title: Home Alone 4: Taking Back the House

text: As the mansion is prepared for a party for the royal family's arrival, Peter and Natalie go to pick them up, while Kevin notices Marv and Vera disguised as caterers. He traps Mr. Prescott in the freezer, overhears Marv and Vera's plan to kidnap the prince for ransom, and forces them out of a window. The royal family is unable to attend the party because their flight was canceled, so Peter and Natalie decide to announce their engagement instead. Marv and Vera run back into the house and pursue Kevin, who accidentally ruins the party by running into the guests and knocking over an ice sculpture that turns out to be a frozen Mr. Prescott. Angered, Peter sends Kevin to his room, refusing to believe his story and accusing him of trying to sabotage his relationship with Natalie, who threatens to evict him if he misbehaves again.


title: Home Alone 4: Taking Back the House

text: Taking matters into his own hands, Kevin sets up booby traps for Marv and Vera. The next morning, the duo head to the house after Peter and Natalie go to pick up the royals. Kevin tricks and locks Mr. Prescott in the basement, but eventually discovers Marv and Vera's real ally is Molly, who is also Marv's mother. Kevin gets locked in the basement with Mr. Prescott, who admits that he turned off the cameras during the initial break-in as he was taking an unscheduled break from his duties because he despises Natalie, let alone working for her; he and Kevin then apologize for misjudging each other. After several failed attempts to call Kate, Kevin escapes via the house's dumbwaiter and temporarily traps Marv underneath it. Marv and Vera pursue Kevin through the house, where they spring the traps and suffer various injuries, while Molly gets trapped in the house's elevator.


title: Home Alone 4: Taking Back the House

text: At the airport, Peter suspects that something is wrong back at the house with Kevin and takes a cab back to Natalie's to check on him. Kate, Buzz, and Megan also drive to the mansion due to the suspicious nature of the calls received by Kevin himself and Molly. Kevin uses an altered recording of Marv's voice to provoke an argument between him and Vera, and knocks them down a flight of stairs with a remote-controlled plane. The duo is then tricked by Kevin with a secret wall switch, ends up being launched onto a chandelier, and are knocked unconscious by their fall. Molly, having escaped, grabs Kevin, but is quickly knocked out by Mr. Prescott who also escaped via the dumbwaiter shaft and calls the police.


title: Home Alone 4: Taking Back the House

text: As Peter, Kate, Buzz, and Megan arrive, Kevin — with Buzz and Megan's help — prevents a final escape attempt from Marv and Vera. The royal family and Natalie arrive, and the offenders' plot to kidnap the prince is revealed to Natalie's shock. Mr. Prescott, per Kevin's advice, resigns from his position as her butler. Realizing that their relationship was built on infatuation rather than love and was affecting his responsibilities as a husband and father, Peter breaks up with Natalie, and reconciles with Kate and their children. Grateful to Kevin for his foiling of the kidnapping plot, the royals spend Christmas with the newly-reunited McCallisters, devastating Natalie as Kevin and Prescott give the commands for music to play and snow to fall.


title: Home Alone 4: Taking Back the House

text: Daniel Stern, who previously portrayed Marv Murchins in the first two "Home Alone" films was approached to reprise his role, but declined after reading the original script.


title: Home Alone 4: Taking Back the House

text: In November 2020, Disney began to feature the first three "Home Alone" films on their streaming service Disney+ in celebration of the first film's 30th anniversary. The fourth and fifth installments were released on HBO Max and were added to Disney+ on December 17, 2021.


title: Home Alone 4: Taking Back the House

text: Clint Morris at Moviehole gave the film one out of five stars, writing, "From the unappealing cheapish opening titles to the murky production values, it's immediately obvious "Home Alone 4" isn't playing in the same park as its beloved predecessor... sad". Joly Herman of Common Sense Media also rated the film one out of five stars and wrote, "recycled gags with none of the original's charm". Jerry Roberts of Armchair Media gave the film one out of four stars. Sue Robinson of Radio Times gave the film one out of five stars, writing that, "you have to wonder why they bothered".


title: Home Alone 4: Taking Back the House

text: On March 15, 2012, ABC Family announced that "Home Alone: The Holiday Heist" was in production, which premiered on that network during the 2012 Christmas season. The film stars Christian Martyn as the 10-year-old main character Finn Baxter. The story centers on the family's relocation from California to Maine, where Finn becomes convinced that his new house is haunted. When his parents become stranded across town and Finn is left home alone with his older sister Alexis, he sets traps to catch his new home's ghosts, which instead prove troublesome for a group of thieves (played by Malcolm McDowell, Debi Mazar, and Eddie Steeples). The film also stars Edward Asner, is produced by Fox Television Studios, and is directed by Peter Hewitt.


title: National People's Party (India)

text: The National People's Party is a national-level political party in India, though its influence is mostly concentrated in the state of Meghalaya. The party was founded by P. A. Sangma after his expulsion from the NCP in July 2012. It was accorded national party status on 7 June 2019. It is the first political party from Northeastern India to have attained this status.


title: National People's Party (India)

text: In January 2013, P. A. Sangma launched the party on the national level. He announced that his party would be in alliance with the National Democratic Alliance led by Bharatiya Janta Party. Sangma also reiterated that though the membership of the party is open to all, it shall be a tribalcentric party.


title: National People's Party (India)

text: Sangma who has been a nine-time Member of Parliament, had announced to form a new political party soon after his expulsion from the Nationalist Congress Party in July 2012, when he refused to accept party decision to quit the 2012 Indian presidential election. NPP contested the assembly election of Rajasthan in December 2013, under the leadership of Kirodi Lal Meena, a former BJP member and MP (Independent from Dausa) at the time of election and won four seats.


title: National People's Party (India)

text: Currently it is a part of North-East Democratic Alliance consisting of political parties of the northeast which has supported the National Democratic Alliance.


title: National People's Party (India)

text: In 2015, in a rare move election commission has suspended NPP for its failure to provide party's expenditure during Lok Sabha Elections held in 2014. NPP became first party to get suspended by EC.


title: National People's Party (India)

text: In September 2015, the leaders of six parties—Samajwadi Party, Nationalist Congress Party, Jan Adhikar Party, Samras Samaj Party, National People's Party and Samajwadi Janata Party announced the formation of a third front known as the Socialist Secular Morcha. National People's Party is fighting on 3 seats as part of Socialist Secular Morcha in 2015 Bihar Legislative Assembly election.


title: National People's Party (India)

text: In May 2016, after the Bharatiya Janata Party led National Democratic Alliance formed its first government in Assam, and formed a new alliance called the North-East Democratic Alliance (NEDA) with Himanta Biswa Sarma as its convener. The Chief Ministers of the north eastern states of Sikkim, Assam and Nagaland too belong to this alliance. Thus, the National People's Party joined the BJP-led NEDA.


title: National People's Party (India)

text: The NPP won 19 seats in the 2018 Meghalaya Legislative Assembly election. Although the ruling Indian National Congress emerged as the single largest party, the NEDA collectively held a majority. Conrad Sangma thus became Chief Minister, becoming the first member of the party to lead an Indian state.


title: National People's Party (India)

text: Its election symbol is a book. The significance for the same is that the party believes that only literacy and education can empower the weaker sections.


title: National People's Party (India)

text: The party won a seat in 2014 Loksabha elections from Tura and Sangma became MP. After the death of P. A. Sangma, from this seat his son Conrad Sangma won by-election held in May 2016. The party had proposed to contest election and expand its base in tribal constituencies of Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, north West Bengal and the Northeast India.


title: National People's Party (India)

text: In March 2018, the party won 19 out of 60 assembly seats in the Meghalaya Legislative Assembly election 2018 and formed government in the state in coalition with BJP and other parties and party president Conrad Sangma sworn in as Chief Minister of the state. In May 2018, the party won Williamnagar Assembly seat in a by-election making its tally to 20 out of 60 assembly seats in Meghalaya Legislative Assembly.


title: Dabo Swinney

text: William Christopher "Dabo" Swinney (; born November 20, 1969) is an American football coach, currently serving as the head coach at Clemson University. Swinney took over midway through the 2008 season, following the resignation of Tommy Bowden. Swinney has led them to national championships in 2016 and 2018, and trails only Frank Howard for the most wins by a head coach in Clemson history. On September 8, 2022, Swinney signed a new contract extension that keeps him the head coach of the Clemson Tigers through the 2031 football season and pays him $115 million over the duration of the contract. This makes him the second-highest paid college football coach, behind only Nick Saban.


title: Dabo Swinney

text: Swinney was raised in Pelham, Alabama, and attended the University of Alabama, where he joined the Crimson Tide football program as a walk-on wide receiver in 1989. He earned a scholarship and lettered on three teams (1990–1992), including the Crimson Tide's 1992 National Championship team. During his time as an undergraduate at Alabama, Swinney was twice named an Academic All-SEC and SEC Scholar Athlete Honor Roll member. In three seasons at Alabama, he caught 7 passes for 81 yards. He received his degree in commerce and business administration in 1993 as well as a master's degree in business administration from Alabama in 1995. Swinney was involved in Greek Life during college, and was initiated as a brother of the Pi Kappa Alpha.


title: Dabo Swinney

text: While completing work on his MBA, Swinney served as a graduate assistant at Alabama under Gene Stallings.


title: Dabo Swinney

text: In December 1995, Swinney received his MBA from Alabama and became a full-time assistant coach for the Crimson Tide in charge of wide receivers and tight ends. He retained these posts under Stallings' successor, Mike DuBose. He was fired with all of DuBose's staff in early 2001.


title: Dabo Swinney

text: Swinney sat out the 2001 season while receiving his contractual payments from Alabama. His former strength coach at Alabama, Rich Wingo, had become president of Birmingham-based AIG Baker Real Estate and offered him a job. From April 2001 through February 2003, he did not coach and instead worked for AIG Baker Real Estate on development projects in Alabama.


