JESUS AS " THEOS " IN THE NEW TESTAMENT1

G. H. BOOBYER, B.D., D. Theol.

VISITING PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF
RHODESIA

W HAT I want to say on this subject this evening will fall

into two main divisions. The first will speak of the need
for a reappraisal of the traditional interpretation of New Testa-
ment christology ; the second will deal with evidence requiring
special attention in any reappraisal of New Testament christology.

I
Aloys Grillmeier's valuable book entitled Christ in Christian
Tradition (1965) has an epilogue headed " Chalcedon End or
Beginning ?" Here, this learned Roman Catholic scholar
reminds us that, react as we will to the christological disputations
which agitated the church from the Council of Nicaea to that of
Chalcedon, the Fathers certainly " intended to preserve the Christ
of the Gospels and the Apostolic Age for the faith of posterity ".
Then, however, Grillmeier goes on to mention a comment by
Karl Rahner that Chalcedon was not an end but a beginning,
refers approvingly to Pope John's call to the church at the
Second Ecumenical Vatican Council to speak the language of the
modern world, and finally himself asserts that '* the demand for
a complete reappraisal of the Church's belief in Christ right up to
the present day is an urgent one " (p. 494).
Some while ago, a high-ranking colleague of mine in the
University of Newcastle upon Tyne assured me that theologians
are always wrong! Be it so, or not, the prevalence of Grill-
meier's view among Catholic and Protestant theologians is
evident from the number and nature of christological studies
produced by New Testament scholars and others in recent years
an output to which the one whom we commemorate this
evening with honour and gratitude made notable contributions.
1 The Manson Memorial Lecture delivered in the University of Manchester
on the 30th of January 1968.
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And if it is asked why a reappraisal of christological doctrine is
urgent today, I would give at least four reasons.
(1) First, is it not a pressing apologetic and catechetical
need ? Put more precisely, do we not find the orthodox doctrine
of the person of Christ a source of much perplexity to enquiring
non-christians and to many a christian believer under instruc-
tion ? " True God from true God, begotten not made, of one
substance with the Father " and " the selfsame perfect in God-
head, the selfsame perfect in manhood, truly God and truly
man " thus runs the familiar language of what we call the
Nicene Creed and the Chalcedonian Definition, but how success-
ful are ministers and clergy in making it intelligible? not to
mention its baffling elaboration in the Athanasian Creed ! Must
it not be conceded that to many intelligent lay folk it seems sheer
mystification ? Donald M. Baillie confessed as much years ago
in his widely read book God was in Christ. He remarked, " I
am convinced that a great many thoughtful people who feel
themselves drawn to the Gospel in these days are completely
mystified by the doctrine of the Incarnation far more than we
theologians usually realize " (p. 29).
(2) Secondly, if some of the thought about the nature of God
now emerging outside and within the christian churches is
accepted, a restatement of traditional christology is certainly
necessitated. Quite obviously so, if we entertain the notion of a
decease of the transcendental, personal God of the Bible as pro-
pounded by Thomas Altizer and other exponents of the so-
called " death of God " theology ; but no less definitely so, if we
opt for some form of the Ground-of-our-being theology associated
particularly with the names of Paul Tillich and the Bishop of
Woolwich. This theology contends that, though personal, God in
relation to us is not another Person. Yet Jesus certainly was
another person ; then if God is not to be conceived as another
Person, in what sense may Jesus still be confessed as " True God
from true God " and " perfect jn Godhead " ? The affirmation
will require fresh clarification.
(3) Thirdly, for some time christological studies have been
insisting strongly on the essential genuineness of the humanity of
 JESUS AS " THEOS " IN NEW TESTAMENT 249
Jesus, often indicting the main stream of christological orthodoxy
with proneness to Docetism and Apollinarianism Docetism
being that ancient heresy which denied the physical reality of
Christ's human body, while Apollinarianism could not allow him
a human mind. The trend is obvious in the book just men-
tioned, Donald Baillie's God was in Christ; it assumes robuster
features in later writing like that of John Knox and W. N.
