Chapter 8: The Birth and Rise of Christianity

After Pilate arrived in Jerusalem as the fifth governor in the year 26 CE, a new generation of preachers, prophets, bandits, and messiahs appeared throughout Palestine, gathering disciples, preaching liberation from Rome, and promising the coming of the Kingdom of God.

• 28 CE, a preacher named John began baptizing people in the water of the Jordan River. John the Baptizer was imprisoned by Herod Antipas, the governor of Galilee, and then was executed.
• Two years later, a carpenter from Nazareth named Jesus made a trip to Jerusalem with his disciples, where he assaulted the temple and overturned the tables of the money changers. He was also captured and sentenced to death by Pilate. The message of Jesus of Nazareth, the messiah who influenced the entire world after being crucified, will be discussed in detail later on in this chapter.
• In 36 CE, a messiah known as the Samaritan gathered a group of followers atop Mount Gerizim; he, too, was captured by Pilate and was executed. Pilate and the high priest of Jerusalem, Caiaphas, were dismissed after the execution of the Samaritan.
• In 44 CE, a prophet named Theudas crowned himself messiah, and brought his followers to the Jordan River promising to part the river and cross toward Judea to establish God’s kingdom. The Romans captured Theudas and executed him.
• In 46 CE, two sons of Judas the Galilean, Jacob and Simon, launched a revolutionary movement against Rome; both were crucified by the Romans.
• In 48 CE, riots erupted in the temple as a result of humiliating and exasperating acts by Roman soldiers against the pilgrims, including the tearing of a Torah scroll.
• In 52 CE a group of bandits led by Eleazar, son of Dinaeus, arose in the countryside against the Romans. The Roman governor Felix, working with the high priest Jonathan (one of Ananus’s sons), captured the bandit chief Eleazar and sent him to Rome, where he was crucified.
• In 56 CE, a zealot group called the Sicarii (“dagger men”) assassinated the high priest Jonathan during the feast of Passover.
• A mysterious Jewish sorcerer called the Egyptian declared himself King of the Jews. Although his movement was crushed by the Roman troops, the Egyptian himself escaped.
• Between 64 CE and 66 CE anger, resentment, and messianic zeal were building throughout the land due to the savage practices of the Roman administration, which had led to extreme devastation of Palestinian life in Jerusalem and the countryside. A group of lower-class priests led by a temple captain called Eleazar seized control of the temple. The Sicarii, under their leader Menahem, immediately rallied behind Eleazar. The rebels killed the high priest and set fire to the public archives, which included the ledgers of the debt collectors and money lenders, the property deeds, and the public records. This was the start of the 66–70 CE revolt.

The Messiah

The title “messiah” in the Old Testament means “anointed.” This title was given to the Jewish king and the Jewish high priest, who were both anointed with oil at their inauguration ceremony. Later on, especially during the Roman rule, it acquired a new meaning: the deliverer, a descendant of the house of David, who would rescue the Jews from the cruel and humiliating power of Rome. It was also believed that there would be a precursor to the messiah: the prophet Elijah, who had never died. The prophet Malachi (ca. 400 BCE) foretold: “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord” (Malachi 4:5). The true messiah, then, would be anointed by a true prophet. The return of Elijah would signify the return of God to his people, for ever since Malachi, the Jews had been without a prophet. These beliefs about the messiah and Elijah the prophet were widespread, especially among the Pharisees. Other doctrines related to the concept of deliverance evolved. Some believed that this deliverance would come at the hands of God himself without the intervention of a messiah figure; others believed that God would send an angel to accomplish the deliverance as told in the book of Enoch. The prophecies of the scripture about the Last Days were extremely vague. 104

The idea of a messiah in Judaism was based on the prophecies of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, Joel, and Zechariah. In each of these books, the title messiah carried different meanings: according to Daniel and Jeremiah, he appeared to be a prophet; according to Isaiah a liberator; and according to Zechariah a king.

Jesus of Nazareth

John the Baptist came from a priestly family. Instead of joining the priestly line of his father Zechariah, however, he rejected his family obligation to the temple and moved to the wilderness, traveling through Judea and Perea preaching a simple message: “The end is near. The Kingdom of God is at hand.” His words spread rapidly throughout Palestine, and people came to him seeking the path to salvation. They traveled through the Judean wilderness to hear him preach at the shore of the Jordan River. He took them one by one to the eastern shore and submerged them in the living water, and then the baptized crossed back to the western bank of the river, repentant, redeemed, and ready to receive the Kingdom of God. John was offering this baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins and purification of the body. According to the Jewish historian Josephus, John’s baptism was meant to be an initiation rite, a means to enter his order.

Jesus of Nazareth, as a teenager, left his tiny village in Galilee and traveled to Judea to be baptized by John in the Jordan River. Jesus then was an unknown peasant and worker. Not everyone who was baptized by John became his disciple; most of the baptized returned to their homes. But Jesus stayed and became a member of John’s inner circle. He remained in Judea, preaching his master’s words, until Herod Antipas, the governor of Galilee and Perea, had John captured and imprisoned. Jesus then returned to Galilee, and began preaching about the Kingdom of God that was to come. He continued John’s mission, but his message was more revolutionary and far more radical. Two of John’s disciples, Andrew and Philip, joined Jesus and became his first disciples. 105

Galilee had been hotbed of revolutionary activity for centuries, long before the Roman invasion. The region benefited from its rugged topography and mountainous terrain. The Galileans always resisted foreign rule. They were different from the inhabitants of Judea and other parts of Palestine in their culture and lifestyle. They were pastoral people easily recognized by their own customs and accent. The elite in Judea referred to them as “the people of the land.” This term meant many things, including that they were dependent on subsistence farming, uneducated, and did not abide by the law, especially in regard to making the obligatory tithes and offerings to the temple.

Although they felt a meaningful connection to the temple in Jerusalem, where God resided, they were very critical of the lavish lifestyle of the Judean priesthood, their exploitation of the peasantry, and their shameful collaboration with Rome. 106

As discussed in the previous chapter, the Roman response to the Palestinian resistance during the decade that followed Herod’s death (4 BCE) was devastating to all of Palestine, especially Galilee: villages were burned, cities were razed, and populations enslaved. From 10 CE until 36 CE, when Herod Antipas was deposed by the emperor Caligula, Galilee witnessed a period of relative tranquility. During this period, Herod Antipas built two new Greek cities: Sepphoris and Tiberias. Around 10 CE, he established his capital at Sepphoris, and later on he moved to his new capital, Tiberias, on the coast of the Sea of Galilee, when it was completed. Although the construction of the two cities provided job opportunities, it added a significant burden to the economy. Taxes were raised, land prices doubled, and debt soared. The gap between the rich and the poor widened. Galilee gradually became a lot like Judea: urbanized and Hellenized. The new cities were almost wholly inhabited by Roman merchants, Greeks, and wealthy Judean settlers.

When Jesus returned to Galilee, he chose Capernaum, a small seaside village of fifteen hundred people, as his home. It was the ideal place for him to launch his ministry. The majority of Capernaum residents were poor farmers and fishermen who had been left behind by the new Galilean economy. Jesus’s message was a direct challenge to the wealthy and the powerful. It was simple: “The Lord God had seen the suffering of the poor and the dispossessed; he had heard their cries and anguish. And he was finally going to do something about it.” 107 Jesus was able to gather a large group of Galileans, mostly fishermen, to be his disciples. Among this large group there was an inner core of twelve who left their homes and families behind and traveled with him from town to town, village to village. The twelve included the brothers James and John, the sons of Zebedee; Philip, who had been one of John the Baptist’s disciples; Andrew, who had also been with John the Baptist; Peter; Matthew; Jude, the son of James; James, the son of Alphaeus; Thomas; Bartholomew; Simon; and Judas Iscariot.

The twelve disciples of Jesus became his “ambassadors” (apostles) whom he sent to the neighboring towns and villages to preach on their own, without supervision. Jesus then began visiting Capernaum’s synagogue to preach to the people of his village. The crowds at the synagogue were astonished by his charismatic authority as he began to proclaim, “Repent! The kingdom of heaven is near!” He was challenging the guardians of the temple of Jerusalem and their authority as God’s representatives. Jesus succeeded in establishing a firmly built movement with a widespread group of followers. Large crowds began to travel to Capernaum from nearby villages to listen to the charismatic preacher. The status of his ministry completely changed when the crowds experienced Jesus’s healing power and witnessed his miracles. His fame could no longer be confined to Capernaum; the news of his message and wondrous deeds spread throughout all of Galilee. More crowds gathered around him from every town and village of northern Palestine.