title: Dabo Swinney

text: In 2002, Tommy Bowden—Swinney's former position coach at Alabama— offered him the position of wide receivers coach at Clemson, and Swinney joined in 2003. He also took over as recruiting coordinator from popular longtime coordinator Rick Stockstill. Swinney proved to be both an excellent wide receivers coach as well as recruiting coordinator, coaching ACC-leading receivers and being named one of the nation's top 25 recruiters in 2007 by Rivals.com.


title: Dabo Swinney

text: Swinney was named the interim head football coach on October 13, 2008, after head coach Tommy Bowden resigned six games into the season. The Tigers had started the year ranked #9 in the preseason polls, but then went 3–3 (1–2 ACC) in their first six games. At the time he was informed of his promotion, he was working with the wide receivers on their upcoming game.


title: Dabo Swinney

text: With a reputation as a top-notch recruiter, Swinney was chosen over Clemson defensive coordinator Vic Koenning (former head coach of Wyoming), and associate head coach Brad Scott (former head coach of South Carolina). Swinney's first actions as interim head coach were to fire offensive coordinator Rob Spence and introduce a new tradition, the "Tiger Walk", where all players and coaches walk through the parking lot outside Memorial Stadium about two hours before a game as they head inside for final game preparations. On October 18, in his first game as interim head coach, the team lost to Georgia Tech 21–17. On November 1, 2008, Swinney claimed his first victory as the Tigers' head coach by defeating Boston College, breaking Clemson's six-game losing streak against the Eagles. On November 29, 2008, Swinney coached Clemson to a 31–14 win over South Carolina in the annual rivalry game, after which Clemson became bowl eligible. After a vote of confidence from athletic director Terry Don Phillips, Swinney was formally named as Clemson's 27th head coach on December 1, 2008. In his first game as the full-time head coach, he lost the 2009 Gator Bowl to the Nebraska Cornhuskers 26–21.


title: Dabo Swinney

text: Swinney's recruiting reputation became evident when he produced five top-20 ESPN recruiting classes in a row, including top 10 classes in 2011 and 2012. As a result, Clemson was one of only 10 schools to be ranked in the top 20 of recruiting five years in a row (along with LSU, Alabama, Texas, USC, Florida, Georgia, Florida State, Ohio State, and Oklahoma), and as of 2014 Swinney was one of only four active head coaches at the time to accomplish the feat (along with Nick Saban, Les Miles, and Bob Stoops).


title: Dabo Swinney

text: Despite his recruiting reputation, Swinney was an unpopular hire among some Clemson fans. Some fans and pundits noted that he had never been more than a position coach. Others were skeptical that Clemson had opted to retain one of Bowden's assistants.


title: Dabo Swinney

text: During the 2009 season, which was Swinney's first full season at the helm, Clemson achieved several accomplishments. The 2009 team finished the season with a record of 9–5 (6–2 in ACC) to win the Atlantic Division title of the Atlantic Coast Conference. The 2009 season included three marquee wins: a win over #8 Miami (FL) in overtime on the road, a 16-point win over Florida State at home, and a win over Kentucky 21–13 in the 2009 Music City Bowl. Swinney coached the Clemson Tigers to a #24 AP Top 25 final season ranking for the 2009 football season.


title: Dabo Swinney

text: In 2010, Swinney led Clemson to a 6–6 (4–4 in ACC) regular season. Of the 6 losses in the 2010 season, 5 were by less than 10 points and 4 were by 6 points or less. The season included close losses to Cam Newton and the eventual national champion Auburn Tigers (27–24 on the road in OT), and the eventual division champion Florida State Seminoles (16–13 on a 55-yard, time-expiring field goal on the road). After the conclusion of the regular season, many fans called for the firing of both Swinney and athletic director Terry Don Phillips. Swinney would say years later he expected to be fired after the regular season ended with a loss to South Carolina. Phillips instead gave Swinney another vote of confidence and allowed him to return for the 2011 season. Discontent with Swinney grew even more after a bowl loss to South Florida made Clemson's final record 6–7, Clemson's first losing season since 1998. Swinney, who was 19–15, entered the 2011 season widely considered to be a coach on the hot seat. Despite a disappointing 6–7 record, the 2010 team featured one of the nation's top defenses and the Bronko Nagurski and Ted Hendricks award winner, Da'Quan Bowers.


title: Dabo Swinney

text: In 2011, Swinney led the Tigers to a 10–3 record that included an ACC Championship, the Tigers' first since 1991. They earned a trip to the Orange Bowl, their first major-bowl appearance since the 1981 national championship season. During a pre-game ESPN interview prior to the 2012 Orange Bowl, Swinney said, "Hopefully when this thing is over, people are going to be talking about the Clemson defense." The comment proved to be prescient as #15 Clemson went on to lose to the #23 West Virginia Mountaineers, 70–33, conceding an all-time record number of points scored in a quarter (35), half (49) and game (70) in the 109-year history of bowl games. Defensive coordinator Kevin Steele was fired after the game.


title: Dabo Swinney

text: Part of Swinney's success the past three years was the 2011 offensive coordinator hire of Chad Morris, who was originally seen as a risk as most of his coaching experience had been on the high school level. Morris brought in a fast-paced, up-tempo offense that shattered many Clemson offensive records.


title: Dabo Swinney

text: Swinney was the 2011 winner of the Bobby Dodd Coach of the Year Award, which was established to honor the NCAA Division 1 football coach whose team excels on the field, in the classroom, and in the community. The award is named for Bobby Dodd, longtime head football coach of the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets. The award was established in 1976 to honor the values that Dodd exemplified.


title: Dabo Swinney

text: In 2012, Swinney led Clemson to its first 11-win season since the 1981 national championship year, capping the year off with an upset victory over the #8 LSU Tigers in the Chick-fil-A Bowl. The Tigers finished the year at 11–2, ranked 9th in the Coaches Poll and 11th in the AP poll. Swinney was a finalist for the third time in his career for the Liberty Mutual National Coach of the Year.


title: Dabo Swinney

text: In 2013, Swinney guided the Tigers to their third 10-win season in a row, the first time since 1989. The highlight regular-season win came against #5 Georgia in the season opener. The Tigers won 38–35. Clemson's two regular season losses were to top 10 opponents, national champion Florida State and South Carolina. The 31–17 loss to the rival Gamecocks was a record fifth straight for the Tigers, the longest winning streak for South Carolina in the series. The completion of the season marked 32 wins over three years for Swinney, the most ever in such a span in Clemson football history. The Tigers received their second BCS bowl bid under Swinney with an invitation to play seventh-ranked Ohio State in the 2014 Orange Bowl. The Tigers defeated the Buckeyes 40–35 to give the Tigers' their third Orange Bowl win in their history and their first BCS bowl victory. The 2013 season marked the first time Clemson had back-to-back 11-win seasons. After the game, Swinney recalled the Tigers' lopsided loss two years before in the Orange Bowl and the team's journey since then. "Hey, listen: Two years ago we got our butts kicked on this field. And it has been a journey to get back. We're 22–4 since that night. And we are the first team from the state of South Carolina to ever win a BCS game," Swinney said. The win was Swinney's fourth victory over a top ten opponent as a head coach. The Tigers finished the season ranked in the top 10 in both polls (#8 in AP, #7 in Coaches), the first such achievement for Swinney as head coach.


title: Dabo Swinney

text: Following the season, Swinney agreed to eight-year, $27.15 million contract and guaranteed if Swinney was fired in the next three years.


title: Dabo Swinney

text: Under Swinney, Clemson had their fourth 10-win season in a row, making them one of only four schools to achieve the feat in the last four seasons. The Tigers started the season ranked #16 but suffered early setbacks with losses to #13 Georgia and #1 Florida State. However, with the emergence of freshman quarterback Deshaun Watson, the Tigers only lost one more game to ACC Coastal Division Champion Georgia Tech, which Watson started but did not finish due to injury. The regular season was highlighted with the finale against South Carolina in which Clemson broke a five-game losing streak to the Gamecocks to win 35–17 in Death Valley. Clemson received an invitation to play Oklahoma in the Russell Athletic Bowl on December 29, 2014. Led by Clemson's #1 ranked defense in the nation, the Tigers routed the Sooners 40–6, holding Oklahoma to 275 total yards and forcing five turnovers. Ironically, defensive coordinator Brent Venables had held the same position with the Sooners until coming to Clemson in 2012. The Tigers finished 10–3 for the season and ranked 15th in both the AP and the Coaches Poll.


title: Dabo Swinney

text: Swinney's last three bowl wins have been over college programs that have all won national titles since 2000.


title: Dabo Swinney

text: Swinney completed his then best season as Clemson's head coach in 2015, leading the Tigers to a 14–1 record with an ACC championship and an appearance in the national championship game. Clemson fell short to Alabama in the title game 45-40 after Nick Saban, the head coach of Alabama, surprised Clemson with a successful onside kick. The season marked Clemson's best run since the 1981 national championship season. The Tigers defeated #8 North Carolina 45–37 to win their 15th ACC championship. Clemson also defeated #4 Oklahoma 37–17 in the Orange Bowl for its first college playoff appearance. Swinney was named Associated Press Coach of Year, Walter Camp Coach of the Year, Home Depot Coach of the Year, and the Paul "Bear" Bryant Award. The 2015 Tigers set a record for single-season wins under Swinney with 14. Clemson ended the season ranked #2 in both the Associated Press and Coaches Polls.


title: Dabo Swinney

text: On April 12, 2016, Swinney signed a six-year contract extension with the Tigers. Swinney once again recorded a banner season as Clemson's coach, leading the Tigers to a 12–1 regular season record and another ACC Championship, the third in Swinney's career. Clemson posted big wins during the 2016 season over #3 Louisville at home and #12 Florida State on the road. Their only loss of the year was to the Pitt Panthers, losing on a last second field goal and snapping their 15-game home winning streak. Swinney punctuated the regular season with a 56–7 home victory over arch-rival South Carolina, the largest margin of victory over the Gamecocks in Swinney's career and the largest in over 100 years in the history of the storied rivalry. Following Clemson's ACC title win over #19 Virginia Tech, the Tigers secured the #2 seed in the College Football Playoff. On Dec 31, Swinney and the Tigers defeated #3 Ohio State 31–0 in Ohio State head coach Urban Meyer's first career shut-out to set up a rematch of the 2015 National Championship against #1 Alabama. On January 9, 2017 Swinney led the Tigers to a 35–31 comeback win over Alabama to capture the National Championship.


