Table of Contents

Introduction ...................................................................................................................................... 1
Christological Question/Problem...................................................................................................... 1
Titles, Metaphors and other Christological Designations for Jesus ................................................... 2
1. SON OF GOD .............................................................................................................................. 2
2. SON OF MAN ............................................................................................................................. 5
3. CHRIST ....................................................................................................................................... 6
4. LORD ......................................................................................................................................... 9
5. LOGOS ..................................................................................................................................... 11
6. LAST Adam............................................................................................................................... 14
Christological Controversies and the Development of Creeds ........................................................ 17
Christianity outside Palestine: New Challenges ................................................................................ 17
CHRISTOLOGICAL HERESIES ......................................................................................................... 17
a. Docetism.............................................................................................................................. 18
b. Arianism .............................................................................................................................. 19
Council of Nicaea (325 AD)....................................................................................................... 20
Apollinarianism ........................................................................................................................ 21
Nestorianism ........................................................................................................................... 22
Eutychianism ........................................................................................................................... 23
The Chalcedonian Definition of A.D. 451 .................................................................................. 24
Chalcedonian Christology ............................................................................................................ 25
MEDIEVAL CHRISTOLOGY................................................................................................................ 25
Spiritual Mystical Christology....................................................................................................... 25
Christological ideas of Thomas Aquinas ....................................................................................... 27
ATONEMENT THEORIES .................................................................................................................. 28
THE RANSOM-TO-SATAN THEORY ................................................................................................ 28
THE RECAPITULATION THEORY .................................................................................................... 28
THE SATISFACTION THEORY OF ANSELM (COMMERCIAL THEORY). .............................................. 29
THE MORAL INFLUENCE THEORY. ................................................................................................ 30
PENAL SUBSTITUTION THEORY .................................................................................................... 30
THE GOVERNMENTAL THEORY..................................................................................................... 31
CHRISTUS VICTOR THEORY OR BATTLE THEORY ........................................................................... 32
REFORMATION CHRISTOLOGY: MARTIN LUTHER............................................................................ 32
 Eucharistic Christology (Doxological Christology) ......................................................................... 33
Theology of the Cross (Theologia Crucis)...................................................................................... 35
SELECTED MODERN CHRISTOLOGY ................................................................................................. 36
FRIEDRICH SCHLEIERMACHER (1768-1834) .................................................................................. 36
Religion and Theology .............................................................................................................. 37
Schleiermacher’s Christology ................................................................................................... 38
KARL BARTH (1886-1968)............................................................................................................. 39
Theology ‘From Above’ ............................................................................................................ 40
Barth’s Christology: Major ideas .............................................................................................. 40
WOLFHART PANNENBERG (1928-2014) ....................................................................................... 42
Revelation as History ................................................................................................................... 43
Task and Method of Christology .................................................................................................. 43
Resurrection: As the Proleptic Revelation .................................................................................... 44
Anthropology and Christology ..................................................................................................... 46
Cross and Atonement .................................................................................................................. 46
Incarnation: As the Self-Actualization of God ............................................................................... 47
CONTEXTUAL CHRISTOLOGIES ........................................................................................................ 48
CHRISTOLOGY IN LATIN AMERICAN LIBERATION THEOLOGY ........................................................ 48
Christ the Liberator...................................................................................................................... 48
CHRISTOLOGY IN BLACK LIBERATION THEOLOGY ......................................................................... 49
‘Blackness’ as Defining Category .............................................................................................. 49
Black Christology (James Cone) ................................................................................................ 50
Cross: The Ultimate Symbol of Black Experience ...................................................................... 50
Resurrection as the Power of Hope .......................................................................................... 51
FEMINIST CHRISTOLOGY .............................................................................................................. 51
The Problem of the Male Savior ............................................................................................... 52
Christ the Liberating Prophet ................................................................................................... 52
Embodied Christ ...................................................................................................................... 53
Ecological Christ....................................................................................................................... 54
Suffering Christ ........................................................................................................................ 54
Christ Sophia............................................................................................................................ 54
Introduction
In the light of Christian faith, practice, and worship, that branch of theology called
Christology reflects systematically on the person, being, and activity of Jesus of Nazareth (c.4
bc–c.ad 30). In seeking to clarify the essential truths about him, it investigates his person and
being (who and what he was/is) and work (what he did/does). All the Church’s major
doctrines including those of the Trinity, salvation, sanctification, creation, final judgment and
the coming Kingdom of God have been influenced, if not governed, by the interpretation that
Christians give to his person.

Once Jesus was perceived by the believing community in the light of how Church came into
being starting from the ministry of John the Baptist and elevated to a position of divine status
in its worship, the Church found itself facing, even as it continues to face today, a whole host
of complex and baffling questions about his person. Responding to them has been the task of
Christology. Christology is, according to this description, a distinct discipline from one which
seeks to show why Jesus is indeed worthy of the status that the Church ascribes to him. Its
primary concern is not to persuade the agnostic that he is the promised Messiah or to collect
evidence in support of his divinity for those who are yet to be convinced. It has to do, rather,
with making sense of what is already there, that is, the faith and practice of the believing
community. Christology is consequently a theological discipline that is undertaken by the
Church. This does not preclude those without or within that community of faith from
challenging the coherence or the appropriateness of its christological structures. But it
remains a reflection on the Church’s understanding of Jesus, the belief of Christians that the
son of Mary is now Lord and Saviour of the world.

At this moment it’s important to understand that doing Christology is a never ending task
because of the unfathomable depths of the mystery of its subject matter. Most christological
formulations in the Church’s dogmatic history have been driven by the attempt to solve or
eliminate weaknesses apparent in earlier models. As each age brings its own questions, or
more often, somewhat different slants on ancient questions, so the Church has to be ever
ready, if it is to be true to its calling, to address them afresh. However this is the most
significant purpose of the Church. On Christology, Catholic theologian Karl Rahner
emphatically wrote, “...we should mediate on this centre of theology and of Christian life, and
often speak less of a thousand other things. For this mystery is inexhaustible and in
comparison with it most of the other things of which we speak are unimportant” (Theological
Investigations, vol. IV).

Christological Question/Problem
The Christological question emerges for the first time as a problem even during the lifetime
of Jesus. In Mark 8.27-29 Jesus himself gives it what may be called a classical formulation-

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‘. . . and on the way he asked his disciples, “Who do men say that I am?” And they told him,
“John the Baptist; and others say, Elijah; and others one of the prophets.” And he asked them,
“But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Christ.”’
Here we see that the problem as such already existed both for the people and for the disciples
who lived every day in close fellowship with Jesus - those who saw him with their eyes and
heard him with their ears. We see also that both among the people and among the disciples
various answers were given, answers in the form of familiar titles, each describing at the
same time a function and a work to be accomplished. All these answers have in common the
fact that they do not simply place Jesus in a general human category, but attempt rather to
explain his uniqueness. This uniqueness alone is in question in what we call the
‘Christological problem.’

Titles, Metaphors and other Christological Designations for Jesus

NT scholar Oscar Cullmann wrote that “The New Testament hardly ever speaks of the person
of Christ without at the same time speaking of his work. Even the prologue to the Gospel of
John connects the one statement that 'the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God'
immediately with the second statement that through this Logos "all things were made'. He is
the Mediator of creation... When it is asked in the New Testament Who is Christ?’ the
question never means exclusively, or even primarily, 'What is his nature?', but first of all,
'What is his function?' Therefore, the various answers given to the question in the New
Testament (answers which are expressed in the various titles we shall investigate one after the
other) visualize both Christ's person and his work. Of course these various titles implicitly
raise also the question concerning the relationship between God and the person and origin of
Christ. But the problem is not really a 'problem of natures' even here.” 1 Through the first
centuries, when reflecting on and attempting to express the identity of Jesus, the Church
made considerable use of Christological titles. The New Testament titles are numerous, each
of them presenting a particular aspect of the problem. No single title is sufficient to
comprehend the infinite fullness disclosed in Christ.
John Macquarie speaks about ‘prehistory’ of Christology, as he says that nothing comes out
of blue. According to him, “it was the expectation arriving out of Judaism and Hebrew
scriptures that shaped the earliest thinking about the Person of Jesus Christ and that were
used as the answer for the question, ‘who was he (or is he)?’. That is the reason that demands
a backward look at the heritage of Judaism…It is the heritage that I mean when I speak of the
‘prehistory’ of Christianity. In speaking of the prehistory of Christianity I am simply
acknowledging that debt which Christianity owes to the older tradition.” 2 Christianity from
the beginning expressed in the language and terms, about which first Christians were aware.

1. SON OF GOD
To begin with, the incarnate ‘Logos’ competed with ‘Son of God’ as the major, high
christological title. From the time of the Arian controversy in the fourth century, ‘Son of

1
Oscar Cullmann, The Christology of the New Testament (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1959), 3.
2
John Macquarie, Jesus Christ in Modern Thought (London: SCM, 1990), 27.

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God’ entered into its own as the principal title lodged in the Apostles’ Creed, the Niceno–
Constantinopolitan Creed, and other universally used Christian prayers and texts. The title
had already entered Christian usage decades earlier.
The oldest Christian document calls Jesus God’s Son (1 Thess. 1: 10) and subsequently Paul
continues to introduce that title—often at key places in his letters (1 Cor. 15: 28; 2 Cor. 1: 19;
Gal. 2: 20; 4: 4; Rom. 1: 3– 4; 8: 3, 32). Altogether, he speaks of Jesus seventeen times as
God’s Son. It is significant that Paul himself never tries to prove that Jesus is the Son of God;
he takes it for granted that this belief is simply shared by the early Christians to whom he
writes.

