The Nazareth Baptist Church Theology Religion Essay Example

he is and what work he does, is he both human and Godhead? So like divinity is the scientific discipline whose object is the survey of God, Christology is the scientific discipline whose object is the survey of the individual and work of Jesus of Nazareth ( Gerald O ' Collins, 2009, p. 1 ) .

The Nazareth Baptist Church ( Shembe )

The ulterior Christological contentions refer about entirely to the individual or nature of Christ. They refer on the one manus to the relation between his ( Christ ) nature and that of God, and on the other manus, they refer to dealingss which exists in Christ himself between his Godhead and his human nature, for case how is Jesus to the full God and to the full adult male.

The topographic point of Jesus in Isaiah Shembe is really debatable. Shembe could non settle with the thought of Christ whom he accepted as the Son of God, holding same position with God the male parent, an thought different to the full cultural relationship between seniors and their kids. Here we see a repetition of the sort of job early Christian faced in seeking to specify their claims about Christ, God and the Holy Spirit, a job which took centuries to work out and even so left many loose terminals for history to play with ( J.W. Hofmeyer & A ; Gerald J. Pillay, 1994, p. 238 ) .

Unorthodoxies

Over the centuries the Church has been faced with legion theological and Christological inquiries. The original apostle and their immediate followings left us with the Bibles of the New Testament as the basic informant to the significance of

who Jesus is and the significance of his life, decease and Resurrection. These Bibles have non provided ready-made replies to all the theological inquiries about legion issues that ulterior coevalss had to face. This means that the church as the community of Jesus followings had to travel through great battle to seek replies to these inquiries, inquiries like who is Jesus Christ, and what is the relationship between his humanity and his deity?

Questions like these resulted to batch of unorthodoxies. Harmonizing to McGrath two early point of views were rapidly rejected at this point and were considered dissident. The first 1 is Ebionitism, a chiefly Jewish religious order which flourished in the early centuries of the Christian epoch. This regarded Jesus as an ordinary homo being, the human boy of Mary and Joseph. This attitude adapted to bing Judaic grouping. This reduced Christology was regarded wholly deficient. The other one was known as Docetism this attack argued that Christ was wholly godly and that his humanity was simply an visual aspect. The agony of Christ was treated as apparent instead than existent ( McGrath, 2011, p. 273 ) .

To detecting which spiritual and point of view was suited to show the significance of Jesus of Nazareth reached a crisis in the fourth century. The contention which forced the issue was led by Arius of Alexandria, and the contention was known as Arian Controversy. Arius instructions were summarised into these three statements harmonizing to McGrath:

The Son and the male parent do non hold the same kernel ( Ousia ) .

The Son is a created being ( Poiema ) even though in footings of rank he is

to be recognized the first among created existences.

Although the Son was a Godhead of the universe, and must hold existed before them and before all times, there was however a clip when the Son did non existed

The whole Arius point and belief was that Jesus was non godly in any meaningful sense of the term ( McGrath, 2011, p. 274 ) .

Arius was opposed by Athanasius who taught that Jesus Christ is ageless Son of God. Athanasius argued that merely God and God entirely can salvage and interrupt the power of wickedness and convey humanity to ageless life. He farther explains that human nature needs to be redeemed and that no animal can salvage another animal and claims that merely the Godhead can deliver. Therefore if Christ is non God he is no solution instead portion of the job. Athanasius argues that Christ is God incarnate. ( McGrath, 2011, p. 276 )

In 325 AD the council of Nicea took up Athanasiusaa‚¬a„?s place and announced that Jesus the word and Son of God has been ageless aa‚¬A“begottenaa‚¬A? from the male parent and was non created. He is consubstantial or of one kernel ( homoousious ) with the male parent he was the incarnate of the Virgin Mary and became human. Creed was issued corroborating this instruction.

The credo was outstanding for its brief interlingual rendition of the Christian narrative and the building of Christian vision and world. The credo was an of import tool needed for the church to recover a sense of its ain honor and to retrieve a healthier reading of the Bible ( Johnson, 2003 ) .

By the terminal of the 4th century most

Christians were confirming that Christ was so to the full human and to the full godly. But how were this deity and humanity related to one another?

This led to other unorthodoxies:

Apollinarianism: was taught by Apollinaris that the individual of Christ had a human organic structure and a Godhead head ( Placher, 2003, p. 184 ) . This position was rejected by the early church leaders who realized that it was non merely our human organic structure that needed redemption and that needed to be represented by Christ in the redemptional work, but our human head as good ( Grudem, 1994, p. 480 ) .

Nestorianism: is a philosophy that there were separate individuals in Christ, a human individual and a godly individual, a instruction that is different from the scriptural position that sees Jesus as one individual. This position or philosophy was besides rejected on the footing that there is nowhere in Bibles do we hold an indicant that the human nature of Christ for illustration is an independent individual make up one's minding to make something contrary to the godly nature of Christ. Besides there is nowhere where we have an indicant of the human and godly natures speaking to each other or fighting within Christ ( Grudem, 1994, p. 480 )

Monophysitism: Euctyches who was the leader of Monastery at Constantinople advocated a position that Christ had one nature merely. He denied that the human nature and godly nature in Christ remained to the full human and to the full divine. He instead held that the human nature of Christ was absorbed by the godly nature, so both natures were changed and a 3rd nature

resulted. An analogy to this position is a mixture of ink and H2O something else come out of that and so he taught that Jesus was a mixture of Godhead and humanity for which both were modified to organize new nature ( Grudem, 1994, p. 481 ) .