Against Marcellus

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.”

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.”

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.”

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.”

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.

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?

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.”

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.”

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.”

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.”

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.

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.

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.”

“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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.’

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.’

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.

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.”

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.

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.”

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,

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,

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.)

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.

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.

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.”

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].”

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.”

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.”

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.’”

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.

Listen, then, to how he writes: “For this reason it seems to me good now to go through matters I have not yet discussed.”

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.

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.”

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.”

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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:

“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.’”

“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.”

“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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.’”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

“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.’”

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.”

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.”

“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.

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.’”

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.

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,

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.

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.”

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.

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.”

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:

‘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.”

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.

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,

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:

‘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?

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.

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.”

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.”

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.”

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.

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?”

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.

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.

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.”

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.”

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.

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.”

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.

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.”

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.”

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.”

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.”

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.

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.”

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.

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?”

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:

“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.”

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.”

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,

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?”

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,”

(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.”

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.”

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.”

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.’”

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.”

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.’”

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.”

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?”

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.”

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.

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.”

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.

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. 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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,

“...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.”

“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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.”

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.

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.”

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.”

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.

He attacks those who say that the Son of God is truly a Son, living and subsisting. He makes his own view plain, writing in these very words (No. 42): “So before he came down and was born through the virgin, he was only Word. For what else was it that came down ‘in the last of the days,’ as he himself wrote, and was born of the virgin, before he took on human flesh? It was nothing other than Word.”

Then, going on, he calls him eternal, defining him in this way as unbegotten. He writes (No. 48): “Do you hear, then, the agreement of the Holy Spirit, who through many different persons bears witness to the eternity of the Word?”

“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.’ By using three testimonies in a row he wants to show the eternity of the Word.” And after other things he adds (No. 81): “For before, as I have often said, he was nothing other than Word.”

He adds that he was not even “the image of the invisible God,” saying (No. 82): “It is therefore clear that before he took up our body, the Word by himself was not the image of the invisible God.” And again, after other things, he goes on (No. 49): “What, then, was this that came down before he became man? Surely, he says, Spirit. For if anyone wanted to say anything other than this, the angel who spoke to the virgin would not allow it: ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you.’ And if he says it was Spirit, hear the Savior saying, ‘God is Spirit.’”

Here the Savior has plainly said of the Father, “God is Spirit,” and so Marcellus is refuted, since he said that the Father himself became man. But he strives still harder, writing as follows (No. 39): “So let him learn that the Word of God has come, not a Word named loosely, as they say, but one who is truly Word.”

And again he adds this to what he has said (No. 62): “For if the examination concerned the Spirit alone, he would reasonably appear to be one and the same as God. But if the addition of the flesh in the Savior is examined, the Godhead seems to be extended only in activity. So reasonably it is truly an undivided monad.”

He builds up this point still more by what he writes in the following passages (No. 31): “To say that he was begotten before the ages seems consistent. For the offspring is what comes forth from the Father who sent it out. But the other point has not been taken up by him in a sound or reverent way.”

“For to say that the one who came forth from him is not Word, and that this is the true manner of the begetting, but is simply Son only, usually gives those who hear it an impression of a human appearance.” In these words he openly denied the Son. He brings in a bare Word, like some commander of what is to be done, as is clear from what he adds (No. 41): “whom all the divine Scriptures proclaim in this way.”

“For David says about him, ‘By the word of the Lord the heavens were made firm.’ And the same again: ‘He sent out his word and healed them.’ Solomon says, ‘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 said, ‘For out of Zion will go forth a law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.’”

“And again Jeremiah says, ‘The wise were put to shame, and were terrified and were caught, because they rejected the word of the Lord.’ And the prophet Hosea said, ‘They hated the one who reproved in the gates, and they abhorred the holy word.’ Micah likewise, also mentioning the Word, said, ‘Out of Zion will go forth a law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.’”

After collecting so many sayings about the commanding Word, Marcellus says that the God Word who was “in the beginning with God” is also of this kind. So he goes on to say (Fr. 46): “The holy apostle and disciple of the Lord, John, teaches clearly and explicitly at the beginning of the gospel, as of something previously unknown among men. He names him the Word of the Almighty. This is how he spoke: ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.’ By using more than one testimony he shows the eternity of the Word.”

Marcellus adds to this and says next (Fr. 47): “By saying ‘In the beginning was the Word,’ John shows that the Word was in the Father in power (for God is the beginning of all things that have come to be, ‘from whom are all things’). By saying ‘and the Word was with God,’ he shows that the Word was with God in active operation (for ‘all things came to be through him, and apart from him not one thing came to be’),

and by saying that the Word was God, he shows that the Godhead is not divided, since the Word is in him and he is in the Word. For he says, ‘The Father is in me, and I am in the Father.’” Marcellus adds still more to this, laying bare his own thought in what he says next (Fr. 28): “So the holy apostle and disciple of the Lord, John, when he spoke of the Word’s eternity, proved a true witness to the Word, saying, ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.’

