Eusebius on the Trinity Part 3

We come to the last part of the series: Eusebius on the Trinity Part 2.

Chapter 12

(1) And yet the great man who is at once both evangelist and theologian, having mentioned the Word three times in this passage, has not only said that he is Word of God. For he did not say, “In the beginning was the Word of God,” but indefinitely, “In the beginning was the Word,”¹⁵⁰ having left it to us to investigate what sort of Word he was. And again, he said, “And the Word was with God,”¹⁵¹ when he could have said, “And the Word of God was in God.” But he also said, “the¹⁵² Word was God,”¹⁵³ and not “the Word was of God,” lest we assume that he is a certain activity of God (2) that communicates or makes something. And indeed Marcellus, having thought that the Word of God is himself eternal, that is to say, unbegotten, asserted this many times, not comprehending that if, on the one hand, he should say that the Word is other than God, there will be two eternal beings (the Word and God) and no longer one source, but that if, on the other, he should say that there is one eternal one, asserting that God is the same as the Word, he will blatantly agree with Sabellius, introducing (3) that entity that is one and the same, a Son-Father. Therefore, for him the Father will be begotten and have suffered, and he himself will be the one who prays to himself and says that he has been sent by himself and that he is Son and only-begotten of himself; here Marcellus does not speak truly, but lies with dissimulation through his ignorance. And what other statement could be more impious than this? But come, let us see what sort of Word the evangelist announces to us when he says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”¹⁵⁴

Chapter 13

(1) Thus the term “word,” as it has been utilized in the Greek tongue, admits of various meanings:

1) That which has been placed in the rational soul, by which it is possible for us to reason, has been called “word.”

2) And besides this, there is another meaning: that which communicates something through the tongue and articulate speech.

3) And in a third (2) sense, [“word”] refers to that which has been laid down by an author in writing.

4) And already we have also been accustomed to call “word” that seminal or vegetative power, by which those things that are not yet growing but will soon come forth in actuality into the light are stored up in potentiality in seeds.

5) And besides these, we have otherwise been accustomed to call “word” that knowledge of a certain skill or science, which also comprehends all the basic principles of these sorts of things, such as medicine or architecture or geometry.

Chapter 14

(1) Well now, since the different senses of the term “word” have been presented, and the evangelist has said without qualification, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,”¹⁵⁵ it is fitting [for us] to consider the sense intended [here], whether in the present instance the evangelist conveys a certain peculiar use of the term “word” besides those known to us, on the one hand having said without qualification “word,” while on the other having added some strange and paradoxical sense of the power unique to him [the Word] in the statement “and the Word was God.”¹⁵⁶ (2) For do not think, he says, that this, too, belongs to those things that are in relation to something else, such as the word that is in the soul or that is heard through the voice, or that which is in physical seeds, or which subsists in mathematical theorems. For all of these, belonging to those things that are in relation to something else, are thought to exist in another pre-existing being.¹⁵⁷ But the God-Word is in need of no other pre-existing thing so that, having come to be in it, he might subsist, but he is in himself (3) living and subsisting, since he is God. For “the Word was God.”¹⁵⁸

And hearing that he is God, he [the evangelist] says, lest you suppose that he also is without source and unbegotten like his Father, learn that this God-Word was “in the beginning.”¹⁵⁹

And what beginning he attributes to him, he [John] clarifies immediately afterward, not having said, “and the Word was the God,” with the addition of the article, lest he assert that [the Word] was the God who is over all. But neither [did he say] the Word was “in God,” lest he compare him to the likeness of a human [word], but he said, “and the Word was (4) with God.”¹⁶⁰ For if he had said, “and the Word was in God,” having  proposed that he is like an accident in a subject and one thing that is in another thing, he would have introduced, as it were, a composite God, supposing that he [God] is a (5) being¹⁶¹ without rationality, while he renders the Word an accident in th[at] being.¹⁶² Having thought this very thing, Marcellus causes the Father and Son to become the same thing, calling the being¹⁶³ Father, and the Word within him the Son, without realizing that he who grants this, having supposed that God is without [his] Word, would fall into the godless and impious claim of asserting that God is irrational,¹⁶⁴ having the Word as an accident within himself while not being himself (6) rational.¹⁶⁵

