THE PERSON AND WORKS OF JESUS CHRIST

FIRST LECTURE (11TH SEPTEMBER, 2024) – Rev. Ransford Kwakye (T. A)

Theology is faith seeking understanding by Anselm.

The foundation of the Christian faith is Jesus Christ (1 Pet. 2;4-8, Eph. 2:20-22). Peter describes Jesus as the
living stone and the cornerstone on which every structure of the faith stand. Therefore the actions and inactions
of the church and the decisions of believers must be hinged on the person and works of Jesus Christ. Our
“understanding of Christ must be central and determinative of the very character of the Christian faith” and this
is from Millard Erickson in his book introducing Christian doctrine in page 206. Hence it is appropriate for
believers to have indebt understanding of him. Our enquiry into the person and works of Jesus begins from and
ends with the witness of scripture. The witness of scripture is not ambiguous about the person and works of
Jesus Christ. However, historically unraveling the person of Jesus Christ came with several controversies,
several heretical (heresies, unorthodox) views about Jesus Christ including Ebionism, Arianism, Apollinarism,
Docetism etc. These have portrayed Jesus as a unique person not possessing either a divine or a physical nature
but significant biblical passage clearly indicate that this is not the case as earlier indicated. In theology, the
doctrine of Christ is termed as Christology. The doctrine consist of the study of the person and works of Jesus
Christ, thus who was or is He Jesus Christ and what does He do. The quest to study Jesus Christ could have
been engendered or caused by Jesus himself when he asked his disciples at Caesarea Philippi but who do you
say that I am Mark 8:29. However, this question follows an earlier question Jesus Christ asked “who do people
say I am”. The Christological question is therefore a question which no generation will outgrow for Jesus
speaks to every generation. Therefore the question which faces every age or generation today is who is Jesus
Christ for us today. The early church tried to answer this who is Jesus Christ to us today with the doctrine of
incarnation. John 1:14 puts it that Jesus Christ as the logos or God in the flesh. In john 1:1, John identified the
word with “theos” which is God.

What is the Logos?

Before the term logos was used by John, it had been used by Greek philosophers in 100 of years for example
Heraclitus who lived around 500 BC used it for the first time as “a principle of cosmic interpretation”, that is a
means of explaining and interpreting the world. For him the cosmos was in ceaseless change. He said you could
not step into the same water twice. According to him what is spoilt is always changed. Hence the order we see
the universe according to these philosophers if we look at things or the universe there is order in it which might
have been brought about by a certain force or agent or element. There was a debate whether this force or

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element is water, wind, air or fire. According to these philosophers, that which regulated and controlled the
universe was called the logos. The logos was the reason or intelligent that all things under orderly control. It
made everything happen in life and brought orderliness in the universe. The concept which was logos was used
by the proponents by all philosophers including Platoism, Aristotelianism, Stoicism, Alexandria Jewish
philosopher called Philo. Philo used the logos as a vehicle for communicating Jewish religions ideas to his
contemporaries. For Philo, logos acted as an intermediary between God and the universe (it is Gods agent or
instrument in creation but the logos is not God). He added that it also a means by which men understand. By the
time John‟s gospel was written, both Greek and Jewish philosophers agreed that the invisible universe was the
expression of Gods reasoning. This divine reasoning was the force and urgency of creation. It was the logos
who said let there be and there was. But John was the first person to boldly equate this reasoning with God
Himself and at the same time saw it‟s incarnate in Christ. So for John the logos was not an unseen force but a
person Jesus Christ and pointed these philosophers to Jesus Christ.

SECOND LECTURE (18TH SEPTEMBER, 2024) – Very Rev. Prof. Emmanuel Martey

God take preferential option treatment for the oppressed. He chose Israel not because they were sinless but
because they were oppressed. The church should be a sacrament of liberation, or it must be a sign of liberation.

In theology, the doctrine of Christ is referred to as Christology. Etymologically derived from two Greek words
“christos” and logos. Christos meaning Christ to transliterate Christos and its logos. Christology can be divided
into two, namely the person of Christ and the work of Christ. The person of Christ which deals with who Christ
is and two the work of Christ which also deals with what Christ has done. Conventionally, Christology was
restricted to that branch of the inquiry which addresses itself to the person of Christ as distinct from the work of
Christ which is the subject of soteriology or the atonement which means the work of Christ culminating the
work of Christ on the cross or at Calvary. However, Christology is the science (signs) whose object is the
person and works of Christ. As Oscar Cullmann has pointed out “the new testament hardly ever speaks of the
person of Christ without at the same time speaking of His work even the prologue to the gospel of John
connects the one statement that „the logos was with God and the logos was God‟ immediately with the second
statement that through this logos all things were made”. (Every theology is a situational theology. It must be
contextualized, it must speak penitently). Because of this interconnectedness some have argued or puzzled that
“Christ was who he was because of what he did or Christ did what he did because of who He was”. There are
full range of different views that center on both the person and works of Jesus Christ, some of which have been
declared as heresies or false teachings and therefore have been rejected by the church.

