By Water & Blood

Chapter 16: How he is caught, by his own words, holding the same opinions as Sabellius

First, then, since he said that neither Sabellius nor the Jews knew God, because they did not know the Word, we must consider what sort of Word he supposes. For if he means the only-begotten Son of God, who subsists and lives, then neither did he himself know him. For example: our Saviour made mention of the Son in various ways and often called himself the only-begotten Son, and never once called himself Word, but throughout all the Gospels taught that he is the Son of God (for which reason he also pronounces Peter blessed when he said, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God,” and testifies that this knowledge came to him through the revelation of the Father, saying, “Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven”). Yet this marvellous man, as though his ears were stopped, writes these things word for word (Nr. 34):

“And for this reason he does not name himself Son of God, but everywhere calls himself Son of Man, in order that through such a confession he may prepare man to become Son of God by adoption (θέσει), through fellowship with him.”

You see how he does not dare to confess him as Son of God, lest he fall away from the doctrine of Sabellius; but he calls him Son of Man on account of the flesh which he assumed. And throughout his whole treatise he names him Word, continually pointing out that he was nothing other than Word. And even in the passage where he finds fault with Sabellius, he cites the Saviour’s words in which he said, “No man knoweth the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him”;

but, as if correcting them, he again names “Word” instead of “Son,” speaking thus (Nr. 38): “For ‘no man knoweth,’ he says, ‘the Father, save the Son’—that is, the Word”; and he adds (Nr. 38): “For the Word through himself grants the knowledge of the Father”; and he further puts (Nr. 38): “It was impossible to know God otherwise than through his own Word.” Again he sets “Word” in place of “Son,” and calls him “his own Word.” And in so very few words he has mentioned the Word many times, but the Son not even once. Indeed, he even alters the Saviour’s own saying,

adding, in place of “the Son” (Nr. 38), “that is, the Word”—as though the meaning “Son” were not rather what fits the title “Father.” Hence the Saviour fittingly and naturally joined to the Father the yoke-fellow term “Son,” while this man, refusing to say “Son,” babbles up and down about the Word; and he accuses Sabellius of denying the Son, while doing the same as he, and puts on a show, thinking by his slander against him to avoid the suspicion of false doctrine. If, then, he blames Sabellius for denying the Son of God, he ought first to have blamed himself; but if he blames him because Sabellius was ignorant of the Word as he himself defined it, he did not make this charge rightly.

For neither Sabellius nor even the Jews, who deny the Christ of God, were ignorant of the Word which Marcellus says is in God, through which he gave oracles to Moses and the prophets. Rather, everyone—not only of the Jews but also of the Greeks—would say that he knows this Word exactly. For who would not confess that God is rational (λογικός), just as he is wise and good and powerful? Sabellius would not deny that he knew this. But because he did not confess also a Son of God who lives and subsists, and who exists and pre-existed the flesh, for the sake of this agreement with Marcellus he was driven out of the Church of God just as Marcellus was.

And how Marcellus held the same views as Sabellius would be plain from the passages in which he declared that God and his Word are one and the same—at one time saying in these very words: