It belongs to their character as didactic rather than narrative writings, for example, that in Paul’s Epistles the designation of our Lord by the simple ‘Jesus’ falls strikingly into the background,⁴ while the designation of Him as Lord comes strikingly forward.¹ This phenomenon we already observed in Acts: it is much more marked in Paul. The simple Jesus’ occurs in all these Epistles only some seventeen times, while the simple Lord occurs some 144 or 146 times, to which may be added 95 to 97 more instances of the use of ‘ Lord in conjunction with the proper name. And this constant application of the term ‘ Lord to Jesus must not be imagined merely a formal mark of respect.² It is the definite ascription to Him of universal absolute dominion not only over men, but over the whole universe of created beings (Phil 2¹¹, Rom 10¹²).}

Note: Cf. Stanton, The Jewish and Christian Messiah, p. 156-7. 4 Cf. Robinson on Eph 1³ (p. 23): “To St. Paul, Jesus was preéminently the Christ” Very rarely does he use the name Jesus’ without linking it with the name or the title ‘ Christ.” “Cf. p. 107.

It is, of course, true that Paul has the exalted Jesus in mind in thus speaking of Him. It was only on His exaltation that Jesus entered upon His dominion. But it by no means follows that he conceived Jesus to have acquired His Lordship,’ in the sense of His inherent right to reign, by His exaltation. On the contrary, to Paul it was the ‘ Lord of Glory who was crucified (1 Cor 2⁸).

Note: The statistics of Paul’s employment of the various designations of our Lord are carefully given by Paul Feine, Jesus Christus und Paulus, 1902, pp. 21 seq. The text he uses is Nestle’s ed. 3, 1901.

Note: It was a notion of Baur’s (Der Lehre von der Dreieinigkeit, 1. p. 85, N. T. Theologie, p. 193) that Lord in Paul always means ‘ Lord of the Church,’ through whom salvation has been brought to men. Not only the passages cited, but many others, such as 1 Cor 8⁶ negative this. Dr. Sanday (on Rom 1⁴, p. 10) supposes that this was the primary meaning of the term: “On the lips of Christians, κύριος denotes the idea of sovereignty,’ primarily over themselves as the society of believers (Col 1¹⁸sea.), but also over all creation (Phil 2¹⁰,¹¹1 Col 1¹⁶,¹⁷)” “The title,” he adds, “was given to our Lord even in His lifetime (Jno 13¹³), but without a full consciousness of its significance: it was only after the Resurrection that the Apostles took it to express their central belief (Phil 2⁹sed.).” These remarks, however, require revision. Though the term “does not in itself necessarily involve divinity “and “Jews may have applied it to their Messiah (Mk 123⁶,3⁷, Pss Sol 17⁴⁶) without meaning that He was God”—and indeed His followers may have applied it to Jesus in its lower connotation during His lifetime and afterwards,—yet its association with the Lord of the LXX. gave it also its divine implication from the beginning, and in point of fact it is so employed from the first. 9 Cf. T. C. Edwards on 1 Cor 2⁸; who rightly takes the genitive as genitive of characteristic quality, and explains: “The Lord to whom glory belongs as His native right… Glory is the peculiar attribute of Jehovah among all the gods (Ps 29¹). The expression is theologically important because it implies that Jesus was Lord of Glory, that is Jehovah, and that the Lord of Glory died (cf. Acts 3¹⁵).” Passages like 1 Cor 11²⁶, “the Lord’s death,” 11²⁷, “the body and blood of the Lord,” are quite similar in import, owing to the exalted sense of the term Lord.’ Hence Heinrici speaks of “the paradox” in such expressions. Cf. Heinrici-Mever. ed. 1896. pp. 252 and 2613.

That is to say, even in the days of His flesh, Jesus was to him intrinsically “ the Lord to whom glory belongs as His native right.⁹ That Paul usually has the exalted Christ in mind when speaking of Him as Lord is only thus a portion of the broader fact that, writing when he wrote, and as he wrote, he necessarily had the exalted Christ in mind in the generality of his speech of Him. He was not engaged in writing a historical retrospect of the life of the man Jesus on earth, but in proclaiming Jesus as the all-sufficient Saviour of men. That he recognized that this Jesus had entered upon the actual exercise of His universal dominion only on His resurrection and ascension, and in this sense had received it as a reward for His work on earth (Phil 2⁹, Rom 14⁹) merely means that, no less than to our Lord Himself, the earthly manifestation of Jesus was to Paul an estate of humiliation upon which the glory followed.³ But the glory which thus followed the humiliation was to Paul, too, a glory which belonged of right to Jesus, to whom His lowly life on earth, not His subsequent exaltation, was a strange experience. “It was one who was rich, he tells us, who (in Jesus became poor that we might through His poverty become rich (2 Cor 8⁹); it was one who was in the form of God who abjured clinging to His essential equality with God and made Himself of no reputation by taking the form of a servant, and stooping even to the death of the cross (Phil 2⁶ seq.). When Paul speaks of Jesus, therefore, as ‘ Lord it is not especially of His exaltation that he is thinking, but rather ““the whole majesty of Christ lies in this predicate⁴ for him, and the recognition that Jesus is ‘ Lord expresses for him accordingly the essence of Christianity

(Rom 10⁹, 2 Cor 4⁵, 1. Cor 12³, Phil 2¹¹). The proc lamation of the Gospel is summed up for him therefore in this formula (2 Cor 4⁵); the confession of Jesus as Lord is salvation (Rom 10⁹), and it is the mark of a Christian that he serves the Lord Christ (Col 3²⁴); for no one can say that Jesus is Lord except in the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 12³).

Obviously the significance of the title Lord as applied to Jesus by Paul is not uninfluenced by its constant employment of God in the Greek Old Testament, and especially in those Old Testament passages which Paul ap- “/ plies to Jesus, in which Lord is the divine name (e.g. 2 Thess 1⁹, 1 Cor 1³¹ 10⁹,²⁶; 2 Cor 3¹⁶ 10¹⁷; Rom 10¹³, Eph 6⁴ 2 Tim 2¹⁹ 4¹⁴: Isaiah 45²³ is clied with reference to God in Rom 14¹¹, and with reference to Jesus in Phil 2¹⁰).⁵2 Under the influence of these passages the title ‘ Lord becomes in Paul’s hands almost a proper name, the specific designation for Jesus conceived as a divine person in distinction from God the Father. It is therefore employed of Jesus not merely constantly but almost exclusively. It is doubtful whether it is ever once employed of God the Father, outside of a few citations from the Old Testament: and in any case such employment of it is very exceptional. It is accordingly in point of fact the determinate title for Jesus as distinguished from God the Father.¹ As such the Lord Jesus Christ is coupled with ‘ God our Father (or ‘ the Father’) as the co-source of that grace and peace which Paul is accustomed to invoke on his readers in the addresses to his Epistles (1 Thess 1¹,2 Thess 1¹,², 1Cor 1³, 2 Cor 1², Gal 1³, Rom 1⁷, Eph 1², Phil 1² 1 Tim 1², 2 Tim 1² Titus 1⁴, cf. Eph 6²³, 1 Thess 3¹¹, 2 Thess 1¹²). And throughout the Epistles Jesus as ‘ the Lord and the Father as God are set over against each other as distinct and yet conjoined objects of the reverence of Christians, and distinct and yet conjoined sources of the blessings of which Christians are the recipients.

Note: Cf. David Somerville, St. Paul’s Conception of Christ, 1897, pp. 124 seq.: “The term Lord occurs hundreds of times in the Epistles, and expresses the conviction of the supremacy of Christ which the Apostle shared with the entire primitive Church. In the nomenclature of the Apostle the Father is θεός, Christ is κύριος. The term Lord,’ except when he quotes from the O. T. (in which case κύριος is used of God, being the Lxx. translation), uniformly describes Christ in Paul’s Epistles. That he regards it as Christ’s proper designation we see from 1 Cor 8⁵,⁶, also from Eph 4⁵, 1 Cor 12³. Wherever Lord occurs we are to understand him as referring to Christ. 1 Cor 4¹⁹ 3⁵ 7¹⁷, Rom 14⁴, which Weiss adduces as exceptions, are so only in appearance.” Cf. also Sven Herner, Die Anwendung des Wortes κύριος im N. T., p. 22, speaking of the Ep. to the Romans, he says: “If we direct our attention here to the verses where x0Optog represents God, we find that they are all citations from the O. T.: 113 1219 14¹¹ form no exception to this rule. Outside the O. T. citations, on the other hand, κύριος in Romans means our Lord Jesus Christ, and no certain exception to this rule occurs… These citations are not always, however, able to alter the usage of Paul. We not only have an inX stance in which in Romans—as in the Gospels and Acts—a passage is applied to the Lord Christ in which in the O. T. the Lord Jehovah is Dspoken of (10¹²); but also two passages (x1¹,²) in which an O. T. “Lord God is altered to (118) God.’”

