JESUS: Teacher and Savior, or

Christology 101, or Who is JESUS CHRIST?

October 24, 2006

Dev Thakur

St. Joseph’s Parish, Columbia, SC

Jesus means “God saves.” It is the name that Joseph and Mary gave him when he became flesh and was born. The name Jesus signifies the action of the Father in the incarnate presence of his Son.[1]

At the Annunciation the archangel Gabriel says to Mary,

Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.[2]

Jesus is the name above every name:

Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.[3]

In the Acts of the Apostles we read that there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.[4] The name of Jesus is also the center of Christian prayer, as seen in the liturgy, the Hail Mary, the Jesus Prayer, and the last words of the martyrs.[5]

Christ means “Messiah” or “anointed.” The Psalmist writes,

The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD and against his anointed (Hebrew, “messiah”).[6]

The Old Testament is full of references to the savior, the salvation to come from the seed of Abraham, the descendent of David, the warrior-king, the prince of an everlasting kingdom, the anointed of God, the servant of Yahweh, and many other ways by which the Messiah is known.

That Jesus is the Messiah is shown explicitly in many New Testament texts. Matthew records Peter’s clear confession of Jesus’ identity:

Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” [7]

Jesus communicates his own identity in his response to the High Priest.

Again the high priest asked him, “Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?” And Jesus said, “I am, and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven.”[8]

Just like Peter’s confession, Jesus’ answer affirms not only that he is the Messiah but also that he is the Divine Son of God.

The Humanity of Christ. Heresies throughout the ages have denied this doctrine in some way. Examples:

Docetists deny that Jesus has a true body.
Marcionists deny that Jesus has any material nature whatsoever (absolute Docetism).
Valentinians claim that he assumed a body brought down from heaven.
Apollinarians deny that he has a human soul or that he has the higher faculties of the human soul (those being supplied by the logos or verbum).
Kant said that the Creed deals with the “ideal Jesus” not the “historical Jesus”
According to Fichte, Jesus was merely the first to see and teach the absolute unity between God and man.
Hegel claimed that Jesus is the symbol of the incarnation of God in humanity in general.
In our day, many recent “Catholic” theologians have attacked the historicity of the incarnation by arguing that the “Christ of history” and the “Christ of faith” can be distinguished.[9]

Scripture and the Councils say otherwise. The Gospels, particularly the synoptics, imply Jesus’ humanity throughout the narratives, and especially when the discuss his conception, birth, subjection to the law, passion and suffering, death, and resurrection. Beyond this, we have dozens upon dozens of statements supporting Christ’s humanity from the New Testament, including this statement from St. Paul’s letter to Timothy:

Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness: He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory.[10]

As another example of the importance of the humanity of Christ, we have, in the opening to his first letter, the words of St. John,

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life ... [11]

The Divinity of Christ. There have also been those who have denied the Divinity of Christ in various ways. Examples:

Ebionists consider Christ as a mere man who received a gift of the Spirit at his baptism.
Dynamic Monarchianism considers Christ a miraculously conceived man who was adopted as the Son of God being filled with wisdom and power.
Modalism holds that the Father and the Son are the same person.
Arianism teaches that the Son was created, but did not exclude worshipping the Son.
Others call Jesus “the greatest man who ever lived,” or simply “an enlightened teacher,” or even go so far as to deny his historical existence.

The biblical teaching, however, is clear. The synoptic gospels express Jesus’ divinity in subtle but certain ways, including his unique status as Son of God, his conception, his baptism, his Transfiguration, his miracles, his forgiving of sins, his resurrection and ascension, and perhaps most clearly in his eschatological discourses, in which he calls himself Lord of all and the Final Judge.

When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.[12]

Perhaps the most powerful and sublime statement of Christ's Divinity is the prologue to St. John's Gospel:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.[13]

The Hypostatic Union. The teaching of the Church, as stated in the Councils of Ephesus, Chalcedon and Constantinople II, is that there is one person Jesus Christ, who is both fully divine and fully human (i.e., True God and True Man, two natures in a hypostatic union). This teaching, as we see from the citations above, is fully based in Scripture. Being fully divine, Jesus is eternal, uncreated, omniscient, omnipresent, consubstantial with the Father and the Holy Spirit, the creator of the world, God. He is the Son of God who is eternally begotten of the Father. Being fully human, he was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, and born of the Virgin Mary. He suffered and died. He has a human body, a human mind, human feelings and emotions, grew in human knowledge as a child, could be tempted as a human (but could not sin, as he was God). He also had a human will, not to be conflated with his Divine Will. Jesus is not a mixture of humanity and divinity (Eutyches) nor his he an accidental or moral union of two natures (Nestorius).

The Church’s teachings regarding Jesus’ humanity and divinity and regarding the hypostatic union are important for our understanding of Jesus’ revelation of the Father, his incarnation, his suffering and death for all mankind, his resurrection, his ascension and his second coming.

[1] Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) 432

[2] Luke 1:31 (all biblical citations are from the English Standard Version unless otherwise noted)

[3] Philippians 2:9-10

[7] Matthew 16:16

[8] Mark 14:61-62

[9] see “Christology” in the Catholic Encyclopedia.