His message was also troubling to Rome. Jesus spoke of a coming “kingdom of God” and described his own actions as the dawning of that kingdom. He instructed his followers to give appropriate respect to Caesar, the Roman Emperor, but he also told them to give their entire lives to God, a qualification that clearly limited any loyalty owed to Caesar. And, while he did not seek political power for himself, he refused to cower when he was arrested and questioned by Rome’s political appointees in Palestine. All of it seemed potentially subversive to an empire that demanded absolute obedience, and Rome responded vigorously, as Rome always did. Using the gruesome spectacle of execution on a cross, the Empire eliminated Jesus and sent a public message to his followers that the show was over.
Most local residents thought that was the end of the matter; they assumed that another pesky prophet had come and gone and that life would now return to normal. But killing Jesus did not stop the movement. His closest followers – all of whom were, like Jesus, Jews themselves – soon became convinced that Jesus had survived his crucifixion or, as they put it, he had risen from the grave and conquered death. They reported that they had seen him alive, in a glorious resurrected body, and that he had commanded them to continue the work he had begun. Rather than using his given name Jesus, which numerous other individuals shared, they called him “the Christ” (or just “Christ”), which means “the anointed one,” God’s special representative on earth.
Very quickly, many of the earliest followers of Christ came to think of Jesus Christ not merely as God’s representative, but somehow as divine himself. Yes, they said, Jesus was a human being, but Jesus was also God incarnate, God appearing in human form. Christians around the world today continue to make this claim. Thus, in addition to being committed to following the teachings of Christ, most Christians also worship Christ as God. This has been the main driving force powering the growth of Christianity through the centuries and around the world: that, in Jesus, God came to earth in order to heal the woes of humankind. This belief makes Christianity more than just the religion of Jesus, the religion taught and practiced by Jesus himself. If that was all that was claimed, then Christianity would be a new variety of Judaism. But Christianity quite quickly became a very different religion than Judaism, and the key difference is what Christians believe about Jesus.
God as Trinity: New ideas about God did not stop with Christianity’s affirmation of the deity of Christ; Christians also believe that God is a Trinity. Jesus had spoken of a paraclete (meaning “comforter” or “advocate”) who would come to help his followers after he had departed the earth. With that promise in mind, Jesus’s closest followers gathered together in Jerusalem after his death to wait for this to happen. On the day of Pentecost, a Jewish holy day that took place fifty days after the celebration of Passover, those followers reported that the Holy Spirit had descended from heaven and filled them, both individually and as a group, with God’s presence and power. Ever since, Christians have conceptualized their relationship with God as involving not only the God of creation and the person of Jesus Christ, but also their ongoing experience of God as life‐giving Spirit.
After many years of reflecting on this threefold understanding of God – as Creator, as Christ, and as Holy Spirit (or “Holy Ghost”) – Christians settled on the word “Trinity” to describe their complex understanding of God. Many different theologians over the centuries have tried to explain the three‐ness of God. No single explanation of the Trinity has ever been adopted as the one model that all Christians accept, but almost all Christians continue to ascribe some kind of three‐ness to God. Most Christians describe God as “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” – three divine “persons” bound indissolubly together in one divine being. The notion of God as Trinity sets Christianity apart from the other two Abrahamic religions, Judaism and Islam. In fact, many Jews and Muslims think that Christians have somehow abandoned monotheism for an alternative belief in three separate Gods. Christians themselves maintain that they are indeed monotheists, but they believe that God’s inner being is more complex than can be communicated by simple singularity.
Salvation: Christians assume that the world as it currently exists, and especially the way people currently live, falls short of what God intended for them. In the terminology of the New Testament, this is called “sin” (harmartia), a word that literally means “to fall short” or “to miss the mark.” The word “salvation” refers to the act or process by which God overcomes sin, redeeming human beings and giving them the opportunity to become the people they were meant to be.
According to Christian scripture, the most important goal for any person – the goal of the life for which they were created – is to love God “with all your heart and with all your mind and with all your soul.” Salvation accordingly involves the establishment of a proper loving relationship with God. Christians also believe that they are supposed to love others as much as they love themselves, so salvation includes a mandate to establish just and loving relationships among human beings as well. (Obviously Christians do not always live up to this ideal, but most would agree that it is the goal.)
Christians believe that salvation is impossible apart from God’s grace. Grace is God taking the initiative for remaking people into who and what they ought to be. In the language used by many churches, grace is defined as God’s unmerited favor directed toward humanity despite humanity’s sin. Christians believe that God’s grace has been delivered to humanity in many different ways: by way of the Ten Commandments, through the words of the many different prophets who spoke to the ancient Israelite people, and, most crucially, through the birth, teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Grace is also evident in every personal encounter with God that nudges people little by little toward greater love for God and others.
Different communities of Christians have different opinions about some aspects of salvation, including whether human effort is required (or whether God does everything) and how quickly salvation happens (all at once or slowly over time). Despite these differences, all (or almost all) Christians agree that the Christian life includes an ongoing dynamic of confession, forgiveness, and reconciliation. Christians are instructed to confess their sins (to acknowledge and name their moral failures), they are told to seek forgiveness for these sinful acts from both God and the people they have hurt, and they are encouraged to act in ways that will allow them to be fully reconciled with God and the people they have harmed. Many Christian churches build this dynamic of confession, forgiveness, and reconciliation into their formal religious practices, a process which often involves a priest or pastor acting as one’s “confessor” (a person who hears an individual’s confession of sin and forgives that person in God’s name). Other churches expect individuals to take care of these matters on their own without the help of a priest. Obviously not all Christians follow this practice of self‐examination, confession, and reconciliation with equal rigor, but it is central to the theology of how Christians are supposed to live.
Sacraments: Most Christians believe that God’s grace is uniquely communicated to human beings through specific formal practices of the church; these rituals are typically called sacraments. The two most important Christian sacraments are baptism and the Eucharist. Baptism is the ritual of initiation that marks a person as a follower of Jesus, and it involves either submerging a person in water or pouring water over a person’s head. Baptism is seen as washing away sins committed in the past and as initiating the recipient into a new spiritual life (sometimes called the “new birth”). Some churches baptize babies while others baptize only adults, but baptism in one form or another is practiced by almost all Christians worldwide. Often, it is considered a prerequisite for salvation.
The other major sacrament is the Eucharist, which is also known as Communion, the Lord’s Supper, or Mass. The Eucharist is a symbolic meal that takes place near the end of a Christian worship service. It occurs regularly in most churches and involves eating a small piece of bread and taking a sip of wine (or, in some churches, grape juice). The Eucharist commemorates the last meal that Jesus ate with his disciples, and