Here he makes no mention of any begetting of the Word. By using three testimonies one after another, he confirmed that the Word was in the beginning.” And he adds to this, saying (Fr. 61): “We know that the dispensation in the flesh is different with regard to the man, but we have believed that the eternity according to the Spirit is united with the Father.”

Going on after this, he says next (Fr. 64): “If then he himself says, ‘I came out from the Father and have come,’ and again, ‘The word which you hear is not mine, but the Father’s who sent me,’ and ‘All that the Father has is mine,’ it is clear that he also said, with good reason, ‘The Father is in me and I am in the Father.’ The meaning is that the Word who says this is in God, and the Father is in the Word, because the Word is the power of the Father.

For a trustworthy witness has called him ‘the power of God and the wisdom of God.’ So the Savior does not say ‘I and the Father are one’ because of an exact agreement in all words and works, as Asterius said. He says it because it is impossible for the Word of God, or for God, to be divided from his own Word. Asterius thinks the Savior said this because of agreement in everything. If he refuses to look at the second dispensation and so learn the truth, then we must remind him how, in what appears on the surface, one can sometimes see disagreement.

For that is what the written words teach us. What agreement is there at the time of the passion, when he says, ‘Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass,’ and then adds, ‘Yet not as I wish, but as you wish’? First of all, to say ‘Let this cup pass’ is not what someone in agreement would say. And what is added does not seem to belong to agreement either, for he says, ‘Not mine, but let yours be done, Father—your will.’

You hear how the letter shows disagreement in appearance, with one willing and the other not willing. For it is clear that the Father willed it, from the fact that what he willed came about. And it is clear that the Son did not will it, from the fact that he asks to be spared. And again he says, ‘I do not seek my own will, but the will of the Father who sent me.’”

How then, he says, did the Savior say “I and the Father are one” because of their agreement in everything? And after a little he adds (no. 65): How can the Son have agreement with the Father, or the Father with the Son, when the Son says “All that the Father has is mine”? For to say “All that the Father has is mine” would plainly be the act of a Son who takes more than his share from the Father.

For on that view, passing over the words “all that the Father has is common,” he said instead “all that the Father has is mine.” Yet that is not how one who agrees would speak. He would say: all that the Father has is common. For the Acts of the Apostles praises the agreement of those who then came to the faith, and says “all things were common to them.” If one must hold that among men, who are able to agree, all things are common, how much more should the Father and the Son share a common life, if they are divided into two hypostases? But as it is, in saying “All that the Father has is mine,” the Son appears to take more than his share from the Father. And in claiming that he is not even master of his own word, but that the Father is master of this too

(for “the word that you hear,” he says, “is not mine but the Father’s who sent me”), he shows the Father taking away the Son’s own things. So on Asterius’s notion, both statements appear to be inconsistent with each other.

For one who agrees ought not to snatch away what rightly belongs to the other, since that would be grasping. He ought to regard what belongs to each as common. So when we look at the human flesh, we will not find the Savior saying “I and the Father are one” in the way Asterius has written. The Savior did not say “I and the Father are one” because of an exact agreement in all words and deeds, as Asterius wrote.

For if that were so, he would surely have said: “I and the Father agree with each other in everything.” But as it is, he said “I and the Father are one.” So if there was some disagreement in those matters, and the Master must speak the truth, we must understand exactly this: whenever the Savior says “I and the Father are one,” he is not saying it with a view to the man whom he took up, but to the Word who came forth from the Father.

For if there seems to be any disagreement, it must be referred to the weakness of the flesh, which the Word took up although he had not had it before. But if oneness is spoken of, this clearly belongs to the Word.

So it was fitting that he said not only “I and the Father are one,” but also this: “I have been with you so long, Philip, and you say, ‘Show me the Father.’” He plainly meant that the Father is seen not with these eyes but with those that can see things of the mind. For both the Father and his Word are invisible to the eyes of the flesh. So he did not say this to Philip because of an agreement in everything.

After saying so much, he takes up the argument again from the beginning and lays down his teaching this way (no. 92): Before all creation there was a kind of stillness, as is likely, since the Word was in God. For if Asterius believes that God is the maker of all things, clearly he will agree with us that God has always existed and never received a beginning of being, while created things were made by him, and made out of nothing. For I do not think he agrees with anyone who says that some other things are also unbegotten. I think he is firmly persuaded that heaven and earth and everything in heaven and on earth were made by God.

If then he believes this, he must also agree that apart from God there was nothing else. So the Word, being in the Father, had his own glory.

After saying this, he adds, after other remarks (no. 93): Asterius calls the authority given to him “glory,” and not only glory but “glory before the world.” He does not consider that when the world had not yet come to be, there was nothing else besides God alone.

Having said this, Marcellus openly denied the Son through these words. Then, to persuade us exactly what kind of Word of God he had in mind, he makes his meaning clearer by comparing the Word to our own speech. He writes this (Nr. 55): “For just as everything that has come into being has come into being from the Father through the Word, so also the things said by the Father are expressed through the Word. For this reason the most holy Moses calls the Word an angel here: he appeared for no other purpose than to announce to Moses the things he knew would benefit the sons of Israel. And he knew that it would benefit them to believe that there is one God.”

