Jesus' Authority as God and Jesus' Authority as Mediator: Symington

For several years I have been trying to understand the history of the doctrine of the Mediatorial Kingship of Christ. One issue that continues to crop of in the literature is how to understand Christ in relation to the Church and Christ in relation to the created order.

This distinction was important during the time of the Westminster Assembly (1643-1653), the killing times in Scotland (1660-1688), and in the Reformed Presbyterian Church's witness though writers such as William Symington.

I hope in a future post to address this distinction as the Westminster Assembly was confronted with the issue.

More recently, this distinction has appeared, throughout the years, in the debate over Two Kingdom theology. Dr. Darryl Hart and Dr. R. Scott Clark have been redirecting any opposition at Two Kingdom theology to an essay written by Dr. David McKay in The Faith Once Delivered: Essays in Honor of Dr. Wayne R. Spear. I intend to write a future post about how to understand Dr. McKay's essay in the future, but for now I want to highlight a very helpful, modern day explanation of this distinction that Drs. Blackwood and LeFebvre give in their book William Symington: Penman of the Scottish Covenanters on pages 210-212:

Before examining the main content of Symington's work, one important clarification should be made. It is a matter of clarification which Symington sought to establish in the opening pages of his book [ed., Messiah the Prince]. Specifically, we must have clearly fixed in mind a distinction between Jesus' authority as God—an authority which He always enjoyed over all things—and His authority as our Savior. By His very nature, Jesus always was God. To bring about our salvation, however, Jesus had to become a man. It is in Jesus' becoming a man that He took up the responsibilities and prerogatives of a Priest, a Prophet, and a King. We should have it clearly in mind that Symington was writing, in this book, about the royal authority Jesus obtained as our Incarnate Savior. This is an aspect of His authority distinct from that which He always enjoyed as the Creator God.

This might seem a confusing distinction to make, but it is a biblical distinction that needs to be upheld.Just as it is hard to comprehend how Jesus can be both God and man, similarly it is difficult to comprehend how Jesus can be at once both eternally sovereign (as Creator) and yet also to have needed to obtain sovereignty (as Savior). Yet such distinctions are taught to us by Scripture, and are important to have in mind as we approach Symington's book. ...

[T]he same Jesus, who as Creator always held sovereignty over us, now takes on mediatorial kingship as well for the purposes of our salvation.

In the case of Jesus, we might speak of the first kind of authority—His eternal sovereignty as God—as His natural dominion. It was Jesus who made all things, and having made everything, Jesus naturally owns all things. Simply because of who Jesus is (His nature), He has sovereign authority over everything. Paul wrote about this kind of authority held by Jesus in his epistle to the Colossians:

For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: and he is before all things, and by him all things consist (Col.1:16-17; cf. Ps. 24:1-2).

As the Creator God, Jesus always had absolute authority over all things. Just as there was never a time when He was not God, there was never a time when Jesus was not King, in this sense. Symington refers to this authority of Jesus the Creator God as His essential, or what we here have termed His natural dominion.

The second king of authority Jesus held, however, is something which He had to obtain as part of His work of salvation. It is what Symington calls His mediatorial dominion. As a man, Jesus took "the form of a servant" (Phil. 2:7). In respect to His humanity, Jesus was not (at first) revealed as a king, but a servant. Nevertheless, from that position of servanthood, Jesus went on to be exalted to a throne: "Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name" (Phil. 2:9).

Peter also preached about this authority Jesus received as our incarnate Savior in Acts 2. Using one of David's Psalms (Ps. 110) as a preaching text, Peter proclaimed,

Therefore being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him, that of the fruit of his loins, according to the flesh, he would raise up Christ to sit on his throne...David...saith himself [of Jesus], The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, until I make thy foes thy footstool. Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made the same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ (Acts 2:30-36; cf., Isa. 9:6).

Jesus was exalted to a throne and endowed with titles of sovereignty. Peter is clear to indicate these privileges as being "new" acquisitions—authority ascribed to Jesus at a specific point in time and in specific connection with His work as our Savior. This is a second kind of authority obtained by Jesus in specific connection with His work of salvation. [A]lthough Jesus already held natural authority over the creation, in His love He went further to obtain for Himself mediatorial authority for the specific purpose of guaranteeing the effectiveness of our redemption.

Drs. Blackwood and LeFebvre's reference to Symington's establishment of this distinction in the opening pages of Messiah the Prince must be a reference to pages 4-5:

The sovereign authority of Christ may be viewed either as necessary, or as official. Viewing him as God, it is necessary, inherent, and underived: viewing him as Mediator, it is official and delegated. It is the latter of these we are now to contemplate. The subject of our present inquiry is, the MEDIATORIAL DOMINION of the Son; not that which essentially belongs to him as God, but that with which, by the authoritative act of the Father, he has been officially invested as the Messiah. It is that government, in short, which was laid upon his shoulders—that power which was given unto him in heaven and in earth.

It is also helpful, when addressing this distinction, to note that Symington had to defend Christ's mediatorial authority (as Drs. Blackwood and LeFebvre use "authority" instead of Symington older term "dominion") over the Nations against contemporaries in Symington's time who contended that Christ only had natural dominion over the Nations. Symington's lengthy defense of his position can be found on pages 192-230 of the edition of Messiah the Prince that I have linked to earlier in this post.