Epistles are clear on this point (esp. 2 Cor 4* 8^ cf. Col i^^i^). 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 2^ . . .). This is sufficiently expressed by our word ' designated,' which might perhaps with advantage also be used in the two places in the Acts (10*- 17^^). 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 6 I'dtog u[6^ (Rom 8^-), 6 iaurou ulo^ (8^), he intends to cover the period of preexistence as that St. John identi- fies the fj.ovoy£V7Ji with the preexistent Logos." Cf. also Robinson on Ep/i. 4^^ (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,"
The Corroboration of Paul 25 1
of God ' In . his presentation of the personality of
<c f r^ -, Jesus to his readers.^^ It Is doubtless 'Son of God' '' , , y , . ,., •
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.'^® In a number of these Instances" there Is naturally little Indication of the particular Im- plication of deity which It nevertheless always carries with It In Paul's usage.^® 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 8^), sent "His own Son " (rdv kaurou utou) " in the likeness of sinful flesh " " to condemn sin In the flesh " : and again God spared not " His own Son " ( rou Idiou olou ) but " de- livered Him up for us all" (Rom 8^^). Obviously we are expected to estimate the greatness of the gift
35 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 Tes- timony of St. Paul to Christ, p. 43), "that the first and earliest intima- tion 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 prose- lytes, 'he proclaimed Jesus that He is the Son of God' (Acts 92*')." It is already an old form of speech with him when he wrote his first Epistle (cf. I Thess i^" and see Knowling, pp. 229 seq.).
36 Rom i3.4.9 510 83.29.32^ j Cor i» 1528, 2 Cot i^^, Gal 1I6 220 ^4,6^ Eph 413, Col ii3, I Thess iio.
37 E.g. I Thess iio, Gal iis 220, Col iis, Eph 413.
38 Cf. Meyer on Rom i3.4 (E. T., pp. 43, 44): "The Apostle never designates Christ as the ulb^ deou otherwise (cf. Gess. v. d. Pers. Christi, p. 89 seq.; Weiss, Bibl. Theol., p. 309) than from the stand- point of the knowledge of God given him by revelation (Gal i^^) of the metaphysical Sonship (83.32, Gal 4*, Col i", Phil 2^, al)."
252 The Designations of Our Lord