The King of Glory

Finally, let us look at the addition with which you sum up your earlier blasphemies. Your words are that it was the Spirit “who gave such glory to Christ.” You name glory in order to lower him. By claiming that the Lord was endowed with glory, and saying that he received it, you blasphemously imply that he needed it, for your twisted idea suggests that the generosity of the giver shows the need of the one who receives. What wretched ungodliness! Where, then, is what the divine voice itself foretold long ago of the Lord Jesus Christ ascending into heaven? It says, “Lift up your heads, and the King of glory will come in.” Then, in the manner of divine sayings, it answers itself as though speaking in the person of one who asks, “Who is the King of glory?” and at once adds, “The Lord, strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle.” Under the picture of a battle fought, it shows the Lord’s victory in his triumph. Then, to complete the explanation, it repeated the words already quoted and showed the majesty of the Lord as he entered heaven with this closing line: “The Lord of hosts, he is the King of glory.” This was so that his taking a body would not get in the way of the glory of his mighty divinity. It taught that the same Person it had earlier proclaimed the Victor in the battle below was the Lord of hosts and the King of heavenly glory. [a]

Go on now and say that glory was given to the Lord, when prophecy has said that he is the King of glory, and he himself has also testified of himself, “When the Son of Man comes in his glory.” Refute this if you can, and contradict it: he testifies that he has glory of his own, and you say he received another’s. Yet we maintain that he has his own glory in such a way that we do not deny that this very possession of glory is shared by him with the Father and the Holy Spirit. For whatever God possesses belongs to the Godhead, and the kingdom of glory belongs to the Son of God in such a way that it is not withheld from the whole Godhead.