It would, however, be a mistake to assume
that Paul formally makes Christ co-equal with God . . . New Testament scholars
point out that it should not be assumed too quickly that Paul identifies Jesus
Christ with God. Paul is extremely careful not to simply identify Jesus Christ
with God. Throughout his writings, God
the Father and the Son, the Lord
Jesus Christ, are always two distinct beings, closely associated, but never
identified. No one would deny that to Paul, Christ is central to Christian
faith and life. Paul routes all traffic between God and the world through Christ
and affirms that the only way to salvation is through Christ. But Paul, in
spite of his radical Christocentrism, is extremely careful to retain the
ultimacy of God. It is God who “was
in Christ reconciling the world unto himself” (2 Corinthians 5:19). It is God “who raised up Jesus from the dead”
(1 Corinthians 6:14), and it is God “who
will sum up all things in Christ” (Ephesians 1:10). He reminds the Corinthians,
“You belong to Christ and Christ belongs to God”
(1 Corinthians 3:23). And in his great resurrection text, Paul affirms that
when all things are subjected to the Son, the Son also will be subjected to God
“until God be all in all” (1
Corinthians 15:28).
It is difficult to see how conservative
evangelicals who affirm the verbal inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible can
get away from the authority of such clear texts in epistles regarded as
authentically Pauline. In the doxological formulate that Paul often uses to
begin or end his epistles, the context is liturgical. But even here God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ (Galatians 1:3) are surely not spoken of as God the Father and God the Son. To Paul, Theos remains
the ultimate horizon for faith in Christos.
The central purpose of Paul in his epistles is not to prove that Jesus Christ
is God but to invite people to share in the salvation wrought through him by
God. The New Testament seems to be concerned not so much with the ontological
status of Christ in relation to God as with the functional nature of his work
as Savior of all humanity. Cullmann points out, “The New Testament always
speaks of the Son of God (task) and never of God the Son (status) that is the
full co-equal deity is never taught in the New Testament” (Oscar Cullmann, The Christology of the New Testament,
p. 251). “The Total Christian faith, as reflected in the New Testament, is
essentially and primarily theistic, that is to say, monotheistic, and
secondarily, christological” (F.C. Grant, Ancient
Judaism and the New Testament, p. 130). (S.J. Samartha, One Christ—Many Religions: Towards a Revised
Christology [Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1991], 121-22)
