By Water & Blood

Chapter 10: That he did not rightly take “In the beginning was the Word”

And yet the great and divine evangelist himself did not call him Word only, as we have often said, but also God, and Light, and Son, and Only-begotten. And he records that the Saviour himself nowhere in the Scripture calls himself Word, but throughout the whole Gospel calls himself Life, and Light, and Only-begotten, and Son of God, and Truth, and Resurrection, and Bread of Life, and Vine, and Shepherd, and a myriad of other titles, as has already been shown above.

Why ever, then, since there are so many, does he not stop at the mere expression in all the other cases, but busies himself with the sense of what is said, while in the case of “Word” alone he says that it is used of him in the proper sense, as though he were nothing other than Word? He writes, at any rate, in these very words, saying (Nr. 40): “Not named Word by a loose usage (καταχρηστικῶς)—even if those who teach otherwise burst with their lies—but being Word properly and truly.”

And again (Nr. 39): “Let him learn, then, that the Word of God has come—not a Word so named by a loose usage, as they themselves say, but being true Word.” And once more (Nr. 43 = 81): “Previously, as I have often said, he was nothing other than Word.” And again (Nr. 42):

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

To Marcellus, saying these things, it would be just to put a question of this kind: “And whence, my good man,

do you add for us ‘nothing other’ and ‘only’? For ‘In the beginning was the Word’ we know exactly; and not this only, but also ‘and the Word was God,’ and ‘that was the Light, which lighteth every man,’ and ‘he was the only-begotten Son,’ and all the other titles that have been listed. But that he was Word only, and nothing other than Word, no one could show to have been said.”

Whence, then, the audacity of the addition? For why should one not rather say that he is Son only, and nothing other than Son? Or why not God, and nothing other than God? Why not the Light of the world, and nothing other than this? Or why not Life, and nothing other? And one might most justly put the same question in similar cases.

But just as anyone who said this would be convicted of error (for he is all these things together, being the one Son of God—and whatever is higher than these—having been counted worthy of the titles according to each distinct conception of the diverse divine powers in him),

so too in the case of “Word,” the one who says that he is Word only, and nothing other, would fittingly be said to err. For since John the evangelist alone called him Word—and not this only but other things as well—while the Saviour proclaimed himself Light and Truth and Life and only-begotten Son and the rest, but nowhere Word, how is it not absurd, in the case of the names by which he named himself, not to say that he is one of these and nothing other, yet in the case of the evangelist’s expression concerning him, which proclaimed him Word, to insist that he was nothing other than Word?

But (Nr. 40) “being Word,” he says, “properly and truly.” Then why not “being God properly and truly”? For it was not one person who proclaimed him Word and another who called him God; rather, one and the same evangelist taught him to be at once God and Word, saying, “and the Word was God”; and the same evangelist also named him Light. Why, then, not properly and truly only-begotten Son, and whatever else the Master and Saviour himself has testified concerning himself through the evangelist? But he passes over all these and says that he is properly and truly Word only; and he adds that he was, after all, Word only; and from there he falls down to the likeness of the human word.