Jesus spoke all the time about the establishment of the Kingdom of God. His concept of this kingdom was very clear. It meant simply that God was the sole sovereign, the one and only king, over all the world. “Everything in heaven and earth belongs to God.” It was not a celestial kingdom, but a real kingdom to be established on earth at the present time. Jesus’s belief regarding the Kingdom of God was shared by all resistance movements in Palestine. This concept was not different from John the Baptist’s view of the Kingdom of God. However, Jesus’s interpretation was clearer, as he was calling for the complete reversal of the current political, religious, and economic systems. “Blessed are you who are poor, for the Kingdom of God is yours. Blessed are you who are hungry, for you shall be fed. Blessed are you who mourn, for you shall soon be laughing” (Luke 6:20–21). It was a promise of impending deliverance from subservience and foreign rule. It spoke of a radically new world wherein the meek would inherent the earth, the hungry would be fed, and the poor would be made rich. In the Kingdom of God, wealth would be redistributed and debts cancelled. 108

Jesus’s words were clear: The Kingdom of God was about to be established on earth. God’s rule could not be established without the destruction of the present order, and without the annihilation of the present leaders. “The Kingdom of God is at hand” meant the end of the Roman Empire. It was simply a call to revolution. There is no evidence that Jesus advocated violent actions, but he was certainly no pacifist. He understood that God’s sovereignty could not be established except through force. He warned his disciples: “If anyone wishes to follow me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Mark 8:34). It was well known at the time that crucifixion was the punishment for sedition. Jesus recognized that the new world order he envisioned was so radical and revolutionary that would face a brutal response from Rome: arrest and execution. Jesus intentionally was hiding the truth about the Kingdom of God from all but his disciples: “The secret of the Kingdom of God has been given to you to know; but to others, everything is said in parables so that they may see and not perceive, they may hear and not understand” (Mark 4:11–12). 109

In the two years that followed Jesus’s return to Galilee, he not only carried on John’s message, but expanded it into a movement for national liberation from the oppression of imperial Roman rule. Jesus and his disciples intentionally and wisely restricted their activities to northern Galilee, Phoenicia, and Gaulanitis. They also avoided the royal cities of Sepphoris and Tiberias. Jesus preached to the poorer population in these territories, condemning the Roman governor, Herod Antipas (the Fox) and the hypocrite priests who would be displaced in the Kingdom of God that was to come.

At the end of these two years of preaching and organizing his movement, Jesus and his disciples began their slow journey toward Judea and Jerusalem. Along the outskirts of Caesarea Philippi, Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do the people say I am?” The disciples responded: “Some say you are John the Baptist; others say Elijah; still others say you are Jeremiah or one of the other prophets risen from the dead.” Then Jesus stopped and turned to his disciples. “But who do you say I am?” Peter answers for the rest: “You are the Messiah” (Matthew 16:13–16; Mark 8:27–29; Luke 9:18–20).

Six days later, Jesus takes Peter and the brothers James and John, the sons of Zebedee, to Mount Hermon, the highest mountain in Palestine, which was close to Caesarea Philippi. There, he was miraculously transformed before their eyes. According to Mark: “His clothes became dazzling white, like snow . . . and suddenly Elijah and Moses appeared on the mountain. A cloud consumed the mountain, and a voice from within echoed the words: ‘This is my son, the Beloved. Listen to him.’ Then a divine voice from the sky confirmed: Jesus of Nazareth is the anointed Messiah, the king of the Jews” (Matthew 17:1–8; Luke 9:28–36).

The journey to Caesarea Philippi and the events that took place in this region, especially on Mount Hermon, did not happen by accident. It was the crowning ceremony of Jesus as king of Jews in preparation for the journey to Jerusalem. Following the coronation, Jesus began his tour toward the capital, Jerusalem. It was his inauguration tour to claim the throne and to end the Roman rule. His liberation movement, which had witnessed explosive growth in the two years since he returned to Galilee, had reached its peak. His followers were expecting bold action from him. 110

Jesus never made a statement about his messianic identity. In the book of Mark, the miraculous moment on the mountaintop ends without comments from Jesus; however, in the book of Mathew, Jesus addresses his disciples: he identifies John the Baptist as Elijah reborn, thereby clearly claiming for himself, as the successor to John/Elijah, the mantle of the Messiah (Matthew 16:20).

Jesus clearly understood his mission: he believed that the time for the fulfillment of the prophecies had come, the Roman rule would end, and the unworthy among the Jews would perish. He did not refer to himself as the Messiah or the “Son of God”; but repeatedly called himself the “Son of Man.”

The term “Son of Man” was mentioned in the book of Daniel, which was written during the reign of the Seleucid king Antiochus Epiphanes (175–164 BCE), who claimed to be a god. In Daniel’s book, the prophet had a vision where he saw four monstrous beasts representing four great kingdoms: Babylon, Persia, Medea, and the Greek kingdom of Antiochus. The four beasts were let loose to plunder the earth. In the midst of death and destruction, Daniel saw God sitting upon a throne made of flames and passing judgment on the beasts, killing and burning some with fire and taking authority away from the rest. Then Daniel saw “a human form, a son of man arriving in a whirl of clouds. He came to [God] and was presented to him. He was given the power to rule—all the glory of royalty. Everyone—race, color, and creed— had to serve him. His rule would be forever, never ending. His kingly rule would never be replaced” (Daniel 7:1–14). Most scholars believe that the primary source for Jesus’s interpretation of the phrase “Son of Man” came from the book of Daniel. 111

Jesus recognized the danger of his message in calling for the establishment of the Kingdom of God. He consciously was trying to avoid the fate of the other revolutionaries who claimed the title of Messiah. Thus Jesus refrained from declaring himself as the Messiah, and opted to use the ambiguous “Son of Man.” Jesus’s concealment of his messianic aspirations, and his commands to his disciples to keep his identity and mission to themselves, were behind what became known in the Gospels as the “messianic secret.”

Jesus was not a guerrilla leader. He did not prepare his followers for a real war; he did not train them militarily. He believed in the miraculous nature of the coming salvation. Because the fight against Rome would be won by miraculous means, he made no military preparations. With these beliefs in mind, he started his journey from Mount Hermon to Jerusalem, passing through Galilee, then through Perea, until he reached Jericho. Here he was joined by a vast crowd, and they proceeded into Jerusalem to claim the throne. Mark describes this mass march as a royal procession.

It was around 30 CE when Jesus entered Jerusalem, riding a donkey in deliberate fulfillment of the prophecy of Zechariah, surrounded by the crowds shouting “Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed be the Kingdom of God.” The crowds were spreading cloaks on the roads for Jesus to ride over. They scattered palm fronds before him, while others carried palm branches and waved them in the air. The entire celebration was meticulously orchestrated by Jesus and his followers in fulfillment of Zechariah’s prophecy (Zechariah 9:9): 112

Rejoice Greatly, O daughter of Zion; Cry out, daughter of Jerusalem; Behold, your king is coming to you; Righteous and victorious is he; Humble and riding upon an ass.

Jesus’s message to Jerusalem’s inhabitants was clear: The long-awaited Messiah, the king of the Jews, had come.

The following day Jesus and his disciples entered the temple’s public courtyard, the Court of the Gentiles, and began their cleansing mission. In a rage, Jesus overturned the tables of the money changers and drove out the vendors. He then released the sheep and cattle that were waiting to be sold for sacrifice. He opened the cages of the doves and pigeons and set them free.

Jesus had almost complete control of the temple for the following week. During the day he was preaching to the masses of Jerusalem’s inhabitants and the pilgrims who had come to Jerusalem for the Passover festival. He addressed the crowds: “Does not scripture say: My house will be called a house of prayer. You have turned it into a robber’s den.” (Mark 2:15–18). “You see those great buildings; not a single stone will be left on another, everything will be destroyed” (Mark 13:1–2). In the evenings, Jesus and his disciples went to the Mount of Olives, on the east side of Jerusalem. Apparently, he was following Zechariah’s prophecy stating that a miracle would take place on the Mount of Olives. After preparing himself by several nights of meditation and prayers, he was convinced that “the day of the lord” was close at hand. He then called his disciples to celebrate the imminent overthrow of Roman power. This celebration was the feast that became known as the Last Supper. After the Last Supper, Jesus and his disciples camped at the Mount of Olives. He was convinced that this was the night on which God would appear in glory and overthrow the foreign invaders of the Holy Land. Jesus was quite sure of his interpretation of the prophecy stated in Zechariah 14:4–5:

Then shall the Lord go forth, and fight against these nations. His feet shall stand in that day upon the Mount of Olives . . . and the Mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof toward the east and toward the west, and there shall be a very great valley; and half the mountain shall move toward the north, and half of it toward the south. And you shall flee to the valley . . . and the Lord my God shall come, and all the saints . . . and the Lord shall be king over all the earth.

On that night when Jesus was expecting the miracle to take place, he took his disciples to “the garden of Gethsemane” located at the foot of the Mount of Olives (the valley) where he could watch the miracle and not be overwhelmed by it. Here he told his disciples to watch and pray. He was expecting an awesome miracle and the appearance of the glory of God. Jesus must have felt, however, that this occurrence would depend to a great extent on his worthiness and that of his disciples; he had been preparing for this moment for years, preaching and calling people to repentance. As the fulfillment of the prophecy of the Kingdom of God depends on the Jews’ worthiness

and cooperation, it is no wonder that he kept repeating the messianic slogan, “Watch and pray.” 113

Jesus was an apocalyptist who believed that God would produce the miracle, if and when the people repented and redeemed themselves. He worked hard over a period of three years to build a national movement made of large masses of believers who repented in preparation for God’s miracle to happen. Jesus’s movement was completely different from that of the zealots, who were committed to a program of long guerrilla war. It was also different from those of the other messianic groups who were relying on God completely to make the change and produce the miracle.

The miraculous appearance of the Lord God on the Mount of Olives did not occur that night. Instead, the Roman troops, reinforced by the temple’s police, arrived at the garden of Gethsemane. How did the troops know where to find Jesus? The high priest did not want to arrest Jesus in the temple, as he was concerned about the possible reaction of the masses who supported him. The high priest and the Roman troops clearly knew where to find him. There are many versions of the story of the acts of Judas Iscariot, the most popular one being that Judas Iscariot betrayed Jesus. The Roman troops arrested Jesus and then proceeded on their way with their prisoner while the disciples fled.

After Jesus was arrested, he was brought under cover of darkness to the courtyard of the high priest. Most likely Jesus was questioned only by the high priest Caiaphas and Ananus, the priest’s father-in-law. The high priest asked him directly whether he was the Messiah. Jesus’s answer varies in all four Gospels, but it always includes a declaration of himself as the Son of Man. It appears that Jesus was not charged with blasphemy. According to the Torah, anyone who is condemned for blasphemy shall be put to death: “The congregation shall stone him to death” (Leviticus 24:16). The high priest made the charge of sedition against Jesus when he handed him over to Pilate.

