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By Archibald Robertson.
St Athanasius the Great Resources Online and in Print
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128 Pages (Part I)
Page 67
Marcellus 'appeals from Origen to S. John.' He begins with the idea of Sonship, as Arius and the Nicene Council had done. Perceiving that on the one hand Arians and Origenists alike were led by the idea of Sonship as dependent on paternal will to infer the inferiority of the Son to the Father, and in the more extreme case to deny His coeternity, feeling on the other hand (with Irenaeus II. xxviii. 6) our inability to find an idea to correspond with the relation implied in the eternal Sonship, he turns to the first chapter of S. John as the classic passage for the pre-existent nature of Christ. He finds that before the Incarnation the Saviour is spoken of as Logos only: accordingly all other designations, even that of Son, must be reserved for the Incarnate. Moreover (Joh. i. 1) the Word is strictly coeternal, and no name implying an act (such as gennesis) can express the relation of the Word to God. But in view of the Divine Purpose of Creation and Redemption (for the latter is involved in the former by the doctrine of anakephalaiosis) there is a process, a stirring within the divine Monad. The Word which is potentially (dunamei) eternally latent in God proceeds forth in Actuality (energei& 139;), yet without ceasing to be potentially in God as well. In this energeia drastike, to which the word gennesis may be applied, begins the great drama of the Universe which rises to the height of the Incarnation, and which, after the Economy is completed, and fallen man restored (and more than restored) to the Sonship of God which he had lost, ends in the return of the Logos to the Father, the handing over of His Kingdom by the Son, that God may be all in all.
What strikes one throughout the scheme is the intense difficulty caused to Marcellus by the unsolved problem which underlies the whole theology of the Nicene leaders, the problem of personality. The Manhood of Christ was to Marcellus per se non-personal. The seat of its personality was the indwelling Logos.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/athanasius/athanasius-life-arianism.asp?pg=67