But it is necessary to confess that that which is beyond the universe is one single thing, divine, ineffable, good, simple, incomposite, something of one form, that is God himself,¹⁶⁶ Intellect itself, Word itself, Wisdom itself, Light itself, Life itself, Beauty itself, Goodness itself, and whatever one could think is greater than these, and rather beyond (7) all knowing and beyond all thought and conceiving. And [one must also confess] the only-begotten Son of this [God], as if he were the image of the Father who has been brought forth from him and [is] altogether and in every way most like the one who has begotten him, and [one must confess that] he, too, is God and Intellect and Word and Wisdom and Life and Light and Image of the Good and the Beautiful itself; not that he himself is the Father, but that he is the only-begotten Son of the Father; not that he himself is the one who is, who is unbegotten and without source, but the one who has been brought forth¹⁶⁷ from the latter and who acknowledges as source the one who has begotten him.

(8) But if, denying these arguments, Marcellus should allege that God and the Word within him were the same, defining God as incomposite and simple, see, then, how he confesses neither the Father nor the Son, but openly either professes what Jews believe or introduces Sabellianism, because he alleges that the same is Father and Son. As a result, according to him, the statement “In the beginning was the Word” is equivalent to the statement “In the beginning was the God,” and the statement “and the Word was with the God” is equivalent to the statement “and the God was with the (9) God,” and likewise, too, the third statement is the same as the statement “and God was the God,” which statement indeed would, in addition to being incoherent, also be most illogical.

In addition, how can there be scope for the statement “and all things came to be through him,” since the underlying reality is one? For he [the evangelist] does not say that all things have come to be “by” him or “from him” but “through him.” Now the addition of the preposition “through” indicates that which is of service, as the same evangelist further on shows, saying, “The Law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ”;¹⁶⁸ for as the Law, since it is not of human invention nor comes from Moses himself, but from God, designated Moses as servant and helper for the giving of the Law to human beings, and because of this it has been said, “The Law was given through Moses,” so also, “grace came through Jesus Christ,”¹⁶⁹ the (10) Father having effected it through Christ. Therefore, in the same way it has also been said, “All things came to be through him,”¹⁷⁰ since there was one who did the making, himself having been assisted, so that one must seek the maker of the universe as another, the one who caused all things to subsist through the one who has been spoken of as divine. And (11) who would this be? But he [Marcellus] could not say. Since these things are so, it is necessary to confess that the one who is spoken of as divine by the evangelist is neither the God who is over all¹⁷¹ nor the Father himself, but the only-begotten Son of the latter, who is not an accident in the Father, nor something that exists in him as in a subject, nor as one and the same thing with God, but truly as Son, living and subsisting, existing in the beginning and being with God and being God, (12) through whom he fashions all things, so that it would be correct, if one were to clarify and to say instead of “in the beginning was the Word,” “in the beginning was the Son,” and instead of “and the Word was with God,” “and the Son was with the Father,” and instead of “and the Word was God,” “and the Son was God.” And likewise that statement that follows right after would also agree with these: for “all things came to be through him, and without him not one thing came to be.”¹⁷² (13) Well then, rightly did the divine evangelist say that he was in the beginning, having attributed to him a source, that is to say, the begetting from the Father. For everything that is begotten from something has the one who has begotten him as source. And surely likewise he added, not “and the Word was in God,” but “and the Word was with God,” teaching that the one who was begotten, having also possessed the Father as source, is not somehow far from the Father, nor has he been separated or moved to some great distance from him, but that he is present to him and exists together with him.

(14) And indeed, he [the Son] also taught this in Proverbs, having said previously, “before all the hills, he begets me,” having added afterwards, “when he established the heavens, I was present with him.”¹⁷³ Thus the Word, that is to say the only-begotten Son, was with God, his own Father; he coexisted with him and (15) WAS ALWAYS AND EVERYWHERE PRESENT WITH HIM.

