Marinus De Jonge on “High Christology” being Early

When early Christians like Paul proclaimed the message concerning Jesus Christ, they had to remind their non-Jewish hearers that they had to turn “to God from idols, to serve a living and true God” before they could put their hope in “his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the wrath that is coming” (1 Thess. 1:9-10; cf. Acts 14:15-17; 17:24-31). So also in 1 Cor. 8:6, “yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist,” echoes (among other things) the fundamental Jewish conviction in the Shema’ Yisrael in Deut 6:4 and many other passages in the Old Testament. Yet the formula continues in the same breath “and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.” As in Col. 1:15-20, Jesus Christ is mentioned as the agent, the mediator, of creation as well as the agent of redemption. This implies a central role for him not only in the present and in the future, but also in the very beginning. He is thought to have been with God the creator and to have played a role at the creation. (Marinus De Jonge, God’s Final Envoy: Early Christology and Jesus’ Own View of His Mission [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1998], 135)