By Water & Blood

Chapter 23: That the Church does not proclaim two gods

Straightway, at any rate, he does not understand the sayings of the divine Apostle, who taught in various ways that the Son is the image of God, in the words of his which I have set out. From these he ought to have understood that the Church of God does not proclaim two gods. For she does not bring in two unbegottens, nor two without beginning, as we have often said, nor two essences set side by side against one another on equal terms of honor (ἰσοτιμία)—and therefore not two gods; but she teaches that there is one first principle and God, the same being the Father of the only-begotten and beloved Son, and likewise one image “of the invisible God,” which is the same as his only-begotten and beloved Son. And even if the Apostle, theologizing the Father, says, “the blessed and only Potentate,” and again, “who only hath immortality,

dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto,” and once more, “Now unto the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God,” and again, “To God only wise be glory through Jesus Christ for ever. Amen”—and even if still more than these is said in glorification of the one God who is over all—one must understand that the only-begotten Son of God is the image of all these things also, an image formed not as in lifeless matter but as in a living Son. And even if the Saviour himself teaches that the Father is the only true God, saying, “that they might know thee the only true God,” yet one must not shrink from confessing him also to be true God, as possessing this too as in an image, so that the addition of “only” may befit the Father alone, as the archetype of the image.

The inspired Paul, at any rate, taught most clearly that he is the image and brightness of the Father, and that he is “in the form” of God, as has been demonstrated above. Just as, then, when there subsists one Father and one Son sprung from the Father, no one of sound mind would say that there are two fathers or two sons; and just as, when one king rules and his image is carried about everywhere on earth, no one in his senses would say that there are two rulers, but one, who is honored also through his image—in the same way (as we have also often said) the Church of God, having received the faith to worship one God, continues worshipping the same God also through the Son, as through an image.

Not understanding these things, Marcellus declared that the image “of the invisible God” is the flesh of the Saviour, which the Apostle called “the form of a servant”—not reckoning that all men too are formed after the manner of the Saviour’s flesh. And he insists that the body which the Saviour assumed is the image of the unbegotten, ineffable, and paternal Godhead, while he denies that the only-begotten Son of God, through whom all things were constituted (for “all things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made”), is the image of God, saying in these very syllables (Nr. 82): “It is therefore manifest that before the assumption of our body the Word by himself was not the image of the invisible God.” You see how great a distortion of the apostolic interpretation he employs.

And so, when the evangelist John proclaimed as good news and unveiled the mystery that had been known in a hidden way in Moses and the other prophets, and heralded with a loud cry, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

All things were made through him”; and when he bore witness that “That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, and the world knew him not”; and when he clearly set forth the sonship by saying concerning the Father, “No man hath seen God at any time,” and concerning the Son, “The only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him”—