Jesus Christ

The nature of Jesus is the central issue of Christology. The theological concept of Jesus as Christ was refined by a series of seven ecumenical councils between 325 and 787 AD/CE. While most Christians believe that the councils were guided by the Bible and the Holy Spirit, some Christians question one or more of the councils. Restorationists reject all the councils and seek to restore what they believe was the original Christian faith.

Different Christians also have different interpretations of Jesus' family members mentioned in Matthew 13:55 and Mark 6:3.[38] Eastern Christianity, following Eusebius, believes that they were "Joseph's children by his (unrecorded) first wife." Roman Catholicism, following Jerome, believes that they were Jesus' cousins, which the Greek word for "brother" or "relative" used in the Gospels would encompass. Both beliefs are based on the tradition that Mary remained a perpetual virgin,[39] thus having no biological children before or after Jesus. While such notable reformers as Luther, Calvin, Zwingli and Wesley affirmed the perpetual virginity of Mary, most Protestants today believe that these family members were the biological children of Mary and Joseph.[40]

Paul of Tarsus wrote that just as sin entered the world through Adam (known as The Fall of Man), so salvation from sin comes through Jesus, the second Adam (Rom 5:12–21; 1 Cor 15:21–22). Most Christians believe that Jesus' death and resurrection provide salvation not only from personal sin, but from the condition of sin itself. This ancestral or original sin[41] separated humanity from God, making all liable to condemnation to eternal punishment in Hell (Rom 3:23). However, Jesus' death and resurrection reconciled humanity with God, granting eternal life in Heaven to the faithful (John 14:2–3).


Jesus Carrying the Cross, El Greco - Domenikos Theotokopoulos, 16th c.Most Christians accept the New Testament presentation of the Resurrection as a historical account of an actual event central to faith. Belief in the resurrection is one of the most distinctive elements of Christian faith; and defending the historicity of the resurrection is usually a central issue of Christian apologetics. Conservative Christian scholars such as Gary Habermas, F.F. Bruce, Norman Geisler and William Lane Craig believe that Jesus was raised bodily from the dead and that he was raised in spiritual body.[42] Some liberal Christians such as John Shelby Spong and Tom Harpur, do not believe that Jesus was raised bodily from the dead, or that he still lives bodily.


Trinitarian views
Most Christians believe that Jesus is God incarnate, being one of the three divine persons who make up the single substance of God, a concept known as the Holy Trinity. In this respect, Jesus is both distinct and yet of the same being as God the Father and the God the Holy Spirit.[43] They believe Jesus is the Son of God, and also the Messiah. Following John 1:1, Christians have identified Jesus as "the Word" (or Logos) of God. Most also believe that Jesus' miracles and resurrection are additional proof that he is God. They combine this with the classic proof based on the two rational alternatives in the face of Jesus' repeated claims that he is the one God of Israel (e.g. Jn 8:58): either he is truly God or a bad man (a liar or a lunatic), the latter being dismissed on the basis of Jesus's perceived coherence. [44] Most trinitarian Christians further believe that Jesus has two natures in one person: that he is fully God and fully human, a concept known as the hypostatic union. However, Oriental Orthodoxy professes a Miaphysite interpretation, while the Assyrian Church of the East professes a form of Nestorianism.