No doubt by this elevation of Jesus as ‘ Lord to the side of God certain peculiarities of expression are produced which are on a surface view sufficlently puzzling, Thus, for example, pn declaring the nonentity of the objects of heathen worship, Paul asserts roundly that “none is God except One,” and proceeds to explicate this assertion by remarking that, although there may exist so-called gods whether in heaven or earth, as there are—obviously among the heathen—many gods and many lords, ‘ yet to us there is one God, namely, the Father, from whom are all things and we unto Him “(1 Cor 8⁴⁻⁶). But he does not stop there, but adds at once, “ And one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and we through Him” (1 Cor 8⁶). This addition might seem to a superficial reading to stultify his whole monotheistic argument: ‘ There is no God but one: for tous there is one God i. loi, and one Lord.” There is but one possible solution. Obviously the one God whom Christians worship is conceived as, in some way not fully explained, without prejudice to His unity subsistent in both the one God,’ viz., the Father and the ‘ one Lord,’ viz., Jesus Christ. Otherwise there would be a flat contradiction between the emphatic assertion that none is God but LB) LJ one” and the proof of this assertion offered in the explanation that to Christians there is but “ one God, viz., the Father “and “one Lord, viz., Jesus Christ.” And it is clear that Paul can count upon his readers understanding that the ‘ one Lord, Jesus Christ bears such a relation to the one God, the Father” that these two may together be subsumed under the category.,of the one God who alone exists. We shall not say that there are the beginnings of the doctrine of the Trinity here. It seems truer to say that there is the clear presupposition of some such doctrine as that of the Trinity here⁶

Note: Cf. David Somerville, St. Paul’s Conception of Christ, p. 295 seq., where the use of the term κύριος in the LXX. is examined, and it is added that it was as “accustomed to this usage that Paul confines the term κύριος to Christ and reserves fed for the Father, God””— and “this plainly points to the belief that He whom he called Lord was in some sense God as well as He who was termed 6f:é” (p. 296). Cf. p. 143: “But the fact that he habitually applies to Christ the term Lord (αύριος) a term that in the Lxx. is practically equivalent to God ( θεός) and is the rendering of the most solemn name of Jehovah in the O. T. shows that in his regard He was entitled to the worship and obedience that are due to God.”

There is lacking, indeed, only the conjunction of “the Spirit” with “God the Father “and Jesus the Lord” to compel us to perceive that underlying Paul’s mode of speech concerning God there is a clearly conceived and firmly held conviction that these three together constitute the one God of Christian worship. ‘And other passages enough supply this lack. For example, later on in this same Epistle the Apostle, speaking of those gifts of the Spirit with which the Apostolic Church was blessed, remarks in the most natural way in the world: “Now there are diversities of gifts but the same Spirit.

And there are diversities of ministrations, and the same Lord. And there are diversities of workings, but the same God” (1 Cor 12⁴⁻⁶). “Now I beseech you, brethren,” he says again towards the end of the Epistle to the Romans, “by our Lord Jesus Christ, and by the love of the Spirit, that ye strive together with me in your prayers to God for me” (Rom 15³⁰). There is one body and one Spirit, even as also ye were called in one hope of your calling,” says he again, in a later Epistle (Eph 4⁴=), “one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all, and through all, and in all.” Or, perhaps, most explicitly of all, in those closing words of the Second Epistle to the Corinthians which have become the established form of benediction in the Churches: The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, be with you all” (2 Cor 13¹⁴). From passages like these it is perfectly clear that the Christian doctrine of God as apprehended by Paul, and as currently implied in his natural modes of speech concerning Him, as he wrote in simplicity of heart and with no misgivings as to the understanding of his language by the Christian readers whom he addressed, embraced, in conjunction with the utmost stress upon the unity Trinity. It is already found some six years before the composition of Ep. to Romans at the time when St. Paul wrote his earliest extant Epistle (xr Thess 1¹, cf. 2 Thess 1²). This shows that even at that date (A. D. 52) the definition of the doctrine had begun. It is well also to remember that although in this particular verse of Ep. to Romans the form in which it appears is incomplete, the triple formula concludes an Epistle written a few months earlier (2 Cor 13¹⁴). There is nothing more wonderful in the history of human thought than the silent and imperceptible way in which this doctrine, to us so difficult, took its place without struggle and without controversy among accepted Christian truths.” Dr. Sanday neglects to note that the triple formula is found in Romans as well as 2 Cor. viz. 15³⁰.

of God, the recognition at the same time of distinctions in the Divine Being by virtue of which the Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit were esteemed God along “with the Father.

But what we require to note particularly at this point is that to Paul, the divine name—perhaps we may even be permitted to say, “ the Trin- tarian name’—of Jesus is apparently the Lord.” God, the Lord, the Spirit, —this is his triad, and when he speaks of Jesus as Lord it must be supposed that this triad is in his mind. In other words, ‘ Lord to him is not a general term of respect which he naturally applies to Jesus because he recognized Jesus as supreme, and was glad to acknowledge Him as his Master (Eph 6⁹ Col 4¹), or even in the great words of Col 2¹⁹ as the ‘ Head of the body which is His Church (cf. Eph 4¹⁵). It is to him the specific title of divinity by which he indicates to himself the relation in which Jesus stands to Deity. Jesus is not Lord to him because He has been given dominion over all creation; He has been given this universal dominion because he is Lord,’ who with the Father and the Spirit is to be served and worshipped, and from whom all that the Christian longs for is to be expected. In His own nature the ‘ Lord of glory (1 Cor 2⁸), He has died and lived again that He might enter upon His dominion as Lord of both the dead and the living (Rom 14⁹), and being thus Lord of all (Rom 10¹²) might be rich unto all that call upon Him and so fulfill the saying that whosoever “shall call upon the name of the Lord” shall be saved (Rom 10¹³). He does not become Lord,’ but only comes to His rights as ‘ Lord,’ by and through

His resurrection and ascension, which are the culminating and completing acts of His saving work. He is Lord because He is in His own person the Jehovah who was to visit His people and save them from their sins.⁷

No doubt a different representation is sometimes given. We are even told that there is in these very passages a distinction drawn between of God and the Lord,” by which the Subordination tats of the Lord is made definitely inferior to that of ‘ God,” to whom He is subject and whose will He executes. It is God the Father who is the source and end of all things; the Lord Jesus Christ is the mediator through whom He works (1 Cor 8⁶ cf. 1 Tim 2⁵ and such passages—διά with the genitive—as the following, Rom 2¹⁶ 3²² s¹,¹¹,¹⁷,²¹1 Eph 1⁵,

1 Th 5⁹ Tit 3⁶). The term ‘ Lord as applied to Jesus,’ therefore, although ascribing a certain divinity to Him, appears to fall short of attributing deity to Him in its full sense. It is the appropriate designation of a sort of secondary divinity, a middle being standing in some sense between man and God. Accordingly we read that while the head of every man is Christ,” “the head of Christ is God” (1 Cor 11³), and that “if we are Christ’s,” so Christ is God’s” (1 Cor 3²³). The whole redemptive work of Christ is represented as the working of God through Christ, as terminating ultimately on God, and as redounding specifically to His glory (Rom 3²⁵ 510 33³2 Corl 1¹⁸, Eph [6121419 319. Col 1¹⁹, etc.). When, then, the redemptive work is completed the Lordship which has been conferred upon Christ ceases also, so that His very sovereignty appears as a derived sovereignty delegated for a purpose (1 Cor 15²⁷,²⁸). God is appropriately spoken of therefore distinctly as the ‘” God of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Eph 1¹⁷, cf. Rom 15⁶, 2 Cor 1³ 17³¹, Eph

1³), a locution which, while intimating that the relation subsisting between Him and Jesus is peculiarly close, yet equally clearly intimates that it is not a relation of equality but of the nature of divine master and subject servant.⁸

