Personal Acts and Offices of Our Lord

 THERE are various (and those not the least prominent and important) acts and offices of our Lord, which, as involving the necessity of both His natures in concurrence and belonging to His Person, may be said to be either [ theandrika ] (vid. art. under that heading), or instances of [ antidosis idiomaton ] (vid. also art. on it). Such are His office and His acts as Priest, as Judge, etc., in which He can be viewed neither as simply God, nor as simply man, but in a third aspect, as Mediator, the two natures indeed being altogether distinct, but the character, in which He presents Himself to us by the union of these natures, belonging rather to His Person, which is composite.

 Athanasius says, Orat. ii. § 16, "Since we men would not acknowledge God through His Word, nor serve the Word of God our natural Master, it pleased God to show in man His own Lordship, and so to draw all men to Himself. But to do this by a mere man beseemed not; lest, having man for our Lord, we should become worshippers of man. Therefore the Word Himself became flesh, and the Father called His Name Jesus, and so 'made' Him Lord and Christ, as much as to say, 'He made Him to rule and to reign,' that while in the name of Jesus, whom ye crucified, every knee bows, we may acknowledge as Lord and King both the Son and through Him the Father." Here the renewal of mankind is made to be the act, primarily indeed of the Word, our natural Master, but not from Him, as such, simply, but as given to Him to carry out by the Father, when He became incarnate, by virtue of His Persona composita .

 He says again that, though none could be "a beginning" of creation, who was a creature, yet still that such a title belongs not to His essence. It is the name of an office which the Eternal Word alone can fill. His Divine Sonship is both superior and necessary to that office of a "Beginning." Hence it is both true (as he says) that "if the Word is a creature, He is not a beginning;" and yet that that "beginning" is "in the number of the creatures." Though He becomes the "beginning," He is not "a beginning as to His substance ;" vid. Orat. ii. § 60, where he says, "He who is before all, cannot be a beginning of all, but is other than all." He is the beginning in the sense of Archetype .

 And so again of His Priesthood (vid. art. upon it), the Catholic doctrine is that He is Priest, neither as God nor as man simply, but as being the Divine Word in and according to His manhood.

 Again S. Augustine says of judgment: "He judges by His divine power, not by His human, and yet man himself will judge, as 'the Lord of Glory' was crucified." And just before, "He who believes in Me, believes not in that which he sees, lest our hope should be in a creature, but in Him who has taken on Him the creature, in which He might appear to human eyes." Trin. i. 27, 28.

 And so again none but the Eternal Son could be [ prototokos ], yet He is so called only when sent, first as Creator, and then as Incarnate. Orat. ii. § 64.

 The phrase [ logos, hei logos esti ], is frequent in Athan., as denoting the distinction between the Word's original nature and His offices. vid. Orat. i. § 43, 44, 47, 48. ii. § 8, 74. iii. § 38, 39, 41, 44, 52. iv. § 23.