Jesus Christ
Jesus Christ, Christ or Christ is simply the name given to Jesus of Nazareth by Christians , who recognize him as the Messiah ( / in Greek ), "the anointed of the Lord "announced by the Old Testament 's Judaism , died and resurrected for the salvation of men.
Because of the influence of Christianity in Western culture Jesus Christ has become a synonym for Jesus of Nazareth in the current language.
He is regarded by Christians as the Messiah and only Son of God. It takes a variety of roles in several branches of Christianity with beliefs different.
There was, from the first centuries after the death of Jesus of Nazareth, multiple views and interpretations of its message. Many discussions focused on the relationship between divine and human natures of man in general and Jesus Christ, in particular, a savior , mainly in Galilee, practicing healings and exorcisms. It creates excitement and enthusiasm, attracting the suspicion of political and religious authorities before being arrested, condemned and crucified around AD 30 in Jerusalem during the Jewish feast of Passover , during the administration of the prefect Pontius Pilate .
In the first decades after the death of Jesus of Nazareth to 30, his followers will be in small communities around two beliefs: that Jesus was the Messiah awaited by the Jews , and that he was resurrected and appeared to A number of witnesses. This "movement followers of Jesus, by his belief in the Messiah and the resurrection of Jesus , then constitutes a particular sect within Judaism says the Second Temple , much more diversified than it will under the leadership after 70 Judaism Pharisee , which will give the rabbinic Judaism.
Belief in Jesus Christ is marked from the outset by the preaching of Paul of Tarsus , the apostle of the Gentiles "who knew not the historical Jesus, but that it would have appeared after his resurrection.
The "Jesus Land"
The problem of "Jesus Land" and traditions that are related theological representations of Jesus as preserved in evangelical literature. Without the need to oppose all symmetrically on this tradition and research, research on the historical Jesus - that they are of modernity - are accessible only through the traditions of "Jesus Land" .
Nevertheless, "the question of the historical Jesus seeks to discern through the early traditions about Jesus' earthly traces that can approach the Jesus of history. However, interpreting the traditions of the earthly Jesus for themselves is to seek how the first Christian communities have made their testimony of faith in Jesus who lived and died in Jerusalem " .
The construction of Christian doctrines
The earliest Christian writings are the letters of Paul of Tarsus , including seven of the fourteen New Testament are today considered authentic and written between 50 and 55 . Jesus is presented as "Lord" invested with the power and divine salvation. Paul however did not discuss the nature of Jesus divine or human. The bulk of the creed of Paul (also known as kerygma ) is expressed in the First Epistle to the Corinthians. It rests on the assertion of divine salvation by a redeemer, the Messiah sent by God to redeem the sins of men , .
The three joined fingers symbolize the Trinity, the two fingers raised the dual human and divine nature .
In the three synoptic gospels, Jesus is referred to alternately as Messiah, Son of Man or Son of God. These names will be reinterpreted by Jewish Christian tradition. The term messiah, that the historical Jesus seems to have rejected means in prophecies of Isaiah the suffering servant announcing the Kingdom of God. The Son of Man in the Book of Daniel , was the personification of the chosen people in its initial purity free from sin. The name " Son of God , "which will be the foundation of the doctrine of the Christian Trinity , was a title of Hellenistic rulers, and for that of the Jewish Messiah as king of Israel.
The idea of the divinity of Jesus is clear in the late first century , in texts that the Christian tradition to award the apostle John (called Johannine writings: the Gospel of John makes Jesus the " Word of God "The three Epistles of John and the Apocalypse ), and in the letters attributed to Paul of Tarsus, and are now considered later Pseudepigrapha: Epistle to the Colossians and Ephesians , which affirm the preexistence of Christ , "the image of the invisible God", by the incarnation of God.