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Who is Jesus Christ: the Christological question emerged for the first time during the lifetime of Jesus when in
mark 8:27 at Caesarea Philippi He Jesus posed a question “who do people say that I am”. Doubtedly this is a
question which confront every generation and no generation can outgrow this.. After the disciple told Jesus
what others have said about him, he asked them a direct question “but who do you say that I am” so that in the
final analysis it is NOT what others say about Jesus but rather everyone must give his or her own personal
answer to make his or her own personal confession. The Christological question is therefore a question which
no age will outgrow for Jesus speaks pertinently to the concerns of every generation, thus the question which
face every age and every generation is “who is Jesus Christ for us today. This question “who is Jesus Christ is a
question of Christology which the early church since the NT time also sought to answer. The early church
answered this question with its doctrine of incarnation “and the logos became flesh and dwell among us” (John
1:14). So John identified the logos with God (John 1:1).

THIRD LECTURE (25TH SEPTEMBER, 2024) – Very Rev. Prof. Emmanuel Martey

The church that is called by Christ is evangelical, charismatic, apostolic.

The early Christians therefore saw Jesus Christ as the climax of God‟s revelation and the writers of the NT
considered Christ as pre-existent compare John 1:1 and attributed to him a two-fold order or being that He was
fully human “according to the flesh” that is “kata Sarka” and fully divine “according to the spirit” that is “Kata
Pneuma”. In other words they ascribe to Him as to Christ two natures, human and divine. This two-fold order or
nature the human and the divine became the point of departure and criterion for all later Christological
discussion. Therefore questions about Jesus revolve most importantly around the issues of his humanity and
nature. The task of Christian doctrine of Christ Jesus or of theology thus became how to hold the two
dimensions or nature together in a single person. How can Jesus Christ be considered both human and divine at
the same time. This is what is referred to as the Christological problem that has occupied the churches thought
for many years‟ even centuries. In the first three centuries of the church, formulations of who Jesus Christ was
were not all that explicit. In attempt to explain who Jesus was, in these early times certain trends or movement
arose whose teachings were to be judged later as heretical (what the church accepted was orthodoxy that is the
right way). These arose among both Jewish and Hellenistic Christians. But these early trends tended to have
only “one sided” solution to the Christological problem that is if the problem was to be described in terms of the
two dimensions of Jesus humanity and divinity. Among Jewish Christians, a trend that arose was Ebionism and
among the Hellenistic Christians it was called Docetism (Acts 6). To these we now term the Jewish heretics

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EBIONISM

It was one of the earliest Christian groups or teaching that denied the divinity and deity of Jesus Christ. The
group probably derived its name from the Hebrew word for poor that is “Ebyonim” meaning the poor or poor
people. It was an early Jewish heretical Christian sect which began in the first and second centuries and
persisted until the 7th century compared to Roman 15:26. However, there were some people who thought that
there was a personality behind this group. However, Tertullian and Hypolytus connected the name to members
of the group to one Ebion as their founder but the mostly held view is that it comes from the Hebrew word for
poor

FOURTH LECTURE (2ND OCTOBER, 2024) – Very Rev. Prof. Emmanuel Martey

Beliefs and Teachings of the Ebionism

1. In their belief, the Ebionites did not accept fully the divinity of Jesus. Being Jesus, they were passionately
monotheistic. That God is one was the foundation of Jewish religion and their way of life (compare the shema
Deut. 6). Jesus himself affirmed this belief Mark 12:29. Therefore these first Jewish convert to Christianity
found it difficult if not impossible to accept the idea that Jesus is another God.

2. The Ebionites held that Jesus was a normal human being a Jewish child of joseph the carpenter and therefore
referred to Jesus “the son of the carpenter” and the mother Mary whom they knew very well and might not have
seen anything supernatural about her. They therefore rejected the virgin birth that is parthenogenesis
etymologically derived from Greek meaning “birth from a virgin”, parthenos means virgin and genesis means
beginning. For them therefore Jesus was born like any human being.

3. They practiced strict obedience to the Law of Moses and rejected Pauline interpretation of the gospel
especially his teachings on Greeks.