In the morning of the following day, Jesus was escorted to the Antonia Fortress to appear before Pontius Pilate, where Caiaphas made the charge of sedition against Jesus. According to the book of Luke, the high priest presented Jesus to Pilate, saying: “We found this fellow perverting the nation, and forbidding to give tribute to Caesar.” 114

Pilate was not one for trials. In his reign as governor of Jerusalem, he had sent thousands upon thousands to the cross with no trials. The personal relationship between Pilate and Caiaphas expedited the process. No trial was held. Jesus’s crime was recorded in Pilate’s logbook, and then Jesus was led out of the Antonia Fortress and taken to the courtyard, where he was tortured. Like all those condemned to crucifixion, he was forced to carry the crossbeam himself to the Golgotha hill outside Jerusalem’s walls for all citizens and pilgrims to witness his suffering as a reminder of the fate of those who would defy the rule of Rome. The crossbeam was then attached to a post. Jesus’s wrists and ankles were nailed to the cross with iron spikes. In a few short hours Jesus’s lungs collapsed and he stopped breathing. 115

Jesus died in the year 30 CE, in the late afternoon, just few hours before the Jewish Passover evening meal. Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the Sanhedrin, got permission from Pilate to bury Jesus’s body. That same night, Joseph and friends carried the body and buried it temporarily in a nearby cave, as there was no time for the full and proper Jewish burial procedure. They wrapped the body in a linen cloth and laid it in a rock-hewn tomb, and blocked the entrance with a stone. The women of Jesus’s family had plans to wash the body and anoint it with oil and spices after Passover and the Sabbath had passed (Mark 16:1). 116

According to John, the women who came on Sunday morning to perform the proper washing and anointing procedure found an empty tomb. They ran and told Peter: “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” Peter and another disciple came and verified the fact that the tomb was empty (John 20:1–10). Other versions of the empty tomb story are mentioned in the other Gospels.

Following the discovery of the empty tomb, Jesus appeared to the disciples. According to John, he first appeared to Mary Magdalene outside the tomb on Sunday morning. Later that evening he appeared to the rest of the disciples in Jerusalem. Other versions of Jesus’s appearance are mentioned in the other Gospels. The other main version is the one describing his appearance in Galilee.

The appearance of Jesus after his crucifixion, death, and burial is how Christianity started. Christian scholars, both Protestants and Catholic, believe that the only possible explanation for the empty tomb is that God raised Jesus from the dead and that he emerged from the tomb fully and miraculously restored to health. The disciples were in great despair over Jesus’s death, having lost all hope that he could be the Messiah. They were not expecting him to rise from the dead. The resurrection suddenly transformed them from hopelessness to dynamic faith. 117

The Gospels

Christian scholars and historians faced a difficult challenge when they attempted to explore and document the history of Jesus’s life and mission, as well as the events that led to his crucifixion and resurrection. Those who witnessed these events left no written narratives. For many years the only available sources were the verbal ones which circulated among people and disseminated over the years. The first written sources were the four Gospels of the New Testament. These Gospels were not written by eyewitnesses, but by anonymous, highly educated, Greek-speaking Christians of a later generation, probably after Jesus’s disciples had all died. They are named Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John after two of Jesus’s disciples, Matthew and John, and two close companions of other apostles: Mark, who was Peter’s secretary, and Luke, who was the traveling companion of Paul.

Jesus died around 30 CE. The Gospel of Mark was written around 65–70 CE in Rome; Matthew was written about twenty years later, around 85–90 CE, in Damascus; Luke was written around the same time in the Greek city of Antioch; and John was written in Ephesus after 100 CE. The apostle Paul was the first Christian author; his writings—the seven letters (1 Thessalonians, Galatians, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Romans, Philippians, and Philemon) dating to the early 50s CE—are the earliest surviving Christian texts. The book of Acts covers the period from the death of Jesus to Paul’s journey to Rome (30–60 CE), and mainly focuses on Paul, who brought the Christian message to Rome. It is believed that this book was written by Luke between the 90s CE and the beginning of the second century CE.

Matthew, Mark, and Luke are called the Synoptic Gospels, as they are alike. The Gospel of Mark was written first; Matthew and Luke copied Mark, but they contain additional passages and sayings of Jesus. It is believed that they had other sources, which became known as the Q source (The word for “source” in German is Quelle). Matthew and Luke have stories not found in the other Gospels; obviously they got them from other sources, which scholars called the M and L sources. Two other valuable Gospels were found at a later time: the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Peter. 118 Scholars who have studied these Gospels conclude that they have numerous discrepancies, contradictions, and historical problems.

These books do not contain the words of someone who was sitting at Jesus’s feet taking notes They are intended to tell the “good news” of Jesus (the word gospel means “good news”). That is, their authors had a vested interest both in what they were telling and how they were telling it. They wanted to preach Jesus Does this mean that the Gospels are useless as historical sources? No, it means that we need to have rigorous historical methods to help us know what Jesus really said and did. 119

Jesus was a Palestinian Jew, and like most Jews in Palestine he believed that there was one true God, the creator of heaven and earth. He was an apocalyptic who believed that God would intervene very soon to end pain and suffering by overthrowing the forces of evil to establish His kingdom, where there would be no misery or injustice. Jesus believed that the situation on earth had reached its peak of injustice, with the forces of evil in full control. He predicted that God would send a savior from heaven to destroy the wicked kingdom of this age and to establish the Kingdom of God, and those who entered the kingdom would have a utopian eternal life. This would be the Judgment Day, on which all people would be brought back to life to face judgment—either punishment or reward. Jesus believed that the Judgment Day was coming soon. He believed in the prophecies of the Bible that emphasized the role of the Messiah in leading the way for the new kingdom. Christian scholars and historians believe that Jesus thought of himself as the Messiah, the king in the new kingdom.

During his life, Jesus raised hopes and great expectations among his disciples, as they believed that he was the Messiah. His crucifixion came as a crushing disappointment, as they realized that they were wrong. However, this situation changed completely when they came to believe that he had been raised from the dead. They saw this miracle as a confirmation of him being the Messiah. Were it not for the belief by Jesus’s disciples that he had risen from the dead, he would be known today only as another failed Jewish messiah, like the other rebels who claimed that they were messiahs. The disciples believed that Jesus was raised into an immortal body and exalted to heaven, where he would live and reign with God Almighty. 120

The debate over the divine nature of Jesus was the most important issue among Jesus’s followers following resurrection. During Jesus’s life, the disciples never thought of him as God; their thoughts never went further than the possibility that he was the messiah. According to the earliest Christian belief, “Christ is said to have been exalted to heaven at his resurrection and to have been made the Son of God at that stage of his existence. In this view, Jesus was not the Son of God who was sent from heaven to earth; he was the human who was exalted at the end of his earthly life to become the Son of God and was made, then and there, into a divine being.” 121 Raymond Brown, a Roman Catholic priest who wrote several books about this subject, concluded that the earliest Christians originally held that God had exalted Jesus to a divine status at his resurrection. 122 In his books, Brown reviews how later Christians developed their views in regard to the divinity of Jesus Christ. In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus became the Son of God at his baptism by John the Baptizer; Matthew and Luke indicate that Jesus became the Son of God when he was born; and John presents Jesus as the Son of God from before creation. The word “Christ” is from christo, the word for messiah in Greek, which also indicates divinity. Christology (understanding of Christ) has evolved over time since the vision of Jesus by the disciples.

The Gospel of Mark begins by describing the baptism ministry of John the Baptist: After being baptized, when he comes out of the water, Jesus sees the heavens split open, the spirit of God descends upon him as a dove, and a voice from heaven says, “You are my beloved Son, in you I am well pleased” (Mark 1:9–11).

According to the Gospel of Luke, Jesus was born of Mary, who became pregnant despite being a virgin; it was God who made her pregnant. In this telling, the angel Gabriel comes to Mary, who is engaged to be married but has not yet gone through the ceremony or had any physical contact with her espoused, Joseph. Gabriel tells her that she is specially favored by God and will conceive and bear a son. She is taken aback—she has never had sex: how can she conceive? The angel tells her in graphic terms: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the one who is born will be called holy, the Son of God” (Luke 1:35).

Paul believes that Jesus Christ is a preexisting divine being. He refers to him as God’s chief angel. The New Testament scholar Charles Gieschen defines the Jewish notion of an angel as “a spirit or heavenly being who mediates between the human and divine realms.” 123 The concept of Jesus Christ being the God’s chief angel is the beginning of Incarnation Christology, which stands in sharp contrast to Exaltation Christology, which holds that the human Jesus was exalted to the divine status after crucifixion. If Jesus Christ was the chief angel who performed God’s work on earth, then he was the figure who appeared to Hagar, Abraham, and Moses, who sometimes actually was called God in the Hebrew Bible. If this is in fact the case, then he is a preexistent divine being who chose to come in the likeness of human flesh, who, because he humbled himself to the point of death, was elevated to an even higher status than he had before and was made the Lord of all. Paul clearly thought that Christ was God in a certain sense, but does not think that he was the Father; he was the angel of the Lord who was eventually exalted to be equal with God and worthy of all of God’s honor and worship (Romans 9:5).

In John’s Gospel, Jesus is equal with God the Father—before coming to the world, while in the world, and after he leaves the world:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God . . . And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have beheld his glory, glory as of the unique one before the Father, full of grace and truth (John 1:1, 14; later, in verse 17, this Word made flesh is named “Jesus Christ”). Jesus said: “Very truly, I tell you, before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58). Jesus said: “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30).

