Is high Christology merely a late product of translation?

1. Typography establishes no deity

Capitalizing a pronoun can express reverence. It is no proof from the Greek text. The German spelling “HERR,” too, initially explains a translation convention. A careful defense must therefore show what a sentence asserts independently of how an edition presents it typographically.

Decisive examples include creating all things, existence before the world, address as God and universal worship. These statements do not disappear when the capital letters are removed.

This also applies to articles and pronouns. In John 1,1 the decision between “God,” “divine” and “a god” must be explained through sentence structure and context; the translator's personal religious conviction does not decide it.^[2] For the Spirit, neither a German “he” nor a Greek neuter word may substitute for statements about his activity. A translation can be biased. Whether it is at a particular point, however, is shown by comparison with the source text, not its agreement with a doctrine.

2. Paul presupposes extraordinarily high Christology

1. Corinthians 8,6 assigns Jesus to the action through which everything exists. Philippians 2 connects him with the form of God and universal homage. These letters belong to the early surviving Christian witnesses; high Christology therefore need not first be projected back from John's Gospel into a supposedly Unitarian early period.^[1]

Paul argues with Christ here to clarify concrete church questions. The statements do not stand on the margins as isolated later doctrinal chapters. They determine his understanding of worship of God, humility and Christian life.

3. The language of prayer, too, is revealing

With “Maranatha,” 1. Corinthians 16,22 preserves an Aramaic expression generally understood as a request for the Lord's coming. The precise division of the Aramaic words is debated. The reference to Jesus within Christian hope nevertheless remains significant.

This is no complete proof of a developed Nicene vocabulary in every early church. But it shows that turning to Jesus as Lord cannot simply be explained as a late Greek invention.

4. Different Gospels need not formulate identically

Mark 2 places Jesus' forgiveness within the question of who can forgive sins except God. John unfolds his identity differently and more explicitly. Different presentation is not already a contradiction or continuing invention.

A developmental thesis would have to explain why early texts already include Jesus in creation, invocation and worship of God. Merely observing that John uses particularly explicit formulations is insufficient for this. Our reasoning rests on the actual statements of different writings, not reverential translator typography.