Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Chapter XI. St. Ambrose returns to the main question, and shows that whenever Christ is said to have “been made” (or “become”), this must be understood with reference to His Incarnation, or to certain limitations. In this sense several passages of Scripture--especially of St. Paul--are expounded. The eternal Priesthood of Christ, prefigured in Melchizedek. Christ possesses not only likeness, but oneness with the Father.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter XI.
St. Ambrose returns to the main question, and shows that
whenever Christ is said to have “been made” (or
“become”), this must be understood with reference to His
Incarnation, or to certain limitations. In this sense several
passages of Scripture—especially of St. Paul—are
expounded. The eternal Priesthood of Christ, prefigured in
Melchizedek. Christ possesses not only likeness, but oneness with
the Father.
76. When,
therefore, Christ is said to have been “made,” to have
“become,” the phrase relates, not to the substance of the
Godhead, but often to the Incarnation—sometimes indeed to a
particular office; for if you understand it of His Godhead, then God
was made into an object of insult and derision inasmuch as it is
written: “But thou hast rejected thy Christ,2241
and brought Him to nought; thou hast
driven Him to wander;” and again: “And He was made
the derision of His neighbours.”2242
Of His neighbours, mark
you—not of them of His household, not of them who clave to Him,
for “he who cleaveth to the Lord is one Spirit;”2243
he who is neighbour doth not cleave to
Him. Again, “He was made a derision,” because the
Lord’s Cross is to Jews a stumbling-block, and to Greeks is
foolishness:2244
for to
them that are wise He is, by that same Cross, made higher than
the heavens, higher than angels, and is made the Mediator of the better
covenant, even as He was Mediator of the former.
77. Mark how I repeat the phrase; so far am I from
seeking to avoid it. Yet take notice in what sense He is
“made.”
78. In the first place, “having made
purification, He sitteth on the right hand of Majesty on high, being
made so much better than the angels.”2245
Now where purification is, there is
a victim; where there is a victim, there is also a body; where a body
is, there is oblation; where there is the office of oblation, there
also is sacrifice made with suffering.
79. In the next place, He is the Mediator of
a better covenant. But where there is testamentary disposition,
the death of the testator must first come to pass,2246
as it is written a little further
on. Howbeit, the death is not the death of His eternal Godhead,
but of His weak human frame.
80. Furthermore, we are taught how He is
made “higher than the heavens.”
“Unspotted,” saith the Scripture,2247
“separate from sinners, and made
higher than the heavens; not having daily need, as the priests have
need, to offer a victim first for his own sins, and then for those of
the people. For this He did by sacrificing Himself once and for
all.” None is said to be made higher, save he who has in
some respect been lower; Christ, then, is, by His sitting at the right
hand of the Father, made higher in regard of that wherein, being made
lower than the angels, He offered Himself to suffer.
81. Finally, the Apostle himself saith to
the Philippians, that “being made in the likeness of man, and
found in outward appearance as a man, He humbled Himself, being made
obedient even unto death.”2248
Mark that, in regard whereof He is “made,” He is made, the
Apostle saith, in the likeness of man, not in respect of Divine
Sovereignty, and He was made obedient unto death, so that He displayed
the obedience proper to man, and obtained the kingdom appertaining of
right to Godhead.
82. How many passages need we cite further
in evidence that His “being made” must be understood with
reference to His Incarnation, or to some particular dispensation?
Now whatsoever is made, the same is also created, for “He spake
and they were made; He gave also the word, and they were
created.”2249
“The Lord created me.” These words are spoken with
regard to His Manhood; and we have also shown, in our First Book, that
the word “created” appears to have reference to the
Incarnation.
83. Again, the Apostle himself, by declaring
that no worship is to be rendered to a created existence, has shown
that the Son has not been created, but begotten, of God.2250
At the same time he shows in other
places what there was in Christ that was created, in order to make
plain in what sense he has read in Solomon’s book:
“The Lord created Me.”
84. Let us now review a whole
passage2251
| 2251 Viz.: the
complete section Heb. ii.
14–iii. 2. | in order.
