordained it “through angels” for the first people. So from that time the Son was mediator of God and angels, before he became “mediator of God and men.”

32 And he was not so as a bare word of God, without a substance of his own and one and the same as God, for then he could not be a mediator. He was and existed beforehand as “the only-begotten Son, full of grace and truth.” He was acting as mediator for the Father, who gave the law to men “through angels.” In teaching this from the beginning to those who knew nothing of the Son’s divinity, the apostle sealed it by saying, “But a mediator is not of one.” For it is not in the nature of things for a mediator to be defined in relation to one party. 33 So he is not mediator of one but of necessity stands between two, and he is neither of the two between whom he stands. We must therefore not think that he is the God over all, nor one of the angels, but between them and mediator when he mediates for the Father and the angels. Likewise, when he becomes “mediator of God and men,” though he stands between both orders, he is neither of those whose mediator he is. He is not himself the one and only God, nor is he a man in the same way as the rest of men.

34 What then is he, if none of these, but the only-begotten Son of God, who has now become mediator of men and God, and long ago, in the time of Moses, was mediator of God and angels? It is in this way, writing to them, that the great apostle hands it down when he says, “The law was ordained through angels by the hand of a mediator.” 35 “But a mediator is not a mediator of one, whereas God is one.” So “God is one,” and there is “one mediator” between God and all created things. He did not begin this saving work of mediation only now. He was already mediator before his appearing as God among men, as the argument has shown. 36 These points have been set out briefly, using only the letter to the Galatians. That saving faith gives the mystical new birth “into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Besides the divine writings, God’s catholic Church, from one end of the earth to the other, seals the witness of the divine Scriptures with unwritten tradition. So it is now time to examine the words of Marcellus and to give the proofs of what we promised, so that no one will think the man is being slandered by us.

37 My aim is to set out what was said in a short space. So I will not quote all the man’s words, but only those that hold his argument together. Most of the rest I will pass over as superfluous, since they run along the same lines. But before proving what I have said, I think I must first show readers that he did not even handle the plain wording of the divine Scriptures with accuracy. Then those who do not yet know him will see what kind of man he is, who was led on to the boldness of his claims.

Chapter 2

1 Take this first example. The prophet Zechariah lived at the time of the return from Babylon, and he mentions Jesus the high priest, that is, the son of Josedek, who led the returning exiles together with Zerubbabel. This noble and admirable writer did not know this. He sets down Zechariah’s passage in which Jesus is mentioned, but he shoots far wide of the history and supposes that Zechariah is speaking about Jesus, the successor of Moses. 2 Again, the apostle wrote in the letter to the Galatians: “But the Jerusalem above is free, which is our mother.” Marcellus either missed this, or did not understand it, or else deliberately twists the statement. He writes: “But our Jerusalem is above; for this one is in slavery with her children.” 3 And once more, our Savior said to Peter: “Get behind me, Satan, you are a stumbling block to me, because you do not think the things of God but the things of men.” Marcellus did not understand how the statement was made to the apostle, or why, and says these words were spoken to the devil. He puts all these mistakes together in one passage, writing word for word as follows: “That no name among those named on earth has become greater than Jesus, the Gospel bears witness, where the angel said to Mary, ‘Do not be afraid, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in the womb and bear a son, and you will call his name Jesus.

4 He will be great, and will be called Son of the Most High.’ It is also clear from the prophecy of Zechariah, which long ago prophesied about this name. For he says, ‘The Lord showed me Jesus the great priest, standing before the angel of the Lord. And the devil stood at his right hand to oppose him. And the Lord said to the devil: May the Lord rebuke you, he who has chosen Jerusalem.’ 5 For when did he rebuke him? When he joined to his own Word the man whom he loved. ‘He who has chosen Jerusalem,’ he says, clearly meaning this Jerusalem of ours, about which the apostle says, ‘But our Jerusalem is above; for this one is in slavery with her children.’ 6 For at that time, when he was in that great Jerusalem, that is, in our Church, he rebuked the devil according to the prophecy, saying, ‘Go away from me, Satan, for you are a stumbling block to me.’ This, then, is the great priest, of whom the Jesus of that time preserved a type.

7 For it was not possible for that man to be called a great priest, although he had become glorious among all, unless Moses had first been called great. For Moses was not yet great, because he was called a servant of God, and was called by God himself a god to Pharaoh.” 8 But suppose someone thinks Jesus was called “great” because he was counted worthy to bring the people into the holy land and did many other wonderful things. Let him know from this that the greatness spoken of in Jesus did not lie so much in the thing he prefigured. It lay in what was to come a little later: that he would bring his own people into this great Jerusalem. You see how much he did not know, having wandered away from the history, and how he could not give proper attention to the Jesus indicated by the prophet Zechariah.

9 For the one was the son of Josedek, of the tribe of Levi, who had taken up the high priesthood from the line of Aaron. For that reason he was also styled a great priest, as the prophet teaches when he says, “And the Lord showed me Jesus the priest, the great one.” 10 But the successor of Moses, who led the people into the land of promise and did many other wonderful things, was the son of Nave [Nun], of the tribe of Ephraim, which had nothing in common with the priesthood. So how could a man who has gone so far astray from the plain wording, and who does not know the bare history, be fit to teach the highest theology? In the case of Peter also, one ought likewise to examine how the words “Get behind me” were said to him, 11 and what the name “Satan” means, and why he also called him a “stumbling block,” and how, at almost one and the same time, both “Blessed are you, Simon bar Jonah” and “Get behind me, Satan” were said to him,

12 and what is the meaning of “going behind” the Saviour. (He himself made this clear right away by adding next, “If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” Peter himself did this in deed a little later, when he was perfected by martyrdom.) 13 One ought also to ask for what reasons he pronounced Peter blessed and for what reasons he rebuked him. But Marcellus paid attention to none of this, and declared, contrary to Scripture, that these words were spoken to the devil. 14 Was this, then, the only thing he did not know? Going on further, he mentions the resurrection of our Saviour. Then he wants to show that even before him, in the prophetic times, someone is recorded as having been raised from the dead. Here again he stumbles, saying first that the prophet Elisha raised someone from the dead. He did not know that even before Elisha, the great Elijah raised the widow’s son who had died, as one can learn from the third book of Kingdoms.

