What do you believe about Jesus? (Christology or the nature of Jesus) Choose answer closest to your view.
mikenassau
2012/08/09 23:44:49
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19 votes
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15% | ||
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31 votes
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24% | ||
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13 votes
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10% | ||
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33 votes
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25% | ||
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6 votes
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5% | ||
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4 votes
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3% | ||
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11 votes
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8% | ||
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2 votes
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2% | ||
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11 votes
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8% | ||
ANSWERS 3 AND 4 MEAN NOT DIVINE, NOT GOD. iF YOU BELIEVE JESUS WAS GOD, CHOOSE 5, 6, 7 OR 8.
I keep seeing people writing of Jesus as "the son of God". I really want to find out how many people believe in the traditional Christian view that Jesus was God the Son, completely human and completely God, and how many believe he was the Christ, the Messiah, born as the human son of God to be the savior.
Answers 1, 2 and ?. are for non-Christians.
Answers 3 and 4 are for Unitarian Christians who believe Jesus is the savior but not god.
Answers 5, 6, 7 and 8 are for Trinitarian Christians who believe Jesus was both human and God. Note that Orthodox, Catholic, mainline Protestant and many Evangelical (fundamentalist) Protestant Christians are supposed to answer 7, the Chalcedonian position.
-------------------------------------------------------
1. I do not believe Jesus ever existed. The story of Jesus is
compounded from many myths and some Jewish Messianic expectations.
After removing the massive loans from Mithras, other mystery religion
saviors like Hermes of the Gnostics, the Messianic Son of Man of the
Jewish Essenes, Greek hero veneration like the virgin birth (Alexander
was the son of Zeus but still legitimately inherited the Macedonian
throne from his human father Phillip), and the king killing all the new
born babies in order to kill the new king (from Krishna of Hinduism),
there is nothing new or unique in the story of Jesus.
2. Jesus existed but he was just an ordinary human being. He was a Jewish
reformer who taught a message of love and acceptance. (This is the
position of many Unitarians today and historically of most of the
Founding Fathers of the U.S.A. like Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and John
Adams.)
3. Jesus was the Messiah, the Christ, the anointed savior
sent or chosen by God. Some with this position believe he had a
miraculous birth and was always meant to be the savior, others
(Adoptionists) believe he was chosen at his baptism, but in either
case, he was more than an ordinary man, with special powers, able to
perform miracles. He was completely human, not God, but he was the
messenger of God and the savior of humans. (This was the position of
the Ebionites, the first Christians led by the brothers of Jesus.
Later, it was taken up by the Socianians and other Unitarians like
Michael Servetus. The Christadelphians and many other modern
fundamentalists come to this position from reading the Bible.)
4. The son of God, same as 3 but especially conceived by God to be the Christ, savior of the world.
5. Jesus was God from his conception, created by God the Father. He is
subordinate to God the Father and did not exist before his conception.
This is known as Arianism from Arius of Alexandria in the ancient
church and is the position of modern churches such as Jehovah’s
Witnesses, Iglesia ni Cristo and others.
6. Mormons believe Jesus was the spirit child of God the Father (Elohim) and the Heavenly Mother, created, not eternal. He was them born to Mary in human form. He became god through his spiritual development, he became God the Son also known as Jehovah, but is a totally separate god from Elohim the Father.
7. Chalcedonian Christology was established by the council of Chalcedon in
451 A.D. It is dyophysitian, believing there are two natures, Jesus the
human and God the Son as the divine nature. But they are partially
merged to form one person, unlike Nestorianism. God the Son is eternal,
existed from the beginning, and is equal to God the Father. God the Son
merged with the human Jesus to make the Christ, the Messiah, the divine
savior. Jesus really suffered and died upon the cross, else there would
be no sacrifice and no redemption.
Wikipedia references:
8. Jesus and God the Son
were two separate beings who occupied the same physical space through
the life of Jesus but never fully merged to make one entity. Known as
Nestorianism after Archbishop Nestor of Constantinople. It is the
extreme form of dyophysitism, the belief in two natures. This was the position of the Church of the East, from Syria through Iran and Turkestan to China and India. Largely wiped out by Muslims, it mainly survives in India in Mar Thoma, etc.
8a. Monophysitism is the belief that Jesus and God the Son had only one nature. The usual
view is that the human and divine natures merged to make one nature.
This view survives in the Coptic churches of Ethiopia and Egypt and
some of the Eastern churches. An extreme form of this was docetism, the
belief that Jesus only appeared to be human but was really only divine.
This was the belief of the Gnostic Christians as found in the Gospels
of Phillip, Thomas and Peter. It survives in the Muslim belief that
Jesus only appeared to die on the cross. If this is your position, please vote for 8. but note in your comment this is what you believe.
