^2 On this designation see the full note of J. Armitage Robinson in his commentary on St. Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians, 1903, pp. 229-233 ; and cf. Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible, II. p. 501. Cf. also Charles, The Ascension of Isaiah, 1900, pp. 3 seq., and E. Daplyn, in Hastings' D. C. G., sub voc. (i. pp. i88, 189).
248 The Designations of Our Lord
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 Lord of Glory' (i Cor 2^) or 'God' Itself
(Acts 20-^). 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 O But not J r J • J- 1 •
-^ru/^h^ Merely Man ^"^ ^^^ iormed m tashion as a man
(Phil 2^'S); and Paul found no diffi- culty in so understanding, even though he also under- stood that the " taking the form of a servant " was not a supercesslon of " the form of God " but an addition to It: and that therefore though now made in the like- DtvH^ ^^ss of men and formed In fashion as a man, Jesus
remained nevertheless unbrokenly " in the form of God" (y~df)')^cou, 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 rep- resented 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 i^'^) : 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 9^). 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 Corroboration of Paul 249
the Apostle brings the two sides of our Lord's being The Two Sides sharply to our apprehension. Reduced of Christ's to its lowest terms, what he tells us Being \\tYt 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 orig- inal 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 {yevojueuoi; ) — of the seed of David according to the flesh; He was 'designated' — marked out as {bptadivroi;) — 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.^^ Thus clearly the Apostle presents our Lord as essentially the ' Son of God,' and this Sonship to God as essentially consubstantiality with God.^* After precisely the same fashion, at a later
33 Cf. Lightfoot on Rom i*: "The word ^svo^cisvo? implies a prior existence of the Son before the Incarnation. . . . His Messiahship was after all only the lower aspect of His Person ( xara adpxa \ His personality as the Divine Word . . . was His higher aspect."
3* Cf. Sanday on Rom i*: "It is certain that St. Paul did not hold that the Son of God became such by the Resurrection. The undoubted
250 The Designations of Our Lord
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, " accord- ing 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 na- ture, he is content with nothing lower than the highest conceivable. " From whom is Christ, as ac- cording to the flesh," — that Christ " who is in His essential being (o wv) none other than God over all blessed for ever" (9^). 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