turns out to be the very opposite: it, in fact, becomes a key statement about it. No creature, no matter how exalted, could be the means of the redemption of creation. Only God himself could be the firstborn/redeemer of the whole of creation. Thus, as the early believers reflected on the Old Testament Scriptures, on how Yahweh had promised to redeem creation, and saw it to have been achieved in the death of Jesus, they could come to no other conclusion than that Jesus was God. Their Christology was