Christology is a branch of Christian theology that concerns Jesus. Different denominations have different opinions on questions such as whether Jesus was human, divine, or both, and as a messiah what his role would be in the freeing of the Jewish people from foreign rulers or in the prophesied Kingdom of God, and in the salvation from what would otherwise be the consequences of sin.
The earliest Christian writings gave several titles to Jesus, such as Son of Man, Son of God, Messiah, and Kyrios, which were all derived from Hebrew scripture. These terms centered around two opposing themes, namely "Jesus as a preexistent figure who becomes human and then returns to God", versus adoptionism—the idea that Jesus was a human who was "adopted" by God at his baptism, crucifixion, or resurrection. Prior to 2007, the scholarly consensus was that the divinity of Christ was a later development, though most scholars now argue that a high Christology existed prior to Paul.