Acts 2:21--Proof of Jesus' Deity?

Many Trinitarians attempt to argue that Acts 2:21 is proof of Christ's deity. However, the context (Acts 2:22ff) suggests otherwise--nevertheless, what exactly are Trinitarian scholars saying about Acts 2:21?

Greek: καὶ ἔσται πᾶς ὃς ἐὰν ἐπικαλέσηται τὸ ὄνομα Κυρίου σωθήσεται. (Acts 2:21)

LXX (Joel 2:32): καὶ ἔσται πᾶς ὃς ἂν ἐπικαλέσηται τὸ ὄνομα κυρίου σωθήσεται ὅτι ἐν τῷ ὄρει Σιων καὶ ἐν Ιερουσαλημ ἔσται ἀνασῳζόμενος καθότι εἶπεν κύριος καὶ εὐαγγελιζόμενοι οὓς κύριος προσκέκληται

ESV: And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.’

Darrell L. Bock:

The reference to the Lord (κύριος, kyrios) needs careful attention. In Joel this means calling out to Yahweh (יְהוָה), Israel’s God, for salvation. At a literary level, nothing in Peter’s speech up to this point would have anyone think otherwise about the meaning of this reference, because verse 20 speaks of the day of the Lord, which would be the day of God’s judgment. But one of the functions of the entire speech is to show that Jesus is Lord, a key title also applied to Yahweh. Peter will give Jesus a place alongside Yahweh as carrying out the plan and will make clear that the name one is to call on belongs to Jesus (Acts 2:38; 4:10–12).

Bock insists that Peter would have applied Joel 2:32 to the resurrected Christ in this way, although he would likely not have spoken the divine name--YHWH. So Bock thinks Peter's quotation of Joel is geared to demonstrate that Christ is LORD (YHWH). See Bock, Acts, Grand Rapids: Baker Academics, 2007 [2012].

Craig Keener (Acts--An Exegetical Commentary):

The expression “call on the Lord’s name” was familiar in Jewish texts, where it concerned especially praying to him,[642] as in the later Targum on this verse (Tg. Joel 3:5), or praise (Jdt 16:1). Luke’s term for “call upon” (ἐίικαλέω) could also apply to a formal appeal to Caesar (as in Acts 25:11–12, 21; 26:32; 28:19), but it is the Lord who could grant true deliverance. Peter’s sermon expounds at length on this final line from Joel, arguing that the Lord’s name on which his hearers must call in this salvific era is Jesus (2:21, 34, 38).[643] Thus Peter concludes by exhorting them to call on the Lord’s name by baptism in Jesus’s name (2:38).[644] After this Peter com- pletes his Joel quotation, picking up later in Joel’s sentence after the point where he broke off to begin expounding the last line he had quoted (2:39; see also comment there).[645] Cultic invocation of Jesus’s name appears elsewhere in Acts (22:16) and early Christianity (e.g., Rom 10:9, 13; cf. 1 Cor 1:2; 12:3; Phil 2:11); in this context, Jesus’s name is necessary for salvation (Acts 4:12), and in the immediate context, he is “Lord” (2:36).[646]

Peter Pett's Commentary:

To ‘call on the name of the Lord’ was to approach God in worship and to seek His mercy. Compare Genesis 4:26; Genesis 12:8; 2 Samuel 22:4; Psalms 55:16; Psalms 86:5; Psalms 105:1; Psalms 116:13; Psalms 116:17; Psalms 145:18). But here was probably the added idea that it was Jesus Who was the Lord Who had to be called on.

The Expositor's GT:

But just as in Romans 10:12 this same prophecy of Joel is beyond all doubt referred by St. Paul to the Lord Jesus, so here the whole drift of St. Peter’s speech, that the same Jesus who was crucified was made both Lord and Christ, points to the same conclusion, Acts 2:36. In Joel κύριος is undoubtedly used of the Lord Jehovah, and the word is here transferred to Christ. In its bearing on our Lord’s Divinity this fact is of primary importance, for 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—although it is certainly remarkable that in 1 Thess. the name is applied to Christ more than twenty times—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, Zahn, Skizzen aus dem Leben der alten Kirche, pp. 8, 10, 16 (1894), and for the force of the expression, ἐπικ. τὸ ὄνομα, in 1 Corinthians 1:2, see Harnack, History of Dogma, i., p. 29, E.T.— ὃς ἂν ἐποκ., “whosoever”: it would seem that in St. Peter’s address the expression does not extend beyond the chosen people . . .

[Conzelmann; Haenchen]