That a problem is raised by the passages of this class is obvious enough. But it is equally obvious that this problem cannot be solved by the attribution of a certain secondary divinity to Christ, and much less by supposing that He has merely a sort of divinity communicated to Him quoad nos, while in His essential nature only a creature. The strict and strongly asseverated monotheism of Paul forbids the former assumption: his definite ascription to Jesus of an eternal divine form of existence antecedent to His earthly career excludes the latter. Nothing could exceed the clearness and emphasis of Paul’s monotheism. None is God,” says he, but one “¹⁸, (1 Cor 8⁴); and he says it, as we have seen, in immediate connection with his recognition of one God, the Father” and “one Lord, Jesus Christ” (cf. Rom 3³⁰076²⁷, Gal 3²⁰, Eph 4⁶ 1 Tim 2⁵). How, then, could he mean to set by the side of this “one God the Father” the “one Lord Jesus Christ” as a second, although somewhat inferior, God?¹⁹ And nothing could exceed the clearness and emphasis with which (Paul represents Jesus’ divine majesty not as an attain- (ment but as an aboriginal possession. He does not say that Jesus Christ became rich that by His riches we might be enriched, as he must have said if he had conceived of Jesus as a man to whom divine powers and dignity were communicated that He might save us. What he says is that our Lord Jesus Christ was rich, and became poor only for our sakes, that “through His poverty we might become rich” (2 Cor 8⁹). That is to say, that, as he expresses it in another place, it was to make no account of Himself for Him to take the form of a servant (Phil 2⁷). Nor does he leave us in doubt as to the quality of the riches He left when He thus made Himself of no reputation by taking “the form of a servant.” No heavenly humanity suffices here: not even angelic grandeur:⁹ it was “in the form of God” that He was by nature (ὑπάρχων): it was equality with God which He did not graspingly cling to. And to be “in the form of God” means nothing less than to have and hold in possession all those characterizing attributes which make God God: having which He could not but be equal with God, because He was just God. No wonder then that Paul tells us that though He was crucified by man yet was He the Lord of glory (1 Cor 2⁸), that in Him dwelt “all the fulness of the Godhead bodily (Col 2⁹), that Israelite as He was “according to the flesh” He was something much more than what He was according to the flesh—nothing less indeed than “God over all, blessed forever” (Rom 9⁵). He certainly does not mean then to contrast Jesus as Lord with God the Father as an inferior God en) 0 possessing a merely delegated m cation o slilieiie

Note: ¹⁸” No [Being] is God except One [Being],” Evans iz loc.; cf. Edwards in loc.: “There is but one God and the Christians’ God is that One.” ¹⁹ The fallacy -of writers like Beyschlag, Christologie d. N. T., 1866, consists in treating the phrase “to us there is one God the Father” as taking up and repeating the “There is no God but One,” and the phrase “and one Lord Jesus Christ” as a kind of afterthought added to it (pp. 203-4). In truth it is the double clause: “There is one God the Father… and one Lord Jesus Christ for us,” which takes up and develops the phrase, “None is God but One.”

15. 3, divinity. Nor, indeed, does the term Lord lend itself readily to such a contrast. On the pages of Paul’s Bible—the Greek version of the Hebrew Scriptures—it stood side by side with God as the most personal and intimate name of Deity: and thence he took it as we have seen and applied it to Jesus. And if it thus could not have been lower in its connotation to him than Jehovah itself, it was charged likewise to the apprehension of his Gentile readers with suggestions in no way inferior to those of God itself.¹⁰ For him to say Lord of Jesus as His most appropriate title was therefore to say and to be understood as saying all that he could say by the designation of ‘ God itself. And if nevertheless there was to him and to his readers but one God, then there is nothing for it but that we should recognize that for Paul and his readers two might be God and yet there be but one God; and that is as much as to say that their thinking of God was already ruled —by a Trinitarian consciousness.

As for the expressions in which, despite his clear intimation of the proper deity of Jesus, he yet speaks wis of Him as in) some sense: inferior or, Sin¹⁰ to be more precise, subordinate, to God the Father, it is quite clear that they must find their explanation in Paul’s intimation of the humiliation to which this divine Person subjected Himself for the purposes of redemption. When He who was rich became poor; when He who was and ever remains “ in the form of God made Himself of no reputation “ by taking the form of a servant”: then and thus He became so far inferior to and subject to that God the Father on an equality with whom He might have remained in His riches had He so chosen. In and for the purposes of this redemptive work He v is the Mediator of God the Father, whose He is, and who is His Head and His God; whose will He performs and whose purposes of grace He executes; and to whom, when the redemptive work is fully accomplished and its fruits garnered, He shall restore the Kingdom, that God may be all in all. In a word, there underlies Paul’s statements not merely the conceptions which have found expression in the doctrine of the Trinity and the Incarnation, but those also which have found expression in the doctrine of the Covenant of Redemption in accordance with which the Persons of the Godhead carry on each His own part of the work of redemption: and he who will not recognize these conceptions in the Pauline statements must ever find those statements a confused puzzle of contradictions, which can be reduced to apparent harmony only by doing manifest violence to one or another series of them. Only on the presupposition of these conceptions can it be understood how the Apostle can speak of our Lord now as ‘“” in the form of God,” “on an equality with God,” nay, as God over all,” and now as subject to God as His Head and His God with reference to whom He performs all His work: and how He can speak of God the Father” and “Jesus Christ our Lord” as each “God over all,” and yet declare that there is but one Being who is God.

With this high meaning of Lord as attributed to Jesus in our mind it is interesting to observe the various forms of designation into which this epithet enters. These run through pearly all the possible combinations with the names of Jesus. The (or our) Lord Jesus,’ which, were the title Lord a mere honorific, would be the simplest of them all, but which, since that title is an express declaration of deity, is now the most paradoxical,¹¹ occurs some twenty-four to twenty-six times, chiefly in the earlier Epistles; and its duplicate, Jesus our Lord,’ twice more. The (or our) Lord Christ is less frequent, occurring only twice (Rom 16¹⁸, Col 3²⁴). But the full formula, the (or our) Lord Jesus Christ,” is the most common of all, occurring some forty-nine times, pretty evenly scattered through all the Epistles. The (or our) Lord Christ Jesus’ does not occur: but in the reverse order of the titles, Christ Jesus, the (or our, or my) Lord,’ this combination occurs ten times and by its side, Jesus Christ, our Lord” four times. In all these combinations the names, whether the simple ‘ Jesus,” the simple ‘ Christ,’ or the combinations ‘ Jesus Christ or Christ Jesus,” appear to be used as proper names, though, no doubt, the appellative ‘ Christ does not in any of them become a mere proper name. Certainly in the phrase, “Ye serve the Lord Christ,” the term Christ is a title of dignity which is still further enhanced by the adjunction of the term Lord’: and something of the same intention to enhance an already lofty ascription appears traceable in the instances where the fuller phrase Christ Jesus, our Lord occurs (1 Cor 15³¹, [2.Cor 4⁵1, Rom 6²³ 8³⁹, [ Col 2⁶], Eph 3¹¹, { Phil 3⁸]. But this obvious use of ‘ Christ as a name of dignity by no means implies that it is not employed practically as a proper name. Its implications of Messiahship remain present and suggestive, but it has become the peculiar property of Jesus who is thought of as so indisputably the Messiah that the title Messiah has become His proper name.¹²

It is worthy of remark moreover that not only is

Note: “It is still a much controverted question. Bornemann (Meyer’s Com. on 1 Thess. 1¹⁰) maintains that Χριστός is never a proper name in the N. T.: on the other hand, von Soden (T/eolog. Abhandlungen Weizsicker gewidmet, 1902, p. 118), considers Χριστός already to have won the character of a proper name so fully that it has the article only about sixty times.” Westcott-Hort also print Χριστός when it stands without the article, as a proper name with a capital initial: on which Schmiedel (Winer, Grammatik, 54) remarks that Χριστός just as truly is a proper name in a series of passages.” Hausleiter also (p. 9) points out that ‘ Christ has for the Apostle frequently the significance of a proper name for designating the person of Jesus.” Feine thinks the term is appellative in such passages as Rom ⁵ 10⁶,⁷, 2 Cor 5¹⁶, Gal 2¹⁷, and that the Messianic suggestion is generally present. Dr. Sanday in his Inspiration, 289, speaks cautiously (but scarcely cautiously enough): “We know how in the Epistles Christ has become almost a proper name. It may perhaps retain rather more of its true meaning than we are apt to realize; but if not exactly a proper name it is rapidly becoming such.” So far, so good. But more doubt attaches to the assertions that follow: “In the Gospels, on the other hand, it nearly always means, as in the mouth of our Lord and His strict contemporaries it must have meant, the Messiah’… The compound phrase Jesus Christ occurs a few times (Mt 1¹ 118 1 16²¹ ( 1), Mk 1¹, Jno 117 173 20³¹), but always, with one exception (Jno 17³), as it should do, in words of the evangelist and not of our Lord Himself. The true phrase, the natural phrase in our Lord’s life-time, is of course that which we find three times in St. Matthew, Jesus who is called Christ (Mt 116 27¹7.²2)” Dr. Sanday misconceives the significance of the phrase Jesus who is called Christ,’ not perceiving that it presupposes that Christ had already become a quasi-proper name, having in this respect the same implications as the compound ‘ Jesus Christ.

