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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.

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This Chapter is sponsored Gucci Men's Sneakers.

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