It is very difficult to determine when Christians started to think of Jesus as a preexisting divine being. Most scholars believe that this view was in place before Paul’s letters. Eventually Incarnation Christology replaced Exaltation Christology. Although Incarnation Christology dominated the Christian tradition, a significant issue surfaced: If Christ really was God, and God the Father was God, how could Christians claim that there was just one God? And if the Holy Spirit is also God, aren’t there three Gods? If so, aren’t Christians polytheists instead of monotheists? To solve this issue, and to answer this question, most theologians say: “Jesus was God; he was not God the Father; yet there was only one God.” 124

The Jerusalem Church and the Nazarenes

After Jesus’s crucifixion, his disciples remained in Jerusalem and continued to preach their message. In Jerusalem they had the chance to talk to the Jewish pilgrims who visited the temple from all regions of the Roman Empire. They gave their possessions away and lived a communal life. “Their message was wholly focused around their expectations that the Kingdom of God had drawn near, as proclaimed by John the Baptist and Jesus, and that very soon God would intervene in human history to bring about his righteous rule of peace and justice among all nations.” 125

Jesus’s original disciples and followers, led by James, Peter and John, continued to live as Jews, but as a new Jewish sect. They founded what became known as Jerusalem Church, the mother church. James, Jesus’s brother, was elected as the leader of the church by the council of seventy elders that had been established by Jesus himself, and by the eleven disciples. John and Peter were elected as James’s left- and right-hand advisers. They continued to observe the Torah and worship in the temple at Jerusalem or in their local synagogues. They practiced circumcision and followed the religious dietary rules. They were not different in their beliefs from other Jewish sects, except that they believed in the resurrection of Jesus, and that Jesus was still the promised Messiah. They believed that Jesus, by a miracle of God, had been brought back to life after his death on the cross, and would soon come back to complete his mission of overthrowing the Romans and setting up the Kingdom of God. In the meantime, both Jews and non-Jews were urged to repent of their sins, turn to God, and follow Jesus’s teachings. 126 Jesus’s adherents preached their message to the Jews of Jerusalem, as well as to the Jewish pilgrims. Their movement spread to other cities in Palestine: Lyda, Joppa, Caesarea, and Galilee. They sent emissaries to Syria, Asia Minor, Egypt, Greece, and Rome to spread Jesus’s message. Members of the church were not known as Christians at that time; they were called Nazarenes.

The followers of Jerusalem Church were persecuted following the arrest of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane; the disciples fled and became fugitives. The high priest’s police went after Jesus’s followers. Many were arrested and tortured, and some were executed. The first member of Jesus’s movement executed after Jesus was Stephen, who had come to Jerusalem on pilgrimage and had been converted to the Jesus movement. The book of Acts describes his arrest, his trial by the Sanhedrin assembly, and his execution by stoning. According to Luke, he was a man full of grace and power; his speech and wisdom were so powerful that few could stand against him. Stephen referred to Jesus as “the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God” (Acts 7:56).

Peter was also arrested and tried by the Sanhedrin, but Gamaliel, the leader of the Pharisees’ party, defended him and managed to persuade the assembly to grant him clemency. James was also arrested and tried before the Sanhedrin, and was executed in 62 CE. He was thrown from the corner of the temple enclosure into the Kidron Valley, where he was stoned and beaten to death with a club. 127

The New Religion: Christianity

Scholars refer to the Nazarenes as the original apostolic Christians who came before Paul. However, the Nazarenes saw themselves as a Jewish sect with a completely different and distinct belief about Jesus, which was in sharp contrast to Judaism. This belief was also in sharp contrast to Paul’s version of the new faith. The Christianity that was developed as a new thriving religion in the fourth century CE was based on “the ecstatic and visionary experiences of Paul.” 128

Paul was a devout Jew when Jesus arrived in Jerusalem in the year 30 CE. Following Jesus’s crucifixion, he was part of the temple establishment that persecuted Jesus’s followers. In the year 37 CE, Paul, who was known as Saul then, was traveling to Damascus to arrest Jesus’s followers and to bring them to Jerusalem for trials. Acts 9: 1–31 has the following account:

While Paul was still on the road and nearing Damascus, suddenly a light flashed from the sky all around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”

“Tell me, Lord, who you are.”

The voice answered, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you have to do.” Meanwhile the men who were traveling with him stood speechless; they heard the voice and could see no one. Saul got up from the ground, but when he opened his eyes he could not see; so they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus. He was blind for three days, and took no food or drink.

In Damascus he was visited by Ananias, who cured his blindness, converted him to Jesus’s movement by baptism, and informed him of his mission to preach the gospel message of salvation to the Gentiles.

After Paul’s initial apparition of Jesus in 37 CE, he became connected with Jesus throughout his entire life through extraordinary revelations that no other human in history had received. He believed that God had selected him before his birth for a special mission. “Though Jesus had directly chosen the twelve apostles, and in that order of things Paul came after them, God’s choosing him before birth would actually make Paul the first apostle.” 129 Jesus did not disclose God’s plan to the twelve apostles. That came later, when God chose to reveal his son, the heavenly glorified Christ, to Paul and to Paul alone. Paul made such a statement in Galatians:

But when he who had set me apart before I was born, and had called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles, I did not confer with flesh and blood, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me, but I went away into Arabia. (Galatians 1:15–17)

Immediately after he received his initial vision of Christ, Paul traveled to Arabia to Mount Sinai, where God had delivered the revelation of the Torah to Moses. It is believed that Paul stayed in Arabia for three years in isolation, praying and meditating. In 2 Corinthians 12, he mentions an ecstatic experience in which he was taken up into the third, or highest, level of heaven. This privileged experience, gazing upon the glory of God as well as Jesus Christ in his glorified state, surpassed that which any human being had ever received. 130 Moses alone had been allowed to ascend to Mount Sinai and communicate directly with God (Exodus 24:15–18); Elijah had been taken up to heaven in a fiery heavenly chariot (2 King 2:11–12).

Three years later, Paul traveled to Jerusalem to meet James and Peter (Galatians 1:18). Paul’s goal was to get their approval that he alone would be entrusted with the mission to the Gentiles (Galatians 2:7–8). He believed that when God sent Jesus to the world, he had a two-stage plan: the first stage was sending Jesus directly to the Jews to fulfill his promise to send the Messiah; the second stage was sending Paul to the Gentiles, as an extension of Jesus, to finish up the main task of the Messiah.

Paul was the one who established the doctrine of salvation through the divine sacrifice of Jesus Christ. This was the basis of Christianity. The main elements of Paul’s theological vision are as follows:

• Salvation (forgiveness of sins) is achieved through faith in Jesus Christ, God’s divine Son, based on his sacrificial death on the cross;
• Receiving the Holy Spirit and the gift of eternal life is guaranteed by faith in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead;
• The belief in the return of Jesus to establish a heavenly glorified reign. 131

Paul’s theological vision was clear when he declared that only belief in the Messiah could put a person into a right standing before God, because the Messiah had died for the sins of others, and God, in order to show that this death did indeed bring atonement, had raised him from the dead. Paul’s greatest contribution to Christianity was his view that salvation in Christ applied to all people, Jew and Gentile alike; a Gentile did not have to become a Jew in order to gain salvation through the death and resurrection of the Messiah.

During Paul’s visit to Jerusalem around 40 CE, a lengthy debate took place between the leaders of the Jerusalem Church and Paul regarding whether the Gentile converts must be circumcised and follow the Law of Moses. According to the author of the book of Acts, at the end of the debate, Peter made a speech, arguing that conversion to Judaism was not necessary: “God made no difference between them and us; for he purified their hearts by faith. Then why do you now provoke God by laying on the shoulders of these converts a yoke which neither we nor our fathers were able to bear? No, we believe that it is by the grace of the Lord Jesus that we are saved, and so are they.”

The final word came from James:

My judgment therefore is that we should impose no irksome restriction on those of the Gentiles who are turning to God, but instruct them by letter to abstain from things polluted by contact with idols, from fornication, from anything that has been strangulated, and from blood. (Acts 15:19–20)

The Council of Jerusalem gave Paul the freedom to work with Gentiles without having to impose the demands of the Torah on the converts. He succeeded in getting James to accept the Gentile converts as full members of the Church rather than giving them special status at the periphery of the movement. Paul was satisfied with the results of his visit to Jerusalem, as his mission to preach to the Gentiles had been endorsed by the Jerusalem leadership. Reaching such a compromise with James and Peter was a very important achievement, as he was trying hard not to break with the Jerusalem Church.

After the Council of Jerusalem, Paul returned to Antioch and presented himself as being on equal status with James. He stated to his followers that the Council acknowledged the following:

I had been entrusted with the Gospel for Gentiles as surely as Peter had been entrusted with the Gospel for Jews. For God, whose action made Peter an apostle to the Jews, also made me an apostle to the Gentiles.

Recognizing then the favor thus bestowed upon me, those reputed pillars of our society, James, Cephas “Peter,” and John, accepted Barnabas and myself as partners, and shook hands upon it, agreeing that we should go to the Gentiles while they went to the Jews. All that they asked was that we should keep their poor in mind, which was the very thing I made it my business to do. (Galatians 2: 6–10)

The relationship between Paul and the Jerusalem Church leaders was described by most historians as being tense. A serious dispute occurred between Paul and Peter in Antioch shortly after Paul returned from Jerusalem. Paul describes his quarrel with Peter in Galatians:

But when Cephas “Peter” came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he was clearly in the wrong. For until certain persons came from James, he was taking his meals with Gentile Christians; but when they came, he drew back and began to hold aloof, because he was afraid of the advocates of circumcision. (Galatians 2:11)

The tension between the two sides intensified in the mid to late 50s CE, as Paul was preaching that the Torah had now been superseded by the new Torah of Christ.

