Nicene and Post-Nicene Church Fathers Series 2 - The Still Small ...

“If the Son has not authority over the judgment, and power to benefit some and chastise
others, how could He say, ‘The Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment
unto the Son’? 453 And in another place, ‘The Son of man hath power on earth to forgive
sins;’ 454 and again, ‘All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth;’ 455 and to Peter, ‘I
will give thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven;’ 456 and to the disciples, ‘Verily, I say unto
you that ye which have followed me, in the regeneration,…shall sit upon twelve thrones,
judging the twelve tribes of Israel.’ 457 The explanation is clear from the Scripture, since the
Saviour said, ‘Then will I reward every man according to his work;’ 458 and in another place,
‘They that have done good shall come forth unto the resurrection of life, and they that have
done evil unto the resurrection of damnation.’ 459 And the Apostle says, ‘We must all appear
before the judgment seat of Christ, that every one may receive the things done in his body,
according to what he hath done, whether it be good or bad.’ 460 It is therefore the part of
the recipients to make themselves worthy of a seat on the left and on the right of the Lord:
it is not the part of Him Who is able to give it, even though the request be unjust.” 461
On Ps. xviii. 31, LXX. Who is God, save the Lord? Who is God save our God?
“It has already been sufficiently demonstrated that the Scriptures employ these expressions
and others of a similar character not of the Son, but of the so-called gods who were
not really so. I have shewn this from the fact that in both the Old and the New Testament
the son is frequently styled both God and Lord. David makes this still clearer when he says,
similar error is to be found in both the French and German (Luther’s) of Bagster’s polyglot edition. Wiclif has
correctly, “is not myn to geve to you but to whiche it is made redi of my fadir.” So Tyndale, “is not myne to
geve but to them for whom it is prepared of my father.” The gloss begins with Cranmer (1539), “it shall chance
unto them that it is prepared for,” and first appears in the Geneva of 1557 as the A.V. has perpetuated it. The
Rheims follows the vobis of the Vulgate, but is otherwise correct. cf. note on Theodoret in this edition, p. 169.
453 John v. 22.
454 Mark ii. 10.
455 Matt. xxviii. 18.
456 Matt. xvi. 19.
457 Matt. xix. 28.
458 cf. Matt. xvi. 27.
459 John v. 29.
460 2 Cor. v. 10.
461 These last words are explained by a Scholium to the MS. Reg. II. to be a reference to the unreasonable
petition of James and John. It will be seen how totally opposed Basil’s interpretation is to that required by the
gloss of A.V.
Dogmatic.
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