title: Dabo Swinney

text: Coming off of the national championship season from the year before, Clemson and Swinney looked to fill big shoes with the loss of many offensive starters, including standout quarterback Deshaun Watson who entered the NFL draft. However, the Tigers once again rose to national prominence with a 12-1 regular season record and their third ACC championship in a row. Clemson dominated #7 Miami 38–3 in the ACC championship game and secured the #1 seed in the College Football Playoffs. The Tigers also posted big wins in the season with a 14–6 win over #13 Auburn, a 47–21 victory over #14 Louisville, and a 31–17 win over #12 Virginia Tech. Later in the season, a 24–10 win over Georgia Tech gave Swinney his 97th career win at Clemson, vaulting him past Danny Ford to become the second-winningest coach in school history.


title: Dabo Swinney

text: Swinney capped off the regular season with another convincing win over rival South Carolina, 34–10, marking his fourth win in a row over the Gamecocks. The Tigers faced #4 Alabama in the Sugar Bowl for the first round of the playoffs. Alabama defeated Clemson 24–6. Clemson finished #4 overall in the final standings and were ranked in the top 10 throughout the entire 2017 season.


title: Dabo Swinney

text: The 2018 Tigers, led by true freshman quarterback Trevor Lawrence, finished the season undefeated and won the 2019 College Football Playoff National Championship, defeating Alabama 44–16. Clemson was the first team to go 15–0 in modern history, which led some pundits to say that the 2018 Tigers are the greatest college football team of all time.


title: Dabo Swinney

text: Swinney's 2019 Tigers picked up where the previous year's team left off, running the table, including wins over Southeastern Conference opponents Texas A&M and South Carolina. The one close call came in Week Five, a 21–20 road win over Mack Brown’s North Carolina Tar Heels. They won their final seven regular season games by an average scoring margin of 41.7 points, and their streak of six straight wins by 35 points or more is the longest such streak of the modern era. The 2019 Tigers held all twelve of their regular season opponents under 300 yards of total offense, and they finished the season allowing the fewest points (10.6) and yards (244.7) per game in the country. Swinney won his fifth straight ACC Championship (and sixth overall) with a dismantling of Virginia in the championship game (although they were unable to hold Virginia under 300 yards of total offense [387]). The 62–17 final score brought the above-mentioned streak to seven. On December 8, 2019, Clemson was named the No. 3 seed in the College Football Playoff and slated to meet No. 2-seed Ohio State in the College Football Playoff Semifinal at the Fiesta Bowl. They defeated the Buckeyes, 29–23, to advance to the College Football Playoff National Championship on January 13, 2020. They lost the national title game to the LSU Tigers by a score of 42–25.


title: Dabo Swinney

text: The 2020 Tigers played a shortened schedule due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Tigers finished the regular season with a 9–1 record with the only loss coming to Notre Dame on the road in double overtime. The Tigers avenged that loss, beating Notre Dame in the ACC Championship Game to secure a sixth straight conference crown and a tenth win for a tenth straight season. The season ended with a loss in the 2021 Sugar Bowl, the College Football Playoff Semifinal, to the Ohio State by a score of 49–28.


title: Dabo Swinney

text: Swinney's nickname "Dabo" was given to him as an infant by his brother, Tripp, who would try to enunciate "that boy" when referring to Swinney.


title: Dabo Swinney

text: While a student athlete at the University of Alabama, his mother stayed with him in an apartment off campus after the mother-son team lived in near-homelessness his senior year of high school.


title: Dabo Swinney

text: Swinney converted to Christianity when he was sixteen years old, saying, "And that was a game-changer for me. That’s really become the foundation of my life." Swinney has also said, "Coaching makes some of the things I’ve experienced in my life make sense to me. It allows me to use my life experiences to impact young people and to serve God through what I do. I’m very passionate about seeing young people graduate, mature and develop.".


title: Christian theology

text: Christian theology is the theology of Christian belief and practice. Such study 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:


title: Christian theology

text: Christian theology has permeated much of non-ecclesiastical Western culture, especially in pre-modern Europe, although Christianity is a worldwide religion.


title: Christian theology

text: Christian theology varies significantly across the main branches of Christian tradition: Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant. Each of those traditions has its own unique approaches to seminaries and ministerial formation.


title: Christian theology

text: Systematic theology as a discipline of Christian theology formulates an orderly, rational and coherent account of Christian faith and beliefs. Systematic theology draws on the foundational sacred texts of Christianity, while simultaneously investigating the development of Christian doctrine over the course of history, particularly through philosophical evolution. Inherent to a system of theological thought is the development of a method, one which can apply both broadly and particularly. Christian systematic theology will typically explore:


title: Christian theology

text: Revelation is the revealing or disclosing, or making something obvious through active or passive communication with God, and can originate directly from God or through an agent, such as an angel. A person recognised as having experienced such contact is often called a prophet. Christianity generally considers the Bible as divinely or supernaturally revealed or inspired. Such revelation does not always require the presence of God or an angel. For instance, in the concept which Catholics call interior locution, supernatural revelation can include just an inner voice heard by the recipient.


title: Christian theology

text: Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) first described two types of revelation in Christianity: general revelation and special revelation.


title: Christian theology

text: The Bible contains many passages in which the authors claim divine inspiration for their message or report the effects of such inspiration on others. Besides the direct accounts of written revelation (such as Moses receiving the Ten Commandments inscribed on tablets of stone), the Prophets of the Old Testament frequently claimed that their message was of divine origin by prefacing the revelation using the following phrase: "Thus says the LORD" (for example, 1 Kgs 12:22–24;1 Chr 17:3–4; Jer 35:13; Ezek 2:4; Zech 7:9; etc.). The Second Epistle of Peter claims that "no prophecy of Scripture ... was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit" The Second Epistle of Peter also implies that Paul's writings are inspired (2 Pet 3:16).


title: Christian theology

text: Many Christians cite a verse in Paul's letter to Timothy, 2 Timothy 3:16–17, as evidence that "all scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable ..." Here St. Paul is referring to the Old Testament, since the scriptures have been known by Timothy from "infancy" (verse 15). Others offer an alternative reading for the passage; for example, theologian C. H. Dodd suggests that it "is probably to be rendered" as: "Every inspired scripture is also useful..." A similar translation appears in the New English Bible, in the Revised English Bible, and (as a footnoted alternative) in the New Revised Standard Version. The Latin Vulgate can be so read. Yet others defend the "traditional" interpretation; Daniel B. Wallace calls the alternative "probably not the best translation."


title: Christian theology

text: Some modern English versions of the Bible renders "theopneustos" with "God-breathed" (NIV) or "breathed out by God" (ESV), avoiding the word "inspiration", which has the Latin root "inspīrāre" - "to blow or breathe into".


title: Christian theology

text: Christianity generally regards the agreed collections of books known as the Bible as authoritative and as written by human authors under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Some Christians believe that the Bible is inerrant (totally without error and free from contradiction, including the historical and scientific parts) or infallible (inerrant on issues of faith and practice but not necessarily on matters of history or science).


title: Christian theology

text: Some Christians infer that the Bible cannot both refer to itself as being divinely inspired and also be errant or fallible. For if the Bible were divinely inspired, then the source of inspiration being divine, would not be subject to fallibility or error in that which is produced. For them, the doctrines of the divine inspiration, infallibility, and inerrancy, are inseparably tied together. The idea of biblical integrity is a further concept of infallibility, by suggesting that current biblical text is complete and without error, and that the integrity of biblical text has never been corrupted or degraded. Historians note, or claim, that the doctrine of the Bible's infallibility was adopted hundreds of years after the books of the Bible were written.


title: Christian theology

text: The content of the Protestant Old Testament is the same as the Hebrew Bible canon, with changes in the division and order of books, but the Catholic Old Testament contains additional texts, known as the deuterocanonical books. Protestants recognize 39 books in their Old Testament canon, while Roman Catholic and Eastern Christians recognize 46 books as canonical. Both Catholics and Protestants use the same 27-book New Testament canon.


title: Christian theology

text: Early Christians used the Septuagint, a Koine Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures. Christianity subsequently endorsed various additional writings that would become the New Testament. In the 4th century a series of synods, most notably the Synod of Hippo in AD 393, produced a list of texts equal to the 46-book canon of the Old Testament that Catholics use today (and the 27-book canon of the New Testament that all use). A definitive list did not come from any early ecumenical council. Around 400, Jerome produced the Vulgate, a definitive Latin edition of the Bible, the contents of which, at the insistence of the Bishop of Rome, accorded with the decisions of the earlier synods. This process effectively set the New Testament canon, although examples exist of other canonical lists in use after this time.


title: Christian theology

text: During the 16th-century Protestant Reformation certain reformers proposed different canonical lists of the Old Testament. The texts which appear in the Septuagint but not in the Jewish canon fell out of favor, and eventually disappeared from Protestant canons. Catholic Bibles classify these texts as deuterocanonical books, whereas Protestant contexts label them as the Apocrypha.


title: Christian theology

text: In Christianity, God is the creator and preserver of the universe. God is the sole ultimate power in the universe but is distinct from it. The Bible never speaks of God as impersonal. Instead, it refers to him in personal terms– who speaks, sees, hears, acts, and loves. God is understood to have a will and personality and is an all powerful, divine and benevolent being. He is represented in Scripture as being primarily concerned with people and their salvation.


title: Christian theology

text: Many Reformed theologians distinguish between the "communicable" attributes (those that human beings can also have) and the "incommunicable" attributes (those which belong to God alone).


title: Christian theology

text: Some Christians believe that the God worshiped by the Hebrew people of the pre-Christian era had always revealed himself as he did through Jesus; but that this was never obvious until Jesus was born (see John 1). Also, though the Angel of the Lord spoke to the Patriarchs, revealing God to them, some believe it has always been only through the Spirit of God granting them understanding, that men have been able to perceive later that God himself had visited them.


