Why it matters for reading Scripture
Who Jesus is, his person and his work: the center of Christian faith.
Systematic theologyWhat does it teach as a whole?
Christology is the part of Christian theology that studies Jesus Christ: his person, the relation of divine and human in him, and his work, where it meets the doctrine of salvation. The division between who Christ is and what he does is the field's basic structure. In theological degrees it is normally a core module of systematic theology.
Study v1.5, 16 October 2026
Who Jesus is, his person and his work: the center of Christian faith.
Most churches confess Christ in the conciliar language formed from Nicaea (325) to Constantinople III (680 to 681), centred on Chalcedon's one person in two natures.
Chalcedon divided the Chalcedonian churches from the Oriental Orthodox and the Church of the East; Lutheran and Reformed later divided over Christ's humanity and the Supper.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that in the Incarnation the Son became truly man while remaining truly God, not part God and part man nor a confused mixture of the two, and receives Chalcedon's confession of one and the same Christ, consubstantial with the Father in his divinity and with us in his humanity.
Christ's human nature is assumed, not absorbed, and he has a human intellect and a human will in harmony with the divine will. Dominus Iesus (2000) teaches that Jesus of Nazareth alone is the Son and the Word of the Father, and the International Theological Commission's documents of 1979, 1981, 1985 and 2025 develop the Church's teaching. The Catholic Church includes the Eastern Catholic churches, which keep Byzantine, Syriac, Armenian, Coptic and other inheritances while in communion with the Church of Rome and its bishop.
The Orthodox Church in America's catechetical text presents the confession that Jesus Christ is Lord, Kyrios, a title proper to God, as the fundamental confession of Christians.
The Orthodox Church receives the seven councils, including Constantinople III's two wills and two operations in the one person of Christ, and the teaching of Maximus the Confessor and of Gregory Palamas on the uncreated light. Its account of salvation centers on theosis, a union with the divine energies and not the essence, in which the deified remain creatures. In its dialogue with the Oriental Orthodox it agreed in 1990 that the natures are distinguished in thought alone and that the Orthodox may also use Cyril's formula of one nature of the incarnate Logos; full communion between the two families has not been restored.
The family includes the Coptic Orthodox Church, the Syrian Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch, the Armenian Catholicosates, the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church and the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.
Pope Shenouda III teaches that Christ is God the incarnate Word, who took a perfect manhood united to his divinity without mingling, confusion or alteration, and that the Church's formula is the one nature of God the incarnate Logos, from Cyril; he rejects the label monophysite as a misreading. The Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church confesses one composite hypostasis, and V. C. Samuel argued in The Council of Chalcedon Re-Examined (1977) that the dispute over one or two natures rested largely on mutual misunderstanding. The Ethiopian name Tewahedo means being made one, naming the union of divinity and humanity in Christ.
Sebastian Brock, writing for the Church of the East, sets out its terms: kyana, nature; qnoma, the individual instance of a nature, not to be translated person; and parsopa, person.
The Church of the East confesses two kyane and two qnome in one parsopa, and Babai the Great's Book of the Union is the classic statement of its Christology. It never received the Council of Ephesus and regards the name Nestorian as polemical. Its Common Christological Declaration with the Catholic Church (1994) confesses Christ's divinity and humanity united in one person without confusion or change, without division or separation.
The Formula of Concord (Solid Declaration VIII) teaches that Christ is not two persons but one, with two natures never separated or mingled, and a true communion of the natures, so that the death of the man is called God's death.
Through the personal union the human nature has received divine majesty, hidden in the state of humiliation, and Christ can be present with his body wherever he wills, especially in the Lord's Supper; God's right hand is God's almighty power, not a place.
The Westminster Confession (1646) teaches two whole, perfect and distinct natures inseparably joined in one person, and that Christ in his work of mediation acts according to both natures.
The Heidelberg Catechism (1563) holds that in his human nature Christ is not now on earth, while in his divinity he is never absent; the Belgic Confession (1561) holds that each nature keeps its own properties, and the Second Helvetic Confession that Christ's human nature is not everywhere. Its teaching that the Word, wholly united to the flesh, also remains wholly beyond it is called the extra Calvinisticum. The Leuenberg Agreement of 16 March 1973 records that the Reformed tradition stressed the integrity of Christ's divinity and humanity and the Lutheran tradition the full unity of his person, and that the signatory churches can no longer adopt the past mutual condemnations.