“Seeing, then, that the sons have parts of flesh and blood, He
too likewise was made to have part in the same, to the end that by
death He might overthrow him who had the power of
death.”2252
Who, then,
is He Who would have us to be partakers in His own flesh and
blood? Surely the Son of God. How, save by means of the
flesh, was He made partaker with us,2253
| 2253 Particeps
noster—our partner, companion, sharing all our labours (and
taking the lion’s share, too). Isa. liii. 4. | or
by
what, save by
bodily death, brake He the chains of death? For Christ’s
endurance of death was made the death of Death.2254
This text, then, speaks of the
Incarnation.
85. Let us see what follows:
“For He did not indeed [straightway] put on Him the nature of
angels, but that of Abraham’s seed. And thus was He able to
be made like to His brethren in all things throughout, that He might
become a compassionate and faithful Prince, a Priest unto God, to make
propitiation for the sins of the people; for in that He Himself
suffered He is able also to help them that are tempted.
Wherefore, brethren most holy, ye who have each his share in a heavenly
calling, look upon the Apostle and High Priest of our confession,
Jesus, regard His faithfulness to His Creator, even as Moses was in his
house.”2255
These,
then, are the Apostle’s words.
86. You see what it is in respect whereof
the writer calls Him created: “In so far as He took upon
Him the seed of Abraham;” plainly asserting the begetting of a
body. How, indeed, but in His body did He expiate the sins of the
people? In what did He suffer, save in His body—even as we
said above: “Christ having suffered in the
flesh”? In what is He a priest, save in that which He took
to Himself from the priestly nation?2256
87. It is a priest’s duty to offer
something, and, according to the Law, to enter into the holy places by
means of blood; seeing, then, that God had rejected the blood of bulls
and goats, this High Priest was indeed bound to make passage and entry
into the holy of holies in heaven through His own blood, in order that
He might be the everlasting propitiation for our sins. Priest and
victim, then, are one; the priesthood and sacrifice are, however,
exercised under the conditions of humanity, for He was led as a lamb to
the slaughter, and He is a priest after the order of
Melchizedek.2257
88. Let no man, therefore, when he beholds
an order of human establishment, contend that in it resides the claim
of Divinity;2258
for even that
Melchizedek, by whose office Abraham offered sacrifice, the Church doth
certainly not hold to be an angel (as some Jewish triflers do), but a
holy man and priest of God, who, prefiguring our Lord,2259
| 2259 Orig.
“typum gerens Domini”—“bearing the stamp
of our Lord,” marked with His mark, as a coin is stamped with the
image and superscription of the king or other authority who issues
it. | is described as “without father or
mother, without history of his descent, without beginning and without
end,”2260
in order to show
beforehand the coming into this world of the eternal Son of God, Who
likewise was incarnate and then brought forth without any father,
begotten as God without mother, and was without history of descent, for
it is written: “His generation who shall
declare?”2261
89. This Melchizedek, then, have we received
as a priest of God made upon the model of Christ, but the one we regard
as the type, the other as the original. Now a type is a shadow of
the truth, and we have accepted the royalty of the one in the name of a
single city, but that of the other as shown in the reconciliation of
the whole world; for it is written: “God was in Christ,
reconciling the world to Himself;”2262
that is to say, [in Christ was] eternal
Godhead: or, if the Father is in the Son, even as the Son is in the
Father, then Their unity in both nature2263
and operation is plainly not
denied.
90. But how, indeed, could our adversaries
justly deny this, even if they would, when the Scripture saith:
“But the Father, Who abideth in Me, even He doeth the
works;” and “The works that I do, He Himself
worketh”?2264
Not
“He also doeth the works,” but one should regard it
as similarity rather than unity of work; in saying, “The things
that I do, He Himself doeth,” the Apostle has left it clear that
we ought to believe that the work of the Father and the work of the Son
is one.
91. On the other hand, when He would have
similarity, not unity, of works, to be understood, He said:
“He that believeth in Me, the works which I do, shall he do
also.”2265
Skilfully
inserting here the word “also,” He hath allowed us
similarity, and yet hath not ascribed natural unity. One,
therefore, is the work of the Father and the work of the Son, whether
the Arians please so to think or not.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
