Christianity (world religion)

CHRISTIANITY
World Religion
Areño, Mary Joy S.
Gandeza, Ma. Victoria Samantha M.

Introduction
Christianity has more followers than any
other religion in the world - more than two
billion, or roughly one out of every three persons
on earth. The admonition of Jesus to make
disciples at the end of the Gospel of Matthew
(28:19-20) to go in all the world and make
disciples of all nations has been largely fulfilled.

Definition and Nature
Christian is derived from the Greek form of
the title of Jesus (ho Christos, the Christ or the
Anointed One).
The first to be called Christians were
Christ’s followers at Antioch (Acts 11:26).
Christianity: a belief in God as Creator, in
the Bible as God’s Word, and in Jesus as God’s
Son and the final revelation of God to man – in
His perfect humanity, sacrificial death and
Groiler Incorporated (1963,1962).
The American Peoples Encyclopedia
(p. 435)
3

Definition and Nature
miraculous resurrection, and His ability by this
sacrifice and exaltation to meditate forgiveness,
salvation, and immortality to all who “come unto
God by Him” (Heb 7:25)
(p. 435)
4

Definition:
• Everyone who is baptized in Christ is a Christian. However,
each baptized person also belongs to a particular family of
Christians (i.e. Anglican, Catholic, Baptist etc.).
• Catholics are Christians who belong to the Latin or the Eastern
Catholic Churches.
• All Christians however are catholic (with a small c) because
Christ is present in all Christian Churches.
• The word catholic means “universal” or “to the whole world.”

Stages of Development and Sacred Texts
Founder: Jesus of Nazareth
Jesus of Nazareth was a Jewish rabbi from
the region of Galilee in the first Century C.E.,
who attracted a small band of followers through
his ministry of healing and teaching. After a
short ministry he was executed by Romans
authorities. Historians would have paid him little
notice, but his followers made the astounding
claim that Jesus had been raised by God from the
Young, William A.. (2005) The world's religions :worldviews and
contemporary issues Upper Saddle River, N.J. : Pearson Prentice Hall,
6

dead. They kept alive his teachings and the
stories of his life and eventually wrote them
down in different versions. They proclaimed the
message that through the death and resurrection
of Jesus, God had made a new covenant with
humanity, and that, through Jesus, God offered
redemption to all.
As with other “founders”, the stories of the
life of Jesus told in the New Testament gospels
(Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) were not
written as biographies in the modern sense but
rather as affirmations of faith in who Jesus was
7

And what his coming meant.
• Birth of Jesus
• Childhood days of Jesus
• Baptism of Jesus
• Temptation of Jesus in the desert
• Jesus’ public ministry
– Taught, worked miracles, healed the sick, the
blind, and the lame, fed the hungry, cast out
demons, walked on water, calmed stormy seas,
raised the dead.
8

Origin and Founder
The Christian movement built upon the
Jewish belief in one God and upon the Holy
Scriptures (Old Testament) of the Jews, but the
genius of Christianity is found in the uniqueness
of the life and message of Jesus. He spoke of
God as compassionate heavenly Father, but He
also claimed to be one with the Father. In High
preaching, His positive message was “the good
news” that God loved the world and sent His Son
(p. 435)
9

Origin and Founder
that through faith in Him man might have
everlasting life (Jn 3:16). He emphasized the
possibility of fellowship with the Father and
participation in His kingdom; but He claimed to
be the Messiah bringing the kingdom, although
His messiahship was that of the “suffering
servant” (Lk 4:16-21) and His kingdom spiritual
(Jn 18:36). After His resurrection, He charged
His disciples to go “into all the world, and
preach the gospel to every creature” (Mk 16:15)
(p. 435)
10

• For somebody so important, we don’t have any contemporary
accounts of his appearance.
• He certainly wasn’t the Caucasian-looking fellow that gets
portrayed a lot in Western culture.

• Being a Semitic man from the 1st century, he likely had
a tawny skin tone, dark hair and eyes. These are facial
reconstructions from a skull from that time period.
• Bear in mind that this is just a random skull the face is
based on. You can’t say this is Jesus any more than if
you took George Bush’s skull and came up with my

• This is based on the image from the Shroud of Turin

• Interestingly, just as the West portrays Jesus as white,
other cultures portray him in their own ethnicity: Arab,
African, etc.

Background to the life and death of
Jesus Christ
• The traditional story of Jesus tells of his birth in a stable
in Bethlehem in the Holy Land, to a young virgin called
Mary who had become pregnant with the son of God
through the action of the Holy Spirit.
• The story of Jesus' birth is told in the writings of
Matthew and Luke in the New Testament of the Bible.
• His birth is believed by Christians to be the fulfilment of
prophecies in the Jewish Old Testament, which claimed
that a Messiah would deliver the Jewish people from
captivity.