Nontrinitarian views
Some Christians profess various nontrinitarian views. Arianism, denounced as a heresy by the early Church, taught that Jesus is subordinate to God the Father.[45] Binitarians believe that Jesus is God, although a separate being from God the Father, and that the Holy Spirit is an impersonal force. Unitarian Christians believe that Jesus was a prophet of God, and merely human.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) theology maintains that God the Father (Heavenly Father), Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost are three separate and distinct beings who together constitute the Godhead. LDS sometimes, although rarely, use the word Trinity to describe this belief, it is slightly different from the traditional doctrine of the Trinity, which maintains that the three are one being. LDS maintains that all three members of the Godhead are eternal and equally divine, but play somewhat different roles. While the Holy Ghost is a spirit without a physical body, the Father and Son do possess distinct, perfected, physical bodies of flesh and bone. Although Mormon theology sees the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost as separate beings, they are considered to be "one God" in purpose. 3 Nephi 11:8 (part of the Book of Mormon) records that the resurrected Jesus visited and taught some of the inhabitants of the early Americas after he appeared to his apostles in Jerusalem. Mormons also believe that an apostasy occurred after the death of Christ and his apostles. They believe that Christ and Heavenly Father appeared to Joseph Smith in 1820 as part of a series of heavenly visits to restore the fullness of the gospel of Jesus Christ necessary due to the apostasy. They also believe Jesus (not the Father) is the same as Jehovah or Yahweh of the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible. See also Jesus in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Jehovah's Witnesses view the term "Son of God" as an indication of Jesus' importance to the creator and his status as God's "only-begotten (unique, one and only) Son" (John 3:16), the "firstborn of all creation" (Col 1:15), the one "of whom, and through whom, and to whom, are all things" (Rom 11:36). Most Jehovah's Witnesses believe Jesus to be Michael the Archangel, who became a human to come down to earth.[46] They also believe that Jesus died on a single-piece torture stake, not a cross.[47]. See also Jehovah's Witnesses and Jesus.


Messianic Jewish view
Messianic Jews hold that Jesus is the prophesied Messiah. Strictly speaking, all Messianic Jews are Christians, but the term generally applies to those Jews who believe Jesus to be the Messiah but still hold to and practice many Jewish traditions and occasionally Jewish law. Often the tension between Jewish Monotheism and Christian Trinitarianism promotes a diversity of opinions about Jesus's divine status.

A prominent group of Messianic Jews is Jews for Jesus, part of a loose affiliation of Evangelical Christians.


Other views arising from early Christianity
The Ebionites, an early Jewish Christian community, believed that Jesus was the last of the prophets and the Messiah. They believed that Jesus was the natural-born son of Mary and Joseph, and thus they rejected the Virgin Birth. The Ebionites were adoptionists, believing that Jesus was not divine, but became the son of God at his baptism. They rejected the Epistles of Paul, believing that Jesus kept the Mosaic Law perfectly and wanted his followers to do the same. However, they felt that Jesus' crucifixion was the ultimate sacrifice, and thus animal sacrifices were no longer necessary. Therefore, some Ebionites were vegetarian and considered both Jesus and John the Baptist to have been vegetarians.[48] Shemayah Phillips founded a small community of modern Ebionites in 1985. These Ebionites identify as Jews rather than as Christians, and do not accept Jesus as the Jewish Messiah.

In Gnosticism, Jesus is said to have brought the secret knowledge (gnosis) of the spiritual world necessary for salvation.[49] Their secret teachings were paths to gnosis, and not gnosis itself. While some Gnostics were docetics, most Gnostics believed that Jesus was a human who became possessed by the spirit of Christ during his baptism.[50] Many Gnostic Christians believed that Christ was an Aeon sent by a higher deity than the evil demiurge who created the material world. Some Gnostics believed that Christ had a syzygy named Sophia. The Gnostics tended to interpret the New Testament as allegory, and some Gnostics interpreted Jesus himself as an allegory. Modern Gnosticism has been a growing religious movement since fifty-two Gnostic texts were rediscovered at Nag Hammadi in 1945. The movement was also given a boost by the publication in 2006 of the Gospel of Judas.

Marcionites were 2nd-century Gentile followers of the Christian theologian Marcion of Sinope. They believed that Jesus rejected the Jewish Scriptures, or at least the parts that were incompatible with his teachings.[51] Seeing a stark contrast between the vengeful God of the Old Testament and the loving God of Jesus, Marcion came to the conclusion that the Jewish God and Jesus were two separate deities. Like some Gnostics, Marcionites saw the Jewish God as the evil creator of the world, and Jesus as the savior from the material world. They also believed Jesus was not human, but instead a completely divine spiritual being whose material body, and thus his crucifixion and death, were divine illusions. Marcion was the first known early Christian to have created a canon, which consisted of ten Pauline epistles, and a version of the Gospel of Luke (possibly without the first two chapters that are in modern versions, and without Jewish references),[52] and his treatise on the Antithesis between the Old and New Testaments. Marcionism was declared a heresy by proto-orthodox Christianity.