Christianity

Christianity is the largest religion in the world, with over two billion adherents, and is made up of a large set of traditions originating in first-century Palestine with the philosophy and teachings of Jesus (or Yeshua) Christ. As an historical and theological offspring of Judaism, the early Christian community incorporated the Jewish scriptures into their Bible and the relationship between the Jewish and Christian traditions remains complex and multifaceted. Christianity is a monotheistic faith that teaches that God is made up of three persons sharing a single essence (this teaching is known as Trinitarianism), and that His will for the world has been revealed in the Bible, a book made up of several dozen pieces of literature composed over 2,000 years in the Ancient Near East.

Theology

Christian theology centers around several main beliefs. Christianity is monotheistic; that is, Christians believe in one God, who is in 3 persons, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (or Holy Ghost). Christians believe that Jesus was both fully human, and fully divine. Christianity asserts that God is ethically perfect, or holy, and that God is immutable; that is, God does not change<red> Theologians quote James 1:17, "the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning." See Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology (1873) p. 390 online </ref>. God is believed to be infinite, as well as omnipotent, or all-powerful. Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768 –1834) merged all God's characteristics into the idea of causality and his treatment shaped liberal Protestant thought. Karl Barth in the 20th century emphasized God's transcendance. Lastly, God is omniscient, or all-knowing, although a small minority of Christian scholars argue that God does not exhaustively know the future, a belief known as "open theism".

Soteriology

Soteriology is the theology of salvation. Christians believe that, as a result of the fall of Adam in the Garden of Eden, all humans are sinful. Because of this "sinful nature", all people are doomed to be condemned to Hell, for breaking God's command. However, Christian soteriology asserts that Christ came to Earth as a human being, and was killed to take the punishment for man's sin. Christians generally believe that a person must accept God's forgiveness, and if they do so, that they are allowed to go to heaven. Most Christian denominations today agree that salvation is "by grace alone", meaning that a person is not required to do good works to get into heaven, although good works will generally be a by-product of salvation.

Eschatology

Eschatology is the theology of "last things", or beliefs about the end of the world. Christians believe that after Christ was crucified, he resurrected from the dead (the origin of the celebration of Easter), that he later ascended to heaven, and that some day he will return to Earth.

The Hebrew and Christian scriptures both have a wide body of work known as prophecy, which purports to predict the future. However, because prophetic literature is highly symbolic, there is very wide disagreement among Christian scholars about how exactly the end of the world will come about. The disagreement tends to focus on when exactly Christ will return to Earth, and whether the book of Book of Revelation is primarily about past, current, or future events, or whether it should be interpreted as metaphor.

Denominational taxonomy

Christianity has developed into a variety of traditions and ecclesiastical bodies over the past 2,000 years. The broadest division is between Eastern and Western Christianity, two families that come from historical differences between the Latin-speaking Roman Empire and the Greek-speaking Byzantine Empire. The Eastern traditions are made up of the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Oriental Orthodox Church, two associations of national churches in communion (although not with one another) and the much smaller Assyrian Church of the East, whose leadership lives among the Assyrian diaspora in Chicago, Illinois, United States of America. The Western faiths trace their heritage through direct descent, reform, or missionizing to the Roman church and included Catholicism, Protestantism, and Anglicanism. In addition, there are hundreds of millions of independent Christians - many in the United States; sub-Saharan Africa, where the Pentecostal movement has been influential; and the People's Republic of China - that have a legacy of some Protestant history, but are not formally associated with a church authority. Some churches from the East have formally joined the Catholic faith, and are historically and culturally Eastern, but ecclesiastically Western. Additionally, there are some movements - such as Messianic Judaism or Christian anarchism - which eschew these distinctions, and are based on a radical interpretation of early Christianity.