Annotatio XVIII

”Let us make man.” — Genesis 1:26

Melito the Asian, Bishop of Sardis, in his book περὶ τοῦ ἐνσωμάτου θεοῦ — that is, On God clothed with a body — expounding the present passage, seems to assert that the image of God, to which man was made, is corporeal, just as God himself is corporeal, having human form, figure, and members.¹ Which opinion Epiphanius reckons among the heresies of the Audiani, who are also called Anthropomorphites. For Theodoret writes thus about Melito, on Genesis question 20: “It must, however (as I said before), first be discussed where that ‘to the image’ resides — in the body, or in the soul. And first let us see what [arguments] those use who assert the former. Of whose number is Melito, who left writings in which he asserts that God is corporeal. For ‘we call them the members of God,’ they say, ‘when we find “the eyes of God looking upon the earth,”² and “his ears attentive to their prayers,” and “God smelled the odor of sweetness,”³ and “the mouth of the Lord has spoken,”⁴ and “the arm of God,” and hands, and feet, and fingers.⁵ From which they immediately infer that these things teach nothing other than the form of God.’” These things Theodoret reports about Melito according to the Latin translation of John Pico the Gaul. But since the same Theodoret, in the fourth book of Heretical Fables, disputing against the Audiani, the assertors of this madness, ascribes nothing of the sort to Melito, and since there is no approved writer who accuses him of this kind of error, I would never dare to believe that a man greatest in sanctity and erudition — whom Tertullian asserts was held by Christians as a prophet — fell into such madness; and especially since the aforesaid words of Theodoret stand far otherwise in the Greek copies than in the Latin translation. For what Pico translated as “of whose number is Melito, who left writings in which he asserts that God is corporeal,” is read in the corrected Greek codices in this manner: Ὧν ἐστι καὶ Μελίτων συγγράμματα καταλέλοιπε, Περὶ τοῦ ἐνσωμάτου θεοῦ — that is, “Among which are the writings that Melito left, Concerning what is called the attribution of a body to God.” For indeed, as Eusebius and Jerome testify, Melito wrote a book to which he gave the title περὶ τοῦ ἐνσωμάτου θεοῦ — that is, On God clothed with a body, or On the God to whom the divine Scripture attributes a body — in which he most powerfully confuted the arguments of those who assert God to be corporeal, and who think the image of God, to which man was made, is corporeal; as also appears clearer than light from the following words of Theodoret, set down in the same 20th question:

In the book of Theodoret printed at Cologne at the expense of the widow and heirs of John Stelsius in the year 1573, there is no word about Melito — although the translator is said to be John Pico, president of the inquisitorial courts of the Parisian Senate. For thus it is written in that place: “Certain overly simple people say that the human body was made to the image of God, because they hear the divine voice saying, ‘Open your eyes and see,’ and ‘Incline your ear and hear,’ and ‘The Lord smelled the odor of sweetness,’ and that, ‘The mouth of the Lord has spoken these things,’ and, ‘In his hand are the ends of the earth,’ and the like. Wherein the stupid did not observe that the Lord God speaks to men in a human manner, accommodating his discourses to the weakness of the hearers,” etc.