By Water & Blood

Chapter 18: How he said that before the incarnation the Son was nothing but Word alone, like human speech

Hear, at any rate, how he affirms it, writing in these very words after this manner (Nr. 37):

“So that it is plain from every side that no other name befits the eternity (ἀιδιότης) of the Word than this which the most holy disciple and apostle of God, John, spoke at the beginning of the Gospel. For since after the assumption of the flesh he is proclaimed both Christ and Jesus, and Life and Way and Day and Resurrection and Door and Bread, and whatever else he may be named by the divine Scriptures, it is not fitting that we should on this account be ignorant of the first name, that he was Word. For this reason the most holy evangelist and disciple of the Lord, being exceedingly wakeful in the Spirit, making mention of the beginning from above and of nothing more recent, said, ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,’ in order to show that, if there is any new and more recent name, this belonged to him from his new and recent economy according to the flesh.”

And next he adds (Nr. 42):

“Therefore, before he came down and was born through the Virgin, he was Word only. For what else was that which came down ‘in these last days,’ as he himself also wrote, and was born of the holy Virgin, before it assumed human flesh? Nothing else than Word.”

And again he goes on (Nr. 43 = 81): “For previously, as I have often said, he was nothing else than Word.”

And he adds once more, saying (Nr. 36):

“For the Word ‘was in the beginning,’ being nothing else than Word; but the man united to the Word, not existing previously, became man, as John teaches us: ‘And the Word was made flesh.’ For this reason, then, he appears to make mention of the Word alone.

For whether the divine Scripture mentions the name of Jesus or of Christ, it appears to be naming the Word of God as he is together with the human flesh. And if anyone should profess to be able to show the name of Christ or Jesus, even before the New Covenant, applied to the Word alone, he will find this to have been said prophetically.”

And after other things he goes on, saying (Nr. 44): “Fittingly, then, before the descent he was this which we have often said—Word; but after the descent and the assumption of the flesh he obtained also various titles.” These, then, are the passages by which Marcellus is convicted of denying the Son of God, who exists and lives and is truly Son, and of introducing a bare word (λόγος ψιλός).

And it has been shown through his words cited earlier what sort of word he supposed him to be, using as an example the human word, and saying that he is one and the same with God. And having laid down this as his starting point, he proceeded consistently, from the premise he had granted himself, to lie against the God-inspired Scripture and to make perverse interpretations of it.