And indeed [John] also shows this, when he says, “And the Word was with God.” But since it was fitting for us to know also to what rank he belonged, he necessarily added, “and the Word was God.” For how was he who was begotten from the one and only unbegotten God not going to be God? For if “that which has been begotten of the flesh is flesh, and that which has been begotten of the spirit is spirit,”¹⁷⁴ according to the saving teaching, it would follow, too, that that which has been begotten from God (16) would be God. For this reason also “the Word was God,” even God [the] maker and fashioner of all things. And indeed this same point the evangelist also showed immediately afterwards, having added “all things came to be through him.”

Therefore, the Law, which was a tutor [given] through Moses, introducing God as maker of all in the story of the making of the universe, in transmitting the elements and principles of godly piety, taught, “In the beginning God made the heavens and the (17) earth,”¹⁷⁵ and what follows. And guiding the Jewish people through them [these principles and elements], the Law exhorted [them] to believe that the cosmos is created, so that they might not worship the creation (18) instead of the “one who created it.”¹⁷⁶ But how and through whom God fashioned all things, Moses had not yet handed over to those under him, but “grace and truth came through Jesus Christ,”¹⁷⁷ proclaiming the mystery that had been hidden in silence by Moses, and initiating the newer and mystical teaching for the Church of God. Having shouted openly for all to hear, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,”¹⁷⁸ and “All things came to be through him, and (19) without him not one thing came to be,”¹⁷⁹ and having added still to these, “In him was life, and the life was the light of human beings. The light shines in the darkness,”¹⁸⁰ and the things that follow these, through [these] [the Church] teaches the Son of God and the excellence of the divine light and of the life that is in him, and how everything that has been said by Moses and even that which is beyond these were established through him. But Marcellus, grasping none of these things, is convicted now of Judaism and then of Sabellianism: (20) as a Jew, claiming that before the establishment of the cosmos there was nothing except God alone (while the Church confesses that before the establishment of the cosmos there were the Father and the Son), while as Sabellius, declaring that Son and Father are one and the same thing, and introducing him [the Son] as at one time an interior word and at another as an expressed word. (21) For although he pretends not to allow these terms, he clearly [means them] when he says that [the Word] is at one time in God and at another comes forth in active energy, and through these statements he likens him to the human word.

To be sure, the divine evangelist established that the one who was spoken of as God by him was Word in none of the ways that have been recounted, but such as it was fitting to think of the only-begotten Son of God: namely, that he was Word in such a way that all things were established by the Word and without the Word nothing came to be, but God and only-begotten in such a way that he alone was truly Son of the God who is over all—really a genuine and beloved Son, (22) who is made like his Father in all things. For this reason he was also truly light in such a way that he sheds intellectual and rational light upon the souls made in his image. For this reason he [John] says that he is the light not of all things, but only of human beings. For he [John] said, “He was the light that enlightens every man coming into the world.”¹⁸¹ Likewise, he was also truly life, in the sense that he provides to all living things the stream of living water that flows from him. And if you considered each conception of the divine powers in him, you would find that they also were true names of him. For in all things the Son of God was truth, which indeed he himself shows, saying, “I am the truth.”¹⁸²

150. Jn 1.1.

151. Ibid.

152. Klostermann’s addition of “and” is superfluous.

153. Jn 1.1.

154. Ibid.

155. Ibid.

156. Ibid.

157. οὐσίᾳ.

158. Jn 1.1.

159. Eusebius is using ἀρχή here in the sense of “source.”

160. Jn 1.1.

161. οὐσίαν.

162. οὐσίᾳ.

163. οὐσίαν.

164. I.e., literally, “without his word,” or “without his rationality.”

165. Literally, “not being himself Word.”

166. See below, ET 3.17.

167. φύντα.

