Christians
- For other uses of the term Christian, see Christian (disambiguation).
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A Christian is a follower of Jesus Christ. There are, however, different understandings of what exactly that entails. In any case, Christians by definition are a part of Christianity. Christians are monotheistic, believing that there is one God. Today, it is estimated that there are around 2.3 billion Christians in the world.
History
Early times
Church is taken by some to refer to a single, universal community, although others contend that the doctrine of the universal church was not established until later. The doctrine of the universal, visible church was made explicit in the Apostles' Creed, while the less common Protestant notion of the universal, invisible church is not laid out explicitly until the Reformation. The universal church traditions generally espouse that the Church includes all who are baptized into her common faith, including the doctrines of the trinity, forgiveness of sins through the sacrificial action of Christ, and the resurrection of the body. These teachings are expressed in liturgy with the celebration of sacraments, visible signs of grace. They are passed down as the deposit of faith.
Some minority traditions of Christianity have maintained that the word translated "church" in scripture most often properly refers to local bodies or assemblies. "Church" is a derivative of the Late Greek word "κυριακον", meaning Lord's house, which in English became "church". The Koine word for church is εκκλησία (ecclesia). Before Christian appropriation of the term, it was used to describe purposeful gatherings, including the assemblies of many Greek city states. Christians of this stripe maintain that a centralizing impulse in the church, present from the early days of the church through the rise of Constantine, represented a departure from true Christianity. They therefore reject the authority of the Nicene Creed or the Apostles' Creed.
The first millennium
Christian spirituality blossomed in the Roman Empire between 64 and 313 AD in spite of official efforts to suppress it. The earliest record of the use of the term is by Tacitus when he recorded that Nero blamed the "Christians" for the Great Fire of Rome in 64 AD. Sometime around 200 AD, one leader, Tertullian, is quoted as saying, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed [of the Church]” to account for this phenomenon of persecution of Christians. Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History 2.25[1] recorded: "The Roman Tertullian is likewise a witness of this. He writes as follows: "Examine your records. There you will find that Nero was the first that persecuted this doctrine, particularly then when after subduing all the east, he exercised his cruelty against all at Rome. We glory in having such a man the leader in our punishment. For whoever knows him can understand that nothing was condemned by Nero unless it was something of great excellence."" In 313 AD, the Edict of Milan ended official persecution, and under the Emperor Constantine, Christians acquired powerful political influence, the results of which are controversial to this day, beginning with Constantine's First Council of Nicaea, sometimes called the Constantinian shift. In 390, Theodosius the Great declared Nicene Christianity the state religion of the empire.
Christians developed hierarchical structures to lead the visible Church over the course of many centuries. From the early formation of the Church until the Great Schism in 1054 AD, virtually all Christians subsisted within one Church as one visible organization, led locally by bishops, and regionally by patriarchs. However, minor divisions occurred over differences in doctrine as early as the Council of Chalcedon, and continued through the progression of ecumenical councils.
Medieval times
In Medieval Europe, the Roman Catholic Church was at its peak of Apostolic flourishment and spirituality. Not only was the Church and its organizations extremely devoted to Christianity, piously spreading the word of God through missionaries and established monastaries in many countries but through its dominant spiritual influence that eventually rivalled the political power of most Monarchs for support of the population. The majority of people of this age devoted their lives to God and it showed by the donations of land, money, and possessions to the church. In time, this made the Pope an important figure in the life of the continent.
This wealth often expressed itself in the building of beautiful cathedrals which showed their great devotion and adoration to God. The Church's monasteries were seats of learning and study which evolved into modern universities. They also provided the first hospitals for the care of the sick.
Modern times
The history of the Christian faith in modern times must be studied movement by movement, such is its diversity. In the West, the Protestant Reformation profoundly conditioned the relationship between church and state, thus bringing to Christianity the idea of self-interpretation and the denouncement of visible unity. Intellectual pressure from the Enlightenment led to a religious reaction in the North American colonies — called the Great Awakening — to which Protestant North American Christians owe much of their pattern of practice.
Widespread Christian missions, founded by all segments of Christianity in response to the command of Jesus in Matthew 28:19-20, have created today's situation in which Christians are to be found in almost every part of the world.
Some Christians devote themselves to active participation in prophetic communication and miraculous healing, as represented in the early church and the pre-Christ prophets. They are categorized as Charismatic or Pentecostal, but can be found in other denominations, as well.
Other movements within contemporary Christendom include the emergent church, fundamentalism, return to orthodoxy, messianic Judaism, liberalism, and the home church movement.
The life of a Christian is still characterized by faith in the figure of Jesus as represented in the New Testament. Sacraments aside, the concept of grace is still uniquely Christian: the idea that spiritual wholeness comes only as a result of a gift from God.