The various authors of dogma of a slow orthodoxy that builds over various councils base their reflections on the texts of the Old Testament and some Gospels , presented in a coherent articulation, whose parts are complementary. It will be for several centuries the emergence and the alternation of different opinions that will confront them through the various councils convened by the Roman emperors to formulate the faith of the Church with an accuracy of more rigorous.
The first councils of Nicaea in 325 and Constantinople in 381 lead to the " Nicene " creed that defines the orthodox belief in Jesus Christ:
- "We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, begotten of the Father before all ages, light from light, true God of very God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father and by whom everything has been done, which for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became man. He was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate , he suffered and was buried and is resurrected from the dead the third day according to Scriptures , He ascended into heaven where he sits at the right hand of the Father. From there he will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead , and his kingdom will never end. "
This creed was opposed in particular to Arianism , which professed a lack of consubstantiality , but he remembered what was generally regarded as heresy in relation to different conceptions of the divinity of Christ.
Messiah Redeemer
Messiah (the Hebrew : - mashia'h) originally described in Judaism 's anointed, that is to say the person consecrated by the rite of the anointing , performed by a prophet of God. Christ is mashia'h literal translation used in the Septuagint.
The Christian belief in Christ departs, however, the understanding of the Messiah in Judaism.
It gives a central place in the Resurrection , Paul of Tarsus says in his Epistle to the Corinthians: "If Christ be not raised, our preaching is empty and vain and your faith" .
Christ for Christianity the divine Redeemer, the Messiah sent by God, whose sacrificial death must atone for the sins of men .
Human nature and divine nature
One of the most important principles of Jewish faith is the affirmation of one and only God , without any intermediary or shareholder (shoutaf) , and belief in Jesus as deity, part of deity or son of God is incompatible with Judaism , as well as his or her Messianic prophecy , . Jews who shared one or more of these beliefs, which of course the early Church , were ostracized by the Sages with Minaeans (See view of Judaism on Jesus of Nazareth )
The belief in the divinity of Jesus was so variously accepted in the Christian communities of the second century. Some ( Ebionites and elkasates ) will remain on the transcendence of the God of traditional Judaism, and humanity of Jesus. But others like Marcionites , Gnostic and Montanists will exalt the divinity of Jesus, and reject the body and matter.
Ignatius of Antioch (35-107) emphasizes the reality of Jesus' earthly life. Justin Martyr (Justin Martyr 105-135) uses the term logos , borrowed from Greek philosophy, which means the divine reason that permeates and governs the world. Origen (185-254) tries to understand how human nature is united to the divine nature in Jesus. For him, Jesus can not be truly human without human soul the divine nature could unite directly with the body.
Finally, what would become the Christian majority of the "Great Church" will keep a kind of middle way, leading to the concept of the Christian Trinity.
The thesis of a purely divine of Gnosticism in monophysitism
The Gnostic Christians believe that there is a good nature (divine or created by God) and poor (terrestrial and / or created by a demiurge ), immiscible and conflicting. They differ in that the majority of Christianity believes that God is the only creator, and that everything he created is of a good, and there is no distinction between nature divine and carnal nature.
For Gnostics, the reality of the existence of Jesus seems secondary to the meaning ascribed to him. There is a profound reflection on the personality of the one they called the Savior who is fundamentally alien to the world. We find this theme as well: The Lord descends to earth for the salvation of men and in turn he assumes for a time their destiny. Not for the purpose of giving meaning to suffering in the world here, but to deliver the parcels are misguided light in it . Among these Gnostic, one finds the Docetism the second and third century who believes that Jesus' humanity is only an appearance, which implies in particular that the death on the cross was an illusion. His descendants will be found later in the thought of Eutyches (378-453) with several churches claiming Monophysite.
