Christianity and Christ

The close and inseparable connection between Jesus Christ and Christianity, which is implied in the name, and which study only makes more and more evident, produces the inevitable consequence that our view of the nature and characteristics of Christianity must depend on the answer which we give to the question which Jesus himself put to His disciples -- "Whom do ye say that I, the Son of man, am?" There are different theories of Christianity, because there are different theories of Christ, and in order to know how various conceptions of the nature of Christianity arise it is necessary to be familiar with the various views which men have held and hold about the nature and work of Christ. For example, different theories of Christianity arise when we ask what was the relation existing between Jesus and what went before Him, what was the relation in which Jesus stood to His· contemporaries and His immediate followers, what is the connection which subsisted between Jesus and the future. All these inquiries reveal different theories about the nature and work of Christ, which are reproduced in different theories of the essential nature of Christianity, and enable men whose opinions and principles are widely different to call themselves, to their own satisfaction at least, Christians.





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