Pittenger. " Chalcedon ", says Pittenger, " failed to prevent
a modified Apollinarianism from becoming the orthodoxy of the
Middle Ages "J and Knox declares that " at whatever cost in
terms of other cherished beliefs, the reality and normality of
Jesus's manhood must be maintained ".2
This emphasis derives in part from the success however
qualified with which modern New Testament scholarship has
brought us face to face with the historical Jesus of Nazareth, an
achievement the real value of which has in my view been most
unprofitably obscured by those recent theological fashions which
have disclaimed interest in any other Jesus than the kerygmatic
Christ of apostolic witness and have denied that our New Testa-
ment sources can yield up any other. However, be its causes
what they may, does not so much outright insistence as we are
hearing today on what Knox calls " the reality and normality
of Jesus's manhood " demand new apologetic efforts of those
who with the Fathers and the ancient credal formularies still
affirm that this historical human Jesus, a prophet from Nazareth,
while truly man was also ontologically " True God from true
God"?
The embarrassing edge of this age-long problem is com-
monly thought to be turned by the plea that, despite the implica-
tions of some of their language, the Fathers never intended to
identify Jesus with God outright. This is said to be evident
from their use of the Logos christology and the conception of
Jesus as God's Son. So orthodox christology in confessing
Jesus as truly God is not asserting that Jesus is God without
qualification, or God absolutely. But will this line of argument
do ? May I at least frankly admit that, coming as it so often
1 The Word Incarnate (1959), p. 102.
2 The Humanity and Divinity of Christ (1967), p. 73.
250 THE JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY
does from eminent christian theologians, I find it quite extra-
ordinary ? For does it not at once evoke the query, What kind
of God is it, then, who is only God with qualification, who is not
God absolutely ? On any legitimate christian use of terms is
any being who is only God with qualification, and not God
absolutely, any longer truly God ?
(4) I pass to a fourth reason for a re-examination of the
traditional doctrine of the person of Christ.
There now exists a widespread recognition that early chris-
tology, and especially New Testament christology, was an out-
growth of the christian experience of Jesus as Saviour yes,
indeed, as eschatological Saviour. That is, in, through and
around him God was held to be providing man's full and final de-
liverance from the world, sin, death, from all demonic cosmic
powers and Satan. To be sure, Jesus's advent was thought to
portend the dissolution of the kingdoms of this world, the end of
the present age and the inbreaking of the kingdom of God. Then
in consquence of his God-appointed role in this stupendous
series of eschatological events, what was his rank ? How must
one assess his status in the light of his redemptive function ?
It was from this angle that the first christians formed their esti-
mate of Jesus. When, therefore, they assigned him such honor-
ific titles as Christ, Son of man, Son of God and Lord, these were
ways of saying not that he was God, but that he did God's work.
In other words, such designations originally expressed not so
much the nature of Christ's inner being in relation to the being
of God, but rather the pre-eminence of his soteriological function
in God's redemption of mankind. That is, the earliest interpreta-
tion of the person of Christ found in the New Testament is pre-
dominantly not ontological but functional; and Oscar Cullmann
has stoutly maintained that the functional emphasis remained the
dominant one throughout the New Testament. He wrote,
" When the New Testament asks * Who is Christ ? ' it never
means primarily ' What is his nature ?' but 'What is his func-
tion ? ' "J
However, interest in Jesus's personal nature and speculation
about the relation of his inner being to God's being soon arose
1 The Christology of the New Testament (1959), pp. 3 f.
 JESUS AS " THEOS " IN NEW TESTAMENT 251
in the first christian communities, and asserts itself in the New
Testament documents, especially in passages like Philippians
ii. 5-11 ; Colossians i. 15:20; Hebrews i and ii; and in the
Fourth Gospel. Moreover, the three centuries following the
New Testament period saw this concern for an ontological inter-
pretation of the person of Christ eclipsing and overriding func-
tional christology, until the question whether and in what sense
Jesus was God became the dominant issue. Nicene and Chalce-
donian christology was the credalizing climax of this process,
with Jesus ultimately confessed as "of one substance with the
Father ", " perfect in Godhead " as in manhood, truly God and
truly man.