15 That he did not know this is evident from the way he writes the following (no. 2): “The apostle says, then, that he is firstborn not only of the ‘new creation’ but also firstborn ‘from the dead.’ In my opinion this is for no other reason than that, through the firstborn ‘of the dead,’ it might be possible to understand how he is also called ‘firstborn of all creation.’ For our Lord Jesus Christ was not the first to rise from the dead. The man raised through the prophet Elisha rose earlier, and Lazarus rose before his resurrection, and at the time of the passion ‘many bodies of those who had fallen asleep’ were raised.” 16 Marcellus also seems to me to have stated this without proper consideration, I mean that “many bodies of the holy ones who had fallen asleep” were raised before him. For he did not pay attention to the whole text of the Gospel, which teaches that the bodies of the saints were raised “after his [resurrection].”

17 You would also find him going wrong in his setting out of the apostle’s statement. For the divine apostle, writing to the Romans, says this: “set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in holy writings, concerning his Son, who came from the seed of David according to the flesh, who was appointed Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness.” 18 But he, I do not know with what intention, twists the apostle’s wording here too. In place of “appointed” he makes it “predestined,” so that he may be like those who are predestined “according to foreknowledge.” 19 He says, then, word for word (no. 16): “Just as the almighty God long ago predestined the church, so also he predestined the economy of Christ according to the flesh, through whom he predestined to call the race of the godly ‘to adoption as sons,’ having first laid its foundation in his own mind. For this reason the apostle, with the Holy Spirit, plainly speaks beforehand of ‘the predestined Son of God.’” And again he says in another place (no. 109): “This is the one about whom Paul said, ‘the predestined Son of God.’”

20 Here too he corrupted not only the apostle’s wording but its very sense, by adding the preposition “before.” He does the same thing with the psalm, which says “from the womb, before the morning star, I begot you.” There again he uses an addition that is nowhere found in the text, so that he can find fault with the man who does not speak as he does. 21 Listen, then, to how he writes: “For this reason it seems to me good now to go through matters I have not yet discussed.” 22 Most of what he has written has already become clear from what we have said. “From the womb,” he says, “before the morning star I begot you out.” He supposed that the stolen preposition “out” would surely agree with the view of his heresy. So he removed the most important part of the syllable, because he wanted to indicate the Son’s ancient regeneration. And since he argued strongly on these points, blaming the man who had written correctly for his own mistake, though he himself had said nothing of the kind, he hands readers the same testimony of the reading.

23 Going on, the same man again brings in the Savior saying “I am the day,” and he speaks somewhat like this: “For since there was darkness before, because of ignorance of true religion, and the day was about to appear (‘For I am,’ he says, ‘the day’), he reasonably calls the star the morning star.” 24 And in another place he says: “Since after the taking up of the flesh he is proclaimed as Christ and Jesus, and as life and way and day.” And going on again he sets down the apostle’s words: “But our Jerusalem is above.” 25 Why should I go on at length, when anyone who wishes can gather similar things from the whole treatise, from what has been said, and see the man’s recklessness? From this recklessness you will hear him often call Solomon a prophet and call the Proverbs prophecies. 26 For example, where he says: “For this reason the most holy prophet Solomon said, ‘to receive the turns of words,’ and again, ‘the sayings of the wise and riddles,’” he calls the proverb prophecy. And again: “Therefore this very wise prophet seems to me to have spoken the first words of the prophecy in proverbs.”

27 And, as I said, he does this a second and a third time, and many times, not knowing that “there are distributions of gifts,” even if it is “the same Spirit,” and that, according to the apostle, to one “is given a word of wisdom,” “to another a word of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith in the same Spirit, to others prophecies.” So Solomon is attested as having received the gift of wisdom. 28 For, as the Scripture says, “the Lord gave Solomon wisdom,” “and he was made wiser than all men.” But he neither lived a prophet’s life, nor does he show in his own words the mark of prophecy, which is recognized by “Thus says the Lord” and similar phrases. 29 But Marcellus, seeing none of this, calls him a prophet, as though doing the man a favor. He does not understand that the prophets “went about in sheepskins, in goatskins, destitute, afflicted, ill-treated.” He also says that his Proverbs are a prophecy, though the divine Scripture nowhere teaches this. The wisest man himself, with the divine Spirit, gave this book the name PROVERBS, the second ECCLESIASTES, and the third SONG OF SONGS.

