"Harnack is in error on" the Hellenization of Christianity. "ignorance of ontology is ignorance of Christ."

"from a historical and biblical point of view [the claim that the 'biblical, ethical Christology' of scripture was unfortunately Hellenized] can be shown to be untenable. . . .  To state things in so gentle a way, however, is in fact already to concede too much.  For if Harnack is in error on this point (which I take to be the case), then we should be concerned not merely to establish the right of the interpreter to consider the ontological dimension of the mystery of Christ, as if this were one way of reading scripture among others.  Rather, we must say that unless we study the mystery of Jesus ontologically, we fundamentally cannot understand the New Testament.  For generally speaking the Bible is deeply concerned with the ontological structure of reality and its dependence upon God.  The New Testament in particular, however, is concerned above all and before all else with the ontological identity of Christ and the fact that he is both God and man.  No teaching is more central [to it].  It is the truth that underlies all other scriptural affirmations regarding Jesus.  Consequently, to study the New Testament realistically at all is to study the being and person of Christ. . . .  ignorance of ontology is ignorance of Christ.  The understanding of the Bible offered by the fathers and the scholastics, then, is not merely something that can be justified as one possible form of reading among others (defensively, as against a post-critical anthropological turn in modern philosophy).  Rather, it is the only form of reading that attains objectively to the deepest truth about the New Testament:  a truth concerning the identity of Christ as the God-man.  By the same measure, only this reading of scripture can attain to a proper understanding of the subject of biblical theology as such."

     Thomas Joseph White, O.P., The incarnate Lord:  a Thomistic study in Christology (Washington, DC:  The Catholic University of America Press, 2015), 7-8, underscoring mine.  White then proceeds to a supportive initial sub-section entitled "The biblical ontology of the New Testament."  "Scholasticism," understood as "the scientific examination of the very causes of being," "is inevitable . . . whenever theology becomes truly itself" (29).  And from p. 117:

Seeking to understand the New Testament claims about Christ non-ontologically is in the end a non-biblical exercise.