And so arises a leading exegetical question, namely, to what
extent is the ontological christology of the ancient creeds with their
strong affirmation of the deity of Jesus a faithful credalization of
the New Testament evidence? Is it a legitimate and inevitable
development of New Testament christology, or a distortion of
it ? In the light of the knowledge now at the disposal of New
Testament scholarship knowledge so much greater than that
possessed by the Fathers does not this christological problem
call for fresh and far more thoroughgoing elucidation ?
Martin Werner, of course, has offered a solution of it in
words both forthright and provocative. The dogma of Christ's
deity, he has said, turned Jesus into another Hellenistic redeemer-
god, and thus was a myth propagated behind which the historical
Jesus completely disappeared.1 Professor H. E. W. Turner has
pronounced Werner's book " brilliant, learned and perverse "2
(a very possible combination of qualities in any erudite scholar !).
Yet be that as it may, the fact has to be faced that New Testament
research over, say, the last thirty or forty years has been leading
an increasing number of reputable New Testament scholars to
the conclusion that Jesus himself may not have claimed any of
the christological titles which the Gospels ascribe to him, not
even the functional designation " Christ ", and certainly never
believed himself to be God. For example, with the words of
Mark x. 19 in mind, H. W. Montefiore has of late remarked that
1 The Formation of Christian Dogma (1957), p. 298.
2 The Pattern of Christian Truth (1954), p. 20.
252 THE JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY
Jesus seems to have denied explicitly that he was God 1 ; and
R. H. Fuller's exhaustive analysis of the growth of New Testa-
ment christology brings him to a view of the self-understanding
of Jesus resembling Bultmann's. Fuller thinks that Jesus under-
stood himself as an eschatological prophet, not in the sense that
he defined himself thus precisely, but that this was " the working
concept" of his identity which guided him throughout his
mission.2
Now if this is the position to which careful analysis of the
Gospel evidence brings us, what becomes of the claim that the
christological clauses of the ancient credal formularies are a right
explication of the New Testament witness ? Can you hold
together, as many New Testament scholars seem still to do, the
two positions that on the one hand critical study of the Gospels
discloses a Jesus with no consciousness of being God and making
no claim to be God and on the other hand the belief that Nicene
christology, declaring him " True God of true God " is a right
credalization of the New Testament evidence ? I would at least
suggest that this problem is becoming sufficiently acute today to be
in itself a reason for that " re-appraisal of the Church's belief
in Christ right up to the present day " which, in the quotation
made at the outset of this lecture, A. Grillmeier speaks of as
urgent.

II
Shall we now move on to our second main division, which will
be a review of the evidence requiring special attention in any
reappraisal of New Testament christology. In other words, if
in consequence of the advance of New Testament scholarship
this is a day for christological stocktaking and one which poses
the question whether the traditional formulations of the doctrine
of the person of Christ are in fact scriptural, what aspects of New
Testament teaching about Christ's person require careful re-
consideration ?
1 In his essay " Toward a Christology for Today ", published in Soundings,
ed. A. Vidler (1962), p. 158.
2 The Foundations of New Testament Christology (1956), p. 130.
 JESUS AS " THEOS " IN NEW TESTAMENT 253
May I say something about three? They are all familiar
to New Testament scholars ; they are not overlooked in christo-
logical apologetics ; but are they apt to be underrated ?
(1) First, there is the rarity of New Testament references to
Jesus as " God " (" theos "). Some nine or ten passages occur
in which Jesus is, or might be, alluded to as " God " (" theos ").
