Christology is the study of Jesus Christ’s nature and essence, including his dual humanity and divinity. The First Council of Nicaea established the Nicene Creed, but theologians continue to offer various solutions, such as metaxu. Some use Christology to argue for atheism, like Žižek who believes that God denies his own existence.
In general, Christology is the study of the nature and essence of Jesus Christ. It is a distinct field of Christian theology. One of the major questions of Christology is how Jesus Christ can be both human and divine at the same time, otherwise known as the Incarnation. Other Christological themes include the question of the Resurrection and Christ’s precise relationship to the Holy Trinity.
Some of the earliest Christological problems concerned the nature of Christ’s relationship with God. It raised questions for some people, such as ‘if Christ was a human being, how could it be that he was also divine?’ Many solutions to this question have been offered, such as the Gnostic interpretation, which suggested that Christ’s physical body was only an illusory form produced by a higher spiritual essence. This interpretation is known as docetism. Conversely, other interpretations, such as the Classical Eastern Orthodox perspective, believed that Christ was both wholly human and wholly divine.
According to such disagreements about the nature of Christ, the First Council of Nicaea was held in 325. This was one of the first assemblies of bishops where Christology was rigorously discussed. One of the goals of the Council was to determine the nature of Christ as described by the Apostles. At this meeting, the unified Christian doctrine known as the Nicene Creed was formulated. It established the divinity of Christ, directly identifying him with God.
Despite the Nicene Creed, theologians have continued to investigate Christ’s dual humanity and divinity. Many kinds of solutions were offered by various theologians and Christologists. One example is the concept of metaxu, which is a Platonic term, used by Russian Orthodox theologians of the Silver Age, to explain the nature of Christ. Metaxu can be translated as resonant communication, and basically means that the deity and the world are related, but also separate. For these theologians, Christ was generally thought to be the incarnation of metaxu.
Other approaches to Christology have been used to argue for atheism. For example, Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek accepts the dual divinity and humanity of Christ, but uses it to demonstrate that God does not exist. Following the writer GK Chesterton, the crucial moment in Žižek’s Christology is when Christ is crucified and says: “My God, why have you forsaken me?”. According to Žižek, since Christ is God, this means that God does not believe in himself. Thus, for Žižek the meaning of Christology and the Christian religion is that it is the first religion in which God denies his own existence.
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