The Thirty-Nine Articles (1571) confess in Article II that the Godhead and manhood were joined in one Person, never to be divided, very God and very man, and in Article IV that Christ rose with flesh and bones.
The United Methodist Articles of Religion, Wesley's abridgment of the Anglican articles, confess in Article II the Son, the very and eternal God, of one substance with the Father, with two natures united in one person.
Baptists hold no single binding confession.
The Southern Baptist Convention's Baptist Faith and Message 2000 confesses Christ as the eternal Son of God, conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary, now the one Mediator, fully God, fully man. The Second London Baptist Confession (1689), chapter 8, follows Westminster closely: two whole, perfect and distinct natures joined in one person without conversion, composition or confusion.
The Church of the Nazarene's Article II confesses Jesus Christ as the Second Person of the Triune Godhead, with two whole and perfect natures, Godhead and manhood, united in one Person, very God and very man.
The Salvation Army's fourth doctrine holds that in the person of Jesus Christ the divine and human natures are united, so that he is truly and properly God and truly and properly man.
The Assemblies of God's Statement of Fundamental Truths confesses in Truth 3 that the Lord Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God, and lists his virgin birth, sinless life, miracles, substitutionary work, bodily resurrection and exaltation.
The United Pentecostal Church International confesses one God revealed as Father, through his Son in redemption, and as the Holy Spirit, and teaches that Jesus Christ is God manifested in flesh, both God and man, with baptism in the name of Jesus Christ.
Oneness Pentecostals do not confess three eternal persons.
The Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective, adopted in July 1995, confesses in Article 2 Jesus Christ, the Word of God become flesh: fully human and tempted, yet without sin, the model human being, and fully divine, the one in whom the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.
Menno Simons in the sixteenth century held the celestial flesh view, that Christ took no human flesh from Mary, which the Belgic Confession condemned; the 1995 Confession does not teach it.
Fundamental Belief 4, The Son, confesses that God the eternal Son became incarnate in Jesus Christ, forever truly God and also truly human, conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary, who now ministers in the heavenly sanctuary.
Adventists have debated whether Christ took human nature as it was after the Fall; Woodrow Whidden traces the debate from M. L. Andreasen's post-Fall view to the book Questions on Doctrine (1957) and its later republication.
The Lausanne Covenant (1974) holds that there is only one Savior and that Christ is the only mediator between God and people, and rejects the view that he speaks equally through all religions.
The National Association of Evangelicals confesses the deity of Christ, his virgin birth, sinless life, miracles, atoning death, bodily resurrection, ascension and personal return.
The Moravian Ground of the Unity confesses Jesus Christ as the one Lord and Head of his body, the Church, and acknowledges the Apostles', Nicene and Athanasian Creeds.
The Religious Society of Friends sets no binding creed and holds a range of views among its members; Britain Yearly Meeting's Quaker Faith and Practice records George Fox's experience of 1647 of Christ Jesus who could speak to his condition.
The World Council of Churches recognizes African Instituted Churches as a church family of their own: independent African churches that arose from the late nineteenth century, partly in reaction to racism and to missionary control.
Their Christologies are diverse and are not well represented by any single statement. A body of African origin, the Kimbanguist Church, founded in 1921, joined the World Council of Churches in 1969 and in 2021 lost its membership on doctrinal grounds, because its official teaching identifies Simon Kimbangu and his successors with persons of the Trinity.
Jehovah's Witnesses teach that Jesus is the firstborn of all creation, created by Jehovah God before everything else, God's only-begotten Son and the Word, and not Almighty God; they also identify Jesus with the archangel Michael.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints teaches that Jesus Christ is the Son of Heavenly Father, the Only Begotten in the flesh and the Jehovah of the Old Testament, and that the members of the Godhead are three separate beings, one in purpose.
The Christadelphian Statement of Faith confesses Jesus as the Son of God begotten of the Virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit, and rejects the teachings that God is three persons and that the Son was co-eternal with the Father.
The Iglesia ni Cristo's official magazine argues that Jesus Christ is a man and not God, and that only the Father is the true God.
The Unitarian Universalist Association prescribes no single view of Jesus and describes most Unitarian Universalist Christians as believing in God but not in the Trinity.