Usually cited are John i. 1, 18 ; xx. 28 ; Romans ix. 5 ; 2 Thes-
salonians i. 12; 1 Timothy iii. 16; Titus ii. 13; Hebrews i.
8f.; 2 Peter i. 1 and 1 John v. 20. Two or three of these, how-
ever, are highly dubious, and, of the remainder, varying degrees
of textual or exegetical uncertainty attach to all save one, which is
Thomas's adoring acclaim of the risen Jesus in John xx. 28 as
" My Lord and my God! " Distinguishing this passage from
the others, Vincent Taylor a moderately conservative scholar on
christological problems speaks of it as " the one clear ascrip-
tion of Deity to Christ MI in the New Testament.
But let me give another view. Karl Rahner, the eminent
Roman Catholic theologian, considers that there are reliable
applications of " theos " to Christ in six texts (Romans ix. 5 f.;
John i. 1, 18, xx. 28 ; 1 John v. 20 ; and Titus ii. 13). Rahner,
however, immediately goes on to say that in none of these in-
stances is '* theos " used in such a manner as to identify Jesus
with him who elsewhere in the New Testament figures as "ho
Theos ", that is, the Supreme God.2
Now obviously the very few New Testament passages
possibly only one which without question call Jesus " God "
outright do not exhaust the linguistic evidence. Notwith-
standing, and in comparison with the frequency with which this
form of christological confession is still required in the christian
churches, is not its rarity in the New Testament most surprising ?
Would it, in fact, be unfair to press the point with the following
query ? If the New Testament writers believed it vital that the
faithful should confess Jesus as " God ", is the almost complete
absence of just this form of confession in the New Testament
explicable ?
1 In the article " Does the New Testament Call Jesus God ? ", Expository
Times, Ixxiii, No. 4 (January 1962), p. 118.
2 Theological Investigations (1961), pp. 135 ff.
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(2) A second consideration when re-examining New Testa-
ment chnstology must certainly be the background of the
divinizing christological language of the New Testament that is,
the background of all that New Testament christological lan-
guage which in one way and another speaks of Jesus as though he
were a divine being and which sometimes seems to be saying that
he was God. And how rich, how far-reaching, yes, how worshipful
much of this language is! To these first Christians, Jesus bore
God's image, was in the form of God, the effulgence of God's
glory, the stamp of God's very being. He had been raised far
above all angels, was the firstborn of all creation, the alpha and
omega, a heavenly high priest, the man from heaven, the wisdom
of God, God's Logos (or Word) which was with God at the
beginning and his agent in creation. And when it came to
personal titles, his were the highest they could bestow: they
proclaimed him as the Christ, the Son of man, the Son of God,
Lord and on occasion even as God !
One cannot but be moved with wonder at this glorification,
but this should not suppress the question, What does such
language really mean ?
May I here interject a somewhat irreverent story? I was
once conducting a Sunday service in a Baptist Church. Sitting
in the minister's vestry with the deacons in their appointed
places on the right hand and on the left, I was waiting to enter
the church. The order of service had been given me, but not
the title of the anthem. The door opened a little, the organist
put his face around it, looked only at me and simply said, " Come,
Holy Ghost! " When I replied that it was not yet the hour for
worship the gravity of the deacons collapsed !
Thus by means of a digression into levity we happen upon a
reminder of a serious linguistic point: wrenched from their
right context, words can convey wrong meanings words which
in their right setting gave the title of the anthem became grotesque
when apparently transferred to me ! Related to the exposition
of the christology of the New Testament, what then does this
caveat imply ? The point, of course, is that if what the New
Testament says about the person of Jesus is to be understood
aright, it must be read not in accord with our linguistic English
 JESUS AS " THEOS " IN NEW TESTAMENT 255
usage in the 1960s, but in the setting of the categories of thought
and the linguistic idiom of its day, that is, in the context of the
thought and speech of that first century Jewish and Hellenistic
environment to which the New Testament documents belong.
