Why is it, the learned Church Historian, who is hailed by many, given this honor – especially when he, standing on the shoulders of Origen, denied the absolute deity of Christ? Of course, the particular doctrine of Eusebius focused a reality upon each title, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Doctrine is not seen, discussed, nor developed in a vacuum – and I have to wonder if development, even in language, would have been necessary if Arius had never been asked a question.
(2.) For the Son of God himself, who quite clearly knows all things, knows that he is different from, less, and inferior to the Father, and with full piety also teaches us this when he says, "The Father who sent me is greater than me" .
Except that as Marcellus would point out – the Reality of the Incarnation is different than the reality of pre-existence. The Father is greater than the Incarnated Son, having sent forth His Logos to tabernacle with men.
(3.) But he teaches that that one is alone true when he says, "that they may know you, the only true God" , not as if one only is God, but that one is the (only) true God, with the very necessary addition of true. For also he himself is Son of God, but not true, as God is. For there is but one true God, the one before whom nothing existed. But if the Son himself is true, it is simply as an image of the true God, and he is God, for "and the Word was God" , but not as the only true God.
Yet, in 1st John 5:20 we read the same phrase as applied to Christ. For both Origen and the (semi-) Arians monotheism was defended by having God the Father as absolute, or one true God. Yet, while Christ spoke to the Father calling Him in heaven the one true God, John was able to say that to the ascended Christ.
But surely the image and the one whose image it is are not considered one, but they are two Beings and two Things and two Powers, similarly with other titles .
A 'Marcellian' must have written the first, in italics, citing the Logoi of Justin, Origen, in which once the Logos was developed apart from the supercelestial God, there was of a necessity of several Logoi – one from the Father and one of the Father. The phrase 'another God' is direct from Justin's works in describing the meeting at Mamri.
For more clearly also the divine Apostle transmits to us the unspoken and mystical theology when he calls and cries out, "There is one God;" then after saying one God he continues to describe another, "One mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus" .
How strange this talk of 'another God' must have sounded in the hears of the miahypostatics.