To these he adds: "These things I have spoken to you while remaining with you; but the Comforter, the Holy Spirit whom my Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and will remind you of all that I said to you." Do you hear how he used the plural form, "we will come" and "we will make our dwelling with him," speaking of himself and the Father, and how, speaking about the Holy Spirit as about another, he said, "He will teach you all things"?
Of this same kind was also, "I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Comforter, that he may be with you forever, the Spirit of truth." The Comforter, then, concerning whom he taught so much, was other than himself. Fittingly, then, he again added, saying: "These things I have spoken to you while remaining with you; but the Comforter, the Holy Spirit whom my Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and will remind you of all that I said."
"For up to now," he says, "I have spoken these things to you; but the Spirit of truth, whom my Father will likewise send, will teach you all things which you have not yet learned, because you are not [yet] able to receive them."
"But that One, when he comes" — I mean the Comforter — "will complete the teaching, and will also produce in you a remembrance of the things now spoken by me." And again he adds: "But when the Comforter comes, whom I will send to you from the Father — the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father — that One will testify concerning me." By all these words he clearly establishes that the one sent by him, and the one who is going to testify concerning him, is other than himself.
He elaborates the argument still further also through what he adds next: "But I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away. For if I do not go away, the Comforter will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you." And by saying that he himself would go away, he was signifying in these words both his own Passion and his subsequent ascent to the Father.
Who then is so foolish as, after so many statements, to say that the one speaking these things and the one concerning whom he was speaking are one and the same — when he hears him clearly distinguishing that he speaks the truth, and demonstrating what the truth is: namely, that unless he himself should go away, the Holy Spirit would never come?
But if he distinguishes that at one time the Father will send the Holy Spirit, and at another time [that] he himself [will send it], he is surely not teaching contrary things; for "all that he sees the Father doing, these the Son likewise does, and as he hears, he judges." Wherefore, by the judgment of the Father, when the Father also wills — at that time the Son, and (through him) the Savior, sends to his disciples the Spirit of truth, the Comforter, for the purpose of comforting and consoling them in what they were suffering at the hands of those who were persecuting them as they preached the gospel.
Not only for exhorting them, but also for teaching them the whole truth of the new covenant, which they were not able to receive being taught by the Savior when he spoke these things with them, because they were still enslaved to the Jewish manner of life.
These things he fulfilled in deed after his resurrection from the dead. After which, having said to Mary, "Do not touch me, for I have not yet ascended to my Father," afterward, inasmuch as he had already ascended to the Father, he appeared to the disciples, the Holy Spirit having been sent and being present with him, ready and standing by for the ministry to which it had been appointed, at which time he also permits them to touch him.
For then he breathed on them, and then he gave them a certain part of the gift of the Holy Spirit, that which is productive of the remission of sins; for there are divisions of gifts, of which he bestowed a part on them at that time, being with them and present to them, but afterward he filled them with a greater and more perfect power. Concerning which, in the Acts of the Apostles, he said to them, "But you shall receive power from on high when the Holy Spirit has come upon you"; at which time he also promised that they would be baptized in the Holy Spirit — which promise was itself fulfilled after his ascension, on the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit was sent to them in accordance with his own words.
Since the matters in question require further elaboration and clarity, it is not now the occasion to pursue them with exact scrutiny, since this is not our present purpose; but it was necessary to establish that the Paraclete Spirit is other than the Son — which was indeed demonstrated in various ways through what the Savior himself taught, both among other things and in what he said: "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now; but when he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you into all the truth."
"For he will not speak from himself, but whatever he hears, he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are coming. He will glorify me, because he will take from what is mine and will declare it to you." In these words again he promises that his disciples will learn from the Holy Spirit things which he himself did not teach — speaking of another when he says "when he comes," and "for he will not speak from himself," and "he will glorify me," and "because he will take from what is mine." For to suppose that the Savior means all these things about himself is a dreadful and incurable foolishness.