Obviously, a few brief words cannot adequately show the
interpretative consequences of doing this, when the relevant field
of study is so far-ranging. The main considerations, however,
are well enough known and appear in the commentaries, text-
books and works of reference, together with mention of the
original sources of information.
Some of the specially important facts are these. The Greek
world drew no sharp line of division between the human and the
divine, and readily divinized human beings outstanding people
such as distinguished philosophers, soldiers or kings might be
called " son of God ", " lord " and even " God ". For instance,
the Seleucid king Antiochus IV whose policy provoked the
Maccabaean revolt, had himself styled " theos " (God) on his
coinage, and the Roman emperor Domitian, a contemporary of
some of the New Testament writers, affected the honour of being
*' Lord and God ". So far accepted was this fashion that an
able and cautious New Testament scholar, Professor C. F. D.
Moule of Cambridge, has expressed the opinion that even chris-
tians might, in certain senses, have been willing to recognize the
deity of the emperor.1 That the New Testament writers were
not unaffected by these modes of thought and speech appears in
the striking words of 2 Peter i. 4, where the readers are told that
even they ordinary christians would "become partakers of
the (or ' a') divine nature " ; and that the consequences of
christian salvation would indeed be deification (in whatever
sense) is said here and there by the christian Fathers. Athanasius's
statement is often quoted; speaking of Jesus, he remarked:
" He was humanized, that we might be deified."2
Then, too, notwithstanding its fervently sustained insistence
upon monotheism, upon the belief that the only true God was the
transcendental God of the Jewish Scriptures, Judaism, the cradle
of Christianity, sometimes went surprisingly far in applying
1 The Birth of the New Testament (1962), pp. 116 f.
2 On the Incarnation, 54 (vol. iii, Library of Christian Classics, p. 107).
256 THE JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY
divinizing terms to angels, to the personalized concepts of
Wisdom and the Logos and even to men. Angels could carry
the designations " son of God ", " lord " and even " god " the
Qumran documents have brought further evidence of this.
Jewish writing about Wisdom, the Logos and the Torah (the
Law of Moses) contains close parallels to the New Testament
description of Jesus as God's image, the effulgence of God's
glory, his firstborn, God's agent in the creation of the world and
so on. Philo could speak of the Logos as a second God ".
In honorific references to men, Hellenistic Judaism was be-
ginning to speak of outstanding Old Testament characters as
divine (" theioi "); a righteous man could be a " son of God " ;
and a passage can be cited in which Philo alludes to Moses as
" theos " (god).1
But, to be sure, already in the Old Testament, Israel's king as
God's anointed finds mention as " son of God ", and one or two
passages occur in which the noun " god " is actually used of men.
Psalm xlv. 6 f. provides a significant example, because here the
greater and lesser senses of the substantive " God " appear side
by side, namely, " God " in the usual sense of the supreme God
of Israel and " god" denoting the person of Israel's king.
Furthermore, this same passage appears in Hebrews i. 8 f. as a
testimonium related to Christ, where it is " god" in its lesser
connotation in the original which, following the usual translation
of the passage, is apparently related to Jesus Christ.
This short and fragmentary survey of linguistic background
material must end. Possibly, however, enough has been said
to indicate that the New Testament writers spoke of Jesus in an
environment in which terminology which we should reckon
appropriate only when referring to a truly divine being could be
used of angels and indeed of human beings. In that first-
century world, you could maintain that certain humans were in
origin associated with the heavenly sphere ; you could attribute
to them a measure of ontological affinity with God's nature;
you could honour them with such titles as " son of God ",
" Lord " yes, even " god " ; and you could do all this without

1 Cf. F. Hahn, Christologische Hoheitstitel (1963), pp. 294 f.

 JESUS AS " THEOS " IN NEW TESTAMENT 257
any intention of investing those so honoured with the same
divine status as that of the highest God.