“Therefore he also said to him, ‘I am the one who is,’ so that he would teach that there is no other god besides himself. And this, I think, is easy for sensible people to understand even from a small and lowly example taken from our own lives.”

“For no one can separate a man’s word from him in power or in substance. In a man the word is one and the same thing as the man himself, and it is distinguished from him by nothing else except the active working of the deed.” Then he expands still further, making his thought plain in the words that follow (Nr. 53): “God did not need some other preparation for the construction, such as material or anything else of a human sort, but only this preparation that was in his own mind.”

“Since, then, it was impossible for God to plan the construction of heaven apart from the Word and the wisdom that belongs to the Word, it was fitting that he said, ‘When he prepared the heaven, I was present with him.’” Again he adds a comparison of God’s Word to the human word, to show that it has no substance of its own. He writes here as follows (Nr. 56): “Here the Father says to Moses, ‘I am the one who is,’ and he clearly says it through the Word.”

“For everything the Father says, he is plainly seen to say everywhere through the Word. This is clear from ourselves too, as far as small things can be compared with great and divine things. For we also do everything we wish to say or do, as far as we are able, by means of our own word.”

Then, after saying some things in between, he adds (Nr. 68): “How then did Asterius, who pretends to follow the holy Scriptures simply and with fear, fail to know this passage, which says, ‘The Lord your God, he is God in heaven above and on earth beneath, and there is no other besides him,’ and that ‘he is one’ and that besides him there is no other?”

Going on, he again insists, saying (Nr. 40): “He is not called Word by misuse of the term—even if those who teach otherwise burst with their lies—but he is Word properly and truly. And he adds (Nr. 45): “For what else was the hidden mystery but the mystery concerning the Word? This mystery was so hidden ‘in God’ before that none of the earlier people clearly knew the things concerning the Word, but now we enjoy the wealth ‘of the glory’ and the hidden mystery.”

After this he again uses a human illustration, writing in this way (Nr. 52): “For who, whether of the holy angels or of righteous men, was trustworthy enough to cancel the punishment decreed against him on behalf of God,

if not the Word himself, who was present and formed together with him, to whom the Father said, ‘Let us make man in our image and likeness’? There was no other God who could help to form him. For he says, ‘I am God, the first, and I am after these things, and besides me there is no other God.’ So there was no younger god, nor any other who, being God ‘after these things,’ was able to work together with God.”

But suppose someone uses a small, human example, like our own, to examine God’s work as if in a picture. Take a skilled sculptor who wants to make a statue. First he looks within himself at its outlines and features. Then he works out how wide and how long it should be to look right, and he checks the proportion of the whole against each individual part. He prepares suitable bronze, sketches the coming statue beforehand in his own mind, and imagines he sees it with the mind’s eye. He is also aware that reason is working with him. By reason he calculates, and by reason he is accustomed to do everything, since nothing done without reason is beautiful. As he begins this work on material things, he urges himself on as if speaking to another: “Come, let us make it; come, let us shape a statue.” In the same way God, the Master of all, when he makes the living statue from the earth, urges on no one else but his own Word, saying, “Let us make man.” This was not the same way he made the other things, for the whole creation came to be by the Word.

And after other things he adds to this (Nr. 108): “But now I believe the divine Scriptures, that there is one God. And his Word [God] came forth from the Father so that ‘all things’ might come to be ‘through him.’ But after the time of judgment, the setting right of all things, and the removal of every opposing power, ‘then he himself will be made subject to the one who made all things subject to him,’ ‘to God and Father.’ In this way the Word will be in God, just as he was before the world existed. For when nothing existed before except God alone, and all things were going to come to be through the Word, the Word came forth in active power, this Word who belongs to the Father.”

And again he states the same thought more plainly, saying (Nr. 54): “For before the world existed, the Word was in the Father. But when the almighty God purposed to make everything in heaven and on earth, the making of the world needed an active power. For this reason, since nothing else existed except God (for all things are agreed to have been made by him), the Word then came forth and became the maker of the world. He had earlier prepared it inwardly, in thought.”

And once more, after all this, he adds (Nr. 34): “And for this reason he does not call himself Son of God, but everywhere calls himself Son of Man, so that by such a confession he might bring it about that man, through his fellowship with him, becomes a son of God by adoption. Then, after the end of the work, he would again be united with God as the Word, fulfilling what the apostle said earlier: ‘Then he himself will be made subject to the one who made all things subject to him, so that God may be all in all.’ For at that time he will be what he was before.” Through all these statements Marcellus, with head uncovered, has openly renounced the Son of God.

For if God and the Word within him were one and the same, then no one could ever be his own father, any more than his own son, being one and alone. But God was one and alone, and the same as his own Word. So it is plain that he was not a father when he had no son, and not a son when he had no father existing.

