The answer
St. Cyril of Jerusalem says, “God (the Father) is One, alone unbegotten, without beginning, change, or variation; neither begotten of another, nor having another to succeed Him in His life; who neither began to live in time, nor ever comes to an end: and that He is both good and just; that if ever you hear a heretic say, that there is one God who is just, and another who is good,348 you should immediately remember, and discern the poisoned arrow of heresy. For some have impiously dared to divide the One God in their teaching: and some have said that one is the Creator and Lord of the soul, and another of the body;349 a doctrine at once absurd and impious. For how can a man become the one servant of two masters, when our Lord says in the Gospels, ‘No man can serve two masters’ (Matt. 4:24; Luke 16:13)? There is then One Only God, the Maker both of souls and bodies: One Creator of heaven and earth, the Maker of Angels and Archangels: of many the Creator, but of One only the Father before all ages,—of One only, His Only-begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, by Whom He made ‘all things visible and invisible’ (John 1:3; Col. 1:16).”350
Fr. Tadros Yacoub Malaty
Notes
348 Irenæus, I. c. xxvii. says that Cerdo taught that the God of the Law and the Prophets was not the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ: for that He is known, but the other unknown, and the one is just, but the other good. Also III. c. 25, § 3: “Marcion himself, therefore, by dividing God into two, and calling the one good, and the other judicial, on both sides puts an end to Deity.” Compare Tertullian, c. Marcion. I. 2, and 6; Origen, c. Cels. iv. 54.
349 This tenet was held by the Manichæans.
350 St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures 4.4 (NPNF II/7:20) amended.