168. Jn 1.17.

169. Ibid.

170. Jn 1.3.

171. Rom 9.5; Eph 4.6.

172. Jn 1.3.

173. Prv 8.27.

174. Jn 3.6.

175. Gn 1.1.

176. Rom 1.25.

177. Jn 1.17.

178. Jn 1.1.

179. Jn 1.3.

180. Jn 1.4–5.

181. Jn 1.9.

182. Jn 14.6. (Pp. 242-250)

Chapter 16

(1) Therefore, there is no need to reconsider how all these statements serve to deny the Son of God. I think that it is enough to ask this much: if indeed there was one God and nothing else, neither Father nor Son, why did Scripture fabricate such names? And why does even Marcellus himself dissimulate, calling the Son not Son, but Word? And since he has used that word that is in human beings as a model, it should be said that while not every man has a son, every man is rational and has within himself a connatural reason. (2) Therefore, a son is something other than [a man’s] reason. Thus, if he [Marcellus] were to allege that God has within himself a word and nothing else, [a word] by which he both thought and conversed with himself, saying, “Let us make man,”¹⁸⁹ why does he also call him unnecessarily Son? Why does he mislead the Church? Why does he pretend to believe in the Son of God when he does not, making a show of calling the Word that is in God “Son,” while the image clearly teaches us to make a great distinction between the word that is implanted in the soul and the Son who was begotten from someone [else] and who himself (3) subsists and lives and is active? But “not I,” he will say, as is to be expected, “but the divine evangelist addressed him as Word; from this it follows that we too should make this confession [with him].” And even I myself say yes [to that].

Chapter 17

(1) Nevertheless, I do not think it fitting to take the expression in any other sense than that in which the evangelist himself defines the “Word” when he teaches the disciples. And clearly he showed what sort of word this was, adding this immediately afterwards when he says, “And the Word was God.”¹⁹⁰ Indeed, he could have said, “And the Word was the God,” with the addition of the article, if indeed he thought that the Father and the Son were one and the same and that the (2) Word himself was the God who is over all¹⁹¹—but he did not write in such a way. For it would have been necessary to have said either that the Word was of God or that the Word was the God, with the addition of the article, if he were going to make what he wrote agree with the thought of Marcellus. But now he also shows that the Word himself is God in a similar way as the God with whom he was. For, having said before, “and the Word was with God,” he continues, saying, “and the Word was God,” not only teaching us more clearly to think first that the Father of the Word, with whom the Word was, is God, the one who is beyond all,¹⁹² and then not to be ignorant that, in addition, after him his Word, the only-begotten Son, was not himself (3) the God who is over all,¹⁹³ but was also himself God. For the conjunction “and” connects the divinity of the Son to the Father. For this reason he [John] says, “And the Word was God” so that we might see that he who is over all,¹⁹⁴ with whom the Word was, is God, and hear that the Word himself is God, as an image of the God, and an image not as in inanimate material but as in a living son, who also has been made like, in the closest way possible, to the archetypal divinity of the Father. (4) But since it seemed a good idea to Marcellus to compare the Word of God to the human word, we will also say it is better by far, if one uses the human word as an image, to have used instead this example and to say that the mind is the father of the word in our experience, being other than the word. For no man ever has come to know what the mind is in its being,¹⁹⁵ but it is like a king, who, seated within his secret treasures, takes counsel as to what things must be done; and his word, having been begotten from [his] innermost chambers as from a father, (5) is made known to all outside. Therefore, they may partake of the benefit of the word, but no one ever knows the unseen and invisible mind, which indeed is the (6) father of the word. In the same way, then, but rather beyond every image and example, the perfect Word of God, the all-powerful king, not being composed of syllables and words and names like the expressed word of men, but living and subsisting like an only-begotten Son of God, goes forth from the paternal divinity and kingship, and he refreshes the entire world with the gifts of his abundance, causing all creatures to overflow with life and reason and wisdom and light and participation in every good. The Father and God of the universe, who is transcendent, however, is unapproachable and unfathomable to all because of his ineffable and invisible intelligence, for which reason he has also been said to dwell in “unapproachable light.”¹⁹⁶ (7) But the one who is unapproachable and unfathomable to all would be the Father, while there is the other, who is nearer to all since indeed he governs all things with the Father’s consent (for which reason it has been said, not of the Father, but of the Son, that “he was in the world, and the world was made through him”),¹⁹⁷ and the one was beyond the universe and over all things, “dwelling in unapproachable light,”¹⁹⁸ while the other is omnipresent through all things and [is] in all things by his careful providence—thus only in this way can the image of the human word be compared to him. But since these things have been shown by us, it is fitting for somebody who wants to learn to ask:  

