ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the person of Jesus Christ, Jesus' authority as the Son of God, and Jesus' authority as a teacher of wisdom. Extra-biblical texts were initially seen as the most important proof of the historical Jesus. However, in the twentieth century, the works usually cited, by Philo, Pliny, Josephus and Tacitus, were all discredited as forgeries or forged insertions into the text. This was a belief which said that Jesus was born as man and because he was so virtuous he was adopted as the 'Son of God' when the Holy Spirit descended to him on the banks of the river Jordan. Apollinaris of Laodicea also said that human souls contained other souls, as well as their bodies. This heresy was condemned by the first Council of Constantinople in 381. Monothelitism was a development of Monophysitism. Patriarch Sergius I of Constantinople was the force behind this heresy with the blessing of the Emperor Heraclius.
