Chapter XIX. Amelius on the Theology of Our Evangelist John

[AMELIUS] [1] ‘AND this then was the Word, on whom as being eternal depended the existence of the things that were made, as Heracleitus also would maintain,[2] and the same forsooth of whom, as set in the rank and dignity of the beginning,the Barbarian maintains that He was with God and was God: through whomabsolutely all things were made;in whom the living creature, and life, and being had their birth: and that He came down into bodies, and clothed Himself in flesh, and appeared as man, yet showing withal even then the majesty of His nature; aye, indeed, even after dissolution He was restored to deity, and is a God, such as He was before He came down to dwell in the body, and the flesh, and Man.’

This, it must be evident, is paraphrased from the Barbarian’s theology, no longer under any veil, but openly at last and ‘with forehead bold and bare.’ [3] And who was this Barbarian of his but our Saviour’s Evangelist John, a Hebrew of the Hebrews? Who in the beginning of his own Scripture states the doctrine of the deity thus, ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that hath been made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.[4] . . . And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the Only-begotten from the Father.’[5]

Hear also what another Hebrew theologian says concerning the same Person: ‘Who is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation: for in Him were all things created, in the heavens and upon the earth, whether visible or invisible,... and by Him all things consist, and in Him were they all created.’

But since we have found such agreement between the philosophers of the Greeks and the doctrines of the Hebrews concerning the constitution and substantiation of the Second Cause, let us then pass on to other matters.