On Ecclesiastical Theology (Book 1)

On Ecclesiastical Theology

Eusebius of Caesarea

c. AD 337–339

A second work by Eusebius of Caesarea against Marcellus of Ancyra, in three books, written after the first and meant to set out ‘the church’s theology’ against what Eusebius took to be Marcellus’s errors about the Father, the Son and the Spirit. Eusebius defends the Son as a distinct, eternal person begotten of the Father, and again quotes Marcellus at length. The sections are those of Klostermann’s edition.

Book 1

Table of contents

The first book contains the following. 1. Marcellus slandered Sabellius for nothing, since he holds the same opinions as Sabellius. 2. The grace of Christ gave to the church of God, as a special gift, the knowledge of the Father and the Son. 3. Those who hold other doctrines have erred in many different ways in their teaching about the Son. 4. Those who do not confess that the Son of God has a real existence call themselves Christians for nothing. 5. How Marcellus denied the Son of God by imitating the heresy of Sabellius. 6. What the church of God believes. 7. How the other teachers have fallen in different ways from the true theology of the Son. 8. A statement of the sound and churchly right belief. 9. The Son was not brought into being in the same way as the many created things. 10. Because he alone was begotten of the Father, he alone is rightly called both God and only-begotten Son. 11. How the church knows one God, though it accepts that the Son is God from God. 12. His begetting from the Father cannot be spoken of. 13. The Son’s oversight is necessary and saving for all. 14. The church was right to reject Marcellus, who thought the same things as Sabellius. 15. With what words Marcellus attacked Sabellius, pretending not to think the same as he did. 16. How he is caught, by his own words, holding the same views as Sabellius. 17. How he denied, with head uncovered, the real existence of the Son. 18. How he said that before the incarnation the Son was nothing other than a word only, like the word in human beings. 19. How the divine Scriptures, even before the incarnation, called the Son of God not only Word but countless other names as well. 20. Quotations and partial explanations of the proofs from divine Scripture, in thirty chapters in all.

Preface

Pref. I thought that the quotations from Marcellus’s own words, which I gathered in the earlier books, were enough to refute him. They contain such a plain and unshakable denial of the Son of God that, even without any reply, those raised in the church of God should avoid what he says in them. 2 But I considered that some might be swept away from the church’s theology by the great number of quotations he used to support what he thought would help his case. So I decided to bring out the refutation of these too, here and now. Then everyone may learn that not one passage of the God-inspired Scripture gave him testimony in agreement with his denial of the Son of God. All of them speak plainly against him, correcting without distortion his wrong interpretations of the divine Scriptures. Alongside the exposure of these errors I will set out the theology of our Savior. I have nothing newer to say, and no clever discovery of my own. I put forward the uncorrupted teaching of the church of God, which she received from the beginning from those who saw and heard the Word himself, and which she keeps.

Chapter 1

1 Before examining these matters, I found that in the middle of his work he attacks Sabellius. I was astonished at the man’s foolishness. He did not hold back from speaking evil of the one he ought to have praised above all, since Sabellius shares his opinion and his mind. So I did not think I should pass over this in silence, but should give a refutation of this point also in the present book. To slander God’s servants, even if it brought blame on himself, brought good repute to those freed from fellowship with him, 2 and still there was some plausibility in appearing to disparage what he did not hold dear. But to attack himself unawares by speaking ill of one who thinks as he does seems to me to show shamelessness and also dullness. That this is so, he himself provides the proof. He brings in God as “son-father,” as Sabellius did, if not in plain words then in truth, by destroying the real existence of the Son and defining God as one, and by calling this one both his own Father and again his own Son. For he granted that there is a Word in God,

3 and he defined this Word as one and the same with God, and said that God is called the Father of this Word. He said that the Word is God’s Son, though not truly a Son with a substantial existence, but properly and truly a Word. At any rate he stresses that it is not Word in a loose sense, but properly and truly Word, and nothing other than Word. 4 But if the Word was nothing other than a word, then clearly he was not properly or truly a Son either, and was called so only in sound and in name, by misuse of the term. And by saying that the Word, who became flesh and was born of the virgin, is one and the same as God, he made him out to be God the Father himself. This is exactly what Sabellius declared long ago, and the church of God rejected it and counted him among the godless heretics.

