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Christocentrism is a doctrinal term within Christianity, describing theological positions that focus on Jesus Christ, the second person of the Christian Trinity, in relation to the Godhead/God the Father (theocentric) or the Holy Spirit (pneumocentric). Christocentric theologies make Christ the central theme about which all other theological positions/doctrines are oriented.
Certain theological traditions within the Christian Church can be described as more heavily Christocentric. Notably, the teachings of Augustine of Hippo and Paul of Tarsus, which have been very influential in the West, place a great emphasis on the person of Jesus in the process of salvation.
For instance, in Reformation theology, the Lutheran tradition is seen as more theologically Christocentric, as it places its doctrine of justification by grace, which is primarily a Christological doctrine, at the center of its thought. Meanwhile, the Calvinist tradition is seen as more theologically theocentric, as it places its doctrine of the sovereignty of God ("the Father") at the center.
Scotus is famous for his belief in the Absolute Primacy of Christ, whereby Christ would have become incarnate even had the Fall never taken place. Scotus writes "that God predestined this soul [of Christ] to so great a glory does not seem to be only on account of [redemption], since the redemption or the glory of the soul to be redeemed is not comparable to the glory of Christ’s soul. Neither is it likely that the highest good in creation is something that was merely occasioned only because of some lesser good; nor is it likely that He predestined Adam to such good before He predestined Christ; and yet this would follow [were the Incarnation occasioned by Adam’s sin]. In fact, if the predestination of Christ’s soul was for the sole purpose of redeeming others, something even more absurd would follow, namely, that in predestining Adam to glory, He would have foreseen him as having fallen into sin before He predestined Christ to glory". [1] As such, Scotus' theology is grounded in the claim that Creation exists for the sake of Christ, regardless of whether any individual chooses to sin.
John Paul II's magisterium has been called Christocentric by Catholic theologians. [2] He further taught that the Marian devotions of the Rosary were in fact Christocentric because they brought the faithful to Jesus through Mary. [3]
The christocentric principle is also commonly used for biblical hermeneutics. The aim behind it is to read and interpret the narratives of the Old Testament in light and in primacy of the revelation of Christ. It is normally employed to demonstrate Christ typologically (or via allegoresis) through the Hebrew Bible (since Christ did not fulfill any prophecy in the authorial context), [4] but not in a grammatical or authorial sense as understood today. And another aim behind it is to purge away detrimental and/or theologically incoherent ideas of God found in the texts of the Old Testament. The Christocentric method (as in Christ is the interpretive telos or goal behind reading the Law) is mentioned by the apostle Paul in Romans 10:4, and Ignatius of Antioch thematically demonstrates that Christ (or the revelation of Christ) is the magisterial and “inviolable” record, or the “charters” according to J.B. Lightfoot and Kirsopp Lake; Ignatius considers the incarnation of Christ to be superior to the Hebraic writings when he disagrees with (what is seemingly) the religious Jews on what is considered authoritative (Philadelphians 8:2-9:2). Ignatius repeats this idea by writing, “But the Gospel has its own preeminence: the advent of the Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ, His passion, and the resurrection,” or “ ἐξαίρετον δέ τι ἔχει τὸ εὐαγγέλιον, τὴν παρουσίαν τοῦ σωτῆρος, κυρίου ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ, τὸ πάθος αὐτοῦ, καὶ τὴν ἀνάστασιν”. The Greek is found in Kirsopp’s edition.
This interpretive technique is employed by early Christians like Paul of Tarsus when he argues (through a rhetorical, dichotomous question) that the mosaic command for the care of oxen was not inspired by God in its original context, but in its spiritual form for believers (1st Corin. 9:9-10), when he argues that the mosaic rites acted as symbols or types for Christ (Colo. 2:16-17), like patristic Barnabas who argued that God never forbade the consumption of pork, nor commanded circumcision since these things were interpreted naively due to an evil angel misleading them, but these served as spiritual lessons (ibid. 9:1, 4, 6, 10:2-3, 9), like Origen of Alexandria when he argued that infantile Christians had vicious and irrational ideas of God (an interpretive mistake similarly employed by the Gnostics and Jews) due to literalism and a lack of the pneumatic, interpretive approach (First Prin. IV.8-9), like Saint Athanasius, who cited Colossians 2:17 and Hebrews 9:10, argued that God never commanded sacrifice through the law of Moses, “nor even when they came to mount Sinai,” but He prefigured the symbols towards Christ (Letter 19, Section 3–4), like Gregory of Nyssa when he wrote that the Exodus narrative where the firstborn die for the sins of their fathers is an idea so impious that he considers it unworthy of God; thus, he reinterprets it as “The teaching is this: When through virtue one comes to grips with any evil, he must completely destroy the first beginnings of evil” (Life of Moses 2.89-101), and even an early Christian document, the Didascalia, speaks of Christ fulfilling the types and it denies God commanding sacrifice in the beginning to Cain and Abel (ibid. Chapter 26, translated by R. Hugh Connolly).