I have already stated that this background, linguistic evidence
has by no means been overlooked : it is too well known. Yet in
expositions of the meaning of the christological language of the
New Testament along traditional lines, has it so far been accorded
its due weight ?
(3) The third and last of the three considerations treated in
this lecture as deserving of close attention in any reappraisal of
New Testament christology is what may surely be described as
the sustained subordinationism of New Testament christology.
That is to say, is it not a fact that right through the New Testa-
ment the reader again and again encounters material which,
implicitly or explicitly, represents Jesus as of lesser rank than
God ? And is it not of special significance that this position is
maintained, even where the New Testament is speaking of the
person and functions of the celestial Christ active in heaven
after his resurrection and exaltation ?
Whatever happened at that first christian Easter, the earliest
Christians were convinced that God had raised Jesus from death,
and had translated him to the highest heaven, where God him-
self was believed to dwell. Further, in and from his heavenly
dwelling-place the erstwhile terrestrial Jesus, now a celestial
being, was continuing his redemptive function and would go on
doing so until its consummation. In consequence, the resurrec-
tion event was a decisive turning point in the growth of New
Testament christology. Recent research has stressed this.
Barnabas Lindars, for example, wrote of his recent book, New
Testament Apologetic, published in 1961 : "... this study shows
that the resurrection of Jesus is the primary factor in the forma-
tion of Christian dogma. The Messianic titles are applied to him
as a consequence of this fact, and defended by appeal to it"
(P. 29). ....
This judgement is sound, and implies that a careful considera-
tion of the New Testament accounts of the post-resurrection life
and activity of the celestial Christ is essential, if a true elucidation
of New Testament christology is to be achieved. May we, then,
look into a few significant points ?
258 THE JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY
Noteworthy first of all is the fact that, in his post-resurrection
heavenly life, Jesus is portrayed as retaining a personal individ-
uality every bit as distinct and separate from the person of God
as was his in his life on earth as the terrestrial Jesus. Along-
side God and compared with God, he appears, indeed, as yet
another heavenly being in God's heavenly court, just as the angels
were though as God's Son, he stands in a different category,
and ranks far above them. Small wonder, then, that angel
christology was a prominent strand of early christological thought,
as Martin Werner has emphasized and other scholars have recog-
nized.1 Werner further argued that in calling Jesus " Lord "
(" Kyrios "), Paul and the early church meant that Jesus " was a
high heavenly being of an angelic kind ", the designation " Lord "
being a particular instance of the designation and invocation of
angels as " lords " (" kyrioi ") in late Judaism.2
But whatever is to be said for or against the validity of
angel christology, the distinctness and separateness of Christ's
heavenly person in his celestial life and activity from the person
of God in heaven is plain enough. We are told that he sits at
God's right hand; Stephen at his martyrdom is said to have
seen him standing there (Acts vii. 56) ; and ultimately, of course,
men on earth are to see him again as a person quite distinct from
God when, with his holy angels, he returns triumphantly from
heaven at his parousia, that is, at his second advent.
Indeed, so completely and consistently is his individual
separateness from God maintained that if the New Testament
writers did consider him fully God, and if for the sake of the
argument the New Testament references to the Holy Spirit are
left on one side, would not the resultant conception of God be a
form of ditheism ? I do not see how this conclusion can be
avoided.
What, however, is said of his life and functions as the celestial
Christ neither means nor implies that in divine status he stands
on a par with God himself and is fully God. On the contrary, in
the New Testament picture of his heavenly person and ministry

1 Werner, op. cit. pp. 120-41. Cf. too, Grillmeier, op. cit. pp. 52-62.
2 Werner, op. cit. p. 124.
 JESUS AS " THEOS " IN NEW TESTAMENT 259
we behold a figure both separate from and subordinate to God.