30 He did not give these titles without God, or by merely human reasoning. Yet Marcellus tries to explain even this God-inspired writing of his by Greek examples. He has not listened to the apostle Paul, who says: “We received not the spirit of the world but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God. These things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in words taught by the Holy Spirit, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him. And he cannot know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” Ignorant of this as well, the noble fellow tries to set before us the meaning of the divine Proverbs from Greek reading, writing in these very words as follows:

Chapter 3

1 “For it is not out of place, I think, to remind you briefly at this point of some proverbs from outside the Scriptures. ‘EITHER HE IS DEAD, OR HE TEACHES LETTERS.’ At first sight of the wording, someone might take this proverb to be said against those who teach letters, since another of their writers also said, ‘You were teaching letters, and I was attending.’ But those who wrote the commentaries said it is not so. They say that when the Sicilians defeated the Athenians in war, they spared only those who claimed to have education, and put them to work teaching their children, while they killed all the others. Some of these men escaped and came back, and when the Athenians asked them about certain people they cared about, they reportedly answered, ‘EITHER HE IS DEAD, OR HE TEACHES LETTERS.’” 2 “And what about ‘THE GOAT—THE KNIFE’? Let me first set down what is said about it. Someone might suppose the proverb was said simply because the goat that is sacrificed looks to the knife. But the ancients did not say that. If that were the meaning, it would not be a proverb at all, since this would be the natural thing to think from the surface of the words. They say instead that it is said of people who bring evils upon themselves. For they say that Medea, after killing her children in Corinth, hid the knife there. The Corinthians, following an oracle given to them, were offering a black goat in sacrifice to the dead but could not find a knife. The goat, scratching with its foot, uncovered Medea’s knife, and was sacrificed with it.”

3 “And what does ‘ENOUGH OF THE OAK’ mean? Someone asks, for it is not possible to know the proverb from the obvious sense. The ancients, as they said, lived on acorns before the cultivation of grain. When this other fruit was discovered later, as they supposed, they turned their attention to it and rejoiced in the change, and said ‘ENOUGH OF THE OAK.’ And they said this was the proverb.” 4 Again, there is another proverb, spoken by very many of their wise men in very many different books. It is necessary at this point to recall what those who undertook to explain proverbs have written about it, * * * but in order that we may expose Asterius, who from this outside learning knew precisely what is distinctive about the proverb, yet at this point pretended ignorance, so that by using the proverbial saying he might seem to make his own purpose convincing. It is ‘THE ART OF GLAUCUS.’ The wise men outside the faith who mentioned this proverb explained it in different ways.

5 One of them said that a certain Glaucus had become skilled in some art [† most wonderful of many †], and that he perished at sea together with it, before anyone had yet learned it from him. Another, testifying to Glaucus’s supreme experience in music, says that he made four bronze disks which produced a tuneful harmony of notes when struck, and that the proverb arose from this. 6 Another of them says that among the offerings dedicated at the Alyattic treasures there stands a wonderful mixing-bowl and stand, the work of Glaucus of Chios. Another says that Glaucus himself dedicated a bronze tripod at Delphi, and made it so that [† when struck heavily †], the feet on which it stands, the part set above them, the rim around the cauldron, and the rods set through the middle all sounded with the voice of a lyre. And yet another says the proverb comes from a certain Glaucus who was thought to have achieved something extraordinary.

7 You see how the difficulty of the proverb is shown by this very fact, that those who wanted to explain it did not settle on the same interpretation. So hard to discover is the meaning of the proverb, even among outsiders. This is why one of their wise men collected the proverbs spoken by many people in different ways and wrote six books on them, two in verse and four in prose. 8 These outsiders called them proverbs, I think, for no other reason than this: they came across the Proverbs of the very wise Solomon and learned from them that nothing said in them can be clearly understood from the surface. Wanting to imitate the prophetic writing, they wrote in the same manner. Then, being unable to think of any more fitting name than that one, they named these collections proverbs too. 9 By such comparisons Marcellus tries to teach the church of God to understand the God-inspired Scriptures. I have set out this whole long, chattering excess of words because I wanted to show the folly of the man’s great and ill-timed ambition: he is eager to show off with Greek writings, while forgetting the divine ones.

10 He would never have fallen into such foolish talk if he had remembered the apostolic commands. There the apostle urges us to speak “the things freely given to us by God” not in words taught by human wisdom, but in words taught by the Spirit, “interpreting spiritual things to spiritual people.” 11 Nor did he understand how it was said, “The natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” Because he did not understand this, he supposed that the wise men of the Greeks had knowledge of the wisdom God gave to Solomon, and that, having learned it, they eagerly imitated the prophetic writing, as he puts it. 12 How could they have understood the things of God and imitated them, when they were natural men who did not know how to interpret “spiritual things to spiritual people”? The divine apostle declared that the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God. The same apostle said that the natural man cannot know spiritual things, “because they are spiritually discerned.” Yet this noble fellow contradicts the apostle and says that the makers of the Greek proverbs wrote in the same manner as Solomon.

13 Here are his exact words: “since they came upon the Proverbs of the most wise Solomon, and saw from them that nothing said in them can be clearly learned from the surface, they too, wishing to imitate the prophetic writing, wrote in the same manner as he did.” But consider from his own quotations, in another way, how far he has missed the truth in saying that the Greeks wrote in the same manner as Solomon. 14 Solomon was moved by a wisdom given by God. He dedicated his whole writing to the message of true religion, for the benefit and salvation of souls. To train the minds of his readers, he used dark problems, twists of speech, and sayings put forward in riddles. He himself testifies to this at the beginning of the book, saying: “For by hearing these things the wise man will become wiser, and the man of understanding will gain guidance, and will understand a parable, the dark sayings, the words of the wise, and riddles.”

15 And again: “to receive the twists of words.” It is easy to learn from the contents of the book that this is how things stand. These sayings cannot be understood in any other way than by passing from the surface wording to the meaning perceived through it. For example: “The leech had three daughters, loved with devotion, and these three did not satisfy her. And the fourth was not content to say, ‘Enough.’” 16 Another example: “Wisdom built herself a house and set up seven pillars. She slaughtered her own sacrifices and mixed her wine in a mixing bowl.” And there are many other sayings like these. They cannot be understood otherwise, whether on the surface or from some historical story, but only by treating the wording as metaphor and turning it around. The Greek proverbs he cited, however, took their origins from certain stories. 17 For example, the saying “Either he has died or he is teaching letters” was spoken, they say, because of a certain story. Another saying, “The goat [and] the knife,” was spoken because of a different event that gave rise to such an action. The same goes for “Enough of the oak,” which arose because people who once ate acorns stopped that kind of food. And if a certain Glaucus, skilled in some craft, was remembered in different ways by later people who disagreed in their accounts of him, what has that to do with the God-inspired Proverbs? They do not, like the Greek proverbs, get their solution from some story. So Marcellus, in ignorance and without experience of the study of the divine Scriptures, and in opposition to the apostle, has declared that the wise men of the Greeks came upon Solomon’s Proverbs, learned from them, imitated the prophetic writing, and wrote in the same manner as he did.

