Incarnation: The Christ of the Creeds

On or around AD33 a Jewish man called Jesus from Nazareth, in Galilee, was crucified by the Roman authorities after a period of preaching and teaching in the region – pretty much every serious historian of the ancient world can agree on this much. But the earliest writings in the New Testament also claim that this man Jesus had been “raised” by God, and refer to him as “the Lord” and as the “Son of God”. By the time of the Nicene Council, in 325, Christians agreed that this “one Lord Jesus Christ” was “the only begotten Son of the Father”, “very God of very God”. The man from Nazareth was now thought to be the one “by whom all things were made”, the moment when God was “incarnate”. By 451 AD, Christian theologians agreed that Jesus Christ should be said to have two natures (divine, and human), but to be one person. Explaining exactly what this was supposed to mean was not straightforward, however, and debate continued to rage for some time afterwards.

So how did all these ideas arise? Why did they? And does any of it make sense? What does it really mean to say that the wandering Jewish teacher from Nazareth was—and is—fully God, whilst also being fully human? In this course we examine a few of the most important moments in this astonishing intellectual movement, and explore some of the questions that it raises. If God has “become” human, does this mean that God has changed? If Jesus was God, was the death of Jesus also the death of God?  

We will also explore some of the most important recent writing on this subject, which shows that the theology of the incarnation is still very much alive (and sometimes kicking).  

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