By Water & Blood

Book 2, Chapter 24: How Marcellus likened the Only-begotten Word to God’s words of practical command

this marvellous teacher of the words of Christ, gathering together from the divine Scripture the commandments of God and the words that give instruction about what is to be done, defines the Word who was “in the beginning” as something of this kind. Listen how he tries to establish these things, writing in this manner (Nr. 41):

[A gap in the Greek text.] “… while those who teach them are, as it were, ashamed to mention the Word—the Word whom all the divine Scriptures thus proclaim. For David says concerning him, ‘By the word of the Lord were the heavens made firm’; and again the same says, ‘He sent his word, and healed them.’ And Solomon: ‘The wicked shall seek me, and shall not find me: for they hated wisdom, and did not choose the word of the Lord.’ And Isaiah: ‘Out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.’ And again Jeremiah says, ‘The wise men are ashamed, they are dismayed and taken, because they have rejected the word of the Lord.’

And Hosea the prophet said, ‘They hated him that rebuketh in the gate, and they abhorred the holy word.’ And Micah likewise, also making mention of the Word, said, ‘Out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.’”

Having gathered these passages and others akin to them, he thinks to strengthen his own opinion by them.

But see how, mixing up the testimonies from the divine Scripture, he has gathered together both the Word of God who is sent forth, the saving and healing Word, and the word that gives orders about what is to be done. For what sort of word does “They hated him that rebuketh in the gate, and they abhorred the holy word” suppose, if not altogether the word that gives commands about holy and just actions? And he wishes to confess anything rather than the Son of God, as though ashamed to mention the Son. For we know that the Son of God is Son in the most proper sense and truly the Only-begotten of God; and we know him exactly to be Word as well—not like the word in men, but such as it is fitting to conceive the Word of God to be: living and subsisting, and Son. But he who brings in a significative word, one that gives orders about what is to be done, fittingly shrank from confessing the Son, whom in very deed he was denying.