18 I have said all this to show that the man has not read the divine Scriptures in the way he should. Now it is time to examine his unsound view of the faith. Holding opinions contrary to the teaching of the Church, he slandered both the Church and its leaders.

Chapter 4

1 First I will set out the passages in which he tries to speak against what was written rightly and in line with the Church, slandering those who wrote it, and all but taking up an all-out fight against everyone. At one moment he directs his objection against Asterius, at another against the great Eusebius. 2 Then he turns against the man of God, the truly thrice-blessed Paulinus. He was honored with the office of presbyter in the church of the Antiochenes, and then served with distinction as bishop of the church of the Tyrians. He shone so brightly in the episcopate that the church of the Antiochenes claimed him as its own good. 3 Yet this man, who lived a blessed life and has long since fallen asleep in blessed rest, and who causes him no trouble at all, this marvelous writer mocks. From him he moves on to wage war against Origen, who also finished his life long ago. Then he marches against Narcissus, and goes after the other Eusebius. Together he rejects all the fathers of the Church, pleased with no one at all except himself alone.

4 He writes, then, speaking ill of them all by name, in this way (Nr. 59): “So I will begin from the letter he wrote, and answer each of the things that were not rightly written. He has written that he believes in God the Father Almighty, and in his Son, the only-begotten God, our Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Spirit; and he says he has learned this way of true religion from the divine Scriptures.” 5 When he says this, I fully accept what is said. For this is the common way of true religion for all of us: to believe in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. But when he fails to grasp the divine power, and in a rather human way, through some clever speculation, says that the Father is “Father” and the Son is “Son,” it is no longer safe to praise such speculation.

6 For through such speculation, it happens that the heresy now being devised by them grows. I think this is easy to show plainly from his own words. For he said that one must hold that the Father is truly Father, and the Son truly Son, and the Holy Spirit likewise. 7 This is what Marcellus said against Asterius, because he was not pleased that one must confess that the Father is truly Father, the Son truly Son, and the Holy Spirit likewise. For this reason he goes on at greater length to try to overturn the teaching on these matters. For he is willing to confess Christ only as a bare word, like the human word, and not as a Son truly living and subsisting. 8 And since he said that this heresy is only now being devised, I must show that as he goes on he mentions Origen, who lived long ago, as agreeing with those whom he now slanders. But I myself have read very many church writings of men older than Origen, and various letters of bishops and councils written long ago. These show that the stamp of the faith is one and the same.

9 So he was wrong to slander them by saying that this heresy is only now being devised by those he attacks. Then, after going on a little further, he speaks ill not only of Asterius but also of the great Eusebius, whose bishopric many notable provinces and cities claimed for themselves. He does it in this way (Nr. 29): “I will remind you of what he himself has written in supporting the things wrongly written by Eusebius, so that you may know that he plainly departs from his earlier profession.” 10 “For he has written in these very words: ‘The main point of the letter is to trace the generation of the Son back to the Father’s will, and not to declare that the begetting of God is a passion. This is what the wisest of the fathers declared in their own writings, guarding against the impiety of the heretics, who falsely claimed that God’s begetting of children was bodily and subject to passion, teaching doctrines of emissions.’”

11 And against these words he goes on to make a long reply. After it he adds, saying (Nr. 30): “So Asterius, wishing to defend Eusebius, who had written badly, and mentioning the nature of the Father and the nature of the unbegotten, became his own accuser. For it would have been much better to leave untouched the depth of Eusebius’ meaning, as he himself wrote it, set down in brief form, than to use such speculation and bring the craftiness of the letter into the light.” 12 And after other things he adds (Nr. 3): “Now let us examine one saying among those written by Asterius. For he said: ‘The Father is one, who begat from himself the only-begotten Word and firstborn of all creation.’ He has joined both together, ‘only-begotten’ and ‘firstborn,’ though there is great contradiction between these names, as even the very slow can easily see.” 13 “For it is clear that the only-begotten, if he is really only-begotten, can no longer be firstborn, and the firstborn, as firstborn, cannot be only-begotten.” And in these things too he blames Asterius for nothing. For the expressions were not his own but those of the divine Scripture, which sometimes calls the Son of God the only-begotten Son, and sometimes the firstborn of all creation.

14 Again he joins these remarks to the others, saying (Nr. 76): “But he has put aside the true knowledge, and even now has shown us a contrived way of looking at things. For since he cannot establish his own purpose from the divine Scriptures, he runs back to the wisest fathers, as he thinks, saying: ‘what the wisest of the fathers declared in their own writings.’” 15 Marcellus says that Asterius’s fathers “made a pronouncement,” and that they wrote a “dogma” about God out of their own choice. For the word “dogma” belongs to human counsel and opinion. 16 That this is so, the dogmatic art of the physicians gives us ample witness, and so do the so-called “dogmas” of the philosophers. I think no one is unaware that what seemed good to the senate is still called a “dogma of the senate.” Marcellus was led to say this, forgetting the apostolic word about the Savior, “having abolished the law of commandments by dogmas.” He even finds fault with the duty of following the fathers, although the divine Scripture says, “Ask your father and he will tell you,

