As we have considered the setting and themes of Johannine theology, there has been ample opportunity to observe the ways in which it relates to, and brings to expression, characteristic doctrines of early Christianity that are stated or suggested elsewhere in the New Testament. Thus the Gospel of John has often been viewed as the culmination of the theology or theological development of the New Testament period, and while the direct dependence that such a developmental concept implies is hard to demonstrate, the basic perspective seems somehow correct. The Gospel of John represents quite well what is distinctive about the New Testament and early Christianity generally. It identifies the central, christological issue and presses it unremittingly. We shall now turn to three important and related issues that the Gospel of John raises and ask about their role and function in the Gospel and in the development of Christian thought as it is mirrored in our own situation. These are the questions of mythology, raised by the heavily supernatural aspect of the christology of the Fourth Gospel; of anti-Semitism, raised by the Gospel's negative view of the Jews who reject christology; and of the nature or character of Christianity, raised by John's relationship to the rest of the New Testament and to the later creeds of the church.