" inner connection between the divine predicates and the historical individual who bears them " is lacking. ^^ In point of fact these divine predicates are there; and whether the seer means anything by them may be safely left to the reader to decide. Jesus is represented as emphatically as God Himself, as the living one (i^®), eternal (i^^), omniscient (i^^ 2^^ 19^") j the searcher of the reins and hearts (2^^), In whose hands are the keys of death and hell (i^^). If in reminiscence of Is 44^ where the Lord, the King of Israel, and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts, de- clares of Himself: " I am the first and the last: and beside me there is no God," — God is represented as announcing: "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end" (21^ cf. i^), Jesus equally (despite the strong monotheistic assertion of the orig- inal passage) is represented as announcing: " I am the first and the last, and the living one " (i^'^-^^, cf. 2^), " I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the
(319), Dan 7^ (i^*), Zech 4I0 (5^). Thus the writer seems either to coordinate or to identify Christ with God. Yet he is certainly not conscious of any tendency to ditheism, for his book is rigidly mono- theistic; nor, on the other hand, is he guilty of confusing the two Persons."
^- So also substantially Kostlin and Hoekstra. See the refutation in Gebhardt, pp. 86 seq. Bousset (Meyer's Com. on Apoc), while repre- senting the christology of the book as " a confused conglomeration of the most diverse conceptions" (280), has yet to recognize that it is (in some of its elements at least) " apparently the most advanced in the whole N. T." (280). He says: " W^e have in it the faith of a layman unaflFected by any theological reflection, which with heedless naivete simply identifies Christ in His predicates and attributes with God, while on the other side it calmly incorporates also wholly archaic elements."
ig6 The Designations of Our Lord
last, the beginning and the end" (22^^)." Indeed, in
the opening address we have one of Trinitarian , rr^ . . . , . ,
Background those Irinitarian arrangements which
betray the real underlying conception of deity in others, too, of the New Testament writers: " Grace to you and peace from Him which is and which was and which is to come " — that is Jehovah, of which this Is an analysis, — " and from the seven Spirits " — that is the Holy Spirit set forth in His divine com- pleteness,— " and from Jesus Christ who Is the faith- ful witness, the firstborn from the dead and the ruler of the kings of the earth" (i'*^^'^). In the presence of such pervasive and universally recognized ascrip- tions of deity to our Lord we need not stop to ex- pound the significance of such designations as that by which He is called not merely the ' Amen^* and the faithful and true witness,' but ' the principle of the
13 Dr. B. W. Bacon, Hastings' D. C. G., I., 43 seg., endeavors to ex- pound the application of these phrases to Christ as an eschatologico- soteriological adaptation, in which the metaphysical implication is lost: in them Christ would say " I am the primary object and ultimate ful- fillment of God's promise" (4^). What is in its application to God, therefore, " a solemn designation of Divinity " becomes when trans- ferred to Christ only an assertion that in Him the promised redemption is accomplished : " It is only in the eschatological sense that Christ be- comes the original object and ultimate fulfillment of the Divine pur- poses and promises, ' the Yea and Amen,' ' the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end'" (p. 45). The arti- ficiality and inadequacy of this construction is manifest. Cf. on the other hand A. E. Ross, art. "First and Last," Hastings' D. C. G., I., 595 ^^Q-, who frankly allows " that the title ' the First and the Last ' as applied to Christ in Rev. recalls and attributes to Him all that the O. T. writers had realized of the nature of God" (596 a). Cf. Dr. David- "lO. *>) son, as above, p. jtS,- note, on the essential significance of the phrases.
I 1* On the ' Amen ' as a designation of our Lord, cf. J. S. Clemens,
Hastings' D. C. G., I., 51 a., and J. Massie, Hastings' D. B., i., 8i a.
The JFitncss of the Apocalypse 297
creation of God' (3^^)" — that is to say, the active agent in creating all that God creates. It is abundantly clear that the Christ of the Apocalypse is a divine person. ^^
1^ Cf. Gebhardt, p. 93, and Diisterdieck, in loc.