17 your elders, and they will tell you,” and “Do not move the eternal boundaries which your fathers set.” Then he is indignant that Asterius called Paulinus “blessed,” and, speaking ill of Eusebius again at the same time, he writes thus (Nr. 77): “For Eusebius wished to defend the one who wrote the letter badly. First, he composed the letter without setting out the doctrine in the manner of a teacher, he said. For the writing was not addressed to the church or to those who were ignorant, but to the blessed Paulinus. He called him blessed for this reason, that he held the same opinion as Asterius. Therefore, since we have learned who Asterius’s wisest fathers are, I think it follows that we should also name the one who became the teacher of Paulinus and the others. 18 For from the letter of Paulinus, the man who became his teacher too would become quite clear to us.” After saying some things in between, he again slanders the same man, as though he had wrongly welcomed Origen, saying (Nr. 32): “Paulinus did not write this to remind them of the gospel teaching. He admitted that some are moved in this way of themselves, while others have been led in this way by the readings of the men mentioned earlier.”

19 Then at the end, as though adding a crowning flourish to his proof, he appended to his own letter some sayings of Origen, as if Origen could persuade more than the evangelists and apostles. These are the sayings: “It is time to take up again the subject of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and to go through a few of the points left out at that time. Concerning the Father: being indivisible and without parts, he becomes Father of the Son, not by projecting him, as some suppose. 20 For if the Son is a projection of the Father and an offspring from him, like the offspring of animals, then the one who projects and the one who is projected must be bodies.” 21 Then, after setting out these words of Origen, he goes on to say (Nr. 32): “Origen wrote these things, not wishing to learn about the eternity of the Word from the holy prophets and apostles, but having given himself over to it, he rashly dares to narrate in vain a second hypothesis about the Word.” Yet Marcellus argues against these words, which Origen said correctly, that one must not suppose the begetting of the Son’s divinity to be bodily and subject to passion. He objects most of all because Origen gave the Son a distinct subsistence [hypostasis]. And again, speaking ill of Origen and contradicting what he had written correctly, he adds in these words (Nr. 32): “That Origen used his own dogmas when he wrote such things is clear from the fact that he often overturns his own statements. In another passage, at any rate, it is fitting to recall what he says about God. He writes thus:

22 ‘For God did not begin to be Father because he was prevented, as human beings who become fathers are, by not yet being able to be fathers. For if God is always perfect, and the power to be Father is present in him, and it is good for him to be the Father of such a Son, why does he put it off and deprive himself of the good? And, so to speak, from the time he was able to be Father, why does he not become Father?’ The same must be said also about the Holy Spirit.” 23 Origen wrote this too. So how did the blessed Paulinus, in Marcellus’s view, think it dangerous to hide this passage, yet use it against his opponents to support his own opinions, when I would say not even Origen himself could have given an account of them? In these words Marcellus falsely claimed that Origen contradicted himself. He could not grasp that the first passage showed the Father to be without body and without passion, while the second showed that the Son was begotten not in time but before all ages.

24 Again, after other remarks, he writes this about Origen (Nr. 78): “And yet, if the truth must be told about Origen, it is right to say this: he had only just left the studies of philosophy, and chose to occupy himself with the divine words before he had an exact grasp of the Scriptures. Because of the great weight and ambition of his outside education, he began to write sooner than he should have. He was led astray by the arguments of philosophy, and because of them he wrote some things badly. This is plain, for he was still mindful of the teachings of Plato, 25 and of the difference of first principles in Plato. He wrote a book ON FIRST PRINCIPLES and gave his work that title. The strongest proof of this is that he took the beginning of his words, and the title of the book, from nowhere else than from the words spoken by Plato. For he begins his writing like this:

26 ‘Those who have believed and been persuaded.’ You would find this saying worded just so in Plato’s Gorgias.” But even if that were so, it would bring no charge against Origen for saying, “Those who have believed and been persuaded,” and for joining to it, next, that grace and truth came “through Jesus Christ,” and that Christ is the truth, according to what he himself said: “I am the truth.” For what fellowship could Plato ever have with these things? 27 No book of Plato’s ON FIRST PRINCIPLES is mentioned anywhere. Nor did Origen hold the same opinion about first principles as Plato. He knew only one first principle, unbegotten and without beginning and beyond all things, and that this is the Father of one only-begotten Son, through whom all things came to be. 28 Marcellus, who falsely accused Origen in these matters too, adds after other remarks (Nr. 15): “Asterius said that the Word came to be before the ages, but the very text proves him a liar. So he has missed not only the matter but the letter as well. For if Proverbs says, ‘Before the age he founded me,’ how could he say that he came to be before the ages? For to be founded before the age is one thing, and to come to be before the ages is another.”

29 After saying this, and adding further remarks to overturn the claim that the Son came to be before the ages, he adds these very words (Nr. 79): “I ask those of the saints who read this, since they have truly received something like seeds and beginnings of this interpretation, to add more proofs to what has been said, so that the intentions of those who twist the faith may be exposed still more. For they have truly abandoned God who begot them, and have dug for themselves broken cisterns.” 30 Having abused them with such words, he next tries to show that the Son is not even the image of God. He says (Nr. 80): “I think it fitting to say a few words about the image also. For Asterius wrote: ‘The one begotten from him is another, “who is the image of the invisible God.”’ Asterius mentions the image of the invisible God in order to teach that God differs from the Word as much as a man is thought to differ from his own image.”