Origin of the Title

In the Old Testament, divine sonship was attributed to a range of subjects—in particular,
angelic beings, the chosen people, and their king (Ps. 89: 3–4, 19–37). Since they were
understood to share in the heavenly life of God, angels could be called ‘sons of God’ (Job 1:
6; 2: 1; 38: 7; Pss. 29: 1; 89: 6; Dan. 3: 25). The divine choice and deliverance begot Israel
(Deut. 32: 5, 15, 18) as a people and made Israel God’s children (Isa. 45: 11), God’s ‘first
born son’ (Exod. 4: 22–3), and God’s ‘sons and daughters’ (Deut. 32: 19; see 14: 1; Isa. 1: 2;
30: 1; 43: 6; Jer. 3: 22; 31: 9, 20; Ezek. 16: 20–1; Hos. 1: 10;Wis. 9: 7; 18: 13). In the wisdom
tradition, a righteous person could be called God’s ‘child’ or ‘son’ (Wis. 2: 13, 16, 18; 5: 5).
The man who cares for widows and orphans ‘will be like a son of the Most High’ (Sir. 4: 10).

Monarchs were considered divine in the ancient Middle East, for example in Egypt. Divine
sonship was a prominent and prevalent concept in Greek culture and religion. Among the
Greeks, divine sonship implied literal divine ancestry and thus some level of divinity, the
degree of which could vary. For example Apollo was the literal son of the god Zeus and the
goddess Leto and thus was fully divine. Likewise Alexander and even philosopher Plato were
considered divine sons of Zeus and Apollo respectively. Among the Romans, divine sonship
was also quite prominent. They adopted the mythology of the Greeks and so embraced divine
sonship. However unlike the Greeks, the Romans were extremely reluctant to attribute divine
status to a living human being, though such status could be granted to the deceased. For e.g.
Augustus was the adopted son of the deceased and subsequently deified Julius Caesar. As far
as the second Temple Judaism is concerned there was earlier thinking that there was no
understanding of messianic divine sonship during that time. However the findings of Dead
Sea Scrolls weakened that argument because it gave evidence that a concept of messianic
divine sonship was present in Second Temple Judaism and therefore readily available to
Jesus and his disciples. There is also a debate over the question that whether the early Church
understood Jesus as the son of God only after his resurrection or before.

Significance of ‘Abba’
There is widespread scholarly agreement that Jesus addressed God as “Father,” with many
concluding that Jesus did so by using the Aramaic word abba. Abba appears in the canonical
Gospels only once (Mk 14:36), raising questions about its use by the historical Jesus. Yet the
appearance of this Aramaic word in a thoroughly Greek Gospel likely indicates its
importance in the early church and in the church’s memory of the historical Jesus. Such a

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conclusion finds confirmation in the surprising appearance of abba in two of Paul’s epistles
(Rom 8:15; Gal 4:6). That this paternal form of addressing God was used and known among
Gentile Christians indicates its unique significance for the church and strongly suggests its
early origin. James D.G. Dunn suggests that although Jesus’ use of abba may not have been
unique, the consistency and unvarying way in which he used abba to address God likely was.
We can conclude that Jesus’ use of abba reflects his sense of personal intimacy with God, an
intimacy that was unique in the way it pervaded the prayer language of Jesus. Mark 12:1-12;
13:32 also indicate the uniqueness of Jesus’ divine sonship. Mark 12:1-12 contrasts Jesus,
who is God’s Son, with the prophets, who are God’s servants. Jesus understood his identity as
God’s Son: as a royal messianic descendant of David.

New Testament
When we turn from Old Testament origins to the Synoptic Gospels, the evidence makes it
clear that Jesus understood his relationship to God as sonship. But we come across Jesus
speaking absolutely of ‘the Son’ but never of ‘the Son of God’. First, in an important passage,
heavy with wisdom language (Matt. 11: 25–30; see Luke 10: 21–2), Jesus refers to the Father,
Identified as ‘Lord of heaven and earth’, and claims that a unique and exclusive (salvific)
knowledge of ‘the Father’ is possessed by ‘the Son’ who is tacitly identified as ‘me.
Implicitly, Jesus claimed an essential, ‘ontological’ relationship of sonship towards God
which provided the grounds for his functions as revealer, lawgiver, forgiver of sins, and agent
of the final kingdom. Those functions (his ‘doing’) depended on his ontological relationship
as Son of God (his ‘being’). Jesus invited his hearers to accept God as a loving, merciful
Father. He worked towards mediating to them a new relationship with God, even to the point
that they too could use ‘Abba’ when addressing God in prayer. Yet, Jesus’ consistent
distinction between ‘my’ Father and ‘your’ Father shows He was apparently conscious of a
qualitative distinction between his sonship and their sonship which was derived from and
depended on his. His way of being son was different from theirs.’ For the Markan evangelist,
Jesus’ divine sonship clearly identifies him as a royal messianic figure. The divine
affirmation of Jesus’ sonship in Mark 1:11; 9:7 clearly allude to the divine affirmation of the
Israelite king in Psalm 2:7. This kingly identity is further evidenced by Jesus’ triumphal entry
(Mk 11:1-11), Jesus’ anointing at Bethany (Mk 14:1-9) and the written
Charge for Jesus’ crucifixion (Mk 15:25). Almost from the outset of Mark’s Gospel Jesus the
divine Son appears on the scene empowered by God’s Spirit and acting as God’s royal agent.
But in the second half of Mark’s Gospel introduces a new function of Jesus the divine Son:
he will be the obedient Son, who surrenders his life in obedience to God’s will and on behalf
of God’s people (Mk 10:45). Jesus’ suffering and death is clearly central to Mark’s
presentation of Jesus’ divine sonship.

In their own way, John and Paul maintained their distinction. Paul very much focuses on our
adoption in Christ making us the ‘children of God’ (Rom. 8: 16–17) or, alternatively, ‘sons of
God’ (Rom. 8: 14; Gal. 4: 6–7). John distinguished between the only Son of God (John 1: 14,
18; 3: 16, 18) and all those who through faith can become ‘children of God’ (John 1: 12; 11:
52; and 1 John 3: 1–2, 10; 5: 2).

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 2. SON OF MAN
The phrase ‘Son of Man’ is one of the most widely used Christological titles in the NT and
belongs almost exclusively to the Gospels (Synoptics 69, John 13, rest of the NT 1), and all
these cases it appears to all intents and purposes only on the lips of Jesus. It has raised
questions on the authenticity of the usage of this title, but without any conclusion.

Hellenistic Background

The Greek phrase ‘Son of Man’ (ho huios tou anthropou) is very strange in Greek. Behind it
lies the Aramaic phrase bar nash or bar nasha. In Aramaic the phrase usually means ‘man’ in
the generic sense of human beings in general, or in an indefinite sense of ‘a man’, ‘someone’.
Sometimes it appears to have been used as the substitute for the first person singular ‘I’ on its
own.3

Judaism

The phrase is used in Ps. 8:4, where it says, ‘what is man that thou art mindful for him, and
the son of man that thou dost care for him?” Here ‘man’ and ‘son of man’ are parallel and
clearly means the same. Similarly, when the prophet Ezekiel is addressed by God as ‘son of
man’ (2:1), this means simply ‘you are a man’ (in contrast to God). In the famous vision of
Dan. 7:13, where Daniel sees a figure which he describes as ‘one like son of man’, he clearly
means simply that the figure looks like a human being, in contrast to the other figures he had
just seen.4 In IV Ezra the Son of Man appears as an apocalyptic redeemer rising out of the
sea and riding upon the clouds (13:32,52). The Enoch passages in which the title appears (37-
71) is in all probability not pre-Christian since there is no evidence for these sections in the
extant portions of Enoch found in the Qumran library. So also IV Ezra is not pre-Christian in
date.5 According to H. Lietzmann, the early church invented this self- designation of Jesus by
giving ‘man’ a messianic significance and making it a title.6 But Culmann argues by saying
that, “The decisive question is: if the evangelists were really the first to introduce the title,
why do they use it only when they represent Jesus himself as speaking? They themselves
never call him by this name and they never report another’s doing so in conversation with
Jesus. This would be completely inexplicable if they were really the first to attribute the title
to Jesus as a self-designation. Actually, they have preserved the memory that only Jesus
himself used it in this way. 7 Culmann further differentiate between two categories of Jesus’
saying about the son of man: first, with eschatological work he must fulfill in the future;
second, those in which he applies it to his earthly works.

Gospels

Like above noted Jewish views about the eschatological Son of Man, so also the
eschatological role of the Son of Man is seen in synoptic (‘day of the son of man’ LK.
3
Christopher M. Tuckett, Christology and the New Testament (Edinburgh: University Press, 2001), 25.
4
Christopher M. Tuckett, Christology and…, 25.
5
Donald Guthrie, New Testament Theology (Secundarabad: OM Books, 2003, 273.
6
H. Lietzmann, Der Menschensohn. Ein Beitrag zur neutestamentlichen Theologie (n.p, n.p., 1896), n.p., cited
by Oscar Culmann, The Christology…, 139.
7
Oscar Culmann, The Christology…, 155.