But indeed, through these words the Savior himself clearly taught that the Holy Spirit is other than himself, surpassing in honor and glory and precedence, and superior to and above every intellectual and rational essence — being greater and higher than every noetic and rational nature (wherefore it is also counted together with the holy and thrice-blessed Trinity).
Yet it is inferior to himself. And this he showed by saying, "For he will not speak from himself, but whatever he hears he will speak"; and from whom he will hear, he makes clear by saying, "He will take from what is mine and will declare it to you" — clearly from my own treasury; for in him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
He himself, then, inasmuch as he is the only-begotten Son, receives from the Father and hears from the Father, but the Holy Spirit is supplied from him; wherefore he says, "He will take from what is mine and will declare it to you." Now the God over all is also called Spirit, as the Savior himself taught, saying, "God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth," and he will be truly Holy of holies himself, and resting among the holy ones. But the Son of God also happens to be spirit, and he himself too is a holy Spirit among holy ones, if indeed he is the image of the invisible.
But indeed, since the Holy Spirit is other than the Father and the Son, the Savior, in establishing its distinguishing property, called it Paraclete, marking off the community of the common name by means of the appellation "Paraclete," since the angelic powers too might be called spirits — for it is said, "who makes his angels spirits." But none of these can be made equal to the Paraclete Spirit. Wherefore this alone is counted together with the holy and thrice-blessed Trinity.
Nor did the Savior otherwise instruct his apostles to hand down the mystery of his regeneration to all who believe in him from among the nations, than by baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit: the Father exercising authority and bestowing the grace, the Son ministering this (for "grace and truth came through Jesus Christ"), and the Holy Spirit — namely, the Paraclete — being the very one who is supplied according to the divisions of gifts within him; for to one is given through the Spirit a word of wisdom, to another a word of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith in the same Spirit, and the other things enumerated together with these likewise.
The Holy Spirit, then, is by nature suited to dwell only in the holy, being supplied through the Son to whomever the Father should judge fit. And this would be his work, to sanctify all to whom he imparts one or more of the gifts within him — as with prophets and apostles and every soul beloved of God, and it is likely also the superior and divine powers partake of holiness from him. But the Son alone, honored with paternal deity, would be productive and creative of all things that come into being, both visible and invisible, and indeed also of the very subsistence of the Paraclete Spirit.
"For all things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being"; and "in him all things were created, in the heavens and on the earth, whether visible or invisible." But the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is beyond all things, being some ineffable good and superior to all reasoning and understanding and every voice and thought, presides over all things whatsoever they are and however they exist, together with the Holy Spirit itself and moreover the only-begotten Son. He alone, fittingly, is called by the apostle the God who is over all and through all and in all, saying, "one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all."
And he alone would properly be styled the one God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, while the Son is the only-begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father; but the Paraclete Spirit is neither God nor Son, since it did not receive its own generation from the Father in the same manner as the Son, but is one of the things that came into being through the Son, since indeed "all things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being."
These things, then, are the mysteries handed down in this manner through the divine utterances to the holy and catholic Church; but Marcellus, confounding everything, at one moment goes down entirely into the very abyss of Sabellius, at another moment attempts to renew the heresy of Paul of Samosata, and at yet another moment stands openly convicted as a Jew — for he introduces a single hypostasis with three persons, as it were also with three names, saying that God and the Word in him and the Holy Spirit are one and the same.
Then, moving from there to the apostolic theological statements concerning Christ, he again employs distorted interpretations. For when the divine apostle theologizes explicitly concerning the Son of God, saying, "who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, because in him all things were created, both those in the heavens and those on the earth, whether visible or invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things have been created through him and for him; and he is before all things, and in him all things hold together" —
This wonder-worker, falling once again upon the flesh, declares it to be the image of the invisible God, not understanding that the relative "who" was rendered in the masculine gender in "who is the image." For as to "who," fitting it — I know not how — to the flesh, he claimed that this word signified the flesh, as if the flesh itself were the image of the invisible God. And again he says that "he is before all things" is said concerning the flesh, not being ashamed to apply "he himself" to the flesh.