So from what has been set out, we have seen what this man laid out: that the Son of God neither exists nor pre-existed, but that a bare word was inside God himself, at one time resting and at another working with active power. He set these same points before us again and again in different ways in his writing, and piled up a great heap of needless words in the book. But we are content with the refutations he supplies against himself from the words he quoted, and we will not even think the absurdity of this Jewish doctrine worth an answer.

From here let us move on to what the same man said about the flesh, which he says the Word in God took up by activity alone. Let us see how he transfers to the flesh the teaching about God that Scripture gives concerning the only-begotten Son of God. He denies the Son who truly pre-existed, yet speaks of the flesh as God, though a little later this irreverent man declared that this flesh would be left empty of the Word.

“For the Word ‘was in the beginning,’” being nothing other than Word. But the man who was united to the Word, who did not exist before, became man, as John teaches us when he says, “and the Word became flesh.” For this reason, then, Scripture appears to mention the Word alone. Whenever divine Scripture mentions the name of Jesus or of Christ, it appears to be naming the Word of God as he exists with human flesh. And if anyone claims he can point out the name of Christ or Jesus applied to the Word alone even before the new covenant, he will find that it was said prophetically, as is clear from this: “The kings of the earth stood by, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against his Christ.”

And after other things he adds: “So it is reasonable that before the descent he was, as we have often said, Word. But after the descent and the taking up of flesh he received various titles, because ‘the Word became flesh.’” Notice how by this Marcellus does not want the name of Jesus and Christ, and the other titles, to be applied to the Word, but to the flesh which he took up. This observation is necessary, so that when Marcellus in turn throws off the flesh, he may be convicted of blaspheming against the very Christ of God. Then, going on after the passages quoted above, he writes the following about the body of the Savior:

“And let Asterius not think it unbelievable that the body, though younger than he, could attain such antiquity. Let him consider this: even if human flesh is in fact younger, still the Word, who deigned to take it from a pure virgin and united his own to it, not only made the man created in himself ‘firstborn of all creation,’ but also wants him to be the beginning of all things, not only of those on earth but also of those in the heavens.”

After saying this, and after other remarks, he applies to the flesh the apostle’s words, in which the apostle speaks of the Son of God in the highest terms: “who is the image of the invisible God, firstborn of all creation; because in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him; and he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” He is not ashamed to take such words of the apostle as being about the flesh. Going on, Marcellus himself writes this about it: “If, then, the Savior confesses that the flesh is of no benefit, how can it be that flesh which is from the earth and of no benefit should be with the Word in the ages to come, as though profitable to him?”

And again, about the same flesh, he adds: “How, then, could the form of a slave, which the Word took up, being the form of a slave, be with the Word?” Yet the man who said such things about the flesh now calls it “the image of God” and “firstborn of all creation,” and says that it existed before all things, and that “all things in heaven and on earth, thrones, dominions, rulers, authorities, were created in it.”

He writes as follows: “Therefore, if he himself is ‘firstborn of all creation,’ and ‘in him all things were created,’ we should know that the apostle is now speaking of his economy in the flesh.” And he confirms his statement by adding next: “So he was named ‘firstborn of all creation’ because of his birth in the flesh, not, as they suppose, because of the first creation.”

And he adds: “So this most holy Word was not called ‘firstborn of all creation’ before the incarnation (for how could the one who always is be the firstborn of anything?). Rather, it is the first ‘new man,’ in whom God willed ‘to sum up all things,’ that the divine Scriptures call ‘firstborn of all creation.’” And again he adds: “You hear how it happens that not only these things, but also the things that already existed, ‘in heaven and on earth, were created in him,’ in the new creation.”

So much for the passages in which Marcellus says he was named “firstborn of all creation” because of the flesh. Now see how he also applies the words “The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways for his works” to the flesh. He pays no attention to the divine Scripture, which speaks in the person of Wisdom in the Proverbs in this way: “I, Wisdom, made counsel my dwelling, and I called on knowledge and understanding. Through me kings reign, and rulers write down righteousness.”

Wisdom goes on to say right after this: “I walk in the ways of righteousness, and I move about among the paths of justice, so that I may give a possession to those who love me, and fill their treasuries with good things. If I report to you what happens day by day, I will remember to count what comes from eternity.

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,” and what follows. Marcellus did not want to fix his mind on these words. He had only one aim, which was to avoid confessing the Son of God. So he applies this plain statement about the divine nature to the flesh. He turned aside from the straight road and invented a trackless path for himself. His words are these:

“So this passage of the Proverbs, when it says ‘The Lord created me,’ does not mean to set out the beginning of our Savior’s divinity, as these people suppose. It means the second arrangement, the one in the flesh. For this reason it fittingly speaks of the creation of human flesh.”

And he continues: “So the creation belongs to his work as a man. That is why it says, ‘The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways for his works.’ It means: he created me through the virgin Mary, through whom God chose beforehand to unite human flesh to his own Word.”

