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| Christ as the First and the Last; He is Also What Lies Between These.
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34. Christ as the First
and the Last; He is Also What Lies Between These.
Further, we have to ask in what sense He is called in
the Apocalypse the First and the Last, and how, in His character as the
First, He is not the same as the Alpha and the beginning, while in His
character as the Last He is not the same as the Omega and the
end. It appears to me, then, that the reasonable beings which exist are characterized by
many forms, and that some of them are the first, some the second, some
the third, and so on to the last. To pronounce exactly, however,
which is the first, what kind of a being the second is, which may truly
be designated third, and to carry this out to the end of the series,
this is not a task for man, but transcends our nature. We shall
yet venture, such as we are, to stand still a little at this point, and
to make some observations on the matter. There are some gods of
whom God is god, as we hear in prophecy,4611
“Thank ye the God of gods,” and4612
“The God of gods hath spoken, and called the earth.”
Now God, according to the Gospel,4613
“is not
the God of the dead but of the living.” Those gods, then,
are living of whom God is god. The Apostle, too, writing to the
Corinthians, says:4614
“As
there are gods many and lords many,” and so we have spoken of
these gods as really existing. Now there are, besides the gods of
whom God is god, certain others, who are called thrones, and others
called dominions, lordships, also, and powers in addition to
these. The phrase,4615
“above every
name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is
to come,” leads us to believe that there are yet others besides
these which are less familiar to us; one kind of these the Hebrews
called Sabai, from which Sabaoth was formed, who is their ruler, and is
none other than God. Add to all these the reasonable being who is
mortal, man. Now the God of all things made first in honour some
race of reasonable beings; this I consider to be those who are called
gods, and the second order, let us say, for the present, are the
thrones, and the third, undoubtedly, the dominions. And thus we
come down in order to the last reasonable race, which, perhaps, cannot
be any other than man. The Saviour accordingly became, in a
diviner way than Paul, all things to all, that He might either gain all
or perfect them; it is clear that to men He became a man, and to the
angels an angel. As for His becoming man no believer has any
doubt, but as to His becoming an angel, we shall find reason for
believing it was so, if we observe carefully the appearances and the
words of the angels, in some of which the powers of the angels seem to
belong to Him. In several passages angels speak in such a way as
to suggest this, as when4616
“the angel of
the Lord appeared in a flame of fire. And he said, I am the God
of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob.” But Isaiah also
says:4617
“His name is called Angel
of Great Counsel.” The Saviour, then, is the first and the
last, not that He is not what lies between, but the extremities are
named to show that He became all things. Consider, however,
whether the last is man, or the things said to be under the earth, of
which are the demons, all of them or some. We must ask, too,
about those things which the Saviour became which He speaks of through
the prophet David,4618
“And I became
as a man without any to help him, free among the dead.” His
birth from the Virgin and His life so admirably lived showed Him to be
more than man, and it was the same among the dead. He was the
only free person there, and His soul was not left in hell. Thus,
then, He is the first and the last. Again, if there be letters of
God, as such there are, by reading which the saints may say they have
read what is written on the tablets of heaven, these letters, by which
heavenly things are to be read, are the notions, divided into small
parts, into Α and so on to
Ω, the Son of God. Again,
He is the beginning and the end, but He is this not in all His aspects
equally. For He is the beginning, as the Proverbs teach us,
inasmuch as He is wisdom; it is written: “The Lord founded
Me in the beginning of His ways, for His works.” In the
respect of His being the Logos He is not the beginning.
“The Word was in the beginning.” Thus in His aspects
one comes first and is the beginning, and there is a second after the
beginning, and a third, and so on to the end, as if He had said, I am
the beginning. inasmuch as I am wisdom, and the second, perhaps,
inasmuch as I am invisible, and the third in that I am life, for
“what was made was life in Him.” One who was
qualified to examine and to discern the sense of Scripture might, no
doubt, find many members of the series; I cannot say if he could find
them all. “The beginning and the end” is a phrase we
usually apply to a thing that is a completed unity; the beginning of a
house is its foundation and the end the parapet. We cannot but
think of this figure, since Christ is the stone which is the head of
the corner, to the great unity of the body of the saved. For
Christ the only-begotten Son is all and in all, He is as the beginning
in the man He assumed, He is present as the end in the last of the
saints, and He is also in those between, or else He is present
as the beginning in Adam, as the
end in His life on earth, according to the saying: “The
last Adam was made a quickening spirit.” This saying
harmonizes well with the interpretation we have given of the first and
the last.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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