title: Christian theology

text: This belief gradually developed into the modern formulation of the Trinity, which is the doctrine that God is a single entity (Yahweh), but that there is a trinity in God's single being, the meaning of which has always been debated. This mysterious "Trinity" has been described as hypostases in the Greek language (subsistences in Latin), and "persons" in English. Nonetheless, Christians stress that they only believe in one God.


title: Christian theology

text: Most Christian churches teach the Trinity, as opposed to Unitarian monotheistic beliefs. Historically, most Christian churches have taught that the nature of God is a mystery, something that must be revealed by special revelation rather than deduced through general revelation.


title: Christian theology

text: Christian orthodox traditions (Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant) follow this idea, which was codified in 381 and reached its full development through the work of the Cappadocian Fathers. They consider God to be a entity, called the Trinity, comprising the three "Persons"; God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, described as being "of the same substance" (). The true nature of an infinite God, however, is commonly described as beyond definition, and the word 'person' is an imperfect expression of the idea.


title: Christian theology

text: Some critics contend that because of the adoption of a tripartite conception of deity, Christianity is a form of tritheism or polytheism. This concept dates from Arian teachings which claimed that Jesus, having appeared later in the Bible than his Father, had to be a secondary, lesser, and therefore distinct god. For Jews and Muslims, the idea of God as a trinity is heretical– it is considered akin to polytheism. Christians overwhelmingly assert that monotheism is central to the Christian faith, as the very Nicene Creed (among others) which gives the orthodox Christian definition of the Trinity does begin with: "I believe in one God".


title: Christian theology

text: In the 3rd century, Tertullian claimed that God exists as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—the three personae of one and the same substance. To trinitarian Christians God the Father is not at all a separate god from God the Son (of whom Jesus is the incarnation) and the Holy Spirit, the other "hypostases" (Persons) of the Christian Godhead. According to the Nicene Creed, the Son (Jesus Christ) is "eternally begotten of the Father", indicating that their divine Father-Son relationship is not tied to an event within time or human history.


title: Christian theology

text: In Christianity, the doctrine of the Trinity states that God is one being who exists, simultaneously and eternally, as a mutual indwelling of three Persons: the Father, the Son (incarnate as Jesus), and the Holy Spirit (or Holy Ghost). Since earliest Christianity, one's salvation has been very closely related to the concept of a triune God, although the Trinitarian doctrine was not formalized until the 4th century. At that time, the Emperor Constantine convoked the First Council of Nicaea, to which all bishops of the empire were invited to attend. Pope Sylvester I did not attend but sent his legate. The council, among other things, decreed the original Nicene Creed.


title: Christian theology

text: For most Christians, beliefs about God are enshrined in the doctrine of Trinitarianism, which holds that the three persons of God together form a single God. The Trinitarian view emphasizes that God has a will and that God the Son has two wills, divine and human, though these are never in conflict (see Hypostatic union). However, this point is disputed by Oriental Orthodox Christians, who hold that "God the Son" has only one will of unified divinity and humanity (see Miaphysitism).


title: Christian theology

text: The Christian doctrine of the Trinity teaches the unity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as three persons in one Godhead. The doctrine states that God is the Triune God, existing as three "persons", or in the Greek "hypostases", but one being. Personhood in the Trinity does not match the common Western understanding of "person" as used in the English language—it does not imply an "individual, self-actualized center of free will and conscious activity." To the ancients, personhood "was in some sense individual, but always in community as well." Each "person" is understood as having the one identical essence or nature, not merely similar natures. Since the beginning of the 3rd century the doctrine of the Trinity has been stated as "the one God exists in three Persons and one substance, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit."


title: Christian theology

text: Trinitarianism, belief in the Trinity, is a mark of Catholicism, Eastern and Oriental Orthodoxy as well as other prominent Christian sects arising from the Protestant Reformation, such as Anglicanism, Methodism, Lutheranism, Baptist, and Presbyterianism. "The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church" describes the Trinity as "the central dogma of Christian theology". This doctrine contrasts with Nontrinitarian positions which include Unitarianism, Oneness and Modalism. A small minority of Christians hold non-trinitarian views, largely coming under the heading of Unitarianism.


title: Christian theology

text: Most, if not all, Christians believe that God is spirit, an uncreated, omnipotent, and eternal being, the creator and sustainer of all things, who works the redemption of the world through his Son, Jesus Christ. With this background, belief in the divinity of Christ and the Holy Spirit is expressed as the doctrine of the Trinity, which describes the single divine "ousia" (substance) existing as three distinct and inseparable "hypostases" (persons): the Father, the Son (Jesus Christ the Logos), and the Holy Spirit.


title: Christian theology

text: The Trinitarian doctrine is considered by most Christians to be a core tenet of their faith. Nontrinitarians typically hold that God, the Father, is supreme; that Jesus, although still divine Lord and Savior, is the Son of God; and that the Holy Spirit is a phenomenon akin to God's will on Earth. The holy three are separate, yet the Son and the Holy Spirit are still seen as originating from God the Father.


title: Christian theology

text: The New Testament does not have the term "Trinity" and nowhere discusses the Trinity as such. Some emphasize, however, that the New Testament does repeatedly speak of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit to "compel a trinitarian understanding of God." The doctrine developed from the biblical language used in New Testament passages such as the baptismal formula in and by the end of the 4th century it was widely held in its present form.


title: Christian theology

text: In many monotheist religions, God is addressed as the father, in part because of his active interest in human affairs, in the way that a father would take an interest in his children who are dependent on him and as a father, he will respond to humanity, his children, acting in their best interests. In Christianity, God is called "Father" in a more literal sense, besides being the creator and nurturer of creation, and the provider for his children. The Father is said to be in unique relationship with his only begotten ("monogenes") son, Jesus Christ, which implies an exclusive and intimate familiarity: "No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal him."


title: Christian theology

text: In Christianity, God the Father's relationship with humanity is as a father to children—in a previously unheard-of sense—and not just as the creator and nurturer of creation, and the provider for his children, his people. Thus, humans, in general, are sometimes called "children of God". To Christians, God the Father's relationship with humanity is that of Creator and created beings, and in that respect he is the father of all. The New Testament says, in this sense, that the very idea of family, wherever it appears, derives its name from God the Father, and thus God himself is the model of the family.


title: Christian theology

text: However, there is a deeper "legal" sense in which Christians believe that they are made participants in the special relationship of Father and Son, through Jesus Christ as his spiritual bride. Christians call themselves "adopted" children of God.


title: Christian theology

text: In the New Testament, God the Father has a special role in his relationship with the person of the Son, where Jesus is believed to be his Son and his heir.. According to the Nicene Creed, the Son (Jesus Christ) is "eternally begotten of the Father", indicating that their divine Father-Son relationship is not tied to an event within time or human history. "See" Christology. The Bible refers to Christ, called "The Word" as present at the beginning of God's creation., not a creation himself, but equal in the personhood of the Trinity.


title: Christian theology

text: In Eastern Orthodox theology, God the Father is the "principium" ("beginning"), the "source" or "origin" of both the Son and the Holy Spirit, which gives intuitive emphasis to the threeness of persons; by comparison, Western theology explains the "origin" of all three "hypostases" or persons as being in the divine nature, which gives intuitive emphasis to the oneness of God's being.


title: Christian theology

text: Christology is the field of study within Christian theology which is primarily concerned with the nature, person, and works of Jesus Christ, held by Christians to be the Son of God. Christology is concerned with the meeting of the human (Son of Man) and divine (God the Son or Word of God) in the person of Jesus.


title: Christian theology

text: Primary considerations include the Incarnation, the relationship of Jesus' nature and person with the nature and person of God, and the salvific work of Jesus. As such, Christology is generally less concerned with the details of Jesus' life (what he did) or teaching than with who or what he is. There have been and are various perspectives by those who claim to be his followers since the church began after his ascension. The controversies ultimately focused on whether and how a human nature and a divine nature can co-exist in one person. The study of the inter-relationship of these two natures is one of the preoccupations of the majority tradition.


title: Christian theology

text: Teachings about Jesus and testimonies about what he accomplished during his three-year public ministry are found throughout the New Testament. Core biblical teachings about the person of Jesus Christ may be summarized that Jesus Christ was and forever is fully God (divine) and fully human in one sinless person at the same time, and that through the death and resurrection of Jesus, sinful humans can be reconciled to God and thereby are offered salvation and the promise of eternal life via his New Covenant. While there have been theological disputes over the nature of Jesus, Christians believe that Jesus is God incarnate and "true God and true man" (or both fully divine and fully human). Jesus, having become fully human in all respects, suffered the pains and temptations of a mortal man, yet he did not sin. As fully God, he defeated death and rose to life again. Scripture asserts that Jesus was conceived, by the Holy Spirit, and born of his virgin mother Mary without a human father. The biblical accounts of Jesus' ministry include miracles, preaching, teaching, healing, Death, and resurrection. The apostle Peter, in what has become a famous proclamation of faith among Christians since the 1st century, said, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." Most Christians now wait for the Second Coming of Christ when they believe he will fulfill the remaining Messianic prophecies.


title: Christian theology

text: Christ is the English term for the Greek ("Khristós") meaning "the anointed one". It is a translation of the Hebrew ("Māšîaḥ"), usually transliterated into English as "Messiah". The word is often misunderstood to be the surname of Jesus due to the numerous mentions of "Jesus Christ" in the Christian Bible. The word is in fact used as a title, hence its common reciprocal use "Christ Jesus", meaning Jesus the Anointed One or Jesus the Messiah. Followers of Jesus became known as Christians because they believed that Jesus was the Christ, or Messiah, prophesied about in the Old Testament, or Tanakh.


title: Christian theology

text: The Christological controversies came to a head over the persons of the Godhead and their relationship with one another.


