frequently than in Paul's letters (2^ 3* 6^° 7"^ jq19 j 22.24 1312) . Jt occurs almost as frequently, indeed, as ' Christ.' Neither is , however, a com- mon title in Hebrews (nine and eight times re- spectively) , nor is the compound title ' Jesus Christ,' which occurs three times (10^^ 13^'"^) » while 'Lord Jesus' (13"°) and 'Jesus the Son of God' (4**) each occurs once. The simple ' Lord ' also is only occa- sionally applied to our Lord (i^*^ 2^ 7^^ [12^*]) ; and no combinations of it with other designations occur at all, except, as we have already intimated, the phrase ' our Lord Jesus ' is once met with ( 13^°) .^ It is notice- able that in two of the three instances in which the term 'Lord' is employed of Christ (i^° 2^) it is used in order to throw into prominence His superangelic dig- nity. The peculiarity of Hebrews is manifested in the free use it makes of the two designations, ' the Son ' ^ j2,5,5,8 ^6 ^5,8 ^28^ ^ qj. more fully the * Son of God '
(414 6« f 10^9), and 'the (or our) High Priest' (2IT 3I 414.15 ^10 620 ^26 gi ^11) or simply ' Priest' (5^ ^3,ii,[i5],i7,2i |-g4-j^ 10^^), which form respectively the favorite ontological and the favorite soteriological des- ignations of Christ in this Epistle.
It is chiefly by means of and In connection with the title 'Son' that this Epistle (in this, like the Epistles
of John) gives expression to its concep- Recognition of . ^ t j5 -t-^
Jesus' Humanity <^ion of our Lords person. There is
no lack of recognition of the humanity of our Lord. Indeed, nowhere else in the New Testa-
2 Cf. Sven Herner, op. cit., p. 41 : " The usage by which xbpio^ is applied to Christ is not alien to Hebrews. We meet once (i3-**) with the designation ' our Lord Jesus ' : and at 7^* we read ' that the Lord springs from Judah.' In i^" God is represented as saying to Christ, 'Thou, Lord, hast laid the foundations of the earth,' and z^ speaks of
278 The Designations of Our Lord
ment do we find the reality and the completeness of His humanity so fully expounded and so strongly in- sisted upon.^ But it is the transcendent conception of Christ, which looks upon Him as ' the Son of God,' clothed with all the attributes of God, that gives its whole tone to the Epistle.* The keynote is struck in the very opening verses, where our Lord is set as ' Son ' in contrast not merely with the prophets, the greatest representatives of God on earth, but also with the angels, the highest of creatures. All these are servants of God: He is His ' Son,' through whom no doubt God works (i"), but as one works through a fellow in whom He is reduplicated; and whom He addresses by the great names peculiar to Himself, * God ' ( i^) and — its equivalent here — ' Lord ' ( i^" 2'^. V
That it is what is called the metaphysical Sonship, which is here attributed to our Lord is obvious in
itself and is put bevond all doubt by the What the . • . '. . .
Son 'is description which is given of Him as
' Son.'^ In this description there are as- signed to Him divine works, in eternity and in time : the creation of the world and the upholding of the
the salvation which the Lord has announced. Finally Hebrews has a passage where we cannot decisively pronounce whether xupiug refers to God or to Christ, . . . (la^*)."
^ Cf. Riehm, Der Lehrbegriff des Hebraerbriefes, 1867, p. 271. " We shall see that the author emphasizes the true humanity of Jesus more than Is found in any other N. T. book." Accordingly, cf. §§ 36, 37> 38, 39, for details.
* Cf. Riehm, pp. 270, 271 : " He sees in Christ above all the Son of God in the eminent sense of that word."
5 Cf. Riehm, op. cit., p. 276: "There is already contained in what has been said the solution of the second question which we were to deal with in this paragraph — the question, namely, whether the uniquely intimate relation of Christ to God, which is designated by the name of
Witness of Epistle to the Hebrews 279
universe. But the most striking element of it tells us rather what the ' Son ' Is than what He had done or is yet to do. He is, we are told, " the effulgence of God's glory and the very image of His substance " — which seems to be only a rich and suggestive way of saying, to put it briefly, that the ' Son,' as ' Son,' is just God's fellow. He is the repetition of God's glory: the re- iteration of His substance. By the " glory of God " Is meant here just the divine nature itself, apprehended In its splendor: and by its "effulgence" is meant not a reflection, but, so to speak, a reduplication of It. The ' Son ' Is just God over again In the glory of His majesty.^ Similarly by the " substance " of God Is meant, not His bare essence, but His whole nature, with all Its attributes; and by "the very Image " Is meant a correspondence as close as that which an Impression gives back to a seal : the ' Son ' of God in no single trait In the least differs from God.'' In a word, what is