Christocentrism is also a name given to a particular approach in interfaith and ecumenical dialogue. It teaches that Christianity is absolutely true, but the elements of truth in other religions are always in relation to the fullness of truth found in Christianity. The Holy Spirit is thought to allow inter-religious dialogue and to influence non-believers in their journey to Christ. This view is notably advocated by the Catholic Church in the declarations Nostra aetate , Unitatis Redintegratio and Dominus Iesus.
Apollinarism or Apollinarianism is a Christological heresy proposed by Apollinaris of Laodicea that argues that Jesus had a human body and sensitive human soul, but a divine mind and not a human rational mind, the Divine Logos taking the place of the latter. It was deemed heretical in 381 and virtually died out within the following decades.
In Christianity, Christology is a branch of theology that concerns Jesus. Different denominations have different opinions on questions such as whether Jesus was human, divine, or both, and as a messiah what his role would be in the freeing of the Jewish people from foreign rulers or in the prophesied Kingdom of God, and in the salvation from what would otherwise be the consequences of sin.
Predestination, in theology, is the doctrine that all events have been willed by God, usually with reference to the eventual fate of the individual soul. Explanations of predestination often seek to address the paradox of free will, whereby God's omniscience seems incompatible with human free will. In this usage, predestination can be regarded as a form of religious determinism; and usually predeterminism, also known as theological determinism.
The resurrection of Jesus is the Christian belief that God raised Jesus from the dead on the third day after his crucifixion, starting – or restoring – his exalted life as Christ and Lord. According to the New Testament writing, Jesus was firstborn from the dead, ushering in the Kingdom of God. He appeared to his disciples, calling the apostles to the Great Commission of forgiving sin and baptizing repenters, and ascended to Heaven.
Antisemitism and the New Testament is the discussion of how Christian views of Judaism in the New Testament have contributed to discrimination against Jewish people throughout history and in the present day.
In Christianity, Jesus is believed to be the Son of God as chronicled in the Bible's New Testament, and in most Christian denominations he is held to be God the Son, a prosopon (Person) of the Trinity of God.
In Christianity, salvation is the saving of human beings from sin and its consequences—which include death and separation from God—by Christ's death and resurrection, and the justification entailed by this salvation.
Pauline Christianity or Pauline theology, otherwise referred to as Gentile Christianity, is the theology and form of Christianity which developed from the beliefs and doctrines espoused by the Hellenistic-Jewish Apostle Paul through his writings and those New Testament writings traditionally attributed to him. Paul's beliefs were rooted in the earliest Jewish Christianity, but they deviated from this Jewish Christianity in their emphasis on inclusion of the Gentiles into God's New Covenant and in his rejection of circumcision as an unnecessary token of upholding the Mosaic Law.
Two names and a variety of titles are used to refer to Jesus in the New Testament. In Christianity, the two names Jesus and Emmanuel that refer to Jesus in the New Testament have salvific attributes. After the crucifixion of Jesus the early Church did not simply repeat his messages, but focused on him, proclaimed him, and tried to understand and explain his message. One element of the process of understanding and proclaiming Jesus was the attribution of titles to him. Some of the titles that were gradually used in the early Church and then appeared in the New Testament were adopted from the Jewish context of the age, while others were selected to refer to, and underscore the message, mission and teachings of Jesus. In time, some of these titles gathered significant Christological significance.