Chapter 18

(1) Why at the beginning of his book did the evangelist proclaim the only-begotten Son of God as Word? To this, we will answer: because of the hidden prophecies about him of long ago. For to each prophet, it was said, “the Word of the Lord that came”—for example, “to Isaiah,”¹⁹⁹ and “the beginning of the Word of the Lord in Hosea,”²⁰⁰ and “the Word of the Lord that (2) came to Joel,”²⁰¹ and “The Word of the Lord came to Jonah,”²⁰² and likewise “to Micah.”²⁰³ And to the remaining prophets as to each one that expression came was added (for the divine Scripture correctly and necessarily indicates that [the Word] was in none of the prophets but came to each, to the extent that the power of each was capable of admitting [it], coming to it and providing to the soul of each the appropriate spirit from [him]). And understandably, in the present case, the evangelist was about to announce the intelligible economy of the Word. He no longer teaches that he came as one to another, as he came to the ancients, but that he assumed flesh and became man. And since he was going to announce to all his saving advent to human beings, when he says next, “and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us,” he necessarily goes back to the beginning,²⁰⁴ showing of what sort the (3) Word was who just recently became incarnate, and he describes him as God, announcing at the same time the knowledge of him and of his divine appearance among human beings. Then, since the ancients knew beforehand from the divine Scriptures that the Word had come to each prophet, he himself [the evangelist] announces the more divine and excellent source of him, which none of the prophets (4) proclaimed to human beings so obviously and explicitly. For this reason, in handing over the mystery concerning the Word that had been unknown and hidden, he shouted in a great voice to all, saying, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; all things came to be through him, (5) and without him not one thing came to be.”²⁰⁵ For he says that if, having been taught by the earlier holy writings, you have previously learned in times long ago that the Word of the Lord came now to this prophet and likewise again to another and yet again to another, even so now it must be proclaimed to all not that he came, but that he “was in the beginning” and that he “was God” and that “all things came to be” through him, and that that very God-Word through whom all things came to be, by the Father’s love for humankind, (6) “became flesh and dwelt among us.”²⁰⁶

John, the great disciple and apostle of Christ, announced these things, instructing all human beings in the new and recent mysteries of the Savior: not that God was rational,²⁰⁷ nor that he himself ponders within himself and converses with himself, saying, “Let us make man,”²⁰⁸ nor that he has used words that command what he wishes to be done. For every man who denied (7) the Son of God would say these things. And indeed, Marcellus does just this when he flees to the ancient Scripture as to a place of refuge and tries to bring together those things that were enjoined upon the Jewish people in their infancy regarding the prohibition against worshiping idols and the obligation to acknowledge and revere only one God. And there were many instances of teaching available to him concerning the one God, it having been handed over for their [the Jews’] benefit then and in times since, whenever the Jews fell into idolatry. Indeed then, fleeing to this position and having barricaded himself in by his Jewish hardness of heart as in a fortress, he proposed the denial of the Son of God.

189. Gn 1.26.

190. Jn 1.1.

191. Rom 9.5; Eph 4.6.

192. Ibid.

193. Ibid.

194. Ibid.

195. οὐσίαν.

196. 1 Tm 6.16.

197. Jn 1.10.

198. 1 Tm 6.16.

199. Is 2.1.

200. Hos 1.2.

201. Jl 1.1.

202. Jon 1.1.

203. Mi 1.1.

204. Jn 1.14. Eusebius uses ἀρχή here to mean “source” or “origin.”

205. Jn 1.3.

206. Jn 1.14.

207. λογικός.