4. They accepted Jesus as the awaited Messiah but was not regarded as God. They believed the Holy Spirit
descended on Jesus at his baptism at which time his Messiahship was given to him by Elijah in the form of John
the Baptist. So they regarded Jesus as a deified man and which came to be known as Adoptionism teaching that
Jesus was adopted as a Messiah at his baptism. (Read more about Ebionism)

DOCETISM

Docetism moves in the opposite direction from Ebionism eliminating and rejecting the humanity of Jesus.
Docetism is derived from the Greek “Dokein” meaning to appear or to seem. Docetism held the belief that Jesus

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was too divine to suffer agony and death and that he only “seemed” or appeared to do so (for them God does not
die). Docetists teach that Jesus Christ had no freshly existence but visited the world in human semblance
without been corrupted by matter or materiality. Therefore in this view Jesus humanity and suffering were not
real, they were only phantasms. That is having no physical reality, just a mental impression of a real person or
thing. Docetism is thus a simplest solution to the Christological problem. The NT attacks those Docetist who
refuse to “confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh” (1 John 4:2). Their rejection of Jesus humanity arose
from the Greek views that flesh or historical existence or matter is corrupt and unreal therefore to participate in
it means derogatory to the divine. A famous docetic saying was that when Jesus walked on the beach he left no
foot print, another docetic saying is what is given in the NT apocryphal book called the acts of John “AD 170 to
180” which describe Jesus as appearing to John on the mount of Olives while His body was been crucified
across the valley. Docetism is opposed both in the NT and in the writings of the early church fathers for
example the gospel of John opposes it when it insist upon the realities of Jesus death in John 19:33-35.

FIFTH LECTURE (9TH OCTOBER, 2024) – Very Rev. Prof. Emmanuel Martey

Justin Martyr writing of Docetism said “there are some who declare that Jesus Christ did not come in the flesh
but only as spirit and exhibited an appearance of the flesh”. Early traces of this docetic view are found in the NT
itself especially in the first epistle of John 2:18-19 4:2-3, 5:5-6, 9, Matthew 1:1 (begotten, the root word is
begets and it is a male expression or masculine word eg: Abraham was the father or beget Isaac). John 1:12
(create and make, sounds synonymous. Human beings make cars. Human beings begets human beings, animals
begets animals therefore God begets God. Jesus was the only one who was begotten). Romans 8:14 (two ways
to become a child of God, first is to be given the authority by Jesus by believing in Him, the other way by those
who are led by the Spirit of God, empowerment of the Spirit of God can also make you a child of God). Psalm
8:5, Hebrew 1:14 (Angels are ministering spirits who are sent to serve those who inherit salvation and those
who believe in Jesus Christ and those empowered by the Holy Spirit and we are not to serve them). Hebrews
5:11-14, 1 Cor. 1:18-20.

Docetism is also opposed in the letters of Ignatious (AD 110-117) who declares that Christ suffering was real
not merely semblance and that the Docetist themselves are but semblance. Docetism had much in common with
Gnosticism but eventually became a distinct sect.

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SIXTH LECTURE (16TH OCTOBER, 2024) – Very Rev. Prof. Emmanuel Martey

The Marcionites

Marcion died AD in 160was a native of sinope on the black sea in Pontus who went to Rome in C. 140 and
joined the church but was ex-communicated in AD144. He then organized his followers throughout the Roman
Empire. Marcion‟s central thesis was that the Christian gospel was wholly a gospel of love to the exclusion of
the law. He therefore rejected the Old Testament and from this Pauline doctrine of law and gospel he
extraculated that is concluded two deities a just God depicted in the Old Testament was an inferior and
antagonistic to the merciful and loving God of the NT. This is the greater God the Demiurge. There is also a
good God who was revealed in Jesus Christ. According to Marcion this loving and merciful God was unknown
until revealed by Jesus the true Christ not the messiah of the Jews. According to Marcion the OT inferior God
demanded “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth”. The other God apart from the OT God “to him that
mightiest …on one click, turn the other”. The former could say “I create evil” (darkness) (Isaiah 4.., compare
Amos 3:6 and since a good tree could not bring forth evil fruit such a God could not himself be good. For
Marcion, the Revealer of the true God was misunderstood by all and was crucified only God properly
understood Him and he too fell prey to Jewish machination. Marcion does attempted to purify Christianity from
all contact with Judaism.