And he says that Christ was called "firstborn of all creation" on account of the flesh, and he persists unflinchingly in claiming, with reference to the flesh, that "the things in the heavens and the things on the earth" were created, both the visible and the invisible; nor is he abashed to say that thrones and dominions and principalities and powers were deemed worthy of creation in Christ on account of the flesh of the Savior. Having already, in the writing before this one, set forth Marcellus's statements on these matters, sparing the reader excessive length, I shall content myself with that very testimony of theirs. As for how distorted and forced such an exposition of the apostolic text is, I do not think I need any further demonstration, since the shamelessness of this interpretation is manifest to everyone.
Yet after saying so much concerning the flesh of the Savior, he does not even preserve it intact for us; would that he had at least maintained a pious reasoning about it! But now, after all that he has said concerning it, he declares that at the consummation of the ages it is left destitute of the Word, writing thus: "If, then, he confesses that the flesh benefits him nothing, how is it possible that what is of the earth and benefits nothing, should also in the ages to come, as though it were advantageous to him, be together with the Word?"
And he repeats the same thing elsewhere, saying: "If, then, Paul said that in the time of the restoration of all things, even creation itself would be changed from bondage into freedom (for he says that 'the creation itself also will be set free from the bondage of corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God'), how would it still be possible for the form of a servant, which the Word assumed, being a servant's form, to be together with the Word on that account?"
You see what sort of statements he has dared to put forth against the flesh of our Savior, not observing that even before the ascension into heaven, while it was still on earth before the Passion, he so glorified it on the mountain, showing to three of his chosen disciples alone an image of his kingdom, so that his face flashed like lightning and gleams of light shone forth.
("For" — says the divine Scripture — "his face became as the sun, and his garments white as the light"); nor did he understand what sort of "body of glory" of Christ the divine apostle was speaking of, and how he also taught that our bodies too will be conformed to that body, saying, "who will transform the body of our humiliation to be conformed to the body of his glory"; nor did he perceive in what manner "the mortal will be swallowed up by life," of which he wrote, saying, "in respect of which we do not wish to be unclothed, but to be further clothed, that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life." Being unlearned in these matters, he asserts confidently on the one hand that the Word will become one and the same with God as he was before, but as for the flesh left behind by the Word, he does not know what it will ever become.
Hear, then, how he says these things: "If someone should inquire concerning this flesh which has become immortal in the Word, what shall we say to him? We think it is not safe for us to dogmatize about matters which we have not learned precisely from the divine Scriptures. For how is it possible for those who overturn the doctrines of others to do this themselves?"
"But we shall say to those who wish to learn from us the precise account of this matter, that being persuaded by the sacred apostle, we know that it is fitting for us to see the hidden mysteries in the way he himself said: for he says, 'we now see through a glass, darkly, but then face to face,' and so on. So do not inquire of me concerning matters I have not clearly learned from the divine Scripture; for this reason, then, neither shall I be able to speak clearly about that flesh, spoken of in divine Scripture, which had communion with the Word." Then he, who confesses that he is able to say nothing and has learned nothing from Scripture —
made such pronouncements about the flesh — taking them neither from Scripture, nor receiving them from others, nor learning them from the Church, but fashioning them for himself and devising, out of his own conceit, a strange offspring, alien to the truth, not even bearing in mind the Scripture which says, "Do not add to his words, lest he reprove you, and you be found a liar," and "woe to those who prophesy out of their own heart."
But observe into what great impiety he has fallen. For he who cast down the whole theology concerning the pre-existent only-begotten Son upon the flesh, and by his own very words proclaimed it a crown of victory (for thus he said, that the Word of God prepared the human flesh to become immortal through the resurrection, and, having bound it about him like a crown of victory, sits at the right hand of the Father) — this same man says that this flesh will be destitute and orphaned at the end of all things, uniting the Word to God but separating the flesh from the operation of the Word, and leaving it behind — immortal and incorruptible, I know not how, yet lifeless and inoperative, deprived of the Word.