31 And after some remarks in between, he continues (Nr. 82): “So it is plain that before taking up our body, the Word by himself was not the image of the invisible God. For an image must be seen, so that through the image what was until then unseen can be seen.” And he adds (Nr. 82): “So how could Asterius write that the Word of God is the image of the invisible God? For images show the things they are images of, even when those things are absent, so that the absent one seems to appear through them. 32 But if God is invisible and it follows that the Word is invisible too, how can the Word by himself be the image of the invisible God, when he himself is invisible?” And going on, he abuses him again, saying (Nr. 24): “So how is it that these men, ‘full of deceit and villainy,’ to speak as the apostle does, transfer the text to what they suppose was his first creation, when David has spoken plainly about his coming to be according to the flesh?”

33 In the middle of these remarks he stretches out a long speech and then adds (Nr. 85): “What will he say to this? I do not think he has anything to say about it. For I do not think he would confess, clearly and without disguise, even to others, what he hides in his own mind, as can plainly be learned from what he has written. For the Father is one, he says, and he begat from himself the only-begotten Word, the firstborn of all creation: alone, the only one; perfect, the perfect one; king, a king; lord, a lord; God, God; the unchanging image of his being, will, glory and power.” These words plainly expose his worthless opinion about the Godhead. 34 For how can the one who was begotten, who is Lord and [the] God, as he himself said earlier, be the image of God? An image of God is one thing, and God is another. So if he is an image, he is not Lord or God, but the image of the Lord and God. But if he is truly Lord and God, then the Lord and [the] God can no longer be the image of the Lord and God.

35 He has said this with great blindness. He did not consider that a living son can also be called the image of his own father, whenever he is most like his father. Scripture teaches this when it says: “Adam lived two hundred and thirty years, and he begat a son according to his own form and according to his own image, and he named him Seth.” 36 The apostle also teaches about the divinity of the Son when he says: “who, existing in the form of God, did not regard being equal with God as something to be seized, but emptied himself.” And again: “who is the radiance of the glory and the exact imprint of the being.” And elsewhere it is said: “For he is a radiance of everlasting light, a spotless mirror of the working of God, and an image of his goodness.” 37 Again the apostle says: “having put off the old man, and put on the new, which is being renewed to full knowledge according to the image of the one who created him.” It is clear that he is teaching that the flesh is not what is meant by the image of God.

38 Then Marcellus turns again to the bishops and writes as follows (Nr. 87): “Look, what Asterius wrote does not grieve us so much, though he was led to write such things. What grieves us is that some of those who seem to preside over the church have forgotten the apostolic tradition and preferred the things outside the divine writings. They have dared to write and teach things that are no less caught up in the error of those mentioned before.” 39 And after other things he adds (Nr. 71): “I came across a letter of Narcissus, who presides over Neronias. He wrote it to a certain Chrestus, Euphronius and Eusebius. In it, Bishop Hosius asked him whether he said the same as Eusebius of Palestine, who says there are two beings [ousiai]. From what Narcissus wrote, I learned that he answered that he believes there are three beings.” Having said this, he moves from Narcissus to Eusebius, accusing him because he confesses that the Word of God is God.

40 He writes this about him as well (Nr. 72): “He has dared to divide the Word of God and to name the Word another God, set apart from the Father in being and in power. How far into blasphemy he has fallen can be easily learned from the very words he wrote.” 41 He wrote, in these very words: “Surely the image and that of which it is the image are not thought of as one and the same, but as two beings, two things and two powers, as there are also so many names.” And to slander him, as if he did it well, Marcellus adds (Nr. 75): “How then did these men not turn onto the same utterly bad road as those outside, and set out to teach and write the same things? Eusebius speaks like Valentinus and Hermas, and Narcissus like Marcion and Plato.” 42 Then he strings together a long, chattering, endless discourse. He claims that he learned by hearsay that Eusebius had once conversed with someone while staying in Laodicea, and so he writes about things he did not know, having learned them only by hearsay. He adds (Nr. 88): “They ought rather to cry out the opposite to the Lord with tears and mourning: ‘We have sinned, we have been ungodly, we have acted lawlessly,’ and ‘we have done evil in your sight,’ and now that we have repented we ask to obtain your kindness.”

43 These were the words that suited him, and it was fitting for him to speak them, given God’s measureless kindness and love for mankind. Yet it would have followed that God, who cares with both love and justice, would answer in these words: “If an enemy had reproached me, I would have borne it; and if the one who hates me had spoken boastfully against me, I would have hidden from him. But you, a man of like soul with me, my leader and my familiar friend, you who together with me took pleasant food, we walked in the house of God in harmony.” 44 For we know from his own saying that he is present with us who serve him: “Behold,” he said, “I will be with you all the days” of your life “until the end of the age.” Then, quite consistently, he would also have added the words that follow upon the earlier ones: “Let death come upon them, and let them go down alive into Hades, for wickedness is in their hearts.” For Scripture says that those who are in the darkness of ungodliness are swallowed up by Hades as dead men; they were in fact dead, even though they seemed to be alive.

45 Then, next after this, he again accuses Eusebius of having, when passing through Ancyra, spoken in the church about matters which, Marcellus says, he knew only by hearsay. Angry over this, he writes the following: “But the apostle writes such things about the faith of the Galatians. Eusebius, however, twists the apostolic meaning, for the reason for which the apostle said, ‘My children, with whom I am again in labor until Christ is formed in you,’ and he has attacked the Galatians as though they did not hold a right opinion about God.” 46 For the apostle was truly in labor, with a sharp and bitter pain, because he knew that the Galatians did not hold the same opinion about godliness as that man does, nor speak of two substances, two things, two powers and two gods. But observe how bitterly he abuses a man who, as he himself writes, said nothing more than the apostolic saying. And now he admits that Eusebius speaks of two gods, as if I were declaring the Son of God to be God together with the Father. But going on in what follows, as if he had forgotten what he accused me of here, he tries to slander the same man by saying that he calls Christ a mere man.