He says no one put a new wine into old wine skin. For Marcion it was only the apostle Paul who fully
understood the contrast of the law and grace and all the rest of the apostle and evangelist were largely branded
to the truth be remnants of Jewish influence. Thus for him, the only authoritative holy writings were ten of the
Pauline epistle (excluding the pastoral epistles that is 1 & 2 Tim and Titus which either he rejected or he did not
know) and an edited version of the Luke‟s gospel. He therefore formed the first Christian canon of scripture
(which in tend force the church to act) like other Gnostics Marcions Christology was Docetism. Marcionites
churches were noted for their ethical rigor Ascetism and mataia heroism and they posed continuous challenge to
orthodox leaders into the fourth and fifth centuries. The term Marcionites is used in modern theology to
describe interpretations of Christianity which undervalue and misunderstand the place of the Old Testament in
Christian revelation for example Rudolf Bultmann‟s assertion that “for the Christian faith the OT is not in the
true sense of God‟s word” is to be seen in this life.

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SEVENTH LECTURE (23RD OCTOBER, 2024) – Very Rev. Prof. Emmanuel Martey

Apollinarianism

Apollinarious or Apollinaris C.310 to C (lived around) 390 was a bishop of Laodicea in Syria in the late fourth
century. Apolloniarism is a name given to the theological system of Apollinarious. He was a friend of
Athanasius. And in his early days an opponent of Arianism. Apollinarious agreed with Athanasius that the Son
while distinct from the Father is eternally begotten of the Father and homoosious (of the same substance or
being) with the Father. The question then arose as to how this eternal Son who was homoosious with the Father
could at the same time be truly human. To Apollinarious it seems impossible that Christ humanity should
remain same as that of all other human beings if the divine logos was incarnate in Christ and became the
directing principle of his human life. It was held at the time that the directing principle of the human beings was
the mind (the nous) and it was this aspect of anthropological make-up which led human beings to sin.
Apollinarious therefore argued that if Christ had assumed human mind he could not have saved or occupied by
the divine laws. Therefore, Apollinarianism like Arianism had a soteriological interest and then and so
taught that the presence of human mind disqualifies Jesus Christ to be our savior since the mind was
thought of as the source of human sinfulness but the church saw the whole issue differently. To the church it
was rather the presence of a human mind in Christ which makes him qualified to be our savior and expressing
the orthodox position. Gregory of Nazianzus said that what he did not assume he did not heal, that is what is not
assumed is not redeemed. Apollinarious‟s idea was anathematized and his teachings condemned by synods of
the church, first at Rome in AD 377, Antioch AD378, Constanipole AD 381, Rome AD382, and Chalcedon in
AD 451. But particularly, that of Constantinople in AD 381 (it was there that the creed of Nicene was finally
settled) after the death of Constantinople the movement became extinct. Apollinarious was accused by the
Cappadocians of the Docetism since he made Jesus Christ only seen to be true human version. He denied Jesus‟
humanity and accepted only his divinity because of this Apollinarious followers were called monophysites
meaning “one nature” since they saw Jesus as having only a single nature.

Monophycism and Dyophysitism

Monophycism: They believe that Christ had only one united and single nature divine and human which
constituted one and only composite being or nature.

Dyopysitism: It is the belief that Christ had two separate natures, human and divine inextricably united in the
one person.

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EIGHTH LECTURE (23RD OCTOBER, 2024) – Very Rev. Prof. Emmanuel Martey

[John 9:1-4 (Write a paragraph of what theodicy means, to be submitted next week)]

Biblical Background to Christology (the Person and Works of Jesus Christ)

The writers of the NT do not present us with either unified picture of Jesus or an intellectually developed
statement of who Jesus is rather they used titles, and ideas to demonstrate the different experiences each had
with Jesus (Likely exams question: Who is Jesus Christ for you). There are therefore many Christological
thoughts in the bible and as the early church sought to develop its understanding of who Jesus was, it appealed
to the diverse elements in the NT and also attempted to see how all these differences fit into a larger more
unified pattern. Broadly speaking, the bible present the incarnate Christ as having two natures; human and
divine. Although He is one person, the writers of the NT saw Jesus as having both human and divine natures.
Jesus is human but also God. (Acts 10:38)

The two natures of Jesus Christ include:

1. The Humanity of Jesus

The early disciples of Jesus did not doubt the humanity of their master. He lived, walked and talked among
them like any other human person. The realities of life such as hunger, and thirst, fatigue, pain and suffering as
well death were all real to Him.

NB: (1Cor. 15:3-9, Mark 3:13-19, Heb. 3:1-3, Matthew 10:16). The first reason why Jesus calls us is to
establish relationship with Him, that is He knowing you inside out and you also knowing Him inside out. The
second reason why He calls us is into ministry and we have different kinds of ministries such as the teaching,
evangelism, pastoring ministry etc. The third reason is to have authority that is exousia or power. Mark 16:17,
Luke 10:19.