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17:222ff; ‘coming of the Son of Man’ (Matt24:27 and 37ff.; Mark 8:38). The primary
eschatological function of the coming Son of Man is that of judgment (for e.g Matt. 25:31-46;
Mark 8:38).8 But as soon as the title Son of Man unites with suffering of the servant of God
(i.e. when he relates it to his earthly vocation), his designation of himself as the Son of Man
becomes also declaration of humiliation. Thus he combined ebed Yahweh and bar nasha.
This combination by Jesus was something new. ‘Son of Man’ represents the highest
conceivable declaration of exaltation in Judaism; ebed Yahweh is the expression of the
deepest humiliation. 9 But Ferdinand Hahn, sees in words concerning the earthly deeds of Son
of Man as titular use of the expression, and product of the community. 10

What is more striking about the Johannine Son of Man saying is the idea embedded in them
that Jesus qua Son of Man is a figure who ascends to heaven to a place from which he has
previously descended. “No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from
heaven, the Son of Man (3:13). 11 Clearly the emphasis is made on the pre-existence of Jesus
which is John’s peculiar theme in his Gospel.

3. CHRIST
The Greek word christos usually is translated as “Christ” in most English versions (though
occasionally as “Messiah” [see, e.g., Mk 1:1 tniv]), and it occurs over five hundred times in
the Greek NT. It is a designation used of Jesus to indicate his status as the Messiah, and it is
used frequently in relation to the name “Jesus” with “Jesus Christ,” “Christ Jesus” or “Lord
Jesus Christ” especially in Paul’s letters. In some cases, it is possible that “Christ” has
become a proper name rather than merely a title; however, a titular use of christos certainly is
retained in the NT (e.g., Mt 1:1; Jn 20:31; Acts 18:5; Rom 9:5; Rev 11:15; 12:10). The
designation “Jesus Christ” is really a shorthand way of way of saying “Jesus is the Christ” or
“Jesus is the Messiah.” The word christos and its cognate verb chriō are associated with
anointing or smearing with oil or ointment. Thus, the designation “Jesus Christ” would sound
peculiar to speakers of Greek as something like “Jesus the Smeared-One.”

Proclamation of Jesus as the Messiah was an important feature of early Christian preaching
and teaching (e.g., Acts 2:36; 5:42; 8:5; 9:22; 18:28; Rom 1:3- 4; 2 Tim 2:8). The NT
accordingly presents Jesus as the Messiah of Israel, who fulfills the Jewish Scriptures through
his life, death, resurrection and exaltation. An important function of the canonical Gospels in
this regard is to demonstrate the legitimacy, characteristics and impact of Jesus’ messianic
career.

Judaism

Literally, both words, the one derived from Greek and other from the Hebrew, mean ‘one
who has been anointed.’ Various people might be anointed in ancient Israel - the king (I Sam
10:1; I kings 1:39), the priests (cf. Ex. 29:3; 40:13, some of the prophets (I kings 19:16; Ps.

8
Oscar Culmann, The Christology…,161.
9
Oscar Culmann, The Christology…,162.
10
Ferdinand Hahn, The Titles of Jesus in Christology (London: Lutterworth Press, 1969), 35.
11
Christopher M. Tuckett, Christology and…, 163.

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105:15). But the idea of coming Messiah as part of the eschatological expectation of Israel
was associated chiefly with kingship or royal figure. At the root of the messianic tradition is a
promise made to David by prophet Nathan (II Sam. 7:22 ff.). Oscar Culmann states that,
“History denied the realization of this prophecy in a brutal way, but the Jewish eschatological
hope held for all the more energetically to this unfulfilled expectation so that the ‘anointed
one of Yahweh’, the ‘Messiah’, gradually became an eschatological figure (although
strangely enough the expression mashiach does not appear in the OT itself as an
eschatological figure).” 12 The beginning of what we call the messianic hope appears to be
found in the pre-exilic prophets, proto-Isaiah and Micah. 13

But Culmann states that “Just at the time of Jesus there were in Judaism many varied
conceptions of the coming mediator of the end time, some of which differed radically from
one another.” “In the New Testament period the prevailing messiah type was of course more
and more that which we roughly designate the ‘political Messiah’, or simply the ‘Jewish
Messiah’. The fact is, however, the Christians took over only certain important elements of
the predominating picture of the Messiah, and did not apply to Jesus other quite essential
aspects of Jewish Messiah. The great success of the designation Messiah- Christ is all the
more remarkable in light of the fact that Jesus himself always showed a peculiar reserve in
accepting it as a description of his calling and person, although he did not fully reject it. One
might consider it really ironical that the title Messiah (‘Christ’ in Greek) should have been
deliberately, permanently connected with the name Jesus.” 14

There was variety in the in the way Jews thought the new age would be established. For some
God would act entirely alone to achieve his ends. (cf. Sib. Or. 4:40-49; 18:1, 2). However in
other strands of Jewish eschatology whereby God would be accompanied by, and assisted by,
another figure acting alongside him to inaugurate the new age. For e.g. god would be assisted
by the patriarch Enoch (Jub. 10:17; 2 Enoch 64:5), other that Elijah would return (cf. Mal.
3:1; Sir. 48:10), other that a prophet like Moses, other that Enoch and Elijah will appear
together (cf. 4 Ezra: 6:26). In some strands of Jewish thought the expected intermediary
figure could be termed ‘messiah’. 15

Gospels

The question whether Jesus had a ‘messianic self-consciousness’ is one of the major
problems for understanding his life and teachings. For e.g., Mark 14.61f. and parallels .
During the trial of Jesus, the high priest Caiaphas asks him, ‘Are you the Messiah, the Son of
the Blessed?’ according to the Greek text of Mark, Jesus answered . This certainly
means ‘yes’. But the parallel text in Matthew and Luke read differently. In Matt. 26:64 Jesus
says  ‘you have said so.’ On the basis of the Greek these words will also signify an
affirmative answer. But the corresponding Aramaic word (presupposing that we may assume

12
Oscar Culmann, The Christology of the New Testament, translated by Shirley C. Guthrie and Charles A.M. Hall
(London: SCM, 1959), 114.
13
Reginald H. Fuller, The Foundations of New Testament Christology (London: Fontana Library, 1969), 24.
14
Oscar Culmann, The Christology…, 113.
15
Christopher M. Tuckett, Christology and the New Testament (Edinburgh: University Press, 2001), 15.

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literal translation from the Aramaic), by no means indicates a clear affirmation. It is rather a
way of avoiding a direct answer and can even mean a veiled denial. 16 For Culmann, “The
original Palestinian church was far from sharing Jesus’ reserve toward the title Messiah. On
the contrary, in the light of the Easter experience and in the expectation of the approaching
end, it elevated the expression ‘Jesus is the Messiah to a confession.” 17

Unlike ths Synoptic Gospels, John’s Gospel mentions two specific occasions when the title
Messiah is applied to Jesus (1:14; 4:25-26). The Samaritan woman in 4: 25-26 says, “I know
that the Messiah is coming; and when that one comes, he will tell us everything.’ Jesus
responds, ‘I, the one speaking to you, I am (he).” Christopher Tuckett also sees a relation
between signs and Messiahship in John, especially in 20:30, 31, where it is said that the
‘signs’ recorded in John have been written so that ‘you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah,
the son of God.18

Apostle Paul

Ben Witherington III asks, How much of a dept did Paul’s Christology are to his pre-
Christian messianic beliefs? This enterprise, however, involves a tremendous amount of
conjecture not only about messianic faith in pre -A.D. 70 Pharisaism, but also about Paul’s
unique appropriation of his heritage. Unfortunately, apart from few references here and there,
Paul says little about his pre-Christian beliefs about Messiah. The most one can assume,
judging from a text such as Rom. 9:5, is that he must have believed in a coming human and
Davidic Messiah. 19 Tuckett says, “Paul is the earliest Christian writer whose writings have
survived. But even in his letters probably date from the early 50s (or thereabout), i.e. a good
20 years or so after the death of Jesus. Clearly Paul had predecessors within the Christian
Church and the ideas and thoughts of such predecessors at times have evidently affected
Paul’s own thinking and writings. 20 James D.G. Dunn observed, how could a Jew believe that
a crucified man was God’s Messiah? – ‘Christ crucified a stumbling block to Jews’ (I
Cor.1:23). Hence it became cardinal importance for these first Christians to demonstrate that
‘Christ crucified’ was not a contradiction in terms. Scriptures were searched and passages
brought in light (no doubt Is.53) which could taken to show that Messiah must suffer (Acts
3:18; 17:2f; 26:23; I Cor. 15:3). Paul’s use of the title reflects the same emphasis –Christ
crucified is the Messiah. But his use of it also implies that this was a battle already long won
for Paul. He makes no attempt to prove that Jesus really is ‘Christ’ despite his suffering and
death. The belief in Jesus as the Christ has become so firmly established in his mind and
message that he simply takes for granted, and ‘Christ’ functions simply as a way of speaking
of Jesus, as a proper name for Jesus. 21 According to Guthrie, “the fulfillment motif is

16
Oscar Culmann, The Christology…, 118.
17
Oscar Culmann, The Christology…, 133.
18
Christopher M. Tuckett, Christology and…, 156.
19
Ben Witherington III, “Christology”, in Dictionary of Paul And His Letters, edited by Gerald F. Hawthorne and
Ralph P. Martin (Illinois: IVP, 1993): 102.
20
Christopher M. Tuckett, Christology and…, 42.
21
James D. G. Dunn, Unity And Diversity In The New Testament (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1997), 42-43.

8
particularly significant in those instances where passages which were currently accepted as
being messianic are applied to Jesus, either by himself or by others.” 22

4. LORD
Applying the title ‘Lord’ to the crucified and risen Jesus began very early in Christianity.
There is little question today regarding the pre-Pauline character of Kvpios as a designation
for Jesus. It is generally agreed that the title was employed in regard to Jesus both as a term
of respectful address and as a worshipful acclamation prior to the ministry of Paul. Our oldest
Christian document, 1 Thessalonians, calls him by that title twenty-four times.