Around 57 CE he was summoned to Jerusalem to address this issue. The charges during this second visit were more serious; however, he decided to meet with the Jerusalem Church leaders, as he was trying to avoid any break with the Nazarenes. Why did Paul work so hard to avoid a break with Jerusalem leadership? Why did he not establish his own church, since his views were radically different from those of James and Peter? Paul had many followers and founded many Gentile communities of Christians all over the Roman world. Yet he felt that being connected to Judaism was essential for his movement. Jesus was a Jew, and his mission had been to fulfill the prophecies of the Old Testament. Paul himself believed that he was fulfilling Isaiah’s prophecy of delivering God’s message to the Gentiles. He was also hoping for the transformation of Judaism into his vision of Christianity.

The author of Acts describes the meeting between Paul and the Jerusalem Church leaders:

Paul paid a visit to James; we were with him, and all the elders attended. He greeted them and then described in detail all that God had done among the Gentiles through his ministry. When they heard this, they gave praise to God. Then they said to Paul: You see, brother, how many thousands of converts we have among the Jews, all of them staunch upholders of the Law. Now they have been given information about you: it is said that you teach all the Jews in the Gentile world to turn their back on Moses’ Laws You must therefore do as we tell you. We have four men here who are under a vow: take them with you and go through the ritual of purification with them, paying their expenses, after which they may shave their heads. Then everyone will know that you are a practicing Jew. (Acts 21:18–26)

While he was in the temple, Paul was confronted by a large Jewish crowd who tried to kill him. The Roman police rescued him from the crowd by arresting him. During interrogation, and as the Roman soldiers were ready to torture him, he announced to the commanding officer that he was a Roman citizen, which put an end to his trouble with the Romans. However, he was turned over to the Sanhedrin on the account that the incident was a Jewish religious quarrel. Paul managed to rescue himself from the high priest by addressing the council, stating that he had been a Pharisee all his life. He was acquitted and discharged.

The high priest took Paul’s case to the governor in Caesarea, accusing him of being a ringleader of the Nazarenes (Acts 24:1–9). Felix, the Roman governor, decided to keep an eye on Paul rather than handing him over to the high priest, because of Paul’s Roman citizenship. Paul stayed in Caesarea for two years until the end of Felix’s term as a governor. When the new governor, Festus, took office, the high priest renewed

the charges against Paul, who requested he be tried in Rome before Caesar, because he was a Roman citizen. Paul was then brought before the Jewish king, Herod Agrippa II, who granted his request and sent him to Rome. 132

It is not clear what Paul did in Rome. He apparently was acquitted in 63 CE. During the following four years he made several trips to different cities around the Mediterranean, including Spain, preaching his gospel. He also visited France and England. In 67 CE he was arrested and brought back to Rome. It is believed that Paul was executed on June 29, 67 CE, during the reign of Nero. Peter, who was in Rome at that time, was also executed. Most likely both apostles were among the many Christians who were killed by Nero following the fire that broke out in Rome in the summer of 64 CE.

Paul’s Theological Vision

During the 50s CE, two movements of Christianity existed side by side: the apostolic Christianity that was developed by Jesus’s disciples under the leadership of James, Peter, and John; and the form of Christianity that was developed by Paul. There was rivalry between the two emerging forms of Christianity during this period, each of which made Jesus their reference point. Neither form was identified as Christianity at that time. The word “Christianity” never appeared anywhere in the New Testament, and the word “Christian” never appeared in any of Paul’s writings.

The death of James in 62 CE, and the brutal destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 CE (see page XX), expedited the process of the defeat of apostolic Christianity. The production and final editing of the New Testament in the early second century CE gave Paul’s form of Christianity great boost, and finally, the adoption of this form of Christianity by the Roman emperors brought an end to the apostolic form, which then was labeled as heresy. 133

Jesus will always be the center of Christianity, but the “Jesus” who most influenced history was the “Jesus Christ” of Paul, not the historical figure of Jesus Paul became the most influential defining figure for later Christianity, even beyond the historical Jesus Paul transformed Jesus himself, with his message of a messianic kingdom of justice and peace on earth, to the symbol of a religion of otherworldly salvation in a heavenly world All of us, whether Christian or not, whether wittingly or unwittingly, are heirs of Paul, since the parameters of Christ and his heavenly kingdom created by Paul were what shaped Christian civilization. 134

In his letters, Paul presents the major elements of his vision of the new faith.

These included the following tenets:

• Resurrection is a primary and essential component of the Christian faith: “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures.” (1 Corinthians 15:3–4)
  
  “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. (1 Corinthians 15:14)” This statement summarizes Paul’s belief that resurrection is the foundation of Christianity. Crucifixion invalidated Jesus’s claim of being the Messiah. According to the Old Testament, a crucified individual is cursed: “Anyone hung on a tree, that is crucified, is under God’s curse” (Deuteronomy 21:23). Resurrection, where Jesus was transformed into a spiritual body, meant that the cross would no longer be a curse, but a symbol of victory.
• Salvation: Salvation hinges on Jesus’s resurrection from the dead. The resurrected Christ dwells in a spiritual body as a life-giving spirit (2 Corinthians 3:17–18). Paul believed that Jesus’s physical body returned to the dust, and like a change of old clothing, had nothing to do with the new spiritual body Jesus received. Paul emphatically declared, “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God,” and that humans can be “saved” only by grace through faith in Christ, not by their good deeds (Romans 3:21–24). Paul’s doctrine of “justification by grace through faith” has been considered the heart and center of his gospel message. To be justified means to be forgiven of one’s sins. Grace means unmerited favor. Without the grace and forgiveness of God, no human being could stand before the Creator at the Day of Judgment.
• Paul believed that Jesus was glorified when he became the firstborn Son of God in power according to the spirit of holiness through the resurrection of the dead (Romans 1:4). God, as creator, inaugurated a process through which he reproduced himself—literally bringing to birth a “God-Family.” Jesus, now transformed into the heavenly glorified Christ/Messiah, is the firstborn brother of an expanded group of divine offspring.
• The destiny of this cosmic heavenly family is to rule over the entire universe. The Kingdom of God would have nothing to do with the righteous reign of a human messiah on earth. The group of divinized, glorified spirit-beings would then participate, with Christ, in the judgment of the world, even ruling over the angels (1 Corinthians 6:2–3).
• “Mystical Union with Christ”: Paul completely transformed the practice and understanding of baptism and the Eucharist to his Greek-speaking Gentile converts. Baptism brought about a mystical union with what Paul called the “spiritual body” of Christ, and was the act through which one received the impregnating Holy Spirit. Three of the New Testament Gospels (Mark, Matthew, and Luke) record Jesus’s Last Supper, in which he tells his disciples over bread and wine: “this is my blood,” (Mark 14:22–25; Matthew 26:26–29; Luke 22:15– 20) and in the Gospel of John, Jesus speaks of “eating my flesh” and “drinking my blood.” (John 6:52–56). These writers based their accounts of Jesus’s final meal on Paul’s letters almost word for word (1 Corinthians 11:23–26).
• Paul was quite sure that he and his followers would live to see the return of Christ from heaven. Right up until the end of his life he expected to live to see the great event, the visible appearance of the heavenly Christ in the clouds of heaven to usher in the events of the final judgment.
• Paul maintained that the Torah that was given to Moses on Mount Sinai had now been replaced and superseded by the new Torah of Christ (Galatians 3:23–26). Paul emphasized that there was no comparison between the Torah of Moses, which promised prosperity, well-being, and peace, and the Torah of Christ, which promised spiritual glory to those destined to be part of the new cosmic heavenly family of God-glorified children. Paul declared, “Christ is the end of the Torah” (Romans 10:4). This concept is in complete opposition to the leaders of the Jerusalem Church, who believed that Jesus had come to fulfill the Law of Moses and even expand it. Where the Law commanded: “Thou shall not kill,” Jesus added: “If you are angry with your brother or sister you are liable to the same judgment” (Matthew 5:22). And where the Law states, “Thou shall not commit adultery,” Jesus extended it to include “everyone who looks at a woman with lust” (Matthew 5:28).
• Paul believed that his call to be an apostle was a singular and extraordinary event (1 Corinthians 15:9–10). Unlike the other apostles, who had been chosen by Jesus at the beginning of his preaching in Galilee, he had been set apart and called before he was even born (Galatians 1:15). Paul believed that he was commissioned by God to go to the entire world (Romans 15:8–9). He believed that his specific role as an “apostle to the Gentiles” had been prophesied by Isaiah (Isaiah 49:1–6).

Paul believed that Jesus had replaced the Torah as God’s primary revelation to the world. The death and resurrection of Jesus had opened a new phase in salvation history. He believed that Gentiles could enter Christianity without the need to observe the dietary laws, or to practice circumcision, because those were the marks of the old covenant, which had now been superseded. All who lived “in Christ” were now sons of God and children of Abraham, whatever their ethnic origin.

Paul’s teachings were the basis of the new religion: Christianity. These teachings were the beginning of the transition from the temple to the divine man. Instead of the old rituals of pilgrimage and purification, the new Christian rites of passage would be conversion, initiation, and identification with the man Jesus, who had achieved a divine status when he was raised by God from the dead. Paul taught Christians that salvation comes through Jesus; he would rescue them not from chaos but from the demonic powers of sin and death. 135

The split between the Nazarenes’ apostolic Christianity and the Christianity that was developed by Paul began in the 50s CE. Rivalry and competition existed between the two emerging forms of Christianity, each making Jesus their reference point. The events of 66–70 CE and 132–135 CE expedited the defeat of the apostolic form of Christianity.

