Christians call Jesus fully God and fully human; agreeing how took until 451
For most Christians, Jesus is the promised Messiah, the Son of God and the second person of the Trinity, whose death and resurrection open the way to salvation. How one person could be both divine and human sparked centuries of argument, settled for many churches at the Council of Chalcedon in 451.
The title Christ translates the Jewish idea of the anointed Messiah foretold in the Old Testament. By the time Paul wrote his letters, the word was so firmly attached to Jesus that he could use phrases like in Christ to mean believers without explanation. The Gospel of Mark opens by calling him both Christ and Son of God, and the New Testament applies the Son of God title repeatedly, from the Annunciation to the crucifixion.
Christian teaching frames his life through a handful of milestones: baptism, transfiguration, crucifixion, resurrection and ascension, bookended by the nativity and the sending of the Holy Spirit. Believers hold that he ascended to God 40 days after rising and will return for a final judgement. Paul cast him as a second Adam: where the first man disobeyed and brought sin into the world, Jesus obeyed and undid the damage. The second-century writer Irenaeus developed the idea that Jesus restarted the human line afresh.
Defining his nature was the harder task. The Gospel of John identifies him with the Logos, the divine Word present from the beginning, which became central to the doctrine of his pre-existence and divinity. From the 2nd century onward, debates raged over how the human and divine fit together. In 451 the Council of Chalcedon declared a hypostatic union, one person with two complete natures. Not everyone accepted it: monophysite Christians rejected the two-natures formula, and nontrinitarian groups vary on whether Christ existed before his birth.
Christian sources also say something about the historical setting. Jesus grew up in Galilee and most scholars agree he taught mainly in the Galilean dialect of Aramaic. Luke states he was about 30 when his ministry began, which has been estimated at around AD 27 to 29, ending somewhere between AD 30 and 36. The gospels mention him wearing tzitzit, the tassels on a prayer shawl, but otherwise describe nothing of his appearance.
Source: Jesus in Christianity
