Jesus Person and offices

Christology is a branch of Christian theology that concerns the nature of Jesus, which has been the topic of much debate over the centuries that culminated in the ecumenical Council of Chalcedon in 451 CE, issuing a formulation of the hypostatic union between a human and divine nature of Jesus, "united with neither confusion nor division." Different denominations have different, sometimes mutually exclusive, beliefs on this matter, such as whether Jesus was divine in nature, human in nature, both, or neither. Jesus's mission as the Jewish messiah is also a related concern: whether he came specifically to free the Jewish people from foreign rulers, something else in addition to that, or something else entirely, and what his role is in salvation and the coming of the kingdom of heaven. Christian writings address Jesus by numerous titles, such as Son of Man, Son of God, Christ (Messiah), and Kyrios. These terms centered around certain themes, namely "Jesus as a preexistent figure who becomes human and then returns to God" as opposed to adoptionism, the notion that Jesus was a human who was adopted by God at some point, typically when he is baptised, crucified, or resurrected. Contemporary scholarship generally acknowledges the advent of high Christology as a monotheistic phenomenon within early Jewish Christianity, though older evolutionary models viewed it as a later gentile concept. Most scholars argue that high Christology precedes Paul. Many scholars today concede the synoptic gospels and other New Testament texts portray Jesus as divine.