Unlike the Jews, Christians were not attached to Jerusalem. They viewed Jerusalem as the Guilty City that had rejected Christ. Not many Christians came to Palestine as pilgrims during the second and third centuries CE, as they believed that devotion to shrines and holy mountains was characteristic of paganism and Judaism, both of which they rejected. However, Christians were interested in visiting the sites connected with Jesus outside the city, such as the summit of the Mount of Olives, where Jesus ascended to heaven; the Garden of Gethsemane, where he had prayed in agony before his arrest, and the Jordan River, where he had been baptized by John the Baptist. They also valued two caves: the first was in Bethlehem, the site of the birth of Jesus; and the second was on the Mount of Olives, where the risen Christ was said to have appeared to the apostle John. 136

Christianity emerged as a version of Judaism. But Christianity had no special reason to become dominant if it stayed as one Jewish sect among many. It became more attractive when Paul succeeded in convincing the Jerusalem Church leaders, James, Peter, and John, to accept Gentiles into the new religion without requiring them to observe strict dietary rules or endure circumcision. In Christianity there is no separate class of “God Fearers,” and there is no belief in a “Chosen People.” Christianity also became more attractive when it emphasized the concept of salvation through the resurrected Jesus. The concept of resurrection and Jesus’s birth by a virgin mother echoed the beliefs of Greek and Egyptian religions. 137

Jesus’s movement was dependent on the Palestinian peasants and the oppressed poor class. It challenged the Roman Empire and the rich Jewish collaborators. The Jerusalem Church followers continued to be an oppressed class. The disciples called themselves the Evionim (the poor): they gave their possessions away and lived a communal life. Outside Palestine, Christianity targeted a wide spectrum of people besides the poor. Its leaders preached to city dwellers—small traders, craftspeople, clerks and minor officials. They also reached out to the wealthier class. Paul attracted many members of the upper class; they financed his activities and provided the early Christians with meeting places.

The New Testament was compiled in the second and third centuries CE. The Gospels contain many contradictions, as they were compiled over a relatively long period of time. Such contradictions helped Christianity to appeal to a broad range of people outside Palestine. The apocalyptic vision that advocated the destruction of the empire, the weakening of the rich and the rising of the poor, changed in later writings. The revolutionary message was diluted: the rich merchant could be assured that the “eye of the needle” was as wide as a gate in Jerusalem so that he could get through; a rich Roman woman could be attracted to Paul’s teachings that emphasized that women and men are equal, even though at the same time they assured the rich husband that his wife had to serve him. Christianity did not oppose slavery in principle: Paul wrote that a slave should stay with his master, even if they were “brothers in Christ.” 138

Christian preachers concentrated their efforts in administrative centers and along trade routes. This was an important factor in the spread of Christianity to areas outside the empire such as Armenia, Persian Mesopotamia, Ethiopia, southern Arabia, and southern India. Initially the first apostles preached on their own without supervision or control, and their local communities supported them and provided for their needs. When the number of preachers increased, the Christian Church became more bureaucratic. At this point the bishops began to determine what correct doctrine was and who was entitled to preach it. 139 Over time the church developed a strong bureaucratic administrative structure. During emergencies the Christian clergy provided the community with food and supplies; they also looked after the burial of the dead.

Most of the time the imperial authorities were tolerant of Christian institutions; however, Christians were intermittently persecuted, as when they were accused of burning Rome during Nero’s reign. Some of the emperors, like Alexander Severus and Philip, were favorable to the church.

By the late third century CE, the Christian church had become a strong and influential institution among large segments of the empire’s population. Constantine, who became emperor after he defeated his rival Maxtinius, attributed his victory to the god of the Christians. Realizing the power of the church and its potential as a source of stability for his empire, Constantine in 313 CE declared Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. This was a turning point in the history of Christianity.

Although Constantine did not promote Christianity at the expense of other faiths, he established a huge building program in Rome under which shrines were constructed at the tombs of the Christian martyrs. New basilicas started to appear alongside the pagan temples, but were confined to marginal areas as the central sites were already occupied by pagan buildings. Constantinople, the new imperial capital, was a different case: it became a wholly Christian city where the cross was displayed centrally and the statues of Christian heroes occupied the squares. 140

Eusebius, the bishop of Caesarea (d. 339 CE), was a strong supporter of Constantine and played a major role in the establishment of Jerusalem as a Christian city. He initially emphasized that “believers should not look for God in a corner of the earth, nor in mountains, nor in temples, but they should worship and adore Him at home.” He believed that the fate of the Temple of Jerusalem was clear proof that God wanted people to follow the spiritual religion preached by Jesus, which did not depend on temples or holy places. Constantine gave Makarios, Jerusalem’s bishop, permission to demolish the Temple of Aphrodite and to unearth the Tomb of Christ, which the temple had been built over. Constantine ordered the construction of a basilica beside the Cardo Maximus, the main street of Aelia Capitolina (the city built by Hadrian on the ruins of Jerusalem in 130 CE), some yards away from the supposed site of Golgotha. While this construction project proceeded swiftly, the demolition of the Aphrodite Temple was more complex. It took two years to unearth the rock tomb, which immediately was declared to be the sepulchre of Christ. Eusebius, who was skeptical, did not question the authenticity of the tomb. The find stunned the Christians, and even Eusebius described it as “contrary to all expectations.” The mass of rock surrounding the tomb was retained and a circular space about thirty-eight yards in diameter was cleared. Here a round shrine which would be called the Anastasis (resurrection) was built. The workers who unearthed the tomb also discovered what they identified as the rocky hillock of Golgotha where Jesus had been crucified. The remainder of this rock is today almost entirely encased in the Golgotha chapel of Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

“[Christians] had proudly proclaimed that theirs was a purely spiritual faith that was not dependent upon shrines and holy places. Their startling response to the discovery of the tomb shows that beliefs regarding sacred geography are deeply rooted in the human psyche.” 141 Even Eusebius, who opposed the notion of sacred space, was touched by the discovery of the tomb. For him, the discovery of the tomb reproduced the miracle of Christ’s resurrection from the dead. There was nothing holy in Hadrian’s city of Aelia—in his mind, the name Jerusalem applied only to the tomb and to Constantine’s new buildings; the rest of Aelia was as profane and guilty as ever. Eusebius called the Constantinian complex New Jerusalem, because it had been built up against the old Jewish city which was cursed by Christ. Before the Golgotha excavation, there had been no Christian pilgrimages to Jerusalem; once the tomb was discovered, pilgrims started to come from all corners of the empire.

Constantine’s mother Helena visited Jerusalem in 327 CE. She was escorted by Eusebius, who suggested to her the location of two new churches at the sites of two caves related to Jesus: the cave in Bethlehem at Christ’s birthplace and the cave on the Mount of Olives. Two basilicas were built in these locations: the Nativity Church in Bethlehem and the Eleona Church on the Mount of Olives. In September 335 CE, Constantine’s Basilica was completed. A great celebration marked this momentous occasion. Bishops of all the dioceses in the eastern provinces attended the dedication ceremony of the church. Although the new Jerusalem was a small enclave in a pagan city, the ceremony was a declaration of the triumph of Christianity. The new Jerusalem became a Christian city, ending the Jews’ hopes of rebuilding their temple.

Christology

In the pagan world, it was possible for divine beings to temporarily become human, and for humans to become divine. Although the scripture in Judaism was based on the oneness of God, it also allowed for the existence of divine beings besides God, and made it possible for humans to be divine. Starting with the Ten Commandments, it states: “You shall have no other gods before me”; it does not say, “You shall believe that there is only one God.” This standpoint is described as henotheism, not monotheism. In contrast, the book of Isaiah was monotheistic when it emphasized, “I alone am God, there is no other.” The Jewish texts also speak of the great angels Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, who are above humans, though far below God. Angels in ancient Judaism were God’s messengers who mediated His will on earth. In some of the texts there was a figure known as the “Angel of the Lord,” who was identified as God himself, and sometimes appeared as a human. In Genesis, God appeared to Abraham and Hagar. “The Angel of the Lord appeared to Moses in a flame of fire out of a bush” (Exodus 3:2). Other Jewish texts speak about humans who become angels. Enoch, who was 365 years old, passed from this earth without dying: “Enoch walked with God; then he was no more, because God took him” (Genesis 5:24). Moses received the law directly from God, as he alone ascended Mount Sinai to communicate with God (Exodus 19–20).

In Proverbs 8, there is a reference to a distinct feature of God called Wisdom that is portrayed as the first thing God created (8:22–23, 25). Once Wisdom was created, God created the heavens and the earth (8:27–28, 30–31). In the Hebrew Bible, God created all things by speaking a “word”: “And God said, let there be light, and there was light.” Creation happened by means of God uttering his Logos. The Logos comes from God, and since it is God’s Logos, in a sense it is God. But once he emitted it, it stood apart from God as a distinct entity.

Christology literally means the understanding of Christ. The second and third centuries witnessed heated debate about the nature of Jesus Christ. Some of Jesus’s followers thought he was a human but was not divine; others thought he was divine but not a human; others thought he was two different beings, one human and one divine; yet others believed that he was human and divine at one and the same time. This debate intensified after Constantine declared Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire.

Before his crucifixion, Jesus’s followers believed that he was a great teacher, a charismatic preacher. They thought of him as a man, born like other humans, raised like other humans, no different from others except being wiser, more righteous, and more spiritual, but not God. That all changed with the belief in the resurrection; his followers began to believe that he was exalted to heaven at his resurrection, and was made the Son of God at that stage of his existence. According to this belief, “Jesus was not the Son of God who was sent from heaven to earth; he was the human who was exalted at the end of his earthly life to become the Son of God and was made, there and then, into a divine being.” 142 This view became known as Exaltation Christology.