Joseph Klausner's Yeshu ha-Notzri (1922) set Jesus within Palestinian and Pharisaic Judaism, while holding that his teaching contained a kernel of opposition to Judaism.
Walter Riggans traces a wider Jewish reclamation of Jesus through Leo Baeck, Klausner, Martin Buber, who called Jesus a great brother but not the Messiah, David Flusser, Geza Vermes and Pinchas Lapide, and records the critiques of Samuel Sandmel and Jacob Neusner. Vermes argued that Jesus could be understood only within Judaism, and Amy-Jill Levine's The Misunderstood Jew (2006) addresses the Church's portrayal of the Jewish Jesus.
The Qur'an names Jesus ʿĪsā, son of Mary, prophet and Messiah.
Qur'an 4:171 calls him a messenger of God, God's word and a spirit from him, forbids speaking of a Trinity and affirms that God is one and above having a son, and in Qur'an 5:116 God asks Jesus whether he told people to take him and his mother as gods, and Jesus disclaims any right to say so. Most Muslim commentators take Qur'an 4:157 to 158 as denying the crucifixion, while verses such as 3:55 and 19:33 have been read as implying a real death.
Pope Victor excommunicates Theodotus of Byzantium, who taught dynamic monarchianism or adoptionism; Paul of Samosata, who later taught it, is condemned at Antioch in about 266 to 268.68
Arius, a presbyter of Alexandria, has taught from about 319 that the Son was created out of nothing; Constantine convokes the Council of Nicaea, whose creed confesses the Son as of the same substance with the Father, and Arius is anathematized and exiled. In Henri Leclercq's tentative reconstruction the creed was drawn up on 19 June.697071
The First Council of Constantinople, called by Theodosius, condemns the Arians, the Macedonians and the Apollinarians in its first canon. Apollinaris of Laodicea had taught that Christ had no human rational mind, the Logos taking its place, and the answer of the Fathers was that what Christ has not assumed he has not healed.7273
The Council of Chalcedon approves its definition on 22 October: one and the same Christ, acknowledged in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation. It receives the creeds of Nicaea and Constantinople, two of Cyril's letters and Leo's Tome.7778
The Third Council of Constantinople defines that in each of Christ's two natures there is a perfect operation and a perfect will, and condemns the authors of monothelitism, including Pope Honorius.81
The Formula of Concord sets out the Lutheran position, quoting Luther's words that wherever God is placed, the humanity must also be placed. The Reformed, who accepted the first two kinds of communication of attributes, rejected the third, by which divine majesty is given to the human nature, holding that omnipresence is inconsistent with the limits of a human body, and taught the extra Calvinisticum.842530
David Friedrich Strauss's Das Leben Jesu kritisch bearbeitet rejects both supernatural and rationalist readings of the Gospels in favor of a mythical interpretation and sets off the search for the historical Jesus.85
Albert Schweitzer's The Quest of the Historical Jesus shows that each portrait of Jesus projected its author's ideals onto him and brings the first quest to an end. A new quest began later, with Ernst Käsemann's lecture of 1953.86
Pope Paul VI and Pope Shenouda III confess Christ perfect God in his divinity and perfect man in his humanity and set up a joint commission. From 1973 the churches divided in the fifth century sign a series of agreed statements on Christ.90
At Anba Bishoy in 1989 and Chambésy in 1990, the Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox agree on one composite hypostasis, with the natures distinguished in contemplation only, and that he who wills and acts is the one hypostasis of the Logos incarnate. The Chambésy statement asks the churches to lift the past anathemas; such statements do not by themselves restore full communion.1514
The 1700th anniversary of Nicaea is marked by the International Theological Commission's document of 3 April, the World Council of Churches' Sixth World Conference on Faith and Order (24 to 28 October), Pope Leo XIV's apostolic letter In Unitate Fidei (23 November) and his ecumenical prayer with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I at İznik on 28 November.6919293
Read the New Testament evidence through the titles given to Jesus, through early devotional practice or through the identity of the God of Israel, keeping apart whether the earliest Christians worshipped Jesus, whether they included him within the identity of the one God, and whether they thought of him in the later categories of nature and person1109496.
Study the formation of the doctrine from the acts of the councils and the writings of the Fathers, in critical editions such as the Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum and translations such as Price and Gaddis's Acts of the Council of Chalcedon (2005)111112.
