Classical theology is a set of religious beliefs associated with mainstream Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. It was defined in the early centuries of Christianity and remains important today. It conceives of God as perfect, eternal, and necessary, and sees him as a trinity of three equal persons. Jesus Christ is believed to be the incarnation of God the Son, with a fully human and divine nature. The classical view also sees God as impassive and immutable.
Classical theology is most commonly used to describe religious beliefs and doctrines that have traditionally been associated with mainstream Christianity in the Western world and which have been regarded as authoritative by many Christian churches and theologians. Like other theologies, classical theology contains a systematic set of beliefs and arguments about religious matters such as the nature of God. The term is also sometimes used in reference to Judaism and Islam to refer to the traditional core beliefs of those religions, but in a Western context “classical theology” without further modifiers usually means traditional Christian theology.
The term “classical theology” was broadly defined in the early centuries of Christianity through bishops’ councils such as the Council of Nicaea in AD 324 and the writings of early Christian theologians such as St. Ambrose of Milan, St. Augustine of Hippo and St. Irenaeus of Lyon. Notable later theologians in this school of thought include St Thomas Aquinas and St Anselm of Canterbury. It remains enormously important in Christianity in the world today and is the primary influence on the doctrines accepted by the Orthodox and Catholic churches as well as most major Protestant denominations.
Classical theology conceives of God as a perfect, omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent being. God is considered eternal in the sense that he has always existed and has no beginning in time. Unlike created entities such as humans or the universe as a whole, its existence is not caused by anything else, a property called aseity. Since God in classical theology is both perfect and not caused by or dependent on anything else, he is eternally immutable or immutable.
The classical view also sees God as a necessary being, in the sense that God is a being that could not but exist; there is no possible world in which God would not exist. This distinguishes the existence of God from the contingent existence of created beings, such as humans, because the existence of a particular being or beings other than God is caused by a particular set of circumstances which could have been otherwise. All that exists other than God is considered dependent on God, as the only necessary and uncreated being, for his existence.
God’s independence from external cause is also commonly taken to imply that God is also impassive, meaning that he experiences no feelings such as pleasure or pain from the actions of other beings. Theologians who hold this view argue that biblical references to God being angry, pleased, or the like are not meant literally, just as the reference to God’s hand or throne does not refer to physical body parts or a literal chair on which God sits. Instead, they are treated as metaphors for things beyond human understanding rather than a description of God experiencing changing emotional states caused by external events in the way he does a human being.
Classical Christian theology views God as a single being who is a trinity of three equal persons called Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. These people are believed to be distinct and yet united as one being, with all three people having the same divine attributes described above. All three are perfect, omnipotent, and eternal. The precise nature of the trinity has been one of the most intensely controversial theological questions in the history of Christianity. Alternative views include unitarism, the belief that God is a single person, and modalism, the belief that the persons who make up the trinity are all equally divine but are aspects, manifestations, or modes of God instead of distinct persons. In the Mormon faith, the trinity is considered to be not just three persons, but three distinct beings who are united in purpose but are separate entities.
Jesus Christ, in the classical view, is the incarnation of God the Son, who had a fully human and a fully divine nature united in one person. His suffering and death by crucifixion is believed to have served as an atonement for human sin, making possible salvation and reconciliation with God for humans. Jesus was able to suffer during the crucifixion because he possessed a fully human nature, even though his divine nature remained insurmountable. Historically significant rivals of this view include Arianism, the belief that Jesus was divine but was a created being subordinate to God the Father rather than coeternal with him, and Monophysitism, the belief that while Jesus had a human body, he had only a single divine nature.
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