In Christian theology, universal reconciliation is the doctrine that all sinful and alienated human souls—because of divine love and mercy—will ultimately be reconciled to God. The doctrine has been rejected by most mainstream Christian churches, which tend to maintain at least the possibility that many are not saved, but it has received support from many prestigious Christian thinkers as well as many groups of Christians. It has been argued that the Bible itself has a variety of verses that seem to support a plurality of views.
Theocentrism is the belief that God is the central aspect to existence, as opposed to anthropocentrism, existentialism and sentientism. In this view, meaning and value of actions done to people or the environment are attributed to God. The tenets of theocentrism, such as humility, respect, moderations, selflessness, and mindfulness, can lend themselves towards a form of environmentalism. In modern theology, theocentrism is often linked with stewardship and environmental ethics or Creation care. It is the belief that human beings should look after the world as guardians and therefore in the way God wants them to. Humans should be considerate to all, from animals to plants to humans themselves. It maintains that human beings are merely here for a short time and should be looking after the world for future generations.
Trinitarian universalism is a variant of belief in universal salvation, the belief that every person will be saved, that also held the Christian belief in Trinitarianism. It was particularly associated with an ex-Methodist New England minister, John Murray, and after his death in 1815 the only clergy known to be preaching Trinitarian Universalism were Paul Dean of Boston and Edward Mitchell in New York.
In Christian theology, Hell is the place or state into which, by God's definitive judgment, unrepentant sinners pass in the general judgment, or, as some Christians believe, immediately after death. Its character is inferred from teaching in the biblical texts, some of which, interpreted literally, have given rise to the popular idea of Hell. Theologians today generally see Hell as the logical consequence of rejecting union with God and with God's justice and mercy.
The doctrine of the Trinity, considered the core of Christian theology by Trinitarians, is the result of continuous exploration by the church of the biblical data, thrashed out in debate and treatises, eventually formulated at the First Council of Nicaea in AD 325 in a way they believe is consistent with the biblical witness, and further refined in later councils and writings. The most widely recognized Biblical foundations for the doctrine's formulation are in the Gospel of John, which possess ideas reflected in Platonism and Greek philosophy.
Penal substitution is a theory of the atonement within Protestant Christian theology, which declares that Christ, voluntarily submitting to God the Father's plan, was punished (penalized) in the place of (substitution) sinners, thus satisfying the demands of justice and propitiation, so God can justly forgive sins making us at one with God (atonement). It began with the German Reformation leader Martin Luther and continued to develop within the Calvinist tradition as a specific understanding of substitutionary atonement. The penal model teaches that the substitutionary nature of Jesus' death is understood in the sense of a substitutionary fulfilment of legal demands for the offenses of sins.
The pre-existence of Christ asserts the existence of Christ prior to his incarnation as Jesus. One of the relevant Bible passages is John 1:1–18 where, in the Trinitarian interpretation, Christ is identified with a pre-existent divine hypostasis called the Logos. There are nontrinitarian views that question the aspect of personal pre-existence, the aspect of divinity, or both.
Christian theology is the theology – the systematic study of the divine and religion – of Christianity and Christian belief and practice. It concentrates primarily upon the texts of the Old Testament and of the New Testament, as well as on Christian tradition. Christian theologians use biblical exegesis, rational analysis and argument. Theologians may undertake the study of Christian theology for a variety of reasons, such as in order to:
Christian theology sometimes refers to Jesus using the title Redeemer or Saviour. This refererences the salvation he accomplished, and is based on the metaphor of redemption, or "buying back". In the New Testament, redemption can refer both to deliverance from sin and to freedom from captivity.
Eternal life traditionally refers to continued life after death, as outlined in Christian eschatology. The Apostles' Creed testifies: "I believe... the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting." In this view, eternal life commences after the second coming of Jesus and the resurrection of the dead, although in the New Testament's Johannine literature there are references to eternal life commencing in the earthly life of the believer, possibly indicating an inaugurated eschatology.
The Church Fathers, Early Church Fathers, Christian Fathers, or Fathers of the Church were ancient and influential Christian theologians and writers who established the intellectual and doctrinal foundations of Christianity. The historical period in which they worked became known as the Patristic Era and spans approximately from the late 1st to mid-8th centuries, flourishing in particular during the 4th and 5th centuries, when Christianity was in the process of establishing itself as the state church of the Roman Empire.
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