For Marcion, too, Jesus Christ is the visible manifestation of God with a body that is not made of flesh and blood, a subtle body, through which God, pure transcendence manifests itself suddenly on the Jordan. Marcion is part of a radicalization of thought Pauline , a complete break with Judaism, and says nothing of all that relates to the childhood of Jesus, his baptism or his Jewish roots . The Marcionism , resulting from the breakdown of Marcion in 144 of the priests of Rome, the churches will flourish everywhere in east throughout the third century , advocating a strong moral imperative, asceticism and contempt of the body. This is against him that was worked out theological reflection of the Church Fathers , the considerable number of anti-Marcionism attests.
The monophysitism , appeared in the fifth century in theological schools of the Byzantine empire , sees the divine nature of Christ did eclipse his human nature. Against recognition of consubstantiality the Father and the Son, and the human nature of Christ, the Son Monophysite say has only one nature and it is divine, the latter having absorbed his human nature. The Monophysite opposition to Nestorianism in that as well. Christianity majority stresses that the union of natures did not remove their difference, and therefore that Jesus is truly and fully man. The Monophysitism professed today is still in its variant miaphysite. These are the Chalcedonian churches ( Armenian , Syrian Jacobite , Coptic , etc.)..
A different nature from that of God: Unitarians and Arianism
The Arian is based on the preaching of Arius from 312. Its central point is the nature of the relationship between Jesus and his heavenly Father and the respective positions of the concepts of "God the father and his son Jesus." Arianism, trying to solve the problem between eternal and contingent, defends the position that the divinity of the Almighty is greater than that of his son made man. Arians adopt subordinationism , that Jesus Christ is created but not of the same substance as God, who is uncreated and timeless. The Arians then profess a lack of consubstantiality : If the Son of God testifies, he is not God, if the Son of God has a position, it is less important than God Himself. Christianity majority emphasize response, in the Nicene Creed , that Jesus Christ . Nestorianism is represented today in the Middle East in the churches of the two councils.
Faith from the seven councils
Can be summarized, schematically, the change in the formulation of the currents prevailing dogma in the following manner:
- As the Savior who deify Christ is himself God, consubstantial with God is the definition of the Council of Nicaea (325), against Arius.
- It is total man, consubstantial with each of us is the definition of the Council of Constantinople (381), Apollinaire cons.
- Man and God, it is yet to be one, and not divided, it is the definition of the Council of Ephesus (431), against Nestorius.
- It is "two" after all, man and God, without confusion or absorption, is the definition of the Council of Chalcedon (451), against Eutyches.
The Catholics , the Orthodox of the seven councils Churches celebrate Jesus Christ as both true man and true God, second person of Trinity. The Protestant churches confess the European as well, recognizing freedom of conscience to their followers, and they therefore have different philosophies and, even when the wording appears identical to that of Catholic and Orthodox Christianity - which have a large corpus dogmatic and a hierarchical structure responsible for maintaining it and teaching it - it must be remembered that the meaning of the expressions does not express exactly the same view.
For Eastern Christianity, the Christology is sometimes a bit different and the situation is quite complex depending on the number of councils that these churches recognize.
- The original Byzantine Orthodox Churches or Churches of the seven councils ,
- The two Councils of Churches , who insisted, in response to Nestorius , on the difference between humanity and divinity in Christ, to mention two persons, one divine and one human, coexisting in him
- The three councils of churches are Monophysite or rather miaphysites , which speaks of the Incarnate Word rather than human nature of Christ
All those Eastern Churches and the Catholic Church recognize the councils of Nicaea and Constantinople, and the Creed , or Trinitarian profession of faith, which is derived. Churches belonging to the World Council of Churches also recognize the Trinity.
The Unitarians do not accept the dogma of the Trinity. They claim a monotheism strict in that they do not conceive of trinity. There are Unitarian churches in various Protestant and from Protestantism: Theological Liberalism of liberal Protestantism and Jehovah's Witnesses. For Mormons , by cons, Jesus Christ is Jehovah and a character distinct from the Father.
The messenger of God
If for Christianity, Christ is the only Messiah, other religions, but regard it as such, to recognize a messenger from God, a prophet who like others before and after it received a divine revelation.
