The Religions Book

208

See also: Beliefs for new societies 56–57 ■ The promise of a new age 178–81

■ A divine trinity 212–19 ■ The Prophet and the origins of Islam 252–53

M

any ancient kings and

emperors claimed that

they had been adopted

by the gods, thereby giving

themselves divine legitimacy

to rule. On their deaths, some,

such as Julius Caesar, were

elevated to divine status—a

process that was known as

apotheosis—and worshipped.

In the Gospels, Jesus calls God

his Father many times, in ways that

are open to many interpretations,

from the broadest—that God, as

the creator, is the Father of all

humankind—through the symbolic

to the literal. The last of these was

claimed by the first Christians as

the truth. They pointed to the

extraordinary miracles of Jesus’s

ministry decribed in the Gospels,

and especially to his resurrection

from the dead, as evidence of his

unique place in God’s plan.

God has become human

The early Christians also claimed

that Jesus’s divine status was

unlike that of other rulers. Jesus

was not adopted by God as

a reward for his obedience; rather,

Jesus had always been God’s Son,

even from before his birth, and so

he shared God’s divine nature

throughout his human life.

This idea, known as the

incarnation, became a central

belief of Christianity. It is the

opposite of apotheosis; in the

incarnation, the eternally divine

Son of God took on humanity in

the person of Jesus. God had

sent his divine Son into the world

as a human in order to bring his

kingdom from heaven to earth. ■

GOD HAS SENT

US HIS SON

JESUS’S DIVINE IDENTITY

IN CONTEXT

KEY BELIEVERS

Early Christians

WHEN AND WHERE

1st century CE, communities

around the Mediterranean

BEFORE

From c.500 BCE Jewish

scriptures use the term son

of God to describe God’s

earthly representative.

c.30 CE Jesus is arrested

and accused of blasphemy

by the Jewish authorities for

claiming to be the son of

God. He is sent for trial by the

Roman governor Pontius Pilate

on charges of sedition, and

condemned to death.

AFTER

325 CE The Nicene Creed

states that Jesus is the

divine Son of God, using the

phrase “of one substance

with the Father.”

451 CE The Chalcedonian

Creed affirms Jesus as both

fully God and fully human.

You are the Christ,

the Son of the

living God.

Matthew 16:15