Needs help replying two posts:

Watch: "Early Christian Schisms, Part 1-4 (YouTube) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1ZZeCDGHJE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZsZXHPDwsw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6d2lOQpuqd4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9lEcwLnwfg Read: Nicene Creed https://www.usccb.org/beliefs-and-teachings/what-we-believe Read: Apostles' Creed https://www.usccb.org/prayers/apostles-creed

1.) The search into Jesus' history along with Christianity is a complex journey. I believe that in the Christian faith among different churches, it is easy for people's beliefs to be slightly different. I had grown up going to church but I never went to Sunday school; I believe this contributes to a lack of knowledge of topics. I do understand many concepts but there were some things that I had never thought there was such a rich history behind it.

There are many new things that I have learned during this module. There were three things that stuck out to me because I had once thought I had a full grasp on them. The first thing that I had learned is why Christians do not practice many traditions of Judaism. I had always wondered why this could be since Jesus was practicing Judaism and grew up with many Jewish mentors in his life. I had just thought over time these traditions phased out as Christianity was being passed down. However, the reason that they dropped some of these Jewish practices is that there are some that people would have a hard time accepting. Which would help to grow the Christian religion. The second thing that I had learned was about communion and why it is a practice during most Christian masses. I believed that it directly came from the Last Supper. Which is partly true because that is when Jesus said that the bread is his body and the wine is his blood. What I did not know is that we started to do it in churches to help people who only saw Jesus as a spirit/divine to start understanding Jesus' side as human and not just divine. With only seeing Jesus as divine is takes away the death and resurrection as spirits cannot die. The last thing I had learned directly connects to the last one. That people fought over Jesus as a human, spirit, a mix of both in one, or half and half. I have never been taught that people see his as other than what I believe, which is that he is human and divine in one. It is important that people see Jesus as human because it is why his death and resurrection is a great significance.

2.) First thing I learned was the belief of the Docetists and why their view on Christ was wrong to many Christians. Docetists believed that Christ was a being of pure spirit. But this is seen as wrong because if Jesus was just a pure spirit, then what becomes of his sacrifice. If he was a spirit, that means he did not suffer and did not die because spirits cannot die. In the Epistles of John, he uses the phrase "in the flesh" a lot because this was a dig at the docetists, emphasizing that Jesus was alive in the flesh and was human.

Second thing I learned was how Athanacius introduced the term "homoousian." I had never heard this term, or if I did, I never thought about it in context. This meant that Jesus and God of the same substance, there was no difference between God the Son and God the Father. This started a huge debate on if Christ was homoousian.

Third thing I learned was how there were three theories back then on what the actual nature of Christ was and how there was much debate on this as well. The first one was that Christ has two separate natures, one divine and one human. The second was that Christ has two perfectly unified natures, one divine and one human. The third was Christ was entirely one nature, divine and human.

After learning all of this new information, it makes thinking about the nature of Christ very complex and sometimes confusing. How I learned everything was that there was the Holy Trinity that was comprised of the Father Son and Holy Spirit and all three was what made up God. I agree with John in the Epistles that Jesus was human because he truly did suffer for us to be forgiven by God. I understood him to be human since he was born from his mother Mary and grew up and lived like any other human. And because He is the son of God, he performed miracles and spread the good word. I never thought about it if Jesus had separate natures or if they were unified.