?.. For those who have no interest in Jesus or Christianity.
(Sodahead editor will not let me put a 9 in front of I in the question.)
-------------------------------------------------------------...
Here is a nice statement of the Chalcedonian position which most Christians are supposed to believe in:
"The conception of Jesus is new creation, not begetting by God. God does
not become the biological father of Jesus, and neither the New
Testament nor the theology of the Church has fundamentally ever seen in
this narrative of the Annunciation or in the event recounted in it the
real ground for the divinity of Jesus, his "Sonship" of God. For this
does not mean that Jesus is half God, half man; it has always been a
basic tenet of the Christian faith that Jesus is completely God and
completely man.
According to the faith of the Church the Sonship of
Jesus does not rest on the fact that Jesus had no human father; the
doctrine of Jesus' divinity would not be affected if Jesus had been the
product of a normal human marriage. For the Sonship of which faith
speaks is not a biological but an ontological fact, an event not in
time but in God's eternity; God is always Father, Son and Spirit; the
conception of Jesus does not mean that a new God-the-Son comes into
being, but that God as Son in the man Jesus draws the creature man to
himself, so that he himself "is" man. "
http://www.poorclarestmd.org/benedictxvi/introchristianity/co...
This still leaves the problem that the Bible says Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit, no by God the Father.
------------------------------------------------
See these Wikipedia articles for more information.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docetism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adoptionism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestorianism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chalcedonian
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monophysitism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyophysite
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebionism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arianism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnostic_Christianity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_the_East
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcionism
I keep seeing people writing of Jesus as "the son of God". I really want to find out how many people believe in the traditional Christian view that Jesus was God the Son, completely human and completely God, and how many believe he was the Christ, the Messiah, born as the human son of God to be the savior.
Answers 1, 2 and ?. are for non-Christians.
Answers 3 and 4 are for Unitarian Christians who believe Jesus is the savior but not god.
Answers 5, 6, 7 and 8 are for Trinitarian Christians who believe Jesus was both human and God. Note that Orthodox, Catholic, mainline Protestant and many Evangelical (fundamentalist) Protestant Christians are supposed to answer 7, the Chalcedonian position.
-------------------------------------------------------
1. I do not believe Jesus ever existed. The story of Jesus is
compounded from many myths and some Jewish Messianic expectations.
After removing the massive loans from Mithras, other mystery religion
saviors like Hermes of the Gnostics, the Messianic Son of Man of the
Jewish Essenes, Greek hero veneration like the virgin birth (Alexander
was the son of Zeus but still legitimately inherited the Macedonian
throne from his human father Phillip), and the king killing all the new
born babies in order to kill the new king (from Krishna of Hinduism),
there is nothing new or unique in the story of Jesus.
2. Jesus existed but he was just an ordinary human being. He was a Jewish
reformer who taught a message of love and acceptance. (This is the
position of many Unitarians today and historically of most of the
Founding Fathers of the U.S.A. like Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and John
Adams.)
3. Jesus was the Messiah, the Christ, the anointed savior
sent or chosen by God. Some with this position believe he had a
miraculous birth and was always meant to be the savior, others
(Adoptionists) believe he was chosen at his baptism, but in either
case, he was more than an ordinary man, with special powers, able to
perform miracles. He was completely human, not God, but he was the
messenger of God and the savior of humans. (This was the position of
the Ebionites, the first Christians led by the brothers of Jesus.
Later, it was taken up by the Socianians and other Unitarians like
Michael Servetus. The Christadelphians and many other modern
fundamentalists come to this position from reading the Bible.)
4. The son of God, same as 3 but especially conceived by God to be the Christ, savior of the world.
5. Jesus was God from his conception, created by God the Father. He is
subordinate to God the Father and did not exist before his conception.
This is known as Arianism from Arius of Alexandria in the ancient
church and is the position of modern churches such as Jehovah’s
Witnesses, Iglesia ni Cristo and others.
6. Mormons believe Jesus was the spirit child of God the Father (Elohim) and the Heavenly Mother, created, not eternal. He was them born to Mary in human form. He became god through his spiritual development, he became God the Son also known as Jehovah, but is a totally separate god from Elohim the Father.
7. Chalcedonian Christology was established by the council of Chalcedon in
451 A.D. It is dyophysitian, believing there are two natures, Jesus the
human and God the Son as the divine nature. But they are partially
merged to form one person, unlike Nestorianism. God the Son is eternal,
existed from the beginning, and is equal to God the Father. God the Son
merged with the human Jesus to make the Christ, the Messiah, the divine
savior. Jesus really suffered and died upon the cross, else there would
be no sacrifice and no redemption.