Chapter 2

The confession of one God, set against the polytheistic error of the Greeks, was first handed down by the children of the Jews. But to know this same God also as Father of an only-begotten Son is a special privilege which saving grace has given to the church. The church knows Jesus Christ alone as Son, and no one else. It does not know him as Son by the birth of the flesh which he took up, for it has been taught to call that the form of a servant and the son of man. It knows him as Son by his begetting from God the Father himself before all ages, a begetting unknown to all. By it the fullness of the Father’s divinity established him as Son, himself God. He did not draw in a Godhead that was his own possession and cut off from the Father, nor one that was unoriginate and unbegotten, nor one brought in from somewhere else and foreign to the Father. Rather he is filled from the Father’s own sharing of it, poured out upon him as from a spring. For the great apostle taught that “all the fullness” of the Father’s “divinity” dwells in him alone. This is why one God is proclaimed to the church of God, “and there is no other besides him.” And there is one only-begotten Son of God, the image of the Father’s divinity, and for that reason God.

Chapter 3

Many people could not grasp this teaching about God, and they devised various byways of error. Some granted that the Son is God but denied the man whom he took up. Others supposed him to be a mere man and failed to recognize the God in him. Others, fearing that they would seem to introduce a second God, declared that Father and Son are one and the same. The church of God turned away from these and prides itself on the gospel proclamation of the truth. It boasts of having one God over all. It also acknowledges one only-begotten Son, God from God, Jesus Christ. It confesses that this same Savior became also a son of man. He was the Son of God before he became man, and he became this, what he was not, because of the unspeakable excess of the Father’s love for humanity.

Chapter 4

This is what the word of truth proclaims on behalf of the church. But why do those who deny the Son of God, and say that there is one God and nothing else, trouble the church for nothing, when they ought to be keeping company with the synagogues of the Jews? And why do they run themselves through with blasphemous words, slandering the one God with two titles, if they suppose the Father and the Son to be the same? For whose Father is he, if no Son exists? Whose Son will he be, if the one who begot him does not exist beforehand? And if God is one, then surely this same one will be the one who was made flesh, suffered, and lived out a mortal life among men.

Chapter 5

1 Sabellius said these things, and the church of God drove him far away, since he dared to say godless and impious things. Marcellus tries to bring them back again, using a cover that is not persuasive. He rightly defines God as one, but then he says that this God has the Word united and joined to himself within him. After that he calls one part of the one God Father and another part Son, as though there were in him some double and composite being. 2 And in choosing between evils, how much better than he is the man who does not divide the unoriginate, unbegotten, divine power, but confesses, in plain words, that it is the same! And how much better than both is the Jew. He does not divide the one God into Father and Son, as Marcellus does, nor does he bring in the same person as son-father, as Sabellius does. He worships God, and he knows and expects God’s Christ, who was proclaimed through the prophets as one who would come. Since they did not receive him when he came, they have paid the penalty for their unbelief in him, and they will pay it still.

Chapter 6

1 Those who are able to pray their way to faith in the One who has come will recognize three things. First, the one “from the seed of David” and of the holy virgin. Second, the Son of God who dwelt in him, who existed beforehand and has a real, substantial existence of his own. Third, the God who is this Son’s Father, by whom the Son himself continually confesses that he was sent. So, as the apostle says, “for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things.” That is the pre-existent only-begotten Son of God. And the third is the son of man according to the flesh, whom the Son of God took up for our sake. 2 But the body he took up was not the same as the Son of God who took it up. Nor could the Son of God himself be considered one and the same as the one who begot him. There are three things, then, set before us. Those who grant two of them but remove the third would have to be rejected by the church.

Chapter 7

1 Some godless people among the heterodox rejected the Saviour’s flesh. They said he was seen on earth only in a seeming appearance, and so they were the first to miss the mark of the truth. Others accepted the economy of the incarnation but denied the pre-existent Son of God, and, as I said, they devised for themselves all sorts of wrong turns. Some said he was a mere man, in no way above the common nature of all, except for a superiority in virtue. Others taught that the God of the universe himself dwelt in the body, and said that he was called his own Son because of the economy he underwent as a man. These people grant two things, God and man, and deprive themselves of the third. They deny the Saviour himself, the only-begotten Son of God. 2 Sabellius long ago, and Marcellus now, were carried away by the thinking of these people. Like the unbelieving Jews, they insisted that they knew well enough the God over all, and they also agreed on the second, the flesh from the holy virgin. But the third, the very heart of salvation for all of us, the Son of God, who is light and truth, they pushed aside. In denying the Son, they have at the same time fallen away from the light of truth.