47 Next, after what has been set out, he attaches a great deal of long-winded nonsense, stringing together things that are and things that are not, almost like those who said, “Our lips are our own; who is lord over us?” 48 By this it is shown, as I said at the beginning of the treatise, that he pounced on the writing out of excessive hatred and hostility toward his brothers. Moving on from this, he again makes a tragic show of Asterius, drawing out a long account about him: how he travels abroad, and where, and when, and to whom. Leaving that too, he turns once more to the man of God Paulinus, writing in these very words: 49 “Paulinus, the father of this man, was persuaded by these sayings and does not hesitate to say and write the same things. Sometimes he calls Christ a second god, and says that he became god in a more human way; at other times he defines him as a created thing. That this is so, he once said to us, when he passed through Ancyra, that Christ is a created thing.”

50 And again, telling a story, he says that he talked with Paulinus. Then he slanders the blessed man as having spoken of many gods. Leaving Paulinus, he turns again to Eusebius, saying: “So too Eusebius of Caesarea has written, holding himself the same opinion about gods as Paulinus and those outside the faith.” 51 For he wrote, not as if there were only one God, but as if there were one who is the only true God. Learning this from him, Paulinus, the father of Asterius, supposed that there were younger gods. In these words he also accuses us of bringing in opinions of gods, while he himself denies the divinity of the Son. And having set down Eusebius’s wording, he fails to understand that the voice teaching that the Father is the only true God was not Eusebius’s own, 52 but that of our Savior, who said, “that they may know you, the only true God.” And after other matters he adds, saying: “For from where will they be able to show us, from the divine sayings, that one is unbegotten and one is begotten in the way that they themselves have believed he was begotten, when neither prophets nor evangelists nor apostles have said this?”

53 Then, as though he had entered himself in the games to fight against everyone at once, he moves on to Narcissus and says: “So even if someone says that, arguing that there is a first god and a second, as Narcissus has written in these very words,” 54 (For the one who says, “Let us make man in our image and likeness,” does not allow it.) That he himself and his Father are two, we have heard in part from the Lord himself and from the holy Scriptures, who bear witness to it. If, then, Narcissus wished on this account to divide the Word from the Father in power, let him know that the prophet who wrote that God said, “Let us make man in our image and likeness,” himself wrote, “And God made man.” 55 Then, moving on from Narcissus to Asterius, he writes these things: “Asterius declared that the Father and the Son are one and the same only in this respect, that they agree in everything. For he said it this way: ‘Because of their exact agreement in all words and works, “I and the Father are one.”’” And again he attacks Eusebius, saying: “For they want the Saviour to be a man. This is clear from the way Eusebius craftily twisted the words of the apostle to suit his own purpose.”

56 He speaks as if he wished to bring to birth, from some old labor pain, the greatest blasphemy. In the words of the Saviour, he “brought forth from his own treasure” what is “evil.” 57 Wishing to show that the Saviour is only a man, and as if he were uncovering for us some great secret mystery of the apostle, he spoke as follows: “Therefore the divine apostle, handing down to us the secret and mystical teaching about God, most plainly cries out and shouts, ‘One God’; then after the one God he says, ‘one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.’” 58 If, then, he says that Christ is a man, looking only at his dispensation in the flesh, he must surely agree with this too: that one should not place hope in him. For the prophet Jeremiah said, “Cursed is the man who has his hope in man.”

59 You see how wickedness is blind. For at one time he himself bore witness against the man who confesses the Son as God, and blamed him for this, saying he brought in the Word of God as God subsisting in being and power. Now he slanders the same man as saying that Christ is a mere man. He plainly lies both in what he has already said and in what he adds next about him, saying again: “But the man mentioned above, paying little attention to the holy prophets, and sounding forth as if he were revealing some secret and hidden teaching about God from the apostle, said, ‘One God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.’” 60 The man who wrote this, boasting loudly of remembering the Scriptures, did not consider that the most holy apostle who wrote this also wrote that other saying: “Who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, becoming in the likeness of man, and being found in appearance as a man.”

61 You see how the holy apostle, as though he had foreseen by the Spirit the wickedness of these men, wrote elsewhere “as a man” and “becoming in the likeness of man,” to put a stop to such great blasphemy of theirs. And after other things he slanders the same man in this way: “How then, since Eusebius does not attend to these things, does he want the Saviour to be only a man?” 62 He does not dare to say this openly, but he wants it, and he is refuted by his own words. And the man who said these things also blamed the same Eusebius for proclaiming the Son as God, writing thus: “For having dared to divide the Word of God, and having named the Word another God, standing apart from the Father in being and power, into what great blasphemy he has fallen.” 63 Marcellus has set out so many such charges, and many more besides, not only against the bishops but against the sound faith of the Church. It would be clear what his own purpose was. That the man cared nothing for the truth, you could learn by reading the bishops’ letters themselves. There you will find him cutting off the limbs from the whole body of the meaning of their words, hiding the whole connected argument, and seizing on little phrases, from which he makes his accusation dishonestly.

64 For example, he openly slanders Eusebius as having said that Christ is a mere man, because in his letter he quoted the apostolic saying in which the apostle himself said, “For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” 65 So Marcellus attacked this apostolic saying as though it were Eusebius’s own. In his great wisdom he did not see that he was really attacking the apostle. But he passed over in silence Eusebius’s own words in that same letter, and those in his other writings on the divine Scriptures, which have been circulated everywhere. By his silence he hid whatever he could not slander. 66 One could find him doing the same thing with the other writings he has attacked. To keep this work in proportion, I will leave these to those who want to examine them closely. I am eager now to expose Marcellus’s own strange teaching about the Son of God, so that everyone may see plainly what he himself thought about the Son of God.