In Biblical Greek, Kyrios spans a wide range of meaning: from a polite form of address
(‘Sir’) right through to God as the One who has absolutely sovereign rights and full control
over human beings and their world. In the Septuagint, the (Hebrew) divine name of YHWH
(not pronounced out of reverence but replaced by Adonai, ‘Lord’) was rendered Kyrios or
‘Lord’, and, especially in the prophetic books, God could be called ‘the Lord of hosts’. The
New Testament applies to Jesus this name for the one true God. 23

Greek Usage.
The term kyrios was used both in religious and secular contexts in the NT era. Both national
and mystery religions, especially in the East (i.e., Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor, but also in
Greece and elsewhere), frequently used the term kyrios or its female equivalent, kyria, to
refer to gods and goddesses. Equally important for our purposes is the fact that the Roman
emperors were called Lord like Augustus and Nero even though they were human beings.
The usage of the term is also derived from the more ordinary usage in the institution of
slavery. The term kyrios had a perfectly normal, nonreligious sense in both classical and
Koine Greek, meaning “master” or “owner” of some property. The vocative form kyrie
frequently was just a polite form of address like the English term “sir.” This latter usage is
evident not only in secular Greek literature but also in the NT (e.g., Mk 7:28; Jn 12:21). In
such a context it is understandable why Paul might say that there are many so-called gods
and lords, yet for Christians there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ (1 Cor 8:5-6).

Jewish Background.
In the Septuagint (LXX) the term kyrios occurs over nine thousand times, and in some 6,156
occurrences it is used in place of the proper name of God, “Yahweh.” This amounts not to a
translation of the personal name Yahweh but to a circumlocution meant to aid in avoiding
saying the sacred Tetragrammaton. NT scholar Joseph Fitzmyer has produced evidence that
early Jews did use the Greek kyrios as well as ’ādon or mārē’ for Yahweh, and thus it is not
impossible that early Jewish Christians transferred such a title from Yahweh to Jesus.

22
Donald Guthrie, New Testament Theology (Secundarabad: OM Books, 2003), 252.
23
Gerald O’ Collins, Christology- A Biblical, Historical and Systematic Study of Jesus, 2 nd ed. (Oxford: OUP,
2009), 144.

9
However some 190 times in the LXX ’ādon is translated as kyrios and refers to those who
were lords or commanders in some sense. 24

Examples of kyrios used of Yahweh can be found not only in Josephus and Philo but even as
early as the Wisdom of Solomon. In fact, there is also some evidence that ’ădōnāy was being
used as a substitute for YHWH in some cases at Qumran in their Hebrew Biblical
manuscripts. The Aramaic word for “lord” is mār, which is almost always found with various
suffixes. The use of mārē’ or mārā’ to refer to God as Lord can be traced back at least as
early as Daniel 2:47; 5:23. The Qumran document Genesis Apocryphon (1QapGen) probably
dates from about the turn of the era and has examples of God being addressed in Aramaic as
māri, “my Lord.”

The Origin of Christian Kyrios Usage

Range of usage for the term Kyrios in the entire New Testament

(1) Kyrios could be simply a respectful way of addressing other people (e.g., Matt. 21: 30;
25: 11; 27: 63; John 4: 11; 12: 21; Acts 16: 30).

(2) It could be a way of addressing a ‘teacher’ or ‘rabbi’ (Matt. 8: 25; see Matt. 17: 15; Mark
4: 38; 9: 17).

(3) The designation can suggest authority, in the sense of one with power to perform mighty
works (e.g., Matt. 8: 25).

(4) Kyrios may denote the owner of property (Mark 12: 9; Luke 19: 33) or the master of
slaves (Luke 12: 42–7; Eph. 6: 5; Col. 4: 1). In some parables ‘the master’ or kyrios is a
metaphor for Jesus (e.g., Matt. 25: 18–24, 26).

(5) Because of their power, political rulers (Matt. 27: 63) could lay claim to a certain divinity
and as ‘lords’ even demand worship (see Acts 25: 26).

(6) ‘Lords’ might also refer to so called gods who were supposed to have rights over human
beings (1 Cor. 8: 5).

(7) Finally, the New Testament speaks not only of God (e.g., Matt. 5: 33; 11: 25; Mark 12:
29–30; Acts 2: 39; 4: 26; Rom. 4: 6–8; 11: 2–4) but also of Jesus as Kyrios and often does so
in a way that raises him above the merely human level (e.g., Mark 12: 36–7; Luke 19: 31;
John 13: 13–14; Phil. 2: 11; Rev. 22: 20–1).

Maranatha: An Early Christian Usage

Aramaic evidence of singular importance for this study can be found in 1 Corinthians 16:22
and in what is probably the earliest of extracanonical Christian works, the Didache (Did.
10:6). Here Jesus is referred to as Lord by the earliest Aramaic-speaking Christians using the
phrase maran atha, or more likely marana tha. There are three ways the phrase marana tha

24
B. Witherington III and K. Yamazaki-Ransom, “Lord,” in Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels , 2nd ed., edited by Joel B.
Green, J.K. Brown and N. Perrin (Illinois; IVP, 2013), 528.

10
could be rendered: (1) “Lord, come”; (2) “Our Lord has come”; or (3) even as a prophetic
perfect, “The Lord will come.” Whichever rendering one chooses (the first of the three seems
most likely), a person who has died is being referred to as Lord. Since the first translation is
the most probable, NT scholar C. F. D. Moule’s pointed remark is significant: “Besides even
if ‘our Lord’ is not the same as ‘the Lord’ absolutely, and even if the Aramaic mārē had been
used mostly for humans and not for God one does not call upon a mere Rabbi, after his death,
to come. The entire phrase, Maranatha, if it meant ‘Come, our Master!’ would be bound to
carry transcendental overtones even if the maran by itself did not.” 25 That means that the
term maranatha definitely carries divine connotation to Jesus.

It is striking that Paul, writing in the 50s to Greek-speaking Christians who very likely did
not know Aramaic, does not bother to translate maranatha. This surely must mean that he
assumes that they understood the meaning of the phrase, which in turn suggests that it had
long been a common invocation used by Christians, originating from Judean Christianity, and
especially the Jerusalem church. Consequently, the apostle sees no need to explain or
translate it. The origin of the Christian use of the term “Lord” for Jesus must be traced at least
back to the earliest Aramaic-speaking Jewish Christians. ‘The word of the Lord’, to which
Old Testament prophets and prophetical books so often appeal, becomes the word of (or
message about or from) the Lord Jesus (1 Thess. 1: 8; see 2 Thess. 3: 1; Acts 8: 25; 12: 24;
19: 10, 20). Where deliverance has been promised to those who ‘call upon the name of the
Lord’ (Joel 2: 32), Christians ‘call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ’ (1 Cor. 1: 2).
Passages in the Old Testament which call God Kyrios are referred to Christ (Rom. 10: 13
cites Joel 2: 32; Heb. 1: 10–12 cites Ps. 102: 25–7). Philippians 2: 10–11 echoes Isaiah 45:
23–4, a classic Old Testament passage celebrating YHWH, the one and only God of Israel
and of the whole world: ‘At the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven, on earth,
and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord (Kyrios).’ This
divine title serves Paul in expressing his faith that the crucified and risen Jesus enjoys
lordship over everyone and everything. Jesus exercises an all-determining role, a universal
divine sovereignty. Christ alone, and not any ‘deified’ emperor, merits the title ‘Lord of
lords’ and ‘King of kings’ (Rev. 17: 14; see 19: 16). His lordship is superior to that of all the
greatest political rulers. By taking over the Old Testament language of ‘Lord’ and ‘the day of
the Lord’, the New Testament puts Christ in his doing and being on a par with God.

5. LOGOS
Although Logos became the predominant designation for Jesus in the classical Christology of
the ancient Church, and to a great extent was even considered the essential content of all
Christology, we find it as a Christological title only in one group of NT writings, the
Johannine. Even there it occurs only in few passages: the prologue of the Gospel of John, first
verse of I John, and Rev. 19:13.26 Both the Hellenistic as well as the Jewish backgrounds can
be look into for the idea behind this title.

25
B. Witherington III and K. Yamazaki-Ransom…, 528.
26
Oscar Culmann. The Christology of the New Testament. Translated by Shirley C. Guthrie and Charles A.M.
Hall (London: SCM, 1959), 249.

11
Hellenistic Background

The use of Logos in a philosophical sense had a long history before its use in John’s Gospel.
The earlier Greek writer gave impression to a logos principle was Heraclitus (c.500 B.C.)
who see Logos as unifying principle, the Law or Reason on which accounted for the stable
pattern in the ever changing world. 27 Stoics also used the term Logos, and although they too
could say that the Logos was ‘in the beginning’, nevertheless with their impersonal,
pantheistic Soul they meant something quite different from the Johannine Logos. For John
Logos is just not the mind of God as Stoics says but He is God himself Platonism also used
the concept. Its view of the ‘real’ being (in the Platonistic, idealistic sense of logos) may
come nearer the Johannine view, but it still has nothing to do with a hypostasis, and idea of
Logos ‘becoming flesh’ is quite unthinkable for the Platonist. 28 Bultmann in his work ‘The
Gospel of John: a Commentary’ concludes that the idea of Jewish and Johannine Logos is
within the Gnosticism. In Gnosticism Logos is a mythological intermediary being between
God and man who temporarily became man (term used by Bultmann is ‘disguise’). 29
However this idea is now completely dismantled as it is proved that Gnosticism developed
only in the latter half of the 2 nd century. In fact some scholars argue that Gnosticism is
influenced by John’s thought instead.

