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| Chapter XIII. The majesty of the Son is His own, and equal to that of the Father, and the angels are not partakers, but beholders thereof.
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Chapter XIII.
The majesty of the Son is His own, and equal to that of
the Father, and the angels are not partakers, but beholders
thereof.
103. Now, we having
already laid down that the Father and the Son are of one image and
likeness,2280
it remains for
us to show that They are also of one majesty. And we need not go
far afield for proof, inasmuch as the Son Himself has said of
Himself: “When the Son of Man shall come in His majesty,
and all the angels with Him, then shall He sit upon the throne of His
majesty.”2281
Behold,
then, the majesty of the Son declared! What lacketh He yet, Whose
uncreated majesty cannot be denied?2282
Majesty, then, belongeth to the Son.
104. Let our adversaries now hold it proved
beyond doubt that the majesty of the Father and of the Son is one,
forasmuch as the Lord Himself hath said: “For he who shall
be ashamed of Me and of My words, of Him shall the Son of Man be
ashamed, when He cometh in His majesty and His Father’s, and the
majesty of the holy angels.”2283
What is the force of the words “and the majesty of the holy
angels,” but that the servants derive honour from the worship of
their Lord?
105. The Son, therefore, ascribed His majesty to
His Father as well as to Himself, not, indeed, in such sort that the
angels should share in that majesty on equal terms with the Father and
the Son, but that they should behold the surpassing glory of God; for
truly not even angels possess a majesty of their own, after the manner
in which Scripture speaks of the Son: “When He shall sit
upon the throne of His majesty,” but they stand in the presence,
that they may see the glory of the Father and the Son, in such degrees
of vision as they are either worthy of or able to bear.
106. Furthermore, the God-given words
themselves declare their own meaning, that you may understand that
glory of the Father and the Son not to be held in common with them by
angels, for thus they run: “But when the Son of Man shall
come in His majesty, and all the angels with Him.” Again,
to show that His Father’s majesty and glory and His own majesty
and glory are one and the same, our Lord Himself saith in another
book: “And the Son of Man shall confound him, when He shall
come in the glory of His Father, with the holy angels.”2284
The angels come in obedience, He
comes in glory: they are His retainers, He sits upon His
throne: they stand, He is seated—to borrow terms of the
daily dealings of human life, He is the Judge: they are the
officers of the court. Note that He did not place first His
Father’s divine majesty, and then, in the second place, His own
and the angels’, lest He should seem to have made out a sort of
descending order, from the highest to lower natures. He placed
His own majesty first, and then spoke of His Father’s, and the
majesty of the angels (because the Father could not appear lower than
they), in order that He might not, by placing mention of Himself
between that of His Father and that of the angels, seem to have made
out some ascending scale, leading from angels to the Father through
increase of His own dignity; nor, again, be believed to have,
contrariwise, shown a descent from the Father to angels, entailing
diminution of that dignity. Now we who confess one Godhead of the
Father and the Son suppose no such order of distinction as the Arians
do.2285
| 2285 i.e. no
such gradation as will lead without a break from angels to the Father
through the Son, ignoring the difference of creature and Creator. | E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