Wikipedia references:
8. Jesus and God the Son
were two separate beings who occupied the same physical space through
the life of Jesus but never fully merged to make one entity. Known as
Nestorianism after Archbishop Nestor of Constantinople. It is the
extreme form of dyophysitism, the belief in two natures. This was the position of the Church of the East, from Syria through Iran and Turkestan to China and India. Largely wiped out by Muslims, it mainly survives in India in Mar Thoma, etc.
8a. Monophysitism is the belief that Jesus and God the Son had only one nature. The usual
view is that the human and divine natures merged to make one nature.
This view survives in the Coptic churches of Ethiopia and Egypt and
some of the Eastern churches. An extreme form of this was docetism, the
belief that Jesus only appeared to be human but was really only divine.
This was the belief of the Gnostic Christians as found in the Gospels
of Phillip, Thomas and Peter. It survives in the Muslim belief that
Jesus only appeared to die on the cross. If this is your position, please vote for 8. but note in your comment this is what you believe.
?.. For those who have no interest in Jesus or Christianity.
(Sodahead editor will not let me put a 9 in front of I in the question.)
-------------------------------------------------------------...
Here is a nice statement of the Chalcedonian position which most Christians are supposed to believe in:
"The conception of Jesus is new creation, not begetting by God. God does
not become the biological father of Jesus, and neither the New
Testament nor the theology of the Church has fundamentally ever seen in
this narrative of the Annunciation or in the event recounted in it the
real ground for the divinity of Jesus, his "Sonship" of God. For this
does not mean that Jesus is half God, half man; it has always been a
basic tenet of the Christian faith that Jesus is completely God and
completely man.
According to the faith of the Church the Sonship of
Jesus does not rest on the fact that Jesus had no human father; the
doctrine of Jesus' divinity would not be affected if Jesus had been the
product of a normal human marriage. For the Sonship of which faith
speaks is not a biological but an ontological fact, an event not in
time but in God's eternity; God is always Father, Son and Spirit; the
conception of Jesus does not mean that a new God-the-Son comes into
being, but that God as Son in the man Jesus draws the creature man to
himself, so that he himself "is" man. "
http://www.poorclarestmd.org/benedictxvi/introchristianity/co...
This still leaves the problem that the Bible says Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit, no by God the Father.
------------------------------------------------
See these Wikipedia articles for more information.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docetism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adoptionism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestorianism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chalcedonian
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monophysitism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyophysite
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebionism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arianism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnostic_Christianity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_the_East
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcionism
Read More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christology
Top Opinion
-
RosaLuxemburg 2012/08/10 00:19:342.Jesus was a good teacher, a Jewish reformer, a nice ordinary human being.
True Christianity was reinstituted by Joseph Smith, with the help of the angel Moroni and the Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon is another Testament from God, like the Old and New Testaments. Everyone needs to read the Book of Mormon and get the complete message from God.
Christ IS the son of God:
Jhn 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
Jhn 3:17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.
Jhn 3:18 He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
Human and tempted:
1Ti 3:16 And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.
Hbr 4:14 ¶ Seeing then that we have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast [our] profession.
Hbr 4:15 For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as [we are, yet] without sin.
Equal with God:
Phl 2:5 ¶ Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:
Phl 2:6 Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God:
The first is to read the four Gospels and see what the writers report that Jesus said about himself.
Or the second option, just decide that those reports are all made up an then forget about it.
Why dwell on it if you don't believe it?
By the way, Wikipedia is so biased against God I am amazed that you use it as your source for this post. According to the WikiWiki, Creation is a MYTH. Nuf said.
The most well know verse of the Bible is
John 3:16. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever should believe in him, should not perish, but have everlasting life.
I think you'll find that most christians will answer this way, due to human nature.
Enough Said....
I reckon the author of this post did not like my answer and decided to block me. What a Christian thing to do! lol
Unitarian Christian Fellowship http://www.uuchristian.org
Biblical Unitarians http://www.biblicalunitarian....
The Christadelphian http://www.thechristadelphian...
The Trinity (Christadelphian) http://www.christadelphian.or...
1. 18
2. 26
?. 9
Total non-Christian 53
3. 10
4. 21
Total Unitarian Christian 31
5. 3
6. 3
7. 9
8. 1
Total Trinitarian Christian 16
A lot more Unitarian Christian than I expected and less Trinitarian than I expected.
http://mithras.webs.com/
1 Timothy 2:5 http://bible.cc/1_timothy/2-5...
GOD IS LOVE. "So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him." ESV
http://bible.cc/1_john/4-16.htm