τ6.
of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (iv. 6), and it is the unbelieving on whom ‘‘the light of the Gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God,”’ does not shine (iv. 4), These passages illustrate Paul’s language here, and show that it is not, as Oltramare argues, of physical visibility or invisibility that he is speaking. Christ is the image of God for Christians. This, it is true, is only part of His wider functions. The Son is the Mediator between God and the uni- verse. His work in grace has its basis in His place and work in nature. But it is the aspect of His work of which Paul is here speaking. The view of some of the Fathers that the Son, as image of the invisible God, must be Himself invisible is precisely the opposite of that intended by Paul.—wpwrdédtokos πάσης κτίσεως. πρωτότοκος in its primary sense expresses temporal priority, and then, on account of the privileges of the firstborn, it gains the further sense of do- minion. Many commentators think both ideas are present here. Sodenand Abbott, on the other hand, deny that the word expresses anything more than priority to and distinction from all creation, while Haupt again thinks that all the stress is on the idea of dominion, the Son is ruler of all creation (similarly Ol. and Weiss, who says that no temporal priws lies in the expression). It is undeniable that the word in the O.T. had in some cases lost its temporal significance, ¢.g., Exod. iv. 22, Ps. Ixxxix. 28. Schoettgen instances the fact that R. Bechai spoke of God as “the firstborn of the world,” though, probably, as Bleek says in his note on Heb. i. 6, this is to be regarded ‘nur als eine Singularitat”. The course of the argument seems to require that the stress should lie on the lordship ot the Son rather than on His priority to creation. For what Paul is concerned to prove is the superiority of Christ to the angels, and for this the idea of priority is not relevant, but that of dominion is. Whether the word retains anything of its original meaning here is doubtful. If so, it might seem most natural to argue with the Arians that the Son is regarded as a creature. Grammatically it is possible to make πάσης κτίσεως a partitive genitive, But this is excluded by the context,which sharply distinguishes between the Son and τὰ πάντα, and for this idea Paul would probably have used πρωτόκτιστος. The genitive is therefore commonly ex- plained as a genitive of comparison. Oltramare says that such a genitive after a substantive is a pure invention, but it is