By Water & Blood

Chapter 9: A refutation of the man’s false doctrine

It is time, then, for him to answer our questions. What, then, ought we to think about the intervening time, when the Word was outside God? And how did he come forth? And in what sort of condition was God, then, not having his own Word within himself? For if at the consummation of the universe the Word will be in God, just as he was before, prior to the time of the consummation, how will he be the Word that came forth from God? For if, subsisting by himself, he became other than God, Marcellus’s labor is in vain; but if, even having come forth from God, he remained inseparable from the Father, after the manner of the uttered word (προφορικὸς λόγος) in us, then he was always and continually in God, even when he was active.

How, then, does he defer it to the time of the judgment, saying that he will then be united to God and will be just as he was before? For if he will then be just as he was before, not only will the Word that came forth from God not be such as he was before, but God himself also will be unlike himself: of old having the Word within himself, and at the consummation of the universe receiving him back and becoming then just as he was before, while in the intervening time being in an unlike state. And the Word likewise, having come to be outside God, will not be, before the consummation of the universe, such as he was before.

And what doctrine could be more impious than these? For in general “was” and “will be,” and “having once come to be” and “again being about to be,” since they are indicative of change in time, would be foreign to the timeless, unoriginate, unbegotten, and unalterable essence. Of that essence it is fitting to conceive only being—and being invariably, always holding itself in the same respects and in the same manner: not diminished, not contracted, not extended, not unfolded, not having anything outside and inside itself, not becoming different at different times, nor being one thing before and then becoming something else and again being restored to its original state.

Yet these are the very things Marcellus dared to propose, saying that of old there was God, and sketching for himself a certain stillness together with God (after the manner of that founder of the godless heretics who, dogmatizing godless things, declared, “There was God and Silence”); and that after the silence and the stillness the Word of God came forth at the beginning of the world’s making by an effective activity—so that he was no longer such as he had been before, keeping still in the silent God, but was active, coming forth from God. And how, then, did he come forth?

Surely by the utterance of an articulate voice—God, evidently, speaking aloud and talking in the manner of men. This, at any rate, was his opinion, writing in this manner (Nr. 55): “For just as all things that have come into being have come into being by the Father through the Word, so also the things spoken by the Father are signified through the Word.” And again (Nr. 56):

“For whatever the Father says, he everywhere appears to say through the Word. And this is plain also from ourselves, so far as small things may be likened to great and divine ones; for we too do all that we wish, so far as we are able, both to say and to do, by our own word.”

If, then, the Word came forth from the Father in this way, by an effective activity, whence did it occur to Marcellus to set a time limit to the Word’s activity—namely, the time of the consummation, at which he says the Word will be in God just as he was before (and before, he granted, he kept still in the silent God)? Then after the consummation also there will be a certain stillness, the Word being about to do nothing. But, he says, before the constitution of things that have come into being there was nothing except God, and since there was nothing, he fittingly fashioned stillness for himself.

Yet at the time of the consummation the prophet Daniel foretells that there will be myriads before the throne of God, saying, “Thousand thousands ministered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him.” And all the sons of the age to come will doubtless be there then: the blessed souls of patriarchs and prophets and apostles, and the holy spirits of martyrs, and all the sheep of our Saviour, who will stand at his right hand and will hear, “Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.”

Since, then, so many will exist and will live an immortal life after the time of the judgment, why will the Word of God not be active then also? And whence did it occur to Marcellus to declare that God will then no longer speak to the saints, nor make use of his active Word, but will be as he was before—silent, evidently, and keeping still within himself? For this is what he presented when he often said that he will then be as he was before; and before, as he himself said, he was in stillness.

Then God will fall silent: speaking before this, and using his Word as active, but then, in the very kingdom of heaven that has been promised, depriving his saints of his own Word and of the Wisdom in him. You see to what a precipice he has gone, using no one as a guide, not even the divine Scriptures. All these things, at any rate, he composed for himself from a single expression which he did not understand.

For as soon as he proceeded to the proofs from the New Covenant, he was driven back on every side and hemmed in; but finding one single expression that contributed to his false doctrine, he clung to this alone, as though he had chanced upon a windfall—an expression not even spoken in the person of our Saviour, but in the person of the evangelist, by which the evangelist named him, saying, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Setting out from here, at any rate, he denied the Son, as though he were nothing other than a word like the one known among us.