“Christ a proper name of our Lord with Paul, but it is his favorite designation for Him.¹³ For, full and rich as Paul’s employment of the term Lord is, it is not nearly so frequently employed by him as ‘ Christ.” This designation (more commonly with than without the article)¹⁴ occurs in his Epistles no fewer than 210 or 211 times in its simplicity, and many more times in combination with other designations. It is most dominantly Paul’s favorite name for our Lord in the great central Epistles—Romans, Corinthians and Galatians,, — in which it occurs some 138 to 140 times; but it is also very frequent in the Epistles of the first imprisonment (67 times in Eph., Col., Phil., Philemon), and is unusual only in the Thessalonian letters (4 times only) and in the Pastorals (once only). It surprises us somewhat to observe that next to the simple ‘ Christ (and Lord’), Paul’s favorite designation for our Lord is the compound Christ Jesus.’ Wi This form, as we have seen, seems to occur occasionally in Acts, not only as a Pauline (24²⁴) but also as a primitive Christian (3²⁰) ond a Lucan formula (5⁴²).¹⁵ But in Paul’s Epistles it occurs not less than 82 (84) times, regularly anarthrously (except Eph 3,¹ cf. 3¹¹, Col 2⁶), and pretty evenly distributed, though with a tendency to increased frequency in the progress of time (Thess. only 2; Gal, Cor.,, Rom. 29; first imprisonment, 29; Pastorals 24). It is possible that the prepositing of the ‘ Christ may throw greater emphasis upon the Messianic dignity of Jesus than was currently felt in the opposite compound ‘ Jesus Christ,’¹⁶ which is much less frequent in Paul (only 23 times; and not at all in Thess., Col.,, Philemon). But in any case, both formulas are employed as practically proper names of our Lord, and it is difficult to trace any difference in the implications of their use. Along with these simple compounds Paul also employs the more elaborate formulas, the (or our) Lord Jesus Christ,’ Jesus Christ our Lord,” ‘ Christ Jesus, the (or our, or my) Lord.” The first of these meets us most frequently, occurring indeed no fewer than 49 times, pretty evenly distributed through the Epistles. (The second occurs only four times (Romans 3 and 1 Cor 1): and the “last only ten times (two central groups of Epistles only). In these sonorous formulas the Apostle expresses his deep sense of reverence to the person of Jesus, and he tends to fall into one or the other of them whenever he is speaking of his Master with solemnity and exalted feeling.¹⁷ It is noticeable that they are apt to be employed in the formal solemn opening and closing sections of his Epistles, and whenever Jesus is named in direct connection with God.

In the Pastoral Epistles the compound names Jesus Christ and ‘ Christ Jesus’ occur also in composition with the epithet Saviour’: Christ ye Jesus our Saviour (Titus 1⁴), Jesus Christ our Saviour (Titus 3⁶), our Saviour Christ Jesus’ (2 Tim 1¹⁰), our Saviour Jesus Christ (Titus 2¹³). In the earlier Epistles, Jesus is indeed not only treated as our ‘ Saviour,” but the epithet is given Him as a title of honor, it being a mark of Christians that they look for a Saviour from heaven, even ‘ the Lord Jesus Christ (Phil 3²⁰, cf. Eph 5?). But the precise forms of expression occurring in the Pastorals are not found in these. The significance of the epithet Saviour thus applied to Jesus may perhaps be suggested by the circumstance that it is in the same Epistles a standing epithet of God. Paul describes himself as an apostle of Jesus Christ “according to the command of God our Saviour and Christ Jesus our hope” (1 Tim 1¹, cf. Titus 1³), and wishes Timothy to live so as to be acceptable in the sight of Ged our Saviour (2³, cf. Titus 2¹⁰) whose glory it is to be the Saviour of man (4¹⁰), in accordance with His love to men as our ‘ Saviour (Titus 3⁴).¹⁸ The ascription of this epithet thus interchangeably to God and to Jesus assimilates Jesus to God and leaves us in less doubt how we are to take the passage in Titus 2¹³ which in contrast with Christ’s first coming in grace speaks of the impending appearing of the glory of’—shall we say “the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ”?—or shall we not rather say our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ”? If the latter construction is followed, as it seems it should be,¹⁹ it provides us with one of the most solemn ascriptions of proper deity to Jesus Christ discoverable in the whole compass of the New Testament.

Perhaps something similar is implied in the designation of Him in Eph 1⁶ as the ‘ Beloved,’ the epithet appearing in its simple majesty without qualification: His grace which He” —that is God—” freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.” We have already had occasion to point out the significance of this phrase on its appearing in the Gospels as a designation of Jesus (Mt 3¹⁷ 12¹⁸ 17⁵, Mk 1¹¹ 9⁷ 1.k 3²²). Here the same epithet meets us without the defining accompaniments: Jesus Christ is in full simplicity set forth as by way of eminence the Beloved,” in and through whom God has communicated His grace to men. This designation of Christ makes us feel,” we are told, the greats ness of the divine grace.”²⁰ But it does this only by making us feel the greatness of the Mediator of this grace. It is only at the cost of the blood of the Beloved that God has redeemed us. The epithet of Saviour is a designation of our Lord from the point of view of men: this epithet of ‘ Beloved tells us what He is from the point of view of God—He is God’s own unique One, the object of His supreme choice, who stands related to Him in the intimacy of appropriating love. In the parallel passage in the sister Epistle (Col ‘1¹³), Paul calls our Lord the Son of God’s love.” This seems a combination of the two titles, the Son of God,’ and the ‘ Beloved’; and bears witness to their close affinity,—which indeed is inherent in their significance. We will recall that in the evangelical use of the Beloved it stands in the closest relation with Son’: This is my Son, the Beloved, in whom I am well pleased.” It is only in connection with the idea of Son,’ thus, that ‘ Beloved comes to its rights.²¹

On the other side, the compound names, ‘ Jesus Christ and Christ Jesus,” appear in Paul’s Epistles also in combination with designations which emphasize rather the human as- pect of our Lord’s person. We read ll of “the man Jesus Christ” (Rom 5¹⁵), of the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim 2⁵), and somewhat more frequently we are, apart from such a combination with His personal name, directed to contemplate our Lord 1 as a “Man” (ἄνθρωπος). In very few of these instances, it is true, is the emphasis primarily upon the fact of humanity. Most commonly it is thrown upon some point of likeness or contrast between Jesus and that other man, Adam (Rom 5¹⁵,¹⁹, 1 Cor 15²¹,⁴⁷,⁴⁸,⁴⁹, fl of. 15⁴, “last Adam’), and it is the singleness or the superiority of this ‘ Man which is in question But in a passage like 1 Tim 2⁵ There is one God, one mediator also between God and man, Himself man, Christ Jesus,” it is clear that the humanity of Christ itself is insisted upon: and there is a necessary if somewhat unemphasized suggestion of humanity underlying all these passages. The lesson we must first of alk draw from this series of passages seems, then, to be that neither Jesus Christ nor Christ Jesus’ is a designation of such supreme dignity that it could not suggest itself as an appropriate name for Jesus when the mind of the writer was intent on precisely His humanity, as indeed no designation could be in the case of a being who was not purely divine, not even the Y.ord of Glory {zt Cor 2⁸) or “Ged itself (Acts 20⁸). Beyond that, we learn, therefore, that clear and strong as was Paul’s conception of the proper deity of Christ, it in no wise precluded him from also recognizing with equal clarity and expounding with equal force His essential humanity. When He who was in the form of God took the form of a servant He was made in the likeness of men oe tes and was formed in fashion as a man PH 2⁷,⁸) land Paul found noldifi culty in so understanding, even though he also understood that the “taking the form of a servant” was not a supercession of the form of God” but an addition to it: and that therefore though now made in the likeness of men and formed in fashion as a man, Jesus remained nevertheless unbrokenly in the form of God” (ὑπάρχων, verse 6, observe the tense) and able at will to lay hold again of His essential equality with God. Accordingly, therefore, the Apostle, if he represented Jesus as of the seed of David, represented Him as this only on one side of His being,—that side which he calls “according to the flesh” (Rom 1³,⁴): if he saw in Him, to the glory of the covenant people, an Israelite, he saw this also in Him only “according to the flesh” (Rom ). It cannot be denied that there underlies this whole mode of conception the idea of “the two natures” of Christ, on the basis of which alone can this duplex method of speaking of Him be defended or even comprehended.