Exaltation Christology was a first step toward a higher-level Christology. In reviewing Paul’s writings and the Gospel of John, the progression toward Incarnation Christology is apparent: a divine being comes from heaven to take on human flesh temporarily before returning to his original divine status. Incarnation Christology states that Jesus Christ was a preexisting divine being who became human before returning to God in heaven. Paul, in Galatians 4:14, identifies Christ as God’s chief angel. In the Gospel of John, Jesus said: “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30); and when Philip said to Jesus: “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied,” Jesus said to him: “I have lived with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” (Galatians 14:8–9)

Throughout the second and third centuries, Incarnation Christology developed further:

Justin Martyr is considered the first true intellectual and scholar in the church. Originally from Palestine, he moved to Rome in the middle of the second century around 140 CE. Justin in his writings stated that Christ was a preexistent divine being: “the first begotten of God.” He saw Jesus Christ as the angel of the Lord who appeared in the Old Testament and spoke with Moses in Sinai. Christ was also one of the three angels who appeared to Abraham. For Justin, Christ was not only the angel of the Lord, but also was the Word (Logos) of God who became human. He emphasized that Christ is a separate being from God, but at the same time fully God; God is worshiped first, the Son second, and the prophetic Spirit third. 143

Callistus, one of the bishops of Rome (from 217–222 CE) shared the view of the modalists, who held that “God exists in different modes of being, as the Father, and as the Son, and as the Spirit. All three are God, but there is only one God, because the three are not distinct from one another but are all the same thing, in different modes of existence.” 144

Hippolytus and Tertullian developed the idea of the divine economy . . . in which there are three persons—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. These are three distinct beings, but they are completely unified in will and purpose [According to Hippolytus], “The Father indeed is One, but there are Two Persons, because there is also the Son; and then there is the third, the Holy Spirit It is the Father who commands, and the Son who obeys, and the Holy Spirit who gives understanding. The Father who is above all, and the Son who is through all, and the Holy Spirit who is in all.” Hippolytus introduced the term “triad”; Tertullian called it the Trinity. 145

The great Christian theologian Origen of Alexandria expressed his views in his book On First Principles around 229 CE. In his book How Jesus Became God, Ehrman summarizes Origen’s position: “Christ is to be understood as God’s Wisdom, which existed always with God the Father (since God always had wisdom), without beginning. Christ is also God’s Word, since he is the one who communicates to the world all that is involved with God’s Wisdom. For Origen, Christ was not only a preexisting divine being; he was always with God the Father, and since he is God’s own Wisdom and Word, he was himself God by nature, and always has been. He was the one through whom God created all things.” 146

Arius, the charismatic presbyter of Alexandria, was born around 260 CE. In 318 CE Arius presented his position in regard to his understanding of Christ. He understood the Wisdom of God to be the same as the Word of God and the Son of God. For Arius, Christ the preexistent divine being had been with God at the beginning of creation, but he had not always existed. He had come into existence at some point in the remote past before the Creation.

Originally, God had existed alone, and the Son of God came into existence only later. He was, after all, begotten by God. God the Father had not always been the Father; instead, he became the Father only when he begot his Son Only God is without beginning. This means that Christ—the Word (Logos) of God—is not fully God in the way that God is. He was created in God’s own image by God himself; and so Christ bears the title God, but he is not the true God. Only God himself is. Christ’s divine nature was derived from the Father he is the creation of God. In short, Christ was a second-tier God, subordinate to God and inferior to God in every respect It is the Father who is above all things, even the Son, by an infinite degree. 147

Arius was opposed by Alexander, the bishop of Alexandria, and by Alexander’s young assistant Athanasius. Athanasius argued that the Logos was God in the same way as God the Father. He shared the same nature as God the Father, and had been neither begotten nor created. Athanasius saw the incarnation of the Logos as an absolutely unparalleled event in world history; Jesus was the one and only revelation of God. 148 Eusebius was one of the leading Christian intellectuals of his generation. He was a great supporter of Arius. He disagreed with Athanasius’s understanding of Jesus the incarnate Logos. He believed that the incarnation of Jesus was neither unique nor unprecedented. God had revealed himself in a human form to Abraham, and to Moses. God’s revelation of himself to humanity was an ongoing process. Eusebius believed that Jesus was the savior, but his principal task was to be the revelation of God to the world; one of Jesus’s chief objectives was to remind Christians of the spiritual nature of religion. 149

The Ecumenical Councils of the Church

The Council of Nicaea (325 CE)

Constantine, like all Roman emperors, saw the political value of religion. He was counting on the political, social, and cultural potential of Christianity to be a significant factor in bringing stability and harmony to the Roman Empire. When he learned that an enormous controversy was creating rifts in the Christian community, he became concerned and upset. According to Eusebius, as written in his book The Life of the Blessed Constantine, Constantine sent a letter to Arius and Alexander in which he tried to get them resolve the theological issue. He emphasized the value of Christianity as a unifying force in his socially and culturally disunified empire. There is one God. God has one Son. There is one way of salvation. All creation is united with God, its creator; God is united with his Son; his Son is united with his people; and the salvation he brings makes his people united with God. Constantine’s first concern was that all the provinces should be united in one consistent view. What did it really matter whether there was a time before which Christ existed? To resolve this issue, an ecumenical council of church bishops convened in Nicea in June 325 CE, producing a creed stating that Christ is “from the substance of the Father”:

We believe in one God, the Father, almighty, maker of all things visible and invisible; and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten from the Father, only-begotten, that is, from the substance of the Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made, of one substance with the Father, through whom all things came into being, things in heaven and things on earth, who because of us humans and because of our salvation came down and became incarnate, becoming human, suffered and rose on the third day, ascended to the heavens, will come to judge the living and the dead; and [we believe] in the Holy Spirit. 150

Twenty of the 318 bishops disagreed with the creed when it was finally formulated. Constantine managed to force seventeen of those twenty to sign off on the creed. In the end, only three did not sign off the creed: Arius himself and two bishops from his home country of Libya. Jesus, the apocalyptic preacher of rural Galilee, had now become fully God.

The Council of Constantinople (381 CE)

The Nicaean Creed declared that Jesus was Lord, Savior, Son of God, the Wisdom of God, and the eternal preexistent Logos. Although the creed was adopted by 315 bishops out of the 318 who attended, there were still those who felt a sense of unease with this decision.

In 380 CE, during the emperor reign Theodosius I, Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire. About the time of Constantine’s conversion, 5 percent of the empire’s inhabitants were Christians; by the end of the century, 50 percent were Christians.

In 381 CE, the second ecumenical council convened in Constantinople. The council reaffirmed the faith of Nicaea against Arianism. Two other issues were addressed by the council. The first issue was the question of the relation of the Holy Spirit to the Son and to the Father: Was the Spirit co-eternal with the Father and the Son, or was it created by God? The council affirmed the position of the Cappadocian Fathers (from Cappadocia in central Asia Minor) in regard to the Holy Spirit: The Holy Spirit was pre-existent and co-eternal, as part of the Father’s instrument in creation. The Holy Spirit has the role of perfecting creation and of bringing it to completion. The three persons of the Trinity are unified but also distinct. 151

The second issue that the council addressed was how the divine Logos or Son actually became united with the humanity of Jesus in the incarnation. How did the two natures unite in one person? This issue was not settled in Constantinople. What was Christ’s role in human salvation? And what was the Virgin Mary’s role in the incarnation? These questions were addressed at the Council of Ephesus in 431 CE.

The Council of Ephesus (431 CE)

The role of the Virgin Mary in the incarnation was a major subject of debate among the church leaders, especially between Nestorius, the Antiochene theologian who became the archbishop of Constantinople in 428 CE, and Cyril, the bishop of Alexandria. In the early fifth century, the Virgin Mary became a significant part of Christian worship, especially among the general population of Greek-speaking Christians. Mary’s virginity had captured the Christian imagination. She was a model of purity and had a special role in human salvation. She was given the title “Theotokos,” which means “bearer of God.” Nestorius had reservations about this title. He believed that the humanity of Christ should be duly acknowledged both in worship and theological debate. Cyril, however, objected to this position, accusing Nestorius of trying to separate the two natures of Christ or even deny his divinity. Nestorius suggested that the divine and the human were together “in conjunction in Christ, rather than in union.” He spoke of unity in outward appearance; the two natures were united while also remaining distinct.

The council of Ephesus was held in the Church of Mary in June 431 CE with nearly two hundred bishops in attendance. Although John of Antioch was delayed because of flooding, Cyril decided to open the council. Nestorius refused to attend, insisting on waiting for John. In the absence of Nestorius and John, the council condemned Nestorius. When the Antiochene party fully assembled, they called their own council and condemned Cyril. Cyril succeeded in getting the recognition of the emperor in Constantinople, Theodosius II; this meant that Nestorius was defeated. Ultimately Nestorius was condemned and later exiled to Antioch. 152

The Council of Chalcedon (451 CE)

In the summer of 450 CE, Emperor Theodosius II died. Emperor Marcian, who succeeded him, called for an ecumenical council of the Church to deal with the ongoing Christological controversies. The council was held at Chalcedon, across the Bosphorus from Constantinople, in October 451 CE. The relation between the divine and the human in Christ had been the subject of intense debate in the Christian Church. The eternal Son, the “true God of true God” as claimed at Nicaea, had become incarnate as a real human being, Jesus of Nazareth. A clear definition was required to express this concept, and at the same time to preserve the concept of the unity of God, as Christianity after all was a monotheistic faith.

