13 Therefore commentators have been tempted sometimes to seek out an easy and mechanical rule of discrimination. In his Neueste Theol. Journal, iv., pp. 11-24 (cf. in. p. 501), Gabler, e.g., maintained that anarthrous x6pco<} always is God in the N. T., while articled xupco^ is always Jesus. Winer in the first and second editions of his Gram- mar blindly repeated this. But on investigating the matter he was soon convinced of the error, and showed in his monograph, Disputatio de sensu wocum xopio? et 6 xbpio^ im Actis et Epistolis Apostolorum (Erlang., 1828), pp. 26, that the assumed rule did not hold good. Moses Stuart had meanwhile taken up the whole subject and printed the results of his researches in a somewhat rambling but useful paper in the first volume of the Biblical Repository (1831, Oct.), to the same effect. Dr. A. Plummer in his commentary on Luke repeats as regards that book the artificial statement of Gabler. In truth the distribu- tion of the usage between Christ and God cannot in any book of the N. T. be determined on such grounds: and the difficulty in determining the reference is rooted ultimately in the assimilation of the two persons in the minds of the writers. Cf. Harnack, History of Dogma, i. p. 183.
i^Cf. Meyer on z^^ and lO"",
212 The Designations of Our Lord
That in this rich development of the conception of the Lordship of Jesus, His Messianic dignity is not out of mind is already apparent from the Man' phraseology of 2^*^.^* The emphasis of
Peter's preaching turns, indeed, pre- cisely on the fact that God has made the Jesus whom the Jews crucified " both Lord and Christ." It is thus with Acts as truly as with the Gospels the Messianic office of Jesus on which the greatest stress is laid. Nat- urally as Jesus is not a speaker in the narrative of Acts, His own favorite self-designation of ' Son of Man ' is here conspicuous by its absence. It occurs only a single time, when the dying Stephen declared that he saw the heavens opened and the ' Son of Man ' stand- ing at the right hand of God (7^^). This is the only instance in the whole New Testament where this desig- nation is employed by anyone except our Lord Himself: Stephen's use of it seems a reflection of our Lord's declaration, " Henceforth ye shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power" (Mt 26*^* |I), and is at once Stephen's testimony to the greatness of his Lord in His divine Majesty, and a witness to the genu- ineness of the whole series of declarations attributed to our Lord in which He saw Himself in the Danielle vision and developed on that basis His conception of His Messiahship in its earthy humiliation and subse- quent elevation to participation in the divine glory.
The great companion designation ' Son of God ' is
i^Cf. e.g. A. H. Blom, De Leer <van het Messiasrijk, etc., pp. 58-9: " Christians were thoroughly convinced that the Messiah had appeared in Jesus the Nazarene. This was the main content of the preaching of the Apostles, whether they turned to the Jews (Acts 222-36 313,26 ^8-12 529-32 752 q2o^ etc.), or to the Samaritans (8^), or to the heathen i(io3*-*2 13I6-41)."
The Designations in Acts 213
almost as rare In Acts as the * Son of Man.' This pre- cise designation, Indeed, occurs but once, God ' where we are told that Paul Immediately
after his conversion began to proclaim in the synagogues of Damascus Jesus as the ' Son of God' (9"°), which Is explained as meaning that he proved Jesus to be 'the Christ' (9"). In his speech in the synagogue of Pisldlan Antloch, Paul Indeed de- clared that by raising up Jesus God fulfilled the an- nouncement of the second Psalm, " Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten Thee " (13^^) ; and the risen Jesus Is quoted as twice speaking of God as " the Father" (i'^'^), and Peter Is cited as repeating one of these declarations In his Pentecostal sermon (2^^). Oc- casion has been taken from the circumstance that In all these three cases of allusion to the ' Father ' the term employed Is ' the Father ' to suggest that It Is not specifically Jesus' Father but the general Father of spirits that Is Intended. To this is added the sugges- tion that In Paul's allusion to the second Psalm It Is of the Incarnation or even perhaps of the resurrection that he Is thinking as the point when the Son was be- gotten. The conclusion is then drawn that in Acts there Is no allusion to a metaphysical Sonship of Christ.^^ It must be frankly admitted that had we these