In the opening verses of the greatest of his Epistles the Apostle brings the two sides of our Lord’s being sharply to our apprehension. Reduced ¹to its lowest terms, what he tells us ¹here is that on one side of His being (our Lord was the Son of David and on the other side the Son of God.” These two sides of being he speaks of respectively as “according to the flesh”’ and “according to the Spirit of holiness,” which may be briefly paraphrased respectively as the human and the divine sides. But he does not leave us to infer that these two sides of our Lord’s being were equally original to Him. ( On the contrary, he tells us that the human side had a historical beginning, while the divine side knew only an historical establishment: our Lord ( was made—came to be (yevépevoc)—of the seed of David according to the flesh; He was designated —marked out as (δρεσθέντος) —the Son of God by the resurrection of the dead. Becoming man, He brought life and immortality to light, and thus showed Himself more than man,—nothing less than the Son of God.’ (The highest human exaltation is the Messiahship: but —, His Messiahship was the lower side of His majesty. That He might be the Messiah He stooped from His prior estate of divine glory.²² Thus clearly the Apostle presents our Lord as essentially the ‘ Son of God,’ and this Sonship to God as essentially consubstantiality with God.²³ After precisely the same fashion, at a later point of the same Epistle, having occasion to mention Christ as sprung from the seed of Israel, he at once pauses as if to guard himself from the imputation of insufficient reverence, to add the limitation, according to the flesh.” He was not wishing to speak of Christ even incidentally as merely man. And so greatly did his reverence for His person swell in his heart, that, in adjoining a designation of His higher nature, he is content with nothing lower than the highest conceivable. From whom is Christ, as according to the flesh,”—that Christ “who is in His essential being (6 ὢν) none other than God over all blessed for ever (9⁵). On the side in which He was not “ according to the flesh,” He was the Supreme God ruling over all things.

It is, however, significant rather than copious use which the Apostle makes of the category of the Son of God in his presentation of the personality of, Jesus to his readers.²⁴ It is doubtless Son of God. ‘.: at least in part due to his predilection for the term Lord as the Trinitarian name of Jesus that Paul speaks of Him only some seventeen times as the Son.”²⁵ In a number of these instances²⁶ there is naturally little indication of the particular implication of deity which it nevertheless always carries with it in Paul’s usage.²⁷ In others, however, the whole point of the employment of the term hangs on the uniqueness of the relation to God which it intimates. This is the case, for instance, when this uniqueness of relation is emphasized by the added term own: God, we are told for example (Rom 8³), sent His own Son” (τὸν ἑαυτοῦ υἱόν) “in the likeness of sinful flesh” “to condemn sin in the flesh”’: and again God spared not ‘” His own Son” ( τοῦ ἐδίου υἱοῦ ) but delivered Him up for us all” (Rom 8³²). Obviously we are expected to estimate the greatness of the gift by the closeness of the relation indicated: it is because it was His own Son whom He gave that the love of God to us was so splendidly manifested in the gift of Jesus, who, we are further told, was for this gift “sent forth from Himself (Gal 4⁴, ἐξαπέστειλεν). This closeness of relation, amounting really to identity, is somewhat oddly suggested by the argument in Rom 5⁸⁻¹⁰, Here we are told that scarcely for a righteous man would one die: but God commends His love to us —or as it is strengtheningly put, His own love to usby dying for us while we were yet sinners? No,—by Christ’s dying for us while we were sinners! But how does God commend His own love for us—by someone else’s dying for us? Obviously the relation between Christ and God is thought of as so intimate that Christ’s dying is equivalent to God Himself dying. And so, we read further that this Christ is God’s Son (v. 10) and His dying for us is to such an extent the pledge of God’s love that it carries with it the promise and potency of all good things (vv. 10, 11). With this emphasis on the Sonship of Christ and its high significance it is a little strange that the correlai tive Fatherhood of God is brought so little into immediate connection with it. The explanation is doubtless again that Paul prefers the title Lord to express our Lord’s Trinitarian relations. The Fatherhood of God is in any event not very frequently adverted to by Paul, and is very seldom brought into immediate relation with Jesus. Indeed God is expressly called the Father of Jesus Christ only in those few passages in which He is spoken of as “” the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom 15⁶ 2 Cor 3³ 11³¹, Eph 1³, (Col

1³1). In a number of other passages in which God is called the Father the Trinitarian relation seems in i mind (Rom 6⁴ 1 Cor 8⁶ 15²⁴, Gal 1³, Eph 2¹⁸ 6²³, 1 I Thess 1,¹ 2 Thes 1², v Tim 1² 2 Tim 15, Thus 1⁴). In the other instances of the application of the name of Father to God the reference is rather to His relation tous (Rom 1⁷ [8¹0 1 Cor 1³5, Gal v⁴ (4⁶), Doh 1² 4⁶ Phil 1² 2¹¹ 4²⁰, Col 1², 1 Thess 1³ 3¹¹,¹, 2 Thess 1¹ [2 var. lec.] 21¹⁶ Philem 3, cf. 2 Cor 1³ Eph Ra¹⁷ a¹⁴ e²⁰C) 1¹² 2¹⁷) In only three passages are “the correlatives ‘ Son and ‘ Father brought together (1 Cor 15²⁸, Gal 4⁴⁻⁶, Col 1¹³), and in no one of these instances is it clear that the term Father is employed in sole reference to Jesus, the unique Son.’ In one of them we are told that the Father has delivered us out of the power of darkness and translated us into the Kingdom of the Son of His love (Col 1¹), where there seems certainly a reference to God’s Fatherly relation not only to Jesus the Son of His love but also to us who are by His grace introduced into a similar relation to God with Christ’s own. Soin another, we are told that because we are sons God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father (Gal 4⁶)—where it is quite clear that Father has relation to us, too, as the brethren of i Christ. Even in the remaining instance, where we are told that at the end Christ shall deliver up the Kingdom to God even the Father, and even ‘ the Son Himself shall be subjected to Him, that God may be all in all (1 Cor 15²⁸, it is by no means obvious that the term Father may not again embrace with Christ all those who have been brought by Christ into the King- dom. We may see in all three instances that the peculiar relation of the ‘ Father and Son lies at the basis of the thought: but this peculiar relation does not in any of them absorb the whole thought. It seems to be treated by Paul as a matter too well understood to require particular insistence upon. He could count on his readers, when he spoke of Jesus as the Son of God,’ understanding without further elucidation that he was thereby attributing to Him a unique relation, including proper deity along with the Father, while our co-sonship was to be realized only in and through Him.

Another method employed by Paul to indicate the relation of Jesus to God is the presentation of Him as the image of God (2 Cor 4⁴ Col Christ All;

1¹2). He is the image of God, weiare told, and the light of the knowledge of the glory of God shines in His face (2 Cor 4⁴). And, again, He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation (Col 1¹⁵). The meaning is that we may sce in Christ what God is: all God’s glory is reflected in Him; and when we see Him we see the Father also. Perhaps the mere term falls short of expressly asserting proper deity, though it would certainly gain force and significance if proper deity were understood to be asserted. In that case it would suggest that Jesus Christ is just the invisible God made visible. And that this is its actual significance with Paul can scarcely be doubted when we recall that he does not hesitate to ascribe proper deity to Jesus, not only by means of the designations ‘ Lord and Son of God,’ but by the direct application to Him of the name ‘ God itself and that in its most enhanced form — God over all (Rom 9⁵), the ‘ Great God (Titus

2¹³). That Jesus Christ is intended in both instances by these great designations, seems, despite sustained efforts to deny them to Him, beyond legitimate question.²⁸ The natural interpretation of the passages themselves compels it: and no surprise can be felt that Paul, who everywhere thinks and speaks of Christ as very God, should occasionally call Him by the appropriate designation. These passages in effect supply only the to-be-expected expression in plain language of Paul’s most intimate thought of Jesus. He is always and everywhere to his thought just our Great God and Saviour,” God over all, blessed for ever.’

It was thus, then, that Jesus was thought of, and familiarly spoken of, in the Christian communities throughout the epoch in which the Syn-the Primitive optic Gospels were composed or, if we choose to use such misleading language, were compounded. The testimony of Paul’s letters comes from the sixth and seventh decades of the century; and assures us that at that time Jesus was to His followers a man indeed and the chosen Messiah who had come to redeem God’s people, but in His essential Being just the great God Himself. In the light of this testimony it is impossible to believe there ever was a different conception of Jesus prevalent in the Church: the mark of Christians from the beginning was obviously that they looked to Jesus as their Lord and called on His name in their worship. The general significance of the testimony of Paul, we may say, is universally recognized. Bousset, for example, when engaged in repelling the crudities of Kalthoff points it out with great distinctness. In Paul, he tells us, we have ‘a witness of indubitable value from the bosom of the Christian community for the existence and the significance of the Person of Jesus.” “” His conversion, according to the tradition, goes back very nearly to the death of Jesus. His chief activity falls in any case in the forties and fifties. From his letters the historical existence of Jesus stands out before us in all clearness. And not merely does Paul presuppose this, as we perceive from these letters: he had intercourse with the first generation of Christians, who had themselves seen the Lord Jesus.” Whoever would question the existence of Jesus must erase also the existence of Paul, as he meets us in his letters.” “With the person of Paul the person of Jesus, too, stands established.” Nor is it merely the existence of a Jesus which Paul thus substantiates for us: he ratifies also the fact that the person of Jesus had for the faith of the first Christian community no indeterminate but a perfectly determinate significance.²⁹ In the presence of Paul’s letters, therefore, it is impossible to deny that there underlies the whole Christian movement the great personality of Jesus, or that the primitive Christian community looked to Him as its founder and Lord. Is it not equally impossible to deny in the presence of these letters that the primitive Christian community looked upon this Jesus as their divine founder and divine Lord?