3 So you will hear them confessing one God and honouring the Saviour’s flesh. But as for the Son of God who dwelt in the flesh, they accept him with their voice and lips, while in practice they reject him. For we ought to look for a Son of God who truly lives and has his own existence. He is neither the same as the body he took up, nor the same as God the Father. Nobody could call the God beyond the universe a “Son” and still be godly. For whose son would he be, when he is clothed in a deity without beginning and unbegotten? And whoever says that the only-begotten Son of God is himself the Father will not escape the penalty that falls on blasphemers.

Chapter 8

1 For this reason the church of God lays out the straight, royal road, and has rejected the other detours. To her own nurslings she hands down the knowledge that comes from divine grace. In the very mystery of the new birth she teaches them to confess faith in one God, Father Almighty. She gives them the means to know this theology as complete, exact and whole. It hands down one God, and so marks itself off from the Greek error of many gods. It knows him as Father, and so separates itself from Jewish teaching. It confesses him as Almighty, and so turns away from the impiety of the godless heterodox. 2 None of the heterodox, at any rate, would say that the Father of Christ is himself the God Almighty. In the same way, no Jew would confess that God is Father, since he does not know the only-begotten Son. And no Greek would say that he knows only one God. So the church cleanses away the error of all these and proclaims the one God. She teaches that he is both Father and Almighty. He is Father of one alone, Christ, and God, Creator and Lord of all the rest. In the same way she hands down Jesus Christ as the only-begotten Son of God, begotten from the Father before all ages. He is not the same as the Father, but exists and lives in himself, and is truly a Son who is with the Father. He is God from God, light from light, life from life. He was begotten from the Father for the salvation of all, in ways that cannot be spoken or told, and are altogether unknown and beyond our grasp. His existence is not like that of other begotten things, and he does not live a life like those who came into being through him. He alone was brought forth from the Father himself, and he is life itself.

3 It was fitting for the God over all to bring forth this only-begotten offspring before every created thing and before all ages. He was to be like a foundation and an unbreakable base for everything that would come into being through him. So before everything that was to exist, God begot the Son. He is like a ray of light, a spring of life, and a treasure-house of good things, “in whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, hidden,” as the divine apostle says. 4 The Father, who alone is good, gave existence to a Son with all these good things. The Son is life itself, who gives life to all things. He is light itself, “the true light,” who enlightens every intelligent and rational being. He is the Word himself and Wisdom itself, who brings all things into being and governs them wisely and rationally. For this reason he alone, and no one else, is called the only-begotten Son of God, and is so.

Chapter 9

1 So it is reasonable to find fault with those who have dared to call him a creature, one who came into being out of nothing like the other creatures. For how could he still be a son? How could he be the only-begotten of God if he is credited with the same nature as the other creatures? On that view he would be their brother rather than the Son of God. He would be one among the many created things, since he would share with them, just as they do, in a creation out of nothing. 2 But the divine oracles do not teach this about him. When Scripture teaches about the existence of created things, it testifies without exception that all things came into being through him. “All things came into being through him, and apart from him not one thing came into being.” And “in him were created all things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible.” And “all things have been created through him and for him; and he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” So the apostolic teachings say.

3 But when Scripture brings in the doctrine of his divinity, it sets him apart from all the rest. It knows him as Lord, Master, Maker, God and Savior of all. It declares him alone, and no one else, to be the only-begotten Son of God. It calls him alone Wisdom, Word, Life and Light. It calls him the image “of the invisible God” and “the radiance of eternal light.” And it teaches us to hold countless other things about him of the same kind. All of these point to the special relation of the Father’s divinity to him alone, as to an only-begotten Son. 4 That is why the Father’s voice proclaimed him alone as the beloved Son at the streams of the Jordan, testifying with a great cry: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” And the Father repeated the testimony at the transfiguration on the mountain, sealing the same word.

5 So the God of all himself gave him this testimony. The evangelist plainly teaches that he is the only-begotten Son when he says, “No one has ever seen God; the only-begotten Son (or “only-begotten God”), who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known.” And the Savior himself, in his teachings about himself, sealed the same things when he said, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.” 6 After these words, whoever defines the Son as something that came into being out of nothing, a creature brought forth from what did not exist, does not notice that he is granting him only the name. He denies that he is truly a Son. For one who has come into being out of nothing could not truly be a son of God, just as no other created thing could.

