(2) In this brief letter Jesus is more than twenty times referred to as 'Lord' (Ki'rpws). The dis- ciples had been in the habit of addressing their Master as ' Lord ' during His lifetime, using the term as a title of authority in a sense not very different from that in which any Rabbi might be addressed by his pupils (Jn 13'"-) (see Sanday in HDB ii. 648''). But that sense is no longer ade- quate to the apostolic usage ; the word has become filled with a deeper meaning, being used as the LXX equivalent of the OT ' Jahweh ' and as sig- nifying Divine power and sovereignty. What Jahweh was to Israel, that Jesus was to the re- ligious consciousness of St. Paul — the One who has earned the place of Sovereign in his heart, and whom he feels constrained to worship and serve.
(3) Prayer is addressed to Jesus directly, and not merely offered in His name — ' Now may our God and Father himself, and our Lord Jesus, direct our way unto you' (3"). And all this, it is significant to note, is referred to by the Apostle only in the passing, without the slightest indication that it was a novel or unfamiliar attitude to his readers. In his subsequent Epistles St. Paul gives fuller and more developed doctrinal expression to his convic- tion of the truth of the Divine Sonship of Jesus. Per.sonal pre-existenee in the Godhead is unam- biguou.sly affirmed of Him in 2 Co 8' (' ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,' etc. ) and in Ph '¥"■ (' though he was divine by nature, he did not snatch at equality with God but emptied himself by taking the nature of a servant,' etc. [Motl'att]). In Col I ""-"His cosmic significance isdweltupon. As ' the image (ekcif) of the invisible God,' He occupies a position of unique pre-eminence and sovereignty, iind is agent or mediator and end in creation as well as in redemptive history (' in hiiu were all things created ... all things have been created through him, and with a view to [ds^ him ' ; cf. 1 Co 8^ 10^). But already in his earliest as truly ,as in his latest writings full, eternal, essential Divinity is ascribed to Jesus as Son of God, whereby He is placed alongside the Father in honour and worship.
350 RESUKRECTION OF CHRIST
RESURRECTION OF CHRIST
St. Paul's usage of the terra ' Son of God ' in this transcendent sense has Iwen traced to Hellenistic influence. While the title had been eniployed hy the earliest Christian conininnity ' in a very harm- less sense,' St. I'aul gave it the altogether new and mythical sense of a (iod who had descen<ied from heaven, a sense wliich was intelligible enough to tJrceks and heathen but not to Jews with their strict nionotheisni ; and in .so doing he ' hecaine the creator of the new Christoloi;y, which drew its inspiration, not from history, out from something above it — from a mythical being, and which won over the heathen for this very reason' (W(M'nle, Beginnin(js iif Christinnitii, Kng. tr., '2 \-iils., London, i9i)3-04, i. i.W). 'Sonof God,'aseiii|iloyi'il by St. I'auI, is thus held to be primarily a tjeiitile title, one which was sometimes applied to the Emperors, like the title ' Lord ' (e.g. it is so found in a letter of the Emperor Augustus dated A.D. 5 ; see Exp, 6th ser., vii. [1903] 114, and Knowling, Testi- mony of St. Paul, p. 44). This Imperial usage, Deissmann conjectures, may have first suggested to St. Paul the application of the title to Jesus (Bibelstudien, Marburg, 1895, i. 167, Eng. tr., Bible Studies, Edinburgh, 1901, p. 166 f.). But 'Son of God,' if a Gentile, was also a Jewish title, and, as Knowling points out, it is most significant that the first and earliest intimation which we have in Acts of St. Paul's Christian teaching is this, that ' in the synagogues '^not to Greeks or Romans, but to Jews and proselytes — ' he proclaimed Jesus, that he is the Son of God' (9=°).
If St. Paul had interpreted ' Son of God ' differ- ently from the other apostles, and if the deification of Christ had been due to him, the surprising thing is that we do not hear of any opposi- tion on this point between him and the other apostles. The older apostles and St. Paul dittered no doubt in many things, but there is no trace that they differed in the estimate which they formed of the Person of Christ, and of His relationship to the Father. St. Paul's representation of Christ is only a more developed e.xpression of what is present already in solution in the primitive apostolic teach- ing. Of this St. Peter's sermons in Acts and his First Epistle may be taken as representative.
In St. Peter's sermons in Acts, while no attempt is made at a fully developed doctrine of the Person of Christ, He is quite definitely placed on the side of God as over against man, the theme of the go.spel and the object of faith. Through His resurrection and exaltation Jesus is proclaimed not only ' Messiah ' {S'^-'" i'^--^), but ' giver of the Holy Spirit' (2=3), 'Prince of life' (S's 5^'), 'Saviour' (412 521), and 'Judge of living and dead' (10« a prerogative which in the OT belongs to God and to God alone). Prayer is offered to Him directly (1^ V), so that one mode of describing Christians in these early days was to speak of them as those that called upon the name of Jesus (9='). And already in his first sermon we find St. Peter applying to Christ the term 'Lord' (Ki)pios, Ac 2='-^-^; cf. 31s. 21 531 1036)^ f]jg same term as is used of Jah- weh in the LXX, thus assigning to Him Divine sovereignty and authority. The mere use of the word Kvpio! may not in itself necessarily involve Divinity. The Jews applied it to their Messiah (Mk 1'2^'''- and ||s) without thereby, it is said, pro- nouncing him to be God. But, as Knowling points out, ' it is not merely that the early Christians addressed their Ascended Lord so many times by the same name which is used of Jehovah in the LXX . . . but that they did not hesitate to refer to Him the attributes and the prophecies which the great prophets of the Jewish nation had associated with the name of Jehovah ' (EGT, on Ac 2=').