Tuesday, March 20, 2018

The source of christology

For the New Testament authors, the God who is accessible in the person of Jesus is identical to the God to whom the Old Testament bears witness, and Jesus is the eschatological savior expected in the Old Testament, to whom the New Testament authors (at the latest) gave the title “Messiah/Christ,” which was also used in Judaism during the same period to designate an eschatological savior and deliverer. Finally, early Christianity, which adopted the sacred scriptures of early Judaism, understood itself both in continuity and discontinuity with biblical Israel as representing the (new) people of God. Yet if Jesus Christ is understood as the definitive revelation of God, then within the context of Christian theology, the discourse on God in the Old Testament ultimately becomes part of Christology.—The Development of God in the Old Testament, pages 53–54

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