We learn that he confesses or denies men before God (Matt.
x. 23 f.; Luke xn. 8); he intercedes with God on our behalf and
as heavenly paraclete pleads our cause with the Father (Rom.
viii. 34 ; Heb. vii. 25 ; ix. 24 ; 1 John ii. 1) ; he is the mediator
between men and God (1 Tim. ii. 5) ; and in Hebrews there is the
familiar description of his heavenly ministrations as a high priest
who is faithful to God, who has learned obedience to the God
who appointed him, who offers prayers and supplications to
God and can in fact address the Father God as his God (i. 9;
x.7).
And how will it be at the end, when, with his outstanding
work as celestial Christ accomplished, he re-appears in his
parousia glory? St. Paul is quite explicit about it. The
apostle writes that after that victorious event, and when Christ
has put all remaining enemies beneath his feet, then will he hand
over complete dominion to God to quote from the relevant
passage in the New English Bible translation : "... when all
things are thus subject to him, then the Son himself will also be
made subordinate to God. . . and thus God will be all in all "
(1 Cor. xv. 28).
In many another place, and apart from allusions to the
celestial work of Christ, this New Testament stress on Jesus's
subordination to God recurs. How strong it is, for example, in
the Fourth Gospel the very document which contains the two
most certain references to Jesus as God in the whole New Testa-
ment ! Yet in this gospel not only is it Jesus as the Son rather
than as God who is in the foreground, but he is also a Son who
explicitly declares " the Father is greater than I " (xiv. 28), or
" I can of myself do nothing... I seek not mine own will, but
the will of him that sent me " (v. 30) even the will of Jesus, be
it noted, is one will and the will of God another ! The Fourth
Gospel contains more in a similar vein, so when it comes to
the exposition of the prologue's statement that Jesus as the
Logos was ** theos" (" God") or Thomas's exclamation in
chapter twenty, " My Lord and my God! ", J. M. Creed was
entirely right in the statement, " Even the Prologue of St. John,
which comes nearest to the Nicene doctrine, must be read in the
260 THE JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY
light of the pronounced subordinationism of the Gospel as a
whole 'V
The situation is similar when one turns to the exposition of
the christology of St. Paul. Whatever is made of the details of
important christological passages like Philippians ii. 5-11 or
Colossians i. 15-20, they have ultimately to be understood in the
light of Paul's overall christological position. This position is
clearly expressed in the passage used just now which speaks of
Christ eventually handing over sovereignty to God that God may
be all in all (1 Cor. xv. 28). It comes out again with unequivocal
clarity in the words of 1 Corinthians xi. 3 " the head of every
man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man ; and the
head of Christ is God."
This discussion must now draw to a close, but with what
kind of conclusion ?
My reading of the facts must inevitably be limited and liable
to error. Rightly or wrongly, however, I can but think that the
main weight of the evidence is on the side of those who conclude,
as does H. W. Montefiore, that " a christology which is expressed
in terms of functional and personal relationship rather than in
ontological categories means a return to the biblical perspective ".2
That is, in expounding and proclaiming the significance of Jesus
Christ, the New Testament writers were moved primarily not by
intellectual curiosity about the nature of Christ's person and his
relation to the divine being of God, though this interest is some-
times apparent. They were gripped mostly by the extent to
which Jesus was in God's service, executed God's redemptive
work and on God's authority. If, therefore, on occasion they
went so far as to refer to Jesus as " God ", this was meant as an
expression of his soteriological significance his God-given place
in the unfolding of God's plan of eschatological salvation. In so
speaking, they were not assigning Jesus equality of status with
God, and certainly did not intend to say that ontologically he was
truly God. They meant that he was God functionally. In
terms drawn from 1 Corinthians viii. 6, just as they knew of

1 The Divinity of Jesus Christ (Fontana edn.), pp. 122 f.

2 Soundings, p. 159.
 JESUS AS " THEOS " IN NEW TESTAMENT 261
lords many, but of only one true Lord, namely, Jesus Christ, so,
too, were they aware of gods many, yet of only one who was truly
God, and he the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. To
him above all was the kingdom, the power and the glory for ever
and ever.