Beginnings
Early Christians found themselves confronted with a set of new concepts and ideas relating to the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, as well the notions of salvation and redemption, and had to use a new set of terms, images and ideas to deal with them. The existing terms and structures available to them were often insufficient to express these new set of religious concepts, and taken together, these new forms of discourse led to the beginnings of Christology as an attempt to understand, explain and discuss their understanding of the nature of Christ.
Furthermore, as early Christians (following the Great Commission) had to explain their concepts to a new audience which had at times been influenced by Greek philosophy, they had to present arguments that at times resonated with, and at times confronted, the beliefs of that audience. A key example is the Apostle Paul's Areopagus sermon that appears in Acts 17:16-34. Here, the apostle attempted to convey the underlying concepts about Christ to a Greek audience, and the sermon illustrates some key elements of future Christological discourses that were first brought forward by Paul.
The Kyrios title for Jesus is central to the development of New Testament Christology, for the early Christians placed it at the center of their understanding, and from that center attempted to understand the other issues related to the Christian mysteries. The question of the deity of Christ in the New Testament is inherently related to the Kyrios title of Jesus used in the early Christian writings and its implications for the absolute lordship of Jesus. In early Christian belief, the concept of Kyrios included the pre-existence of Christ, for they believed if Christ is one with God, he must have been united with God from the very beginning.
In everyday Aramaic, Mari was a very respectful form of polite address, which means more than just "Teacher" and was somewhat similar to Rabbi. In Greek, this has at times been translated as Kyrios. While the term Mari expressed the relationship between Jesus and his disciples during his life, the Greek Kyrios came to represent his lordship over the world.
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Famous quotes containing the word beginnings:
“The frantic search of five-year-olds for friends can thus be seen to forecast the beginnings of a basic shift in the parent-child relationship, a shift which will occur gradually over many long years, and in which a child needs not only the support of child allies engaged in the same struggle but also the understanding of his parents.”
—Dorothy H. Cohen (20th century)
“When the beginnings of self-destruction enter the heart it seems no bigger than a grain of sand.”
—John Cheever (1912–1982)
“Let us, then, take our compass; we are something, and we are not everything. The nature of our existence hides from us the knowledge of first beginnings which are born of the nothing; and the littleness of our being conceals from us the sight of the infinite. Our intellect holds the same position in the world of thought as our body occupies in the expanse of nature.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)