BEING THEN GOD’S OFFSPRING, WE OUGHT NOT TO THINK THAT THE DIVINE BEING IS LIKE GOLD OR SILVER OR STONE, AN IMAGE FORMED BY THE ART AND IMAGINATION OF MAN. THE TIMES OF IGNORANCE GOD OVERLOOKED, BUT NOW HE COMMANDS ALL PEOPLE EVERYWHERE TO REPENT, BECAUSE HE HAS FIXED A DAY ON WHICH HE WILL JUDGE THE WORLD IN RIGHTEOUSNESS BY A MAN WHOM HE HAS APPOINTED; AND OF THIS HE HAS GIVEN ASSURANCE TO ALL BY RAISING HIM FROM THE DEAD.

NOW WHEN THEY HEARD OF THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD, SOME MOCKED. BUT OTHERS SAID, “WE WILL HEAR YOU AGAIN ABOUT THIS.” SO PAUL WENT OUT FROM THEIR MIDST. BUT SOME MEN JOINED HIM AND BELIEVED, AMONG WHOM ALSO WERE DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE AND A WOMAN NAMED DAMARIS AND OTHERS WITH THEM.

ACTS 17

Since the universal judgment is a work of the mediatorial office, it is ascribed to the person according to both natures, not according to one only. Therefore the distinct operations of each nature concur to it, the divine indeed by omniscience and omnipotence, the human by the return to judgment and the sensible and visible acts of judgment described in Mt. 25:31-46. When it is said “And hath given him authority to execute judgment also, because he is the Son of Man” (hoti hyios anthropoid, Jn 5:27), the particle hoti is to be taken not so much reduplicatively (for “inasmuch as”) so that Christ not only as God, but also as man may be called a Judge appointed by God (as the apostle has it, Acts 17.31), as causally (by “because”) to mark the cause of the bestowment of this authority upon the Son – namely the office of Mediator which he entered through the incarnation. Thus the Son of man denotes here not the human nature in the abstract, but the person in the concrete, relative to his official; nor does it signify anything else than that such a power was given to him because he is the Messiah (who is called by Daniel the “Son of man,” 7:13) to whom Daniel saw the empire and power given by the Ancient of Days (since he is that person who was chosen for so great and so sublime a mediatorial work).