Chapter 10

1 But the one who is truly the Son of God has been brought forth from God himself, as from a Father. So it is reasonable that he should be called the Father’s only-begotten and beloved. In this way he would also be God. For what could God’s offspring be other than what is like the one who begot it? A king founds a city but does not beget a city, and he is said to beget a son but not to found one. A craftsman is the maker, but not the father, of what he makes. And he could not be called the maker of a son who was born from him. In the same way the God of all is reasonably called the Father of the Son, and the Creator and Maker of the world. 2 If someone finds it said just once somewhere in Scripture, “The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways for his works,” he must look at the meaning of the saying, which I will set out a little later. He must not, as Marcellus does, shake the most authoritative doctrine of the Church because of a single expression. For Marcellus too heard it said only once that the Son is “Word,” and so he fell upon the human aspect and rejected the Son’s real existence.

3 The Son is attested as Son both by himself and by the Father. How, then, is it holy to compare him with the rest of the things that have come into being? And how will he be “only-begotten” if he is counted together with the multitude of created things? Indeed, the very title “Son” shows his natural relation to the Father. In the same way, the name “only-begotten” touches on his kind, on the begetting itself, and on his being alone, so that nothing else shares in his sonship. But these people seem to have suffered the same thing as Marcellus. 4 Marcellus, out of fear of speaking of two Gods, put forward a denial of the Son and rejected his separate existence. These others grant two separate existences, one unbegotten and the other created out of nothing, and yet they claim to hold one God. But for them the Son will no longer be the only-begotten, nor Lord, nor God. He shares nothing in the Father’s deity, and is put on a level with the other created things, in that he came into existence out of nothing. But the Church does not teach this.

5 The Church proclaims the Son of God as God and Lord, and teaches that he is truly Son and God. He is not like the many who are called sons and gods by courtesy, of whom it is said, “I said, you are gods, and all of you are sons of the Most High.” Rather, he alone, begotten from the Father himself, “existed in the form of God,” and was “the image of the invisible God and firstborn of all creation.” Therefore the Church has learned to honor, revere and worship him alone, as her Lord, Savior and God.

Chapter 11

1 But if it frightens them that they might seem to be proclaiming two Gods, let them know this. Even though we confess the Son as God, there is only one God, the one who alone is without beginning and unbegotten, who possesses deity as his own, and who has been the cause to the Son himself of his being and of his being what he is. The Son himself confesses that he lives because of him, saying plainly, “As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father,” and, “For just as the Father has life in himself, so he gave the Son also to have life in himself.” 2 This is why the Son teaches that the Father is God both of us and of himself, where he says, “I am going up to my Father and your Father, and my God and your God.” The great apostle likewise teaches that God is the head of the Son, and the Son the head of the Church. In one place he says, “The head of Christ is God,” and in another he says of the Son, “And he gave him as head over all things to the Church, which is his body.”

3 So the Son is the leader and head of the Church, and the Father is his head. Thus there is one God, the Father of the only-begotten Son, and there is one head even of Christ himself. Since there is one source and one head, how could there be two Gods, and not rather that one alone? He ascribes to himself no one higher and no other cause of himself. He possesses deity as his own, without beginning and unbegotten, with the authority of a sole ruler. He has shared his own deity and life with the Son. Through the Son he established all things. He sends him, gives him orders and commands, and teaches him. He hands everything over to him, glorifies him, exalts him highly, and has shown him to be king of all. He hands all judgment over to him. He wishes us also to obey him. He commands him to hold the throne at the right hand of his majesty, speaking to him and saying,

4 “Sit at my right hand.” For all these reasons he is God even of the Son himself. In obedience to him, his only-begotten child “emptied himself, humbled himself, took the form of a slave, and became obedient to the point of death.” The Son prays to him, obeys his command, and gives him thanks. He teaches us to regard him as “the only true God,” and confesses that he is greater than himself. And besides all this, he wants all of us to know that he is also his own God. 5 The Son honors his own Father in this way, and the Father honors him in return. He has shown him to be Lord, Savior and God over all, and a sharer of his throne in his kingdom. The church of God has been taught these things. She knows him as her own God, Lord and Savior, and as the only-begotten Son of the God who is over all. She does not think it right to proclaim any other created being as God. She knows as God only the one whom the Father alone begot out of himself,

6 just as the Son himself declared through Solomon when he said, “Before the mountains were settled, before all the hills, he begets me.” Here, I think, the mountains and hills are a veiled way of speaking about the divine powers that are above the world.

