A class on Christology was held at the Lutheran Center in Novosibirsk on April 1st and 2nd as part of the Biblical school (pre-seminary) activity. Fr. Alexei Streltsov was the lector for this class.

Discussion was based on the classical Christology of the Church Catholic as it was expressed in the III and IV Ecumenical Councils. Such foundational Christological documents as the second and third Epistles of St. Cyril of Alexandria to Nestorius, Tome of Leo the Great, and the Definition of Faith of Chalcedon were brought into discussion. The presentor pursued three main goals: (1) to demonstrate the central place of Christology in the corpus of Christian dogmatics and its relation to the other articles of faith on the basis of “All theology is Christology” principle proposed by Lutheran dogmatician Dr. David Scaer; (2) to examine the need to understand the doctrine of justification (“the article on which the church stands or falls”) in the christological context; (3) to analyze modern christological deviations and perversions, such as feminist, black, post-modern, and the like. The instructor mentioned also some popular heretical portrayals of Christ using as an example the notorius book “The Da Vinci Code” by Dan Brown.

Fourth-year seminarian Andrei Lipnitsky brought a change in the flow of the class on the second day. At the lector’s request, Andrei shared the results of his graduation diploma work with the audience. Lipnitsky has been working in the area of Martin Luther’s Christology and its difference with the Christology of Ulrich Zwinglie and the sacramentarians that was the cause of the Euharistic controversy of the 1520s. Lipnitsky aptly demonstrated the faulty character of the teachings on Christ of Carlstadt, Zwinglie, and their followers.

By the end of this intensive course the students received questions on which they will have to work during the following month, using both lecture materials and assigned books to find answers.