Strange to say, Bousset draws back at this point. Paul’s testimony to the existence of the historical Jesus and to His significance to the primitive Church is decisive. But Paul’s testimony to the estimate placed upon the personality of this historical Jesus is not trustworthy. It is, indeed, impossible to doubt in the light of his testimony, that “the earthly Jesus worked in the souls of His disciples (with inexpressible power” (p. 26): and that they had come to believe that He had risen from the dead. But it does not follow that they who had companied with Him in His life shared Paul’s idea that He was ‘ essentially a heavenly being” (p. 26). The inconsequence here is flagrant. Paul is not writing a generation or two later, when the faith of the first disciples was a matter only of memory, perhaps of fading memory; and when it was possible for him to represent (it as other than it was. He is writing out of the very bosom of this primitive community and under its very “5 eye. His witness to the kind of Jesus this community believed in is just as valid and just as compelling, therefore, as his testimony that it believed in Jesus at all. In and through him the voice of the primitive community itself speaks, proclaiming its assured faith in its divine Lord. This would be true quite apart from the consentient witness of the Acts and the Gospels. In the presence of this consentient witness it is impossible to contend that Paul has misrepresented or misconceived the faith of Christians. The same divine Jesus which Paul presents as the universal and aboriginal object of Christian faith, Luke sets before us in Acts from the mouth of the primitive disciples —Peter and John and James and the rest—as from the beginning believed on in the Church; and the same Luke with his companion evangelists represents as Himself asserting His divine dignity. The testimony of Paul merely adds to this witness a new and thoroughly trustworthy voice; and renders it so much the more impossible to doubt that from the very beginning the entire Christian community was firmly convinced of the deity of its Lord.

Nor can the force of this testimony be broken or even weakened by suggesting doubts as to the genuof more or fewer of Paul’s letraising question of a development of the doctrine of the person of our Lord through their course. We have treated them all as genuine products of Paul’s mind and pen and as all of a piece: because, shortly, the facts warrant such a treatment of them. But the conclusion to be drawn from them in the matter in hand does not depend on so taking them. The conception of Jesus embedded in these letters is the same in them all: if they are not all Paul’s they are all Pauline. You may discard any number of them you choose, therefore, as not Paul’s personal product: the conception of Jesus in those that remain is not altered thereby. Take the extremest hypothesis which has ever even temporarily commanded the assent of any considerable number of scholarsthe old Tiibingen theory which allowed to Paul only the four great Epistles, Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians and Galatians.³⁰ In these Epistles may be found Paul’s entire witness to the deity of Christ. It is from them that we learn that Jesus Christ, while on the side of His flesh of the seed of David, had another side to His being, on which He was the Son of God (Rom 1³,⁴); that as God’s own Son He was rich before He became poor by becoming of the seed of David (2 Cor 8⁹); and that in His real nature He is not merely God’s Son but Himself God over all, blessed for ever (Rom 9⁵). When we add to these four great Epistles one after another of the others—such as Philippians, and 1 Thessalonians and Colossians, as practically all living critics do⁴²—and even Ephesians and Second Timothy, as many are willing to do—we merely add to the mass of the testimony, and in no respect alter its character or effect. These letters one and all only repeat, and in repeating more or less clarify, the teaching of the four chief Epistles as to the dignity of our 7 Lord’s person.

For this same reason nothing is gained for our present purpose by treating the Epistles not all together, but in small chronologically arranged groups. Slight differences may be observed, it is true, from group to group in modes of expression and relatively favorite forms of statement. But no differences can be traced in the conceptions which are brought to expression in these varying forms of statements. For example, the ruling designation of Christ in the Thessalonians is the Lord (22), with the Lord Jesus Christ (14) somewhat close second, and the Lord Jesus’ (10) third, while the simple ‘ Christ occurs only four times. In Romans, Corinthians, Galatians, on the other hand, it is the simple Christ which becomes the favorite designation, with ‘ Lord a good second: and the same is true of the Epistles of the first imprisonment. In the Pastorals, on the other hand, while ‘ Lord is still common, ‘ Christ,” as in Thessalonians, falls into the background, and ‘ Christ Jesus’ becomes the favorite designation. Variations like these, it is obvious, are rather interesting to those who are engaged in studying the literary form of the Epistles than important in estimating their witness to the deity of our Lord. Through all such variations, the product of circumstance, the essential teaching of all these Epistles upon the person of Christ remains the same. In them all alike He is the divine ‘ Lord,” whose right it is to rule: the ‘ Son of God,’ consubstantial with the Father: the great God and Saviour of sinners: ‘ God over all, blessed forever.” And in their consentient testimony to the deity of Christ they make it clear to us that upon this point, at least, the whole primitive Church was of one unvarying mind.

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← The Designations of Our Lord in Acts and Their Significance · Contents · The Witness of the Catholic Epistles →

Footnotes

1. On the relation of Christ and Lord in Paul’s usage cf. Robinson, Com. on Ephesians, pp. 72-90. ↩

2. Cf. Knowling op. cit., pp. 39, 65, etc.: “No criticism has sufficed to do away with the peculiar significance of this title.”… We must “frankly admit that St. Paul had very far overstepped the limits of Christ’s humanity when he finds in Him the Lord of the O. T.” ↩

3. Cf. on this Meyer on 2 Cor 4⁴ (E. T. pp. 229-30): “For Christ in the state of Hi¹ exaltation is again, as He was before His incarnation (comp. Jno 17⁵), fully ἐν μορφῇ 0:00 and fsa θεῷ (Phil 2⁶), hence in His glorified corporeality (Phil 3²¹) the visible image of the invisible God… It is true that in the state of His humiliation He had likewise the divine 065a, which he possessed xara πνεῦμα ἁγιωσύνης (Rom 1⁴), which also, as bearer of the divine grace and truth (Jno 1¹⁴), and through His miracles (Jno 2¹¹), He made known (Jno 14⁹); but its working and revelation were limited by His humili_ ation to man’s estate, and He had divested Himself of the divine appear__ ance (Phil 2⁷sed) till in the end, furnished through His resurrection with the mighty attestation of His divine Sonship (Rom 1⁴), He entered, through His elevation to the right hand of God, into the full communion of the glory of the Father, in which He is now the Godman, the very image and reflection of God, and will one day come to execute judgment and establish the Kingdom.” The whole acknowl__edgment of the heavenly κυριότης of Jesus as the σύνθρονος of ._God,” says Meyer justly on Rom 109⁹ “is conditioned by the acknowledgment of His previous descent from heaven, the incarnation of the Son of God, 8³, Gal 4⁴, Phil 2⁶, f al.” ↩

4. The phrase is Meyer’s, on 2 Cor 45. ↩

5. Cf. Paul Feine, Jesus Christus und Paulus, p. 38: “8 κύριος became to him ever more the heavenly Jesus, to whom he belonged with all his thoughts and activities. Jesus was to the Apostle the embodiment of God. This follows from the peculiarity which meets us also in Acts 2²⁰(?) 2²⁵, x P 3¹⁵, that with Paul κύριος in O. T. citations is often applied to Jesus: 2 Thess 1⁹, 1 Cor 1³¹, 2 Cor 10¹⁷, 1 Cor 10⁹ 2 Cor 3¹⁶, Rom 10¹³, Eph 6⁴ 2 Tim 2¹⁹ 4¹⁴, In Rom 14¹¹}, Is 45²³ is applied to God: in Phil 2¹⁰ sed. to Christ.” ↩

6. Dr. Sanday, in his otherwise excellent note on Rom 1⁷, neglects to consider the point here made, and speaks as if we were observing in these passages the formation of a christology and of a doctrine of the Trinity instead of the presupposition of these doctrines. He says: “The assignment of the respective titles of ‘ Father and Lord represents the first beginnings of christological speculation. Tt is stated in precise terms and with a corresponding assignment of appropriate prepositions in 1 Cor 8⁶. Not only does the juxtaposition of Father and Lord mark a stage in the doctrine of the Person of Christ; it also marks an important stage in the history of the doctrine of the ↩

