Master the full doctrine of Christ — from eternal Sonship to eschatological triumph

If you have spent time in theological study, you already know the frustration. You have a shelf of systematic theologies. You have worked through the standard introductory surveys. You can recite the Chalcedonian formula and identify the major heresies by name. And yet, when you sit down to preach a text that bears on the person of Christ, or when a sharp question about the incarnation or the atonement is put to you in a pastoral conversation or a seminar room, you feel the inadequacy of what you actually know — the gap between the vocabulary you have acquired and the deep theological reasoning you have not yet built.

That gap is precisely what this course exists to close.

I designed this course because Christology deserves more than a chapter in a survey textbook. The doctrine of Christ is not one locus among equals — it is the center around which all of Christian theology organizes itself. The being of God is disclosed most fully here. The nature of humanity is defined here. The logic of salvation is grounded here. The shape of history, from creation to consummation, is given its meaning here. A shallow Christology produces a shallow gospel, a thin piety, and a church that cannot give a reason for the hope it professes. That is not good enough — not for those who will stand in pulpits, sit in dissertation defenses, or simply love the Lord Jesus Christ with their minds as well as their hearts.

So this course moves slowly and seriously through the full christological arc. We begin with methodology — because how you approach Christology determines what kind of answers you can reach — and then we trace the doctrine from Christ's eternal preexistence and Trinitarian identity, through the incarnation and its staggering theological weight, through the exegetical case for full deity and full humanity, through Chalcedon and its continuing significance, through the messianic offices, the earthly ministry, the cross and its multi-dimensional atonement theology, the resurrection and ascension, and finally the parousia and the consummation of all things in Christ. We do not skip the hard parts. We do not paper over the genuine tensions. We work through them.

I want to be direct about the posture of this course: it is confessionally orthodox and exegetically serious. I argue for the Chalcedonian settlement because I believe the biblical text requires it, and I engage heterodox and revisionist christologies fairly — but not with a false neutrality that pretends the tradition has nothing to say. You will be pressed to construct and defend arguments, not merely to survey positions. And throughout, my hope is that the sustained rigor of this kind of doctrinal work does not diminish your wonder at the mystery of Christ — it deepens it.

If you are ready to do that work, I am glad to be your guide through it. Come with your questions, your doubts, your half-formed convictions, and your love for the truth. That is exactly the raw material graduate-level theology needs.