• It didn’t help that people were thinking of him as the messiah.
• The Christian conception of that term is different from the
Jewish conception at the time. For 1st century Judaism, the
messiah would be a political and military leader – a new
king that would reunite Israel and defeat its enemies
(specifically the Romans). Naturally, the Romans didn’t
like such talk.

The New Testament and the
Birth of Christianity
The New Testament not only preserves
virtually the only evidence about the life of
Jesus, it is also the primary source for the birth
of Christianity.
The New Testament is actually a library of
27 separate sacred writings that came into
existence over an extended period of time. Most
scholars think that the earliest writings in the
N.T. (the first letters of the Apostle Paul) were
18

written 15-20 years after the death of Jesus. The
latest books probably composed in the mid- to
late second century C.E.
The name “testament” is another word for
“covenant”. The Christian compilers of the N.T.
believed that these writings bore witness to a
new covenant that God had made, extending the
“old” covenant with the nation of Israel to
include all people. Some of the prophets of Israel
envisioned a “new covenant” between God and
Israel (e.g., Jeremiah 31:31-34). The writers of
the N.T. thought that through Jesus, whom they
19

proclaimed as the Messiah, God had initiated this
new covenant. They believed that the people
who responded to Jesus’s call to discipleship,
and to the message about him, were “new Israel”
that God had assembled for a new age.
According to Acts, the movement first
called itself simply the Way, and acquired the
name “Christians” for the first time in Antioch,
Syria – probably (as with the names of other
religions) from outsiders seeking to understand
this new group.
20

The first Christians suffered persecution at
the hands of both the Sadducean leaders and
Roman authorities .
Worship within the earliest Christian
communities apparently revolved around
gatherings in homes, in which the last meal of
Jesus with his disciples was reenacted as a way
of experiencing his presence .
Followers shared the unconditional love for
one another that God had shown in sending His
son into the world .
21

Early Christianity
The Christian movement began in
Jerusalem, and preached the death and
resurrection of Jesus in accord with His
commission.
Christianity discarded the restrictions of
Judaism and became a religion for all men.
(p. 436)
22

Early Christianity
Two Types of Christianity
1. Gentile
2. Jew
* Overcame dissension spread by various
sects, such as the Gnostics. It made its way
against ostracism, competition, and persecution.
(p. 436)
23

Paul and the early church
• It has been suggested that the
work of Jesus Christ and the
impact of his death and
resurrection would not have
made any lasting impact on the
world were it not for the
missionary work of Paul.

The term “church” translates the Greek
“ekklesia” (“gathering, those called together”)
and refers at this stage to the people in the
Christian community , either locally or all
together, never to physical structure or a
denomination.
25

Some of the early disagreements were over
the “natures” of Jesus .
• Was he a human being, called by God to
special work?
• Was he divine and in his appearances on earth
only apparently human?
• or was he both human and divine, and if so,
how were these natures related?
26

A variety of groups, linked together by
historians under the name of “Gnostics”,
claimed that Jesus was a divine savior who only
appeared to be human .
Marcionism, named after the second-
century theologian Marcion, held that there are
two gods, one of justice, who created the world,
and another of goodness, the father of Jesus
Christ , who redeemed the world .
27

In 313 C.E. the Emperor Constantine ,after the
latest in a series of persecutions of Christians, ordered
in the Edict of Milan that Christianity be protected
alongside other religions.
Twelve years later the Council of Nicaea to
reconcile disputes among Christian leaders over the
vexing question of the natures of Christ. The council
produced the still-popular Nicene Creed, which
affirmed that Christ was “begotten, not made, of the
same substance with the father…..” on his death
Constantine accepted baptism and become a Christian
himself.

Spread due to 5 main factors as put in the book:
1.Embraced all people – men, women, slaves,
poor, nobles.
2.Gave hope to the powerless
3.Appealed to those who were repelled by
Roman extravagance.
4.Offered personal relationship with a loving
God.
5.Promised eternal life after death.

Constantine turns the tide
• When a Roman soldier,
Constantine, won victory
over his rival in battle to
become the Roman emperor,
he attributed his success to
the Christian God and
immediately proclaimed his
conversion to Christianity.

• Christianity became the official religion of the
Roman Empire.
• Constantine then needed to establish exactly
what the Christian faith was and called the
First Council of Nicea in 325 AD which
formulated and codified the faith.

Formulating the faith
• Over the next few centuries, there were
debates and controversies about the precise
interpretation of the faith, as ideas were
formulated and discussed.
• The Council of Chalcedon held in 451 was the
last council held whilst the Roman Empire was
intact. It gave rise to the Nicene Creed which
Christians still say today to affirm their belief
in God, Christ and his church.

