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Examined Doctrine

God & Christ

3 questions in this part of the map. Each one shows the views side by side, who holds each view, and their own words wherever they can be quoted.

  1. How can Father, Son and Spirit all be God if there is only one God?

    The Trinity

    Everyone on this map who takes a position confesses one God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The difference is one of era rather than belief: 21 hold the faith as the Council of Nicaea settled it in 325, while Irenaeus, writing more than a century earlier, states it without that vocabulary. No one here holds that the Son or Spirit is lesser in being, or that the three are one person in three roles.

    2 views: One being, three equal persons; The same faith, before the vocabulary · 27 figures placed

  2. How can Jesus be both God and a man at the same time?

    The person of Christ

    Everyone on this map who takes a position says Jesus is both God and man. They differ over how to describe the two joined in one person. Sixteen hold the answer the Council of Chalcedon gave in 451, one person in two natures; three earlier writers put it in other terms, and no one here holds that Christ is two persons or has only one nature.

    3 views: One person, two complete natures; God the Word in a human body; Both, before the formula existed · 24 figures placed

  3. When the Old Testament talks about other “gods,” who or what are they?

    Divine plurality & the unseen realm

    The Old Testament sometimes speaks of “gods” (in Hebrew, elohim) besides the Lord, as in Psalm 82. On this map two figures read them as real spiritual beings ruling under God, two as human judges, and six never take up the question in these terms. Nobody on the map holds that they are only angels or nothing at all, so that gives three views.

    3 views: Real spiritual beings under God; Human judges called “gods”; Never asked this question · 11 figures placed