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Fragment number Vinzent 98
Klostermann 58
Rettb. 52
Ancient source used Eusebius, Against Marcellus 2.2. On Ecclesiastical Theology 1.17;2.15;3.3.
Modern edition M. Vinzent, Markell von Ankyra: Die Fragmente (Leiden, 1997).

For which of the holy angels or righteous men was so credible as to pay the penalty appointed for him from before God except for the Word himself who both was present with him and forming things together with him? To him the Father said, “Let us make man in our image and likeness” (Gen 1:26), for there is no other God who is able to form things together with him. For he says, “I am the first God and I am after these things and besides me there is no other God” (Is 44:6). So there was not “some younger God” or “some other God “after these things” who was able to work with God.
But in case someone would like to use some small, human, every-day example and examine the divine act as through an image: Any skillful sculptor, when he plans to form a statue, first pictures in his mind its forms and features. Then he considers what the fitting height and width is and arranges the proportion of everything part by part. He prepares the appropriate material bronze, and first strikes the statue to be with his intelligence. He does not begin until he is convinced that he has seen it mentally, conscious of the fact that his reason works together with him. By it he reasons and by it he is accustomed to doing everything, for nothing good is done without reason. Then when beginning this perceptible work, he calls to himself as if talking to someone else, saying, “Come, let us make! Come, let us form a statue!” In this way God, the Lord of all, when making out of the earth a statue with a soul called not to someone else but to his own reason, the Word, “Let us make man,” in the same way as with other things, for the entire creation came to exist by the Word.

Translated by AMJ

Last updated: 8-29-2012

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