1, Christ in His relation to God.— (1) He is n
Divine. Being. St. Paul is an OT believer, utterly removed from polytheism, and wholly incapable of believing in demi-gods. He is not a Greek philos- opher ; impersonal abstractions or principles have no meaning for him. He of whom he speaks is 'Christ,' which with St. Paul is a proper name, the official designation being lost in the personal appellative. If, then, he ascribes to Christ the qualities which a Jewish monotheist, a member of the Old Covenant, attributed to Jehovah, he can mean nothing else than that this same ])erson, Jesus Christ, is a Divine Being, equal with God and one with God.
side of His being He is linked ; and St. Paul has ample knowledge of the facts of man life, and shows no want ot interest, and still less xnce, in referring to them. How should he, when it ain business as a missionary to prove that this very the Son of God'f On the other side of His being.
(a) He attributes Lordship 1 title 'Lord' habitually in . .mii Bonal names 'Jesus' and ■' : is used in the sense in win
it has the
accordingly, whi _ . . _ ^
(Ro 10", 1 Co 1022). To the Lord, therefore, as to Ood,
ship is offered, and prayers are addressed hv St. Paul and by
all Christians (2 Co 128, i Co 12, Ro lO"). (b) He designates
Christ as 'the Son of God.' The teaching of St. Paul on this
subject is in harmony with the other NT representations.
(Ro 11 ■'). St. Paul's Christianity centres in this Divine Sonship of Christ (Gal &«, Eph 413). it was no invention of his brain, no borrowing from pagan adulation of the Emperor. It was the centre of Christianity as such, and belongs to the very earliest period ot which we have literary record, being implied in 1 Th 11. The faith in Christ as Son of God is the differentia of Christianity. They are Christians who think ot Jesus Christ ' as of God ' (i; mp) tiou), and so thinking they name Him, as St. Paul did, 'God' (Ro 95).
(2) He is one with the Father.— 1\\e. relation of the Divine Christ to the Godhead became an insoluble problem for subsequent thought. Let the presupposed conception of God be abstract simplicity and unity. Let Him be conceived as Pure Being, Pure Form, Pure Thought, the Idea, or Substance. Then let tlie claim be advanced on behalf of a historic person tliat he is God. The result will be a problem which, in the nature of the case, must be insoluble. With such a Deity, the Divinity of the historic Christ is utterly incom- patible. Christ must be lowered to the rank of a demi-god, or He must be etherialized into an im- personal principle.
Suppose, however, that God be differently con- ceived ; in that case the claim of Divinity ad- vanced on behalf of one who lived a human life may not lead to intellectual impossibilities. It is certain, however, that neither St. Paul nor any other NT writer held any such speculative idea of God as was prevalent in Greek Philosophy. To the men of the NT, God was the God of the OT, the living God, a Person, loving, energizing, seek- ing the accomplishment of an everlasting purpose of mercy, the satisfaction of His own loving nature. When, accordingly, the facts of the character and claims and resurrection of an historic person com- pelled them to recognize Him as Divine, they were constrained greatly to enlarge their thought of God ; but they were saved the labour of stretching a logical formula to cover facts wholly irreconcilable with it, for the simple reason that no such formula had any place in their thoughts. They set the Divine Christ side by side with the Divine Father, and thus found a manifoldness in the being of God which did not destroy its unity. St. Paul, there- fore, includes Christ in the Divine circle (1 Th 3"-", 2Th 2"*-", 1 Co 8«, 2 Co l.S"). 'Abstract mono- theism' has ceased, and has been 'replaced by a Theism which iinds within the one Godhead room for both Father and Son ' (Fairbairn, Place of Christ, p. 309). Perhaps it would be more correct to say that the monotheism of the OT was never abstract, because the God of the OT was never a conception, or a substance, but always a Person. Personality, indeed, has never the bare unity of a monad. It always makes room for distinctions ; and reachc.^ its greatest wealth of meaning in the fellowship ot person with person. Between an abstraction and a historic person there can be no unity. Between two historic persons there may be unity of the pro- foundest kind. St. Paul, moreover, is not thinking of a mere quantitative enuiA'alence between the Divine Christ and God. He is true to the concep- tion of Sonship. The relation of Christ to the Father is that of a real son, including dependence and subordination (1 Co 3^ 11» 15=^-=»). To the Son, as reward of obedience, is given a glory and a fulness which enable Him to fullil His mediatorial function
INCAENATION
IKCARKATION
(Pli 2»-", Ro U'J, Col l'"). This, however, in no sense lovers the Divine bein" of the Son, or shuts Him out of the Godhead, llie glory He had with the Father from eternity, and the glory gained as He returns to the Fatlier, are not inconsistent. Without the former, indeed, the latter would be impossible.