Theology

• According to Luke, Joseph and Mary lived in Nazareth in Galilee, they went to Bethlehem because of the census, then returned to Galilee.
• The Incarnation is the belief that Jesus was fully God and fully human, summed up by the early Christian writer Irenaeus that 'God became man so that we might become God'.
• According to Matthew, they lived in Bethlehem, fled to Egypt to escape Herod and when they came back they settled in Nazareth.
• The extent to which the birth narratives provide insight into the doctrine of the Incarnation is a key focus of the specification.
• Irenaeus, writing c.180 AD, summarises the belief that Jesus was fully God and fully human.
• For both Gospels writers, Jesus lived in Nazareth, but they also believed that he was the fulfilment of prophecies which said he would be in the ‘house’ / ‘line’ of David, born in David’s city (Bethlehem).
• The two Creeds which evolved in the following centuries contain elements of the narratives of the stable, the journey to Bethlehem, the shepherds, the Magi.
• For Matthew, as a redactor, who wanted to portray Jesus as a second Moses, giving new Laws, up a Mountain in his Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7, then the exile to Egypt was particularly important.
• The kenotic model, as stated in Philippians 2:7-8, suggests that Jesus emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness and humbled himself.
• The doctrine of the Incarnation is a tightrope where Christian theology has attempted to preserve Jesus’ divinity and humanity.
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 - The King’s Cross Scene (in which Harry ‘meets’ Dumbledore at a mythical King’s Cross Station.)
• If Jesus was to be fully human, it was important he lived with truly human emotions, including doubt.
• Ekenosen could suggest that Jesus abandoned the nature of God and self-emptied himself of all God-stuff while on earth.
• Rudolf Bultmann was a German theologian, about 40 years older than Jurgen Moltmann, who worked alongside the existentialist philosopher Martin Heidegger, Rudolf Otto, and Karl Barth.
• Rudolf Bultmann was a member of the Confessing Church which opposed the Nazi regime.
• Rudolf Bultmann was a famous form critic who explored the individual stories and ‘units’ of texts in the New Testament which he called pericope.
• God could not change in becoming Jesus, so the eternal Son put aside some of his eternal attributes to be born, live and die, taking them back up when he had ascended after the Resurrection.
• Rudolf Bultmann tried to understand how the narratives in the New Testament would have been used in the early Church, what their original life-setting or sitz im leben might have been.
• The kenotic model suggests that Jesus emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness and humbled himself.
• Rudolf Bultmann argued that some of the narratives in the New Testament, including the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection and Ascension, reflected the world-view of these first century writers.
• Rudolf Bultmann believed that God’s teaching or revelation never comes to us in a pure form, it comes through human language, which reflects the culture and time it is expressed in.
• Rudolf Bultmann believed that the New Testament stories reflect God’s revelation through the prism of the time they lived in.
• The doctrine of the Incarnation is heavily dependent on the Virgin Birth, which is embedded in the nativity narratives in both Matthew and Luke.
• Historically, what are the options for explaining Christian beliefs in the Resurrection?
• Joseph was not Jesus’ father, he did not have a human father but divine.
• Rudolf Bultmann believed that every generation needs to find the kernel of Christian truth for themselves, the core message of Christianity and liberate it from earlier expressions of it, even the expressions in the Gospel.
• Rudolf Bultmann defined the core message of Christianity as the “message of God’s decisive act in Christ”.
• The texts that describe the Resurrection include I Corinthians 15, Matthew 28, John chapters 20 & 21.
• The narratives, full of supernatural angels appearing to shepherds and stars to the magi, distract from the Incarnation.
• According to Rudolf Bultmann, the Resurrection narratives, in his theology, don’t reflect historical events that actually happened.
• The earliest account of the Resurrection is found in I Corinthians 15, written by Paul c.52-3 CE.
• A scholar we’ll begin to get to know next week, Rudolf Bultmann, will argue along these lines with the Resurrection.
• According to I Corinthians 15, Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, was buried, and was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures.
• The Bible is a source of wisdom and authority in daily life.
• If you focus on the Incarnation and God becoming human and say that this isn’t dependent on all the details of the narratives being historically accurate, it also means that you do not have to worry about harmonising the accounts in the different Gospels.
• There are no short-cuts in learning the set texts.
• Christ appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve, then to more than five hundred brothers and sisters, and finally to James and all the apostles.
• Jesus and the Beloved Disciple were walking, and Peter turned and saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following them.
• When you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.
• The disciple whom Jesus loved had reclined next to Jesus at the supper and had asked, 'Lord, who is it that is going to betray you?'.