Chapter 12

1 But suppose someone gets curious and asks how God could beget, or how the one who is beyond all things could be a Father. The one who said, “Do not seek what is deeper than you, and do not investigate what is higher than you. Think about what has been commanded you, for you have no need of hidden things,” will silence the boldness of that question. Paul also said, “O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how untraceable his ways!” Let that persuade anyone daring to go further not to attempt what cannot be reached. Or let him first tell us, about the things he says came to be out of nothing, how and in what manner they came into existence, when before that they were in no way at all. 2 For God did not take material already lying to hand and build the universe with his hands, as the craftsmen among us do. What is by nature impossible, at least for human beings (I mean bringing into being out of what is not something that did not exist at all), was possible for him. He became the Maker of all things, not in a human way, but by words that we cannot speak or describe. In the same way, and much more so, the begetting of his only-begotten Son must be unsearchable and untraceable. It is so not for us alone, as someone might say, but for all the powers that are higher than we are.

3 Things far lower in nature, which stand below and very far from the ineffable divine being, how could they reach an understanding that is beyond them and the highest of all? And how could things that once did not exist, and were brought by him out of nothing into being, have knowledge of their first coming to be, when he who brought them forward was the cause of their existence? Are we, who were born only yesterday, clothed in “skin and flesh,” fitted together with “bones and sinews,” and who do not even know our own affairs, to make a harmless inquiry into things that cannot be spoken, meddling in how the Father begot the Son? That countless things right at our feet escape our knowledge will be clear from what follows. 4 Who could say how the soul is shut up in the body, how it goes out, how it was admitted in the first place, what its appearance is, what its shape, what its form, what its essence? And I am not yet speaking of prying into the matter of demons, or the essence of angels, or of rulers and thrones and lordships, or of authorities and world-rulers.

5 If we are at a loss over all these things, why must we search out knowledge of the divine being who has no beginning and was never begotten? Why ask about what cannot be reached, how God came to be the Father of an only-begotten Son? As if the Father’s own voice were not enough for us as a witness to the beloved Son, whom he proclaimed when he said, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; listen to him.” 6 If he commands us to listen to him, then let us obey this royal law and listen to the beloved Son. What he wants us to know about himself he will make clear when he says, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.” We must believe him, then, so that we may obtain eternal life. For he says, “The one who believes in him has eternal life.”

7 It is not the one who knows how he was begotten of the Father who has eternal life. No one could have a share in it on that basis, if it has been said that “no one knew the Father except the Son, and no one knew the Son except” the Father alone, who begot him. So the faith is enough for our salvation, the faith that lets us know God as Father almighty, and lets us write down his only-begotten Son as Savior. Among other things, he handed down this teaching: “What has been born of the flesh is flesh, and what has been born of the Spirit is spirit.” And “God is spirit.” 8 It follows that we should understand that what has been born of God would be God. And just as the God who is beyond all things is separated and set apart in his nature from earthly flesh, so we must understand that the manner in which the Father begot the Son is just as far removed from the birth of bodies. He did not bring him forth by sending out anything from himself, nor by being changed, nor by being moved by any passion, nor by undergoing anything at all that we know from experience. In none of these ways did he give him existence.

9 For God was not a body, so that one could think of an outflow, a diminishing, a stretching out, a change, a turning, a flowing, a part, or a passion in him. Free of all these things, he gave existence to the Son by a begetting that cannot be spoken or reasoned out by us, and is even beyond searching out and tracing by any created nature. The sun also begets its radiance, and the Son too is called “the radiance of eternal light” and “the radiance of the glory.” But this is not to be taken according to the visible picture of light. For beyond every example, the Father gave him existence by inexpressible and incomprehensible means, and gave him as one and only-begotten. 10 Let every mouth be shut of those ungodly and godless men who are sick with the error of many gods. They have dragged the special and unique begetting of the only-begotten Son down into a crowd, and have spoken of a father “of men and gods.” They mix men together with gods, and in the same breath bring in one and the same father for them, of the same nature. These men, by the working of demons, uttered this ungodly and godless word. They supposed gods who share the nature and the passions of the mortal, suffering and sinful race of men, and they supposed a common father of them all, surely made like his children. But the herald of the church proclaims to everyone one only-begotten Son of the one God. The Father gave him existence for the salvation and care of all created things.