Book 2

Table of contents

Book 2. 1. How Marcellus held that the Son of God neither exists nor existed before his birth from the virgin. 2. What Marcellus thought about the Word in God. 3. What Marcellus thought about the flesh which the Word took up. 4. What kind of end Marcellus brings upon the kingdom of Christ and upon the flesh he took up.

Chapter 1

1 Now that I have set out what he slandered, the time calls me to bring into the light the faith of the Galatian, or rather his unbelief toward the Son of God. For a long time this false teaching lay hidden in the man. I must go briefly around the pretext of his letter and strip it bare. I must show everyone, through the testimony of his own words, what sort of man was leading the church of Christ. He held that the Son of God neither is, nor was before, nor ever at all existed as a Son to God before he was born through the virgin. He says there is only a Word, of one nature with God, eternally with him and united to him, just as the word in a man would be. 2 For he himself uses this example. He says there is a Word within God himself, at one time at rest, at another time active in expressing something. This Word comes forth only as an activity of the Father, just as we, when we give a command, act by saying and speaking something. But it is plain to everyone that nobody could call the expressive and active word a Son in this sense. Yet having granted this about God, I do not know how he says that this Word, which has no real existence, took flesh and was active in it.

3 He says that only then did he become Christ and Jesus and King and image of God and Beloved and glorified Son, and indeed firstborn of all creation. Though he did not exist before, he then came to be, even though he had no real existence. And here is the strange part of the account: all this begins less than four hundred years ago, and again all of it will suddenly cease after the time of judgment. The Word will be united with God, so that he is nothing other than God. But the flesh he took up will be left abandoned by the Word. So at that time neither the Son of God will exist, nor the Son of Man whom he took up. 4 He brings it to this end as though he were deaf. He does not hear the angel Gabriel, who plainly and explicitly announced to the Mother of God the one who would be born of her and who would come “from the seed of David according to the flesh.” The angel said, “Behold, you will conceive in the womb and bear a son, and you will call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” Nor does he understand the words of the great prophet Daniel, who confirms these very things when he spoke beforehand in the Holy Spirit: “And behold, with the clouds of heaven one like a son of man was coming, and he reached the Ancient of Days, and was brought before him.

5 And to him was given the rule and the honor and the kingdom, and all peoples, tribes and tongues will serve him. His authority is an everlasting authority which will not pass away, and his kingdom will not be destroyed.” But Isaiah did not persuade him either, who likewise prophesies here about the endless kingdom of the Son of Man: “For a child has been born to us, a son has also been given to us, 6 “...whose rule is upon his shoulder. His name is called Messenger of Great Counsel, Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Ruler, Prince of Peace, Father of the age to come. For I will bring peace and health to him.” 7 “Great is his dominion, and of his peace there will be no end, upon the throne of David and over his kingdom, to set it right and to uphold it with judgment and with righteousness, from now and forever.”

8 In agreement with these words was what Gabriel announced to the virgin, saying that the one born of her would reign “forever” and that there would be no end “of his kingdom.” Yet Marcellus dared to write against all of this. You can learn how from his own words, in which he denied both the divinity and the humanity of the Son of God, in a way more novel than any godless heresy. 9 Among those who hold other doctrines, some said that the Son of God did not exist beforehand or pre-exist. They supposed him to be a man like the rest, who was honored from being a man by adoption as a son. Yet even they, having granted this, acknowledged that he has an immortal and unending honor, glory and eternal kingdom. Others, denying that the man is the Son of God, asserted that God was pre-existent. But those outside the church went in their error only that far. This man, however, who led the church of God for so many years, [does away with] the existence of the Son of God. He served at the church’s altar, and presumably believes that he himself will obtain eternal and immortal life, yet he robs the High Priest of it.

10 But we have, as the apostle says, “a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God.” Marcellus does not dare to say that he pre-existed or existed beforehand. Nor will he say that he will continue to exist, or be with God’s saints according to that very promise of the kingdom of heaven. For at that time, when all the saints will share in the kingdom of God in incorruptible and immortal bodies, he deprives Christ alone, and the flesh he took on, of it. 11 And he does not shudder to declare that the Founder of the resurrection, the cause of eternal life for all, will fall away not only from the kingdom but even from life itself. It is as if someone gave eyes but took away the light that supplies their radiance. Neither Gabriel, so great an angel of God, nor the great prophet Daniel, of whom it was said, “Are you wiser than Daniel?”, nor the great Isaiah, nor the rest of the company of the prophets, persuaded the man not to write or think such things.

12 Not even the Jews themselves did so. Among them the Christ, whom they still await and are accustomed to call the Anointed, is expected to have an ageless and deathless kingdom. Yet this man has become worse even than these, daring to be impious about both the beginning and the end of the Son of God. Not even the divine apostle moved him to stop such impiety, though he said plainly, “The saying is trustworthy: if we died with him, we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him.” He said that we will be heirs of God, though not apart from Christ. For he says, “heirs 13 of God, and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.” And again he says, “But if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him, knowing that Christ, raised from the dead, no longer dies; death no longer rules over him.”

14 And again: “But the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” So eternal life will be provided for us in no other way than “in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Our hope is not simply to live, but to be glorified with him, to inherit with him and to reign with him. For everything will be ours from sharing in him. 15 The same apostle teaches this when he says, “God is faithful, through whom you were called into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord.” And he shows what this fellowship is when he says, “He raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the surpassing riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” 16 The same apostle also taught this about the Savior, saying, “But he, because he remains forever, holds his priesthood permanently. Therefore he is also able to save completely those who come to God through him, since he always lives to intercede for them.”

17 Not only that, but he also said that Melchizedek remains a priest “continually,” because he has been made like “the Son of God.” Shortly I will set out how Marcellus dared to write the opposite of all this. For now, let us first look at what he thought about the Son of God not existing at all, not even having a real subsistence.