County of statue: St. Charles County
location of statue: 1235 Church Rd., inside St. Paul Catholic Church, St. Paul
In Hebrew time Jesus of Nazerith, and Christians referred to him as Jesus the Christ. In the 14th through 16th Centuries when new religions were splitting off from the Roman Catholic Church (i.e. Lutheran and Angelican, etc.), they wanted to distance themselves from the Roman Catholic and the Hebrew (Jewish) religions. So, during that time, Jesus as the Christ, and Jesus the Christ began being referred to by Protestants as Jesus Christ.
Christ is the English term for the Greek (Khristós) meaning "the anointed". In the 3rd- to 1st-centuries BC, the Tanakh (what Christians would in later centuries come to call the Old Testament) was translated into a Greek version called the Septuagint, in which Khristós was used to translate the Hebrew (Mašía?,) (Messiah), meaning "[one who is] anointed, typically with holy anointing oil."
A central doctrine of the Christian faith is that God took human form in the body of Christ. Therefore, Christ was both fully human and fully God at the same time. Followers of Jesus became known as Christians because they believed that Jesus is the Christ (Messiah). Jewish tradition rejects this claim and is still waiting for the messiah to come (see Jewish Messiah) as a human being without deity or divinity.
The area of Christian theology focusing on the nature of Jesus as the Christ, particularly with how the divine and human are related in his person, is known as Christology.
Etymology:
The spelling Christ in English was standardized in the 17th century, when, in the spirit of the Enlightenment, spellings of certain words were changed to fit their Greek or Latin origins. Prior to this, in Old and Middle English, the word was usually spelled Crist, the i being pronounced either as /i/ preserved in the names of churches such as St Katherine Cree, or as a short, preserved in the modern pronunciation of Christmas). The spelling "Christ" is attested from the 14th century.
The term Christ (or similar) appears in English and most European languages, owing to the Greek usage of Khristós (transcribed in Latin as Christus) in the New Testament as a description for Jesus. In the Septuagint version of the Hebrew Bible, it was used to translate into Greek the Hebrew mashiach (messiah), meaning "[one who is] anointed."
His followers believe Jesus Christ is the living son of God and will return to judge all humanity one day.
Khristós in classical Greek usage could mean covered in oil, and is thus a literal translation of messiah. The Greek term is thought to derive from the Proto-Indo-European root of *ghrei- ("to rub"), which in Germanic languages, such as English, mutated into gris- and grim-. Hence the English words grisly, grim, grime, and grease, are thought to be cognate with Christ, though these terms came to have a negative connotation, where the Greek word had a positive connotation. In French the Greek term mutated first to cresme and then to crème, due to the loss of certain 's' usages in French, which was loaned into English as cream. Indian ghee, from Sanskrit ("sprinkled") is another obvious cognate, and indeed, has a sacred role in Vedic and modern Hindu libation and anointment rituals.
Christian views:
The New Testament records that the Messiah, long awaited, had come and describes this savior as The Christ (Greek Genitive: toú Christoú,; Nominative: ho Christós). The apostle Peter, in what has become a famous proclamation of faith among Christians since the first century, said, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God" (Matthew 16:16).
Teachings about Jesus and testimonies about what he accomplished during his three-year public ministry are found throughout the New Testament. Core biblical teachings about the person of Jesus Christ may be summarized that Jesus Christ was and forever is fully God (divine) and fully human in one sinless person at the same time. Scripture asserts that Jesus was conceived, by a miraculous work of the Holy Spirit, in the womb of his virgin mother Mary without a human father (Matthew 1:18-25, Luke 1:35, Luke 3:23).
Apostles' Creeds dating from the third century A.D. and still in current use by Christians succinctly describe Jesus as:
* the only Son of God the Father Almighty
* born of the Virgin Mary
* was crucified under Pontius Pilate, dead and buried (having died in the place of all humanity and paid the
penalty due to everyone since all have sinned against God)
* rose (resurrected) from the dead on the third day
* ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty
* is coming again to judge the living and the dead
Christian Science View:
In the theology of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, the religion's founder, wrote in her book, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, that:
"The invisible Christ was imperceptible to the so-called personal senses, whereas Jesus appeared as a bodily existence. This dual personality of the unseen and the seen, the spiritual and material, the eternal Christ and the corporeal Jesus manifest in flesh, continued until the Master's ascension, when the human, material concept, or Jesus, disappeared, while the spiritual self, or Christ, continues to exist in the eternal order of divine Science, taking away the sins of the world, as the Christ has always done, even before the human Jesus was incarnate to mortal eyes."
Eddy wrote that while Jesus, as a material man, was not the exact ontological or quantitative equivalent to God, he thoroughly embodied the spiritual sonship of God's nature. In Christian Science, the Christ, or divine manifestation of God, continues forever to enlighten humanity and to destroy sickness, sin, and death.
Rosicrucian Views:
For the Rosicrucians there is a distinction to be made between Jesus and the Christ. Jesus is considered a high Initiate of the human life wave (which evolves under the cycle of rebirth) and of a singularly pure type of mind, vastly superior to the great majority of the present humanity.
They believe he was educated during his youth among the Essenes and thus prepared himself for the greatest honor ever bestowed upon a human being: to deliver his pure, passionless, highly evolved physical body and vital body (already attuned to the high vibrations of the 'Life Spirit'), in the moment of the Baptism, to the Christ being for his ministry in the physical world. At the crucifixion the Christ was released from the bodies of Jesus and entered into the Earth. Christ is described as the highest spiritual being of the life wave called Archangels, having completed his union ("the Son") with the second aspect of God: Wisdom (Christ the Logos); and this great Archangel still is, according to these esoteric Christian teachings, the indwelling Spirit of the Earth: the Regent of the Earth.
Gnostic Views:
The gnostics generally believed not in a Jesus who was a divine person with a human form, but in a spiritual Christ who dwelt in Jesus. Through the spiritual path of gnosticism, followers of these schools believed that they could experience the same knowledge, or gnosis. Gnosticism, a non-hierarchical interpretation of the Christian message, was declared heresy by the formal, hierarchical Christian church at the first Ecumenical Council, which occurred at Nicaea in 325 A.D., although condemnation of such beliefs were held by orthodox church leaders for some time.
Gnostic texts with Jesus Christ include the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Mary, and many more which have been discovered throughout the centuries.
Islamic View:
Muslims believe Jesus (Isa) to be the Messiah (Massih) and a prophet. Although they believe in the Virgin Birth, they do not consider Jesus to be "the Son of God". Jesus was neither crucified nor dead, but was raised to Heaven by God while still living.
Islamic traditions narrate that he will return to earth near the day of judgment to restore justice and defeat al-Masi ad-Dajjal (lit. "the false messiah", also known as the Antichrist) and the enemies of Islam.
Much of the information in the above views are from Wikipedia.