The Symbiotic Nature of Early Christian Theology and Christology

I’ve come across some interesting quotes as to how the Christian view of God was shaped by Jesus and their view of Jesus was shaped by their view of God.

“When the early Christians spoke about God, they had to speak about Jesus; and when they spoke about Jesus, they had to introduce God. ‘Theology’ implied ‘christology,’ and ‘christology’ implied ‘theology.'”

Marinius de Jonge, God’s Final Envoy: Early Christology and Jesus’ Own View of His Mission (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), 130.

“Jesus’s first followers found themselves not only (as it were) permitted to use God-language for Jesus, but compelled to use Jesus-language for the One God” and “He is not a semi-divine intermediate figure. He is the one in whom the identity of Israel’s God is revealed, so that one cannot now speak of this God without thinking of Jesus, or of Jesus without thinking of the one God, the creator, Israel’s God.”

N.T. Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God (COQG 4; London: SPCK, 2013), 655, 666.

“Paul could not understand the life, death and resurrection of Jesus without seeing there the agency of God; but neither could he now understand God except in the light of what had happened in Christ.”

John Barclay, Paul: A Very Brief History (London: SPCK, 2018), 27.