Manichaeism
The Manichaeism , whereas the one hand and the Good God and secondly the World and Evil are radically separated, can not admit that Jesus is both God and man. Against this separation, Irenaeus of Lyons (120-140) says that God wants to share his life with the man and that therefore the nature of man is not opposed but willingly adapted to that of God and that all this is summarized in Jesus, God and man.
Islam
In the Qur'an, Isa appears as a prophet , a harbinger of Muhammad , who preached pure monotheism, performs miracles, heals, resurrects the dead and knows the secrets of the heart. Ibn Arabi gives him the title of "seal of holiness "" the greatest witness by the heart ", while Muhammad was the" seal of the prophets, "" the greatest witness by the language . The representation of Isa in the Qur'an also gives it a dimension of eschatological , : its return to Earth, as a Muslim, is the sign of the end of the world and the Last Judgement, while many hadiths have the as the main companion of the Mahdi , Savior of the end of time .
Found in the Quran four categorical denials regarding Isa, for fear of associationism ( shirk ) : it is neither God nor his son, and the third in a triad - the Trinity being equated with polytheism - nor has it been crucified because it was "unworthy" of a prophet of its importance .
The Christic Model
As "founder" of religion, the figure of Christ was a model for Christians.
A work like The Imitation of Christ , a collection of sayings of the late fourteenth century, fueled the devotion and prayers of many generations of Christians, especially lay people, who sought in their daily lives to live according to precepts of Christ (hence the title) . It begins with these words:
- "Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness , saith the Lord. These are the words of Jesus Christ, through which he exhorts us to imitate his conduct and his life, if we are truly enlightened and delivered from all blindness of heart. "
The imitation was a success which continues unabated for centuries. In 1450 , there were over two hundred and fifty manuscripts. It was a reference to the nineteenth century for Catholics and had a great influence on St. Therese of Lisieux . New editions come out regularly again.
Notes and references
References
- Geoltrain Pierre , "The Origins of Christianity: how to write history," in The Origins of Christianity, ed. Gallimard / Le Monde de la Bible, 2000 XVII, and Michel Quesnel , "Jesus and the Gospels," in The Origins of Christianity, ed. Gallimard / Le Monde de la Bible, 2000 205, online article.
- Geoltrain Pierre , "The Origins of Christianity: how to write history," in The Origins of Christianity, ed. Gallimard / Le Monde de la Bible, 2000 XVII.
- Jean Zumstein , "earthly Jesus in the Gospel of John" in Daniel et al Marguerat, Jesus of Nazareth: New Approaches to an enigma, ed. Labor et Fides, 1998, {{{1}}} 459 et seq., excerpts online
- Jean Zumstein, op. cit., {{{1}}} 461, excerpts online
- Hyam Maccoby , Paul and the Invention of Christianity, p. 266
- a and b Mircea Eliade , History of Religious Beliefs and Ideas, Volume II, p. 331-332
- Easter or nothing: The Resurrection at the heart of the New Testament of Franois and Jean-Franois Vouga Favre, page 297 read online
- a and b Annick Martin, "The dazzling success of Arius," in the early days of the Church, ed. Gallimard / Le Monde de la Bible, 2004, pp. 690-698
- a href = "http://www.chabad.org/library/article.asp?AID=9970" class = "external text" rel = "nofollow"> Devarim, Deuteronomy 6:4
- "For a Jew, however, any form of shitouf (belief in other gods besides the God of Israel) is tantamount to idolatry in the fullest sense. It is not possible for a Jew to accept Jesus as a deity, mediator or savior (messiah), or even as a prophet, without betraying Judaism. "(en): Schochet, Rabbi J. Immanuel. "Judaism has no place for those who betray their roots." , Canadian Jewish News, July 29, 1999.