And these things again he attempts to establish from the divine readings, which he has not understood. For our Savior, speaking to those who did not understand his teachings concerning his flesh and blood, said: "Does this offend you? What then if you should see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the Spirit that gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life."
Not attending to the meaning of this saying, he supposed that the Savior was setting aside the flesh which he assumed from the holy Virgin. Then from this he attempts to establish that after the consummation of all things, the Word who is in God will leave the flesh destitute of his own operation. Accordingly, he speaks in these very words: "For concerning the flesh which he had while conversing with the disciples, he speaks thus: 'Does this offend you? What then if you should see the Son of Man departing to where he was before? The Spirit gives life; the flesh profits nothing.' If, then, he confesses that the flesh benefits him nothing, how is it possible for what is of the earth and benefits nothing, in the ages to come as though profitable to him, to be together with the Word?" You see how great a distortion of the gospel word he has employed, because he did not understand the saving meaning of the saying, how it was said and for what reason.
But do you take up the gospel writing and observe the whole teaching of our Savior: how he was not speaking about the flesh which he had assumed, but about the mystical body and blood. For when he had fed the multitudes with the five loaves, and this occasioned great wonder among those who had seen it, most of the Jews, belittling what had happened, said to him, "What sign, then, do you perform, that we may see and believe?" Then they compared it to the manna in the wilderness, saying, "Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, as it is written: 'He gave them bread from heaven to eat.'"
To this the Savior answered: "Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven." Then he adds: "I am the bread of life," and again: "I am the bread that came down from heaven," and again: "the bread that I will give is my flesh." And again he adds: "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in yourselves."
"He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink."
"He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him." As he was expounding these and similar sayings in a rather mystical manner, some of his disciples said, "This is a hard saying; who can hear it?" To them the Savior replied, saying, "Does this offend you? What then if you should see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before?"
"It is the Spirit that gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life." By these words he taught them to hear spiritually what had been said concerning his flesh and blood; "for do not," he says, "suppose that I mean the flesh which I wear about me, as though it were necessary to eat it, nor imagine that I am commanding you to drink the perceptible and corporeal blood; but know well that my words which I have spoken to you are spirit and are life," so that the very words and sayings themselves are the flesh and the blood. And whoever partakes of these, being ever nourished as if by heavenly bread, will share in heavenly life.
"Let this, then," he says, "not offend you — what I have said concerning the eating of my flesh and the drinking of my blood; nor let the ready hearing of what has been said to you concerning flesh and blood trouble you; for these things, heard in a merely sensory way, profit nothing, but it is the Spirit that gives life to those who are able to hear spiritually."
But the new expositor of the gospel teachings, understanding none of this, hear how he writes, saying, in these very syllables, that after touching the human body and showing it to those who saw it, he said: "Does this offend you? What then if you should see the Son of Man going up to where he was before? The Spirit gives life; the flesh profits nothing."
To him one might say: And whence, my good fellow, this addition of things not found in the gospel writing? For to say that the Savior, having touched a human body and shown it to those who saw it, said, "Does this offend you?" — this you have fabricated out of your own head, and you dare to make the addition of your own accord. Having taken up this presumption on his own authority, he thinks from this to prepare the way for the flesh of the Savior being left destitute of the Word's operation, saying: "If, then, he confesses that the flesh benefits him nothing, how is it possible for what is of the earth and benefits nothing, in the ages to come as though profitable to him, to be together with the Word?" Thus, then, ignorantly and unlearnedly he set out to misinterpret the gospel utterance. And likewise he also made distorted interpretations of the apostolic sayings.
For example, in the Acts of the Apostles, when Peter has said concerning our Savior, "whom heaven must receive until the times of restoration," not having understood the meaning of the saying, he attempts from this to circumscribe the kingdom of Christ, asserting that a certain boundary and time-limit of his kingdom is indicated by the phrase "until the times of restoration."
