Increased historical knowledge has enabled new generation to see more clearly how Jesus of history had been obscured by legends. Theologians of that time were interested in demonstrating how Jesus the Messiah was unlike mortal man, and how he was like God. To understand why it took place, we should consider several factors.
Firstly, the brief statement that Jesus was Christ rather quickly lost most of its meaning when the Christians took their religions out of Palestine into the wider Graeco-Roman world. Being the Christ meant simply posing as a pretender to the long-vacant throne of David. That point of view was limited to political and national component. The non-Jewish world had a highly sophisticated metaphysical world view derived from Plato and his interpreters, a theology of the pagan Mystery of dying and a risen god as well as moral philosophy known as Stoicism. Consequently it was natural for Christians to interpret their faith along these lines.
“We should never forget”, says John Hick, “that if the Christian gospel gad moved east, into India, instead of west, into the Roman empire, Jesus’ religious significance would probably have been expressed by hailing him within Hindu culture as a divine Avatar and within the Mahayana Buddhism which was developing in India as a Bodhisattva, one who has attained to oneness with Ultimate Reality but remains in the human world out of compassion for mankind and to show other the way of life. These would have been the appropriate expressions, within those cultures, of the same spiritual reality.”[1]
Secondly, there were purely political reasons. Constantine became a patron of new faith because he thought of the church as stabilizing and uniting power in the Roman civilization. To preserve political unity he sought ecclesiastical uniformity that could only come through resolving the debates between Arius and Athanasius. For that reason, the Ecumenical Council was assembled.
Thirdly, in view of uncritical devotion of Christian masses, theology represented a rationalization of what people felt as a result of worship. For Christians of fourth century Jesus was a cult object of a very elaborated ritualistic Church. Thus theology based on the leadership of the Jesus was replaced by one based on praising him[2].
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