208. Gn 1.26. (Pp. 250-255)

(14) For this very reason, the Word, protecting them from this sort of error, announced the one God, although he surely did not deny that the same was Father. And he taught them to worship the true [God], and he commanded them to acknowledge none but him, while he, to be sure, did not deny that he is a father. And if he called him Lord and God and just and savior, it still would not prevent anyone from thinking that he is Father of his only-begotten and beloved (15) Son. Therefore, if the Father or the Son should say, “I am who am,”²⁶⁰ the statement would be true of each. For the Father would be “He who is,” being himself alone “God who is over all and through all and in all,”²⁶¹ as the divine Apostle taught. And the Son himself would also speak the truth, calling himself “He who is” since he alone is the only-begotten Son of “He who is.” But since he also exists as image of the invisible God, in this way he would be image of him, with respect to the fact that [God] himself alone is “He who is.”²⁶² For this reason [as sole image of the invisible God who is “He who is”], he also calls himself “He who is,” since throughout the divinely inspired Scripture he calls himself both God and Lord just as the Father was.

Chapter 21

(1) It is also possible to know this from the oracle given to Moses. Thus Scripture says, “And God spoke to Moses and said to him, ‘I am the Lord. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as their God.’”²⁶³ You see how he said that he himself appeared to the fathers. And when he appeared, Scripture again gives witness, saying, “And the Lord God appeared to Abraham by the oak of Mamre, as he sat at the door ...”²⁶⁴ And how did he appear but in human form? And whom should one believe this to be other than the Son of God? Indeed, [Christ] also showed this in the gospels, saying to the Jews, “Your father Abraham rejoiced that he was to see my day, (2) and he saw [it] and was glad.”²⁶⁵ And as his listeners wondered, he added to the statement: “Before Abraham was, I am,”²⁶⁶ showing in the clearest fashion possible his own pre-existence. What, then, does the statement convey other than that he is the Son of God, who gave the oracle to Moses and said, “I am who am”?²⁶⁷ For he taught that he himself appeared to Abraham. And how (3) he was “He who is” has been stated.

And the great Apostle Paul knew the Son of God was the mediator of the giving of the Law through Moses, which he taught, saying, “The Law was ordained through angels by [the] hands of a mediator. Now a mediator implies more than one.”²⁶⁸ Therefore, the one who spoke to Moses was the mediator, mediating by means of that [law] for (4) the salvation of human beings even before the assumption of the flesh. The same Apostle showed that this was Jesus Christ, having said, “There is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ.”²⁶⁹ Therefore, whether the statement “I am who am” was made to Moses from his own person²⁷⁰ or the Father was the one who uttered this statement through him, in each case (5) the statement would be true. Well, then, let Marcellus not be puzzled, using, as he thinks, an irrefutable syllogism, when he says,

Well then, who does Asterius think it is who says, “I am who am,”²⁷¹ the Son or the Father?²⁷² 

then implying next that if the Father were “He who is,” the Son will not be God, because

... he [Asterius] says that the “one who is” is himself in contradistinction to him who is not? But if he were to allege that the Son said this, “I am who am,” while separated in hypostasis, he will be thought to say the same thing again concerning the Father [namely, that the Father is not]. And each of these is impious.²⁷³

(6) Saying these things, the same man has fallen into each of these absurd claims, on the one hand asserting that the “one who is” is one, while on the other hand denying the other. And who this is, he should know. For he will either, having granted the Father, deny the Son, or having accepted the Son alone, he will dismiss the Father. Rather, he will be convicted of knowing neither the Father nor the Son, because in granting one alone he tosses the other aside.

And if he should hear God saying, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of  bondage. (7) You shall have no other gods before me,”²⁷⁴ again, let his soul not be troubled at this, but let him listen to those things that follow immediately afterwards. For having said, “You shall have no other gods before me,” he continues, “You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them. For I (8) the Lord your God am a jealous God.”²⁷⁵ You see how he gave the command, lest [the people] be led astray by the polytheistic error of the Gentiles, that they should acknowledge him alone as God and Lord. And who was this? The Son, who had the image of the Father within himself, and ordered these things on his own authority for those who were sick with idolatry. For as “all things were made through him,”²⁷⁶ the Father having caused to subsist the being²⁷⁷ of all creatures through the Savior, so the Father himself handed over to human beings the knowledge of (9) and piety toward him through the Son as a mediator...

