Scripture and God in Christianity

inclined to believe that a good case could be made for the ingredients for such conclusions being
present immediately in the experience of the risen Christ." 454 F.V. Filson argues that "from the
first days of the Apostolic Church an explicit and high Christology was an integral part of its
message, and that this Christology was basically no Hellenistic product, but had its chief ties with
the Old Testament and found expression in the earliest Apostolic preaching." 455
Filson and others fail to prove the point from the Old Testament itself. It seems likely that the
process of treating Jesus as a Deity equal to God in attributes and works was the result of non-
Jewish influences external to the environment of Jesus himself and his immediate disciples as is
clear from Harnack and others. H. Anderson observes that "In the picture he draws of the "Lord
Jesus Christ, "Paul unquestionably makes use of mythological concepts prevalent in the Hellenistic
milieu." 456 The disciples may have exalted him, but what we have seen in the above quoted
passages is more than just exaltation. He has been made equal to God (Rom. 1:4), and it is not
robbery to become equal with God as Paul says in Phil. 2:6, "Who, being in the form of God,
thought not robbery to be equal with God."
In addition to the passages quoted above there are at least two other passages in the Gospel of
John that call Jesus, the Word, as "God". Cullmann argues that "Since it is clear that the New
Testament arrives at the conception of Jesus' deity in the sense indicated from the standpoint of a
group of basic Christological ideas, the question whether it also actually designates him `God' is
only of secondary importance." 457 But this designation is extremely crucial for our study of anthropomorphism
because if Jesus is adorned with all the majestic attributes of divinity, eternity,
absolute cosmic Lordship, equality with God, worship and is finally designated with the title
`God' itself then it becomes impossible to say that the New Testament concept of deity/Jesus is
not anthropomorphic.
Jesus never called himself God, nor did the first three evangelists, the authors of the Synoptic
Gospels. It is, in the opinion of Cullmann, "the Gospel of John and Hebrews (that) provide the
clearest and least ambiguous evidence of the attribution of Oeos to Jesus." 458 In John 1:1 it says,
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." In John
20 it says, "And after eight days again his disciples were within, and Thomas with them: then
came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, peace be unto you. Then saith
he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and
thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing. And Thomas answered and said unto
him, My Lord and my God." (Jn.20:26-28)
To this designation with the absolute title `God' the fourth evangelist presents Jesus as not responding
negatively. He seems to have approved it when he is quoted to have said," Thomas, because
thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed."
(Jn. 20:29).
If therefore, according to Cullmann, the " whole Gospel culminates in this confession, and, on
the other hand, the author writes in the first verse of the first chapter, "And the Logos was God',
then there can be no doubt that for him all the other titles for Jesus which are prominent in his
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