Scripture and God in Christianity

framework of the Messianic idea; but with the Greeks it inevitably set an entirely new theory in
motion. Christ's appearance in itself, the entrance of a divine being into the world, came of necessity
to rank as the chief fact, as itself the real redemption. Paul did not, indeed, himself look
upon it in this light; for him the crucial facts are the death on the cross and the resurrection, and
he regards Christ's entrance into the world from an ethical point of view and as an example for us
to follow: "For our sake he became poor"; he humbled himself and renounced the world. But this
state of things could not last." 448
How could this radical change of direction and perspective have occurred in the minds of the
early Christians, who inherited the Jewish Bible from Jesus containing passages that leave no
room for any partner, equal, or rival for God. There was, as is commonly held, " no sign of any
difference between their ideas of God and the ideas of their countrymen. They too worshipped
the one and only God, creator and ruler of the world, the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of
Jacob...." 449 Why then some of the New Testament books attribute the creation, universal cosmic
lordship, omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience and eternity to Jesus, worship him and pray
to him with absolute terms like "Kyrios".
Bousset in his classic book Kyrios Christo and following him R. Bultmann in his Theology of the
New Testament maintained that this radical change was an outcome of cultic veneration. When
the Rabbi or Master Jesus became the object of cultic veneration the titles like Lord changed into
absolute tones of glory, power and authority and became "the one Lord". This radical change
took place when Christianity moved from Palestine to Antioch, from the Jewish to the Hellenistic
environment. Christ worship first began there and the titles got used in a more and more absolute
sense in the early Christian writings that belong to that environment. Following this thesis
McGiffert argues, "In passing from Jews to Gentiles the faith of the original disciples was thus
transformed and instead of a Jewish Messianic sect there came into existence a new religion, one
of the many religions of personal salvation in the Roman Empire." 450
Others like Cullmann and Moule, for instance, disagree with this thesis. Cullmann argues that "it
can by no means be proved that the Hellenistic Churches were the first to worship Jesus as divine."
451 He further maintains that "this worship took place in the very earliest Church, and not
for the first time in Antioch." 452
He discusses at length the philology of the ancient Aramaic prayer Maranatha which have occurred
in various New Testament passages like 1 Corinthians 22-24 and concludes that the Aramaic
word 'Mar' "Lord" constitutes the clue that determines how the Hellenistic word Kyrios got
used for Jesus in absolute sense. "The non-Christian use of the Kyrios name in the Hellenistic
world, its relation to emperor worship, and above all its use as the name of God in Septuagint-all
this certainly contributed to making Kyrios an actual title for Christ. But this development would
not have been possible had not the original Church already called upon Christ as the Lord.
Bouusset is right in saying that the Kyrios title goes back to the experience of the Church's worship;
but it is the experience of worship in the original Church." 453
Moule maintains the same when he argues, "I am not for a moment denying that developed language
about cosmic dimensions might be the fruit of long speculation and cogitation; but I am
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