Writings of Philo of Alexandria

Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria, who was a contemporary of Jesus and the earliest
Christians, combined elements from both the Old Testament and current philosophical
system notably Platonism and Stoicism. Philo describe the logos as neither uncreated like
God nor created, but in a very real sense a mediator. For him the God who is fully knowable
manifest himself through the Logos and his two powers; Creator power (God) and the Royal
power (Lord). The Logos contains God’s fullness of light and a communion with him gives
light to the souls. Philo describes Logos as the ‘second God’ and even as God in the context
of God’s self-manifestation.

Philo’s Logos doctrine is a close parallel to the Johannine presentation of the Logos as God
(without definite article 1:1c) who is living in with close communion with ‘the God.’ John
also agrees with Philo that the Logos and the light is the self-manifestation of God to human
beings. However, for John the light is not separate entity from Logos and after all the life in
the Logos is the light of human beings. Johannine understanding of mutual indwelling of
Logos and God is also missing in Philo.

Logos in Judaism

In the OT, creative power is attributed to the Word of God (debar Yahweh) in several
passages, notably Gen. 1 and Ps. 33:6, 9. Such passages as Ps. 147: 15 -18, shows God’s
providential care for the creation through his powerful world. In Hos. 6:5, judgment is
executed by the Word of God. More important for early Christian thought about the logos are
27
Donald Guthrie, New Testament Theology (Secundarabad: OM Books, 2003), 321.
28
Oscar Culmann, The Christology…, 252.
29
Oscar Culmann, The Christology…, 252.

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the Jewish speculations concerning Wisdom. In Prov. 8:22-26 Wisdom itself speaks, ‘the
Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of old.’ According to
Wisdom of Solomon 7:26, wisdom is ‘an image of his eternal light.’ 30 Though the concept of
divine revelatory action is common in Old Testament line of Word of God and later Jewish
line of Word (under extra Jewish influence), ‘foreign to both is the idea that this revelatory
action, this speech of God to the world, happens finally and definitely in the historical
framework of an earthly, human life.’ 31

Logos in Gospel of John

According to Culmann, the pre-existent being of Christ is more important for John. “The
incarnate one, the son of man as he appeared in the flesh, is centre of all history. Therefore
the question of his pre-existent work arises too. The one who is the centre of the whole
heilgeschichte (salvation history) cannot simply have appeared from nowhere. Therefore the
Gospel of John emphasizes very strongly the participation of the pre-existent Christ in
creation.” 32 The first five verses of the Gospel are reminiscence of the Genesis creation
narrative, where God is seen as the sole creator of all things. According to Richard
Bauckham, “In the prologue the evangelist uses ‘Word’ to identify the preexistent Christ
within the Genesis creation narrative, and so within the unique identity of God as already
understood by Jewish monotheism.” 33

The role and function of the logos in John's prologue (1:1-18) is closely paralleled by the
personification of wisdom in biblical and later Jewish wisdom texts, notably in Proverbs
8:22-31 (cf. Genesis 1), where wisdom is personified and said to be present with God at
creation. Moreover, whoever finds wisdom is said to find life (Proverbs 8:35), even as in
John the logos is the source of life (1:3-4). In the deutero-canonical Wisdom of Solomon, a
part of scripture for most ancient Christians as well as those in the Catholic tradition, wisdom
is called "the fashioner of all things" (7:22) and "a pure emanation of the glory of the
Almighty" (7:25). Interestingly, the word for wisdom is feminine in both Greek (sophia) and
Hebrew (hochmah); perhaps for this reason the masculine term logos was selected by John to
describe Jesus, who was male, although logos has other connotations having to do with
expression or communication that may have influenced the evangelist's choice. Of course, the
word of God, or of the Lord, is itself an important biblical term and concept, especially in the
prophetic literature, although the absolute use of "word" (without "of the Lord") is not. In any
event, if one asks where the idea that God uses a mediator in creation, and ultimately in
redemption, originates, an important answer may be found in the biblically based
personification of wisdom.

John 1:1 is the most unequivocal statement of Christ’s deity in the New Testament. “In the
beginning” echoes the opening word of the Hebrew Scriptures (Gen 1:1).11 The clause “was

30
Oscar Culmann, The Christology…, 256.
31
Oscar Culmann, The Christology…, 257-58.
32
Oscar Culmann, The Christology…, 250.
33
Richard Bauckham, “Monotheism and Christology in the Gospel of John,” in Contours of Christology in the
New Testament, edited by Richard N. Longenecker (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 151.

13
the Logos” views God’s creative utterance as a reified projection from himself and thus
clarifies that a second hypostasis or subject of the Godhead was there. “And the Logos was
with God” indicates personal communion between the two. “And the Logos was God [θεὸς
ἦν]” specifies that it was the unique divine essence that existed as the Logos. The lack of a
definite article with θεός makes it “qualitative, emphasizing nature.” There is a progression
from the presence of the Logos with the creator in the first clause, implying his transcendence
vis-à-vis the cosmos and his aseity, to his relation with God in the second, to their identity of
being in the third. We can understand in this way the theological significance of Logos in the
Prologue.
John 1:1a: Preexistence Logos
John 1:1b: Difference of Personhood with the God
John 1:1c: Union with God

R. Gundry has argued that in actuality there is a strong Logos Christology, which is
discernible throughout the Gospel of John (Gundry, 1-50). In other words, there remains an
emphasis on Jesus as the logos beyond John 1:18. For instance, Jesus says that God’s word is
truth (Jn 17:17), and yet he himself is the truth (Jn 14:6), implying that Jesus is the Logos (cf.
Rev 19:11-13). In addition, to have God’s logos remain in the believer is equivalent to having
Jesus the logos remain in the believer (Jn 5:38; 8:31; cf. Jn 14:23; 1 Jn 1:10; 2:14) (Gundry,
22-23).

According to Martin Hengel, “The Christology of the fourth Gospel …represents rather the
completion of the traditions within the church of the person and work of Christ. This is
clearly shown by the intentional occurrences of nearly all other important Christological title
side by side, much more so here than in the Synoptic gospels. The list also contains the
absolute ‘Lord’ (ho kyrios), ‘Saviour of the world’ (soter tou kosmou [4:42], ‘Son of Man’,
elected of God (1:34), ‘Holy of God’ (6:69), ‘Christ’, and its Hebrew equivalent, ‘Messiah’
and even the simple Palestinian form of address for the master, ‘Rabbi’ or ‘Rabbouni’.’34

We conclude here with the conclusion made by James DG Dunn saying, “the author of John
1.1-16 was the first to take that step which no Hellenistic-Jewish author had taken before
him, the first to identify the word of God as a particular person; and so far as our evidence is
concerned the Fourth Evangelist was the first Christian writer to conceive clearly of the
personal pre-existence of the Logos-Son and to present it as a fundamental part of his
message.” 35

6. LAST Adam

Christ’s sinless solidarity with the human race (Heb. 4: 15) leads us towards the image of him
as the last or ideal Adam. Just as in the case of the messianic and priestly titles, calling Jesus
‘the last Adam’ pointed primarily, albeit not exclusively, to his salvific meaning and function.

34
Martin Hengel, Studies in Early Christology (Edinburgh/New York: T&T Clark, 1995), 27.
35
James D.G. Dunn, Christology in the Making: A New Testament Inquiry into the Origins of the Doctrine of
Incarnation, 2nd ed. (London: SCM, 1989), 249.

14
Here the symbol was full of significance for the entire human race and the whole of its
history. Genesis presents human beings not only as the climax of God’s work of creation but
also as made in the divine image and manifesting God’s rule on earth: (Gen. 1: 26–7). The
next two chapters of Genesis repeat (from a different tradition) the story of the creation of
humanity, and add a story about Adam and Eve falling into sin. Subsequent tradition proved
both positive and negative about Adam (and Eve). The roll call of famous persons in Sirach
44–9 ends by praising Adam, who is ‘above every living being in creation’ (Sir. 49: 16).
When the Wisdom of Solomon sets out to show the power and work of wisdom in history it
begins with Adam, ‘the First formed father of the world’ (Wis. 10: 1–2). With words to be
cited by Hebrews (2: 5–9) and clearly echoing the story of creation, the psalmist celebrates
the dignity and power over the rest of creation God has given to Adam and humanity (Psalm
8: 4–8).

This positive picture of Adam at the beginning of history led some to postulate an Adam-like
figure to appear at the end of the messianic age. Qumran has supplied evidence for this view
of Adam which links positively his role at the beginning with that at the end (1 QS 4. 23; CD
3. 20). Some scholars find a pointer to this eschatological function of Adam in the canonical
Scriptures (Dan. 7: 13–14). The Scriptures also recalled Adam as the one who sinned and
brought death to humanity (2 Esdras 3: 6–10; 1 Cor. 15: 21–2). Some Biblical passages
named Eve as the one primarily responsible for the fall into sin: ‘From a woman sin had its
beginning, and because of her we all die’ (Sir. 25: 24; see 1 Tim. 2: 13–14). But, Adam’s
representative role in originating sin was generally more to the fore (see Rom. 5: 12–14; 1
Cor. 15: 21–3).

