By Water & Blood

Chapter 22: That in the prophets also the Father was theologized through the Son

Even if, then, crying out through the prophet ten thousand times, he says, “Beside me there is no God,” and, “There is none righteous and a Saviour beside me,” and, “Thou shalt know no god but me, and there is no saviour beside me,” and all the other things akin to these that are found in the rest of the prophets, it was God who even from that time was “in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself.” And it was the Father himself who prompted these words to men through the only-begotten Son, as through an interpreter. This the Son himself also handed down in the Gospels, teaching men to know one God only, where he said, “And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.”

He, then, was the true God, the one and only, besides whom there is no other—he who, not only through the prophets but also through his own Son, enjoined these things at that time upon the Jewish nation, which was then given to idolatry. Immediately, at any rate, Isaiah (or rather God through him), having said, “Beside me there is no God. Who is like me?” and next, “Ye are witnesses whether there is a God beside me,” went on, “And they were not then. They that make a graven image and they that carve are all of them vanity, doing the things they desire.”

And throughout his whole prophecy you would find lifeless wooden images cut down; and in each prophet likewise you will find the one God proclaimed for the turning away of polytheistic error. So too we ourselves are accustomed, in our discussions with superstitious Greeks, to store up the teaching about Christ for a fitting season, while for the time being we bring forward refutations of idolatrous error and establish by demonstrative arguments that God is one.

Let Marcellus learn, then—if, having grown old in the episcopate of the Church of Christ, he has not learned it even now—that the knowledge of the hidden mystery concerning the Son of God was in no way suitable for the ancient people, who were prone to slip into idolatry; and that “the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations” was stored up by his grace for his Church alone—the mystery in which was contained the doctrine of the holy Triad (τριάς), Father and Son and Holy Spirit.

But he, having gathered together as many passages as even a teacher of the Jews might cite when preaching on circumcision in a synagogue of the Jews, prides himself on putting these forward to the disciples of Christ, not knowing that a carnal Jew could cite more of them than he. In these, then, he boasts; and he is not ashamed of distorting the true theology concerning our Saviour.