Sabbath School Lesson Podcast

As Christianity spread through the Greco-Roman world and moved into the second generation, people began to reflect on its basic message about Jesus’ person, and to raise questions: How could Divinity and humanity cohabit the same body? How could Deity become mortal? What is Jesus’ relationship to the Father? And so forth . . . Beginning in the first century, two conflicting emphases emerged. One would stress Christ’s humanity at the expense of His divinity; the other would do just the opposite. Among those denying Christ’s deity were the Ebionites, early Jewish Christians who taught that Jesus became the Son of God only at His baptism, at which time He became united with the eternal Christ, a nondivine being who could not save humanity but came, instead, to call humanity to obedience. The Arians later would take up the struggle against Christ’s divinity, beginning around the late third century, a position strongly condemned by the Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325. The heavyweights on the other side of the spectr