With almost improbable ease Paul could contrast Adam and Christ as two corporate
personalities or representatives (Rom. 5: 12–21; 1 Cor 15: 20–3, 45–9) and see human beings
as bearing the image of both Adam and Christ (1 Cor. 15: 49). Where Adam’s disobedience
meant sin and death for all, Christ’s obedience more than made good the harm due to Adam
by bringing righteousness and abundance of grace (Rom. 5: 12–21).9 As a ‘life-giving spirit’,
the last Adam is risen from the dead and will transform us through resurrection into a
heavenly, spiritual existence (1 Cor. 15: 22, 45, 48–9). Thus, Paul’s Adam Christology
involved both the earthly Jesus’ obedience (Rom. 5) and the risen Christ’s role as giver of the
Spirit (1 Cor. 15). Paul understood Adam to foreshadow Christ (Rom. 5: 14) and what Christ
was to do as a—or, rather, the—corporate, representative personality. The same symbol was
taken up to express Christ’s being: he is ‘the last Adam’ (1 Cor. 15: 45), or the ‘second man
from heaven’, and one not made ‘from earth, of dust’ (1 Cor 15: 47; see Gen. 2: 7).

Some scholars detect an Adamic reference in several other New Testament passages: for
instance, in the language about ‘the glory of Christ, who is the image (eiko¯n) of God’ (2
Cor. 4: 4). In Colossians 1: 15, Christ is called ‘the image (eiko¯n) of the invisible God, the
First-born of all creation’. In isolation this verse could be taken merely in an Adamic sense as
referring to Christ as the First created being, the archetypal human being who visibly reflects
God, the invisible Creator. But, the context suggests finding the background in personified
wisdom, the perfect image of God (Wis. 7: 26) and the agent of creation (Prov. 8: 22–31).

15
The verses which follow speak of ‘all things’ being ‘created through him and for him’, of his
being ‘before all things’, of ‘all things holding together’ in him, and of the plenitude of deity
dwelling in him (Col. 1: 16–17, 19). Any parallelism with Adam, who was simply made in
the divine image and likeness, gets left behind here.

The context of Colossians 1: 15, therefore, prompts one to interpret ‘the image of the
invisible God’ as pointing to Christ being on the divine side and being the perfect revealer of
God—a thought paralleled by John 1: 18 and 2 Corinthians 4: 4. Like the hymn or poem in
Colossians, Hebrews also portrays Christ as the exact (divine) counterpart through whom the
Father speaks and is revealed, and who is the one that sustains the entire universe: ‘He
reflects the glory of God and bears the very stamp of his nature, upholding the universe by his
word of power’ (Heb. 1: 3).

The whole context of Colossians 1: 15–20 suggests a more than Adamic and human
interpretation of ‘the First-born of all creation’. Christ is ‘the First-born’ in the sense of being
prior to and supreme over all creation, just as by virtue of his resurrection from the dead he is
supreme vis-a`-vis the Church (Col. 1: 18). The emphatic and repeated ‘kai autos’ (and he) of
Colossians 1: 17, 18 underline the absolute ‘pre-eminence’ of Christ in the orders of creation
and salvation history; he is pre-eminent both cosmologically and soteriologically. He through
whom the universe was created is the same Christ who formed the Church by rising from the
dead. He has been active in both creation and redemption.

What then of the hymn in Philippians? Here any Adamic interpretation of Christ’s prior state
of being ‘in the form of God’ and enjoying ‘equality with God’ (Phil. 2: 6) seems to be made
doubtful by what follows. This divine status and mode of existence stand in counterpoint (the
emphatic ‘but’ of ‘but he emptied himself ’) to the subsequent state of ‘assuming the form of
a slave’, ‘being born in likeness of men’, and ‘being found in human form’ (Phil. 2: 7). It is
what is said in v. 7 that first puts Christ with the community of human beings and their
collective image, Adam. Christ belonged to the eternal sphere of divine existence (Phil. 2: 6)
and joined the human (and Adamic) sphere only when he assumed another mode of existence
(Phil. 2: 7) which concealed his proper (divine) being. Nevertheless, in talking of Christ as
refusing to use for his own advantage or exploit for himself the godhead which was his, v. 6
might also be contrasting his humility (in becoming human and dying the death of a slave)
with the presumptuous aspiration of Adam (and Eve) to enjoy illegitimate equality with God
and become ‘like God’ (Gen. 3: 5–6).

In post-New Testament times the symbol of Adam proved a valuable foil for Clement of
Alexandria, Origen (d. c.254), St Athanasius of Alexandria c.296–373), St Hilary of Poitiers
c.315–67), St Gregory of Nazianzus (329–89), St Gregory of Nyssa (c.330– c.95), and other
Church Fathers, when they presented and interpreted the person and work of Christ.

St Irenaeus (c.130–c.200), in particular, did much to elaborate further Paul’s antithetical

parallelism between Adam and Christ, the latter reversing the failure of the first. In a typical
passage of his Adversus haereses he wrote: ‘The Son of God. . . was incarnate and made man;

16
and then he summed up in himself the long line of the human race, procuring for us a
comprehensive salvation, that we might recover in Christ Jesus what in Adam we had lost,
namely the state of being in the image and likeness of God’ (3. 18. 1). Interpreting Christ as
the ‘second’ or ‘last’ Adam who ‘reran’ a programme and more than made up what had failed
in Adam has proved a long-lived christological theme, not only in theological teaching but
also in liturgical, hymnic, and catechetical texts. 36

Christological Controversies and the Development of Creeds

Christianity outside Palestine: New Challenges

The Christology right after the NT period is sometimes called as Classical Christology. John
Macquarie (Jesus Christ in Modern Thought) suggests three reasons which resulted into
Christological development as the new challenges emerged during that time.

a. In the first century believers were basically coming from the Jewish background and
hence they interpret the person and work of Christ from their Jewish theological
categories. But by the second century Gentile Christians grew in number and the
prevalent Hellenistic culture outside Palestine made Church to employ new categories
viz., non-Jewish imageries, understandable to the people coming from non-Jewish
backgrounds.

b. Christianity in this new context had to face Greek philosophical traditions as many
educated people were attracting towards Christian message. Thus Christianity was
presented as a new philosophy employing the ideas from Greek philosophical
traditions.

c. The NT concepts like incarnation and Logos were easily related to the gentile
churches and thus need for such approaches arose before the Church.

All these reasons made necessary for Christianity to break out of its narrow origins in
order to be appealing in the Post-Apostolic age. These were the times of intellectual
wrestling for the Christian faith. These new challenges led to Christological development
in the history of Christian Church.

CHRISTOLOGICAL HERESIES

Christological heresies refers to the false/wrong teachings/doctrines or understandings

regarding the person of Jesus Christ. During the first five centuries of the Church’s existence,
various heresies and then conciliar responses to these heresies served to develop some clarity
about the being of Christ.

36
Gerald O’Collins, Christology: A Biblical, Historical and Systematic Study of Jesus, 2nd ed. (Oxford & New York:
OUP, 2009 [1995]), 30-35.

17
By the end of the first century, two opposite false tendencies had already emerged to mark
out for all time the possible extreme positions. On the one hand, the Ebionites, an umbrella
name for various groups of Jewish Christians, considered Jesus to be no more than the human
son of Mary and Joseph, a mere man on whom the Spirit descended at baptism. He was
specially anointed by God to be Israel’s Messiah and given the power to perform miracles.
From this specifically Christological perspective, Ebionitism can be seen as a form of
Adoptionism (The view that Jesus was simply a human person whom God favored and
adopted as the “Son of God” at some point in his life, either at his baptism or his
resurrection.), and in the later history of the Church the term was applied loosely to any
teaching that was perceived to compromise confession of Jesus’ divinity. On the other hand,
the early heresy of Docetism held that the Son of God merely appeared to be a human being.
Christ’s corporeal reality was considered heavenly or else a body only in appearance, with
someone else, such as Simon of Cyrene, suffering in his place. The Docetic heresy, to the
extent that it separated Christ from the human race, made him irrelevant for our salvation.
The Johannine literature insisted against Docetist tendencies that Christ had truly ‘come in
the flesh’ (1 John 4: 1–3; 2 John 7) and against any Ebionite tendencies that he was truly
divine Lord (John 1: 1; 20: 28).

Irenaeus countered Ebionism as he wondered: “How can they be saved unless it was God
who worked out their salvation upon earth? Or how shall man pass into God, unless God has
[first] passed into man?” He added: “For no one can forgive sins but God alone; while the
Lord forgave them and healed men, it is clear that he was himself the Word of God made the
Son of man, receiving from the Father the power to forgive sins. He was man and he was
God, in order that since as man he suffered for us, so as God he might have compassion on
us, and forgive our sins.”

a. Docetism
The term ‘docetism’ is applied to all forms of Christology that deny or diminish confession of
Christ’s full humanity. In its most extreme form, it refers to the position, associated with
certain forms of Gnosticism, that Jesus only seemed (dokein in Greek) to have a human body
and thus did not genuinely suffer or die on the cross (some Gnostics allegedly went so far as
to deny that Jesus left footprints).

