Christ: The Beginnings of Dogma

What do the terms “Son of God,” “Son of Man,” “Lord,” and “Messiah” mean? What did they mean for the first Christian community that used them? In this volume, Weiss sets out to answer these questions by examining the most ancient records of Christianity. He attempts to explain the sudden origin of a relatively complete Christology in the early church by seeing it as a rapid fusing of the existing Messianic theology of Judaism with the distinctive person of Jesus. The most distinctive feature being the resurrection, which Weiss supposes is the result of the amazing impact Jesus had on his followers, which drove them to believe that he rose from the dead after his crucifixion and therefore became “the divine Soul of the world, creative and active from all eternity.” This important work is broken up into three sections. The first deals with the faith of the primitive community. The second is an examination of Paul’s theology. The last section considers post-Pauline Christology.