Place historical Jesus research in its periods: the first quest, brought to an end by Schweitzer in 1906; the new quest, from Käsemann's lecture of 1953; and the third quest, which stresses Jesus's Jewish setting and his eschatological message86113.
Weigh the criteria of authenticity, which Chris Keith and Anthony Le Donne questioned in 2012, arguing for approaches based on social memory114.
Choose whether to begin from above, with the eternal deity of the Son, or from below, from Jesus's history115.
Read Christ's person and work together, and use no single approach alone, since historical study is never neutral116.
Test the coherence of the doctrine of the Incarnation with the tools of analytic philosophy, as philosophers of religion have done since the 1980s with models such as two minds and reduplication105117118.
Read the Old Testament Christologically within the canon, as theological interpretation of Scripture does102119.
Begin from a particular situation, such as poverty, racism, the experience of women or the religious world of Africa or Asia, and ask who Christ is for people in it120.
The works below shaped the field and are cited in this study, from the earliest to the most recent. Hover over a book, or select it, to see its author and the sources behind it.
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The words that carry the most weight in this field, each defined from the sources of this study. Turn a card over to read its definition.
Scholars hold three main positions. Wilhelm Bousset's Kyrios Christos (1913) argued for a gradual development, and Michael Kok groups James Dunn, Maurice Casey and Anthony Harvey as scholars who hold that the divinization of Jesus is not attested before John or Ignatius9495. Larry Hurtado and Richard Bauckham argue that devotion to Jesus appears in the earliest sources, within Jewish monotheism, and Bauckham states that the earliest Christology was already the highest9496165. Bart D. Ehrman's How Jesus Became God (2014) distinguishes exaltation Christology from incarnation Christology, while the response volume How God Became Jesus, edited by Michael F. Bird, argues that Jesus's exalted status in belief and worship appears in the earliest sources shortly after his death166167.
The Council of Chalcedon (451) defined one person in two natures, without confusion, change, division or separation77. The Oriental Orthodox churches confess one nature of God the Word incarnate and reject the name monophysite, and the Church of the East confesses two kyane and two qnome in one parsopa and regards the name Nestorian as polemical171622. Agreed statements from 1973 to 1996 have followed, and joint commissions now often describe differences once taken for heresy as differences of terms, though full communion between the divided churches has not followed901524168.
Both confess Christ as one person in two natures, each keeping its properties, but differ over whether divine properties are communicated to the human nature2530. The Formula of Concord (1577) holds that the human nature has received a majesty through the personal union, so that Christ can be present with his body wherever he wills, especially in the Lord's Supper25. The Heidelberg Catechism holds that in his human nature Christ is not now on earth while in his divinity he is never absent27. The Leuenberg Agreement of 1973 records the different emphases of the two traditions and sets aside the past condemnations31.
The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy states the problem: divinity seems to require omnipotence, omniscience and moral perfection, while humanity involves limitation105. It lists four responses: deny the law of non-contradiction, adopt relative identity, revise which properties divinity or humanity require, or show that Christ does not have a property and its complement in the same respect105. Thomas V. Morris proposes that the incarnate Son has an eternal divine mind and an earthly human mind, and Timothy Pawl argues that the arguments for incoherence fail117118. The Myth of God Incarnate (1977), edited by John Hick, treated the Incarnation as a metaphor rather than a metaphysical claim, a view Hick developed in The Metaphor of God Incarnate (1993)169170.
Leonardo Boff's Jesus Cristo Libertador (1972) argues that each age must discover the meaning of Christ anew and that Latin American Christology must have characteristics of its own171172. Diane B. Stinton groups contemporary African Christologies by the images they use: Jesus as life-giver and healer, as mediator and ancestor, as leader, king, chief and liberator, and as loved one173174. Ancestor Christology, in Charles Nyamiti, Bénézet Bujo, Kwame Bediako and John Pobee, is the most discussed of these models, and critics have raised syncretism and a possible weakening of Christ's divinity175176177178. Aloysius Pieris holds that Asia is marked both by overwhelming poverty and by deep religiousness, so that Christ's double baptism is in the Jordan of Asian religion and on the Calvary of Asian poverty179.
Reviewed and approved by Duane Herholdt, BA (Theology), Chief Executive Officer, Numa Verse
Study version: v1.5, 16 October 2026 (theology map v1.27)
Last reviewed: 9 November 2026