After some other remarks he adds: “This being so, it follows that we should consider in our minds this passage, spoken in a proverb: ‘The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways for his works.’ For our Master God truly created, making what did not exist. For the flesh which the Word took up was not in existence; he created it when it did not exist.” And he adds again: “This, then, is what ‘The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways for his works’ means.”

He goes on: “‘Before the age he founded me.’ He calls this a foundation, meaning the arrangement in the flesh that had been appointed beforehand. So the apostle also says, ‘For no one can lay any other foundation than the one that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.’ He mentions only one age here, from which he said the things of Christ were founded.”

And again he confirms the same wording, saying: “The prophet rightly said, ‘Before the age he founded me.’ He plainly means the flesh, because of its fellowship with his true Son, the Word.” Then he adds: “Next he says, ‘In the beginning, before he made the earth.’ What earth is this, if not our flesh, which became earth again after the disobedience? For it says, ‘You are earth, and to earth you will return.’ This flesh had to receive healing, since in some way it had come into fellowship with the holy Word.”

But see how Marcellus contradicts himself here. In one place he said that the flesh is “the beginning of his ways” that God created, and again he said that the same flesh is the “foundation.” Then he adds “before he made the earth,” and explains that the earth too is the flesh. He does not see that it makes no sense to say that the flesh was created before the flesh, and then, after the creation of the flesh, to call it flesh again.

On top of this, he goes on to say: “Then it says, ‘Before he made the depths.’ Here the prophet means, in a proverbial way, that the depths are the hearts of the saints, which hold the gift of the Spirit in their own depth.”

Notice in this too what he does. He took “The Lord created me” to be said about the flesh. Then, hemmed in by the Scripture that says “before he made the depths,” he explains the depths as the hearts of the saints. But he does not see that the hearts of the saints, that is, of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, of Moses, Elijah and Melchizedek, and of the other prophets, existed before the Savior’s flesh.

How, then, is it possible to apply the words “before He made the abysses” to the flesh? And after some other remarks Marcellus again goes on to say (Nr. 20): “What, then, is this heading too: ‘before the springs of the waters came forth’? He says it means the holy apostles.” The Scripture of Exodus sets this mystery before us, announcing the types of the apostles long ago; for since the apostles were twelve in number, it mentions twelve springs.

And he goes on to repeat the same thing, writing as follows (Nr. 20): “So it was reasonable that the Master, speaking through the prophet Solomon, said ‘before the springs of the waters came forth’ concerning his birth according to the flesh.”

Then, after going through some other matters in order, he continues (Nr. 22): “Since, then, we have spoken about the things that came first, it follows that we should fill in what is left. What is left is the part about the mountains and hills. For he says, ‘before the mountains were set firm, and before all the hills, he begets me.’ By mountains and hills he means the apostles and the successors of the apostles, so as to indicate, in figurative language, their righteous way of life as set against other people.”

After setting out interpretations of this kind, he turns again to the words of the apostle, and speaks the opposite of what the apostle says. For the apostle taught that the Son of God existed beforehand and is “firstborn of all creation.” With a loud voice he testified that “all things” were created “through him and in him,” and that he is “before all things.” But Marcellus drags this teaching down to the flesh, and a little later denies even this.

He says this (Nr. 43): “For this reason he fittingly adds, ‘who is the image of the invisible God.’ When did he become an image? Or when he took up the creature formed ‘according to image and likeness’? For before that, as I have often said, he was nothing other than Word.” And he persists, making the same point more plainly in these words (Nr. 82): “So it is clear that before he took 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 until then was not seen can be seen.”

And again he adds (Nr. 82): “How then did 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. 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? For it is impossible for what is not visible ever to be made visible through something invisible.”

Here too Marcellus fails to see that if we grant that the flesh is the image of God, it is time to say that the flesh of all people, and the faces of their bodies, are images of God. On his view the Savior would then have had nothing exceptional. Yet Marcellus seems to forget what he wrote afterward about the flesh. He called it “the form of a servant,” drawing on the apostle’s wording, and said that for this very reason, because it is “the form of a servant,” it cannot be united with the Word.

He even said outright (Nr. 104): “How can it be that what is from the earth and is of no benefit in the ages to come is united with the Word?” Yet at the present point he insists that the flesh is the image of the invisible God, and declares emphatically (Nr. 82) that before the taking up of our body his Word was not the image of the invisible God.

And again, after the passages already set out, he goes on to say (Nr. 83): “So it is clear from every side that the holy apostle called the flesh that was added to the Word the image of the invisible God, so that through what is visible the invisible might also appear. The apostle says, ‘He is the image of the invisible God.’ That is, now, when he has taken up the flesh made according to the image of God, he has become the true image of the invisible God.”

“For if we were counted worthy to know the Word of God through this image, we ought to believe the Word himself when he speaks through the image: ‘I and the Father are one.’ For no one can know either the Word or the Father of the Word apart from this image.”

And again he adds (Fr. 84): “So the apostle also says, as we said a little earlier, ‘he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant.’ By ‘the form of a servant’ he means human flesh for us. Our Lord God shaped that flesh by his own wisdom when he said, ‘Let us make man in our image and likeness.’ He rightly calls human flesh an image, for he knew exactly that it would, a little later, be the image of his own Word.”

