By Water & Blood

Chapter 10: That, alone begotten from the Father, he alone is rightly called God and Only-begotten Son

But the one who is truly Son of God, inasmuch as he was brought forth from him as from a Father, would fittingly be styled both the Only-begotten and the Beloved of the Father; and in this way he would also be God. For what could the offspring (γέννημα) of God be, except that which has been made like to the one who begot it? A king, then, founds (κτίζει) a city but does not beget a city; he is said to beget a son but not to found one. And a craftsman would be the maker, but not the father, of what is crafted by him; while of a son sprung from him he could not be called the maker. So also the God of the universe would fittingly be called Father of the Son, but Founder and Maker of the world.

And if anyone should find it said once somewhere in Scripture, “The Lord created me the beginning of his ways, for his works,” he ought to examine the sense of the saying, which I shall set out a little later, and not, after the manner of Marcellus, shake the most authoritative doctrine of the Church on the strength of a single expression. For he too, having once heard that the Son is Word, fell back upon the human sense and set aside his real existence (ὕπαρξις).

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

For he, from fear of saying “two Gods,” put forward the denial of the Son, setting aside his hypostasis. These others, granting two hypostases—the one unbegotten (ἀγένητος), the other created from things that are not—do indeed posit one God; but for them the Son will no longer be the Only-begotten, nor Lord, nor God, since he shares in nothing of the Father’s Godhead and is compared with the rest of the creatures, inasmuch as he came to subsist from things that are not. But the Church does not hold so.

Rather, she proclaims the Son of God as God and Lord, and teaches that he is truly Son and God—not after the manner of the many who are called sons and gods by title, of whom it is said, “I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High,” but in that he alone, begotten from the Father himself, “was in the form of God,” and was “the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature.” Therefore she has learned to honor, revere, and worship him alone, as her own Lord and Saviour and God.