Theological Dissertation on the Theologoumena of Macarius Magnes

He adds, for the sake of the Christians, the testimony of S. Paul taken from 1 Cor. VIII. 5-6: "Thus the Apostle, in order to teach the true Divinity, and distinguishing the substance from the homonymy to convict it, and to show to his disciples God as God in essence and properly Lord, but others as Gods by position and not properly by the name, says: For even if there are Gods, just as indeed there are many lords, but for us there is one God, from whom are all things, and one Lord Jesus, through whom are all things. You see how he says, 'For even if there are gods' (meaning: by name only, not properly Gods), 'but for us one God,' that is, the truly God, whose rationale of substance bears witness to his Divinity."

The rationale of the demonstration which our Author uses is gathered openly from the purpose which the Apostle Paul had set before himself in this passage. For the divine Doctor of the Gentiles, who was speaking about idolothytis food sacrificed to idols, had taken upon himself to demonstrate this against the Gentiles: that an idol is nothing in the world, and there is no other God except the one (v. 4). When he saw, however, that the Gentiles could immediately object to him that there are many gods—who are called Gods not only by the opinion of men, but even by the mind of Holy Scripture itself, both in heaven and on earth—since it is established that this name of Gods is attributed to angels in heaven (Ps. 97:7, cf. Heb. 1:6), or to Magistrates on earth (Exod. 22:28, Ps. 82:1, 6, John 10:34-35), through the breadth of the word founded on some similarity with the true God, or in some participation of divine perfection: on this occasion, he recalls to the Corinthians, who had converted from Gentilism, the chief doctrine of the Christian Religion,