How was Christian doctrine established?

Answer 1

A:Christian theology developed over a period of centuries and is probably still in a process of development.

Paul is the first author in the New Testament to begin to define a Christian theology. One of his assertions was that salvation by faith alone. The Epistle of James came along later, opposing Paul's "free gift of faith" and saying that faith without works will not save. This was to be the Catholic position for centuries, but many Protestants now adhere to Paul's concept of faith alone for salvation.

Mark's Gospel was the first New Testament gospel to be written and portrays Jesus as God's adopted son, as at the time of his baptism. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke followed, portraying Jesus as the son of God, from his conception. It was not until the second century that John's Gospel portrayed Jesus as divine and pre-existing. At this stage, there was no concept of the holy Trinity, which began to be formulated in the second and third centuries, and accepted as fact by the Council of Nicaea in the fourth century. Scriptural support for the Trinity is indirectly provided by 1 John 5:7, a verse now known as the Johannine Comma and added to the epistle in the fifth century. A papal change to the Nicene regarding the relationship of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit was partly responsible for the Great Schism of 1054.

Saint Augustine of Hippo (354-430) developed the concept of original sin in Western Christianity, but it was never adopted in the Eastern Churches. He also influenced much of the Christian doctrine on ethics.

The Middle Ages were an important time in developing the theology on the devil and on demons, heaven, hell, limbo and purgatory. The roles of saints and their relics became central to Catholicism, but were later discarded by the Protestants.

Answer 2

through Jesus Christ and the disciples.