Chapter 13

1 The nature of created things has many differences. It includes bodies and bodiless beings, living and lifeless things, rational and irrational, mortal and immortal. It could not come near the God who is over all and above all, or share in the brilliant rays of his divinity, because of the great distance between it and what is greater. In the weakness of its nature it would have slipped far away, even to the farthest distance, if it had not found a helper in a divine Savior. So it was fitting that the Father’s love for mankind set his only-begotten Son over all things. He passes through all things, oversees them all, and waters them with the supplies that come from him. 2 The Father who begot him has shown that he alone is shepherd and savior, caretaker and guardian, physician and helmsman of all things together, in heaven and on earth. To him alone the Father handed the tiller for the holding together and governing of the whole. This the Son himself teaches when he says, “All things have been handed over to me by my Father,” and again, “For the Father loves the Son, and has given all things into his hand.”

3 Like a wise helmsman, he has received his allotted charge from the Father. He has taken his place over the whole world, and looks up to his Father, and steers the whole, guiding and carrying it. He overlooks not even the smallest thing that needs his provision, and does not look down on the least of them. For this reason he is present to all, giving each what suits it. Like a physician, he supplies for the care of the whole what is fitting for its salvation. 4 So it is only natural that he did not look down on life as a human being either. Long before, he gave his help to men who loved God from the beginning of the age. Here he appeared in human form to the forefathers of the Hebrews. There he laid down fitting laws for their descendants. And later he issued oracles through the prophets to all who came after, announcing that his appearing as God would one day shine out on all people.

5 As that time went by, he fulfilled in deed the outcomes of the old oracles. Then at last he came and mingled with mortal life, living among men. The only-begotten Son of God was himself present as in a divine image, in the instrument of his body, and he dwelt with the human race through teachings and healings, 6 and through the unspeakable instructions of divine wisdom. He even went with them as far as the gates of death, by the surpassing love for mankind of the Father’s will, so that he might count those here below worthy of his grace and draw them up into the life that is with him. So “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself.” He underwent the economy of the flesh, though he went before it and existed before it, honored with the divinity of the Father’s glory. He did not count “being equal to God” as “something to be seized.” Instead he emptied himself, “took the form of a servant and humbled himself, becoming obedient” to the Father “to the point of death.” The purpose was this: “just as” death, through one man who sinned, gained mastery over the whole human race, so eternal life, through “his grace,” might reign over those who [believe] in him and who through him are made known to God, his Father.

Chapter 14

1 The church, then, proclaims these things, and so she rightly rejected Sabellius as one who had stamped a counterfeit coin, the denial of the Son of God, even though he, like Marcellus, said he knew one God and that besides him there is none. The first heralds of our Savior himself also gave the name Ebionites to certain people. In the Hebrew tongue it means “poor,” a name for their poverty of mind. They said they knew one God and did not deny the Savior’s body, but they did not know the divinity of the Son. 2 The man of Samosata also, although he taught that Jesus Christ belongs to God and, like Marcellus, confessed one God over all, was declared a stranger to the church of God by the fathers of the church. The reason was that he did not confess Christ to be Son of God and God before his birth in the flesh. This man, then, was driven far from Christ’s church as one who was impious toward Christ.

3 Sabellius was impious toward the Father himself, whom he dared to call Son, and so he suffered the same penalty as the godless heretics. Marcellus suspected that he would suffer the same, so he devised a newer contrivance for his error. He defined God and the Word within him as one, yet he granted him two titles, Father and Son. But he was not hidden, and he did not escape. Late though it was, he was caught in his own nets. 4 Even before he was caught, however, he was struck by his conscience and set out to blaspheme Sabellius, to throw off the suspicion.

Chapter 15

1 Listen to how he slandered the man, mentioning him by name, as he writes about him in these very words: “Sabellius too slipped from the right faith, and knew neither God accurately nor his holy Word. For whoever has not known the Word has failed to know the Father also. ‘No one knows the Father,’ it says, ‘except the Son,’ that is, the Word, for the Word through himself provides the knowledge of the Father. So too he said to those of the Jews at that time who thought they knew God but rejected his Word, through whom alone God is known: ‘No one knows the Father except the Son and the one to whom the Son reveals him.’ For since it was impossible to know God in any other way, he teaches that people know him through his own Word. So that man also went wrong, because he did not accurately know the Father and his Word.”

2 Marcellus wrote this, clearing himself of the suspicion of Sabellianizing, but only in voice and word. In his thinking, and in his agreement with the man, he is caught pierced by the same arrows as Sabellius. I [wish], and would have prayed, that he had not fallen into the same ones. As it is, he appears to err worse than Sabellius. For Sabellius, when he stumbled, perhaps did so in ignorance. But the man who admits that Sabellius went wrong, and then pushes himself over the plain cliff of the same impiety, could not deserve any pardon. But let us look carefully at what has been said.