- "For two thousand years Jews have rejected claims that Jesus is the messianic prophecies of the Hebrew Bible and the dogmatic assertions concerning issued by the Fathers of the Church, that is to say that He was born of a virgin, he is the son of God, he is part of a divine Trinity, and he raised after his death .. ... For two thousand years, a vow Central Christianity was to be an object of desire on the part of Jews, whose conversion would have shown their acceptance that Jesus fills their own biblical prophecy. "(en): by Susannah Heschel, in by Gregory A. Barker, editor. (Orbis Books, 2005) ISBN 1-57075-573-6. p.149)
- Madeleine Scopello , The Gnostics, ed. Cerf / Fides et al. In short, 1991, p. 89
- Michel Tardieu, Marcion and the radical, in the early days of the Church, ed. Gallimard / Le Monde de la Bible, 2004, pp. 401-407
- Doctrine and Covenants 110:3-4
- a , b and c Marie-Therese Urvoy, Article "Jesus" in M. Ali Amir-Moezzi (ed.) Dictionary of the Qur'an, ed. Robert Laffont, 2007, p. 440
- Will it or not a character nicknamed "al-Mahdi" before the coming of Jesus son of Mary?
- Marie-Therese Urvoy, Article "Jesus" in M. Ali Amir-Moezzi (ed.) Dictionary of the Qur'an, ed. Robert Laffont, 2007, pp. 439, 441
- The Koran says that it is the Christian Trinity "Father, Mother, Son"?
- a and b the Census of "The Imitation of Christ" by Sr Cecile Rastoin, Spirit & Life No. 78 / March 2003 - 2nd half, p. 32-33
Notes
- The very name Jesus means Savior. Jesus, in Greek / Iesous, just Yehoshua ( Hebrew : ) which means "God saves" (But according to Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew Lexicon and Franais , the reference dictionary of biblical Hebrew, the word means "hello, health, financial comfort" and everything that relates to the well-being) while Christ is the Greek translation of Messiah , that is to say, the anointed , Mashi'ah in Hebrew.
- In chronological order, the First Epistle to the Thessalonians The First Epistle to the Corinthians , the Epistle to the Galatians , the Epistle to the Philippians , the Epistle to Philemon , the Second Epistle to the Corinthians , the Epistle to the Romans
- up Theodosius II
- First Epistle to the Corinthians , 15, 14
- ( Ga. 4 19 )
- On the Mahdi, Sunni and Shiite traditions diverge, Shiites awaiting his return - Hidden Imam , whereas for the Sunnis, that it will arise near the end of time. "
- Sura 4.157 says: "... and their saying: "We killed Christ Jesus the son of Mary, the Messenger of Allah" ... But they have neither killed nor crucified, but it was a false pretense! And those who argue about him are really in doubt: they have no certain knowledge, they only follow conjecture, and they certainly did not kill him. "
- John 8, 12.
Bibliography
On ancient Christianity
- Grillmeier Aloys , Christ in the Christian tradition of French translations Sister Pascale Dominique Nau, OP, Volume I: From the Apostolic Age to Chalcedon. Second French edition Paris, Cerf, 2003 [coll. Cogiatio fidei 230]; Volume II-1: The Council of Chalcedon (451). Reception and opposition. Paris, Cerf, 1990 [coll. Cogiatio fidei 154]; Volume II-2: The Church of Constantinople in the sixth century. Paris, Cerf, 1993 [coll. Cogiatio fidei 172]; Volume II-4: The Church of Alexandria, Nubia and Ethiopia after 451. Paris, Cerf 1996 [al. Cogiatio fidei 192].
The Middle Ages
- Brian McNeil From "The Imitation of Christ" Cerf, 2002 [1]
On the figure of Jesus in modern times
- F. Baudin The figure of Jesus today The Reformed Review 1999, vol. 50, no202, pp. 71-94 [2] [3]
- Jad Hatem, the agonies of Christ, Paris, Editions du Cygne, 2010
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