title: Christian theology

text: Christology was a fundamental concern from the First Council of Nicaea (325) until the Third Council of Constantinople (680). In this time period, the Christological views of various groups within the broader Christian community led to accusations of heresy, and, infrequently, subsequent religious persecution. In some cases, a sect's unique Christology is its chief distinctive feature, in these cases it is common for the sect to be known by the name given to its Christology.


title: Christian theology

text: The decisions made at First Council of Nicaea and re-ratified at the First Council of Constantinople, after several decades of ongoing controversy during which the work of Athanasius and the Cappadocian Fathers were influential. The language used was that the one God exists in three persons (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit); in particular it was affirmed that the Son was "homoousios" (of one substance) with the Father. The Creed of the Nicene Council made statements about the full divinity and full humanity of Jesus, thus preparing the way for discussion about how exactly the divine and human come together in the person of Christ (Christology).


title: Christian theology

text: Nicaea insisted that Jesus was fully divine and also human. What it did not do was make clear how one person could be both divine and human, and how the divine and human were related within that one person. This led to the Christological controversies of the 4th and 5th centuries of the Christian era.


title: Christian theology

text: The Chalcedonian Creed did not put an end to all Christological debate, but it did clarify the terms used and became a point of reference for all other Christologies. Most of the major branches of Christianity—Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Anglicanism, Lutheranism, and Reformed—subscribe to the Chalcedonian Christological formulation, while many branches of Eastern Christianity—Syrian Orthodoxy, Assyrian Church, Coptic Orthodoxy, Ethiopian Orthodoxy, and Armenian Apostolicism—reject it.


title: Christian theology

text: According to the Bible, the second Person of the Trinity, because of his eternal relation to the first Person (God as Father), is the Son of God. He is considered (by Trinitarians) to be coequal with the Father and Holy Spirit. He is all God and all human: the Son of God as to his divine nature, while as to his human nature he is from the lineage of David. The core of Jesus' self-interpretation was his "filial consciousness", his relationship to God as child to parent in some unique sense (see Filioque controversy). His mission on earth proved to be that of enabling people to know God as their Father, which Christians believe is the essence of eternal life.


title: Christian theology

text: God the Son is the second person of the Trinity in Christian theology. The doctrine of the Trinity identifies Jesus of Nazareth as God the Son, "united in essence but distinct in person" with regard to God the Father and God the Holy Spirit (the first and third persons of the Trinity). God the Son is co-eternal with God the Father (and the Holy Spirit), both before Creation and after the End (see Eschatology). So Jesus was always "God the Son", though not revealed as such until he also became "the" "Son of God" through incarnation. "Son of God" draws attention to his humanity, whereas "God the Son" refers more generally to his divinity, including his pre-incarnate existence. So, in Christian theology, Jesus was always God the Son, though not revealed as such until he also became the Son of God through incarnation.


title: Christian theology

text: The exact phrase "God the Son" is not in the New Testament. Later theological use of this expression reflects what came to be standard interpretation of New Testament references, understood to imply Jesus' divinity, but the distinction of his person from that of the one God he called his Father. As such, the title is associated more with the development of the doctrine of the Trinity than with the Christological debates. There are over 40 places in the New Testament where Jesus is given the title "the Son of God", but scholars don't consider this to be an equivalent expression. "God the Son" is rejected by anti-trinitarians, who view this reversal of the most common term for Christ as a doctrinal perversion and as tending towards tritheism.


title: Christian theology

text: Matthew cites Jesus as saying, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God (5:9)." The gospels go on to document a great deal of controversy over Jesus being "the" Son of God, in a unique way. The book of the Acts of the Apostles and the letters of the New Testament, however, record the early teaching of the first Christians– those who believed Jesus to be "both" the Son of God, the Messiah, a man appointed by God, as well as God himself. This is evident in many places, however, the early part of the book of Hebrews addresses the issue in a deliberate, sustained argument, citing the scriptures of the Hebrew Bible as authorities. For example, the author quotes Psalm 45:6 as addressed by the God of Israel to Jesus.


title: Christian theology

text: The author of Hebrews' description of Jesus as the exact representation of the divine Father has parallels in a passage in Colossians.


title: Christian theology

text: John's gospel quotes Jesus at length regarding his relationship with his heavenly Father. It also contains two famous attributions of divinity to Jesus.


title: Christian theology

text: The biblical basis for later trinitarian statements in creeds is the early baptism formula found in Matthew 28.


title: Christian theology

text: Docetism (from the Greek verb "to seem") taught that Jesus was fully divine, and his human body was only illusory. At a very early stage, various Docetic groups arose; in particular, the gnostic sects which flourished in the 2nd century AD tended to have Docetic theologies. Docetic teachings were attacked by St. Ignatius of Antioch (early 2nd century), and appear to be targeted in the canonical Epistles of John (dates are disputed, but range from the late 1st century among traditionalist scholars to the late 2nd century among critical scholars).


title: Christian theology

text: The early centuries of Christian history also had groups at the other end of the spectrum, arguing that Jesus was an ordinary mortal. The Adoptionists taught that Jesus was born fully human, and was adopted as God's Son when John the Baptist baptised him because of the life he lived. Another group, known as the Ebionites, taught that Jesus was not God, but the human Moshiach (messiah, anointed) prophet promised in the Hebrew Bible.


title: Christian theology

text: Some of these views could be described as Unitarianism (although that is a modern term) in their insistence on the oneness of God. These views, which directly affected how one understood the Godhead, were declared heresies by the Council of Nicaea. Throughout much of the rest of the ancient history of Christianity, Christologies that denied Christ's divinity ceased to have a major impact on the life of the church.


title: Christian theology

text: Arianism affirmed that Jesus was divine, but taught that he was nevertheless a created being ("there was [a time] when he was not [in existence]"), and was therefore less divine than God the Father. The matter boiled down to one iota; Arianism taught "Homoiousia"—the belief that Jesus's divinity is "similar" to that of God the Father—as opposed to "Homoousia"—the belief that Jesus's divinity is the "same" as that of God the Father. Arius' opponents additionally included in the term "Arianism" the belief that Jesus' divinity is "different" from that of God the Father ("Heteroousia").


title: Christian theology

text: Arianism was condemned by the Council of Nicea, but remained popular in the northern and western provinces of the empire, and continued to be the majority view of western Europe well into the 6th century. Indeed, even the Christian legend of Constantine's death-bed baptism involves a bishop who, in recorded history, was an Arian.


title: Christian theology

text: In the modern era, a number of denominations have rejected the Nicene doctrine of the Trinity, including the Christadelphians and the Jehovah's Witnesses.


title: Christian theology

text: The Christological debates following the Council of Nicaea sought to make sense of the interplay of the human and divine in the person of Christ while upholding the doctrine of the Trinity. Apollinaris of Laodicea (310–390) taught that in Jesus, the divine component took the place of the human "nous" ("thinking"– not to be confused with "thelis", meaning "intent"). This however was seen as a denial of Jesus' true humanity, and the view was condemned at the First Council of Constantinople.


title: Christian theology

text: Subsequently, Nestorius of Constantinople (386–451) initiated a view that effectively separated Jesus into two persons—one divine and one human; the mechanism of this combination is known as "hypostases", and contrasts with "hypostasis"—the view that there is no separation. Nestorius' theology was deemed heretical at the First Council of Ephesus (431). Though, as seen by the writings of Babai the Great, the Christology of the Church of the East is highly similar to that of Chalcedon, many orthodox Christians (particularly in the West) consider this group to be the perpetuation of Nestorianism; the modern Assyrian Church of the East has at times shunned this term, as it implies acceptance of the entire theology of Nestorius.


title: Christian theology

text: Various forms of Monophysitism taught that Christ only had one nature: that the divine had either dissolved (Eutychianism), or that the divine joined with the human as one nature in the person of Christ (Miaphysitism). A notable monophysite theologian was Eutyches (–456). Monophysitism was rejected as heresy at the Council of Chalcedon in 451, which affirmed that Jesus Christ had two natures (divine and human) joined in one person, in hypostatic union (see Chalcedonian creed). While Eutychianism was suppressed into oblivion by the Chalcedonians and Miaphysites, the Miaphysite groups who dissented from the Chalcedonian formula have persisted as the Oriental Orthodox Church.


title: Christian theology

text: As theologians continued to search for a compromise between the Chalcedonian definition and the Monophysites, other Christologies developed that partially rejected the full humanity of Christ. Monothelitism taught that in the one person of Jesus there were two natures, but only a divine will. Closely related to this is Monoenergism, which held to the same doctrine as the Monothelites, but with different terminology. These positions were declared heresy by the Third Council of Constantinople (the Sixth Ecumenical Council, 680–681).


title: Christian theology

text: The Incarnation is the belief in Christianity that the second person in the Christian Godhead, also known as God the Son or the Logos (Word), "became flesh" when he was miraculously conceived in the womb of the Virgin Mary. The word Incarnate derives from Latin (in=in or into, caro, carnis=flesh) meaning "to make into flesh" or "to become flesh". The incarnation is a fundamental theological teaching of orthodox (Nicene) Christianity, based on its understanding of the New Testament. The incarnation represents the belief that Jesus, who is the non-created second hypostasis of the triune God, took on a human body and nature and became both man and God. In the Bible its clearest teaching is in : "And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us."


title: Christian theology

text: In the Incarnation, as traditionally defined, the divine nature of the Son was joined but not mixed with human nature in one divine Person, Jesus Christ, who was both "truly God and truly man". The Incarnation is commemorated and celebrated each year at Christmas, and also reference can be made to the Feast of the Annunciation; "different aspects of the mystery of the Incarnation" are celebrated at Christmas and the Annunciation.


title: Christian theology

text: This is central to the traditional faith held by most Christians. Alternative views on the subject (See Ebionites and the Gospel according to the Hebrews) have been proposed throughout the centuries (see below), but all were rejected by mainstream Christian bodies.


title: Christian theology

text: In recent decades, an alternative doctrine known as "Oneness" has been espoused among various Pentecostal groups (see below), but has been rejected by the remainder of Christendom.


