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Christology
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What is Christology?
Christology is a branch of Christian theology focused on the nature, person, and work of Jesus Christ. It explores Jesus's identity, including the Incarnation, Resurrection, and his human and divine natures and their relationship. Christological reflection traditionally examines the person and work of Jesus, clarifying the meaning of his scriptural depiction.
Strictly speaking, Christology differs from Trinitarian theology, which is concerned with distinctions within the Godhead and explores the relationship between Jesus and God—specifically, between the divine nature of the Son and that of the Father and the Holy Spirit.
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Why do Christians study the life and teachings of Jesus Christ?
Christians study the life and teachings of Jesus Christ to understand God's revelation through him. The Gospels, narratives of Jesus' life and death, are viewed from a post-Resurrection perspective, inspiring belief and reverence. Studying Jesus helps Christians understand their faith, worship practices, and the meaning of Jesus' life, actions, and words. Christian doctrine seeks to articulate the gospel message intellectually, responding to God's self-revelation. This study embodies the faith of the early church and acknowledges Jesus as Lord.
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What do Christians believe about who Jesus is?
Christians believe that Jesus Christ is the incarnate Son of God, the Messiah, and the exalted Lord. They believe Jesus is both fully divine and fully human, a concept affirmed by the Council of Chalcedon in 451 CE.
Jesus's life, death, and resurrection are central to Christian faith, offering salvation and redemption to believers. His death is seen as a sacrifice for the sins of humanity, and his resurrection signifies victory over death, promising eternal life to those who believe in him.
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How does Christology explain Jesus being both human and divine?
Christology addresses how Jesus can be both human and divine by exploring the Incarnation, Resurrection, and the relationship between his human and divine natures. The doctrine of the two natures of Christ says that Jesus is fully human and fully divine, and these natures are inseparable.
The Council of Chalcedon in 451 stated that Jesus Christ is "perfect in deity and perfect in humanity...in two natures, without being mixed, transmuted, divided, or separated". The distinction between the natures is preserved even in their union, existing in one person. This affirms Jesus as completely God and completely human, joined in a personal unity.
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What are some different viewpoints about the nature of Christ in Christian history?
Christian history features diverse views on the nature of Christ within Christology, the doctrine of Christ.
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Arianism In the early 4th century, Arius of Alexandria proposed that Jesus was created by God, a position later denounced as heresy at the First Council of Nicaea in 325.
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Docetism Gnostic Docetists believed Christ was not truly human and did not truly suffer.
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Monarchianism This early 2nd-century heresy stated that God the Father was the sole deity and that Jesus was merely a mortal endowed with divine wisdom.
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Nestorianism Nestorius of Constantinople's teachings emphasized Christ's full humanity to the point where it seemed to divide him into two persons, human and divine.
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Monophysitism Monophysites believed that Jesus Christ’s nature remains altogether divine and not human, even though he has taken on an earthly and human body.
The Council of Chalcedon in 451 sought to define the orthodox teaching, stating that Christ is "perfect in deity and perfect in humanity...in two natures, without being mixed, transmuted, divided, or separated".
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How has Christology influenced Christian beliefs and practices over time?
Christology, the study of Jesus Christ's nature and work, has significantly shaped Christian beliefs and practices throughout history. Early Christians, convinced that God was revealed through Jesus, attributed titles like "Messiah," "Son of Man," and "Lord" to him.
Over time, Christological reflection has focused on Jesus' person and work, clarifying the meaning of scriptural depictions. Debates on Jesus' divinity and humanity led to the formulation of creeds at ecumenical councils like Nicaea (325) and Chalcedon (451), which defined orthodox teachings on Christ's nature.
These doctrines influenced worship, ethics, and art, with the portrayal of Jesus evolving from symbolic representations to more exalted depictions. The understanding of Jesus as both fully God and fully human has thus shaped Christian faith and practice.
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Christology, Christian reflection, teaching, and doctrine concerning Jesus of Nazareth. Christology is the part of theology that is concerned with the nature and work of Jesus, including such matters as the Incarnation, the Resurrection, and his human and divine natures and their relationship.
The underlying methodological assumption of Christology is that the New Testament contains the authentic and accurate record of Jesus, both explicitly and implicitly. The New Testament is taken to convey that the earliest followers of Jesus were convinced that God was revealed in him and that they attributed a number of titles to him, such as “Messiah,” “Son of Man,” “Son of God,” and “Lord.” Christian discourse uses the portrayal of Jesus in the foundational documents of Christianity as a point of departure. Traditionally, Christological reflection has focused on two specific aspects of that portrayal—namely, the person and the work of Jesus. It has also sought to clarify and systematize the meaning of the scriptural depiction of Jesus.
Sources and concepts
The basic sources for the historical development of Christology are the New Testament, containing the foundational Christian writings; the creeds of Christianity, especially those from the first five centuries; and the reflections of theologians. Clearly, those three are interrelated, with theological reflection occupying a pivotal place. Theologians explicated what they understood to be the meaning of both the New Testament and the creeds. In so doing they played a crucial role in the formulation of the Christological creeds. The argument has also been put forward that the liturgy of early Christianity played an incisive role in the formulation of the creeds, including those of Christology.
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Reflections about Jesus dominated Christian discourse from the apostolic age onward. Most of that Christological reflection took place in the eastern Mediterranean, where it utilized the language (Greek) and concepts of Classical antiquity. The Christological debate is quite unintelligible without an awareness of how it was shaped by that context. Since there seem to be echoes of Classical concepts in Scripture, it is not surprising that Christian theologians appropriated them in order to explicate the meaning of Christian affirmations. Two notions in particular played important roles: logos theology and preexistence.
Logos theology, which was formulated by the Jewish philosopher Philo, sought to describe how God is active and effective through the divine will, reason, and power. That activity was named the logos (Greek: “word”) of God. Christian reflection understood Jesus as the manifestation of the divine will, reason, and power and therefore applied the concept of the logos to him—dramatically so in the opening of The Gospel According to John. (“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”) The startling newness of the Christian affirmation lay in the belief that the logos “became flesh.”
There are intimations of the concept of preexistence both in the Hebrew Scriptures and in the thought of Classical antiquity. That concept held that everything good on earth was preexistent with God, existing in God’s cognition. The good thus existed with God before any earthly appearance, which is merely the transition from hiding to manifestation. The concept of preexistence is related to the notion that there is nothing that God does not know, that there is neither past nor future with God, and that God is the Lord of History. In the New Testament, notions of preexistence, which Christian exegetes have found expressed in the Hebrew Bible, are applied to Jesus. The Letter of Paul to the Philippians (2:7), for example, speaks of the preexistent Jesus who is sent down by God “in human form,” while the Second Letter of Paul to the Corinthians (8:9) portrays Jesus’ Incarnation as an impoverishment, noting that he gave up his riches to become poor so that believers could become rich. According to the apostle Paul, Jesus is voluntarily obedient in his descent from heaven, which is followed by his return there.