Scripture and God in Christianity

world which produced this unique Christ-Figure to meet their spiritual needs. Here in this strange
environment, he argues, the Christian theology "made the very significant transition from 'Son of
God' to 'God the Son', the Second Person of Trinity." 814
In his "God and the Universe of Faiths" he observes that "What seems to have happened during
the hundred years or so following Jesus' death was that the language of divine sonship floated
loose from the original ground of Jewish thought and developed a new meaning as it took root in
Graeco-Roman culture....Thus the meaning of the Christ-event was first expressed by saying that
Jesus was a Messiah, to whom in the Old Testament God has said, 'Thou art my beloved Son';
and then this divine sonship was later understood as his being of one substance with God the Father."
815 He further argues that "If, however, Christianity had happened to expand eastwards, so
that its basic thinking had been done within an Asian instead of a European culture, its intellectual
interpretations would inevitably have taken very different forms." 816 For him "Christianity is
an ongoing movement of life and thought, defined by its origin in the Christ-event and by its consciousness
of that origin. It cannot be defined in terms of adherence to any doctrinal standard, for
its doctrines are historically and culturally conditioned and have changed as the church has entered
new historical and cultural situations. Accordingly it is impossible to predict or to limit the
developments that will take place in the future history of this movement." 817
Regarding the deity of Jesus and incarnation of God in him, Hick observes that "The Christian's
faith in the deity of Christ is an interpretation of a human life and personality as being more than
human, as being continuous with the life of God. This interpretation both involves and transcends
an ethical valuation of his personality. The deity of Christ was mediated first through his
moral character." 818 He further argues that because of "threefold sense of a divine purpose and
love and forgiveness embodied in Christ was later reflected in the thought of the Church as the
dogma of Christ's deity....The disciples' innate tendency to interpret their experience religiously
was powerfully evoked by and focused upon the person of Christ, and it deepened into a consciousness
that in some infinitely significant and momentous sense Jesus Christ was God incarnate."
819 On the other hand, he claims that "it seems pretty clear that Jesus did not present himself
as being God incarnate. He did not present himself as the second person of a divine trinity leading
a human life. If in his lifetime he was called "son of God," as is entirely possible, it would be
in the metaphorical sense that was familiar in the ancient world." 820
To him, the problem lies in the Fathers' literal interpretation of the New Testament's metaphorical
as well as mythological language about the person of Christ and stripping him of meaning,
"the fateful development that created what was to become orthodox Christian belief for many
centuries occurred when this poetry hardened into prose and the metaphorical son of God, with a
small s, was transmuted into the metaphysical God the Son, with a capital S. The philosophers
then developed the explanatory theory that Jesus had two complete natures, one human and the
other divine, and that in his divine nature he was of the same substance as God the Father, while
his human nature he was of the same substance as humanity." 821 He argues that this traditional
two-natures Christology of Nicea and Chalcedon was a literal understanding of Incarnation. "If
we distinguish between, on one hand, a literal statement (whether it be empirical or metaphysical),
and on the other hand metaphorical, poetic, symbolic and mythological statements, the Nicene
formula was undoubtedly intended to be understood literally. It asserts that Jesus was liter-
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