Docetic Christologies work from two related presuppositions. The first is that Christ is fully
divine. The second is that divinity and humanity are so utterly irreconcilable that Christ can
only be genuinely God if his divinity displaces some or all of his humanity. Various NT texts
(e.g., 1 John 4:2–3; 2 John 7; cf. Gal. 4:4) give witness to rejection of docetic Christologies
from a very early date. Countering this heresy, Church Father Ignatius insisted that Jesus
Christ was truly human because he experienced the true activities of human beings. However
the classic theological objection to docetism was formulated by Gregory of Nazianzus: ‘That
which he has not assumed he has not redeemed, but what he has taken up is healed’. In other
words, because Christ’s work involves the renewal of the whole of human nature, it is

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necessary for his life to have been human ‘in every respect’ (Heb. 2:17). 37 Docetism became
part and parcel of Gnosticism, a complex group of movements that focused on a secret gnosis
or knowledge that was reserved for the elite members of its sects. Because Gnosticism drove
a wedge between spiritual realities—which are inherently good—and physical realities—
which are inherently evil—these movements could not accept the church’ contention that the
Son of God took on human flesh. This would have meant that God, who is spiritual and thus
good, had a body, which is physical and thus evil. To counter the church’s affirmation,
several heretical gospels were circulated by the Gnostics. These included the Gospel of
Thomas, the Gospel of Judas, and the Gospel of Peter. Church leaders rejected these writings,
which were falsely attributed to apostles. The early church was united in its strong opposition
to Gnosticism and its major tenet Docetism as expressed in these falsely named gospels. The
early church insisted that this union of the divine and human was necessary to accomplish the
salvation of humanity.

b. Arianism
The term Arianism is derived from Arius, a Bishop of Alexandria whose views were
condemned at the Council of Nicea in A.D. 325. Arius apparently wanted to push the
subordination elements in Origen much further. According to Arius the Father is absolutely
beyond the Son and, being unbegotten, is the only true God. A generation ‘from the
substance (ousia)’ of the Father would misinterpret the divinity in physical categories and
wrongly suggest the divine substance being divided into two or three parts. Arius and his
followers wanted to preserve the absolute, transcendent ‘mon-archy’ of God, they held on to
the real difference of identity between the Father and the Son. (Arius had almost nothing to
say about the Holy Spirit.). Arianism distinguished the subjects while denying their unity of
essence. As Athanasius reported the Arian position, they considered the Son strictly inferior
to and, in fact, infinitely different from the Father (Athanasuis, Contra Arianos, 1. 6).

Arius denied that the Son was coeternal with the Father: ‘there was [a time] when he was
not.’ Since Arius apparently understood ‘eternal’ and ‘unbegotten’ as synonymous, he had to
deny the Son’s eternity. Arius taught that God the Son was at one point created by God the
Father, and that before that time the Son did not exist, nor did the Holy Spirit, but the Father
only. Thus, though the Son is a heavenly being who existed before the rest of creation and
who is far greater than all the rest of creation, he is still not equal to the Father in all his
attributes—he may even be said to be “like the Father” or “similar.

The Arians depended heavily on texts that called Christ God’s “only begotten” Son (John
1:14; 3:16, 18; 1 John 4:9). If Christ were “begotten” by God the Father, they reasoned, it
must mean that he was brought into existence by God the Father (for the word “beget” in
human experience refers to the father’s role in conceiving a child). Further support for the
Arian view was found in Colossians 1:15, “He is the image of the invisible God, the first-
born of all creation.” Does not “first-born” here imply that the Son was at some point
brought into existence by the Father? And if this is true of the Son, it must necessarily be true
37
Ian A. McFarland, “Docetism,” in The Cambridge Dictionary of Christian Theology, edited by Ian A. McFarlnad
& et.al (Cambridge: CUP, 2011), 146.

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of the Holy Spirit as well. After initially speaking of the Son as created out of nothing, Arius
subsequently allowed for the Son being ‘generated’ by the Father but persisted in considering
this act of generation to be in effect a creation. The only creature directly created by the
Father, the Son carried out the will of the Father by creating everything else and so acting as
a kind of demiurge, a Logos exercising divine power between God and the universe. H ence,
the One who became incarnate was not truly divine but less than God.

But these texts do not require us to believe the Arian position. Colossians 1:15, which calls
Christ “the first-born of all creation,” is better understood to mean that Christ has the rights
or privileges of the “first-born—that is, according to Biblical usage and custom, the right of
leadership or authority in the family for one’s generation. (Note Heb. 12:16 where Esau is
said to have sold his “first-born status” or “birthright—the Greek word prototokia, is
cognate to the term prototokos first-born” in Col. 1:15.) So Colossians 1:15 means that
Christ has the privileges of authority and rule, the privileges belonging to the “first-born,”
but with respect to the whole creation. The NIV translates it helpfully, “the firstborn over all
creation.” As for the texts that say that Christ was God’s “only begotten Son,” the early
church felt so strongly the force of many other texts showing that Christ was fully and
completely God, that it concluded that, whatever “only begotten” meant, it did not mean
“created.” Therefore the Nicene Creed in 325 affirmed that Christ was “Begotten, not
made.”

Council of Nicaea (325 AD): Arianism Condemned

Nicaea I, speaking of ‘the Son’ and never of ‘the Word’, confessed in its creed that the Son is
‘of the substance (ousia) of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true
God, begotten, not made, of one substance (homoousios) with the Father’. The Council
anathematized those who said of the Son that ‘there was [a time] when he was not’, and that
‘he was created from nothing and is of different hypostasis or ousia from the Father’. This
was to hold that the Son is truly Son of God and not less than God: in the generation (not
creation) of the Son, the substance of the Father has been fully communicated, and the Son is
coeternal with the Father. 38

Council of Nicaea (325 AD)

Reckoned as the first ecumenical council, the (first) Council of Nicaea was summoned by
Emperor Constantine I (ca 275–337) in 325. The council issued a creed that said that the Son
was generated ‘from the substance of the Father’ and was Homoousios (‘of the same
substance’) with the Father. Arius was exiled. This dispute reflected and stimulated tension
between different theological trajectories present at the time it erupted: Nicaea did nothing to
diffuse this tension. The technical terminology used in the creed seems to have been chosen
as an ad hoc tool to censure Arius and was not clearly defined even by its supporters. Later in
the council of Constantinople in 381 AD, the Nicene Creed was modified with few additions
and that version is the one which is recited in the churches today.

38
Gerald O’ Collins, Christology: A Biblical, Historical and Systematic Study of Jesus, 2 nd ed. (Oxford: OUP,
2009), 182.

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Nicaean Creed (325 AD)

“We believe in one God, Father, Almighty, maker of all things, visible and invisible,
“And in one Lord Jesus Christ, begotten of the Father uniquely, that is, of the
substance of the Father, God of God, Light of Light, true God of true God, begotten,
not made, consubstantial with the Father, through whom all things were made, both
things in heaven and those in earth, who for us men and for our salvation came down
and was incarnate, [and] became man; he suffered and rose on the third day,
ascended into heaven, and is coming to judge living and dead, “And in the Holy Spirit.
“But those who say, there was once when he was not, and before he was begotten he was
not and he came into being out of things that are not, or allege that the Son of God is of a
different subsistence or essence, or created or alterable or changeable, the catholic and
apostolic Church anathematizes.”

Apollinarianism
One branch of contemporary Greek philosophy envisioned the Logos or Word as the personal
governing principle which provides and gives life to the whole of creation. It was a concept
which a number of Christian thinkers were happy to work with and develop. Athanasius
envisioned the Logos’ action with respect to Jesus’ human nature as just one aspect of his
wider work, similar in some respects to that of the soul to the body. In fact, Athanasius often
refers to the physical body of Jesus as the instrument of the Word which he graphically
portrays as being wielded by him. In all this the agent of Jesus’ human nature is clearly the
Word, while his humanity is the instrument through which he acts.

Apollinarius of Laodicea was a close friend of Athanasius and shared in his theological
perspective. He was deeply committed to safeguarding the doctrine of the Son’s substantial
unity with the Father, embodied in the Nicene Creed. He was also opposed to the dualistic
direction taken by the Antiochene school with its emphasis on two distinct natures in the
incarnate Christ. Against this two nature view he emphasized the unity of Christ’s being.
However, what was implied in Athanasius’ christology was now made explicit by
Apollinarius. He argued that the Word, as the governing principle of the life of the incarnate
Christ, took the place of the human mind or soul in Jesus. The Logos was both the intelligent
principle directing his life and also the animating spirit of his flesh.

His conclusion is a logical outcome of the direction taken by what has become known as the
Alexandrian school with its emphasis on the integrity of Christ’s being, its commitment to the
substantial unity of the Son with the Father and its use of a Word–flesh model for Christ’s
person. Apollinarius strongly opposed the Word–man Christological theory favoured by the
competing school of thought, known as the Antiochenes. He believed that the idea that the
Word united himself with a man was incorrigibly dualistic and that it was wrong to speak of
Christ’s body and the divine Word as distinct natures. Rather, he held that in the incarnation
the flesh and the Godhead were fused into one single nature, one life, one hypostasis in Jesus
Christ. Apollinarius believed that such christological perspective required the divine Word to
have actually replaced the human soul or mind in Christ. The Logos or governing principle of

21
the universe was envisioned by him as the only animating spirit of the incarnate Christ’s
being. Apollinarianism was rejected by several church councils, from the Council of
Alexandria in A.D. 362 to the Council of Constantinople in A.D. 381.

Alexandrian Christology Antiochene Christology

Philosophical Platonic and Neo-Platonic Aristotelian
Influence
Chief Figures Origen, Athanasius, Appolinarius, Paul of Samosata, Theodore of
Cappadocian Fathers, Cyril Mopsuestia, Nestorius
Christology Logos-flesh; Logos-man; ‘the eternal Word
assuming the man Jesus’
Emphasized Christ’s divinity; therefore Christ’s humanity; therefore
sometimes called ‘high’ Christology sometimes called ‘low’ Christology
Point of Only the Word’s assumption of a The humanity of Christ was an
contention complete human nature, body and active agent of our redemption,
rational soul, could bring about rather than merely its passive
our complete redemption. object.
Centrality Revelation Salvation

Nestorianism

Nestorius was enthroned as patriarch of Constantinople in 428 and was soon to become
notorious for propagating the heresy associated with his name. The irony is that there is little
evidence that he was a true Nestorian in the way the word had been understood classically.
To safeguard the authentic humanity of Christ, Nestorius argued that his two natures
remained unaltered and distinct in the union. His unchangeable divinity was not reduced to
the human, and his humanity was not overwhelmed by the divine Word. For this reason he
preferred to speak of a conjunction rather than a union of these two objectively real natures.
This idea of Nestorius led to the conclusion that he is talking about two persons in Christ.
Nestorius was, however, vigorously opposed to the idea that there were in Christ two quite
different people. He taught the ‘conjunction’ (synapheia) of Christ’s two complete natures in
one ‘prosopon’. The term prosopon means someone’s or something’s concrete form of
existence and particular ‘appearance’.