And he says that this same thing is also established by the Psalm which says, "Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool," and that Paul the apostle for this reason said, "For he must reign until he has put his enemies under his feet"; for he supposed that "until" and "as far as" signify a circumscribed period of time. Hear, then, how he writes verbatim, saying: "For this reason it seems to me that the Almighty God, the Master, says to him, 'Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool' — seeming to separate him, by his operation alone, on account of his human flesh, and marking off, as it were, a fixed time for his session at the right hand, thus he says to him, 'until I make your enemies your footstool.'"
This prophetic saying of David the sacred apostle interprets more clearly for us, saying somewhat as follows: "For he must reign until he has put his enemies under his feet." Therefore his economy and kingship according to man seem to have a certain limit. And after other matters he adds: "And for this reason the Acts of the Apostles thus teach concerning this man whom the Word of God assumed, and having assumed sits at the right hand of the Father, saying, 'whom heaven must receive until the times of restoration' — these words too, as it were, marking off a certain boundary and time-limit."
To which, after other matters, he adds: "How could it still be possible for the form of a servant, which the Word assumed — being a servant's form — to be together with the Word on that account?" Thus, then, clearly and explicitly, the divinely inspired Paul has said that in a certain short span of time, comprising both the ages that have passed and those that are to come, the economy of the Word according to the flesh happened for our sake, and that this economy, just as it had a beginning, so too has an end — speaking somewhat as follows: "then comes the end, when he delivers up the kingdom to God the Father."
Through all this, Marcellus has both been ignorant of the body of the Son's glory and denies his unending kingdom, not observing that, according to a certain idiomatic usage peculiar to Scripture, the word "until" is customarily employed. Thus, for instance, the Savior said to his disciples: "Behold, I am with you all the days, until the consummation of the age" — not thereby abolishing his being with them even after the consummation, but teaching that both now he will be with them until the consummation, overseeing and guarding all who are his disciples, and after the consummation he will be with them in a more excellent manner, making them sharers of his own kingdom.
Thus, then, both "sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool" and "whom heaven must receive until the times of restoration" are said not as though he would no longer exist after these things, but as one who is going to arise from the paternal throne at the time of the consummation and make a second descent from heaven — concerning which the apostle teaches, saying: "that the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first; then we who are alive, who are left, will together with them be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will always be with the Lord." It is necessary, then, for the Savior to remain in heaven and sit at the right hand of the Father until the consummation, but at that very consummation of all things, having made his glorious and second coming, he will take up his holy ones to be with him always — not for a limited time, but into unending eternity; for thus he says, "we will always be with the Lord."
Therefore the holy ones, who will always be together with him, will enjoy his kingdom in the proclaimed kingdom of the heavens. But this excellent man, not understanding these things, when the divine apostle has spoken concerning our Savior, saying, "For he must reign until he has put his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be abolished is death," and again, "But when all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who subjected all things to him, that God may be all in all" —
employing this same usage, misinterprets these words as well, I know not how construing the Son's future subjection to the Father instead as the Word's being united to God. And when, indeed, was he not united to him, if he was the Word eternally existing in God? How, then, does he say that he will then be subjected to God and Father?
But one must pay careful attention to how the apostle said that all things will be subjected to the Son himself, and teaches that by this same subjection the Son himself will also be subjected to the Father, saying: "But when all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself also will be subjected to him who subjected all things to him, that God may be the all in all."
He does not understand this correctly; for he says that God will not be all things in the Son, but in all — which would seem rather to signify some conjunction and union of all things, if God should come to be all in all. But he interprets the subjection of the Son as a union of the Word, the Word coming to be one and the same with the Father as he was also formerly, as he himself said.
If, then, he defines the subjection of the Son to the Father as being a union, it would follow that also the subjection of all things to the Son would signify the same union with him — so that the Son would no longer exist by himself, nor would the multitudes of the saved who are to be subjected to him live their own life, but there would come about a certain amalgamation and confusion of all things, the Son and all the rest becoming one and the same — and not only that, but God himself too.