By Water & Blood

Chapter 7: How Marcellus affirmed that the image of the invisible God is the flesh

—this marvellous man, falling down once more upon the flesh, declares that it is the image of the invisible God, not hearing that “who is the image” has been expressed in the masculine form. For having somehow fitted the “who” (ὅς) to the flesh, he said that the flesh is meant, as though it were itself the image “of the invisible God.” And again he says that “he is before all things” was said of the flesh, not ashamed to take the “he” (αὐτός) of the flesh.

He also says that he was called “the firstborn of every creature” on account of the flesh; and he persists, unabashed, in the flesh, saying that “the things in the heavens and the things on the earth” were created, “both visible and invisible,” and he is not abashed to say that thrones and dominions and principalities and powers were counted worthy of the creation in Christ through the flesh of the Saviour. But since I have already set out Marcellus’s words on these matters in my earlier writing, and wish to spare the proportions of this discourse, I shall be content with the testimony of those very passages. And that such an exposition of the apostolic text is perverse and forced, I do not think requires further argument, since the shamelessness of the interpretation is manifest to everyone.