An introduction to Christology. Below is a snippet and link to an article from Union Publishing which asks the important question: “Who is Jesus?”
I met a Jesus when I was in the New Age. But where did these folk get their Jesus from? What does the Bible say about Him?
Author Donald Fairbairn
Surely the most important question in the world is the one that forms the title for this article: ‘Who is Jesus?’ Answering that question is the task of what we call ‘Christology,’ a word that means ‘the study of Christ’ and that refers to the branch of Christian theology dealing with the person of Christ.
Typically, when we are asked this question, we answer by saying something like: ‘He is fully God and fully man.’ This is true, of course, but as an answer to the question of who Jesus is, it is more ambiguous than we might realize. According to a story (I do not know whether it is really a true story, but it certainly could have happened many times), a pastor in the nineteenth century was on trial for heresy. The people examining him asked him what they thought was a sufficiently specific question: ‘Do you deny the divinity of Christ?’ His answer, according to the story, was, ‘I’ve never denied the divinity of any man, let alone Christ.’
Notice two things about this answer. First, the pastor is not using the word ‘divinity’ in the same way we do when we say that Christ is divine. For him, ‘divinity’ means little more than that Christ has a special connection to God or embodies some aspects of God’s character in a unique way. It certainly does not mean that he thinks Christ is God, or he would not ascribe divinity to everyone. Second, the pastor’s forthrightness enables us to see that his view of Christ is insufficient. But suppose he had simply answered, ‘No, I do not deny the divinity of Christ.’ Would the examiners have asked further questions to see what he meant by affirming that Christ was divine? Would we inquire further, or would we be satisfied with the affirmation of Christ’s divinity, without trying to find out what was meant by that? …keep reading
Maranatha!
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