260. Ex 3.14.

261. Eph 4.6.

262. I.e., the Son and nobody else. This means that the Father “alone was,” while the Son “was the alone begotten” (begotten without a helper), whereas all others are begotten with the help of the Son; hence the “alone” marks the Son as sole “image” of the Father; see Asterius, fr. 10 (86 V.).

263. Ex 6.2–3.

264. Gn 18.1. 265. Jn 8.56.

266. Jn 8.58.

267. Ex 3.14.

268. Gal 3.19–20.

269. 1 Tm 2.5.

270. προσώπου.

271. Ex 3.14.

272. First part of Marcellus, fr. 85 (63 K./H.) (74,1–2 V.).

273. Second part of Marcellus, fr. 86 (64 K./H.) (74,6–11 V.).

274. Ex 20.2–3.

275. Ex 20.4–5.

276. Jn 1.3.

277. τὴν τῶν γενητῶν ἁπάντων οὐσίαν ὑποστησαμένου. (Pp. 263-266)

(4) Well now, let Marcellus learn, if, having grown old in the episcopate of the Church of Christ, he even now has not yet learned that the knowledge of the hidden mystery regarding the Son of God was in no way granted to the people of old, who had slipped into idolatry, and that the “mystery hidden for ages and generations”²⁹² was dispensed to his Church alone through his grace, in which mystery the teaching of the holy Trinity of Father and Son and Holy (5) Spirit was included. But the fellow [Marcellus] who has gathered together all these statements, as many as even a teacher of Jews could utter concerning circumcision while conversing in a synagogue of the Jews, thinks himself so high and mighty because he casts these things before the disciples of Christ, not knowing that one who is a Jew in his flesh could say more than he. And so he boasts of these things, making a spectacle of himself while he distorts the true divine teaching regarding our Savior.

Chapter 23

(1) Therefore, then, since he does not understand the statements of the holy Apostle, who taught in various ways that he is the image of God, through those remarks of his that I have been laying out, it is necessary from this point forward to understand that the Church of God does not proclaim two gods.

For it does not introduce two unbegottens or two things without source, as has been said many times by us, nor does it introduce two beings²⁹³ parallel to one another because of their equal glory, and for this reason not two gods, but it teaches one source and God and that the same is Father of the only-begotten and beloved Son, just as it also teaches one image of the “invisible God,”²⁹⁴ which is the same as his only-begotten and beloved Son. And even if the Apostle in speaking of God should call the Father “the blessed and (2) only Sovereign,”²⁹⁵ and again, “who alone has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light,”²⁹⁶ and again, “the king of ages, immortal, invisible, the only God,”²⁹⁷ and again, “to the only wise God be glory for evermore through Jesus Christ! Amen,”²⁹⁸ and even if still more things than these should be said for the glorification of the God who is one and over all,²⁹⁹ it is necessary to think that the only-begotten Son of God is the image even of all of these, not as if he were an image that has been formed in inanimate matter but as one in a living Son. And even if the Savior himself teaches that the Father is the only true God, saying, “that they may know you, the only true God,”³⁰⁰ one should not hesitate to confess that he [the Son] is true God and that he has this status as in an image, so that the addition of the word “only” applies to the Father alone as to [the] archetype of the image. Just so, the divinely inspired Paul taught (3) most clearly that he [the Son] is the image³⁰¹ and radiance³⁰² of the Father and is “in the form of God,”³⁰³ as has been shown through what has gone before. Therefore, just as when one father subsists and one son is brought forth from the father, one would not correctly think of saying there were two fathers or two sons and just as when one king has come to power whose image is borne throughout the earth, not wisely would one say that there were two rulers, but that there is one who is honored also through the image, in the same way (as we have often said) the Church of God, having undertaken the worship of one God, (4) continues to worship the same also through the Son, as through an image...

292. Col 1.26.

293. οὐσίας.

294. Col 1.15.

295. 1 Tm 6.15.

296. 1 Tm 6.16.

297. 1 Tm 1.17.

298. Rom 16.27.

299. Rom 9.5; Eph 4.6. 300. Jn 17.3.

301. Col 1.15.

302. Heb 1.3.

303. Phil 2.6. (Pp. 269-270)

Further Reading

Eusebius’ Trinitarian Baptismal Formula