title: Christian theology

text: In the early Christian era, there was considerable disagreement amongst Christians regarding the nature of Christ's Incarnation. While all Christians believed that Jesus was indeed the Son of God, the exact nature of his Sonship was contested, together with the precise relationship of the "Father," "Son" and "Holy Ghost" referred to in the New Testament. Though Jesus was clearly the "Son," what exactly did this mean? Debate on this subject raged most especially during the first four centuries of Christianity, involving Jewish Christians, Gnostics, followers of the Presbyter Arius of Alexandra, and adherents of St. Athanasius the Great, among others.


title: Christian theology

text: Eventually, the Christian Church accepted the teaching of St. Athanasius and his allies, that Christ was the incarnation of the eternal second person of the Trinity, who was fully God and fully a man simultaneously. All divergent beliefs were defined as heresies. This included Docetism, which said that Jesus was a divine being that took on human appearance but not flesh; Arianism, which held that Christ was a created being; and Nestorianism, which maintained that the Son of God and the man, Jesus, shared the same body but retained two separate natures. The Oneness belief held by certain modern Pentecostal churches is also seen as heretical by most mainstream Christian bodies.


title: Christian theology

text: The most widely accepted the early Christian Church made definitions of the Incarnation and the nature of Jesus at the First Council of Nicaea in 325, the Council of Ephesus in 431, and the Council of Chalcedon in 451. These councils declared that Jesus was both fully God: begotten from, but not created by the Father; and fully man: taking his flesh and human nature from the Virgin Mary. These two natures, human and divine, were hypostatically united into the one personhood of Jesus Christ.


title: Christian theology

text: The link between the Incarnation and the Atonement within systematic theological thought is complex. Within traditional models of the Atonement, such as Substitution, Satisfaction or Christus Victor, Christ must be Divine in order for the Sacrifice of the Cross to be efficacious, for human sins to be "removed" or "conquered". In his work "The Trinity and the Kingdom of God", Jurgen Moltmann differentiated between what he called a "fortuitous" and a "necessary" Incarnation. The latter gives a soteriological emphasis to the Incarnation: the Son of God became a man so that he could save us from our sins. The former, on the other hand, speaks of the Incarnation as a fulfilment of the Love of God, of his desire to be present and living amidst humanity, to "walk in the garden" with us.


title: Christian theology

text: Moltmann favours "fortuitous" incarnation primarily because he feels that to speak of an incarnation of "necessity" is to do an injustice to the life of Christ. Moltmann's work, alongside other systematic theologians, opens up avenues of liberation Christology.


title: Christian theology

text: In short, this doctrine states that two natures, one human and one divine, are united in the one person of Christ. The Council further taught that each of these natures, the human and the divine, was distinct and complete. This view is sometimes called Dyophysite (meaning two natures) by those who rejected it.


title: Christian theology

text: Hypostatic union (from the Greek for substance) is a technical term in Christian theology employed in mainstream Christology to describe the union of two natures, humanity and divinity, in Jesus Christ. A brief definition of the doctrine of two natures can be given as: "Jesus Christ, who is identical with the Son, is one person and one hypostasis in two natures: a human and a divine."


title: Christian theology

text: The First Council of Ephesus recognised this doctrine and affirmed its importance, stating that the humanity and divinity of Christ are made one according to nature and hypostasis in the Logos.


title: Christian theology

text: The First Council of Nicaea declared that the Father and the Son are of the same substance and are co-eternal. This belief was expressed in the Nicene Creed.


title: Christian theology

text: Apollinaris of Laodicea was the first to use the term hypostasis in trying to understand the Incarnation. Apollinaris described the union of the divine and human in Christ as being of a single nature and having a single essence– a single hypostasis.


title: Christian theology

text: The Nestorian Theodore of Mopsuestia went in the other direction, arguing that in Christ there were two natures (dyophysite) (human and divine) and two hypostases (in the sense of "essence" or "person") that co-existed.


title: Christian theology

text: The Chalcedonian Creed agreed with Theodore that there were two natures in the Incarnation. However, the Council of Chalcedon also insisted that hypostasis be used as it was in the Trinitarian definition: to indicate the person and not the nature as with Apollinarius.


title: Christian theology

text: Thus, the Council declared that in Christ there are two natures; each retaining its own properties, and together united in one subsistence and in one single person.


title: Christian theology

text: As the precise nature of this union is held to defy finite human comprehension, the hypostatic union is also referred to by the alternative term "mystical union."


title: Christian theology

text: The Oriental Orthodox Churches, having rejected the Chalcedonian Creed, were known as Monophysites because they would only accept a definition that characterized the incarnate Son as having one nature. The Chalcedonian "in two natures" formula was seen as derived from and akin to a Nestorian Christology. Contrariwise, the Chalcedonians saw the Oriental Orthodox as tending towards Eutychian Monophysitism. However, the Oriental Orthodox have in modern ecumenical dialogue specified that they have never believed in the doctrines of Eutyches, that they have always affirmed that Christ's humanity is consubstantial with our own, and they thus prefer the term "Miaphysite" to refer to themselves (a reference to Cyrillian Christology, which used the phrase "mia physis tou theou logou sesarkomene").


title: Christian theology

text: In recent times, leaders from the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Churches have signed joint statements in an attempt to work towards reunification.


title: Christian theology

text: Although Christian orthodoxy holds that Jesus was fully human, the Epistle to the Hebrews, for example, states that Christ was 'holy and without evil' (7:26). The question concerning the sinlessness of Jesus Christ focuses on this seeming paradox. Does being fully human require that one participate in the "fall" of Adam, or could Jesus exist in an "unfallen" status as Adam and Eve did before the "fall," according to Genesis 2–3?


title: Christian theology

text: Evangelical writer Donald Macleod suggests that the sinless nature of Jesus Christ involves two elements. "First, Christ was free of actual sin." Studying the gospels there is no reference to Jesus praying for the forgiveness of sin, nor confessing sin. The assertion is that Jesus did not commit sin, nor could he be proven guilty of sin; he had no vices. In fact, he is quoted as asking, "Can any of you prove me guilty of sin?" in John 8:46. "Secondly, he was free from inherent sin ("original sin" or "ancestral sin")."


title: Christian theology

text: The temptation of Christ shown in the gospels affirms that he was tempted. Indeed, the temptations were genuine and of a greater intensity than normally experienced by human beings. He experienced all the frail weaknesses of humanity. Jesus was tempted through hunger and thirst, pain and the love of his friends. Thus, the human weaknesses could engender temptation. Nevertheless, MacLeod notes that "one crucial respect in which Christ was not like us is that he was not tempted by anything within himself."


title: Christian theology

text: The temptations Christ faced focused upon his person and identity as the incarnate Son of God. MacLeod writes, "Christ could be tempted through his sonship." The temptation in the wilderness and again in Gethsemane exemplifies this arena of temptation. Regarding the temptation of performing a sign that would affirm his sonship by throwing himself from the pinnacle of the temple, MacLeod observes, "The sign was for himself: a temptation to seek reassurance, as if to say, 'the real question is my own sonship. I must forget all else and all others and all further service until that is clear.'" MacLeod places this struggle in the context of the incarnation, "...he has become a man and must accept not only the appearance but the reality."


title: Christian theology

text: The communion of attributes ("Communicatio idiomatum") of Christ's divine and human natures is understood according to Chalcedonian theology to mean that they exist together with neither overriding the other. That is, both are preserved and coexist in one person. Christ had all the properties of God and humanity. God did not stop being God and become man. Christ was not half-God and half-human. The two natures did not mix into a new third kind of nature. Although independent, they acted in complete accord; when one nature acted, so did the other. The natures did not commingle, merge, infuse each other, or replace each other. One was not converted into the other. They remained distinct (yet acted with one accord).


title: Christian theology

text: The Gospel according to Matthew and Gospel according to Luke suggest a virgin birth of Jesus Christ. Some now disregard or even argue against this "doctrine" to which most denominations of Christianity ascribe. This section looks at the Christological issues surrounding belief or disbelief in the virgin birth.


title: Christian theology

text: A non-virgin birth would seem to require some form of adoptionism. This is because a human conception and birth would seem to yield a fully human Jesus, with some other mechanism required to make Jesus divine as well.


title: Christian theology

text: A non-virgin birth would seem to support the full humanity of Jesus. William Barclay: states, "The supreme problem of the virgin birth is that it does quite undeniably differentiate Jesus from all men; it does leave us with an incomplete incarnation."


title: Christian theology

text: Barth speaks of the virgin birth as the divine sign "which accompanies and indicates the mystery of the incarnation of the Son."


title: Christian theology

text: The discussion of whether the three distinct persons in the Godhead of the Trinity were of greater, equal, or lesser by comparison was also, like many other areas of early Christology, a subject of debate. In Athenagoras of Athens (–190) writings we find a very developed trinitarian doctrine. On the one end of the spectrum was modalism, a doctrine stating that the three persons of the Trinity were equal to the point of erasing their differences and distinctions. On the other end of the spectrum were tritheism as well as some radically subordinationist views, the latter of which emphasized the primacy of the Father of Creation to the deity of Christ and Jesus's authority over the Holy Spirit. During the Council of Nicea, the modalist bishops of Rome and Alexandria aligned politically with Athanasius; whereas the bishops of Constantinople (Nicomedia), Antioch, and Jerusalem sided with the subordinationists as middle ground between Arius and Athanasius.


title: Christian theology

text: Theologians like Jurgen Moltmann and Walter Kasper have characterized Christologies as anthropological or cosmological. These are also termed 'Christology from below' and 'Christology from above' respectively. An anthropological Christology starts with the human person of Jesus and works from his life and ministry toward what it means for him to be divine; whereas, a cosmological Christology works in the opposite direction. Starting from the eternal Logos, a cosmological Christology works toward his humanity. Theologians typically begin on one side or the other and their choice inevitably colors their resultant Christology. As a starting point, these options represent "diverse yet complementary" approaches; each poses its own difficulties. Both Christologies 'from above' and 'from below' must come to terms with the two natures of Christ: human and divine. Just as light can be perceived as a wave or as a particle, so Jesus must be thought in terms of both his divinity and humanity. You cannot talk about "either or" but must talk about "both and".


