Marcellus of Ancyra

• Marcellus was bishop of Ancyra in Galatia. A strong supporter of the Homoousion at the Council of Nicaea. In 336 he was deposed from his see on the grounds of certain statements in his work against the Arian Asterius and the two Eusebii.
• The reaction of the Eusebian party was virulent. They accused him of Sabellianism, and so he was deposed and exiled by a synod at Constantinople in 336.
• He attended with St. Athanasius the synod convoked by Pope Julius in Rome in the fall of 340. Pope Julius requested of him an account of his faith in writing.
• This writing was judged to be Orthodox and the Synod refused to sanction his deposition. The Council of Sardica (343/344) also cleared him of the same charge thereupon. Marcellus was restored to his see. A few years later, in 347, he was again deposed and exiled, this time by Emperor Constantius.
• Canon I of the Second Ecumenical Council at Constantinople in 381 condemned him as a heretic. His Doctrines
• He was accused of Sabellianism. The Council of Sardica was correct in its statement that Marcellus never had asserted that the Word of God had a beginning. Nevertheless, he seemed to have held that theWord became Son only with the Incarnation. In his attempt to prove the Arian heresy no more than a poorly veiled polytheism, he himself teaches a monotheism which knows only an economical trinity, not identical with, but closely related to the concept of rationalist or dynamic Monarchians of former times.
• It is this tendency which leads him to the heretical doctrine that

before creation of the world the Logos was only in God and that at the end he will be only in God.The Logos therefore is absolutely co-essential with the Father (o`moou,sioj tw

1. The book which made him famous but caused all his troubles was his treatise Against Asterius the Sophist of Cappadocia. In it he not only attacked Asterius' errors but also the two Eusebii.

• We do not even know its title, not its outline or divisions. But not less than 127 passages are quoted by Eusebius of Caesarea in his Contra Marcellus and De ecclesiastica theologica.
• Another excerpt is found in St. Epiphanius as part of the refutation which Acacius of Caesarea, Eusebius’ successor, composed against Marcellus. 2. The profession of faith which Marcellus wrote down at the request of Pope Julius is extant. It could be interpreted as being in agreement with the Orthodox doctrine. 3. A small tract De sancta ecclesia; deals with the marks by which the true Church can be recognized, i.e. oneness, catholicity and apostolicity.
• St. Jerome remarks that he wrote many volumes especially against the Arians, in which he defended himself against their accusations and referred to his friendship with the bishops of Rome and Alexandria as a proof of his Orthodoxy. None of these

/ parti,) but He is not generated and not a person. Only the God-man Christ is a person, He alone is called, and is in reality, Son of God.