Scripture and God in Christianity

passages are: "Passages of adoption, which, by identifying a point in time at which he became divine,
implied that the status of God was conferred on the man Jesus Christ at his baptism or at his
resurrection; passages of identity, which, by speaking of Yahweh as "the Lord," posited a simple
identification of Christ with God; passages of distinction, which, by speaking of one "Lord" and
of another "Lord," drew some difference between them; and passages of derivation, which, by referring
to the Father as "the greater" or using such titles as angel, Spirit, Logos, and Son, suggested
that he "came from" God and was in some sense less than God." 464
It must be added here that all the above mentioned passages do not prove the hard and absolute
divinity of Jesus that has been believed by a great many traditional Christians. These passages
could be interpreted as giving a divine status to Jesus, although leaving a number of important issues
unresolved regarding Jesus' relationship with God and with human beings.
However, the early Church had no hesitation in assigning Jesus the proper divinity along with absolute
divine titles, actions, attributes and functions. 465 Such an ascription to Jesus of proper divinity
did not cause many problems as long as the faith was confined to the Christians interested
solely in the salvation. It was God and God alone and nobody less than Him who could have
brought salvation to the sin-ripped human beings. That is the implication from the oldest surviving
sermon of the Christian church after the New Testament writings, saying, "Brethren, we
ought so to think of Jesus Christ as of God, as of the judge of living and dead. And we ought not
to belittle our salvation; for when we belittle him, we expect also to receive little." 466 The problem
surfaced when the Church had to face the external world and prove to them the significance
and wisdom of Christian teachings. For the one whom Christians had called God was also the
one who was born, lived an ordinary natural life for thirty or so years, ate, drank, suffered and
was relentlessly crucified, and these were the realities which the Church itself witnessed. The Alexandrian
philosopher Celsus' observations pinpoint the problem. He argued that "Everyone saw
his suffering, but only a disciple and a half crazed woman saw him risen. His followers then
made a God of him, like Antinous... The idea of the coming down of God is senseless. Why did
God come down for justification of all things? Does not this make God changeable?" 467 The pagan
Celsus vehemently attacked the Christian concept of the Deity and dubbed it as thoroughly
corporeal and anthropomorphic. He concluded that "Christianity is not merely a religious revolution
with profound social and political consequences; it is essentially hostile to all positive human
values. The Christians say... `Do not ask questions, only believe'. They say, `Wisdom is
foolishness with God'... they will flee to the last refuge of the intellectually destitute, `Anything is
possible to God'." 468 Clement and Origen's statements regarding the difficulties of biblical anthropomorphisms
and their insistence upon utter transcendence of God, as discussed above, were
responses to such penetrating attacks.
In the words of Grillmeier "The hour had come for the birth of speculative theology, of theological
reflection, of theoligie savante. The confession of Jesus Christ as the Son of God, the novum
of Christian faith... demanded of Christian theology a twofold demonstration, first that it was
compatible with Jewish monotheism, and secondly that it was different from pagan polytheism"
469 There was pressure from within too. In the first place this confusion called forth some of
the earliest doctrinal controversies in the Church itself and then forced the Church to become
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