By Water & Blood

Chapter 3: How he defined the Word of God in God as without beginning and unbegotten

But Marcellus seems to say that the Son is the Word in God himself, the Word by virtue of which God is conceived as rational (λογικός); so that God would be his own father, and again his own son. Listen, at any rate, to his own utterances, in which he writes in this manner (Nr. 92):

“For before all creation there was a certain stillness (ἡσυχία), as is likely, the Word being in God. For if Asterius has believed that God is the Maker of all things, it is plain that he too will agree with us that the one always exists, never having received a beginning of being, while the others both came into being by him and came into being out of things that are not.”

Do you see how, having posited God as without beginning (ἄναρχος), he said that the Word, being in him, was in stillness before the creation? And proceeding next he adds (Nr. 92): “If, then, he believes this, he must of necessity also agree to that other point, that apart from God there was nothing else. The Word, therefore, had his own glory, being in the Father.”

Hence, fittingly, he also says that the Word is eternal (ἀίδιος)—that is, unbegotten (ἀγένητος)—writing thus (Nr. 48): “Do you hear, then, the concord of the Holy Spirit, bearing witness through many and diverse persons to the eternity of the Word?” And again (Nr. 48):

“And for this reason he begins from the eternity of the Word, saying, ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.’ Using three testimonies one upon another, he wishes to show the eternity of the Word.”

And how he said that the Word was united to God and co-unbegotten (συναγέννητος) with him, one may hear him saying somewhat as follows (Nr. 61): “We know that the economy according to the flesh pertains to the man, but we have believed that the eternity according to the Spirit is united to the Father.”