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When Jesus asked his disciples, "Who do people say that I am?" he received a multitude of answers. Some said he was John the Baptist, some said he was Elijah or Jeremiah or another one of the prophets. The disciple Peter came up with the correct answer when he said, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." The early Christians accepted Peter's confession, but they had many different ideas of exactly what it meant for Jesus to be the Christ. What was Jesus' real nature and person like? How was he related to God and to the Father? To what degree was he truly human? There were many debates over these issues in the fourth through the sixth centuries of the church. When Constantine became emperor of the Roman Empire and made Christianity a legal religion, he believed unity of the Church was important to the political strength of the empire. So, in 325 he called a Council at Nicea to settle disputes over the nature of Christ. The council issued the Nicene Creed, agreeing that Christ was both man and God and that as the Son of God he had the same divine nature as the Father. Once it was accepted that Jesus was both fully God and fully man, debates began to rage over how Christ's deity was related to his humanity. One group, the Apollinarians, said the divine Word of Christ took the place of Jesus' human mind and will so that his divine nature was always predominant. Others argued back that if Jesus did not have a human mind and will he could not be fully human. Yet another group argued that at the incarnation the divine and human were so combined in the person of Christ as to produce a new, unique individual. Others again thought that the divine and human natures of Jesus were kept so separate that it was almost like he was two persons. Very often each conflicting group became associated with a particular city - Antioch, Alexandria, Rome, Constantinople, so that political rivalry became entangled in theological debate.
In July, 450,...