title: Christian theology

text: Christologies from above start with the Logos, the second Person of the Trinity, establish his eternality, his agency in creation, and his economic Sonship. Jesus' unity with God is established by the Incarnation as the divine Logos assumes a human nature. This approach was common in the early church—e.g., St. Paul and St. John in the Gospels. The attribution of full humanity to Jesus is resolved by stating that the two natures mutually share their properties (a concept termed "communicatio idiomatum").


title: Christian theology

text: Christologies from below start with the human being Jesus as the representative of the new humanity, not with the pre-existent Logos. Jesus lives an exemplary life, one to which we aspire in religious experience. This form of Christology lends itself to mysticism, and some of its roots go back to emergence of Christ mysticism in the 6th century East, but in the West it flourished between the 11th and 14th centuries. A recent theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg contends that the resurrected Jesus is the "eschatological fulfillment of human destiny to live in nearness to God."


title: Christian theology

text: The Christian faith is inherently political because allegiance to Jesus as risen Lord relativises all earthly rule and authority. Jesus is called "Lord" over 230 times in Paul's epistles alone, and is thus the principal confession of faith in the Pauline epistles. Further, N.T. Wright argues that this Pauline confession is the core of the gospel of salvation. The Achilles' heel of this approach is the loss of eschatological tension between this present age and the future divine rule that is yet to come. This can happen when the state co-opts Christ's authority as was often the case in imperial Christology. Modern political Christologies seek to overcome imperialist ideologies.


title: Christian theology

text: The resurrection is perhaps the most controversial aspect of the life of Jesus Christ. Christianity hinges on this point of Christology, both as a response to a particular history and as a confessional response. Some Christians claim that because he was resurrected, the future of the world was forever altered. Most Christians believe that Jesus' resurrection brings reconciliation with God (II Corinthians 5:18), the destruction of death (I Corinthians 15:26), and forgiveness of sins for followers of Jesus Christ.


title: Christian theology

text: Jesus Christ, the Mediator of humankind, fulfills the three offices of Prophet, Priest, and King. Eusebius of the early church worked out this threefold classification, which during the Reformation played a substantial role in scholastic Lutheran Christology and in John Calvin's and John Wesley's Christology.


title: Christian theology

text: Pneumatology is the study of the Holy Spirit. "Pneuma" (πνεῦμα) is Greek for "breath", which metaphorically describes a non-material being or influence. In Christian theology pneumatology refers to the study of the Holy Spirit. In Christianity, the Holy Spirit (or Holy Ghost) is the Spirit of God. Within mainstream (Trinitarian) Christian beliefs he is the third person of the Trinity. As part of the Godhead, the Holy Spirit is equal with God the Father and with God the Son. The Christian theology of the Holy Spirit was the last piece of Trinitarian theology to be fully developed.


title: Christian theology

text: Within mainstream (Trinitarian) Christianity the Holy Spirit is one of the three "persons" of the Trinity who make up the single substance of God. As such the Holy Spirit is personal, and as part of the Godhead, he is fully God, co-equal and co-eternal with God the Father and Son of God. He is different from the Father and the Son in that he "proceeds" from the Father (or from the Father and the Son) as described in the Nicene Creed. His sacredness is reflected in the New Testament gospels which proclaim blasphemy against the Holy Spirit as unforgivable.


title: Christian theology

text: The English word comes from two Greek words: πνευμα ("pneuma", spirit) and λογος ("logos", teaching about). Pneumatology would normally include study of the person of the Holy Spirit, and the works of the Holy Spirit. This latter category would normally include Christian teachings on new birth, spiritual gifts (charismata), Spirit-baptism, sanctification, the inspiration of prophets, and the indwelling of the Holy Trinity (which in itself covers many different aspects). Different Christian denominations have different theological approaches.


title: Christian theology

text: Christians believe that the Holy Spirit leads people to faith in Jesus and gives them the ability to live a Christian lifestyle. The Holy Spirit dwells inside every Christian, each one's body being his temple. Jesus described the Holy Spirit as "paracletus" in Latin, derived from Greek. The word is variously translated as "Comforter, Counselor, Teacher, Advocate," guiding people in the way of the truth. The Holy Spirit's action in one's life is believed to produce positive results, known as the Fruit of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit enables Christians, who still experience the effects of sin, to do things they never could do on their own. These spiritual gifts are not innate abilities "unlocked" by the Holy Spirit, but entirely new abilities, such as the ability to cast out demons or simply bold speech. Through the influence of the Holy Spirit, a person sees more clearly the world around him or her and can use his or her mind and body in ways that exceed his or her previous capacity. A list of gifts that may be bestowed include the charismatic gifts of prophecy, tongues, healing, and knowledge. Christians holding a view known as cessationism believe these gifts were given only in New Testament times. Christians almost universally agree that certain "spiritual gifts" are still in effect today, including the gifts of ministry, teaching, giving, leadership, and mercy. The experience of the Holy Spirit is sometimes referred to as being anointed.


title: Christian theology

text: After his resurrection, Christ told his disciples that they would be "baptized with the Holy Spirit" and would receive power from this event, a promise that was fulfilled in the events recounted in the second chapter of Acts. On the first Pentecost, Jesus' disciples were gathered in Jerusalem when a mighty wind was heard and tongues of fire appeared over their heads. A multilingual crowd heard the disciples speaking, and each of them heard them speaking in his or her native language.


title: Christian theology

text: The Holy Spirit is believed to perform specific divine functions in the life of the Christian or the church. These include:


title: Christian theology

text: The Holy Spirit is also believed to be active especially in the life of Jesus Christ, enabling him to fulfill his work on earth. Particular actions of the Holy Spirit include:


title: Christian theology

text: Christians believe the "Fruit of the Spirit" consists of virtuous characteristics engendered in the Christian by the action of the Holy Spirit. They are those listed in : "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control." The Roman Catholic Church adds to this list generosity, modesty, and chastity.


title: Christian theology

text: Christians believe that the Holy Spirit gives 'gifts' to Christians. These gifts consist of specific abilities granted to the individual Christian. They are frequently known by the Greek word for gift, "Charisma", from which the term charismatic derives. The New Testament provides three different lists of such gifts which range from the supernatural (healing, prophecy, tongues) through those associated with specific callings (teaching) to those expected of all Christians in some degree (faith). Most consider these lists not to be exhaustive, and other have compiled their own lists. Saint Ambrose wrote of the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit poured out on a believer at baptism: 1. Spirit of Wisdom; 2. Spirit of Understanding; 3. Spirit of Counsel; 4. Spirit of Strength; 5. Spirit of Knowledge; 6. Spirit of Godliness; 7. Spirit of Holy Fear.


title: Christian theology

text: It is over the nature and occurrence of these gifts, particularly the supernatural gifts (sometimes called charismatic gifts), that the greatest disagreement between Christians with regard to the Holy Spirit exists.


title: Christian theology

text: One view is that the supernatural gifts were a special dispensation for the apostolic ages, bestowed because of the unique conditions of the church at that time, and are extremely rarely bestowed in the present time. This is the view of some in the Catholic Church and many other mainstream Christian groups. The alternate view, espoused mainly by Pentecostal denominations and the charismatic movement, is that the absence of the supernatural gifts was due to the neglect of the Holy Spirit and his work by the church. Although some small groups, such as the "Montanists", practiced the supernatural gifts they were rare until the growth of the Pentecostal movement in the late 19th century.


title: Christian theology

text: Believers in the relevance of the supernatural gifts sometimes speak of a "Baptism of the Holy Spirit" or "Filling of the Holy Spirit" which the Christian needs to experience in order to receive those gifts. Many churches hold that the "Baptism of the Holy Spirit" is identical with conversion, and that all Christians are by definition baptized in the Holy Spirit.


title: Christian theology

text: The various authors of the Old and New Testament provide glimpses of their insight regarding cosmology. The cosmos was created by God by divine command, in the best-known and most complete account in the Bible, that of Genesis 1.


title: Christian theology

text: Within this broad understanding, however, there are a number of views regarding exactly how this doctrine ought to be interpreted.


title: Christian theology

text: It is a tenet of Christian faith (Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant) that God is the creator of all things from nothing, and has made human beings in the Image of God, who by direct inference is also the source of the human soul. In Chalcedonian Christology, Jesus is the Word of God, which was in the beginning and, thus, is uncreated, and hence is God, and consequently identical with the Creator of the world "ex nihilo".


title: Christian theology

text: Roman Catholicism uses the phrase special creation to refer to the doctrine of immediate or special creation of each human soul. In 2004, the International Theological Commission, then under the presidency of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, published a paper in which it accepts the current scientific accounts of the history of the universe commencing in the Big Bang about 15 billion years ago and of the evolution of all life on earth including humans from the micro organisms commencing about 4 billion years ago. The Roman Catholic Church allows for both a literal and allegorical interpretation of Genesis, so as to allow for the possibility of Creation by means of an evolutionary process over great spans of time, otherwise known as theistic evolution. It believes that the creation of the world is a work of God through the "Logos", the Word (idea, intelligence, reason and logic):


title: Christian theology

text: The New Testament claims that God created everything by the eternal Word, Jesus Christ his beloved Son. In him


title: Christian theology

text: Christian anthropology is the study of humanity, especially as it relates to the divine. This theological anthropology refers to the study of the human ("anthropology") as it relates to God. It differs from the social science of anthropology, which primarily deals with the comparative study of the physical and social characteristics of humanity across times and places.


title: Christian theology

text: One aspect studies the innate nature or constitution of the human, known as the "nature of mankind". It is concerned with the relationship between notions such as body, soul and spirit which together form a person, based on their descriptions in the Bible. There are three traditional views of the human constitution– trichotomism, dichotomism and monism (in the sense of anthropology).