Using prosopon to cover the sum total of individual properties that manifest themselves,
Nestorius could not only speak of the Christ’s one ‘prosopon’ but even, as Cyril accurately
reports, of the union between the ‘prosopa’ (plural) in Christ. Each nature can be said to
enjoy its own (natural) prosopon. His critics interpreted Nestorius’ language about the man
Jesus being ‘assumed’ (homo assumptus) and about the Word being present in him as in a
temple to mean the mere ‘conjunction’ of two separately existing subjects, Jesus and the
Word of God (who did not truly become flesh). In effect, they accused Nestorius of turning
the distinction between Christ’s two natures into a separation and proposing a merely moral
unity between the eternal Son of God and Jesus as adopted son. Later, Nestorius was to
defend himself vigorously against such charges. 39 Moreover, he refused to attribute to the

39
Gerald O’Collins, Christology: A Biblical, Historical and Systematic Study of Jesus (Oxford: OUP, 2009), 190.

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Word of God the events of Jesus’ human life: in particular, his human birth from Mary.
Hence, Nestorius declined to call Jesus’ mother the ‘Mother of God’ (Theotokos) because
Mary gave birth to human Jesus and not the divine; creature cannot give birth to the
uncreated.

Aloys Grillmeier points out that “‘Nature’ as a purely factual, qualitative expression of being
remains for Nestorius the constant starting point and the principle of duality in Christ. It is on
this that he bases the distinction between ‘Logos’ (divine nature) and ‘Christ’ (unity of divine
and human nature).”40 Nestorius was condemned for making two persons of Jesus Christ in
one body. Hence for him the one who suffered on the cross was not the divine but the human
nature of Christ because omnipotent God cannot suffer. According to him there are two
distinct hypostasis in the incarnate Christ, one divine and the other human.

In contrast, Cyril his arch opponent and Patriarch of Alexandria, was absolutely clear:

If any one does not acknowledge that the Word which is from God the Father was personally
[hypostatically] united with the flesh, and with his own flesh is one Christ, that is, one and the same God
and man together, let him be anathema. If any one in the one Christ divides the persons [hypostasis] after
their union, conjoining them with a mere conjunction in accordance with worth, or a conjunction effected
by authority or power, instead of a combination according to a union of natures, let him be anathema.41

Nestorius was condemned in the council of Ephesus in 431 AD.

Eutychianism
Having addressed Apollinarianism and Nestorianism, the early church still had one more
major heresy to counter. Named after the simple monk Eutychus, Eutychianism combined the
two natures of Jesus Christ into one different nature after the incarnation. This view is an
example of monophysitism, or the belief that Jesus Christ possessed only one nature. Of
particular concern was Eutychus’s belief that before the incarnation, both the divine and
human natures of Jesus Christ existed. But after the union of these natures in the incarnation,
Jesus Christ possessed only one nature. And somehow this one nature made him different
from all other human beings, because Christ was not of the same nature as the rest of
humanity.

Once again, the church responded quickly to this challenge to orthodoxy. Two concerns were
voiced: First, Eutychianism denied that the incarnate Christ had two distinct natures.
According to one interpretation of his view, the divine nature so absorbed the human nature
of Christ that essentially the one nature was divine. On another interpretation, the one nature
was a fusion or hybrid of the divine and human natures, a “divine-human” nature, so to
speak. In either case, the church objected, insisting that after the incarnation Jesus Christ had
two complete natures that maintained their respective properties—the divine nature with its
attributes of deity, and the human nature with its attributes of humanity. The second concern

40
Aloys Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition: From the Apostolic Age to Chalcedon (451), trans. J.S. Bowden
(London: A.R. Mowbray, 1965), 434.
41
Alan Spence, Christology: A Guide for the Perplexed (London: Bloomsbury, 2008), 46.

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was Eutychus’s denial that the human nature of Jesus was the same as that of all human
beings. This cut across the church’s belief in Jesus’ full humanity. Flavian offered this
formula for understanding the incarnation: “We affirm that Christ is of two natures after the
incarnation, affirming one Christ, one Son, one Lord, in one subsistence and one person.”
This “two nature … one person” affirmation became the standard way of expressing the
reality of the God-man.42

The Chalcedonian Definition of A.D. 451

In order to attempt to solve the problems raised by the controversies over the person of
Christ, a large church council was convened in the city of Chalcedon near Constantinople
(modern Istanbul), from October 8 to November 1, A.D. 451. The resulting statement, called
the Chalcedonian Definition, guarded against Apollinarianism, Nestorianism, and
Eutychianism. The Chalcedonian formula is as follows:

We, then, following the holy Fathers, all with one consent, teach men to confess one and the same Son, our
Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood; truly God and truly man, of a
reasonable [rational] soul and body; consubstantial [coessential] with the Father according to the
Godhead, and consubstantial with us according to the Manhood; in all things like unto us, without sin;
begotten before all ages of the Father according to the Godhead, and in these latter days, for us and for our
salvation, born of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, according to the Manhood; one and the same Christ,
Son, Lord, Only-begotten, to be acknowledged in two natures, inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly,
inseparably; the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of
each nature being preserved and concurring in one Person and one Subsistence, not parted or divided into
two persons, but one and the same Son, and only begotten, God, the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ, as the
prophets from the beginning [have declared] concerning him, and the Lord Jesus Christ himself has taught
us, and the Creed of the holy Fathers has been handed down to us.

Against Apollinarius that Christ did not have a human mind or soul, we have the statement
that he was “truly man of a reasonable soul and body...consubstantial with us according to
the Manhood; in all things like unto us.” (The word consubstantial means “having the
same nature or substance.”) However, it should be noted that three localized groups of
ancient churches rejected the Chalcedonian definition and still endorse monophysitism to
this day: the Ethiopian Orthodox church, the Coptic Orthodox church (in Egypt), and the
Syrian Jacobite church. In opposition to Nestorianism that Christ was two persons united
in one body, we have the words “indivisibly, inseparably...concurring in one Person and
one Subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons.”

Against Monophysitism (Eutychus) that Christ had only one nature, and that his human
nature was lost in the union with the divine nature, we have the words “to be
acknowledged in two natures inconfusedly, unchangeably...the distinction of natures being
by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being
preserved.” The human and the divine natures were not confused or changed when Christ
became man, but the human nature remained a truly human nature, and the divine nature
remained a truly divine nature.

42
Gregg R. Allison, Historical Theology: An Introduction to Christian Doctrine (Michigan: Zondervan, 2011), 436-
437.

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Chalcedonian Christology
Some have said that the Chalcedonian Definition really did not define for us in any
positive way what the person of Christ actually is but simply told us several things that it
is not. In this way some have said that it is not a very helpful definition. But such an
accusation is misleading and inaccurate. The definition actually did a great deal to help us
understand the biblical teaching correctly. It taught that Christ definitely has two natures, a
human nature and a divine nature. It taught that his divine nature is exactly the same as
that of the Father (“consubstantial with the Father according to the Godhead”). And it
maintained that the human nature is exactly like our human nature, yet without sin
(“consubstantial with us according to the Manhood; in all things like unto us, without
sin”). Moreover, it affirmed that in the person of Christ the human nature retains its
distinctive characteristics and the divine nature retains its distinctive characteristics (“the
distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property
of each nature being preserved”). Finally, it affirmed that, whether we can understand it or
not, these two natures are united together in the one person of Christ.

MEDIEVAL CHRISTOLOGY

Cambridge History of Christianity brackets ca.600 to ca.1100 as early middle age or early
medieval period and ca.1100 to ca.1500 as later middle age or late medieval period. For our
discussion we are looking at the late medieval period, especially the christology of Thomas
Aquinas, one who is considered as the greatest medieval theologian or rather theologian-
philosopher. However it does not mean that there were not others. But the fact remains that
the works of many medieval theologians other than Aquinas were not given due attention.
However in recent years explorations has been happening in the theological researches of
these less attended figure’s works. On the other hand from Christological perspective there’s
no so much of lengthy works that we witness except the understanding of atonement dealt by
St. Anselm and Peter Abelard who will be brought later on the topic on theories of
atonement.
Late Medieval Period: Important Shifts

Spiritual Mystical Christology

St Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) developed his Christology in a spiritual, mystical way.
He had a major influence on the devotion to the human Jesus (as friend and lover) that grew
stronger in the twelfth century and flourished through St Francis of Assisi (1181/2–1226), the
popular piety inspired by the Franciscan movement, and new developments in liturgy,
painting, sculpture, and architecture. Anselm, Cistercian writing, St Hildegard of Bingen
(1098–1179), and Julian of Norwich (c.1342–after 1413) helped to encourage, in particular,
the use of the motherhood metaphor in Christology and trinitarian theology. Christ was
understood to act like a mother in loving, feeding, and instructing the individual soul. This
fresh use of feminine language for Christ was encouraged by a widespread interest in the
Song of Songs and a return to Jesus’ own image of himself as a hen with her chickens (Matt.
23: 37 par.), an image which had already drawn comments from Clement of Alexandria,

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