After intense discussion and mediation among Church leaders in Antioch, Alexandria, Rome, Constantinople and Jerusalem, an agreement was reached and an acceptable definition of the relation between the divine and the human in Christ was formulated and adopted at Chalcedon:

Wherefore, following the holy Fathers, we all with one voice confess our Lord Jesus Christ one and the same Son, the same perfect in Godhead, the same perfect in manhood, truly God and truly man, the same consisting of a reasonable soul and a body, of one substance with the Father as touching the Godhead, the same of one substance with us as touching the manhood, like us in all things apart from sin; begotten of the Father before the ages as touching the Godhead, the same in the last days, for us and for our salvation, born from the Virgin Mary, the Theotokos, as touching the manhood, one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, to be acknowledged in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation; the distinction of natures being in no way abolished because of the union, but rather the characteristic property of each nature being preserved, and concurring into one Person and one substance, not as if Christ were parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son and only begotten God, Word, Lord, Jesus Christ; even as the Prophets from the beginning spoke concerning him, and our Lord Jesus Christ instructed us, and the Creed of the Fathers has handed down to us. 153

After Chalcedon, numerous factions emerged within the Christian world. There were those who were relatively content with the Christology of Chalcedon; those entrenched in a more Antiochene or Nestorian position, who became known as “Nestorians”; and those who became known as “Monophysites,” rejecting the “two-nature” language of Chalcedon and opting for the one-nature terminology of Cyril.

Nestorian Christianity

Nestorius was one of the most important figures of the fifth-century Church. He was likely born in Germanicia in Syria and spent his early years as a preacher in a monastery in Antioch. He studied under Theodore of Mopsuestia. In 428 CE he was appointed archbishop of Constantinople by Theodosius II. Nestorius was influenced by Theodore and other Antioch theologians who stressed the distinctiveness of the human and divine natures of Jesus. Nestorius had reservations about the title given to Mother Mary, “Theotokos,” which means “bearer of God.” He believed that the humanity of Christ should be acknowledged both in worship and theological debate. He suggested that the divine and human were together in ‘conjunction in Christ, rather than in union’. Cyril of Alexandria opposed such view. The Council of Ephesus in 431 CE condemned Nestorius. Emperor Theodosius supported Cyril, and removed Nestorius from his position as archbishop of Constantinople and exiled him to Antioch. Although he was condemned, Nestorianism survived in the East and became known as the “Assyrian Church of the East” and the “Nestorian Church of the East.” 154

Monophysitism

Monophysitism is the Christological position that Christ has only one nature in which his divinity and humanity are united. The Ghassanids in Syria adopted Monophysitism and resisted all attempts to convert them to the Orthodox decree.

Under al-Harith II they reinvigorated Monophysitism in Syria and helped in spreading its teachings with their emphasis on the single nature of Christ and its simple version of Christianity. The Council of Chalcedon in 451 CE adopted a balanced statement regarding the complex relationship between Christ’s divinity and his humanity, bringing together elements from both the Alexandrian and the Antiochene approaches, and adding significantly deeper insights into the person of Christ. 155

Following the Council of Chalcedon, numerous factions emerged within the Christian world. The conflict between these various factions became stronger and more intense. The Monophysite camp grew stronger as Severus, the patriarch of Antioch, adopted the same position as the Church of Alexandria. The division between the Monophysites, the Nestorians, and the churches that accepted the Chalcedon Creed (which became known as Orthodox Christianity) became starker, and eventually the Syrian Church achieved complete independence from Constantinople. Around 1,200 churches were built in northern Syria. Several Monophysite bishops were ordained, including the famous Jacob Baradaeus, who in turn ordained eighty-nine bishops and 100,000 priests. Ghassan missionary activity covered all of Arabia and extended across the Red Sea into Ethiopia. 156

The Two Councils of Constantinople (553 and 680)

Following the Council of Chalcedon, the conflicts between the various factions became stronger and more intense, especially between the Monophysite and the Nestorian factions. The Monophysite camp grew stronger as Severus, the patriarch of Antioch, adopted the same position of the Church of Alexandria. The split between the Monophysites, Nestorians, and the churches that accepted the Chalcedon Creed became clearer. This last group was called “Melkites” (emperor’s men) by the Monophysites. There are still Melkite Christians in the Middle East today, particularly in Palestine. The Egyptian Copts and the churches of Ethiopia, Syria, and Armenia are still officially Monophysites.

In 527 CE, Justinian became emperor. During his reign, Christianity became wealthier and more influential. Many building projects took place in major cities, including the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, the Basilica of St. John at Ephesus, the monastery of St. Catherine in the Sinai desert, Nea Church in Jerusalem, and the rebuilding of the Nativity in Bethlehem. Justinian limited the freedom of Jews, Samaritans, heretics, and pagans across the empire. He was also intolerant of the Monophysites.

In 553 CE Justinian called for the second council of Constantinople. This council began on May 553 CE, and was attended by about 165 bishops. The council affirmed the Chalcedon Creed; however, the controversy continued.

During the next century there were significant political changes in the Eastern Empire. The Persians attacked Jerusalem in 614 CE, taking from the Church of Resurrection what Christians believed to be the cross on which Christ had been crucified. Jerusalem fell to Arab Muslims in 638 CE.

A new debate emerged in the new century: if Christ had two natures, as Chalcedon had claimed, did he have only one energy? The word “energy,” which had been used by Aristotle to mean function, operation, action, or activity, became very important in Christian theology. Surprisingly, both Nestorians and Monophysites accepted the concept of one energy. The concept that Christ had “one energy” focused on the idea that it was the divine life itself, the energy of God or the divine Logos, that actually energized the humanity in Christ.

In 638 CE, Emperor Heraclius issued a document known as the Ekthesis (statement), which affirmed “one will” rather using the term “one energy.” The idea of “one will” was more powerful than that of “one energy.”

In 680 CE, Emperor Constantine IV called for the third council of Constantinople, which began on November 7, 680 CE and continued until September 16, 681. It was attended by 174 bishops. The council reaffirmed the decisions, Christology, and creeds of the five preceding councils, especially that of Chalcedon. It reaffirmed the two natures in the person of Christ and maintained that this pointed to two energies and to two wills. Even after the two councils of Constantinople, however, the controversy continued.

The Second Council of Nicaea (787 CE)

The second council of Nicaea was convened in 787 CE to deal with the controversy over the making and the use of icons. Images of Christ, Mary, and the saints had become so popular in Christian worship that there were those who considered their excessive use to be idolatrous. Both Judaism and Islam prohibited the use of images in worship. In the first part of the eighth century, Emperor Leo III began a campaign against images. In 726 CE he issued an edict forbidding their use. John of Damascus (660–750 CE) and Theodore of Constantinople (759–826 CE) were the main champions who advocated the value of using icons. Icons were seen by these bishops as a manifestation of God’s action in creating human beings and Jesus Christ in his own image. The second Council of Nicaea affirmed the use and legitimacy of icons. 157

Christology: Summary and Conclusion

During Jesus’ own ministry, the people who followed him saw him as an extraordinary human being closely related to God, and even as a revelation of God himself. After the crucifixion and resurrection, Christians used different titles and expressions to describe Jesus Christ: Lord, Savior, Son of God, Son of Man, and Christ. They went even further and used words and concepts such as Wisdom, Word, and pre-existence to convey that he was involved in God’s ultimate purposes. The nature of Jesus—that is, his divinity and humanity—was the central issue in the debate that took place in the seven ecumenical councils. The line of thinking about Christ and the Trinity that emerged from the seven councils remained in place and has continued to influence Christian theology in both the East and the West ever since. The basic idea that Jesus Christ was truly divine and truly human has not been challenged since then. The concept of human salvation was connected with the concept of the divinity of Jesus Christ, as only God can save. 158

Although the Council of Chalcedon (451) attempted to incorporate both the Antiochene and Alexandrian positions, and spoke of Jesus Christ as “truly divine and truly human,” it failed to bring all the churches together. Chalcedon’s language brought far more division and disagreement than unity. The eastern Orthodox churches accepted the seven ecumenical councils, while other Christian churches in Palestine-Syria, Egypt, and the East rejected the Council of Chalcedon and continued to follow the concept of the one nature of Jesus, becoming known as the non-Chalcedonian churches. The term “non-Chalcedonian” also included the Nestorian Christians of the East, also called the Assyrian Church of the East.

The schism between the Roman Catholic Church and the eastern Orthodox churches started in 1054 and was augmented during the Crusades in 1204, when Constantinople was sacked by the Crusaders. The disagreements and tension between East and West are political rather than theological. Several attempts have been made through the years to reach common ground between the different churches, especially during the twentieth century, but they have achieved little success. Such attempts resulted in statements which stressed the continued belief in God as the Trinity, the incarnation, Church, ministry and sacraments, and common life of the Church.

Since the European Enlightenment, theologians and philosophers have questioned the relevance of the language of traditional Christology, asking whether it is time to use new language to formulate the Christian belief in Jesus. For many Christians in the Western world, the idea that Jesus of Nazareth was “truly divine and truly human” makes little, if any, sense. The period of the Enlightenment brought radical changes to the cultures and philosophical mindset of the people of the period in regard to the Church’s thinking concerning Jesus.

In the nineteenth century, the German theologian Friedrich Scheiermacher was one of the first to find serious difficulty with the Christology of Chalcedon. He claimed that the language of nature and substance as stated at Chalcedon did not make logical sense. During the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries, further questions regarding who Jesus was historically were raised by some biblical scholars and theologians who focused on Jesus the good man or teacher of morals. The concentration on Jesus’ humanity, especially in Protestant Christianity, resulted in separating the humanity from the divinity and pushing divinity out of the picture completely. The views of these scholars do not necessary represent official Church beliefs, but some Christian theologians have rejected the councils altogether or view them as essentially documents of their own time. 159