• When Rome fell in 476, it meant that Western
and Eastern Christians were no longer under
the same political rule and differences in belief
and practice arose between them.

The Great Schism
• The differences between Eastern and Western
Christianity culminated in what has been
called the Great Schism, in 1054, when the
patriarchs of the Eastern and Western division
(of Constantinople and Rome respectively)
were unable to resolve their differences.

• The split led to the Orthodox church and
the Roman Catholic church.
• The Orthodox church does not recognise the
authority of the Roman papacy and claims a
Christian heritage in direct descent from the
Christian church of Christ's believers.

Under the reign of Theodosius (379-395),
Christianity completed its amazing rise from
outlawed sect to the official religion of the
Roman Empire.
In 451 another ecumenical council at
Chalcedon in Asia of Minor attempted to resolve
the dispute over the two natures of Christ by
affirming that Christ is “truly God and truly
man.”

Some Christians went to extreme lengths to avoid
persecution, such as at Cappadocia.
• This was a labyrinth of caves Christians carved
into a mountain and down into the ground.
• It was 18 stories deep and had miles of tunnels.
• The complex housed around 20,000 people who
rarely left the underground system.
• Was complete with living quarters, grape juicing
rooms, churches, ventilation shafts, and wells.
• Was complete with secret doorways that closed
tight from the inside.

Medieval Christianity
• All these developments were intensified in the
medieval period. The most striking feature was
a great development of the institutional aspect
of the church, which often patterned after
empire and in close union with it.
• This was also an era of developing theology
and settlement of controversies.
• In a series of general church councils,called by
various rulers of the empire from 325 to 787.
(p. 436)
41

• During the late medieval period the
groundwork was laid for the sixteenth century
Protestant Reformation.
• Movements of reform and revolt began during
the medieval period.

Reform movements in Christianity
•Martin Luther
•John Calvin
•Anabaptist
•King Henry VIII
Major
protestant
reformers

Martin Luther (1483-1546)
He became convinced through his study of
scripture that every Christian was a priest and
that salvation was not for the Church the
sacraments; rather it was God’s free gift,
received by each individual in faith. He
challenged the corruption of the Roman Catholic
Church, most famously through the “95 theses”
on the door of the castle church in Wittenberg in
1517.

John Calvin (1509-1564)
• Exercised a great deal of influence in both
secular and religion affairs.
• Discouraged frivolity
• Stressed hard wok and industry
• Encouraged the development of business
through the use of money loaned at interest.

Anabaptist Movement (1536)
• Jacob Hutter and Menno Simons.
• “Anabaptist” – baptism for a second time.
• Comes from the practice of baptizing adults
rather than as an infants.
• Known for their advocacy of pacifism and the
strict separation of the church and state.
• Many have been persecuted for their beliefs.

King Henry VIII (1533)
• Refuse to accept the Pope’s denial of his
request for an annulment of his marriage.
• Founded the Church of England, with himself
as the head.

Council of Trent (1545-1563)
• Stated that the tradition of the Catholic church
had equal authority with Scripture.
• Reaffirmed that several books of the Old
Testament were indeed Scripture.
- Deuterocanon, or “second canon”
• Reaffirmed the seven sacraments of the
Catholic church
- reformers claimed that only two were
Scriptural (Eucharist and Baptism)

Major Christian Movements
Roman Catholicism
Eastern Orthodoxy
Protestantism

Other Developments
The Charismatic Movement
- Emphasizes the “baptism of the Holy Spirit,”
The Ecumenical Movement
– seeks to heal division among churches.

The Christian Worldview
Humanity: One in Christ
Problem: Separation from God
Cause: Original Sin
End: The Kingdom of God in heaven
and on Earth
Means: Grace, Faith, and the
Sacraments.
Reality: Creation and the Cosmic Christ
Sacred: One God, Three “Persons”
(The Holy Trinity)

References
• Young, William A.. (2005) The world's
religions :worldviews and contemporary issues
Upper Saddle River, N.J. : Pearson Prentice
Hall,
• Groiler Incorporated (1963,1962). The
American Peoples Encyclopedia

-ism is a suffix in many English words,
originally derived from the Ancient
Greek suffix -ισμός (-ismós), reaching English
through the Latin -ismus, and the French -
isme.[1] It is often used in philosophy to define
specific ideologies, and, as such, at times it is
used as a noun when referring to a broad range
of ideologies in a general sense.[2] The suffix
'ism' is neutral and therefore bears no
connotations associated with any of the many
ideologies it has been appended to; such
determinations can only be informed by public
opinion regarding specific ideologies.

Christianity (world religion)

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