7. Cf. Paul Feine, Jesus Chrisius und Paulus, 1902, pp. 165 seq.: “If Jesus undertook to perform the redemptive acts which were in the O. T. hoped for from God’s action, so in Paul, in correspondence with the advance of the redemptive work which lay in Christ’s death and resurrection, there emerges even more strongly the idea of the divine activity of Christ. Paul applies to Christ words which in the O. T. refer to God,—2 Thess 1⁸,⁹seda.,¹² 5 Cor 1³¹ 2¹⁶ 10²², 2 Cor 3¹⁶ 82¹ 10¹⁷, Rom 10¹⁶, Phil 2¹⁰sed. Eph 4⁸. 1 Thess 4⁶ is doubtful. One of the most commonly employed designations of Christ on the part of the Apostle is κύριος, the name in which the LXX. prevailingly represents the unpronounced MMM. It is not merely in the letters to the Thessalonians uncertain in many passages whether God or Christ is intended by κύριος: even in 1 Cor we still meet with a multiform vacillation in the reference of κύριος to Christ and to God. Divine honors are given to Christ in 2 Thess 1⁹5d-, Rom 10¹³, Phil 2¹⁰, In 2 Tim 4¹⁸ a doxology such as elsewhere is given to God is given to Him. One of the designations of Christians is those who call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Cor 1²; similarly Rom 1012sed:) 2 Tim 2²²),( Christ, after He has ascended above all _the heavens (Eph 4¹⁰), sits at the right hand of God as sharer in the divine disposition of grace to believers (Rom 8³⁴sed), and has the power to subject all things to Himself (Phil 3²¹). Every knee shall bow to Him in the realms of the heavenly and the earthly and the underearthly (Phil 2¹⁰). He is Lord over every lordship and power and might and dominion and every name that is named (Eph 1²⁰sed., Col 2¹⁰), The O. T. day of the Lord, the day of Judgment, has become His day (1 Thess 5², 2 Thess 1¹⁰ 2², 1 Cor 1⁸sed-). Christ is to carry out the world-judgment when He appears accompanied by His holy angels (1 Thess 3¹³, 2 Thess 1⁷,¹⁰). All must appear before His throne (2 Cor 5¹⁰)… The Apostle passes back and forth with references to God and Christ. Is 45²³, which in accord with its original meaning is referred to God in Rom 14¹¹, is applied to Christ in Phil 2¹⁰, In Rom 14⁶⁻¹² the Apostle begins with the words ‘ Who eats, eats to the Lord, for he gives thanks to God,’ etc. (cf. 1 Cor 10³¹). Then comes the beautiful declaration that we belong to the Lord in life and death; on which, however, he grounds the warning to judges that we must all stand before the judgment seat of God.” ↩

8. Cf. for statement of this point of view Beyschlag Die Christologie des N. T., 1866, pp. 203 seq. ‘” Whatever there may be great and unique lying in the εἷς κύριος, it is undeniable that Paul purposely does not apply the name θεός to Christ, but rather most distinctly distinguishes the εἷς κύριος from the εἷς θεός besides whom there is no other. The same conception and manner of expression runs exceptionlessly and in numerous instances throughout the Pauline Epistles: everywhere ‘ God =the Father, our Father, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and everywhere the ‘ Father and the Father only—God, our God, the ‘ God of Jesus Christ (Eph 1¹⁷): everywhere in a word the conception of ‘ God and Father stand together, while the Son or the Lord is equally constantly distinguished from the Father.”” How overstated this is may be observed by comparing it with the text. Cf. the long argument to the same effect in Richard Schmidt’s Die paulinische Christologie, etc., 1870, pp. 148 seq.; and the brief but pointed statement of Paul Feine, Jesus Christus und Paulus, 1902, pp. 168 169; also David Somerville, St. Paul’s Conception of Christ, etc., 1897, PP. 140, I4I. ↩

9. Richard Schmidt, Die paulinische Christologie, 1870, pp. 148 seq., represents it as difficult to fix on a formula by which to express Paul’s conception of what the preéxistent Christ was. We may at first sight think that to suppose he conceived the antemundane Christ as man will best meet his references: but that will soon appear inadequate. Nor can we satisfy ourselves that he thought of Him as an angel. Nor indeed that he conceived Him after the fashion of later Trinitarianism as of purely intro-divine relations. It is unimportant whether he calls Christ God as, e.g. in Rom 95, or not: for even if he applies the name to Him the question would still remain open whether he means by it what we should naturally express by it. This seems, however, in the face of Paul’s repeated attribution to Jesus of full deity in a great variety of modes of expression, very hypercritical. ↩

10. Cf, Harnack, Hist. of Dogma, 1. p. 119, note 1: “Dominus in certain circumstances means more than Deus; see Tertull Apol… It signifies more than Softer; see Irenaeus I. i. 3:… They say Saviour since they do not wish to call im Lord (. “2 ↩

11. Cf. Heinrici-Meyer, 1896, on 1 Cor 12³, p. 363: “The paradoxcal synthesis of the historical personal name with the divine name of dignity (cf. p. 353” [where the paradox of speaking of the Lord’s death in 11²⁶ is adverted to]) “is the crispest and most impressive form of the Christian confession. The Apostle accordingly looks upon κύριος Ιησοῦς as the fixed watch-word of the believing heart, and the key-note of spiritual speech,” ↩

12. As is natural, opinions differ on this matter. Says Feine, op. cit. ↩

13. Harnack, Hist. Dog., E. T., I. p. 184, note 2, says: “Only in the second half of the second century, if I am not mistaken, did the designation Jesus Christ or Christ become the current one, more and more crowding out the simple Jesus.” This appears to be founded on the relative usage of the terms in the writings of the early post-Apostolic age. On taking a broader outlook the appearance of things is altered. Already in Paul the simple ‘ Jesus’ has retired into the back- L ground and the simple ‘ Christ together with compounds of Christ has taken its place. There is in fact no question here of change or development of usage: but only of character of literature. In the N. T. Jesus’ is only the narrative name of our Lord: Christ and its compounds, together with Lord,’ the didactic name. So far as appears from the evidence, Christians were from the beginning accustomed to speak of Jesus as Christ, Lord,’ whenever they were not / merely recounting His deeds in the flesh. The use of Lord and its high implications are recognized by Harnack as an early phenomenon persisting through the succeeding eras (p. 183). ↩

14. Anarthrous Xptsrds in Paul: Rom 5⁶8 6⁴,⁸9 8⁹,¹⁰,¹⁷ g¹ 10⁴,⁶,⁷,¹⁷ 125 14915 158,18,20,20 165,7.9,10 1 Cor 112,17,23,24 216 31,23,23 41,10,10,15 7 615 722 811.12 21 ppl 132²7 143.12.18.14,16,17,18,19,2²0,23 2 Cor 121 210, 215,17 33,14 516,17,18,19,20,20 15 1oT⁷ 1r³10,13,23 1321019 Gal 16.10,22 216,17,17,20,20,21 413,16,24,2²7,20 419 1,2,4 Eph 13 212 415,32 521,32, Phil 110,13,17,18,20,21,23,29 21,16,30 38,9 Col 1²:27,28 22,5,8,20 311, Philem 6,8,20, 1 Thess 2⁶ 4¹⁶; and not at all in the Pastorals; 127 in all. ↩

15. Cf. also Mt 1¹⁸8 v. r. ↩

16. So e.g. Paul Feine, op. cit, p. 36: “The ground of this combination is a feeling of need on Paul’s part to throw the Messianic aspect of Jesus into the foreground. This form, Χριστὸς Ιησοῦς, accordingly has much the same significance as that in which the Apostle uses the simple Christ.’” In his comment on Rom 1¹, Dr. Sanday discusses the forms of the names of Jesus used by Paul in the addresses to his Epistles. He supposes that in the addresses of the earlier Epistles Paul used ΪΙησοῦς Χριστός, but in those of the later Χριστὸς Ἰησοῦς. “The interest of this,” he adds, “would be in the fact that in Χριστὸς’Iyoods the first word would seem to be rather more distinctly a proper name than in’Iysods Χριστός, No doubt the latter phrase is rapidly passing into a proper name, but Χριστός would seem to have a little of its sense as a title still clinging to it: the phrase would be in fact transitional between Χριστός or 6 Χριστός of the Gospels and the later Χριστὸς Ιησοῦς or Χριστός simply as a proper name.” He refers us to his own Bampton Lectures, p. 289 seq., and to an article by the Rev. F. Herbert Stead in The Expositor, 1888, i. pp. 386 seq. According to Feine, then Xpts1ds Insods is more of a proper name; according to Sanday it is less of a proper name, than ησοῦς Χριστός. The truth seems to be that both are practically proper names: and neither has lost the whole implication of office. For the rest is it not rash to speak of one as an “earlier” or a “later” form than the other? ‘ Jesus Christ” is, indeed, placed once on our Lord’s lips (Jno 17³), and is used by the evangelists (Mt 1¹,¹⁸ 16²1) Mk 1¹, Jno 1¹⁷ [17³]), but “Christ Jesus” already appears on the lips of the earliest followers of Jesus (Acts 3²⁰), and in Paul’s earliest epistle (1 Thess 2¹⁴ 5¹⁸). “Jesus Christ” appears not only in I Thess (1¹ 3¹ 59:²3,²⁸) but also in James (11¹ 2¹). ↩

