Christology
Christology (Gk., christos, Christ, + logos, ‘reflection’). The attempt in Christianity to account for the relation of Jesus to God, especially in his own nature and person. From the outset, New Testament writers related Jesus so closely to God that he could be seen as the initiative of God in seeking and saving that which was lost, even to the extent of being the manifestation of God so far as that can be seen or conveyed in human form. This led inevitably to questions of how the being of God is related to the humanity of Jesus in such a way that both are truly contained and present in one person.
The answers given to those questions are necessarily speculative. They range across a spectrum (in the history of the Church) from a view that he was a remarkable teacher and healer who was promoted by the faith of the early Christians into God, to the view that the pre-existent Son is God as God always is, and that the eternal and unchanging nature of God was truly present to the humanity of Jesus, both as co-agent of his activity and subject of his experience, without the humanity being obliterated or the divine nature compromised. The former are known as Euhemeristic or Adoptionist Christologies (see e.g. ARIUS). The latter culminated in the Chalcedonian definition, which sees the person of Jesus as (in the words of Aquinas) instrumentum coniunctum divinitatis, the conjoined instrument of the Godhead.
The answers given to those questions are necessarily speculative. They range across a spectrum (in the history of the Church) from a view that he was a remarkable teacher and healer who was promoted by the faith of the early Christians into God, to the view that the pre-existent Son is God as God always is, and that the eternal and unchanging nature of God was truly present to the humanity of Jesus, both as co-agent of his activity and subject of his experience, without the humanity being obliterated or the divine nature compromised. The former are known as Euhemeristic or Adoptionist Christologies (see e.g. ARIUS). The latter culminated in the Chalcedonian definition, which sees the person of Jesus as (in the words of Aquinas) instrumentum coniunctum divinitatis, the conjoined instrument of the Godhead.
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Christology