Skip to main content

Christology

 In Christianity, Christology, translated literally from Greek as "the study of Christ," is a branch of theology that concerns Jesus. Different denominations have different opinions on questions like whether Jesus was human, divine, or both, and as a messiah what his role would be in the freeing of the Jewish people from foreign rulers or in the prophesied Kingdom of God, and in the salvation from what would otherwise be the consequences of sin.

The earliest Christian writings gave several titles to Jesus, such as Son of Man, Son of God, Messiah, and Kyrios, which were all derived from the Hebrew scriptures. These terms centered around two opposing themes, namely "Jesus as a preexistent figure who becomes human and then returns to God," versus adoptionism - that Jesus was human who was "adopted" by God at his baptism, crucifixion, or resurrection.


From the second to the fifth centuries, the relation of the human and divine nature of Christ was a major focus of debates in the early church and at the first seven ecumenical councils. The Council of Chalcedon in 451 AD issued a formulation of the hypostatic union of the two natures of Christ, one human and one divine, "united with neither confusion nor division." Most of the major branches of Western Christianity and Eastern Orthodoxy subscribe to this formulation, while many branches of Oriental Orthodox churches reject it, subscribing to miaphysitism.

The term "monastic Christology" has been used to describe spiritual approaches developed by Anselm of Canterbury, Peter Abelard, and Bernard of Clairvaux. The Franciscan piety of the 12th and 13th centuries led to "popular Christology." Systematic approaches by theologians, such as Thomas Aquinas, are called "scholastic Christology."

In the 13th century, St Thomas Aquinas provided the first systematic Christology that consistently resolved a number of  the existing issues. In his Christology from above, Aquinas also championed the principle of perfection of Christ's human attributes.

The middle ages also witnessed the emergence of the "tender image of Jesus" as a friend and a living source of love and comfort, rather than just the Kyrios image.

x-------x

This Chapter is sponsored Gucci Men's Sneakers.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to Create a Richly Imagined World

For someone who likes fantasy and sci-fi fiction, most of the time, a lot of people ask me about how to create a richly imagined world. Fantasy and sci-fi elements rest heavily on how an author weave the setting and the world in which the heroes dwell in, and it helps to make the novel to be imagined vividly in the readers' minds. A convincing world should be relatable, something that we can associate ourselves with. For us to be associated with a world an author created in his mind, and wrote on the pages of a book, this world has to be close to the real thing. It has to be systematic, real and alive, and very convincing. A real world has certain elements, and an author must consider them in writing a vividly imagined world: Cartography - a fantasy or sci-fi world depend heavily on geography and maps, especially if the plot requires war and the belligerents occupy so much space in the plot. A convincing world has the world separated in territories, and every part of the...
Post a Comment
Read more

Simple Machine

A simple machine is a mechanical device that changes the direction or magnitude of a force. In general, they can be defined as the simplest mechanisms that use mechanical advantage (also called leverage) to multiply force. Usually the term refers to the six classical simple machines that were defined by Renaissance scientists: Lever Wheel and axle Pulley Inclined plane Wedge Screw A simple machine uses a single applied force to do work against a single work load. Ignoring friction losses, the work done on the load is equal to the work done by the applied force. The machine can increase the amount of the output force, at the cost of a proportional decrease in the distance moved by the load. The ratio of the output to the applied force is called the mechanical advantage. Simple machines can be regarded as the elementary "building blocks" of which all more complicated machines (sometimes called compound machines) are composed. For example, wheels, levers, and pulleys are all use...
Post a Comment
Read more

Mariology

 Mariology is the theological study of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Mariology seeks to relate doctrine or dogma about Mary to other doctrines of the faith, such as those concerning Jesus and notions about redemption, intercession, and grace. Mariology aims to place the role of the historic Mary in the context of scripture, tradition and the teachings of the Church on Mary. In terms of social history, Mariology may be broadly defined as the study of devotion to and thinking about Mary throughout the history of Christianity.  There exist a variety of Christian (and non-Christian) views about Mary as a figure ranging from the focus on the veneration of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Roman Catholic Mariology to criticisms of "mariolatry" as a form of idolatry. The latter would include certain Protestant objections to Marian devotion. There are also more distinctive approaches to the role of Mary in Lutheran Marian theology and Anglican Marian theology. As a field of theology, the most ...
Post a Comment
Read more