Chapter 16

1 First, Marcellus said that neither Sabellius nor the Jews knew God, because they did not know the Word. We need to look at what kind of “Word” he has in mind. If he means the only-begotten Son of God, who has real existence and is alive, then he himself did not know him either. Our Savior spoke of the Son in various ways. He often called himself the only-begotten Son, and never once called himself “Word.” Throughout all the Gospels he taught that he is the Son of God. For this he even blessed Peter, who said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” and he testified that Peter’s knowledge came by the Father’s revelation, saying, “Blessed are you, Simon bar Jonah, because flesh and blood did not reveal it to you, but my Father who is in heaven.” Yet this remarkable man, as though his ears were stopped up, writes these words exactly: “And for this reason he does not call himself Son of God. Rather he everywhere calls himself Son of man, so that by this confession he might bring it about that man, through fellowship with him, becomes by adoption a son of God.”

2 You see how he does not dare to confess him as Son of God, so as not to fall away from the doctrine of Sabellius. He calls him Son of man, because of the flesh he took on. And throughout his whole book he keeps naming him “Word,” stressing continually that he was nothing other than a word. 3 Even in the passages where he finds fault with Sabellius, he sets out the Savior’s own words, in which he said, “No one knew the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son reveals him.” 4 But, as though correcting those words, he again names “Word” in place of “Son,” saying: “For he says, ‘No one knows the Father except the Son,’ that is, the Word.” And he adds: “For the Word, through himself, provides the knowledge of the Father.” And he adds further: “It was impossible to know God in any other way than through his own Word.” Again he puts “Word” in place of “Son” and calls it God’s “own Word.” In these very few phrases he mentions “Word” many times and “Son” not even once. He even alters the Savior’s own saying.

5 In place of “the Son” he inserts: “that is, the Word,” as if the term “Son” did not fit better with the title “Father.” So the Savior naturally and fittingly joined the name of the Son to that of the Father, whereas this man, who refuses to say “Son,” keeps repeating “Word” over and over. He accuses Sabellius of denying the Son, yet does the very same thing himself, imagining that by slandering Sabellius he can turn aside the suspicion of false teaching. Now if he blames Sabellius for denying the Son of God, he ought first to have blamed himself. But if he blames him because Sabellius did not know the “Word” as Marcellus defines it, then he was wrong to make that charge. 6 For neither Sabellius nor the Jews themselves, who deny the Christ of God, failed to know what Marcellus says is the Word in God, through whom God spoke to Moses and the prophets. Everyone would say that they know this precisely, not only among the Jews but among the Greeks too. For who would not agree that God is rational, just as he is wise and good and powerful? Sabellius would not deny that he knows this. But he did not confess that there is also a Son of God, living and subsisting, who exists and existed before the flesh. Because of this agreement with Marcellus, he was cast out of the church of God, just as Marcellus was.

7 How Marcellus held the same views as Sabellius will be clear from the places where he declared that God and his Word are one and the same. Sometimes he said so in these very words:

Chapter 17

1 “If the examination were of the Spirit alone, the Word would naturally appear to be one and the same as God.” At other times he compares the Word of God to the human word, adding: “The word in a man is one and the same as the man, set apart from him by nothing else but the activity of action.” For this reason he sometimes declared that before the world was established there was nothing other than God. And again he said in these very words: “When the world had not yet come into being, there was nothing other than God alone.” 2 At other times he compared the Word of God to our own spoken word. He wrote this: “Just as everything that has come into being has come into being through the Word by the Father, so also the things spoken by the Father are made known through the Word.” Here he calls him a “spoken word.” Then, going on, he shows that the Word is inseparable from the Father in subsistence, and is one and the same with him, saying something like this: “I think this is easy for people of sound mind to grasp, even from a small and lowly example taken from ourselves.”

3 “For no one can separate a person’s word from that person in power and subsistence. The word is one and the same with the man, and it is distinguished from him by nothing else except the activity of the action.” Again he uses the same illustration where he says: “For everything the Father says, he is plainly seen to say everywhere through the Word. This is clear even from ourselves, comparing small things with great and divine ones: we too, as far as we are able, say and do everything we wish by means of our own word.” 4 One should think of these words as no more Marcellus’s than Sabellius’s. Unless, perhaps, Marcellus is mocking Sabellius for this: that Sabellius did not shamelessly dare to call the “spoken word” in God (as Marcellus supposes it to be) a Son. For Sabellius was not so devoid of reason as to give God, who is over all, a word just as human beings have one, nor was he so foolish as to call a word that has no real existence the Son of God. So Sabellius spoke of one God and denied the Son,