After this he tries to argue that the words “From the womb before the morning star I begat you” were also said about the flesh. He writes as follows (Fr. 26): “For this reason, then, since the star that marks the day was fittingly called the morning star by the prophet David, it is no longer right to ask who the morning star is. For it was the star that appeared at that time, the one that brought and announced the day to the magi.”

“It is therefore clear that the words ‘Before the morning star I begat you’ were spoken by the almighty Lord about the Word who was born of the virgin together with human flesh. The gospel also shows this plainly: our Lord was born of the virgin first, and afterward the star appeared that pointed out the day.”

Going on after this, he adds again (Fr. 94): “For man received authority not only over things on earth but also over things in heaven, and rightly so. For if, when he also became ‘man’ and ‘mediator between God and men,’ ‘all things were created for him,’ as the apostle said, ‘both those in heaven and those on earth,’ then it follows that we should know exactly that authority was given to him not only over things on earth but also over things in heaven.” And again, after other things, he adds (Fr. 95): “For if the holy gospel speaks of a certain glory given to him by the Father, man evidently received this glory through the Word. For having become, in the words of the holy apostle, ‘mediator between God and men,’ he glorified God-fearing men with the glory the Father had given him.”

And again he adds these things (Fr. 96): “He also deemed man, who had fallen through disobedience, worthy to be joined through the virgin to his own Word. For what other glory among men could be greater than this glory? After saying ‘I glorified you,’ he adds, ‘and I will glorify you again.’ In his surpassing love for mankind, by this second glory after the resurrection of the flesh, he would make the man who was formerly mortal immortal. He would glorify him with such glory that man would not only be freed from his former slavery but would also be counted worthy of a glory beyond man.”

And again he adds (Fr. 97): “So that, as I said, he might prepare man, who was first deceived by the devil, to defeat the devil himself in turn. For this reason he took up man, so that he might in due order prepare him to receive the firstfruits of authority.” And he adds further (Fr. 97, continued): “For this is the beloved, the man united to the Word, about whom the evangelist said, ‘This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.’”

And again he adds (Fr. 98): “The Word of the invisible God was going to be born of a virgin and take up human flesh. Through that flesh he would fight and defeat the devil, who had earlier overpowered man. He would then prepare man to become not only incorruptible and immortal but also enthroned with God in heaven.”

It is necessary to keep all this in mind because of what Marcellus himself is going to bring forward against the flesh that the Word of God took up. For as though he had forgotten everything he had set out, he brings the Savior’s body to an end that is neither good nor godly. On top of all this, as if his earlier points were already established, he tries to show that the words “The Lord reigned; let the earth rejoice” also refer to the flesh.

He puts it this way (Fr. 99): “The one, then, who came down and took on flesh through the virgin was appointed king over the church. This was clearly so that through the Word the man who had earlier fallen from the kingdom of heaven might be able to obtain the kingdom. God, wishing this man, who had earlier fallen from the kingdom through disobedience, to become lord and god, brought about this plan. So the most holy prophet David says prophetically, ‘The Lord reigned; let the earth rejoice.’”

And after other things he adds: “This is why the prophecy, speaking as though our Lord Christ took the beginning of his kingdom at some point in time, says, ‘But I was appointed king by him.’” And again he adds: “For this reason he will also reign. Having come to be in human flesh, and having been established as king through the Word, the man who was deceived at first will abolish ‘all rule and power and authority’ of the devil.”

Marcellus said all this about the Savior’s flesh, and much more besides. He said that the flesh is “the image of the invisible God” and “the firstborn of all creation,” and the king, and Jesus, and the Christ, and the beloved, and everything else he listed. He declared that the Word was called all these things because of the flesh. It is now time to look at the kind of end he gives that flesh.

“For this reason he will reign, having come to be in human flesh. And having been established as king through the Word, the man who was deceived at first will abolish ‘all rule and power and authority’ of the devil. For he must reign,” he says, “until he puts his enemies under his feet.” So the holy apostle says this is the end of the kingdom of our Lord Christ: that all things be subjected under his feet. And a little later Marcellus adds: “Here the apostle reveals to us a very great mystery. He says that there will be an end of Christ’s kingdom, and that the end comes when all things have been subjected under his feet.”

And working out the same argument still further, he writes as follows: “In our earlier statements we said that our Lord Christ has had a beginning of his kingdom, and we used proofs from the divine Scriptures. One is the passage that says, ‘But I was appointed king by him on Zion, his holy mountain.’

“Another says, ‘The Lord has reigned; let the peoples be angry.’ And again, ‘The Lord has reigned; let the earth rejoice.’ In short, there is an abundance of countless passages we could use as testimony to show that the man received the beginning of his kingdom through the Word. If he received the beginning of his kingdom not more than four hundred years ago, it is no surprise that the apostle says that the one who obtained this kingdom so short a time ago will hand the kingdom over. He means that he will hand it over to God, who, as the Scripture says, appointed him king.”

