20 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 preexistent 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 inade- quate. 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 9^^, 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.
The Corroboratioti of Paul 237
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 w^as charged likewise to the apprehension of his Gentile readers with suggestions in no way inferior to those of ' God ' itself.^^ 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 never- theless there was to him and to his readei*s 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
of Him as in some sense inferior or. Subordination , , . 1 j- , , /^ 1
is Humiliation ^° "^ more precise, subordmate, 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 Him- self 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
-1 Cf. Harnack, Hist, of Dogma, i. p. iig, note i: " Dominus in certain circumstances means more than Deus; see Tertull Apol. ... It signifies more than Soter; see Irenaeus I. i. 3 : . . . 'They say Saviour since they do not wish to call Him Lord ' . . ."
238 The Designations of Our Lord
is the Mediator of God the Father, whose He is, and who is His Head and His God; whose will He per- forms and whose purposes of grace He executes; and to whom, when the redemptive work is fully accom- plished 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 sub- ject 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
Designations various forms of designation into which
Compounded this epithet enters. These run through
with Lord nearly all the possible combinations with
the names of Jesus. 'The (or our) Lord Jesus,'
which, were the title ' Lord ' a mere honorific, would
The Corroboration of Paid 239