17. Cf. Feine, op. cit, pp. 41 seq.: “Ιησοῦς Χριστός and 6 κύριος Ιησοῦς are already solemn names of Jesus: and this is in still higher degree the case with κύριος (ἡμῶν) Ιησοὺῦς Χριστός. It gives expression formally and ceremoniously to the majesty of Jesus over against the believers, and has something in it of the nature of a confession… In Paul this formula occurs for the most part in _ the opening and closing greetings… And it occurs frequently when Jesus is named in connection with God.” “Both of the formulas [Χριστὸς Ιησοὺῦς 6 κύριος (ἡμῶν, pod) and ησοῦς Χριστὸς κύριος ἡμῶν] have something very solemn about them.” ↩

18. Cf. Swete on Rev 7¹⁰: “The cry ‘H σωτηρία τῷ θεῷ xal t ἀρνίῳ is equivalent to attributing to Both the title of Σωτήρ, so freely given by loyal or pliant cities of Asia to the Emperors, but belonging in Christian eyes only to God and to His Christ. The Pastoral Epistles supply examples of both applications, (1) 1 Tim 1¹ 2³, Tit 1³ 3⁴, (2) Tit 1⁴ 2¹³ 36⁶ Also p. clxiii.: “The phrase is perhaps suggested by the free use of σωτήρ on coins and in inscriptions in reference to certain of the heathen deities (e.g. Zeus, Asklepios), and to the Emperors. John recalls the word from these unworthy uses, and claims it for the Ultimate Source of health and life. But in this attribution he includes Jesus Christ.” ↩

19. Cf. Weiss (Meyer) in loc., correcting Huther. Cf. Schmiedel-Winer, Grammatik, p. 158: “In Tit 2¹³, 2 P 1¹, 2 Thess 1¹², Jude 4, Eph 5⁵ and Acts 20²⁸, according to the badly attested reading τὴν ἐκκλ. tod κυρίου καὶ θεοῦ, grammar strictly requires, as well as in 2 P 1¹¹ 2²⁰ 3²,¹⁸8 that there should be in every case a single person intended, and therefore Christ be called θεός or μόνος δεσπότης. Nevertheless it is possible for κύριος in 2 Thess and Jude, and θεός in Eph (and Acts) to stand as a designation of a new person ( 19, 13 d). That σωτήρ too in Titus and 2 P can also be so construed, since it has ἡμῶν with it, is acc. to 19, 5, to be left open. In any case no one will ground here on Grammar, but must hold a careless construction possible, and therefore in deciding the question leave room for material considerations.” Winer (Thayer, p. 130) had on Biblico-theological grounds decided in these passages for two persons— that is, he had decided on the strength of his conception of what these authors would be likely to say; but he allows that grammatically they are flexible to the other opinion. ↩

20. Meyer in loc. ↩

21. On this designation see the full note of J. Armitage Robinson in his commentary on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians, 1903, Ppf 229-233; and cf. Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible, 11 p 50I. Cf also Charles, The Ascension of Isaiah, 1900, pp 3 Seq. and E Daplyn, in Hastings’ D. C. G., sub voc. (1. pp. 183, 189) ↩

22. Cf. Lightfoot on Rom 1⁴: “The word γενόμενος implies a prior existence of the Son before the Incarnation… His Messiahship was after all only the lower aspect of His Person (xara σάρχα > His personality as the Divine Word… was His higher aspect.” ↩

23. Cf. Sanday on Rom 1⁴: “It is certain that St. Paul did not hold that the Son of God became such by the Resurrection. The undoubted Epistles are clear on this point (esp. 2 Cor 4⁴ 8⁹, cf. Col 1¹⁵⁻¹⁹), At the same time he did regard the Resurrection as making a difference— if not in the transcendental relations of the Father to the Son (which lie beyond our cognizance), yet in the visible manifestation of Sonship as addressed to the understanding of men (cf. esp. Phil 2⁹.). This is sufficiently expressed by our word ‘ designated,” which might perhaps with advantage also be used in the two places in the Acts (10⁴² 17³¹). It is true that Christ becomes Judge in a sense in which He does not become Son; but He is Judge too not wholly by an external creation, but by an internal right. The Divine declaration, as it were, endorses and proclaims that right… It is as certain that when St. Paul speaks of Him as [dws υἱός (Rom 8³²), ἑαυτοῦ υἱός (8³), he intends to cover the period of preéxistence as that St. John identifies the μονογενής with the preéxistent Logos.” Cf. also Robinson on Eph. 4¹³ (p. 100): When Paul is treating of the relation of our Lord to the Church he speaks of Him as the Christ’; but when he would describe Him as the object of saving faith, he speaks of Him as the Son of God’— thereby suggesting, it would seem, the thought of His eternal existence in relation to the Divine Father.” ↩

24. It is a usage which he was so far from inventing that he seems to have brought it with him when he entered on his career as a preacher of the Gospel. “It is most significant,” remarks Knowling (The Testimony of St. Paul to Christ, p. 43), “that the first and earliest intimation which we have in Acts of St. Paul’s Christian teaching is this, that in the synagogues,’ not to Greeks and Romans, but to Jews and proselytes, he proclaimed Jesus that He is the Son of God (Acts 9²⁰).” It is already an old form of speech with him when he wrote his first Epistle (cf. 1 Thess 1¹⁰ and see Knowling, pp. 229 seq.). ↩

25. Rom 1³,⁴9 510 832⁹,³²2 I Cor 1⁹ 15²⁸, 2 Cor 1¹⁹, Gal 1¹⁶ 220 448, Eph 4¹³, Col 1¹³, 1 Thess 1¹⁰. ↩

26. E.g. 1 Thess 1¹⁰, Gal 1¹⁶ 2²⁰, Col 1¹³, Eph 4¹³. ↩

27. Cf. Meyer on Rom 13³,⁴ (E. T., pp. 43, 44): “The Apostle never designates Christ as the υἱὸς θεοῦ otherwise (cf. Gess. v. d. Pers. Christi, p. 89 seq. Weiss, Bibl. Theol., p. 309) than from the standpoint of the knowledge of God given him by revelation (Gal 1¹⁶) of the metaphysical Sonship (8³,³², Gal 4⁴, Col 1¹³, Phil 2⁶, al).” ↩

28. On Rom 9 see Dwight, Journal of Exegetical Society, 1881, p. 22; and Sanday iz loc. with the literature there mentioned. Dr. R. B. Drummond significantly writes (The Academy, March 30, 1895, p. 273): “I must confess that I feel very strongly the grammatical difhculty of the Unitarian interpretation; but on the other hand the improbability of Paul attributing not only deity, but supreme deity (ἐπὶ πάντων θεός) to Christ, seems to me so great as to outweigh all other considerations.” On Titus 2¹³ see Weiss’ note (in Meyer’s Com.). The case against the application of these titles to Christ may be read, as well as elsewhere, in Ezra Abbott, Journal of Exegetical Society, 1881, reprinted in his Critical Essays. ↩

29. [Was avissen wir von Jesus? 1904, pp. 17-26. This much, says Bousset, is certain from the general testimony of Paul: “First, the fact of a historical Jesus is assured… Secondly, however, it is assured that the Person of Jesus had for the faith of His first community no indefinite but a perfectly determinate significance.” ↩

30. The extreme radicalism of the so-called Dutch school, the best representative of which is probably van Manen (or in Germany, Steck), may safely be neglected. ⁴² Bousset, WW as wissen air, etc., pp. 19, 20, says: “It is not, however, at all the case that the critical theology denies to Paul all others of the letters ascribed to him with the exception of the four chief Epistles (and possibly also the Epistle to the Philippians). If the critical theology once did that, it has since corrected itself here. Thus with ever increasing confidence it has again accredited to Paul, together with the Epistle to the Philippians, 1 Thessalonians also, and Colossians, with the exception of perhaps a few verses. Lately a theologian like Jiilicher, whom no one can accuse of anti-critical prepossessions, has again defended the genuineness of Ephesians on striking grounds. With ever greater clearness and definiteness doubts are confining themselves to particular Epistles—2 Thess, 1 Tim. and Titus.” Weinel bases his picture of St. Paul the Man and His Work (E. T. 1906), on Romans, 1 and 2 Cor, Gal, Phil, and 1 Thess only: but he is willing to admit that “the vast majority of critics consider the Epistle to the Colossians and the short note to Philemon to be genuine,” and that some not unworthy of the name of critics add Eph. and 2 Thess. (p. ix.) Wrede (Paulus, 1905) uses Romans, 1 and 2 Cor., Gal., Philip., 1 Thess., Col, Philem.; while Wernle makes use of all except the Pastorals (Beginnings of Christianity, 1903). ↩