And after other things he writes: “So it appears that, by activity alone, and because of the flesh, he has been separated from the Father until the coming time of judgment appears. Then those who pierced him will, as the prophecy says, have seen the one they pierced, and so the rest will follow in order.”

“For when all things are about to be subjected to Christ at the time of the end, as the apostle said, then ‘he himself will be subjected to the one who subjected all things to him.’ What then do we learn about the human flesh that the Word took on for our sake less than four hundred years ago? Will the Word have it in the ages to come, or only until the time of judgment? For what the prophet said must be confirmed in fact. ‘For they will look,’ he says, ‘on the one whom they pierced.’ And clearly what they pierced was the flesh.”

And a little later he adds: “That the Word did not take on our flesh for his own benefit, but so that the flesh might obtain immortality through its fellowship with the Word, is clear from the Savior’s own declaration. For concerning the flesh which he had when he spoke with his disciples, he says, ‘Does this offend you? What if you see the Son of Man going up to where he was before? The Spirit gives life; the flesh profits nothing.’ If he himself admits that the flesh profits him nothing, how can it be right that this flesh, which 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?”

“For this, it seems to me, is also why the almighty Master says to him, ‘Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies as a footstool for your feet.’ He appears to be separating him by activity alone, on account of the human flesh. And as though he were fixing a set time for the sitting at his right hand, he says to him, ‘until I put your enemies as a footstool for your feet.’”

The holy apostle explained this prophetic saying of David more plainly for us, speaking somewhat like this: “For he must reign until he puts his enemies under his feet.” So his dispensation and kingdom as a man seem to have a limit. For David means nothing other than what the apostle said: “until he puts his enemies under his feet.”

So when he has his enemies as a footstool under his feet, he no longer needs this partial kingdom, since he is king over all things without exception. For he reigns together with “God and Father,” whose Word he was and is.

For the Word himself did not receive the beginning of a kingdom on his own account. It was the man who had been deceived by the devil who became king through the power of the Word, so that, having become king, he might defeat the devil who had deceived him before. For this reason the Acts of the Apostles also teach about this man, whom the Word of God took up and, having taken him up, sits at the right hand of the Father. They put it like this: “whom heaven must receive until the times of restoration.” These words too set a kind of limit and appointed time, within which the union of the Word with the dispensation as a man is fitting.

For what else does “until the times of restoration” mean, but to point us to the age to come, in which all things must receive their perfect restoration? Now Paul said that at the time of the restoration of all things even creation itself will be changed from slavery to freedom. For he says, “that creation itself will be set free from the slavery of corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God.”

How then could the form of a slave, which the Word took up, being the form of a slave, still be able to be with the Word? It is plainly and expressly the case that the dispensation of the Word in the flesh, for our sake, has taken place within a short time, between the ages past and the ages to come. And the inspired Paul has said that it will have an end, just as it had a beginning, speaking somewhat like this: “Then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God and Father.”

After other things, Marcellus adds to these (Fr. 106): “Therefore he took up human flesh not for his own sake but for ours. But if it is clear that he took it up for our sake, and everything that concerns us will reach its end at the time of judgment through his providence and working, then there will no longer be any need even of this partial kingdom.” After saying this, Marcellus became aware that he had fallen into something absurd, and so he adds to what he had said (Fr. 107): “But if someone says that human flesh is worthy of the Word because he made it immortal through the resurrection, let him know that not everything that is immortal is worthy of God.”

“For God is greater even than immortality itself, since by his own will he can make even things that do not exist immortal. And it is clear that not everything immortal is worthy to be united with God, from the fact that rulers, authorities and angels, though immortal, make no difference to the unity of God.”

After saying this, Marcellus saw that he had thrown himself into a pit of absurdity, as it were, and he tries to take it back, in a way confessing that he knew nothing of what he was saying. So he goes on to say (Fr. 108): “But if someone asks about this flesh that has become immortal in the Word, what do we say to him? That we think it unsafe to lay down doctrine about things we have not learned exactly from the divine Scriptures.”

For how could those who overturn the doctrines of others do this?

“But to those who want to learn from us the exact account of this matter, we will say that, trusting the holy apostle, we know that we should look at hidden mysteries as he himself said: ‘For now we see,’ he says, ‘through a mirror in a riddle, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully, just as I also was fully known.’ So do not ask me about things I have not clearly learned from divine Scripture.”

“For this reason, then, I will not be able to speak clearly about that divine flesh which shared in the divine Word. But as it is, I believe the divine Scriptures: there is one God, and his Word came forth from the Father so that ‘all things’ might come to be ‘through him.’ Then, after the time of judgment, and the setting right of all things, and the destruction of every opposing power, ‘then he himself will be subjected to the one who subjected all things to him,’ ‘to God and Father,’ so that the Word may be in God in the same way as he was before.”

This is the kind of end this remarkable writer brings upon the flesh of our Savior, having forgotten what he had said about it earlier.