title: Christian theology

text: The semantic domain of Biblical soul is based on the Hebrew word "nepes", which presumably means "breath" or "breathing being". This word never means an immortal soul or an incorporeal part of the human being that can survive death of the body as the spirit of dead. This word usually designates the person as a whole or its physical life. In the Septuagint "nepes" is mostly translated as "psyche" () and, exceptionally, in the Book of Joshua as "empneon" (ἔμπνεον), that is "breathing being".


title: Christian theology

text: The New Testament follows the terminology of the Septuagint, and thus uses the word "psyche" with the Hebrew semantic domain and not the Greek, that is an invisible power (or ever more, for Platonists, immortal and immaterial) that gives life and motion to the body and is responsible for its attributes.


title: Christian theology

text: In Patristic thought, towards the end of the 2nd century "psyche" was understood in more a Greek than a Hebrew way, and it was contrasted with the body. In the 3rd century, with the influence of Origen, there was the establishing of the doctrine of the inherent immortality of the soul and its divine nature. Origen also taught the transmigration of the souls and their preexistence, but these views were officially rejected in 553 in the Fifth Ecumenical Council. Inherent immortality of the soul was accepted among western and eastern theologians throughout the middle ages, and after the Reformation, as evidenced by the Westminster Confession.


title: Christian theology

text: The spirit (Hebrew "ruach", Greek , "pneuma", which can also mean "breath") is likewise an immaterial component. It is often used interchangeably with "soul", "psyche", although trichotomists believe that the spirit is distinct from the soul.


title: Christian theology

text: The body (Greek "soma") is the corporeal or physical aspect of a human being. Christians have traditionally believed that the body will be resurrected at the end of the age.


title: Christian theology

text: Flesh (Greek , "sarx") is usually considered synonymous with "body", referring to the corporeal aspect of a human being. The apostle Paul contrasts flesh and spirit in Romans 7–8.


title: Christian theology

text: The Bible teaches in the book of Genesis the humans were created by God. Some Christians believe that this must have involved a miraculous creative act, while others are comfortable with the idea that God worked through the evolutionary process.


title: Christian theology

text: The book of Genesis also teaches that human beings, male and female, were created in the image of God. The exact meaning of this has been debated throughout church history.


title: Christian theology

text: Christian anthropology has implications for beliefs about death and the afterlife. The Christian church has traditionally taught that the soul of each individual separates from the body at death, to be reunited at the resurrection. This is closely related to the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. For example, the Westminster Confession (chapter XXXII) states:


title: Christian theology

text: The question then arises: where exactly does the disembodied soul "go" at death? Theologians refer to this subject as the intermediate state. The Old Testament speaks of a place called "sheol" where the spirits of the dead reside. In the New Testament, "hades", the classical Greek realm of the dead, takes the place of "sheol". In particular, Jesus teaches in Luke 16:19–31 (Lazarus and Dives) that "hades" consists of two separate "sections", one for the righteous and one for the unrighteous. His teaching is consistent with intertestamental Jewish thought on the subject.


title: Christian theology

text: Fully developed Christian theology goes a step further; on the basis of such texts as Luke 23:43 and Philippians 1:23, it has traditionally been taught that the souls of the dead are received immediately either into heaven or hell, where they will experience a foretaste of their eternal destiny prior to the resurrection. (Roman Catholicism teaches a third possible location, Purgatory, though this is denied by Protestants and Eastern Orthodox.)


title: Christian theology

text: Some Christian groups which stress a monistic anthropology deny that the soul can exist consciously apart from the body. For example, the Seventh-day Adventist Church teaches that the intermediate state is an unconscious sleep; this teaching is informally known as "soul sleep".


title: Christian theology

text: In Christian belief, both the righteous and the unrighteous will be resurrected at the last judgment. The righteous will receive incorruptible, immortal bodies (1 Corinthians 15), while the unrighteous will be sent to hell. Traditionally, Christians have believed that hell will be a place of eternal physical and psychological punishment. In the last two centuries, annihilationism has become popular.


title: Christian theology

text: The study of the Blessed Virgin Mary, doctrines about her, and how she relates to the Church, Christ, and the individual Christian is called Mariology. Examples of Mariology include the study of and doctrines regarding her Perpetual Virginity, her Motherhood of God (and by extension her Motherhood/Intercession for all Christians), her Immaculate Conception, and her Assumption into heaven. Catholic Mariology is the Marian study specifically in the context of the Catholic Church.


title: Christian theology

text: Most descriptions of angels in the Bible describe them in military terms. For example, in terms such as encampment (Gen.32:1–2), command structure (Ps.91:11–12; Matt.13:41; Rev.7:2), and combat (Jdg.5:20; Job 19:12; Rev.12:7).


title: Christian theology

text: Its specific hierarchy differs slightly from the Hierarchy of Angels as it surrounds more military services, whereas the Hierarchy of angels is a division of angels into non-military services to God.


title: Christian theology

text: Cherubim are depicted as accompanying God's chariot-throne (Ps.80:1). refers to two Cherub statues placed on top of the Ark of the Covenant, the two cherubim are usually interpreted as guarding the throne of God. Other guard-like duties include being posted in locations such as the gates of Eden (Gen.3:24). Cherubim were mythological winged bulls or other beasts that were part of ancient Near Eastern traditions.


title: Christian theology

text: This angelic designation might be given to angels of various ranks. An example would be Raphael who is ranked variously as a Seraph, Cherub, and Archangel . This is usually a result of conflicting schemes of hierarchies of angels.


title: Christian theology

text: It is not known how many angels there are but one figure given in Revelation 5:11 for the number of "many angels in a circle around the throne, as well as the living creatures and the elders" was "ten thousand times ten thousand", which would be 100 million.


title: Christian theology

text: In most of Christianity, a fallen angel is an angel who has been exiled or banished from Heaven. Often such banishment is a punishment for disobeying or rebelling against God (see War in Heaven). The best-known fallen angel is Lucifer. Lucifer is a name frequently given to Satan in Christian belief. This usage stems from a particular interpretation, as a reference to a fallen angel, of a passage in the Bible () that speaks of someone who is given the name of "Day Star" or "Morning Star" (in Latin, "Lucifer") as fallen from heaven. The Greek etymological synonym of Lucifer, Φωσφόρος ("Phosphoros", "light-bearer"). is used of the morning star in and elsewhere with no reference to Satan. But Satan is called Lucifer in many writings later than the Bible, notably in Milton's "Paradise Lost" (7.131–134, among others), because, according to Milton, Satan was "brighter once amidst the host of Angels, than that star the stars among."


title: Christian theology

text: Allegedly, fallen angels are those which have committed one of the seven deadly sins. Therefore, are banished from heaven and suffer in hell for all eternity. Demons from hell would punish the fallen angel by ripping out their wings as a sign of insignificance and low rank.


title: Christian theology

text: Christianity has taught Heaven as a place of eternal life, in that it is a shared plane to be attained by all the elect (rather than an abstract experience related to individual concepts of the ideal). The Christian Church has been divided over how people gain this eternal life. From the 16th to the late 19th century, Christendom was divided between the Catholic view, the Eastern Orthodox view, the Coptic view, the Jacobite view, the Abyssinian view and Protestant views. See also Christian denominations.


title: Christian theology

text: Heaven is the English name for a transcendental realm wherein human beings who have transcended human living live in an afterlife. in the Bible and in English, the term "heaven" may refer to the physical heavens, the sky or the seemingly endless expanse of the universe beyond, the traditional literal meaning of the term in English.


title: Christian theology

text: Christianity maintains that entry into Heaven awaits such time as, "When the form of this world has passed away." (*JPII) One view expressed in the Bible is that on the day Christ returns the righteous dead are resurrected first, and then those who are alive and judged righteous will be brought up to join them, to be taken to heaven. (I Thess 4:13–18)


title: Christian theology

text: Two related and often confused concepts of heaven in Christianity are better described as the "resurrection of the body", which is exclusively of biblical origin, as contrasted with the "immortality of the soul", which is also evident in the Greek tradition. In the first concept, the soul does not enter heaven until the last judgement or the "end of time" when it (along with the body) is resurrected and judged. In the second concept, the soul goes to a heaven on another plane such as the intermediate state immediately after death. These two concepts are generally combined in the doctrine of the double judgement where the soul is judged once at death and goes to a temporary heaven, while awaiting a second and final physical judgement at the end of the world.(*JPII, also see eschatology, afterlife)


title: Christian theology

text: One popular medieval view of Heaven was that it existed as a physical place above the clouds and that God and the Angels were physically above, watching over man. Heaven as a physical place survived in the concept that it was located far out into space, and that the stars were "lights shining through from heaven".


title: Christian theology

text: Many of today's biblical scholars, such as N. T. Wright, in tracing the concept of Heaven back to its Jewish roots, see Earth and Heaven as overlapping or interlocking. Heaven is known as God's space, his dimension, and is not a place that can be reached by human technology. This belief states that Heaven is where God lives and reigns whilst being active and working alongside people on Earth. One day when God restores all things, Heaven and Earth will be forever combined into the New Heavens and New Earth of the World to Come.


title: Christian theology

text: Religions that teach about heaven differ on how (and if) one gets into it, typically in the afterlife. In most, entrance to Heaven is conditional on having lived a "good life" (within the terms of the spiritual system). A notable exception to this is the 'sola fide' belief of many mainstream Protestants, which teaches that one does not have to live a perfectly "good life," but that one must accept Jesus Christ as one's saviour, and then Jesus Christ will assume the guilt of one's sins; believers are believed to be forgiven regardless of any good or bad "works" one has participated in.


title: Christian theology

text: Many religions state that those who do not go to heaven will go to a place "without the presence of God", Hell, which is eternal (see annihilationism). Some religions believe that other afterlives exist in addition to Heaven and Hell, such as Purgatory. One belief, universalism, believes that everyone will go to Heaven eventually, no matter what they have done or believed on earth. Some forms of Christianity believe Hell to be the termination of the soul.


title: Christian theology

text: Various saints have had visions of heaven (). The Eastern Orthodox concept of life in heaven is described in one of the prayers for the dead: "...a place of light, a place of green pasture, a place of repose, whence all sickness, sorrow and sighing are fled away."