The Person of Jesus Christ Flashcards
What is The Holy Trinity?
The Trinity is the doctrine that there is one God in three persons; Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This is the traditional and mainstream view in Christianity of the nature of God. The trinitarian view holds that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.
What does The holy Trinity claim?
- The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are three distinct Persons (hypostases).
- Each Person is fully God; the three are coexistent, coeternal and coequal.
- There is one God; the doctrine does not split God into three parts.
What did the Nicene Creed claim?
In A.D. 325 a council of Bishops was convened by Constantine to settle the dispute over the God’s relation to Jesus.
1. Belief in one God
2. Christ is the Son of God, “eternally begotten” of the Father
3. “Begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father”.
What does The Chalcedonian Definition declare God to be?
The God of Christian monotheism was thereby declared a triune God. He is one Substance (‘ousia’) yet three Persons (‘hypostasis’). Jesus has two natures (human and divine). He is Fully God and Fully Man, joined in hypostatic union. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are co-equal and co-eternal. Jesus’ relationship with God was therefore unique in that Jesus is the second person of the holy trinity. Jesus is the Son of God and Jesus is God.
How is The Trinity incoherent?
The Unitarian liberal theologian Channing argued that the Trinitarian view of Jesus is one of “infinite confusion”. How could one being be both human and divine, weak and almighty, ignorant and omniscient? These are two different incompatible states.
What quotation from Hick reinforces The Trinity to be incoherent?
“For to say, without explanation, that the historical Jesus of Nazareth was also God is as devoid of meaning as to say that this circle drawn with a pencil on paper is also a square” – Hick.
What do theologians like Barth and Augustine argue?
Theologians like Augustine and Karl Barth admit that the trinity is a mystery which must be taken on faith and that all human attempts to fully understand the trinity through reason are misguided.
Why do Trinitarians uphold The Trinity within the Bible?
Trinitarians believe that we need the concept of the Trinity because they argue it accurately captures the way that the Bible refers to the relationship between The Father and the Son.
What does Jesus say within John 10:30?
“The Father and I are one”. This quote seems to suggest that The Father and The Son are one being which would entail co-equal and co-eternal. This provides biblical evidence for the trinitarian view. It also suggests that Jesus thought of himself as divine.
What does John 1:14 say?
“The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us”, “The Word” refers to Christ. These verses from the first chapter of John are traditionally taken to show that Jesus is the Son of God in the unique trinitarian sense of being co-eternal with The Father, because he pre-existed the creation of the world, and co-equal with The Father.
What does Hick conclude by Jesus to not be the son of God?
Through Hicks development argument, Hick applies demythologisation to the idea of the incarnation, concluding that it conveyed the idea of embodying a conviction in life. Jesus embodied ‘the goodness and love of God’.
What can be inferred through Jesus’ miracles?
The miracles of Jesus arguably show he was the son of God. A mere human would not have the power to do such things. Jesus’ power to do miracles presumably also shows he thought of himself as divine.
What did Jesus take aspects of?
Jesus took aspects of the Jewish faith and made them his own, attracting followers and starting a movement that soon afterwards began to be known as a separate religion.
What does the phrase ‘Son of God’ mean to Jews and Gentiles?
For Jews, it tended to mean someone especially chosen by God, perhaps with angelic or supernatural aspects.
For Gentiles, it was a way of saying someone was divine.
What does the special nature of Jesus’ conception suggest?
Seems to show Jesus as being very literally the Son of God. At his baptism and transfiguration, God specifically calls Jesus his son, but Jesus does not seem to use the title himself.
Why do some people argue Jesus didn’t use the title ‘Son of God’?
Jesus did not seem to use the title ‘Son of God’ himself. Some argue that this was because the idea of him being divine was written into texts later, whilst others argue that Jesus did not want to attract unnecessary attention from religious authorities.
How does Jesus’ miracles point to his divinity?
Miracles such as the calming of the sea showed Jesus performing actions that only God was thought to be able to do, pointing to divinity.
What does the resurrection suggest to Christians?
Jesus came to earth both as human and divine: he died but broke that barrier and therefore is a special intermediary between God and Humans; he shows what it is to be human but also showed that God is completely in control.
What does Paul refer to in 1 Corinthians 15:17?
‘If Christ had not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins’.
What does Mark 6:47-52 refer to?
Jesus walks on water, a miracle story that helps the disciples understand what they had previously witnessed. When Jesus had identified himself to the disciples, he uses ‘I am’, therefore Jesus’ power comes from his identity as God.
Where does Jesus’ wisdom come from?
In Christianity, Jesus’ wisdom comes from the fact that he is God as well as human. His experience of the world is completely different to ours. Some argue that encounters with heaven such as his baptism or transfiguration might have given him the wisdom that he communicated within his
teachings. Yet, the direct access to God would be more of a sign that he was not human, simply divine.
How could it be argued that Jesus thought he was divine?
He was aware of him mission from God to intervene in the world in a unique way. It may be that this sense of mission helped him to focus on his human nature while he was on earth. At the very least, this shows an immense trust in God, but perhaps this was trust founded in the knowledge that everything was part of a plan for the salvation of the world that had been in place since the Fall.
What is Docetism?
Jesus’ human side was a veil which made people view him as human. It was challenged by an emphasis on Jesus’ human characteristics, especially his death.