Then the man who has declared so plainly that the Savior’s body will be left empty of the Word after the time of judgment puts on an air of reverence. He says he does not know how to answer if someone asks him about the flesh, and that he would say to the questioner, “Do not ask me about what I have not learned.”

But any ordinary person could say to him: “Why then, man, are you making a fool of yourself? Why do you push yourself over a cliff, laying down in writing definitions about matters you have not learned? Why do you not guard what you received from the fathers and teachers of the Church? Instead you openly innovate, bringing into life a new and strange perversion. You give the kingdom of Christ a temporary and recent beginning and assign it an end. You deny the truly only-begotten Son of God and suppose in his place a bare Word with no being and no substance of its own, which you say is not other than God but one and the same with him. And anyone who denied the Son of God would say just this, and naturally so!

“For a Word that has no substance of its own is not a son, just as the word in a man could never be called the son of that man, since it exists in the speaker only as an activity. Yet you say, turning everything upside down, that this Word became Son of God from the Father less than four hundred years ago, through taking up the flesh. You say he was named Jesus and Christ, was called ‘image of the invisible God’ and ‘firstborn of all creation,’ and then became king as well. You say he began all of this from the time just mentioned, and that at the time of the consummation all of it will be brought to a sudden end.

“Where, then, did you learn these things? Who was your teacher in them? Which bishop? What councils? What writing of churchmen? And how would the Savior’s immortal body fit into your scheme? For when you admit that it is immortal and call it divine, you must surely suppose it also to be incorruptible and indissoluble. A body of such a nature plainly remains standing, and indissoluble. But you took the Word away from it and joined him to God.

“So then the body alone, without the Word, will stand on in immortal and incorruptible speechlessness and motionlessness? And how will the Word himself go back into God and be joined to him again after the separation from the flesh? Was he not in God when he was with the flesh? But he was in him always, being coeternal and one and the same with God. How then was he in the body? If he lived in it as a soul does, then he will exist with a substance of his own, separate from the Father, living and subsisting in the flesh he took up.

“What, then, prevented him from being confessed as a living Son of God even before the world was established? But perhaps he will say that the Word was in the body by activity alone and not by a substantial existence. For he says that, being with the flesh only by active working (moving it and doing everything that is recorded in the Gospels), he was joined to God in substance, as being God’s Word, inseparable from him and undivided.

“If he says this, let him answer when we ask: did the Word’s activity reach only this flesh, and not other men, God’s saints, as well? And does not the same Word also work in all the rest of the things he made? Yet we have learned that ‘by the word of the Lord the heavens were made firm’ and that ‘all things came to be through him, and apart from him not one thing came to be.’ So he works in all things.”

We know from the divine Scriptures that “the word of the Lord came to Hosea, the son of Beeri,” and “the word of the Lord came to Isaiah, the son of Amos,” and “the word of the Lord which came to Jeremiah.” In the case of each prophet it was the same Word of God who was at work. Then did all those men share the same rank as the only-begotten Son of God, and did the Savior have nothing more than they had, if he was moved only by an activity of the Word who was joined to God?

But Marcellus does not even allow Christ to receive what the prophets receive. They will obtain eternal life, immortal and unending, and they will live through all the ages in the announced kingdom of heaven, enjoying good things “which eye has not seen, and ear has not heard, and which have [not] entered the human heart.” But the Christ of God, the common Savior of all, “the firstborn from the dead,” the hope of the resurrection of the saints, will on Marcellus’s account be left alone at that time. His kingdom will come to an end, and the life-giving flesh will be left deserted and without the Word. So according to Marcellus’s teaching he neither existed beforehand as Son of God nor lasts forever.

It was only to be expected, then, that these views stirred the truly God-loving and thrice-blessed emperor against the man, even though Marcellus had flattered him endlessly and had gone through many praises of the emperor in his writing. These same views also forced the holy council to publicly condemn the man by a written document against him, even though it was unwilling. That council had gathered in the imperial city from various provinces: Pontus and Cappadocia, Asia and Phrygia and Bithynia, Thrace and the regions beyond. These same views have also compelled us to undertake the present examination. In doing so we stand with what the holy council decided, and we also do what is sufficient for our fellow ministers who ordered us to do this.

I consider this writing especially necessary because of those who think the man was wronged. For I must heal the suspicion of our brothers by making plain his unbelief toward the Son of God. For a long time it had lain hidden in him, but now it has been exposed by his own book. He brought it of his own accord, when no one had called for it, and put it into the emperor’s hands, asking him to examine what was written in it. He perhaps hoped that, because of the praises he had given the emperor, he would himself win special favor with the emperor, while the bishops he had slandered would be handed over to punishment.

But the outcome did not match his hopes. For the judge of these matters was God, and Christ Jesus himself, whom the author sets aside. He saw the man’s hidden things, and brought it about that, with no one forcing him, he became his own accuser and his own refutation. So the man who prided himself on his book went to the emperor, and the emperor handed over the examination of what was written to the council. The holy council of God rejected the book, and rightly so, because it confesses neither a godly beginning nor a godly end for the Son of God.