5 and, following the position he had laid down, said that Father and Son are the same. Marcellus likewise grants that God and the Word in him are one and the same. Yet he claims that Sabellius erred in vain, and does not admit that he himself has erred too. 6 For either Marcellus ought to have accepted Sabellius, or he ought to blame himself as well and, in blaming Sabellius, turn away from the same bad doctrine he holds. He should not, like a sculptor, suppose that God speaks to his own thought and reasoning and urges himself on, saying, “Come, let us make, come, let us mould a statue.” (For this is how Marcellus said God spoke the words “Let us make man.”) 7 Nor should he suppose in God at one time an inward word, as in a man, and at another time a spoken word, like the uttered word in us. It would have been more tolerable to hear this from Sabellius, or from one of the Jews who openly deny the Son of God, than from a Christian.

8 But Marcellus, as though priding himself on Jewish teaching, brings into the church of Christ this impious and godless doctrine, that the Son of God does not exist. Throughout the whole of the book he labored over, he argues that before the world came to be there was nothing else but God alone, in order to shut the door against the Son. And he even boasts that he knows one God, 9 as if we did not say this too! We have received that the Son of God is truly a Son. We have learned from him to acknowledge one God, who is both God and Father of the only-begotten Son, whose own Son he truly is, begotten from him before all ages. The Son was called not only “Word” before the taking up of flesh, as this noble fellow insists, but also countless other things. In this too Marcellus misrepresents the divine Scripture, when he maintains that before his coming in the flesh the Son was called nothing other than “Word.”

Chapter 18

1 Listen, then, to how he insists on this, writing in these very words (Nr. 37): “So it is clear from every side that no other name fits the eternity of the Word except the one that John, God’s most holy disciple and apostle, used at the beginning of the Gospel. After the taking up of the flesh he is proclaimed as Christ and Jesus, as life, way, day, resurrection, door, bread, and whatever else the divine Scriptures may call him. But this does not mean we should be ignorant of the first name, that he was Word. For this reason the most holy evangelist and disciple of the Lord, fully alert in the Spirit, recalled the origin from above and nothing more recent. He said, ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,’ in order to show that if any name is new and more recent, it came from the new and recent dispensation in the flesh.”

2 And he goes on to add (Nr. 42): “Therefore before he came down and was born through the virgin, he was only Word. For what else was he before taking human flesh, he who came down ‘in the last days,’ as he himself wrote, and who was born of the holy virgin? Nothing other than Word.” And again he adds (Nr. 43 = 81): “For earlier, as I have often said, he was nothing other than Word.” 3 And once more he adds, saying (Nr. 36): “For the Word was ‘in the beginning,’ being nothing other than Word. But the man who was united to the Word, not having existed before, became man, as John teaches us: ‘And the Word became flesh.’ For this reason, then, John evidently mentions only the Word.” 4 “For whether divine Scripture mentions the name of Jesus or of Christ, it evidently names the Word of God as he is together with human flesh. And if anyone claims he can show the name of Christ or Jesus applied to the Word alone even before the new covenant, he will find it was said prophetically.” And after other remarks he continues (Nr. 44): “So it is reasonable that before the descent he was what we have often said, Word. But after the descent and the taking up of the flesh he received various titles.” These are the passages by which Marcellus is caught denying the Son of God who is, who lives and who is truly Son, and bringing in a bare Word.

5 It has also been shown from the words of his quoted earlier what kind of Word he supposed him to be. He used the human word as his example, and said that the Word is one and the same as God. Having laid down this starting point, he went on, consistently with the premise he had given himself, to slander the God-inspired Scripture and to give distorted interpretations of it.

Chapter 19

1 It seemed good to me to examine a few of these briefly for now. I want to show those who do not know, first, that no Scripture agrees with him in his innovating and turning aside from the sound faith. On the contrary, all of Scripture speaks against him and bears witness against the interpretations he has wrongly adopted. This ought especially to be shown to those who honor the man, lest any of them, through inexperience of the divine readings, suppose that he has hit the mark of the truth. 2 This, then, is the first thing to examine, which he was also the first to dare to declare: that before he was born through the virgin, the Son of God was not called by any name other than Word. For he says that before the coming in the flesh he was nothing but Word, and was not named otherwise except prophetically. He says that he was, and was named, Word and nothing else, and that only after the coming in the flesh did he receive various titles.