Though there is certainly an interest in the
eschatological tone of Ps 101 LXX, and its connection to Christ’s role in
winding up the present creation, the unchangeable character of the Lord of the quotation
is grounded to his protological standing. He does not wear our like the world,
because he was there before it. This suggests that in attributing the quotation
to Christ it cannot be made to terminate only on eschatological categories, it
must also involve the protological. In this regard, Schenck’s equivocation on
pre-existence is unhelpful, sometimes seeming to claim that the Son was son at
all points of existence, but at other times seeming to reconfigure this as the “pre-existence”
of a principal or plan in the mind of God which reaches its goal in Christ. In
the context of Hebrews, such a thesis proves far too much, for the exaltation
of Christ is not the only fulfilment of this divine plan. Though Christ may
play a singular role, as Schenck notes, the accomplishment of human destiny in
toto is at work here. Does this then mean that, because the glorification of
the many sons was foreordained in the mind of God, the audience ought also to
draw from the catena a sense of their own “pre-existence” in the divine wisdom?
Or that, on such grounds, they might see the address as Creator Lord of Ps 101
as somehow being applicable to the hearers themselves? Such questions
demonstrate that to deny a personal and protological existence to Christ as necessitated
by the quotation of Ps 101:27, 28 is to loosen the connection to him from its
moorings and make it too far-ranging. (Nick Brennan, Divine Christology in
the Epistle to the Hebrews: The Son as God [Library of New Testament Studies
656; London: T&T Clark 2022], 64, emphasis added)
