Quotes from Larry W. Hurtado

propose that the emphasis on God's acts as the basis of knowledge of God is why in the NT "God" is identified distinctively and so emphatically with reference to Jesus, for the NT

This provides further warrant for the observation that the unhesitating identification of "God" as the OT deity in the NT is noteworthy.

presents Jesus as God's greatest act of redemption and revelation.

Whether in the Gospels or other NT writings, the overarching emphasis is on "God's" purposes, all events, claims, and characters (including Jesus) receiving their evaluation and meaning in light of these divine purposes.

God" has now done something in Jesus so important that it represents a surpassing further disclosure of divine purposes, both illuminating the eschatological future and also casting a powerful retroactive light on all "God's" prior actions witnessed to in the OT. Everything is given a new meaning in light of Jesus, and Jesus in turn is the superlative vehicle of divine purposes, the new defining divine action in the light of whom one now can and must understand adequately what "God" means.

To be sure, the term is applied to God in the OT, occasionally in relationship to Israel generally (Hos 11:1), and particularly with reference to the Davidic king (e.g., Ps 2:7; 89:26-27; 2 Sam 7:14). In some Jewish texts, God is also specifically "Father" to the righteous (e.g., Wis 2:16).

The claims that the OT God had now sent forth Jesus as the self-revelation that surpassed all previous ones (including specifically the Torah), that this God thereby had widened the circle of the elect to include all nations, and that a right relationship with this God and a full participation in the elect now rested upon how one responded to Jesus, these all amounted to significant differences with the Jewish religious tradition. In

These passages often reflect the use of "Father" in GMatthew to represent "God's" relationship to Jesus' followers as well. So, e.g., believers are instructed to pray invoking "Our Father in heaven" (Matt 6:9), and they are to live in the knowledge that "your Father" sees all and will act accordingly (Matt 6:1-18).

Early Christians (initially Jewish believers and then increasingly Gentile converts) claimed that the OT God was now to be identified with reference to Jesus and approached through him. Either implicitly or explicitly, this meant the relativization of all previous portrayals of and claims about this God, generating unavoidable (and understandable) tensions between the young Christian movement and the larger Jewish religious tradition.

the NT writings reflect the view that "God" is known solely through this deity's acts and that a right understanding of who "God" is can only be based on these phenomena.

it is in sayings of Jesus that "God" is referred to as "the Father" (e.g., 4:21-23).

The God of the NT is described almost entirely in terms of God's acts of creation, calling, sending forth prophets,

rescuing and vindicating, giving commandments, judging and punishing, and most importantly God's acts in Jesus, sending him forth, handing him over to redemptive death, and raising him and exalting him to superlative glory. So theologizing about "God" in the NT is essentially making inferences based on God's acts.

The basic point to underscore here, however, is that both writers refer to Christians and their religion as different, and objectionably so, and not as simply one type of Roman-era religious option among and like others.

that "God" can be known and described only in direct reference to this God's acts.

Similarly, Paul refers to "God's" Spirit as conveying divine sonship to believers (Gal 4:4-6; Rom 8:14-17), a status that is theirs through Jesus' unique sonship. Indeed,