Son, Is an ethico-religious or a metaphysical one. Since this name be- longs to Christ on account of His pretemporal relation to God, the notion ' Son of God ' is plainly in the first instance a metaphysical one. . . . An unprejudiced exposition of the relative passages must lead to the conclusion that according to the doctrine of the author, it is pre- cisely the metaphysical attributes which are attributed to Christ in 1 2 seq. that make Him the ' Son of God.' "
^ Riehm offers this illustration to clarify the notion of d-Tzabyaaiia'. " Should all the light which proceeds from the sun be united again in a second body of light, which radiates it out again a second time, there would be an dTtauyacTfia of the sun in the sense in which the author has used the word here. All the rays of the manifold divine glory unite again in the Son, in order in Him, joined together in a new glori- ous Light-Being, to present the divine glory a second time and to make it through this second presentation visible even to the creature" (p. 288), Cf. also Davidson in loc, who judiciously echoes Riehm.
' Cf . Riehm, op. cit., p. 284 : " What the writer wishes is to empha- size in this second predicate that the nature of the Son corresponds precisely with the nature of the Father; that there is no trait in the
2 8o The Designations of Our Lord
given to us in the ' Son ' Is here declared to be God as * Son ' standing over against God as ' Father."
It can cause no surprise, therefore, when the author declares that it was of the * Son ' that God^ was speak- ing in the Psalm (45^), when He said,
His Deity " Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever." This is only to apply directly to the * Son ' the name which is in the whole discussion Implied to be His: for undoubtedly the very point of the whole argument Is to the effect that Jesus Christ as the ' Son of God ' stands Infinitely above every crea- ture just because He Is ' God ' Hlmself.^^ We may leave undecided the question whether or no the dox- ology at the close of the Epistle Is to be referred to Christ, treated here as the God He Is recognized
nature of the Father which does not find itself in perfection also in the nature of the Son, and lice 'versa." Of the whole, he says (pp. 284-5) • " The Son is then, according to the doctrine of the Ep. to the Heb., an independently existing Divine Person, whose substance is not created by God, but has proceeded out of the glory of the Father's nature; a Divine Person to whom in consequence the same glorious nature be- longs, so that every attribute of the Father repeats itself in the Son, and every attribute of the Son repeats itself in the Father ; so that through the Son the whole nature of God is completely revealed." Cf. the long " Note on the Son " in Davidson's Commentary, pp. 73-79.
* It is noticeable, however, that God is not called ' Father ' as over against the ' Son ' in this Epistle. Cf. Riehm, op. cit., p. 272 : " As the author so frequently designates Christ as the Son of God, it is some- what remarkable that he only a single time and that in a citation from the O. T. (i5) calls God the Father of Christ."
^ For this is the significance of the formulas of citation to which 1* goes back.
1" So Delitzsch, in loc. (E. T., p. 76) : " The very point of the argu- ment for the superiority of the Son above the angels, drawn from Ps 45^^ and foil., lies surely in the fact that He is here twice, or at least once, addressed in the vocative as 6 ffeo^,^' Hofmann and even Riehm are unnecessarily subtle here.
Witness of Epistle to the Hebrews 281