other · 336 · Ancyra
Marcellus of Ancyra was one of the staunchest defenders of the homoousios at Nicaea and one of the very few easterners who never wavered on it, which is why Athanasius stood by him for years and why Rome received him when the east deposed him. His problem was that he pressed the logic. If God is one, he argued, then the Word is not a second person alongside the Father but the Father's own reason, which goes out for the work of creation and redemption and is drawn back at the end, so that God may be all in all — and the reign of Christ therefore has an end. He was deposed at Constantinople in 336, restored at Rome and Serdica, condemned again, and his followers were still being dealt with at Constantinople in 381. The mark he left is in the creed everyone says: the clause whose kingdom shall have no end was put there against him. This dataset keeps him because he is the clearest case of a man condemned not for opposing the council but for defending it past the point where its words could carry him.
Can a man be too Nicene?
The council thought so, and added a clause to the creed because of him.